A Dagger in the Dark

With the rain barreling into the roof, it was almost enough to disguise the sound of the muffled scream. It had been hours since her mother lay her to bed and her father kissed her on the head goodnight.

Clinging to the white wolf gifted to her by her parents on her third birthday, she slinks out of bed, touching her delicate toes onto the unforgiving bedroom floor. She winces at the cold bite of the wooden floorboards as she stands on wobbly legs, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Sleepily, she patters across the room and through the door into the lightly illuminated hallway.

The roof must be leaking because she slips on a wet puddle that now soaks her feet. She walks down the hall towards her parents’ bedroom. Thumb in her mouth and the paws of her wolf drag beside her.

Scream.

She freezes. Then the sound comes of a chair toppling over and an unfamiliar voice.

“Just make this easy on yourselves and stop fighting,” the voice growls low.

Another scream.

Her mother.

“Please! Don’t touch her,” her father begs from their room. “Just let her go and take me, but let her go.”

As cold fear claims her body, sending a shiver down her spine, it takes every ounce of courage she has to slowly creep to her parent’s door, staying hidden behind the potted plant that decorates the hallway.

There, she sees a nightmare incarnate. With her father’s back to her, she could only see the brute of man with his hand tangled in her mother’s long, golden locks, holding a knife to Duchess Leonela’s throat.

“Oh, Duke Severin,” the man purrs with a sinister smile. “Don’t you know there’s no honor in begging when death lay at your feet?”

Just as she’s about to step from behind the plant, she hears the sickening squelch of a blade running across her mother’s throat. She looks up to see blood coating the beautiful satin pink nightgown the duchess wore to bed that night that just barely reaches her ankles.

The fury and agony that voices from her father’s chest as he screams for his wife will haunt her dreams forever.

“Leonela, no,” her father chokes out. “You murderer! I will kill you!” Just as his body tenses, preparing to pounce on the man who so carelessly took the gentle, kindhearted life of his wife who now lay at the stranger’s feet, he hears the whimper of his daughter.

As the hulking man turns his eyes towards her, she sees something strange flicker across his face. Surprise? Confusion? Hesitation? But before she could register the emotion, it was gone and the stony expression he wore seconds ago returned.

“Kliodesa” the Duke breathes. His face blanches of any color as he takes in his daughter partially hidden behind a house plant. Taking a step, then another towards her, he tells her to “run.”

But that was when she sees it. Moonlight hitting silver just before he strikes. The Dukes eyes widen until nothing but white surrounds the ring of russet. He lets out a shocked gasp, and ever so slowly, falls to his knees. Blood begins running from the corner of his mouth and any color he had left now gone from his face. He desperately looks to Kliodesa. “Run, Klio. RUN,” he says on the whisper of his last breath.

The stranger stands behind her father with blood now dripping from his dagger.

Staring directly at her.

Between them, her fathers lifeless body continues its descent to the floor hitting with a soft thud.

Wasting no more time, Klio scrambles to her cold feet and sprints down the hall. Only then does she see the puddle she had slipped in moments ago was not water, but blood. Her nursemaid lay a few feet beside the puddle reaching towards Klio’s room. A silent scream decorates her face, only completed with her sightless eyes.

Not stopping to see if the man follows, she rounds corner after corner until she has the back door in sight. She hesitates only for a moment, seeing the kitchen staff and guards sprawled across the floor, until fear drives her forward. Klio steps over a guard’s body and throws open the back door looking to the barn as a beacon of hope. Halfway to the barn where her pony will carry her away, Klio steps on the hem of her pale blue night gown, sending her hands and knees into the mud. Her dress is glued to her back by the merciless rain and her fiery red hair plasters itself across her face. Wiping the sticky hair out of her eyes, she continues her desperate pursuit to the barn. Slipping on the hay that lay inside, she reaches for her horse’s pen and jerks the door open. It slams closed with a brutal crack that sends the grumpy barn owl fleeing into the angry storm.

A hand wraps around Klio’s delicate wrist, spinning her around to face her captor.

Her parents murderer.

“I don’t think so,” the stranger growls as Klio claws at his arms, kicking and screaming to get away. He pins her back against his chest, folding a meaty hand over her mouth to smother her screams. He is too big and too strong for five-year-old Klio to escape. She knows it and her fight ceases.

“One more noise from you and I spill your blood right here like I did your parents.” That is enough to freeze her to the spot against his overpowering, muscled body.

The man turns her back around, assessing. Analyzing. She keeps quiet as tears stain her rosy pink cheeks, snot running down and over her lips. His grip on her biceps begins to worsen as indecision and anger clash across his face. Finally, he shakes and throws her away as if disgusted by the very sight of her. He roars into his massive hands.

Klio’s legs feel heavier than lead as he begins pacing the length of the barn door and her exit, glancing from her to the house.

“You have no idea how much you’ve complicated matters. You were not supposed to be here.” He continues to pace and mumbles so quietly that only he could hear the words. “A child was not supposed to be here” he whispers into the frigid night, not sure if he realizes he was still speaking aloud. Running his hands down that rugged face one more time, he stops with a snarl, returning that dangerous gaze on her.

She slowly starts to retreat, shaking her head as more tears rush down her cheeks. Terror shakes her so violently and her legs threaten to buckle with each step she takes towards the opposite end of the barn, where another door lay.

“Stop,” he snaps and walks over with the grace of a trained killer. Someone who could end her life before she could turn and take another step. And he could do—would do— exactly that.

He takes hold of her arms, looking into her silver eyes. This time, she sees when his brows furrow and there's a moment of shocked recognition that flickers across his face before he schools it into an icy calm. When he speaks, it is not what Klio expects to hear as she prepares to flee.

Or to die.

“I will not kill you tonight,” he says, looking like he’d rather choke on a knife than say those words. “You were not supposed to be here and I was not paid enough for a child. For you. I will spare you once, but only once. You will not breathe a word of tonight, Kliodesa Reinhart, or I will hunt you down and slit your throat just as easily as I did your mothers. You will leave here and never return. As far as the world is concerned, you are dead. Do you understand?”

Still trembling uncontrollably, Klio only nods her head, staring into those beautifully lethal green eyes. Trepidation sets in when he slides his hand down to her left wrist and pulls out a small hunting knife.

She tries to wrench away and a scream bubbles to her throat.

“Enough,” he hisses. “You will never forget the mercy I have given you on this night.”

Slowly, deliberately, he starts cutting into her wrist. She screeches as the knife slices open her delicate, pale skin, feeling the warm blood flow into her palm and drop to the hay that lay beneath her filthy bare feet.

When it seems he is finished, Klio reluctantly looks at the damage he has inflicted on her. It was a bloody mess but just beneath it, she could see the outline of an “M” on the inside of her wrist. It was ugly and poorly drawn but it was there. Legible. It was a statement, a mercy.

And everyone would know that she should be dead.

Their eyes meet again just before he stalks from the barn dragging her and her mare along behind him. He throws her into the mud, fury lining his eyes as she hears that damning word once more. “Run.”

And so, she does. She scrambles onto her pony’s bare back and rides into the cold, unforgiving rain.

Kliodesa runs, and she never looks back.