harsh breathing filled the air. the small desperate puffs of life that came from the target's lungs froze with the snow, drifting down lightly from the sky. she staggered to her feet, trying to take in her surroundings. in a stumbling step she carried all her weight on her left leg, her right one bashed and bruised. she could still get away. she needed to have hope. after years of risking her life in the black market, she refused to die alone, in this frozen tundra of oblivion.

she noticed it then, almost completely submerged by two splitting icebergs, and with a cry that escaped from her lips that could only be described as insane she crawled towards it, capturing it in her hands and holding it tightly to her chest. with shaking fingers she unlocked the box, and after scanning its contents grabbed the pink spray bottle and the red syringe. She barely had time to lock the box when it flew out of her hands, crashing under an icecap and into the unforgiving darkness underneath. the slightest wind passed by, whipping at one strand of hair.

​

in a panicked defense, she pushed herself behind the icecap just as the place where she had just been exploded, fragments of ice flying into the air. she felt her heart stop, and in that frozen moment she knew what she had to do.

​

as streaks of purple lightning cleared a path of ice straight to her feet, she gripped her two remaining articles of defense. this was it.

​

he approached slowly, long blonde locks billowing in the wind. nothing remained from the fight but a gash on his left arm. he took his time, knowing she was already paralyzed from the waist down from their previous encounter before she had fled.

​

"I brought you here. this is an isolated part of the earth, unbeknownst to anyone but the pembertons. as a parting gift, we bring our more... difficult targets here, so i can give you my personal congratulations. you put up quite a fight, and almost gave away my true identity. it's too bad, i see potential in you to become a great fighter. good common sense. oh well."

​

"please."

​

energy gathered in his left hand, and her eyes widened. rumor had it that he only used his left hand to kill, that there had never been an opponent strong enough where their death blow had been delivered using his dominant right.

​

"please. don't do this. if you do, the market's shaky relationships will completely collapse. we'll all fall."

​

"that is not a consequence i will have to deal with. I hunt and strike down my targets and that is the end of my affiliation with any of the situations."

​

"well if you insist, i can only give you an appropriate parting gift."

​

"don't try anything, I'm warning you." he said calmly.

​

"you love her, don't you... Caspian?" she whispered. the sparks rose higher. he was obviously taken aback, it was not in his informational booklet that she was a mind-reader. how did she know his name? or more importantly, how did she know about...her? she smiled, her sharp canines appearing. "but you're an assassin. who would ever love an assassin?"

​

only half a second, that was all it took. half a second of doubt, of registering what she had just said. mist escaped from the enclosed jar, in fact, all of it, until tears streaked down his face and spices leaped down his throat. he felt the potion travel through his body, all the way to the depths of his soul, and suddenly he felt as frozen as the ice surrounding him.

​

from within his state of oblivion, a voice whispered in his ear, her voice. no, no. he needed to kill his target. this wasn't time for a distraction. he had spent years training with his father, and this was the moment to prove it. even just his thoughts were strong enough to puncture through any spell.

but a mind filled with loving thoughts could never kill anything, only surrender and beg to not be hurt.

​

"what I have placed on you is a love curse, something i specialized in in my work. you and every one of your descendants that are also born in the 11th moon will have souls as cold as the ice-scape you have tried to kill me in. you will never find true love, or your love will never be returned. of course, as with everything, there is an antidote, but you just threw it a few minutes ago into the waters underneath us." the target explained, eyes widening in devilish glee.

"now for our last article of business- i am bleeding to death from my injuries. you will win this fight no matter what. so might as well take the little that i can from you."

​

a smile of only the devil, a child of the endarkened, formed on her face, a look he knew too well - for it had many times been on his too. so she was one of his kind.

​

grabbing the red syringe, she injected the full dosage into the soft skin on the side of her neck, her eyes burning red in reaction to the poison intake. finally, in the last moment, they burst into a blue flame, a breathtakingly beautiful color.

​

"goodbye, Caspian. i hope this curse will haunt you and your descendants forever, causing everything that you hold dear in this world to perish, leaving you alone to suffer in a world without love. in the end, assassin, your fate is much worse than mine."

​

she fell to the ground, and slowly he came out of his trance.

he grimaced, touching his fingers to the side of her neck.

"dead through and through."
 

and without another look back, he turned towards the mountains, calling on the winds to pull him towards the entryway back home, the same way he always did after a dispatch. but in the back of his mind, this little spell nagged at him, like a meek voice warning him of what was to come. little did he know, the events that had transpired that frozen night would come back to haunt him and his children, and change their lives forever.