Placeholder Betrayal

[Ayviss]

91st of Winter, 514 AV

After two whole seasons of careful planning, after all the trouble and hardship she went through, the day had finally came. Ayviss had thought she would face the day with anxiety, excitement, a day she would have to control herself not to rush through things. But she had been wrong.

When the half blood woke up, she was washed up by a sensation of calmness, almost as if her body knew what was coming. As if she was already free, and the day was just another day to go through before she could leave the house forever. In a way, it was true. There was no way Hollard would be able to chase her, and she knew she could escape a long time ago. That day was also about revenge, and that was the only reason she still walked in the house. And also the reason she hadn't simply left.

But the day that would be a start of a new life had finally come, and she smiled to the ceiling, enjoying the calmness she hadn't felt in a long time. It felt stupid that she had, even if only for a moment, wanted to live together with Hollard. It seemed easy. But while she simply waited the ticks go by, listening to the sounds of her owner getting ready to go, she knew that it didn't matter if she had to sleep in a hard floor for a while. Once she knew enough, once she had enough, she would simply leave. Because she could. With a quiet laugh, she waited, her arms behind her head, her eyes locked in the ceiling, the smile growing in her lips. She felt relaxed.

"Why are you smiling so much?" Malak asked, the disbelief clear in the shadow's voice. Ayviss could feel the inquisitive look of Akrar, probably wondering if she had gone crazy at least.

"Today is the day." she answered, and it seemed enough to put the shadows in a observant state. Ayviss could almost feel the excitement coming out of them in waves.

When she finally heard the sound of the front door being closed, Ayviss got up, leaving the comfortable and soft bed she now shared with Hollard. She might miss the bed, sometime, but not enough to make her stay. Not nearly enough.


With steady steps, the half blood walked towards her owner's wardrobe, opening it and taking a big backpack from it. It didn't matter anymore if Hollard saw something was missing, and the thought made her smile. She browsed through the coats and cloaks of her owner. She could take everything, but it had to fit the backpack, otherwise there was no way she would get to the Tent Camps without being robbed. Her hand stopped in a very soft cloak, and she took it off the wardrobe and put around her body. The cloak was deep green, so deep that it almost seemed black, and it was softer than anything she had wore, not that it said anything. She never wore anything soft.

But it was also warm, and she shoved it inside her backpack. She searched for shirts and pants that would fit her. She had only her body clothes, and she really needed at least a change. Taking a white shirt and black pants, she also shoved those on the backpack before closing the wardrobe and walking towards her former bedroom.

[Ayviss]

Ayviss raised her mattress, and took everything she had hid below it. Hollard never checked there, and Ayviss never really understood why. Sometimes she thought that maybe he thought she was too stupid or too obedient to steal, and the half blood had to chuckle with the idea. It was so easy, when he was away, to take small portions of dried food from the kitchen, or to take a bar of soap from the bedroom and pretend it had ended. Hollard was the stupid one, and he would pay for that.

She shoved the things inside, before carefully taking her mother's diary and her dagger. The diary, she also put inside the backpack, but the dagger she hid under her clothes. The diary occupied space that could easily be filled with more important stuff, but she couldn't, she simply couldn't, leave it behind. It was her mother's last words, in a way, and she still needed to figure out who her mother was. Because the woman that wrote the diary was one Ayviss didn't recognized. And she wanted to know what had really happened.

But it wasn't time to think about it, and Ayviss walked back to Hollard's room, searching in the top of the wardrobe for the keys she knew was there. The plan was to get the important documents from Hollard without needing the keys, but after trying again and again to pick the lock of her own room - which she had already stolen the key - and failing, she figured it would be either find the right key, or simply leave it behind.

However, when she tried key after key on the drawer in the library, she couldn't find the right one. Her lips pressed together as she thought, trying to remember how many keys Hollard took with him when he was out. Three, if she wasn't mistaken. She knew one of them was the houses'. Maybe one of the others was the drawer's. That meant waiting for him to come back.

Meanwhile, she could do other preparations. Leaving the backpack under Hollard's bed, she walked to the kitchen. When she began to take a pan out, Malak made an indignant noise.

"You'll be cooking for him?"

"Just wait and see." Ayviss answered back, her smile making both shadows stay quiet.