Chapter 9 : The Valrino Brothers
"She kept screaming all the way through the crowd to the gallows, saying they caught the wrong person.”
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Places mentioned:
Castle Katella
A self-sufficient, city-like castle where the King and the Queen and the unmarried Valrinos live.
Spring
The capital city of Tyrannoson.
Kent:
A dynamic, inclusive town in the outskirt of Spring, swarming with foreign traders and merchants. All imported goods must pass here before entering the capital city.
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Creatures (that can speak and have names) mentioned:
Leopoldo Valrino
The King of Tyrannoson, and the sixth monarch of the Valrino family.
Yisreal Valrino
A son of the King. Leopoldo met the young Yisreal in the woods while hunting. Then the King brought him back to Castle Katella and announced him to be his son.
Chester Valrino
The first-born son of King Leopoldo and Queen Evelyn.
Sean Valrino
The second son of the Queen.
Leslie Valrino
The third son of the Queen. When Leopoldo first brought Yisreal back from hunting, the Queen was pregnant with Leslie.
Nicholas Valrino
The youngest son of the Queen.
Carwen Valrino
King Leopoldo’s only daughter.
Susan
A royal pharmacist.
Lewis
An apprentice at the Medical Tower.
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9
The Valrino Brothers
Chester glanced at his own hands. There was a ring set with a gem bearing his house symbol: an open-mouthed snake spiraling up a sword, its tail made of rose vines, with the sword and vines together forming a "V."
"I knew that symbol," the earring man said, looking at Chester but not looking at him.
The men besieging Yisreal clenched their knives tighter as they shifted their attention to Chester, low snarls pressing down on him. He glanced at Yisreal, Sean, Leslie, and me.
Leslie spoke up suddenly, “So what? This is Tyrannoson. Everybody knows that. And if you bastards insist, you shall have the honor of admiring that symbol in the dungeon!”
The earring man was not triggered; he glanced at Leslie with almost mild appreciation. “But not everyone can wear it, can they?”
“You are a Valrino,” he said, his finger tapping the table in a rhythmic pattern. “I have to kill you.”
Sean and Chester exchanged a glance, then turned the table and threw it at the earring man. Leslie grabbed my wrist and dragged me to a corner. The earring man broke through the table and started fighting Chester. Sean and Yisreal were dealing with the other eight assassins.
I glanced at Leslie and his sword.
“What?” Leslie frowned. “Better stay away if you can’t help.”
We stayed alert, ready to move if anyone approached, but no one seemed interested in us. Chester was dealing with three of them, while the earring man sat on the bench, his back to us, drinking. Leslie was observing the earring man as he clasped his hilt. I pressed his hand down. Leslie was startled, trying to steady his breath, as if he hadn’t realized his own intentions. I moved half a step forward to make sure Leslie wouldn’t see the gold rings flaring in my eyes.
He grabbed me and hissed in a suppressed voice, “Mellon! Stay back, it’s not your business!”
No, it wasn’t. The Valrinos had killed too many people, and this was what they had to deal with—enemies they had no memory of making.
Sean was in a hard fight with two men; as for Yisreal, he had killed two, now working on the third. I swallowed. Not just me, but the surviving assassins seemed to notice Yisreal as well and avoided him. They focused on attacking Chester, the only Valrino in their sights. The braided man, whom Yisreal had cast to the first floor, reappeared and attacked Chester from behind. I made the braided man stumble, then caused another to slip.
Just then, the earring man glanced to our corner. My power stopped instantly out of distraction. As I was worrying if he had seen my unusual eyes, he turned back. Then a man who had just stood up from the ground made eye contact with his boss and threw himself at Leslie and me. We bounced apart from the corner as he cut down on us. Leslie pulled out his sword, his body trembling. He barely resisted the first few strikes before falling to the ground. I blurred the man’s vision, and his knife cut into the broken, flipped table behind instead of Leslie, but I didn’t notice another man raising his knife at me. I shut my eyes out of mortal instinct. Something splattered on my face, followed by an intensified bloody odor. I felt no pain as I opened my eyes and saw the man collapse, with Yisreal emerging behind him. His face was dotted with blood. He gave me a complicated look and dashed away. Blood oozed from the split throat of the man lying in front of me. I wormed back to the corner from the puddle.
The man who tried to kill Leslie gave up and joined his fellows when he saw Yisreal anchoring his gaze on him.
"Drop your sword or we will kill him!"
Chester and Sean were captured. Each of their necks was at the mercy of two knives and a dagger.
Leslie dropped his sword, gaping. Yisreal held his ground and turned to them.
“Drop your sword!” One of them hissed through clenched teeth.
The dagger had already cut into Chester's skin. Chester threw his head back, trying to inch away from the blade. Like Yisreal, he had some wounds on his arms, but they were nothing compared to Sean's, who was kneeling on the ground, his calves and shoulders injured, blood soaking half of his shirt.
“Yisreal!” Leslie hissed in a suppressed voice, urging him to drop his sword.
The earring man studied Yisreal carefully. Yisreal gripped his sword hilt, frowning at Chester and Sean, before turning a cold, leering gaze at the earring man sitting on the bench. Sean looked at Yisreal with desperate indignation, believing that Yisreal would rather see them die. Chester closed his eyes, unable to bear the thought of relying on his half-brother. Even if Yisreal did care to save him, he probably couldn’t defeat all these men alone—especially not the earring man, who hadn't exposed much of himself yet.
Seconds later, Yisreal bowed and slowly laid his sword on the ground. Leslie exhaled quietly, and Sean looked more surprised than relieved. Chester fixed his gaze on Yisreal's sword on the ground, something running through his mind.
The earring man looked at him with more weight than he had shown anyone else and gestured for his men to ease up. “What a great swordsman!” he said to Chester, a smile of contempt on his face. “With a bodyguard like this, you can indeed delay your death.”
Chester struggled to speak, carefully controlling his tongue in case a mispronunciation would cause the blade to cut deeper into his neck.