Elana leaned forward, her muscular arms emphasizing her perfect body shape. "Tell me, Edward. What do you know about Foal Zestus?"
"I know what everybody knows," he replied. "He's the main financier of the rebels, a cunning and calculative agent who leached money and power from the royalty to help the rebels. Rumours say he trained Milize Asina until he was 15."
Elana raised an eyebrow at the short note of detail. She knew Edward was not completing his sentences.
"Just that? I know you know more than that. Anyone allied with the soldiers of this prison knows one thing more."
"His mediations. He constructed a drug that attacks the inner soul of the man, forcing a sense of unbreakable loyalty towards him or a certain cause. And there is something special about the subjects of this drug."
Elana's eyes locked onto Edward's. "Those eyes of yours," she said. "I'm still surprised that somehow you're affected by it but still have that much freedom in your words and actions, or are you the worst case of the drug?"
"You can say I am the worst case. My effect died as soon as Foal Zestus died and I am back on this island. I am now loyal to another person right now and I am not spilling the beans on them."
Elana smiled from the surprise,
"He drugged you to stay away from the 5 kingdoms, woo... You must be dangerous if he had to take such steps. I am dying to know what you did to that sick old bastard but I guess you are out of time right now."
Edward smiled at Elana, but it vanished as soon as he began to speak again.
"You are right, I don't have time. So, spill all the beans and talk in complete detail about why you are not affected and anything else you want to tell me."
"The day I was caught by Foal, Prince also surrendered to him. After, We were taken prisoners. We were offered a contract, " Be prisoners of rot in jail or work of Britannia." ".
Elana shrugged back and covered herself in the blanket once again.
"I remember Foal himself standing in front of me and offering the contract. We took it. It was the plan for male thieves only as female thieves were a foreign concept and the drugs weren't used on me for some reason. So, I was only sent to the first stage of the plan, which is physical development. I went into a war camp and trained alongside soldiers, under the command of different people, all alone."
"Prince wasn't sent alongside you?"
"No, their physical training was another place than time. By the time my training was finished, I was told that it was 6 months before Prince's plan was finished. So, I was forced to work as a worker here once again. I laid one of the final brinks of the port."
Edward got off the bed and walked up to the walls of the room,
"This place must be special to you then. After all, you build It."
Elana completely ignored Edward's words and kept speaking.
"Soon after that, houses and shops were set up, and all the previous workers were thrown out, and new workers came, and you who were the new workers. Soon, Prince returned with the workers. I was so happy to meet him and he was smiling too. He told me how he stole from the big guns around the world and also how we were about to live here in a new place. It all made me so happy but something was wrong..." Elana stopped her words and rested her head against the window.
Edward began to complete the sentences for Elana, he knew the characteristics of those who were affected.
"Something inside him had changed, his eyes dilated more than usual. If you were close you must've noticed that. So, he had a headache now and then only fixed by a good glass of Alcohol. Am I right about all these?"
Elana said nothing just nodded her head.
" Those who received the early variants have these problems, the drug used on me was more refined."
" So why didn't you notice the effects on Prince if he was with you? He was in your crew for more than a year."
Elana asked Edward the apparent question.
" Prince only gets me at drinking parties after a significant successful skirmish. He was not in the same boat as me. We only met for the third time when he stole my beloved Peony. If we had ever met sober, I might have caught on to it.
Elana signed at her luck, and Edward turned back from sitting right beside Elana.
"Elana please tell me. Why did Prince hurt you like that and how did he get his hands on that opium stick?"
He held Elana by the shoulders now, the opium smoke Edward saw in Prince's pocket. The British were using the same tactics as in China, and their reach was already into the people like Prince then Britannia, and the whole four kingdoms were in great trouble.
" I... I don't know, his behaviour was getting worse and worse each day. We came to the shop after another drink because he was having a headache and he fell on his knees in the room. I helped him get up and told him that we should escape this place and I had arranged a plan with a few shopkeepers to escape this place and then .. you saw it for yourself."
"Hmmm mm, I see."
Edward got up from Elana's bed and cracked his shoulders.
" Bloody die then." Edward brought his knives for himself and threw his entire weight at Elana.
Elana jumped right off the bed, falling on the floor and quickly making a significant distance from Edward.
"Tch.."
Edward's knife missed and struck the bed after giving her leg a small cut. Sharp enough that it began bleeding immediately.
Edward threw a black bomb right at the window glass...
"..!!!"
The bomb exploded meters at the nearby building as Edward began to turn himself towards Elana or the person pretending to be Elana.
" You?! Who did you find out?!"
" You only do acting well, girl. Try working on your storytelling for once. So many inconsistencies, somewhere fast and sometimes slow and the biggest giveaway, who did you know about the bloody drug anyway."
"Prince should not have any recollection of it. Then your appearance, it seems very similar to the actual girl, a good disguise for covering but some soldiers were feeling odd about the face, they had seen it years so you can hide it from them and now, you constantly touching the glass window, it was to signal your friends, wasn't it? You'd make a good assassin. Hell! I was-"
As Edward began to walk in the assassin's direction, with a sharp grin on his face as if the person with a noble mind had disappeared and was replaced with a savage hungry for blood.
"!!!"
A white ball fell right onto Edward's feet; he jumped towards the door, and the bomb exploded.
" Smoke!"
As the smoke encapsulated the entire room, Edward heard the creaks on the floor.
The other assassin had entered the fray, and the sound of the eruptions of bombs rang throughout the City.
"!!!"
As the chaos of the environment wasn't enough, something even far worse happened A knife came right out of the smoke hit Edward right into his right shoulder.
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