Luigi burst into the room – Lorenzo eyed him warily. The footman was out of breath and his eyes were wide with a frightful expression. Such a disturbance could only bring bad news.

Fires!

"Where?" demanded Lorenzo, splashing water everywhere to get out of the bath as quickly as possible.

Two separate fires. One in the east wing, one in the stables. Opposite ends of the establishment.

"How? Are we being attacked?" Lorenzo questioned as he pulled undergarments on. The clothes he had picked out for the feast would not do. He reached for his black hood and weapons sheathed in leather.

Luigi didn't know if they were being attacked by outsiders. Reports from the outposts revealed no untoward activities. It was more likely that the novices were expressing their dissatisfaction. Luigi instructed five guards to the east wing to see what they could do. Two were with the Master. There were seven guards waiting orders outside.

"The novices?"

The footman's grave expression gave Lorenzo his answer. Riots in protest of Genevieve's win.

"Get the Master out and take him to the safe house. Call the five you sent to the east wing and instruct them to take the outpost guards with them too," Lorenzo ordered, "Take the rest of the guards and get the servants out and go with them yourself. Warn any Assassins and recruits left in the castle as you go – they will take care of themselves. Everyone leaves. Defend yourselves if necessary." There was no way that the guards and Assassins make any stand in the castle's defence from within. They were too few and too spread out.

The fires added a complexity too. There was little defence against a wayward fire.

Luigi nodded and did as he was bid. Lorenzo tightened his last belt and left his room. He ran down the passages, to the west wing. Only one person on his mind.

The most recent happy memory Lorenzo had of the hallway outside of Genevieve's room was marred by eerie quietness and haunted by a sinister cloud.

Genevieve's room was empty. The clothes she had set out to wear to the feast, a simple pants and shirt with her boots, lay on her bed. She hadn't returned from the stables and panic crept into Lorenzo's focus.

He left her room with his next destination pictured in mind.

He moved cautiously but swiftly down the hallways, slinking like a cat between shadows. The only sound he made was the faint shuffle of his clothes. Checking before crossing intersections, he looked for trouble.

Further down the next the hallway was a dead man. Cattaneo, blood oozing from a clean cut to the neck. Lorenzo spared him no time as he whispered past – the man was dead – and continued along the passageway to the door that lead outside.

He stopped and stared.

An inferno stood where the stables had been, threatening the darkness with its fearsome light and licking the air with its blistering tongue. Horses galloped in terror into the night – at least someone had thought of them. A piercing whistle brought Psyche to Lorenzo. She was breathing hard, her eyes wild with fright, but she put her muzzle trustingly into his hands. With his horse, Lorenzo approached the formidable blaze locking his fear inside his belly.

Three men idly stood watching the burning building, next to the troughs in the stable yard. They were talking amongst themselves and laughing at their own remarks. Franzese gesticulated with his hands and made crude signs towards the inferno. Barone and Rosetti both joined in and added their own.

Cattaneo, dead in the hallway. That made four.

"Ah, here comes Sir," said the biggest tauntingly as Lorenzo cautiously approached, "The impartial one. We saw you kissing that bitch. We aren't as stupid as you think, Sir. We know you've had a soft spot for her from the beginning. Fiero was right. You let her win."

They fanned out with their weapons. Lorenzo's minds' eye saw the formation. The scimitar that he gave Genevieve was held by the ringleader, Franzese. He was disgusted that his careful background checks had not picked up on these prejudiced arsonists. Impatience mounted, disdain mounted, and fury mounted, welling to fill Lorenzo up to his raging red eyes.

"What have you done?" he hissed. Despite the roar that erupted behind them, he knew they heard him clearly.

"What a man should've done," Barone replied.

"She begged for her life as though it were worth something. Didn't' she? She said we could do whatever we wanted to her if we let her live. But nobody likes sloppy seconds, do they Sinacore?" the first one, Franzese, went on, "Not even worth the trouble. She died screaming sweet agony and calling your name," he laughed, "Little did she know that you'd be too late."

A flick of the wrist dispatched the, until now, silent man on Lorenzo's left with a throwing knife. Rosetti gurgled in surprise and sank to his knees. The man on the right, Barone, approached warily with a sword but Lorenzo was too swift and confident in his own abilities. He parried and spun, checking the man in the chest with his own short sword. Making quick work of the weakling.

The last man, who had Genevieve's scimitar, laughed and laughed. "Are you dumb as well as lovesick? She's d-e-a-d. Dead. Look, she gave me this as though it were equal to her life. I'd rather have this than her in my bed. Fiero said that she's had some whoring escapades with various Assassins." Lorenzo kept his own thoughts to himself as he marched on the last man.

"What else did Fiero tell you?" he asked.

"He told us that the Tournaments were rigged. How much did they pay you to ensure they won?" Franzese goaded.

"You've been misled."

"Ha! I don't think so. It appears to me that everything Fiero has told us, was right."

And that was all that needed to be said. Franzese was the most skilled of the three. His form was solid, his strikes were well timed and his footwork made him a formidable opponent.

However, Lorenzo's eyes were red, seeking revenge, and he cut Franzese's Achilles in a furry of quick strikes, bringing him painfully to the ground. His mad smile was gone and he certainly wasn't laughing anymore as his life liquid gushed from his heels.

Lorenzo wasn't done.

He grabbed the man's mop hair and dragged him over to the trough. The man was not easy to kneel as the tendon that held his legs taunt weren't working anymore. He faced the man at the blaze before them – forcing him to watch through tears and blood streaming down his screaming face.

"Whose name will you call as your life ebbs from your body?" Lorenzo leaned down to ask him quietly in his ear, "Who will avenge your death?" He slit the man's throat but held him up by the hair so his dying eyes had to watch the inferno he had created.

And when there was no life left in the executed, Lorenzo tossed his body aside. Already forgotten.

The heat was unbearable, but Lorenzo forced himself to walk slowly around the doomed building, searching, searching, searching for any sign that Genevieve might've escaped. The roaring sound was undercut by falling beams and cracking wood. The roof caved in a burst of heat and embers.

Behind him, a mirror fire ate away at the castle. The home that he had jealously guarded with every fibre of his being, resigned herself to her devastating fate. There was nothing he could do.

The fire died as the day was dawning.

Out of spark, out of fuel, out of breath.

Lorenzo, the remaining witness, stood sentinel.

Afterwards, he razed the rest of the castle to the ground. And simply left.