"Are you going to kill me?" Max asks, suddenly seized with a cold fear. It curls around her throat and suffocates her with cold fingers. The assassin pushes himself away from the stone wall and takes three steps towards her, unsmiling, but his hidden eyes flash with something indistinguishable. Max cowers, internal shaming herself, wishing that she could stand up and say something, but she's scared to die.
"No, you just looked like you wanted some help." He says, and she relaxes, shoulders sagging down and releasing a heavy breath she didn't know she was holding in. The assassin moves around her to leave, but she turns after him, reaching out to grab his sleeve.
"Wait!" She yells, and he has her back against a wall, hand over her mouth, his head turned to the side facing the opening in the alley dead end. Under his hood, his eyes are wide. She's not the only one hiding, he is too, and the guards out there aren't looking to capture him, and he's already too tired to fight anymore.
"Did you hear that?" The faint echo of male voices and the clank of steel boots alerts him to guards at the opening of the alley.
"Do you think it's him?" The same voice asks, and the other unseen guard scoffs. Max relaxes into the wall, she can't hear what they're saying, her pulse is pounding loudly in her ears at the close proximity to the assassin.
"Probably some whore. Altair probably long gone by now, slippery bastard…" The guard curses, and the assigns eye slips to the side to watch Max. Did she catch his name? She appears to be too busy hyperventilating with her eyes trained on his face. The two guards argue for a while longer, but he moves away from her as soon as their voices fade.
"Can you stay quiet." He says, and when she nods her removes his hand from her mouth. She regains her train of though when he moves to leave again, her fingers clinging to his sleeve and recoiling like she'd been burned as soon as he stops.
"I wanted to say thank you, I'm sorry I yelled too loud." Max says, and he pushes his hood back from his head and looks over his shoulder at her. His hair is long, and tied back in a sloppy braid, smaller sections of hair around his face falling out around his dark eyes. Max finds her mouth dry, and not because of fear.
"Anytime, Maximum." He says, offering a haughty smirk before he pulls his sleeve out of her grasp and scales the side of the building and disappears over the roof. She's taken back that he knew her name, and still helped her. He wasn't at all what she pictured in her mind when she heard guards and her father curse the Assassins guild. She pictured middle aged men with scars and angry, twisted faces, not a young attractive boy who couldn't be much older than me.
She stays in the alley for a while longer, until a guard finds her and escorts her back to the castle. As she walks through the streets, she feels a disconnect. Now that her dress is dirty and her braids are falling out she finds herself wanting to stay out int eh chaos of the streets. When she'd run off before, she would return of her own volition after getting too tired or scared.
"You just looked like you wanted some help." His words bounce around in her skull. She should have asked him more questions while he was there, she should have made him stay, he said so himself that he wasn't going to kill her. It was the closest she'd ever been to death, and as much as it scared her, she wanted to see him again, even if it meant seeing him with imminent death. She just wished she'd been able to catch his name.
The guard follows Max up the stairs to the castle, Anne and Lissa waiting beside the open gate. At the top of the stairs, Anne moves to Max's side, one hand digging into her neck.
"Where have you been, Maximum?" Her mouth is close enough to Max's ear for her to feel her breath, and Max tries to shift away, even though Anne's hand holds her in place. Anne takes another breath as if to say something, but she digs her fingernails into Max's neck, the smaller girl yelping and sinking down to get away from her.
"Anne." The voice behind them makes all three of them freeze, and Anne's hand instantly recoils from Max's neck. Jeb is standing in the doorway to the armory that they'd just entered through, how Max had missed him she doesn't know. He's flashy, in a blue and white robe and tunic
"Sir, Your girl never stays in her lesson room, goes and runs away in the city, leaving me and her poor mad to search for her in the forsaken place! How did someone as noble and courageous as you breed such a vile child!" Anne continues to condemn Max to her father, who doesn't even seem to be listening to her. He instead beacons Max to him and she steps forward, solemn. His face doesn't change between diplomatic King and loving father, it remains a passive ruler even when she tries to offer a smile. Jeb cranes his neck forward to peer at the reddening marks at Max's neck.
"Pack your things, Anne." He says, and for a moment, Max feels a pang of guilt before Anne turns on her heel and strides with her head held high towards the servants quarters, Lissa still standing behind Max looking lost. Jeb turns his head to look at Max down his nose. As his only heir, he expects so much from her, but teaching her is like wrangling a snake, impossible to grasp. Max does her best not to whither under his glare, she tries to think of the Assassin, she's sure he wouldn't shy from anyone.
"You needs to stop going out there without an escort. Do you know what kind of people await someone like you to wander like you do?" Max can't contain a venomous smile. She knows, she looked the type of person her father looks in the eye today.
"I know." Max says, and he continues.
"The assassins are restless these days, targeting out family and friends. If you're going to continue to disobey, you will lose the privilege of outings." Max is glaring. She knows what he's saying, he's using kind words but he's saying that she won't be leaving her tower. He's done this before, stationed guards at every stairwell, who will drag her kicking and screaming back to her room if she tries to leave without permission.
"This is for the best." Jeb says as he strides by her, and a set of guards come up from behind her and take her away to her tower. If Jeb thinks that she's going to comply, he's got another thing coming.