Malice Maze

Chapter 3

Roxy’s Knife



Roxy pulled the knife from the man’s skull, watching him fall dispassionately to the floor, blood spilling around her black leather boots. She smiled excitedly and leaned down to watch him die, her cold brown eyes never feeling a thing, her heart never missing a beat. Disappointingly her adrenaline never even rushed anymore at the sight of death. She had been her Lord’s assassin for so long that she never even bothered anymore to look forward to her kill. It had been a game when she was a young teenager, but now she was going to see thirty and she barely had to raise her knife before a cold-blooded killer fell to his knees in death.



Vengeance was sweet. These men died with a cause. Roxy was not just a murderer, though she would never have denied the sweet thrill, she was an assassin for the wicked. Lord Rivalen had hired her when she had first killed one of his guards for raping her sister and ever since young Roxy, who had now aged jokingly into ‘Old Roxy,’ was the assassin for the people. The people knew that when there was an unexplained death that the legend had been there. Her countrymen never questioned her motives, and never had seen her face.



Now she moved the black scarf from around her face, her honey brown skin, the color of the desert dwellers, helped her fade into the dark. She wiped the knife off on the leather of her boots, boots long since stained with the blood of evil. Roxy, a beautiful athletic woman, had never allowed any men but the men she killed, see her face. Always a scarf covered the lower portion of her face, and when she was allowed it her long thick black bangs would hide her dull brown eyes, the only part of her that was even remotely boring. Her eyes never spoke in volumes; her eyes were as dispassionate as her heart, though many men wished her body was as passionate as her body promised.



The sound of the man’s maid coming up the steps had Roxy rushing through the open window and jumping out into the brisk air. The feel of the chill wind even through her many clothes usually was a reminder of the heat she brewed in her blood when she killed, tonight the cold just felt cold.



She returned to Rivalen’s manor and rushed through the hallways undetected, though many of the servants knew of her existence they rarely saw her. All that she left behind for them to clean were bloodstains and an open door. She was too good at finding her way through without being seen, invisible to the world around her in more ways than one.



She found Rivalen where she expected him to be, sitting before a fire with a wine sloshing over the rim of a goblet that he spun in his hands without ever touching the glass. Roxy often had taken the time to wonder why he sent her to kill when his powers were so excruciatingly powerful that he could have done it at the snap of a finger, or so she assumed. It was a rare treat to see Rivalen ever do magic. He was a lord who remained anonymous in his powers, perhaps so he would not upset the kings of his country.



“Roxy,” he said into the dark, never lifting himself from his beautiful leather chair in front of the fire, “next time you come rushing in you should close the front door behind you.”



“I apologize, my Lord.” Roxy fell to one knee behind his chair and stayed bent in a subservient pose until Rivalen stood and walked over to her.



“I would not apologize, Roxy, for you will regret your loyalty to me in just a few moments.” Rivalen walked past her and stepped over to his table filled with old books and novels. For not the first time she admired his perfect appearance, his dark hair that fell messily into his green eyes, his jaw that jutted out with just enough sternness and muscle to make him nearly perfect except for the scar from one side of his face to the other, from the right side beginning at his chin and ending on the left side on his forehead, from a war, he said, before he became immortal. Roxy wondered if his powers could not fix what had happened before his new life, but she always remained quiet, never asking him the questions on the tip of her tongue. She was a murderer, not some nosey trollop. She enjoyed her place, close to Rivalen, as his assassin.



Roxy waited quietly for Rivalen to tell her what he meant. He sighed before speaking. “Tomorrow you will need to enter Malice Maze.” He turned to her to see her eyes, though they were hidden behind long black bangs. “I am assuming you know what Malice Maze is.”



“I have… read about it,” Roxy hesitated. Her heart was pounding hard in her chest. Malice Maze was used for many different things, to teach a young warrior how to fight, to punish the wicked. Why would she need to go to Malice Maze? Was he going to find for her a new love for the kill? No, he would not look so forlorn.



“I’ve lost a game to King Dralnu,” Rivalen admitted.



This time Roxy could not hold her tongue. “You bargained me in a game to Dralnu?” she nearly screeched, her patience gone and her hands instantly gripping the knives she was often adorned with. “For what?”



Rivalen held his head high and said the answer that everyone was receiving. “Power.”



“You are but a lord of a manor,” Roxy spoke scathingly, forgetting she owed this man the joy she had been taken for almost fifteen years. “What sort of power could you covet.”



“The death of the kings,” Rivalen smiled. “If they die I will become king.”



Roxy scoffed. “There are three vampire kings,” she snapped. “You expect all three to die. Dralnu is powerful, but is he so powerful?”



Rivalen suddenly seemed bigger to Roxy and she stepped down, bowing her head and knowing she had stepped over a line she was not allowed to cross as a simple servant. She nearly went to her knee but Rivalen did not seem as anxious to have her back in her subservient position. “I will make this country beautiful,” Rivalen insisted. “Those three kings are allowing this kingdom to fall apart around their ears. When Paige disappeared they forgot they had a kingdom to run. They are children, no matter how many hundreds of years old they are. They are not making it worse, but they could make it better.”



“You would sacrifice your friends for a kingdom…” Roxy realized what she said and bowed her head. “Forgive me for being presumptuous. I should never have said that.”



Rivalen rolled his eyes, though she never saw it. “It surprises me, Roxy, that around me you are the perfect servant, but when around anyone else you can be a real bitch.”



“I respect you, my Lord,” she said, her head still bowed to face the ground. “I am but your pawn.”



“Which should tell you why I have bargained you to Dralnu,” Rivalen said coldly. “I apologize, I truly do, but when it comes to a better world I need to do what I think is right.”



“You will spend your entire life repenting for your sins,” Roxy whispered.



“Now you sound like Serena,” Rivalen snapped. “Roxy, get a good nights rest, it might be your last for a while.”



Roxy knew when she was dismissed and she quietly left the room, disappearing along the walls to her dark corridor and room. Roxy fell to her bed, exhausted, not even bother to wash the blood from her clothes. She knew Rivalen cold and calculating, but after so long of seeing a warmer side it had surprised her, perhaps a bit too much. For the first time in months her adrenaline was pumping… but it was while thinking about Rivalen, a thought that brought a chill to her spine before she fell asleep dreaming of warriors and fights, and never expecting why she had really been chosen.



Earlier, Rivalen had bowed his head in defeat and acquiesced his hold on Roxy. When Dralnu laughed and asked why Rivalen had to admit, “She is the only virgin within this manor,” and in a manor where twelve-year-olds were employed it seemed to be saying quite a lot about Rivalen’s code of ethics. Which only lead the demon king, Darlnu, to believe that Rivalen would be a better ruler than those damned vampire brothers.