CHAPTER 40

The kid finally let go and Nora took her.
“That lady is called Aunt Nora. She shall look after you after we get back to my home. She will teach you everything you need, for you to become strong like she is. No one in the future will ignore you. They will bow down to you and ask for your help. You in return shall not mock them but help them. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, I do mother,” the kid replied.
“But first I should name you,” Valery said and saw the kid’s face brighten up.
She pondered for a while the name she would like the child to have and suddenly she got one.
“I will name you Qara, do you like it?” she asked her.
“Yes, I do love it. Thank you mother,” Qara said and made her first bow.
Valery looked at Nora and smiled. The child was quick witted and she loved that about her.
“Nora, take her to the market and buy her clothes to wear. When we return back to the mountain, tell the tailor department to make more clothes for her,” Valery instructed Nora.
“I will do so,” Nora said and turned to look at Qara.
Nora extended her hand towards Qara and she took it. She watched as the two left the room. She knew they would be very close. She won’t be able to shower Qara with motherly love but she knew that so many people will show her that and let her have a childhood that would be better than the one she and when she grew up.
She was going to teach Qara to become a strong woman, a woman who didn’t have to rely on anyone but herself. She was going to give orders in the future and have people obey her. She just hoped she won’t betray her like the way others had and were doing at the moment.
Valery left the room too and found Nora and Qara gone. She used the time to take a walk by herself. Something she had not done in years. Taking a walk in a city alone without guards and maids was fun, but she knew that her secret guards had been shadowing her all the time. They didn’t let her down; if it was someone else she wouldn’t be able to see that she was being tailed.
She was walking seeing families having a great time together when she felt that she was being followed but this time it wasn’t her secret guards. Someone else was following her and this was getting interesting.
Her secret guards were meant to protect her and they knew the consequences of acting without her order. She didn’t like fighting in the city with so many eyes on her. So, no matter what her guards wouldn’t show themselves out unless she wanted them to.
To avoid any unnecessary bloodshed, she extended her walk towards the nearby forest. She could feel that there was no one there and it would be the best place to talk things out with whoever was following her. She stopped in the middle and looked around.
She closed her eyes and listened very attentively. She could hear them jumping over tress, sheathing their swords as they come to where she was standing. She opened her eyes and took out her enamel fan. She was surrounded by ten men in black.
They had their faces covered and she wondered who was so eager to see her dead a few days before her wedding. She fanned herself and gave a signal to the secret guards shadowing her. They weren’t many but just eight. They stood behind her and she walked straight towards the assassins that had been sent to her.
“I can see that you are here for me but did that person told you who I was before you followed me here?’ she asked them.
“Yes, we know who you are and if you are as great as they say you are, fight us alone,” one of them said implying that the guards shouldn’t interfere.
‘It’s quite fair. Let’s handle it the way you want then. If you don’t kill me in ten moves then it will be your funeral,” Valery said and closed her fan.
It had been too long since she had a normal sparring and it was like that now. They all came after her and all she had to do was defend and no attack. Her guards stood watching as she defended herself from her enemies.
She could tell that Xavier’s mother was so impatient that now she just had to send assassins but somehow it didn’t feel like the method she would use. Someone else was behind the attack.
She stopped the moment the tenth move was done and still she didn’t have a scratch on her body. She looked at them and smiled.
“I gave you a chance but you failed and yet you call yourselves the best. I’m very disappointed in you,” she said as she opened her fan and blew everything away with one swing.
The assassins fell towards the trees. They hit the trees so hard that when they fell down, they were all groaning but they managed to stand up. She wasn’t going to play anymore tricks again. She moved at a lightning speed and slashed all their throats except one.
She had her fan on his throat and she could tell that he was very scared now that al his colleagues were lying dead on the ground.
“I will forgive you if you tell me who sent you,” she said looking at him.
“I don’t know who sent us but we were paid using this,” he said taking out a rare jadeite pendant one of her guards took the pendant and looked at it.
“This belongs to the royal family,” he said.
This guard used to work in the palace so he knew better.
She looked at the assassin and asked.
“Do you know who gave you this pendant?” she asked.
“I can sketch his face, if you want,” he said.