CH 46.1

“You’ll get better eventually, it’ll get harder the more you force yourself. You need to let yourself heal,” Sid coaxed.

Eve didn’t hear anything the man said, instead her eyes saw red as she focused on the damned target in front of her. She held up the dagger again, her joint convulsing as she tried to aim but she failed. The mental block that weighed against her just wouldn’t let her. To her, the dagger wasn’t just an object. There were no arrows, stingers, ropes, or anything she wasn’t able to throw with her left hand. To her, the dagger was now competition, and she was competing against herself.

She’d failed and the continent had faced an upheaval. Her failure had let a murderer like Rihan Kadmin walk away and endanger hundreds of innocents. Her incompetence let a lot of people die, innocent civilians of Amethan, with no faults to have deserved such a fate.

“Still, there is an employee of the affiliated agency, and there is also a person from the Bureau of Investigation, so there is no burden of entrusting the rest of the people in one person.”

But now, she’d failed her mission and returned alive, alone. Eve groaned as she beat herself over her repetitive thoughts. She’d trusted her skills and herself too much. She’d only survived a few street rats and criminals but they were nothing compared to hundreds and thousands of skilled soldiers that blasted towards her and her men on the battlefield.

Now, as she looked at the target, all sorts of horrors lurked around her vision. She kept losing her concentration and her dreaded hand shook again, making bile rise her throat angrily.

“Eve.”

Sid sighed and placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it slightly.

“Stop it, just go and rest,” He urged again, his voice strained with worry.

“How can I rest?” She muttered, her vision blurring.

“In this state, I cannot continue to be in the Bureau of Investigation,” she exhaled, her heart clenching as she spoke the words.

“We can all wait, take some time off, and rest,” Sid spoke from behind her. Eve looked down, her face burning as she stopped herself from replying. Manager Wiles was already giving her organizing duties rather than actual work. If she left now, she’d have nowhere else to go to.

“I’m- I’m sorry, I need to go, I just remembered I had some duties to tend to.”

Eve was tired of talking to Sid, his incessant worrying wore her out even more. He sighed in return. “And what job would that be?” He asked. Eve stiffened, momentarily hurt at his words. Was her uselessness so apparent to everyone around her?

“Eve, you need to rest. Take some time off, whether it’s an annual leave or a sick leave, this is an order.”

Eve laughed weakly at Sid’s words.

She hadn’t written a letter yet, and there was still a report that she needed to submit to the King. Eve sat at her desk, wracking her brain but she couldn’t write anything. The answer was set.

Daniel had told her to leave the Bureau of Investigation, but Eve knew the second she left, she would no longer be “Eve Jean.” That part of her personality would be erased forever, four years of her life disappeared like a whisper.

***

“Eve, you have to at least write a year’s song, there are quite a few dates that have been carried over from last year,” Wiles moaned as he prodded at Iveca, though to no avail. He was already conflicted over her appearance at the bureau despite her obvious mental state and he was now concerned that she was detaching herself from everyone and everything except work.

She’d formed a hectic routine where she would finish every single piece of paperwork assigned to her and then rush to the battlefield, fighting herself. Wiles felt sorry for her, unhappy at her state- just like everyone else at the Bureau of Investigation. It was hard watching her drive herself to the ground each day, in a cold sweat in the training ground.

Wiles decided to keep sliding her assignments that did not require combat, and rummaged through the documents for a newer one to keep her engaged.

“Princess Ashe sneaked into Amenity,” he said quickly.

Ashe was Daniel’s younger sister, and Eve heard that while she was in custody for a crime, she’d borne Prince Ethan’s child after which Daniel sent her to a distant municipality.

Wiles stood before her, the case file in hand, and spoke carefully;

“The situation with Princess Ashe is greatly complicated. She has given birth to the child of a temporary rebel governor while being the wife of the Lord of the Republic of Liszt, making her deeply embroiled in a controversy. She isn’t an Amethan anymore, and her personality is cold and clever- she succeeded in poisoning Prince William. You have to be careful.”

“I understand,” Eve replied.

“Tomorrow, the King is going to visit his sister at an inn, your mission is to infiltrate the procession and learn everything that goes on between the King and his sister. The spy we sent today reported that the Princess is visiting because she missed Amenity, but I wouldn’t take that up to chance. A person like her will not make any moves for such a simple motive.”