Chapter 1: Traitor
She slipped out from the shadows tailing him, his golden curls bouncing at the nape of his gold clustered neck. Paris’s black tailcoat fluttered in the wind behind him as he turned the corner. After all the years that she had known his sweet, gentlemanly character, never had she ever thought that he would be such a disgusting person who would betray his own family.
His own family.
The Capulets.
The family that had nurtured him since he was a young, helpless orphan.
Jurie watched as he knocked onto a steel encrusted door. A large portly, distinguished looking man opened the door and pulled Paris down a dark alley, unaware of the small shadow lurking behind him. She crept forward, her delicate footing not betraying any sound. Another tall, shadow caught the corner of her eye but she took no notice. Slowly she stepped out of the shadows drawing down her black silken mask over her head. Stealthily she edged towards the unsuspecting plump man and pulled out her butterfly knife. Paris locks eyes with her and stood aghast, blue eyes wide with fear.
He whispered one word, “Jurie?” before his companion crumpled to the ground in a pool of his own blood.
She turned to her former comrade, fire burning in her honey coloured eyes only to find him slumped against the alley wall, his throat slit with a single clean cut. A flutter of light grey cloth disappeared from the roof above her.
Run. Every step counts. He told himself as he lithely leapt from roof to roof. He hoped the man in black silk, the one that killed the fat man, hadn’t seen him. He had made a mistake in wearing light-grey clothing. Black would have been much more convenient.
Rami didn’t stop running even though his muscles ached. Damn the vigorous training! He cursed in his mind. He ran faster than the wind, faster than human perception. He didn’t stop to wipe his bloodied kirpaan nor to fix his grey turban and mantle, which was slipping, nor did he stop for breath. He kept running until he reached the city’s wall. He leapt over it effortlessly.
He landed on both his feet silently enough but he had startled his Arabian horse Bucephalus. The stallion whinnied and pounded the dirt with his front hooves.
“Whoa their Bucephalus! It’s only me.” Whispered Rami soothingly.
The black stallion calmed down and whinnied gleefully nudging at Rami’s chest. Rami smiled. The horse and man had known each other for ten years. He remembered how he had broken the wild Bucephalus as a nine year old. He remembered the desert sand glistening around them rising and falling with the crazed hoof beats of the stallion. It had seemed unconceivable that a nine-year-old boy had tamed the wildest horse in the whole of Saudi Arabia. But he had done it.
Today he had achieved another thing. He had avenged his family, by killing that traitor Paris. How could some one he considered as a brother attempt to betray their clan to the governments of the world. At least that portly government official had also died.
Then his mind drifted to the man in black silk who had killed the official. Those honey coloured eyes stayed in his mind.
Rami smiled grimly as he got on Bucephalus. Looks like the Montague’s was not the only clan that Paris had tried to betray.
