I Became the Tyrant's Helper - Chapter 3

Slowly, they started walking uphill towards Ahel’s house, stopping ever so often to look behind and make sure they were not being followed. The sun had completely set by now. The only light source was the faint glow of the moon. The journey was tiresome as she had to carry a man nearly twice her size. It did not look like he was going to make it; he was so weak, and fell a couple of times on the way.

“We’re nearly there; my house is just up the hill.” She said while helping him get up.

Finally, they reached a wooden house near the forest. 

“This is your house?”

“Yes.”

“It’s… small.”

“Well, it’s not every day I bring a dying guest to my house.”

Quickly, she took a key from her pocket and opened the door. They entered and she placed him on a small leather couch in the middle of the room. Ahel went back to close the door after she was sure they were not followed. “Wait here,” she told him and went to another room opposite the door.

She came back with a tray, and a lit candle. On the tray, there was a bandage, an ointment, a clean piece of cloth, a bowl of water, and a pair of scissors. She used the candle to light others that were on a table near the couch, providing sufficient light across the whole room and placed the tray on the table.

“I’ll need you to take off your shirt so I can tend to the wound.” He did.

She used the scissors to cut off the piece of blood-soaked cloth.

“Here,” she handed him the clean cloth. “You’ll want to bite down on this.”

“Why?” Her only response was an apologetic smile. She placed the ointment on the wound, and his face grimaced, and he bit down on the cloth in a feeling of excruciating pain. It was a healing compound she made herself. The bleeding of the wound significantly went down, and it closed ever so slightly. Ray stared at the woman before him, curiosity overcoming the pain. 

“This is not your first time, is it? The way you’re handling the wound with such skill precision… you have done this before, have you not?” he asked.

She paused, but did not give him an answer. Ahel went to the room opposite the door for a few minutes. This gave him time to look around the house. It was quite small. There was a relaxing warmth enveloping the room; it was coming from a fireplace adjacent to the door. Ahel was very organised. There was barely a thing out of place. The seats were clean; the room was dusted. The assassins could never look for him here. He was safe, for now.

A few minutes later, she returned and sat on the table next to the couch.

“Here, drink this. You lost a lot of blood.” She handed him a cup filled with green liquid. “Had you not tried to stop the bleeding, you’d probably be dead.”

“Thank you.”

For the past hour, she’d been so immersed in helping the man that she didn’t notice his immense beauty. His curly pink hair, now slightly soaked by his sweat, appeared violet. His muscles, clenched due to the pain, looked big. He’s… huge, she thought. His eyes, hazel, seemed fiery as they reflected the candlelight. He noticed her purple eyes staring at him.

He had been walking around the capital, and unfortunately had run into some assassins who had been chasing him. Most of the time, he would have dealt with them alone, but there were just too many of them. Still, he had almost defeated them all, but the gap in their numbers was too much even for him. As a result, he had crawled all the way to the outskirts of the capital with injuries. He couldn’t bear the wound he’d suffered on his back, so he found a quiet alley to rest and catch his breath.

At that time, a woman appeared in front of Ray, who seemed so innocent with purple eyes and lavender hair. She saw him injured and offered to dress his wound, and he had rolled his head to face her peering eyes.

Only one assassin was still alive. The enemy would have obtained information that he was injured through that assassin. They would be searching the city by now, following the bloodstains he left on purpose, he thought. 

But they would never suspect that the Emperor would take refuge in a commoner’s home. Even if the thought crossed their minds, he was less likely to be caught in a commoner’s house than an aristocrat’s mansion. Aristocrats can be counted, commoners cannot be. All he had to do was buy himself enough time to get the assassin off his back.