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A soft breeze picked up in the night, pregnant with the soothing scents of wildflowers and rushing water; it whispered through the grass and set motion in the trees. Evelynn inhaled deeply. There was another aroma that accompanied the pleasant mixture in the wind; it was unmistakable. Her.

The night had only barely begun and already the trail was right before her eyes. At this rate she could reach her target in as little as an hour, with more than enough time left over to slit her open and bathe in her blood. A pang of keen joy echoed in her heart at the thought. Wasting no time, blending flawlessly into the rolling hills under the cloudless night sky, Evelynn began moving again. Against the darkness of the Ionian evening, her razor-sharp teeth shone white as her lips parted in a vicious smile.

Ionia’s serene countryside stretched far before her, grand pagodas and clusters of buildings with inclined roofs irregularly interrupted a landscape teeming with verdant life and majestic waterfalls. The trek would have been difficult to lesser beings, ones distracted by the rigidness and splendor of the terrain. Evelynn coldly looked past the natural beauty that so many had died to preserve and scanned the buildings that climbed up a high rise on the left side of the largest waterfall. She concentrated and through the paper windows, beyond the warm glow, she could almost see her prey.

Karma, the Duchess of Ionia, the so-called “Enlightened One.”

It did not matter that her employer had requested so prolific a being to assassinate—he paid very well just to hold an audience with Evelynn. Even then, she could not deny that there would be a certain pleasure in Karma’s death. One less figure that held a candle to the darkness that threatened to engulf the world, one less obstacle standing between the Widowmaker and the schemes that were slowly being set in motion. Evelynn smiled again, this time unable to supress a bloodthirsty little titter that rose in her throat. She licked her lips hungrily. All was proceeding as planned.

She was sprinting across rooftops, her lethal stiletto heels soundless in their flight. The room she wanted was getting closer and closer, almost within reach. In her mind’s eye she saw Karma, sitting in the center, meditating. Defenseless. Evelynn grinned and drew shadows about her. It was time. She leapt high from the roof, wind dancing through her fuchsia hair as she flew at the wall. She would have a split second to take her surroundings into account when she landed—but she would be able to. She was among the most feared assassins in Runeterra and she was ready to further solidify her name. The shadows whirled and swept around her like the billows of a cloak and she vanished before she made contact with the wall.

The shadows unfolded from the ceiling like a rose and down Evelynn plummeted into the room, her knees drawn to her chest, her claws ready to strike. A split second is all she had to take her surroundings into account—and a split second was enough to tell her that something was wrong.

Evelynn leapt down onto the ornate vermillion rug in the center of the room only to find that Karma was not sitting in the center of it as she had perceived. She spun around and leapt back just in time to avoid a singing flash of steel.

Karma! How could she have known? Evelynn summoned the shadows once more; she was too exposed, she had to launch an offensive immediately or risk fleeing into the night.

“I think not,” Karma’s calm voice cut through the air as if she were wielding it like a weapon. A quick mantra, words that meant nothing to Evelynn, left Karma’s lips and silver chains shot out from the tines of her fan. The blue-skinned assassin kicked down at one with the heel of her boot and shattered it in mid-flight—two others rushed at that leg in place of the fallen chain. Evelynn was howling as she struck down chain after chain, but Karma’s persistent assault was slowly overwhelming her. Before she could destroy one, it latched onto her right thigh and turned black, then tightened, pulling her down to one knee. Immediately all other chains followed, wrapping themselves tightly against her bare skin, already coated with a sheen of perspiration. They forced her to her knees, tightly, but somehow not uncomfortably, tying her arms to her sides and the rest of her body to the floor.

Karma had not even broken a sweat. She stepped forward with a coy smile that enraged Evelynn more than perhaps was intended. It could not be—the Widowmaker, the feared demoness from the Shadow Isles, now helpless at the hands of an arrogant noblewoman.

Evelynn shrieked her outrage, bestial, inhuman roars that made the two guards beside Karma take a step back in trepidation. She bucked and struggled against her bonds, screaming savagely with every twist and turn that did nothing to free her.

“Leave us,” Karma ordered her guards. They did not need to be asked twice: their lady could certainly handle herself. They bowed and hurried out of the door where blissful silence awaited them.

“You may be wondering how I arranged this little trap for you.”

Evelynn glared up at the duchess, her eyes an inferno of murderous rage.

“I know who you are, Widowmaker, I know how silently you come and go, leaving only bodies in your wake. Do you know what betrayed your presence?”

She received her reply in the form of more feral screams from her captive.

“It was your thirst,” Karma said and looked down at Evelynn with sadness, almost pity, in her eyes. “Your lust for death is so strong that I felt your presence as soon as you set foot in Ionia. The question now is: what shall I do with you?”

“I’ll drink your screams before you even lift a finger!”

“I highly doubt that. The chains that hold you are molded to contain your power.”

It was true. Evelynn could not summon the shadows to tear through her binds, or through her hated captor—but she struggled and screamed nonetheless. No one could capture her and live to tell the tale. No one.

“But it is a strange source that fuels you—one I have little experience with. I sense that I will not be able to keep you for long.”

Evelynn was already aware of the fact. She could have bided her time and conserved her strength, but these were insults that could not be forgiven and actions that could not go unpunished. For her to be denied in such a humiliating way, she would spend the rest of the night thrashing and screaming until she was free to enact slow, bloody vengeance.

“I will have to do my best with what time I am given.”

“What? Kill me?” Evelynn threw her head back and cackled deep and wicked. Despite years of meditation, patience, and resolve, Karma could not help but feel a small chill run down her spine. “Go ahead and kill me. And then explain my absence to the League. Better yet! Cover it up!” Evelynn smirked, baring her fangs like a ferocious hellcat. “You won’t will you? Even if no one finds out, you’ll always know. You are, after all, representing the best of this worthless place. You’ll show me mercy to try and uphold your pathetic ideals.”

Karma’s face was an expressionless mask as she listened patiently to Evelynn’s taunts.

“No.” she admitted. “I cannot kill you for influencing affairs we have no business in. And Ionia cannot be rushed into a war again, it will need to hold onto its strength in the coming years—this little intrusion will need to go unnoticed.”

Evelynn grinned all the wider, her eyes glimmering intensely with triumph.

“But I will not show you mercy either.”

Karma twisted her fans and the chains that bound Evelynn to the floor began to move and twist. The captive assassin struggled and growled with newfound zeal as she tried her hardest to resist the movements of the chains. It was not enough. In a matter of seconds she was sitting upright, her arms still tied tightly by her sides, her legs tied together and up before her, with her knees drawn to her ample breasts and her feet held securely in place. With the arrangement complete, the chains stiffened themselves into the ground until they looked more like rigid poles than malleable coils, raising Evelynn as though she were seated.

“BY THE NIGHT! I SWEAR I’LL DESTROY YOU!” the Widowmaker screamed like a beast. Her face was livid, spittle marking the air with every snap of her hair as she threw her head back and forth.

“I’LL RIP OUT YOUR THROAT! I’LL TAKE YOU INTO THE SHADOWS AND FLAY YOU ALIVE!”

Karma folded her steel fans and gently tucked them into her decorative kimono’s belt, before clasping her hands together in front of her and giving Evelynn that damned look—like she was looking at a child who didn’t know any better.

“I think I may have an idea,” she said almost conversationally, and with a small smile walked over to the left of the room where she slid open a door and began to rummage beyond it.

Evelynn’s flailing had not subsided for a moment. She could not understand how one simple assignment had turned into such an utter disaster. The feeling of helplessness was absolutely maddening—the chains were showing no signs of breaking, despite the finite power Evelynn sensed in them and despite throwing everything she had into her struggle to escape. Her mind was a murky mess of fury, mortification, and outrage. She could not concentrate enough to summon the shadows to her aid even if she did have full control of her powers.

Karma returned shortly, with a well-designed gold urn, depicting scenes of flowing water, in her arms.

“Your tolerance to pain is very well-known,” she calmly said. She did not bother to look at Evelynn’s face.

“Is it because you are so indifferent to suffering that you are eager to share it with others?”

Evelynn stopped struggling and threw her head back with a harsh laugh. She could not believe it. The imbecile of a duchess was going to lecture her. It was a rather novel way to torture, she had to admit. Now that a conventional execution was out of the question, she would have to do everything in her power to avoid Karma talking her to death.

“Why don’t I share it with you now?” Evelynn spat and lunged her right foot forward. The razor-sharp stiletto of her boot’s heel clicked for a moment and launched itself at Karma’s chest. In a flash of steel, her fan was up, the blade ricocheted harmlessly off of the surface and embedding itself into the wooden floor. At once Karma sheathed her fan as if nothing happened.

“Even without your powers you’re dangerous,” her voice was condescending. “You must be disarmed further.”

Her movements were graceful; four slashes and the straps that connected Evelynn’s magenta boots to the rest of her skimpy outfit were cut. The smooth blue skin beneath was untouched.

“STAY AWAY, YOU BITCH! NO!” Evelynn shrieked and began to struggle again threefold. She hurled every threat, every obscenity she knew (which was quite a few) at the duchess, but she would not stop or slow her movements. All the while, Karma’s face was still emotionless, still empty and insufferably unreadable. She began to undo the latches and Evelynn was no longer screaming words, but a flow of primal nonsense that mixed and melded with inhuman roars. Her boots were her weapons, her strength. When she underwent assassinations by seduction, when she allowed herself intimacy with that one man, she flung off every strap and lash, everything she wore, without a care. Except her boots. Her boots always stayed on.

After some effort, Karma pulled off one and then the other, and stepped back like a painter admiring their work.

Evelynn’s feet were big, anyone could tell from one look at her fatal footwear. Now that they were bare it seemed as though even the boots did not properly convey their size. The bottoms of her feet were a softer shade of blue than the rest of her skin and were mixed lightly with a violet-pink along the length of her smooth, taut sole, which increased greatly in intensity when it met with her heel and arches, almost to the point where those parts glowed. Surprisingly, her feet were barely callused, and the toll of constant travel in those boots showed instead in the tightly-pressed wrinkles beneath and between the balls of her feet and in the angular imprints left on the sides of her heel and toes. Her heels and soles were slender, but sloped up into high and wide arches. Her long toes fanned this way, scrunched that way, trying to get rid of the alien sensation of nakedness.

“You should take your boots off more often. Or does wearing them make you proud. Are they your trophies?” Karma asked with a smile.

Evelynn was seething, her face was flushed an interesting, deep violet color, from both her efforts and the wild mixture of emotions, her shining teeth were bared, like a snarling alpha wolf defending his territory, transforming an otherwise pretty heart-shaped face into a blue-purple inferno of concentrated hatred. Only now did she truly feel vulnerable, truly feel helpless as the warm night’s air caressed and lapped up the sweat that dripped from her soles. Karma found it strange that her feet, so utterly soaked from being stuffed in boots, were without a scent. It wasn’t limited to her feet either; an aura of vast olfactory nothing surrounded the assassin—the duchess supposed it was one of the things that made her so fearful a predator.

“It pains me to try and grasp just how many lives were ended by these feet.” The smile was gone from Karma’s face. “What I want is to make you feel the pain of every life you ended, every family you left without a father, a mother, a son, a daughter.”

She took off the lid from the urn.

“I know that when these chains finally give, you’ll be gone and we may never meet again outside the Fields of Justice. I know that I can’t make you stop killing, but I can give you a little lesson—a little taste that you’ll carry with you every time you murder.”

“What are you doing?” Evelynn hissed.

“I’m sure you know our history—of our battles with Noxus and the toll their chemical weapons took on our people and land. Were it not for Soraka’s tireless work, there would not be much of Ionia left. One of her miraculous inventions was this salve. It could bring sensation and movement back to a necrotized body and take it away during crippling pain. All it needs is a mantra in the desired direction.”

Karma lifted the urn to her face.

“But even I don’t know its limits.”

She said nothing else as she lowered her gaze to the contents of the urn and began to sing a low, deep mantra. Evelynn watched, curious despite herself and altogether uncertain where her captor was going with this. When the humming stopped, the inside of the urn glowed a bright lime green, almost completely erasing the features from Karma’s face. As quickly as the light appeared, it disappeared as well, and an earthy mixture of sweet herbs and roots filled the air. Karma set the urn beside her, then knelt down so that Evelynn’s feet were just below her face. She dipped one hand into the urn and retrieved a palmful of the salve, which was now a deep forest green color. She lathered it with both hands and gently began to rub the balm into Evelynn’s soles.

“This is your lesson?” she snorted. “A foot massage?”

Karma said nothing as she kneaded, softly and smoothly, all without breaking eye contact with her captive, or moving a muscle on her unreadable face. Evelynn could barely supress a scoff. It was as if Karma truly underestimated her resilience to pain. She did not even feel Karma’s hands moving on her soles. After years of training, years of honing her feet into soundless weapons, as effective as any blade—even more so under her masterful technique—all sensation had left them outside the field of movement. Even bare, they could kick through rock and stomp through steel. If Karma thought an amplifier would be enough to make her even bat an eye she—

“Gnyahaa! W-what!?”

What was that? Evelynn’s mouth hung agape, what rage had previously filled her face was now replaced with sheer shock. What was that tingling at the bottom of her foot? Did it just make her laugh? She looked down in confusion. Karma had stopped rubbing and was smirking.

“It is as I suspected,” she said, like she had solved a complicated problem with the simplest thought. “While you show remarkable resistance to pain, you have never been tickled. You are not as invulnerable as you think.”

Tickling? That was what the salve was for?

“Are you afraid? Is the Widowmaker terrified of a few tickles?”

Evelynn exploded with ferocious growls and lashed out at her bindings again, humiliation burned hot in her face. She could not allow this to continue, enough was enough—but the chains were no closer to breaking than when she had begun to struggle.

“This balm will do just fine. Before the night is over, I will teach you humility. You will remember my hands well before every kill you make.”

“I’ll break out of these chains, and when I do youaahahaha! Hahahahaargrrh!”

Karma had taken more of the balm and had begun rubbing it into Evelynn’s feet again. It truly did work wonders. Within seconds, the assassin’s soles soaked up the thick mixture like sponges and they were transformed almost instantly when the salve vanished. The hard lines and marks along her heels and the sides of her feet disappeared as the flesh grew slightly, but noticeably, plumper, like fruit ripening for the harvest. What layers of rough callus once existed were now a distant memory as Karma, with the knowing touch of a healer, applied coating after coating to Evelynn’s soles. In no time at all the flesh became easier to work with. Karma’s fingers were no longer buffing, as if she were touching the surface of a stone, but were now truly rubbing, lavishly sinking deep into the yielding skin that was becoming softer and softer by the application.

Evelynn’s fuming growls and snarls merged with her forced giggles into a wild mixture of harsh, bubbling laughter. Karma explored every inch of her captive’s now supple soles as she rubbed, listening intently for what touch worked best where, marking and mapping out her future plans, like an eager tourist in a beautiful, foreign land. Her fingertips slid deeply and tenderly up Evelynn’s violet-pink soles, where they met her arches and traced into every wrinkle they could find, before sliding back down between the balls of her feet to her heels, where she caressed their round shape.

It was unbearable, maddening; before Evelynn could even try to muster up any mental or physical defense, those strange warms shocks came again and again, electricity setting her feet alight and forcing her to expel peals of roaring laughter. She howled at every gentle touch and screamed frantically with mirth when Karma rubbed at her silky soles and the sides of her feet and—Gods! No!—her madly dancing toes. The duchess gently pinched and caressed the stalks of each toe, rubbing down where they met the tops of her arches. The spaces between and beneath Evelynn’s toes barely made contact with her boots, which already made them a little bit more sensate than the rest of her unfeeling feet. But under the effects of the balm?

“RAHAHAHA! IHAHAHAHA’LL KIHIHIHILL YOUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Evelynn managed to howl.

Finally the sensation ended. Blissfully, Karma had finished rubbing the Widowmaker’s feet and was now wiping her hands on an extravagantly embroidered cloth beside her. She replaced the lid of the urn and stared evenly into her prisoner’s livid eyes. Evelynn’s face was a panting, sweating mess, her hair—already wildly set about her to begin with—was a mess of waves and tangles that decorated her head like a fuchsia halo.

“How does it feel, being so helpless?” Karma asked with earnest interest. “To have another hold your future in their hands?”

Evelynn said nothing as her chest heaved with breathlessness. Her pretty face twisted from an expression of hysteria into the embodiment of seething wrath, made all the more powerful by the way Karma smiled, steadily and self-righteously.

“Not sure? Don’t worry. You’ll have all night to think about it.”

The assassin lunged forward with a monstrous shriek. How had the chains not broken yet? Evelynn was throwing all of her strength into freeing herself, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that the chains were not the only things controlling her powers. Her laughter, the tickling itself, however light Karma had intended it to be, had made her a little bit more tired and therefore a little bit weaker. It was ingenious. While Karma’s control of the chains waned, so too would Evelynn’s capacity to escape.

She looked up to see that Karma’s smile had become one of knowing, as if she had read the every thought as it passed through Evelynn’s mind.

Before Evelynn could open her mouth to hiss further threats, she was shrieking with laughter again.

“I don’t think this will leave an impression if I’m too soft. For what time we have together, I intend to make you suffer,” Karma said matter-of-factly.

Evelynn’s eyes shot wide open and had begun to stream with tears as she looked down with disbelief at her captor. All ten of Karma’s nails had begun to unleash a furious salvo of scrapes and strokes against her intolerably soft soles. Her feet violently jerked and bounced, trying to pull away this way and that way, but the duchess was following them with the patience and enthusiasm she dedicated to her everyday life. When Evelynn’s soles scrunched, Karma raked down at the heels, when they opened again and her toes fanned out, her captor’s nails were ready to invade the in-betweens of her toes.

“GHRAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! IHHAHHAAHAHAHAHAI’LL TEHEHEHEHEAHAHAR YOHAHAHAHAHAHA APAHAHAHAHAHAHART!”

Karma smiled to herself. She knew that if it were not for the chains, her captive would more than make good of her promises—but under their strength and her resolve, all Evelynn could do was swing her pretty blue head back and forth and laugh. Despite the altruistic nature of her intentions, Karma could not help but feel the very smallest spark of satisfaction. Through the torture that she was submitting Evelynn to, she would help the assassin understand humbleness, the first and perhaps the most important step to take on the road to enlightenment.

But Evelynn did not see through her captor’s good intentions. Beyond the ticklish torment and her absolute helplessness, she burned with humiliation. She had braved countless conflicts, killed and vanished and had become the night itself. Now rather than concern herself with survival or escape she was reduced to childishly wishing that the merciless tickling would stop. Her feet felt as though they were on fire. She could no longer understand which one part of her soles was tickled; it felt as though the entire region, down to every last moist wrinkle and smooth surface, was under a ticklish siege. It unlike anything she had ever felt before—and all the while her struggles still amounted to nothing, the chains held her fiercely shaking and thrashing form as securely as when they were first cast.

Karma, true to her word, was utterly ruthless. The map she had mentally planned of her victim’s feet served her very well now. She regularly visited the areas around and beneath the balls of Evelynn’s feet, where every graze and stroke released frenzied peals of shrieking mirth. Karma never stayed for long—after enough time she would return to the length of the assassin’s soles and sink her fingers into the flesh, raking viciously up and down the smooth surface while her victim roared and screamed her helpless hysteria. When she dug her fingernails and scratched at the bases of Evelynn’s shivering toes, she was rewarded with frantic laughter that was touched with even more intense and bestial screaming. The most effective places however, were the light-blue stalks of the soft, round toes. Karma pinched and rolled each stem with her thumb and forefinger, while her nails gently scratched at the spaces between. It was nothing short of impressive how powerful Evelynn’s lungs were when those spaces were attacked. She shrieked with ear-splitting laughter, frenetic and wild, unable to even string words together anymore.

Time passed like a snail and an arrow. Evelynn had no idea for how long she had been tickled. Minutes? Hours? Days? She did not know how much more she could take. It felt like an eternity since the Ionian bitch had smeared her feet with the damned salve and had begun the attack. As the session continued, Evelynn’s strength grew weaker and weaker until she could only softly pull at the chains, her once mad efforts now reduced to feeble, desperate jumping. What made it all the more infuriating was that Karma still did not let up for a second, as if she was completely unaffected by fatigue. Her fingers still danced and stroked and made Evelynn laugh, screaming and crying, with ticklish humiliation. Karma never took her eyes away from her victim’s face, staring unnervingly with that small, haughty smile—like she were a researcher taking down notes on the habits of a previously undiscovered creature.

“STAHAHAHAHAHAPPIT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! LEHEHEHEHET MEHEHEHEHE GOHOHOHOHOHO!” Evelynn blurted out amidst her hysterical laughter.

No threats this time, Karma noted. Perhaps the torture was truly beginning to affect the assassin. It was a good thing as well, because as time went on, Karma could begin her own power waning. The mantra on the chains was beginning to weaken—though her face did not show it, Karma was beginning to feel the toll of holding onto a spell for too long. She knew that it would not last forever; she had to truly make sure that her lesson would not soon be forgotten.

“Tickle tickle, little creature,” she cooed as her fingers continued to wreak havoc on Evelynn’s soles, now a shade of red deeper than they were before.

“NOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

It was an absolute nightmare. It seemed as though the salve not only sensitised her soles, but made certain that they would remain so for the duration of the session. Evelynn screamed with frenzied laughter under Karma’s scribbling nails. It was mortifying, enraging, unbearable, and worst of all: she was completely exposed, completely defenceless to her tormentor’s seemingly infinite assault. Evelynn’s surroundings disappeared around her as she threw her head from side to side to desperately try and distract herself from her ticklish plight. This couldn’t be happening, not to her, one of the most feared predators of the night, reduced to a giggling mess of nerves by that infernal feeling marking every inch of her soles.

Another minute passed, another hour, the torture did not show any signs of stopping. The Widowmaker could barely hold onto her thoughts as Karma tore through her every defence, like the nails that were scraping over her insanely twitching feet.

Wait a second.

Evelynn tried her hardest to keep her eyes open as her face seemed intent on doing the opposite to best capture her hysterical agony. There, what she had suspected was right—the chains were a touch lighter, not the silver-gray they once were. Were they weakening?

“GRRAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YOHOHOU BIHIHITCH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Karma had all of her fingernails between Evelynn’s toes, scraping at the soft, moist flesh, her touch even crueler than before. She had become aware of Evelynn’s noticing. It was as if she was trying to distract her captive from the fact that her concentration on the mantra was diminishing. A shame too. Just when Karma thought she was finally making progress.

“IHAHAHAHAHA WIHIHILL MAHAHAHAHAHAKE HAHAHAHAHA YOU SUHAHAHAHAFFERHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Evelynn screamed amidst peals of wild mirth.

She had begun struggling again, lashing out viciously at her bonds with strength that she did not have a moment ago. If Karma didn’t do something to break the assassin’s concentration, the session will end sooner than she intended. The duchess redoubled her efforts, making her attacks even more sporadic. She drew angry red lines against her captive’s soles and raked her fingernails against the soft wrinkles of Evelynn’s arches. Each touch drew peals of furious, uncontrollable laughter, but did nothing to hinder her thrashing.

Despite her hysteria, Evelynn kept checking the chains. Slowly but surely, they were growing lighter and lighter in color, and the assassin felt her grasp on her power steadily growing stronger—but not quickly enough. Evelynn screamed and her grip on her strength faltered for a minute. Karma had her fingers between the Widowmaker’s toes again, and this time would not leave. Gods why was it taking so long!? Evelynn howled with shrieking laughter, snarled and swore, but was acutely aware of the shadows creeping up along her skin, under the chains. Karma was aware as well, but strangely enough, she did not break eye contact for a second, and was still smiling as she tortured Evelynn’s sensitive soles.

They were almost white now, just a little bit more! With one final feral scream, just as Karma had returned to the balls of her feet, Evelynn summoned the shadows to her. Smoking black thorns, as thick as torsos and razor-sharp, pierced through the chains around her and Evelynn vanished in an explosion of whipping shadows. Karma reacted instantly, rolling to the right just as cuspate stalagmites burst from the forth in a line towards her. She was on her feet in a flash, but the assassin was already gone; her boots still discarded on the rug.

Evelynn was still giggling as she scaled the mountainside, summoning the shadows to aid her ascent. When finally she made it to the top, where rolling plateaus of grassland awaited her, she rolled forward, panting and splayed out on her back.

“GAAHAHA! Rrrrrgh!”

She could not control the burst of laughter that escape her lips when the tall grass met with the length of her soles as she let her feet fall before her. Evelynn could feel every blade of grass caressing her reddened flesh, brushing that would have been gentle to anyone not suffering under the effects of the salve. She tried to keep her feet still to catch her breath but finally gave up when the tender tickling became too much. Still giggling helplessly, she sat up and drew her feet under her so that she was sitting on her knees. The assassination had been a failure, one of the few that marred an otherwise long and successful career. More than just a professional failure, she had never been so humiliated in all of her life. Evelynn’s panting, sweating face, burned crimson when she thought about the way Karma stared throughout the session. There would be a reckoning; it did not matter that no one else would know about what had occurred—she could not allow the bitch to live after all that she had done.

The night’s soft wind cooled the moisture on her face and soles. From the look of it, she had been tortured for several hours. Evelynn gritted her teeth as she gingerly tried to rise without succumbing to the sensations that still danced on her tingling feet. Why did the grass have to tickle so!? Now was not the time or the place to seek revenge—she would have to regroup, recover until her feet were as strong as they used to be. It would mean returning to the Shadow Isles, if only for a little while.

With one last frustrated growl that quickly melted into angry giggles, Evelynn leapt to her feet and began to dash south. As the moon continued its path through the night, the breeze still came and went, pregnant with the soothing scents of wildflowers and rushing water—and now echoing with the sound of distant laughter.