. hello .

Ellie eyed the two men carefully; her hand still tightly clutching the bat at her side. “Who are you?”

The obviously older of the two men slowly held up his hands. “I’m Ivan and that’s newbie.”

The younger one sighed and shook his head. “Jay. My name is Jay.”

“Who are you?” Ivan questioned.

“I don’t think that’s any of your concern,” she replied evenly.

“Listen, we’re not going to kill you,” Ivan assured her.

“If we were going to try anything, don’t you think we would have already done it?” Jay added.

Ellie eyed them carefully. “How am I supposed to believe that? You don’t think people have already tried to tell me that?” To further prove her point, she kicked the douchebag at her feet.

“We’re just looking for a place to stay the night. We’ll be leaving at dawn. We swear,” Ivan said calmly.

“Where are you headin’?” Ellie found herself asking.

“California,” Ivan replied.

“If I let you stay and you guys don’t try anything sketchy, can I come along?” Ellie asked; surprising herself.

Ivan shared a glance with Jay before nodding. “Yeah. We’ve got room for one more. You wanna tell us your name now?”

Arya looked up from Maat’s body. “You killed her. You killed my wife.”

Marise didn’t turn back around to face her. “I followed orders.”

A ring of ice erupted around them all.

“You followed the orders of a killer,” Arya growled. “You murdered the Head Knight. You’ve betrayed the Void. And now,” she stood up and picked up Maat’s discarded sword, “it’s time you’ve paid your price.” She moved forward quickly and swung the sword.

Marise wasn’t fast enough though and the sword sliced through the bridge of his nose and tore along his cheek. He stumbled backwards with wide eyes. "Arya?“ he asked. His eyes flickered to where Maat was lying and then down at his sword. "Oh. No. I didn-” He dropped his sword and brought his hands up to his face as he dropped to his knees.