Domno shifts slightly as Erisen finally surrenders to sleep, easing my son down onto the thin mattress with a gentleness that belies his warrior's hands. Those hands that I've seen wrap around the hilt of his blade with deadly precision now tuck a threadbare blanket around my child's shoulders. He moves with exquisite care, as if Erisen is made of something infinitely precious and fragile.
The sight burns a hole straight through the armor I've spent six years building around my heart.
12
DOMNO
Iease away from Erisen once his breathing deepens into sleep. Even in slumber, his small features hold an echo of tension—a child too accustomed to vigilance. He looks fragile against the threadbare blanket, those tiny fingers still clutching the wooden bird I carved him. Something pulls tight in my chest, an unfamiliar ache I have no right to feel.
When I look up, Esalyn's watching me. The ember-light catches in her dark hair, illuminating the tired lines around her eyes that somehow don't diminish her beauty. She's all careful strength and wary grace, a woman who's learned to make herself smaller to survive. Yet beneath that practiced invisibility burns something fierce—I've seen it flare when market merchants shortchange her, when strangers stand too close to her son.
The storm's fury has abated, leaving behind only the occasional grumble of distant thunder. Ash settles on the windowsill like gray snow.
Esalyn rises silently from her chair, moving with that deliberate quietness I've come to recognize as second nature to her. She reaches above the hearth and pulls down a small amber bottle, holding it up with a questioning tilt of her head.
"Outside?" she mouths, gesturing toward the door.
I nod, surprised. We've never been alone together—truly alone, without Erisen's presence creating a buffer between us. The thought sends an unexpected spike of something that isn't quite nervousness through my blood.
She checks on Erisen once more before we step into the night. The air smells of ash and iron, the afterbirth of Velzaroth's volcanic tantrums. The small covered porch outside her door barely deserves the name—just a few rotting boards held together by stubborn nails—but it offers shelter from the drifting cinders still floating down from the crimson sky.
Esalyn settles on the single step, her shoulders pressed against the doorframe. She uncorks the bottle and takes a swig before offering it to me, her movements revealing a momentary tension. This gesture feels significant—trusting me enough to turn her back, to share her meager luxuries.
I accept the bottle, careful not to let our fingers touch. The mead is sweet but burns pleasantly, nothing like the potent amerinth I usually drink to drown memories. For a while, we sit in silence, passing the bottle back and forth while watching embers dance on the horizon.
"Erisen has never taken to someone like he does with you," she finally says, her voice low. Not accusatory, but wondering.
I roll the mead across my tongue before answering, buying time against the surge of emotion her words trigger. "I don't know why."
"I do." She takes the bottle back, studying it rather than me. "Children see what adults miss. Whatever you're running from, whatever you've done... he sees past it."
Her perceptiveness unnerves me. For six years I've existed as a shadow among shadows, barely speaking more than necessary to complete jobs. Now this human woman with exhausted eyes cuts straight through my carefully constructed emptiness.
"He's a very special boy," I say, the inadequacy of the statement burning my tongue. What I mean is:he reminds me of Zevan. He makes me want to be the man I failed to be.
Esalyn sighs, leaning her head back against the weathered wood. "He is." The bottle dangles loosely from her fingers, catching the crimson light. "I've done everything for him. Everything."
The raw honesty in her voice scrapes something loose inside me. She's never spoken like this before—has maintained careful distances, shared only what was necessary. Now, something has shifted between us, some invisible barrier thinning.
"I belonged to Vorrak Thren'Surath." She speaks the name like a curse, her voice steady despite the way her hands tremble around the bottle. "Not as a wife. As property. A human servant in a demon noble's household."
My blood runs cold at the name. Vorrak's reputation extends even to mercenaries like me—a collector of rare things, living and otherwise, with connections throughout Aerasak's underground. The bottle suddenly feels fragile in my grip.
"Erisen is his son," she continues, words tumbling out now as if she's held them back too long. "Not by choice. Never by choice. For three years, I was his favorite plaything." Her voice doesn't break, but something in her eyes fractures. "When I discovered I was pregnant, I knew what would happen to a half-demon child in that house. Especially one born to a human servant."
The implications hang in the ash-laden air between us. My throat tightens with rage so intense it temporarily blinds me. I've seen what powerful demons do to those they consider beneath them. Have spent my life distancing myself from my own kind because of it.
"I escaped when Erisen was two weeks old," she says. "A healer in the household—she took pity on us. Helped us slip away when I was supposed to be recovering." Her handunconsciously goes to her back, where scars I've never seen but can easily imagine must mark her skin. "We've been running ever since."
The bottle is empty now, but she still clutches it, fingers white against the amber glass. Her face remains composed, but the trembling in her hands betrays the cost of these confessions.
I don't reach for her, though something in me wants to. Comfort has never been my language. The rage thrumming through my veins—familiar and clean—is easier to recognize than this other feeling spreading beneath my ribcage. Instead, I stare out at Velzaroth's glowing horizon, where magma pulses beneath the city's blackened foundations.
"I think I took to Erisen because he reminds me of someone. I had a brother," I say, the words scraping my throat raw. "Zevan."
Esalyn goes still beside me, her fingers ceasing their restless movement against the empty bottle. She doesn't look at me, doesn't press—just waits in that patient way of hers, giving the silence room to breathe.
"He was younger. Softer." I roll the taste of his name around my mouth, unfamiliar after years of forced silence. "That's rare among demons. To be gentle."
