"Quiet now," I whisper, choking back the bitter taste of my own stupidity. "We need to be quiet."
How could I have been so blind? So foolish? A demon with battle scars who appears from nowhere, taking interest in a human woman and her half-demon child. I should have known. Should have sensed the wrongness of it. Instead, I'd beenseduced by his careful kindness, by the way Erisen's eyes lit up whenever Domno appeared.
I dodge around a corner, past the skeletal remains of what was once a bathhouse, its stone pools now filled with murky rainwater and worse things. The air reeks of rot and sulfur, but it's safer here in Velzaroth's forgotten places. No one comes here willingly—except those with nowhere else to go.
Like us.
"But—" Erisen squirms against me, trying to look back the way we came. "He was fighting the bad demon. Domno was protecting us!"
His words strike me like a physical blow. I stumble, nearly losing my footing on the slick stones. The memory of Domno's body slamming into the other demon's flashes through my mind—the violence of it, the desperation. For a heartbeat, doubt creeps in.
Then I remember the other demon's words.
Bounty hunter.
My throat closes up. Six years of vigilance, of paranoia, of looking over my shoulder—and I'd invited the very danger I feared right into our home. Let him touch me. Let him near my son.
"He lied to us," I say, the words scraping my throat raw. "He was hunting us, Erisen. For money."
I duck through a half-collapsed tunnel, the ancient stones groaning overhead as if sharing my pain. The darkness swallows us, and I navigate by memory and desperation, one hand pressed against the damp wall to guide us through.
"No." Erisen's voice is small but stubborn. "No, Mama. Domno wouldn't."
The simple faith in his words breaks something inside me. For a moment, I hate Domno more than I've ever hated anyone—more than Vorrak, even. Because Vorrak never pretended tobe anything but what he was: a monster. But Domno made us believe in him. Mademebelieve.
We emerge into a forgotten plaza, its cracked fountain long dry, the stone eyes of forgotten gods watching from weathered statues. I pause, lungs heaving, trying to get my bearings. The shadows are growing longer. Night will be upon us soon, bringing new dangers. I need to find shelter. Need to think.
"He carved me a bird," Erisen whispers, and I realize he's crying—silent tears tracking down his dusty cheeks. "He showed me how to skip stones."
Each word is another fracture in my already shattered heart. I set Erisen down, kneeling before him on the cracked stones. His golden eyes—Vorrak's eyes, but so different in their gentleness—swim with tears. I brush them away with trembling fingers.
"I know, love. I know." My voice catches, memories of Domno's careful hands on my skin, his mouth against mine, crowding my thoughts. "But sometimes... sometimes people lie. They pretend to care when they don't."
The words taste like ash on my tongue. Because the most terrifying part is that it hadn't felt like pretending. The way he'd looked at me in those quiet moments, the gentleness with which he touched Erisen's small horns when the boy was self-conscious about them—none of it had felt false.
But neither had Vorrak's initial kindness, all those years ago.
"He came to take us back to my father, didn't he?" Erisen asks, his perceptiveness striking me like a physical blow. He's always understood too much, my boy with ancient eyes.
I pull him close, burying my face in his hair to hide my own tears. "Yes," I whisper. "For money."
And that's what cuts deepest. Not just that Domno betrayed us, but that we were nothing more than a transaction to him. A way to earn coin. All those moments—the carved bird, thecareful way he repaired our table, the heat in his eyes when he touched me—just means to an end.
"We have to go, love." I stand, lifting Erisen again. He feels heavier now, a weight of sorrow dragging at both of us. "We can't stay in one place too long."
We move deeper into Velzaroth's forgotten underbelly, through narrow passages where the stone itself weeps with condensation. Past huddled figures who don't even look up as we pass—the city's discarded souls, too broken to care about two more fugitives.
With each step, I feel the tenuous roots we'd begun to put down being torn away. The tiny life we'd built, precarious as it was, had started to feel like home—especially with Domno's solid presence filling the empty spaces.
Now we have nothing again. Just fear and flight and the crushing knowledge that I'd been wrong to hope for more.
Over the next few days, we become ghosts in a city that doesn't care if we live or die.
We spend our first night in an abandoned bathhouse at the very edge of Velzaroth's western quarter, where mineral-crusted pipes twist like petrified snakes across crumbling walls. The air is thick with sulfur and decay, but it's dry and hidden from prying eyes. I spread my cloak on a section of floor where greenish moss hasn't yet claimed the stone, and Erisen curls against me, his small body radiating heat.
"Will we find a new home soon?" he whispers, his golden eyes reflecting what little light filters through the collapsed ceiling.
"Yes," I promise, brushing his dark hair away from the small horns at his temples. "A better one."
