A young boy, no more than ten or eleven, appeared in the doorway. He was thin, his face pale and hollow, and I felt my heart tighten at the sight of him. He was hungry. Desperate.
The cloaked figure knelt in front of the boy, speaking in hushed tones. I couldn’t make out the words, but I saw the way the boy’s face lit up with hope, the way his eyes widened with something that could only be described as relief.
“They’re lying to him,” I murmured, my voice tight with anger. “Whoever that is, they’re manipulating him. We need to stop them.”
I moved to step forward, but Dario’s hand shot out, gripping my arm. “Wait,” he whispered, his voice low but firm. “We need to understand what’s happening first.”
I glared at him, my pulse quickening with frustration. “I can’t just stand by and watch this.”
“You have to,” Dario said, his grip tightening slightly. “If we confront them now, they’ll vanish. We’ll lose the chance to find out who’s behind this.”
His words were logical, but it took everything in me to stay where I was. The boy was looking at that figure like they were offering salvation, and every fiber of my being screamed to intervene, to protect him.
But I didn’t move. I trusted Dario—for now.
The figure placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, speaking softly. “Meet me here tomorrow night. I’ll take you somewhere safe. Somewhere where you’ll never have to worry about food again.”
The boy nodded, his face bright with hope, and I felt a pang of despair stab through me. This was wrong. So wrong.
Before I could react, the figure disappeared into the shadows, slipping away as quickly and quietly as they had come. The boy watched them go, then retreated into his house, closing the door with a soft creak.
I exhaled, my chest tight with frustration and fear. “We can’t let him go with them,” I said, turning to Dario, my voice trembling with emotion. “Whatever they promised him, it’s a lie. They’ll hurt him.”
“I know,” Dario said, his voice calm but intense. “But we need to wait. If we stop them now, we won’t find out where they’re taking him—or who’s behind this. We have to catch them in theact.”
I clenched my fists, torn between the need to act and the logic of Dario’s words.
“We’ll follow them tomorrow night,” Dario said quietly, his voice a calm whisper in the dark. “We need to understand the full scope of what’s happening before we make a move.”
My heart pounded in my chest. I wanted to argue, to rail against the idea of waiting, but a small part of me understood his reasoning.
We needed more information—if we acted too soon, we could tip our hand and lose any chance of stopping whoever was behind these disappearances.
I shook my head, my throat tightening with the weight of my own doubts. “We can’t let this go on,” I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. “I was supposed to protect them.”
Dario’s grip on my arm loosened, and he stepped closer, his dark eyes searching mine in the moonlight. “You still can,” he said softly, his voice gentler than I’d ever heard it. “But you need to see the whole picture first.”
The way he looked at me—so steady, so sure—made something inside me falter.
“And if it makes you feel any better, I shall keep an eye on him until tomorrow.”
I blinked. Never in a million years would I have imagined that the Shadow King would take on the role of protector for one of my people.
So much had shifted in the space of a single day.
The animosity of years, the broken wards, the unlikely alliance... it felt as though fate, not mere chance, had drawn our paths together. A sense of shared destiny, both terrifying and exhilarating, settled upon me.
I turned away from him, unable to hold his gaze any longer. The night around us was heavy, the quiet of the village brokenonly by the distant rustling of leaves in the wind.
The weight of the silence pressed down on me, and I wrapped my arms around myself, feeling the cool air seeping through the thin fabric of my cloak.
“How did I not see this?” I murmured, more to myself than to Dario. “All this time, I’ve trusted the Elders, trusted that they were doing what was best for Solaris. And because of their mismanagement, now we have children ready to sacrifice themselves….just for food. Water.” I shuddered.
Whatever the mage wanted with the child, it was bound to be nothing good.
Dario was quiet for a moment, his gaze still fixed on me. “Sometimes the truth is hidden in plain sight,” he said softly. “You were never meant to see it. They kept you sheltered, protected, just like they’ve kept Solaris hidden from the world.”
His words hit harder than I expected, and I felt a surge of resentment rising in my chest. Sheltered. Protected. Those were words I had heard all my life—words that were meant to be comforting but had only ever made me feel caged.
