Page 58

I straightened, ignoring the whispers of those who had witnessed our exchange.

The child knew about my shadows. She must have seen me while I was unconscious, she must have sensed the shadows, but that was impossible.

Only adults sensed the darkness in me. And she'd mentioned an "Aunt Iris"—possibly another relative of Ada's?

The implications were troubling. If a child could recognize me for what I was, how long before others did?

I made my way back through the village, realizing I had no idea which cottage I'd emerged from.

All looked similar, with their whitewashed walls and thatched roofs.

I was about to try the nearest one when a door opened down the lane and Ada herself stepped out, scanning the street with obvious concern.

When her eyes found me, her expression shifted from worry to relief to exasperation in the span of a heartbeat.

At that moment I realized that I missed her badly. Fuck, this was pathetic.

"There you are!" she exclaimed, and strode toward me with purpose.

My gut clenched with unwelcome desire. She was so beautiful.

"What in Erlik's name are you wandering outside? You shouldn't even be standing, let alone exploring the village!"

I bristled at her tone. "I was gathering intelligence," I said, "since no one bothered to tell me where we are or how we got here."

She grabbed my arm, her touch surprisingly gentle despite her obvious irritation, and steered me toward the cottage she'd emerged from.

"You're in Isikkoy," she stated, "a healing village where Nadine established her practice.

I brought you here after the battle because you were dying and we couldn't reach the shadow realm safely. "

Inside the cottage, I was surprised to find Sarp lounging in a corner, looking considerably worse for wear but very much alive.

Bandages covered half his face, and he held himself carefully, as if nursing broken ribs.

Beside him sat Melo in her human form, her usual sardonic expression tempered with something that appeared suspiciously like concern when she glanced at him.

"Our fearless leader lives," Sarp announced with mock solemnity.

Melo regarded me with annoyed glare. I bet she was hoping for a worse outcome.

"Though his sense of self-preservation clearly perished in battle," Sarp concluded.

"You're one to talk," I retorted, oddly relieved to see him despite his insolence. "You look like something a shadow beast regurgitated."

"And yet still more handsome than you," he shot back with a grin that reopened a cut on his lip.

I turned back to Ada, who was examining my wounds with the critical eye of someone accustomed to healing. Her light connected with my shadow. I needed to fucking touch her or at least talk to her without anyone else eavesdropping, but I didn't think this would be possible anytime soon.

"I'm fine," I said, and brushed her hands away. "The village seemed safe enough for reconnaissance."

"This is neutral territory, technically," she explained, "though firmly within the light realm's borders."

"Yes, I had tea with the local militia and discussed border politics," I replied dryly. "What I meant was it seems safe from Midas's remaining forces."

"For now," Sarp interjected, his tone sobering. "But my sources say they're regrouping under his generals. Without a body to confirm his death, they're operating under the assumption he's alive but incapacitated."

"How did you contact your sources?" I asked, impressed despite myself. He'd been barely conscious when I'd last seen him.

Sarp tapped his temple. "Shadow link. Limited, but functional.

Speaking of which, yours seems significantly…

diminished," he noted, and nodded toward my torso where shadows curled weakly like withered vines beneath the linen shirt.

"I'm guessing getting skewered by magical golden blades isn't conducive to maintaining full shadow strength. "

"Worry about yourself, I will heal soon," I said dismissively, though privately I was concerned by how slowly my power was regenerating. "Nothing that will prevent us from returning to the shadow realm once you're capable of traveling."

"About that," Ada began, but was interrupted when the cottage door opened and Nadine entered with a small figure beside her.

"This little one snuck in earlier when she wasn't supposed to," Nadine said with weary resignation, her hand on the child's shoulder. "Found Sarp in the main room and decided he needed looking after. I couldn't pry her away."

The child from the marketplace beamed and launched herself at Sarp with what would have been painful force had he not caught her expertly despite his injuries. "Uncle Sarp! You're feeling better!"

"Much better, little terror," he greeted her with genuine affection, and ruffled her dark hair. "Your light magic helped. Now, have you been terrorizing the village while I was resting?"

"Only a little bit," she replied, her smile transforming her entire face into something radiant and strangely familiar. "I met him at the market." She pointed directly at me. "He was so grumpy, but he scared away the mean fruit man."

Four pairs of eyes turned to me with varying degrees of surprise. I shifted uncomfortably under their collective gaze.

"We…encountered each other," I admitted, again irritated. "The merchant was manhandling her. I intervened."

"You said you'd make him scream and pull his bones out like flower petals," the child corrected helpfully, and butchered my exact phrasing but captured the essence.

Ada pinched the bridge of her nose, appearing amused but also pained. "Kiraz, what have we said about wandering off alone?" she asked gently.

The child—Kiraz was her name, not the "Little Light" nickname she'd mentioned—put on an expression of exaggerated innocence that wouldn't have fooled a blind man. Kiraz, I realized, meant cherry in our language. She was named after a fruit.

"Should I only do it for 'portant things?" she answered, her dark eyes glimmering with mischief.

"That you should never do it," Ada corrected. "Especially now."

I stared between them, noticing subtle similarities in their mannerisms, yet something else nagged at me. "Who is this child serpent?" I asked Ada, my curiosity genuinely piqued.

"She's my niece," Ada replied, though something in her tone struck me as carefully measured.

"Kiraz," Nadine said in a tone of weary resignation. "I thought we agreed you'd help sort the vervain this morning."

"I was just checking if Uncle Sarp was better," Kiraz replied, not sounding particularly apologetic.

"And stealing fruit, apparently," Nadine said, and gave me an appraising look. "I see you've met our…guest. Kiraz, this is Hakan—the shadow lord."

"Hakan got shadows under his skin," Kiraz announced to the room at large. "Like mine, but bigger."

An uncomfortable silence fell. I stared at the child, my jaw clenching. Shadows under her skin? No. That wasn't possible. I refused to entertain the implications.

"Kiraz has an active imagination," Nadine said. "And a tendency to compare her light magic to other powers she observes."

"I wasn't 'magining it," Kiraz protested, and held out her small palm.

Despite her earlier claim about having both abilities, I was still unprepared for what I saw—tiny flickers of both light and darkness danced across her skin, controlled with surprising precision for one so young.

"See? Shadows and light. Just like the shadow lord's, only smaller."

I stared at her palm, genuine shock coursing through me.

She had mentioned having both abilities, but seeing actual shadow magic—my magic—manifesting in a light realm child was impossible by every law of magical inheritance I knew.

I stared at Ada, whose face had gone carefully blank and slightly pale, then to Nadine, whose expression was equally guarded.

Only Sarp seemed unsurprised, watching the exchange with the air of someone who already knew the punchline to a joke no one else had heard. Something tugged at the edges of my awareness—a possibility I wasn't yet ready to consider. What the fuck was going on in here?

"You should keep an eye on her. She's completely wild," I said to Ada, and tried to recover from my shock. "Uncouth and undisciplined. I found her picking pockets and insulting grown men twice her size."

"Imagine that," Ada replied with a strange smile. "A child who doesn't respect arbitrary authority and stands up to people many times her size. How completely unexpected and not at all familiar."

Sarp made a choking sound that might have suppressed laughter. Even Melo's lips twitched suspiciously.

"I'm not wild," Kiraz informed me with dignity. "I'm spirited. Mama says there's a difference."

"Indeed," I replied. "The difference being that 'spirited' sounds more palatable than 'one step away from feral.'"

Instead of being offended, Kiraz giggled as if I'd said something delightful. "You're funny when you try to be scary."

"Kiraz, the herbs," Nadine, her tone of voice firm. "Now, please."

"I want to check on Uncle Sarp, he needs more healing."

"Mm-hmm," Nadine replied, sounding skeptical. "And the missing sweet buns from the kitchen?"

"They were for…for my light magic," Kiraz said. "Very 'important."

Despite myself, my lips twitched toward a smile. The child was incorrigible but undeniably clever.

"Out," Nadine ordered, and pointed toward the door. "Back to the cottage. Straight to the herb room."

Kiraz trudged toward the door with the air of one marching to execution but paused beside me.

"Your shadows are getting stronger," she observed quietly, her expression suddenly serious, the childish mischief replaced by something unsettlingly mature.

"That's good. The bad men are coming, and you'll need them. "

Then she was gone, leaving me staring after her with an unsettled feeling in my chest. How could a child—a light realm child at that—see my shadows so clearly?

And how did she know about "bad men" coming?

Was it just a child's imagination or something more?

I'd learned long ago not to dismiss warnings, no matter how unlikely their source.

If Midas's generals were regrouping faster than we anticipated, or if my father had somehow learned of my injury and defection…

either possibility meant time was running dangerously short.

"We need to discuss our situation," I said once Nadine had followed her out, and turned to the others. "If Midas's forces are regrouping, we can't linger here. This village is too exposed, too easily found."

"You're in no condition to travel," Ada countered. "Neither is Sarp. Your shadows are barely functional, and the binding between us is still unstable after what happened during the battle."

The mention of the binding brought back flashes of memory—our souls touching, memories and emotions flowing between us unfiltered. I pushed them aside, focusing on the tactical situation.

"I won't endanger these people," I said. "If Midas's generals track us here?—"

"They'd be outmatched," Sarp interrupted, unexpectedly supportive of Ada's position. "Between you, Ada, Melo, and Nadine, this is possibly the most magically formidable location in either realm right now. And that's not counting the village's own protections."

"We need time," Ada insisted. "Time for you to heal properly, time to understand what happened with the binding during the battle."

I wanted to argue further, but exhaustion was already draining my shadows, my brief excursion having depleted my limited reserves. And beyond the tactical considerations, there was the strange child—Kiraz—and the inexplicable pull I felt toward her.

"Three days," I conceded with reluctance.

I recalled ancient shadow healing principles.

"Three is the optimal number for initial shadow regeneration.

We rest, we recover, we gather intelligence.

Then we return to the shadow realm, regardless of our condition.

Any longer risks my father dispatching his own forces to find us. "

What I didn't say was that part of me—a part I barely recognized—was reluctant to leave at all. Something about this place, about Kiraz's fearless eyes and Ada's complex expressions when she looked at her "niece," tugged at instincts I'd thought long buried.

The child unsettled me in ways I couldn't rationalize.

Her mannerisms, her fearlessness, the stubborn set of her jaw—all seemed strangely familiar, though I couldn't place why.

And those shadows dancing across her small palm—hereditary magic that shouldn't be possible in a light realm child, unless through some ancient bloodline connection I wasn't aware of.

Something about the timing nagged at me, too, though I couldn't quite grasp what.

The sensation was foreign, unsettling. A possibility lurked at the edges of my thoughts, one I refused to entertain.

Some connections were too dangerous to acknowledge, too devastating to consider.

I'd built my existence on certainties, on facts I could control and manipulate. This felt like stepping into quicksand.

Three days to recover my strength. Three days to avoid the truth that clawed at my consciousness. Three days to maintain the lie I'd built my sanity upon.

I had the distinct, uncomfortable feeling that time was running out—not just for our tactical advantage, but for something far more personal that I couldn't yet name.