Page 20

ESALYN

I run like the hunted animal I am.

Erisen's small body bounces against my chest with each frantic step, his face buried against my neck. My lungs burn. My legs scream. But I don't slow down. Can't slow down. The revelation of Domno's betrayal drives me forward like a blade between my shoulder blades.

"Mama, wait!" Erisen's voice is muffled against my skin, his breath hot with confusion and fear. "Where's Domno? Why did we leave him?"

His question slices deeper than any knife could reach. I tighten my grip on him, ducking beneath a low archway where sulfur-crusted pipes hiss with escaping steam. The heat sticks to my skin like guilt.

"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 been seduced 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 to be anything but what he was: a monster. But Domno made us believe in him. Made me believe.

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, the careful 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."

He nods, believing me because he has no choice. I watch as exhaustion claims him, his long lashes fluttering closed against tear-stained cheeks. Only then do I allow my smile to crumble.

The next night, we hide in an empty stable where the smell of long-gone zarryn lingers in rotted hay.

Erisen sits cross-legged in the corner, turning his wooden birth over and over in his small hands—one of the stones Domno gave him.

It's smooth and black, shot through with threads of silver that catch the fading light.

"Why did he give me things if he didn't like us?" he asks, voice hollow in a way that no child's should ever be. He never lets go of the wooden carving, and he stares down at it like he doesn't know what to think.

I pause in my task of weaving straw into a makeshift bed. "I don't know, love," I say, the words sticking in my throat. What can I tell him? That men are cruel? That kindness can be a weapon? He already knows too much about the world's darkness.

Erisen tucks the pebble into his pocket without another word, but I see how his fingers keep returning to it throughout the evening, seeking comfort in the one tangible reminder of Domno's presence. It breaks something inside me to watch.

On the third day, we find shelter in the bones of what must have once been a temple, its dome now a jagged half-circle against the red sky.

Statues of forgotten gods line the walls, their faces worn smooth by time and the constant ash that falls like snow in this part of the city.

I recognize none of them—they are not the Seven worshipped in Ikoth, nor any deity I've encountered in my years of running.

"Are they sleeping?" Erisen asks, pointing to a faceless figure whose stone arms reach upward in supplication.

"Perhaps," I say, unwrapping our meager portion of food—a half-loaf of sour bread I'd traded my hair ribbon for in the market. "Or maybe they're just waiting."

"For what?"

I break the bread in two, giving him the larger piece. "For someone to remember them."

Erisen nods solemnly, then sits beneath the statue as he eats, leaning against its pedestal as if finding comfort in the silent stone presence. I watch him, this boy who once chattered endlessly about everything he saw, now conserving words like they're as scarce as food.

Each day, he grows quieter. Each night, more withdrawn.

The child who had finally begun to bloom under Domno's attention is wilting again, curling inward like a plant deprived of light.

The bright curiosity that once sparked questions about everything from why the sky turns red at sunset to how stone bridges stay up without falling is dimming, replaced by a watchful silence that reminds me too much of our earliest days on the run.

I keep smiling for him. During daylight hours, I am stronger than stone, more reliable than the ground beneath our feet.

I point out curious-looking thalivern with their iridescent wings when they flit through broken windows.

I make up stories about the clouds that manage to peek through Velzaroth's smoky haze.

I braid his hair with nimble fingers that don't betray my fear, tucking the strands carefully over his small horns.

"Remember when we saw those black pitter birds nesting on the cliffs?" I ask him as we huddle together on the fourth night. "How fast they flew? Someday we'll fly just as fast, far away from here."

Erisen nods against my shoulder, but says nothing. He doesn't believe me anymore. Perhaps he never did.

It's only after his breathing deepens with sleep that I allow myself to break. I ease away from his warmth, moving just far enough that my silent sobs won't wake him. Tears carve hot paths down my cheeks, tasting of salt and defeat when they reach my lips.

I press my fist against my mouth to muffle the sounds that want to escape. My body shakes with grief—not just for what we've lost, but for what I allowed myself to believe we could have. A home. Safety. The solid presence of someone who looked at us and saw more than just prey.

"Please," I whisper to the faceless gods surrounding us, my voice raw and desperate. "Please help us."

But the stone figures stand silent, unmoved by my tears, and I know better than to expect answers. Hope unravels inside me, thread by precious thread, leaving nothing but a hollow ache where my heart used to be.