The Boy and The Shadows
1655 Words
CHAPTER TWO
The first thing Asher remembered loving was light.
Not the pale glow of the Moon that ruled their kind, but sunlight — warm, unguarded, alive. He would sit by the high windows of the Nightshade manor, watching it crawl across the marble floors, chasing dust motes and gold. The palace always smelled faintly of iron and incense, and the sunlight was the only thing that felt real in it.
His mother, Lady Cerys of the Crescent Clan, used to tell him that the Moon loved him too, that its light just took a different form inside him. But the Moon had been cold the night she died. He was six when the fever took her. Six when his father stopped calling him son and started calling him heir.
Now, at eight, Asher tried very hard to be what his father wanted — steady, strong, emotionless. He trained harder than any boy his age, studied late into the night, and recited the oaths of the royal line until his throat ached. But no matter how perfect he was, it never seemed to be enough.
Not when Cairn, his younger half-brother, could make the Alpha King laugh simply by existing.
Cairn had the Luna’s beauty — golden curls and pale eyes that gleamed like polished glass. When they walked together, servants bowed deeper to him than to Asher, and the Luna, Queen Seraphine, never failed to remind her stepson that lineage was more than blood — it was love, and Asher had none.
Still, Asher tried.
He smiled when he was expected to. Bowed when he was required to. And every night, when the palace grew quiet and the torches burned low, he talked to the shadows.
At first, it was a game. He’d lie awake, tracing shapes on the ceiling — wolves, stars, swords. The shadows would shift with him, following his hand even when the firelight didn’t. They listened when no one else did.
He began to test it. Small things at first — asking them to twist, to bend, to dance. And they obeyed.
He didn’t understand how, only that it felt right. The darkness wasn’t heavy or frightening; it was soft and eager, like a friend.
And so, one morning, bursting with the kind of excitement only a child can hold, Asher ran into the council chamber where his father sat with the Elders.
“Father,” he called, breathless, “you have to see this!”
The King looked up from the parchment spread before him, eyes sharp and cold. The room stilled. Elders in gray robes turned toward the boy who dared interrupt.
“Asher,” his father said slowly. “This is not—”
“I can make them move,” Asher blurted, too thrilled to notice the warning. “The shadows. They listen to me!”
Before anyone could speak, he clapped his hands together and whispered a word — not one he’d learned, but one that had come to him in dreams. The torches flickered. The room darkened. The shadows on the wall rippled, slithered, and then rose, forming the shape of a great black wolf beside him.
Gasps rippled through the chamber. The shadow’s eyes gleamed white for a heartbeat before it bowed its head to Asher and melted back into the floor.
Asher grinned. “See? They like me.”
The silence that followed was not admiration. It was horror.
The King rose slowly, every inch of him stiff with unease. “What did you do?”
“I don’t know,” Asher said, still smiling, uncertain why the air suddenly felt cold. “They’ve been doing that for days. I just thought—”
“Enough!”
The word cracked like thunder. Asher flinched. The shadows shivered, then fled to the corners of the room.
“Do not ever summon that again,” his father hissed. “Do you understand me?”
“But—Father, they’re not dangerous. They listen.”
“That is definitely not the Moon’s gift,” one of the Elders whispered. “That is something else.”
Another nodded. “The shadows belong to the old ones. The forsaken kind.”
Seraphine, who had been watching from the doorway, pressed a hand dramatically to her chest. “Oh, Aldric,” she murmured, “the child’s been touched by darkness.”
Asher’s stomach dropped. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Go to your chambers,” the King said. “Now.”
Asher opened his mouth to argue but stopped at the look in his father’s eyes — not anger, but fear. Real, unmistakable fear.
He ran.
That night, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, whispering to the shadows, but they didn’t answer. He felt them there, hovering at the edges, cautious now. He turned to the window. Outside, the Moon hung heavy and cold, watching.
“Why are you scared of me?” he whispered.
No one answered.
---
Days turned to weeks. The King grew distant, his patience thinning. The servants no longer met Asher’s gaze. When he entered a room, conversation faltered. He felt it—the silent turning of the world against him.
Once, he caught Cairn watching him during training, eyes wide and curious.
“Do it again,” Cairn whispered later, when no one was looking.
“What?”
“The shadow thing. I won’t tell.”
Asher hesitated, then shook his head. “Father said not to.”
Cairn smiled, sly and sharp. “Father says a lot of things.”
He sounded so certain, so untouchable, that for a heartbeat Asher believed him. So that night, in the courtyard behind the stables, he tried again.
The shadows came faster this time, curling around him like living smoke. He made them rise, take shape — wolves, birds, faces half-formed. Cairn laughed, clapping his hands.
“See? You’re not cursed, you’re amazing!”
For a moment, Asher felt light again. Then he noticed movement near the doorway.
Queen Seraphine stood there, pale as moonlight, her expression unreadable. When their eyes met, she smiled — not kindly.
The next morning, the King summoned him again.
“Asher,” he said tightly, “your stepmother tells me you disobeyed me.”
“I was just—”
“Enough!” His father’s voice was harsh, shaking. “Do you wish to bring ruin upon this house? The shadows obey you now, but they are treacherous. They devour those who think they can command them.”
“I don’t want them to devour anyone!” Asher protested. “They help me. They—”
“They will destroy you,” the King cut in. He turned away, muttering something to the Elders about sealing rituals, purification rites. Asher stood there, trembling, wanting to shout that he was not a monster.
But monsters did not need to explain themselves.
---
By the time he turned nine, the whispers had grown louder. The court called him The Darkborn. The servants left food at his door and scurried away before he opened it. He began to spend more time in the old library, where the shadows seemed less judgmental.
Sometimes they still answered him — softly, shyly, like friends afraid of being overheard.
They told him secrets. About the earth beneath the palace. About the voices that slept there. About how power and fear were two sides of the same coin.
He didn’t understand, but he listened.
Then came the day everything changed.
It was supposed to be a celebration — Cairn’s first demonstration before the council. The boy had learned to control fire, and the court was giddy with praise before he’d even begun.
Asher sat beside his father, silent, proud in a strange, painful way. But when Cairn faltered — when the fire turned wild and scorched one of the banners — it was Asher who instinctively moved. He raised his hand, and the flames snuffed out instantly, swallowed by darkness.
The hall gasped.
For a heartbeat, silence. Then the Queen screamed.
“He’s cursed! He smothered the Moon’s flame with shadow!”
Asher froze, horror rising. “I was helping—”
The King’s voice was low, trembling with fury. “You’ve done enough.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Enough!”
With a sharp wave of his hands, the King
The word struck like a blow. The torches dimmed around them, reacting to his fear, his anger, his confusion. The shadows stretched, alive again, and the court recoiled.
Asher looked at his father — at the man who had once lifted him high into the air and called him strong — and saw, for the first time, disgust.
He backed away slowly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just wanted—”
“To help?” the King snarled. “You wanted to show us what you are.”
And then, softer, a whisper not meant for him: “Perhaps it was a mistake letting him live.”
Something inside Asher cracked.
The shadows closed around him like a comforting hand, and he let them.
---
That night, he didn’t speak to them. He didn’t play. He just sat in the dark, knees drawn to his chest, listening to the palace breathe. Every creak of wood, every murmur behind a door — all of it sounded like judgment.
When the Moon rose, pale and distant, he looked up at it and whispered,
“If I’m cursed, then you cursed me. Not them.”
The wind stirred. The shadows moved. And somewhere deep beneath the stone, something ancient and unseen stirred in answer — faint, but real.
Asher smiled for the first time in days. It was not a happy smile. It was the beginning of something else.
The beginning of the boy the Moon would one day fear as much as his father did.
- Writer
