SOUL BOUND HEIR

Chapter 3: The search

The horns stopped.

Silence settled over the clearing, heavier than the mist. Donald stood in the borrowed clothes, the silver band cold against the back of his neck where it held the dead boy’s hair in place. His new hands flexed once at his sides. The heart in the chest that was not his beat too fast. He forced it slower, the way he used to force his own breathing before a difficult lesson.

Gaius moved first. He stepped into the open doorway and raised both empty hands. Donald followed two paces behind, close enough to look like a son who had been pulled from sleep.

Torches appeared between the trees. Barco rode into the clearing on a dark horse, Mateo at his right shoulder. A dozen soldiers spread out behind them, spears ready, eyes already searching the shadows. Two more men dragged something heavy between them—a body bound by magically spelled chains. His own face stared up at the night sky, pale and still. The necklace still rested against the empty throat.

Donald’s borrowed stomach tightened. He locked his eyes forward.

Barco reined in a few steps from the cottage. The torchlight caught the gray at his temples and the hard line of his mouth.

“You must be a hunter,” he said. “We’re looking for a soul that left its body in the river. Have you seen anything that doesn’t belong?”

Gaius’s voice stayed even. “Only my son and I. The fever took him two nights past. He’s only just come back to himself.”

Mateo’s gaze slid over Donald and lingered. “He looks well for a boy who was dying.”

“The fever broke,” Gaius answered. “I sat with him the whole time.”

Barco dismounted. The soldiers shifted closer. One of them lifted Donald’s empty body higher, so the torchlight fell across the still face and the glowing chains.

“This belonged to Donald Gallagher,” Barco said. “The soul left it. We tracked the trail this far. It stops here, I think.”

Donald felt the weight of the necklace from ten feet away. A few steps, a single grab, and part of his power would return. The band in his hair would not stop that. He shifted his weight forward without meaning to.

Gaius’s hand closed hard around his wrist, hidden from the soldiers by the angle of their bodies. The pressure was brief and absolute. Donald stayed still.

Two soldiers pushed past them into the cottage. Boots moved across the wooden floor. Chests were opened, the bed was stripped—yet they found nothing. The environment outside was quiet for a long minute. When the men came out again, they shook their heads.

“Empty,” one reported.

Barco’s eyes narrowed. He stepped closer to Gaius. “You live alone in these woods with a boy, why? You are in magic?"

“No, your highness. I hunt,” Gaius said. “The forest gives more than city streets.”

Mateo walked a slow circle around Donald. He stopped behind him and reached up, fingers brushing the tied hair. Donald felt the light tug on the silver band and forced every muscle to stay loose. Mateo’s hand dropped again.

“No magical scent,” Mateo said, voice barely above a whisper. “Nothing.”

Barco stared at the empty body his men still held. The chains pulsed once with residual power. “Burn it after we return. I want no chance of the soul finding its way back.”

Donald’s borrowed hands curled into fists at his sides. He made them open again before anyone noticed.

Barco mounted without another word. The soldiers turned the horses. The one carrying the empty body slung it across a second saddle like a sack of grain. Torchlight moved away through the trees, growing smaller until only the sound of hooves remained, then that too faded.

The clearing was quiet again.

Donald’s legs felt unsteady. He stepped back into the cottage and sat on the edge of the bed that still smelled of fever and woodsmoke. The silver band pressed cold against his neck. He reached up and touched it once, making sure it was still there.

Gaius closed the door and barred it. He did not light another lamp. The single flame already burning was enough.

“They took the body,” Donald said. The new voice still sounded wrong in his own ears.

“They did.”

“The necklace—”

“Barco would have killed us both the moment you reached for it.” Gaius sat on the stool he had used when his real son died. “The band hides the scent. It does not make you invisible when you act like a desperate man.”

Donald looked at his hands again—Harvey’s hands. Callused. Younger in the knuckles than his own had been.

“Five days,” he said.

“Four and a half now.” Gaius’s voice remained quiet. “The band does not stop the clock.”

Outside, an owl called once and fell silent. Somewhere far down the slope another horn sounded, thinner with distance. The search was moving on.

Donald rested his elbows on his knees the way he had seen the dead boy’s father do earlier. The posture felt borrowed, like everything else; the guilt sat under his ribs beside the fear. Neither of them speaks loudly; both refused to leave.

Gaius watched him for a long moment. “Tomorrow we move to Barco’s palace. Harvey won a scholarship to study there. You will answer to his name until the day you no longer need to.”

Donald nodded once. He did not trust the new throat with more words yet.