Chapter Two: Shadows Never Lie
1121 Words
The stranger was gone before Debbie could even ask his name — one moment in front of her, the next simply absent from a street full of faces that all belonged to someone else.
“Miss, are you alright?” A police officer helped her up.
“I think so.”
“You were lucky.
Lucky. The word didn’t sit right. She could have sworn she’d felt herself lifted clear of the truck before it reached her, and no amount of adrenaline talk explained that away. That night she lay awake replaying his face — the calm of it, the strange age in his eyes — and one question wouldn’t let her sleep: who was he?
At Castle Noctharis, Daniel stood on the highest balcony above a kingdom that feared him and had built that fear with his own hands. He looked down at those hands now, the same ones that had ended so many lives, and thought about how they’d spent tonight instead — pulling a frightened stranger out of the road.
Robert’s knock interrupted him.
“We found another one,” the general said, when Daniel called him in. “Alive. He claims he saw you in Blackridge.”
Another witness. Another life balanced on a decision Daniel didn’t want to make twice in one night.
In the abandoned ruins beneath the city, Dennis watched a single candle burn and knew he wasn’t alone in the dark beyond it. Only a pair of golden eyes showed — the same shade of molten gold he’d knelt before beyond the Gates of Ash, though he told himself it meant nothing. Gold eyes weren’t so rare among the old ones.
“You met him,” the voice said.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“My brother has changed.”
“Dangerous,” the voice offered.
Dennis laughed under his breath. “Weak.” “Do not underestimate love.”
“I don’t believe in it.”
“Neither did the last king.” The candle went out before Dennis could ask what that meant — the last king, not your father, not your predecessor, a phrase that circled something without naming it — and for the first time in longer than he could remember, he stood in the dark genuinely unsettled.
Back in her apartment, Debbie reopened the library book and a folded, yellowed slip of paper slid out from between its pages — one she was certain hadn’t been there before. A single line, in ink gone nearly black with age:
If the king ever saves your life, run.
Three slow knocks sounded at her door. When she checked the window, it stood open, though she was sure she’d shut it before bed. Someone was standing in the dark below, watching, and didn’t look away when she noticed him.
The next morning, Debbie carried the same book across campus, no closer to sleep than she’d been the night before. When the old librarian caught sight of it, his easy smile disappeared.
“You shouldn’t take that one.”
“Why not?”
“It has a habit of finding the wrong people.” “It’s mythology.”
“That’s what everyone says.” He walked away before she could ask anything else, leaving her staring at a cover that felt, absurdly, warm under her palm: The Legend of the Blood King.
She brought it to her usual table, where Stephanie dropped into the seat across from her a few minutes later.
“You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I haven’t.”
“Bad dream?”
“Worse.” Debbie leaned in and lowered her voice. “I think someone saved my life yesterday, and it wasn’t luck. He moved too fast — faster than anyone can move.”
“Adrenaline makes people see strange things,” Stephanie said, not unkindly. “That’s what the police said too.”
“They’re probably right.” Debbie wanted to believe that. She reached for her coffee instead, and the book slipped from the table, spilling loose pages across the floor — handwritten pages, not printed, that hadn’t been part of the book a moment ago. One held sketches of ancient castles. Another, a circle of symbols she didn’t recognize. The last stopped her cold: a painted portrait of a young man in black, standing on a throne surrounded by kneeling figures, centuries old by the look of the paint — and unmistakably the man who’d caught her in the street. Half-hidden behind the throne in the same painting stood a second young man in silver, close enough in the face to be a brother, close enough to have been painted out of the story entirely if you didn’t look for him.
“He looks familiar,” Stephanie admitted, staring at it — meaning the one in black. Neither of them noticed the second figure at all.
The librarian was on them before either could say more, snatching the pages back into the book with hands that weren’t quite steady. “You should leave. The library is closing.”
“It’s noon.”
“I said leave.” Something in his voice frightened her enough that she didn’t argue. He watched them go from the window, then locked the book inside a cabinet behind the shelves and murmured something that sounded like a prayer — and, quieter still, a name that wasn’t Daniel’s.
Elsewhere in the city, inside an abandoned cathedral lit only by moonlight through broken stained glass, Dennis waited for someone who never showed her face.
“You sent for me,” the hooded woman said. “I need information. The kind people die for.”
He set a pouch of gold on the altar. She ignored it.
“I don’t want your money. I want the truth.” She stepped close enough that her next words barely needed to be spoken aloud. “Why does the king keep visiting the human world? You already know he’s hiding something — and whatever it is, it will destroy the throne.”
Dennis said nothing, which was answer enough. She turned for the doors.
“If you continue down this path,” she said, without looking back, “you’ll awaken something even your brother fears. And it isn’t your brother you should be asking what that something is.”
The doors slammed shut behind her. Alone, Dennis found himself wondering — only for a moment — whether the throne was worth what it might cost him, and who, exactly, he’d been kneeling before beyond the Gates of Ash.
Then he smiled, because he’d already decided the throne was worth it. He hadn’t yet decided the second question mattered.
End of Chapter Two
- Writer
