“Perhaps I do.” His tone was maddeningly calm. “But it is difficult not to hear when they march into my woods chanting them.”
The shadows at my wrists shifted, pulling tighter, as though echoing his mood. I bit back a wince. “Release me. If you are so eager for conversation, you can speak to me as an equal, not as a prisoner.”
“Equal?” His eyes flicked briefly to the faint golden shimmer that still clung to my skin where I had tried to use my fire to break free. “Here, priestess, your light barely stirs. In this place, you are notequal. You are fragile.”
The words stung more than I wished to admit. But I pressed on, my voice sharpening. “Then tell me—why have you tormented Solaris? Why do you stalk the border of our wards, dragging my Paladins into your forest to die? Why do the children of our city vanish?”
His gaze snapped back to mine. For the first time, I saw something flare in those dark eyes—anger, bright and raw.
“Is that what they tell you?” His voice was a blade, each word sharpened with fury. “That I steal your children? That I butcher your warriors for sport?”
“You deny it?” I demanded, though uncertainty crept beneath my skin at the vehemence of his tone.
“I deny it.” His shadows rippled outward, shuddering like a living thing in pain. “I defend myself. Nothing more. The Paladins come again and again, blades drawn, light burning in their hands, and you call it holy. When I answer, you call it terror.”
I stared at him, caught off guard by the heat in his voice, by the strange truth I felt thrumming in his words. Yet how could I believe him?
“You expect me to take your word?” I hissed. “You—cursed creature—condemned by Nyx herself? What else but malice could have shaped you?”
Something changed in his face then. The fury ebbed, leaving behind weariness etched deep into his features. His voice, when it came, was low, threaded with bitterness but stripped of heat.
“Not malice. Pride. Hubris. Once, I was a man like any other. One arrogant enough to think I could bind the Night Goddess and twist her power to my will. I sought immortality. A life beyond death. I thought myself clever enough to cage the divine.”
He paused. The shadows curled tighter around him, as though remembering.
“She laughed at me. And cursed me. Not to die, but to live—forever—bound to darkness, unable to bear the touch of light. Every dawn tears at me, every flame scorches me. I cannot escape it. That is my punishment.”
My breath caught. The story was familiar. A legend, a warningwhispered to acolytes about the fate of mortals who reached too high. But standing before me, hearing it from his own lips, it no longer felt like parable. It felt real.
“You…” I whispered. “You were the mage. The one who summoned Nyx.”
His jaw clenched. “Yes.”
I searched his face, the lines carved there not by age but by solitude. He did not look monstrous. He looked… tired. A man hollowed out by years uncounted, by exile.
For a moment my resolve faltered. The monster I had hunted was not a beast at all, but a man trapped by his own arrogance.
I shook myself, hard. Compassion was dangerous. Compassion made me weak. “Even if that is true,” I said, forcing steel back into my voice, “your curse does not excuse you. My people suffer. Paladins do not return from these woods intact. Orphans and urchins disappear. Families mourn. You may dress your cruelty in excuses, but it is cruelty nonetheless.”
His head tilted, a humorless laugh escaping him. “You think I would harm children?” His voice cracked, the shadows around him trembling like a storm. “You insult me. I have never touched a child. Not once. Whatever horror steals them from your streets, it is notme.”
The conviction in his tone rattled me. It was not the defensive snarl of a beast caught in lies. It was a fierce, aching denial.
But still—“Then who?” I pressed. “If not you, who preys upon my people? Who dares, if not the king of shadows himself?”
For a long moment he only stared at me, his eyes burning like embers. Then, quietly, he said, “Perhaps you should ask your Elders.”
The words struck harder than any blow. I recoiled, anger and confusion clashing within me. “You dare suggest—”
“I dare suggest nothing,” he cut in. “I only know what I have seen. Symbols carved in blood at the edges of your wards. Andchildren’s cries carried on the wind from places my shadows cannot reach.”
My throat tightened. I shook my head, refusing to accept it. The Elders ruled Solaris with wisdom. They had defended it for decades. To accuse them of such betrayal was madness.
“You lie,” I whispered. But the conviction had fled my voice.
He watched me in silence, his expression unreadable. The shadows holding me loosened slightly, though they did not release me. My wrists ached, but I refused to show weakness before him.
The silence stretched between us, as thick and unyielding as the shadows binding my wrists. I tried to hold his gaze with defiance, but his eyes were not those of a mindless beast. They were the eyes of a man who had seen too much, endured too long. And they searched me as though peeling back the layers of my anger, my piety, until only the trembling core remained.
