Inner demons only materialize like this when their host is at capacity, unable to contain all the torment consumingthem from the inside. I wonder if he feels them now, clawing at his mind as he sleeps. I wonder if he wakes up in the morning feeling hollow.
My thoughts drift back to the street urchin in Rava. It surprised me how Taron had shown him mercy. I remember the look on his face, something resembling sympathy, but also more…
It was understanding. Empathy.
I study his sleeping form.Who are you, Taron?I wonder.What was it that drove you into Madame Vera’s clutches?
Curiosity gnaws at me. It’s an itch I can’t ignore. My body moves before my mind has the chance to protest.
I slide silently out of bed. Another wave crashes against the ship. It throws me forward. Taron doesn’t stir. His back remains turned to me. I hesitate. If I do this, I’ll invade his privacy. Technically, I’d be committing a crime. Reaching into someone’s mind without consent is against the law across the Triumstellar Accord.
But so is murder, and the tournament is already ripe with it. Besides, this would be for his own good. By reaching into Taron’s mind and taking some of his pain upon myself, I’ll only make him a better competitor.
I tiptoe over to his bed. My heart is hammering behind my ears and I’m cautious, but the closer I seem to get to Taron, the more his energy seems to pull me forward.
My knees land softly on the floorboards as I kneel beside him, my hands hovering over his bare upper body. Unlike Cyrus, whose skin radiates warmth like sunlight capturedbeneath the surface, Taron’s is cool, like the first breath of air on a crisp evening.
The air around him seems to steam, as if delicate threads of dark energy are evaporating from his pores.
I shuffle a little closer until I’m pressed up against the edge of his bed. Then I close my eyes and reach out – at first with my hands, lightly grazing his chest, then with my mind.
The energy swirls around me, cold and potent. It coils around my fingers like black ribbons, pulling me another inch closer before looping around my wrists and tightening.
Images flash behind my eyelids. Taron, as a child. He’s dirty and emaciated, scrounging for food in the bustling streets of Rava. His face is smeared with soot, his eyes wide with desperation. Hunger. He weaves easily through the market, with such small hands darting out for scraps – bits of bread, bruised fruit, anything to fill the gnawing void in his stomach.
Behind the grime, I catch glimpses of an earlier life, a simpler one. A stall laden with goods, two figures smiling, working side by side during a storm. His parents.
I see them struggling beneath the weight of a broken canopy as the wind howls, the collapse of everything they built crashing down in a single stroke. A violent storm.
It left them with nothing, lefthimwith nothing.
Taron, too young to grasp what happened, watches as their hands slip away, leaving him alone to wander the streets. Forgotten. And there, glinting in his tiny hands,is a pocket watch – a delicate thing, his father’s, engraved with three moons. He clutches it tightly, the only remnant of his old life.
Tears well in my eyes.They abandoned him?
The scene shifts, and I find myself in a different moment. Another stormy night, rain cascading from the heavens. A young Taron seeks refuge beneath a canopy of clothing scraps when Madame Vera appears. A striking figure with yellow-blonde hair and piercing eyes.
In the murky shadows of my mind, her promise echoes.
A vow to take care of Taron.
Then, another vision. Taron, older now, stands silently in the shadows, bearing witness to Madame Vera’s brutality. She kneels before a woman, an unsuspecting victim with tears streaking across her cheeks.
Madame Vera has the woman’s chin in her palm, and she pleads while the very essence of her soul, a luminous, ethereal glow, is absorbed by the Soulreaper, leaving only an empty shell in its wake. The woman’s body drops on to the cold, hard floor, and my surroundings shift once again – to an even more grisly scene.
Taron is restraining a bloody man. The man tries to resist, his fingers working in a feeble attempt to spawn a light blade to defend himself with. But Taron keeps him pinned.
“Immobilize him,” Madame Vera commands from the shadows.
Taron drives his knee into the man’s back until I hear the crunch of bones. It’s ghastly, but something about himis different now. Taron’s body moves unnaturally, like he’s a puppet on strings. He kneels there, but it’s not him any more. I can’t put my finger on it.
Madame Vera lowers herself down by the man’s side. She has a wicked smile on her face as she drains his soul.
And then another scene. Madame Vera seizes Taron’s chin and gives him a peck on the forehead. “Thank you, my darling boy,” she says. “Good work today.”
Taron’s eyes fly open as he jerks awake. He launches out of bed and tackles me to the floor. His weight crashes down on top of me, and the breath is knocked from my lungs. My head is still reeling from the visions, words struggling to form.
He holds my hands above my head and drives his knee into my side. The movement is familiar – an echo of what I saw in the vision.
