He takes the lead, and I follow him through the bustling evening streets, weaving between tired shoppers and vendors hurriedly packing away their goods as colorful awnings come down for the night. When we finally leave the main thoroughfare, the noise drops away, replaced by a heavy, unsettling silence. The alleys Soren guides me through feel unnaturally deserted, their shadows stretching long and deep as we near the docks. Every movement startles me. The brush of a cat against my leg. A door opening, a man sweeping dust outside. A woman drawing laundry in from a clothesline.
“Are you alright?” asks Soren, and I jump at his voice.
It’s a bit of a slip. There’s no way for Soren to know I’m afraid. It’s too dark for him to see my face.
But Ronan would be able to tell.
“Fine,” I say, although I’m not. I had been too focused on the missing girls before to think of it, but it occurs to me this could be some kind of trap Ronan set to expose me. He could be leading me into danger on purpose in hopes of getting rid of me, or of finding out what we’re up to.
Or what if Soren isn’t Ronan, and he’s leading us into danger he’s really not prepared for? I have my sword and my dagger. I have my shadows. I’m wearing my armor. But is it enough? There’s no way I could beat a dozen people on my own.
“You don’t have to do this.”
“I know,” I say. “But I sort of do.”
The girls are shadow-born like me. My age, give or take a few years. Soren told me about them. Vesper: a red-head with a love of beer and breaking the rules. Marcella: a scrappy girl who wears her hair in braids to keep it out of the way when she fights. They’re gone, and no one else is looking for them. They could be in the warehouse. They could be frightened or hurt.
It also occurs to me that Ronan, if Soren really is Ronan, could use the immense power at his disposal to find them. But there must be a reason why he hasn’t. Maybe, after we’ve found them, he’ll tell me what it is.
“Just down there,” says Soren, pointing to a large building at the bottom of the hill. It’s close to where we met Felix earlier in the day, and a couple of new fears make themselves known: that we might encounter Larus or Felix nearby, or that the plot we’re uncovering might involve them in some way.
This is a disaster.
“Hazel,” murmurs Soren comfortingly. “You can just go home. I’ll go in and scope it out.”
Time to teach him a lesson for using my feelings when he’s not meant to be able to do that. “I don’t know why you think I’m scared. I never said I was. I’m just thinking about how we can get in.”
“Sorry,” he says, reaching up to run his hands through his hair but finding his hat instead. “It was just the tension…your silence…”
Riiiiight.“Quiet. I’m thinking.”
I can see far more clearly in the dark than he can. There are several doors into the building. The double doors at the front, which will obviously be guarded. Two doors on the left side into an alleyway—likely better options, although not completely safe. A stairway from a deck on the right side down to a dock with a door on each level. And who knows how many in the back.
The only good thing about the setup is that it’s a lot of doors to guard. If they have around a dozen people here, like he suspects, it’s unlikely that there are more than one or two per entrance. We could maybe take them in a fight, but there’s a problem with that.
“How are we meant to get the guards out of the way without killing them?” I ask. My weapons are not meant for intimidation or knocking sense into people. They’re meant to kill, and even if I try not to, I can’t guarantee they won’t.
If the guards are involved in trafficking the girls, I won’t feel bad about taking them out. But if they aren’t…
“With this,” says Soren, pulling a vial out of his pocket. “An elixir that knocks someone unconscious if inhaled. All I need is for you to get me close enough to them that I can open it beneath their noses.”
“So which door are you thinking?” I ask him. It occurs to me that once we’re close enough, if it’s Ronan, he’ll be able to tell if someone is on the other side of the door by their feelings.
Let’s see what he has to say about that.
“The alley is the darkest. Let’s get closer. Maybe we’ll be able to hear something.”
Hear something. Sure…
I wait until the lone woman in the street passes us and lead Soren down the hill to the warehouse. I stick to the shadows of the buildings, avoiding the streetlamps and only darkening our surroundings when I absolutely must in case someone is looking.
As we approach, I check for movement in the alley before I darken the shadow there. I grab Soren’s hand—smooth as ever—and lead him into the inky black of total darkness.
The secrets I’m concealing, including my knowledge of his identity, are really making a difference to my magic. I can usually feel a bit of a drain on my energy when I darken a shadow, and that pull is greater the larger the area or the longer I hold it. But I feel almost nothing in this alley. It’s the difference between running up the stairs and a leisurely stroll on level ground.
Soren gestures to the door furthest away, or roughly where it is given that he can’t see it. I take it that means the one closest to us is guarded. We creep along the alleyway, moving extra slowly as we pass the guarded door. My shadows have no impact on noise. One wrong step and our mission is over before it begins.
We approach the unguarded door and stand perfectly still, listening.
