“What else is Shadowick afraid of?”
Before he could answer, something moved in the alley beside us.
It wasn’t a person this time. It was a shadow. It slid across the stones unnaturally fast before vanishing beneath a doorway, but it was unlike the others.
And that intrigued me more than anything.
Barlen grabbed my sleeve with surprising strength.
“We should go.”
But all I wanted to do was stay.
Chapter Thirty-Two
And I did…much to the horror of Barlen.
“We mustn’t do this,” he hissed.
“Why not?”
“What the shadows do is none of our business.”
I scowled and shook my head. “The Priestess wanted me to explore Shadowick, and as far as I can tell, these things seem to be a big part of it.”
I glanced across the street at a little shop that might have been considered a bakery. It was different than the one I’d peered into earlier.
There was one awning that looked as if it had been covered in soot and said “Patisserie”.
“Why don’t you get us two rolls?” I asked him.
“Only because the Priestess told me to be a good host,” he grumbled before glancing nervously around the sidewalk, “will I entertain this.”
“Thank you. I’ll be sure to tell her you were the best.”
He looked back at me and nodded before trundling off.
I watched him knock on the door. It barely opened, and he squeezed in.
That was when I saw the shadow again. The one that curled and left a wisp of something behind, and I followed it.
For something made of darkness, it had an odd sense of purpose. It didn’t drift the way fog did or slither the way the shadows at the compound liked to do when they wanted to make a point. This one moved in quick, uncertain bursts, as if it knew where it wanted to go but worried about being seen getting there.
That made two of us.
I kept to the edge of the street, close enough to the buildings that the damp stone brushed my cloak. The black velvet the Priestess had given me swayed around my legs, and while I hated that I was wearing anything selected by the woman who believed dungeons were parenting tools, I couldn’t deny the cloak helped me blend into Shadowick more than I wanted to.
But there was no denying it. People still noticed me and the shadow I was following.
A woman selling bundles of dried herbs from a narrow cart stopped tying twine around a bunch when I passed. Her eyes met mine briefly before falling to the cart.
Neither of us spoke, which seemed customary in a place where silence was key to survival.
The shadow slipped around the corner of a narrow alley, and I followed before my better judgment could make a reasonable argument. The alley was hardly wide enough for one person, and the walls leaned toward each other overhead as if the buildings were sharing secrets they didn’t want me to hear. It remindedme briefly of the alleyway to the Butterfly Ward, but that one…took more than me finding it to open up.
Once I stepped into the alley, the fog thickened instantly.
It pooled around my ankles and rose to my knees. It was cold enough to sting through the fabric of the slacks. I glanced back toward the street, but the patisserie and Barlen had already vanished behind the mist.
