Chapter 172: Leon’s Story [5]

Leon slept in alleys against damp brick walls. His clothes went from the frayed remnants of a royal ward’s wardrobe to something that looked like everything he’d survived had happened directly to the fabric. The faint embroidered trim on his collar was barely visible under the grime. His face had gone hollow. The warmth that used to live in his eyes when he was at the palace had gone somewhere he couldn’t locate anymore.

He walked with his chin pressed to his chest staring at the cobblestones.

’So this is what I am now.’

His stomach cramped. He didn’t flinch. He had long since lost the energy to respond to the hunger with anything other than numb patience. It was just there. Like cold air and sore feet and the way every morning felt exactly like the last one.

Without a palace or a purpose, he had no reason to search for Aurelia.

The last thought arrived before he could stop it and he squeezed his eyes shut and forced it back down. ’Don’t. Just keep walking. Don’t think about her. It doesn’t help anything.’

He was still telling himself this when the scream cut through the evening noise.

"NO! PLEASE! DON’T DO THAT!"

Leon stopped walking.

"Please! Let go of our daughter!" A man’s voice came right after. Ragged and sobbing.

Leon turned his head slowly toward the narrow side street to his left.

A small family was cornered against the iron gates of a modest estate. A nobleman and his wife stood facing a group of rough armed men with the particular posture of people who already knew the outcome and were desperately trying to negotiate against it anyway. Though their clothes said noble the expressions on their faces had stripped all dignity away and left only pure helpless terror underneath.

One of the thugs had a heavy dagger pressed against a young girl’s throat. She looked about twelve. Her knees were shaking so badly she could barely stand.

"We signed the documents," the nobleman said with both hands raised. His face was wet. "Just take them and leave my family alone."

The lead thug snatched the parchment and scanned it with a satisfied grin before tossing it to one of his men. "That’s more like it."

The mother stepped forward with her hands clasped. "You have what you wanted. Please. Let our daughter go."

The thugs exchanged looks and one of them laughed. It was the kind of laugh that comes from someone who has no reason to rush and knows it. "You were supposed to hand those over days ago old man. You made our boss wait." He slapped the father across the face cleanly. "Did you think cooperating at the last second just wipes that out?"

The mother went pale. "We’re sorry. Please. We made a mistake."

"Then this is what the mistake costs." The man holding the girl tightened his grip on her hair and pulled her head back.

"Mom..." the girl whimpered. The tears running down her cheeks caught the lantern light.

"PLEASE!" The mother went to her knees on the dirty street. "She’s a child! She hasn’t done anything!"

Leon stood on the other side of the cobblestones watching this. His expression was completely empty. His body hadn’t moved.

He had seen suffering before. He had been in fights and seen blood and watched people he knew lying in the dirt. And right now he had his own pit of misery to sink into quietly and he had nowhere to sleep tonight and nothing in his stomach and he was so tired that even the thought of caring about something required effort he didn’t have.

So he stood there.

And didn’t move.

Until the lantern light shifted and caught the girl’s profile just right and for one moment Leon saw the specific way terror sits on a twelve-year-old face when she is chewing her lip trying not to cry out loud because she doesn’t want her parents to hear her break. The way her eyes kept going to her mother and father with a desperate hopefulness. The way she held on even when everything in her was falling apart.

Something in Leon’s chest didn’t crack. It just stopped.

He thought of another girl. Sunlit corridors. A mischievous smile. A little hand wrapped around his sleeve during thunderstorms. Aurelia calling his name. Aurelia running ahead of him down the marble hallway with her laughter bouncing off every wall.

Leon’s fist closed.

He was already moving before he decided to move.

His arm came up. The geometric mana circle formed at his open palm in the space of a breath.

BOOM.

The spell hit the lead thug directly in the face. The concussive burst sent the man airborne and he hit the cobblestones and didn’t immediately get back up. The girl stumbled free and her parents caught her before she could fall and pulled her in.

The remaining thugs turned with drawn swords. "What the hell?! Who are you, you brat?"

Leon stood ten paces back. Ragged clothes. Dirty face. Eyes completely empty of anything they might have expected to see. "Nobody," he said.

The lead man’s face went red and ugly. "You’re done!"

Leon exhaled slowly. He didn’t feel like fighting. He was too tired to feel like fighting. But somehow that complete absence of feeling made his body very precise and very unhurried about what it did next.

Two minutes later the alley was quiet except for groaning.

One thug hadn’t gone down with the rest. He was on his hands and knees crawling backward with his face completely undone by whatever he’d just seen. "P-Please... Take the papers and the girl. Just let me go." He was already half-running as he said it and then fully running and then gone into the dark.

The nobleman and his wife held their daughter between them. The father was kissing her forehead over and over. The mother had her face buried in the girl’s hair sobbing with relief.

"Emilia!" The father’s hands were moving over her arms and her shoulders checking everything. "Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?"

"I’m okay Daddy." Her voice was small and still shaking. "I was just so scared."

Her mother pressed her closer. "It’s over. You’re safe. It’s over."

The nobleman finally looked up. His face was wet and his eyes were the specific kind of open that a person’s eyes get when they’ve just seen something that they’ll think about for the rest of their lives.

He stood and stepped toward Leon with the reverence of someone approaching something he doesn’t have words for.