Loyalties and doubts

“Where have you been?” Luke demanded the moment I opened the door. He stood in the frame like a bar of shadow, arms full of bread and a small earthen jug of milk, breath fogging in the chill of the room.

“I was looking for you,” I said, stepping aside so he could enter. The simple words felt small and useless against the flaring ache under my ribs.

He shut the door and set the food down on the narrow table. His eyes searched my face, sharp with worry. “Looking for me? Where?”

“By the stream.” I said it too quickly, as if the speed of the answer could keep danger at bay. Luke’s mouth fell open a fraction.

“The stream?” he echoed, incredulity and fear mingling. “Did the patrols see you? You know that—”

“No.” I swallowed. For a breath I hesitated, the truth caught behind a gate I wasn’t sure I could open. Then I took the bread he’d brought and bit into it to steady my voice.

“You said the soldiers didn’t patrol there anymore,” I added, between bites.

He nodded slowly, jaw tight. “They didn’t… but they’ve been cautious lately. Wolves have been sighted near the reeds again.” He said the last word as if it tasted like iron.

Wolves. My throat closed around the name like a hand. Aeron had said the same.

“It’s true,” I whispered. The bread tasted like ash.

Luke sat beside me, his shoulders hunched, the light from the small window catching the worried lines at his temple. “How did you know about the wolves? Who told you?”

“A soldier.” The word left me plain and small.

“Which soldier?” he demanded, leaning forward. His voice had an edge now—stabbed-through fear that anyone I trusted might be tied to the priest’s web.

I told him everything, from the first day at the stream to the night he had hidden me from the patrols: the way his gray eyes had met mine, the warmth of his hand when he steadied me, the curious, solemn grin that had appeared when he said my name. I told him about the wolves and the warning to avoid the reeds at night. I told him about the glow in my shoulder the first time his presence had touched it.

When I finished, the room seemed to lean toward us, listening.

Luke’s face changed while I talked—first suspicion, then alarm, then something like disbelief. When I mentioned the glow, he reached out and rested a trembling hand on my shoulder, as if to prove I was still solid and mortal beneath the red line.

“Do you believe him?” Luke asked finally, the question raw and urgent. “Do you believe this—this Aeron?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “He helped me. He warned me. He looked at me like—like I was not just a thing to be used.”

Luke’s jaw worked. He stood abruptly and began to pace the small room, the boards creaking under his boots. “Selene, listen to me. Aeron is—” He stopped, swallowed. “He’s a soldier. And he’s loyal. Loyal to Eleazar.”

The name landed like a fist. Eleazar. The priest’s crimson robes and clipped promises flashed behind my eyes. If Aeron served him, it meant danger in a way I couldn’t untangle with words.

“You’re saying he could be pretending,” I whispered, trying to wrap my head around the possibility. “That he could be—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The idea felt like a bird beating its wings at the bars of my ribs.

Luke’s expression softened, pleading now. “I don’t want you to trust anyone too quickly. Not here. Not when the priest’s reach is long. People do what they must to survive—or to climb.” He sat down again, folding his hands into his lap. The bread in front of him had gone cold, untouched.

“But he saved me,” I said, each syllable a small defiance. “He saved me from the patrols. He risked himself.”

Luke’s eyes were fierce with love and fear both. “That means nothing to Eleazar’s men. They can smile and turn you in the same breath. You could be bait, Selene. You could be used to test loyalties, to see who would move for you. The priest is cunning.”

I pressed my palm over the red line on my shoulder without thinking—my hand feeling the slight warmth that lived there like a hidden ember. The mark had glowed once before, weakly, when Aeron’s hand had brushed near it. The memory of that faint light was a living thing in me now: startling, beautiful, terrifying.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Luke asked, quieter. “About his warning, or about meeting him at all?”

“Because I didn’t trust my own feelings,” I confessed. “When he looks at me, it’s not like what most people show. There’s no disgust—only…recognition. I don’t know why. I’m scared, Luke. I don’t know whether that recognition is a trap or something else.”

He looked at me then, really looked—the lines around his eyes cradling an ocean of unspoken things. “What do you mean?”

“I felt something strange inside me, I don’t feel fear with him,” I said seriously, “With him, there’s something…calm. A rightness. It’s foolish—so foolish—but I can’t make myself fear him the way I fear most others.”

Luke’s eyes met mine with a fierce tenderness. “That's a foolish thing, Selene,” he said with his brows furrowed. “ Stop talking with him, as I said he was Eleazar’s loyal guard.

My fingers curled into the cloth of my tunic. I don't have any words to say. Luke immediately went out with disappointment.