Page 12 of Thane's Demon
6
WALKING INTO DANGER
ALORA
The evening air felt cooler than usual as I stepped out of the building where my last class had finally ended. The sky was a deep navy, brushed with streaks of city light that always made Shanghai look like it belonged in another realm, as if it were painted in colors too bold for the real world.
I pulled my bag closer to my chest and tried to force a smile onto my face, the same smile I had practiced for the last two years. The same one I used whenever the heaviness in my chest threatened to pull me under. It was strange how a smile could become armor, flimsy and fragile, yet somehow still enough to keep the edges of the world from noticing when you cracked.
I told myself I was fine, the way I always did. Even though the weight of my mother’s memory settled against my ribs like a familiar ache. She had been gone for years, but the grief still sat in the space between my breaths, silent and heavy. I blinked up at the streetlamp glow and tried to focus on something else. Which meant I did what I always did when the pain tried to rise, I whispered a poem to myself in my head, the words flowing gently, a private lullaby only I ever heard.
The one my mom created just for me…her little light.
That’s what she used to call me, and with a softness that always made me feel special. But I hadn’t felt special for a long time now. No. Now…I was just existing.
After my mom died, I hadn’t even wondered what would become of me, as I was too overwhelmed by my grief. But at seventeen, I hadn’t yet been classed as an adult to make it on my own. Especially not when the bank took our house and nearly everything in it to pay back the insane medical debt that my mother’s illness had left behind. But I hadn’t cared. I would have lived in a tent if it meant even a single extra day with her. It would have been better than living under my father’s roof. A man I had quickly come to loathe, and I no longer questioned why my mom had left him when I was only a baby.
But I had been out of options, so I left the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and ventured into a completely different way of life here in Shanghai. Leaving Colorado had felt like tearing up the last remaining roots of who I used to be, and arriving in Shanghai only made the wound ache deeper.
My father lived along the Bund, a place dripping with wealth and history. Its elegant riverfront was marked by towering neoclassical buildings and glittering lights that drew crowds of people who belonged to a world I didn’t understand. I would sometimes walk the promenade, pretending I was a tourist instead of a displaced daughter.
A girl unwanted, staring across the Huangpu River at the glowing skyline and wishing I could feel even a fraction of the awe everyone else seemed to carry so easily. But everything here felt foreign, too loud, too bright, too crowded, too controlled, especially the life I was expected to live.
At seventeen, the plan had been simple… endure a year under my father’s roof, turn eighteen, and leave.
But when he offered to pay for college, that plan changed. An education was something that had never once been possible, not with my mom working herself into exhaustion just so we could live. I realized then that I couldn’t walk away from the chance she had always wanted for me. It meant more years trapped in a life dictated by a man I barely knew, studying something I cared nothing about. Because he insisted it was ‘practical,’ but it was the price of a future.
A few more years of sacrifice for the promise of education, a decent job, and eventually…a way back home.Back to the mountains. Back to the parts of myself I hadn’t lost yet. Back to the life I was still trying to rebuild from the ashes.
That was the dream.
The soft hum of traffic, the echo of shoes on concrete, the distant call of vendors closing their stalls, all blended into a rhythm I tried to follow. Once my mom’s poem was done, I would always start my own. I recited lines in my mind, turning thoughts into whispers, turning whispers into the little verses that had kept me breathing through the darkest days.
Hold the light.
Even when it hurts.
Even when the world forgets to be kind.
I inhaled slowly, letting the humid air settle into my lungs, and for a moment, I almost felt calm. But as I turned onto the quieter street that led toward home, a strange, creeping awareness wrapped around my shoulders, the faint, uncomfortable prickle of someone walking too close behind me.
I froze for a breath.
Then forced myself to keep going.
Shanghai was crowded, always crowded. People walked behind you all the time. That was normal. That was fine. That was safe.
I tried to believe that.
I straightened my back and kept walking, pushing my thoughts into another poem, something about moonlight and hope, anything that might stop my imagination from spiraling. But the hairs on my arms still rose, prickling with a warning my brain kept dismissing. I hated fear more than anything. Hated the way it tried to make my body small, hated the way it made my thoughts scatter, hated the idea of being someone who froze when she should have fought.
My mother used to say fear was a shadow and that shadows could only grow when you stopped facing the light. I clung to that, as I always did, letting her voice guide me even when mine threatened to shake apart.
When I turned left into the narrow shortcut behind the apartment complexes, he was already there.
A man stepped out from behind a dumpster, blocking the path ahead with a slow smile that did not reach his eyes. His jacket was expensive, his hair slicked back, but the look on his face made something sharp and cold slide down my spine. He walked toward me with a confidence that felt wrong, his gaze sliding over me as if he had the right to stare. As if he had the right to touch, as if he had the right to take.
I forced a polite smile because that was what I always did when fear clawed its way up my throat. I buried it behind manners and forced cheerfulness, because if people saw you shake, they only pushed harder.
