Cassian Valdimor's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Cassian set down his charcoal when the guards brought the girl in. She didn't look afraid. She looked furious, the way wolves look when cornered. The sergeant held up what she'd stolen — not bread or coin, but a drawing. Cassian took it. The creature on the page had scales and wings and eyes that seemed to know something the world had forgotten. He studied the silk she'd drawn on, the way the threads caught light and made those golden eyes glow. The creature had too many teeth. It had claws that could tear through armor. But the artist had drawn it curled around something small and soft, protecting it. "This isn't stealing," Cassian said quietly. He looked at the girl. "This is seeing." He folded the silk portrait and handed it back to her. The guards shifted, uncertain. "Go," he told her. "And next time, show me what you draw before someone calls it a crime." The girl took the silk but didn't leave. She stared past him at the glass case behind the throne, where his own drawing hung. A creature with matted fur and bleeding gums, teeth bared not in rage but exhaustion. "You drew that," she said. It wasn't a question. Her anger cracked open into something else. "Everyone says it's wrong to draw things like this." Cassian stood. He walked to the case and traced the wood frame, overgrown with moss and tiny red-capped mushrooms. "They say that because looking hurts," he said. "But wrong and hidden aren't the same thing." He turned back to her. "If you want to learn, come back tomorrow. Bring your silk. Bring whatever you see that nobody else will look at." The girl clutched her drawing to her chest and nodded once, sharp and sure, before she ran.