Chapter 2: The Boy Who Smelled of Starlight

Chapter 2: The Boy Who Smelled of Starlight

The ride to the Meadowlight penthouse was like ascending into a different sky. The taxi left the grimy, neon-soaked streets of my neighborhood and climbed into the pristine heights of the city’s Spire District, where the rain seemed to wash the glass-and-steel towers clean instead of staining them with grime. The doorman, a stiff figure in a crisp uniform, didn't give my worn trench coat a second glance. A faint shimmer in the Gloom told me why: Elara’s magic was already at work, wrapping me in a glamour of respectability. To him, I probably looked like I owned the building.

The elevator ascended in unnerving silence, a gilded cage lifting me from my world into hers. When the doors opened directly into the penthouse, the contrast was a physical blow. My office was a cramped shoebox of shadows and decay; this place was an endless expanse of white marble and glass. Walls of windows showcased a panoramic, god's-eye view of Evernight, the city's perpetual storm a beautiful, silent spectacle from this height.

The air was cold, sterile, and still, carrying only the ghost of Elara’s lily-scented presence. It wasn't a home. It was a gilded cage, just like the elevator. The silence was the most unsettling part. There was no hum of a refrigerator, no ticking clock, just a profound, unnatural emptiness. A place where a child’s laughter had been stolen.

My goal was to find a thread, any thread, to pull on. But a mundane investigation was useless here. There was no forced entry. The complex lock on the door was untouched. The windows were sealed. No dust was disturbed, no furniture overturned. For any other PI, this was a dead end.

But I don't look for fingerprints. I look for scars.

I took a swig from my flask, the familiar burn of cheap whiskey grounding me before I let go. Closing my eyes, I sank into the Gloom Sight.

The world exploded.

The sterile white penthouse vanished, replaced by a battlefield of incandescent energy. The very air writhed with Elara's magic—a dense, silver-blue web of protective wards woven with breathtaking complexity. They coated every surface, pulsed in the walls, and sang a silent song of power that made the fillings in my teeth ache. It was the magic of the Seelie Court: elegant, ancient, and utterly lethal.

But something had broken it.

A brutal, jagged tear ripped through the shimmering web, starting from the window and ending near the center of the living room. This wasn't the clean slice of a rival Fae. This was a different kind of magic entirely. It was a chaotic, greasy smear of power, sickly green-brown and crackling with raw, desperate energy. It smelled of damp earth, rusted iron, and festering resentment. It was the magical equivalent of a bloody crowbar smashing through a priceless stained-glass window. Whoever had taken the boy was not one of Elara's kind. They were something cruder, something that crawled up from the city's gutters, not down from the sky.

I walked the path of the intrusion, my boots silent on the marble floor that now seemed to seethe with magical echoes. The trail led me down a hallway to a smaller room. The boy's bedroom.

Here, the lingering magic was different. Beneath the angry scar of the intruder and the cold silver of Elara’s wards, there was a third signature. It was faint, but unmistakable. It was warm, golden, and felt... vast. Like a handful of captured starlight. It pulsed with an innocence that felt achingly out of place in this cold, perfect apartment. This was the boy, Lyra. And the sheer, raw potential in his magical residue sent a shiver down my spine. Elara hadn't just lost a son; she'd lost a weapon of unimaginable power.

My Gloom Sight scanned the room, replaying the spectral echoes. The intruder's energy signature showed a frantic search. Not a kidnapping of opportunity, but a targeted hunt. They knew what they were looking for. The green-brown magic coalesced around the boy's bed, where his starlight aura was strongest, then retreated back along the same jagged path to the window.

A simple smash and grab. But nothing about this was simple.

My gaze drifted from the ethereal chaos back to the mundane. The bed was perfectly made. A few expensive-looking toys sat on a shelf, untouched. Everything was in its place. Too perfect. A real kid’s room is a mess of passions and projects. This was another display case.

Then I saw it. Tucked deep under the bed, almost swallowed by the shadow and the plush, white rug, was a small, dark object. It wouldn't have registered to a normal eye, just a piece of lint or a forgotten bit of trash.

I knelt, the cold of the marble seeping through my trousers, and reached for it. It was a crude little thing, no bigger than my thumb. A few twigs and a shard of bone, tied together with greasy, knotted twine. Mundane junk.

But in the Gloom, it was the loudest thing in the room. It pulsed with a weak but stubborn magical light, the same sickly, resentful green as the intruder's trail. The magic was crude, utilitarian, and smelled faintly of mushrooms and bilge water. It was a focus, a charm. The kind of thing cobbled together from scrap and spite in a place where real magic was scarce.

Goblin work. I'd bet my last drop of whiskey on it.

A Fae prince, a living nexus of starlight, taken from a fortress of silver magic by something that used goblin charms. It didn't add up. This wasn't the elegant political maneuvering of the Fae courts. This was a back-alley mugging.

I palmed the charm. It felt grimy and strangely warm against my skin, a stark contrast to the sterile cold of the penthouse. This was my thread. This was the one piece of evidence that didn't fit Elara's pristine, curated narrative. She wanted me to follow the trail of her powerful enemies, to get drawn into her glittering, treacherous world.

But this grubby little charm didn't point up to the Spires. It pointed down.

I stood up, pocketing the charm. The faint scent of lilies still haunted the air, a reminder of my client's beautiful lies. She lived in a palace built on secrets, but her son's kidnapper had left dirt on her marble floor. This ugly, forgotten piece of goblin trash was the truth she'd either missed or deliberately ignored.

And it was the only truth that mattered.

The elevator ride down felt different. I wasn't just descending from a building; I was descending from the clean, cold world of Fae politics into the muck. The goblin charm was a heavy weight in my pocket, a compass pointing me away from the light and into the city's grimy, supernatural underbelly. My next stop wouldn't be a lord's manor or an ethereal court.

It was time to go shopping in the Undermarket.