Hours bled into dusk, painting the slum rooftops in bruised purples and deepening greys. Shiro trundled back from the communal well, bucket heavy in his hand, shoulders aching from the day's labour. The air was damp, thick with smoke and rot, the slums breathing their usual misery. He turned the corner near Aki's shack and froze.
The boy stood out like a pearl in a coal scuttle. Merchant silks, deep indigo and impossibly clean, draped a frame that moved with a contained, predatory grace, like a hawk caged but still dangerous. His jet black hair was swept back with oil, severe and precise, save for a single, defiant streak of silver that slashed through it like the tail of a comet. His eyes, a startling storm grey, scanned the squalor with detached curiosity. Not disgust, something colder. Focus. They swept past crumbling walls, listless faces, piles of refuse... and locked onto Shiro with unnerving precision.
Shiro set the bucket down, muscles coiling. Trouble. Wealth always was. The boy moved towards him, not with the wary shuffle of slum dwellers, but with the silent glide of a shadow given form. His polished boots, fine leather, somehow avoided the worst of the mud with eerie precision. He stopped near Shiro's usual spot by a broken cartwheel, where Shiro sometimes laid out carvings when desperation outweighed caution. The boy lingered, picking up a discarded, rusted compass Shiro had found weeks ago, turning it over with long, elegant fingers.
"You're the thief," the boy said, voice smooth as polished marble, devoid of inflection.
The accusation hung in the cooling air. Shiro's hand instinctively went to the medicine vial in his pocket. Guard? Noble's son? His jaw tightened.
"What?"
Finally, the storm grey eyes lifted, pinning him.
"The one who returned my purse." A statement, not a question.
Relief warred with irritation. The carriage owner. Shiro brushed a strand of white hair from his eyes, meeting that gaze.
"Not a thief. Just someone who didn't want your trouble landing on his head."
"Honesty?" A faint, humourless smirk touched the boy's lips. "In Higaru?" He flicked a silver coin through the air. It spun, catching the dying light. "A rare star indeed."
Shiro snatched the coin mid air and flicked it back with sharp precision. It landed at the boy's polished feet.
"Keep your charity. What do you want?"
The boy crouched abruptly, movements fluid, economical. He reached not for the coin, but for a piece of scrap wood leaning against the cartwheel. One of Shiro's discarded carvings, a clumsy attempt at Ursa Minor. His storm grey eyes narrowed as he traced the grooves.
"This isn't Polaris," he murmured, voice losing its smoothness, gaining an edge of something raw. "You've misaligned the Little Dipper. Kochab shouldn't be level with Pherkad. The handle's bent."
Shiro bristled, humiliation warring with absurdity.
"Rich brat," he snapped. "What do you know about stars? Can you even see them through the roof of your gilded carriage?"
The boy's head snapped up. The mask cracked. Intensity flared, sudden and fierce, making Shiro step back.
"More than you," he said, low and cold. He traced the groove representing the pole star. "Polaris..." He almost spat the name. "It's not a guide. It's a fixed point in a shifting sky. Change your perspective, shift the heavens... and it betrays you." He withdrew his hand abruptly, as if the jagged lines had bitten him. For a moment, the armour was gone. His voice carried something deeper, pain, memory, hunger. Shiro saw it. A boy troubled, carrying shadows. And yet, when he spoke of stars, it was like he was stripped bare for all to see.
"You sound like you've been burned," Shiro muttered, curiosity breaking through his anger.
The boy's expression shuttered instantly. The mask returned. He straightened, sharp, predatory. His gaze flicked past Shiro to the grimy window of a nearby shack. A crow perched on the sill, its head cocked at an unnatural angle, prismatic galaxy eyes fixed on them.
"Bored, more like," he said, smile returning, all teeth and no warmth. "Astronomy's a pointless hobby when the stars themselves are liars."
A floorboard creaked sharply in the alley behind him. Shiro saw the transformation. The boy didn't startle; he focused. His body went taut, every muscle coiling like a drawn bowstring. His storm grey eyes fixed on the alley entrance, sharp as a predator cornered. Shadows shifted. A figure clad in boots of pure, lightless obsidian leather stood motionless, watching.
"Anyway." The tension bled out of him, replaced by languid nonchalance. He brushed imaginary dust from his immaculate sleeves. From an inner pocket, he produced a folded scrap of parchment. He tossed it onto the cartwheel. It slid across the grimy surface, unfolding slightly to reveal Cassiopeia's jagged spine, inked with precise handwriting:
Polaris declination: 22.5°
Cassiopeia's tilt: West, not East
,P.P.
"Burn that," he said, voice smooth again, though his eyes flickered once more towards the alley. "If you've got any sense." He turned to leave, then paused, adding over his shoulder, near whisper, "Or don't. Stars make poor allies."
Shiro snatched up the parchment, squinting at the angles.
"Who's 'P.P.'?" he demanded. "Why give this to me?"
The boy was already moving, shadow melting into dusk.
"A dead poet. A paranoid scholar. A puppet Prince." He waved a dismissive hand. "Does it matter?" He reached the mouth of the alley, but Shiro shifted, blocking his path.
"Why leave this with me?" Shiro pressed, parchment crumpling in his fist. "What's the game?"
The boy stopped. He turned his head slowly, silver streak catching the fading light. The smirk was back, brittle.
"Call it a test," he said, words deliberate. "See if slum rats know their stars better than kings who claim them." His gaze flickered past Shiro again, towards the obsidian boots lurking in the shadows. The crow cawed, slicing the silence.
"And if I pass?" Shiro asked, voice low.
For a fleeting second, the mask cracked again. Hunger flickered in his eyes.
"Then maybe," he murmured, "Polaris isn't the only traitor in the sky." He sidestepped Shiro with unnerving grace, pausing at the threshold where the slum lane met deeper shadows. His profile stark against the bruised sky. "If we meet again... try not to die before I decide if you're worth the trouble."
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Shiro snorted.
"Same to you, stargazer."
The ghost of a smirk touched his lips, fleeting, gone in an instant, as he vanished into the gloom. The crow launched itself from the sill, following. The obsidian figure melted back into shadow. Shiro stood alone, unsettled, parchment heavy in his hand.
The slum didn't return to silence. It swallowed the boy's departure and chewed on it, the air thick with unfinished tension. Shiro didn't move. He stared at the mouth of the alley where the shadows had swallowed the polished boots and the crow. The parchment in his hand felt alive, its edges sharp against his palm.
"He left quick." The voice came from his left, low and phlegmy. Old Man Cedric leaned in his own doorway, a silhouette carved from gristle and resentment. He spat a stream of black tobacco into the mud. "Too quick for a boy dressed like that. Like the dark itself was on his heels."
Shiro tucked the parchment into his belt.
"Maybe it was."
Cedric's laugh was a dry rattle.
"Ain't no 'maybe' about it, boy. That one's marked. You see the cut of him? The way he held his shoulders? That's not merchant son posture. That's 'someone taught me how to stand so a knife misses my spine' posture. And that streak in his hair..." He shook his head. "That's no fashion. That's a mark of royalty, that is. The kind you're born with, not the kind you buy. A blood mark. A bad omen."
Shiro almost laughed.
"Royalty? Here? You've finally lost it, old man."
"Have I?" Cedric's milky eye fixed on him. "You think kings don't leave their marks on the world? I remember a gentler time. Under King Shojiki Oji. The father of the Butcher King. He used to walk these lanes. Not to trample. To help. Brought healers after the plague. His guards handed out bread, didn't break heads. But his son..." Cedric spat again, the gesture full of venom. "Ryo. The devil's own get. Look what he's shackled. Look at the fear he's sown. They don't call him 'King' in the whispers. They call him the Butcher. And that name sends shivers down the spine of every man, woman, and child in Astralon." He leaned closer, his breath sour. "That silver in the boy's hair... that's royal blood. Cursed blood. Means trouble. The kind that follows a line to the grave."
"He knew stars," Shiro said, the words feeling foolish as they left his mouth.
"Course he did," Cedric scoffed. "The mad ones always do. The ones with too much time and too many enemies look up. Think the sky's got answers. It don't. It's just a bigger version of this." He gestured at the filth strewn lane. "Cold, empty, and it don't care if you live or die." He fixed Shiro with that milky eye. "He give you something?"
Shiro's hand drifted to his belt.
"A piece of paper."
"Burn it."
"He said the same."
Cedric nodded slowly, as if confirming a deep, unpleasant truth.
"Then it's doubly cursed. Anything two different men tell you to destroy is a seed. And seeds grow in shit like ours. They spring thorns, not flowers." He pushed off from the doorframe, retreating into his gloom. "That boy's trouble walking. You touched his trouble. Now it's on you. Don't bring it to my door."
Shiro was alone again. The words hung in the thickening dusk. Marked. A blood mark. Trouble walking. The Butcher King. They fit the sharp angles of the boy's face, the way his eyes had gone flat and predatory at a creaking floorboard. Royalty? No. Cedric was seeing ghosts. But the rest... this wasn't just a bored noble slumming. This was something else. A fugitive? A ghost? The parchment at his hip seemed to grow colder, its cryptic angles feeling less like a star chart and more like a rune. A ward. Or a target. He thought of the boy's final, brittle smirk. If we meet again... try not to die before I decide if you're worth the trouble. It hadn't sounded like a joke. It had sounded like a calculation. The slums were a cage, but they had rules. This boy felt like a new rule, written in a language of silver streaks and storm grey eyes.
Shiro's fingers tightened around the bucket handle. He had Aki's medicine. He had a promise to keep. He didn't have room for a noble's cryptic games. But as he turned toward the shack, the image wouldn't leave him: the boy, crouched in the filth, tracing a misaligned star with a reverence that looked like pain. Not disgust. Recognition. As if he'd found a fellow prisoner in the dark.
As he returned to the shack, the candle guttered. Aki stirred, coughing, her voice rasping.
"Who was that?"
Shiro hesitated.
"A noble brat. Said the stars are liars."
Aki's eyes narrowed, fevered but sharp.
"And you listened?"
Shiro looked down at the parchment.
"He knew things. About Polaris. About Cassiopeia."
Aki's hand shot out, weak but insistent, gripping his wrist.
"Listen to me, Shiro. Nobles don't come to Higaru for charity. They come for sport, for secrets, for blood. Whatever mask he wore, whatever truths he spoke, remember this. Stars bury their secrets in blood. And boys like him? They'll use yours."
Shiro swallowed.
"He seemed... troubled. Like he..."
"Troubled or not," she cut him off, coughing hard. "He's dangerous. I won't have you tangled in noble games. Promise me."
Shiro looked at her, at the fire in her sunken eyes.
"I promise."
Aki's grip tightened.
"Good. Because if he's taken a liking to you, it's not kindness. It's hunger. And hunger devours."
Her words seared into him. He tucked the parchment into his belt, next to his carvings. The cryptic angles pressed against his hip like a brand. He looked up at the smoke choked sky. Polaris was hidden. He wasn't sure he wanted to see it. The candle spat, drowning the shack in a deeper gloom. Aki's breathing was a shallow, rhythmic scrape.
Shiro lay on his pallet, the rough blanket itchy against his skin. The day pressed down on him, a physical weight. The silver, given away. The noble boy, a ghost in silk. The parchment, a cold secret against his hip. His mind wouldn't still. It picked at the interaction like a scab. Why return it makes no sense? A bored noble doesn't seek out the gutter rat who found his purse. He pays a servant, forgets the face. But this boy had come himself. He'd stood in the filth. He'd looked at Shiro's carvings not with contempt, but with... correction. Kochab shouldn't be level with Pherkad. The specificity of it gnawed at him. It wasn't a general insult. It was a critique. An engagement. As if Shiro's clumsy stars mattered.
And the things he'd said. Polaris is a traitor. Stars make poor allies. They weren't the vague, mystical warnings of the temple madmen. They were statements, sharp and personal, bitten off like they tasted bad. This boy didn't fear the stars; he was angry at them. Betrayed by them. What did a rich boy have to be betrayed by?
The mask. That was the thing. The smooth marble of his voice, the predatory grace, it was a shell. But it had cracked, twice. Once over the stars. Once at a sound in the alley. In those cracks, Shiro hadn't seen a monster. He'd seen a reflection. Someone else who was watched. Someone else who carried a weight they didn't understand.
Fool, he told himself. Cedric's right. He's marked. Touching his trouble is asking for a knife in the dark. Aki's right. It's hunger, not kindness.
But another, quieter voice argued. The boy had tossed a coin. He'd offered payment, a transaction. When Shiro refused, he hadn't pressed. He'd offered information instead. A strange, useless piece of star lore. A test, he'd called it. See if slum rats know their stars better than kings. Was that it? Was Shiro just a tool? A piece on a board, moved to prove some point to a ghost in an alley wearing obsidian boots? The thought should have made him angry. Instead, it made the hollow in his chest feel colder. To be seen at all in Higaru was rare. To be seen and used was the default state of being. Why should this be any different?
He shifted, the straw of his pallet crackling. The parchment crinkled. He should burn it. Cedric said so. The boy said so. It was the smart thing. The surviving thing. But he didn't move. He lay there, listening to Aki fight for air, and held onto the cold, folded secret. It was all he had from a world that wasn't mud and rot and dying light. A message from a boy who thought stars were liars. In a life of truths that were all variations of you will hunger and you will hurt, a beautiful, cryptic lie felt like a kind of treasure.
That night, as the slums drowned in shadow, Shiro dreamed of stars. Not guides, not lights, but eyes, watchful, hungry, cruel. They burned above him in endless constellations, each one whispering in a language he could not understand, a chorus of promises sharpened into threats. Polaris glared brightest, not as a beacon, but as a blade, fixed and merciless, its cold fire cutting through the smoke choked sky. He saw Cassiopeia tilt, jagged and proud, but its throne was overturned, its crown dripping with ash. He saw Ursa Minor twist, its handle bent into a noose. Every constellation he had carved into rotten wood returned in his dream, warped, mocking, alive. They were not maps. They were judgments.
And in the dream, the same boy with storm grey eyes lingered, flickering like a mirror of the heavens themselves, troubled, sharp, hungry. The parchment pressed against Shiro's hip burned like a brand, its angles shifting, rearranging, as if the stars themselves were rewriting their truths. Stars make poor allies, he had said. But in the dream, they were not allies at all. They were predators circling, waiting for blood.
Shiro woke with the taste of iron on his tongue, the echo of Aki's warning in his ears.
They bury their secrets in blood.
He lay in the dark, listening to her ragged breathing, the slums whispering outside, and felt the weight of something vast pressing down.
The stars ticked, relentless, cruel, and for the first time he wondered if they had already chosen him.
Is The Boy Royalty?
