How to Make a Sinner Sleep

39 | knight; the faceless that roam

Arlo skipped along the streets happily, holding tightly onto the butterfly pressed into his palm. "Tell me again, what she told you it meant! I didn't understand!"

Kaden gave a short laugh at the overwhelming excitement that couldn't be faked. He cleared his throat and repeated the words the woman had spoken.

"A butterfly represents change and transformation in your future. Perhaps what awaits for you is something unimaginable, where you will stand in a position you never knew before. I feel brilliance and beauty in your future, little boy."

Arlo paused, pouting. "Not that last bit—I am not little."

"Really? Although I can lean against you like this?" Kaden rested a portion of his weight on the boy's head, as the child swatted him away angrily.

"Your large size does not equate to me being small!" said the boy stubbornly.

"And you trying to sound intelligent doesn't make you more grown up." commented Kaden at the purposefully composed words. "There's nothing wrong with being small—in your case, it simply means your growth will be more spectacular."

"How does that make sense?"

Kaden tugged Arlo closer, avoiding a rumbling carriage on the street as he pushed the child gently to his opposite side. "Say, if you were my height and grew two inches taller, would that be amazing?"

"Nope."

"But if you were your height, and then you grew taller than me one day—isn't that more incredible?"

"Oh! Yeah, it is! Then, just wait and see—I'll grow way taller than you soon!"

After appeasing the child, Kaden walked around and bought some food for them to take a break and eat. He couldn't help but smile at Arlo's silly expression of relishing simple foods, an expression he likely would've made too, in the past.

Even if the child was a little warped, his thoughts a little darker than the typical child's, he was still young and bright.

Yet to reach the depths of murky darkness.

Kaden felt relieved that he'd found Arlo when he did, even if Yoser haunted his dreams at night and the suitcases in the corner of that room still flickered to mind.

What had become of the boy in the past?

Another mangled corpse on the streets, robbed and left to rot alone? Sold to the richest bidder, forced to prostitution as a child that hardly knew what such a thing entailed? Beaten, day after day, by the father he relied on?

Or would Arlo have put an end to that abuse with his own hands?

Kaden paused at that thought, glancing at the child, who was happily chewing on food. It wasn't an uncommon possibility, in fact, it was rather likely.

He felt some relief, knowing that whatever did or could've happened would no longer. That in his miserable life, at least he'd saved one person—he'd saved somebody, rather than reaped.

That feeling brought a rush of salvation he couldn't describe.

"When I become gigantic," said Arlo, intruding in the euphoric thoughts with a silly, oblivious grin. "Promise me one thing, okay?"

"That would depend on what it is."

"Hey! Don't adults make lots of promises to kids? Even if you can't keep them—"

"Do you want me to break the promise?"

The boy shifted with a pout. "Well, no."

"Then I won't make you a promise without considering it, boy." Kaden crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow in question. "What promise, hm? If I can fulfill it, then I'll swear to you."