Despite wanting to sit down, Joe felt compelled to hear the man out. After all, he wouldn’t put it past some of his co-workers to ignore an innocent man’s pleas if their ego had been bruised—or something like that.

  Joe walked back to the cell doors and squatted, willing to give the man a moment. The daylight shining through a small hole near the ceiling did little to reveal the man’s features. But as the man stepped closer, Joe could make out the scruff on his jaw, short black hair, bruises across his cheeks and forehead, and a nervous twitch in his eye.

  “Sir, I swear to you, I’ve done nothing wrong. They haven’t even told me why I’m here.”

  Of course, that meant very little—every guilty party had said something similar.

  “You say you have no idea why they’ve locked you up?”

  “None whatsoever. Please—just tell my family where I am. Do something.”

  Joe rolled his eyes and pulled out his notepad. “Give me a description.”

  The man obeyed, describing in detail his wife and daughter's appearance, the outfits they might be wearing, and why they had come to Moonset.

  Joe dotted the final note and closed his pad. “I’ll tell them your situation if I run into them.”

  “Thank you. Thank you, sir,” the man said, weeping as he fell to his knees. He didn’t seem far from kissing Joe’s boots—a desperate man if Joe ever saw one.

  As he made his way out, Joe glanced at the third man behind bars. Maybe he’d been here before—maybe more than once. He was large, though whether it was muscle or fat, Joe couldn’t tell. Maybe a bit of both. He didn’t look well. His head drooped low, and his breathing came in heavy, growling gasps. His skin… it had patches of dark green. Almost as if the moss had started to devour him—

  Joe looked away and wandered back into the front room of the station, where Liria still sat hunched over, writing with furious strokes. A few other guards lounged around a table, either sleeping or eating. Not wanting to disturb his superior, Joe began rearranging the tables, tidying the room while he waited for the captain’s attention.

  As he wandered, he noticed moss creeping into the room too—clinging to the corners of the ceiling, stretching farther outward. At the last table, Joe grew slightly careless, and the foot of a leg scraped against the floor with a skin-crawling squeak.

  Liria’s quill snapped at the sound, and the captain looked up, seething with rage.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “What in the world do you think you’re doing?!”

  “Sorry, Captain. I was just hoping to ask you something.”

  “By standing around pushing tables?! Are you a child? Is it that hard to talk to me like an adult?!”

  Joe couldn’t speak. He just stood there, awkwardly waiting for the words to come. Some of the other guards giggled.

  Liria sighed, his breath hot with irritation. “What do you need to know?”

  “A man in there—the scrawny one—I was wondering why he was detained.”

  “He was antagonizing people. Stirring up drunks and picking fights.” Liria returned to his paperwork.

  “Right. When will we release him?”

  “Damn it, I answered you, didn’t I? What are you still doing here? Where’s Fringe?”

  “He’s… outside, sir.”

  “Then go mouth off to him.” The captain waved him away and went back to scratching ink across the page.

  Joe stepped into the street, surrounded by the revelry of residents and travelers alike. He pushed through the crowd, ready to resume patrolling on his own. But his mind was foggy again—stuck on the rage in Liria’s eyes. That wasn’t his captain. Perhaps they shared the same skin, but the mind had strayed far afield.

  He remembered his first day in service—Liria’s tall posture and a gaze carved in stone. The Captain had demanded the utmost from all of them.

  “Don’t come to me with your petty, squeamish excuses,” he’d told them. “Handle the problem.”

  That was Joe’s first impression, and he’d hated him for it. That grumpy old bag of insults, rarely offering a word of encouragement—this was the symbol of justice in town? Joe had thought he knew exactly how Liria had gained power. It had been his father’s job, and his father’s before him. No man like that, Joe believed, should sit so comfortably at the top—and he was going to make sure of it.

  The same day he’d started, one of Joe’s fellow guards had been dismissed. Witnesses reported gang activity, and when the guard went to investigate, he was faced with six men and fled. Liria fired him the moment he returned.

  A few days into the job, while patrolling the market, Joe witnessed a robbery: a man with a knife and a hood pounced on a defenseless old woman, snatching her bag. Joe gave chase, fighting the weight of his own armor. But when he turned a corner and entered an alley, he found himself facing a group—maybe eight men. He couldn’t recall. In hindsight, he saw it as foolish, but he’d demanded the bag be returned. The men didn’t answer. Not with words.

  They jumped him, knocking him to the ground and kicking until his armor caved. The pain was so intense, he didn’t even realize when it stopped. Peering through his arm as it shielded his face, he saw the captain—Liria—tearing through the men, shrugging off wounds like a knife to the side and fighting on regardless. When all eight bodies hit the ground, Liria, clutching his side, reached out and pulled Joe to his feet.

  Joe had apologized, expecting to be fired on the spot. But instead, the captain told him, “You’re who I need under me. It’s men like you Moonset deserves.”

  That wasn’t the man who spoke to him today. The Liria Joe had met wasn’t someone who looked at him with such venom. So many who’d joined alongside Joe had since quit, citing Liria’s aggression. But Joe had believed the captain was only ever harsh because of his passion—for the job, for the town.

  Where had that man gone?

  Joe clenched his fists. He no longer knew how to protect the town he had been taught to love.