Chapter Seven : Whispers In The Blood
692 Words
Elira awoke with blood on her hands.
Not her own.
She sat up sharply in bed, heart pounding, breath coming in sharp little gasps. The crimson smeared across her palms was sticky, still warm, and she didn't know how it had gotten there. Her gown was torn at the hem. Her feet were dirty, scratched, as though she had walked barefoot through thorns.
But she remembered nothing.
Only fragments. A hallway of doors. A woman's voice humming in the dark. The feeling of being watched by something that breathed just behind the veil of the world.
And the music.
Always the music.
She scrubbed the blood away with trembling hands in a basin of freezing water. She didn't ask whose it was. She didn't want to know.
Later, when she ventured out into the castle, she saw that the mirrors were gone.
All of them. Every one in the west wing.
In their place were heavy black curtains nailed to the walls. As though the castle itself was ashamed.
Or hiding something.
It was two days before she saw the prince again.
He appeared in the solarium-a rotting garden of glass and dead roses, where the light never reached. Elira had gone there for the silence, but it followed her now, always. Like something holding its breath in every shadow.
Kaelen stood among the wilted vines like he belonged there.
His mask was back on.
"You dream too loudly," he said without turning.
"I wasn't dreaming," she replied. "I was wandering."
He glanced over his shoulder. "That's worse
She hesitated, then stepped beside him. The roses, once red, were now black and brittle. She touched one and it turned to ash beneath her fingers.
"What happened to this place?" she asked.
He didn't answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice was low, like memory tasted bitter.
"My kingdom died. And I lived. That's all that matters."
"Was it war?"
"No. War would have been kind."
Silence stretched between them.
"I saw a girl in a mirror," she said quietly. "She was screaming."
Kaelen's jaw tightened.
"There were many girls. Most didn't last the week. Some longer. All of them..." He paused, then shook his head. "None of them listened."
"I'm not like them."
"Not yet."
Their eyes met.
Something flickered in his expression. Not softness-but recognition. As if he saw something familiar in her... and hated that he did.
"Why do you keep marrying?" she asked.
"Because I must. The curse demands it."
"What curse?"
Kaelen turned away. "The kind that eats your name and rewrites your soul."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I'll give."
Frustration bubbled in her chest. "Then why keep me here at all? Why let me into your halls, your home-your dreams, if all I am is the next name on a tombstone?"
He turned sharply, stepping in close. Too close. She could feel the cold of him, like winter dressed in flesh.
"You think I want you here?" he snarled. "You think I want to watch another girl crumble beneath this place? I begged the seer to stop choosing. I begged the gods. And do you know what they gave me instead?"
His hand lifted, and for a moment she thought he might strike her.
But he only removed his mask.
Elira gasped.
His face-his true face-was not just scarred. It was fractured. Like cracked porcelain, light bleeding through from beneath. Veins of silver ran along his cheek, and where his left eye should be was a burning coal, pulsing with red magic.
He looked like a man stitched together from moonlight and ruin.
"They gave me this," he whispered. "And the promise that it will never end."
Elira stared at him-not with pity, but something deeper.
Not fear.
Understanding.
"I will end it," she said.
Kaelen laughed, the sound hollow and tired. "Then you will be the first."
He walked away, his cloak dragging shadows in his wake.
But Elira didn't move.
Because she'd heard something, just before he left.
A whisper-small and desperate-spoken not by his lips, but by the curse itself, clinging to him like rot.
Help me.
- Writer
