I Was Sent To Kill The Cursed King

"Leave, before the moon turns its face and I stop pretending that your heartbeat isn’t the only song I crave to silence." The words tasted like copper and old rot in Malphas’s throat, but his expression remained a mask of carved obsidian. He didn't look at her. He didn't dare. Instead, he gripped the hilt of his heavy broadsword, his knuckles white against the dark leather, staring out of the vaulted windows of the Obsidian Spire. Outside, the night air of the Silent Peaks was sharp enough to cut bone, swirling with a frost that never seemed to thaw. Behind him, the soft sound of silk whispering against stone echoed in the vast, tomb-like throne room. Lyra didn’t flinch. She hadn't flinched in the three months she had been a prisoner or, as the court whispered, a sacrificial offering within these walls. "You say that every night, Malphas," Lyra replied, her voice steady, betraying none of the terror that surely lurked in the recesses of her mind. She walked closer, the rhythmic click of her boots against the floorboards sounding like a countdown to an execution. "Yet, you leave the keys to the eastern gate on your desk every single evening. You want me gone, yet you make it impossible for me to truly escape." Malphas spun around, a blur of shadow and midnight velvet. He crossed the room in three long strides, cornering her against the cold, unyielding stone of a pillar. His hand shot out, gripping her chin, not enough to bruise, but enough to command. His eyes, typically a piercing, glacial grey, flickered with a haunting, predatory amber. The wolf within him was waking, sensing the proximity of the lunar cycle. "You think this is a game?" he hissed, his face inches from hers. The scent of him was overwhelming, cedarwood, ozone, and the metallic tang of dried blood. "My father, his father, and every king who wore this crown before me ended their reigns by shredding the throat of the woman they dared to call 'Queen.' Do you truly believe your soft, human heart is the exception to a thousand-year-old blood curse?" Lyra looked up, her gaze locked firmly onto his. There was no fear there, only a devastating, quiet pity that made Malphas want to howl. Her hand came up, her thumb brushing tentatively against the vein pulsating in his neck, a gesture that, given his current temperament, was essentially a death wish. "I am not a sacrifice, and I am certainly not a victim, Malphas," she whispered, her voice a fragile melody in the oppressive silence of the room. "I was sent here to spy on you, to find the cracks in your kingdom for my father’s greed. But in the three months I’ve spent watching you suffer, I’ve realized something. The curse isn't in the moon. It’s in the history books you keep locked in the archives. It’s a rot, a poison, and you are the only one holding it back by starving yourself." Malphas recoiled as if struck, his grip on her loosening. "You know nothing of the rot." "I know that you haven't eaten properly in weeks because you fear your own hunger," Lyra countered, stepping into his space again, reclaiming the distance he had tried to force upon her. "I know that you stay awake until dawn to keep the beast at bay, even though your body is failing. You’re a king who is being eaten alive by his own duty, and you think cruelty is the way to save me? You are a fool." The air in the room suddenly grew heavy, vibrating with an unnatural frequency. A tremor ran through the stone floor—not an earthquake, but a shudder of the very earth reacting to the approaching eclipse. The light of the candles flickered, dimmed, and died, leaving them in the suffocating gloom of the throne room, lit only by the pale, sickly glow of the stars filtering through the high clerestory windows. Malphas gasped, a ragged, guttural sound that tore through his chest. He clutched his stomach, his knees buckling. The transformation was starting, not with the full moon, but because the darkness was leaching into him, feeding on his agitation. His veins pulsed with a black, oily fluid visible beneath his skin. "Get out!" he roared, the sound distorted, half-human and half-snarl. "Run, Lyra! I cannot… I cannot promise I won't kill you!" He fell to the floor, his frame convulsing as the bone structure of his face began to shift, his jaw unhinging with a sickening c***k. Lyra stood frozen for a heartbeat, her eyes wide. This was the moment she had been warned about, the moment of the monster. But as she watched him curl into a ball of agony, fighting the urge to rip his own skin apart, she didn't run toward the door. She didn't reach for the dagger hidden in her bodice, the one her father had given her to drive into his heart should the situation arise. Instead, she moved forward. She knelt beside him, ignoring the way his sharp, serrated claws began to shred his own royal vestments. She grabbed his hand, pressing her palm against his, feeling the boiling heat radiating from his flesh. "I won't let you turn into them," she vowed, her voice trembling but resolute. "I found the journals, Malphas. The 'True Silence' isn't a myth. It’s a place, and we are going to find it before the sky turns black." Malphas looked up, his face barely human, one eye human-grey and the other glowing with a feral, yellow rage. He clutched her hand so hard she felt the bones in her fingers strain, but she didn't pull away. Suddenly, a sharp, crystalline chime resonated through the room. The massive, heavy oak doors at the end of the hall splintered inward, showering the room in splinters of wood and iron. Through the dust and swirling frost, a silhouette appeared. It was a man, lean and draped in tattered grey robes, his eyes glowing with an ancient, malevolent intelligence that rivaled Malphas's beast. He held a sword made of solidified moonlight, and he was smiling. "So," the stranger drawled, his voice like grinding stones. "The boy-king has finally found his pet. How fortunate that I arrived just in time to claim the bloodline’s end." Malphas tried to rise, but his limbs were locked in the agony of the transformation. Lyra stood, placing herself squarely between the monster she loved and the monster that had come to finish them both. She pulled the hidden dagger from her bodice, not to strike Malphas, but to defend him. "You're late, Silas," Malphas growled, his voice a gravelly echo of a king. The stranger laughed, stepping into the dim light. "I'm exactly on time, little wolf. The eclipse starts in ten minutes. And tonight, I intend to see how much blood a king can lose before he finally becomes the animal he’s always been." As Silas lunged, the shadow of the moon finally touched the edge of the sun, and the room plunged into a terrifying, unnatural twilight. Malphas let out a roar that wasn't a warning, but a surrender, and the final restraint on his humanity snapped. Lyra braced for the strike, but it wasn't the enemy’s blade she feared most, it was the beast currently clawing its way out of the man behind her.