DAEDILLION
"Hold still, Your Highness, or I swear by the eternal crypts I'll stab you with this pin and claim it was an accident."
I suppressed a smile as Morrow, my long-suffering valet, attempted to secure the ceremonial death lily to my lapel. The petrified flower—white as bleached bone and harder than diamond—was slipping for the third time against the midnight fabric of my formal attire.
"If you stab me, Morrow, I'll just come back as a ghost and continue being difficult," I replied, studying my reflection in the mirror. Mercury eyes stared back at me—too old for my twenty-year-old face, too knowing. The curse of prescience, my father called it. The burden of seeing beyond time's veil.
"Ghosts can't wear death lilies," Morrow muttered, finally securing the bloom with a triumphant
