A few days had passed since Aeryn's terrifying demonstration in the Jaw of Judgment and the forced blood-binding ceremony. The court was subdued, but the external fear was now matched by a deep internal terror that haunted the young queen.
Aeryn had stopped sleeping. Not because she physically couldn't, but because she feared what sleep would bring. The nightmares, which began in fragments after the binding ceremony, (a consequence of foul play) were now whole, vivid, and lethal. They were smears of red across a sunless sky, hands stretched toward her from beneath bone-colored soil, and a sound, distant and wet, like water dripping in a dying well.
Last night, the kingdom had died in them.
She had stood in the palace courtyard, barefoot, blood-soaked, and watched the people of Sahirra stagger through the streets. Their eyes were hollow, their cheeks sunken, their veins utterly empty. Not cut. Not pierced. Simply… emptied. As if the land itself had drunk their vitality.
They walked until they fell, cracking like brittle wood on the unforgiving stone. There was not a scream among them. Only silence, and the wet whisper of red flowing through unseen cracks in the foundation. They were walking dead. Soul-less.
Aeryn woke with a silent scream stuck in her throat. Her pillow was stained crimson from her nose. She looked at her hand, trembling and sticky with fresh blood.
.........…
Sakina found her at dawn beneath the bone-laced arch of the eastern window. The Queen sat, knees pulled to her chest, her face damp with sweat, the faint, dried streaks of blood unwashed.
"My queen…" Sakina started softly, clutching a pitcher of lavender water.
Aeryn turned, her eyes red-rimmed and exhausted.
"If I asked you something, would you lie to me?"
Sakina hesitated. "If you ordered me to."
"Don't." The girl-queen's voice was hoarse. "Tell me the truth. Tell me what they call me." She looked out into the far distance.
Sakina looked down, then whispered: "The Witch Queen."
Aeryn nodded slowly, as if the word had already been stitched to the inside of her skin and now simply itched. "They think I drink blood, don't they?" she said with a faint, chilling smile.
"They fear you," Sakina said, falling onto her knees. "And when men fear women, they make monsters out of them."
Aeryn did not press. She left Sakina there, alone in the room.
She did not go to court that day. Instead, she walked barefoot into the labyrinths beneath the palace, where the walls were carved with the names of dead rulers and the air smelled of salt and forgotten fires. Torches flared to life as she passed, unlit by hand. Her power was now an openly flickering thing, uncalled for, at her fingertips. The blood in the stone hummed, awaiting its opportunity.
She reached her parents' tomb. Their sarcophagi stood side by side, carved from deep sapphire obsidian and veined with molten silver. Aeryn knelt, reaching for the script etched into the lids: Queen Elaira Yssa. High King Maeron Thalen.
Her fingers froze inches away. The stone was cracked. Someone had defiled the graves.
Aeryn scrambled to her feet, her heart thundering. She opened her mouth to scream, "SAKINA!", but the name died on her lips.
There, burned into the marble floor in blood-red ink, she saw a message:
Your power will be your tomb. Lose it willingly and you and your people will live. Go against the divine calling and you will face retribution that was never seen before.
She stood straight and turned. A figure in grey-white stepped out from the deep shadow at the far edge of the tomb. Hooded, faceless, cloaked in robes that shimmered like oil on water.
Aeryn raised her hand, magic pooling at her palm. "Who are you?"
The voice was neither male nor female. It was new. Non-human. Beautiful, yet capable of sending a thrill of pure horror into the listener.
"A message. That is all."
"What message?"
The figure tilted its head. "You dream of blood because it remembers. You see a dying realm because it is already dying."
Aeryn's voice cracked with desperation. "Then tell me how to save it."
"Let it go."
"I can't. I won't."
The figure began to dissolve into the shadows. "Then the curse will bloom, red as your crown."
Aeryn demanded: "Why?"
"The One who created you will not burden your soul beyond what you can bear. But you have crossed a threshold, and He cannot allow you to go beyond what has been ordained for you. Either relinquish your gifts, or face the destruction by the very power you seek to wield while awaiting the divine retribution! A lesson for those who try defy His will."
The figure vanished.
Aeryn collapsed onto the cold marble, alone in the tomb, the bones of kings and queens pressing their silence into her. Her breathing was shallow. She didn't remember leaving the catacombs, but the crown felt heavier that night when she put it back on and faced her reflection.
............….
The next morning, she stood before the mirror. Her hair was almost entirely red now. Only the faintest traces of gold remained near the scalp. Her eyes were no longer light brown. They held an echo of copper, a glint of change.
She stared. And behind her reflection, for just a moment, she saw the hollow-eyed people again, the bloodless, dead mannequins of her dream. She turned away before the scream could escape her lips.
The court tried to pretend nothing had changed, when they exactly knew through their spies in the palace that something was amiss with the dress up queen. They came in their silks and leathers. They bowed with the same guarded half-curves. They delivered reports as though the world was not unraveling. But they spoke softly, and all eyes watched her hands. They were using her weakness, her fear for her people, against her. It was proving more devastating than any assassin or poison.
In the lower quarters of Sahirra, the rumors had bloomed and become unstoppable. Whispers of the blood-queen who cursed the crops with her shadow. Of the red-haired girl who drank nightmares. Of the palace whose stones bled at midnight. And one rumor louder than all the others: She is not the queen. She is the curse.
That night, Aeryn returned to the observatory. The enchanted sky swirled above her, gray and storm-choked.
"No stars tonight, Your Highness," Sakina said softly.
Aeryn stood at the chamber's center, her arms crossed behind her back. "Sakina," she interrupted, "Do you believe I was born cursed?"
"I believe," Sakina said gently, "that you were born watched."
Aeryn turned. "By what?"
"By something ancient. Something the world thought it had buried."
The queen's voice was firm now. "Then I will bury it again!"
Sakina frowned. "And if it's part of you?"
Aeryn's lips trembled once, then settled into a hard line. She didn't need to answer. She knew it was true.
She whispered her final, devastating resolve: "I will save them. Even if I must become what they fear, or what I fear."
.
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