Aurelia was still trying to hide the blood, pressing the ruined napkin harder, but it kept dropping.
Plink. Plink.
Tiny, dark coins of blood struck the marble beneath her chair.
Her eyes stared, unblinking, at her own palm. It was not just stained. It was filled—a slick, thick red liquid, the lines of her fate drowned in the substance of her own life, seeping relentlessly from her control.
The blood was warm, alive, and utterly damning.
Then, the silent, tense room broke apart with the sound of laughter.
It was King Mortifer, leaning on Tenebrarum's arm, entering the dining hall. They walked majestically.
Aurelia's head turned toward the sound, and her breath caught.
This was the first time she had seen Tenebrarum in white. He had always worn black, as if the colour meant everything—power, shadow, finality. Now he was clad in frost-white silk and velvet, a startling vision of glacial elegance.
Wow, this monster looks different.
He had even changed his mask. Gone was the plain, faceless obsidian. In its place was a masterwork of pale gold, finely wrought, that covered the upper half of his face, leaving only his stark, unsmiling mouth and jaw exposed. It was beautiful, and somehow more inhuman than the blank one before.
Please, she prayed silently, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. Don't let him notice. Don't let him see this.
He guided his father to the head of the table. But as he passed the long glass table, he paused. His head tilted, almost imperceptibly.
He had smelled it.
Blood.
His gaze—sharp, calculating—swept over the assembled court, a silent predator identifying the source of a wound. It didn't take long. His eyes dropped, following the trail no one else had yet seen, and landed on the small, shining pool of red beneath Aurelia's chair.
The gold of his mask seemed to blaze as his focus locked onto her. She could feel his gaze like a physical touch, cold and penetrating, seeing through her bowed head, the bloody hands, the shame.
She bent her head lower, a futile attempt to hide.
She didn't even notice that in the respectful silence, everyone else in the room had risen to their feet.
She alone remained seated—a solitary, stained figure at the grand table, committing the dual offence of bleeding in the king's presence and failing to honour his arrival.
Tenebrarum's gaze lingered on the blood for a heartbeat too long.
Then his mask swept over the silent, standing court like a scythe. It passed over Aurelia's bowed head and landed with pinpoint accuracy on the trio of girls who had taunted her in the corridor.
Every eye in the room turned to him.
"The atmosphere at my father's table is clouded," he announced, his voice not loud, but cutting through the silence like the edge of his mask. "A lack of grace has left a stain on this hall."
He took a single step toward them. The ringleader, who had hissed slut, shrank back.
"You," Tenebrarum said, his tone devoid of all emotion. "Your clumsiness has disturbed our peace. You will clean it. Now."
The girl's face went ashen. She was sure she hadn't spilt any wine; she had been careful all this while. "My prince, I did n't—it wasn't me!"
"The evidence is at your feet," he stated, his voice chillingly final. He gestured to the red droplets near Aurelia's chair as if they were a spilt goblet of wine. "You will kneel. You will clean it. Every drop. Or you will become part of the floor you've soiled."
A terrible, understanding silence fell. He wasn't punishing her for the blood. He was punishing her for the earlier transgression—calling his claim a slut—using this moment as his excuse. And he would punish her more than this later, but perhaps not now.
It was a lesson for everyone: an offence against his property would be answered, publicly and decisively, even if the reason given was a lie.
As the terrified girl scrambled to the floor, her knees hitting the cold marble, she silently scrubbed at Aurelia's blood with her own napkin, the thick liquid clinging stubbornly to the polished stone.
Tenebrarum finally turned his golden mask toward Aurelia.
"We're full, aren't we?" he murmured, his voice a low vibration meant only for her. His hand came to rest on her shoulder. The touch was soft, almost gentle, a stark, horrifying contrast to the violence of the scene he had just orchestrated.
Her violet eyes slowly looked up, her neck raising until her gaze met his chin, the stark line of his jaw, and finally, his pale, unsmiling lips.
"I believe you cannot force her to do what she does not wish to do."
Kaelen's voice cut through the tense silence, sharp and clear.
All heads turned. He hadn't moved from his seat, but his storm-blue eyes were locked not on Tenebrarum, but on Aurelia—a gaze intense enough to feel like a touch.
Her own gaze lingered on Tenebrarum's chin, her mind racing.
She was hungry, with a hollow ache in her stomach, but she understood the game. To eat now would be defiance. To refuse was submission. It was a trap disguised as concern.
She lowered her eyes, a calculated show of deference.
"Yes, my lord," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I'm full."
Kaelen's challenge hung in the air, sharp and unanswered.
Tenebrarum did not turn. He did not acknowledge his brother's voice. He simply let the silence stretch, a dismissal more absolute than any rebuke.
His focus remained entirely on the king.
"Father," he said, his voice reverting to a tone of formal respect, "could you excuse us?"
Without waiting for a verbal reply—the king's weak nod was permission enough—
Tenebrarum hand slid from Aurelia's shoulder, down the length of her arm in a slow, deliberate caress that was not tender, but assessing—a lord checking the fit of a glove, a hunter testing the tension of a snare.
Then his fingers closed, not around her hand, but precisely, unerringly, around her wounded wrist.
His grip was a vice, firm enough to crush the tremor in her bones, intimate enough that his thumb pressed directly over the torn skin beneath the bloody napkin.
The pressure was instant, electric—a bolt of wild-hot pain that shot up her arm, stealing her breath. She could feel the warm, sticky pulse of her own blood seeping new against his skin, a secret they now shared, trapped between his palm and her ruin.
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To be continued...