I have waited three hundred and fourteen years.
Most of that time I spent asleep beneath the black stones of the Cairn of First Night, wrapped in the slow heartbeat of the earth, dreaming the same dream over and over: my brother's throat opening under my dagger, the crown of iron thorns sliding from his dying fingers, the taste of his blood on my tongue as I whispered the binding words that would keep me breathing long after his heart stopped.
Maevor was always the fool.
He thought the Shadow Crown gave him power.
I knew it only borrowed power, and the debt would come due.
I paid it gladly.
I let the kingdom forget me.
I let them call me the "loyal twin" who ended the tyrant and vanished in grief.
I let them bury the crown in an unmarked grave and seal the old tongue behind seven locks of silence.
While they built their pretty new dynasty on lies, I slept and grew roots into the bones of the land itself.
Every harvest that failed, every child born with the sight, every king who died too young; those were my fingers tightening around the realm's throat.
And then, forty-seven days ago, I felt it.
Two hearts, bleeding together under a winter moon, daring to rewrite the oldest song.
A king who should have fallen.
A consort born beneath open sky who should have died.
Instead they mingled their blood and told the stars no.
Arrogant, beautiful, perfect.
I woke laughing.
Now I sit in the circle of standing stones the new kingdom pretends are only ruins. The green fire burns low in the hollows of the stones, fed by the last drops of Maevor's preserved heart (still beating, still useful). My hair is silver again, my eyes the color of fresh slaughter. The body I wear is young and strong; the soul inside is older than mountains.
Seven moons, I told them.
Seven moons until the debt is called in full.
The boy-king thinks he can defy fate because he loves.
The farmer-consort thinks a star-shaped birthmark makes him special.
They are both half right.
The mark is not a blessing.
It is a key.
And the Shadow Crown is the lock.
When the seventh moon bleeds red (an eclipse I have been nudging into place since the day Maevor died), the crown must drink royal blood and common blood mingled. It tried once and was denied. It will not be denied again.
There are three ways this ends.
First way (the one they pray for): they destroy the crown and somehow live.
Impossible. The iron came from a fallen star. Only star-fire can unmake it, and the last star-fire is bound inside the consort's living flesh.
Second way: one of them wears the crown willingly.
The realm kneels to a new Shadow King.
I rule through him until the land itself is ash.
Third way (my favorite): they refuse.
The crown drinks them both.
The kingdom fractures into seven bleeding pieces, and I walk free under a sky that remembers my name.
Either way, I win.
I have already begun.
The black iron box was only the invitation.
Next comes the dreams.
Tonight the farmer will dream of his fields burning while children scream.
Tonight the king will dream of his lover's throat opening beneath the crown's thorns.
Every night the dreams will grow heavier, truer, until they cannot tell waking from nightmare.
They will ride west looking for me.
They always do.
I will be waiting in the Cairn, where the veil is thinnest and the old tongue still tastes like blood.
Let them bring their love.
Let them bring their scars and promises and foolish hope.
Love is only another word for leverage.
And I have waited three centuries to pull.
The green fire flares as I smile.
Seven moons.
Tick, tock, little star.
Tick, tock, broken king.
Your story was always meant to end where mine began.
In blood.
In shadow.
In my hands.