The palace had never felt more suffocating.
Moonlight poured through the tall, arched windows, spilling silver across the black marble floor. The glow only deepened the shadows clinging to the corners of the hall, where oil lamps flickered faintly, unable to chase away the weight of dread.
"This is the tenth woman dying in his palace tonight," whispered a maid, her voice trembling as she polished an ornate vase taller than herself. Her cloth dragged slowly over its golden curves, her eyes fixed instead on the closed door at the far end of the corridor. The heavy black wood loomed like a coffin lid, sealing off whatever horror lay within.
On the steps nearby, another maid crouched low, wiping the marble with a damp cloth, though her hands moved more in hesitation than duty. She leaned closer, her voice low enough to vanish into the shadows. "What do you expect? He is cursed. That's why he's been locked up since birth. They say—" she hesitated, her eyes darting toward the guards stationed like statues at each end of the hall, "—that whoever locks eyes with him meets death before dawn."
The first maid froze. Her hands stilled against the vase, her throat dry. "Hush!" she snapped in a sharp whisper, her gaze darting toward the far corners of the hall.
There, the elders of the court stood in a half-circle, their robes pooling around them like spilled ink. They spoke in hushed tones, their wrinkled faces drawn tight with frowns. Even at this distance, the tension was visible in their bent brows and tightly clasped hands. A single word carried wrong could spark a scandal.
"Don't let them hear you," the maid hissed again, turning back to her work. "Unless you want the prince himself to lock eyes with you." She dropped the cloth onto the rim of the vase, moving briskly down the corridor to the next ornament, as though the very act of stepping away might save her life.
The second maid scoffed, lips curling in disdain as her rag scraped faintly over the marble. "What? It's not as if I'm lying. Everyone knows it. If he doesn't wed soon—if a woman doesn't walk out alive—the throne will fall to the second prince. And tell me—" she flung the dirty water from her cloth back into her pail with a splash—"who would want a king no one has ever seen? A king no one even knows the face of?"
The first maid spun around, eyes wide, her whisper sharp as steel. "Do you not understand? The queen has ears everywhere." Her words shook with more fear than anger. "If she hears we've spoken against her son, we are finished."
The words echoed in the marble hall, faint but heavy, before she hurried away again, skirts rustling against the floor like nervous whispers.
The second maid only rolled her eyes, returning to her task with an exaggerated sigh. She scrubbed in silence, but the murmur of fear did not fade. It lingered—clinging to the high ceilings, curling in the chill air, bleeding from the corners where the elders frowned and muttered.
The palace itself seemed to breathe with unease, every flickering lamp and shifting shadow whispering the same truth:
Another bride had died.
And the cursed prince still waited behind that door.