Six years had passed since Aeryn bound the Great Houses with blood. She had vowed to save her people, even if she became what they feared, but the line between queen and curse had long since vanished. The dreams of a dying kingdom had now invaded her waking world.
Aeryn's madness came slowly.
First, as a whisper in her nightmares. Then as muttered curses in the merchant alleys. Then louder still, in the high courts, murmured behind silk fans and beneath powdered beards: "She is a witch... but alas, she is a queen." And finally, even in the sacred prayer houses, where the scent of incense grew hesitant and the lips of holy men trembled when they dared speak her name.
She was eighteen now, and stood taller than most women in her court. Her hair was no longer streaked, but fully, violently crimson, as though flame had chosen her scalp for a throne. Her skin bore faint, ghostly marks like smoke trails, residue of blood magic etched just beneath the surface. And her light brown eyes, once soft, no longer merely shimmered. They glowed; sunken, haunted, ringed with dark crescents that looked like sleep had long abandoned her.
Every child in Sahirra knew the stories now. Red hair was cursed. Amber eyes were the mark of a withered soul. And their queen... their witch-queen... was a sanguine artist.
..............
It started with dreams. But now it began to slip through the veil into her waking hours.
At first, it was a sound; a soft, distant drip... drip... drip; like water leaking from a cracked cistern. But it wasn't water.
Then came the visions.
She would find herself standing at the edge of a barren, gray valley, hands clean, feet bare. The sky overhead wept not with rain, but with blood. Thin and pale at first, then thick, darker, until rivers of it flowed. The ground beneath her cracked with the crunch of bone, thousands of them.
She would turn, and see them: the people of Sahirra, lying where they had fallen. Drained and shrivelled, their eyes wide with questions she had no answers to.
A court minister would stand before her, droning about grain taxes, and she'd blink; only to see blood trails across his mouth, his eyes hollow and accusing. She saw silent, dead blood dripping from his sleeves, pooling at his feet. The stench of rotting bodies and drying blood would follow, unfathomable and palpable. She could taste the metallic copper on her tongue.
She would grip the arms of her throne until her knuckles turned white, shutting her eyes. The minister would simply roll his eyes, whispering behind his palm: "The little queen is distracted again."
They had no idea what she was enduring. Not even Sakina knew yet.
In the days that followed, Aeryn withdrew. She canceled feasts. Refused visitors. She wandered the palace's long, forgotten corridors and silent crypts. She would stand before her mother's tomb, whispering questions no one could answer. Other times, she climbed the Tower of Names and stared across the city, watching smoke rise from the forges and bakeries, wondering what part of her was still human.
Was she still the girl who had watched her parents die? Or had she become something else entirely?
She still remembered that day. Six years old. Her mother smiling. Her father arguing. Tugging a sleeve to ask, Why do crows only sing when people die?
Then came the black fire. The silence. And the screaming.
..........
Her eyes stung now. She closed them and tears slipped down her cheeks silently.
A maid stepped into the room. "Your Highness...?" the girl said softly.
Aeryn looked up, and something inside her snapped.
The maid's eyes began to bleed.
Aeryn gasped. "No! No... NO!"
She rushed forward, trying to undo it, but the harder she fought the worse it became. Blood streamed from the girl's nose, her ears, her mouth.
"No! Please, I didn't mean..." Aeryn sobbed, cradling the girl's trembling body. "Sakina! SAKINA!"
Sakina burst into the room, instantly kneeling beside the Queen. One glance told her everything. She gently took the bleeding girl from Aeryn's trembling hands. The maid was shaken, but not fatally injured.
Sakina looked up at Aeryn, then placed a firm hand on her shoulder. "You did this?"
Aeryn could barely nod, her own hands stained crimson.
"Are you sure?"
"I don't know!" Aeryn wept, raising her bloody hands. "She just called my name and I... I didn't mean to, Sakina! I don't know!"
Sakina's voice cut through the hysteria like a whip. "Aeryn! Get hold of yourself."
Aeryn went silent, flinching.
"Breathe," Sakina commanded, firm and steady. "Close your eyes. Think about what you were feeling in that moment. And reverse it."
Aeryn obeyed, her lips trembling with misery. A minute passed. When she opened her eyes, they were steady, clear. She placed a trembling hand on the maid's forehead. Slowly, within a few seconds, the bleeding stopped. The girl's body eased into unconsciousness.
Aeryn stared at her for a moment, her breath catching. Then she turned and ran away.
............
In the days of quiet solitude that followed, Aeryn began her research. Not about politics, but about herself. About Blood Weaving, the magic she was honing without even knowing it, the pride that was quickly becoming her bane.
She ordered the Vaults of Hollow Lore to be opened. She read ancient scrolls, some inked in powdered bone, timed back to her great-grandmother. She dissected stories of magicians who went mad, women who turned to mist, and children who razed their own villages to silence the screaming in their blood.
She did not stop, even when the ink bled into her fingertips, even when the books seemed to whisper, even when her nose bled in thin, precise lines across her face like sigils forming from inside her.
She needed to know: Was this curse growing? Was her dream a prophecy, or a warning?
.
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