ERYK
I stood perfectly still as she worked, a statue of grudging compliance in my own damn antechamber. I could feel the cold, clinical press of her metal contraption against my skin, the faint vibrations of its internal mechanisms. But the true cacophony wasn't in her device; it was inside me. A relentless, internal war between a Prince's pride and a dying man's desperation.
Another one, I had thought when the guard announced her arrival. Another well-meaning fool sent by my father to prod and poke at my curse, another link in an endless chain of failures. I'd expected a mage, some old charlatan from the Conclave with a bag of useless charms and a head full of sanctimonious platitudes. When she walked in, I was caught completely off guard.
She wasn't a mage. She was small and severe, her dark hair pulled back in a practical, no-nonsense knot, her gray eyes as serious and unyielding as granite. She looked like a clerk, or a librarian—utterly out of place in the decadent gloom of my royal suite. But there was a fire in her, a sharp, unbending will that belied her modest appearance. I am not a magician, she'd said. I'm an engineer. The sheer, unexpected audacity of her words had been like a splash of cold water.
And so I'd let her. I'd endured the humiliation of unbuttoning my shirt for this commoner, this "engineer," all because she was something different. And after months of the same arcane failures, different was the only thing I had left to hope for.
I watched her as she worked, my carefully constructed mask of bored indifference firmly in place. She was all focus, her brows knitted together, her lips pressed into a thin line of concentration. Her eyes were closed, a small silver device pressed to her ear. I felt the familiar urge to mock her, to dismantle her professional calm with a well-aimed, cutting remark. It was my preferred method of defense, the armor I wore to keep the world—and its pity—at a distance. But for some reason, the words wouldn't come.
I was too distracted by the feel of her hand on my chest. Her touch was surprisingly light, her fingers deft and certain, but it wasn't the touch that unsettled me. It was the warmth. A simple, living warmth that radiated from her palm, a stark contrast to the encroaching coldness I felt spreading from my own core. It had been years since anyone had touched me with such calm, impersonal purpose. The royal healers always approached me with a fearful reverence, their hands trembling. My father barely looked at me, let alone touched me.
This girl, however, touched me as if I were simply a machine. A fascinating, complex problem she was determined to solve. And for a strange, fleeting moment, it felt less like an indignity and more like… a relief.
Then, she gasped.
A small, sharp intake of breath. Her eyes snapped open, wide and filled with a raw, unguarded shock. The clinical detachment was gone, replaced by a look of horrified wonder. And in that moment, I knew. She'd heard it. Not just the beat, but the break. The terrible, beautiful music of my own decay.
She pulled the caliper away from my chest as if the contact had burned her, her hand trembling. The fragile composure she had maintained was shattered, and for the first time, I saw the fear in her eyes. It was a familiar fear, one I'd seen in the eyes of every mage who had ever tried and failed to comprehend my curse. But in her, it looked different. It wasn't the fear of a failed professional; it was the horrified awe of a craftsman who has just discovered a fatal, beautiful flaw in the world's most intricate design.
"What is it?" I asked, my voice harsher than I intended. "See a ghost in the machine?"
She didn't answer. She just stared at me, her gray eyes like deep pools of storm water. Then, she turned away, her back to me, and began methodically packing her tools. Her movements were sharp, almost violent, as she slammed the lid of her case shut.
"Well?" I pressed, rising from my chair. An ugly, familiar anger began to churn inside me. It was the anger of disappointment, the rage of another failed hope. "Don't just stand there like a frightened rabbit. You're the 'engineer.' Tell me your diagnosis."
She finally turned to face me, her face pale, but her eyes held a new, steely resolve. The fear was gone, replaced by an obsessive, analytical fire.
"It's not a flaw," she said, her voice a low, intense whisper. "It's a design. Your curse… it's not just destroying your heart. It's building something in its place."
I stared at her, my blood running cold. "Building what?"
"A resonator," she said, and her gaze was no longer on me, but through me, as if she were seeing the intricate, impossible mechanism inside my chest. "The crystalline lattice… it's forming a perfect harmonic structure. The sounds I heard… it wasn't just breaking. It was tuning. With every beat, your heart is being tuned to a specific, incredibly complex frequency. It's… a musical instrument of impossible precision."
A resonator. A musical instrument. I felt a wave of nausea. The mages had spoken of dark magic and entropic decay. This girl was speaking of acoustics and design. Her clinical, mechanical language was somehow more terrifying than any talk of arcane curses.
"And for what purpose?" I demanded, my voice a ragged whisper.
She shook her head, her eyes wide with a terrible, brilliant insight. "I don't know. Resonators amplify. They transmit. They receive. This thing inside you… it's either being built to send a signal… or to receive one. But either way," she looked at me then, and the pity in her eyes was a blow more painful than any physical ailment, "it's not a random affliction. It's a machine. And someone, somewhere, is building it with a very specific purpose in mind."
She snapped her case shut. "I need to go back to my workshop. I need to run calculations. I need to build a differential resonator, something that can map the harmonic progression." She was speaking quickly now, lost in her own world of gears and frequencies, the terror of her discovery fueling a frantic, obsessive energy. She was already working the problem, her mind a whirlwind of schematics and theories.
She walked to the door, her hand on the handle.
"Wait," I said, and the word was torn from me.
She paused, looking back at me, her hand still on the door.
I should have said something, asked another question, given another command. But all I could do was stare at this strange, intense girl who had, in the space of a single hour, seen the broken machine inside of me more clearly than anyone else. The girl who had looked upon the horror of my affliction and hadn't seen a curse to be lifted, but an engine to be understood.
"I need…" I started, my voice failing me.
I had intended to say, I need a solution. Or perhaps, I need you to work faster.
But that's not what my treacherous mouth said.
The truth, raw and unbidden, spilled out into the quiet of the room, a confession of weakness I despised but could no longer contain.
"I need it to stop breaking."