The screams had been echoing through the ducal manor for hours, each one more desperate than the last. Duke Aldric Ravencrest paced the length of his study, his polished boots wearing a path in the Persian carpet as the storm outside lashed against the mullioned windows. Lightning illuminated his angular face in stark relief—high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and eyes the color of winter steel that had once gazed upon his wife with infinite tenderness.
Now those same eyes held only fear.
"Your Grace," came a tremulous voice from the doorway. The midwife stood there, her white apron stained crimson, her weathered hands trembling. "The child... she's coming."
But something in the woman's expression made Aldric's blood turn to ice. He pushed past her, taking the stairs three at a time, his heart hammering against his ribs like a caged bird. The master bedroom door stood ajar, and through it came a sound that would haunt him forever—Elara's voice, weak and breathless, calling his name.
"Aldric... my love..."
He burst into the room to find his wife pale as moonlight against the blood-soaked sheets. Her golden hair, once lustrous as spun silk, clung damply to her fevered brow. But in her arms, she cradled a small, dark-haired infant whose cries filled the air with life.
"Our daughter," Elara whispered, her violet eyes—those eyes he had fallen in love with at first sight—already beginning to dim. "I've named her Nyx... for she came to us in the darkness, but she will bring light..."
"No." The word escaped him as barely a breath. "Elara, stay with me. Please."
She lifted one trembling hand to touch his cheek, and he caught it, pressing desperate kisses to her palm. "Love her, Aldric. Promise me... promise me you'll love her as you loved me."
"I promise," he choked out, though the words felt like broken glass in his throat. "I promise, my heart."
Elara smiled then, serene and beautiful even as death claimed her. Her hand went slack in his, and the light faded from those magnificent eyes forever.
The baby's cries grew louder, more insistent, as if sensing the tragedy that had accompanied her arrival. Aldric stared down at the tiny creature—his daughter, his heir, his wife's final gift—and felt something cold and terrible take root in his chest.
She killed her, the treacherous thought whispered. This child killed my Elara.
Three Years Later
Little Nyx learned early that she was unwanted.
She learned it in the way her father's jaw tightened whenever she entered a room, in how he would look through her rather than at her, as if she were no more substantial than morning mist. She learned it in the servants' pitying glances and hastily averted eyes, in the way conversations died when she appeared.
But most of all, she learned it the day Ophelia came to live with them.
Nyx was playing with a set of wooden blocks in the nursery—alone, always alone—when the commotion began downstairs. Voices in the entrance hall, the sound of carriage wheels on cobblestone, and then her father's voice, warmer than she had ever heard it directed toward her.
"Welcome home, my dear child."
Curiosity overcoming caution, Nyx crept to the top of the grand staircase and peered through the balusters. Below, her father knelt before a girl who could not have been much older than herself. The child was beautiful—golden curls like spun sunlight, cornflower blue eyes, and a cherubic face that seemed to glow with innocence. She wore a traveling dress of fine blue wool, far nicer than anything in Nyx's own wardrobe.
"This will be your home now, Ophelia," Duke Aldric said, his voice gentle in a way that made Nyx's chest ache with longing. "You'll want for nothing here. Nothing at all."
He lifted the girl into his arms—arms that had never held Nyx with such tenderness—and spun her around until she giggled like silver bells. "Papa Aldric!" she cried, and he laughed, actually laughed, the sound echoing through the marble hall.
Nyx gripped the balusters until her knuckles went white, watching as her father showered this stranger with the affection she had always craved. When Ophelia was settled in the bedroom adjacent to the Duke's own chambers—the room that had once been prepared for Nyx before she was moved to the servant's wing—the gifts began.
Dolls dressed in silk and velvet. A rocking horse carved from the finest oak. Books filled with colorful illustrations. Dresses in every hue of the rainbow. Each present was bestowed with ceremony, with smiles and praise and gentle caresses that Nyx observed from shadows and doorways, invisible as a ghost.
"Look what Papa has brought you, darling," the Duke would say, his stern features softening whenever they fell upon Ophelia's face. And the girl would clap her hands and throw her arms around his neck, and for a moment, the great house would ring with laughter and joy.
Then his eyes would find Nyx lurking in the periphery, and the warmth would drain from his expression like water from a broken vessel.
"What are you doing there?" he would snap, his voice sharp enough to cut. "Go to your room. You have no business here."
And Nyx would flee, tears burning her eyes, while behind her, Ophelia's sweet voice would ask, "Papa, who was that girl?"
"No one important, my dear," would come the reply. "No one at all."
The physical cruelties began not long after Ophelia's arrival, as if the Duke needed to balance his newfound capacity for love with an equal measure of hatred. A backhand across the face for spilling water at dinner. Placing her hand over the Fireplace Burning it for the crime of existing in his sight. Locked in her room without supper for speaking out of turn—or sometimes for not speaking at all.
Each punishment was delivered with cold precision, never in front of the servants, never where Ophelia might witness it. The Duke was careful to maintain his facade of noble respectability, even as he systematically broke his own daughter's spirit.
"This is what you deserve," he would hiss as the switch came down. "This is the price for what you took from me."
And Nyx, small and alone and desperate for any scrap of paternal attention, even if it came wrapped in pain, would whisper through her tears, "I'm sorry, Papa. I'm sorry for being born."
But sorry was never enough. It would never be enough.
Because every time Duke Aldric looked at his daughter's dark hair and pale skin—so different from her mother's golden beauty—he saw not Elara's legacy, but her destroyer. Every time he heard Nyx's voice, he heard the silence where his wife's laughter should have been.
And every time he lavished another gift upon sweet, grateful Ophelia, he reminded himself that some children were blessings, while others were curses born of blood and loss.
In the nursery that first night, as Ophelia slept peacefully in her new canopy bed surrounded by toys and treasures, Nyx pressed her face to her own bare window and made a promise to the stars. "I Vow to the Stars That I won't let my father break Myself"