POV: King Theron
She wasn't going to come.
I stood in the forest opening, watching the moon rise higher in the sky. Midnight had passed ten minutes ago. The cold coming from my body had killed everything around me—the grass was withered, the trees were dying, even the air itself felt like it was choking. This was what happened when I waited. This was what my curse did when I was nervous.
I'd been moving all day. All day, I'd waited for darkness to come. All day, I'd fought the urge to go back to the town and drag her here myself. But I didn't want her to come because I pushed her. I needed her to choose to come.
Which meant she probably wasn't coming at all.
The curse burned inside me, getting worse with every passing second. I could feel it eating through my mind like acid. Without her voice, I was just a monster waiting in the dark. Just another cursed thing that should have died ages ago.
Then I heard footsteps.
She came from between the trees, and my entire world stopped.
Seraphina looked frightened and brave at the same time. She wore the same clothes as yesterday, and her blue hair caught the moonlight. She was carrying her handmade lute. She was actually here. She'd actually come.
"You came," I said, and I noticed my voice sounded desperate.
"I'm here," she said carefully, staying about ten feet away from me. "But you need to tell me the truth now. No more secrets. Who are you really?"
I'd planned to ease into this. I'd planned to let her sing first, to build trust, to make her feel safe before sharing the full weight of what I was. But looking at her honest face, at her eyes that expected the truth, I couldn't lie.
"I am King Theron Nightshade," I said simply. "I have ruled the Twilight Realm for eight hundred years. I am cursed to take the life from anything I touch. I am the thing that mothers tell their children about to scare them into obedience."
She didn't run.
I expected her to scream, to run back into the bush, to want nothing to do with me. Every rational part of me knew that's what she should do. But she stood there, and then she asked something that broke through eight hundred years of my walls.
"Why do you need me to sing?"
The question was so easy. So human. So totally unexpected that I didn't know how to answer it at first.
"Because," I finally said, "the curse is always with me. Every second of every day for eight hundred years, I have felt it burning through my body like fire. There is no comfort. There is no peace. There is only pain and more pain and the knowledge that there will never be anything else."
She was listening. Really listening. Not judging. Just understanding.
"Then one night, I heard your voice," I continued. "And for the first time in eight hundred years, the pain stopped. Just for a moment. But that moment was enough to tell me that I'm alive. That I'm not just a monster. That peace is possible, even if only for a few seconds."
"So you hunted me down," she said quietly.
"Yes."
"You could have just asked."
"I'm a king. I don't ask." I paused. "But I asked you yesterday. I asked you to sing for me. That should tell you how desperate I am."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she said, "If I sing for you, you have to promise me something."
"What?"
"Promise me you won't hurt me. Promise me that whatever happens, you'll protect me instead of killing me."
It was a simple promise to make. It was also the most important promise I'd ever made in my entire immortal life.
"I promise," I said.
She walked closer, and I forced myself to stay still. The curse wanted to strike out, to protect itself, to reject her presence. But I held it back with every ounce of control I possessed.
She sat down on a fallen log and opened her lute. She began to play, and the forest seemed to hold its breath. Even the dying trees stopped their final moments of pain.
Then she sang.
It wasn't the same song as before. This one was different. This one was about loneliness and hope. It was about being trapped and thinking of freedom. It was about suffering and the possibility that suffering might stop.
As she sang, I closed my eyes. The pain that had defined my life for eight centuries began to fade. Not disappear—fade. Like clouds moving away from the sun. Like the tide going out. Like the first time in ages that I could remember what it felt like to be human instead of cursed.
I could feel tears running down my face. I didn't stop them. For eight hundred years, I'd been too hard to cry. Too cursed to feel. Too alone to let anyone see weakness. But her song was breaking me open, and I was glad for it.
When she finished, I opened my eyes and looked at her. Really looked at her. And I understood something with absolute clarity.
I couldn't let her go.
I couldn't let her disappear back to whatever town she came from. I couldn't let another bard or another person ever fill this job. There was only Seraphina. Only her voice. Only her presence could ease my curse.
"Come with me," I said.
"What?" She looked shocked.
"Come with me to my home. Stay with me. Sing for me whenever the pain becomes unbearable."
"I can't," she said instantly. "I have a life. I have—"
"You have nothing," I said, and the words came out harder than I meant. "You were running from village to village, performing for coins, living day to day. I'm offering you more than life. I'm offering you a home. Protection. Everything you could ever want."
"In exchange for being your personal singer?" she asked, and something in her voice sounded broken.
"In exchange for being mine," I corrected. And then I said the words that changed everything. "Just yours. Only yours. I will bind myself to you, Seraphina. Not to politics. Not to power. To you."
She stared at me like I'd just offered her the moon and the stars.
"You're a king," she whispered. "You can't bind yourself to a traveling bard."
"I'm the king," I said. "I can do whatever I want."
And I meant it. For eight hundred years, I'd lived by the rules of immortal politics and holy law. But standing there in the forest with her words still echoing in my ears, I realized none of it mattered. None of it compared to the feeling of her song making the pain go away.
"Say yes," I ordered. "Tell me you'll come with me. Tell me you'll stay."
She opened her mouth to answer, but before she could speak, a figure stepped out of the darkness behind her.
An old woman with silver hair and eyes full of ancient knowledge.
Seraphina's grandmother.
"Seraphina, no," the old woman said, and her voice carried the weight of destiny itself. "You don't understand what you're agreeing to. This man will destroy you. His curse will consume you. Please, child—run."
But Seraphina wasn't looking at her grandmother.
She was looking at me, and I could see the moment she made her choice.