The kitchen wasn't a room anymore; it was an abattoir. The hearth spat desperate embers onto the stone, catching the reflections of a spreading, dark lake on the floor. The air hung thick, suffocating with the smell of scorched iron, raw meat, and the sickeningly sweet decay of broken magic.
Amahle was screaming—a ragged, wet sound that tore her throat to ribbons. She lay pinned to the heavy wooden preparation table, her body thrashing against the agony of the snakeroot and crushed glass tearing through her insides.
Calthea was elbow-deep in the horror, her hands violently glowing with a violet fire that flickered and sputtered like a dying candle. The witch was running on fumes. She'd spent too much of her core pulling Elara's child from a poisoned womb. Now, drawing from her depleted reserves felt like dragging a rusted blade through her own veins. Her vision tunneled. Blood dripped from her nose, splashing onto Amahle's soaked linen shift.
"Push!" Calthea roared, the magic burning her palms. "You have to help me! The poison is eating the tissue, Amahle, I need you to push!"
Beside the table, Viscount Adrian Veriton was coming completely undone. He was on his knees in the blood and the flour, gripping Amahle's slick hand. He was weeping hysterically, his aristocratic face pale and contorted.
"I'm here, I'm here," Adrian babbled, his voice cracking. But he couldn't look at her lower half. The sheer amount of blood, the grotesque, visceral reality of what Elara had engineered, was shattering his fragile mind. "God, please, Calthea, stop the bleeding. Do something!"
"I am doing everything!" Calthea snarled, her teeth bared. She pushed more of her own life force into the girl, her knees buckling as her magic scraped the bottom of her soul. And as she pushed, she felt it. A pulse. Not a heartbeat, but a deep, seismic resonance coming from Amahle's blood. The maid wasn't just some peasant girl. There was something ancient buried in her lineage, something wild and untamed that the magic recognized. Calthea wanted to pull it to the surface, to use it to keep her alive, but she was too weak.
Amahle convulsed, a horrific tearing sound filling the kitchen. The baby crowned.
"Grab her shoulders, Adrian! Hold her down!" Calthea screamed.
Adrian looked up, his eyes wide and vacant with pure panic. Amahle vomited black bile and blood onto his pristine boots. Her eyes rolled back, and the flesh of her arms was cold, clammy with the sweat of the grave. The stench of butchery hit Adrian in a suffocating wave.
His breath hitched. He dropped her hand.
"Adrian!" Amahle gasped, a bloody bubble popping on her lips.
"I can't," he whispered, backing away. He looked at his blood-soaked hands, shaking his head frantically. "I can't do this. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Don't you dare run!" Calthea roared, yanking the squirming, blood-slicked infant free as Amahle gave one final, spine-snapping arch.
But Adrian was already gone. He scrambled backward, slipping in the gore, and bolted out the servant's door into the storm, fleeing the consequences of his own cowardice.
Calthea didn't have time to curse him. The baby wailed—a sharp, piercing shriek that rattled the copper pots hanging from the ceiling. Calthea slammed the child onto a clean sackcloth, pressing her glowing, trembling hands directly onto Amahle's ruptured abdomen.
"Stay with me," Calthea begged, coughing up a mouthful of copper-tasting spit. Her magic was eating her own organs now to keep the fire going. "Amahle, look at me! I have her. She's alive. Don't let the dark take you yet."
Amahle's head lolled to the side. Her pupils were blown wide, swallowing her irises entirely. But she wasn't looking at the ceiling. She was looking right through the witch, into something vast and terrifying. She reached up with a terrifying suddenness, her bloody fingers latching onto Calthea's wrist with a grip like iron.
"The shadows..." Amahle choked out, her voice dropping an octave, layered with an echo that didn't belong in a human throat. "She mustn't cross to the other side of the moon. If she tips the balance... they'll come for her."
Calthea's heart stopped. The ambient magic in the room spiked, freezing the blood on the floor into jagged crystals. "Who will come? Amahle, what are you talking about?"
"The veil is thin," Amahle gasped, her grip painfully tight. Her eyes locked onto Calthea's, filled with a desperate, cosmic terror. "She is the anchor. Promise me. Protect her from the dark... teach her. Hide her light, or the world forgets its breath."
"I promise," Calthea swore, the words tearing from her own exhausted throat. "I'll protect her."
The tension in Amahle's jaw vanished instantly. The terrifying light left her eyes, leaving them dull and empty. Her hand slipped from the witch's wrist, slapping limply against the wood.
She was gone.
Calthea collapsed back on her heels, gasping for air, her entire body shaking violently from magical exhaustion. For a long second, the only sound in the kitchen was the relentless rain outside and the furious, hungry cries of the newborn on the table.
Slowly, painfully, Calthea pulled herself up. She wiped her bloody nose with the back of her sleeve and turned to the child.
She wrapped the wailing infant tightly in the rough cloth. The baby was fair, but as Calthea wiped the mother's blood from her tiny shoulder, she stopped breathing.
There, etched into the newborn's skin, glowing with a faint, bruised violet light, was a crescent cradling two slender, falling lines. A mark of the twin moons.
Amahle's dying words echoed in the witch's fractured mind. She is the anchor. They'll come for her.
Calthea held the child tight to her chest, feeling the terrifying, raw pulse of the infant's dormant power. She looked at Amahle's ruined body, then up toward the ceiling, toward the silk-lined monster waiting in the chamber above.
"God help us all," Calthea whispered. She turned to the paralyzed, weeping servants huddled in the shadows. "Scrub this floor. Burn the rags. If a single word of this leaves the kitchen, I'll sew your mouths shut."
Without another word, Calthea gathered the moon-born child and headed for the stairs, preparing to walk back into the devil's jaws.