Chapter 31: The Hollow Coronation
The sixth heart hung in the air between us, its inverted pulse sending ripples through the blood-soaked marble floor. I reached for it instinctively—then froze as the queen's hand closed around my wrist.
"Not yet," she murmured. Her nails bit into my skin, drawing pinpricks of blood that sizzled against her rings. "First, you claim your crown. Then your consorts. Then we deal with what your father left behind."
Across the throne room, Yassie made a strangled noise. "I'm sorry, consorts? Plural? As in—"
"Yes," Sey said flatly, flexing his shadow-blade fingers. The dagger had fully fused with his flesh now, its edge gleaming like polished obsidian. "We've established this."
The queen released me with a dismissive flick of her wrist. "The ceremony begins at sundown. The priests will prepare you." She turned to leave, her gown whispering against the broken relics littering the floor.
I caught her arm. "Wait." The word came out sharper than I intended. "You don't get to disappear again. Not after—"
Not after letting me believe I was nobody. Not after leaving me to rot in that false reality while my body walked these halls without me.
The queen's smile didn't reach her eyes. "Oh, my little runaway. Did you really think I wasn't watching?" She pressed a cold finger to the golden scale branded on my forehead. "Every nightmare. Every scream. Every time you begged to wake up." Her breath smelled of grave dirt and honeysuckle. "I let you break. Because only broken things learn how to cut."
Then she was gone, leaving us standing in the wreckage of the throne room—me with my stolen heart pounding too fast, Sey with his cursed hand, Yassie with silver threads of the white-haired lock pulsing beneath his skin.
And the sixth heart.
Still beating.
Backward.
The Coronation
They dressed me in my sister's gown.
The realization hit as the attendants laced the silver-and-crimson bodice tight enough to bruise. This fabric had touched her skin last. These sleeves had brushed her wrists. The high collar still smelled faintly of her perfume—citrus and gunpowder.
"Stop trembling," hissed the priestess adjusting my crown. A circlet of blackened gold, set with five empty sockets where the relics should have been. "Unless you want the crowd to see their new queen as weak."
Beyond the cathedral doors, thousands waited. The surviving nobility. The commoners who remembered my family's reign. The hollow ones—though no one could say which faces hid rot beneath.
Yassie entered first, resplendent in storm-gray formalwear, the lock's silver threads now woven through his veins in intricate patterns. He took his place at my left, jaw clenched.
"Remember," he muttered under his breath, "this is political. Not—"
"Not what?" Sey appeared at my right, shadows pooling around his boots. The dagger had spread up his arm, consuming half his torso in living darkness. "Not real? Too late for that."
The doors opened.
Sunset poured through the stained glass, painting us in fractured light. The crowd's roar hit like a physical force—part adoration, part terror.
And beneath it all, barely audible:
The thump-thump of a sixth heartbeat.
The Vows
They made us kneel on the altar, hands joined in a three-way grip that left no room for escape. The high priest's chant echoed through the cavernous space:
"Blood to blood." A blade scored my palm.
"Shadow to shadow." Sey's darkness leapt to my wound.
"Storm to storm." Yassie's silver threads slithered into the cut.
Our blood mingled on the altar stones—red and black and mercury-bright—as the priest proclaimed the union sealed. The crowd cheered.
Only I felt it when the sixth heartbeat synchronized with ours.
Only I saw the moment every reflection in the cathedral's glass windows blinked.
The queen, watching from the shadows, smiled.
The First Kiss
They gave us a private balcony to "consummate the bond." Tradition demanded witnesses, of course—but conveniently out of earshot.
Yassie backed me against the railing. "This is insane."
Sey's shadow-blade came to rest at Yassie's throat. "But you'll play along."
I grabbed both their collars. "Enough."
Then I kissed Sey—hard, biting—before turning to Yassie and doing the same, softer but no less deliberate. Their shock tasted like victory.
Below us, the city burned with celebration.
Above us, the stars winked out one by one.
And in the mirror inside my mind, a girl who looked like me—but wrong, so wrong—pressed her palms to the glass and whispered:
"You should have stayed asleep."
To Be Continued...