**Chapter 14 – Blood in the Walls**
The sun never rose.
Not truly.
The sky stayed thick with ash-colored clouds, casting the palace in a permanent shadow. The moon lingered even in the daylight, pale and heavy. Watching.
The people whispered it was a curse.
Amaris didn't disagree.
She stood in the war room beside the prince, eyes locked on a map stained with wine and blood. Each red pin marked a shrine to the old gods. Each shrine had been reawakened in the last week.
"What happens when the moon turns red?" she asked.
The prince didn't answer immediately.
He stared at the map, then at her.
"On the night of the blood moon, the gods cross the veil. If the Offering isn't claimed, they descend. Unbound. Free."
"And if I survive it?"
"They're trapped. For another era."
She looked down at her hands—scarred from training, calloused, no longer soft. "Then we need to make sure I survive."
He handed her a dagger—curved obsidian, etched with silver veins.
"Forged with magic from the Spire of Bones," he said. "One of only three that can kill something… *not* human."
She took it without flinching.
She didn't ask what the other two were for.
---
Later, her dreams bled red.
She was a child again, standing in the orphan orchard behind the old temple. The apple tree with no fruit. The stone slab carved with warnings. And the hooded priestess who came to her once every month.
"You were born wrong," the woman had whispered then. "A flicker where there should be silence."
Amaris never forgot that.
Even when she was too young to understand.
Now, she did.
They had marked her long before the palace ever knew her name.
---
By dusk, Captain Lorne's body was found in the catacombs.
Throat cut. Heart removed. Laid out neatly as an offering.
But not to the crown.
Amaris stood over him with the prince, firelight flickering across ancient bones.
"He knew too much," she murmured.
"He always did," said the prince. "But I thought he feared me more than them."
"Clearly, he feared the wrong master."
Amaris crouched and traced the symbol burned into Lorne's chest.
A jagged crescent. Old. The same symbol that had once appeared in the misted mirror of her chamber.
"He was silenced," she whispered.
"By something already inside the palace."
The prince nodded grimly.
"This isn't politics anymore. It's infestation."
---
She returned to her chambers in silence, but her mind roared.
There was no safe space left in the palace.
Even her own reflection couldn't be trusted.
At midnight, a note slipped beneath her door.
No name. No seal.
*Come to the chamber of mirrors. Come alone. Or die.*
Amaris didn't hesitate.
She donned her cloak, hid the obsidian blade beneath her sleeve, and slipped into the dark.
---
The chamber of mirrors had been sealed for decades. A place once used to summon visions, long forbidden.
It smelled of mold, rot, and dusted memory.
Dozens of cracked mirrors lined the walls, some veiled in black, others reflecting only shadows.
Her boots echoed on the stone floor.
Then came the voice.
"You shouldn't have come alone."
Amaris turned toward the sound.
A woman in silver robes stepped from the dark, eyes like wells that drank light.
"You're not afraid?" the woman asked.
"Not of you."
The woman tilted her head. "You should be."
She lifted her hand—and the room exploded.
Mirrors shattered in a thunder of glass.
Shards flew like knives. One sliced Amaris across the cheek. Another tore through her cloak. She dropped into a crouch, rolled beneath the sound, and came up with blade drawn.
The woman lunged—faster than a mortal, body shifting in and out of form.
Not a priestess.
Something else.
Amaris slashed upward—felt her blade bite into flesh.
The creature shrieked and vanished into black smoke.
Then appeared behind her.
Amaris twisted, parried a strike with her forearm, and stabbed blindly behind.
The dagger sank in. Again.
The scream that followed cracked every mirror left unbroken.
When the smoke cleared, the woman knelt—bleeding silver from the mouth.
"You are not what they expected," she rasped.
Amaris stepped forward, bloody blade steady.
"No," she said. "I'm worse."
She drove the dagger straight into the woman's chest.
The body disintegrated.
And for a breathless moment, every mirror in the room showed the same image—
Amaris.
Crowned in fire.
Standing above a throne of ash.
Then everything went dark.
---
She returned to her chambers just before dawn, cloak shredded, side bleeding, fury in her steps.
The prince was waiting.
His eyes widened at the sight of her.
"What happened?"
She threw the bloodied blade at his feet.
"They sent another one."
He strode to her, voice low. "Why didn't you wake me?"
"Because I needed to see what they were willing to send."
"And?"
Her voice sharpened.
"They're willing to die for this. To kill me. To kill *you* if they must. They don't want peace. They want submission."
The prince looked as if he'd aged in hours.
He turned away briefly. Then back.
"This ends tonight."
---
Later that morning, the prince summoned the high priestess to the war chamber.
Amaris was there—wrapped in fresh bandages, cloaked in silence.
The high priestess entered with three guards and a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"You sent a beast," the prince said coldly.
"I sent no such thing," she replied.
"Lorne is dead."
"Lorne was a traitor," she said, unfazed.
Amaris stepped forward, eyes locked on hers.
"You lied about the prophecy."
"I preserved it."
"You knew I wasn't supposed to die to *complete* anything," Amaris said. "I was meant to survive. And you've been trying to stop that."
The priestess looked at her as if studying something beneath glass.
"You weren't supposed to survive the night you were born."
The prince drew his sword. "Say that again."
"She is a crack in the old wall," the priestess said calmly. "And cracks let things through."
He stepped forward, blade to her throat.
"Then I'll seal it with your blood."
But Amaris laid a hand on his arm.
"No," she said. "Not yet."
The priestess looked at her. "You'll become what you fear."
"No," Amaris said, voice like frost. "I'll become what *you* fear."
---
That night, the clouds parted for the first time in days.
The blood moon had risen.
And somewhere beneath the palace floor, something ancient began to stir.
Not angry.
Not hungry.
But *waiting.*