PART I: The Price of Life
The black crow circled high above Drakmoor citadel's iron spires, higher than crows usually flew. Its wings beat against air that tasted of iron and ash. Everyone knew what it meant when Death's messenger came to the palace.
In the eastern wing, candles flickered behind tall windows. The flames danced wild and desperate against the approaching darkness.
"Push, my lady, please!" The midwife's voice cracked.
The princess was slipping. The heat in her skin was vanishing despite the hearth fire. Blood clung to the midwife's hands like ink, and frost had begun to creep inward on the windowpanes.
No birth should be this cold, she thought. No child should come with omens in the sky.
She dared not speak it aloud—not with the crow still perched at the window.
Princess Aurora's sea-blue eyes—the mark of her bloodline—flickered like dying stars. Each breath came shallow and cold, misting despite the roaring hearth. This wasn't the clean pain of battle—this was something hungry, something that had come to collect what was owed.
Through the haze of pain, Aurora caught sight of the crow perched on her window ledge. Its black eyes held depths that seemed to swallow light. She stared at them—empty, as if carved out with a spoon—and suddenly, she was drowning in memory.
Three years ago. The graveyard of fallen knights beyond the castle walls.
She had been drawn there by whispers in her dreams, called by something that knew her desperation.
Among the weathered tombstones of the empire's greatest warriors, she had knelt before something that wore the shape of a man but spoke with the voice of winter itself.
The healers had called her barren, but when the entity summoned her to this place of honored dead, she knew her desperate need for an heir had led her to this moment.
"A child for a life, Princess."
She had agreed so quickly then. Too quickly. What choice did she have? The kingdom needed an heir, and she—she needed purpose beyond her own existence.
But now, feeling the shadows stretch toward her like grasping fingers, Aurora understood the true weight of her bargain. Even with the fire blazing, frost began forming on the windowpanes in patterns that looked almost like writing. The crow's patient stare felt like a judge's gavel, waiting to fall.
What had she done? What kind of mother trades her life before she can even hold her child?
The regret tasted bitter as copper in her mouth.
Then came the cry of new life—a sound so pure and fierce it seemed to crack the very air.
"A son, my lady." The midwife's voice was barely a whisper. "A prince."
Aurora's lips moved, forming words of love and apology that only she could hear. The head maid, cleaning blood from pale hands, caught the faintest whisper—but it was so quiet she couldn't be certain she'd heard anything at all.
Aurora reached toward her baby's cries with fingers already growing cold. Her sea-blue eyes held one last moment of fierce love, tinged now with the bitter knowledge of what she had sacrificed, before the darkness claimed her.
The moment Aurora's heart stopped, the crow spread its wings and launched itself into the storm.
Mother and child had shared the same air for mere moments, but had never touched.
PART II: The Name of Death
The grain tax debate droned on for the third hour. Emperor Aurelian August gripped the arms of his throne, forcing himself to nod at the appropriate moments while Lord Harren pontificated in Veythari, the clipped, ancient tongue reserved for declarations of state. Every word felt like sand in his ears.
Aurora's labor had begun at dawn—he could still hear her sharp intake of breath when the pains started. Now the sun hung low, and he was trapped here, listening to men argue over coin and sovereignty while his wife fought for her life three corridors away.
The great doors slammed open with a sound like thunder. Every head turned as a young messenger stumbled forward, his face streaked with tears he hadn't bothered to hide.
The room fell silent—Veythari cut mid-sentence, Lord Harren's mouth still forming the word for "grain tithe" when the weight of real consequence entered the chamber.
Aurelian's hands went numb. He knew.
Before the messenger spoke, before the man's trembling voice filled the chamber, he knew.
The messenger dropped to one knee, gasping. "Your Majesty... the Princess..."
Aurelian's world narrowed to that pause, that terrible hesitation.
"She's given you a son, my lord. A healthy son."
Relief flooded through him—then froze as he saw the messenger's face.
"But Your Majesty... Princess Aurora..." The young man's voice cracked. "She didn't survive the birth."
The words hit him like physical blows. Son. Aurora. Didn't survive. He bit back the scream rising in his throat, tasting blood.
The throne room had gone dead silent. Through his shock, he became aware of movement—Lord Falmee swaying as if he might faint, the other eastern nobles looking like men who'd just watched their reputations die with their princess.
Chair legs scraped stone. The northern lords were rising, their faces white with terror. They expected his rage. They were waiting for the violence that had to come.
Only the western lords remained seated, carved from stone. Duke Aldric's fingers drummed once against his chair—the only sound in the suffocating silence.
The servants along the walls pressed themselves against the stone, eyes wide with terror. They had seen what his father did to those who brought bad news. The court scribe's quill trembled in his hand, ink spattering across the parchment.
For a moment, the messenger's words seemed to echo from a great distance, as if spoken in a dream. A son. Aurora was... gone. Then the meaning crashed over him like a cold wave, and something inside him simply... stopped. He should have been at her side, not beneath a crown
Emotion didn't come. Only silence. No fury to unleash, no heads to claim. The fire they expected never came. Grief had hollowed it out before it could catch.
He couldn't find words. He didn't rage. Who could he blame? The child who cost him everything? The eastern doctors who proclaimed mastery yet failed? The servants who hadn't warned him Aurora was dying? Or his wife, who had chosen to bear a child knowing it would cost her life?
He blamed all of them yet none of them. He was stunned by her sudden death, yet he couldn't bring himself to rage knowing she had chosen a child over him.
His hands lay still on the throne's arms, steady despite the chaos in his mind. A wet nurse stepped forward, trembling, and laid the child in his arms before he could protest. The child was surprisingly warm, almost feverish, against his cold hands. Sea-blue eyes—Aurora's eyes—stared up at him with unsettling awareness.
"Your Majesty?" The court scribe's voice seemed to come from very far away. "What name shall I record for the prince?"
Aurelian stared down at the child. This child who bore her face and his ruin. Those eyes that would forever remind him of what he'd lost.
The silence stretched until breathing became audible. Even the baby had stopped crying, as if sensing the weight of the moment.
Aurelian said nothing, and that silence was louder than any decree. Lord Harren wanted to speak—to offer platitudes—but his tongue lay heavy and dry in his mouth. This prince, born in blood, might one day be their doom.
"Your Majesty?" the scribe whispered again.
The name fell from his lips like a stone into still water: "Nex."
The scribe's hand trembled as he inked the name onto the scroll—Nex. The word bled into parchment like a curse that could not be undone.
Everyone in the throne room knew what the name meant. Death. The baby's cries echoed through the chamber, but Aurelian felt no urge to comfort him.
He had three other children—born of duty and love, their veins carrying his blood, still innocent of dark bargains. This fourth child was something else entirely.
In the servant's quarters, the head maid pressed her hands to her mouth and said nothing. Whatever she thought she'd heard would remain locked in her heart.
Some secrets were too dangerous to tell.