POV: King Theron
The village was poor.
I stood at the edge of Millbrook, watching smoke rise from chimneys and listening to the pathetic sounds of human life. Dogs barking. Children laughing. People doing ordinary things with their ordinary, pointless lives. None of them had any idea that the Twilight King stood in their town. If they did, they'd be crawling.
But I couldn't announce myself. Not yet. Not until I saw her.
My guards had found her location: the Millbrook Inn. She was living there, they said. She'd performed at a local tavern and was going to leave at dawn. That meant I had maybe eight hours to see her. To hear her. To prove that what I experienced wasn't madness.
I pulled on a coat I'd taken from a dead guard. It wasn't a perfect disguise—the power flowing from me still made the air cold, and my silver eyes were hard to hide. But in the shadows of a tavern, with the right angle, I might pass for a traveling merchant instead of the immortal king.
The inn was warm and busy. People sat at tables, drinking and eating. A fire burned in the corner, but even that couldn't fight the cold that followed me inside. Customers noticed and shivered. Some moved away. That was fine. I didn't care about them.
I scanned the room, looking for blue hair. For ocean eyes. For the voice that had changed everything.
Then I saw her.
She was bringing drinks to a table, moving with the kind of tired grace that came from doing the same thing over and over. Her hair was dark blue, exactly as described. Her face was beautiful in a way that made something inside my chest clench. She had sea-green eyes that looked sad even when she was smiling at the customers.
I couldn't move.
This girl. This mortal girl with her mortal life and her mortal issues. She was the one whose voice had broken eight centuries of my curse. She was the one who'd made me feel something besides pain.
It was impossible. She was so small. So fragile. One touch of my curse could turn her to ash.
But I knew the moment our eyes met that there was something different about her. The way she froze when she looked at me. The way her breath caught. It was like she felt it too—that strange pull between us.
I raised my hand and signaled for her to come over.
She paused. Smart girl. She could sense something was wrong about me. But she came anyway, because she was a servant and that's what servants did.
"What can I get you?" she asked, and her words made the curse inside me quiet down. Just a little. Just enough to let me think.
"I want you to sing for me," I said quietly.
Her eyes widened. "I'm sorry?"
"Sing. I'll pay well." I pulled out a handful of coins—more money than she probably made in a month—and put them on the table.
She stared at the coins, then at me. "I've already played tonight. I'm tired."
"Then sing tomorrow," I said, and then I added something that shocked me: "Please."
She blinked. A king doesn't say please. A king rules. But I'd asked, and something in my voice must have communicated how much I needed this, because her expression softened.
"Why do you need me to sing for you specifically?" she asked, sitting down across from me unannounced.
"Because I heard you sing earlier," I said, which was the truth. "And it was... important."
She studied me like she was trying to figure out if I was lying. "You're not from here."
"No."
"You're sick."
It wasn't a question. She could see it—the way my power made the air cold, the way my hands shook slightly from the curse trying to break free.
"Yes," I admitted. "Singing helps me. Will you?"
She looked at the coins again. I could see her thinking, planning. She needed the money. Her clothes were worn. Her boots had holes. She was hungry and desperate and trying to live the same way I was—by enduring pain every single day.
"Where?" she finally asked.
"Your room. Tonight. Just me and you."
She flinched. I realized how that sounded. "I'm not—"
"I know. I don't want that. I just want to hear you sing in private. No crowd. No chaos."
Something about my honesty made her believe me. Or maybe she just didn't care anymore. People who were hurting as much as she was didn't have energy for caution.
"Okay," she said. "After my shift ends. Two hours."
She left before I could reply, carrying her drink tray to the next table.
I sat alone, holding the leftover coins, feeling the curse inside me settle into a strange kind of anticipation. In two hours, I would hear her voice again. In two hours, I would know if she was real or if I'd dreamed everything.
In two hours, my entire life might change.
The wait was agony.
I watched her work. She was graceful even when tired. She was kind to rude customers. She shared a smile with the other service girls. She was everything I wasn't—soft where I was hard, warm where I was cold, human where I was cursed.
Finally, her shift finished. She came to me and said, "Come on then."
I followed her up the stairs. The hallway was small and dark. Her room was at the end—small, cold, barely supplied. A single light burned on a shelf. She signaled for me to sit on the edge of her bed.
"Before I sing," she said, "I need to know your name."
I almost lied. I almost gave her a fake name to keep myself safe, to hide who I was. But something in her eyes made me want to tell the truth.
"Theron," I said simply.
She nodded. "I'm Seraphina."
Then she picked up a wooden guitar and began to play. As she played, she opened her mouth to sing, and I realized I was holding my breath.
But before she could make a single sound, her hand stopped.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
She was looking at my hand. Specifically, at the curse-mark glowing dimly on my skin—the mark that proved what I was.
Her face had gone completely pale.
"You're," she whispered. "You're not sick. You're cursed."
"Yes."
"That means you're not human."
"No."
She looked straight into my eyes, and I watched the moment she understood. The moment she figured out exactly who I was.
Her scream rang through the entire inn.