The First Blood On The Marble

Chapter 4

The First Blood on the Marble

I was twelve the day Father struck me.

It happened in the map room at the top of the west tower (his sanctuary, forbidden to everyone but his adjutants). The air always smelled of ink, lamp oil, and the faint iron of old battles. Maps covered every wall, some so ancient the parchment cracked when you breathed on them. Red pins marked Eldorian incursions. Black pins marked villages that no longer existed.

I had been summoned.

That alone was unusual. Father communicated with me the way one communicates with vermin: through servants, slammed doors, or icy silence.

But that morning a footman delivered a note in Father’s own slashing hand:

West tower. Noon. Do not be late.

I went.

I wore my least-mended dress (gray wool, high neck, sleeves too short). My hair was braided tight enough to hurt. I had learned that pain kept me alert.

The guard outside the map-room door looked surprised to see me, but he stepped aside.

Inside, Father stood at the great oak table, back to me, studying a new map. Fresh ink still glistened. The northern border bled red.

“Close the door,” he said without turning.

I obeyed.

For a long moment there was only the ticking of the brass clock and the wind rattling the leaded windows.

Then he spoke.

“The king is coming.”

The words landed between us like a drawn sword.

King Aldred had not left the capital in eight years. Not since the lung sickness began eating him from the inside. For him to travel north meant one thing: the prophecy was stirring again.

Every child in Aurenfall knew the tale.

Every hundred years the Black Serpent of Eldoria demands a maiden of pure soul.

If none is given willingly, the Veil thins and the night things pour through.

Cities fall. Rivers boil. The sun itself hides its face.

The last offering had been ninety-six years ago.

Four years remained.

Father turned.

He looked older than I remembered. Gray threaded his temples. New lines carved his mouth. The hand that rested on the map was scarred from a raid last winter; the Eldorians had begun using blades dipped in nightshade.

He studied me the way he studied terrain: cold, calculating, searching for weakness.

“Seraphine is fifteen,” he said. “Prime age. Beautiful. Beloved. The priests say her soul shines like a beacon.”

I said nothing.

He continued, “The king wishes to present her at court next spring. A formal betrothal to Prince Edric. A triumph for House Wynne.”

His eyes flicked to me, sharp as flint.

“But there is talk. Whispers. The seers claim the Serpent cares nothing for beauty. Only purity. And Seraphine…” He paused, mouth twisting. “Seraphine has already allowed certain liberties with Lord Cassian’s son.”

I felt my stomach drop.

Seraphine, careless with her smiles and her kisses, had been caught behind the stables with a boy whose father owned half the silver mines. The scandal had been smothered with gold and threats, but the priests remembered.

Father’s voice hardened.

“They say the middle daughter is untouched. Unnoticed. Therefore untainted.”

The room tilted.

I had spent my life perfecting invisibility. Now it was a noose.

He stepped closer.

“You will be examined by the royal seer next month. If your blood sings clean, you will be prepared. You will volunteer when the time comes.”

Volunteer.

The word tasted like rust.

I found my voice. “And if I refuse?”

His hand moved so fast I didn’t see it.

The back of his gauntlet caught me across the cheekbone. Pain exploded white-hot. I staggered, tasting blood.

“Do not,” he said quietly, “mistake silence for weakness, girl. You exist because I allowed it. You will serve when I command it.”

Blood dripped from my split lip onto the priceless map. A red droplet landed on the Eldorian border, spreading like an infection.

Father stared at it.

Something shifted in his expression (disgust, maybe fear).

“Get out.”

I left.

The corridor outside blurred. I pressed a sleeve to my mouth and tasted copper and salt.

I did not cry.

I went to the library instead.

The Wynnehold library was three stories of dust and secrets. No one came here except me and the spiders. I climbed the rolling ladder to the highest shelf, to the forbidden section chained behind iron lattice.

I knew which link was loose.

I slipped through and took down the book I had found years ago:

Prophetia Serpentis, bound in black scales that were not leather.

The pages were brittle, ink faded to rust-brown.

I read by the light of a single candle stub.

…and the Serpent shall claim the maiden whose heart is pure,

yet the heart that is pure is not the heart that is innocent.

Beware the soul that has never been loved,

for it burns colder than starlight

and sharper than regret…

I read until the candle guttered.

Then I took a knife from the map table (small, sharp, used for cutting parchment) and went to the old nursery.

The cradle was still there, shoved into a corner. The serpent circle Old Marit’s sage coal had burned into the floorboards had never been sanded away. Someone had tried to paint over it, but the mark bled through every layer.

I knelt.

I sliced my palm (the same one that had bled over the broken doll, the same one that had held the black scale).

I pressed my bleeding hand to the circle.

The wood drank.

The mark flared (once, like a heartbeat).

And the house answered.

It began with the mirrors.

Every mirror in Wynnehold cracked at once. Not shattered; cracked in perfect spiderwebs that radiated from the center like frost on glass.

Then the chandeliers in the great hall swayed though there was no wind.

Then the portraits began to weep.

Not metaphorically.

Actual crimson tears rolled down the painted cheeks of my ancestors. The oil paint bubbled and ran. The eyes followed anyone who passed.

Servants screamed. Guests fainted. Mother locked herself in her solar with a bottle of laudanum.

Father stormed through the corridors roaring for priests.

They came at dusk (three of them in black robes, carrying bells and censers). They walked the halls chanting in the old tongue, sprinkling salt and holy water.

The house laughed.

Not with sound.

With movement.

Doors slammed in sequence, like applause.

Windows flew open though the latches were rusted shut.

In the west tower, the map Father had been studying burst into flame on its own. The fire wrote words across the parchment in letters of ash:

SHE IS NOT YOURS TO GIVE.

The priests fled before midnight.

Father stood in the ruins of his map room, face gray, staring at the burned warning.

I watched from the doorway.

He saw me.

For the first time in twelve years, General Frederic Wynne looked afraid.

He took one step toward me (then stopped.

Because the floor between us rippled.

Like water.

Like something huge moving beneath.

He backed away.

I turned and walked to my room.

No one stopped me.

No one dared.

That night the bleeding stopped on my cheek, but a bruise bloomed (black and purple, shaped exactly like Father’s gauntlet).

I stared at it in the cracked mirror and smiled.

I smiled back.

The bruise looked like wings.

Or scales.

Or a promise.

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Three days later, Father left for the northern border again.

He took half the household guard with him.

He did not say goodbye to anyone.

But before he rode out, he came to my room.

He stood in the doorway, cloak dripping melting snow.

“You will speak of this to no one,” he said.

I said nothing.

He hesitated.

Then he did something he had never done.

He looked at me (really looked) as though seeing me for the first time.

Whatever he saw made him pale.

He left without another word.

The bruises on my face faded in a week.

The cracks in the mirrors never did.

Servants began leaving.

Some swore they heard a child crying in walls that had no children.

Others claimed to see a tall shadow with ember eyes standing at the end of corridors.

Mother took to her bed with migraines.

Seraphine stopped smiling in my presence.

Isla (now seven, all golden curls and watchful eyes) started following me again.

She left gifts outside my door: a ribbon, a sugar mouse, a single white feather.

She never spoke.

She just watched.

One night I found her asleep on the floor outside my room, curled like a kitten, clutching her rabbit.

I carried her to her own bed.

She woke as I tucked her in.

“Don’t let them take you,” she whispered, fever-bright. “Promise.”

I couldn’t answer.

She fell asleep again clutching my sleeve.

I stayed until dawn.

When I left, there was a new mark burned into her headboard (right beside the old serpent circle).

A tiny handprint.

My handprint.

In blood that was not mine.

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The royal seer never came.

Word arrived a month later: the priest had taken ill on the road north. Froze to death in a warm inn, mouth open in a scream, eyes burned to cinders.

They found a single black scale on his tongue.

Father did not come home for a year.

When he did, he brought new maps.

The red pins had moved south.

Closer.

And in the library, the forbidden book had a new page.

No one had touched it.

But the ink was fresh.

It showed a girl with mismatched eyes standing in chains of gold before a throne of obsidian.

Behind her, a serpent with ember eyes bowed its head.

Beneath the illustration, someone had written in a hand that was not human:

THE WHEEL TURNS.

THE BRIDE COMES.

BUT THIS TIME,

SHE WILL NOT BEND.

I closed the book.

I did not need to read more.

I already knew how the story ended.

Or thought I did.

Outside, snow began to fall again.

Inside, the house settled around me like a beast curling protectively around its young.

And somewhere, far beyond the Veil, in a kingdom where the sun had forgotten how to rise,

the Black Serpent Prince opened both eyes.

He tasted the air.

He tasted blood and storm and starlight.

And for the first time in nine hundred years,

he felt something like fear.

Or anticipation.

They feel very much alike, in the dark.

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