The King Who Bargained With Shadows

Chapter 5

The King Who Bargained with Shadows

Third-person POV

King Aldred IV of Aurenfall was dying, and the knowledge sat on his chest like a millstone.

He was only forty-six, but the black-lung that had begun as a polite cough six years ago had become a ravenous beast. Some nights he coughed until blood spattered the royal handkerchiefs embroidered with golden suns. The physicians bled him, blistered him, dosed him with nightshade and mercury, and still the rot spread.

In the royal bedchamber at Highmont Palace, Aldred lay propped against pillows soaked with sweat and laudanum dreams. Moonlight slanted through the tall windows, painting silver bars across the floor. A fire crackled, but the warmth never reached him anymore.

Beside the bed stood the only man in the kingdom who knew the true price of the king’s continued breath.

High Seer Malphas.

He was ancient, sexless, wrapped in robes the color of dried blood. His eyes were milk-white, yet he saw more than any sighted man. In his bony hands he held a shallow obsidian bowl filled with a dark, viscous liquid that moved when nothing touched it.

“Speak,” Aldred rasped.

Malphas dipped one skeletal finger and tasted.

“The Veil frays,” he croaked. “Three years, perhaps four, before the next black moon. The Serpent stirs. He hungers.”

Aldred’s cough turned into a laugh that ended in red flecks on his lips.

“Then let him hunger. I have no daughter to give him.”

Malphas tilted his head. “You mistake me, Majesty. The Serpent does not require a princess. Only a maiden whose soul burns pure. Untouched by ambition. Unstained by cruelty. Unbroken by love.”

Aldred wiped his mouth. “Find me one, then. I’ll knight the girl, crown her, whatever it takes.”

Malphas’s blind eyes fixed on something far beyond the chamber walls.

“There is one,” he whispered. “Born the night of the hidden eclipse. Born silent. Raised unseen. Her blood sings like starlight on snow. Her name is Elara Wynne.”

Aldred stilled.

“Wynne,” he repeated. “General Frederic’s middle whelp. The eclipse child.”

“The very same.”

A slow smile spread across the king’s gaunt face.

“Frederic wants to be Prime Minister. He wants his golden daughter wed to my son. He has been… tiresome.”

Malphas inclined his head. “Offer him both. In exchange for the girl.”

Aldred’s fingers drummed on the coverlet. “He will refuse. Frederic is ambitious, not stupid. He knows what happens to the offered maidens.”

Malphas lifted the bowl. The liquid inside swirled, forming an image: a girl with storm-and-star eyes kneeling in a circle of salt, blood dripping from her palm. Behind her, a colossal serpent lowered its head—not in threat, but in reverence.

“She will not die,” Malphas said softly. “Not this one. Her soul is too bright. The Serpent will keep her alive. And every year she breathes beyond the Veil, a year is added to your own span. Her purity will feed you, Majesty. Like the others fed the ones who came before you.”

Aldred stared at the vision until it dissolved.

“Send for General Wynne,” he ordered.

Three weeks later, in the dead of night, Frederic Wynne knelt before the king’s bed.

He had ridden hard from the northern border; mud still clung to his boots, and his cloak smelled of horse and winter. Yet his bow was perfect.

Aldred did not ask him to rise.

“You know why I summoned you.”

Frederic’s jaw tightened. “The prophecy.”

“Indeed. The kingdom requires a sacrifice. A pure maiden. My seers have found her.” Aldred paused, savoring the moment. “Your daughter Elara.”

Frederic did not flinch, but something flickered behind his eyes the exact cold blue of Seraphine’s.

“She is… untested,” he said carefully. “Unnoticed. The priests will accept her?”

“They have already accepted her. Malphas tasted her blood the night she was born. It was kept in reserve.” Aldred coughed, a wet, tearing sound. “You will deliver her when the time comes.”

Frederic bowed his head. “And in return?”

Aldred smiled, teeth stained dark from the medicines.

“Upon the day the girl crosses the Veil, you will be named Prime Minister of Aurenfall. Your eldest daughter will be betrothed to Prince Edric with a dowry of three northern provinces. Your youngest will be fostered at court as companion to my niece. House Wynne will rise higher than any house since the founding.”

Frederic was silent a long moment.

Then: “She is only a child.”

“She will be nineteen when the black moon comes. Old enough.”

Another silence.

Aldred leaned forward, voice dropping to a lover’s whisper.

“Refuse, and I strip you of rank, lands, title. I give the border commands to Cassian. Your golden daughter will marry a merchant’s son. Your family will be ash by winter.”

Frederic’s knuckles whitened on the hilt of his dress sword.

He thought of the night the mirrors cracked.

Of the burned words on his map.

Of the way his middle daughter had looked at him across the ruined room (eyes ancient, unforgiving).

He thought of ambition, sharp and bright as a drawn blade.

He thought of the way Elara had never once called him Father.

He bowed lower.

“I accept, Your Majesty.”

Aldred sank back against the pillows, exhausted but triumphant.

“Good. We understand each other. Leave me.”

Frederic rose.

At the door he paused.

“Will she… suffer?”

Aldred’s laugh was a death rattle.

“She will live forever, General. Isn’t that mercy enough?”

The door closed.

Alone, Aldred stared at the ceiling where shadows pooled like spilled ink.

He did not see the tall figure that detached itself from the darkness behind the tapestry.

Kael, Prince of the Void, half-brother to the Black Serpent, smiled with the half of his face that was still beautiful.

“Excellent,” he murmured, voice soft as grave silk. “The board is set.”

He traced one finger along the obsidian bowl Malphas had left behind. The liquid rippled, showing the same girl again—older now, standing in a garden of moonflowers, a black scale pressed to her lips.

Kael’s remaining eye gleamed with hunger.

“Soon, little starlight,” he whispered. “Very soon.”

The shadows swallowed him again.

In the bowl, the girl looked up—as though she had heard.

And for a heartbeat, the king’s dying heart stuttered in fear.

Far to the north, in Wynnehold’s frost-rimed gardens, fifteen-year-old Elara Wynne knelt in the snow beside a half-dead rosebush, whispering to something only she could see.

In her gloved hand, the black scale pulsed like a second heartbeat.

Warm.

Waiting.

Listening.