The frost did not scream when it crawled up the walls it whispered, like an old lullaby sung through a torn throat. In the farthest district of the dying East, behind a veil of snow and silence, the procession had come.
They knocked on Amara's door with crimson gloves. No words were spoken only a parchment sealed with bone wax was handed to her trembling hands. Her mother's tea cup shattered against the stone floor, but Amara did not flinch. Her name was written in blood.
She was chosen.
They dressed her in red not the red of roses or rubies, but the red of something raw and unhealed. The veil covered her face, long and heavy, dragging the memory of her steps behind her. She wasn't allowed to cry; the tears might smudge the ink of destiny.
In the carriage drawn by eyeless black horses, she watched the world freeze and crumble. Abandoned windmills turned slowly like grieving mothers waving goodbye. The sky was bruised with an unnatural dusk, though the sun had not yet set.
She had grown up hearing stories of the Blood King's palace of how its walls breathed, of how his court was ruled not by laws but by ancient oaths whispered through veins. She hadn't believed them.
But as the gates of the Blood King's palace loomed before her, carved from the bones of extinct beasts, she felt it not fear, not sorrow, but stillness. The kind that comes before a storm. Or a scream.
The gates groaned open.
Two sentries waited: tall, pale men with armor as dark as dried blood. They did not speak, but bowed slightly only slightly as they led her through endless hallways lined with portraits that watched. The air smelled of old ash and forbidden ink.
In the throne hall, the ceiling arched like the ribs of a beast. A long carpet of scarlet led to a throne carved from marrow-stone.
He was waiting.
Lucien.
The Blood King did not rise from the throne. He did not smile. His eyes were fire beneath ice, and his presence wrapped around the room like a question no one dared answer.
He studied her.
Amara stood straight, though her knees trembled. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears like a war drum. But she did not bow. She would not offer herself willingly to death.
Lucien's voice, when it came, was a slow strike of thunder.
"So. The bride has arrived."
The court around them murmur-- silhouettes hidden in the dark. "Let the curse remember," he added, as if reciting scripture.
The words echoed, as if the stones themselves had been waiting.
Then, he stood. He descended the steps slowly, each footstep echoing with the weight of centuries.
He stopped in front of her.
With one clawed finger, he lifted her veil.
His eyes did not widen. His mouth did not move. But something in the air changed.
Amara stared back. Into the eyes of a monster. Into the eyes of a man. Into the eyes of a memory she did not yet possess.
She was no longer certain who had been chosen.
The silence between them grew sacred.
And behind them, the great doors slammed shut.
Not with violence.
But with finality.
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