First message
The oak door felt heavier than the crown upon my head. I paused before it, my knuckles hovering just shy of the dark, polished wood, a breath held tight in my chest. This was duty. A biological imperative, a political necessity I had orchestrated with the cold precision of a master strategist. I had chosen her, the Princess, for a single, unassailable reason: her otherworldly beauty. It was a eugenic calculation, a means to sculpt the perfect heir, to strengthen the bloodline with a grace my own stern lineage lacked. I had told myself it was the ultimate act of kingship.
I entered without knocking. A king does not knock in his own palace.
She was at the window, a silhouette against the bruised twilight sky, and as always, the sight of her was a physical blow. It wasn't just beauty; it was a quiet revolution against the very order of my world. The lamplight loved her, catching the silver threads in her gown and the pale moonlight of her hair. She turned, and those eyes—the colour of violets in a deep, forgotten wood—settled on me. They held no fear, no expectation, only a profound and unsettling stillness.
"It is time," I said.
The words, meant to be a declaration of intent, a king fulfilling his purpose, fell between us like a stone into a bottomless well. They sounded hollow, stripped of all their imperial authority, leaving only the raw, awkward truth of wanting