The Choice in Blood
The hidden chamber reeked of damp stone and iron. Moonlight slithered through the barred window, painting the prisoner's ruined face in fractured silver. His chains rattled as he leaned forward—a broken man with unbroken eyes.
"You're not one of the Eastern Palace guards." Blood bubbled at his lips. "You're... the 'false eunuch'."
My hand froze on the dagger hilt. "You know me?"
A ghastly laugh. "Three years ago, outside the city walls. The night you fled your wedding." His gaze pinned me like a spear. "I was the guard who let you pass."
Memory struck like lightning—that desperate night, my hair sheared short, binding my chest with linen. A faceless soldier had turned his back as I slipped through the gates.
"The Crown Prince sent me to kill you." My voice sounded hollow.
"Will you?" He coughed crimson. "You're just his blade. Do you truly believe he'll let a living secret survive?"
The poison in his words seeped into my veins.
"Spare me," he whispered, pressing against the bars, "and I'll give you the truth about your mother's death."
The world tilted.
My mother—the reason I'd first stepped into this viper's nest. How could this dying prisoner know—
A shadow moved behind me.
"Do you trust him?"
The Crown Prince's voice slit through the dark. He stood framed in the dungeon archway, his face a mask of frozen mercury.
"Would you betray me... for ghosts?"
The dagger grew heavy in my grip. Two men. Two paths.
One held the secrets of my past.
The other, the chains of my present.
And I—
I chose.
[The blade fell. The prisoner gasped. The Prince smiled.]
But whose blood stained the stones?
Only the moon bore witness.
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