The guards open the doors to the Grand Hall and I see the first woman emerge.
She approaches the throne hesitantly, two guards flanking her closely on either side as she takes slow, shuffled footsteps toward us. She’s dressed in a dark red skirt that’s damp with mud at the ankles.
My skin pricks on the back of my neck the closer she gets.
There’s death in the air.
I can practically taste it.
Smell it on the woman’s bones.
As she steps forward, skirt the color of dried blood and decaying rose petals, I know somehow that she won’t last the week.
I can feel it.
Then my mother will snatch up her soul and King Seryth will gobble it down, like he’s done for over a century. Feeding his immortality.
“Your Highnesses,” the woman says, once she reaches the steps that elevate the thrones.
She curtsies, low enough that her knees touch the floor and her ankles shake with the weight.
She glances at my mother and I see the flicker of panic in her eyes before she bows her head.
They fear us. They hate us.
And they’re right to.
I lift my chin up, reminding myself that I should be pleased.
This is the one time a year when I’m surrounded by magic. When I can feel the thrum of it coating the castle, as the power of my ancestors drifts through the air like sweet wine.
When I don’t have to stay locked in my tower.
I grab the scissors from the table and descend the stairs.
“With these scissors, I’ll take a lock of your hair and seal your place in the Festival of Predictions,” I tell the woman. “Death will mark you on its list for this month of the Red Moon. It will come for you once this first week, then twice the second, and the prediction we give you today will be your only help to survive.”
I recite the lines easily, as I’ve done since I was fourteen.
“If you die, your soul becomes forfeit to the king. But if you live through the first half of this month, you’ll be rewarded with a wish of your choice and be released from your bargain.”
The woman nods eagerly.
The promise of a wish makes the Festival a celebration in the realm. I’ve heard that the townsfolk even make bets, gambling Chrim on who might make it, throwing parties and drinking into the early hours.
People only ever enter into this bargain for the wish.
For the poor and the desperate, it’s a chance to ask for gold Chrim or healing elixirs. For the rich and the arrogant, it’s a chance to curse their enemies and amass more fortune.
And all of them think it’s worth risking their souls for.
It’s only three deaths, they probably tell themselves. I can live through that. And some do. Each year a handful of people get to resume their lives with a wish granted, inspiring others to try it for themselves next year.
But each year at least one hundred people don’t.
It’s funny how they’re less remembered.
“If you choose to continue beyond this halfway point, be warned,” I say, voice foreboding. “As in place of death, the king himself will have earned the right to hunt you until the month’s end. For if you survive past the Red Moon, his immortality will be yours.”
I feel Seryth’s smile on the back of my neck.
He’s not afraid.
He doesn’t worry that he could ever lose his throne to any of these people.
“This bargain may kill you or bring you unrivaled glory,” I say.
It will be the former. It always is.
Death has a funny habit of getting its way, and so does the king. I’ve seen that firsthand.
Besides, nobody who survives ever even tries to go past the halfway mark. Having death hunt you is one thing, but the king himself? Even before he amassed the deadliest army to ever live, the king was the most skilled warrior in all of the Six Isles. He has survived centuries, blessed by cursed magic.
It would be madness to even try to kill him.
Best to just take your wish and run home to safety.
“Do you accept this bargain?” I ask.
The woman gulps loudly.
“Yes,” she says, voice trembling. “Please just take it.”
With hands as unsteady as her voice, she gestures toward her hair.
I reach out with my scissors and cut a piece. The woman sucks in a breath, eyes sharpening.
I wonder if she feels something. A fragment of her taken to be stored away, so her soul is tethered to this world when she dies.
Ready for my mother to collect in her ritual.
Ready to be bound to the king.
“It’s done,” I say.
I turn away from her and place the hair into one of two hundred glass jars that line the steps to the thrones.
“Step forward,” Theola says. “And keep your arm out.”
I hear the woman’s breath stutter as she ascends the first two steps. She takes a knee.
Theola extends her hand and daintily strokes the woman’s palm.
She closes her eyes, smile slow and damning.
Somniatis witches are like siphons. We draw in energy and let it pass through us. Energy like death that we call into our veins and let wet our lips. It’s what gives us our visions and allows us to take the souls of the doomed and pour them into the king.
It’s cursed magic, but it’s the only magic left in the Six Isles.
My family saw to that.
Theola bites her lip as she looks into the woman’s future.
There’s a part of me that wants desperately to see what she sees. I want to feel the power that comes from knowing the future, from telling fate’s secrets and letting my magic free from its shackles.
From touching someone, for the first time in years.
But then I remember Asden, my old mentor. I remember what happened the last time I touched someone.
I remember how he screamed.
The mere thought of it knocks into me as hard as a fist. I quickly right myself, swallowing the memory before the king notices the slip in my smile.
My mother withdraws her hand and looks down at the kneeling woman, whose palm is newly branded by King Seryth’s crest: a blackened serpent eating its tail.
It appears on all death seekers, marking them and the deal they’ve made.
“In the next week, your youngest daughter will succumb to illness,” Theola says.
Her voice is like ice, cold and smooth, like she’s talking about the weather instead of death.
It wasn’t always like that.
Once it was warm.
“She will die,” Theola says. “And days later when you go to pick her favorite flowers, you will be attacked by a creature of the woods. Left to rot among the trees.”
The woman gasps and even her hands stop shaking, as though terror has frozen her in place.
“No, my daughter cannot die.” She shakes her head, no regard for her own life and the death my mother foresaw for her. “There must be a way. If I survive until the halfway point, then I can wish for a healing elixir and—”
“She will not last long enough for that.”
With a tight jaw, my mother closes her fist and then opens it to reveal a single gold coin of Chrim that wasn’t there seconds before.
She drops it into the sobbing woman’s hand.
“For your troubles,” she says. “Spend time with your child while you can. If you live, perhaps we’ll see you again for a new wish. If you die, remember what you owe us.”
The woman blinks and opens her mouth, as if to scream or cry or try to fight her future. But all that comes out is a whimper, before her eyes shift to mine.
I can see the accusation in them as the guards pull her up and drag her from the hall. The notion that I should be ashamed of my monstrous family and the evil we let seep into the world.
But she doesn’t know.
She doesn’t understand what it means to be a Somniatis witch, bound to the king by an ancient blood oath. Given the choice between prisoner or queen of magic, I doubt this woman would choose differently from me. She doesn’t understand what could happen if I tried.
Still, once she’s out of sight, I turn to my mother.
“Do you think she’ll avoid the forest and forgo her daughter’s flowers?” I ask.
It’s a stupid question, and the moment I speak it, I wish I could take it back.
“What does it matter?” Theola’s voice is scolding. “So long as we get the amount of souls we need, it’s irrelevant which ones they are.”
I know that she’s right.
What’s important is that we have at least one hundred souls by the end of the month. Enough so that the king can sustain his immortality and continue his rule forever.
“Don’t you agree, Selestra?” my mother asks when I fall silent.
She looks at me with warning, telling me to nod, quickly.
“Of course,” I say.
A practiced lie.
“My witches don’t concern themselves with such questions.”
The king stares at me tersely.
His eyes are black, black, black.
“You’ll remember that, Selestra,” he says. “If you ever manage to become one, rather than remain a simple heir.”
I bow my head, but beneath the gesture my teeth grind together.
He calls me an heir like it’s an insult, because it’s all I’ll be to him, to everyone, until I become the Somniatis witch.
Heirs to magic are useless until they reach their eighteenth birthday and are bound to the king by the blood oath, ready to be taught the true essence of magic and trained to take over once the old witch dies. Until then, I am irrelevant.
Sometimes I feel like a weed, pushing out from the roots of a strange garden, never quite able to blend in.
The rest of the evening goes the same way.
People are escorted in and out by the guards, kneeling as Theola recounts their new fates with little more than boredom. Betrayals from trusted friends, drowning in the local river, or stabbed in an alley outside the tavern they visit every night.
Each of them has the same horrified look as their deaths are revealed. They act as though it’s a curse thrust upon them rather than something they sought out.
All the while I remain silent, only speaking to recite the rules of the Festival. I gather the hair dozens of times over, descending the stairs and watching as the king looks hungrily at each person who enters into his bargain.
Each potential new soul he’ll use my family’s magic to devour.
Only a handful of them will survive until the halfway point and be granted their wish.
And not a one of them could ever survive beyond that, even if they were reckless enough to try.