The first thing I noticed was the scratch of parchment under my fingers and the waxy scent of candle smoke. I blinked hard, slow to recognize the desk—his desk—as anything but a dream’s invention. Across from me, the gentle man himself sat hunched, hair glinting silver in the candlelight, every bit as kind-eyed and self-effacing as I’d imagined. His attention was fixed on a parchment sprawled between us: a map crisscrossed with neat inked lines, some so recent they hadn’t dried.
It was midnight. The bell was about to chime. And there, at the map’s heart, a red X bled through the name I now wore. My death marked in his careful hand.
I forced my breath to come evenly, just as the first dull clang of the clocktower echoed through the stone halls. He didn’t look up. He never did, until he’d finished transcribing every detail. The council chamber around us was quiet save for the fire’s crackle and the faint shiver of my own heartbeat. To the left, the windows reflected candlelight, shadowing the portraits of doomed heroes—faces I could name, stories I knew would end in blood if I did nothing.
The others were gone; we worked late, as always, tucked away from the intrigue that squirmed through the palace. No one should disturb us. Yet I could see—on the map—three disasters poised to strike before dawn, the last one unerringly precise: my death, here, tonight.
I tried to recall exactly how the chapter ended. The truth clawed at my memory: it never did. The author abandoned the story, leaving the threat suspended. Every event here could shift if I made a wrong move, or revealed too much. Yet the answer, or at least part of it, sat mere inches from my reaching hand—if only I dared to touch the map, or disturb his intent focus.
He adjusted his spectacles, finally glancing up. "You look pale. Is something troubling you?" he asked, gentle as always, but his hand hovered just slightly above the red mark—my mark. His eyes searched mine, so familiar, so dear, and yet, tonight, impossibly dangerous.
I swallowed hard, choices tumbling in my mind, the bell tolling my hour.