Alone. Madelena’s heart ached only half as much as her throat between pained screams and agonizing contractions, stronger by the minute. Her teeth gnashed, and her fingers tightened on the pillow. And she was alone. She had been for months, dressed head to toe in mourning black. Her eyes cinched shut, trying to cast out the fleeting memories of her husband, her boys, who hadn’t survived the crash and the bits of frame from that fateful shit carried home as the only remains she would ever hold.


    Sweat soaked the sheets, mixing with the blood pooling beneath her, but no midwife came to wipe her brow. Only the hollow ache of an empty room and the faint flickering of the candlelight offered comfort as her body urged her to push. Sharp rakes of pain clawed their way down her sides and through her thighs, her head spinning dizzy from the burning it brought on. Between frantic gasps, she searched the room, barely able to make sense of the flash and fade of the light. Something was wrong.


    It had been a while since she’d delivered a child, but each one had been easier than the last. Each one had felt nearly the same. This one, though, from the moment she felt the first kick, was different. This child had a hold on her that Madelena couldn’t explain and drew in the attention of every subject in the Styxin Empire as if they’d been commanded to notice. Her hand clutched her stomach, silently begging for relief only because she couldn’t find her voice to speak. She was dying.


    Madelena could feel it, the way the weight of the world slipped from her fingers, the way her breath thinned into the cold hush of death. This was not how it was supposed to be, this baby was not to be born alone. She had prayed for a daughter, for a legacy, and Deloxus, the god of her people, came to her and promised her one. He ensured she would bear a daughter, and she dutifully carried the baby even in her mourning. And now the gods, cruel in their irony, decided they would take her away before she could even hold the child. This was not the legacy her people deserved…


    A shadow flickered at the edge of the candlelight. The room cooled, the wind stilling as the air thickened with something ancient and unseen. The air churned and melted away, lighting the space between Madelena and the end of the bed. There, a woman appeared, draped in a gown of shifting daylight, her eyes glowing with the golden fire of a dying sun.


    Ahalexis. The Mother Goddess of the Styxin smiled gently at the woman she saw as her chosen daughter. Every queen of Styxis was a daughter of Ahalexis, and worshiped their Mother in hopes of bearing a daughter in her image, blessed with a greater magic than their own. After all, Ahalexis had given magic to the world in the first place, weaving it into the very bones of the Tandor people and raising Styxis from the sea to shelter them. Their magic was a pact between the people and the gods, and the balance between all people in the world. The Styxin were divine. And Ahalexis had appeared before Madelena.


    It should have been a comfort to see her now, to know that she was not alone in her final moments. But Ahalexis was smiling turned to a pained frown as she took note of the blood on the floor and the shaking of Madelena’s weak legs. The delivery wasn’t progressing, and she was suffering. What mother ever wanted for her daughter to suffer?


    “Madelena,” the goddess murmured, her voice silk and smoke. “Poor, darling girl. Did you really think you could birth a god’s child and survive?”


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    Madelena’s breath hitched. “She is—”


    “The child of my brother, Deloxus, is she not?” Ahalexis said, stepping closer, pressing a cool hand against Madelena’s sweat-slick brow. “Be still now, daughter, it is nearly over, and she will cast your husk aside.”


    Tears burned at the corners of Madelena’s eyes. “Please… You have to do something,” her thin voice rasped, dry lips quivering. “She needs me. I will die for her.”


    Ahalexis hummed, brushing the damp brown hair from Madelena’s face with something like tenderness. “Oh, I know, child. But her future is greater than all yours could have ever been.” She crouched beside the bed, her golden gaze burning into Madelena’s. “Give her to me, and you will live. A chance to love again. A chance to be free from what Deloxus has done to you.”


    A lie.


    Madelena knew it in her bones, knew it in the way the goddess’s fingers curled possessively against her skin. But she wanted to believe. She wanted to live. Most importantly, she wanted her daughter to survive. If she died there, alone in her room, it would be hours before anyone would come, and the baby would starve. What choice did she have?


    And so she whispered, “Give her all the stars in the night sky and endless days…”


    Ahalexis’s eyes flicked up, a smile cresting on her lips as she looked through the room. “Her promised prince awaits her; even now, he is coming to her.”


    Madelena groaned as another contraction came. “Please, save her.”


    Ahalexis’s smile sharpened, and the room darkened as her hands pressed against Madelena’s belly. The pain vanished in an instant, a hollow absence where there had once been life. And then—


    Silence.


    Madelena gasped as her body convulsed one last time, but the child was gone. No wail of a newborn, no warmth against her chest. Only Ahalexis, standing before the dying fire, cradling her newly swollen stomach with a pleased hum running over her lips.


    “She was never yours,” the goddess whispered, then waved a hand, casting a powerful magic over the queen. In a faint flash, no more than a crackling fireplace set alight, the once laboring woman vanished.


    Madelena would not remember this night. Soon, she would wake in the forests of Edithir, drawn to the forbidden springs, and think herself fortunate to have been brought to a place so holy that the water glowed with radiant magic. She would wade in, soak in the warmth of her people’s ancient gift, and slide beneath the surface. Any other day, any other life, she would have been cleansed by the water, freed of her pains, but as Ahalexis stood in the queen’s chamber, breathing through the first contraction of many, she smiled venomously. Madelena would not remember because when she claimed the baby, she claimed every memory attached to her.


    The days of being queen, of Styxis, of magic itself having ever coursed her veins. Those were blessings that belonged to the baby. And now they were Ahalexis’s as if the child had truly always been her own. She stroked her stomach as the ripples of pain, hardly anything for a goddess, ran down and urged the child to birth. It was generous of her to give life to a daughter, even if it had to be stolen from the other. Madelena, she reasoned, would soon come up from the water and make her way to the reeds and flowers where her hands would brush the petals of the ancient flowers—the erebus blossoms, the widow makers. Death would claim her, and the king she had once rejected to marry the duke she had betrayed would find her. And Deloxus would never again have the pleasures of his mortal lover.


    Revenge was too delicious, Ahalexis thought as she bowed forward as the contractions came nearly on top of one another. The world would believe the Queen of Styxis had died in childbirth, cast aside in the righteous waters of a spring by a jealous king. And in her place, a new queen was born—one who belonged to the gods. And fulfill at last the Promise of Tandor.