The Birthday Gift

Eighteen years of invisibility, and I was going to spend my birthday scrubbing pots.

The kitchens sat deep beneath the palace, where light magic never reached. Fitting, really. Everything about me existed in places the court preferred not to see.

Above, the celebration had begun hours ago. I could feel the vibrations through the stone, hundreds of feet dancing, the hum of amplified music, the concentrated glow of light magic that made Valdoria's balls famous across the realms. Princess Emmeline was turning twenty-one. The whole kingdom was invited.

Not me, of course. Never me.

I dragged a copper pot from the stack and plunged my arms into scalding water. The head cook had vanished an hour ago, called upstairs to oversee the dessert presentation. The rest of the kitchen staff had followed, one by one, until I was alone with the dishes and the distant thrum of celebration.

My shadows stirred.

I pressed them down. Eighteen years of practice had taught me how. The darkness inside me responded to emotion, anger, loneliness, the bitter knowledge of what I'd never be allowed to reach. If I let it slip, if anyone saw...

I scrubbed harder.

The door at the top of the stairs opened. Heavy footsteps. Too heavy for kitchen staff.

I didn't look up. Probably a drunk lord who'd wandered the wrong direction. They sometimes did, stumbling into the servants' corridors, expecting someone to point them back toward the party. I'd done it a dozen times before. Keep your head down, give directions, let them forget your face.

But the footsteps didn't stumble. They descended with purpose. Two sets. Three.

My fingers stopped moving.

"That's her." A voice I didn't recognize. Male. Accented in a way that made my stomach tighten. "The shadow-touched one."

I turned.

Three men stood at the base of the stairs. They wore servants' livery, but it fit them wrong, too tight across the shoulders, too short at the wrists. Their faces held no confusion, no wine-glazed wandering.

Just the flat certainty of men with a single purpose.

"The king's hidden stain." The speaker smiled. He had a scar bisecting his left eyebrow, pale against dark skin. "Eighteen years you've survived. Impressive, really. But the Nightblood cannot be allowed to see nineteen."

Nightblood.

I'd never heard the word before, but something in me recognized it. Something ancient and dark that lived in the spaces between my ribs.

"I don't know what you're talking about." Steady voice. A minor miracle. "I'm just a kitchen servant."

"You're the bastard daughter of King Aldric." He drew a knife from his sleeve. Blackened steel, designed not to reflect light. "You're the prophecy made flesh. And tonight, you die."

He lunged.

I didn't think. My body moved without permission, dodging left as the blade sliced air where my throat had been. Training, stolen moments watching the guards, practicing in empty corridors when I should have been sleeping. All of it had been leading here.

Now I understood.

The second man came at me from the right. I grabbed the copper pot and swung, connecting with his temple. He went down. The third was already circling, cutting off my path to the stairs.

The scarred man recovered fast. Too fast. He feinted low, then struck high, and the blade opened a line of fire across my shoulder.

My blood hit the floor.

Black.

Not red. Black, like spilled ink, like shadows given liquid form.

We all stared at it.

"Nightblood," the scarred man breathed. "It's true. The darkness lives in her veins."

The seal inside me cracked.

The shadows I'd spent eighteen years suppressing erupted from my skin. They coiled around my arms like living things, hungry and eager and finally free. The room went dark, not absence of light, but presence of something deeper. A hunger that devoured illumination and left only void.

Fear. I should feel fear. But all I felt was power.

The third assassin screamed as shadows wrapped around his legs and pulled. He hit the floor hard enough to crack stone.

The scarred man backed toward the stairs. His knife hand trembled. "This wasn't, you're stronger than the intelligence suggested..."

"Funny." My voice echoed strangely, layered with whispers that didn't come from my throat. "I didn't know I could do this either."

The shadows moved.

I didn't control them, not exactly. More like they read my intent and acted. One moment the scarred man was raising his knife for a final desperate strike. The next, he was wrapped in darkness so complete he couldn't even scream.

I felt his life pulse against my awareness. Felt the shadows asking, hungry and eager: should we end him?

Yes.

The thought came from somewhere primal. Somewhere that had spent eighteen years being told she was shameful, hidden, wrong. Somewhere that was tired of being afraid.

The shadows squeezed.

When they released him, he didn't move again.

I stood in the ruined kitchen, surrounded by three bodies, my black blood dripping onto ancient stone. My hands shook. My whole body shook. But beneath the tremors was something else entirely.

Satisfaction. Dark and terrible and mine.

The door at the top of the stairs opened again.

I whirled, shadows rising,

My father stood on the stairs.

King Aldric descended slowly, his golden robes catching what little light remained. He looked at the bodies. At the shadows still coiling around my arms. At the black blood pooling beneath my feet.

He didn't look surprised.

"Father." My voice cracked. "I didn't, they attacked me. They called me..."

"Nightblood." He stopped three steps from the bottom. Close enough to see my face. Far enough to stay clear of my shadows. "Yes. I know what you are, Thessaly. I've always known."

The world tilted.

"You've always... you knew? About the magic? About what I could..."

"Why do you think I hid you?" His voice held no warmth. It never had, the few times he'd spoken to me. "Why do you think I kept you in servants' quarters, away from court, away from anyone who might recognize what lives inside you?"

"I thought..." I swallowed. "I thought you were ashamed. Because of my mother. Because I'm a bastard."

"I am ashamed." The words landed like physical blows. "But shame is a luxury. The prophecy doesn't care about my feelings. It only cares about blood. Your blood."

He gestured at the black pooling on the floor.

"Tonight changes everything. These assassins came from Ashenmoor. They'll send more. Now that you've manifested, now that the Nightblood has woken..." He shook his head. "You can't hide anymore. And neither can I."

I wanted to ask a thousand questions. What was the Nightblood? What prophecy? Why had he never told me? But before I could speak, footsteps thundered on the stairs above. Guards in Valdorian gold poured into the kitchen, swords drawn, light magic blazing at their fingertips.

They saw the bodies. Saw my shadows. Saw the king standing calmly amid the carnage.

"Your Majesty..."

"The princess is unharmed." My father's voice rang with royal authority. "These men were Ashenmoor assassins. Dispose of the bodies. Speak of this to no one."

The guards hesitated, staring at me. At the darkness still writhing around my arms.

"Now."

They moved. Quickly, efficiently, with the trained obedience of men who'd learned not to question their king. Within minutes, the bodies were gone. Someone brought rags for my blood. I watched it all in a daze, my newly awakened power crackling just beneath my skin.

When the kitchen was clean, my father turned back to me.

"Tomorrow, an Ashenmoor delegation arrives. A diplomatic mission, allegedly. In reality, they're coming to assess whether the rumors are true. Whether the Nightblood has truly manifested in Valdoria."

I found my voice. "What happens when they find out?"

"War." He said it flatly, like discussing weather. "The same war that's simmered for two hundred years. But hotter this time. Fueled by prophecy and fear."

He started up the stairs. Paused.

"Clean yourself up. Stay hidden tomorrow. Whatever happens, they cannot know you exist."

He left me alone in the ruined kitchen. Death still hung in the air, and my newly awakened shadows whispered against the stone.

Eighteen years of invisibility.

And now everyone wanted me dead.

I pressed my hands against my face and laughed, high and broken and edged with hysteria. The shadows spiraled around me, eager and starving and finally unleashed.

Happy birthday to me.