Chapter 59 I choose You
Vuk Laskovic:
The next morning broke like a wound—gray light bleeding through the frost-crusted windows, offering nothing but more cold.
I hadn’t slept.
Not a single hour. Not even a moment of true darkness behind my eyes. Every time I closed them I saw her—Maureen—curled small under the furs, shivering so hard the bedframe rattled, whispering that something was burning her from the inside. The words had lodged in my chest like a splinter of ice I couldn’t melt. I’d stayed beside her all night, one hand on her back, feeding her my hellfire warmth until my own skin felt raw from the effort. It helped for minutes at a time. Then the cold crept back. Always back.
Now dawn was here and nothing had changed.
She lay motionless except for the faint, labored rise of her chest. Her lips were tinged blue. Her fingers, when I lifted them to kiss the knuckles, were cold as river stones pulled from winter water. Gold hadn’t left her side once; his head rested across her thighs, golden eyes never closing, a constant low hiss ready whenever anyone crossed the threshold.
The chamber doors had not stopped opening.
Servants moved in frantic, silent waves—heads bowed so low they might as well have been crawling. Fresh water pitchers. Clean cloths. More logs for the hearth even though the fire already roared hot enough to blister skin. One boy spilled a bowl of broth; it splashed across the stone and steamed instantly. No one dared speak. They knew better. They’d seen what happened to the first four physicians.
Four.
I hadn’t shouted. Hadn’t needed to.
The first had tried leeches—black, glistening things he’d placed on her wrists while muttering about “bad blood.” I’d watched them swell red, then burst when the hellfire in my palm flared without warning. He hadn’t even had time to scream before the flames took him.
The second had suggested swamp fever, tried to force a vial of bitter green liquid between her lips. I’d crushed the vial in my fist; the shards cut him deeper than the poison ever would have. The third had burned bundles of sage and chanted wards against possession—his voice rising higher and higher until it cracked into a shriek when my fire wrapped around his throat. The fourth… the fourth had dared say “nerves,” that the crown had broken her mind, not her body.
His head had rolled across the floor before the word finished leaving his mouth.
Their bodies were gone now. Dragged out by the heels while servants scrubbed the marble until their hands bled. The copper smell lingered anyway. It mixed with the smoke from the hearth and the sharp herbal stink of failed remedies.
The doors banged open again.
The fifth physician entered between two guards who held him by the upper arms like he might bolt. Young—too young. Beard barely a shadow on his jaw. Robes hanging loose, probably pulled from a dead man’s wardrobe in haste. His face was the color of old parchment.
He dropped to his knees the moment the guards released him. Forehead to stone.
“My lord Vuk,” he whispered. “I… I will examine Her Majesty. Please.”
I didn’t answer right away. Just stared down at him. The hellfire in my hands flickered, low and impatient, casting long shadows that danced across his bowed back.
“Get up,” I said finally. “And do your work.”
He rose on trembling legs. Approached the bed slowly—every step measured, as though the floor might open beneath him. Gold’s hissed deepened; the doctor froze until I lifted a hand to quiet the hound.
He knelt beside Maureen.
Fingers to her wrist. Brass listening tube to her chest. Eyelids lifted gently. Abdomen pressed—soft at first, then firmer. Runes traced in the air above her skin, blue light fading almost as soon as it appeared.
Minutes passed. Long ones. The room was so quiet I could hear the logs pop in the fire, the faint drip of melting ice from the window ledge, the ragged edge of Maureen’s breathing.
He lowered his hands.
His shoulders sagged.
“My lord…” His voice was barely a thread. “There is… nothing. No fever that matches any known plague. No poison trace. No curse mark. The cold she feels—it defies the laws of mortal flesh. I see nothing wrong.”
The words hit like a hammer to the sternum.
Nothing.
Again.
The hellfire roared up my arms before I could leash it—bright orange coils snapping outward, climbing to my shoulders, heat warping the air until the tapestries at the far wall began to curl and smoke. The temperature spiked; servants at the door flinched back, one dropping a tray of vials that shattered in a spray of glass and liquid.
The young doctor scrambled backward on his knees, palms raised, face slick with sudden sweat.
“Have mercy!! Have mercy, Lord!! Please!!” His scream cracked, high and raw. “I have an idea… I have something—please, just listen—!”
I stepped forward. Flames licked higher, hungry.
“Speak,” I snarled.
He fumbled in his satchel—hands shaking so violently he nearly dropped the bundle twice. Cloth fell away. In his palms: a crystal the size of a fist. Clear as glacial ice. Veined with liquid silver that pulsed slow, steady, alive.
“An echo stone,” he gasped. “From the vaults beneath the First Spire. Not used since the old kings fell. It doesn’t read the body like mortal tools. It… it reflects what is hidden. The soul’s deepest currents. Life force. Fates unwritten. Even… things too vast for ordinary sight.”
He looked up at me—eyes wide, pleading, terrified.
“If there is anything—anything at all—wrong inside her… this will show it. Please, my lord. Let me try.”
I stared at the stone. Then at Maureen—lips parted on shallow breaths, fingers curled weakly in the furs.
The hellfire guttered—just enough. Not gone. Never gone.
“Do it,” I said.
He rose on unsteady legs. Moved to the bedside. The surviving physicians pressed against the walls, not daring to breathe too loud.
He began at her heart.
The crystal hummed as he held it above her left breast. Silver veins brightened—slow, gentle. A soft glow spread, outlining her ribs, the steady thump of her heart beneath them. Strong. Unbroken.
Nothing wrong.
He moved to her head.
The stone pulsed brighter. Threads of silver danced behind her brow—tracing thoughts, dreams, the quiet storm she carried. The light lingered, searched, then dimmed. No shadows. No corruption.
He swallowed.
Then he lowered the stone to her abdomen.
The change was instant.
The hum deepened—became a resonant thrum that vibrated up through the floorboards into my boots. The silver veins flared wild. The glow condensed.
A shape formed inside the crystal.
Small. Curled. A faint, rhythmic pulse—tiny, insistent, beating in perfect counterpoint to Maureen’s heart.
Another heartbeat.
The doctor’s breath caught—sharp, audible.
Then the echo stone shattered.
A clean, violent crack—like bone under too much pressure. Shards exploded outward, hung suspended for one frozen second, then began to spin in slow, weightless circles above her body.
Ghostly images bloomed in the air:
Hellfire curling in delicate spirals.Wings of shadow edged with starlight.A small, radiant form radiating power so vast it warped the light around it.
The doctor gasped.
Fell to his knees.
Head to the ground so hard I heard the thud.
“My lord…” His voice was reverent. Broken. “It is a child… You have a child…”
The other physicians—those still breathing—dropped one by one. Knees hitting stone. Foreheads following.
“Praise be to the Eternal Flame and the Star-Queen,” one whispered.“Praise be to the blood of Lucifer reborn,” another murmured.“A seed… a true heir…”
The words washed over me like distant thunder.
A child.
Our child.
I felt something crack open in my chest—joy so sharp it hurt, bright and impossible. My hands—still flickering with dying flames—trembled for the first time in years.
But the young doctor hadn’t finished.
He stayed bowed, forehead pressed to the stone, voice dropping to a whisper.
“Please, my lord… either take my life now… or let me pass a sad message…”
My heart—my traitor heart—stuttered.
I’d been almost happy. For one heartbeat.
I knelt slowly beside him. Grabbed his chin. Forced his face up.
“Why?” My voice came out rough. “Why does my wife have such unnatural reactions? Why the cold? Why the burning inside her?”
He met my eyes—tears streaking his face.
“The mother vessel is weak to carry a child of a god, my lord. Your blood… Lucifer’s blood… Selena’s blood, the power is too vast. Too divine. Her body—it cannot contain it. The child draws on her life force, consumes her warmth, her strength. If she carries to term… she will not survive the birth.”
The room became very still.
I felt the hellfire in my veins stutter—once, twice—like a heart skipping. The joy that had flickered so briefly, so brightly, turned inward and began to burn me instead.
I looked at him. Really looked.
The young doctor was still on his knees, forehead pressed to the stone, tears cutting tracks through the dust on his face. The other physicians remained bowed, murmuring faint praises that now sounded like funeral chants.
“And if the child isn’t taken away,” I said, voice so low it barely carried, “will she—”
“Yes, my lord.” He didn’t lift his head. “She will die. Slowly. The cold will deepen. The fire inside her will consume what’s left. She will burn from within until there is nothing left to burn.”
I nodded once. Slow. Deliberate.
The motion felt like it cost me everything.
“Everyone out.”
No shout. No flame. Just the words.
They moved like shadows fleeing light. Servants first—silent, heads down, trays abandoned. Then the physicians, stepping backward, never turning their backs until the door closed behind them with a soft, final click.
The room emptied.
Only Gold remained, golden eyes fixed on me, a low whine in his throat.
I sank to my knees beside the bed.
Maureen hadn’t stirred. Her breathing was shallow, each exhale a faint mist in the chilled air. I reached for her—careful, so careful—and gathered her into my arms. She was light. Too light. Like the crown had already taken half of her and left the rest for me to hold.
I pressed my face into her hair.
The first sob came without warning—raw, ugly, tearing out of my chest like something alive had been trapped there for centuries and finally clawed free. I hadn’t cried since I was a boy, before the fire claimed everything soft in me. Now it came in waves, shaking my shoulders, soaking into her nightgown.
I held her tighter.
“I have never known peace,” I whispered against her temple, voice breaking on every word. “Not once. Not in the dark halls of my father’s kingdom. Not in the wars I fought for names I no longer remember. Not even when the flames answered me for the first time and I thought I had become something unbreakable.”
Another sob. Deeper.
“I thought power was enough. I thought solitude was strength. I thought I was made to burn alone—until you.”
My hand slid down to rest over her abdomen. The faint pulse beneath her skin answered—small, stubborn, alive.
“You walked into my world like moonlight on black ice. Quiet. Impossible. And you stayed. You saw the monster and you didn’t run. You saw the fire and you reached for it anyway. You gave me laughter when I’d forgotten how it sounded. You gave me mornings where I woke without rage waiting in my throat. You gave me… love. Real love. The kind that doesn’t ask for anything back except that I try to be better than what made me.”
I lifted my head. Looked at her face—pale, peaceful in sleep, lashes dark against her cheeks.
“I would burn the world for you, little moon. Every frozen kingdom, every throne, every star if it meant keeping you warm. I would tear down the heavens and drag Lucifer himself to his knees if he dared claim you from me. But this… this child is mine. Ours. And it’s killing you. How do I choose? How do I look at the life we made—the only good thing I’ve ever helped create—and decide it has to end so you can live?”
My voice cracked open wider.
“I’ve killed without blinking. I’ve watched empires fall and felt nothing. But this… this is tearing me apart. I can feel it—the hellfire inside me turning on itself, burning me from the inside the way it’s burning you. If I lose you… there will be nothing left. No fire. No rage. Just ash. And I will walk through every hell that ever existed just to find you again. I swear it.”
I leaned down. Pressed my lips to her forehead—soft, lingering. Then lower, to her mouth—gentle, trembling. Then I moved to her stomach. Kissed the place where our child rested. One long, broken kiss. I felt the tiny heartbeat flutter against my lips, like a promise I couldn’t keep.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to the life inside her. “I’m so sorry.”
Tears fell onto her skin. Hot. Silent.
I straightened. Wiped my face with the back of my hand. The hellfire had gone quiet—extinguished by grief.
I rose. Opened the door just enough.
“Livia.”
My voice was hoarse. Barely recognizable.
Livia appeared instantly—pale, eyes red from crying in the corridor.
“Call the doctor back. The young one. Alone.”
She nodded and vanished.
Minutes later he returned—alone, trembling, eyes downcast.
I stood over Maureen, one hand still on her stomach.
“Let my wife be herself by all means,” I said quietly. The words tasted like poison. “Do whatever must be done. Take the child. Save her.”
The doctor fell to his knees again. Forehead to stone. Shoulders shaking.
“My lord… I… I will prepare everything. The procedure… it will be swift. She will live.”
He didn’t say the rest. He didn’t have to.
I turned away.
“Leave.”
He scrambled out.
In the corridor, the other physicians still waited—huddled, whispering.
I stepped into the doorway. They froze.
“If one word of my wife having carried a child leaves this palace,” I said, voice flat and cold, “rest assured I will kill you. And your unborn children. Your wives. Your mothers. Your bloodlines will end with you. None will be spared. Not one breath of this will reach the outside world.”
They bowed lower. Some wept openly.
I shut the door.
Returned to the bed.
Climbed in beside her. Pulled her against my chest. Wrapped every fur around us both. Gold settled at our feet, heavy and warm.
I buried my face in her hair again.
“I choose you,” I whispered. “Always you.”
And then I wept—quietly this time. For the child we would never hold. For the future we would never see. For the love that had finally come… and the price it demanded.
The fire in the hearth burned low.
But I held her.
And I would keep holding her.
Until she opened her eyes again.
Until she breathed without pain.
Until the world made sense once more.
Even if it never did.