Chapter 5 Midnight Stirs the Curse
Midnight did not arrive gently.
It seeped.
The hour bled into the palace like ink dropped into water, darkening corridors, thickening shadows, sharpening every sound until even breath felt audible. Clara stood alone in the Council Gallery, hands braced against the frost-veined balustrade, staring down into the endless hollow of the palace’s heart.
Midnight stirs the curse.
The words pulsed through her mind in time with the clock somewhere deep within the tower, an ancient mechanism of gears and spellwork that only rang once a night.
One bell.
The sound rolled through stone, through spell, through marrow.
Clara flinched as the Queen’s sigil beneath her skin flared cold, not pain but warning. Frost blossomed instinctively across her palms, spiderwebbing the rail where she touched it.
Below, something answered.
Not horns this time.
Movement.
Slow at first. Almost polite.
A wooden foot scraping stone.
Then another.
Elias emerged from the shadows near the archway, as if summoned by the same instinct that had dragged her here. Fully armed now, coat clasped, sword belted, gauntlets humming faintly with suppressed warding.
“Report,” she said without turning.
“The underground galleries,” he replied grimly. “The ones sealed after the First Winter. The guards stationed there are… frozen. Standing. Eyes open, breathing, but unresponsive.”
Clara closed her eyes. “And the soldiers?”
Elias hesitated.
“They’re not moving yet,” he said carefully. “But they’re awake.”
That single word tightened around her ribs like wire.
Awake.
Not animated. Not commanded.
Aware.
Midnight stirs the curse.
The palace lanterns flickered, their witchlight dimming to a cold blue hue. Frost traced the murals lining the walls, scenes of victories once celebrated, now distorted as ice crept across faces carved in triumph and loyalty. Clara felt it then, the pull. A familiarity that hummed beneath terror.
The curse was not foreign.
It was hers.
Or rather, what she had made.
“Walk with me,” she said.
They descended the spiral stairs in silence, footsteps echoing too loudly in the hollow hours of night. With every level they passed, the air grew colder, denser, until even Elias’s breath fogged thick and white.
At the doors of the Old Armory, they stopped.
The seals, runic, intricate, layered with Clara’s own hand, were glowing faintly, lines of silver light pulsing unevenly like cracking ice.
“They’re failing,” Elias said.
“No,” Clara corrected softly. “They’re listening.”
She pressed her palm to the door.
The armory breathed.
Wood creaked. Metal whispered. Hundreds, no, thousands, of dormant soldiers stood racked within, carved forms shuddering as ancient enchantments stirred. Their dreams brushed the edge of her consciousness, snow. Orders. Lines. Purpose.
March.
Clara staggered back, gasping as the weight of it slammed into her.
Elias caught her arm instantly. “Clara.”
“I gave them certainty,” she whispered, horror dawning. “When the war dragged on, when fear cracked morale, I bound obedience into their very grain. No doubt. No hesitation. I told myself it was mercy.”
Her voice broke. “I never taught them how to stop.”
The Queen’s sigil flared again, violently now. For a heartbeat, her reflection shimmered in the armory doors, and fractured.
She saw herself crowned in black ice.
Saw the Nutcracker King standing at her right hand, hollow chest blazing with frost, his carved smile reverent and terrible.
“You buried him,” Elias said quietly. “Not destroyed. Buried.”
“Yes.” Tears burned hot despite the cold. “Because destroying him would have meant admitting he was never separate from me.”
A crack split the nearest seal, thin as a hairline fracture in glass.
From within the armory, a single wooden soldier turned its head.
Just a fraction.
Enough.
Elias drew his blade. Wards ignited along its edge. “Give the word.”
Clara straightened slowly, shoulders squaring as the crown’s weight settled fully into her spine. Fear trembled through her, but it no longer ruled her.
“No,” she said. “Steel cannot end this.”
She stepped forward, placing her palm against the failing seals once more, letting the curse see her rather than fight her. Cold roared up her arm. Her vision whited out.
and then she stood somewhere else.
Snow again. Endless. Silent.
But this time, the boots were still.
The Nutcracker King waited alone across the white expanse, towering, immaculate, dark uniform dusted with frost. His hollow chest churned slowly, patiently.
“You’ve come at last,” he said.
“I didn’t march,” Clara replied.
His carved smile sharpened. “Not yet.”
She lifted her chin. “Midnight stirs the curse,” she said. “But dawn will expose it.”
“For dawn,” he answered smoothly, stepping closer, “you will need me.”
The truth struck her like glass shattering.
The curse did not want her surrender.
It wanted her consent.
The vision cracked.
Clara was back in the armory corridor, breath heaving, frost cascading off her like shattered crystal. The seals stabilized, but did not heal.
Elias stared at her, shaken. “What did you see?”
She met his gaze, resolute and afraid in equal measure.
“The war I refused to finish,” she said. “And the king I must face before he finishes me.”
Above them, the midnight bell fell silent.
But the curse had stirred.
And it would not sleep again.
Silence followed, brittle and deceptive.
It pressed against Clara’s ears until she became aware of smaller sounds beneath, the faint ticking of ward-stones resetting, the low hum of ancient enchantments strained but holding, Elias’s careful breathing as if any sound too loud might fracture the moment entirely.
The armory doors stood sealed, yet Clara could still feel them.
Waiting.
Not impatiently. Not angrily.
The soldiers dreamed in formation now, minds aligned in rows and columns, futures stacked neatly like rifles on a rack. The curse had learned efficiency.
Elias finally sheathed his blade, though tension still coiled through him like a drawn bowstring. “You crossed into it,” he said. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded distant even to herself. “And it knows I can.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“So is pretending I can’t.” She turned from the doors, forcing her legs to move, to remember how to walk away from power that wanted her whole. “Midnight is its favored hour. The curse is weakest at dawn, but only barely.”
They moved back up the stairs together, though the palace felt altered now, subtly hostile. Portrait eyes seemed sharper. Frost receded too cleanly from their path, as if clearing a stage.
“What happens when it asks again?” Elias asked.
Clara stopped. Looked at him fully.
“Then I answer on my terms.” She inhaled, steadying herself. “Tomorrow, we convene the archivists. I want every record of the First Winter unsealed. Every lie catalogued. Every truth that was deemed too dangerous for a queen to carry alone.”
Elias’s expression hardened. “Some knowledge breaks people.”
“Yes,” Clara said quietly. “That’s what makes it useful.”
Above them, somewhere deep in the palace’s oldest bones, wood shifted against stone.
One step.
Then another.
Measured.
Patient.
Waiting not for the order to march.
but for the moment she would finally remember exactly how she had taught them to obey.