Hel’s Princess

The realm of Hel did not wake. It never did.

There was no dawn to stir it from slumber, no sun to chase the shadows back into their corners. Hel simply was, a kingdom of never ending sunsets and moonlight, where the sky burned in shades of bruised violet and dying ember, and the only stars were the bioluminescent fungi clinging to the obsidian spires of the city below.

I liked it that way.

I stood on the edge of the Obsidian Balcony, my bare feet cold against the glass-smooth stone, and watched my kingdom breathe. Below me, the city of Nyxara, named after me, a gift from my father on the day of my birth, sprawled in glorious, chaotic beauty. Streets carved from black volcanic rock wound through markets lit by flickering witch-fire. Towers of bone and obsidian clawed at the sky. Bridges woven from spider-silk and shadow connected districts that housed creatures the surface world had long since declared extinct.

Or abominations.

Depending on which Fae historian you asked.

A soft chittering sound drew my attention. I turned my head, a smile already tugging at the corner of my mouth.

"Good morning, Vesper."

My handmaiden, if such a mundane word could possibly describe her magnificence, she scuttled out onto the balcony. Vesper was a Nocturni, her kind bred eons ago from shadow and moth-wing. She stood on two legs but her body was wrapped in a velvet-soft exoskeleton the color of midnight, and great translucent wings folded against her back. Her eyes were compound, multifaceted, and utterly beautiful, each facet reflecting a tiny image of my face back at me.

"Morning is a surface-world concept, my Princess, do not let the surface world corrupt you with their language," she clicked, her voice like wind through dead leaves. "I believe you mean good eternal-darkness."

"Good eternal-darkness, then." I turned back to the city. "What news?"

"Your brother is pacing the throne room. Again."

"Eris or Maz?"

"The Crown Prince. He has been pacing for approximately two hours. The guards are taking bets on when he wears a groove into the floor."

I snorted. Eris Heron Morrigan, Crown Prince of Hel and heir to the Shadow Throne, had been ruling in our father's stead for the past three years. He was brilliant, ruthless when necessary, and utterly incapable of sitting still when something troubled him.

"Tell him I'll be there shortly."

"And your other brother?"

"Maz can wait."

"Prince Maz is already in the throne room. He brought snacks."

I closed my eyes. Of course he did.

---

The Palace of Ten Thousand Shadows was a sprawling, impossible thing. It had been carved into the side of the Abyssal Ridge millennia ago, before the Fae or the humans had even learned to write, before they had declared themselves the "pure" race and begun their purges. The palace's corridors twisted and turned with no apparent logic, staircases leading to rooms that had not existed the day before, doors opening onto memories rather than chambers.

I loved it.

I trailed my fingers along the walls as I walked, feeling the ancient stone hum beneath my touch. The palace recognized me. The shadows leaned toward me as I passed, whispering secrets I was too busy to hear.

Murder, one shadow hissed.

Secrets, another crooned.

The Crown Prince is going to burst a blood vessel, a third added helpfully.

"Thank you," I murmured. "Very informative."

The throne room doors loomed before me, massive things carved from the rib bones of some long-dead leviathan. They swung open without being touched. The shadows knew better than to make me wait.

The throne room was chaos.

Eris was, as promised, pacing. My eldest brother was tall and huge, his shoulders broad but his frame carrying the particular sharpness of someone who had forgotten to eat for the past three days. His hair was the color of raven feathers, tied back in a messy knot, and his eyes, the same violet as mine, the mark of the Morrigan bloodline, were blazing with frustration.

"The trade agreement with the Wraith Courts is falling apart," he announced the moment he saw me. "The Starlight District is petitioning for more territory, the Bone Markets are in an uproar over the new tariffs, and I have seventeen different ambassadors demanding an audience before the next..." 

"Good eternal-darkness to you too, brother."

He stopped pacing. Fixed me with a glare. "Nyx."

"Eris." I swept past him, my black silk gown trailing behind me like spilled ink. "You look terrible. Have you slept?"

"I don't have time to sleep."

"Have you eaten?"

"I had some coffea."

"Coffeea is not food."

"Coffee is the lifeblood of the realm, and I will not hear it slandered."

I reached the dais and turned, settling myself onto the smaller throne beside the Shadow Seat. The Shadow Seat itself sat empty, a towering construction of twisted obsidian and ancient magic, reserved for the reigning monarch. My father had sat there once, before the wasting sickness took him three years ago. Now it belonged to Eris, though he refused to sit in it and now it lay empty until he could be forced into a coronation. 

"I am Crown Prince," he had said when the council urged him to take the throne. "Not King. Father is dead. I have not yet earned the crown."

That was Eris. Stubborn to the bone.

From the shadows beside the throne, a figure detached itself and sprawled onto the arm of my chair.

"Morning, little sister."

Maz. Prince Mazander Hollin Morrigan, second son of the House of Morrigan, professional nuisance, and my favorite person in the entire realm.

He was lounging with the boneless grace of a cat, a bag of popped corn in one hand. His hair was a wild tangle of silver-white, the only one of us who took after our mother in coloring and his eyes sparkled with barely contained mischief.

"You brought snacks," I observed.

"The Crown Prince is having a crisis. I'm not missing this." He offered me the bag. "Some popped corn?"

"Where did you even get that? Isn't that human food?"

"The Bone Markets have a new vendor. Delightful little wraith. Accepts payment in secrets." He crunched loudly. "Eris is going to ask you to handle the ambassadors."

"I am not..." Eris started.

"You absolutely are," Maz said cheerfully. "You've been working yourself into an early grave, and Nyx is the only one who can charm the spines off a hedge-beast. The ambassadors love her."

"They fear her," Eris corrected.

"Same thing."

I held up a hand, cutting them both off. "Maz, give me the popped corn. Eris, stop pacing and tell me what's actually wrong."

Silence.

Eris and Maz exchanged a look. The kind of look that made my stomach tighten.

"What?" I demanded.

Eris reached into his coat. Pulled out a letter.

It was beautiful, in a sterile sort of way. Cream-colored parchment sealed with golden wax. The wax bore the imprint of a sunburst, the sigil of the Aurelian Court, the largest and most powerful Fae nation on the continent.

The seal was already broken.

"The courier arrived an hour ago," Eris said quietly. "It's from the High King."

I felt something cold settle in my chest. Something that had been sleeping for a very long time.

"Read it," I said. My voice came out steady. Good. I would not let them see anything else.

Eris unfolded the letter.

"To Her Royal Highness, Princess Nyx Andromeda Viveca Morrigan of Hel," he read, his voice flat. "By decree of His Majesty, High King Cardan Oberon Ashryver Windsor, you are hereby summoned to the Aurelian Court. A royal escort will arrive in seven days' time to retrieve you. Your presence is required at the coronation ceremonies and for the formal commencement of the betrothal terms as set forth in the Treaty of the Sundered Gate. No refusal shall be accepted. By order of the Crown."

Silence.

Even the shadows stopped whispering.

Maz had stopped eating. His knuckles were white around the bag. 

"'Retrieve you,'" I repeated. "He said retrieve you. Like I'm some sort of package."

"Nyx..." Eris started.

"Eighteen years." I stood. The shadows around the throne stirred, curling toward me like concerned pets. "Eighteen years of nothing. Eighteen years of him sending me poisonous flowers and silence. And now he is king, and suddenly he remembers I exist?"

"The courier said there's more," Maz said quietly. "A second letter. Private. For you."

I snatched the letter from Eris's hand before I could think better of it. My fingers trembled, with rage, I told myself. Only rage.

The second letter was smaller. The handwriting on the front was not the elegant script of a court scribe. It was sharp. Angular. Impatient.

Nyx.

Just my name. No title. No pretense.

I broke the seal.

Princess,

I will not insult you with pleasantries. I do not know you, and you do not know me. But the Oath binds us both, and I have spent eighteen years trying to find a way to break it. I have failed. You will have failed too, or you would not be reading this letter.

The escort arrives in seven days. Do not make this difficult.

—Cardan

I read it twice.

Then I started laughing.

It was not a kind laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who had spent eighteen years being an afterthought, a footnote, a debt that no one wanted to collect. The shadows in the throne room laughed with me, a chorus of cold, dangerous mirth.

"He tried to break the Oath," I said, still laughing. "All this time. He wasn't ignoring me out of arrogance. He was trying to escape me."

"Isn't that supposed to make it better?" Maz demanded.

"No." I crumpled the letter in my fist. "It makes it so much worse."

Eris stepped toward me. His hand closed over my shoulder. "Nyx. You don't have to face this alone. I'll send guards. Ambassadors. A contingent of..." 

"No."

"No?"

I lifted my chin. The shadows rose with me, fanning out behind me like wings.

"He wants the Princess of Hel?" I said softly. "He wants the monster under the bed? The wicked creature he was raised to fear?"

The letter crumbled to ash in my grip.

"Then that is exactly what he will get."

-———————————————-

Later, after Eris had been persuaded to eat something, after Maz had made six inappropriate jokes and I had laughed at all of them, after the throne room had emptied and the shadows had settled back into their corners....

I stood alone on the Obsidian Balcony and looked down at my city.

Nyxara. My namesake. The only home I had ever known.

Below me, a shifter child with too many eyes was chasing a ball of witch-fire down the street. An old spider-woman sat on her stoop, weaving silk that glimmered like captured starlight. Somewhere in the Bone Markets, a vendor was selling secrets for popped corn and laughing about it.

This was my kingdom. My people. My sanctuary of monsters and misfits and the beautifully broken.

In seven days, a Fae escort would come to rip me away from it.

In seven days, I would meet the male who had spent eighteen years trying to erase me.

I looked up at the starless sky, at the bruised purple glow that would never be sunlight, and I made a vow.

I will not break. I will not bow. And I will not let a golden king forget that he is shackled to the Princess of Hel. I shall make him suffer for it.

He and his entire court. 

A soft chittering behind me. Vesper.

"My Princess? What are you thinking?"

I smiled. It was not a kind smile.

"I'm thinking," I said, "that His Majesty has no idea what he just invited into his court."