Confused.
Afraid.
Dying.
Emir starts shouting orders, then disappears for a brief moment. Sometime later he and guards thunder down the stairs, bringing healers with them. Three of them—the best in the Shadow Court—fall to their knees around us, golden light already pouring from their hands.
"Move her upstairs," the lead healer commands. "Now. We need proper facilities."
I don't waste time with stairs. My shadows tear a portal directly to the healing chambers, reality bending to my desperate will. The transition is violent, disorienting, but I don't care—every second counts.
They place her on a table the moment we materialize. More healers swarm in, their combined magic flooding the room with light so bright it makes my shadows recoil.
I stand at the edge of the chaos, useless, while they work to keep my wife and child alive.
The memory fragments, but I can't escape it. Can't pull myself back to the present where Nesilhan is alive and furious and looking at me like I'm every nightmare she's ever had made flesh.
"Why?" Her voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. "Why won't you even try to explain yourself?"
I force my eyes to focus on her. "What's there to explain? You've already decided I'm a monster. Does the monster's reasoning matter?"
"Yes!" The word comes out as a scream. "Yes, it matters! Because I need to understand how you could make that choice.How could you look at our innocent child and decide it was expendable!"
The accusation is a blade between my ribs, all the more effective because part of me—the part that wakes up at 3 AM drenched in sweat and guilt—agrees with her.
"You want to understand?" Something cold and terrible rises in my chest. "Fine. Let me paint you a picture,hatun."
I'm upstairs in the healing chambers, watching them work on Nesilhan's broken body. They've been at it for hours—golden light pouring into wounds that keep bleeding, magic knitting flesh only to have it tear open again.
The lead healer—a woman named Seraphine with ancient eyes and hands that shake from exhaustion—finally steps back.
"My lord," she says, and her voice carries the weight of unbearable truth. "I need you to listen very carefully."
"Fix her." The words come out flat. Empty. "Fix them both. That's an order."
"I can't." Two words. Two simple words that threaten to destroy my entire world. "The blade was poisoned with something I've never seen before. Shadow magic and light magic twisted together in ways that should be impossible. It's eating through her organs, spreading faster than we can heal."
"Then heal faster."
"You're not listening." Seraphine's professional mask cracks, revealing the terrified woman beneath. "The poison is designed to force a choice. Her body is trying to protect the pregnancy, channeling all her remaining strength to keep the child alive. But in doing so, she's dying faster. If I focus my magic on stabilizing the pregnancy, on saving the child, she'll bleed out before I can turn my attention back to her."
The words don't compute at first. I stare at her like she's speaking a language I don't understand.
"And if you focus on her?"
Seraphine's tears fall onto Nesilhan's blood-soaked gown. "If I focus on saving your wife, the child... the child won't survive the next hour. My lord, I'm so sorry, but you have to choose. Your wife or your child. I cannot save both."
The world stops.
Time stops.
Every god I've ever cursed, every demon I've made deals with, every scrap of power I've accumulated over a decade—none of it matters. None of it can change this simple, brutal arithmetic.
One life or the other.
Not both.
Never both.
