Page 2 of The Truth-Teller's Bargain

Her mother’s grip tightened on her shoulder, and she gasped at the sudden sharpness.

“Youmust.”

Alethea closed her eyes, frantically searching inward.Please…if anyone can hear me. Please help me.She hoped her silent prayers would reach the ears of some merciful deity.

While her father was a devout follower of Nehalennia, her mother defiantly refused to worship any of the gods. Alethea had never felt any of their favor… but perhaps someone would help her now.

For several long, terrifying minutes, the only sound in the room was her father’s ragged, uneven breathing.

She reached further. Dove deeper. Her head ached as she tried to empty herself of all the distracting, intrusive thoughts.

And then the voices began.

Alethea inhaled sharply, her head flying back as if the words were a force of their own. Her eyes flashed white, words pouring forth, unstoppable and damning:

“King Aikat dies by the Crimson Moon.”

“No!”

The room spun as Zenobia seized her by the hair and wrenched her backward, sending her crashing to the polished stone floor. Alethea’s scalp screamed with the ghost of her mother’s grip. The queen’s anger filled the air around them, a palpable, suffocating force.

The Crimson Moon ended in three days.

Alethea fought the bile rising in her throat as she grabbed at her own head, fingers threading into her hair where her mother had wrenched it. She’d never seen the queen so enraged, so… untethered. She tried to back away, but Zenobia snatched her wrists and yanked her close with a punishing grip.

“Take it back! Change the prophecy! Say he will live!” The desperation in her mother’s eyes was unsettling, her grip bruising as she clutched Alethea’s arms in a viselike hold.

“I… I can’t!” she sobbed. It was cruel of her mother to even ask. Ever since she could speak, Alethea had never been able to tell a lie. A curse for her blessing of foresight. “Mother, please!”

Zenobia stopped, releasing her from her imprisoning grasp. Alethea wondered if her mother had taken pity on her and was giving her some sort of reprieve. A long moment passed.

Then the queen’s expression turned to stone, and Alethea crumbled under her withering stare.

“You cursed him. You’vedestroyedus.”

The words cut deeper than any blade ever could.

Zenobia stood to her full height, the entire force of her malice coming down on the princess. “When our enemies comefor our throne, when they tear down these walls around us, when they hang our bodies from the gallows… remember, girl,youspoke this fate.”

“No,” Alethea pleaded, a pathetic puddle at her mother’s feet. She had witnessed that gaze before, heard that tone leveled at others. But her father had always stood between them. Now, with no one to shield her, she finally understood what it meant to be truly cut down by the queen.

The queen’s retreat was marked by the echo of her footsteps against the stone floor. As she neared the door, she turned with chilling deliberation, her eyes boring into Alethea’s heart, featuring a mix of disappointment, anger, and desperate expectation.

“You will fix this,” she assured her. “Or I will.”

Her words hung heavily in the air like a prophecy of her own.

The room seemed to be closing in around Alethea, and after a slam of the massive wooden door, she was utterly alone. Sobs rose through her chest, but she would not let herself cry. With her jaw set and her fists clenched, she sat alone in the room where her father was dying—and understood, for the first time, that no one was coming to save her.

“Each Oracle teaches the same lesson: the Weave does not grant power; it lends it.

The Bloodwright severed divine lines until his own unraveled. The Mnemosyne bore perfect memory until theirs disappeared.

Gift and curse, forever entwined.”

—ON THE NATURE OF ORACLES AND THEIR BURDENS, BY JASPER HAWTHORNE

CHAPTER ONE