The night Prince David was born, his mother died crying his name.
Queen Nyara's gasped her final breath just as the child was pulled from her womb slimed with blood, silent, and staring at the world as though it had already betrayed him. Thunder cracked over the palace of Aurelion, and the midwives froze, their hands trembling around a life no one wanted to acknowledge.
"A son," one whispered.
"A curse," another answered.
The bells of birth were never rung.
In the corridors beyond the birthing chamber, the other queens waited not with joy, but calculation. In a palace ruled by polygamy, a dead queen meant opportunity, and a newborn prince without a mother meant weakness.
"Let him be raised by servants," Queen Maleth said coldly. "He has no womb to defend him now."
King Aerion did not argue.
He stood over Nyara's lifeless body, grief sealed behind a king's silence, and looked once at the child who had cost her everything. Queen Nyara was the king's favorite,he loved her and now he would try to love and shield the child but he can't help but feel hatred at that moment for the child because the child had cost him the love of his life.In his thoughts thoughts the infant should not have been able to sense—was a single, heavy truth:
This boy will either destroy us… or save us.
David did not cry.
He lay still, eyes open, absorbing the storm of hatred, fear, and ambition pouring into the room. Minds brushed against his like knives. Even as a newborn, he felt it resentment from the queens, disgust from the princes, dread from the servants ordered to carry him away.
From that moment, David was alone.
He grew up motherless in a palace overflowing with mothers who despised him. The sons of other queens were bathed in affection, trained openly, praised loudly. David was tolerated nothing more.
By the age of four, he understood what no child should.
People thought around him.
Not words—intentions. Emotions pressed into him without permission. Hatred burned the strongest.
Prince Malrec, the eldest, passed him in the courtyard one morning and thought:
He should have died with her.
David stopped playing that day.
By five, he knew to lower his eyes when the queens passed. By six, he knew which servants wished him gone. By seven, he had learned the art of invisibility not by hiding his body, but by masking his mind.
Because the truth was terrifying.
David could read thoughts.
The power came with pain. Each emotion struck him like a blow. Rage was heat. Envy was rot. Fear crawled beneath his skin. He learned quickly to build walls in his mind, to pretend ignorance, to smile softly when his brothers mocked him.
They thought him weak.
They were wrong.
The absence of a mother hardened him in ways affection never could. While his brothers trained to rule, David trained to survive. He listened. He learned. He memorized the politics of polygamy the way queens turned sons into weapons, the way favor was a silent war.
And despite himself, the king began to favor him.
King Aerion never touched David openly, never praised him in public but whenever David entered the room, the king's thoughts softened.
He listens.
He understands consequences.
He knows loss.
Favor spread like poison.
The queens noticed.
The brothers noticed.
Hatred deepened.
The first attempt on David's life came quietly.
Poisoned wine. A trembling servant. Fear leaking through thought like ink in water.
David sensed it before the cup reached his lips. Death felt cold, patient waiting. He pretended to drink. He collapsed. His body convulsed. Panic erupted.
That night, hidden in a forgotten chamber beside his mother's tomb, David learned something new.
He could slow his heart.
Still it.
Convince the world he was dead.
The ability frightened him more than mind-reading ever had. It felt unnatural like stepping into the grave and choosing to return. But he understood immediately why it existed.
To survive this family, his mind whispered, you must die first.
death was the safest disguise of all.