The third death was poison.
Aleksi had not meant for it, but the Empress's banquet offered opportunity. A jeweled cup placed before him, wine dark as blood, its surface rippling with an oily sheen.
The first time, he refused and was mocked.
The second time, he drank — and died within minutes, throat seared by fire, tongue blackened.
The third time, he drank again.
And when the poison worked through him, he studied it. He counted the beats of his faltering heart. He tracked the taste, the way it numbed his lips before burning deeper. He forced himself to note every sensation, every clue.
And then he woke again, gasping in his chamber, morning light slanting across his desk.
---
The cycle had rules. That much was clear.
But Elara's obsession carried its own rhythm, one just as dangerous.
Each audience with her grew stranger.
On the first cycle, she had been amused, her smile edged with hunger.
On the second, she laughed more often, her gaze lingering on him as though he were no longer simply a scholar but a puzzle she alone could solve.
By the fourth, she was studying him with something sharper than desire. Curiosity.
"Aleksi," she murmured one evening as the court dined, "you are unlike the others I've collected. They fear me. You do not."
Aleksi bowed his head, hiding the tremor in his hand. "Fear is easy, Majesty. Truth is harder."
Her eyes glimmered like knives catching the light.
"Truth. Yes. And your truth shifts, little scholar. One day you are timid. The next you are bold. Sometimes you flinch at shadows, other times you stare at me as though you've known me a lifetime."
Aleksi's throat tightened. She was seeing it. The changes. The fractures between lives.
The Empress leaned closer, her perfume cloying, roses and iron.
"Tell me… how many lives have you lived in my presence already?"
The question nearly stopped his breath. Did she know? Did she *feel* it, the way he returned each time? Or was she merely playing her endless games?
He forced a small smile. "Majesty flatters me. One life is already more than I deserve."
Her laughter rang out across the banquet hall. The courtiers laughed with her, though too nervously, unsure if she mocked or delighted in him.
But when the laughter faded, her eyes lingered on him, unblinking.
Watching. Weighing.
---
That night, Aleksi tested the curse again.
This time, he sought his own death deliberately, not by poison or accident, but by blade. He hid away in the scholar's archives, cut his palm, and pressed the wound deeper and deeper until blood poured across the table. His vision dimmed. His breath slowed.
And once again, the world ended.
When it began again, he staggered upright in his chamber, gasping. His palm unmarked. The mark on his chest burned brighter than ever, its hourglass symbol now etched so deeply he could see it faintly even in daylight.
The curse had limits. He could feel it. Each death pushed him closer.
Yet each return gave him more knowledge.
The poison. The Codex's syllables. The Empress's shifting moods.
Piece by piece, he was building a map of the trap he had been cast into.
---
The next morning, when he stood before Elara again, she dismissed the courtiers early. Only the guards remained, silent and still as statues.
"Scholar," she said softly, her gaze pinned on him. "I had a dream last night."
Aleksi inclined his head. "A dream, Majesty?"
"Yes," she said. "In it, you died. Over and over. Yet every time, you returned to me. You would not leave me. You could not. Tell me, Aleksi… was it a dream?"
His chest went cold. The mark beneath his skin throbbed painfully, as if it knew she spoke the truth aloud.
He swallowed, his voice steady though his blood roared in his ears.
"Majesty, dreams are only reflections of desire. Perhaps it was simply your will, shaping your sleep."
Elara smiled. Slow. Too knowing.
"Perhaps," she murmured. "But my dreams rarely lie."
She rose from her throne, every step a ripple of silk across the marble floor. She came so close he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes, the dangerous curve of her smile.
"If you are bound to return to me," she whispered, "then it is fate itself that has given you to me. Do not fight it, Aleksi. There is no need. What belongs to me does not escape."
Her hand brushed against his chest. For the first time, Aleksi flinched—because beneath her touch, the hourglass mark burned like fire.
And her eyes widened.
She felt it.
---
Aleksi staggered back, breath caught in his throat. The Empress's lips curved into something that was not quite a smile, not quite a snarl.
"So," she whispered. "It is true. You are mine, in ways even the Codex did not tell me."
The guards shifted. The air grew heavy.
Aleksi's heart pounded. She knew. Or enough of the truth to bind him tighter.
But the curse pulsed within him, its hourglass mark glowing faintly through his tunic. And for the first time, he saw not only her obsession—but her hunger. If she understood the curse, if she learned to wield it… she would never need armies. She would never need fear. She would be eternal.
And she would never let him die free.
---
That night, Aleksi wrote only a single line in his journal.
The Empress suspects. Soon she will know. And when she does, I must already be ready.
He stared at the words until the ink bled into the parchment.
Because if Elara ever mastered the Hourglass Curse herself, there would be no cycle left for him to break.
Only her eternity.
And his endless chains.