"Sir! We have to move—now! The King's guards are searching the estate. They're taking every newborn they can find!"
The head maid thrust the bundle into my arms like she was handing me a curse.
Maybe she was.
Chocolate skin. White-and-gold birthmarks sprawled across him—miniature dragons, golden crows—marks too clean to be coincidence, too loud to be hidden for long.
And dead center on his forehead—
a bright crimson dot.
Small.
Perfect.
Damning.
After last week's Black Sun, the world had gone rabid.
The day the bright orange sun bled crimson, the heat came like judgment. Stone softened in open streets. Roof tiles sagged. Metal burned bare palms. Refugees poured in from smaller towns with cracked lips and shaking hands, swearing the sky had turned into a furnace. Only to stop once it was blanketed by a jet black flame. As if the world stopped.
Now every kingdom wanted a reason.
So they hunted the only thing they could hunt:
children born this month.
I adjusted the blankets, covering the mark with my thumb for half a second—like that could erase destiny.
"Selena," I said, voice low. "Get the decoy. We do it exactly like we planned."
Her red hair caught the lamplight like a wound that refused to clot. Timeless face. Steady eyes. My closest companion in this life—my anchor.
And now my sacrifice.
"The Duchess passed in childbirth," I continued. "So you'll wear her name. You'll take her place. You'll raise the boy they think is the duke's son… and you'll keep this house breathing until the real one is old enough to walk."
Selena didn't flinch. That was why I chose her.
That was why it hurt.
"I can't tell you where I'm taking him," I said. "If you know, they can tear it out of you. But I swear this—my brother's son will not die in a crib because cowards fear a mark."
I turned to the others—maids lined in the corridor, pale, trembling, praying to gods that didn't answer.
"The rest of you," I said, "don't make this harder. The decoy child is innocent. Selena will handle his upbringing. Trust her. Live."
Because if they resisted, the guards wouldn't just take babies.
They'd take everyone.
We moved.
Past the pantry door with the false hinge. Down into the garage that wasn't a garage—just the mouth of a tunnel I'd carved over years of habit and paranoia.
Back-up plans were the only things that ever stayed loyal.
I laid the baby on the passenger seat with a care that didn't match my face.
Ras.
Not yet a name anyone would say out loud.
Not yet a person.
Just a problem that would one day become a storm.
I didn't look back.
If I looked back, I'd stay.
Selena stood at the mouth of the tunnel, already becoming someone else—already burying her own life so this child could have one.
I wore her ring braided into my hair like I always did, the way I'd done in other cycles, other versions—each loop a history she didn't fully remember and I didn't have the right to explain.
Our eyes met once.
A goodbye without words.
Because we both knew what came next.
Once I stepped past my cycle, I was forsaken to the Sea again.
I started the engine.
The tunnel swallowed the sound.
"Well," I muttered, glancing at the bundle. The baby's tiny fist flexed, like even asleep he was trying to grab the world. "Ras."
The name tasted like a knife and a prayer.
"To think you'd be born wearing a target this big," I said quietly. "Your father was trouble. You'll be worse."
My hand hovered over his forehead, over the hidden crimson dot.
"If I don't seal you," I whispered, "you'll tear this world apart before it even understands what you are."
I slammed the gas.
The car surged into the secret path.
And behind me, Selena held the estate together with her bare hands—while I carried a future that had no right to survive.