Revenants. The returned ones. Those who went to their graves, and then somehow … came back. She’d heard stories about them growing up, and as part of the royal court had played audience to knights with heart-pounding tales of the battle against unholy creatures who had already proven once how they would not die. But the accounts told of fangs and claws—neither of which the spindly gentleman before her possessed.

“It is time that you explained your business with me, Herr Kramer.” She settled her lips into a grim line.

“Are you not afraid?” He seemed surprised, perhaps even a little dismayed. “Most mortals run screaming when they learn what I am.”

“As you can well see,” she began with a sweeping gesture around her tidy and comfortable prison, “I have nowhere to run. And even if you were to take my life, you would only beat the king to my neck by a matter of days. But you speak of taking me out of the Tower, and I wish to know why.”

“I offer a condemned prisoner a chance to escape the axe and she wishes to question my purpose.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Very well. I shall be blunt: I know who you are, of course, and why you’re here—”

“I failed to birth a son,” she interjected bitterly. “Whatever you’ve heard, that is the reason I am here. His Majesty required a male heir, and my body could not produce one.”

“What if I told you that your body is destined to produce something so much greater than a mere prince? That in a matter of days, perhaps a week, you will change the very world as we know it—that you will reduce this king and his kingdom to nothing?”

“I would say that I am come to doubt your credentials as a fortune-teller,” she answered smartly. “In a week’s time, I shall be dead.”

And so he told her about the something she felt inside of her. He called it the Dark Star, and he explained its reach back into time so ancient that no written record of its origin existed. His vision was apocalyptic, and his belief in the truth of what he said was total.

At the conclusion of his tale, he renewed his offer. “This does not have to be how your story ends. Come with me. Spare yourself from the wrath of a spiteful and petty king who could not remain faithful to you for three whole winters.”

“You need not remind me of the weakness of my husband’s flesh.” Even now, he was planning his next wedding—to her own maid of honor, the conniving vixen. “You wish me to leave this place with you, to trade one hour of death for another, and my only reward is to become the mechanism that … does what, again? Permits the dead to rule the Earth?”