Giver of Gold: Ammut & Aric
Beneath the palace walls, where no light dared go, the Crow had hidden. For months now, not a soul had seen her. Some had started to doubt she was still in Nore at all, but, oh, she was. And, oh, she was far from idle in the dungeons deep. With her cauldron of gold, and her brew of everything unholy in the world, she made the perfect gift for the infant prince.
Theodric. How sweet the sound, how sweet the sight. It made her sick. The Caddocks, celebrating and naming a babe before it had even started to teethe. The were sentimental fools. He wouldn’t survive the year. Especially if Ammut had something to say about it, and she had something to say about everything. So she’d cook him a spell. A subtle, slow-working thing that would seem like nothing more dangerous than a golden ring. In fact, it was nothing more than a golden ring.
In appearance, anyway.
Once slipped over his fat little wrist, the infant would no longer belong to the Caddocks. His teeth would grow in sharp, and his eyes would fade to black, rather than the pretty Caddock Blue. He’d be her creature to command and to craft into her perfect little spy, and her perfect little flesh-and-blood sacrifice at the end of it all.
A darkness fell over the Palace when the iron door finally opened. Ammut filled the corridor like a shadow, like a sickness, leaving what remained of her ingredients and meals to rot beside her pot. She held the bracelet in an obsidian box, jeweled and ornate and everything she liked in a trinket.
It could not have been much past dawn.
Curtains were not yet drawn, and lit candles were snuffed out as she passed. (Ammut always did like making an entrance.) Up the stairs, through the halls, and past each wing of the palace until she could smell him -- the king with his weak blood and old heart, and his pretty perfumed bath heating up the air around him. She snapped her fingers. Somewhere, blood was spilled, and it mixed with freshly-fallen rain. With this mixture, Ammut drew the power to turn herself to smoke, seeping through the walls until she found the king.
“You must think me terribly discourteous,” she mourned. Her voice echoed around the room before she materialized completely. “I’ve been away for so long, I have not even joined you for a simple meal.”
Her black gown spilled across the floor as her wicked eyes took in the king and all his vulnerability. With sorrow and guilt painted across her sharp features, Ammut decided his figure was left wanting. He had grown fat and old. A terrible thing for a monarch to be.
She held out the box with delicate hands. “I do hope this gift is enough to make up for it. A small thing for your newest son, to show even I am happy to have him in this world.”
