Madlenka awoke pressed up against the warmth of her husband’s back. She did not know what had caused her to wake but she felt distinctly uneasy and nauseous. Also she desperately needed to go to the bathroom as she often did during the night lately.

She gently wiggled over to the side of the bed, sitting up and pulling back the covers carefully so as not to wake the sleeping figure next to her. Not that she could have woken him, Eallair slept like the dead, a trait she had often thought, not particularly useful for a king to possess. Luckily she slept so lightly that the slightest noise would awaken her, and so was the best guard of all for her husband while he snored beside her.

She did not light a candle, despite all the evidence that it would not disturb Eallair, instead choosing to shuffle blindly to the door. It did not seem so dark to her anyway, in fact there was a red glow coming from the chamber next to theirs, as though someone had already lit a candle in there.

When she looked into the chamber she saw that there was no candle lit, and there was a figure standing facing her. She screamed filled with sudden heart-clenching terror, but even this did not wake Eallair.

A woman stood in the room before her, clutching a tiny baby in her arms. She seemed somehow ethereal, surrounded by a mist that seemed to emanate from the space she occupied. She did not seem to notice Madlenka standing at the doorway but was entirely focused on the tiny baby she held in her arms.

Madlenka choked back a gasp as she recognised the woman standing before her. It was her very own mother, wearing the regal robes of Lomorrad, the very robes they had buried her in. Madlenka could have been staring into the mirror, she bore such a close resemblance to her, but Laela’s skin was pallid, her eyes sunken and hollow, the skin on face drawn back slightly revealing her teeth more than was normal.

Madlenka felt a confusing blend of emotions, terror at the apparition standing before her, wonder at seeing her mother again and a desperate longing to be wrapped in those cold dead arms and bury her face in the red hair that hung limply around her mother’s face.

She felt a sharp tongue of jealousy wrap itself around her heart and squeeze. Her mother did not even notice her, oblivious to all but the babe she clutched to her chest.

She remember the day they had buried her mother, the sky had been filled with dark clouds as they stood before the family crypt. As they carried her to her final resting place, the skies had suddenly opened, rain pouring down on the mourners and on the body of her tiny, frail mother and the dead baby she held in her arms. She remembered the sharp prick of the raindrops, millions of tiny needles burying themselves deep into her arms, the rising smell of the cemetery soil in the rain and the salty taste of the tears that ran freely down her face. She had only been ten shivering as she clutched tightly at her younger brother, fused to him in sorrow. Her poor mother, whose body had seemed averse to bearing children, to lose her life giving birth to the last.

Suddenly her mother seemed to notice she was there, staring at her hollowly, a flicker of recognition in her dulled eyes.

She moved slowly towards Madlenka, her walk marred by an unnatural stiffness in her limbs.

Madlenka’s heart was pounding in her throat, as she stood unable to move, paralysed with fear, a sick feeling growing in her stomach.

Her mother smiled at her, a dreadful cracked smile, which contorted what had once been a beautiful face into something horrifying.

Madlenka understood she meant for her to take the baby from her, the woman was trying to press the squirming thing into her arms.

She looked down at it, her dead brother and was shocked to see Eallair’s eyes staring back at her. She reached out her arms tentatively as her mother placed the baby in them.

Madlenka awoke with a jolt, sobbing uncontrollably with tears pouring down her face.

Eallair was awakened at the sound of her distress as she pushed herself out of bed and crashed into the wall beside it.

He ran around the side of the bed, pulling his shaking, weeping wife into his arms holding her tightly against his chest and stroking her hair. He did not know what else to do.