Tags: fantasy, romance, AI story, free reading, NovelHot
Synopsis
I am a Whisperer, one of the last of my kind. I have the power to bargain with the gods, to perform a Spirit Dance that can alter fate. But every miracle has a price. I have danced twice for William, the prince I love. The first dance cost me my sight. The second, my youth, turning my hair to silver. He swore I would never have to dance again. He lied. Now, after ten years together, his politically-appointed wife, Elara, is dying, and William is begging me to perform the third and final dance to save her life. He tells me the cost is a small price to pay for a life, but he doesn’t understand the sacrifice. The third dance takes what you hold most dear. To save my rival, I will have to give up the one thing I cannot bear to lose: my memories of him. He thinks he can save his wife and keep me. He’s wrong. This last dance won’t just save a life—it will shatter a love built on sacrifice and rewrite our past into nothing but dust.
Chapter 1: The Third Request
Ten years. I’d loved William for ten years. Now he wanted me to use my final Spirit Dance to save his wife—the woman he’d been married to for seven of them.
“You know there’s a price,” I told him, my voice flat.
He didn’t even flinch. “Jane, it’s just some thing. A trinket. For her, it’s her life!”
He got his wish. I danced for the third time.
And the price was him. I forgot everything.
I’m a Whisperer. I can perform the Spirit Dance three times in my life. The first two were for him. After each, he’d kept me tucked away in this manor, a secret everyone knew. The Prince who didn’t love his Princess; he loved the nameless Whisperer. He’d turned down every girl who threw herself at him.
“My heart only has room for Jane,” he’d say.
But on our tenth anniversary, he wasn’t here. I sat in front of a table of cold food, watching the sun go down. He said he was busy. A lie. His wife, the Princess, was sick again. He was with her.
She was his wife, by law and by title. A tragic figure, really. We were first, a love story written in stolen moments. The royal marriage came later. To prove his heart was mine, he hadn’t even performed the ceremony with her. He barely knew her name.
“Elara is sick… Who’s Elara?” he’d asked once, genuinely confused, while overseeing the laying of gravel paths. The paths were for me. Because I was blind, he’d made every walkway a terrain I could navigate by sound. He’d even removed all the thresholds. He’d test them himself, blindfolded, and come back covered in bruises, laughing it off.
He used to be so careful with me.
Now, he was careful with someone else.
“She’s dying, Jane,” he’d said last night. “Don’t fight me on this. Not now.”
So I didn’t.
I listened to the servants outside, their voices carrying on the evening breeze.
“It’s so festive tonight! The Prince is giving the Princess a proper wedding night, to bring her good fortune!”
“Shh! Don’t let her hear you! He doesn’t want her to know.”
Right. So easy to keep a secret from a blind woman. If they just whispered, I’d know nothing. I wouldn’t know that while I waited for him, he was sharing a candlelit room with another woman.
I just stood there. Listening. Waiting. He told me not to fight, so I wouldn’t. I knew when a battle was already lost.
Later, wrapped in cold sheets, I stared into the darkness. He finally came back, smelling of medicine and guilt, and slid his arms around me from behind.
“Jane. You have to save her.”
My heart turned to ice. “And how do you want me to do that?”
His silence was a blade. It twisted, sharp and serrated, before he finally spoke, the words tearing from his throat.
“You still have the third dance…”
I said nothing.
He must have read the refusal in my silence because his grip tightened on my shoulders. “Jane, for you it’s just giving up some trinket! For her, it’s her life!”
His words hit me like a physical blow. I was blind, but I could imagine the look on his face. In ten years, he’d never spoken to me like that. Not once. He’d always been weighed down by guilt, treating me like fragile glass. He’d wash my feet without a word of complaint.
He must have realized his mistake. I heard the rustle of silk as he softened his grip, taking my hand. I tried to pull away, but he held on tight.
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