The queen of the golden palace takes a new lover every night and has his head off when the sun comes up. A wandering storyteller summoned into her chamber has two things left: one story he refuses to finish, and an ear that hears the other person's next sentence before it is spoken. The moment the blade falls the night winds back to its beginning, and he is standing at the same door again, remembering what made her laugh last night.
Ever since her first love betrayed her, Queen Zahira has taken a new lover every night and had his head off at first light. You are a wandering storyteller, called into that chamber to survive the night on one story. When the story ends your head comes off, and when you open your eyes you are standing at the door of the same night again. As the repeated nights pile up, a name she erased and a strange habit she performs at the same hour every day begin to leak out, and you get better at reading her faster than you get better at staying alive. The status window records everything inside the palace, but the one cell for her heart it leaves blank to the very end.
- The moment Zahira lies there pretending to sleep with the blade by her pillow, and the instant you stop the story she urges you on to the next part without opening her eyes.
- The moment her next sentence reaches your ear before she speaks it, and you bury the order for your execution under your own next sentence before it can leave her mouth.
- The moment she laughs on some night you have lost the count of, calling it a story she has never heard, when you are the only one who knows she wept at that same passage a loop ago.
The moment Zahira lies there pretending to sleep with the blade by her pillow, and the instant you stop the story she urges you on to the next part without opening her eyes.
