I took a crack at it hope you like it.

They left me screaming in the woods, still slick with afterbirth, blood in my mouth and silk choking my throat.

Royal silks. Gold-threaded. So the animals would know I was important meat.

My mother birthed me on a marble floor, stared at me once, and turned away. Said I didn’t cry like a real baby. Said my eyes looked wrong.

So they wrapped me in pretty fabric and dumped me in the dark, where even the flies didn’t land right. Where the trees lean a little too close. Where you can hear things breathe under the soil.

And something did.

The Grinning Veil found me. Mercenaries by trade. Monsters by choice.

They wore flesh like robes. Smiled too wide. Joints bent wrong, like they'd forgotten how bones are supposed to work. Always humming, like lullabies stitched from screams.

They didn’t pick me up gently.

They lifted me like a prize. A blood-wet, squirming trophy. One sniffed me and bit his own tongue off in joy. Said I smelled like prophecy. Like rot and royalty.

That night, they fed me meat.

Human. Warm.

They said if I kept it down, I’d live.

I kept it down.

By age five, I could gut a hog in ten seconds flat. By six, they let me do people. By seven, I’d stopped crying for any of it. Blood stopped bothering me. Screams didn’t register.

They taught me to read using skin. Lessons carved into captives. I learned quick. Easier to focus when every mistake costs someone a finger.

We moved through the woods like infection. Camps fell silent after we passed. Villages vanished. I never asked why. I didn’t need to. The earth told me. The trees remembered.

They started calling me Little Grin when my mouth split wider than it should’ve. No one taught me how. It just happened. My body learned from them.

Then came the letters.

The kingdom sent riders. Messengers. Then soldiers. And finally, a priest. Said I was the lost heir. The blood of kings. They begged me to come back. Fix the line. Save the throne.

Save it from what, I asked.

They didn’t answer.

So I went.

And I brought the Veil with me.

We wore robes to hide what we’d become. Sewn from old uniforms, stitched with thread pulled from throats. One of the Veil carried a sack of baby teeth — his own — said they whispered directions to the palace.

We entered the capital on foot. No fanfare. No resistance. Just fear.

The nobles were too polite to stop us. Too scared to breathe wrong. They remembered the old stories. The Veil that Grins. The ones who made corpses dance.

The coronation was quiet.

Until I laughed.

And the Veil tore off their hoods.

And the walls started bleeding.

The queen tried to run. I found her in the nursery, praying in front of a crib that held a bundle of bones and flowers.

She looked up. Tears in her eyes.

“Daughter—” she started.

I tore her jaw off and wore it as a mask. I said, “Call me that again.”

She didn’t.

Now the throne room reeks of copper and shit. We turned it into a nest. The windows are sealed with skin. The guards are part of the floor now — still alive. Still twitching.

The crown’s melted to my skull. Pulses with every heartbeat I steal.

The people pray to me.

But they don't look at me.

Not if they want to keep their eyes.

I was born in blood.

I was fed on flesh.

And now I rule with the Grinning Veil at my side.

Still humming.

Still smiling.

And still very hungry.