CHAPTER 231: ZAHKAR

ERIS

I watched him ride away.

Soren... the man who’d been feeding me pastries and making me blush like some lovesick fool just minutes ago... transformed into the Ice Emperor of legend as he descended the mountain path.

Frost spread from his horse’s hooves, creating a trail of white against dark stone. His guards formed a protective wedge around him, their movements synchronized, weapons already drawn despite the distance between mountaintop and capital.

He didn’t look back.

"To the palanquin, Your Imperial Highness."

The title still felt foreign. Wrong. I’d been a queen, a villainess, a monster wearing a crown... but "Imperial Highness" suggested I belonged here, suggested Nevareth was mine to claim, and right now it felt like a lie told to comfort children before the darkness came.

Imperial guards surrounded me... not the elite fighters who’d followed Soren toward battle, but the ones assigned to protect rather than engage, the ones whose sole purpose was ensuring I reached safety regardless of what happened to anyone else. Their faces were professional, concerned, already calculating the fastest route back to the palace that avoided the outer districts entirely.

Away from danger.

Away from the screaming I could hear even at this distance, carried on wind that shouldn’t be able to travel sound across miles of mountain terrain but somehow managed it anyway.

Away from the people who needed help more than I needed protection.

I could still feel it... the fire beneath the city, the heat signature that registered against my own magic like discordant note in a familiar song.

The same from two nights ago, that strange sensation while Soren had me pinned against his office door, that cold-foreign-hungry presence that I’d dismissed as stress or imagination or anything except what it apparently was: warning.

The universe trying to tell me that something terrible was stirring and I was somehow connected to it.

This fire felt familiar in ways that made my chest tight with dread. Not my fire... I knew my own power intimately, knew its rhythm and flavor and the specific way it moved through my veins.

This was something else. Wrong fire. Corrupted fire. Fire that had been twisted from its original purpose into something that existed only to destroy, to burn, to reduce everything it touched to ash and screaming.

Zahkar.

The name rose from memories I didn’t know I possessed, from knowledge that came with housing a dragon god, from Pyronox’s own recognition of his former servants now perverted into weapons.

They had been beautiful once, the Zahkar. Divine soldiers created by Pyronox to protect humanity’s first fires, to guard the gift of flame against those who would misuse it. But centuries of imprisonment in hell’s depths had corrupted them, had transformed guardians into monsters, had turned divine purpose into demonic rage.

And someone had summoned them.

Someone had cracked the seal that kept them imprisoned, had opened a door between realms that should have stayed permanently closed, had unleashed forces that would burn until there was nothing left to consume.

This was my fault.

The thought hit like physical blow, stealing breath, making the fire in my chest surge with guilt and fury in equal measure.

It had to be connected to me. The timing was too perfect... demons of fire appearing just as I arrived in this frozen kingdom, just as I prepared to marry its Emperor, just as prophecies spoke of reshaping the empire through our union. Someone wanted to destroy that future, wanted to paint me as the threat, wanted to make Soren choose between his bride and his people.

And they’d succeeded spectacularly.

"Your Highness, please." The guard captain’s voice carried urgency barely concealed by professional courtesy. "We must move quickly."

I let them guide me to the palanquin... an elaborate construction of carved wood and silk curtains, designed to transport nobility in comfort while protecting them from weather and common sight. It was beautiful and useless and everything I’d always hated about being royalty, about being something precious that needed protecting rather than something dangerous that could protect itself.

The curtains closed around me, cutting off my view of the darkening sky, of the smoke rising in the distance, of everything except luxurious interior and my own racing thoughts.

Guards positioned themselves around the palanquin. I heard orders being given, felt the structure lift as bearers took their positions, felt the first swaying steps as we began moving away from the mountain altar, away from the ceremony site, away from everything burning in the capital below.

But I could still hear it.

Distant screaming that shouldn’t have been audible at this distance, that my magic somehow amplified or my guilt conjured or possibly both.

The sound of terror, of agony, of people dying in ways that fire made particularly horrible because burning alive gave you time to understand exactly what was happening before unconsciousness or death granted mercy.

I could smell the smoke too... acrid, thick, carrying undertones of burning wood and flesh and everything that made cities function reduced to component elements and scattered on wind.

And I could feel the heat. Even miles away, even separated by mountain terrain and altitude and every possible physical barrier, my fire magic sensed its corrupted cousins and responded with recognition that felt like nausea, like looking at a reflection that had been twisted into something monstrous.

My seal throbbed again.

The sensation was unmistakable now... A small crack spreading through the magical structure that contained Pyronox, releasing a little more pressure, a little more power, a little more of the dragon’s desperate desire to be free and whole and unchained.

The fire begged for release.

I could feel it like living thing inside my chest, like prisoner pleading through bars, like force of nature that understood it could save those people if I would just let it out, just allow it to do what fire did best when properly motivated.

Fight fire with fire. Burn the corruption. Purify through flame what had been perverted by imprisonment and rage.

I’d promised Soren I wouldn’t use my magic.

Had looked him in the eyes and given my word that I would stay safe, would protect myself first, would not risk the catastrophic loss of control that could kill more people than the demons were currently managing.

But they were dying down there.

Soren’s people. Nevarians who feared me, who whispered about the foreign fire witch, who’d never wanted me as their Empress but who deserved protection regardless of their opinions of me.

Mine nonetheless.

The thought crystallized with perfect clarity, sharp as ice, bright as flame.

They were mine. My responsibility. My people by virtue of the crown I’d accepted, by the marriage I’d agreed to, by the simple fact that I had power and they were dying and doing nothing made me complicit in their slaughter.

I couldn’t live with that.

Wouldn’t live with that.

I had spent my first life as a monster and my second trying to be something better, and watching people burn while I rode to safety was not better, was not redemption, was just cowardice wearing the mask of prudence.

"Stop."

My voice cut through the rhythmic sound of bearers’ footsteps, through the guards’ quiet conversations, through everything.

The palanquin halted immediately. Curtains parted as the guard captain’s face appeared, confusion evident despite professional composure. "Your Highness?"

I stepped out before he could offer assistance, my feet hitting frozen ground with more force than grace, my entire body thrumming with decision made and consequences accepted.

"I’m going to the capital."

Silence.

The kind that isn’t empty, but full. Full of the unsaid, the impossible, the moment a world cracks.

"But His Imperial Majesty ordered—" the captain started, his voice already sounding like a eulogy for his own career.

"I don’t answer to orders." The words left my lips, and my eyes burned. I felt it—the dragon, surging against the cracking seal, not with rage, but with recognition. "I answer to myself. I am going."

"Your Highness, we cannot allow—"

I was already moving.

Running. Not as a queen, but as a weapon finally aimed. My focus narrowed to the horses. To Solara... white as a bone, temperament like a lightning strike. Guards shouted. Orders tangled into noise. They scrambled, a wave of silver and panic trying to form a wall between me and the end of the world.

I didn’t need a saddle. I had memory. Muscle. Desperation.

My hands found her mane. My legs locked around her barrel. I was a part of her, and she was a part of the fire building in my chest.

"HYAH!"

Solara erupted.

She didn’t run. She devoured the ground. She had been waiting, this creature of Solmire’s sun, for the moment when protocol died and speed was the only prayer left.

We rode toward the smoke.

Toward the screaming.

Toward the stupid, glorious end of a promise.