CHAPTER 245: CHOICE

SOREN

The bed was too soft for someone who’d just held divinity in their mortal hands.

I laid Eris down carefully, adjusting pillows beneath her head, smoothing ash-streaked hair away from her face.

Her skin still burned under my touch, hot enough that I half-expected the silk sheets to char.

But they didn’t. Just darkened slightly where her body pressed against them, absorbing heat that had nowhere else to go.

The physicians arrived in a rush of footsteps and medical bags, three of them led by Ryse himself.

The best healers in the empire... two men in their middle years and one ancient woman whose hands shook with age but whose eyes remained sharp as winter stars.

They descended on Eris like crows on a battlefield.

Checking pulse, breathing, pupil dilation. Examining the cracks spider-webbing across her skin, touching them gently, murmuring to each other in the shorthand language all physicians seemed to share.

One pulled a crystal from his bag, held it over her chest, watched it glow faint orange in response to the residual divine power still radiating from her core.

I stood at the foot of the bed and waited. Watching. Not interfering. My hands clenched into fists at my sides, nails cutting crescents into my palms.

The head physician... the old woman whose name was Maren and who’d delivered half the noble children in Nevareth... finally straightened from her examination. She looked at me with eyes that had seen plagues and wars and emperors rise and fall.

"She’ll live Your Majesty."

The relief hit me like a physical blow. My shoulders sagged, tension draining so suddenly I had to lock my knees to keep from swaying. I wanted to sit, to collapse, to let the fear I’d been holding back for hours finally surface. But I was the emperor. So I stood.

"But?" I asked, because there was always a but.

Maren wiped her hands on a cloth, methodical and thorough. "Extreme exhaustion. Mana depletion beyond anything I’ve seen in forty years of practice.

Divine power burn throughout her entire system... every vein, every organ, every bone. It’s a miracle she’s breathing at all."

"Will she recover?"

"With rest. Lots of it." Maren packed away her instruments with practiced efficiency. "Days, maybe weeks before she wakes. Her body needs time to remember how to be mortal again. The power she channeled..."

She trailed off, shaking her head.

"Your Majesty, I’ve treated battle mages who pushed past their limits. They burn out, lose their magic permanently, sometimes die from the strain. What she did should have killed her ten times over."

"But it didn’t."

"No." Maren looked at Eris with something between awe and fear. "It didn’t. Whatever’s inside her, it’s keeping her alive. Barely. But alive."

I dismissed them with a gesture. They bowed and filed out, taking their bags and concerned whispers with them. The door closed with a soft click, leaving me alone with the woman who’d burned herself to save my empire.

I moved to the chair beside the bed and sat heavily.

Eris slept fitfully. Her face twisted occasionally, brow furrowing like she was arguing with someone in her dreams.

Sometimes her skin would glow faintly gold, light pulsing beneath the surface like embers under ash.

The overwhelming being settling back into dormancy, I realized. The dragon retreating into whatever space he occupied inside her, content to rest now that the battle was won.

I reached out, placing my palm flat against her chest just above her heart.

Another strange thing was happening.

The seal was reforming. I felt it like ice crystallizing in reverse... structure building itself slowly, one piece at a time.

How could this be?

Too many strange things had happened in one evening that I wasn’t even too alarmed.

But the seal was different than before. Weaker. More cracks running through it, fault lines that hadn’t existed when her father first carved the prison.

The dragon had been fully unleashed, and now that he was being sealed again, the barriers weren’t as strong.

They’d never be as strong again.

A knock at the door pulled my attention away.

"Enter."

Ryse stepped in, still in full armor, soot streaking his breastplate. His eyes went immediately to Eris, scanning her with the trained assessment of a career soldier checking if his comrade would make it.

"Will she live?" His voice was rough, tired.

I nodded.

He released a breath I hadn’t realized he was holding, shoulders dropping slightly.

"Good. I always thought Lady Eris was kind, you know. Even when she looked the opposite. The way she carries herself, the precision of her cruelty... it’s calculated. Intentional. People who are truly cruel don’t think about it that much."

"Precisely." I found myself nodding again, though I hadn’t expected Ryse to see her so clearly.

He shifted his weight, and I caught the expression on his face... the careful neutrality soldiers wore when delivering bad news.

"How bad was it?" I asked.

"Very bad, Your Majesty."

He pulled a folded report from his belt, but didn’t hand it over immediately. Just held it, like the parchment itself was heavy with the weight of what it contained.

"Confirmed dead: two hundred and seventeen souls. Another thirty-three missing, but..."

He swallowed. "At this point, we’re just finding ash piles, Your Majesty. No way to identify individuals. Families are claiming multiple piles, hoping one of them is their loved one."

Two hundred and seventeen. Each one a name, a life, a future cut short.

"Structural damage spans two districts. One is a complete loss—nothing salvageable. The eastern market will need to be rebuilt from foundation up. Estimated cost in gold..." He named a figure that would have made my treasury master weep.

I listened to all of it. Every casualty, every ruined building, every family left homeless or grieving or both. This was my empire. My people. My responsibility.

My failure.

Perhaps I had underestimated Vetra’s cruelty. Had thought of her too careful to do plan such a disaster. I knew she wouldn’t sit by but what I hadn’t expected was to sacrifice hundreds of lives to make a point.

I could have had her arrested, executed on the spot but not without the threat of another civil war. Vetra wouldn’t die without making sure I had no empire left to run.

Still I knew I needed to be patient...

"Survivor testimonies are being collected," Ryse continued.

"Most remember the demons, the heat, the screaming. Some remember His Majesty’s barrier going up, containing the worst of it. And many..."

He paused.

"Many remember Lady Eris. Floating above the destruction with wings of black fire, speaking words that shook the earth, banishing demons back to hell."

"Do they blame her?"

"Some do. Some say the demons came because of her, because fire attracts fire. But others..." Ryse met my eyes. "Others say she saved them. That without her, the entire capital would have burned."

Both could be true. Probably were true. The world wasn’t simple enough for clear villains and heroes anymore.

"That’s all for now, Your Majesty. I’ll have more detailed reports in the morning."

"Thank you, Ryse. Get some rest."

He bowed, turned to leave, then hesitated at the door. His hand rested on the handle but didn’t turn it. "Your Majesty?"

"Yes?"

"What you did today... the barrier, protecting as many as you could... You did your best. The people saw their emperor fighting for them. They won’t forget that."

He left before I could respond.

I sat in silence, listening to Eris’s shallow breathing, watching her chest rise and fall with mechanical regularity. The report Ryse had given me sat on the bedside table, unread. I’d look at it eventually. Would memorize every name, every loss, every failure. Would carry them with me like I carried all the others.

But not yet.

I took Eris’s hand, folding it gently between both of mine. Her fingers were still too warm, too fragile, bones like bird wings wrapped in skin. I pressed my thumb against her pulse point and felt that faint, stubborn rhythm that meant alive, meant fighting, meant surviving.

I remembered everything that had happened. The demons pouring through the rift, my barrier straining under pressure, the moment I’d thought we were going to lose.

Eris walking away from me, floating into the air with divine fire wreathing her body, speaking words that bent reality itself.

And before all that... the kiss.

Gods, the kiss.

I’d never kissed anyone before. And I wasn’t saving my first for any particular reason other than not being interested...

But kissing Eris had been like touching lightning. Like falling into fire and discovering it didn’t burn so much as transform.

She’d kissed me back. Had poured herself into it with the same intensity she poured into everything... desperate and fierce and honest. And when she’d pulled away, stuttering for the first time in her life, she’d promised to come back.

What do you think that meant?

Everything. It meant everything.

I looked down at her hand in mine, at the cracks still visible along her wrist, at the faint glow of divine power that would probably never fully leave her now that Pyronox had been unleashed.

And I realized, with the cold certainty of ice forming on still water, that I was utterly doomed.

Because if the time came to choose... Eris or my empire, her life or my throne, her safety or my people... I already knew my decision.

I’d choose her.

Every single time, without hesitation, I would choose her.

Even if it cost me everything. Even if it meant abandoning the empire my ancestors had built, turning my back on the throne I’d sworn to protect, becoming the worst kind of ruler imaginable.

I would choose Eris.

The realization should have terrified me. Should have sent me spiraling into guilt and self-recrimination and questions about my fitness to rule. But instead, I just felt... certain. Calm. Like I’d finally stopped fighting against something inevitable and accepted it.

I loved her.

Not the careful, measured affection of political alliances or the calculated devotion of strategic marriages. Just love... simple and complicated and terrifying and perfect.

I loved the woman whom people saw nothing but destruction and villainy.

Snow continued falling outside my windows, blanketing the capital in white. Somewhere in the city, families mourned their dead. Somewhere, my treasury master was calculating costs. Somewhere, probably multiple somewheres, people were whispering about the fire queen who’d brought demons to their doorstep.

But they could whisper.

I tightened my grip on Eris’s hand, brought it to my lips, pressed a kiss against her knuckles that tasted of ash and salt and survival.

"Come back to me," I whispered against her skin. "I’m waiting. I’ll always wait."

The candles burned lower. The night deepened. And I sat vigil beside the woman who’d stolen my heart somewhere between her arrival in Nevareth and the moment she’d chosen to burn herself to save my people.

Outside, the empire awaited its emperor’s judgment, its ruler’s decision, its sovereign’s wisdom.

Inside, a man held the hand of the woman he loved and prayed to gods he wasn’t sure existed that she’d open her eyes again.

That was all that mattered.

That was all that would ever matter again.