CHAPTER 63: HERO/A MOTHER’S GIFT

The corridor was almost too quiet as they stretched endlessly.

Only the sound of my heels against marble filled the air... steady, echoing, too loud for how fragile I suddenly felt. The ballroom’s din had faded behind me.

Above, through the high windows, lightning crackled across the sky. The aftermath of Pyrosanct still clung to the air... smoke, celebration, the faint hum of magic settling back into the stones.

Fitting, I thought. The kingdom celebrating its rebirth while I walked toward my ending.

My guards trailed several steps back, respectful, silent. Perhaps they could feel it too, that something monumental had just ended.

I had done it.

After years of clutching that crown like a dying thing, I had let it go.

Stepped down.

Freed myself.

Freed him.

Released the people who cursed my name every morning and prayed to it every night.

Caelen had his kingdom.

Ophelia had her crown.

And I... well, I had my emptiness.

It was supposed to feel liberating.

That was the cruel part.

Instead, my thoughts refused to settle. They twisted and turned, circling the same absurd interruption that had shattered my grand exit like a stone through glass.

A marriage proposal.

Of all the ridiculous, inconceivable things I expected from Soren of Nevareth... mockery, manipulation, perhaps even another one of his political mind games... that had not made the list.

"to seek your hand in marriage," he’d said.

So simple. So disarming.

Even now, I could still feel the way he looked at me, steady, unflinching, with eyes that froze everything inside me. I hated that look. Hated the way it crawled under my skin, as if the man could see straight through the armor I’d spent half a lifetime forging.

Worse still, I hated myself for feeling something in return.

That small, traitorous shiver that wasn’t born of fear but of awareness.

The kind that starts at the spine and spreads, uninvited, unexplainable.

It infuriated me.

I was the Fire Queen. The last person who should tremble before a man made of ice.

But the truth was undeniable: Soren’s gaze had shaken me. For a heartbeat, I’d almost forgotten my resolve... to leave, to end, to vanish.

Almost.

But none of it mattered anymore.

Not the crown. Not the empire. Not even him.

Especially not him.

Caelen had looked at me tonight as though I’d shattered something precious, as though he couldn’t decide whether to hate me or grieve me. But I knew what that expression truly was, wounded pride.

He had built his entire world on the belief that I was irredeemable.

That every gesture I made had venom at its root.

That Eris Igniva was incapable of kindness unless it served her own ends.

And perhaps he was right.

The woman who ruled Solmire for a decade had never been good. She had bargained love for loyalty, burned fear into obedience, traded mercy for control. Her kindness was always a strategy; her compassion, a weapon.

But that version of me was done now.

I was leaving. Far from Solmire. Far from Caelen and his new queen and the throne that had only ever been a cage.

My steps slowed.

Except...

I couldn’t leave. Not yet.

Not without seeing him one more time.

Rael.

My throat tightened. I changed direction abruptly, my guards scrambling to adjust.

"The eastern wing," I said quietly. "Caelen’s quarters."

They didn’t question me. They simply obeyed.

The halls were quieter here... his halls.

Caelen’s wing had always felt colder than mine, not by temperature but by presence. Every torch along the corridor burned a little less brightly, as though even flame itself knew better than to disturb the stillness of this place.

My guards continued to follow at a respectful distance, unsure why their Queen... former Queen... had suddenly decided to walk this path when her chambers lay in the opposite direction.

But I had already made my decision.

Just one detour.

Just one more glimpse before I left this gilded cage forever.

I told myself it wasn’t weakness. That I wasn’t doing it for sentiment.

But I knew better.

I only wanted to hold my son.

Just once more.

Rael had been half-asleep in Caelen’s arms earlier, little hands gripping at the edge of his father’s coat while the noise of the ball faded behind them. I’d watched him hand Rael to his nanny during the ball, seen the way he’d kissed the boy’s head before letting him go.

Such tenderness. Such ease.

Things I’d never been able to give.

My footsteps slowed as I approached the nursery doors. The heat beneath my skin pulsed anxiously, and I had to close my fists, will it to quiet down.

The last thing I wanted was to startle him again. Every time I’d tried to hold him before, he had cried, not out of spite, not even out of fear, but something worse. Instinct. Children felt things adults learned to hide.

I wished—oh, gods, how I wished—I could turn the fire off.

Snuff it out. Be normal, if only for a minute.

But the curse inside me was ancient and cruel. It did not yield to human longing.

When I finally opened the door, the nursery’s warmth wrapped around me like a memory, soft amber lights, faint scent of lavender, the quiet rhythm of Rael’s breath. His nanny looked up instantly.

Her eyes widened in terror.

"Y–Your Majesty." She half-bowed, half-stumbled. Her voice trembled like paper near a flame.

I didn’t answer her.

My gaze was already on him.

Rael lay on his little bed, clutching his stuffed phoenix close, his dark lashes resting against flushed cheeks. The faintest trace of a smile lingered there, peaceful, unbothered by the chaos that had shattered the night.

My heart pounded so hard I thought it might crack my ribs. Every instinct screamed at me to reach for him, to pull him close, to hold him the way mothers were supposed to hold their children.

But I was terrified. Terrified he’d wake and see me and cry for his father because his mother was the monster under the bed.

I took a slow step forward. Then another. My chest ached.

He looked so much like him.

My hand lifted before I even realized it, hovering inches above his hair. The fire within me curled backward, recoiling like a tamed beast. For once, it obeyed.

But before I could touch him, the nanny’s voice broke the moment.

She was pale, wringing her hands, eyes darting between me and Rael. "Please don’t touch him," she whispered. "Your fire—it might startle him. Wake him. He’s had such a long night and—"

I turned to her slowly. Just one look.

That was all it took.

The poor woman flinched, bowed again so fast her forehead nearly hit the floor, and fled. The door shut softly behind her, leaving only silence and the sound of Rael’s tiny breaths.

Finally.

It was just the two of us.

My son.

My beautiful, unreachable boy.

I sank to my knees beside his bed, watching the rise and fall of his chest, the way his curls caught the dim light. I didn’t touch him. I didn’t dare. I simply watched.

And for the first time in a very long time, my fire did not rage. It mourned.

He looked so peaceful, too peaceful for a child born into so much ruin.

I sat beside his bed in silence, watching the slow rise and fall of his little chest, his hair spilling across the pillow like threads of the pale sky. He slept with his fist curled tightly. Like he was too afraid to let something go and I had wished it would have been me.

Rael.

My son.

The only part of me that remained untainted.

Gods, he was beautiful.

His hair... my hair. That same pale, unnatural shade that marked us both as touched by dragon fire. His eyes, when they were open, burned gold like mine, but his face... his face was all Caelen.

Up close, the resemblance was cruel, his lashes were mine, thick and white, brushing against cheeks kissed with sunlight, yet the shape of his mouth, the sharpness of his jaw, even the faint frown in his sleep... all his father’s.

He looked so much like Cael it hurt.

I remembered Caelen, young, naive, full of hope before I’d twisted it into hate. And now here was Rael, a perfect echo of that boy I’d fallen in love with so long ago.

For a fleeting heartbeat, I let myself wonder.

What if I had been someone else?

Not the cursed daughter of Pyronox’s bloodline.

Not the monster they whispered about as children hid behind their mothers’ skirts.

What if I had been born a farmer’s daughter?

A baker’s apprentice, with ash on her fingers instead of flame in her veins.

Maybe then, I would have met Caelen at the market. Maybe he would have smiled at me, not out of duty or pity, but because he wanted to.

Maybe he would have kissed me under the summer fields, and we would have built a small house with a crooked door and a sleeping boy inside.

Maybe we could have been happy.

I didn’t even realize my hand had moved until my fingers brushed through Rael’s hair, soft, warm, unbothered. He shifted, sighed, then settled again. My heart broke quietly at the simplicity of it. A touch. A child’s trust. The very things I could never keep.

I leaned closer, my voice barely above a breath.

"My sweet boy," I whispered. "You must grow up to be like your father, not me."

The words trembled, but I kept going.

"Your mother... she’s not a very good person. She’s done terrible things... hurt people who didn’t deserve it. But your father, he’s different. He believes in kindness, even when the world doesn’t deserve it. He believes in saving people, not burning them. That’s why he’s the hero of this story."

I smiled faintly, though it hurt. "And you... you’ll be better than both of us. You’ll be a greater hero in another story too I’m sure."

I bent down, pressing my lips softly to his forehead. His skin was cool against mine.

"Forget me, little flame," I whispered. "It will be easier that way."

A single tear slipped free, falling onto his closed eyelids. He stirred, muttered something... maybe my name, maybe nothing at all. And only then did I realize I was crying.

I stood quickly, swallowing back the ache. I couldn’t afford weakness now.

Reaching into the pocket of my gown, I took out the small bracelet, woven threads of gold and red, the same one I’d made for him when he was still a swaddled infant but he’d outgrown.

But I’d remade it. Larger now. Reinforced. Still burning with the same magic, the same desperate love I couldn’t put into words.

I laid it gently beside his pillow.

A mother’s gift. A farewell. A fragment of a heart she could no longer keep.

Then I turned away, the silence of the nursery echoing like judgment, and walked back into the corridor, where the fire waited to carry me home to ash.

The gaping hole in my chest widened with every step toward the door, threatening to swallow me whole.