CHAPTER 65: ONE YES

Long before the scroll was broken, before the gasps rippled like fire through the ballroom, long before Caelen’s face went pale and the priests clutched their relics like frightened children.

I had known.

It was written in her eyes the first night I arrived in Solmire.

The Queen who met me in the garden that night had not been a monarch drunk on her own power... no, she’d been half-sober on resignation. There had been something ghostly about her then, something hollow in the way she smiled, as though she were already halfway gone.

I’d seen it immediately, though I pretended not to.

In the days that followed, that certainty only grew.

Eris Igniva, the woman the world called flame incarnate, had begun to move like dying embers, slow and deliberate, as though any gust might extinguish her. Her eyes would glaze mid-conversation, her responses delayed by thoughts she’d never share. Even her fury, that beautiful, terrible blaze that once set entire courts trembling, had cooled into something quieter.

And then there were the maps.

Gods, those damned maps.

The parchment spread out on a table, marked with circles, lines, little notations that only someone preparing for flight would make.

Routes. Distances.

Escape.

That was when I knew with certainty.

The Fire Queen was planning to disappear.

I had waited for the night she would finally do it, not out of fear or dread, but out of curiosity. I wanted to see if my prediction would hold, if Eris would truly have the courage to burn her crown rather than let it consume her.

And tonight, she did.

But even when you expect the fall, it doesn’t make the impact softer.

When Dareth’s trembling voice carried her words across that hall, when she renounced her throne and her name, it still struck me in the chest like a hammer.

Eris Igniva, Queen of Solmire, stepping down.

The concept itself felt wrong, like winter claiming the sun.

Queens like her didn’t abdicate.

They conquered.

They ruled.

They burned everything in their path until nothing dared to oppose them.

And yet she had done what none before her had dared, walked away from a world that worshipped and hated her in equal measure.

It was terrifying in its calmness.

Almost unnatural.

Still, even that, I had expected.

What I hadn’t expected, what not even my careful calculations accounted for, was the annulment.

The moment her voice sliced through the chaos with those words... "I annul my marriage to Caelen"...the world stopped moving.

And in that stillness, something dangerous bloomed inside me.

It wasn’t an idea.

It was an inevitability.

I didn’t think.

Didn’t plan.

Didn’t calculate.

The thought arrived in my mind fully formed, crystalline and absolute:

Ask her to marry you.

It wasn’t madness. It was clarity.

I knew she’d refuse, of course.

Eris Igniva was many things, brilliant, proud, unyielding, but impulsive affection was not among them. She would laugh, glare, maybe threaten to set me ablaze.

But refusal never frightened me.

Not from her.

Because what she didn’t understand... what she would one day see... is that I always get what I want.

Eventually.

For starters, I could justify it a thousand ways.

An alliance of Fire and Ice, a union to strengthen the fragile treaty, to end centuries of bloodshed.

A political maneuver that would grant her sanctuary, safety from Caelen’s inevitable thirst for justice.

Freedom from Solmire, from the chains of her legacy.

Power, protection, preservation, all neatly tied in a bow.

But that wasn’t the real reason.

No, the truth was simpler.

I just wanted her.

Not her throne, not her power, her.

Her laugh.

Her defiance.

The way she made my blood boil and my chest ache in the same breath.

If I had to call it strategy to make it sound reasonable, so be it.

But between the two of us, I’d already stopped pretending.

This wasn’t politics anymore.

This was gravity.

And she was the only thing in this burning world worth orbiting.

Yes, there were alliances to be forged, treaties to protect, and peace to maintain, but beneath the silk of strategy beat something far more dangerous. Something raw. Something unholy.

I wanted her... not as a pawn, not as a conquest, not even as redemption for the man I used to be. I wanted her the way flame wants air... violently, endlessly, destructively.

Her laugh that always sounded like mockery wrapped in music.

Her defiance that cut sharper than a sword.

The intelligence that flashed behind those molten eyes every time she caught me off guard.

And gods, the way she looked at me as though I were a puzzle she could not decide whether to solve or destroy.

She made me feel alive.

Warm.

And for a man born of ice, that warmth was addictive.

But warmth, as I’ve learned, comes with danger.

It melts, and when it melts, it floods.

Because somewhere between wanting her and watching her walk away tonight, something inside me shifted from admiration to hunger.

And hunger, in my experience, was not a gentle thing.

It wasn’t just attraction anymore. It wasn’t interest or curiosity.

It was something deeper, something that sank teeth into bone and whispered mine every time I thought of her name.

The idea of her leaving Solmire without me was unbearable.

The thought of Caelen trying to stop her, unacceptable.

The notion of anyone else touching her, even speaking her name with familiarity, intolerable.

I told myself stories to soften it.

That she deserved better.

That I could give her peace, protection, freedom.

That I was saving her from a world that would devour her.

But that was a lie even I couldn’t sell myself.

It wasn’t nobility that drove me.

It wasn’t care.

It was possession, pure and simple—the kind that turned kings into monsters.

And I was already halfway there.

Still, there was a silver thread among the chaos: she hadn’t said no.

No laughter, no rejection, no fire meant for burning me to ash, only that withering glare, and silence.

But silence was not a refusal.

Silence was space.

And space, I could fill.

Before dawn broke and her abdication became more than words, I would find her.

Before she could disappear into the horizon with her pride and her guilt, I would stand before her again.

Not as the Emperor.

Not as Caelen’s friend.

As the man who wanted her, utterly, unapologetically.

She would resist, of course. She always did.

But I had patience, and a memory of her gaze during the dance,

that fleeting spark of curiosity, the faintest trace of warmth hidden behind suspicion.

It was there.

And if it was there once, I could make it grow.

All I needed was one night.

One chance.

And perhaps, if the gods were merciful,

one yes.