CHAPTER 66: WHAT TO DO?

ERIS

The garden was quiet again, unnaturally so.

The chaos of the ballroom felt like a fever dream left behind in another lifetime. Here, the air was cool, still humming faintly with the scent of roses and burned incense. The Eternal Pyre’s glow had long since dimmed beyond the palace walls, leaving only the pale shimmer of moonlight to drape the marble paths.

I should have been packing.

I should have been running.

The plan was clear, slip away before dawn, before Caelen could find another reason to make me stay.

Yet, somehow, I found myself sitting on the same stone bench I always came to when my head felt too heavy for my crown.

Except tonight, there was no crown.

And my head still felt heavy.

The garden had been my sanctuary once, a place where I could pretend I was human. Now, even surrounded by its familiar blooms, I couldn’t decide what I was anymore. Queen? Monster? Woman? Or simply a name scribbled into someone else’s story?

I leaned back against the cold marble, tilting my head toward the sky. Clouds crawled lazily across the moon, and for a long time, I did nothing but breathe.

No urgency. No panic. No fire.

Just the faint, unsettling quiet that comes after everything burns down.

My maps were all memorized.

My routes were drawn.

Every step of my escape carefully plotted.

And yet... none of it seemed to matter now.

Because no matter how far I went, the same truth would follow: my time was running out. A year, maybe less, before the dragon beneath my ribs clawed its way out. Before the curse consumed what was left of me. I could travel the whole world, and it would still end the same way, with me as ash and ruin.

So what was I supposed to do with the little time I had left?

Find peace?

Find meaning?

Find a place to belong?

I laughed under my breath. The sound was brittle. "Belonging," I murmured, "what a ridiculous word."

But the thought didn’t leave.

Could I really live a quiet life somewhere far away? Would I fit in anywhere? Could I even remember how to be normal, how to exist without power, without fear, without blood clinging to my hands?

And worst of all, did I even want freedom?

Or was this, too, just another scene in the script I was written into?

I had always spoken about choice, about taking back control, but now, stripped of everything, I wasn’t sure if any of this was mine.

Maybe I wasn’t choosing.

Maybe I was only playing the part already decided for me once again.

I sighed, closing my eyes again. "Was this ever my story to begin with?"

"What’s your guess?"

The voice drifted through the stillness like a ripple across calm water, smooth, amused and awfully familiar.

My eyes snapped open. A soft white light hovered in front of me, pulsing gently, illuminating the garden with its quiet radiance.

A slow, inevitable smile tugged at my lips.

"Hah," I breathed.

The god of balance, or perhaps the cruel author of my fate, had decided to pay me a visit with this thing.

Of course he had.

The light pulsed once, almost indignantly.

"A thing?" Orrian’s voice rose, affronted, ringing through the quiet garden like an offended bell. "You make me sound like some artifact, Eris Igniva. Or a misplaced trinket on your shelf of regrets."

I arched an eyebrow, entirely unimpressed. "What are you, then, if not a thing?"

"Orrian is a being," he said, the glow rippling as though straightening its spine. "And a busy one at that."

I sighed, leaning back on the stone bench. "Are you a man or a woman?"

"Orrian doesn’t have a gender," he replied smoothly.

"Then I’ll pick one for you." I smirked. "Only a man could irritate me this much."

The light flickered sharply, like a glare. "And only you could be so ungrateful to the cosmic entity that keeps guiding your messy little existence."

"Guiding?" I snorted. "You mean meddling."

He hummed, unbothered. "Semantics."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "If you’re so terribly busy, why are you here? I thought you were bound to that... whatever you called it. The liminal space."

"The subliminal space," he corrected primly. "And yes, I was. But I’ve been terribly occupied with narrating."

"Narrating what?"

There was a pause, long enough to feel like a smirk. "You don’t need to understand. The readers will."

I blinked at him. "The what?"

"Never mind." The orb spun lazily, emitting an exasperated hum. "You’ll ruin the flow if you keep asking questions like that."

My glare could’ve scorched the moon. "What do you want, Orrian?"

He drifted closer, the glow softening. "To see how you’re faring so far," he said simply. For once, there was no sarcasm, just quiet, almost human concern.

I wanted to mock it, to throw something sharp back, but the words wouldn’t come. "I’m not sure," I admitted instead.

That seemed to please him. He began to circle me like a lazy comet, radiating equal parts grace and drama. "What part, precisely, makes you unsure?"

"Everything," I muttered. "I thought letting go of everything that made me miserable would bring peace. But somehow I feel worse."

"Ah," Orrian sighed, spinning lazily above my shoulder. "Emotional aftermath. A tedious human invention."

"And to make things worse," I went on, ignoring him, "I seem to have caught the eye of someone who shouldn’t be looking at me at all."

"Soren Nivarre of Nevareth," he said, instantly.

"Obviously," I exhaled. "I don’t understand him. Not one bit. He’s reckless, unpredictable. I never paid much attention to him before, perhaps because I was too busy destroying everything else that mattered."

Orrian’s tone turned almost fond. "Maybe because everyone tends to focus on the hero of the story. Sometimes they forget there’s a hidden gem waiting to be discovered."

"Hidden gem," I repeated dryly. "That’s definitely one way to describe him. An irritating hidden gem."

Orrian’s laughter rang through the garden, light and genuine. "And yet, he’s taken up space somewhere in that fiery mind of yours."

I scowled. "He hasn’t."

The light dimmed, as if wincing. "Oh, you’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you?"

I looked away, jaw tightening.

He wasn’t wrong.

And that was the most irritating part of all.

"Since you took his advice," Orrian spoke again, his glow rippling like candlelight against my skin, "what now, little phoenix? You’ve burned your cage to ash, so what will you do with the sky?"

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Do you truly want to do nothing?" he asked, circling lazily above the pond. "Do you even know how to do nothing? Or will you, as you always do, seek another mountain to climb, something new to break, something new to conquer? Something that isn’t yourself this time?"

His voice wasn’t mocking anymore. It was quiet. Gentle, almost.

And I hated that it made sense.

I looked down at my hands, those cursed, blistered hands, and wondered if I’d ever learned to simply be.

Everything I’d done, every breath I’d taken, had been about fighting, for power, for survival, against Caelen, against myself. I didn’t know what it meant to exist without an enemy. Without a war.

"Humans," Orrian began, his tone shifting to something melodic, like he was reciting a truth older than time itself, "were born to overcome. Even the sky wasn’t enough; they built towers to touch it. But when there’s nothing left to fight, they lose themselves. Drift without wind. Burn without fuel."

He floated closer, light bathing the garden in soft silver.

"And that is what’s happening to you, Eris Igniva. You’ve stopped being his challenge, his ruin, his opposite. But now you cannot find peace, because for so long, that’s all you were allowed to be. His villain."

The word stung more than I wanted to admit.

His villain. His obstacle. His curse.

I swallowed. "What am I to do now, then?"

"Maybe," Orrian said softly, "you find a new purpose. Forge a story that belongs only to you. Not written for the hero, not written by fate, just you. That’s where happiness hides. Not in running."

His glow pulsed brighter. "In building."

I let out a laugh, quiet, bitter. "There’s no time." My voice cracked a little at the edges. "I wasn’t made to be a happy woman."

"Maybe you’re wrong."

The words didn’t come from Orrian this time.

They came from behind me.

I turned, pulse catching, and there he was.

Soren stood at the edge of the garden path, moonlight tangled in his hair, eyes uncertain, hesitant. Not the emperor who’d commanded the ballroom, but something softer. Smaller.

For once, he didn’t look like he was made of frost and arrogance.

He looked like a man who’d lost his way to courage and found it again, standing here, in front of me.

I blinked. When I glanced back toward Orrian,

The air shimmered, faintly silver. But he was gone, leaving a faint whisper.

"Look what’s in front of you and just might find your answer Igniva."

He’d left deliberately.

Of course he had.