CHAPTER 73: HOPE’S CORPSE

The corridors that led back to her chambers had never seemed so long, nor so suffocatingly still. The air trembled faintly around her, heavy with smoke and the ghosts of her own fury, as if the palace itself feared to breathe in her presence.

Eris Igniva walked like a storm disguised as a woman, head high, eyes alight, trembling from the inside out. Her night dress clung to her like liquid fabric, the scent of scorched marble and broken glass trailing in her wake like perfume.

Oh, but rage was such an exquisite thing on her. It glimmered beneath her skin like gold beneath flame, beautiful, terrifying, and utterly consuming.

Yet even rage could not disguise the ache beneath it. The kind of ache one does not show to the world, not even to herself.

For beneath the fury, she trembled with something far more dangerous than anger, hope’s corpse, still twitching.

She hated herself for it. Hated that some part of her, small, treacherous, stupid, had dared to believe that maybe, just maybe, Caelen might have chosen her this time. That after everything, after all the blood and cruelty and years of resentment, there could still be something human left between them.

But love, it seemed, had always been her greatest delusion.

And delusions, when they die, never go quietly.

She reached her chambers at last. The grand double doors loomed like sentinels, the metal handles cool beneath her palm. Inside, her reflection greeted her from the tall mirror across the room... hair disheveled, skin marked by his mouth, eyes bright with unshed tears she would never allow to fall.

It was a tragic portrait. The once-Queen of Solmire, reduced to something painfully human.

She laughed. A soft, brittle sound. The kind that cracked rather than soothed.

The fire still pulsed under her skin, restless, demanding. She could feel it in her veins, pressing against the thin walls of her control, begging to be released. To burn something, anything, until her pain had form and color.

For a moment, she almost gave in. Her hand lifted toward the velvet drapes, the perfect offering. She could already imagine the blaze, the smell, the light.

But no. Not here. Not now.

Not again.

"Enough," she whispered, the word trembling in the air like the last note of a dying song.

She would not stay another night within these walls. Not another hour surrounded by ghosts of choices she no longer wished to defend.

Her decision crystallized in an instant, sharp and final as a blade drawn in silence.

Leaving tonight.

No grand farewells. No softened explanations. No chance for Caelen to come crawling back with his guilt and his promises and his empty eyes.

Tonight, she would walk out of this kingdom and take her fire with her. Let him have his crown, his lover, his peace. Let him live beneath skies she would one day set aflame from afar.

With that thought, she crossed to her writing table, her movements deliberate, precise, regal even now in her ruin. A single ring of her bell summoned the nearest guard, one of her oldest, most loyal, and therefore, most frightened.

He entered, cautious, head bowed, the scent of smoke still thick in the air. His boots clicked against the blackened marble that had cracked beneath her temper.

"Your Majesty," he began, voice quivering.

"Summon Emperor Soren," she said. Her voice was low but steady, a calm born of exhaustion and resolve. "Tell him if he truly intends to take me to Nevareth, he must do it tonight."

The guard’s head snapped up in disbelief. "Tonight, Your Majesty?"

"Not tomorrow," she cut in, eyes narrowing. "Not later. Now."

The flames around her flickered higher for a heartbeat, flaring in agreement before settling once more into uneasy submission.

The guard bowed deeply, retreating with hurried steps, and the doors closed behind him.

And so she stood alone again, surrounded by smoke and silence, in the echo of all the things she could never have.

Outside, thunder rolled across the horizon, low and distant, as if the world itself were preparing to change hands.

And perhaps it was.

For somewhere within that storm of grief and fury, the Fire Queen was reborn, not as Solmire’s sovereign, not as Caelen’s tormentor, but as something freer, wilder, and infinitely more dangerous.

Eris Igniva, the woman who once burned for love, was ready to burn for herself.

There was a strange calm in the storm of her undoing.

A quiet, feverish calm. The kind that visits only those standing on the edge of ruin, when all that remains between destruction and surrender is the sound of one’s own breathing.

Eris Igniva was packing. Or rather, she was trying to.

Her chambers, once a sanctuary of silk and command, now looked like a ruin waiting to happen. Drawers pulled open, wardrobes half-emptied, the scent of smoke threading through velvet and gold.

She tried to take only the things that mattered.

A child’s toy, worn, wooden, Rael’s tiny fingerprints still faintly visible upon its surface.

A mirror, cracked along one edge, once belonging to her mother.

A handful of maps, her previous escape routes drawn in careful ink, routes winding across distant lands she’d never see.

And books, the few she’d loved enough to keep, pages marked by candlelight and insomnia.

Simple things. Mortal things.

Tokens of a life she was no longer sure had ever truly belonged to her.

But the gods, it seemed, were in no mood for sentiment.

Everything she touched began to burn.

The soft cloth of Rael’s old blanket blackened beneath her fingers. The leather of the map curled in on itself, edges glowing red before collapsing into ash. Even the mirror warped, its silver face blistering like skin under her touch.

The fire was no longer listening to her.

It slithered beneath her skin like something alive, hissing with every breath she took, licking up her arms, her neck, her trembling hands. The air shimmered around her with heat, her magic rising in rebellion, refusing restraint.

And for the first time in a long while, Eris was afraid of herself.

She sank down in the farthest corner of her chambers, where the light didn’t reach and the smoke couldn’t quite choke her.

Folded herself small, knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped tight around her trembling frame.

It was almost pitiful, this image of her, a queen brought to her knees by her own heart, clutching herself like a child warding off a nightmare.

"Fine," she whispered, her voice raw, a broken echo swallowed by the crackle of dying flame. "I’m fine. I just need to leave. I just need to hold on. This isn’t even real. It’s all an imagination."

But her body betrayed her. She was shaking too hard to believe her own lie. Everything was real enough.

The cracks had begun, not in her resolve, but in the seal. That ancient, cursed binding pulsed faintly beneath her skin, glowing like liquid gold, fissures spider-webbing outward from the center of her torso.

The dragon beneath stirred, restless, hungry.

Its whispers threaded through her thoughts, too faint to understand, too loud to ignore.

Her breaths came uneven, sharp little gasps that trembled on the edge of a sob she refused to let fall. Anger coiled in her belly, twisting itself tighter and tighter until there was no room left for reason.

And from that pressure came the memories.

They rose unbidden, vicious and slow.

A dark cave.

Symbols carved into wet stone, pulsing faintly with the light of something unnatural.

A voice, low, melodic, in a tongue she did not know. Words of power. Words of spells.

And a child, a little girl with hair like snow, screaming until her throat bled.

She didn’t recognize her at first. Didn’t understand the memory.

Until she realized the sound, that sharp, raw, pleading cry, belonged to her.

Her past self.

The one who had begged for mercy in a world that offered none.

Her fingers clawed at her temples as if she could scrape the sound out of her skull. The whispers grew louder, ancient syllables pressing against her mind like claws dragging through silk.

"No," she gasped. The word slipped out unbidden, trembling, terrified. "No, no, no..."

It became a mantra, her only tether to sanity.

"No, no, no," she whispered again and again, rocking slightly, the words tumbling from her lips in a rhythm too desperate to be prayer, too fragile to be defiance.

The room grew darker around her, shadows trembling against the walls, flamelight flickering like the heartbeat of something wild and wounded.

And if one had been brave enough to peek through the door just then, they might have seen what the world would soon come to fear:

A woman made of ruin, whispering to herself in the smoke, her eyes glowing faintly gold as something ancient began to wake beneath her skin.

The Fire Queen, unraveling,

and the dragon beneath her skin crawling to the surface.