CHAPTER 87: NEW LIFE

ERIS

The sun was beginning to lower, softening everything it touched.

The golden edge of the sky dimmed to amber, spilling over the rooftops of Crimson Port. Behind us, the market still pulsed with fading noise, laughter, clinking coins, the faint echo of a drumbeat carrying through the air.

We walked in silence for a while, side by side. The cobblestones glowed in the dusk, and the river beside us caught the light like molten glass. I could still feel the shawl around my shoulders, its fabric cool and soft against my skin, a strange comfort, a lingering echo of something gentle I didn’t know how to hold.

My mind kept circling back to what had just happened, the laughter, the afternoon, Soren standing knee-deep in melting ice and ruined fruit.

It was absurd. Impossible. Wonderful.

Soren broke the silence first, his voice low but edged with amusement. "Quite the afternoon, wasn’t it?"

I glanced at him. "I didn’t expect... any of that."

He smiled faintly. "The shawl? The stowaway? Or my humiliation by fruit?"

The corner of my mouth curved. "All of it. I admitted. "This whole day feels... strange."

"Strange how?"

I thought for a long moment before answering. The streets ahead glowed with the last of the day’s light, merchants closing their stalls, families lighting small lanterns that floated over the water. Everything felt too alive, too real for me to belong in it.

"Like it’s not mine," I said softly. "Like I’m watching someone else’s life, someone luckier, freer."

He was quiet for a while, the sound of our footsteps filling the silence. Then he said, gently,

"Perhaps because it’s the first day of your new life."

I looked up at him.

"The old one ended when you left that palace, Eris," he continued. "This one... is yours to shape as you see fit."

It was such a simple thing to say, yet it felt impossible to believe. The words pressed against me like sunlight against ice.

I wanted to believe him, gods, I really did, but the past clung too tightly. It was in my blood, in every burned memory that refused to fade. And beneath my ribs, I could still feel the dragon’s slow pulse, a warning that my time was no longer my own.

Sometimes I wondered if that pulse was growing louder.

If my time was already below past what I expected now.

If every breath I took toward a new life was stealing from the little I had left.

I didn’t tell Soren that.

He would only look at me with that same quiet pity I couldn’t bear.

Maybe he was wrong. Maybe I didn’t have years to rebuild. Maybe all I had were moments, fragile, fleeting ones like this.

Still, I nodded, pretending his words were enough.

We turned down the narrow path leading back toward the inn, the air smelling faintly of smoke and spice. I thought the day was over. I thought the world would let us have this small peace.

But fate, as always, had other plans.

....

From the western road came a sound, the hard gallop of hooves, fast and desperate. Dust rose in a spiral behind the rider cutting through the twilight haze.

The Winter Knights were on alert instantly, swords half-drawn, positioning themselves between the carriage and the road.

"Halt!" One of the knights commanded.

The rider didn’t slow. "I seek the Ice Emperor!" he shouted, voice hoarse from travel. "By the gods—please, I seek the Ice Emperor!"

The words carried over the wind, urgent, honest.

When he finally reached them, his horse was lathered, its flanks streaked with dust and sweat. The man swung down before it had even stopped moving, dropping to one knee before Soren.

Recognition flashed in Eris’s eyes though she knew not his story.

The fighter from the Duel of Cinders.

The man who stood second to the winner.

The man whose father had been condemned, and whose life Soren had chosen to spare.

He looked different now: road-worn, thinner, but with the same determined fire in his gaze.

"Your Majesty," Jorel said, voice shaking with exhaustion but strong. "You freed my father when no one else would. You showed mercy where Solmire showed none. I’ve come to offer my sword, my skill, and my life to your service. Your majesty."

He drew his blade, pressing it into the dirt before Soren’s boots. The steel caught the sunset and flared red, a gleam of firelight meeting frost.

Eris watched in silence.

There was something humbling in the scene, something she hadn’t expected to feel. She had seen men kneel before her countless times, but always in fear, never out of choice.

And here stood Soren, calm and steady, inspiring loyalty not with terror or command, but with kindness. With mercy.

A lesson, wordless and piercing, unfolded before her.

Soren didn’t immediately answer. He looked instead to Eris, eyes calm but intent.

"He was your subject," he said softly. "What say you?"

The question caught her off guard. He didn’t have to ask, he was emperor of his own realm, soon of hers, and yet, he offered her the choice.

She could have rejected Jorel. Out of pride. Out of habit.

But the memory of the duel rose in her mind, his courage, his desperation, the fire that refused to die in him even as the world burned around them.

"If the Ice Emperor accepts your blade," she said finally, her voice even, "then so do I."

The knight lifted his gaze, gratitude flickering like light through smoke. "I will not disappoint you," he vowed.

Soren inclined his head, a faint smile tracing his lips. "See that you don’t. And welcome to the North."

Jorel bowed low again, then rose, a new purpose burning in his eyes. Behind him, the sun sank lower, the last of its light touching the blade still gleaming between them.

Eris stood quietly beside Soren, the wind tugging at the edges of her shawl. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel like a ghost walking through borrowed days.

She felt, just for a moment, that something new was beginning.

And for once, the world didn’t feel entirely against her.