The sound swelled like a tide, as if some signal had been given that it was now safe – no, proper – to celebrate. It rose in a great exhalation of adoration and loyalty, ringing out across the pyre square in waves. Some clapped. Others sang. I saw veils lifted, faces wet with tears not of grief, but of fervour. I watched mouths open in praise as the fire consumed Alaric, saw hands reach upward like pilgrims at a shrine, desperate to catch a blessing from the ash. And all I could think was how broken they must be – how thoroughly twisted and undone to stand here, cheering as a man was turned to smoke before their eyes. They did not mourn. They did not question. They celebrated. Their joy was the sharpest cruelty of all.
The pain flared again – sharper now, deeper – and I staggered a step before catching myself. I prayed it looked like fatigue. The fire had reached Alaric’s chest, then his throat, and the iron at his mouth had melted inward, fusing into the flesh beneath it. Still, his eyes did not turn away. Not until the skin around them blackened, blistered, and cracked. Even then, I saw the last of him disappear into the flame—not as a broken man but as something sent.
Only when the flames began to die, when the smoke began to thin and the crowd began to settle, did the world return to focus. The square quieted. The final cheer gave way to murmurs, to drifting voices, to movement. My breathing was uneven, my hands shaking inside their gauntlets. I kept my gaze forward, not daring to look at Mowgara, not ready to see what expression she wore now.
It was then, through the veil of ash that still drifted in the square below, that I saw it – something pale glinting in the dark heap where Alaric’s body had been. It caught the morning light, not like gold or steel, but softer, bone-white and impossible. My eyes fixed on it, refusing to believe, even as recognition settled in my chest like a dropped stone.
It was a dagger. Or what was left of one. The blade had warped and curled, melting nearly flat against the altar stone – but the hilt had somehow survived. Pale, dulled, strangely out of place against the scorched black. From this height, I couldn’t see the detail, but I didn’t need to. I knew that shape. That curve. The faint glint of discoloured pearl catching in the ash. It was recognisable – unmistakably like the one I had carried since I was a child. Not similar. Not close. The same make. The same weight, I was certain, even if I could not hold it.
I’d always treated the dagger as nothing more than a trinket – a useless relic with no bite, no story, no worth beyond what little memory clung to it. It wasn’t beautiful, or sharp, or even particularly well-made. But it was mine. The only thing that had been, when I wasthrown into the barracks and told to become someone else. I had carried it year after year, war after war, tucked in the bottom of my pack or beneath my bed, never used, barely noticed – just there. A stubborn thing I couldn’t seem to part with. Not because it mattered, not really, but because it had once belonged to the girl I used to be. And I suppose, in some way, it still did.
Now, another lay beneath the pyre. Buried in ash. Unburned by flame.
I stared at it as the smoke thinned and the crowd began to shift, as the murmurs of awe and devotion rippled through the tiers like water disturbed. No one else seemed to notice the thing half-buried in ruin. No one else seemed to see it. But I did. And as I stood there, the mark beneath my shoulder blade flared once more – not in pain, not in protest, but with a steady, insistent heat that seemed to root itself in me.
Chapter Twelve: Frejara
The square was emptying, though not yet empty. It took time, even for revelry to die. The energy that had carried the crowds through the fire’s final blaze did not vanish all at once but dispersed in stages—first the nobles, their laughter echoing behind silk veils and perfumed sleeves, their retinues already polishing the tale for the next table they dined at; then the merchants, clinking with coin and ushering their favoured clients toward private halls and deeper cellars. The soldiers followed in clusters, drawn toward warmth and drink like moths to a flame, their shoulders already relaxing as the scent of burning faded into the sweeter heaviness of roasted meat and cask ale.
But some lingered longer – stragglers and servants, boys sweeping ash from stone with makeshift brooms, women with their faces still painted in festival red, standing as if they feared the spell might break the moment they turned their backs. I watched one such woman kneel where the outer steps met the square’s edge, her hands folded in prayer or exhaustion – I couldn’t tell which. She left behind a ribbon of redsilk tied around one of the iron torches, as if something sacred had occurred here. As if something holy had passed through.
I did not descend with them. I lingered at the top of the palace steps; the square spread beneath me in the waning haze of smoke. I waited – not because I needed to, but because I didn’t yet know where else to go. The square was quieter now, and I found I preferred it that way. There was a clarity to the way it emptied. A ritual to it. The fire had done its work. The pageant was complete. Now all that remained was the ash.
Only when the last of the torches were doused and the Acolytes had begun to fold the Queen’s banners with their stiff, trembling fingers, I descended the steps slowly. No one followed. No one cared. This was not a part of the ceremony. This was something else.
The altar was still warm when I reached it – radiating heat from its seams like the last breath of a dying beast. Beneath my boots, the stone carried a low thrum, steady and defiant, as if the fire had only withdrawn, not surrendered. The wind had shifted again, carrying the scent of char – dull and lingering, the kind that clung to cloth and skin alike. I’d long since learned not to flinch at it.
The pyre still stood at the centre, though what remained of it was little more than blackened timber and glinting fragments of chain, slumped against the scorched heart of the Dragonstone altar. I stood before it for a long moment, longer than I meant to. The night was so still now, the air hollowed by absence, emptied of song and praise and the dreadful hunger that had filled every breath while the fire had lived.
And there, at the base of the stone, half-buried in ash, was the thing I had come for.
I had seen it earlier – clear enough to know it wasn’t a trick of the light. A glint, pale and curved, oddly familiar. It had survived. When the body broke, when the chains snapped, when the flames took what little flesh he had left, this had not been claimed.
The hilt—a pearl, discoloured and marred by heat but unmistakable in form. I crouched slowly and reached for it. It was warmer than I expected, as if the fire had left a trace behind. I brushed off the worst of the soot with my palm and closed my fingers around it. There was a faint tremble in my hands, but I told myself it was the wine the night before.
It felt, for the first time, like there was indeed something sacred about this place, but not in the way the burgess believed. Not in the way the Queen had intended when she started burning her enemies here. It was the kind of sacred that carried its own gravity, and I felt it drawing at me, as if it meant to hold me there to show it reverence.
I stood there for a while longer, until the smoke thinned and the stone shed the last of its warmth. Long enough to remember the old man’s eyes, not when he burned, but before – when he had looked at me as if he already knew what I would do. As if he had come here not to die, but to leave something behind. Long enough to wonder whether I had just inherited something I did not understand.
I slid the hilt into the inside pocket of my cloak, where the lining was still thick enough to shield the heat. It knocked gently against the worn edge of the other dagger – one I could forget for months at a time but never truly put down. The weight of the two pressed against each other, light but undeniably present, and at last, I turned from the altar.
The square was empty now, in a way that felt final. No footsteps, no banners, only the wind, threading ash through the cobblestones like a funeral veil. The streets of Irongate had also grown weary. A few stragglers wove through the lower alleys, robes hitched above muddied shoes, laughter hushed to a low murmur. The Feast had ended, but the city hadn’t yet remembered how to breathe without fire in its lungs.
I hadn’t eaten since morning, and my stomach reminded me of it with a low, petulant twist, the kind that promised to return sharper if not sated. I turned toward the banquet hall, not expecting anythingmore than scraps. The court would have moved on by now, retreated to their dens and parlours to dissect the day’s theatre over glasses of honeyed wine and idle cruelties.
But as I pushed through the tall carved doors and stepped into the hall, I knew I’d misjudged the hour.
The hearth was still lit – low, but steady. Shadows danced across the long tables, mostly cleared now, though the silver platters still glinted with remnants of spiced meats and cured game. The scent of it hung thick in the warm air – wine, cloves, and venison. Sweet and sharp and too much all at once.
And there she was.
My Mother stood alone near the head of the table, half-filled goblet in hand, her other fingers trailing across the carved back of a high chair as if testing its strength. Her robes were midnight-dark, lined with thread that caught the firelight like molten gold. The Circlet of Flame was gone. In its place, a simple silver pin fastened her dark braid. She didn’t turn when I entered, but I could feel she had been waiting.
“You didn’t come,” she said, and the words echoed like a reprimand against the stone.
“I was there,” I replied, crossing the threshold slowly. “I was at the pyre.”
“It was your victory,” she said, still not looking at me. “They toasted your name.”
