The four guards standing at attention in the hall flooded in but were immediately swallowed by the blaze.
Five of the six council members were on the ground screaming. The initial explosion had already charred their robes to ash, allowing the flames to consume their flesh. But one council member remained. Caddver was holding himself inside a barrier of magic, struggling to keep the firestorm at bay.
The three females and the drummer were already dead, their bodies unmoving and consumed by fire. The acolytes screamed in agony; their joints stiffened with burnt crust where skin should havebeen. Their eyes turned to white goo that dripped down their blistered black faces, and yet I could tell they were still alive. It became grotesquely clear that Fire Fae died slowly from flame.
The smell of burning flesh was repulsive. My stomach turned and bile burned the back of my throat.
Now that my eyes had adjusted to the brightness, I could see that Caddver was struggling for his life.
“My Lord, I was only upholding Holy Law, I beg of you call back your fire!” he pleaded, fighting to keep his ward intact.
Titus didn’t shout. He didn’t snarl.
Then the High Lord spoke in a voice I had never heard before. His cadence was slow and steady, never rushing, because he knew his words carried the weight of law. For the first time ever, Titus spoke like a true ruler.
“Take the shadows of our history with you into the dark; let the dawn find us cleansed from the smoke you and my father have choked us with; there is nowhere I would allow you to exist except as ash in the wind."
Titus pushed his fury to every inch of the room. Fire consumed Caddver. He buckled under the pressure of the unforgiving blaze, and just like that—in moments—the council that had held Titus on such a short leash and imposed so much cruelty upon the kingdom for centuries was gone. Their lips peeled away, exposing their teeth, before they collapsed into ash.
When Caddver took his final breath, my shackles and collar magically released, and I stood, trying to make sense of what was happening.
Everything around me was ablaze—the furniture, the Fae, the walls, the floors.
I was stunned and overwhelmed by a flood of emotions.
Then I remembered.
Aurelius had been just about to—
I whipped around and found him inside a shield, fighting for his life against the inferno, with the High Lord of Flame towering over him in all his god-like power.
His amber eyes burned brighter and more hostile than the lava in Mount Orid.Titus was death. Titus was fire in bodily form. A vengeful god whose wrath was entirely focused on Aurelius.
My heart overflowed with awe.
He was doing this. The flames, the explosion—it was all him. He saved me. This had been his plan all along. He was never going to allow me to succumb to Aurelius’s brutality.
“Just trust me,” he had said. And I had doubted him.
That was when I realized… I was inside a shield.
My heart surged. He was projecting his shield onto me, and it glowed stronger than ever and unwavering.
But a chilling reality shattered that joy—his words from Mount Orid echoed in my mind.
“Nothing is fireproof, only resistant,” and if I was in his shield then that meant…
Oh no. Titus.
Safe within the barrier, I looked at him. The raging blaze pouring off him had killed almost everyone in the room. He was trying to kill Aurelius—but it was killing him… too.
Why couldn’t he shield himself too like he did in the waterway in Coralis Falls?
Then I understood the limits to his magic, and his sacrifice.
He couldn’t hold a shield around himself and me and pour out this much fire.
He had…
