The world held still after the coronation.
Ash drifted, smoke smoldered, and every survivor stared at her as though she were both saint and scourge. Her ears rang from the chants that had only just died, her body trembling under the weight of a crown she never asked to wear.
Aria wanted to scream. To claw the ash off her skin. To dig the fire out of her veins and fling it into the dirt. But Kael groaned weakly in her arms, and that small, broken sound bound her tighter than any chant or crown.
"Kael" Her lips shaped the name voicelessly, her tears streaking his soot-stained face.
He stirred again, his lashes fluttering. His hand trembled upward, barely brushing her arm. The contact sent a pulse of light through his burns, faint, fleeting like her fire had answered him again.
Her heart clenched in horror. Not him. Not him too.
And then the voices began again.
The worshippers were the first to move.
