The pyre crackled under Seraphina's feet, wood snapping like bone. Chained before them all, title stripped, her name already ash on their tongues. Nobles who once begged to kiss her hand now looked through her, as if she'd already gone. House D'Lorien's banners hung charred and limp; the flames licked wood close enough that she could taste smoke.
At the front stood Alaric Vessant. Her husband.
His red cloak moved in the heat. He wore the same look she'd once thought was love. Next to him stood Evelyne Malenthra, her face arranged to look sad, though satisfaction gleamed in those green eyes.
This wasn't justice. This was theater.
The Royal Justiciar's voice rang out. "Seraphina D'Lorien, for treason, forbidden magic, and betrayal, you are sentenced to death by flame."
The crowd was completely quiet, no gasps or objections, just a heavy silence, as if everyone had been anticipating this moment.
Through the haze, her eyes found Caelan Vorenthal. The Warden General stood quiet behind his mask, Alaric's biggest rival. Something in how he stood told her he knew these charges were fake.
Their gazes locked over the flames. He took a small step forward but then hesitated. One man couldn't take on an entire court of traitors to save her.
Yet he still wanted to try, which meant more to her than she realized.
And nothing else.
Through the smoke, memories washed over her.
Six Months Earlier
The day Seraphina D'Lorien learned she was pregnant, she didn't shed a tear or burst into laughter. She just sat with the reality of it.
The greenhouse wrapped around her with warm air and blooming lilies. Sunlight came through stained-glass panels above, throwing colored light across the flowers and stone. This was her safe place.
Seated by the fountain, back straight and hands folded, she replayed the midwife's words. No issues at all; everything looked great.
It had weight now.
Fingers trembled against her stomach. Being a mother had always seemed far away, something whispered about at fancy dinners. Now it was here. An actual child with its own heartbeat.
This would fix everything. Belief came easy then.
Gravel crunched behind her. She didn't turn, already knowing his walk.
"You missed breakfast," Alaric said, voice light. "I was five minutes from calling the guards."
Still watching the white flowers across from her, she smiled. "All that fuss over tea and toast?"
He chuckled and leaned down, kissing her temple. It lingered there, warm.
"You don't usually disappear unless you're mad at me."
"Maybe I am."
"Anything I should know about?" His hand found her shoulder.
She looked up at him. "Not yet."
He sat next to her and took her hand. Leaning into him without thinking, she settled against the familiar warmth. The way she always did when they were alone.
He'd brought her tea that morning, too sweet. He listened while she rambled about lilies and pH levels and soil composition, technical concepts he clearly didn't understand. He smiled like she was the most fascinating person he'd ever met.
Believing it was real became easy.
Later, she found Evelyne in the sunroom. Her cousin lay curled on a couch with a book, sunlight making her copper hair shine.
"You look like you have a secret," Evelyne said without looking up.
"Maybe I do."
"Should I worry?"
"Not yet."
They laughed together, easy, as they linked arms.
"You've been quiet lately," Evelyne observed. "Planning something?"
"Maybe. Or maybe I'm just trying to appreciate what I have."
Evelyne's fingers brushed down Seraphina's arm. For just a second, they twitched weird, didn't match how relaxed she looked.
Seraphina almost didn't notice. Almost.
The moment passed. The tea got cold. The sun faded.
The rest of that day was hushed. Seraphina kept her secret close, didn't say it out loud because it felt too sacred. In that quiet, her journal lay unlocked on the desk where anyone could read it, her private letters unsealed in the drawer. Why hide anything from people she loved?
That baby she carried, she allowed a future to bloom.
What she didn't know was that this would be her last secret. And it would be the first one they'd take from her.
Six Hours Before the Pyre
One moment she sat in her study, ink still wet on parchment. The next, doors burst open and men in steel armor marched in. They carried a proclamation sealed with red wax.
Alaric's decree.
They didn't speak or explain. They seized her and bound her wrists, the metal cuffs biting into skin, then dragged her down corridors while their boots hammered the stone loud enough to rattle her teeth.
Servants lined the hallway. People she'd known for years. Most looked away.
One smiled.
That's when Seraphina stopped hoping for reason or mercy. There was never going to be mercy.
The guards moved like puppets, every step too precise. Someone had planned this down to the smallest detail.
They threw her into a stone cell beneath the court. No windows. No guards. Just shadows.
Alone, she waited until footsteps echoed down the corridor.
The door opened. Evelyne stepped through. Alone.
"Please," Seraphina whispered, voice breaking. "I don't understand what's happening. If you ever meant any of it, please help me. If not for me then for the child I'm carrying."
Evelyne tilted her head. Then she smiled in a way that made Seraphina's blood run cold.
"You still don't get it," Evelyne said softly. "You were never supposed to win this game."
She stepped closer and placed her hand on Seraphina's belly. "You're not the only one carrying his future. My child will be Alaric's rightful heir. Mine will live. Yours will burn."
The words hit sharper than any chain. Seraphina couldn't speak, couldn't breathe around the rage that bloomed in her chest.
"Goodbye, cousin," Evelyne said, voice dripping with mock sympathy. "You always thought this was your story to write."
The executioner raised the torch high for everyone to see.
Seraphina didn't beg or cry. She looked at every traitor with their painted faces and smiled through the smoke, a cut across her face.
Because she heard it then. Her mother's voice, clear like she stood right there.
"By blood unbroken, by flame unquenched. Let the wheel turn, let fate be wrenched. Undo the hour, reclaim the flame. Let the ash bear my true name."
Words from childhood, half-forgotten until now.
The torch dropped. Flames jumped up in a wave of heat so bad the crowd stepped back.
Pain ripped through her as heat boiled her skin and turned breathing into screams. Smoke filled her lungs. She coughed once, surprised at the sound. Trying to breathe only brought more pain.
Her throat ripped open while hair ignited and flesh cracked, chains holding her upright as fire crawled up her legs and across her belly and past her ribs.
She burned alive with nothing except agony and smoke and the distant sound of the crowd watching. The last thing she saw was Alaric's face.
Then nothing.
Too late for mercy.
Lilacs and silk. Light fell through curtains she knew. Breath caught. Pain should have been here, every muscle braced for it.
Smoke clung to her hair. Knees weak, she forced herself up and, absurdly, noticed the smell of old candle wax and something iron-sweet beneath it. Her hands trembled; the chains were gone.
A pale shimmer crossed the inside of her wrist and died. No scar. Only the hard certainty that this was not an ending but a summons.
She looked down: her belly flat, the child gone. Mercy, or price paid. She did not know which.
To the mirror she forced herself, each step shaking. Same face. Same copper hair. But her eyes were different now.
She saw what Evelyne feared. What Alaric would never understand.
Her eyes remembered the fire, every crackle and scream etched into them.
She held out her hand and watched flames dance around it. Real fire that didn't need wood or anything. It moved with her thoughts. Something deeper living in her blood now, woken up by dying.
The fist closed. The flame vanished, though the heat pulsed under her skin like a second heartbeat.
They'd burned her once. This time she'd be the one holding the match.
Her eyes caught the calendar on her desk, and the date struck like a blow to the chest.
Months before the pyre. Before betrayal became real. Before Evelyne's smile had turned into a knife. Rewound to before it happened.
At her knees, cold stone pressed into skin, everything too big to understand, though part of her brain noticed the dirt under her hands and how one corner of the rug had come loose. This wasn't mercy. Not from any god she knew.
This was a reckoning.
In her chest, something jagged lodged itself and stayed. Last time she'd worn white and smiled at Evelyne and laughed with people holding knives behind their backs.
Never again.
She opened her closet. The silk inside remained unscarred by flame, no smoke, no blood, no mark at all. The fabric smelled faintly of lemon and old iron.
It hadn't happened yet. Time had given her the gift of knowing what was coming.
They thought she was naive, thought she'd be easy to kill. Some even saw her as the fool who loved too much.
This time she wouldn't wait for justice. She'd make it herself, patient and careful, fire in her blood and revenge in her heart. No sword, no open fight, just silence and painted smiles until every betrayal carried its cost.
And when the court looked at her again with their self-satisfied faces, when they thought her tamed and harmless, all they'd see was fire in her eyes.
And they would burn.
A knock sounded at her chamber door. Three sharp raps she recognized as the morning maid's pattern. The same maid who watched them drag her away. The same maid who smiled.
Seraphina's hand closed on the silk dress, and under her palm, heat pulsed like a warning.
Time to choose who burns first.