"Some queens rule with crowns. Others with silence and scars."
---
The Silence Beneath Stone
The prison beneath the Throne of Wounds was not made of iron or chains alone.
It was built from oaths, layered over centuries like the dust upon its floor.
Aelira sat with her back against the wall, hands clasped before her knees, unmoving. Her chains rattled when she breathed but her silence was sharper than steel.
No one had visited her in six days. No one dared.
Not after what she had said to the last guard.
"This is not the first throne I've seen fall. It will not be the last."
He had not returned.
---
Her Bloodline Burns
In the deepest hour of the night, when the torches guttered and the stone sweated with cold, Aelira dreamt.
But it was not a dream.
It was memory.
---
A hall of flame.
A woman cloaked in silver, her voice like flint.
"You are born of fire that forgets not. You carry the Weeping Flame, child. Even if you bury it."
A scream her own.
A necklace clutched in bloodied hands.
The fall of a crown too heavy for her mother to bear.
---
She woke with a gasp.
The scar along her left palm throbbed like it had the day it was carved.
"The Weeping Flame," she whispered. "Still alive in me."
---
An Audience of Chains
The guards came at dawn, silent and armed with spears marked by runes of stillness meant to mute magic, not just mouths.
She did not resist.
They brought her to the upper chamber beneath the throne room, where sunlight filtered through colored glass and painted everything in blood and gold.
And there he waited.
King Eryndor.
Not yet cloaked in full regalia he wore black robes embroidered with faint crimson thread, the color of old embers. His crown, the Crown of Ash, rested beside him, not upon his head.
They faced each other in silence.
"You've kept me below longer than I expected," she said finally.
"I expected you to kill me sooner," he replied.
Her smile was thin and dangerous.
"I still might."
---
The Words Between
Their conversation was not recorded. But had any scribe been brave enough to listen, they would have written this:
"What do you know of fire?"
"Enough to know it lies. Enough to know it remembers."
"You are the enemy."
"I was. Before my kingdom was burned. Before your father's vow turned my mother into ash."
"Then why speak now?"
"Because I think you hate the crown as much as I do."
And in that stillness, a bond began to smolder. Not of trust but of shared ruin.
---
The Flame Within
Later, alone again in her cell, Aelira whispered in Vel'Kaerin, the tongue of oaths.
"Rise, old fire. Not to destroy but to remember."
The walls did not tremble.
But the chains around her wrists melted slightly.
And on her palm, the scar pulsed once a single red spark glowing in the dark.
She closed her eyes.
And for the first time in years, she wept.
But the tears were warm.
And they hissed as they touched the floor.