Chapter 18: New Flame
A month had passed since the storm broke.
Spring came to Daltigoth like an apology — slow, awkward, and warm. The city stirred itself from its ruins like a sleeper waking from a long nightmare. Roofs were repaired. Markets reopened. Children laughed again in the streets, though they still flinched at thunder.
Lira had begun to dream again.
They were not the same as the others. Not recollections of lives past or future horrors. These were warm: being beside a hearth, listening to Thalen argue with a speaking book; watching Kaela out-drink mercenaries in a tavern; teaching Kerris to smile without irony.
She'd woken one morning with tears in her eyes and a smile on her mouth.
Something inside of her had shifted — or perhaps just grown.
They sat again at the center of the citadel — Kaela, Thalen, Kerris, and Lira — beneath the obsidian tree.
It was taller now.
It had new leaves: green now, not black. The spiral on Lira's hand no longer flamed. It pulsed now, like a heartbeat. Like it was in rhythm with the world.
"I still think it's a terrible idea," Kerris complained. "A festival? Now?"
"It's exactly the time," Kaela said, stretching. "We've got survivors, food, and a city that needs something to believe in."
"Also fireworks," Thalen added, grinning. "I've invented ten new kinds. One might not explode."
Kerris rubbed his eyes. "I'm going to die surrounded by idiots."
"No," Lira said, stepping forward. "You'll live surrounded by friends."
He blinked. Then — just for a moment — smiled.
—
The Festival of the New Flame began with stiff speeches and ended with drunken dancing.
Kaela battled a knight into a mud pit.
Thalen juggled flaming spheres until one gained sentience and proposed to him.
Kerris was able to elicit exactly three-quarters of a smile from a child by teaching them how to disarm a trap.
Lira danced.
She hadn't meant to. But there was music, and a tug on her hand, and then she was spinning through torchlight, boots kicking mud, alive and breathless. The mark on her palm glowed softly, as though it, too, were dancing.
When the fireworks burst — one in the shape of a wyvern sneezing glitter — she laughed so hard she nearly fell over.
She hadn't felt this *real* in so long.
—
Later that night, they perched on the reconstructed tower, stars reclaiming the sky.
"Do you think it's truly finished?" Thalen asked.
"No," Lira said. "Not for always. Nothing ever concludes completely."
"But we're still here," Kaela said, bumping her shoulder against Lira's.
"Still pestering," Kerris added.
"Still family," Thalen finished.
Lira looked at the three of them — battle-scarred, optimistic, ridiculous — and felt the silent flame within her kindle.
Not the Queen's.
*Hers.*
"We are," she breathed.
And in the distance, the obsidian tree blossomed.