Page 78 of Among the Burning Flowers

‘Then you mean to leave us?’ she asked him. ‘To go to Inys?’

‘Not for long.’ Fýredel looked into her eyes. ‘Enact my will in Yscalin. Do not seek to escape or resist, or flesh will burn as flowers do, all across this land. You know what is expected.’

The iron helm, wrought like a wyrm.

‘Yes,’ Marosa said. ‘I understand, my liege. You will find no disobedience in Cárscaro.’

‘So be it.’

The Flesh King crumpled. While Lord Gastaldo and the Vardya tended him, Marosa left the Privy Chamber, her skin turning cold, and rushed to her balcony for the first time since Ermendo died. She had not been able to bear walking that familiar path without him.

In the distance, she heard the first screams, followed by cries of joy.

It was not yet dawn, so she only saw Fýredel when he passed over the lava, which lit his colossal form. The architect of the Grief of Ages, free of his lair in Mount Fruma, taking to the sky for the first time in centuries.

His wings stretched wide enough to plunge Cárscaro into shadow. Now she saw that he had four legs rather than two, separate from those wings, and his tail was as broad as the trunk of a stone pine, with spikes at the end, each twice as long as she was tall.

Every scale looked as hard as a shield.

As he passed the Palace of Salvation, his gaze scraped hers for a moment. She gripped the balustrade as he soared towards the Great Yscali Plain, watched by all who were awake. With three mighty sweeps of his wings, the wyrm disappeared into the night.

Marosa slid to the ground, strands of hair blowing free of their braid. Priessa came to kneel in front of her.

‘And so a second Grief begins,’ Marosa said softly. ‘If he kills Queen Sabran, all is lost. The Nameless One will rise. This time, humankind will be extinguished. Not even bones will remain.’

Priessa cupped her face. Marosa searched hers for hope, for salvation.

‘I care not if my father is a cultist,’ Priessa said, her voice taut. ‘We two may be quite alone, but we are Yscals. We are strong.’ Her freckled cheeks glistened. ‘I believe Queen Sabran will survive Fýredel, as Glorian Shieldheart did. And I believe in you, even above the Saint himself. One day, you will be Queen of Yscalin. The Marosan era will heal this scarred country.’

They pressed their foreheads together.

‘The Knight of Fellowship is good,’ Marosa whispered, ‘to have given me you, at the end of our days.’

They stayed there until the sun rose, bleeding its light on to the dead and barren plain. At last, a chirp made them both look up in surprise, their faces tearstained. After two long years, the serin – that lovely, merry little bird – had dared return to Cárscaro. It cocked its head, seeming to look Marosa in the eyes, before it flew away again.

****

Outside, the Tundana kept flowing. The wyverns kept their constant watch. Under the eye of Lord Gastaldo, the Privy Council fell to the cult. Meanwhile, the Flesh King rotted in his bedchamber, dreaming of flight and scarlet fire, of a woman with the sun in her grasp.

By the time the new Inysh ambassadors arrived in Cárscaro, Fýredel had not returned, but Marosa stood ready. They might only have a small window of time to send the box away once more.

Priessa had gone to meet theRose Eternal, the ship that had brought the pair to Yscalin. By feigning her devotion to the cult, convincing her father that she was loyal, she had earned the freedom to leave Cárscaro.

And soon Marosa stood at a hidden entrance to the Presence Chamber, wearing a black gown with a red sash, pinned by a brooch showing an iron tongue of flame. The Privy Council would be in the audience. They looked to her now, instead of her father, just as she had once desired.

If only it had not happened like this.

The Inysh ambassadors waited for her. Lord Arteloth Beck and Lord Kitston Glade, two men who did not know that she would soon ask them to risk their lives for her people – but who had risked their own, by choice, by coming to a harrowed land the Saint had forsaken. And she – a puppet, a prisoner, a princess – would remain on the throne, unable to leave, until the day that Fýredel fell, as he had once before, on the last day of the Grief of Ages. She wore her suit of armour, made up of her fear and pain, but underneath, she was still burning.

She donned the head of Fýredel, and inside, all was quiet. Watched by her court, and by the two men, she took her place on the obsidian throne, carved from the Dreadmount itself.

‘Lord Arteloth and Lord Kitston,’ she said. ‘My beloved father and I bid you welcome to the Draconic Kingdom of Yscalin.’