Chapter Fifteen: Crown of Ash and Roses
Kael had vanished into the east.
Through tunnels even the palace architects had forgotten, aided by loyalists too afraid to show their faces in daylight.
The boy I once loved was gone.
What remained was a ghost—
One that wanted vengeance more than victory.
The council demanded war preparations.
I gave the order myself.
The Queen's Guard was expanded. Fortresses lit their beacons. Messengers rode to every corner of the realm.
And at the center of it all, I stood beneath the throne's great arch, flame in my veins.
"We do not chase shadows," I told my people.
"We become the fire that drives them out."
On the first night of winter's edge, he came.
Not in secret.
But in storm.
Kael's banner flew black over the hills.
His army—mercenaries, exiled knights, traitors—marched like a dark wave.
They thought I'd cower behind marble walls.
They were wrong.
I met him on the battlefield, crown woven into my braid, steel strapped to my side.
Caden rode beside me, eyes like winter steel, bow in hand.
The Queen and her commander.
Not in ivory.
In iron.
The fighting was swift, brutal.
Kael's lines broke before dawn.
He came at me through the smoke and snow, sword dripping with ruin.
"I loved you once," he snarled, as we clashed blade to blade.
"You loved power," I said, striking.
He staggered. "You were supposed to be mine."
"I was never yours."
My blade found his side.
He fell, breath misting in the cold air.
"It should've been me," he whispered.
"It was." I knelt beside him. "And you lost it."
Then, silence.
The war ended not with a roar—
But a breath.
Back in the throne room, I walked the length of the great hall, boots echoing over stone.
The banners had been changed.
Not Kael's falcon.
Not even the old sigil of my father's reign.
But a new crest:
A crown half-burned, wrapped in thorns and wild roses.
At the coronation, I wore no jewels.
Only scars.
Only truth.
The people chanted my name.
But I spoke only one vow:
"To the liars, the cowards, the traitors—I am your reckoning.
To the lost, the loyal, the broken—I am your blade.
And to the realm—
I am your queen."
Caden stood at the edge of the dais.
I met his eyes.
And smiled.
Not for the throne.
Not even for victory.
But because I had survived everything they threw at me—
And became something more.
Elira Seravyn, Queen of Ash and Roses.
And the world would never forget it.
The End.