The crown wouldn't stop whispering.
Even in sleep—if what she just had counted as sleep—it murmured at the edge of her thoughts. Words in an ancient tongue, symbols she didn't recognize glowing behind her closed eyes. She woke with a jolt, sweat slick on her skin despite the cold.
"Flameborn."
"Breaker of the chain."
"She who was lost shall rise again."
"Shut up," she whispered, voice hoarse.
She sat up from the blanket of ash-dusted cloth she'd stolen from a dying stall in the market district. The crown was still there, nestled inside a broken crate, emberlight flickering beneath the wood like a dying heartbeat.
It hadn't moved.
But she could feel it breathing.
Ember pulled her cloak tighter. The shoulder wound from the arrow still burned, but not enough to kill. She'd cleaned it with forge-water and wrapped it with a strip of linen she tore from her sleeve. It would scar.
Just another reminder.
Another secret she'd have to keep.
She stared at the crown again. "What are you?"
It didn't answer this time. Not with words.
Just warmth. Familiar. Wrong.
She looked down at her hands. They weren't smoking anymore, but faint lines—like glowing cracks—still traced her veins. Golden. Pulsing.
Fire lived inside her.
And she didn't know how to control it.
The city of Solara always smelled like smoke.
But this morning, it was worse. More guards. More checkpoints. Panic whispered through the streets like wind through a dry forest. The heist had worked—too well. The royal vault had been breached for the first time in over a century. And people were talking.
The crown had vanished.
The Flame King was furious.
And Ember was public enemy number one.
She moved through the lower districts with her hood pulled low, using alleys and market crowds to stay unseen. She couldn't go back to her usual hideouts. Couldn't risk being followed.
She needed answers.
About the crown.
About her fire.
About why it had called to her.
There was only one person left in Solara who might know: Ashar.
Old, half-mad, and full of stories that most thought were just drunk smoke-dreams. But Ember had listened. Years ago, when she was just a street rat hiding in the back of his apothecary, he'd whispered things no one else dared say.
That the royal bloodline was cursed.
That the throne was stolen.
That a girl would come, fire-born and crown-marked, to burn it all down.
She hadn't believed him then.
She wasn't sure she believed him now.
But she had no one else.
Ashar's apothecary sat at the edge of the glassforge district, wedged between two collapsed kilns. The windows were fogged over, and the door hung crooked on its hinges. It looked abandoned.
Perfect.
She knocked once, twice. No answer.
"Old man, it's Ember."
Silence.
"I need to talk. And I brought trouble."
The door creaked open on its own.
Of course it did.
She slipped inside and bolted it shut behind her. The air was thick with the scent of burnt herbs, ashroot, and something that smelled suspiciously like dead lizard.
Ashar was hunched over a smoking bowl, eyes glowing faintly silver.
"You stole it," he rasped, before she said a word.
Ember froze. "You know?"
He looked up. His eyes focused for the first time in years.
"I felt it. Every mage in Solara did. The Crown of Cinders hasn't woken in a hundred years. And now… now it sings again."
He stood—slowly, bones popping—and stepped closer.
"You have it, don't you?" he whispered. "The blood answers to the flame."
"I don't know what that means."
"You will."
He lifted her hand. She didn't stop him. He traced one glowing vein with his thumb.
"You were born with it," he said. "Hiding it only delayed the burn."
"What is it?"
"Power," he said. "And a curse."
Ember's jaw clenched. "You told me stories. A fireborn heir. A stolen throne. That was all just rebel talk, wasn't it?"
Ashar smiled bitterly. "You think fairy tales come from nothing? Your mother wore that crown once."
Her breath caught.
"No."
"She hid you. Burned her own name from the royal books. Gave you to the gutter so they wouldn't find you."
"No. That's not—" She backed away. "I'm no princess. I'm not—"
The crown burned through the cloth of her satchel and clattered to the floor.
Neither of them moved.
The embers pulsed.
Ashar's eyes narrowed.
"It's awake now," he said. "And so are you."
Outside, bells began to ring.
Low and heavy.
Not warning bells.
Hunting bells.
They were coming.
For her.