The wind didn't just howl through the broken spires of the Citadel; it screamed, tearing at the tattered banners. The air was thick with the scent of ash and hot metal, and the distant, metallic clang of mourning horns was swallowed by the ever-present beat of war drums. The sky above Sahirra was not blue, it was a bruised, pulsing gray, heavy as a stone, darkening with every echo. High above the capital, the clouds wept, but no sound was louder than the silent grief of the child who had just become a ruler.
She stood barefoot in the ruin of the palace courtyard, her small fingers clenched in the heavy, blood-stained folds of her gown. Her name was Aeryn, daughter of Queen Elaira Yssa and High King Maeron Thalen, but the child they'd loved had died moments before they did. What remained was a throne, still warm with smoke, and a six-year-old girl with red hair in a kingdom that saw the color as a curse.
She had watched.
One moment, her mother was laughing. The next, she was on fire.
It wasn't a flame from torch or oil; this was black, oily, and unnatural. It hissed like a nest of disturbed serpents, magic that crawled over Yssa's skin, consuming her from the inside out. The Queen's bones were left almost instantly, a crown of fire scorched onto her skull. Her father, the High King, roared like a lion and lunged forward. The black fire swallowed him whole. He didn't scream for himself, he screamed her name until his lungs were silence.
Aeryn had not screamed at all. Not when her handmaid dragged her behind the heavy silver tapestry. Not when the stones cracked and the throne chamber split open like a dying heart. She had stared with the frozen, terrible silence of prey. A silence that did not break even now, standing amidst the smoke and the bones.
The Burden of Rule
The High Orator approached. Beneath his veil, his voice was muffled and grave. He placed the High Crown in her small hands. It was dented from the blast, part of it melted, but the gold still gleamed.
"By the laws of flame and blood, by the pact of the Thousand Thrones, by the will of Sahirra and its sky…" The Orator paused, looking down at the trembling child. "…do you accept the burden of sovereign rule?"
Aeryn looked up. Around the perimeter of the courtyard, black-robed nobles stood like columns of basalt. None knelt. Their eyes were hard, their necks stubbornly unbowed. She knew what they saw: a child soaked in soot and taboo, trembling beside the bones of her royal parents.
A spark, hot, sharp, and strange; flared in her chest, a thorn under the skin.
She stepped forward, planting her small feet on the broken stones.
"I do."
The crown was placed on her head, slipping slightly over her ear. The wind clawed at her, threatening to pull the cloak from her shoulders, but she did not move. She stood, chin raised, as the sky split with a violent clap of thunder. Bells began to ring out her name across the city. No one cheered.
.........…..
Aeryn's first decree was to bury her parents herself.
She refused the priests, the pallbearers, the gold-stitched veils, and the ceremonial birdsong. In the Garden of Stone, she dug the graves with her own small hands. Her handmaid, panicked, tried to intervene. "Your Highness! Please! You are Queen now, this task is below you!" But Aeryn ignored her, focused on the earth. Her hands calloused and bled, shivering in the cold twilight. The guards watched, confused but silent.
Aeryn did not cry. She whispered to no one.
When her maid finally pulled her back with a firm, desperate grip and motioned for the stunned guards to finish, Aeryn stopped struggling. After the earth was mounded, she planted one lily for each parent, red for Yssa, white for Thalen, and pressed her forehead into the cold dirt until her skin was raw.
When she finally rose, her desert-amber eyes were darker than dusk.
The Shadow of the Alcove
That night, the Royal Court convened without her.
Old men with oil-slick beards. Grandmothers whose fingers were heavy with rings. Priests who smelled of dusty, ancient parchment. They gathered in their silks and furs to dissect their new Queen, wondering aloud if the realm could survive a girl born under such omens.
"She is too young," declared High Minister Varr. "Barely six winters to her name."
"Too cursed," muttered Lady Hareth. "Red hair is the mark of the Unblessed."
"And those eyes," hissed a voice. "Amber, like the Dune Vale beast-folk."
"After the chaos that claimed her parents, who knows what she will bring to us?"
They spoke as if she were a thousand miles away. But Aeryn stood in the deep shadow of a ceiling alcove, still wrapped in her burial cloak. She heard every cruel word. Her small hands curled around the cold iron railing. For a single, fleeting second, she felt the words rise in her throat: Please... help me. But alas the sound never escaped. She had no one left to beg.
She returned to her bedchamber. No servant followed. No guard took post outside her door. Outside, lightning struck the far hills. Inside, Aeryn sat by the glass, hands gripping a bread knife.
She did not sleep.
.........….
They tried to kill her in the Hour of Emberlight, when the setting sun bled crimson across the horizon and the sky glowed like a fresh wound.
She had just entered the Solar Hall for the first council. Behind her, the great stained-glass windows burned with light, images of ancient queens, battles, and gods.
The knife came from nowhere. A shadow launched itself from the upper balcony.
Aeryn turned.
The assassin's blade met the air a mere inch from her throat.
A shriek of agony shattered the silence, not hers, but the attacker's. His body instantly convulsed, seizing violently in mid-air. Blood burst from his eyes. His bones cracked with a sickening, audible sound.
He dropped to the floor like a bag of shattered glass, a pool of crimson blooming around him.
Aeryn stared. It had not been her hands. It had been something inside her.
The court gasped. Guards surged in, keeping everyone back. The assassin was dead before they reached him.
Aeryn looked down at her hands. They shook. Her blood-colored hair had darkened, the tips now glowing with an intense, fiery hue. As she was escorted from the hall, streaks of deep, unnatural red had begun to appear in her curls. She didn't understand the how or the why. But she was sure of one thing: she was the culprit.
From that day onward, they bowed. Every viscount, marshal, duke, minister, slave, and maid.
Not out of love. Out of terror.
As the shock-faced court parted for her, Aeryn, the child of six who had given a bloody response to their silent judgment, finally smiled.
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