POV: Siran
Four days earlier, in the eastern provinces.
Siran had picked up the trail at the southern archive, just as Lady Seraphina instructed. A courier had been spotted leaving through a back entrance, moving east on paths that did not appear on any official map. No house colors. No identifying marks. Heading toward Cerwyn territory.
Seraphina had given him the assignment during the war council, while she was still confined to the palace under suspicion. The divorce proceedings were dragging on, but she had seen the walls closing in and sent him while she still could.
He tracked the courier's route through three villages before catching sight of the man himself in a market town along the Cerwyn road. The description matched: worn traveling clothes, no house colors, moving with the kind of careful precision that screamed training. He never quite looked where he was going yet never bumped into anyone. Professional. Dangerous. And clearly still on his mission.
Siran signaled Amara, and they fell into closer pursuit.
The courier left the town at dusk, timing his departure to blend with the farmers heading home. Half a mile out, he glanced back twice, then slipped into the treeline and vanished onto paths that did not appear on any map.
Ghost routes. The kind smugglers used, the kind spies used, the kind people used when they did not want to be followed.
Siran and Amara followed anyway.
Two days of travel brought them deeper into Cerwyn territory. The land grew wilder as farms gave way to thick forest and rocky hillsides that swallowed sound and light alike. The courier moved with purpose, checking landmarks against something tucked inside his coat. He knew exactly where he was going.
Once, Siran thought they had lost him. He doubled back through a creek bed, walking in the water for nearly a mile and leaving no tracks, no scent, nothing for dogs or magic to follow. They had to circle wide before picking up his trail again. Whoever trained this man had trained him well.
On the second evening, he found what he sought.
A cottage sat at the edge of a clearing, half-swallowed by encroaching woods. The stone walls were crumbling and the roof had been patched with mismatched tiles. Smoke curled from the chimney in a thin gray line, the kind of fire someone built when they were trying not to be noticed.
The courier settled into a watching position among the trees and began writing in a small notebook. He was making observations, doing reconnaissance. He was not here to make contact. He was here to confirm a location.
Siran caught Amara's eye and made the decision. They would take him now, before he could report back.
The capture was clean. Amara came from behind while Siran stepped in front, his blade at the courier's throat before the man could reach for a weapon.
"Who sent you?" Siran demanded. "Who lives in that house?"
The courier did not struggle. He looked at Siran with calm, empty eyes that had seen this moment coming for a long time. Then he smiled, and his jaw moved as something cracked between his teeth.
Foam erupted from his mouth. His body convulsed once, twice, then went rigid. Whatever poison he had hidden in that hollow tooth worked fast, killing him in ten seconds or less.
Siran stared at the body. The smile had not quite faded from his face.
"He killed himself rather than answer," he said.
"Whoever sent him thought this secret was worth a death." Amara's voice was flat and professional, but her eyes held the same cold understanding.
Siran's head snapped toward the cottage when he caught movement at the back window. A figure stood silhouetted against firelight for just a moment before vanishing from view.
"Someone saw us."
They ran, but by the time they reached the cottage door, it stood open. The back window gaped wide to the evening air. Whoever had been inside was gone.
The cottage was still warm with recent life.
A worn dress hung on a peg by the door. A shawl lay draped over the reading chair by the fire. The fire itself held embers beneath gray ash that had not yet gone cold. A pot of soup cooled over the hearth with steam still rising from its surface. A chair lay knocked on its side near the back window, and boot prints marked the soft earth outside, heading north at speed.
"She used our distraction," Amara said as she examined the tracks. "Saw us take the courier and ran while we were focused on him."
They had been so intent on the capture that they had missed their true quarry.
Siran cursed and began searching the cottage. The woman had made this place her home. Hairpins sat in a small dish on the windowsill. Books sat stacked by the reading chair with spines cracked from repeated use. Herbs lined the shelves, carefully labeled in neat, precise handwriting. A narrow bed had been neatly made except where someone had grabbed a blanket in haste.
She had built a life in this isolation and abandoned it in seconds when danger appeared.
The floorboard creaked wrong beneath Siran's foot. He knelt and found a slight gap at one edge with scratches where something had pried it up many times.
Beneath the board, wrapped in oilcloth to protect against moisture, sat a wooden box.
Inside the box he found papers, dozens of them, all yellowed with age.
Servant records bearing the House Vessant seal. Lists of names with marks beside them, some crossed out, some circled, some with dates written in the margins. Letters in elegant handwriting that bore no signature but carried fragments of wax seals. A sketch on heavy parchment, drawn from memory with careful precision, showing a serpent coiled around a shattered crown.
Siran spread the papers across the table and studied them. None of it made sense to him. Household records, names he did not recognize, a symbol he had never seen. But someone had kept all of this hidden and organized. That meant something.
A name appeared in the margin of one document. It had been underlined twice, circled once, and surrounded by question marks.
"Calis."
"Mean anything to you?" Amara asked.
"No, but it meant something to her." Siran gathered everything carefully, preserving the order and arrangement. Whatever this was, the woman had thought it important enough to hide. "Important enough to run rather than let someone find it."
One more item caught his attention. A small pouch had been tucked beneath the papers. Inside he found the broken remnants of a crest ring. The metal was scorched and warped, the outer band cracked as if someone had torn it off fast and without care. Most of the design had melted, but a piece of a serpent still caught the light, clear enough to recognize.
The same symbol as the sketch.
"She kept this hidden," Siran said. "Whatever this symbol means, she thought it was worth running from."
He looked around the empty cottage with its still-warm fire and the life that had been abandoned in seconds.
"And now she's gone, and we have no idea who she is or where she went."
Amara checked the tracks outside again. "North, moving fast. She knows this territory and we don't."
"We can't chase her and deliver this at the same time."
"No, we can't."
Siran made the decision. "We take the box. Lady Seraphina needs to see this."
"The woman is gone."
"She wanted to be gone." Siran looked at the box, heavy and awkward. "Couldn't take it with her. Not through a window, not at a run."
"Lucky for us."
"Maybe. Either way, Seraphina needs to see this."
They left the cottage as they found it. The box went with them, secured in Siran's saddlebags.
The capital appeared on the horizon two days later.
They had pushed the horses hard, stopping only when the animals threatened to collapse. Whatever they had stumbled into felt urgent in ways Siran could not name. A courier who died rather than talk. A woman who ran rather than be found. A symbol hidden under floorboards for reasons he did not understand.
He expected to ride through the gates and straight to Seraphina. He did not expect the barricades.
The main road was blocked. Soldiers in imperial colors stood shoulder to shoulder with pikes lowered, their faces grim with exhaustion and something worse. Fear. More soldiers lined the side streets, and overturned carts funneled all traffic away from the palace district.
A crowd had gathered at the perimeter. Merchants were demanding access and nobles were shouting about appointments, but all of them were being turned away with the same words, over and over.
"What is this?" Amara muttered.
Siran pushed forward. A sergeant stepped into his path with one hand raised and the other on his sword.
"Road is closed. Turn back."
"I serve Lady Seraphina D'Lorien. I carry urgent intelligence."
"No one enters. Empress's orders."
"On what grounds?"
The sergeant hesitated. His eyes flickered toward the palace, toward the smoke rising in thin columns from somewhere within, and Siran saw fear there. Real fear, the kind that came from seeing things that should not exist.
"Curse outbreak," he said finally. "The dead are walking inside those walls. No one in, no one out, until it is contained."
The blood drained from Siran's face.
"Lady Seraphina is inside."
"Fighting it, from what I hear." A note of reluctant respect entered the sergeant's voice. "Her fire is one of the few things that works. They say she has saved dozens, pulled the curse from their blood herself."
"And you will not let me in to help her."
"I will not let you in to die." The sergeant straightened, and Siran saw that his hands were shaking despite his steady voice. "Those are my orders. Not you, not anyone, not until it ends."
He tried every approach over the next several hours.
The eastern gate was blocked. The servants' entrance had been barricaded with furniture and prayer beads. Even the old drainage tunnels had been sealed with fresh mortar and warding sigils that glowed faint blue in the darkness.
The palace was a fortress and everyone inside was trapped.
Siran found a spot where he could see the walls rising in the distance. Smoke curled from somewhere within, gray and black and occasionally shot through with something that might have been gold. Screams drifted on the wind, distant and terrible. Sometimes the smoke thickened, and he thought he saw flames beneath it. Seraphina's fire, burning things that refused to stay dead.
Rumors spread among the watchers gathered at the barricades. The dead could not be killed by steel. The curse spread through bites, through scratches, through the very air in certain corridors. The Flamebearer was burning herself out saving others.
They called it the Flamebearer's curse. Some said she had caused it while others said she was the only thing holding it back.
Siran did not know which were true. He only knew that Seraphina was fighting somewhere behind those walls, and all he could do was stand here with a box of secrets that might matter and might mean nothing at all.
The sun set and the smoke kept rising.
"We wait," he said. "We wait and we pray she survives long enough to see what we found."
Amara said nothing. There was nothing to say.
The smoke kept rising. Somewhere behind those walls, Seraphina was fighting something they could not see, could not reach, could not help with. They had ridden hard for days to bring her answers. Now all they could do was stand outside the walls and hope she lived long enough to hear them.
A scream cut through the night air. Then another. Then silence.
Siran gripped the barricade until his knuckles went white. Beside him, Amara's hand moved to her blade out of instinct, though there was nothing here to fight.
They waited.