Chapter 2 ASHES IN THE VEINS

The wind tore at her lungs as they fell through the darkness.

Eris barely had time to scream before the light beneath her hands flared again heat, alive, furious. Then the fall slowed, the fire catching the air like wings, scattering sparks across the midnight sky.

Kael’s arm was locked around her waist, his heartbeat thundering against her back. The ground rose like a threat, but the flame wings curved, dissolving into smoke before they struck. They hit the garden pond with a hiss, water exploding around them.

Eris rolled free, gasping, drenched, half blind from light and rage. Her dagger was gone. Her mask lay shattered among the reeds.

“Don’t touch me,” she snarled, pushing herself to her feet.

Kael stood waist-deep in the water, his mask gone too, revealing a face that looked infuriatingly human sharp jaw, smoke-gray eyes, hair dark as coal dust. But the mark burned faintly above his heart, golden and alive, the same as the one on her wrist.

“You should thank me,” he said, voice low but steady. “I just saved your life.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“No. But you also didn’t ask the sky to catch you.”

“Are you always this unbearable?”

“Only when someone tries to stab me.”

Eris’s chest tightened. He was calm too calm. The fire in her blood hissed at the sight of him, at the sound of his voice. She should finish what she started. But when she reached for her magic, it didn’t obey. The ember-light that had once burned freely under her skin now pulsed in rhythm with his.

She could feel him. His heartbeat, his focus, his restraint. The connection was real.

“What did you do to me?” she demanded.

Kael stepped closer, water rippling. “That’s what I was going to ask you.”

“Don’t play ignorant. You’re not human.”

“And you are?”

The question landed like a blow. She turned away, clutching her arm where the mark glowed faintly through the wet silk.

He sighed. “Look, assassin, we don’t have long. The guards will be sweeping the palace. If they find either of us alive, they’ll start asking questions neither of us can afford to answer.”

She almost laughed. “You think I’m helping you escape?”

“No. I think we’re escaping the same death.”

Lightning cracked across the horizon, silent but bright, as if the gods themselves eavesdropped.

Eris clenched her jaw. Every part of her screamed to run, to vanish into shadow as she’d done for years. But something in the fire under her skin refused. It tugged toward him an invisible chain forged of heat and breath and something older than both.

“Fine,” she spat. “But the moment we’re clear, I cut this bond and your throat.”

“Fair,” Kael said. “Let’s move.”

They slipped through the garden’s edge, past the carved statues of dragons and saints. Alarms blared in the distance. Above, the palace burned where their fire had touched.

Eris led, moving like a shadow through the trees. Kael followed, his steps silent for a man wearing half a palace on his shoulders.

“Why were you at the masquerade?” she asked without looking back.

“I could ask the same.”

“I asked first.”

“Because the empire’s council thinks I’m still loyal.” His tone darkened. “I was there to prove them right.”

“Were you?”

He didn’t answer.

They reached the edge of the forest. The night smelled of rain and smoke. In the distance, the silver towers of Aedryn rose like blades, lights flickering in panic.

Eris’s hand brushed the scar along her collarbone the one that still ached when she dreamed of fire. “You slaughtered my people.”

“I led the army,” Kael said quietly. “I didn’t light the pyres.”

“Don’t you dare”

“But I didn’t stop it either.”

His voice cracked slightly at the end, enough that she turned. For a heartbeat, she saw something unguarded in him guilt, raw and bright as flame.

Then torches glimmered through the trees. Voices shouted. The spell of the moment broke.

“They’re close,” he said.

“Then we run.”

They ran.

Branches whipped past; roots clawed at their boots. The forest seemed alive with whispers, the old kind that remembered magic before men ruled it. The fire in Eris’s veins pulsed faster, guiding her deeper, toward the forgotten path she’d used as a child.

She stumbled once, Kael catching her elbow before she hit the ground. The heat between them sparked again an echo of the same fire that had saved them. It wasn’t just power. It was recognition.

They burst into a clearing, and there it was: the ruins of a stone temple, half swallowed by vines. The air shimmered faintly around it old wards, weakened but still humming.

Eris slowed. “Here.”

“You know this place?”

“My mother did.” Her throat tightened. “She said it was where the Emberbloods were born.”

Kael looked skeptical. “Born from what?”

Eris’s eyes glowed faintly gold. “From flame itself.”

They crossed into the ruins. The air inside was heavy with warmth, as if the fire beneath the earth never fully died. Strange carvings lined the cracked walls serpents, wings, eyes that followed.

Kael brushed his fingers along one. “This symbol… it matches the mark on us.”

Eris’s heartbeat quickened. “Then it’s true.”

Before she could explain, a sound echoed through the chamber low, metallic, wrong. The torches behind them flared blue.

Kael drew his sword in a single motion. “We’re not alone.”

A figure stepped from the shadows tall, wrapped in armor the color of frost. His face was hidden by a visor carved like a skull. The sigil on his chest burned with cold fire.

“By order of the High Council,” the figure said, voice distorted, “the traitor prince and the witch are to be taken alive.”

Kael muttered, “Always alive. Never a good sign.”

Eris raised her hands, fire curling between her fingers but the flames sputtered, reacting to the blue wardlight.

“They’re dampening magic,” she hissed.

The knight stepped closer. “Surrender, and your deaths will be painless.”

Kael smirked. “Tempting offer.”

Eris glanced at him. “Got a better one?”

“Always.” He slammed his sword into the ground. The impact cracked stone, a pulse of red light spreading from the mark on his chest. The knight staggered.

Eris seized the moment, drawing on the faint ember left in her veins. Her fire roared back to life, bright enough to burn through the dampening ward. Together, their flames met his red, hers gold and burst outward.

The shockwave threw the knight across the chamber, shattering stone and memory alike.

When the light faded, the ruin was silent. Smoke coiled above the cracked floor.

Kael exhaled. “That was reckless.”

“You started it,” she shot back.

He smiled, faintly. “You finished it.”

But even as the tension eased, Eris felt it again the pull under her skin, the bond deepening, roots digging where they shouldn’t. The fire in her blood was changing.

Something ancient had awakened.

Kael must have sensed it too, because his expression hardened. “That wasn’t just power.”

“No,” she whispered. “That was memory.”

A faint whisper curled through the air, the same voice that had spoken in the ballroom older than magic, patient as fire.

The halves are bound. The Queen stirs.

Eris froze. “Did you hear that?”

Kael nodded slowly. “Every word.”

They looked at each other, realization sinking lik

e ash through water.

The prophecy her mother had died for wasn’t a myth.

The Ember Queen the first flame was returning.

And her heart now burned in both of them.