35. Chapter 35
K aelin was perched in a high-backed chair like she owned the place, one leg draped over the armrest and a half-empty glass of deep red wine balanced between two fingers.
Kaelin tilted her head. “Do you ever pause to actually think before you speak, or is this – ” she gestured at Ren “ – your natural pace of processing? You are so vulgar. I’ve met sailors with cleaner tongues.”
Ren considered turning around and leaving and coming back tomorrow. But pride was a venomous thing, and she’d already swallowed too much of it today.
“Well, I guess somebody has to raise the bar,” Ren plopped into a nearby chair. “I just didn’t know this section came with royal accompaniment.”
Kaelin raised her glass, eyes gleaming over the rim. “Only for the truly blessed.”
“Then I’m in the right place.”
They both thumbed through the old tomes piled on the table.
“You skipped dinner,” Kaelin drawled without looking up. Her voice was calm, but threaded with that clipped tone Ren had come to recognize as concern disguised as irritation.
“I wasn’t hungry. ”
“You’re contracted to fight for this realm. Paid with coin, clothing, housing. We’re not just feeding you out of kindness. If you collapse in battle because you’re not eating properly – ”
“I’ve survived worse than skipping a meal. I don’t need you monitoring my plate,” Ren shot back, slamming her book closed. “Didn’t realize feeding me meant you owned me. Go back to drinking your wine and playing princess. I didn’t come here to be lectured.”
“You’re right,” Kaelin murmured coolly. “You didn’t. You came here because your world tilted sideways last night, and you don’t know which way is up. So you're snapping at the one person who is actually trying to do something about it.”
The words struck deeper than Ren expected. Heat bloomed behind her eyes, hot and unwelcome. She looked away, pretending to study the spines of nearby books, but the fire had already risen in her throat.
For a split second, just one traitorous heartbeat, she almost thought that Kaelin regarded her not as the realm’s precious asset but as a person.
But the wineglass still sat half-full beside Kaelin’s elbow, and her voice had held too much steel, too much duty, to be anything close to tenderness. Ren knew better. Kaelin didn’t care about her. She cared about the realm’s investment.
That’s all she was to them.
An asset left unfed and unrested was a liability. What more would she expect?
“I’m not the enemy here.”
“You may not be my enemy,” Ren retorted. “But you’re not a friend, either.”
She turned back to the table, reached for another biscuit with hands that trembled just slightly, and took a bite. It practically melted in her mouth.
Kaelin sighed. It slipped past her lips like steam from a cracked kettle, and for the first time that night, her carefully cultivated calm fractured.
Kaelin set her wineglass down with a soft clink and leaned against the back of her chair, folding her arms. “Why are humans so dramatic about friendship? You all cling to the idea, as if every interaction must fall neatly into a box – friend, enemy, stranger, lover.” Her mouth twisted.
“I’ve lived over a hundred years, and if I wasted my energy trying to define every connection, I’d have lost my mind long ago.
Maybe I’m not your friend. Maybe I never will be.
But does that mean I don’t care whether you survive?
” She held Ren’s gaze. “This isn’t about friendship.
It’s about what has to be done for the safety of the realm.
And what has to be done involves both of us, whether we like it or not. ”
Ren hated how much sense Kaelin made. But instead of staying quiet, like she probably should have, Ren’s mouth ran ahead of her better judgment.
“You’re right, but I’m so tired of the masks.
” Ren sighed, pushing a hand through her hair as the words kept tumbling out.
“I don’t hide things from people. What you see is what you get.
I am who I am. And maybe that’s too much for some, but I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not just to make someone else comfortable or to get something I want out of someone.
What I say is what I mean. I don’t understand how you all do that, day in and day out. It’s exhausting.”
Kaelin didn’t say anything. The silence stretched.
Ren’s eyes widened slightly as realization struck her.
Shit.
Her face flushed, heat rising all the way to her ears. Ren stared resolutely at the wall, suddenly fascinated by the cracks in the stone.
Then—
A soft sound broke the air.
Kaelin laughed .
Ren turned toward her, blinking in disbelief.
“I’ve been performing since I was old enough to braid my own hair. There’s not a soul at court who doesn’t wear a mask so long they forget the shape of their real face underneath. The truth is, I envy you. You walk into a room, fire blazing, and you don’t dim it for anyone.”
Ren shuffled in her chair, unsure how to respond.
Kaelin’s eyes flicked back to the scrolls before them. “You should rant to me more often. Your thoughts are rather interesting.” She paused, then added, “For a mortal.”
Ren’s brain struggled to catch up. Her mouth, however, had no such delay. “Has the wine gotten to you?”
The corners of Kaelin’s lips twitched into a ghost of a smile. “Possibly. But don’t let it go to your head. I’ll deny everything come morning.”
Ren huffed a laugh, the tension in her chest loosening just a little. “Good to know the realm’s future rests in the hands of a tipsy noble. ”
“ And a stubborn, sword-swinging fire hazard with a flair for dramatics.”
Ren grinned, despite herself. “So, did you find anything worth mentioning?”
Kaelin’s gaze flicked up from the book in her lap, the hint of wry amusement vanishing from her face. “Do you remember anything specific about the people who invaded your home?”
Ren’s spine went rigid.
A familiar heat crawled up her neck, the kind born of pain that still hadn’t scabbed over.
“You mean the night my parents were murdered?” she snapped before she could stop herself.
The words came too fast, too bitter. Her jaw clenched tight, but Kaelin didn’t flinch.
She merely raised one perfectly shaped brow, as if braced for the lash of Ren’s temper.
Ashamed of her outburst, Ren bit into another biscuit. “They wore red cloaks. Their faces were hidden behind bone-white masks.” Her voice faltered, her fingers curling into her sleeve. “They chanted something. It sounded like… a prayer.”
Ren stared at the table, her mind peeling back the years like old wallpaper. That night had a sharpness to it—jagged edges of memory too painful to touch, yet impossible to forget.
Her heart began to race. “Wait.”
Ren pushed to her feet, pacing.
“When I was headed to the butcher’s block,” she said, half to Kaelin, half to herself, “Sela said something – a prayer. I remember the words. They hit me like a blow at the time, but I couldn’t place why.” Her eyes narrowed, thoughts spinning. “How did it go? Ash to air, wing to flame —”
Kaelin’s smooth voice finished the verse:
“Guard the lost, forget no name.
Though bound and broken we remain…
Let the last flame wake again.”
Ren’s breath caught in her throat. “Yes,” she whispered, then louder, “Yes! That’s it. That’s what they said. How do you know that?”
Kaelin lifted the heavy leather-bound tome in her lap, the worn cover stamped with a sigil Ren didn’t recognize. “I’ve been reading,” Kaelin answered simply, eyes gleaming. “Drinking, of course, as well. But more importantly, reading. ”
Ren studied the sigil on the tome. It depicted a coiled dragon, but its body was made of what looked like burning cinders rather than scales. At the center of the circle was a single, vertical eye, and Ren felt like it was watching her.
Noting the tightness in Ren’s jaw, Kaelin gestured toward the page between them.
“This is the sigil of the Embersworn. They are a cult that believes the dragons were never meant to vanish from this world, that their extinction was a betrayal against the natural order. They preach that without dragons to rule over us, mortals and fae alike have grown weak, arrogant. The Embersworn seek to awaken the last slumbering flame… to resurrect Vortharax.”
Ren’s breath hitched. “Veylan mentioned him.”
“Where the Flameborne vow was meant to contain the dragons’ legacy and keep Vortharax from devouring the world, the Embersworn have twisted it into something darker. Their chant is now a ritual. Their devotion... blood sacrifice.”
She flipped through the tome with practiced fingers, pausing on a stained page covered in smudged ink. Ren opened her mouth—half a joke ready, half a plea for alcohol—but before she could speak, Kaelin held out a fresh glass of wine, halfway full.
“Thanks,” Ren whispered, accepting it like a lifeline.
“I can read most of this book,” Kaelin said, her brow furrowed. “Until I reach this. Admittedly, I’m not well-versed in reading Draconic.”
She rotated the tome toward Ren. The page was messier than the rest, as though scrawled in haste or madness. Some of the text bled into illegible black scratches. In the margins, symbols resembling claw marks curled around Draconic phrases.
“Their high priests are called Ashbinders,” Kaelin said, tapping a passage. “They speak fluent Draconic, and some even say they’ve heard Vortharax’s voice in their dreams.”
“And what exactly does a dragon say in a dream?”
Kaelin’s gaze darkened. “That the fire must rise again. That the unworthy must burn. They believe the dragons are divine punishers, returned to burn away corruption and usher in a trial by fire. Only the ‘worthy’ will survive.”
Ren took a long, grateful drink of the wine and stared into the page like it might open up and offer her answers, or at least a way out .
Then the silence was shattered by a voice so loud it rattled the shelves and sent several books tumbling from above.
“—AND LO! She wept ’neath moonlit flame,
Though I, her knight, forgot her name!
’Twas love, or lust, or tragic fate—
OH DAMNATION, WHY COULDN’T SHE WAIT?!”
Ren groaned audibly before she spun toward the sound, eyes narrowing to slits as a translucent form drifted straight through the wall of shelves.
“Sir Pindlewhip,” Ren muttered, as the ghostly apparition floated into view, quill in one hand, a thick, ink-stained manuscript in the other, his spectral cloak billowing with ghostly flair.
“Ladies,” he greeted dramatically, flourishing the quill like a rapier. “A pleasure. I was merely refining my epic ballad when I felt a tremor of darkness cross the archive wards – terribly inconvenient, I assure you. Broke my rhyme scheme.”
“We’re discussing the Embersworn.”
“Ah.” Pindlewhip’s theatrical energy dimmed a fraction. “Those cretins.” He hovered closer, his joviality dampened by something darker. “I had the misfortune of encountering them once. Long after my... well, current state.”
Ren arched a brow. “You mean after you died?”
“Indeed. I was minding my own ghostly business, wandering the old ruins of Blackmere Keep, when I stumbled upon them. They were hooded and chanting what sounded like incantations. They were also surrounded by bones and fire.” His translucent eyes met Ren’s.
“They were trying to summon something. There was so much blood, as well. And did I mention all the bones?”
Kaelin’s expression sharpened. “What did they summon?”
The ghost shivered, a strange thing to see. “I don’t know if they succeeded. But something answered. I couldn’t understand the language, but I fled. Even in death, I wanted no part of what they were bringing through.”
Ren’s blood froze in her veins.
Sir Pindlewhip set the manuscript down atop the tome Kaelin had shown her. “You two may find this all riveting. But take this advice from a ghost with more regrets than glories: If the Embersworn are stirring again, pray they haven’t found a Flameborne heart still living.”
Ren exchanged a look with Kaelin, and for once, neither had a retort.
Because deep down, they both knew.
A heart was living.
Hers.