60. Chapter 60 #2
Ren’s lips curved faintly. “Give me some credit where it’s due.
I’ve stared down tougher opponents in the pits.
The undead? They’re stupid and move on instinct alone.
I could run in a circle and they’d follow me like fools before I finished them off with either Ashrend or my fire.
” Her grin curled into a wicked smirk. “I can handle a few scratches.”
Kaelin’s mouth parted, torn between a scold and a laugh.
“I can hold my own,” Ren added, a spark of that familiar fire returning to her eyes. “You should know by now. I don’t break easily.”
Without asking, without hesitating, Kaelin bent low and pressed her lips to Ren’s wrist. A soft kiss, tender. Her breath lingered, fanning across Ren’s skin like a promise.
Ren’s pulse thundered in response.
Violet eyes flicked to Ren. Kaelin leaned in close enough that her breath was a whisper against Ren’s skin. “I don’t like seeing you like this, and I hate—” Her breath caught, her teeth clenched. “I hate that you think you have to face it alone.”
Ren tilted her head. “Alone? Hardly. I’ve got a prince who knows his way around a sword, and a certain princess whose blade swings as sharp as her tongue.”
Ren reached over, her fingers brushing against Kaelin’s cheek before settling there. Her thumb traced a slow circle along Kaelin’s skin, smudging away the faint worry line that had gathered between her brows.
Kaelin’s breath caught. Her eyes fluttered closed, unbidden, as she leaned into Ren’s touch.
Ren’s voice dropped, quieter. “You don’t have to worry. ”
But Kaelin only hummed, her lashes trembling, her fingers curling against the bedsheets as though the loss of that touch might undo her entirely.
Finally, Ren cleared her throat. “If that’s your way of keeping me all to yourself, I’ve heard worse proposals. I guess that makes us... what? Sweethearts? Or is it courting when royalty’s involved? Should I start practicing my curtsies and table manners?”
Kaelin rolled her eyes, but her smile was soft like Ren had just handed her the moon. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you curtsying at my feet. Might be the highlight of my reign.”
Ren snorted, but the sound was swallowed whole when Kaelin kissed her, fierce and unrelenting at first, as if she needed proof that Ren was alive, breathing, hers . Then it softened, lingering, like a vow spoken in silence.
The door creaked open. The young nurse froze in the doorway, eyes wide, a tray of herbal salves trembling in her hands. “I—uh—should I...?” she stammered, looking between them like she’d walked in on something sacred or scandalous.
Or both.
Kaelin didn’t even turn but stated, “Leave.”
The poor girl nearly dropped the tray.
Ren reached over, catching Kaelin’s wrist with a warning glance. “Easy, you’re scaring the shit out of the person who’s keeping me alive.”
Kaelin didn’t look remorseful, exactly, but she relented.
Ren gave the nurse an apologetic glance. “Maybe come back in five. Or ten. Also, maybe knock louder next time.”
The girl nodded timidly and all but fled.
When the door clicked shut, Ren sighed and remarked to Kaelin, “You’re going to stop half the court’s hearts at this rate.”
Kaelin smirked. “Then they’ll learn not to interrupt when I’m kissing you.”
Ren turned her head and stared at the ceiling, its cracked stone dimly lit by the flickering wall sconce nearby. Her breath came slow, deliberate, as if her body were trying to ground itself in the aftermath of something seismic.
Just an hour ago, she’d kissed Kaelin. Again, and again. And she could have kept going if not for her wound.
The memory struck like lightning – Kaelin’s mouth on hers, all fire and hunger. A cold sweat clung to the nape of her neck, but it warred with the low, curling heat blooming in her belly, a confusing, maddening ache of want and warning.
Gods, what the hell was happening to her?
When this all began—whatever this was—she’d vowed to keep Kaelin at arm’s length. Kaelin had been an infuriating thorn, a symbol of everything Ren loathed about this realm: powerful, poised, untouchable. The kind of fae who would’ve laughed at a gutter rat like her once upon a time.
And now?
Somewhere along the way, the fae princess who once made Ren’s blood boil now made her burn in another way entirely.
A soft knock shuddered against the chamber door, barely audible over the crackling hearth.
Ren groaned, ready to close her eyes and let sleep pull her under again. But the door creaked open, and heavy footsteps echoed across the stone floor.
Talen moved like a storm held at bay, his face shadowed in the dim firelight.
He sat where Kaelin had earlier, the weight of him pressing into the chair as though the burden he carried was too great to bear.
His expression was drawn, lips tight, brows furrowed in a way Ren hadn’t seen before, as though he were trying to solve a puzzle.
“How are you?” he murmured, his voice low, careful.
“I’ve been better.” She hesitated, then added with a wry smile, “One hell of a fight we had.”
The words struck something in him. His frown deepened. “What do you remember of it?”
Ren shifted, propping herself up against the headboard. “Too many corpses. Then the fire.” She flexed her fingers absently. “Blackness after that until I woke up here. ”
Her lips pressed together, the memory flickering like a half-forgotten dream. That low and guttural voice scorching into her mind – burn, burn, burn . She’d almost felt it inside her chest, urging her, coaxing her to lose control.
And she did.
Thinking back, Ren wasn’t sure what had been real. The battlefield was chaos, the air thick with screams and smoke. Maybe it had been her imagination. Maybe her mind had simply conjured something monstrous to make sense of the fire that had come from her own hands.
“Why?” Ren finally asked the question she had been dreading. “What else happened?”
“ You happened,” Talen answered, the words falling from his lips like a curse. “Your fire... it incinerated all the corpses. But the entire village is gone, too. My soldiers barely had enough time to get out of your line of attack, otherwise they’d be incinerated as well.”
Her mouth went dry. The walls seemed to tilt around her.
“Was anyone…?” she whispered.
He shook his head, the tension in his shoulders easing. “Everyone was either already dead or evacuated.”
Relief surged through her, mixing with a sickening swirl of guilt. “Thank the gods,” she breathed.
“Yes,” Talen murmured, but his voice was hollow. “Thank the gods, indeed.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating. The nursemaid entered quietly, pressing a cup of bitter-smelling remedy into Ren’s hands. Ren drank, grimacing at the taste, but the numbing effect seeped into her limbs almost instantly, making her head feel light and distant.
Talen remained, his eyes roaming over her. “You’re certain you don’t remember anything?”
Ren shook her head, her thoughts already clouding. “Nothing. I lost control, maybe. But it won’t happen again.”
“And how exactly do you plan to ensure that?” he murmured, gaze flickering down her body and back to her face.
Unease rippled through her. His stare wasn’t one of compassion.
It was an assessment .
“I’ll figure it out. I’ll ask Zakhar, or… or someone trained in elemental magic. Trust me, I’m not just going to sit around waiting for it to explode again.”
He rose slowly, the chair scraping lightly against the stone as he stepped back. “Rest, Ren. You’ll need it.”
And then he left, the door closing with a quiet finality that sent a shiver through her, as though something vital had been sealed away.
Talen paused in the corridor, his hand hovering over the latch as if he might turn back.
But what was there to say? What comfort could he offer when all he saw behind his eyelids was fire— her fire —consuming everything?
The village had been ash before the sun rose. Not just the dead. The homes. The fields. The stone itself.
All gone.
And she had stood at the center of it, her hair wild with flames, her eyes molten gold, her conduit an inferno of uncontrolled power. Talen recalled wings made of molten flame unfurling from Ren’s back.
No human should wield such magic. No mortal should be able to raze a village to nothing but embers and ash.
Who are you, Ren? he wondered, his pulse racing. What are you?
He knew the answer. Flameborne. He remembered her as a woman in chains, frightened and fierce. But the woman in that firestorm? That was something older. Something dangerous.
Something not human.
A flicker of unease shivered down his spine. His loyalty to the crown, to his people, warred with the pull she exerted over him—the pull of something wild and terrifyingly untamed. If she ever turned on them… gods, he didn’t know if even he could stop her.
Talen forced himself to turn away, his steps echoing down the corridor, leaving behind not just a prisoner in a sickbed, but a question that might one day shatter the kingdom.
What is she capable of?