A Court Of Mist And Flames Prologue #3
I dropped beside her so fast my dress pooled around us like spilled moonlight.
“Sahara,” I said again, louder, like volume could fix it. “Stay. Stay with me.”
Her eyes found mine.
They tried to smile.
She failed.
“Wren,” she rasped, barely a sound. “Don’t… fall…”
I choked. A laugh tried to come out and turned into something broken.
“Stop,” I whispered. “Stop talking.”
Sahara’s fingers curled around mine, weak but stubborn.
“Tell… Mother…” Her throat worked. Blood glistened at the corner of her mouth. “Tell her… I did it right.”
“You did,” I said, voice shaking. “You did everything right.”
Sahara’s gaze slid past me, toward Siergen.
The dragon’s head lowered slightly, as if heartbroken.
Sahara’s grip tightened for one final heartbeat.
Then it loosened.
Her eyes stayed open.
The lavender faded into nothing.
Something inside me went quiet in a way I didn’t know was possible.
Not numb.
Not calm.
Just empty, like a door had slammed shut in my chest.
And then, beneath that emptiness, a strange weight settled. A thud, deep and slow, like a second heartbeat had dropped into place.
My breath stuttered.
Heat crawled along my skin, not from fire, but from within. A pressure behind my ribs. A presence that wasn’t mine, pressing against the inside of my bones like it was trying to make room.
Sahara.
No.
That was impossible.
I clutched her hand harder, as if holding on physically could stop whatever was happening inside my soul.
The corridor exploded into movement.
Boots thundered. Voices rose. Shouts cracked through the stone halls, sharp with panic and fury. The castle’s calm fractured, servants screaming as they ran, guards swarming like steel and sweat and confusion.
Siergen lifted his head and released a low, rumbling sound that vibrated through the floor. A warning. A command. Dragons didn’t bow to crowns, but they understood urgency.
Someone dropped to their knees beside me.
Father.
King Zander Rayne.
His hands hovered over Sahara, trembling, as if he couldn’t accept the reality of touching her. His face was pale in a way I’d never seen. The strength in him, the darkness that lived under his skin, looked suddenly useless.
“No,” he breathed, and it wasn’t a word. It was a wound.
He lowered his hand to Sahara’s cheek, gentle, like she might wake if he was careful enough.
His shoulders shook once.
Then he broke.
He folded over her, grief ripping through him so violently it made my stomach twist. My father, who could face war and betrayal and dragonfire, shattered beside the body of his daughter.
My body didn’t move. It couldn’t. I sat there in silver and blood, holding Sahara’s hand like I could keep her from leaving if I just refused hard enough.
Mother’s voice sliced through the chaos before I even saw her.
“Wren!”
Ashe barreled into the corridor like the queen she was and the thief she’d been, eyes blazing, hair white as frost, face stripped bare of court polish. Her gaze locked on me. Then on Sahara.
The sound she made was raw. Not a sob yet. A gasp like someone had stabbed her too.
She dropped beside us, hands on my shoulders, turning me as if checking for wounds, as if her fury could reverse time.
“Are you hurt?” she demanded, voice shaking. “Where are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, because that was what daughters said when mothers were terrified.
Ashe’s eyes snapped to Sahara.
The fury on her face crumpled. For a heartbeat she looked younger than her years, like a woman who had fought her way out of darkness only to be dragged back down.
Her hand reached out, hovering over Sahara’s chest.
Nothing moved beneath it.
Ashe’s breath hitched.
She pressed her palm to Sahara anyway, like denial was a spell she could cast.
“No,” she whispered.
Zander’s head lifted, eyes red, and the two of them looked at each other over Sahara’s body like the world had ended and neither of them had been warned.
Ashe’s gaze swung back to me, wild and burning.
“They were inside our walls,” she said, and each word sounded like it scraped her throat. “Inside my home.”
Her grip tightened on my shoulders until it hurt.
“You will never be left alone again,” she said, voice rising, turning into a vow. “Never. Do you understand me, Wren? Never.”
I stared at her, unable to answer.
Because the thud inside my chest grew heavier.
Because Sahara’s absence was a scream in the air.
Because my soul felt crowded, like it had been forced to make space for something it wasn’t ready to carry.
I looked down at Sahara’s face.
My twin.
My other half.
Gone.
And yet, something in me insisted she wasn’t fully gone. Not the way death was supposed to work. Not clean. Not final. Not when the weight inside my ribs kept pressing, settling, claiming.
A burden for both of us.
For all time.
Siergen’s golden eyes watched from the edge of the circle of guards, unblinking, ancient, unreadable.
The castle around us kept screaming.
Inside me, everything went silent.
And I understood, with a clarity that tasted like blood, that I had survived on timing, not safety.
That the world had just changed.
I would never be whole.