Chapter 25
Thorne
Ashfell, The Broken Plains
I leave her sleeping.
My Shula is sprawled in the center of our bed, dark hair a halo on the black sheets, lips soft and swollen from my kisses, my bite still a faint mark at the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
The sight nearly undoes me.
I force myself to turn away.
If I stay, there will be no council, no reports, no plans. Only her.
And the realm burns if I let that happen.
So I pull on black leathers and a long sleeveless coat marked with the sigil of Ashfell, slip my bone cuffs over my wrists, and send word to Xavier.
“Have the ministers and the representatives from the mining camps meet me in the throne room,” I tell him. “By the Great Flame.”
He bows low. “At once, my Lord.”
The castle around us hums with low, constant heat—Ashfell’s heartbeat.
The Great Flame at its core has burned for a thousand years, tended by my line since the first spark was pulled from the bones of the world.
Being a Demon Lord—a Prince of the land and master of elements—is not a coronet and a comfortable chair.
It is service.
Sacrifice.
And that is what my enemies never understood. They see power and assume it exists for its own sake. For domination. Control.
They don’t see the cost.
My steps are silent as I walk through the volcanic stone corridor as I approach the throne room.
I can feel the Great Flame ahead, a steady roar behind the thick doors—comforting, grounding.
Something in me is… different these days.
Sharper.
More focused.
Delia has done that.
Simply by existing in my orbit, she makes me want to be better than the story they tell about me in hushed tavern whispers. Not gentler. Not softer.
Just truer.
More worthy of the way she looks at me.
So when I hear them—those fat, self-important ministers and camp leaders—talking before I even round the corner, the shift inside me is immediate.
The fire in my veins goes from slow simmer to blistering boil.
“Business as usual for our most prestigious Lord of Fire?” a nasal voice sneers.
“That’s Gorran Flint,” Xavier murmurs quietly at my shoulder. “Representative from the Northern Pits.”
I hold up a hand to silence him.
“I hear he rushed back from the Vein simply to bed his female,” another minister says, amused contempt dripping from every syllable.
“Aye,” a third voice adds. “Who knew the Two-Face would turn lap dog for a woman?”
Laughter. Dry and ugly, crackling like old bones.
My vision goes white at the edges.
They speak of me like I am not within earshot—fools—but it is the mention of my Shula that incinerates the last of my patience.
Fire hisses along my fingertips. The torches along the wall flare in sympathetic anger.
I step into the doorway.
“If you are going to talk about me in my own castle,” I snarl, my voice rolling through the chamber like thunder, “perhaps you should close the door.”
They whirl toward me. Eyes wide. Faces draining of color.
I walk forward, slow and deliberate, long coat whispering around my boots. The Great Flame at the center of the throne room throws my shadow huge against the walls.
“I might forgive that,” I continue, heat rising with every step. “Gossip is a pathetic habit—but not a crime.”
I let the fire crawl higher along my hands, licking up my forearms, lighting the magma-veined sigils etched into my skin.
“But you had to mention my viyella.”
I stop at the base of the dais, looking down at them from the first step. My eyes burn, the bone-mask itching under the surface of my skin.
“And that,” I say softly, dangerously soft, “is not something I will forgive.”
Flames whoosh up from my fingertips, an arc of ruby-gold fire that races to the ceiling and curls there like a living serpent.
The ministers flinch as the heat sweeps over them, singeing their hair, reddening their cheeks.
One of the camp representatives—broad-shouldered, soot-streaked, clearly more accustomed to the tunnels than these perfumed fools—drops to one knee immediately.
“My Lord,” he stammers. “We meant no disrespect—”
“You did,” I cut in. “You meant exactly that. Do not insult me further by pretending otherwise.”
Gorran Flint—pale and round as a forgotten dumpling—wipes sweat from his brow, his throat bobbing.
“We were… merely expressing concern, my Lord. With all due respect, some of us worry your attentions may be… diverted.”
“Diverted,” I repeat, tasting the word like ash on my tongue. “You think the Lord of Fire has grown weak because he has bound himself to a woman?”
Silence.
Not one of them is stupid enough to answer.
“Look at me,” I order.
They do. Reluctantly.
“The night I took my Shula to wife, the wards around the Broken Plains flared stronger than they have in centuries,” I say, voice low but carrying to every corner of the room. “My power is not diminished. It is focused. Tempered. Directed.”
I step down from the dais slowly, closing the distance between us.
“And as for Delia…” My flames dim slightly as I speak her name.
The ministers notice. Of course they do.
“She is not a distraction. She is an asset. Her ideas will increase your survival rates in the mines. She is building something with Healer Withers even now that will save lives you have already written off as acceptable losses.”
I stop in front of Gorran Flint.
He reeks of fear and sweat, and old incense.
“Tell me, Flint,” I murmur. “How many sons from your district have died in the tunnels in the last ten years?”
His lips tremble. “T-too many, my Lord.”
“And yet you mock the woman—my viyella, my true mate with whom I share our most scared bond, the zareth—who might keep the next boy from bleeding out on the stone before he ever reaches the infirmary?”
I lean closer, letting my eyes flare bright.
“Do you know what that tells me?” I ask.
He shakes his head, throat working.
“That your tongue wags more than your brain works.”
A ripple of nervous laughter skitters across the gathered men, quickly silenced when I flick a glance their way.
“Listen well,” I say, straightening. “I will not explain to fools like you why I chose to return from the Vein. Nor will I apologize. The fact is, I chose her. The Fates chose her. And I have bound myself to her. In doing so, I have strengthened Ashfell, The Ember Vein, and Nightfall itself.”
I let the bone-mask slide just enough that white ridges press faint under my skin, a ghost of the skull beneath. The ministers gasp.
“You may call me Two-Face,” I go on, voice dropping.
“They have sung worse in their little taverns. But if you ever again refer to me as a lapdog or speak of my viyella with anything less than the respect she is due, I will personally see to it that you spend the rest of your days tending slag pits on the outer wastes.”
I smile then. It is not kind.
“You know as well as I that nothing grows there. Nothing lives. You will crawl back to the mines begging for the mercy of heat and work.”
Gorran swallows hard. His knees buckle fully this time, dropping him to the floor.
“My Lord Thorne,” he whispers, bowing his head. “Forgive my foolishness.”
I let the silence stretch.
The fire overhead crackles, shifting from angry red to steady gold.
“Consider this your only warning,” I say at last. “Rise. All of you.”
They do, with varying degrees of grace.
I turn my back on them—not out of trust, but out of confidence—and stride up to the throne. The carved obsidian chair looms behind me, but I don’t sit yet.
Instead, I face them with the Great Flame roaring high at my back.
“Now,” I say. “We speak of what matters.”
The camp representatives straighten, their expressions sobering.
“The SoulTakers have tried to advance,” I continue. “I have found evidence of tunneling attempts beneath the lower wards of The Ember Vein. Dagan, Kael, Alaric, and I have reinforced the protections, but that is only the first step.”
I let my gaze pin each of them in turn.
“We will increase guard rotations. We will implement the emergency response unit my viyella has designed with Healer Withers. We will train more healers, more first responders, from among your people. From your families.”
A murmur ripples through the room—uncertain, hopeful, fearful.
“Nightfall does not have the luxury of your complacency anymore,” I say. “You will adapt. You will accept her help. You will obey my commands.”
I let my fire flare once more, a warning and a promise.
“Because I swear this to you by the Great Flame and by the crown that still sits empty—so long as I breathe, The Ember Vein will not fall. My people will not be abandoned. And anyone who stands between me and that vow…”
I smile again, all teeth and heat.
“…will learn just how little of me has gone soft.”
The chamber is silent.
Then, one by one, they bow. Low. Deeper than before.
“By your flame, my Lord,” Gorran Flint says hoarsely from the back, thumping a fist to his chest.
I finally sit on the throne, leaning back as the fire settles into a steady roar behind me.
For the first time in a very long time, I do not feel alone on it.
Somewhere above, in our chambers, Delia sleeps.
Or perhaps she is awake now, talking the healer into revolutionizing the entire medical system of my mines.
Either way, she is mine.
And gods help anyone who underestimates what that means—for me, for Ashfell, for Nightfall—ever again.
The scent of scorched fear is just starting to fade from the throne room when Xavier appears at the edge of my vision, hovering in the shadows like a well-trained ghost.
He clears his throat once. Quiet. Respectful. Urgent.
“My Lord,” he says, bowing. “There is an urgent missive from the Lord of Air. Alaric requests yours and Lady Delia’s presence.”
Alaric needs us?
The fire in my chest tightens.
“Bring it,” I command, holding out a hand.
Xavier crosses the room quickly, placing the folded sheet of flame-sealed vellum into my palm. Alaric’s sigil—dragon wings and storm—glows faintly in silver across the wax.
I break it with my thumb.