Chapter 4
The square was crowded as Ellaryn made her way back to the castle, but as always, the chaos seemed to part around her.
She couldn’t remember the last time someone had bumped her shoulder or stumbled into her because they hadn’t been looking where they were going. Her presence was always known. The people parted before her like an ocean splitting down the middle, leaving her an empty path through the crowd.
A child stood directly in her way, utterly motionless.
Ellaryn recognised the response immediately. Some children fled at the sight of her. Others froze.
He was the latter.
She crouched until they were eye to eye, her gaze settling on the amber of his wide, trembling eyes. For a moment, she simply held his stare.
“Boo,” she whispered, and the boy startled so violently he nearly tripped over his own feet before darting in the opposite direction.
Ellaryn smirked at his hurried escape, glancing back just in time to see him disappear beneath what she presumed was his mother’s skirt.
She straightened, hiding the faintest smile.
“Scaring children again, Ruin? I thought you’d grown out of that.”
A knight’s voice sounded behind her, and Ellaryn rolled her eyes before she even turned. She knew exactly who it was.
Damien Wick.
Her childhood friend turned enemy.
Damien had been her neighbour when they were children.
Their parents had been close, which meant the two of them were often thrown together, whether they liked it or not.
She would always remember him: unnecessarily chaotic, loud, reckless, and utterly incapable of keeping a secret.
Always meddling. Always needing control.
His nature could never be bottled. He was far more comfortable letting his temper spill freely through his work, where it could be sharpened into something useful.
The two had butted heads throughout their childhood, and adulthood had done little to change that.
Ellaryn knew he hated the way the King favoured her. She saw the effort he put into his orders, and his need to be praised.
In public, they were civil. Cultured, even.
But Ellaryn knew how to read between the words.
She could hear the resentment beneath every polite exchange, see it flicker behind every smile. The tension between them was sharp enough to cut with a blade.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” she drawled, continuing on without slowing.
He chuckled and fell into step beside her. “I am.”
He glanced over his shoulder, his dark skin illuminated as the sun glowed across it.
Ellaryn followed his gaze to four knights escorting two people towards the castle. Escorting was a generous word. They dragged the pair along despite their desperate pleas, their heels scraping against the stone.
“What are they in for?”
“Found them praying at the old temple,” he mused, shaking his head.
Ellaryn nodded swiftly in acknowledgement, her expression giving nothing away.
Praying was something the King had banned long ago. Cinders was ruled by him, and so any talk of the Gods was seen as blasphemy. There were no Gods in his eyes. He was God. He was the Devil.
“Rubies, Miss Ruin?”
A young boy called out as they passed, a scarf wrapped across his mouth and nose.
He stood behind a small market stall, dust coating his clothes and clinging beneath his fingernails.
He plunged his fingers into a wooden bowl and sifted through the gemstones, letting the rubies tumble between his knuckles.
“Fine ones,” he added, holding one up to the light.
“Not today.” Ellaryn shook her head and kept walking, never breaking stride.
“Never were one for jewellery,” Damien remarked with a smirk. “Even as a girl, you were more interested in getting your hands muddy.”
“Is there a reason you’re still talking to me?” she asked, rolling her eyes. Boredom laced every word.
He shook his head, falling silent for a beat before stopping in his tracks.
“And that’s my cue.” He spread his hands in surrender. “Always a pleasure.”
He tipped his head in an exaggerated bow, his dark afro seeming to absorb the sun’s rays.
Ellaryn scoffed and continued on.
“Didn’t even say goodbye,” he called after her.
She didn’t turn around.
“To say goodbye, I’d have to register your presence.”
His chuckle faded out, swallowed by smoke and ash that suffocated the city.
* * *
Ellaryn was composed, steady—firmly encased in the armour she wore as naturally as any soldier—until she reached the Throne Room’s heavy iron doors, and a scream tore through the other side, so violent it seemed to rattle the iron itself.
Then… silence.
Her fingertips barely brushed the cold surface before a man’s wail split the air beyond them again, raw and animal, a sound too broken to be ignored.
She pushed at the door lightly, peering through the gap hesitantly.
The King stood over a kneeling man, his face blurred by tears and broken cries.
Ellaryn recognised him at once. It was Magnus, the old jeweller from the left side of the city, fingers once clever and precise, now shaking uselessly in his lap.
He had known her parents, had shared bread at their table, laughter in their home.
He had known her and her brother, watched them grow, set stones into bands meant for weddings that would never come.
Seeing him like this hurt somewhere deep inside her, a place she kept locked and unnamed. Not sharp enough to bleed, not loud enough to scream—just a slow, hollow ache, reminding her that no matter how carefully she hardened herself, some losses still found a way in.
The King’s palm came down without warning.
The crack echoed through the chamber as Magnus’ head snapped sideways and his body collapsed in a heap. Ellaryn flinched despite herself. She knew that sound, and she knew the pain that followed it.
“Are you ready to start talking?” the King snarled.
His presence pressed down on the room, heavy and suffocating. Magnus scrambled backwards on his hands, his breath hitching as terror widened his eyes.
“I-I told you already, I don’t know anything,” he sobbed, arms raised in surrender.
The King did not hesitate. He crouched, closing the distance until their faces were inches apart, and reached—not with his hands, but with his power.
Ellaryn felt it as much as she saw it.
Blue vapour tore from Magnus’ chest in ragged streams, his soul dragged screaming into the open. His cry rose into something inhuman as his body convulsed beneath the King’s grip.
“I know you’re lying,” the King said again, voice calm now. Patient. “You know what happens to liars.” He leaned in close to Magnus, who whimpered in response but still said nothing. Ellaryn could see the fear in his eyes, and her stomach turned.
With a hiss of irritation, the King released him and turned away. The vapour snapped back into the man’s body, and Magnus collapsed forward, gasping, clutching at his chest as if trying to keep himself from spilling apart.
Before he could recover fully, the King spun back in a single fluid motion and drove his boot into Magnus’ stomach.
The air left the jeweller in a violent wheeze as his body folded in on itself, the sound of breaking breath swallowed by the echoing hall.
Ellaryn’s jaw tightened.
This was an interrogation of sorts.
But what could have driven the King to such fury?
Ellaryn had always believed he knew everything that stirred within the city’s veins—every whisper, every shadowed transaction, every life worth ending. The illusion of his omniscience had been carefully maintained.
But this…
This was different.
Either paranoia had finally taken root, violent and unrestrained—or something had slipped past him. Something dangerous enough to make him forget himself.
She was still turning the thought over when the King’s gaze snapped to hers.
“Ah, little Ruin,” he said smoothly, though anger curdled beneath every syllable. “Don’t be shy now.” He beckoned her into the room with a blackened finger, and her throat tightened.
Ellaryn swallowed and pushed the door fully open, stepping inside despite every instinct screaming at her to retreat. To flee.
Magnus looked at her then.
Not for comfort.
Not for mercy.
But with fear.
The realisation struck harder than the King’s blows. That the man who had once polished gemstones for her mother’s hands now feared her just as much as the monster looming above him.
The sickness that rose in her chest was slow and suffocating—and for the second time today, she wondered how much of herself she had already lost.
“Take him to the dungeons,” the King said, lifting a single finger.
The Defiers obeyed at once—morphing from nothing, their forms folding out of shadow and will. They seized Magnus by the arms, iron grips locking around his frail frame.
“Perhaps some time alone,” the King added mildly, watching the terror bloom in the man’s eyes, “will untangle those memories of yours.”
Magnus’ heels scraped uselessly against the stone as he was dragged away, his sobs fracturing into raw, broken pleas. No, no, no—the word followed him down the corridor until the doors swallowed the sound whole.
Ellaryn could not peel her eyes away.
The dungeons were not merely cells like the ones that caged the prisoners in Cinders.
They were a harsher punishment—absences.
Enchanted voids where time came apart at the seams and meaning slowly rotted away.
Even the thought of them made her stomach clench, her body remembering what her mind wished it could forget.
The King had stitched dark magic into every brick, every chain, every breath of air.
He had built the place not just to imprison the body, but to unmake the mind.
Madness was not a side effect of the dungeons—
It was the sentence.
Below the castle, light did not exist. Not dimness. Not shadow. Nothing. Prisoners were sealed into damp stone wombs with no food, no water, no voice to answer their own. Days blurred into nights that never ended. Minds splintered long before bodies failed.
They did not count the time down there.
Time counted them.
Most broke within days. Some screamed until their throats bled, desperate to hear themselves exist. Others went quiet far sooner—retreating inward, dissolving piece by piece until there was nothing left but breathing flesh and regret.
Ellaryn exhaled slowly. She had sent many people there to their demise.
“Everything okay, Your Darkness?” Ellaryn asked, Ruin returning to drown the person behind the villainous mask.
The words tasted wrong in her mouth; she did not care if he was okay. She wanted to know why Magnus was being punished. Her gaze lingered on the door before reverting to the King.
It was strange.
The King had not ordered her to punish him. Had not demanded she peel truth from bone or memory from marrow. He had done it himself.
“There’s been talk in the city,” the King replied, his voice smooth, almost idle. “Rumours, if you will. And I intend to see them silenced.”
He moved toward her as he spoke, unhurried. His arm slid around her shoulders—not a gesture of comfort, but possession—guiding her toward the tall window overlooking Cinders. The city sprawled beneath them, unaware, breathing quietly like prey that did not yet know it had been scented.
“Rumours?” She echoed in question, and he inclined his head slightly.
“It seems Cinders has forgotten who it belongs to.” He said with a cold, calculated edge to his voice. “No matter, soon it will realise. People are like dogs, you see.”
Ellaryn stayed silent but tipped her head slightly.
“Without an owner, all they do is chase their tails and make a mess of everything around them. They need order. The city needs order.” He turned to look at her, his silver eyes darkening. “Do you know what happens to dogs who don’t obey?”
Ellaryn swallowed; she knew he expected her to answer. “They get put down.” She said, hoping that her voice didn’t sound as weak as she felt.
The King smiled. “That’s right.” He turned to look back out at Cinders, admiring the flames that never died, the tall buildings that puffed smoke, the ash that fluttered through the sky like dandelions in the wind.
Ellaryn’s brows furrowed; to her, the city had seemed the same as it always had been.
No different from usual. She hadn’t heard any rumours, and she walked the streets daily.
The King would usually issue her names of accusers and orders, but he didn’t, and the absence gnawed at her more than any command could have.
The King was many things—cruel, precise, obsessive—but he was never vague without reason.
He’s hiding something, she realised.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he mused, eyes glinting at the city below.
When he smiled, the black tar staining his teeth caught the light.
Ellaryn forced her gaze past him, fixing it on the city below.
Dust and embers glimmered across the streets like dying stars, a fragile sheen disguising rot.
She fought the urge to recoil as his scent closed in around her—cold metal, smoke, and something faintly decayed, like a thing long dead pretending otherwise.
She nodded, lips pressed into a thin line.
A lie.
He had run the city into the ground and called it order.
His eyes slid to her face, sharp and searching. She shifted her weight despite herself, every muscle tight beneath his scrutiny.
“I’m thinking of expanding,” he said, glancing down at her.
Ellaryn’s stomach somersaulted, twisting itself into a tight, nauseating knot. She was taken aback. In all her fifteen years, she had never heard him say those words.
“Oh, really?” she managed, hoping her voice sounded level, hoping he couldn’t see past the thin veil of disdain she had forced across her face.
Because she knew exactly what it meant:
More land equalled more bodies. More suffering. More of everything.
“Yes.” His gaze drifted back towards the window. “I hear Velaviere is rather pleasant this time of year.”
His smile darkened as a vast shadow swept across the glass.
Scornszar glided past the window, his wings blotting out the sunlight for a fleeting moment.
Ellaryn swallowed hard.