Chapter Seven Frejara #2
We passed a shrine not long after, half-sunk in the undergrowth and leaning at a tired angle, as though the earth had grown weary of holding it upright.
If it had ever carried a name, time had long since scraped it clean.
The stones were older than the roads—perhaps older than the villages that had come and gone around them.
Moss clung to the arch in thick swaths, and ivy had begun its slow work of reclaiming the altar, curling over the edge like a shroud drawn by patient hands.
What might once have been red ribbons clung there still – shredded to threads, clawed and tangled like old veins, trailing in the undergrowth like remnants of a prayer no longer needed nor heeded.
Whatever god had once been honoured there had long since fallen silent, and yet I felt an echo of reverence in the clearing around it, in the way the trees bent back just enough to let the light in.
Someone had been here. Not long ago.
The sigils carved into the central stone – nearly faded now, little more than memory etched into granite – had been struck through with something crude and violent.
A blade, perhaps. Or a chisel. The grooves were fresh, pale against the weather-darkened surface, the moss torn away in clumps where the edge had bitten too deep.
Whoever had done it had not merely vandalised.
They had desecrated. As though it mattered still.
There was no power left in that place. No blessings to revoke, no curses to invoke.
The gods had left this world so long ago that even the memory of their absence had grown quiet.
And still, someone had carved their hatred into the bones they left behind.
It was not the rage of war. It was not an act of rebellion.
It was something smaller. Meaner. The kind of hatred that festers low and long in the dark, needing no audience, no witness, no reason beyond itself.
And I could not help but wonder what it was they feared – or remembered – that made them strike at a god already dead.
As the sun began to fall toward the western ridgeline, the road widened and the trees thinned, giving way to low stone walls and fields of flax.
The colour struck me – soft blues and greens that caught the breeze and rippled like a tide, peaceful in a way that felt unnatural after the last days of ash and stillness.
We were entering territory that had not just surrendered to the Queen but accepted her reign long ago.
This was not land recently taken – it was land reordered, reshaped in her image.
The village that came into view ahead of us was modest but intact.
The roofs were thatched and recently patched.
Smoke rose from chimneys in lazy spirals.
A woman stepped out to sweep her threshold and paused, brush frozen mid-stroke, as she watched us approach.
She didn’t bow or run. She simply stood there, still as a stone, watching us come.
When we passed, she nodded once, as if we were no more remarkable than a pack of traders on the move. Her eyes lingered on the cage at the rear, the brush forgotten in her hand. Whatever she saw, she kept it to herself.
A child darted across the road behind her, a flash of brown hair and bare feet. Laughter followed, thin but bright, like glass caught in sunlight. It felt out of place. Not wrong, exactly – but out of reach.
There were banners hung above the square – black silk and gold thread, the Queen’s colours. Not battle flags. Decorative. The kind used for festivals.
The Feast of the Black Fire was coming.
Here, in the heart of her dominion, it was not feared. It was prepared for. Expected. Celebrated.
And we were drawing closer with each step.
The further we rode, the more the land seemed to prepare itself.
Villages no longer crouched – they stood upright, painted, polished.
Courtyards and facades had been swept clean and festooned with garlands, and in every town square we passed, the signs of the coming Feast unfurled themselves more plainly: ribbons of black and gold wound around market stalls, fountains dyed with crimson water, brass braziers cleaned and waiting.
The people, too, had changed. They no longer merely watched us pass. They greeted us now – not with warmth, but with rehearsed smiles, with nods held just long enough to show deference, with hands clutching children too tightly. Their eyes followed the cage. Their eyes always followed the cage.
Alaric had not spoken since Haedor, and though he sat at a distance, caged and half-hidden by the length of the procession, I could feel his presence pulling at me like a current beneath the surface – unseen, but impossible to ignore.
There was no anger in his posture, no fear, only composure carefully held.
and for reasons I couldn’t quite explain, it kept me at unease.
When we made camp again, it was on the outskirts of a town called Arnesh. The name meant nothing to me. It looked like all the others: too clean, too orderly, too awake. The kind of place that kept its windows spotless and its doors bolted just the same.
I took my rations apart from the others, seated on a stone at the edge of a barley field whose stalks stirred in the breeze like they were whispering to one another.
In my hand, I turned the small dagger I always carried – not the one I fought with, but the other, older one.
Its pearl handle had dulled over time; its blade still sharp, though it rarely left its sheath.
It had been mine for as long as I could remember, and like the mark on my back or the scar across my palm, I had long since stopped wondering where it came from.
Behind me, I heard footsteps. Astrid, by the weight of them.
“They’re calling it the grandest Feast in a decade,” she said, crouching beside me, eyes scanning the field like it might rise up and bite us. “Spices from the south, blood acrobats, silks enough to drown in.”
“Isn’t that what every Feast promises?”
“Most don’t deliver.” She pulled a stalk of barley loose and twisted it between her fingers. “This one will. They’ve been planning it for months. Even before Haedor.”
I looked at her. She wasn’t smiling.
“You don’t like it.”
Astrid snorted. “Like it? It’s grotesque. We’re dressing up a pyre and calling it theatre. And the people cheer because they’ve forgotten what screams sound like up close.”
I didn’t answer. She didn’t expect me to.
“You ever wonder about all of this—” she gestured vaguely towards our company and the cage they guarded. “- is really about… what did they say it was about again?” Her voice was uncharacteristically sombre. “Trade disputes. Broken treaties. Taxes.”
“What else would it be about?” I asked, though I already knew where she was going.
“I don’t know,” Astrid said. “But I don’t think it’s taxes.”
I glanced at her then, but she wasn’t looking at me.
“You think it too,” she said, more of a statement than a question. “I see it. In the way you grip your sword before we march. Like you’re trying to remind yourself it still means something.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. My sword is the Queen’s to command.”
Astrid raised an eyebrow, as if she didn’t believe that I would be so indifferent about it. “Even if the cause is rotten?”
I nodded, once. “Even then.”
“Why?”
I drew in a breath that tasted like dust. “Because I am the Queen’s General,” I said then, slowly, as if weighing each word carefully. “Because when she names where she lays her claim next, I will ride. And when their gates close to keep me out, I will be the one to break them open.”
“Doesn’t that make us pawns?”
“Yes,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “And it makes us soldiers.”
Astrid looked at me, long and level. “Same thing, some days, I guess.”
I turned to her sharply, but she was already standing, brushing dust from her palms. “I’ll take first watch,” she said, and walked off before I could speak.
The barley rustled behind me.
And I realised I’d stopped turning the dagger.
Somewhere behind me, the voices of the camp had quieted. A soldier laughed – too loud – and was quickly shushed. A cooking pot clattered and was hushed just as quickly. The fire snapped, a brittle sound, drawing my gaze to its flickering rim.
Beyond it, just out of reach of the light, the cart sat in silence. I didn’t hear Alaric move, but when I turned, his face was lifted, barely visible through the dark – eyes open, waiting. He hadn’t spoken all day, but now, with the others gone and the field hushed, his silence felt like a summons.
I rose, brushing dust from my palms, and walked over to the cart.
He looked older in the firelight. More worn than before, but not diminished. Some people shrink in chains – Alaric did not. He sat with the quiet dignity of someone who had long since made peace with pain.
“You haven’t said a word in days,” I said, folding my arms. “Running out of riddles?”
Alaric sat quiet for a moment longer, then said, “It’s nearly time, isn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. He knew it was.
“They’ll hang gold from every arch,” he went on. “Fill the streets with silk and fire. You’d think it was a wedding, not a warning.”
“You’ve seen it before?” I asked, wary.
“Once. Long ago.” He tilted his head. “Not from the palace steps, mind you. From the gutters. It looks different down there.”
“Everything does.”
He gave a soft hum of agreement. “The Feast of the Black Flame. That’s what they call it now. But it wasn’t always called that, was it?”
“You seem to think I know.”
“There was a time it meant cleansing.” His voice wasn’t sharp. It was tired. “A renewal of light. The fire was a symbol. Now it’s a sentence.”
“You’re not the first man to be executed as entertainment,” I said.
“No,” he replied, “but I might be the first to enjoy the irony.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, and I didn’t like how calmly he said it. The fire crackled between us.
“They say people cry during it,” he added. “Not from grief. From awe. From fear. From the heat of it all.”
I remembered. The smell. The way the flames twisted in colours no natural fire should bear. The way my mother smiled when the crowd gasped.
“She makes it beautiful,” I said quietly.
“And that’s the horror of it,” Alaric murmured. “She’s made the world love the fire that devours it.”
My shoulder pulsed then – not a sharp jolt, but a steady throb. It felt like a warning.
I turned away from the cart, my hand instinctively brushing over the aching spot.
“You should rest,” I said – then, softer: “It won’t be long now.”
“No,” he sighed. “Not long at all.”
His words followed me into the dark – like smoke curling into a place I hadn’t known was hollow.
As I stepped away, putting distance between us and the firelight, I heard him begin to hum. It was faint, almost tuneless at first – like something learned long ago and left to fade. Then came the words, spoken low in a voice not meant to carry, but which reached me all the same:
“No roads lead to Dragna’toch, but all roads bring you home, sister.
No gates will greet you at Dragna’toch, but they all open to you, sister.
There are no windows in Dragna’toch, but you will see inside, sister.
Let us know you, sister, and we will welcome you home.”
I stopped mid-step, breath caught somewhere between a gasp and a thought.
The pain in my shoulder flared white-hot, sudden and blinding – a single heartbeat of searing, echoing ache that stole the air from my lungs.
I turned, in half a mind to demand what he knew, how he knew – but he had already gone silent again. Eyes closed. Head bowed.
The cart sat still beneath the stars, its prisoner unmoving.
But I stood there far too long, wondering how a man like that had ever learned the song of Dragna’toch – a place no man should know, and no living Sister would have ever taught him.