Chapter Eleven Frejara #2
I swayed, the world blurring at the edges, the cold and sweat suddenly gone from my skin, replaced by something far more dangerous: heat.
Not from the fire below, but from within.
My shoulder burned as though something was hacking at me beneath the skin, like something was suddenly clawing for breath.
And in that instant, I remembered… I hadn’t drunk the broth.
All I could do was to watch as the fire climbed.
It curled up Alaric’s legs with slow, dreadful hunger, devouring cloth and flesh in equal measure.
The iron sealed across his mouth had turned a molten red, bright enough to draw cries of awe from the crowd, but the man made no sound.
No screams, no struggle, only breath—laboured and shallow—slipping past blistered, sealed lips and through the gaps in the clasp as though even now he refused to yield.
The flames licked higher, curling around his body like something ritual, something practised, and through it all, his gaze never left mine.
And I… I could not look away. It was not pity that held me there, nor horror, nor fascination.
It was the pull of him – the gravity in his silence, in his stare, in the way the fire refused to reduce him into anything less than what he had been.
Even as his face blackened, even as the chains burned into his skin, there was something whole in him. Whole, and aimed at me.
The pain beneath my armour sharpened until it was no longer pain but presence – bright, white-hot, and alive.
It flared through my shoulder and into my chest, into my spine, filling my skull with light, until it took everything I had not to cry out.
My jaw clenched so tightly I tasted blood.
I gripped the edge of the stone railing with both hands, grounding myself in the weight of it.
Beside me, Mowgara stood tall and radiant, arms still raised in solemn ceremony, her lips curved in the faintest smile. She did not look at me, but I could feel her watching – and I would not stumble, I would not tremble, I would not give her the satisfaction of seeing me bend.
Below, the crowd had begun to cheer.
The sound swelled like a tide, as if some signal had been given that it was now safe – no, proper – to celebrate.
It rose in a great exhalation of adoration and loyalty, ringing out across the pyre square in waves.
Some clapped. Others sang. I saw veils lifted, faces wet with tears not of grief, but of fervour.
I watched mouths open in praise as the fire consumed Alaric, saw hands reach upward like pilgrims at a shrine, desperate to catch a blessing from the ash.
And all I could think was how broken they must be – how thoroughly twisted and undone to stand here, cheering as a man was turned to smoke before their eyes.
They did not mourn. They did not question.
They celebrated. Their joy was the sharpest cruelty of all.
The pain flared again – sharper now, deeper – and I staggered a step before catching myself.
I prayed it looked like fatigue. The fire had reached Alaric’s chest, then his throat, and the iron at his mouth had melted inward, fusing into the flesh beneath it.
Still, his eyes did not turn away. Not until the skin around them blackened, blistered, and cracked.
Even then, I saw the last of him disappear into the flame—not as a broken man but as something sent.
Only when the flames began to die, when the smoke began to thin and the crowd began to settle, did the world return to focus.
The square quieted. The final cheer gave way to murmurs, to drifting voices, to movement.
My breathing was uneven, my hands shaking inside their gauntlets.
I kept my gaze forward, not daring to look at Mowgara, not ready to see what expression she wore now.
It was then, through the veil of ash that still drifted in the square below, that I saw it – something pale glinting in the dark heap where Alaric’s body had been.
It caught the morning light, not like gold or steel, but softer, bone-white and impossible.
My eyes fixed on it, refusing to believe, even as recognition settled in my chest like a dropped stone.
It was a dagger. Or what was left of one.
The blade had warped and curled, melting nearly flat against the altar stone – but the hilt had somehow survived.
Pale, dulled, strangely out of place against the scorched black.
From this height, I couldn’t see the detail, but I didn’t need to.
I knew that shape. That curve. The faint glint of discoloured pearl catching in the ash.
It was recognisable – unmistakably like the one I had carried since I was a child.
Not similar. Not close. The same make. The same weight, I was certain, even if I could not hold it.
I’d always treated the dagger as nothing more than a trinket – a useless relic with no bite, no story, no worth beyond what little memory clung to it.
It wasn’t beautiful, or sharp, or even particularly well-made.
But it was mine. The only thing that had been, when I was thrown into the barracks and told to become someone else.
I had carried it year after year, war after war, tucked in the bottom of my pack or beneath my bed, never used, barely noticed – just there.
A stubborn thing I couldn’t seem to part with.
Not because it mattered, not really, but because it had once belonged to the girl I used to be.
And I suppose, in some way, it still did.
Now, another lay beneath the pyre. Buried in ash. Unburned by flame.
I stared at it as the smoke thinned and the crowd began to shift, as the murmurs of awe and devotion rippled through the tiers like water disturbed.
No one else seemed to notice the thing half-buried in ruin.
No one else seemed to see it. But I did.
And as I stood there, the mark beneath my shoulder blade flared once more – not in pain, not in protest, but with a steady, insistent heat that seemed to root itself in me.