Chapter Twelve Frejara
The square was emptying, though not yet empty.
It took time, even for revelry to die. The energy that had carried the crowds through the fire’s final blaze did not vanish all at once but dispersed in stages—first the nobles, their laughter echoing behind silk veils and perfumed sleeves, their retinues already polishing the tale for the next table they dined at; then the merchants, clinking with coin and ushering their favoured clients toward private halls and deeper cellars.
The soldiers followed in clusters, drawn toward warmth and drink like moths to a flame, their shoulders already relaxing as the scent of burning faded into the sweeter heaviness of roasted meat and cask ale.
But some lingered longer – stragglers and servants, boys sweeping ash from stone with makeshift brooms, women with their faces still painted in festival red, standing as if they feared the spell might break the moment they turned their backs.
I watched one such woman kneel where the outer steps met the square’s edge, her hands folded in prayer or exhaustion – I couldn’t tell which.
She left behind a ribbon of red silk tied around one of the iron torches, as if something sacred had occurred here.
As if something holy had passed through.
I did not descend with them. I lingered at the top of the palace steps; the square spread beneath me in the waning haze of smoke.
I waited – not because I needed to, but because I didn’t yet know where else to go.
The square was quieter now, and I found I preferred it that way.
There was a clarity to the way it emptied.
A ritual to it. The fire had done its work.
The pageant was complete. Now all that remained was the ash.
Only when the last of the torches were doused and the Acolytes had begun to fold the Queen’s banners with their stiff, trembling fingers, I descended the steps slowly. No one followed. No one cared. This was not a part of the ceremony. This was something else.
The altar was still warm when I reached it – radiating heat from its seams like the last breath of a dying beast. Beneath my boots, the stone carried a low thrum, steady and defiant, as if the fire had only withdrawn, not surrendered.
The wind had shifted again, carrying the scent of char – dull and lingering, the kind that clung to cloth and skin alike.
I’d long since learned not to flinch at it.
The pyre still stood at the centre, though what remained of it was little more than blackened timber and glinting fragments of chain, slumped against the scorched heart of the Dragonstone altar.
I stood before it for a long moment, longer than I meant to.
The night was so still now, the air hollowed by absence, emptied of song and praise and the dreadful hunger that had filled every breath while the fire had lived.
And there, at the base of the stone, half-buried in ash, was the thing I had come for.
I had seen it earlier – clear enough to know it wasn’t a trick of the light. A glint, pale and curved, oddly familiar. It had survived. When the body broke, when the chains snapped, when the flames took what little flesh he had left, this had not been claimed.
The hilt—a pearl, discoloured and marred by heat but unmistakable in form.
I crouched slowly and reached for it. It was warmer than I expected, as if the fire had left a trace behind.
I brushed off the worst of the soot with my palm and closed my fingers around it.
There was a faint tremble in my hands, but I told myself it was the wine the night before.
It felt, for the first time, like there was indeed something sacred about this place, but not in the way the burgess believed.
Not in the way the Queen had intended when she started burning her enemies here.
It was the kind of sacred that carried its own gravity, and I felt it drawing at me, as if it meant to hold me there to show it reverence.
I stood there for a while longer, until the smoke thinned and the stone shed the last of its warmth.
Long enough to remember the old man’s eyes, not when he burned, but before – when he had looked at me as if he already knew what I would do.
As if he had come here not to die, but to leave something behind.
Long enough to wonder whether I had just inherited something I did not understand.
I slid the hilt into the inside pocket of my cloak, where the lining was still thick enough to shield the heat.
It knocked gently against the worn edge of the other dagger – one I could forget for months at a time but never truly put down.
The weight of the two pressed against each other, light but undeniably present, and at last, I turned from the altar.
The square was empty now, in a way that felt final.
No footsteps, no banners, only the wind, threading ash through the cobblestones like a funeral veil.
The streets of Irongate had also grown weary.
A few stragglers wove through the lower alleys, robes hitched above muddied shoes, laughter hushed to a low murmur.
The Feast had ended, but the city hadn’t yet remembered how to breathe without fire in its lungs.
I hadn’t eaten since morning, and my stomach reminded me of it with a low, petulant twist, the kind that promised to return sharper if not sated.
I turned toward the banquet hall, not expecting anything more than scraps.
The court would have moved on by now, retreated to their dens and parlours to dissect the day’s theatre over glasses of honeyed wine and idle cruelties.
But as I pushed through the tall carved doors and stepped into the hall, I knew I’d misjudged the hour.
The hearth was still lit – low, but steady.
Shadows danced across the long tables, mostly cleared now, though the silver platters still glinted with remnants of spiced meats and cured game.
The scent of it hung thick in the warm air – wine, cloves, and venison.
Sweet and sharp and too much all at once.
And there she was.
My Mother stood alone near the head of the table, half-filled goblet in hand, her other fingers trailing across the carved back of a high chair as if testing its strength.
Her robes were midnight-dark, lined with thread that caught the firelight like molten gold.
The Circlet of Flame was gone. In its place, a simple silver pin fastened her dark braid.
She didn’t turn when I entered, but I could feel she had been waiting.
“You didn’t come,” she said, and the words echoed like a reprimand against the stone.
“I was there,” I replied, crossing the threshold slowly. “I was at the pyre.”
“It was your victory,” she said, still not looking at me. “They toasted your name.”
“Then they toasted smoke,” I said. “It wasn’t my fire.”
That earned me a glance over her shoulder – sharp, assessing, but not surprised.
“You never cared for appearances,” she said after a moment. “But even a blade must gleam if it wants to be noticed.”
“I’m not here to be noticed.”
“No,” she said, her gaze narrowing. “But they notice you, or your absence, all the same.”
I didn’t answer her – there was nothing to add; we both knew it was true.
Moving toward the far end of the table, I lifted a silver lid to reveal half a pheasant, its skin roasted to a deep gold, surrounded by black figs and roasted onions. I pulled a leg free with the knife in my pocket and sat without asking; the chair was cold through my armour.
For a time, neither of us spoke. The fire murmured in the hearth, its glow sharpening the angles of her face, while somewhere deep in the keep, music drifted faintly – a harp, played softly, as if someone were practising alone.
The air between us stretched, taut and waiting, until at last I broke the silence.
“Do you remember where I got this?”
My Mother turned again, this time more fully, her brow arching slightly. “Got what?”
“This dagger.” I lifted the knife in my hand to meet her eyes and paused. “I’ve had it since I was a child. But I don’t remember who gave it to me.”
She studied me for a moment. Not harshly, but curiously, as if trying to determine whether I was being sincere or clever. “That thing?” she said at last. “You’ve carried it for years.”
“I know.”
She stepped toward the hearth, swirling the wine in her goblet. “It was probably from the barracks. Or something a soldier left behind. You were always dragging useless things into your quarters.”
I held my tongue and watched her, measuring every small, deliberate movement as if it might betray more than her words would.
She looked into the fire for a moment longer, then added, too casually, “I never understood why you kept it. It isn’t even sharp. You’d do better to throw it away.”
Something in her voice pulled at me – too light, too rehearsed. Like someone nudging a stone to see what might crawl out from beneath.
My shoulder flared, not a searing pain but a slow, insistent throb that curled inward like a warning.
It pulsed beneath the skin just at the curve of my shoulder blade, a heat that wasn’t sharp but aware, like something stirring after too long asleep.
I shifted in my seat, almost unconsciously, rolling the shoulder back as if to shrug it away, but the motion only deepened it.
My breath hitched before I could stop it.
And the Queen noticed.
Her gaze, which had wandered back toward the hearth, snapped to mine like an arrow finding its mark. The softness – if there had ever been any – evaporated. Her eyes were a firelight now, deep and burning and impossible to meet without feeling consumed.
“The broth didn’t help after all?” she asked, though it was not quite a question. There was already accusation in the space between the words.