Chapter Thirty-Two Frejara
The iron began to tremble. A long, guttural groan reverberated through the stone beneath my feet – low and dragging, as if the doors themselves were pleading against what came next.
Heat pulsed in thick, uneven waves – rising from the cracks in the floor, from the seams of my skin, from the place inside me that had been broken open and would not close again.
Something in the air buckled. The torches along the walls guttered toward the floor as if cowed, their flames bending under the weight of what gathered between me and the door.
But still the iron held, groaning low beneath the force pressed against it, resisting not with strength but with the slow, reluctant strain of something ancient refusing to yield.
When it gave, it did so all at once – a scream of metal, ragged and savage, tearing through the antechamber.
The doors split inward with a thundering violence, iron cracking at the hinges, stone splintering as the Queen’s wards flared and failed in the same instant.
I watched them burn out mid-glow, their power undone by the breaking of the tether that had bound my fire to hers, and now turned against her.
The smoke curled around my ankles as I crossed the threshold, and the Throne Room pulled me in.
Heat rose in thick waves, rolling forward as I passed through, the air folding around me in staggered gusts.
It caught in my throat and clung to my skin, thick as smoke, filling each breath until drawing air felt like bearing weight.
Flame spilled from my hands before I knew I’d raised them – brutal, lashing streams that caught the low tapestries and dragged fire across the walls in long, uneven strokes.
The carvings above the arch split in their mortar.
Gold flaked from the high reliefs and fell in shining scraps to the floor.
The fire roared louder with each step I took, building up behind me.
I felt it echo through the stone, pushing back against me as it spread, folding into itself and surging outward again, drawing as much from within me as from the blaze already licking up the walls.
Something had opened, and there would be no closing it now.
My blood ran too hot, too fast. The fire moved ahead of me in sharp bursts, pulled by the same fury that drove my steps, racing towards the throne at the base of the Hall.
The Sorcerer Queen stood atop the dais, framed by flame and shadow – tall, unyielding, carved into the hall like a curse.
The throne rose behind her, a ruin made regal, its surface split by fissures that caught the firelight and held it like veins in volcanic stone.
Three steps lifted it from the floor, wide and uneven, gouged by time and by those who had once knelt and burned.
Mowgara remained unmoving, unyielding, as though the stone itself might bend before she would.
Her posture had stiffened—not out of fear, but in the manner of someone reevaluating the odds.
Her hands no longer hung at her sides. One hovered, deliberate, fingers curled as though tasting the magic in the air – the other near her waist, fingers loose, almost idle, a gesture that might’ve seemed careless, if not for the coil of tension braided through her shoulders and the way her gaze narrowed, sharp and measuring.
She watched the fire arc behind me, then returned her gaze to mine – a tilt of the chin, a slow breath, as if she had made up her mind that what came next would not be beneath her.
“So, you didn’t come here for the crown after all,” she said, voice even, lips barely parted – but the words struck with precision, like daggers placed, not thrown. “You came to bite the hand, little dog. Thinking, perhaps, you could slip the leash and forge your own.”
I kept walking, drawn by the fire surging ahead, by her pull, and by the reckoning that waited at the foot of those jagged steps. The fire moved with me now, woven into the air, my blade in one hand and the weight of flame burning in the other.
“You thought I wanted your seat?” My voice tasted of heat and iron. “You thought I came here to reign?”
She smiled, but her eyes did not soften.
“You came here thinking you had a choice,” she said.
“That power could be taken like a trophy. That fire obeys whoever dares to hold it.” Her fingers flicked, slow, deliberate, as if brushing away something not worth her notice.
“You’ve no idea what it costs to wield power, child.
What it demands. What it asks of you, again and again, until there’s nothing left but the shape it requires.
Only what you must become to hold it.” She scoffed in disappointment, disgust. “But you were always predictable, child. All fury. No vision.”
“I didn’t come for the crown,” I said, voice steady.
“But I’ll take it from your corpse if that’s what it takes to end this.
” My hands lifted, slow and certain, as the fire flared outward in spirals.
“And I’ll take it as payment. For every drop of blood you spilled because no one stopped you.
For every year you called cruelty a duty and carried it like a standard. ”
“Is that what you think this was?” Her voice cut through the smoke, low and deliberate, not mocking now but sharpened with conviction. “Sport? Amusement? You think I burned my Sisters for pleasure?”
She took one step down – slow, controlled, not an approach but a pronouncement – and the fire near her feet recoiled, drawn back as if remembering who first summoned it.
“They were rotting from the inside,” she went on, gaze never leaving mine.
“Corrupted by comfort. Gorged on reverence. They bent the knee in secret to old absent gods, whispered vows in the dark, conspired to return what was never theirs to give.” Her lip curled, not in anger but in disgust. “They would have handed the Dragon Fire back to divine hunger, piece by piece, until nothing remained of what we built.” Her voice rose, just enough to carry across the wide hall, threading through the fire as if it belonged there.
“You call it betrayal. I call it what it was. Purification.”
A breath passed. The heat between us shifted – stranger now. Warmer in some places, colder in others, like it, too, was listening.
“I kept the fire from being swallowed,” she said.
“From being reclaimed by the gods that wait like vultures for the last thread of mortal defiance to snap.” Her lips curled now in scorn.
“You think they’ve forgotten what Drizzna took?
You think they would let the Dragon Fire remain in human hands if they had the strength to take it back? ”
She lifted her hand—not to cast, not to threaten, but to show.
The flames obeyed her still, curling lightly around her wrist in ribbons of pale blue and golden, soft like a morning’s first ray and just as cruel.
“I gave the Sisterhood mercy,” she said.
“And I gave the world time. You think you’re here to punish me? You’re here because I won.”
She paused then, letting the weight of her words settle like smoke curling through the room. Her gaze sharpened, narrowing until it seemed to pierce beyond the walls, beyond the fire, beyond even me.
“The Sisterhood was not a family,” she said slowly, each syllable deliberate, heavy with disdain.
“It was a furnace – one that forged power from sacrifice, from blood and betrayal. Their complacency would have been the death of us all. I burned what was necessary to protect what remains. Mercy is a fire that spares only to consume later.”
Her voice settled into a cold whisper, cutting sharper than any blade could – an accusation and a confession braided into one.
“Love is a luxury for those who can afford to be weak. A loose thread in the tapestry of power that must be severed before it unravels everything.” Her eyes focused on the fire dancing along my skin, but they never softened, never wavered.
“Falkar, Benjadir, that Seer boy of yours – they are tools, nothing more. Threats disguised by your need for them.”
Her words twisted around me like smoke, suffocating and clear.
“To love is to be vulnerable. To bleed for others is to invite ruin.” The throne behind her seemed to loom taller, a monument not just to rulership but to the cold calculus that had forged her reign.
“I gave you strength by taking away the distractions. Power is purpose, child. Not sentiment.”
The air snapped tight, charged with the sharp scent of brimstone and the promise of violence.
Mowgara’s fingers unfurled with deliberate grace, each movement precise, a spider weaving a deadly web of devastation.
Coils of flame twisted into lances, invisible threads of force surged forward, honed and honed again by a lifetime of command.
Her flames moved with ruthless control; every strike carved with calculated intent.
She moved with the certainty of one who had long since embraced the cost of power, or a predator sizing its prey.
There was no reckless wrath in her assault; instead, it came with the weight of ruthless certainty – flames curled and sparks sang, striking through air thick with heat and the metallic tang of blood.
In stark contrast, I was a wild flame – untamed, disruptive, a blaze born from fury and grief that neither strategy nor discipline could contain.
The Dragon Fire inside me surged like a tempest, answering only to my rage and the pulse of memory: the mark scorched across my back, Alaric on the pyre, Mathias falling to his knees.
It flared brighter with each raw wound opened in my heart, a fierce and impetuous echo of all I had lost and all I still carried.
There was no order in this fire – only will, savage and desperate, blazing in response to every beat through my blood.