PROLOGUE: THE SMOKE REMEMBERS
The firewood had been stacked with surgical precision. Oak, dry as a traitor's vow. Birch and pine beneath, for smoke. The pyre creaked in the wind as if it, too, waited for judgment.
Lord Cael Arros knelt at its base, bound and bare to the waist. His wrists were bruised from iron shackles, his mouth split from the trial that wasn't one. Blood crusted down one temple where the captain of the royal guard—his own second—had struck him in the square.
He did not beg. Not yet.
The sky hung heavy with cloud, silver-grey and smothering. No sun, only cold light. The castle behind him loomed like a mausoleum. Flags were half-lowered—not for him, of course, but for the illusion of a fallen order.
The crowd gathered in eerie silence. Hundreds of them—courtiers, commoners, soldiers. Their eyes locked on him like wolves watching a dying stag. But he didn't look at them.
He searched for her.
And found her.
There, across the crowd, on the raised dais reserved for the noble families—Lady Elira Mylen, wrapped in black lace and burgundy velvet, her hair pinned with a gold crest. Her face was unreadable, but her eyes were locked to his like a curse.
The fire snapped beside him. He flinched.
Elira didn't move.
Gods, she was even more beautiful than he remembered. She always had that look about her—like someone trying to remain whole in a world that only wanted her in pieces. He had once kissed her in that storm garden above the palace walls. She had laughed then. He remembered the sound. But now her lips were drawn thin, her hands clenched at her sides.
Not a tear.
Not a word.
He felt the scream clawing its way up his throat. Instead, he swallowed.
"Speak your final words," the priest commanded, voice echoing from the stone walls.
Cael lifted his chin. The wind caught the ends of his hair, the smoke stung his eyes, but he didn't look away from her.
He said only four words.
"I would've loved you."
And then the flames began.
The fire licked the edges of the dry wood like it remembered his name. Heat surged. The air changed—dense, shimmering, screaming inside his ears. The scent of smoke wrapped around him like a familiar cloak. His skin split at the shoulder. The pain bloomed, not like a blade—more like memory. Deep. Known.
He saw her once more, in the rising black haze.
She had moved forward. Her lips were moving. She was shouting something.
Too late.
The last thing Cael saw before the flames devoured his vision was the look on her face.
It wasn't cold.
It was shattered.
And he realized, far too late—
She hadn't known he was the target.
Then came fire.
And then…
…nothing.