The square of Eryndor burned before the flames even touched it.
Hundreds gathered at dusk, torches blazing, banners snapping like the wings of vultures waiting to feast. The smell of pitch and sweat and sanctified fear thickened the air until it clung to every breath. The pyre stood ready at the square's heart, built of cedar and heather so that even sin would die sweetly.
Bound to the stake, Seraphine Vale felt none of that sweetness. Ropes cut into her wrists, and beneath her bare feet the rough wood trembled with each gust of wind. When she tried to speak, smoke filled her throat—tasting of oil, iron, and regret.
Across the crowd, priests chanted from crimson scrolls. "May the flame return the wicked to light." They said the words like hammer blows, striking her name into history as heresy. Somewhere a child cried; somewhere a woman laughed; and above them all, from the marble balcony of the Crimson Court, the crown prince watched in silence.
Aldric Thorne. The boy she had once taught to conjure light from dust, the man who now condemned her for using it.
Their gazes met through the blur of heat. His eyes were the same pale gray that had once looked at her with wonder; now they reflected only duty. He mouthed something—perhaps her name, perhaps prayer—but the wind swallowed it.
The executioner lowered his torch.
The first kiss of flame was almost tender. It crawled up the heather stalks like a curious animal, testing her. Then pain bloomed in full, bright and absolute. The crowd roared approval, a living wave of sound that seemed to shake the world.
Seraphine arched her back, fighting for one last breath. Magic surged where blood had been, gathering behind her eyes, beneath her tongue. The curse took form as easily as speech.
"When I return," she said, voice breaking on the smoke, "your soul will burn with mine."
Aldric flinched. Only for a heartbeat—but she saw it. The fire saw it too.
Wind roared. The pyre exploded upward, a pillar of living gold that painted the prince's face in reflected damnation.
For one infinite instant she was everything—the heat, the scream, the light bursting beyond sight. And when her body fell into ash, something of her did not. Her last thought was not of mercy or pain.
It was of remembering.
The dream always ended that way—with the sky collapsing into smoke and silence.
Seraphine woke gasping. The scent of char still lingered in her hair though the fire had died a hundred years ago. She clawed at the sheets until her pulse slowed enough to know she was alive.
Stone walls surrounded her, rough and wet with night air. A candle burned on the table beside her cot, its flame thin and nervous. Beyond the window, the bells of the Crimson Court tolled midnight, each chime rolling through her bones like a heartbeat she did not own.
She rose on unsteady legs and crossed to the wash-basin. Water shimmered with reflected light; her reflection shimmered too, almost refusing to stay still. The woman in the glass was younger than she remembered—dark hair tangled, eyes wide and violet, no older than twenty. But beneath that face something ancient stared back.
"Not again," she whispered.
The candle's flame stretched, bent, then spoke.
"Still running from the fire, little witch?"
The voice was unmistakable—dry, amused, threaded with smoke. The face that formed within the light belonged to Eldric Wane, the warlock whose soul she had once bound to her grimoire. He had been her teacher, her rival, her last friend.
"You're supposed to be gone," she said.
"And you're supposed to be ashes." His grin flickered. "Yet here we are. Curses keep better promises than people."
Her fingers shook as she reached for the candle. "Why me? Why now?"
"Because the bond still breathes," Eldric murmured. "He wears a crown; you wear another skin. But the fire between you never went out."
Before she could answer, footsteps echoed down the corridor. Eldric's face collapsed back into flame; the candle burned plain yellow again.
A fist thumped her door."Up, Mira! Dawn's near, lazy bones!"
Mira. The name landed heavy in her chest—the name of the servant girl whose body she had awoken in three nights ago, when fever stole the girl's last breath and left space for another soul to crawl in. Seraphine pulled the blanket tighter, forcing her heartbeat to mimic life.
The palace was already stirring when she stepped into the courtyard with the other maids. Dawn bled pink over the cliffs, turning the rain slick stones into mirrors. The Crimson Court reared above them, half fortress, half cathedral—towers of red stone banded by black iron, every window an eye that remembered something it shouldn't.
"Don't lag behind, Mira," snapped Maera, the head servant. "The King doesn't fancy stares."
Seraphine lowered her gaze to the pail in her hands, but her heart refused obedience. When they crossed the outer square, she looked up—just once.
High on the balcony of the eastern wing stood a figure cloaked in the color of wine. Even from far below she knew him. Time had carved sharper lines into Aldric Thorne's face, but the eyes were unchanged. The same gray that once softened at her laughter now seemed forged from frost.
Their gazes met for a single impossible instant.
The mark on her wrist—a faint crescent scar—heated as though touched by flame. Aldric jerked his hand slightly, glancing down at his palm with the same bewildered pain. Then he turned away, cloak sweeping behind him.
Eldric's voice brushed her thoughts like a sigh. Fire remembers what it touched.
Seraphine tightened her grip on the bucket until the handle bit into her fingers. She could not afford notice—not yet. Let him dream; let him doubt. She would learn this new world's rules before she burned in it again.
That night, rain lashed the windows of the upper tower. Lightning drew veins of white across the sea.
King Aldric sat alone before a mirror that refused to stay still. Candles guttered in the draught, their light breaking and reforming across his face. He looked older than his thirty years, eyes shadowed, jaw tight from too many nights without sleep.
The scar on his palm glowed faintly each time he closed his fist.
He had tried to explain it away—training wound, priest's blessing gone wrong, superstition—but when he dreamed, he felt fire licking at his skin and heard a woman call his name as though it belonged to her.
Now he leaned closer to the mirror, studying his reflection.For a moment the surface misted, clouding like breath on glass. A figure formed behind him—pale, hair drifting like smoke, eyes burning violet.
He spun around. The room was empty.Only the faint scent of lilac and ash lingered, too delicate for imagination.
"Enough," he muttered. He seized the nearest candle and snuffed it out. "I'll not be haunted by ghosts."
But when darkness claimed the chamber, he still saw her silhouette burned into his sight like the afterimage of lightning.
Below, in the servants' dormitory, Seraphine sat at her narrow window, knees drawn to her chest. The storm outside painted silver rivers down the glass. She traced the mark on her wrist, feeling its throb echo somewhere distant—in a king's pulse, in the memory of fire.
Her whisper was barely sound."You will remember me, Aldric Thorne. Even if it takes another hundred years."
Thunder answered, low and rolling.Somewhere deep in the palace, a bell tolled once—long, mournful, like the heartbeat of a city that had never forgiven itself.