Chapter 547: Little Army

The lanterns in the bedchamber were dimmed to a low, amber hum, casting long shadows that flickered against the heavy tapestries.

Rael was tucked tightly against Eris’s side, his small frame a furnace of youthful energy that seemed to defy the very concept of exhaustion.

Her hand moved through his hair in a slow, hypnotic rhythm, her fingers tracing the familiar silkiness of his curls. She felt the specific, hollow ache of loving something she knew she could not keep… a silent, heavy weight that sat behind her ribs like a stone in a stream.

Rael, however, was not sleepy. He was in the throes of a five-year-old’s complete and utter refusal to acknowledge that the moon had risen.

He was rambling, his voice a bright, continuous stream of consciousness that filled the quiet room. He spoke of Bjorn, the great hound, and how he had witnessed the beast pilfering a link of sausages from the kitchens with the stealth of a master thief.

“And I was the only one who saw him,” Rael whispered, his eyes wide and sparking in the dim light. “The head cook looked right at him, but Bjorn did a sneeze and hid the meat behind the flour sack. He’s very clever. I think he should be a spy.”

He moved on without a breath to a guard named Perrin, who had apparently spent a quiet hour in the gardens teaching Rael how to whistle through his teeth.

To demonstrate, Rael let out a sharp, tuneless warble that echoed off the stone walls. “It’s for signaling,” he explained with profound gravity. “In case of an ambush. Or if I see a fish.”

This led naturally to a detailed report on the ice sculptures in the east corridor. One had cracked during the tremors of the Syvrak attack, and Rael was convinced that the resulting fissure had transformed a stoic imperial bust into the likeness of a very surprised trout.

Eris listened to it all. She watched the animation of his face, the way his hands moved to emphasize the importance of the trout-bust, and the sheer, unadulterated seriousness he brought to these trivialities.

She felt a surge of love so potent it made her breathe hitch. She wanted to lock the doors. She wanted to tell Caelen to ride back to Solmire alone and leave this boy here, in the frost, where she could guard his sleep for a hundred years.

But she knew the truth. Rael and Caelen shared a bond forged in the quiet years she had missed, a closeness built on thousands of small moments she could never reclaim.

She had only recently begun to earn this… the way he ran to her, the way his arms looped around her neck with trust instead of hesitation.

It was a fragile, beautiful thing, barely months old. Rael belonged with his father, in the sun. She would not be the one to sever that cord. The acceptance of his departure settled over her, quiet and mournful, a grief she accepted as the price for the blood on her cheek.

She shifted slightly, looking down at him. “Rael,” she said, her voice careful. “What would you think… about perhaps having more siblings?”

The effect was instantaneous. Rael sat bolt upright, the blankets pooling around his waist. “More siblings? Like actual ones? For me?”

His questions came in a rapid-fire volley, his eyes growing impossibly wide. “Could I have five? If I have enough, I could build my own army. We wouldn’t even need the Imperial Guard. We could just be the Sibling Guard and we would have wooden swords and no one would ever take the sausages again.”

A cold finger of fear traced Eris’s spine. She thought of the three heartbeats beneath her own, the sheer fragility of the life she carried.

She didn’t know if she would carry them to term… all three, or any of them. To raise his hopes now, to plant the image of brothers and sisters in his mind only to potentially leave the sentence unfinished, felt like a cruelty she couldn’t afford.

She remembered Ophelia’s pregnancy, the child due in months who would be Rael’s half-sibling regardless of what happened in this palace.

“It’s a surprise, little flame,” she said, gently pulling him back down. “Besides, you already have one coming soon, from your father’s side. You’ll have a brother or a sister to play with in the desert.”

“I want more than one,” he insisted, though his voice was finally beginning to lose its edge. “More siblings means more everything. It’s better for the army.”

“Go to sleep, General,” she murmured, pulling him against her chest until his head rested just below her chin. She resumed the stroking of his hair, her touch a tether. “How is your practice going? Are you calling the fire every day?”

“Every day,” he whispered, his eyelids finally drooping. “Like you said. I don’t let it push me. I push it. I made a tiny bird today. It didn’t even burn the rug.”

“Good,” she said, her voice slowing, getting softer to match the deepening rhythm of his breath. “You are the master of the flame, Rael. Never the other way around.”

She continued to whisper encouragements, guiding him down into the dark. Eventually, his yapping faded into a soft, rhythmic snuffle.

Sleep took him mid-sentence, his small hand still clutching a fold of her dress. Eris didn’t move. She stayed there, a sentinel in the amber light, holding the weight of a world that was already starting to slip through her fingers.

The next morning, the palace felt different.

The rest had done something to stitch Eris back together, though her body was beginning to insist on its own peculiar requirements.

At breakfast, the sheer quantity of food she consumed became a point of silent fascination for the maids. She was eating for four, a mathematical reality that manifested as a ravenous, relentless hunger.

She felt the raised eyebrows of the servants, their gazes carefully neutral but brimming with unspoken questions.

She offered them a single, sharp look… the kind that ended conversations before they began—and continued her meal.

Afterward, she sought the air. She walked through the parts of the palace that were still standing, the stone cold and indifferent to the trauma it had witnessed.

Before she set out, she sent word to Aldwin. She wanted him to meet her at the Mage Academy library, the one place where the scent of old parchment might drown out the lingering smell of ash.

When she arrived, she found Ellyn first. The young mage’s face went through a kaleidoscope of expressions in quick succession: relief, delight, and that specific, flustered quality he always wore like a second skin when she was near.

“Your Majesty!” he stammered, nearly dropping a stack of scrolls. “I… we heard… the courtyard yesterday… you’re alright?”

“I am functional, Ellyn,” Eris said, and to her own surprise, the greeting was genuine. “It is good to see you standing.”

Ellyn’s relief was palpable. He began to recount his experience during the Syvrak attack… the running, the blind chaos of the underground, the names of the mages who had fallen trying to hold the palace wards and the few who had stood their ground.

He spoke of the rumors spreading through the city, of how the people were already whispering about how she and Soren had fought back the darkness. But then his tone dropped, turning heavy with a weariness that seemed too old for his face.

“The news from outside the walls… it’s not good, is it?” Ellyn asked, looking at the floor. “Wars seem to be a frequent occurrence in this empire. It’s like a cycle that never quite breaks.” He said it without accusation, just the quiet observation of someone who had been counting the cost.

“Wars are the language of men who fear they are being forgotten,” Eris replied.

Ellyn looked up, his eyes glassy. “I lost both my parents in the last civil war,” he said, his voice steady but hollow. “That’s why I study. Why I wanted to come to the Academy. I wanted to be powerful enough to stop the people who like to start these things. I thought if I knew enough magic, I could make a difference. But when the ground opened… I was just a boy running in the dark again.”

The confession hung in the air, raw and bleeding. Eris looked at him… this young man who had seen the same rot she had, just from a different vantage point. She felt a strange, uncharacteristic softness rise in her chest, a byproduct of the lives she was carrying.

“You are not just a boy running, Ellyn,” she said, her voice unusually sweet, devoid of its usual jagged edges. “You are the one who stays to look for the answers. That is a different kind of courage. Your parents would have been proud of the man you are becoming.”

Ellyn stared at her, his eyes wide with shock. The Fire Queen, the woman of iron and ash, had just said something… kind. He blinked rapidly, adjusting his glasses as if he didn’t quite trust his ears. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Your Majesty… I…”

Eris cleared her throat, her face returning to its dry, impenetrable mask. “Don’t look so surprised. These children,” she gestured vaguely to her stomach, “must be rotting my brain. I’m told the humors of the body become quite imbalanced during this state.”

Ellyn’s mouth fell open. “You… you’re…?”

“Back to business, Ellyn,” she snapped, though there was no real heat in it. “The assignment. What can kill a god? Tell me you found something more useful than a prayer.”

Ellyn shifted gears instantly, though his hands were still shaking slightly. He began to report his findings.

He hadn’t found a singular, definitive weapon, the records of the Old Gods were fragmented and steeped in metaphor but he had found options.

He spoke of ritualistic dampening, of celestial alignments, and of a specific type of ’hollowed’ magic that didn’t destroy a divine entity so much as it unraveled the belief that gave it form.

He was in the middle of explaining a theory regarding the ’Soul’s Anchor’ when the library doors swung open.

Aldwin entered with the practiced ease of a man who found the world’s end mildly amusing. “I was told there was a meeting of the minds,” he said, his voice dry and melodic. “Though I see we’ve invited a fledgling to the table. Careful, Eris, the boy looks like he might faint if you breathe too hard.”

Eris turned, a faint smirk touching her lips. “Aldwin, I would like you to meet Ellyn. He has been doing the work you were too lazy to finish.”

Ellyn’s glasses nearly slid off his nose. He looked from Eris to the legendary mage, his eyes bulging. Everyone who had ever touched a tome of magic knew the name Aldwin. To the young man, it was like meeting a constellation that had decided to walk the earth. “A-Aldwin?” he squeaked, standing as straight as a spear.

“At your service, fledgling,” Aldwin said, strolling toward them. “Now, let’s see what sort of nonsense you’ve managed to dig up. If we’re going to kill a god, we might as well do it with some style.”

Eris watched them—the legendary mage and the boy who wanted to stop wars. The timeline was shortening. Caelen was leaving in two days. Soren was still a ghost in the northern wind. And here, in the quiet of a ruined library, the final pieces of the puzzle were beginning to click into place, even as her own strength continued to bleed away into the three lives she was fighting to bring into a world on fire.

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