CHAPTER 49: PANDEMONIUM

Ah...

Solmire, city of fire and vanity, had never been one for restraint, but on the eve of the pyrosanct’s ball, it outdid even itself. By night, the entire kingdom thrummed like a living forge, every street a molten artery feeding toward the palace at its heart.

Inside the ballroom, chaos took the form of artistry. Servants scurried beneath floating braziers that burned without smoke, coaxing them higher with murmured spells until they hovered like captive suns. Above, chandeliers of fire-glass were hoisted into place, each crystal refracting flame into a thousand jeweled colors. The obsidian floor gleamed so perfectly it reflected the whole mad spectacle, a second ballroom turned upside down.

Columns were dressed in living flame-vines that wound and pulsed as if breathing. Along the walls, molten gold trickled through thin channels, tracing the architecture like glowing veins. And at the center, the Eternal Pyre awaited, a single, towering flame said to have burned since Solmire’s founding. Around it the first dance would take place, because in this kingdom, even love was expected to waltz with danger.

Below the glitter and heat, the royal kitchens were their own inferno. Fires roared in every hearth; chefs moved like generals leading battalions of ladles and knives. Trays of ember-roasted meats still smoked as they passed; fire-wine shimmered in decanters, glowing faintly from within. Pastry artisans breathed flame into sugar sculptures so delicate one could see the trapped fire flutter inside their glassy hearts.

And there, glistening like defiance itself, stood the ice sculptures from Nevareth — carved into wolves and stags, melting slowly in Solmire’s heat. Their steady dripping was the only cool sound in a room otherwise alive with sizzle and crackle.

In the courtyards, fire dancers rehearsed until sweat gleamed like liquid gold upon their skin. Their flames traced stories in the air, battles, coronations, betrayals, all gone in a blink, swallowed by the night.

Musicians tuned glass flutes that sang when warmed, the notes trembling like laughter over a candle flame. Jugglers tossed enchanted orbs that spun fiery constellations between their hands. Even the living statues, painted in gold and copper, eyes unblinking, stood ready to ignite their eternal torches at the Queen’s signal.

Meanwhile, beyond the palace gates, Solmire’s nobility dissolved into delightful pandemonium. Carriages clogged the marble avenues hours before the event; jeweled horses snorted impatiently while their passengers shouted about seating charts and visibility.

Seamstresses were being held hostage by hysterical ladies demanding last-minute miracles. Jewelers sprinted between manors with boxes of fire-rubies clutched to their chests. Perfumers advertised the night’s newest temptation, Essence of Flame... Promised to make even an emperor forget his vows.

And in one particularly tragic household, young Lady Cordelia Ashvane suffered a catastrophe of color. Her gown, meant to be dawn crimson, had arrived in sunset crimson, a shade that, to the untrained eye, looked identical, but to seventeen-year-old Cordelia spelled ruination.

"The Emperor will never notice me now!" she wailed, flinging sequins like shrapnel.

Her mother, serene in the way only long-suffering women can be, murmured,

"Darling, your eyes are brown."

"They’re amber in candlelight, Mother! Amber! Like the queen herself!"

Peace was restored only after a quick-thinking maid suggested a change of jewelry "to alter the undertone." Cordelia departed for the palace sniffling heroically, draped in the wrong crimson but fortified by hope.

Everywhere, rumors burned hotter than the braziers. The Ice Emperor... yes, that one... had returned, it was said. Some swore he’d been seen on the palace terraces, others that he’d vanished again into smoke. The ladies of court, undeterred, prepared as though he might appear beside the punch bowl at any moment.

"Mysterious but approachable," one mother instructed her daughter.

"Smile just enough to suggest tragedy," advised another.

By the time the first carriages reached the palace gates, half of Solmire’s women were armed with nothing but ambition, perfume, and the dangerous gleam of possibility to sway the untouchable emperor.

And above it all, unseen, unsmiling, the Queen of Fire prepared to end her reign, the city below too drunk on spectacle to sense that something far greater than ceremony was about to ignite.

At the heart of the west wing, where silk met silence and mirrors caught every secret, Lady Ophelia prepared for the night that, in some quieter corner of her heart, test her own reflection.

Three handmaids moved around her with the precision of well-trained clockwork, hands gentle but sure as they cinched, fastened, and arranged. The air shimmered faintly with heat from nearby braziers, and the scent of rose oil drifted like a sigh.

Ophelia herself sat unmoving. Her eyes, reflected in the mirror, seemed far away, once again, caught somewhere between thought and memory, between him and her.

Caelen.

Eris.

Soren.

Names that burned, each in a different way.

She told herself she wasn’t thinking about them. She told herself she was simply breathing. But her stillness had that brittle quality of someone pretending not to break.

"Milady," murmured one of the maids, "the final stitch."

And with that, the gown came alive.

Pearl-white, threaded with gold so fine it shimmered like spun sunlight. Elegant, restrained — a thing of purity and power balanced on a knife’s edge. Where Eris blazed, Ophelia glowed. It was said the design had been commissioned by Caelen himself to rival the Queen herself, though Ophelia, ever the dutiful lady, had smiled demurely at such talk.

And yet... as she rose and the fabric shifted around her legs, some small, treacherous part of her hoped it was true.

Her jewels, diamonds sharp enough to wound, caught the lamplight, scattering stars across her collarbone. Her hair was braided into a crown, threaded with gold leaves that trembled when she breathed.

No, she wasn’t competing. Not at all.

But wouldn’t it be delicious if someone thought she was?

The door burst open before vanity could devour her further.

"Ophelia?"

Caelen stood framed in the doorway, disheveled from haste, his son Rael perched on his hip like a small prince of mischief.

For a moment, the world forgot to move. His steps faltered, his breath caught ... the kind of silence that made poets sigh.

"Your highness..." Ophelia frowned slightly, walking towards him.

"Forgive my impatience," he murmured, crossing the room in long strides. His hand brushed her arm as he handed Rael over. "But your beauty is too enchanting. Perhaps later I might apologize... properly?"

A dangerous softness crept into her chest. "You’re impossible," she chided, though the faintest blush betrayed her.

Rael’s laughter broke the spell... a child’s sound, bright and grounding.

Ophelia crouched, adjusting his ember-red vest. "Well, my handsome knight, what do you think? Do you like your outfit?"

He nodded so hard his curls bounced. "I look like Father!"

Caelen chuckled, pride slipping through the cracks of his usual restraint. "That you do."

"Then will I see Mother tonight?" Rael asked suddenly.

The laughter dimmed.

Caelen’s smile didn’t falter, but his jaw did. "Don’t worry about her, Rael. Tonight, just have fun with us."

Ophelia’s hand lingered on the child’s shoulder longer than it needed to. When she finally let go, her palm drifted... unconsciously, helplessly, to her belly.

Empty. Still. Always.

The ache came like a shadow that knew its way home. Rael would never look at her as he did Eris. She had accepted that. Almost.

Caelen noticed. Of course he did.

He passed Rael to the nearest maid, voice gentle but firm. "Take him to the nursery. We’ll join him soon."

When the door shut, he turned back and gathered Ophelia close. His hand slid to her jaw, tilting her face up to his. "Don’t," he whispered. "Don’t let that poison tonight. We’ll give him a sibling soon enough. We just have to try harder."

He kissed her before she could answer, deep, deliberate, a vow and a distraction all at once. For a heartbeat, she allowed herself to believe him. To believe in him.

Outside, the bells of Solmire tolled the ninth hour. The night was coming alive.

Elsewhere, higher, grander, lonelier, the Queen of Fire sat before her mirror as well, surrounded by the quiet chaos of devotion.

Handmaids flitted around her like moths to their own sovereign flame. One pinned jewels into her hair. Another brushed molten gold onto her eyelids. A third smoothed silk across her arms, careful not to tremble.

Eris’s reflection stared back, composed, regal, utterly still, but beneath that stillness burned a storm.

It was her last night as Queen.

Her last night bound by the throne she’d once killed to keep. The one her father made sure to keep her bound to... with a curse yet also a blessing. Her fire. Her blood.

She told herself she should feel peace. Freedom. Triumph.

Instead, all she felt was him.

The stranger in black.

The voice that haunted.

The name she wouldn’t let herself say aloud.

Soren.

What would he ask for? She thought to herself. "Trade rights? Land? Routes?"

She exhaled sharply. "Tighter," she told the maid at her waist, and the girl obeyed.

The gown itself was a masterpiece, a temptation masquerading as ceremony. Deep crimson that darkened to ember at the hem, stitched with gold so fine it seemed alive. Phoenixes rose and fell along the bodice, their wings catching the firelight as though truly burning.

Her sleeves shimmered like heat haze; her train, six feet of liquid silk edged in glowing thread, trailed behind her like a dying sunset. At her throat, a choker of fire-rubies gleamed, not heavy, but binding all the same.

When she stood, the room seemed to bow around her. Not a woman, not even a queen,

a myth sculpted from flame.

Like the dragon who held the very first breath of fire.

A knock broke the trance.

"Enter."

High Keeper Dareth stepped in, robe trailing, the scent of incense curling behind him. In his hands, wrapped in black silk and sealed with molten wax ... lay the Fire Testament.

"The words are safe?" she asked.

"Hidden and bound by spell," he assured her. "It will be read when the bells strike twelve, as decreed."

Her gaze flickered to the parchment, then to the window beyond, where Solmire glowed like a field of stars burning too close to the earth.

For a moment, she said nothing.

Then she rose... tall, impossible, magnificent... and turned toward the door.

Her voice, when it came, was steady enough to fool even herself.