CHAPTER 59: ANNULMENT

If the night had been aflame before, this was the moment it began to unravel... like silk catching at the edges, burning to threads.

Caelen’s voice... so rarely raised in public, cut through the smoke and murmurs like a blade.

"Why are you suddenly giving up something so precious to you?"

The sound of it turned heads. Every noble, every priest, every guest froze mid-breath. It wasn’t only the question, it was the desperation threaded through it, the kind that did not belong in a king’s throat. It was grief wearing the wrong mask.

He was staring at her as though she had just set fire to the sun.

Power. The crown. The flame. Eris had built herself from those things, had bled and burned for them. And if there was one thing the world knew of Eris Igniva, it was that she did not yield. Not to gods. Not to men. Certainly not to consequence.

And yet...

"Because I no longer care for it."

Her tone was quiet, almost conversational and the words sounded too simple, too human for the woman who had built an empire on ruin.

"All the power. The rage. The fire. None of it matters to me now."

Her voice didn’t tremble. It floated, steady and sure, over the crowd’s confusion. The silence deepened, the flames flickered, and she went on, softly, as though speaking to herself rather than to them.

"I’ve finally reached a sense of clarity I’ve never felt my whole life," she murmured. "Like the morning after a drunk, wild night... I feel sober. Awfully so. And almost suddenly, I can’t even remember the anger that used to dance in my blood. Always looking for something to burn. To kill."

The words were strange in her mouth, like light refracted through broken glass... honest, almost tender. She looked less like a queen, and more like a woman startled by the sound of her own truth.

‎There was no grandeur to her speech, only the strange, fragile beauty of a confession made too late.

‎

‎She sounded, for a second, almost free.

‎

‎Caelen, however, was far from enchanted. His composure cracked, his voice rising not in command but in raw disbelief.

The firelight caught on his clenched jaw as he took a step forward, shadow spilling over her, voice cutting through the hush.

"Is that what you really think?"

His tone was low, but it cracked at the edges, brittle with disbelief.

"That you’ve changed?"

For the first time in the long, bloodstained legend of her reign, Eris Igniva faltered.

No mask, no venom, no crown could shield her from that question.

Had she changed?

Had she really?

The quiet inside her... the strange, hollow calm that had replaced rage... felt new. Frighteningly new. But was it peace or simply emptiness? She couldn’t tell. And for once, she had no clever reply ready to wield like a sword.

The ballroom held its breath.

Every noble leaned forward. Every flame stilled. Even the Eternal Pyre seemed to wait.

‎When Eris finally spoke again, her voice had changed... regained that ceremonial precision that fit her like armor. She did not look at Caelen. Not anymore. She spoke to the air, to the gods, to the watching world.

‎

‎"Caelen is to be pronounced King of Solmire in seven days, as is tradition."

‎

‎Her tone was formal now... distant, imperial. But there was something softer hiding in the spaces between her words.

‎

‎"Not just Caelen," she added, "but Ophelia as well."

The words swept through the hall like a second firestorm.

"If he so wishes," she continued, her tone turning almost ceremonial, "these two may be wedded officially. I am not only stepping down from the throne... I am annulling my marriage to Caelen by my own authority, bound by the High Priest and Priestess."

The decree hit the room like thunder.

Legal. Binding. Irrevocable.

And then, worse still, she turned her gaze, steady and unflinching, toward the pale figure across the marble floor.

"Ophelia Calista will be crowned the next Queen. The one Solmire truly deserves. The one who rules with grace and kindness."

‎There was no malice in it. No poison. Only something hauntingly close to sincerity.

‎And that, somehow, was worse.

Ophelia went still as a struck flame. The color drained from her cheeks. Her fingers trembled against the silk of her gown.

‎Her hands slowly went to her mouth, trembling like a woman who’d been told the stars were hers... but only because someone else had thrown them away. She looked fragile beneath the weight of her own longing, tears threatening, disbelief flooding her face.

This... this moment... should have been the culmination of every prayer whispered in secret. Yet it felt hollow. Wrong. Like being handed a crown dipped in pity.

She could barely breathe, barely stand.

And still, Caelen didn’t look at her.

His eyes... those cold, grey eyes... never left Eris.

Not even once.

The woman he claimed to love had just been handed the world.

And yet, the only thing reflected in his gaze was loss.

‎It was a cruel irony, really: the moment he finally became free of her name, he could not stop staring at her.

‎And in that gaze... raw, uncertain, almost pleading... there was something not even he could disguise.

Eris saw it.

Didn’t understand it.

Didn’t trust it.

Perhaps she was imagining it... perhaps not.

But in that single heartbeat, with the kingdom watching and the flames roaring and her freedom only a step away, she suddenly wondered if she had truly let go of the crown...

or if it was letting go of him that would finally destroy her.

The air in the ballroom had turned heavy... thick with the kind of tension that prickled against the skin like heat before a storm.

Caelen’s voice came first... quiet, frayed at the edges.

‎"What do you plan to do now?" he asked, each word measured and a little raw. There was not only curiosity in it but an ache... old, private, and oddly parental; as if he wondered what to do with the small, feral thing he had once loved and mended and then learned to fear.