A Flame That Isn’t Mine
463 Words
The trees above the cavern whispered again, but this time, they sounded like breath. Like voices hiding behind leaves. Like names Liora didn’t remember learning.
She and Cael had climbed out of the underground hours ago, finding shelter beneath the bones of an old watchtower—long abandoned, mostly stone, half-swallowed by ivy and time.
Liora sat on the cracked ledge of the tower, barefoot, dress torn, cloak wrapped tight.
The wind didn’t bite.
It curled around her.
Like it recognized her.
Like it was waiting.
Cael slept just inside, one hand still resting on his sword hilt even in dreams. She’d tried to rest. She couldn’t.
Because something inside her wouldn’t sleep.
The second heartbeat had quieted, but it was there. Beneath her ribs. In her blood.
Not violent.
Not urgent.
Just present.
Watching.
She held out her hand in the moonlight, palm up.
“Let’s see what you are.”
She whispered a summoning word—one of her mother’s—expecting the usual flicker of firelight.
Instead, shadows spilled from her skin. Not black—golden. Smokeless. Silent.
They curled through her fingers like ribbons, weaving around her wrist, slow and strange and beautiful.
Then—without a spell or command—they formed a shape.
A crown.
It hovered above her hand, pulsing with light and memory.
Her breath caught.
“I didn’t ask for that,” she whispered.
The crown shifted.
Melted into flame again.
Then vanished.
Her skin was cold where it had touched her.
“I don’t understand you,” she said quietly. “Are you a curse, or a gift?”
No answer came.
But she felt something stir.
Not a word. Not a thought.
A mirror.
It showed her something she didn’t want to see:
The ballroom.
The nobles watching.
Her mother’s execution.
The Queen’s face as she smiled and said: “Your bloodline ends here.”
Then it showed something else—
Liora, standing over the Queen’s throne. Alone. Crowned.
She gasped.
“I didn’t ask for that either,” she said aloud.
Cael stirred behind her.
Liora clenched her fists. The power receded again, obedient for now.
But she didn’t feel triumphant.
She felt hollow.
Haunted.
What if it doesn’t want to destroy me?
What if it wants to be me?
She stood, staring at the horizon.
A storm was building far off—black clouds rising over the palace city.
The Queen would move soon.
So would the rebellion.
But Liora knew something they didn’t.
They were all wrong about what had been sealed beneath the Hollow.
It wasn’t a weapon.
It was a choice.
And now it lived inside her.
The question was—
When the moment came… would she choose to burn the world?
Or let it burn her?
- Writer
