Chapter Ten : The Price of Power
599 Words
The fire came without warning again.
It started as a pulse beneath Lysander’s ribs – faint at first, then sharp enough to make him drop to his knees. His palms burned as light cracked through them, thin and wild, tearing through the air like veins of lightning.
Theseus was beside him in an instant, muttering words of binding. The ground trembled. The fire answered – not to him, not to the spell – but to something deeper, older, that didn’t want to be tamed.
“Lysander, focus,” Theseus shouted over the roaring heat. “It’s inside you, not against you. You have to guide it!”
Lysander clenched his teeth, sweat running down his neck. “It doesn’t listen to me!”
“Then listen to it,” Lysander said, his voice low but firm. “Don’t fight the fire – feel what it wants.”
Lysander closed his eyes, the world blurring into red and gold. For a moment, he felt nothing but pain – and then, something else. A memory. Not his.
A tower of marble. A crown of black iron. A woman’s voice crying out in the dark.
He gasped and fell forward, the fire vanishing as quickly as it came. Smoke rose from the ground, and the air smelled like rain and ash.
Theseus knelt beside him, his face pale. “What did you see?”
Lysander stared into the dirt, his breathing uneven. “Someone… someone was begging for mercy. I think– I think it was a queen.”
Theseus’s eyes narrowed. “The same one from the prophecy, perhaps. The one who sealed the heart of Ammon.”
But before Lysander could answer, Aurora’s voice echoed from the trees. “There was a queen.”
They turned. She stepped out of the shadows, her cloak drawn tight around her. Her face was unreadable, but her eyes held something – a truth too heavy to speak easily.
“I found records in the ruins beyond the ridge,” she said quietly. “Names written in the old tongue. The first queen of Ammon was called Hermia.”
Theseus frowned. “That name–”
“It’s my name,” she said, cutting him off. “Or close enough. My family… we’re descended from her.”
The wind moved through the trees, carrying the smell of old smoke and salt.
Lysander rose slowly. “So you’re saying the curse– it started with your bloodline?”
Aurora nodded once. “And it might have to end with it.”
No one spoke for a long time. The fire between them had burned out, but its glow still lingered in Lysander’s eyes.
Finally, Theseus broke the silence. “If that’s true, then the prophecy wasn’t about a single savior. It was about the three of us. Fire, blood, and wisdom – bound together.”
Lysander looked at Aurora. She met his gaze, steady but fragile, like someone learning to face the weight of her own name.
“I won’t let my family’s past decide our fate,” she said. “If I have to burn the curse out of this land myself, I will.”
Lysander placed a hand on her shoulder. “Then let’s make sure the fire knows which side it’s on.”
As dusk fell over the forest, the trio stood together – scarred, shaken, but no longer uncertain. The curse was tightening its hold, and the answers were coming faster than they could breathe.
And somewhere beneath the soil of Ammon, the heart they all feared began to stir again.
- Writer
