CHAINS OF FIRE AND ROSES 🌹🌹🌹🌹
CHAPTER 4
Blood in the Snow
The silence that followed the parade was heavy—thicker than the snowfall that had turned the square white with mourning. Karl's gaze bore into Emerald's as if peeling back every layer of silk and defiance she wore. Her head remained high, but a tremble betrayed her—a single shiver, not from the cold, but from the weight of thousands of stares and the promise of vengeance held in them.
A guard yanked her chain, and the spell broke. She was dragged to the steps before the palace, where the old banners of Karnova had already been torn down and replaced by the golden phoenix of Solenta. The symbol of rebirth. Of a vengeance long ripened.
Inside the great hall, the firelight reflected off polished stone and ancient wood. The scent of pine, sweat, and war hung in the air. Karl ascended the throne that once belonged to Emerald's father. It was still warm from the man's last breath.
The room fell silent as Emerald was shoved to her knees before him.
She didn't flinch.
She didn't beg.
Karl stared at her as though she were a beast in a gilded cage. "You remember the screams, Princess?"
She looked up slowly. "I remember your father on his knees."
Gasps rippled through the hall. Elira, standing to Karl's right, stepped forward with a blade drawn. Karl raised a hand to stop her.
"She's not wrong," he said flatly. "But the difference is, I don't deny what I am. I was a boy when your father took my kingdom. Burned my people. Chained my sister. And yet, here I stand."
"You're no better," Emerald said coldly.
Karl descended the steps, slowly, until he stood just before her. "No," he whispered. "But I'll be the last monster Solenta ever needs."
Then, turning to the crowd, he declared, "Let it be known. This woman—this jewel of Karnova—will not die quickly. She will live as we lived. She will serve as we served. She will kneel as we kneeled."
The soldiers roared in agreement.
Emerald was pulled up and dragged from the throne room. The sound of boots echoing through the stone corridors reminded her of all the prisoners she'd once seen brought before her father. How easily power had shifted. How fast empires fell.
They didn't throw her in a dungeon.
They gave her a servant's quarters beneath the palace—filthy, dim, cold. A pile of straw, a rusted basin, and a chain bolted to the wall.
The chain was unnecessary. She had nowhere to run.
Night came bitter and fast in Karnova. Emerald sat huddled in the corner, wrapping her arms around her knees, the silk gown already torn and muddied. Her mind raced, not with grief, but with confusion. Rage. Shame.
Karl Valerius.
She remembered his name from whispered stories. The boy prince who had once smiled during a treaty banquet. The child who was taken alive when Solenta fell. Her father had spoken of him as if he were a thorn, not worth the effort to pluck. And yet he had returned as fire.
What had they done to him?
What had she done, by saying nothing all those years ago?
---
In another chamber, Karl stood overlooking the balcony, the cold biting into his skin like memory. Elira approached quietly.
"She provokes you," she said.
"She reminds me."
"Of what?"
"That not all monsters look like beasts."
Elira frowned. "She's not her father."
"She didn't stop him either."
"You didn't stop yours."
He turned to her then, eyes rimmed with ice. "I was in chains."
"So is she now."
They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Elira added, more softly, "Don't let your past write your future, Karl."
"She'll live," he muttered. "But she will live knowing what her name cost us."
---
By the third day, Emerald was assigned to work. She scrubbed floors beside former nobles now stripped of name and honor. Some spat on her. Others ignored her.
She was no longer Princess Emerald.
She was slave.
The women she once dined with now watched her carry buckets and clean latrines.
The whispers were cruel.
"She once drank from golden goblets."
"Now she washes blood from them."
"She used to order executions."
"She'll be lucky to survive the winter."
But she never wept.
And Karl watched. From afar. From behind walls. From the shadows.
He watched her stumble.
He watched her bleed.
He watched her learn humility the way he had—through ash and silence.
But what disturbed him most was not her suffering.
It was her endurance.
To Be Continued