CHAINS OF FIRE AND ROSES 🌹🌹🌹🌹
CHAPTER 6
Beneath the Crown
Emerald woke to the sharp clang of metal against stone. Her body ached from the cold floor, the rough chain still tight around her ankle. A tray of crusted bread and a dented tin cup of water had been shoved into her cell, neither touched. Hunger gnawed at her, but pride held firm.
Footsteps echoed down the corridor—measured, deliberate. She straightened, brushing dirt from her tattered dress.
Kael appeared.
No guards flanked him. No sword hung from his side. He walked like a man who had nothing to fear.
"You look well, all things considered," he said flatly.
She said nothing.
He glanced at the untouched food. "Too proud to eat? Or hoping
Thanks for your patience. Here's Chapter 6 of Chains of Fire and Roses, continuing directly from where Chapter 5 ended. This chapter is approximately 1000 words long.
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Chapter 6: Embers in the Ash
The early light broke through the frost-rimmed windows of the palace, gilding the corridors in cold gold. Emerald moved silently, a bucket of soapy water in her bruised hands. Her fingers ached, blistered from scrubbing the stone floors of the east wing where Solentan banners now fluttered above the broken lion sigils of Karnova.
The corridors still whispered with the ghosts of royalty. Once, servants had scattered from her presence. Now, they passed by without so much as a glance, or with cruel smirks laced with thinly veiled contempt. A former high lady of the court had tripped her deliberately that morning, sneering, "Careful, Princess. Floors are treacherous for traitors."
Emerald had said nothing. Just stood, picked up the bucket, and resumed scrubbing.
Pain was no longer a stranger. Hunger had become a familiar ghost. Her back stung from beatings, her knees raw. Yet the ache that weighed most heavily was not on her skin.
It was in her chest.
It was in the memory of Kael's eyes, burning with betrayal. Not just for his kingdom—for her silence.
She had been there.
The night Solenta fell, she had stood behind her father as the palace gates were breached. She had watched as Kael, then just a boy with wild eyes and bloodied wrists, was dragged in chains. He had stared at her—not pleading, not begging, but questioning.
And she had looked away.
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Kael stood in the war council chamber, shoulders tense as Darek traced lines across the map on the table.
"The mountain passes are stable, but we need to secure the trade routes to the south," Darek said. "Without them, we'll face shortages come the next moon. Karnova's granaries are half-burned."
Kael barely heard him. His gaze remained fixed on a carving on the far wall: the crest of Karnova, chipped and scorched. A lion's head wreathed in fire. A beast that roared in conquest.
How fitting that it now stared down upon the ashes of its empire.
"We'll move troops to the southern ridge by week's end," Kael said finally. "And reinforce the Blackreach gates. I want no openings."
Elira nodded. "The nobles are restless. They held power too long. They'll rebel if given the chance."
"They won't get one."
She hesitated before adding, "And Emerald?"
Kael's jaw tensed. He didn't look at his sister.
"She works. She eats. She lives."
"She survives."
Kael didn't respond. He strode from the chamber, the cold wind curling around him like a memory he could never shake.
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Emerald knelt in the garden that afternoon, her once-delicate hands now dark with soil. She had been assigned to tend the grounds outside the west tower. The once-lush garden was now a battlefield of broken stone, frost-bitten leaves, and splintered statues.
She dug with numb fingers, pulling weeds from the roots. Around her, birds chirped without care for kings or wars. The sun glinted weakly through the cloud cover.
She paused when she saw him.
Kael.
He stood across the courtyard, watching her. He wore no crown—just simple black, the colors of mourning and memory. His sword was at his side. Always.
Emerald didn't rise.
She didn't flinch.
But she didn't look away either.
Kael walked toward her slowly, boots crunching over the frost. When he reached her, he didn't speak. Neither did she.
They remained that way for a long moment. The garden felt like the only still place in a world that had burned.
"You could have run," Kael said finally, voice low.
Emerald looked up, face smudged with dirt, hair tangled by wind. "To where?"
"There are sympathizers. Hidden paths. You had chances."
"And if I ran, would it change what I was born into? What my father did?"
Kael stared at her. He didn't have an answer.
She dropped her eyes. "I didn't run because I deserve this."
"No," Kael said. "You deserve worse."
He turned to leave.
Emerald called after him. "And yet you gave me life. Why?"
Kael paused. "Because death is mercy. And I want you to understand what your name cost."
He walked away, and she remained kneeling, the soil cold and wet beneath her hands.
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That night, the wind howled through the halls of the palace like a living thing. In her tiny servant's cell, Emerald lay curled in her threadbare blanket, staring at the ceiling.
She had not cried in days.
She had not slept in longer.
Her body ached, but her mind wouldn't rest.
Images flashed through her thoughts—the screams from the Blackreach tunnels, the roar of the crowd as she was paraded through the square, Kael's voice as he condemned her.
The past was a blade with no sheath.
She closed her eyes and whispered the name she had not dared to say aloud since Solenta's fall.
"Kael."
It slipped past her lips like a secret.
Not in reverence.
But in mourning.
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Elsewhere in the palace, Kael stood at the window of his old chamber—now the king's quarters. The moonlight washed over his scarred hands.
In the shadows, Elira leaned against the doorway.
"You're not sleeping," she said.
"Neither is she."
"Do you expect her to break?"
"No," Kael said. "I expect her to change."
"And if she does?"
He didn't answer.
He looked toward the horizon, where the first sparks of dawn began to rise.
"She once watched us fall," he said softly. "Now she'll learn what it means to rise from ashes."
To Be Continued