Crown of Thorns and Flame Born of The Blood Moon

The skies burned red as if the heavens themselves bled in warning.

Smoke crowned the distant rooftops of Valerius, the capital city that had been her home. On the edge of the cliff where the cursed forest gave way to rock, Seraphina was enveloped by silence. She had not said a word since stepping out from beneath the final blackthorn tree, the border of the magic still echoing behind her, calling her back into its shadows.

But she would not go back.

Not yet.

The wind tore at her tattered cloak, its hem frayed as her past. Beneath, her swollen belly shifted as the child within her stirred—again. He always awakened when danger approaches, as though the blood that bound them was sensitive to what was coming.

She cupped a hand on her belly, fingers trembling slightly.

" Soon," she breathed.

The word was lost to the cold.

Five years.

Five years since the blood moon saw her fall, searing her name into legend with fire and treachery. Five years since the man she loved, the king she bled for, crowned another while her ashes were still warm in the wind.

And yet she lived.

A myth dressed in flesh, cursed by blood, and reborn of vengeance.

Seraphina pulled her hood up over her face, hiding the silver burn marks that curled around her neck like a necklace of flame—blessed or cursed, no one could say. They were a gift from the pyre. She wore them now like a crown.

The forest groaned behind her.

Something old woke up in it, watching. The ancient magic had not wanted to let her go. None had come unscarred from its depths previously—few had tried. It had devoured knights and kings and prophets. But she had not been just a queen. She was fireborn.

The prophecy whispered her name in every dark corner of the kingdom, but no one dared speak it by day.

Born of fire. Bringer of blood. Breaker of thrones.

She looked once more at the city, where banners of obsidian and gold fluttered in the breeze above the citadel. The banner of House Darion. His banner.

Kael.

The name tasted like ash on her tongue.

His betrayal still married her skin like soot. The look in his eyes that night—the moment he'd turned away and let them burn her—was branded into her soul.

She'd loved him more than breathing.

He'd placed the crown above her.

But now… the game was hers.

With a last glance at the horizon, Seraphina stepped forward.

The forest didn't move with her.

It didn't need to. Its gift was already inside her.

Valerius's outer wards reeked of rot and coal smoke. The guards at the southern gate wore the new queen's crest, tacky and red—Lady Elira, Seraphina's lady-in-waiting. Now the wh*r* who sat on her throne, gold-plated by betrayal.

Seraphina passed them in the guise of a merchant widow, head bowed, her cloak speckled with the semblance of dirt and sweat. Her magic simmered beneath her skin, restrained by sheer will.

She would not strike—not yet.

The time for fire was coming. But first… she had to lay eyes on him.

To see if the man who betrayed her still had the face she kissed under the moon's light. To see if anything in him was still human—or if he had become the king the prophecy had foretold.

The royal court pulsed like a sick heart behind iron gates and glittering towers. The city had grown cruller in her absence—darker. Beggars filled the streets with vacant eyes. Merchants traded goods with knives hidden behind their backs. And magic, once revered, had been strangled into silence.

No more flame rituals. No more blood sigils. The temples were cold, empty. The old gods had fallen asleep, or perhaps died when she had burned.

The baby within her stirred once more.

Seraphina halted in an alley, hidden in shadow. Her breath fogged the air. A heartbeat echoed in her ears—not her own.

He was near.

She closed her eyes and let the curse speak.

It was a whisper between her teeth—a tug toward the north wing of the palace. Toward where he trained still, as he did when they were children, before blood crowned him.

Kael.

Her chest splintered under the weight of his name.

He was every bit the legend they said.

Seraphina walked along the tall gallery of the practice court, enveloped in a glamor spell transparent enough to hide her presence. Below her, Kael Darion stalked like a blade.

His sword carved the air in a perfect curve, sweat glistening on his jaw. He had not aged as she thought he would. His hair was darker, longer, tied back in the style of mourning.

Good. Let him mourn her.

Let it fester and rot his insides since the day she returned.

"Concentrate," his sparring partner growled.

Kael did not answer. He shifted again, faster now, his strikes brutal. Not graceful, like they once were. There was anger in his form now. Guilt in each slash.

He glanced up—suddenly, sharply.

Seraphina still.

Could he feel her?

No.

Impossible.

She drew the magic closer around her, like smoke between bones.

But something passed before his eyes. A glimmer of memory. Of grief.

He turned his head away.

She emerged from the shadows.

Night, and Valerius sang with vice. The pleasure houses glittered. Spices wafted on the air with strange fragrances, and shadows lengthened into enticements. She walked among them, unseen, until she reached the ruins of the old temple.

It had been her sanctuary once.

Now bones littered the steps. Magic lost, blood rites destroyed.

She knelt by the altar and placed her hand upon the stone. Her blood touched. The curse changed.

He is close, it whispered.

"He will come," she said.

The altar erupted in an old flame.

And across the city, on the other side, Kael Darion woke with her name on his lips.

The queen commanded a feast.

A banquet in honor of the new trade pacts. A farce, Seraphina knew. The kingdom was bleeding. War seethed on the northern borders, and rebellion had begun to stir beneath the palace like rats in the floorboards.

She attended disguised—one of the lesser nobles, masked and painted in foreign silks.

Kael sat alongside Elira.

Their hands did not touch.

Their eyes did not meet.

But when Seraphina entered the hall, he froze.

His cup halted mid-air. His eyes raked the room. 

And found her. 

No magic hid her now. Only the assurance that he would not look at what he looked at. 

Not truly. 

She held his gaze. Frozen. 

His hand did not waver. Wine spilled. 

Elira spoke, but he did not hear it. 

Seraphia smiled, slow and cold. 

Then dissolved into the crowd before he could rise. 

He hunted her that night, in the ruins.

She waited for him beneath the ruined statue of the fire god, her cloak billowing around her like smoke.

"You're not real," Kael croaked.

Seraphina didn't move.

"You burned."

"I lived."

He moved nearer, his jaw clenched.

"They said you screamed."

"I did."

"Seraphina…"

His voice broke.

She laughed, sharp and cruel. "Don't say my name like you have a right."

His fists curled. "You don't know what I—"

"I know you deserted me. I know you saw them lead me to the pyre. I know you crowned her with my bones still smoldering."

"I couldn't—"

"You could have. But you didn't."

The wind wailed between them.

He gazed at her as a man looking at a ghost. "Why are you here?"

Her hand rested on her belly.

His eyes widened.

"Whose—?"

"Yours."

The word dropped like a stone in a still lake.

"No," he whispered.

"Yes."

He stumbled back a step, as if struck.

Seraphina’s voice turned to flame. “Born under the blood moon, as the prophecy foretold. A child to end kings. To remake the world.”

He stared at her, broken. “You can’t mean to use him…”

“I mean to protect him. From you. From this kingdom. From everything you’ve allowed to rot.”

Kael reached for her—but she was gone, smoke trailing in her wake.

From the palace walls, flames began to rise.

Not wild. Not destroying.

Contained.

A message.

She was returned.

And fire remembered.

The game of thrones had begun anew—this time, with blood.

And no one would leave untouched.

Ash clung to her lashes like smoke-groomed snow, concealing the needle-bright sheen of amber eyes once bright with command and authority, once able to call courts to order and armies to heel. Now, they gazed out from under a tattered hood, sitting upon the broken spires of Caelorth's eastern watchtowers—mute guardians to a kingdom that had buried her in both name and fire.

Seraphina moved as stealthily as wind—silent, invisible, vital. Her cloak's hem trailed across broken stone, each pace a vow to the gods whom she had profaned long years before. The city had changed, to be sure—fresh walls, new sigils, fresh blood—but it still lingered on hidden things. Secret and ash.

The blood moon once more had arisen this night. The same chill eye that had seen her hang, saw the flames devour her wails, the prophecy stitched into her womb, and the realm her blood once protected.

A low whistle cut through the air, piercing and deliberate. She stiffened. Two men emerged from th