Chapter 6 - Memory of Ashes
Two hours later, frantic screams echoed from the Sun Tower.
Servants scrambled through the dark corridors as word spread like wildfire through the palace: the lost princess had suffered a sudden, violent reaction to a mysterious illness and was lying breathless in her bed.
Within thirty minutes, Lord Malakor, Lady Celeste, and King Alistair were brought into the chamber.
King Alistair threw himself beside the bed, weeping uncontrollably as he held Mara’s limp, pale hand. Her skin was ice-cold, her chest barely moving, her pulse so faint that even the royal doctor declared her as good as dead.
Standing in the shadow near the doorway, Celeste hid a wicked smile behind her lace handkerchief. Malakor rested a comforting hand on his brother’s sagging shoulder, though his eyes gleamed with triumphant malice.
“It is a tragedy, Brother,” Malakor said, suppressing his joy. “The girl’s frail body could not handle the dark alchemy she tried to use. God has judged her.”
“Leave me…” King Alistair sobbed. “All of you… leave me with my daughter…”
When the room was finally cleared of everyone except the weeping King and Captain Vance, Vance bolted the heavy wooden doors securely from the inside.
He approached the bedside and whispered, “Your Majesty. It is time.”
King Alistair stopped weeping immediately. He wiped his eyes and looked up, his expression instantly shifting from hopeless grief to sharp, cold resolve.
From the bed, Mara opened her eyes and sat up, coughing slightly as she spat out a small leather pouch of numbing herb solution Vance had given her to slow her heart rate and pale her skin.
“Did they buy it?” Mara asked softly.
“Hook, line, and sinker,” Vance replied with a grim smile. “Celeste is already preparing her coronation gown for next week.”
King Alistair took Mara’s hands, his eyes filled with fierce pride. “My child, while you were feigning sleep, Captain Vance’s loyal men searched the hidden archives beneath Malakor’s private quarters. Look at what we found.”
The King held up an old, dust-covered leather journal bearing the royal seal of seventeen years ago.
Mara opened the dusty pages. As her eyes scanned the elegant handwriting of the former Royal Alchemist, buried memories suddenly flooded back into her mind with terrifying clarity.
She remembered the smell of thick, choking smoke. She remembered a dark figure carrying her away from her crib while flames roared around her. She remembered a voice whispering, “Keep her alive in the servant quarters, but rub this waxy salve on her mark every day. If the phoenix ever glows, she dies.”
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“It wasn't an accident,” Mara whispered, tears of real realization spilling down her cheeks. “The nursery fire seventeen years ago… Malakor set it himself! He stole me, hid me as a servant, and used a magic-suppressing salve to cover my birthmark so Celeste could inherit the throne!”
“And now,” King Alistair said, his voice cold as steel, “the time has come for the snakes to pay for their crimes.”
