Chapter 2 THE CINDERMOTHER'S CURSE

APOLLO

I slam my palms flat against the mahogany table in the war room, my breath hitching as molten iron surges through my veins. The ink on the maps before me, showing the advancing front line of Queen Ysolde’s forces along our eastern border, blurs into a crimson smear as the pain consumes me.

My eyes immediately track the back of my hand, watching as a burning crack traces its way across my skin, glowing like a living coal. Then a second. Then a third. They crawl up my wrist in a jagged line of liquid flame, tracing the ancient, cursed path that has been consuming my body for the better part of two centuries.

My jaw clenches tight as the heat seeps beneath the cuff of my sleeve, racing up my forearm. I have spent decades learning how not to scream. In the first century of this curse, I wept. I howled. Gods above, I screamed. There had been no royal dignity to it, no crown, no centuries of forged pride, just a terrified young king curled on the cold flagstones, weeping like a child and begging the Cindermother to stop burning him alive.

Two hundred years later, I have turned agony into an art form. I suffer in silence.

The fire reaches dangerously close to my chest. I drag a ragged breath into my lungs, my vision blurring at the edges with streaks of gold and ash.

"Your Majesty?" General Kael’s voice sounds distant, muffled as if underwater.

"Out," I command, my jaw locked tight enough to shatter teeth. "All of you. Out."

They don't hesitate. They know the signs. The guard doors snap shut, and the moment the heavy latch falls, I collapse to my knees on the stone floor.

A guttural roar almost rips from my throat as the ember-marks flare fully to life. The lines of blinding, liquid fire ignite in my chest, racing up my throat, crawling upward like parasitic roots.

The Cindermother's bargain, burning me from the inside out. Two hundred years ago, I promised her my life to save Vaeloria from the Grey Wilt, the sickly, rotting blight Aethelvale unleashed upon my people. I gave my kingdom back its future, but I cheated the fire entity of her final feast.

And she has been eating me alive ever since.

The heat is unbearable. It strips the air from my lungs, charring my breath. I clutch at my chest, my fingernails digging through my velvet tunic, feeling the agonizing heat pulsing just inches from my ribs. When the curse first bloomed, it used to ignite, at most, twice a year. Lately, it is about twice a month. And the remnant of each episode, the blackened, glowing veins, they cover nearly every inch of my body now, creeping inexorably inward toward the small, untouched patch of skin directly over my heart.

The door opens softly behind me. Maelor steps in, his silver healer’s robes rustling, carrying a vial of cooled frost-drake serum. He doesn't flinch at the heat radiating off me; he has watched me burn for two centuries.

“My goodness,” he mutters under his breath. His weathered hand grips my shoulder, trying to hold me upright.

“Get... away from me,” I choke out, my voice thick with smoke and pain.

“I’d rather not.”

The next wave hits like a crashing sea of flame. My back arches sharply, every muscle locking. The fire is no longer merely skin-deep; it is crawling inside my marrow. It feels as though someone has poured molten copper directly into my veins and is slowly stirring it with a jagged dagger.

I grab Maelor’s velvet sleeve, gripping his forearm hard enough to feel the crunch of bone. He grunts, but he doesn't pull away. He never does.

“Breathe,” he commands softly, his voice a steady anchor in the storm. He uncorks the vial and forces the frigid liquid down my throat. The cold hits my belly like an iceberg, fighting the burn, and reducing the agonizing blaze just enough for me to think properly as it recedes into a dull, throbbing agony. But I know better than to trust the quiet; it will return. It always returns, hungrier than before.

I slump back against the carved legs of the table, heavy coat drenched in cold sweat, chest heaving.

Maelor kneels beside me, gently pulling back my collar to inspect the glowing lines on my neck. His weathered face grows pale, lines of sorrow deepening around his eyes.

"It has advanced again," Maelor whispers softly. "Apollo... the lines are mere finger-widths from your heart. You’re… you’re running out of time, my King."

"How long?" I rasp, my voice raw and scraped bare by the pain.

Maelor closes his eyes, sighing heavily. "If the flare-ups continue at this acceleration... a year. Twelve months at most before the ember touches your heart and consumes your soul entirely."

“A year?” I echo softly.

“If the curse continues to spread at this violent a pace... yes. A year.”

Twelve months. A year before the Phoenix King becomes nothing more than a pile of ash on the throne.

I look down at my bare forearms. The bright glow has faded back into faint, crimson lines—like delicate thread sewn beneath my skin. Two centuries ago, those threads barely brushed my wrists. Now they bind my shoulders, my chest, my ribs, winding down my thighs to the very soles of my feet.

There is only one place the fire has not yet conquered.

My heart.

But apparently, the fire will get to my heart in a year.

And I will be dead.

“Is there really nothing that can be done?”

“Your mate…”

I flinch at the word, my fingers curling into a fist.

“Nothing else?”

"We have tried every remedy out there, my King," Maelor says quietly. "We have spent two hundred years scouring the realms. We have plundered libraries forgotten beneath frozen mountain peaks. We have dragged ancient witches, starsingers, and shadow-priests to this very room. We have tried moon-herbs, sun-blood, elemental bindings, and dark soul-magic. Nothing has quenched the fire. Nothing has even slowed its crawl.”

My heart races as I remember all the lengths and measures, up to the most extreme, that we have taken.

All without result.

“And?”

“There is only one path left, Apollo. The old texts do not lie. You must find your soul-bound mate."

My jaw tightens. A cold, dark hollow opens in my stomach, a fear worse than the Cindermother's fire. "No."

"The Rekindling is the only ritual that can sever the entity's debt!" Maelor presses, his voice rising with rare desperation. "A soul-bound mate, offering her blood willingly at the altar where the bargain was struck, it is the only power capable of quenching the Cindermother's flame."

"I said no," I snarl, shoving myself up from the floor and standing on shaky legs. “That is a myth. And I am not ready to risk looking for a soul mate just to test a myth.”

“It is not a myth,” Maelor insists, pulling a heavy, leather-bound tome from beneath the folds of his robes. I recognize the velvet cover immediately, the ancient text we have spent decades trying to translate. The book I swore never to look upon again.

Maelor opens the delicate pages with practiced reverence. “The bargain you struck with the Cindermother cannot be severed by mere magic,” he recites softly. “It requires a soul mate. A woman whose heart was forged to mirror yours.”

I stand motionless, staring at the floor.

“She must come to the altar willingly and lovingly,” Maelor continues, his finger trailing over the faded silver ink. “She must give her blood freely where the debt was made, taking half the flame into her own heart to balance the magic.”

“I know the legend, Maelor.”

He looks up at me, his eyes sharp. “Then you know what you must do.”

I push myself away from the desk, though the room tilts sickeningly beneath my feet. “I will not do it.”

“You are dying!”

“I am aware!”

“You have twelve months left!”

“I heard you the first time!” I roar, turning on him.

“Then why?” Maelor’s voice cracks with raw desperation. “Why throw away your life out of sheer, stubborn pride?”

Because I have seen what soul bonds do to a man.

My mind flies back three hundred years, to my little brother, Cassian. I remember the day he found his soul-bound, a girl with starlight in her eyes and laughter that could tame wild beasts. Cassian, who had always been cold and reckless, became soft. He loved her with a terrifying, absolute adoration. He would have torn the stars from the night sky and laid them at her feet. He would have handed her his kingdom on a silver platter if she had asked.

And she knew it.

She took his heart, used his devotion to open the kingdom’s gates to our enemies, and destroyed him from the inside out.

I never learned every dark detail of what transpired between them in the end, I never wanted to know. I only remember finding my brother locked in his dark chambers after her betrayal. He stopped eating. He stopped speaking. A dragon-lord prince who had once commanded armies spent fifty years staring at a blank wall, unable to bear the touch of another soul.

Yes, we captured the traitor. She’s been in the dark cells for centuries. But Cassian has never recovered. Love had stripped him of his armor, handed his enemy a blade, and left him to bleed.

To love someone is to hand them a dagger and point it directly at your own chest. It makes a king weak. It makes a man a fool. I will not be broken. I will not let a woman hold my life, and the fate of Vaeloria, in her delicate, treacherous hands.

I will not let a woman undo me.

“I will not do it,” I repeat, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. “I will not hand someone else the power to shatter what is left of me.”

"You have twelve months to live, Apollo!" Maelor shouts after me as I walk toward the private balcony. "Would you rather die a proud corpse than risk your heart?"

I stop at the threshold, looking out over the spires of my kingdom.

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city of Vaeloria is drowning in twilight, preparing for a war it may not survive. From my vantage point in the high tower, I can see the great eastern wall. Torchlight flickers along the stone ramparts as guards march their watches. Far below, in the lower wards, the ceaseless ring-ring-ring of blacksmiths' hammers against steel echoes faintly through the night.

If my enemies discover that the Phoenix King has only twelve moon-cycles left before he turns to ash, Vaeloria will fall long before Ysolde’s siege engines ever reach our walls.

“So what is your grand design?” Maelor asks softly behind me. “How do you intend to survive?”

I glance down at the crimson thread tracing my hand. “Find another cure.”

“We have searched every corner of the realm, my king!”

“Then search farther,” I cold-snap. “Search the places we haven't dared to tread.”

“And if there is no other way?” Maelor asks, his voice barely a whisper. “If the bond is truly the only thread holding your life together... what then?”

I close my eyes, squeezing them shut against the image of my own ash blowing across the stone floor. I think of my kingdom. I think of my people. I think of the fire slowly creeping toward my collarbone.

Beyond those mountains, Ysolde gathers her legions, waiting for the Phoenix King to fall. My people need their king. They cannot afford my pride, but they also cannot afford my ruin.

"I will find her," I say, my voice cold as winter ice, turning to face him. "I will search every corner of this realm until I locate the woman bound to my soul. I will bring her to the altar, and I will make her bleed for the ritual."

Maelor frowns, uncertain. "And... love?"

"She will give her blood willingly because I will offer her wealth, power, and protection she could only dream of," I say, stepping onto the stone balcony as the night wind whips my hair. "But I will never love her. I will open my veins to her blood, Maelor, but I will never open my heart."

Maelor’s mouth twitches with sad amusement. “One does not simply command a soul bond, Apollo.”

“I can command my own heart.” I look him dead in the eye. “I need to survive, Maelor. That is all this is. A bargain for my life.”

I turn and stride toward the heavy double doors before he can offer another word of wisdom.

That night, sleep refuses to claim me.

I stand alone in my private chambers, the balcony doors flung wide, allowing the freezing mountain air to flood the room and chill the phantom flames beneath my skin. The castle is deathly quiet. For once, no war councils are shouting in the grand halls, no generals are demanding audience, no servants are hovering in the shadows.

Just the howling wind and the falling snow.

I lift my hands, looking at the faint red lines crisscrossing my palms. One year. Perhaps less if the war demands too much of my blood.

I walk over to the tall, gold-framed mirror resting in the corner. For the first time in decades, I allow myself to unbutton my high velvet collar and pull the fabric down, looking at the true extent of my ruin.

The glowing red marks cover my throat. They trail down my chest, wrapping around my ribs like a cage of burning thorn-vines. Two hundred years of punishment. Two hundred years of paying the price for a deal I struck when I was too young and too foolish to understand the cost.

I can still hear the Cindermother’s haunting voice echoing out of the dark, centuries ago: A life for a kingdom, sweet prince.

I had thought saving my land was worth any price. I still do. I do not regret taking the fire into my own chest to save Vaeloria from destruction.

But sometimes... in the quietest hours of the night, when the fire is eating through my bones and the cold offers no relief... I wonder if I should have just let myself burn to ash long ago.

I close my eyes and drop to my knees upon the stone floor before the open balcony.

I have never been a man of prayer. Kings are built to be begged to, not to beg. But tonight, I have no pride left to barter with only a fading heartbeat and a kingdom on the brink of ruin.

"I don't care what it costs," I whisper to the empty night, my words carried away on the icy breeze like a dark vow. "I will pay anything to survive."