Page 21 of A Kingdom of Shadow and Ash

Kai must have sensed her distress, because he softened. ‘I mean it in a good way, Mal. We were taught to fear magic, but you are my sister. I will always love you. However, we must ensure no one ever sees what you can do.’

They reached her chambers.

Mal hesitated. ‘I am to marry the Fire Prince in a few weeks, Kai.’

He nodded. ‘Then you must keep it hidden. Likeyou always have.’

Mal halted, her gaze drawn to one of the many arched windows to her right—empty of glass, yawning wide to the world beyond. The temple loomed in the distance, a lonely sentinel upon the hill, its pale stone stark against the encroaching twilight. A sanctuary, a place untouched by the weight of fate. She longed to be there, wrapped in the hush of its hallowed walls, where the whispers of the gods might shield her from what was to come.

‘I can feel it, Kai,’ she murmured, her voice barely more than a breath against the evening wind. ‘My powers… shifting. Here, in our land of darkness, I have always been able to contain them. But that place, that kingdom of fire—’ she exhaled sharply, fingers tightening on the windowsill, ‘it is not my home. I don’t know what will happen to me there.’

Her mind conjured an image of the Fire Prince, though it remained a thing of smoke and shadows, slipping between her thoughts before she could grasp it. Surely, his face was cruel, sharp-edged and twisted with malice, just as the stories described. What did it mean to belong to such a man? To bear his name, to share his bed, to press her lips to the mouth of an enemy she had never even laid eyes upon? The thought unsettled her, curling in her chest like an ember yet to catch flame.

Kai shifted beside her, his presence steady as the mountain beneath their feet. ‘We will find a way,’ he muttered, his voice weighted with a promise.

Mal scoffed, the corner of her lips quirking upward despite the storm inside her. ‘Well,’ she mused, the words tasting of bitter amusement, ‘hopefully, I’ll have killed him before he realises my eyes are real.’

There is a change in the air that I cannot explain. Hadrian will no longer look at me. He received a letter from the Kingdom of Fire with a proposal. Of what kind, he will not say. I fear the worse.

Tabitha Wysteria

Time dripped like honey, thick and unyielding, each passing day leaving behind a whisper of footprints upon the darkened earth, only to be swallowed by time itself—buried beneath fallen leaves and the hush of the wind. The land was already beginning to forget her. Soon, it would no longer carry her essence, no longer hold the weight of her presence.

And so Mal did what she had always done: she honed the edge of her blade until it gleamed like the promise of blood, spent her mornings sparring against Kai beneath the grey skies, her afternoons kneeling in the temple, whispering prayers to gods that had never answered, and her evenings seated beside her family, wrapped in conversations about the looming event.

Her wedding.

It still felt like they were speaking of someone else. As if the girl meant to walk down the aisle in barely two weeks was astranger, someone who lived within a different body, breathing a different fate. She tried to summon an image of herself bound to a prince she had never met, but all she saw was a nameless shadow. No, not nameless. The Fire Prince. A man whispered to revel in cruelty, in conquest, in the suffering of others.

Yet, strangely, she did not cry. She did not weep into her pillows or curse the fates for the path before her. Mal was no captive bride; her father had given her a choice. He would have refused the proposal if she had asked.

But she hadn’t.

‘Are you even listening?’

Mal blinked, torn from her thoughts. Haven stood before her, holding up a gown of midnight cotton—a garment their mother adored. Mal, however, despised it. Too much fabric, too many layers, a thing of suffocation and restraint. A dress ill-suited for a warrior.

‘You should wear this when we arrive,’ Haven suggested.

Mal scoffed. ‘I cannot ride in that.’

Haven rolled her eyes. ‘Mal, you know Father will not let you land on the Fire King’s doorstep atop a wyvern.’

‘Why not?’ Mal challenged.

‘Because you’re marrying the Fire Prince.’

‘I fail to see the correlation, sister.’

Haven sighed, exasperated. ‘They think we are savages, Mal. If you arrive on wyvern-back, hair unkempt, in one of your torn dresses—’

‘I will make an impression,’ Mal interrupted, smirking.

‘Mal—’

‘If the Fire Prince desires a wyverian bride,’ she declared, crossing her arms, ‘then he will get one.’

Haven laughed, and the sound struck Mal like a blade of light cutting through the dark. Would she ever hear it again?Would she forget, in time, the melody of her sister’s mirth? She wished she could capture it, bottle it in a glass vial, keep it tucked by her bedside for the nights when she would be alone.

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