"You danced with him," Isla spat the next morning, her voice echoing off the marble in the palace solarium.
Elara didn't look up from the scroll she was reading.
"And you counted the steps."
Isla's lips curled. "Don't get comfortable. He only humored you because you're a novelty."
Elara rolled the scroll shut with calm precision. "That's still more than he gave you."
The slap came quick. Not hard, but sharp enough to echo.
Elara didn't flinch.
"That stone chose wrong," Isla hissed, voice trembling. "You're not even royal. You're a stain they can't scrub out."
Elara met her gaze.
"And yet here I stand. Still glowing. Still not burned."
Isla turned and stormed out, silk trailing like smoke.
Prince Kael wasn't idle.
By midmorning, he was in the training courts, sword in hand, facing the palace's best.
Elara watched from the shaded gallery, arms folded. M appeared beside her without warning.
"He fights like someone who knows what people whisper behind his back," M said.
"Let them whisper," Elara replied. "I want to see what he does when the world stares."
Kael took down his opponent with a clean strike. As applause scattered like rain, his gaze found Elara's.
He smiled.
She didn't.
Later, in the Hall of Maps, the Empress and King received Kael in a private audience.
Elara was not invited.
But that didn't stop her from hearing.
M passed her the parchment: a copied transcript, hand-written in tight, careful strokes.
Kael had not come to woo. He had come with a proposal: a new alliance, not through Isla, but through shared fire.
"Let the Flamebearer choose where her loyalty burns," he'd said. "You keep her locked behind silk and ceremony. I'd put her on the battlefield."
The King had gone silent.
The Empress had not.
"She is an untested myth."
"And myths move armies."
Elara read it twice.
Then she folded the paper and burned it over her candle.
That night, Kael found her in the outer gardens, standing barefoot in the moonlit dew.
"You listened, didn't you?"
"You expected I wouldn't?"
He chuckled. "You don't belong in their cage. You burn too hot."
"And you think your leash is better?"
He stepped closer. "I don't want to leash you. I want to watch what you do when no one's holding the chain."
Elara said nothing.
But the flame in her palm flared briefly to life.
Not an attack.
A promise.
"Then don't stand too close, Prince. Some fires bite."
Inside the palace, the Empress stood before her mirror, expression brittle.
"She makes him curious," she whispered.
The King's reflection joined hers.
"She makes the world curious."
And for the first time in years, the Empress's silence wasn't confidence.
It was fear.