Chapter 179 The Wait Is Done
(Caelum Ashborne)
“In eight hours,” Apollo said, adjusting the leather bracers over his wrists, covering the blood, “you will accompany her to training.”
Training.
Caelum’s stomach clenched. Training meant pushing. Testing limits. Seeing how close to the edge she could be driven without breaking—and then taking one step further.
Another test. Another trap. Another tightening snare in the prophecy’s web.
“You may leave,” Apollo added. “But understand—”
His gaze slid down Caelum’s frame, lingering on the tired set of his shoulders, the redness around his wrist where the leash had chewed through skin.
“You will learn to obey.”
There was something softer buried under the threat. A strange, twisted version of concern—like a handler warning a dangerous animal not to hurt itself against the chain. Then he closed the door.
Caelum exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours. His lungs protested the sudden rush of air.
He turned away, legs stiff, every step down the corridor sending needles through his overworked muscles. Shadows followed him in a ragged trail, no longer sleek and obedient—more like wounded creatures limping at his heels.
He walked the familiar turns by memory: left at the cracked column, right at the scorched archway, down past the old war relief carved into basalt where Devils tore Emberborn apart in looping, stylised lines.
His alcove waited where it always did.
Small. Bare. A shallow bite carved into the mountain wall, just large enough for a narrow bed of furs, a hook for his weapons, and a rough-hewn shelf where he kept the things he pretended not to care about. A strip of charred cloak from his first Emberborn captain. A stone from the old homeland cliffs. A shard of obsidian marked with his family sigil.
He sank onto the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands. Adelaide’s flame still brushed along his bones. Faint now, but there.
He couldn’t keep this to himself anymore.
Caelum lifted his head and drew in a slow breath. He peeled his fingers open, palm up, and summoned what little of his own power he dared to use under Apollo’s roof.
A tiny ember flickered to life above his skin.
At first, it was dull—nothing but a coal, orange-red and weak. Then it tasted the residue of Adelaide’s power on him. It flared, stretching into a spiralling tongue of living fire that twisted higher, snapping and crackling with recognised lineage.
Her magic answered even this. The flame shivered. Then it settled.
Arkael’s face took shape inside it—features carved from coal and light, eyes like burning coals banked for war. His father looked older each time Caelum called him, lines etched deeper around his mouth, hair more smoke than black. But the power in him never dimmed.
“Report,” Arkael said without preamble. His voice was the sound of wood catching, dry and dangerous.
Caelum swallowed. His mouth was suddenly dry.
“It’s her,” he said, the words scraping on their way out. “There is no doubt anymore.”
Arkael’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
“She’s growing stronger every day,” Caelum said. “Faster than even your predictions. The flare the other night was nothing compared to what she’s doing now. Apollo is… experimenting with her fire.”
The word tasted wrong. Clinical. It didn’t cover the way Apollo held her, the way his voice had softened when he thought no one could hear, the way he’d looked back at her before leaving the room.
“Experimenting how?” Arkael asked.
Caelum’s jaw flexed. “He pushes her until she breaks. Then he pushes further. He wants to see how far she bends before she shatters. He’s testing thresholds. Pain. Pleasure. Control.”
The flame around his father’s features guttered, then steadied.
“And she survives this?” Arkael asked, too calm.
“She does more than survive,” Caelum said, unable to keep the rough edge of awe from his voice. “Her power keeps answering him. Every time he drives her to the brink, her flame spikes higher instead of burning out. It’s… dangerous.”
“Dangerous for whom?”
“For everyone,” Caelum said. “For her. For him. For us. The Queen’s Flame doesn’t like chains, Father. You know that. It hasn’t changed just because the crown is lost.”
Arkael was silent for a long heartbeat. Firelight moved across the hard planes of his face.
“And the Queen’s Flame itself?” he pressed. “You are certain?”
Caelum hesitated. He thought of the first time he’d felt it—waking his father in the Emberborn camp miles away, the mountain roaring as that long-sleeping power stirred across the divide.
“It’s waking more and more. And not just inside her.” Caelum whispered. As if saying the truth would bring the mountain down upon him.
“Explain,” his father ordered.
“Father, my own Ember responds to her. She is pulling my Emberthread to the surface. I can feel the strength of it growing.”
“You’re certain?”
“I am.” Caelum thought of the way it had rushed through him tonight, not like a foreign fire, but like something coming home.
“He’ll kill her when he realises what she is,” Caelum said finally. The truth fell between them like an axe. “He’s close. He can feel the difference already. He just doesn’t have the name for it yet.”
Arkael inhaled. Slow. Controlled. The ember-flame brightened with the force of it.
“That,” he said, “we cannot allow.”
The reflection of Caelum’s face wavered in the fire, smaller next to his father’s, eyes hollowed out by sleeplessness and things he could never admit.
“You told me we had time,” Caelum said quietly. “That we would move when the signs aligned. When the prophecy confirmed itself.”
“It has,” Arkael replied. “More than once. You just delivered the last piece.”
Fear slid cold through Caelum’s heat. “You mean to bring the Emberborn here.”
“I mean to finish what the old kings started and failed,” Arkael said. “We will not sit on our ashes while a Devil plays with the Queen’s fire until it burns the world to cinders.”
“He’s protective of her,” Caelum said before he could stop himself. The words were barely more than a breath, but they were out, and there was no taking them back.
Arkael’s gaze sharpened. “Protective?”
Caelum forced himself to meet that coal-black stare. “He doesn’t know why. He doesn’t understand what she is. But he is already… attached. If we move too soon, he will tear her apart rather than let her go.”
“Then we do not move clumsily,” Arkael said. “We move with precision. With fire and shadow together, as we were meant to. You are my knife inside his ribcage, Caelum. You know his halls, his habits, his weaknesses. You feel the Queen’s power when she breathes.”
Guilt flared in Caelum’s chest. He had never told his father how much he felt. How deeply her flame had embedded itself under his skin. How her whisper at the door had hurt worse than any leash spell.
“You are certain we have no other path?” Caelum asked. It sounded close to pleading, and he hated it.
Arkael’s expression eased for the briefest moment, something almost like sympathy flickering through the flames.
“You have always been softer than your brothers,” his father said. It wasn’t an insult. Not entirely. “That softness is why I sent you instead of them. You see what others do not. You feel what they refuse to feel. But do not let it blind you.”
The fire swelled.
“She is our Queen,” Arkael said. “Not his. Not yours. The Prophecy has begun to wake. The Devilfire and the Queen Flame cannot be left to find each other on their own. The last time we trusted fate, it gave us centuries of ruin.”
Heat licked higher, singeing Caelum’s fingertips.
“We will not wait any longer,” Arkael finished. “Prepare yourself. When the Ember-call comes next, it will not be for a report. It will be for war.”
The flame flared once—bright enough to paint the alcove walls in burning gold—then snapped out, plunging Caelum into darkness. His palm stung. His wrist throbbed under the leash. Adelaide’s faded heat shivered along his bones like a half-remembered touch.
He sat there, in the suddenly cold alcove, and felt the axis of his world shift.
Apollo’s leash was held on one arm. His father’s expectations on the other. Adelaide’s flame threaded through both.
Three fires. All of them pulling at him.
He didn’t know which one would burn him first.