Chapter 21: Fire Does Not Ask Permission
Chapter 21: Fire Does Not Ask Permission
Thalia POV
They dragged the Vikings in just before dawn, four of them, shackled, bloodied, and still snarling.
One was missing an eye. Another had a broken arm twisted backward at the elbow. The last two were still struggling even with their legs chained, spitting at the Syndicate guards like wild dogs refusing the leash.
Thalia stood at the edge of the balcony, watching the courtyard below, arms folded tight over her chest. The air was cold. The mountains were silent. But her mind was burning.
It had been six nights ago when the first whispers came.
A village outpost near the Shadowvale crossing had gone dark. The guards posted there had missed two report cycles. When the patrol arrived, they found the station burned to the foundation, a healer’s hut soaked in blood, and a child missing.
The Vikings left their mark behind, an axe carved into a horse skull, nailed to a charred door.
Syndicate scouts tracked them through the mountains for three days, across a frozen ravine and deep into abandoned mining paths. Three warriors died in pursuit. One was skinned alive.
The scouts returned with four prisoners and the severed hand of a fifth.
Thalia hadn’t blinked when the report was read.
“Bring them to the Flamehall,” she’d said. “Alive.”
But now, as she watched them sneer and laugh and spit curses in their rogue tongue, she felt the flame rise inside her, boiling and steady.
They weren’t just criminals.
They were a message.
And now, she would send one back.
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The Courtroom – That Morning
The Blackridge courtroom was hewn from jagged obsidian, shaped like a crucible, its torches ever-burning in the flame lines carved into the walls.
“These men are not mere trespassers. They are butchers. Raiders. Cowards who hunt children and skin warriors like game. Their group, the Vikings, have long skirted our borders, killing where they please and leaving rot behind. But they’ve crossed into Syndicate lands one time too many.”
She stepped down from the Flame dais.
“I decree death. Public. Immediate. Let their corpses rot where the crows can see them.”
The silence after her words was not agreement.
It was calculation.
Then came Elder Drevyn, of course it was him, rising from his seat like he’d been waiting for it.
“We are not savages, Luna,” he said, arms folded into his grey robes. “We do not execute without process. Without hearing. What gives you the right to speak death before this court has weighed?”
Thalia met his eyes. “What gives you the right to question a Luna crowned by the Flame?”
The room tensed.
“You may hold the crown,” Drevyn said smoothly. “But justice must still be weighed. Arash would never have rushed bloodshed.”
Elder Sarell stood then, lean and sharp-eyed, his voice a hiss. “Arash is dead. And the Vikings fed on her weakness. These aren’t soldiers; they’re filth. Scourge. You want to hold trials for wolves who slit children’s throats in their sleep?”
Drevyn turned, expression calm. “And what happens when we start killing without distinction? What precedent do we set? That power alone is law?”
“I say it’s about time they remember who the hell we are,” Sarell growled. “They murdered our scouts and burned our land. A swift death is a mercy.”
Another voice joined, Elder Alryn, older, slower in speech, but firm. “Arash waited. And it served her. There is power in patience. The Luna is young and new. Let her not start her reign with blood.”
“A reign without blood is a reign built on myth,” Sarell snapped.
A few younger nobles seated along the outer gallery began whispering. One of them muttered, just loud enough for ears to catch:
“This is what happens when you crown someone who didn’t grow up among us, just because the flame chosed her.”
Thalia’s spine stiffened.
She turned. Stepped forward. Voice low and dangerous.
“Who said that?”
The court stopped.
Not a breath stirred.
Thalia’s eyes scanned the gallery, row by row, face by face.
“I said—who said it?”
Silence.
A flicker of flame behind her flared higher, as if it too had heard.
“I will not ask a third time.”
She moved down the center aisle slowly, the sound of her boots cracking like bone on the stone floor.
“Who here believes I do not belong? Who here believes a crown must come from comfort and not from fire?”
Still nothing.
Her voice dropped to a hiss. “You think I do not know how you whisper? That I was not raised here, not forged here, and thus not one of you. But I bled. I burned. And the Flame did not reject me. It crowned me.”
The air rippled.
“Come forward,” she said. “Say it again to my face. Or stay in your seat and know that from this day on, you speak against me. Not beside me.”
A long, pulsing silence.
Then,
“It doesn’t matter who said it,” came a voice from the back. “The fact is… many of us think it.”