Chapter 117 Hundred and twenty three
“Tell me that isn’t smoke,” Sienna said quietly, her voice barely a breath, yet every soldier around her stiffened the moment they heard it. She didn’t raise her head. She didn’t need to. The scent had already reached her, burnt wood, melted stone, blood drying too fast in heat that should not exist at night.
“It’s not just smoke,” Colonel Thane answered, stepping closer to her. His tone held the kind of restraint men used when delivering terrible news to someone who could break the earth open with one command. “The lower city is burning. The rebels made their move earlier than we expected.”
“And the Moon Court?” she asked, finally lifting her gaze toward the Citadel gates.
He hesitated.
She turned fully to him. “Thane. Answer me.”
“They’re surrounded.”
The words landed like weight on her chest, but she didn’t flinch. She moved forward without permission, without guards calling her back, without the council whispering their doubts behind her. The flames licking the horizon reflected in her eyes, but the soldiers couldn’t tell if she looked frightened or furious. Maybe both.
“Open the gates,” she ordered.
The guards exchanged glances. “Your Majesty, ”
She didn’t slow. “Open. The gates.”
The steel groaned as mechanisms shifted. Soldiers scrambled to obey, pushing the massive doors apart. The wave of heat that hit them was thick, choking, almost alive. Sienna inhaled once, steady, as if fire had been part of her lungs since birth.
“Move,” she said, stepping through the threshold.
The city roared ahead of her, a living battlefield. Buildings cracked open like eggshells. Flames crawled up stone walls as if hungry. Wolves lunged through corridors of broken carts and fallen statues. The air trembled with war cries, metal scraping against metal, bodies slamming into ground.
A young warrior ran up to her, eyes wide, breath shaking. “Your Majesty, your orders? Where do we reinforce first?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She scanned the chaos, absorbing details like shards of glass pressed into skin. Rebels in red sashes storming the merchant district. Council loyalists holding shaky lines near the river. Shadows moving unnaturally fast along the rooftops, Ryder’s work, she suspected. Every path felt like a trap. Every direction screamed for her attention.
But she let instinct speak before fear could.
“The river,” she said. “If they break through there, the fire will spread to the northern block.”
“Yes, Your Majesty!” the soldier shouted before sprinting away.
Thane moved beside her again. “Zane is pushing from the west. And Renna, ”
“I know.” Her voice hardened. “She’s the reason the flames aren’t dying.”
As if summoned, a scream tore through the night, sharp, distressed, horribly close. Sienna spun toward the sound and bolted down the nearest street. Her soldiers ran after her, struggling to match her speed. The smoke thickened until the world blurred, but she never slowed.
When she reached the collapsed marketplace, she stopped.
Bodies lay scattered among broken stalls. Some were council men. Some were her soldiers. Some…were children trying to hide. The fire had taken all of them the same way, fast, merciless.
Thane swallowed hard. “Renna did this.”
“Renna enjoys attention.” Sienna crouched beside a fallen boy, touching his soot-covered hair gently. “This is a message.”
“To you,” Thane said quietly.
She stood. “To everyone.”
She turned again, sharp as a blade, and her gaze locked on a familiar sigil burned into the ground: a spiral, jagged, incomplete. Ryder had used it before, only when he wanted to warn her.
Her heartbeat kicked painfully.
“Don’t tell me he’s here,” she whispered.
A soldier approached, shaking and pale. “Your Majesty…there are reports in the northern alley. A…shadow. Fast. Silent. Saved a group of guards from an ambush and disappeared.”
Thane exhaled. “So the Ghost Alpha walks tonight.”
Sienna ignored the flicker of pain in her chest. “Keep the men focused. If Ryder is here, he isn’t attacking us. He’s buying us time.”
Thunder cracked in the distance. But it wasn’t thunder. It was the Citadel’s ancient bell tower collapsing under rebel fire. The sound echoed across the city like the howl of something wounded.
“We move,” Sienna said. She headed toward the flame-lit streets without waiting for the others to catch up.
As she ran, soldiers parted around her. Some reached out to touch her cloak. Others bowed mid-battle. They didn’t call her queen. They called her hope. She felt the weight of it with every step.
She reached the tower’s remains and drew her sword from her side. “Clear the rubble!”
Her guards rushed in. They lifted stone, dragged wounded from debris, extinguished patches of fire. Sienna waded deeper into the wreckage, listening for movement.
A groan came from beneath a fallen beam. She shoved the burning wood aside, ignoring the pain scorching her palms. Beneath it, an elder lay bleeding, skin blistered.
“Sienna…” he rasped.
“My name is Your Majesty,” she said sharply. “Save your breath.”
“They want the throne… tonight…” He coughed violently. “Zane… he found a way into the inner court.”
She froze. “How?”
“Renna… opened the wards.”
Sienna’s jaw clenched so tightly it ached.
“Thane!” she called. “We need archers on the eastern wall and guards at the Moon Court immediately. If they breach the inner chambers, ”
A sudden crash split the sky.
The ground shook beneath them. Sienna lifted her eyes, squinting through smoke to see the source.
The temple dome was cracking.
A burst of light shot upward as ancient protective runes shattered along its surface. The Moon Gate, the last barrier protecting the heart of the capital, fractured with a sound like worlds splitting apart.
“No,” Sienna breathed. “Not the Gate, ”
The barrier ruptured completely.
Heat and wind blasted through the city. People staggered, shielding their faces. Wolves dropped to their knees as the backlash of magic tore through their senses.
Flames surged, rising higher, hotter, feeding on unleashed energy.
“Sienna!” Thane shouted. “We need to retreat!”
She shook her head. “If we retreat now, the Citadel falls.”
“If we stay, we die,” he argued.
“Then we don’t stay,” she said. “We advance.”
And she ran straight toward the temple.
Her guards cursed and chased her. The streets grew narrower, darker. Rebels appeared from shadows, lunging at her, but she struck without hesitation. Her sword flashed in swift, precise arcs. Her movements were practiced, deadly, driven by certainty rather than rage.
“You’re chasing death!” a rebel snarled as he blocked her path.
She shoved him aside. “Then death should run.”
She leaped over burning debris, twisted through collapsing archways, and pushed deeper into the heart of the city.
When she reached the temple steps, she stopped cold.
Bodies were everywhere, guards she had stationed, council men loyal to Theron, rebels trying to breach the inner chamber. None of them escaped the explosion of power from the Moon Gate. They lay scattered like discarded memories.
And in the center stood a figure.
She stiffened.
He wore a mask. A black one. The kind that concealed everything but the shape of his jaw. His shoulders rose and fell slowly, as if he were deciding whether to walk away or walk toward her.
“Ryder,” she whispered.
He tilted his head, not stepping closer, not stepping back. The flames cast shadows across his form, making him look carved from night itself.
“Don’t,” he said softly. His voice was deep, familiar, raw. “Not one more step, Sienna.”
She approached anyway. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I shouldn’t be anywhere near you.”
“Then why are you?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. His silence said everything, he came because she was in danger. Because he always came. Because he couldn’t stop.
The temple groaned behind him. The air thickened with heat and tension. Sienna moved closer still, her sword lowering at her side.
“You’re risking everything,” she said. “If the curse, ”
“It already hurts,” he cut in. “Every breath near you hurts.”
She exhaled shakily. “Then leave. Please.”
His jaw tightened behind the mask. “I can’t.”
The fires roared around them, swirling like a storm made of light and fury. Sparks rained through the air, illuminating the ruined steps.
And then,
A scream pierced the night.
A primal scream.
A scream carrying her name.
Sienna spun toward the rooftops.
Renna stood there, her cloak flaming at the hem, her smile sharp enough to cut bone. She pointed down at Sienna, her voice rising above the battle.
“Your queen has lost the Gate!” she shouted. “Your queen has lost the city!”
The rebels, waiting in the shadows, charged.
Ryder lunged toward Sienna.
And the world around them broke open as the temple doors behind him burst outward in a violent wave of fire.