Ashes of the crown

POV: Prince Ruvan ❄️👑🩸

Ruvan had broken kingdoms with less effort than it took to stop thinking about her.

Ariya.

The girl with fire in her blood and rebellion in her spine. The one meant to fall. To break.

And yet… she hadn't.

Even after the vision he sent. Even after the mimic whispered the cruel truth of her past.

Instead of crumbling… she had chosen him.

No. Not him. The knight.

Kael.

He stood at the edge of the Dream Chamber, the mirror pulsing faintly in its stone frame. The connection to Ariya was growing weaker, her mark resisting his pull.

"She's distancing herself," the High Seer said behind him, voice hesitant.

"She's turning against me," Ruvan corrected, jaw tight. "And not because she's strong. Because he is."

Kael. The shadow-blade. Loyal. Steady. Unshakably hers.

Ruvan hated how easily she leaned into him. How freely she let him close.

And yet… when Ruvan closed his eyes, he didn't see Kael.

He saw her. Eyes blazing. Voice trembling not in fear, but fury.

"I hate him," she'd said.

And for a moment, hearing it… Ruvan had felt something that twisted colder than ice.

Not victory.

Loss.

He turned away from the mirror.

The storm outside the citadel howled, frost biting at the windows. His generals feared the southern rebels, the Cracked Cliffs uprising, the whispers of prophecy returning.

But Ruvan feared one girl.

Or worse—how she made him feel.

"Send word to the Shadow Spire," he said suddenly. "I want reports on her new movements. Every campfire. Every whisper. Every laugh."

The seer hesitated. "Even the light-hearted ones?"

"Especially those."

He wasn't sure what frustrated him more:

That she was resisting his mark…Or that part of him wanted her not to.

Because if she hated him… she wouldn't forget him.

And that, somehow, felt worse than being her enemy.

Later that night, Ruvan sat alone in the Throne Hall, his blade resting across his knees. The frost had crept up the walls again, shaping silent, glassy roses.

He thought of the moment her fire had met his shadow in the dream.Of the brief second her fingers had brushed the mark on her shoulder, and she'd whispered his name—not with longing…

…but with a shiver.

He could still feel it.

"Why do you fight me, Flame?" he murmured into the silence. "When we're both already burning?"

The mirror pulsed faintly behind him.

And somewhere, far beyond the frost and the flame, Ariya turned away from the pull…

…and toward someone else.