The Thirteenth Ember - Chapter 45: Chapter 45

By the time Aeryn reached the outer ridge of the rebellion camp, the sky was steel-gray and trembling. Thunder rolled in low groans across the horizon, but the storm hadn’t yet broken. The land like the war was holding its breath.
She had been gone five days.
And the world had changed.
Again.
Kael stood at the northern watchtower when he saw her horse. He didn’t shout. Didn’t run. Just watched in silence as she approached, her cloak soaked, her shoulders heavy, and her eyes unreadable.
She dismounted wordlessly.
They stood facing one another in the rain, the sounds of the camp distant beneath the drum of the sky.
“You left,” Kael said quietly.
“I had to.”
“You didn’t trust me enough to say goodbye?”
Her throat tightened. “I trusted you enough to come back.”
They were quiet for a long time.
Until Kael stepped forward.
Not to hold her.
To look at her carefully, painfully as if trying to see what the south had taken from her, and what it had left behind.
“What did she say?” he asked.
She told me I was a weapon. A prophecy. A spark they tried to cage.”
“And you believe her?”
“I believe…” Aeryn whispered, “...that I don’t have time not to.”
She held out the sealed scroll from Miraen, the wax still unbroken. “This is where it ends. Nar’Vareth. Beneath the old Temple.”
Kael didn’t take it. “And the child?”
Aeryn met his eyes. “They want it. The Court, the Order. They see it as more than I do. But Kael, I’m not ready to be anyone’s god or martyr.”
He finally stepped closer.
“You’re not.”
He brushed her wet cheek with his thumb.
You’re mine.”
That night, beneath shelter and flickering oil lamps, Aeryn told Kael everything. Miraen’s words. The Emberborn Schema. The fact that the Order had not yet made its final move because it was waiting for a sign.
“You,” Kael said grimly. “You’re the sign.”
Aeryn nodded. “And the Court will strike as soon as they believe I’ve grown too powerful to control.”
“Then we strike first.”
Meanwhile, in the capital…
The Court’s chambers echoed with murmurs and heatless laughter.
High Seer Varenth leaned over the map of the rebellion zones, tapping Nar’Vareth with a bone ring.
“She’s gone to the girl,” he said to the others. “The flame has reached its mother.”
A younger lord in emerald robes frowned. “Is that… a problem?”
Varenth’s smile was cold. “It’s a mistake. Miraen sowed her ruin long ago. If anything, it hastens our plans.”
He stood, straightening his robes.
“Deploy the phantoms. Shift the Temple wards. If Aeryn is to burn, let it be in the place where her
bloodline began.”
He paused.
“And send word to the Order.”
And deep beneath the mountains…
A circle of Order priests knelt in silence, their faces hooded, their hands bloodstained.
Their commander a woman known only as Sereth of the Glass Veil read from a scroll freshly delivered.
“She walks toward Nar’Vareth,” she announced. “The Court wishes her gone.”
A murmur rose.
One priest hissed, “She is not theirs to end.”
Another: “She was made for us.”
Sereth lifted her head.
No. She was made for fire. And it’s time we remembered who built the spark.”
She tore the scroll in half.
“Prepare the Witness Blades. We march within the week. To take her child. Or die in the attempt.”
Back in the rebellion camp...
Aeryn stood at the edge of camp, watching the lightning fork in the distance. Her cloak snapped in the wind. She could feel it in her bones:
The Court was coming.
The Order was rising.
And somewhere beneath Nar’Vareth… her destiny was coiled and waiting.
Kael joined her without speaking.
She leaned into him, and for a moment, there was no war.
No prophecy.
Only two people standing in the eye of everything.