2: The ember heart

Mira pov

My mother was already at the stove when I walked in, the smell of dinner thick in the air. I crossed the room and wrapped my arms around her from behind, resting my chin on her shoulder the way I used to as a child.

“What is that smell, Mira?” She wrinkled her nose and stepped out of my grip, eyeing my ruined dress.

“Sorry. I’ll go wash up properly.” I hesitated at the doorway. She studied me a moment too long, then shook her head, a small smile breaking through.

“Whoever heard of a dirty princess?”

“My father did,” I said, and slipped away before she could see my face change.

By the time I returned, scrubbed clean and changed, she had set two bowls on the table, steam still rising off the rice. I sat across from her, the conversation from the riverbank circling endlessly in my head, replaying itself in the king’s voice, in Minister Han’s careful, frightened tone. I wasn’t sure she’d want to hear what I was about to ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask it either.

“Mira. Are you all right?” Her eyes found mine, sharp in the way only a mother’s could be.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. And don’t forget I’m supposed to be your best friend in this life now.” She said it lightly, but it landed the way it always did. My father used to be the one who held that title. Now it belonged to no one, or to her, depending on the day.

I took a breath before I could stop myself. “Mom. Do you think the Ember Heart could destroy our kingdom?”

She went still. The ladle stopped moving in her hand.

“The king thinks it might,” I added, when she didn’t answer.

She turned to face me slowly, and the warmth that had been in her eyes a moment ago was gone, replaced by something colder. Something afraid.

“So you’ve been eavesdropping. On the *king*.” Her voice was quiet, controlled in the way that scared me more than shouting ever could. “Do you want to get us both killed?”

“I didn’t mean to. I just happened to be near the river when”

“*Enough.*” She cut me off before I could finish. “You will not speak of this again. Do you understand me, Mira?”

“Yes, ma.” The words came out small.

She held my gaze a moment longer, and when she finally spoke again, her voice had dropped to something almost too quiet to hear.

“That same book is what took your father from us.”

The words landed like something physical. I opened my mouth, but nothing came no question felt small enough to ask, not after that.

She stood before I could find one anyway, gathering the bowls though neither of us had finished eating, and walked out without another word.

I sat alone at the table, the silence pressing in around me. I’d never known much about the Ember Heart not really, not beyond the fear it seemed to summon in everyone who spoke of it. Not until my father died and left it behind like a wound none of us were allowed to touch.

But something had been pulling at me for weeks now. Quiet, persistent. A question shaped like my father’s voice.

I knew I owed my mother my silence. I owed her my safety, my obedience, every promise I’d ever made her.

But somewhere beneath all of that, I had already made a different promise to myself, one I had no intention of breaking.

I was going to find out the truth.

*******

I woke so early it felt like someone had shaken me awake. I sat up at once and went straight for my clothes, gathering a few robes and wrapping them into a bag I could sling over my shoulder. I dragged a stole from the closet, then climbed up to bring down a sword, my first ever crafted blade, made with my father’s hands guiding mine. He had been a blacksmith before everything else.

I went to my pillow next and pulled out a jade necklace the most precious thing my father had ever given me. After his death, it had become the only thing that still felt like comfort. I fastened it around my neck and slipped out through the back door.

I wanted to see my mother one last time. But I knew if I looked at her now, it would break me and I’d lose what little courage I had left to do this. So I took the harder option, and I left without a word.

I went straight to the stable, where Blaze was waiting.

“Hey,” I said, brushing my hand through his mane. “Let’s go for a long ride.”

I loosed the rope holding him to the stable post and pressed a kiss to his nose. We’d had a history together since I was a child he was the one constant I trusted not to ask questions.

It was a short ride to the edge of the village. As soon as we passed beyond the gate, the air changed colder, thinner, the kind of quiet that makes you feel watched. My chest tightened with something close to fear. But I knew this was my only chance. I kept going.

We rode for a long while with no road, no map just instinct, guessing my way toward the next village. The moon hung low and pale above the tree line, and the only sounds were Blaze’s hooves against packed dirt and my own breathing, too loud in my ears.

That was when I saw them.

Two shapes lying in the dirt ahead, barely visible in the dark. I slowed Blaze and came closer, and my stomach turned cold. They were people two men, badly beaten, their belongings scattered around them like they’d been robbed and left for whatever came next.

For a moment I just sat there, frozen. I knew I should help. Every part of me wanted to stop, to do *something. But I thought of my mother’s voice, you will not speak of this again and of how far I still had to go, and how little I knew about what waited for me out here. If I stopped now, I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to keep going. I told myself someone else would find them. I told myself a lot of things.

I rode past them and didn’t look back, though the image stayed with me long after they disappeared behind me. I didn’t yet understand how much I would come to regret that choice.

The path grew lonelier as the night deepened, the cold settling into something sharper. Blaze began to shift beneath me, restless, his ears flicking toward the dark. I sat up straighter, every instinct on alert and before I could spur him forward, men stepped out from the bushes on either side of the path, blocking our way.

“Oh she’s a lady,” one said, a slow, menacing smile spreading across his face.

“What’s a lady doing on a beast like that?” another asked, genuinely baffled. “At this hour.”

“Does it matter?” a third cut in. “Let’s just get this over with.”

I studied them quickly with ragged clothes, hardened faces. Men who survived by taking what wasn’t theirs.

“What does a woman like you have to offer?” the first one asked, his eyes dragging over me.

“We’re about to find out,” another said.

Before I could answer, one of them lunged and yanked me down from Blaze’s back. I hit the ground hard, the impact knocking the breath from me. I’d trained with a blade for years, but I’d never actually been in a fight where someone wanted to hurt me and it showed. I was too slow to brace myself.

He came at me again. This time I moved first, scrambling to my feet and driving my knee into him with everything I had.

He doubled over, a strangled scream tearing out of him. “She’s a tough one,” he managed, voice thick with pain. “Beat her down.”

I drew my sword in one clean motion, the way my father had taught me, and held it level in front of me.

“You think you can even use that, girl?” one of them laughed.

“You’d be surprised what I can use,” I said. “Try me.”

The fight came fast after that. They were rough, but not careless, clearly no strangers to this. I matched them anyway, every flip and dodge sharper than I expected from myself, like my body remembered the training even when my mind was screaming.

One came at me from behind. I dropped low, swept his legs out from under him, and tore the sword from his grip before he hit the ground. I pinned him by the collar of his shirt, my knee against his chest, and turned just in time to catch a strike from one of the others. Steel met steel. I blocked it, then another, and another barely keeping pace, my arms burning with the effort.

“What the hell *is* this?” one of them shouted.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t have the breath to.

I was holding my own until I wasn’t. The man I’d pinned to the ground broke free behind me, and before I could turn, I felt the cold edge of a blade slice through the cord at my neck.

The necklace.

One of them snatched it from the air before it hit the dirt, dangling it just out of reach. “This’ll fetch a fine price, won’t it, love?”

“No give it back!” I lunged for it, but he was already running, the others close behind, vanishing into the trees.

I sprinted after them on foot, but they were faster, swallowed by the dark before I’d gone twenty paces. I ran back for Blaze and rode after them anyway, desperate, but the woods gave no trail to follow. They were simply gone.

I stood there in the silence, breathing hard, tears blurring my vision before I could stop them.

I had lost the one thing that still felt like my father chasing after something I didn’t even fully understand. And standing there in the dark with empty hands, I finally let myself ask the question I’d been avoiding all night.

What was I even doing, going after the Ember Heart alone?