Page 20 of The Kingdom of Flames

A fever was the final rider that rode him down in the middle of the night.

Encarmine’s body shook with fever. Celestine stripped him, his majestic body ruined by gruesome wounds. There was nothing beautiful here, not any longer. As she tended to him, the stories and songs she had once heard of great battles seemed like bitter lies. The ridges of his muscle were shattered peaks. Half of his body was crumbling. The Lord of the Red Banner began his last journey in front of her. His eyes, once bright, rolled to the back of his head in the agony of fever.

The sun had dipped beyond the horizon long ago, and Celestine tended to him under the light of lanterns and candles. They dared not light the hearth for sake of his fever.

“My Lady, please. Eat. You must steel yourself.” A servant held out the board of bread and cheese.

Celestine turned away finally, her eyes swollen from tears. “He is dying.”

The servant nodded. “Lord Encarmine will not last long.”

“I don’t understand,” Celestine said. “His circlet. He didn’t don it.”

“It is not his way.” The servant touched her shoulder. “It would not be proper, against mortals.”

She could not eat. His wounds kept reopening. They exhausted the linens, even the sheets. More blood than ten men deserted his veins. The fever ravaged his body like a countryside under war. His flesh was hot. Celestine tried to place his circlet on him, but nothing happened.

All night, he was feverish. Eventually, his blood slowed its seeping. There was too little left.

In the darkest hour of the night, the season who had fought all others of the Calendar Court opened his eyes in the haze of his fever.

“Celestine…” he whispered. She touched his brow now. It was hot, like steel left in the sun for days.

She looked around the room for something to dip into her cold water. There was nothing. Her dress would do, the blood-soaked mess it was. As she reached down, she felt his torn banner in her pocket.

Celestine set her jaw, refusing to cry.

I will not weep. I won’t. I won’t send a man to his death with tears on his chest.

She dipped the rag into the cold water and squeezed it. Her right hand held his.

Celestine dabbed at his fevered brow with the banner that was now a rag in her hands. Encarmine groaned. His agony finally staunched at her touch. He raised his hand to the rag in her hand upon his forehead and touched her.

“Heaven,” he whispered. Celestine felt the fever recede from his brow as if by magic. She smiled and looked down.

Lord Encarmine died under her cooling touch.

“Encarmine?” she whispered. There was no answer. It was horrid, to have him here with her a moment ago and now realize she was alone.

In a numb grief, she slept somehow. Afraid to move from him, afraid to accept what had just happened. It was too much. Too much and not enough. She slept in the bed next to his body because there was nowhere else. Celestine curled her knees to her chest and shut her eyes, willing the world away.

Her entire life had been a gambit won by this immortal who now lay dead. Would she now be sent to the next Lord of Summer? Would the contest end? Was she stranded here, in this strange world of blades and sun?

The possibility of their future, as briefly as she had known him, was gone now. His mystery, his majesty…gone. She had seen a lord of battle and blood, proud with his red banner and armor. He had saved her crest from being taken by the monster of the Scarlet Banner, the thief of the Gold Banner, and the beast of the Brown banner.

Celestine did not want another lord, nor a bride or a courting. She wanted to go home.

In the dawn light, she woke. Eyes fluttering open, swollen from a restless night.

“Celestine,” someone said.

Her eyes opened slowly. She was moving, floating above the ground.

I am dreaming. Floating. I hope I am taken home to my broken realm.

“Celestine.”

She saw red mist. A circlet of molten daggers. Celestine shook the sleep from her eyes, not believing what she saw as she floated above the walkways.

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