Page 46 of The Kingdom of Flames

Captain Aidric stared at her again. “None have ever left his realm.”

Perhaps my grave will be draped in yellow banners after all.

The landscape shifted, and Celestine sat with her grief. It was all-consuming. She felt the need to get out of this carriage. To walk or run. To distract herself. When she shut her eyes, she saw Encarmine. When she slept, she was back in the ambush, reaching for Dritha. She remembered leaping from the parapet to her death and stuffed the feeling down deep to her ravaged heart.

The sun was different here. It was a feeling of bright harvest. Long fields of crops, mostly golden barley and hay and wheat, stretched among the hills. Yellow streamers were upon every farm, every marker. In the wind, she smelled the distance of the sea.

“Suncrown approaches,” Captain Aidric whispered.

Celestine looked up from her dazed lull and stuck her head out the carriage window.

Far upon golden fields, where hundreds worked, yellow scarves or golden necklaces shone and glittered on their necks.

Such was the beauty of this realm. Behind her was the dust of the soldier on march, the grunt of steel and muscle. Lord Solis’s realm was one of beauty. The landscape was an oil painting. The wind bent the wheat like the fingers of a lover. This was the summer many dreamed of. The sky held a white clouded canvas, golden rays kissed the earth,

“It is beautiful,” Celestine whispered. The warm wind ran through the locks on her hair. For a moment, just a moment, she could forget Encarmine.

“All things are beautiful to the eye in the realm of the Yellow Banner.” Aidric responded. “The price of this beauty lies under a harshly wrought surface…”

A procession dusted the winding road ahead of them. Lord Solis came, and a retinue of yellow bannered escorts came with him. The driver of Celestine’s carriage slowed, bringing them to a halt.

“Hail, Mirror Guard of Calendar!” A youthful and glowing voice rang out. A voice that rang with the command of a Lord of Summer. The octaves in that voice spoke of the need for her to kneel, to serve.

A strange magic.

The carriage stopped. Captain Aidric opened the door from his seat and stepped out, his face flashing with light in the sun. He held a gloved hand out, and Celestine took it. She felt that same strange static charge when she touched him.

He exists in the Painted Realm and the realms of the Lords of Season. Some sorcery must bind him to both places, or perhaps neither?

“Hail, Final Bride!” Lord Solis rode up through the sunlight.

Celestine shielded her eyes. The sun was bright here but not as hot as Encarmine’s lands.

“Greetings, Lord Solis.”

He was beautiful. This was beyond doubt. This was not the stoic and stark ruggedness of Encarmine’s strength. Solis did not don his circlet. He climbed down from his horse, not a lord of war but one of staggering brilliance.

Many maidens have broken upon that visage, this I know for certain.

Blond, tall, lean, and beautifully muscled. Solis was a young-looking demigod, but everything about him spoke of extreme wealth. His frock coat was neatly emblazoned with sunbursts in pearl and yellow jewels. She saw no sign of his circlet. A coiled whip of yellow ribbons hung at his side with a handle of softly studded pearls. A finely wrought dagger upon the other.

Teeth so white, with eyes blue like the sky beyond them, looked her up and down. His face fell in its perfection from carefree abandon to a flicker of worry.

“My lady, what did Encarmine do to you? You look weary.”

“Life in the Red Realm was good to me, Lord Solis.”

My heart aches to return, but this could not be a better vision or welcome. I want nothing from him but distraction. Distraction from this torment inside of me.

Solis came forward and took her hand, his full lips kissing her knuckle slightly.

“Come, my lady. Please. Allow me to show you my realm. Allow me to give you rest and respite.”

“Thank you.” Celestine looked back at Aidric, who stood motionless, body rigid.

What worries him so?

Solis, almost a foot and a half taller than her without his circlet took her arm gingerly and brought her towards his cortege. Where Encarmine had ridden as a rider among riders, Solis traveled in a seat of honor.

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