Page 58 of The Book of Legends
“You can sense it,” Malachi says from above. “Trust me, you do. She feels the grip of the flames.”
For some reason, I was perplexed and could only shake my head. “What on earth are you referring to?”
Gradually, the monarch stood up from her seat. Due to its lack of seams and weight, her gown shifted like smoke. No light, only the stars.
She walks gracefully down the stairs from her throne.
Suddenly, she was standing right in my face. “So delicate,” she says as she put her palm on my chest. “And yet...”
My pulse raced.
“Let me see what he sees,” she whispers. “Let me taste the flame.”
Subsequently, her hand forcefully strikes my chest.
A combination of cold and lightning struck the queen's hand. My whole life crumbles with just one touch but I remain upright. Then I fall.
A scream tears itself from my throat, but I don’t hear a sound as the room disappears, engulfed in darkness and smoke. I just felt it, resonating in the bones of a girl who had forgotten her own name.
After that—the color of fire. Everywhere I looked. Deep inside me.
Before my gaze, a structure made of obsidian burst open, its pinnacle obscured by whirling storm clouds. I find myself in the midst of a long-forgotten battleground, where bodies had crumbled to dust and swords had dissolved into the earth. A golden and fiery sky bleeds. Massive, celestial wings spread out from an unseen person above it all.
It originated in the flames. “Saorith,” a voice whispers coming from the flames.
Not a name.
A title.
“Bringer of balance. Daughter of the twin flame.”
Another vision crashes into me with no warning.
A lady with my features, shrouded in darkness, her bare hands stained with blood over a man whose eyes were silvery... Kainen?
No. It can’t be. this man is older. His expression is chilled. This is someone crueler.
But she loved him. Or had once.
In a voice I recognize but can’t decipher, he mutters, “You were never meant to stay.”
Her eyes burn gold as she replies, “No. I was meant to return.”
Then it was gone.
As if struck by a tidal wave, the court suddenly reappears, and I gasp in shock. The impact of light, sound, and air is simultaneous. My chest tightens. My legs give way.
Just as I'm about to fall to the floor, Kainen swoops in. Against my flesh, his hands are like fire: solid, rooted, and genuine. As the world around me swirls, I instinctively grasp his tunic, tying myself to him.
“Selene,” he whispers, his voice rough and low, as if he's been attempting to save me from the brink.
With a rapid rise and fall of my chest, I gaze up at him. “She showed me...” My jaw clenches. “Kainen, I saw someone, but I can't remember who it was. Yet flames erupted—in every single place.”
With a voice that is both soothing and commanding, the Queen averts her gaze as we stand on shaky ground. “The flame in her remembers. But she does not.”
Wailing, “I don't want this,” my words are unpolished and full of pain.
“Wanting doesn’t change what you are,” Malachi says quietly from above, or is it in my head?
