>" the God's do not speak to orphans but they burn through them.
The scent of smoke clung to her skin long before the veil did.
They scrubbed her clean in freezing water, poured oils down her back like melted gold, then draped her in silk the color of blood. Not crimson. Not ruby. But the deep, dried kind — like something long-dead and buried beneath the throne she was about to kneel before.
No one said her name. Because she had none.
The girls who dressed her didn't speak to her, didn't look her in the eye. Only the oldest one — her hands trembling with age or guilt — dared whisper as she tied the ceremonial belt around her waist.
> "He wears a crown," she said, knotting the red cord tight, "but walks like a ghost.
The orphan girl said nothing. Words had never saved her.
The wedding was not a celebration. It was a sentence.
Drums beat like war. Priests chanted in a language no one understood anymore. And in the center of it all, she stood on scorched earth — the black-stone dais where kings were crowned… and traitors burned.
The prince appeared like a shadow pulled from firelight.
Tall. Silent. Hooded in gold-trimmed black. His face hidden beneath a thin royal mask that glinted with carved symbols of power, grief, and control. His voice, when he spoke the vow, was cold enough to silence the wind.
"I bind myself to the will of the crown. I take the flame before me as bride, as blade, as burden."
She repeated the vow, though her voice shook.
"I take the flame…"
They said the vow was just tradition — a relic. But the heat behind her eyes said otherwise.
That night, in her new chamber — not a bedroom, not a home — she sat alone in the silk she could not afford to ruin.
She stared at the unlit candles. Not a single one was burning.
Until they were.
All at once, without touch or spark, the wicks came alive. Fire, whisper-thin and dancing, bloomed across every candle in the room.
She gasped and stumbled back, heart pounding in her ribs. Her fingers glowed faintly.
> No, no, no… not now.
The flame inside her, the one she had spent years suppressing in the shadows of orphan kitchens and temple ruins, had stirred. It was awake.
And she was not alone anymore.
The next morning, he came.
The prince. Crownless, unmasked, and even colder than the room he entered.
His eyes — slate-gray, ringed with exhaustion — landed on her face without emotion. He did not sit. He did not smile.
"We are not husband and wife," he said. "You were brought here because the crown ordered it. Nothing more. I will not touch you. I will not protect you. I suggest you learn the art of silence. It might be the only thing that keeps you alive."
She opened her mouth — to ask why, or what he meant — but he was already gone.
He left no warmth behind.
That night, as the palace fell into its usual hush, she found a piece of folded parchment slipped beneath her door.
Her fingers trembled as she read it, its ink smudged and hurried.
You are not the first girl.
You are the last.
She looked to the flames again. This time, they did not flicker in fear.
They danced.