The Blood Throne of Sahirra

[accuscripter]

The wind howled through the broken spires of the Citadel, carrying with it the scent of ash and the distant cry of mourning horns. The sky above Sahirra was not blue that day. It was a bruised gray, darkening with every beat of war drums that echoed through the capital. Somewhere beyond the veil of smoke, the clouds wept; but none louder than the child who had just become a ruler.

She stood barefoot in the ruins of the palace courtyard, small fingers clenched into the folds of her blood-stained gown. Her name was Aeryn, daughter of Queen Yssa and High King Thalen, but the name no longer mattered. The child they'd loved had died moments before they did. What remained was a throne, still warm with smoke, and a girl with red hair in a kingdom that had no place for such a thing.

She had watched it happen.

One moment, her mother was laughing. The next, she was on fire.

It wasn't a flame like any soldier's torch or oil-born blaze; it was black, oily, unnatural. Magic that hissed like serpents. It crawled over Yssa's skin, devouring her from the inside out, leaving behind nothing but bone and a crown scorched into her skull. Her father tried to save her, of course. Lunged forward, roaring like a lion. The black fire took him too, swallowing him whole. He screamed her name until he had no lungs left.

Aeryn had not screamed. Not even when her handmaid pulled her behind the silver tapestry. Not when the stones cracked and the throne chamber split open like a heart. She had stared with the frozen silence of prey; a silence that did not break even when it was over.

Now, only the bones remained. And the smoke. And the child with hair the color of blood, and eyes the hue of desert amber; both cursed by centuries of courtly lore.

They say rulers must bear eyes the shade of shadowstone; pure black, deep and sharp. They say no red-haired child has ever ruled Sahirra, not since the bloodcurse of the Scar Wars. Aeryn had both.

That should have been enough to bar her from the throne.

But there was no one left to deny her.

The High Orator placed the crown in her hands. It was still dented from the blast, part of it melted, but it gleamed all the same. The Orator's voice echoed from beneath his veil.

"By the laws of flame and blood, by the pact of the Thousand Thrones, by the will of Sahirra and its sky…"

A pause. He looked down at her, voice tightening.

"...do you accept the burden of sovereign rule?"

Aeryn looked up. Around her, black-robed nobles stood like statues, lined along the courtyard's rim. None knelt. Their eyes were hard, their necks unbowed. She knew what they saw: a child soaked in soot and taboo, trembling at the bones of her parents.

A spark flared in her chest. Something strange. Hot and sharp, like a thorn under the skin.

She stepped forward.

"I do."

The crown was placed on her head. It slipped slightly over one ear. The wind snatched at her cloak, nearly pulling it free, but she did not move. She stood, chin raised, as the sky cracked with thunder. Somewhere in the distance, bells rang to declare her name. But no one cheered.

Aeryn's first act as queen was to bury her parents herself.

She refused the priests. Refused the pallbearers, the gold-stitched funeral veils, the ceremonial birdsong. Instead, she dug the graves in the Garden of Stone with her own little hands, her maid tried to get her away, "Your Highness! Please! You are Queen now, it is below you!" but all in vain. Her hands calloused, bleeding, shivering in the cold of twilight. The guards stood back, confused but silent. Aeryn whispered to no one. She did not cry. Maid forcefully pulled her back and motioned the guards to dig the graves. She still didn't say anything, instead this six year old child tried to get free from the cold strong hands, holding her, but after all she was just a child.

Finally after her parents were buried, she planted one lily for each; red for Yssa, white for Thalen; and pressed her forehead to the mound of earth until her skin was dirt-streaked and raw.

When she finally rose, her eyes were darker than dusk.

That night, the Royal Court convened behind her back.

Old men with oil-slick beards. Grandmothers with rings on every finger. Priests who smelled of ancient parchment. They gathered in silk and fur to speak of the new queen, and whether a realm could survive a girl born of omens.

"She is too young," said High Minister Varr. "Barely six winters to her name."

"Too cursed," muttered Lady Hareth. "Red hair is a mark of the untamed. The Unblessed."

"And those eyes," spat someone else. "Amber like the beast-folk of the Dune Vale."

"Who knows after her parents, what chaos she will bring to us" another voice echoed from behind.

They spoke as if she were not in the palace at all. She was standing in the shadow of the ceiling alcove, still in her burial cloak. She heard every word. Her fingers curled around the iron railing. For a moment, she almost whispered. Almost begged.

Please... help me.

But the words never left her mouth.

She had no one left to beg.

She returned to her bedchamber that night without speaking to anyone. No servants followed. No guards kept watch.

Outside, lightning struck the far hills. Inside, Aeryn sat by the glass window, hands curled around a knife meant for bread.

She did not sleep.

---

​

Three Days Later

They tried to kill her.

It happened in the Hour of Emberlight, when the sun casts red across the horizon and the sky glows like an open wound. She had just walked into the Solar Hall for council. Behind her, the great stained-glass windows burned with light; scenes of ancient queens, battles, gods.

The knife came from nowhere. A shadow leapt from the balcony.

Aeryn turned.

The assassin's blade met the air an inch from her throat.

A scream shattered the silence; not hers, but the attacker's. His body convulsed, seizing midair. Blood burst from his eyes. His bones cracked audibly.

He dropped to the ground like a bag of shattered glass, crimson pooling from every orifice.

Aeryn stared.

It had not been her hands.

It had been… something inside her.

The court gasped. Guards surged in. The assassin was dead before they touched him.

Aeryn looked down at her hands. They shook. Her hair had darkened slightly, the tips brightening. By the time she was escorted out, streaks of deep red had begun to appear in her curls.

From that day onward, they bowed. Every viscount, martial, duke, minister, slaves and maids, everyone.

Not out of love. But out of terror after seeing a bloody response given to their by a child no older than their grandchildren. She didn't even chant a spell or looked the victim in the eyes. They were scared.

And for the first time since her parents' death… as she was hussled out of the court and everyone looked at her with shock, Aeryn smiled.

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[accuscripter]

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[accuscripter]

The High Court of Sahirra had stood in the middle of the red desert for seven hundred years, a ring of obsidian thrones carved into the ribs of a dead Leviathan, sunken into the heart of the capital. The old ones called it Draakhal-Veir; the Jaw of Judgment.

Aeryn sat at its center, her legs barely reaching the silver rest beneath her seat, and the court ministers as usual eyeing her with disgust and malice. But she didn't care, it was the throne that was right now her center of attention. As she tried to peek down, to see how up her feet were from the ground, she felt as if she was sitting on a pit hole and might fall anytime, in short It was too large for her. It had always been too large, even when she'd played in its shadow as a child, mimicking her father's commands in a voice full of giggles and naivety. Now, there was no play. No joy. Just silence and Dead stares.

While aeryn was drowned in self-thinking, across the circle, the nobles watched her with the quiet contempt of a pack that had lost its alpha but not its fangs. All of them were wearing their age like an armor; wrinkled skin, silver eyebrows, gold-tipped canes and bone-crested rings, looking down at her.

They bowed; they certainly did, but only their heads. Never the spine. Never low enough to forget who they thought she was: a child-queen born with taboo, stained by prophecy that was never said, and orphaned by the black fire, that also happened according to them due to her so called cursed fate.

It had been twelve days since the regimen changed after the deaths of her parents. She had ruled for twelve days only. Twelve days of icy civility, and of scraped smiles and quiet refusals by her so called servants and ministers.

She was watching them pretend to obey while they spoke behind closed doors, sent letters sealed with false approval, and changed nothing and did nothing to restore what was lost. Not the guard shifts. Not the tariffs. Not even the prayer-rites.

She needed them, she was so young to carry the world and the burden of the noble lives on her shoulders. And they knew it. And wanted to use this fact against her to get rid of her.

…….

But little Aeryn, stranger to tactics, ignorant of plannings, tired by the weight of the heavy crown, and scared of the shooting eyes, tried everything they asked her for, until she was tired.

She wore the silks they preferred; light blues and grays that "soothed the courtly mind."
She trained her voice to sound older, deeper; that only gave them more to laugh at.
She memorized the names of their wives, their bastard sons, the bloodline histories stretching back to the Silver Era.
She gifted goldleaf paper to Lady Marrion, who wrote poetry.
She complimented Lord Innos's crumbling teeth; said they looked like carved ivory.

She smiled when they mocked her. But what with the passing time it got her nothing.

They started when she was young and kept going even when she got older and tried to use her command. They laughed when she tripped over the word "recompense."
They sneered when she asked where rain came from, and if the gods had moods; out in the open court while they were discussing floods in the distant zones, her maid motioned her stop talking but they had already got a chance at her.
They exchanged amused glances when she tried to speak of tariffs and grain distribution. Even one time, as she tried to discuss the tarrifs, one of the ministers jested, "your highness, it seems you no longer worry about the moody Gods." And all of them started laughing.

It didn't matter that she'd watched her parents die.
Didn't matter that she was after all carrying the power in her blood and nightmares in her eyes.

All they saw was a little girl playing dress-up in a dead queen's crown.

One afternoon, Lord Vael of House Miraj; who wore eight rings for the sons he had lost to plague and none for the daughter he still ignored; stood up during council and said, without hesitation:

"My queen, with utmost humility, I suggest you appoint a Steward. Someone older. Wiser. You may sign off on his decisions, of course, but let him guide the blade. For now."

Aeryn's fingers stiffened around the stem of her goblet.

Vael continued. "You are burdened, child. Let us carry it with you. Just until you grow."

Heads nodded like leaves in a poisonous wind and almost all of them murmured their support.

She forced a smile. "And which of you would like to carry my crown; my dear loyal ministers?"

No one spoke up, there was dead silence.

Then, Lord Innos, the oldest man in the room said, "Only what you allow, Your Majesty."

She saw his eyes. And they were clearly saying, while he smacked his lips, with a greedy look.

Only what we let you keep.

........

She spent that night alone in the palace observatory, under the vault of stars. She was already 12 years old now. But nothing much has changed. Even today they demanded her to get off the throne. The domed ceiling of the observatory was enchanted to reflect the sky as it appeared across every region of Sahirra; storm-ridden on the coast, cloudy in the east, and cloudless in the desert heartland. She stared up at it, legs curled beneath her, crown tossed onto the marble beside her.

"Do they all hate me?" she whispered aloud.

No one answered. Her maid, also her nanny was standing right beside her, in case she needed something, and she was the only one who was on her side.

"My Queen" She said.

"Drop the formalities, Sakina…" aeryn said softly.

"I am yours, your highness, still, I must not ignore what is required of me"


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[accuscripter]

today i am feeling really awkward... like i dont know what to do... and i have no motivation to do anything... i am just feeling really down