Ashes Of Broken Home

Darian came back at dusk.

The sky still held the heat of the day and the city smelled of coal and old bread. The palace gate was a pile of splintered wood and rusted iron. Smoke rose from low fires where people kept warm. No banners flew. No guards stood.

He stepped over a fallen statue and did not slow. The air tasted sharp, like metal. His hands wanted to curl into flame. He kept them clenched until the urge eased. Control had a cost. He knew that better than anyone.

"Get down," a voice said from the shadow of an arch.

He froze. A woman stepped into the light. She was small and carried a satchel of herbs. Her hair was tied in a messy knot and her hands trembled. She looked like someone from the market lanes not the ruins of a palace. But the way she checked the air told him she had lived through worse than hunger.

"You should not be here," she said. Her voice was rough from lack of sleep. "They will come."

"Let them," Darian said. He let the heat under his skin calm. He wanted to show he had not returned begging. "I am not afraid."

She laughed short and hard. "Everyone fears something. You burn people."

The words should have hurt. Instead they landed like a cold slap he welcomed. He had practiced looking unbothered. It kept him alive.

"You know my name," he said.

She looked at him properly then and something like memory passed over her face. "You are not the only one who remembers names," she said. "I have not lived under the palace shadow since before you were born."

She stepped closer. He smelled boiled roots and smoke and a faint sweetness he did not want to name. A pale scar cut her cheek. It made her look both fragile and unbroken.

"Lyra," she offered as if that settled things.

"Name suits you," Darian said. "Lyra the healer."

Her shoulders tightened. "Lyra who cannot leave her oaths." She set the satchel on a stone and opened it like a small ceremony. "This will help if you are burned."

She did not flinch as she examined the singed seam of his sleeve. Her fingers could stitch a wound as easily as telling a simple truth. He felt a small dangerous pride. Not for being burned but because she did not walk away.

"You should hide," Lyra said. She had not been told he was the name on every tongue. Yet she saw him as hunted and did not cower.

"Hiding is not a plan," he said. "I did not return to hide."

"Then you return to die," she said blunt and true. He saw the ruined halls the way he had tried to bury them and could not argue.

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe I came back to burn it down."

Lyra snapped the satchel shut like a prayer book. "You will not be the only one to die. There are children in those alleys. Old women who remember when the palace fed them. We will lose everything."

Darian laughed a sound with no joy. "Everything was taken. My father is gone. My mother vanished. They wiped our names. Why pretend there is anything left to lose?"

Lyra pressed a cool cloth to the place where his skin was blackened. Her touch was steady. For the first time that evening he felt like a boy found by a hand from kinder days.

"You say you are not afraid," she said looking at him. "What do you want Darian?"

He had rehearsed the answer. Revenge. The throne. Flames to make them remember. But the practiced speech felt small. Instead he said, "I want the truth. I want what was taken returned."

Lyra's face changed. She paled and then looked older. "You wear your grief like armor," she said.

"It keeps me from breaking," he said.

She closed her eyes a moment and when she opened them she looked like someone who had made a choice. "People will follow you because they fear the crown not because they love you. That is a dangerous mix."

"And you," he asked. "Why help a stranger? Why risk your life?"

She studied him. For a moment he thought she would not answer. Then she pulled from the satchel a scrap of embroidered cloth. The gold thread on it curved like a crescent moon. She pressed the tiny stitch until the shape matched something in her memory.

"My mother kept this when we were chased," she said. "I thought it a trinket from a noble house. I always wondered whose it had been."

Darian's hand shook when he reached for the cloth. He had hidden his locket beneath his armor the night he fled long ago. He had never shown it to anyone. The thought of it in another hand made him ache. Still he let Lyra hold the cloth.

The gold thread caught the dim light and seemed to wink. It matched nothing he had seen and yet it felt like a door opening.

Footsteps sounded down the lane. Heavy boots not like scavengers. A torch rolled over the stones and the light grew.

"Guards," Lyra whispered. She grabbed the satchel. "You must go."

Darian stepped back without thinking. The heat under his skin rose like a tide. If he used it now the flames would light the ruins like a beacon. He could clear the road. He could burn the memory of this place and all who had done him wrong.

Instead he knelt and took the scrap cloth to his face. "If I go," he asked, "will you come with me?"

She hesitated. "I have my work. I cannot leave everything."

"Then we both lose what is left," he said.

The boots stopped at the corner. A man in a worn crest raised a hand and shouted. Torches bobbed. The lead guard narrowed his eyes when he saw them. He glanced at the cloth in Darian's hand and paled.

"You have his sign," he said low. "He bears the star mark."

The name fell like a stone. Lyra's breath hitched. Darian felt the old spark wake under his skin. The guard stepped forward and reached for him.

Darian looked at Lyra. Behind the guard a dozen torches flared. He smelled tinder and fear and felt the count of his life like a drumbeat.

He smiled slow and dangerous. "Arrest me," he said. "And see which burns brighter the city or the truth."

The guard's hand closed on his shoulder. At the touch the heat inside Darian answered like a bell. For a single breath a bright flare climbed at the place where the mark had slept for years.

Lyra cried out as the first ember leapt into the dark and the alley filled with flare and sound.