The Reign of Ash and Blossom

Chapter 4 – The Reign of Ash and Bloom

The world beyond Eldoria had whispers of Selvara before, in old songs sung only by candlelight. But now her name was no longer whispered. It was carved into banners, carried by marching feet, and screamed across burning fields.

Beside her rode Kael Voss, no longer Captain of the High Guard, but a black knight remade in silver and ash. Where once he had defended kings, now he tore them down. The world knew his blade, and it trembled.

They moved as storm and season combined. In their wake, kingdoms fell not only to steel, but to the garden’s strange power. When their armies camped outside a city’s walls, the ground itself shifted, blossoms pushing through the cracks of stone, their glow soft and alluring. Men breathed in the perfume and laid down their arms, unable to resist. Women wept and kissed Selvara’s feet, begging to be taken into her service. Few resisted long, for resistance was agony.

Selvara delighted in it all. She rode at the front as a queen kept safe in the rear, but as a conqueror whose laughter carried over the din of war. When her armies breached the gates of Cindralith, she stood among the flames, her hair whipping in the smoke, and kissed Kael upon the steps of the king’s own throne.

“You see,” she whispered against his lips, her hand clutching his jaw with tender cruelty, “you were never meant to serve one throne, but to break them all. With me.”

And Kael obeyed. He led charges that shattered lines. His sword, once raised in defense of his people, now cut through knights sworn to other crowns. He was Selvara’s blade, her lover, her instrument. She knew his weakness and pressed it as surely as she pressed steel against his skin in the privacy of her tent. He was hers, and every conquest was proof of it.

Yet cracks formed.

In the clash of steel, sometimes he saw not an enemy’s face, but the memory of his wife, pale and distant as if through a fog. Once, on the fields of Marrowfen, a girl with hair like the princess ran screaming from the fire. Kael’s arm faltered mid-swing, and his enemy’s blade cut his cheek. Selvara appeared, her voice like silk over the din. She touched the wound with her fingers, smearing blood across his face as if it were war paint.

“Do not drift,” she purred. “There is no family, no oaths, no chains but mine.”

Her kiss that night was fierce, claiming, her body pressed against his as the blossoms outside bloomed unnaturally in the dark. Each time his old self tried to surface, she smothered it with pleasure, with power, with fire.

And so, the reign spread.

The banners of Eldoria, now twisted with silver blossoms, flew over the cities once proud and free. Kaels name was cursed in the mouth of widows and sung in the chants of Selvara’s armies. At night she would stand above her conquered halls, looking down at her knight as if he were both lover and weapon, and whisper of thrones yet unbroken.

The world bent beneath the reign of ash and bloom. And though Kael’s eyes burned with white flame at her side, somewhere beneath the blaze, a shadow of doubt still stirred.