Scarlet and crimson stained the halls of Niveus's palace. Gold lined the red carpets, providing something for Aiko's eyes to follow when she began to drown out the brilliant, fiery color that surrounded her. Her steps were muted against the soft carpet as she walked down the hall, clipped and choppy to reflect the storm brewing within her.

"You don't have blood on your hands, do you?"

The words had barely left her lips before the unnamed man's forest green eyes lit up in surprise. He took a small step back as if struck and it took him a heartbeat to flatten back into his expressionless mask again. It was fascinating. He almost always wore this disinterested expression, as if to portray that his mind was empty. Sometimes, a weak flicker of a flame stirred in his eyes, and a cold, calculating look took over his face. But for the most part, he was empty like a shell.

That unnamed man... A smile rose to her lips. His weak flame was exactly what she needed.

She flung the doors open, stepping into the palace library. At this hour, it was completely dark and abandoned, and the halls of the west wing of the palace were the same. Windows lined the far wall, letting silver moonlight flood the room. Yet even so, the shadows hung thickly around the shelves of books, clawing at her from the depths of the deep. They could never reach her, for she was engulfed in flames that burned ever bright, but some small part of her hung back anyway.

Taking the lantern from the hook on the wall beside the door, she crouched low to the ground. "Mae," she called, her gaze locked on the farthest part of the hall. "Come light this for me."

Quick as always to answer a summons, the white cat came scampering out of the dark, his tail waving in the air and his head held high. He mewed at her as he sat in front of her lantern, staring up at her with striking, electric blue eyes. He held her stare for a moment longer, the tip of his tail twitching.

With a sigh, Aiko pointed to the lantern. She opened the hatch to expose the candle's wick inside, holding it out to the pesky cat. "Light it, Mae. I haven't got all night to stand around and stare at you."

He almost seemed to roll his eyes as he turned his attention to the lantern. Opening his mouth, he breathed a small, blue flame onto the wick. The flame stuck, flickering as it cast pale azure light across the deep red floor. Smiling, Aiko stroked Mae's side, combing her fingers through his soft fur. A purr rumbled through his body; he closed his eyes and nuzzled against the palm of her hand. She chuckled to herself. For a magical creature with a flame bound to guarding the forests of Niveus, he was often just the same as any normal cat.

Aiko stood and made her way into the library, holding the lantern high to allow its light to cascade across the floor and chase the shadows away. The shadows seemed to hiss as they retreated from the light, parting like water for her as she walked.

She knew exactly where to go even without scanning the shelves. She had been there many times before, and her feet carried her without a signal from her mind. Smooth wood slid beneath her fingers as she trailed them across the shelves, brushing over the numbered plaques. Forty-three, forty-two, forty-one. She stopped at the empty place where plaque forty should have been, though it had been missing for as long as she could remember. All that remained as evidence of its existence was the faint outline of it left on the wood.

Row forty was where the records of myths and fairytales were placed. As a kid, she had asked before why forty was the number that marked them. The librarian had told her it had to do with fairies themselves. The explanation made Aiko frown, even now. In this palace, no one ever took her seriously. Her concerns were waved away, her ideas were dismissed, and her questions were looked down on. Despite her coming coronation, the court and the regent were still quick to steer a conversation in their favor, glossing right over her when she voiced concern about the Core and her curse in regards to the safety of her kingdom. When she was a kid, it didn't matter. As an adult preparing to take the throne, it stung.

They either shunned her for what she was or completely dismissed her. She couldn't blame them. Who would respect a cursed child?

Unwittingly, her thoughts drifted back to the unnamed man from Furvus. Barely an hour had passed since she escorted him back through the gates and sent him off, and yet her mind kept dragging up the memory as if to press a thorn into her side. This time, there was awe and wonder in his green eyes; the look of a child who stands on the edge of a cliff and gazes at the ocean below for the first time. The look wavered as if something inside him was trying to suppress it, yet she had glimpsed it—even if the moment was ultimately short-lived.

"What do you need me to do?"

Aiko pressed a hand to her mouth, suppressing a giggle that rose to her lips. The unnamed man was empty of his own desires, a blank slate ready for carving. He stated he was cautious, and seemed to attempt to avoid her as he had no reason to trust her, but he couldn't refuse a request. How fascinating.

She didn't know what he was or who he was, but he was fascinating. If only she had a name to call him by, perhaps then it would be easier to keep her thoughts in order.

"Unlike you, I am wary of strangers and don't hand out my name so casually."

"Be that way then," she said to the empty room. "I'll just make up a name for you then until I know the truth." She was good at making up names. She had named Mae herself, and he seemed quite pleased with it. Not only that, but she had also come up with an alternative name for herself. It started as play when she was a little girl, something to use to pretend she was someone else. Now, it was how she was going to win this game.

Cinere. A charming, innocent young girl with a fascination for magic and a slight dislike of the cursed Princess Aiko. Though she came to the castle as a court seer, she soon became Aiko's closest attendant and friend. To the unnamed man, Cinere would be a resource. If she understood him right, Cinere would be a pawn to whatever his true purpose was. Aiko didn't care. There was no Cinere, after all.

She pondered what she had seen of the unnamed man as she raised her lantern, letting its light shine across the books. A deep, dark red spine caught her eye, and she slid the book from the shelf. Gold embellishments had been pressed into the cover's fabric, creating intricate swirling patterns that curled around the corners and down the face of the book. It had no title, and no author's name to give it credit, yet it was one she reached for most often. Dust had gathered on many of the other books in the library, but the red-and-gold book was always spotlessly clean.

Kai? She paused for a moment as the name came to mind. With the shake of her head, she tucked the book under her arm and made her way back to the front of the room. No, Kai doesn't suit him.

The unnamed man's eyes were a vibrant green, soft like the first sign of spring, yet narrowed and harsh like the poison ivy that grew in the wildlands of Theus. Kai was a name that belonged to a person with a brilliant flame, and the unnamed man's fire was too faint to count.

He needed something soft, something that rolled easily off the tongue. Not too harsh, not too sharp.

Soft, to compliment the rough scrape of the name Cinere.

Aiko frowned to herself in thought. She emerged out of the shelves to find the doorway still standing open, and Mae sitting inside it. He watched her carefully, his tail shifting across the carpeted floors. There was no glow to his fur this time; a disapproving scowl seemed to twist his features—fitting for a cat.

"What's that face for?" She hung the lantern on its hook beside the door. As soon as the handle left her hand, the blue flame sputtered and died, leaving only a burnt wick behind.

As magical as he was, Mae did not possess the gift of speech. To answer her question, he simply rose to his feet and stretched, arching his back and extending his claws. When he was done, he turned and left her standing there, his tail sticking up in the air behind him.

Aiko's frown deepened, her gaze following him. "It's a game, Mae, and I'm going to win it," she called after him.

The dark shadows swallowed his white fur, and he was gone.

A sigh slipped through her lips and her shoulders went slack. Ever since the forest when she first encountered the unnamed man, Mae had become even more fickle. Perhaps he sensed it too, that uneasy feeling around the man. Or perhaps he didn't like that she was meddling with things that were meant to be untouched. The gods had left The Ember Core and the Bright Soul as gifts meant to protect and balance the kingdom of Niveus, yet she sought to tear them down.

She grabbed the book and gazed down at its blood-red cover. The pages were crinkled, yellowed and worn with age. They felt stiff beneath her fingers as she leafed through them. The binding was coming undone, perhaps because she liked to fold the book back a little too far while reading and prop it open for hours on end. Some of the words were faded from the time she slipped and dropped it in a pond. Overwhelmed by a sense of nostalgia, she cracked the book open as she walked.

The phoenix god bestowed upon humanity a gift, the book read in it's swirly, delicate handwriting. The gift of the soul in the form of a flame. As long as the flame burns, life will continue. Once the flame is extinguished, the soul is gone and so is the being.

Aiko snapped the book shut. The violent sound echoed in the still quiet around her, and the torches in their sconces flickered from the force of it. It was the same as always: life was a gift from the phoenix god, and the soul was a flame that must not be snuffed out. As an opening, it sounded hopeful in a way, as if the book would preach about the beauty of life.

Only later in the book did it speak of the other half of the god's so-called "gift."

"The Ember Core," Aiko murmured to herself. She rounded a corner and soon came to her quarters. Tonight, there were no guards posted outside her door, some part of her sighed in relief. When the hall was empty, she was free. When her room was unguarded, she didn't have to be what they wanted her to be.

Tonight, she was free—despite how the book dragged her down like a heavy stone.

The doors opened before she thought to reach for them; looking down, she realized it was her hand on the handle. She sighed, rubbing her temples. A haze had fallen over her thoughts, pulling them this way and that. One moment, she knew who she was and what she wanted. The next, she was someone else watching her body move, trapped in a dreamlike state.

She needed that "willing weak flame" as quickly as possible, and although she had found one, the unnamed man wasn't quite willing yet. He was simply swept away by the tide, drifting wherever the waters took him. If he remained that way, the Core would reject him and she would be stuck as she was until she chanced upon another like him.

Doubt eclipsed her confidence as she stepped into her room and shut the door, leaning her back against it.

In the midst of the raging, hellish flames of life, he was a beacon—one she couldn't help but run toward, like a moth drawn to a candle. If she wanted to end the cycle, to be free of The Ember Core, to be the queen her kingdom truly required, she was going to need him.

"Something soft," she murmured to herself, sliding against the doors until she found herself seated on the floor. She perched the book in her lap, tracing her fingers across the gold embellishments. "To compliment the name Cinere."

Time was short, and it whisked past her faster than she could keep up with. It was a beast she could never hope to control, one whose reins scraped her palms raw until she could no longer hold on. It was fleeing her, and she could never hope to keep up.

"I want you to stop Aiko from taking the throne." As Cinere, she had boldly said those words aloud while the unnamed man stared at her blankly with those vibrant green eyes. As Aiko, she knew it wasn't what she wanted at all. She wanted to be queen, but she couldn't as long as her flame was held by The Ember Core. While her life remained in the talons of the phoenix god, she was as good as cursed. Everyone knew it, and everyone despised it.

She glanced down at her wrists, at the gold bands that chained her.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. While you live on, your soul beckons thus: magic binds magic and you destroy us.

As long as she was bound to her curse, she could never safely take the throne. Over and over, she had heard those words from the court. If she became queen in name alone, perhaps they believed it would be alright, but there was no fooling the Core.

Glancing down at the book, she couldn't help the bitterness that rose in her chest. Confusing, jumbled, prophetic words had been ingrained in her mind for as long as she could remember. As a kid, they seemed dreamlike and far away, like distant memories she couldn't bother to grab onto.

When her parents died—and their death was proclaimed to be divine punishment from the phoenix god—the weight of her kingdom fell onto her shoulders. It pressed down onto her until the air was crushed from her lungs, her legs grew weak, and her vision darkened with exhaustion.

But it's just a game, right? She tucked her knees against her chest and buried her face in her arms, sucking in a sharp breath. Her life was a piece on the board, and so was his. The goal was freedom: a slippery, moving target that taunted her day in and day out. Only now, she had found a new trick to keep up her sleeve.

The face of the unnamed man resurfaced in her mind, always flat and disinterested as if he had better things to do. And yet, his eyes were soft and his words were curious. Just once, she wanted to see him smile. If he smiled, would the light return to his forest-colored eyes?

A name rose to the tip of her tongue—a vague idea to fit the soft, coldness he portrayed. It rolled easily off her tongue, as gentle as light summer rain.

"Kou," she whispered. Her fingers curled tightly around her sleeves as she exhaled softly. The name slipped easily from her lips, just as she had thought it would. While she knew it was only a fake name like Cinere, it suited him. It was just something to keep her thoughts in order as she worked.

She would call her pawn—the unnamed Furvian man—Kou and she would not let his weak flame slip away. Her curse would be broken and she would be free, all before he could even flip the tables on her.

It's my game, after all. She pushed herself to her feet, tucking her hair behind her ears as it fell in her face. I started this, and I'm going to finish it. 

Fun fact: I have been taunting some people with Cinere and Kou for weeks. Surprise, guys, Cinere and Kou are not separate people. They are, in fact, Aiko and Felix.

No, Ace, there is no love triangle.

See you in the next update! :D