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Chapter 15 - Anatia

When she returned to the palace she went to the fireplace in her room and she lit a pile of kindling with some candles she kept in her room. Her fireplace was big and mocking, a grande chamber to hold a small fire that she used to be able to make dance and grow. When the flames were tall enough to singe the stars themselves she started throwing things in. Books, dresses, paintings, nothing escaped her wrath as she fed the flames until they were scorching her skin, turning the whole room hot and boiling.

She heard a shriek and distantly registered Suzette fumbling for a bucket of water and splashing it across the now ruinous fireplace. Steam hissed creating a thick fog of mist that enveloped the room slowly thinning to reveal the fireplace.

The fireplace. The scorch marks on the stone fireplace reached outwards crawling over the sides, creeping out of the ruinous fireplace. The fire had burned into the metal frame, creating a furrow into the floor of the fireplace that had reached out and left a whole in the floor of the room like a crater, molten metal shining on the stones.

The lady's maid was scrambling to snatch anything from the fireplace that hadn't yet been consumed by the flames, scavenging a slightly singed old tapestry that Cinis had yanked off the wall behind her bed. I was a tapestry displaying the majestic Obicirus Mountains, cold and grey. Normally the mountains felt like a wall, an iron fence stretched across the Altonisian Border with Galcinar, but the tapestries looked at the mountains from the Altonisian side with green forests blanketed in snow and a faun standing in a wood at the mountain's base. It had always reminded her of home, it was a taunt, and one of the many reasons she hated being at the Iron Castle. The chief of those reasons of course being the man that sat on the throne. Now as Suzette was brushing of the ashes and dust, seeing what parts might be salvaged, her nursemaid looked up at her and blanched,

"M-my Lady, you're-" Suzette stood rushing to her and cupping her hand to her cheek before abruptly pulling back, "-You're burning hot!" Cinis indeed felt like she was burning alive and the brand in her back was screaming and searing itself into her spine. Suzette ushered her to the bed, making her sit down and be still as she quietly called for a nurse. A few minutes later the royal nurse arrived and upon seeing Cinis asked bewilderedly if she had jumped in a fire or something and had immediately gotten to work on what Cinis had realized were burns that coated her skin. They were worse on her back where the burns went so deep she couldn't bear to let the nurse dress the wounds. Suzette had to give her a dose of a sleeping tonic in her tea to get Cinis to stop struggling and fighting every time the woman so much as touched her back. When Cinis woke up she had been bandaged wrapped around her torso and Suzette had been given instructions on how to clean and care for them.

Suzette said that they had been able to save part of the tapestry but the bottom half that showed the faun in the forest had been ruined beyond repair. She had done her best to hide her bitter satisfaction at the ruined tapestry but she suspected that she hadn't had enough energy to really keep it from showing on her face anyway.

Cinis didn't get out of bed the next morning, or the next or the rest of the week. When word arrived that one of Queen Aine's Warriors was coming to meet with the king, Cinis didn't care.