Rothe's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

Rothe returned to the cottage in the last hour before dawn, his wisps trailing through the door without resistance. The stranger's sketch lived behind his attention now — the crowned figure, the word Prince, the blue flower at the throne's base. He had not decided what to do with the weight of being named. Miri was awake when he arrived, sitting at the table with the stranger's journal open in front of her. She had found it. The page showed his form clearly — wisps shaped into something almost human, flames gathered above in the pattern of a crown. The word beneath the drawing was written in her language, not the dead tongue. Prince. She looked up when his light filled the doorway. "Why does he call you that?" Rothe could not answer without telling her what he had been before he followed her across the bridge. A judge of souls. A keeper of the throne that decided who passed and who remained. He had walked away from that duty to protect her, but the title still belonged to him whether he carried it or not. He moved closer to the table, his presence stirring the air now instead of passing through it. The flames in the hearth bent toward him as they always did. Miri closed the journal and pushed it aside. "You don't have to tell me." Her voice was steady, but something had changed in the space between them. She had seen what he was in the sketch — not just a guardian, but something that had given up power to stay at her side. She stood and walked to the brazier, lifting the lantern that held his flame. "This is enough. You're here." She handed him the lantern, and for the first time since crossing the bridge, Rothe felt the weight of it in his grasp. Not heavy. Not solid. But present. Real. The flame inside burned brighter, responding to his touch, and Miri smiled. The question she could not afford to ask had been answered anyway, and she had chosen to trust what he had become instead of what he had been.