Sleep never came quietly to queens.
And for Aurelia, it came dragging claws.
The chamber was still ...too still. Even the sea below the cliffs of valkoron had gone mute, as if holding its breath. Aurelia turned in her sheets, restless, her skin slick with sweat.
The night pressed down heavy and thick, and then, without warning, the world folded in on itself.
She was dreaming.
And the dream was made of fire.
She stood on a plain of black stone, the sky bleeding with streaks of red light. The air trembled; the earth groaned.
Then the ground split open.
From its depths rose a woman too vast for the world that tried to contain her ... a giant wreathed in flame. Her hair blazed like molten rivers, her skin burnished gold beneath the inferno. Cloth clung only where it dared, half-consumed by her own fire.
Each step she took made the ground quake. Lava gushed where her feet touched. The air burned with her breath.
Aurelia wanted to run.
But she couldn't move.
