📖 The Celestial Codex (7/7) 📖
The Stoneward
Stoneward was built into the spine of the eastern cliffs, a fortress-prison of cold stone and darker memories. There were no windows. Only torches lit at odd intervals, their flicker casting long shadows down the corridor walls. Everything smelled of rust and mildew and smoke—like the past, left too long unburied.
After six months in Stoneward, Leona was no longer the woman who had once stood defiant in the queen’s chamber. Her once-smooth hair, black as river stone, now hung in tangled cords past her shoulders, streaked with ash-gray and clinging to her cheeks with damp. The prison air was always wet—some foul mix of salt and smoke that never fully lifted. Her skin had gone pale and sallow from lack of sunlight, her frame thinner now, but not delicate—stripped, like bark peeled from a tree. The strength remained beneath, but it had changed. Gone was the courtly poise. What remained was survival.
She had stopped weeping months ago.
Her fingernails were uneven, broken at the edges, and one of her molars had begun to ache with a dull, persistent throb. She spoke to no one unless she had to. She kept a tally on the wall by the bunk—though not for time. She wasn’t sure what it measured anymore.
She had no mirror, but she knew what others saw. A prisoner. A traitor. A shadow of a woman who had once counseled queens and sheltered heirs. Her voice was hoarse from the damp air and her own fury. Even her thoughts had changed cadence—more clipped, more cruel. She was no longer trying to justify her choices.
Now she only replayed them.
She muttered the Codex sometimes in the dark—scraps of it, fragments of melody that once meant something sacred. The guards laughed when she did, called her mad. She no longer argued. Let them think her broken. Let them believe it was over.
She had thought the same.
But she kept waking up.
And that meant something still remained.
But that morning, the bell tolled at an odd hour.
Leona banged her tin cup against the cell grating.
“Guards! Gardus!” she shouted, her voice raw from too many nights of shouting into silence.
It took several minutes before the echo of boots approached. A man in mail stepped into view, face half-hidden beneath a dented kettle helm.
“Settle down,” he grunted, not stopping.
“What are the bells for?” she demanded. “Why are they ringing?”
He paused, glanced over his shoulder.
"The queen is dead," he said as if announcing the weather. "Long live the queen."
Leona stared past him, at the moss-veined stone of the opposite wall.
“Died?”
“Yes. This morning.”
No ceremony. No title. Just died.
Leona slumped to the floor, her back against the cold iron bars. The tin cup slipped from her hand and rolled away.
“Then we are all lost,” she said softly. “It’s over.”
She was surprised when she woke the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
The bells stopped. The torches burned low. Stoneward remained unchanged—but something inside her had shifted. She had expected collapse. A tremor. Fire from the sky. Instead, there was only the creak of chains and the shuffling of feet in cells she could not see.
She lived. The world had not ended.
Perhaps she had been wrong. Perhaps it had all been myth and she had, indeed, betrayed her queen.
Acceptance was the hardest.
She had done what she thought was right. But she had been wrong. And good intentions do not absolve you of crime.
But Alyse would now be queen. It did at least feel like a reprieve. She couldn't imagine her friend from so long ago would have her killed.
"Not after I took care of her son. My son!"
She wept.
On the third day after the queen’s death, Leona heard the iron door at the end of the corridor groan open.
Footsteps echoed down the stone hall—measured, uneven. She knew that limp. Karl. But he was too early to be changing out the torches.
He stopped briefly at her cell.
“You have visitors,” he said, and turned away.
She waited, breath tight in her chest.
Then:
“Mother?”
She looked up. Tears welled instantly.
“Kane?”
He stood there in the torchlight—taller than she remembered, dressed in fine wool and silver trim, the boy she’d raised transformed. Not a page now.
A prince.
She knew in that moment that the secret had been spoken.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, rising. “I’m so sorry, Kane.”
“You lied to me, Mother.”
Her mouth trembled. “We did what we thought was best for you. We were just children ourselves.”
“I know, Mother. And… I forgive you.”
She gasped softly, one hand rising to her lips.
“You do?”
“You took care of me when no one else would. You loved me. Protected me. You called me your son when you didn’t have to.”
Her voice broke. “You are my son.”
He nodded, gently.
“In some ways,” he said. “Maybe even in the most important ways. But I’m also the queen’s son.”
She lowered her head. “Yes. Yes, you are, Your Highness.”
He smiled, a flicker of the boy she remembered.
“Do you know,” he said, stepping closer, “when I was little, you used to call me the Little Pain-in-the-Arse Prince?”
She laughed, choked and wet.
“You were,” she said. “You absolutely were.”
"You're filthy," he said.
She looked herself over and nodded.
"I haven't had a hot bath in a very long time."
"I have to go now," he said.
"You'll come back to see me?" she asked, weeping.
"I'm sorry mother, but no. I won't be back in this place any time soon."
"I… I understand," she said.
No one wants a traitor for a mother.
She wiped her tears away, stood up, bravely, and reached through the bars to caress his cheek.
"I love you, son."
"I love you too, mother," he said. He turned on his heel and departed.
She heard whispers in the hall and she pressed her face to the grate, but could see nothing until a shadow loomed in front of her.
"Leona."
It was Moses.
"I guess I was wrong," she said, sheepishly.
"No," he said. "You weren't wrong. You just should have been more honest."
"I know," she said. "Can you forgive me?"
"Forgive you?" Moses asked. "I'm here to beg your forgiveness. I could have been more empathetic. I could have done a better job convincing you. I could have helped you. But I turned you in. I betrayed you."
"I did the same."
He nodded.
"I forgive you," she said.
"And I you," he replied.
"Thank you for coming," she said.
"I..I should have come sooner," he said. "I know this is going to sound awful. But I've been very busy."
"I'm sure you were."
"It's more than you think."
"What happened?" she asked.
"The queen performed the rites. We helped her through it."
"So Alyse became the new vessel?"
"She did," Moses said.
"She has the burden now," Leona said, sadness coming over her face.
Just then Alyse stepped up to the gate, standing close to Moses.
"Alyse!" she exclaimed and then sobbed. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Your apology is accepted," Alyse said.
"Thank you, my queen," Leona said. "May I ask, what will you do with me?"
"I have pardoned you," Leona said.
She produced a key and opened Leona's cell.
"Come," Alyse said. "We know what you did, and we know why you did it. And we forgive you."
"You…you do?"
"My dear friend," Alyse said. "After you have given me so much, I could not abandon you."
Alyse, the queen, grabbed the filthy and stinking Leona in an embrace caring not one bit for their difference.
Leona stepped back after a long embrace, and noticed that the queen—Alyse the queen!—slipped her hand into Moses' hand.
And she saw it instantly. They had become lovers.
Alyse, who had been alone since her man died at 17, nearly a dozen years later, was finally with someone.
Leona felt so much joy that she felt her heart might burst after so many months of despair.
"But," she said. "You—you now carry the burden?"
"No," Alyse said. "After I completed the rite, I then spoke the words of the codex to Moses, who write them all down. I carried it for six months. Now it is gone. My line will forever be free of this burden."
Leona, astonished, just stared at her queen.
"You chose to return the magic?"
Alyse nodded. "The very first time my grandmother held my hands and tried to perform the rite, I felt the power. Not just the burden, but the power."
"The power?"
"I was not just the vessel," Alyse said. "I have become a practitioner."
"You have become mageblood?"
Alyse nodded. "From this point forward, this monarchy will be a mageblood line."
"So, Kane?"
"Will be a mage. And you," Alyse said. "Will help me to teach him."
On his eighteenth birthday, Kane, a mage with seven years of training, stood before the elders in the House of Lords. It was to be his formal Rite of Naming where he would take a name from his house lineage as the heir apparent to the throne of Garreval.
His mother, the Queen, sat on the dais with her husband, Moses, the Queen's consort. Between them, his half-brother William, stood in formal dress, looking every bit the four year old he was, leaning with his elbow on the arm of his father's seat, and looking sleepily at the crowd of onlookers.
His mother—actually both of his mothers—beamed at him. The Queen from her throne. And Leona from the galley. He smiled briefly at both of them, but kept mostly to the formality of the occasion.
When Kane arrived at the dais, he bowed deeply to his mother, and then turned to face the audience.
Lord Hampden, High Lord of the House, approached him, holding the gilded crest in his hands.
His voice was that of an orator, rising and filling the chamber.
“Lords and ladies of the realm, honored guests, and keepers of the Codex—
"Today, before sun and star, stone and flame, we gather to bear witness to a legacy reborn. Not merely through blood, but through will. Not only through birth, but through choice.
"From the line of kings and queens who bore the burden, from the flame that once lay hidden, rises an heir—tempered by truth, forged in silence, and awakened to purpose.
"In my hand I hold the Flamebound Crest—a symbol of trust once worn by those who were called not to reign, but to prepare. This is not yet a crown. It is a vow. A visible promise. A sign that the bearer shall learn, serve, and one day lead.
"I present it now, not to a boy of hidden blood, but to a man of revealed strength.
"Kane of the House of Halveth, son of Queen Alyse, bearer of magic and memory—by right of blood and by the fire that lives within you, receive this regalia and be known to all as heir apparent to the throne of Garreval.”
Hampden handed the Flamebound Crest to him and Kane held it aloft for all to see, invoking a loud ovation from the crowd. He lowered it and held it in his hands, waiting for the crowd to quiet, and then he spoke:
"I am honored by what flows in my veins. I am chosen by fate to serve. But how I serve shall be of my own choosing. I was born more free than most in my station, and so my heart shall ever remain. I choose today to serve—but I find I would rather serve as a teacher, a mage, and a student of what's to come."
The crowd murmured as he spoke.
"The throne belongs to one who chooses it. I do not."
He turned to the queen.
“My mother has chosen a future of magic, of knowledge, of balance. I will help her build it—but not from a throne. I shall never be a wielder of the scepter. But I shall wield the flame."
He walked to the thrones, bowing just momentarily, and placed Flamebound Crest on his brother.
He turned back to the crowd.
"I give you Prince William, the heir apparent."
And with that, Kane formally abdicated. Not in shame, nor in resentment, but in peace.
For sixty-four years, he served as his brother’s guide and flamekeeper, a loyal mage and counselor to a throne he had the wisdom not to take.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
Well done to lead us into emotional resolutions. I enjoyed this story.
Thank you Stephen.
I love this ending. I also really like the dynamic of the oldest heir handing over the right to the throne peacefully!