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Chapter Text

“Dad’s going to kill you!”

Ursa froze just outside the room, the words slicing through the quiet like a blade. Azula’s voice was too sweet, too sing-song, and carried down the corridor. It was the tone she always used when she wanted to twist the knife and make it hurt.

“Really, he is.” She added. 

Ursa stayed in the shadows of the hallway, unseen.

Zuko had come to her earlier that evening, pale and trembling. His hands had been cold and clammy, and his eyes were wide and rimmed with red. He didn’t want to eat, he’d said. He claimed he felt sick after the meeting with his grandfather, Fire Lord Azulon in the throne room. Something in his voice, in the way he wouldn’t meet her eyes, had unsettled her.

She hadn’t pushed the issue. It had already been an exhausting day. 

The day had already stretched her nerves to breaking. They were all still raw from earlier in the evening. Ozai had been a storm before the visit to the throne room. Azulon’s presence always drew out the worst in him. He nitpicked every detail beforehand: her dress, her posture, the way her perfume lingered when she bowed. Last time, she had spoken too much. The time before, too little. Eventually, she’d simply stopped trying altogether and kept silent.

But as harsh as he was with her, he was worse with the children. Azula had performed like a prodigy before the Fire Lord, sharp and precise in every form. Ozai was pleased. Ursa could see it in the smug tilt of his jaw.

But Zuko, her dear, sweet Zuko. He stood up when he wasn’t supposed to. He had tried too hard, fumbled, and missed his mark. 

Ursa had seen the shame in his face. His eyes flicking toward his grandfather, then his father, begging silently for approval. She could feel the sting of it herself, that burning shame.

She had comforted him quietly, placing a steady hand on his back. Ozai hadn’t even looked at him. Ursa knew that she wouldn’t hear the end of it. 

Later, Zuko came to her and asked to stay in bed. She had offered to bring his meal to him, to sit with him until he fell asleep. He nodded, grateful but ashamed. It broke her heart a little more.

She hadn’t expected Azula to be there now. So Ursa waited, silent and listening.

“Ha ha, Azula,” Zuko muttered. “Nice try.”

Azula’s voice floated toward her, careless and cruel.

“Fine. Don’t believe me,” she replied airily. “But I heard everything. Grandfather said that Dad’s punishment should fit his crime.” Her tone suddenly shifted, deepening into a chilling mimicry of Azulon’s thunderous voice. “ ‘You must know the pain of losing a firstborn son—by sacrificing your own. ’”

Ursa’s heart stilled. Her ears strained for Zuko’s reply.

“Liar !” he snapped.

“I’m only telling you for your own good,” Azula said with that infuriating little smirk in her tone. “I know! Maybe you can find a nice Earth Kingdom family to adopt you!”

“Stop it! You’re lying!” Zuko’s voice cracked. “Dad would never do that to me!”

Ursa stepped through the doorway.

“Your father would never do what?” she asked sharply, her voice like ice beneath silk. “What’s going on?”

Zuko turned, his eyes glassy with unshed tears. Azula blinked up at her from Zuko’s bed, feigning wide-eyed innocence, the perfect little actress.

“I don’t know,” Azula said, lifting her shoulders in a light shrug.

Ursa crossed the room in three quick strides. She seized her daughter’s wrist and pulled her off the bed with a force that startled even herself. Azula stumbled, caught off balance, forced to move quickly to keep up with her mother’s grip.

“It’s time for a talk,” Ursa snapped, voice low and tight with fury.

She led Azula briskly into the hallway, not stopping until they were far enough from Zuko’s room that he wouldn’t hear what came next. Then she dropped to one knee, bringing herself level with the girl.

She looked into those cold, clever eyes, the same eyes as her father’s.

“Spill it, Azula,” Ursa said, wrapping her hand around the girl’s narrow shoulder—not gently, but not yet rough. Just enough to remind her who held her still.

Azula’s gaze dropped to the floor, then flicked to her mother’s face, then back again. When she finally spoke, her voice was quiet—eerily quiet. That alone set Ursa’s nerves on edge.

“Well…” Azula began, drawing the word out like a thread. “I accidentally overheard Grandfather talking to Daddy in the throne room.”

Ursa arched a brow. “Accidentally?”

Azula gave a quick, almost convincing nod.

“You were spying again,” Ursa said flatly.

The girl’s lips pressed into a tight, guilty line. She didn’t respond. She didn’t need to.

“Go on,” Ursa urged.

Azula twisted the hem of her tunic between her fingers, pretending to look ashamed. “Daddy asked to take Uncle Iroh’s place as heir. Grandfather got really mad. Really mad. He yelled at Daddy. He said it was disgusting to ask something like that right after Lu Ten died.”

Ursa nodded slowly, biting the inside of her cheek until the pain cut through the rage rising in her throat. She needed to hear it all. Ozai would never give her the whole truth. But Azula listened when she shouldn’t. That was useful, for now.

She knelt and tucked a finger under her daughter’s chin. “And then what happened?”

Azula hesitated, then exhaled. “For punishment… Grandfather said Daddy had to get rid of Zuko. He said—” she gulped for effect, eyes fluttering wide, “—that Daddy should know the pain of losing his firstborn.”

Ursa rose to her feet, her blood suddenly cold in her veins. The air seemed thinner, the corridor too narrow, and the walls too close. Azulon had truly said it. Madness. Senility. Or something worse, intentional cruelty. Another opportunity to torture his second son. 

Ozai wouldn’t— couldn’t —actually do it. Could he? He was many things. Vain, ambitious, arrogant, and even cruel at times, but he wouldn’t murder his own son. Not her son. She wasn’t sure if he loved the boy, but love was not a requirement for mercy.

Then came Azula’s voice again, too delicate and practiced. 

“Oh, Mommy,” she trilled, hands folded like a doll. “I’m so scared for Zuko. You don’t think Daddy would really do something like that… do you?”

Ursa hadn’t answered. She hadn’t needed to. That voice had been too sweet, those eyes too wide. The girl had been performing, but the smirk, that razor-thin curve of her mouth, his smirk, had given her away.

Everything in the palace was theater. Ursa had learned to detect the lies wrapped in silk and polite compliments. And Azula was learning quickly. She lied without hesitation, maneuvered with intent. Her deceit was growing bolder by the day. At eight years of age, she must have thought herself clever. She must have thought she could manipulate Ursa like one of the servants, like Zuko.

As if Ursa hadn’t mastered this game before the child drew first breath. But Ursa saw her clearly. The way a hawk sees a rabbit twitching in the grass. She was scared, and trying to be brave. An attempt to be smug and sneering in order to mask her true feelings.

In any other circumstance, she would be proud of her, but Ursa was not in a mood to humor the girl. 

“Go to bed, young lady!”

“But..”

“Now!” she snapped, her voice cold enough to bite, already turning from the girl before the last word had left her mouth. Her footsteps had echoed like thunder as she moved through the palace corridors, not caring who heard them. 

A flicker of guilt had tried to rise in her chest, but she crushed it before it could bloom. Azula didn’t deserve her anger, no. She was a child mimicking the adults surrounding her. But neither did she deserve the softness of comfort. Not tonight. Not with what might be coming.

Weakness had slipped through the cracks, and Ursa hated herself for it. She had allowed the girl to see her fear. That was unacceptable.

She would fix it in the morning. After the matter with Azulon was resolved, one way or another.

Children forget. Or they learn to forget. It was a lesson Ursa had learned when she was Azula’s age. 

Anxiety burned through her veins, quick and merciless. Her heart pounded so violently against her ribs she imagined it tearing free of her chest, crashing to the marble at her feet, just in time to be crushed beneath her own heel.

There was no time to waste. 

She had to find him. Now.

Each second stretched thin as glass as she stalked through the halls, until finally, there he was.

Relief flooded her, but it did little to steady her hands.

Ozai stood with his back to her, facing the tall window that loomed over the garden. Moonlight poured in around him, casting his figure in stark silhouette. He didn’t move, but she could hear the air hissing through his nose, sharp, rhythmic, too loud in the silence. 

So, it’s true. Azula was right. Ursa thought, her eyes narrowing.  

He was trying to appear composed.

But Ursa knew better. She knew him. 

He wasn’t thinking. He was unraveling.

“Ozai,” she said, her voice catching like a thread. Her heart was still a thunder in her chest, unrelenting. “Ozai, you can’t do this.”

She tried to steady herself, to gather her composure into something presentable, but her fingers betrayed her. They picked and scraped at the skin along her knuckles, red crescents forming beneath her nails.

He didn’t answer. Not at first.

He only gave the slightest movement, a slight lift of his head. Then, slowly, he turned to face her.

His expression was carved from stone, cold, and unreadable to most. But Ursa had learned his tells, after over a decade of marriage. She knew the minute fractures in the mask he wore. The faint crease between his brows, the almost imperceptible grinding of his jaw. He was nervous. Perhaps even afraid. 

“What am I to do?” he asked. “The Fire Lord’s word is law.”

His voice scraped against her nerves, thin and grating, like metal dragged across porcelain.

He turned away again, his back rigid, retreating into the shadows.

“I’ll do it when he’s asleep,” he muttered towards the window “He won’t feel a thing. I promise.”

Ursa stepped forward, laying a hand on his shoulder. His muscles were stone beneath her touch, the tension vibrated through him. 

“Ozai…” she said, softer now. “Please.”

Her voice dropped lower, a hum of intimacy.

“He’s your son. Our son.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped, turning his face half toward her, just enough to spit the words. “Do you think I want this? That I enjoy it?”

But Ursa saw through the performance. Anger was an easier mask to wear than fear. It was his family’s tradition. 

She reached for him again, firmer this time. Her fingers found his sleeve, tugging, and forcing him to face her. When he did, she brought both hands to his face, cupping it gently, as if to cradle glass.

“You don’t have to do this,” she whispered, her thumbs brushing the sharp ridges of his cheekbones, the bone beneath his flesh, sharpened by tension. “There has to be another way…”

He flinched, not from her words, but from her touch. He resisted the instinct to lean into it and began to pull away, but she held firm. Her fingers, delicate yet unyielding, tightened their hold onto him. 

For a moment, he relented.

He dipped his head, just enough for her to regain her grip, and placed a hand against her wrist. It wasn’t a rejection, it was as if he was waiting, delaying. 

“There is no other way,” he murmured. He hesitated and paused. “Not really.”

There was hesitation in his voice. Not uncertainty, he was too proud for that, but something heavier. Weariness, maybe. The slow erosion of his resolve.

He looked older now.

Normally, he wore the face of a man half his age, smooth, carefully composed, carved by his vanity. But now, under the cold light of the moon, she saw the lines beneath the surface. The fatigue and the shadows that clung to the edges of his eyes.

Ozai was not a man who welcomed tenderness. Not publicly, and no longer in private. What little softness shared between them had been the first thing to die in their marriage. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched him without a purpose or even shared a bed. 

But now, he didn’t stop her. He let her trace his face with reverent fingers, mapping the sharp planes and familiar angles she had once known by heart. Her touch was slow, searching. Almost mournful.

And still, he allowed it. 

She couldn’t overpower him—not in strength or in fire. He would burn her before she ever got the chance. Instead, Ursa chose honey over steel. His pride over honor. Vanity over duty.

She leaned in, her lips just shy of his skin, close enough that her breath ghosted across his cheek.

“If you obey your father and kill Zuko…” she began, voice low and deliberate, “what then?”

Her words slithered into his ear, smooth as silk and cold as death.

“Will you always be the weapon your father commands? Ready to strike, then be discarded the moment you become an inconvenience?” She let the question hang, then twisted the knife. “Do you think he’ll love you then? Are you truly this masochistic?”

Her nails pressed into his skin. 

“When you take the life of a sleeping child— your child—will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror? Will you recognize the man staring back? What type of man takes the life of a child who couldn’t fight back if he wanted to? Warriors don’t kill sleeping children, cowards do. He’s not only trying to humiliate you, he’s tarnishing your honor as well.”

She paused, watching his jaw tighten.

“Do you think it ends with Zuko?” she asked, her voice nearly a whisper now, intimate and lethal. “Will I be next? Azula?”

She let that sink in before striking the final blow.

“If he ordered you to take your own life… would you? Would you bend even then, just to please a man who delights in humiliating you? He’ll never be satisfied, Ozai. Not until he’s broken every piece of you. Until you’re nothing but ash and obedience. And even then, he’ll find a way to degrade you.”

Her fingers dug in deeper. His skin was warm beneath her nails. Too warm.

“Tell me,” she said, breath steady, her voice sharp as a blade, “are you going to let that withered old man snuff out your legacy?”

She let the venom slide into her tone, just enough to stir the fire in him.

“You’re not a coward,” she purred. “You’re the greatest firebender the world has ever known. That’s what I see. Better than Iroh, better than Azulon… better than Sozin himself. You deserve a legacy, long, glorious, and unstoppable. As I see it, you’ve earned the right to be called heir. Iroh fled when he lost his son, abandoned his men, and left them to fend for themselves. That’s not you. You would’ve sought revenge and killed every single one of them, if you were feeling merciful. You would have slain the Earth King and brought home his head. One day, you‘ll stand before the skulls of your enemies, while a crowd shouts your name. One day, you’ll be sitting on the throne, hearing your grandson’s stories of triumph. Of conquest. Of bending the world to your will. In your name.” 

Her mouth was close to his ear now, each word a temptation, a curse.

“It’s time to choose, Ozai,” she said. “The will of a dying man… or your triumph.”

Choose, she thought. Choose wrong, I dare you. Give me a reason to kill you. I’ll feed you the worst poison I can create. Which would it be? The Strangler? The Dance of Frenzy? The Crimson Boil? Kill my son…. I dare you. 

She pulled away to look at him. The fear that once flickered behind his eyes had burned away, replaced with something far more potent. Rage. Determination. That sweet, familiar hunger for revenge.

Exactly what she wanted to see.

Ursa nearly smiled, but not yet. She would only allow herself satisfaction when Azulon’s corpse was ash and Zuko was safe beneath her protection.

“He needs to die,” Ozai said flatly.

She nodded. “Indeed.” Her voice softened, silk wrapping steel. “Do you remember what we spoke about… all those years ago?” Her gaze held his. “The white flower.”

Ozai’s eyes flicked toward the movement behind her. A servant passed nearby, humming as she carried bed linens folded under one arm. She bowed at the waist when she noticed them, and only continued down the corridor after Ozai dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

“Walk with me,” he said.

It was safer in the palace to keep moving. It was harder for any lingering ears to overhear treasonous words. Stillness bred suspicion. Spies bloomed like mold in the corners of every room. Movement gave the illusion of normalcy. And time was already slipping through their fingers. 

They walked in silence at first, their steps echoing through the cold marble halls.

“It’s colder this time of year,” Ursa murmured. “White flowers tend to bloom in this weather. Stronger than usual.”

“It has to be tonight,” Ozai said. “Iroh will return soon to place Lu Ten‘s ashes in the family mausoleum.”

“How long do you think it will take him to return?”

“A few days, maybe less. Depends on the weather. His mode of transportation.”

Ursa nodded, thoughtful. “Then this is the perfect time. Azulon is an old man. How many strokes has he had now? Three in the last ten years?” She clicked her tongue. “He’s frail. And death comes for old men, doesn’t it? Especially during the cold seasons. Perhaps he was overcome with grief. A broken heart after the loss of a grandson. Perhaps, in the pain of it, he saw reason.”

Two guards passed in the distance, murmuring softly between themselves. Ozai and Ursa kept their pace slow and voices lower. The guards bowed to them and continued without pause.

When they were out of earshot, Ozai spoke again. “You’re right. But what of my position? When he dies… what then?”

“Think,” Ursa said, gently. “What did the last report say?”

“That Iroh abandoned his men. Left them leaderless.”

“Exactly.” Her voice was smooth and warm. “That’s cowardice. And Azulon saw that weakness in his favorite son. Perhaps, in his final moments, he named you his heir.”

A smirk curled at Ozai’s lips. “Correct. But this white flower? Is it detectable?”

“Do you remember the Earth Kingdom dignitary who came here five years ago?” Ursa asked, the corner of her lips twitching at the memory. “The one who tragically died in his sleep? It was so sad. So unfortunate.”

She remembered it with vivid clarity.

The man had a reputation, valuable knowledge, a taste for strong drink, and a weakness for Fire Nation women. An architect and mapmaker by trade. Fortunately for her, he was ignorant of her name, and Ozai reluctantly approved of what needed to be done.

She spent the whole evening laughing at his dull jokes. Admired his culture with wide, attentive eyes. When he invited her to his room, she wore silk that shimmered like flames and revealed more than it concealed.

He drank. He boasted. She smiled a touch too wide. 

When he excused himself, she slipped the vial into his wine. By the time he returned, he was too drunk to notice her careful distance, too feverish to realize she wouldn’t let him kiss her—not with poisoned wine on his lips. His hands had been rough, fumbling over her thighs and breasts. But somehow she dodged the worst of it.

He was nearly naked when he complained of a headache and couldn’t perform. He asked her to stay until morning, but he never finished his sentence. 

His body collapsed onto the bed, almost pinning her beneath him. His eyes were wide open, but he was still breathing. Haggard and struggling breaths, but he was alive nonetheless. 

She took the time to go through his belongings. Taking the maps, sketches, and letters exchanged between himself and other members of his trade. By the time she was finished, he was dead. Before she slipped out of his bedroom, she left a soft kiss on his still-warm cheek.

His death had served the Fire Nation. And Ozai had taken her that night like a man starved—more savagely than he had in years.

Ursa nearly laughed at the memory.

“No one will detect it unless they know what to look for. It’s untraceable,” she said, musing aloud. “Barely any flavor. Perhaps the faintest hint of sweetness. It should be past dinner, Azulon takes his tea around this time.”

Ozai nodded, already working through the possibilities. “I wish you could use The Strangler.”

“If only,” Ursa sighed. “He deserves it, but we can’t afford suspicion. It will be quick. Painless. No theatrics. Just the silence of age catching up to him.”

They turned around another corridor, their steps echoing loudly along the hall.

She didn’t look at Ozai again, but she could feel the heat of his gaze that was hungry for power and eager to see it.  

Ozai stroked his goatee, his fingers contemplative. “It could work,” he said slowly. “But it would have to be you who does it.”

Ursa stopped mid-step. Her brow furrowed. “Me? Why me?”

He arched a brow, as if the answer were obvious. He flicked his head down the hall, urging her to keep walking. Her pace was much slower, but she joined him.

He continued. “Do you really think he’d trust being alone with me?” His tone took on that familiar edge of condescension, sharp and smug. “Think, darling .”

She hated when he called her that in that tone. But he wasn’t wrong.

Azulon would be wary if Ozai stepped into his chamber at this hour. He’d be prepared. But her? The dutiful daughter-in-law, the woman who poured his tea and bowed with lowered eyes when he spoke, he’d never suspect her. He always underestimated her ferocity, her ambition to be titled Fire Lady Ursa. 

Ursa exhaled through her nose, tight and controlled. “Fine,” she said. “But you have to wait nearby. If it fails…”

Ozai’s expression darkened. His mouth drew into a grim line.

“If it fails, we’ll more than likely both die. Are you prepared for that?”

Ursa didn’t hesitate.

She would die for her children, without question. But she would suffer for Zuko. Endure any punishment, face the cruelest death without flinching, if it meant preserving his life. He was too soft for this world. Too good . He felt too much, loved too hard, and worse, trusted too easily. Perhaps that was her failing. For all her faults and cruelty, her daughter Azula was prepared to play the game, Zuko was not. 

Ursa had tried to shield him. To preserve what little innocence the Fire Nation had not already burned away. But he was growing older now. And innocence, she knew, was a luxury he could no longer afford. The world would show him cruelty soon enough. Better he understood that power and ambition had a price.

If they succeeded, he would be Ozai’s heir. The path would be paved in blood, but there would be time for reckoning later. First, they had to kill a sitting Fire Lord. And it was no easy task.

Azulon was old, but not frail. Regardless of his aging body, he was still a master firebender and one who had outlived enemies far more dangerous than either of them. If something went wrong, she would not survive a fight with him.

But strength was not always fire or steel.

“You have other talents,” her father, Jinzuk had once told her. “Use them well.”

She had been so young then, nineteen years old, just a girl with ambition dressed in borrowed silk. When she left their modest holdings in Hira’a, she wore a secondhand gown that her mother, Rina, and a servant girl had patched and hemmed beneath candlelight. They’d stitched together scraps of curtain and castoff embroidery to make her look like a proper noblewoman. A mask to pass as higher than her station.

Ursa had doubted they’d manage it. But when she stepped into the room, her father smiled.

He told her she looked beautiful. The very image of Fire Nation grace.

They both knew what was at stake and failure had never been an option.

As she stood beside the man who would become Fire Lord, she wondered if Jinzuk saw her now, his precious daughter, the apple of his eye turned a poisoner, a conspirator, a mother poised to kill for her son, would he be proud?

Or horrified?

Does it even matter anymore?

She realized she had been silent too long. Her voice, when it came, was low but resolute.

“Of course,” she said, with quiet conviction. “I’ve been ready since the moment I set foot in this place.” She paused, letting the weight of her words settle. “But are you?”

Ozai met her gaze, steel for steel. After a moment, he gave the faintest nod.

It was settled.

Chapter Text

When Zuko was five, he caught a vicious fever. It came on swift and merciless, ravaging his tiny body. His skin turned ashen, his small body trembled with chills even as he soaked through his clothes with sweat. The Fire Sages grew grave. One of them, an ancient man and slow of speech, delivered the truth in a low voice that barely carried.

“If he survives the night, he will live.”

Ursa clung to that fragile hope with white-knuckled hands. She hadn’t slept in days. Her hair hung in loose, greasy strands, untouched by a brush, and the dress she wore was stained with vomit and sweat. Her eyes burned dry, red-rimmed, and sunken.

When the Sages told Azulon, the old man did not offer a word of comfort. Not as a Fire Lord. Not as a father or a grandfather.

Instead, he turned to her, his golden eyes hard and cutting, and said:

“You’re young. You can conceive again.”

Ursa had never wanted to kill someone more than she did in that moment.

She had no words for him, only silence. Her body shook, but she did not cry—not in front of him. Her grief was tight in her throat like a swallowed blade. She stood motionless as he turned his back and walked away.

Beside her, Ozai said nothing at first. He watched his father disappear down the corridor with the quiet of a man calculating his hatred. The silence stretched thin between them.

Then, at last, he spoke, quietly and flatly.

“Our son won’t die,” he said. “I won’t let him.”

Ozai shrugged off his formal robes, letting them fall unceremoniously to the floor. Without another word, he turned and strode into Zuko’s room.

That night, they worked like soldiers on the battlefield. No titles. No crown. Just two people fighting for their child’s life.

They took shifts, feeding Zuko like a baby bird, coaxing water into his dry, cracked lips. They bathed him in ice water to bring down the fever. When he grew too cold and began to shiver, Ozai wrapped the boy in his arms, pressed his own bare skin to Zuko’s burning body, and held him until the tremors stopped.

He did not speak. He simply did, the way a man does when there is nothing left but action.

Ursa never forgot that night. Not the stench of fever, thick and acrid in the air, or the soft, wheezing breaths coming from Zuko. And not the way Ozai had cradled Zuko to his bare chest, as if his body alone held the warmth that might keep their son tethered to life.

It was the last time she remembered seeing Ozai afraid.

It was the first time she believed—truly believed—that he might be capable of love, even if he would never admit it.

They worked through the night, relentless, devoted, afraid. Ursa moved like a ghost, her tired limbs and aching bones dragging her from one task to the next. She hadn’t truly slept in days. Neither had he. But Zuko needed them both.

By dawn, the worst had passed.

Wrapped in layers of blankets and his father’s discarded robes, Zuko was cradled in Ozai’s arms like a helpless baby animal. His fevered breaths were shallow, but steady. His hair was damp from his latest ice bath, curling slightly against his flushed face.

They sat in the garden together—Ursa, Ozai, and Zuko—on a stone bench overlooking the turtle duck pond rimmed with frost. The winter air bit at their skin, but it helped cool Zuko’s heat. Above them, the stars had begun to fade. A pale streak of sunlight cracked across the horizon, washing the world in faint, icy gold.

Ursa let the warmth of the new day rest on her face. She closed her eyes for only a moment—a blink, a breath—but her body, weakened and worn, slipped too easily into stillness.

She jolted awake seconds later—or was it minutes? The morning sun had risen higher, bright enough to sting her eyes, and then panic seized her chest.

“Zuko—” she gasped, eyes wild as she turned.

Still swaddled in his father’s arms, the boy hadn’t stirred. Her breath stilled in her chest. She leaned forward, gently pressing her fingers beneath his nose.

A slow, steady stream of warm air brushed against her knuckles.

“He’s alive,” she whispered, her voice thick with relief. Her eyes brimmed with tears, the tension snapping like a cord too tightly wound. She reached out, instinctively, to take him from Ozai.

But Ozai shifted, pulling the child back into his chest.

“Ssh,” he shushed her, barely above a whisper. “You’ll wake him.”

Ursa blinked, the exhaustion rolling over her like a wave. “We did it…” she said, almost in disbelief. Her voice was weak, and her limbs heavier. “He’s going to live…”

“Did you think I would let my son die?” Ozai’s voice reverberated through her fogged mind, low and firm. “Did you think I’d let that old man win?”

Her head drooped forward, the weight of her body finally giving in after days without rest. Ozai’s hand found the side of her head, guiding her gently to his shoulder. The scent of his cologne clung to his skin—spice and sandalwood—and beneath it, the scent of sweat and fire. It was familiar and comforting.

She let herself lean against him. Just for a moment, just like it used to be, before the children. Before palace politics and ambition placed a distance between them.

“I hate him…” Ursa mumbled with her eyes closed, her lips brushing the bare skin of his shoulder. “When he goes to sleep each night, I hope he never wakes.”

“Keep your voice down,” Ozai said, his tone sharp but not scolding. “The Fire Lord has ears everywhere.”

“I don’t care.”

“You’re exhausted. It’s making you reckless. I don’t think I need to remind you that wishing death upon the Fire Lord is treason.”

“When the Sages spoke of his possible death, he didn’t flinch. He was indifferent to your legacy,” she muttered. “How long must we suffer under him? How long…”

She didn’t wait for his reply. Her mind dimmed, and her thoughts scattered. Her body sank into the warmth beside her, and sleep claimed her.

When she awoke, the sky was dark again—but unnaturally so. The curtains had been drawn to mimic the night. She was in bed, dressed in her nightclothes. Her skin smelled faintly of rose oil and clean linens. Someone had bathed her. She turned her head slowly to the side.

There beside her was the long black hair of her husband spilling over the pillow. Ozai lay still, breathing evenly. A rare peace had settled over his features.

She wanted to curl into him, to rest her head on his chest and feel his arms around her. She wanted to pretend, just for a little while, that they were newlyweds again. That none of this had happened. But sleep tugged her back down, and she drifted again—deeper this time, into silence and relief.

Ursa’s hand did not tremble as she prepared the poison. It moved with quiet precision, with the practiced grace of someone long accustomed to the delicate craft of blending death. She reached for one of the potted plants on her windowsill and, with gloved fingers, plucked a single white blossom. The flower was an unassuming thing—pale, faintly fragrant, and almost innocent in its simplicity.

And yet, even in smaller doses, it was enough to still a man’s heart within the hour. Firebenders, however, were not like other men. Their bodies, tempered by heat, carried a stubborn resistance to many poisons. It would take more to fell one of them—a larger dose, or worse, time. Agonizing, uncertain time.

Ursa’s fear was not that the poison would fail. It was that it would linger. That Azulon, formidable even in his decay, might endure for hours. Perhaps days. Long enough for suspicion to form. Long enough for her to be caught—or worse, long enough that Ozai could not procrastinate on carrying out Azulon’s final order.

The Fire Lord was old, yes. But not weak. And he had a warrior’s resolve to die fighting.

She laid the petals into the stone basin of her mortar and began to crush them with the pestle, grinding in slow, deliberate circles until they collided together into a thick gray paste. Her movements were methodical, silent, reverent.

The room was still, save for the rasp of stone against stone and the faint, ghostly scent of the flower, sweet and sickly, like rotting fruit masked in perfume.

She paused only once to examine the paste lining the sides of the mortar. Any alchemist with a trained hand could create the toxin in under an hour. But few would take the same care.

She added the tincture in steady drops, mixing until the paste thickened like clay. Then she transferred it to a small iron pot and held it over the fire in her hearth. It broiled and bubbled, releasing no smoke, no scent. She stirred it slowly, patiently, until it thinned into a liquid, clear, silent, deadly.

The final result was odorless. Tasteless.

It was perfect.

Her mother, Rina, had been an herbalist by passion and a noblewoman by duty. As was expected of women of their rank, Rina had pursued her interest in teas and healing tinctures with the quiet dignity befitting her station. She taught her daughter the elegance of crushed blossoms, steeped roots, and powdered bark.

But what Rina passed down as medicine, Ursa had twisted into something else entirely.

Where her mother sought remedies, Ursa sought rot.

She became consumed by the study of human anatomy and alchemy. She was obsessed with what soured the blood, stilled the lungs, or shattered the mind. While other girls gossiped in their embroidery circles or practiced music and recited poetry, Ursa poured over moldy volumes, memorizing the names of the most beautiful killer plants, berries, and roots in the wild. Some of her favorites were hallucinogenic herbs that drove men mad with terror or silenced them mid-scream.

To her mother’s horror, she became something of an apothecary of death by the time she was fourteen. 

In time, her knowledge found purpose. She crafted small vials of poison for her brothers, Pax and Aki, to coat their blades before they marched to war. Even if their enemies survived the first blow, they would not last the night. The poison would finish what the steel had not. The end would be slow, agonizing, and worst of all, inevitable. 

She liked to believe that’s why her brothers survived so many battles. Especially Pax, her favorite of the two.

She had prayed for him every night. But all her prayers and all her poisons had meant nothing when the earth opened and crushed his chest with a single boulder. No toxin could save a man from an earthbender’s wrath.

When she came to Ozai, sobbing and half-hysterical, he’d promised they would find the one who did it. He was true to his word. Weeks later, they captured an earthbender soldier, no older than twenty, and tortured him until he confessed. She was there as they tortured him. Watched as fire devoured him slowly, methodically. When he was executed, it was a mercy.  

But even now, all these years later, she couldn’t be certain if he was the one who had truly killed her brother. And maybe that uncertainty was the worst part.

She had prepared four vials. One for Azulon. Three for herself and her children. She had thought to give one to Ozai, even as a courtesy, but regardless he would consider it an insult. Warriors didn’t die cowering in fear or take poison when cornered. They stood and fought until death claimed them. 

Because this wasn’t like the foreign dignitary. That man had died peacefully in his bed, or at least that’s what the story was. At worst, it had earned her a suspicious glance and a whispered rumor. But regicide? Killing the Fire Lord was treason of the highest order. If she failed, there would be no trial. No last words. No mercy.

And they would only stop at her and Ozai if they were feeling kind. The cry for blood would be severe and likely they would kill her children too, painfully and slowly. Perhaps the poison could spare them a slower, crueler fate. It would be like going to sleep. 

She corked each vial with care, her expression calm, her hands precise. 

There’s no other way. It has to be done. She told herself to calm her nerves. 

At least we’d die together, she thought, as she poured the last of the poison into a glass vial. All of us, as a family.

She took great care with her appearance. Every detail had to be perfect, but not beautiful. Tonight, she wasn’t just Ozai’s wife. She was a grieving mother, distressed, fragile, but most importantly harmless. The mask had to be flawless.

She rubbed raw onion beneath her eyes until they burned red and watered. An old theater trick, one she had mastered during her brief time with a traveling troupe. She could fake tears on command, she had learned to control her breathing, to summon weeping with a mere pinch of her eyes. The pain was real. But tonight, the tears needed to be calculated.

She dressed plainly, a long red gown devoid of gold embroidery or fine stitching. No jewelry. No unnecessary makeup. Just the faintest rim of black around her eyes, enough that the tears would streak when they fell. Everything about her said: I am weak. I am grieving. I am no threat.

Ozai met her outside her chamber door.

She sniffled, blinking up at him, the artificial tears glistening like dew in her lashes. “How do I look?”

Ozai wrinkled his nose. “You smell like onions.”

She turned away with a soft huff, retreating to her vanity. Lifting a bottle of perfume, she misted herself twice across the collarbone.

“Better?” she asked.

“Hmph,” he muttered. “Hopefully, he won’t notice.”

“It’ll be the least of his concerns,” Ursa said.

Together, they walked in silence until they reached the corridor outside Azulon’s chambers. A cool breeze drifted through the open hall, and Ursa pulled her dress tighter around her. Around the corner and in the distance, two guards stood at attention outside the Fire Lord’s doors.

She glanced up at Ozai. “Wait five minutes, then find a way to get rid of them.”

“Ten would be better,” he said flatly. “Five’s too obvious.”

She hesitated. Azulon was an impatient man, keeping his attention for ten minutes would be a challenge. But she knew Ozai was right, no matter how her pride bristled at admitting it.

“Fine,” she relented. Slipping two vials from her sleeve, she turned to him and took his hand. Her fingers trembled slightly as she pressed the small bottles into his palm. “If it goes wrong… give this to Azula or Zuko. Whoever you find first, and then find the other. If he suspects anything, I’ll likely be dead. And… take as many of them with you as you can.”

He stared at the vial and shook his head. “That won’t happen.”

She ignored him. “You know how spiteful he can be. He’ll hurt them just to get to us.”

Still, he refused to meet her eyes. “No. You’re wrong.”

“Maybe.” She tightened her grip, her thumb brushing against his in a rare show of tenderness. “But I don’t want them to suffer.”

“I said it won’t—”

“ Listen to me ,” she hissed. “For once in your life, listen. Please . They’re blameless in this. Make sure our children aren’t afraid… if that happens. I don’t want them to go to the afterlife in fear…”

He exhaled through his nose, sharp and slow. “Good luck.”

She wanted to kiss him, not out of longing, but for comfort. For familiarity. Maybe to delay the inevitable. 

She didn’t. Instead, she avoided his gaze, already mourning the possibility she might never see him again. They hadn’t shared a bed in nearly three years. At one time, she could have listed every reason why. Now, all those reasons felt small and petty. 

“Good luck to you,” she whispered, giving his hand one last squeeze before she stepped away.

Her breath hitched as she walked. Her heart thudded against her ribs, and she pinched the corners of her eyes again, urging the tears to spill. The burn from the onion stung all over again.

As she neared the guards posted outside Azulon’s door, she lowered her gaze and began to sniffle, quietly, pitifully, like a woman on the verge of collapse.

“May I speak to the Fire Lord?” she asked, her voice trembling.

The guard to her left glanced at the one on the right. A silent exchange passed between them beneath the shadows of their helmets.

It was the left guard who spoke first. “He doesn’t wish to be disturbed,” he said, voice muffled but firm.

“I only need a few minutes of his time,” she whispered, clasping her hands, holding them to her chest. Letting the tears fall freely now, she took a staggering step forward. 

“Princess,” the right guard spoke next. “The Fire Lord was quite firm in his wish. Perhaps if you come back in the morning—”

Ursa interrupted him, placing her hands on top of the hand that was wrapped around his spear. 

“It cannot wait until morning!” She exclaimed as more tears fell. “I don’t ask for much, only for a few moments. Please. If you have children of your own… please . Just a few minutes.”

They exchanged another silent look towards each other, another pause. Then the right guard knocked on the door.

“I told you I don’t wish to be disturbed!” came the gruff roar from within.

“Apologies, my Lord,” the right guard said, keeping his head bowed although the Fire Lord was nowhere in sight. “Princess Ursa wishes to speak with you.”

A long silence followed. Ursa’s heart pounded in her throat.

She braced herself for rejection, for shouting, or dismissal. But instead, she heard a low mumble. It was too soft to decipher. The guard leaned in closer to the door, listening carefully.

Then, wordlessly, he opened it.

Both guards bowed low to her as she stepped forward.

She crossed the threshold, the heavy door creaking shut behind her with a hollow finality.

The chambers of the Fire Lord were grander than she remembered—lavish in every sense. Rich crimson tapestries adorned the walls, each one bearing the proud symbols and victories of the Fire Nation’s royal lineage. Ornate tables sat beneath them, weighed down with untouched platters of food now long gone cold, congealed oils glistening in the candlelight.

But the grandeur was marred by the air itself.

A sickly scent clung to everything. Urine, sweat, the sour staleness of old age. The incense burning at the altar tried to mask it, the soft fragrance of jasmine curling into the air from polished bronze holders, but it only made the scent worse, like perfume over rot.

And then she saw it. On the far wall, across from the immense four-poster bed, hung a hand-stitched tapestry she hadn’t noticed before.

It was a portrait of Fire Lady Ilah. The late matriarch of the royal family, mother to both Ozai and Iroh.

She had been stunning in her time, even rendered in thread and fabric. Her skin was a warm, dusky brown, her light amber eyes wide and serene. Jet-black hair spilled down to her hips like a river of ink. She wore a silk gown that draped off her shoulders like water, turning back over one shoulder with a graceful pout on her lips. Her ears, wrists, and stubby fingers gleamed with gold.

The artist had captured her in motion, almost alive.

All the portraits Ursa had ever seen of Fire Lady Ilah were different, taller, paler, more slender, the way Fire Nation beauty demanded. But here, hidden away in Azulon’s private chamber, was the real Ilah. Her face and arms were rounder, her skin tone deeper and her body full and soft. She didn’t look like a figurehead of imperial blood, she looked like a woman from the colonies.

Ursa stared at her, a strange mixture of awe and unease building in her chest.

She didn’t remember the tapestry being there the last time she was in this room. But then again, she’d been drunk, very drunk. That night had been a blur of laughter and wine, of Ozai’s fingers on her wrist as they’d stumbled, whispering, into Azulon’s chambers.

Ozai had thrown her onto Azulon’s bed with a force that made her gasp and giggle. Their clothes came off in a clumsy rush, hands too eager, too drunk to be careful. It had been reckless and yet thrilling. The fear of being caught only made the sex better. Her memory of that night was fractured. But she remembered waking at one point, her dress torn at the hem, hair falling into her face, Ozai’s hands digging into her waist as she moved above him, her nails dragging down his chest.

She discovered she was pregnant a few weeks later. They always believed Azula was conceived that night.

Her name, chosen in tribute to his father, was also their private joke.

Little Azula conceived in Azulon’s bed.

Ursa glanced up at Ilah’s portrait.

Hello, by the way , she thought, locking eyes with the woven gaze above her. If I’d known you were staring down my backside that night, I’d have introduced myself properly.

She gave a dry, inward laugh. Ozai must’ve forgotten you were watching. Sorry for that. Probably not the sight you wanted to see.

A wet, rasping cough broke the silence.

It came from the shadowed side of the chamber, followed by the sound of shuffling steps. Her heart climbed into her throat as she turned slowly.

Azulon.

The Fire Lord emerged from the gloom, hunched, skeletal, one trembling hand gripping the edge of a carved table for support. Gone was the towering figure who once ruled from his throne like a god. Without the flames dancing at his feet, he looked… small and feeble. Mortal.

And most jarring of all, his eyes were filled with immense sadness.

His dim gaze drifted upward toward the tapestry of Ilah. For a moment, his face softened. A sigh escaped him, quiet, weary, and almost tender. A sound far too human for the man who had ruled the world with fire and fear.

Ursa was so stunned, she nearly forgot herself. But instinct returned quickly.

She dropped to her knees in a single graceful motion, bowing low until her forehead brushed the cool marble floor. Her dark hair spilled forward like a silken veil, hiding her expression. Behind it, her face was the perfect mask of sorrow and respect.

“Fire Lord Azulon,” she murmured, her voice velvet-smooth. “Thank you for seeing me.”

Silence followed long, and weighty. The only sound was the wheeze of his breath, rattling like loose stones in a kettle.

Then, with two pale, trembling fingers, he lifted his hand. The gesture was barely more than a flick, but it carried the gravity of a man who expected obedience under any circumstances.

“Rise,” he rasped.

She obeyed at once, standing with fluid grace. Her gaze remained low, deferential, her posture demure, the image of grief. 

Azulon didn’t speak again. Instead, leaning heavily on the tables like stepping stones, he shuffled closer to the tapestry toward his beloved Ilah.

“She was a beautiful woman…” he said, his voice softer than she had ever heard it. “The most beautiful woman in the Fire Nation. All the artisans in the empire could never capture her elegance. Her charm, her poise, her humor.”

Ursa stood still beside him, uncertain if he was speaking to her or simply speaking aloud to the ghosts in his chamber. 

They had never shared a private conversation longer than a few clipped sentences. Not unless it was a command or a criticism. So she listened in silence and waited to be addressed.

Azulon continued, his gaze fixed on the woven image of his wife. “She had the most enchanting voice. She sang like a siren. Always lost in a tune. I’d hear her humming through the halls, singing to Iroh and our other children.”

Ursa blinked. Children ? I nearly forgot. 

Ozai never spoke of Ilah’s lost children, not that he would be alive to remember them. Iroh only mentioned them in passing when he was in a sentimental mood, but he never gave specifics. Ursa imagined he was too young to remember some of them.

“There will never be another woman like her,” he whispered. “And I wonder… how could someone so radiant suffer so much? Why is Agni so cruel to his most gentle flowers?”

He turned from the tapestry and slowly approached the altar, where a small portrait rested. A much younger Azulon, already gray at the temples, stood beside a luminous Ilah. She was barely more than a girl, no older than twenty by her estimations. He must have been near forty. Their expressions were formal, composed, but there was something tender in the way their eyes sparkled. An unspoken bond, etched in oil and time.

“She gave me many children,” Azulon said. “Only two lived to see adulthood. Seven were born.”

Ursa’s breath caught.

He paused beside the altar, lowering his head.

“Two were stillborn. One died in the cradle—a boy. And our daughter…” He hesitated. His voice grew hoarse. “She wanted a little girl more than anything. Agni blessed us with three years with her. Happy little one. Big smile and bigger lungs. Fever took her.”

Ursa felt a chill ripple down her spine. “Ozai and Iroh had a sister?” she asked softly. “They never spoke—”

But he didn’t hear her, or he didn’t care to answer.

“If only I had listened to her,” he said. “At the pyre, she begged me— begged —not to put her through that again. That pain.”

He turned away, and his body convulsed with a series of wet, rattling coughs. He covered his mouth with a trembling hand, hunched over, wheezing. Ursa didn’t know if she should offer comfort or stay where she was.

This man— this monster —in gray skin was not someone who would tolerate pity.

Still, she reached into her sleeve and withdrew a neatly folded handkerchief. It was a habit from the years of wiping the children’s crusty noses and frustrated tears. Without a word, she bowed low and offered it to him. 

To her surprise, he took it.

He pressed it to his mouth, and when he pulled it away, she glimpsed faint red blooms staining the white fabric. Blood .

He crumpled it in his fist and leaned heavily on the altar for support. The objects atop it clinked under his weight. Her skin crawled watching him. The smell, the sound of his breath, the way his spine bent beneath the weight of sickness and time, it repulsed her. She wanted to flee. To rip off the mask of softness and bathe until this moment melted off her skin.

But she didn’t move, instead she held firm. 

“That pain of losing a child… that’s why I came here to speak with you, my Lord,” Ursa said, her head still bowed. She watched him through her lashes. “I think this family has suffered enough. With all the children we’ve lost, all the generations swallowed by fever and war, there’s nothing left to gain by shedding more blood.”

But Azulon didn’t respond. He walked past her, the scent of stale urine and sickness intensifying as he moved. He placed his hands on either side of the altar, hunched toward Ilah’s portrait.

“He took you from me,” he mumbled, his voice low and brittle. “Took you. Killed you. Murdered you.”

Ursa froze.

Is he speaking of Ozai? she thought, eyes narrowing slightly.

Ozai had rarely spoken of his mother. He’d never had the chance to know her.

It was Iroh who mentioned Ilah on occasion, but even he did so with a silence clinging to the edges of his words, a reverence that felt more like a wound than a memory.

From what Iroh once shared, Ilah had died in childbirth. Her blood had soaked the sheets of the birthing bed. The nurses and midwives had done everything they could to stop the bleeding, but it hadn’t been enough.

Iroh had been just old enough to remember the aftermath, the way the palace fell into an unnatural hush, broken only by the thin, uncertain wail of a newborn child.

Azulon remained silent, his fingers curled around the edge of the altar. Then, slowly, he turned his head. His eyes, though dim, locked onto her and darkened.

Don’t worry, old man , Ursa thought. You’ll be joining her soon.

“What do you want, Ursa?” he asked.

She almost forgot to act. Her face went still, and she nearly spoke without artifice. Then, quickly, she forced a sniffle and softened her tone.

“Zuko,” she said. “I know you ordered Ozai to kill Zuko.”

“Zuko?” he echoed, brows drawing together. He glanced around the chamber, as if expecting the answer to reveal itself from the shadows.

“Your grandson,” Ursa said, disbelief creeping into her voice. “Zuko. My son.”

She watched him intently. Was this confusion real? Or another performance? She had seen too many masks to trust any man in power. But this one… this one unsettled her.

“Zuko…” he said again, slower. Then his gaze sharpened with recognition. 

“His father wanted Iroh’s birthright,” he muttered. “That little worm of a son….he  always wanted more than he’d earned. Greedy. Spoiled. He’d burn down the empire just to feel the warmth. I told him, if he wanted my throne so badly, he could prove himself. He could sacrifice, as Iroh did. A son for a son.”

Ursa exhaled shakily, her eyes stinging. But this time, the tears weren’t part of the performance.

“Yes,” she whispered. “But Zuko is innocent. He’s a child.”

She took a breath. Her voice trembled, but her words didn’t.

“Think of Ilah. She would’ve wept for Lu Ten. But she would never have wanted Zuko to die. She would never—”

“You dare speak her name in my presence?” Azulon roared, his voice cracking like dry wood. “You dare speak for her?”

Ursa flinched, but held her ground. She wouldn’t cower.

“I don’t presume to speak for her,” she said, her voice tight. “But I am a mother. Just as she was. And your blood runs through Zuko’s veins. He admires you. He looks up to you.”

She paused, swallowing hard.

“And you would have him dead.”

Azulon didn’t respond. He only stared at her for a long, breathless moment.

Then, wordlessly, he turned from the altar and limped toward a low table. A battered teapot rested atop it. He grunted as he lowered himself into the seat, then placed a hand on the pot. A thin hiss of steam whispered from the spout.

With a tired motion, he gestured for her to sit, and she obeyed. 

Her robes swept silently beneath her as she lowered herself across from him. Her hands remained hidden in her sleeves, fingers brushing against the smooth glass of the vials tucked inside.

Not yet , she told herself. Wait . Be patient.

“I see you, Ursa,” Azulon said, setting his teacup down with trembling hands. “You can stop this performance of yours, it won’t work on me. I’ve lived too long and seen many acts from better men than you. I saw you for what you truly were the moment you stepped into this palace. If you hadn’t been Avatar Roku’s grandchild, I’d have banished you to the Water Tribes and let the savages teach you obedience. You and that scheming mother of yours.”

Ursa’s fingers twitched in her sleeve. Still, she said nothing.

“Iroh liked you, did you know that? No, of course you didn’t. The elder brother wasn’t good enough, you had your eyes set on the younger. And like a whore, you pranced and teased and played your games until you got the one you wanted. You used him.”

Her spine stiffened. “It paid off in the end,” she said evenly. “I gave you two heirs. I played the game. Do you begrudge me for winning?”

Azulon coughed again, a deep wet sound that rattled from his chest. “No,” he admitted. “In fact, I respect it. Ozai is many things, but his greatest weakness is his appetite. Power and women primarily, as you know. I’m surprised you held his attention longer than a fortnight. There must be… something about you. A charm, I suppose.”

He gestured loosely at her gown, his gaze raking her figure. She had never felt more naked.

“Not every man is as simple as Ozai,” she replied coldly. “Not every man is disarmed by a few tears and whatever it is you think I’m wearing.”

“My dear,” he said, “your tears are about as genuine as your affection for me.”

Ursa leaned in, her eyes hard despite the shimmer of tears. “You’re my husband’s father and my Fire Lord. I respect you.”

“I said nothing of respect,” he said. “I said affection.”

Another cough. He covered his mouth, then waved it off with irritation. “Still, you’ve been a dutiful wife. A capable mother. I won’t take that from you.”

“How generous,” she said, her voice like the edge of a knife.

“But I love my children,” she continued, letting the raw truth in her voice bleed through. “I would do anything for them. Anything . And I’m asking you, begging you, to spare my son.”

Azulon tilted his head, studying her. “And what am I to do, then? Your husband has to suffer. His actions led to this. That is the price. Save your tears for him.”

“Then kill him,” Ursa said, the words burning as they left her throat. “Or kill me. But Zuko is blameless.”

His eyebrows lifted. “No loyalty for your husband? You’d sacrifice him for your son?”

I would burn the entire world for my son, she thought. For both of my children. I’d salt the earth with their enemies’ bones and dance in the ash. If it kept them safe—especially Zuko.

Her back straightened. “If that’s what it took to save him, yes.”

He raised an eyebrow, a slow arch of amusement. “You’re a cold-blooded woman.”

“No,” she said. “Only a mother.”

Azulon clasped his hands, fingers like brittle vines entwining. Silence settled between them, thick, smothering, and watchful.

“He was right about you,” Azulon murmured. “Your husband. When you first captivated him, he said you had something more than just your looks. He said you were useful. More than a broodmare. Iroh agreed, too.”

Ursa gave a low, humorless hum. She reached into her sleeve and curled her fingers around the vial, keeping it hidden in her palm. “And here I thought it was my wit that charmed him.”

“ Wit ,” he scoffed, a phlegmy chuckle scraping out of him. “If by wit, you mean your blood— your heritage —then yes. It was your wit . And your beauty. And your loose… morals . You were an experiment, Ursa. We wanted to see what Avatar Roku’s line would produce when bred with ours.”

Her jaw tightened. “I see.”

“He didn’t tell you?” Azulon said, his lips curling into something like a sneer. “We had our spies track every eligible girl for months. I wanted you for Iroh, originally. But Ozai took to you first. Impulsive as ever. Still, I expected more than two children from you. A shame.”

Ursa pressed her lips together.

It had never been spoken aloud, not by Ozai, not by Azulon, but she’d always known. She was Roku’s legacy in flesh, and they were curious to see what her blood might yield. A weapon. A prodigy. An heir worthy of fire and history.

After Zuko, Ozai had made his desires clear, he wanted more children—more than she was willing to give him. Sometimes the number was three, other times it was six. He spoke of it like conquest, as if legacy could be secured through multiplication. It was her duty, after all. If he couldn’t outshine Iroh by winning their father’s favor, then he would outnumber him, and Lu Ten, with heirs of his own.

Ursa had once considered giving him three, depending on how it would affect her figure. But Azula had drained what resolve she had left.

That pregnancy had been a brutal test of will. Nine relentless months of nausea, spells of fainting, her limbs swollen and heavy beneath a suffocating haze of summer humidity. Ozai had called it a good omen for a child born in the heart of summer. But Ursa had only felt cursed.

She spent those months wilting beneath shaded awnings, her skin slick with sweat as her maids fanned her and dabbed her brow with cool cloths. Relief only came with sleep, where she dreamed of winter, snow, and silence.

Labor with Azula dragged on for nearly four days. Two of those days were spent in endless, blinding agony. Her screams and curses echoed through the palace halls, but the stubborn little thing refused to come. The memory blurred at the edges, save for one vivid image, her shouting at the midwife to get it out of her or kill her and be done with it . She remembered her screams turned to whimpered begging as she pleaded with the infant to leave her and enter the world. The pain had been so prolonged, so violent, that the midwife feared she would have to be cut open.

Fortunately, or perhaps not, it never came to that.

Zuko had come easily. Too easily . Aside from a haze of early fatigue and a dull ache in her back that worsened toward the end, the pregnancy had been without complication. Ozai had grumbled that their child would be born in the dead of winter, but the complaint melted the moment he held his firstborn in his arms.

The labor was swift, though not without pain. Little Zuko entered the world impatiently, as if eager to breathe before her body had even finished the work. She had labored no more than half a day. He was born small, but healthy, strong, and alert.

And in her foolish pride, she had believed it would be the same again.

Agni humbled her.

When Azula was just past her first birthday, Ursa found herself pregnant again. Another child, set to arrive in another punishing summer. She couldn’t face it. Not so soon.

A cup of tea with a tincture of tansy and pennyroyal settled the matter.

She told Ozai she had miscarried. He was disappointed, but she was relieved.

The lie became a shield. A convenient grief she wore like a veil as a defense against his expectations. When Azula turned three, she deferred again. And then again. Until, eventually, Ozai stopped coming to her bed altogether.

Another burden, quietly lifted.

Perhaps, once Azulon was dead, and Ozai was on the throne, she would consider enduring one more labor, maybe two, but only if it served her .

If I got pregnant now , she thought, the baby would be born in spring. A fair compromise.

Ursa raised her chin and arched a brow, her lips pinched tight. “A shame, perhaps. But you have three—two healthy living grandchildren. Two firebending grandchildren, at that.”

Azulon scoffed. “One… is adequate. The other, a failure.”

Ursa didn’t blink. “He’s still your grandson.”

Azulon shrugged. “I can’t prove he isn’t.”

“He’s the spitting image of his father and grandfather as a child. I’ve seen the portraits. There is no doubt of his paternity.” Quietly, her thumb worked the cork loose from the vial.

“As I said,” Azulon repeated, lifting a trembling hand toward the kettle, “I cannot prove he’s not mine.”

Then the cough seized him, violent and wet. He hunched forward, hacking into his hand. The kettle wobbled precariously on the table.

Ursa lunged forward, steadying it with one hand, her other still clenched tightly around the vial.

Now. Her mind hissed. Now. Now. Now.

“Allow me,” she said, watching him carefully as she poured. His eyes were shut tight, his face contorted with pain as another fit of coughing wracked his frail body, violent, and hacking. His shoulders hunched over the table, trembling under the strain, and for a moment, it seemed he might not catch his breath at all.

He didn’t see the slight movement of her wrist, the way her fingers slipped beneath the wide sleeve of her robe.

His chest rattled like dry leaves in the wind as he gasped for air, one hand gripping the table for balance, the other pressed to his side.

Quietly, Ursa drew the vial from her sleeve. The glass felt cool in her hand, the liquid within darker than the tea. As he wheezed and coughed, eyes shut and attention consumed by the agony racking his lungs, she tilted the vial and let its contents spill silently into his cup. The tea darkened for only a moment before swirling back into its usual pale green hue. She turned the vial upside down, emptying every last drop.

By the time his coughing began to ease, she had already slipped the empty glass back into her sleeve. Her movements were measured, smooth, and practiced.

Azulon opened his eyes slowly, his breathing shallow and labored. He didn’t look at the tea.

She sat down with deliberate calm and poured herself a cup, the gentle clink of porcelain the only sound that filled the tense space between them.

“My Lord, have a little tea,” Ursa began, keeping her voice even as she studied him. “It will help ease your fits. In fact, I know a couple of teas that are a good remedy for a host of illnesses.” 

He gave a rasping sound that might have been a laugh. “There’s no remedy for what I have.”

His skeletal fingers lifted the cup. He blew on it once, and Ursa felt her breath catch. One sip. That was all it would take. Just one sip, and his reign would end. But he did not drink.

The porcelain hovered near his mouth, then slowly lowered to the table. He was staring at her.

Ursa cursed silently. Her expression remained serene as she raised her own cup and sipped, the heat scalding her tongue. Perhaps she should have poisoned the entire kettle. If they both had to die for Zuko to live, so be it.

Azulon’s gaze softened as he watched her drink. He lifted his cup again, and this time, he took a sip. Ursa allowed her shoulders to relax.

“Good tea,” she said, forcing a smile and another swallow of the burning liquid. “Calming.”

“It came from Iroh’s collection,” Azulon murmured.

“He always had good taste in teas,” she replied, her tone gentle, nearly wistful. “My mother’s an herbalist. She has a remedy for everything. Would you like me to write to her? I’m sure she’d come, if you asked. She’d make the journey herself, just to tend to you. It would be an honor beyond words.”

He drank again. Ursa kept her face still, though her pulse thrummed in her ears.

“I’m quite familiar with what your mother does,” he said, voice dry as ash. “But as I’ve told you before, no herb can cure what I have.”

He stared into his cup, the rising steam wrapping around his sunken face.

“Now… what were we talking about again?”

Ursa didn’t answer at first. She rotated her cup slowly between her fingers, gathering strength.

“Zuko,” she said at last. Her voice was quiet, but carried steel beneath the silk. “I’m asking you to spare him. We’ve been speaking in circles. He’s still your grandson.”

Azulon sipped, then spoke without emotion. “Yes. I gave Ozai the order. If he obeys, he may be rewarded. His reward is that he gets to live another day. If he refuses… well.” He cleared his throat, the sound scraping in his throat like a rusted hinge. “That would be treason. The boy, Zuko, has heart, determination, but no talent. Not enough to be heir to this family.” He took another long sip. “Don’t despair, Princess , you’re still young. You can always conceive again.”

Her fingers clenched around the cup. She felt the fragile porcelain strain beneath the pressure.

“Did you tell Ilah the same?”

The words escaped before she could stop them, the swords spilling like smoke from a fire too long smothered. Soft, but impossible to recall.

Azulon paused. He placed the cup down with slow, deliberate care. One brow, barely visible beneath thinning white hair, lifted.

“What did you say?” His voice was low and dangerous. 

There was no going back now. The old man’s time was nearly up.

From beyond the chamber walls came the faint echo of armored boots. The guards. Still, Azulon didn’t turn. His eyes remained fixed on her, sharp and cold.

“You heard me,” Ursa said. Her voice did not tremble. “Is that what you told Ilah, as she buried one child after another? Y ou can always conceive again ? You destroyed her. Forced her to relive that horror, over and over, for your precious bloodline.”

She should have been terrified. Instead, she felt only a strange, icy calm.

Ursa continued. “I’ve heard the stories, how she wandered these halls, weeping, calling out for children who would never answer. I heard it from Iroh himself, how she locked herself in a room with her dead baby for days, just to keep you from sending him to the funeral pyre. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She rose to her feet, her voice climbing with her, sharp, unwavering, resolute, as she looked down on him. This rage was not sudden; it was the slow burn of years, pressure building in the hollow of her chest until it could no longer be contained. For too long, she had swallowed her words, biting her tongue for the sake of keeping appearances. But now, standing before the man who had ruled them all through fear and blood, she allowed herself the truth: she hated him. 

She hated all of them, the men who played their games with her life, who called it legacy, who cloaked cruelty in honor.

For years she had listened to whispers, stories exchanged in the shadows between washerwomen, cooks, housekeepers, women who had seen too much and been told to keep quiet. She had gathered those fragments like bones in the dark.

And now, as death crept closer to him with every breath, she wanted him to know exactly what she knew, and just how much she despised him for it. 

Ursa continued. “Tell me how you drove Lu Ten’s mother to madness, until she feared her meals had eyes watching her. What did you do with her then? Did you send her away because her grief exasperated you? Did it interfere with your legacy? You and your line have ruined more women than you will ever admit. And now you’re trying to ruin me .” 

She took a step closer, the hem of her robe whispering against the floor.

“But I am not one of them . You will not cast me aside, Azulon . And you will not take my son from me. He is mine , and I will be rotting in the ground, with maggots eating my flesh, before I let you or your son hurt him .”

“Get out!” Azulon bellowed, slamming his cup down with such force that it shattered against the table. “How dare you speak to me that way!”

He lurched to his feet, his back hunched with age, his teeth bared like an old wolf preparing for one last kill.

A smirk curled at the corner of her mouth. Let his heart race. The poison would work faster that way. She had no intention of seducing him, so fury would suffice.

“And if I don’t?” she shouted back. “What will you do, strike me down? Go ahead!”

She advanced another step, eyes blazing.

“You know I speak the truth! You’re a foul, weak old man who deserves to die! How dare you try to take him from me! I will not have you take what’s mine !”

Her voice cracked like fire. “You killed your wife, and you’ll never admit it!”

A ribbon of blistering heat sliced past Ursa’s cheek, searing, bright, close enough to singe the ends of her hair. The flames caught the hem of her robe, licking greedily up her back. Porcelain shattered at her feet as she hit the table, sending the kettle and teapot to the ground. She slapped at the blaze, her palms stinging while the heat seeped through silk and skin.

Panic clawed at her throat for a moment, the fire danced wild and feral, smoke scratching her eyes. But she forced her hands to move with ruthless precision, beating the flames into sullen embers.

From the corner of her vision she saw Azulon. His arm drew back to loose another torrent and then froze. The clenched fist hovered, quivering, before falling uselessly to his side.

Ursa straightened, heart hammering against her ribs.

His gaze skittered, unfocused, rage flaring and dimming like dying coals. Jaw locked tight, tendons standing out beneath papery skin, he lurched forward, dragging one foot as though chained to iron. The other arm lifted by sheer will, trembled, and dropped, stone‑heavy and inert.

A slow smile curved across Ursa’s scorched lips.

“Yes!” she exclaimed.

The scorched skin along Ursa’s back throbbed with searing pain, but she barely felt it. The poison was working, she could see it in his eyes, in the staggering steps, the trembling of wasted limbs. A ragged laugh tore from her chest, raw and unbidden. Perhaps she had gone mad at that moment. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, or the sheer, surreal sight of the once-mighty Fire Lord brought low.

She didn’t care.

She wanted to see him die.

Even as her flesh bubbled, the image of Azulon stumbling toward her, hollow-eyed and powerless, was enough to make her laugh again.

“Yes… yes… yes,” she whispered, louder with each breath, her eyes alight with something savage and triumphant.

He lurched forward, his breath rasping, one arm flailing for balance, the other reaching. She meant to move, tried to. But before her body could respond, his hand found her.

His fingers groped wildly until they seized her throat.

Ursa froze.

Chapter Text

His grip clamped around Ursa’s pale throat, iron-hard and unrelenting.

Ancient though he was, the strength in those gnarled fingers remained, unnatural and furious. He squeezed, not hard enough to crush her windpipe, but enough to steal the breath from her lungs the harder she fought. Her hands flew up on instinct, desperate to claw through the paper-thin skin, to tear him off her.

But she stopped herself.

It has to look like a natural death, she reminded herself. You can’t fight back. 

He was dying—but not fast enough.

For one terrible moment, doubt stabbed through her. Had she miscalculated the dose? Had the poison been too mild, too diluted? Or worse—had he somehow resisted it through sheer force of will? There were rumors, half-whispered court tales, of Fire Lords and their kin microdosing toxins throughout the early years of the war, training their bodies against assassination attempts, but that practice had waned since then. 

No , she thought, even as she shoved weakly against him. I didn’t miscalculate. He should be dying now.

Azulon’s face twisted with savage effort, veins bulging, jaw clenched as though he could will the poison from his blood. His grip faltered—minutely, then more.

She pulled herself backward, trying to escape the failing vise of his grasp. Her chest heaved. Her vision blurred.

“Die already!” she rasped through a gasping, hysterical laugh, her voice shredded to ribbons. “Just die!”

Azulon’s mouth twisted as if forming words, but only a guttural growl escaped him, low and animalistic. Still, she laughed, high, hoarse, and unhinged. Madness curled at the edges of her mind, even as black spots bloomed before her eyes.

Then his full weight collapsed.

They hit the floor hard. Pain surged up her spine as the impact jarred every bone in her body. The stink of urine and rot enveloped her, choking her as surely as his grip had. He slumped atop her like a felled statue. Dead weight, spasming in the poison’s grip. Blood-flecked saliva dribbled from his lips. His body was betraying him, but his hatred endured. He would not die gently.

Ursa struggled beneath him, her legs pinned. She screamed until her throat ached raw as desperation surged. She wriggled one arm free and struck upward, shoving with every ounce of strength, even as one of her nails slashed instinctively for his eyes.

He flinched with a grunt, head recoiling and then snapped forward. His teeth sank into her hand.

She screamed.

The pain was searing, sharp as lightning, as his jaw clamped down with terrifying force. She twisted, yanking back with everything she had, but he held fast. His mouth was a trap.

With her free hand, she grabbed a fistful of his thin white hair and yanked.

He let out a strangled, feral sound, but still, he didn’t let go.

Then— finally —she felt it. The pressure completely slackened. His jaw began to loosen, slowly, gradually. His grip weakening.

His body began to give way.

His breathing turned ragged, wet, and loud like a dying kettle shrieking over a flame. The poison had reached his lungs and heart. His time was running out.

Ursa tore her hand free, blood smearing her palm and wrist. She lay beneath him, chest heaving as she gathered her breath, her injured hand cradled against her. Every muscle trembled. Her ears rang, and the silence that followed was thick and claustrophobic.

Then the door burst open and slammed shut. 

Her attention snapped to the sound, panic flaring.

Please—not the guards, she thought, pulse roaring in her ears.

Footsteps thundered toward her that were fast and deliberate.

I’m going to die, she thought, stomach twisting in horror. Not now. Not like this. I have to make sure he’s dead. I need to know Zuko is safe—

And then she smelled it. The scent of sandalwood and spice. It felt familiar, warm, and dangerous. 

She knew that scent, and it struck her like a wave.

Azulon’s body was wrenched off her. Dragged backward with brute force. As her vision swam into focus, she saw Ozai behind him, one arm locked tightly around the old man’s neck, the other twisting Azulon’s wrist behind his back.

Azulon had been strong enough to overpower her, but not him.

Not the younger, stronger man.

Ursa staggered to her feet, breath ragged, her body trembling from strain and fury. Azulon’s eyes bulged in disbelief. His free arm hung slack at his sides, fingers twitching. His heels scraped against the polished floor like a beetle flipped on its back.

Ozai held him fast. Muscles bunched beneath his sleeves, veins pronounced as he locked the old man’s body in place.

“Don’t bruise him!” Ursa barked, her voice hoarse with urgency. She turned, bolting toward the massive bed. Her hand seized one of the plush pillows—thick, heavy, embroidered with the crest of the royal flame. “It has to look like a natural death!”

She whirled back—and froze.

For a heartbeat, she simply stared.

Azulon’s face, once so imperious, was twisted with terror. The man who had ruled the world with fire now  looked lost, shrunken, and even… mortal.

And for a flicker of time, Ursa saw not the Fire Lord—but a frightened, helpless old man.

A memory surfaced.

Azula, no older than three, had once wandered deep into the palace’s forgotten corridors. For nearly an hour, Ursa and Ozai had searched, calling her name with growing dread. When they found her, the child was crouched in the dark—shivering, eyes wide and wet with tears.

She had run into Ursa’s arms sobbing, but when she saw her father, she clung to him with a ferocity that stunned them both. Wrapped her tiny arms around his neck as if she could fuse herself to him.

He hadn’t let her out of his sight for days afterward.

That same primal fear lived now in Azulon’s eyes. Maybe fear of her or perhaps what waited on the other side.

“Hold him down!” Ursa exclaimed, snapping back into the moment.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Ozai growled through clenched teeth.

Azulon’s legs flailed one last time—a final, feeble attempt at escape.

“Stop fighting, old man,” Ozai snarled and with a savage jerk, slammed him down until his body lay flat against the cold floor.

In a single motion, Ursa dropped to her knees. Planting them into the marble, she leaned forward and pressed the pillow down over Azulon’s face—firm and unrelenting. Pouring all her weight and strength into the act.

The old man writhed beneath her, weak, instinctive spasms—nothing more than the body’s last dregs of resistance.

And then… nothing.

Still, Ursa held the pillow.

The room was silent, save for the sound of their breathing. Harsh, ragged, echoing off the stone walls. Seconds dragged like hours, time thick and cruel.

Finally, she lifted it.

Azulon’s mouth hung open in a frozen gasp, dark and slack. His golden eyes, once sharp and cruel, stared upward, clouded and glassy, robbed of purpose.

“Is he dead?” Ozai asked. His voice was low, oddly detached, as though the moment had already passed him by.

“If not,” Ursa murmured, voice trembling like a leaf caught in a draft, “the poison will stop his heart soon.”

She exhaled sharply, her wounded hand quivering against the pillow.

“I antagonized him too soon…” she whispered. “I should’ve waited. Let it take hold first. I should’ve… I should’ve…”

“It’s done,” Ozai said flatly, his tone snapping shut over her like a lid.

Her hands were still shaking. Whether from adrenaline or shock, she couldn’t say. Pain screamed through her—the searing burn down her back, the swelling in her throat, the pulsing throb in her bitten hand. And yet she felt strangely removed from it all. Distant. As though she’d stepped outside her own skin and now stood apart, watching it unfold from above.

She looked down at her injured hand.

The old man had bitten straight through her palm. The wound was bleeding freely, red and raw. She couldn’t tell if the dark smears on her skin were from his blood or hers. The pillow, too, was stained—brown and tacky with gore, whether from Azulon’s face or her hand or both.

She picked it up, walked to the fireplace, and tossed it into the flame. The fabric caught instantly, crackling and curling, then blackening to ash. Her gaze drifted back to Ozai.

He had shed his ceremonial robes, torn them off or discarded them— Ursa wasn’t sure. She couldn’t remember seeing him wear them when he entered. Maybe he lost them during a scuffle with the guards, or something worse. His sweat-soaked undershirt clung to his chest in ragged strips. A fresh gash carved across the skin just above his collarbone, and blood trailed down in slow, deliberate lines.

“You’re wounded,” she whispered, staring at the injury.

He rubbed the side of his neck, smearing the blood with careless fingers. “It’s nothing. A scratch.”

Ursa turned back toward the fire. The flames hissed as they devoured the pillow—slow, steady, and unbothered. The room had gone so quiet, the sound seemed to echo.

Then— thud.

She flinched and looked over her shoulder.

Ozai was already moving. He bent low and seized Azulon’s corpse by the collar, handling him like a bundle of soiled linens. His muscles strained with the effort, but his face remained expressionless, and detached.

“What are you doing?” Ursa asked, eyes following the dead man’s feet as they dragged limply behind Ozai’s grip. She had forgotten how strong her husband was.

He didn’t answer. Instead, he kept dragging the body across the floor with grim precision, then heaved it onto the bed. He arranged the limbs carefully, methodically, like a soldier completing his orders by rote.

“Ozai?”

“What?” he muttered flatly. His voice was fraying with fatigue and annoyance. Long strands of black hair hung damp and disheveled over his face.

“What are you doing?” she asked again, more quietly this time. She blinked as the heat of the fire curled against her cheek. It used to comfort her. Now all she could smell was scorched flesh—her own.

“Are you blind?” Ozai muttered.

“No.”

“It needs to look like he died in his sleep, doesn’t it?”

“Yes…”

“Then why wouldn’t we put him in bed?”

Ursa stepped away from the fire, her gaze falling to her hand. The bite throbbed, inflamed and red, the skin already swollen. She would need stitches. The wound would have to be cleaned thoroughly. If there had been poison on his tongue…

She didn’t finish the thought. Better to apply ointment anyway. Just to prepare for the worst. She shivered at the mental image of her hand rotting off her wrist. 

Oh, how Azulon would laugh. His last revenge.  

She walked to the bed. It felt like moving through a dream. Azulon’s body lay still, mouth slack, eyes wide with shock. Indignity frozen on his face, and her pulse quickened.

Behind her, she noticed the wreckage—the upturned table, the shattered kettle and teacups, the slick sheen of spilled tea across the floor.

“We have to clean this up,” Ursa said, glancing over her shoulder, eyeing the mess. She clutched her aching hand, squeezing until the pain made her dizzy. 

“With what?” Ozai asked.

“A broom.”

“And where would that be, Ursa?” He looked at her, his voice dry.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. She didn’t know. She hadn’t held a broom since she left Hira’a. And even if she found one, she wasn’t sure she’d remember what to do with it.

Ozai didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ll get the servants to clean this. We’ll come up with a story.”

“Of course,” she murmured, turning back to the bed.

Ursa stepped closer. Her heart beat faster with each step. For one horrible moment, she imagined the body jerking back to life. That Azulon might sit up, claw her face, and curse her name.

But he didn’t.

“He’s gone,” she whispered—not to Ozai, but to the air. To the fire in the hearth. To the shadows that had borne witness to a crime they could never speak of.

Ozai said nothing. His chest rose and fell in slow, steady rhythm, but his eyes were sharp now, scanning the room, already calculating the next move. The silence between them throbbed heavily. Her blood roared in her ears, every nerve felt raw and alert.

The realization struck her all at once, and her hands began to tremble. It was like being startled awake from a purgatory she’d wandered for nearly a decade. Everything she’d done, every sacrifice, every moment of silence, had led to this: the tyrant was dead. She no longer had to measure her words. No longer held her breath when Azulon entered the room. No more wondering if she’d spoken too much… or too little. If she’d bowed just right or if she’d smiled at the correct time.

And most of all, Zuko was safe.

Zuko is safe, she thought, the words looped in her head until her heart felt ready to leap from her chest.

“He’s really gone,” she said again, her voice cracking, barely above a breath. She turned to Ozai, and for the first time in years, truly saw him.

Not the mask of the cold husband. Not the calculated, posturing, second son.

But the man who had helped her murder his father—for them. For her. For their son.

There was something terrible in that…something beautiful.

She stepped closer, her fingers trailing down his arm. His muscles flexed beneath her touch—strong, warm, alive. That strength made her dizzy. When had they last touched like this? When had they last looked at each other and felt something?

The distance between them had crept in slowly over the years, layered in silences, buried under arguments that never truly ended. She couldn’t remember when it began. Only that it had solidified into something cold and unshakable. The reasons didn’t matter now.

Azulon was dead.

Her teeth caught her lower lip. Her hand slid across his back. And before she could think better of it, she wrapped her arms around his waist and pulled him close.

“What are you—” he started, but his voice faltered as her hands traveled along his abdomen, slow and certain. She tugged at the tattered sleeve of his undershirt, tearing it further with no care.

“He’s gone,” she murmured, lower now. Her voice steady and hypnotic. The words became a mantra, a truth, a spell. “He’s dead. He’s finally dead.”

Something in her had shifted, elevated. The fear, the shock, the adrenaline — they hadn’t vanished. Instead, it had transformed, hardened, and mutated into something darker.

It was desire, yes, but not tender.

This was hunger. A violent, consuming hunger.

She pressed her body against her husband’s. Her small frame dwarfed by his, but it didn’t matter. She felt in control. More than that—she felt alive. Awake, like the years of numbness had been peeled from her skin.

“We did it,” she whispered, her breath, hot against his chest. “We saved our son.”

Then her hand shot forward, gripping the sharp edge of his goatee, yanking him down to her level. There was no gentleness, no hesitation. Just urgency.

She dragged his mouth to hers with brutal force. Their lips crushed together, her nose nearly cracking against his. Teeth scraped, clashed. It wasn’t a kiss.

It was a collision.

And she didn’t care.

She craved the taste of his fury. She wanted to drink it down like plum wine, to feel his breath mingle with hers in the aftermath of the blood they’d spilled. Their lips didn’t meet so much as they crashed together, grinding, brutal, and desperate. 

She pulled back from him, her breath ragged, only to see the smear of red along his cheekbone. Crimson on pale olive skin. She startled—until she realized it was her own blood. Her torn palm was cupping the side of his face, slick and trembling. Perhaps Azulon’s too. She couldn’t be sure.

It was barbaric. Ghastly.

It should’ve horrified her. And yet, it didn’t.

She hadn’t bled during sex since their wedding night, when he broke her with the same furious hunger and violent desire. They had consummated their marriage in a bed stained with her hymen blood. That too had felt like war.

Her breath caught. The ache returned, ravenous, merciless, and without thinking, she slammed her mouth against his. Her nails raked down his shoulders, scoring his back with savage lines, marking him as hers. The kiss turned feral, breathless, and brutal. With nothing, but teeth, tongue, and desperation.

He lifted her without effort, as if she weighed nothing, and carried her to the foot of Azulon’s bed, where the Fire Lord now lay, cold and forgotten.

When his mouth found her throat, she arched into him—and her eyes slid open.

In the corner of her vision, she saw him.

The old man’s slack-jawed corpse.

His face was twisted in the moment of death, mouth agape, eyes half-lidded and blind. A grotesque final expression, as if he had been mid-command when death claimed him.

And still she didn’t stop.

The proximity of death made her feel more alive. The fire in her veins burned hotter. Her fingers tangled in Ozai’s hair, pulling him closer. Let the corpse watch. Let the dead man look upon what he created. 

Ozai tore at the charred remnants of her dress with animalistic urgency. The fabric gave way easily, crumpling at her waist in tattered folds. Her breasts were already taut with chill, her nipples hardened into aching peaks, made all the more sensitive by the cool air ghosting across her flushed skin. She arched toward him with a soft moan, her throat exposed. 

His lips grazed her collarbone, then lower, his teeth finding her flesh and clamping down without warning. She gasped, the sound raw and unfiltered, echoing through the chamber like a war cry. She fisted her hand in his long, black hair, yanking hard until he grunted through gritted teeth. 

He growled into her neck, a low, guttural sound that made her stomach drop. His hand cupped her breast, thumb brushing over her nipple before pinching— hard . She gasped again, her body tightening, shivering.

It was like he knew. As if he could read the darkest corners of her mind, the filthy little prayers she’d whispered into the dark.

He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her tightly against him, chest to chest, heartbeat against heartbeat. She could feel how hard he was already, how close to losing control. Her hands fumbled with his belt, clumsy with need, desperate to free him, to feel him inside her. To finish what they started.

There was no time for foreplay—no room for tenderness, for gentle touches or teasing kisses. She needed him with a desperation that bordered on madness.

Her hand slid between them, finding him hard beneath the fabric. She gasped, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip as she guided him inside of her, her fingers trembling.

“Fuck me,” she whispered, a breathless plea, ragged and hoarse. A sound torn from somewhere deep, a place that hadn’t stirred in years. “Please, Ozai. Fuck me.”

He didn’t keep her waiting.

With a single, brutal thrust, he buried himself inside her. A guttural sound escaped his throat—half-snarl, half-moan—as her body clenched around him. She cried out, the shock of it breaking through her like a flame across dry grass. Pain and pleasure tangled in a raw, breathless chord. Her nails raked down his scalp, tearing at his hair, wrapping her legs around him, clutching him close as though she could fuse their bodies into one.

Her gaze turned to Azulon. 

Ursa stared at him even as her hips arched to meet Ozai’s rhythm, even as the bed creaked beneath them, even as she gasped with every ruthless thrust.

Part of her watched to make sure he was truly dead.

But the other part— the darker part— wanted him to see.

Wanted his lifeless eyes to bear witness to every unholy second of what they were doing.

I hope he hates us, she thought viciously, clinging to Ozai’s shoulders. Let him rage from whatever dark pit he’s been dragged to. Let him scream.

She wanted to laugh. To throw her head back and shout into the flames:

I killed you.

Me. A woman. The little doll you tried to break.

And your precious second son—the one you hated, the one your adored wife died giving birth to—he held you down.

And now we’re fucking in your bed. In your chamber. On your corpse.

We are dancing on your ashes.

I win. I fucking win.

Each of Ozai’s thrusts was almost punishing. A force driven by years of buried rage, of numb neglect and adrenaline-slicked power. The bed rocked violently beneath them. Its frame groaned with each powerful drive of his hips. Every movement was raw, unrestrained. It hurt, but the pain only fed her. There was pleasure in it. Dark, blooming, and dangerous.

Ursa reveled in the ache, in the sting of his hands clawing into her back. Every mark he left behind would be a keepsake, a reminder carved into her flesh. His teeth scraped her shoulder, and sank in hard enough to bruise. She moaned low in her throat, the sound swallowed in the tangle of sweat and skin between them.

Above her, Ilah’s portrait loomed, woven eyes, gazing downward in eerie stillness. The threads seemed to shimmer in the shifting firelight, watching.

Judging.

Ursa turned her head, her breath catching as her gaze met that of the dead matriarch. For one awful moment, she imagined the sorrow in those stitched eyes. How much had Ilah suffered in silence, watching the man she loved become a tyrant? Dying before she could hold the child conceived from her pain and Azulon’s ambition?

The child who now pounded into the woman who had murdered her husband.

A sliver of guilt pricked Ursa’s gut. A shard of grief for a woman long buried, a mother she never knew, yet somehow felt tethered to in that moment of madness.

She looked away. She couldn’t bear the weight of that gaze.

And then his hand wrapped around her throat.

Calloused fingers curled against her skin—firm at first, then tightening. Her eyes fluttered shut, a grin curled across her lips as the pressure mounted. The suffocation, the dominance, the ownership—it was bliss. Her head tipped back against him as if in offering, her pulse roaring with heat.

She felt like a bride again. Dizzy, breathless, and full of desperation. Her nails raked down his shoulders, across his spine, tracing the heat of his body back to his neck. He felt like fire, like home.

“Ozai…” she gasped through the chokehold, her voice thin, rasping. Her fingers clenched around his arm.

“Don’t speak,” he growled against her neck, his breath scalding, his tone sharp and low. Not a request —a command.

Her spine arched. A thrill coiled through her belly, bright and alive. His voice was a blade she wanted to bleed beneath.

His eyes met hers, gleaming gold and hard as hammered metal. It was a dare as if to say: defy me .

She didn’t, not with words.

But her eyes sparkled with something wicked, and her lips curled in silent defiance. She was his tonight, in this room, under the weight of what they’d done. But that didn’t make her weak. She was reveling in it.

Her body pressed back into his, her hips shifting to meet his rhythm. Her hands clawed at the sheets, clutching the bed beneath her like a lifeline, as she surrendered to his rhythm, to his claim.

And in that dizzying moment, she remembered why she had married him.

No other man had ever touched her like this, not just her body, but the marrow beneath, the secret chambers of her will. No one else had ever made her feel so exposed and yet so invincible. He was a storm—ruinous, glorious, and absolute. And she, reckless and aching, had chosen to stand in its eye.

Even as her thighs trembled and her sex pulsed with the raw imprint of him. Even as she pictured her scorched skin peeling away in blistered strips—

She loved it. Every aching breath of it.

The pain. The surrender. The violent, unspeakable bliss.

Every terrifying second.

His hands roamed her body like a conqueror claiming sacred ground, every inch seized with bruising intent. He gripped her hips, fingers digging so deep into her flesh they would leave behind violet marks, proof of what they had done, what they were doing. He leaned low, lips grazing her earlobe, his breath searing against her skin.

“You’re mine,” he growled, voice like thunder restrained, low and dangerous. “All mine.”

“For now… murderer ,” Ursa rasped, her voice barely a whisper as his hand clamped tighter around her throat, stealing the air from her lungs. 

Darkness swam at the edges of her vision, the chamber beginning to tilt and spin, but her lips curled in a wicked smirk all the same. Her eyes gleamed with something mad and gleeful, caught between agony and ecstasy.

She lived for this.

For the game.

For the precise moment when she could drag him to the edge of himself, when his fury turned to hunger, and his hunger to punishment. She knew how to poke the wound, how to draw blood, how to ignite the tempest within him. His rage was her favorite poison, and she drank deep, body bruised and breathless, aching for the consequences.

“I’ll murder you next if you don’t silence that arrogant tongue,” he snarled, and the danger in his voice sent a jolt through her. His grip tightened again—her breath now barely a thread. Her vision narrowed to pinpricks of light and color, stars bursting behind her eyes. And still, she smiled.

“I thought you liked my tongu—”

She never finished.

His hand closed like a vise.

The beginnings of an orgasm tore through her like a force, every muscle locking down around him. Her throat tried to seize a breath, an inkling of air, but nothing came. Her jaw lay slack as her nails raked along his back, skin under her fingers splitting open in sharp, satisfying lines. His cock swelled inside her, the telltale twitch of his climax beginning, his breaths hot and ragged against her skin.

Desperate, her hand slipped between her thighs, fingers finding her clit, slick and throbbing. Just a touch—and pleasure coiled like a fist, blooming in pulses that echoed through her chest. Her body trembled, quivered, begged.

The only sound was the ragged chorus of their moans and the slow, rhythmic creak of the Fire Lord’s bed, now a desecrated stage.

Ursa’s body seized. Her climax hit like a blade, slicing through her with brutal precision. Her inner muscles clenched hard around him. Every pulse was begging for his release. Her mouth opened in a soundless cry, lungs too starved to summon a voice. She bucked beneath him, teetering on the edge of oblivion.

And then—

Relief.

His hand loosened. Air rushed into her like wildfire. She gasped, the sudden breath making her eyes snap open wide.

Light exploded across her vision forming into colors she didn’t recognize. Heat rushed to her fingertips, traveling to her scalp, and down the arch of her spine. Her heart thundered, and her blood screamed through her like she’d just awakened from drowning.

Every nerve ending was alive.

And still, she held him and wanted more. 

Ursa’s breath came in ragged bursts, her lungs straining to match the fever coursing through her veins. Her eyes darted across the chamber, taking in the world newly sharpened by the aftermath. Everything felt too vivid— too precise. The grain of the scorched floorboards. The flickering hiss of dying embers. The thick, heady scent of sweat, smoke, and sex clinging to her skin like silk soaked in oil.

It was as if something inside her had cracked wide open. Her senses were raw and brimming with an unbearable clarity.

Funny, isn’t it? the thought came unbidden, slipping between jagged breaths. Within the hour, I’ve had two Fire Lords wrap their hands around my throat and lay their weight across me. What a lucky girl I am.

The laugh never came. The sting across her back flared again, a cruel bloom of heat that made her flinch, even as the memory of his body pressed into hers echoed sweetly down her spine.

Ozai’s grip tightened at her hips, possessive and unyielding, and with one final thrust, he buried himself fully inside her, climaxing in shuddering silence. She felt him tremble, his chest vibrating with a low growl, the kind that rose from deep in the throat and never reached the air. His heart thudded against her skin like a war drum—fast and triumphant.

Ursa clung to him.

Her arms locked around his torso with a desperation she didn’t fully understand. She pressed her face to the curve of his shoulder, the scent of iron and sweat and scorched silk grounding her in the whirlwind of sensation. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, her ribs tight against her breath, as if her body were still catching up to the choice she had just made.

And then—tears fell. 

They came suddenly, fiercely.

Not a single drop, but a flood. Hot streaks down her cheeks, slipping over the curve of her jaw, and soaking into the already ruined fabric of her dress in her lap. Her jaw clenched as she tried to hold them back. She had not wept like this in years—perhaps not since childhood. She had never cried during sex. Not on her wedding night. Not after the Earth Kingdom dignitary’s death. Not even during those fevered nights when she was certain she would never see her son again.

But this time—she couldn’t stop them.

They weren’t tears of sorrow.

They were something worse.

Tears of joy.

Joy so bitter it burned, so fierce it frightened her.

Because for the first time in her life, she had won.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, turning her face away from Ozai. The gesture was instinctive, an old habit of hiding softness.

“Are you crying?” he asked, voice rough and flat with suspicion.

“No,” she lied, too quickly.

He reached for her anyway, sliding his hand beneath her jaw and tilting her face toward his. “You’re ridiculous,” he muttered—but his voice lacked malice. His thumb was surprisingly gentle as it brushed away the tears that clung to her lashes. He held her gaze, and for one suspended breath, she wanted to say she loved him.

The moment teetered on a knife’s edge.

She let herself linger in it, just long enough to remember what it felt like to be seen by him without judgment. These moments were rare between them—fragile things, always devoured by time.

Then her eyes drifted—back to the body.

Azulon lay still. His grotesque stillness had become ordinary, almost dull in its persistence. The firelight no longer touched him; it skirted past his corpse like even flame obeyed the silence of death.

Her vision blurred again, not from tears, but from pain. The burn across her back flared hotter with each heartbeat, but it was distant now. A muted ache beneath the inferno still raging within her.

She turned to Ozai. He, too, was staring at his father’s corpse. His eyes—deep, ember-lit, and unreadable—were locked on Azulon’s body, unblinking. As if trying to burn through him.

His jaw was clenched, muscles twitching beneath the skin, and for once, he seemed utterly still. Unmoving in the presence of a man who had once dictated the course of his every breath.

The man who had mourned the ghost of a woman and punished her son for surviving. The man who had called it legacy and love.

Now—he was gone.

Ozai didn’t speak or even look at her.

Ursa’s fingers reached for him, trailing down his spine, slow and deliberate. She traced the line of each vertebra from shoulder to waist, grounding him.

“My love?” she whispered.

She hadn’t called him that in years.

He exhaled, a sound more breath than voice, hoarse and stunned. When he finally spoke, it was as if he wasn’t speaking to her at all.

“He looks… small.”

She wasn’t sure if it was meant for her, for himself, or for a presence that lingered only in his mind. She suspected even he didn’t know.

“Fragile,” she agreed, “Like the wind might lift him.”

Ozai nodded faintly, and for a moment, he seemed distant—no longer the man who had just held her down, nor the prince who defied a tyrant, but something younger. Quieter. A boy still haunted by shadows larger than himself.

“When I was a boy,” he said slowly, “no older than Zuko is now… I thought he was a giant. A mountain. Unmovable. Terrifying. I used to wonder if even fire could hurt him. But now…” His voice thinned to a hush. “Now he looks like someone who could be carried off in a child’s arms. Why was I afraid of him?”

Why indeed? Ursa thought. He was just a man and death came for all men. In their beds. On the battlefield. Squatting over a chamber pot. Struck down by poison or fire, by illness or an errant blade. It didn’t matter. The end was the same. Flesh and bone failed all the same. Even the ones who ruled.

Azulon had been decaying for decades like a rabid animal and she had helped put him down.

Ursa watched him closely. The way his voice wavered. The way memory coiled into his silence. The way grief and relief didn’t cancel each other, only braided into something harder to name.

There was no glory in what they’d done.

Only the deafening sound of silence. 

And they could never speak of it. Not to anyone. Not even, perhaps, to each other.

She wondered if he heard the echo in his own words. If he realized he had become that same towering figure to their son.

She had seen it, time and again, how Zuko stood taller when his father was gone. How he breathed easier, laughed louder, and walked with a firmer step. But in Ozai’s presence, the boy shrank. His shoulders curled inward. His gaze dropped. Each movement became wary, measured. As if he feared that the floor might collapse beneath his feet and swallow him whole.

And when he was afraid, he turned to her. Always. Quietly, instinctively, as though he knew her body was the only place left in the world where he could be small and still be safe.

Ursa wondered, bitterly, if one day she would be nothing more than a portrait on a palace wall, staring down with sorrow in her painted eyes—just as Ilah was now. Her ashes scattered in some distant garden. And Zuko, grown and hardened by the world, would one day stand over Ozai’s lifeless body and whisper the same words his father had spoken that night:

He looks so small. Why was I so afraid of him?

Worse still, she wondered if Azulon had once asked the same thing about his own father, Fire Lord Sozin.

The old man never spoke of Sozin with affection. Nor with open contempt. Azulon was too proud for that. His disdain was quieter. Poison wrapped in formality. A name laced with silence. Despite Sozin’s victories, his conquest, his supposed glory, Azulon never once called him great.

Ursa remembered it differently. Back in Hira’a, Sozin had been a god. Stories of his brilliance lined the edges of every hearth. Her father, Jinzuk, revered him with the fervor of a disciple. His portrait hung in their entryway, flanked by candles. “The unifier,” they’d called him. “The flame that civilized the world.”

But here—now—those triumphs felt like ash. Pale shadows against the suffering they left behind. Sozin’s name still rang through taverns and textbooks, but in his own son’s mouth, it had tasted bitter.

It was a sickness, Ursa realized. A disease passed down like inheritance—from father to son, each one more brutal, more broken than the last. Each one despising the man who made him, even as he became him.

She wondered if Sozin, too, had once looked down on the corpse of his father, Fire Lord Taiso, and whispered, He looks so small.

She realized, all at once, that they had lingered too long.

The fire had dimmed and the air cooled. If they were found like this, her dress torn to shreds, his seed warm between her thighs, the bruises fresh on her skin—what would they say? What would they believe?

No one would call it grief. No one would call it love.

Beside Azulon’s corpse, tangled in sweat and sin, they would be seen for what they truly were.

Monsters.

Ursa reached for his arm—lightly, almost hesitantly.

“We have to go,” she whispered, her voice low and urgent.

But Ozai didn’t answer. He stood frozen, eyes locked on Azulon’s corpse, pale and sunken beneath the canopy. He looked as though he were trying to will the dead man to move. As if he hadn’t yet accepted what they had done.

She tried again.

Her bloody palm rose to his chest, smearing a crimson print over his skin as she pressed against him, coaxing him to rise. Her fingers trembled with the effort. Slowly, she pulled the tattered remains of her dress over her breasts, clutching the fabric around her hips in a futile attempt at modesty.

It was laughable. There was no hiding what they’d done.

She tore a strip from the hem and wrapped it clumsily around her hand, tightening it over the bleeding flesh. Her thighs throbbed, the ache beginning to set in—deep, raw, and unmistakable. Slick warmth still clung to her inner legs, proof of everything she couldn’t explain. Her neck pulsed with a bruise that would bloom by morning, each swallow fanning the fire beneath her skin.

The morning would be hell.

Her heart beat wildly—not with fear, but with clarity.

They had no more time.

“My love?” she urged, more firmly now. “Stay with me. We have to leave.”

Ozai grunted in agreement, still catching his breath. Ursa continued. 

“How are we going to explain this?” she asked, gesturing to her torn dress with her bloody hand. 

“There’s a way out,” he said at last. “Can you walk?” He offered her his arm. 

“Yes,” she replied through clenched teeth, as she took it, wincing as pain flared through her burned shoulder. 

Every inch of her body throbbed. A symphony of bruises and burns that promised agony by dawn. But weakness had no place now.

He led her to the back of Azulon’s chambers. In silence, he reached for a small golden statue of a robed woman perched on a pedestal. With a faint click, the wall behind it groaned and slid open, revealing a narrow corridor cloaked in shadow.

Ursa blinked. A flicker of annoyance cut through her daze.

“We could’ve snuck into his chambers this whole time?”

“No,” Ozai said flatly, pulling the hidden door wider with a firm grip. His brow furrowed, his voice edged with disdain. “Do you take me for a fool? There’s a way out, not a way in.”

Cold air spilled from the passage, sharp against her torn skin. It smelled of old stone and rot.

She pulled what remained of her dress tighter and rolled her eyes.

“Of course. It could never be that easy.”

“If it were easy,” Ozai murmured with a crooked smirk, “Azulon would’ve been dead years ago, dear wife.” He stepped aside with a mock bow. “Ladies first.”

She brushed past him, eyes narrowed, and stepped onto the staircase. It curved steeply downward into darkness. One hand pressed to the cold stone wall for balance, the other clutching her gown’s tattered hem as she moved carefully, wary that a single misstep might send her plunging into the abyss.

Behind her, Ozai shut the door. Darkness swallowed them whole until he conjured a low flame between his fingers. The flickering light illuminated the narrow stone corridor, casting erratic shadows that danced along the damp walls. He extended his arm again. Ursa took it without hesitation.

They descended in silence, the firelight bobbing with each careful step. The air grew colder the deeper they went, thick with old stone and secrets.

“That… didn’t go quite as planned,” Ursa murmured, her voice low. The silence had started to claw at her. “There will be questions about the mess.”

Ozai made a small sound in his throat, neither agreement nor disagreement. Just a tired grunt.

“We could say he had a heart attack… Felt ill and carried himself to bed,” she mused aloud, one hand clutching the torn remains of her dress against her body. “Or perhaps we simply have the servants clean it and offer no explanation at all. And once they’re finished, we dismiss them.”

It wouldn’t be the first time. Servants had been dismissed before—for overhearing too much, for seeing what they shouldn’t, for cleaning blood they couldn’t be allowed to remember. They’d vanish like breath in cold air.

It’s to protect Zuko, she reminded herself. To protect our children.

“We should probably clean ourselves up first,” she added after a pause. “Dress. Wash the blood off. Then call them in. Our story won’t matter, will it? Once the room is clean.”

“Mhm,” Ozai muttered, eyes fixed straight ahead, the firelight flickering in his gold irises. He hadn’t looked at her since they left the room.

Ursa glanced at him, searching for something— anything —in his expression. “The truth is what we make it,” she said softly. “The victors write the histories. It doesn’t matter how Azulon died. He was old—ancient, even. They’ll believe what we tell them.”

She hesitated, then added more quietly, “No one knows. Just us.”

Still, he said nothing. Just kept walking, the flame steady in his hand — as if nothing happened at all. 

“Ozai?” she asked.

“What.”

“Are you with me?”

“Yes.” He didn’t look at her. “I’m listening. What is it?”

She studied him for a moment, then pressed her lips into a thin line. “Nothing. We’ll talk about it later.”

They reached the end of the staircase and entered a vast, empty hallway veined with cobwebs and silence. Ursa looked around, letting her fingers graze the stone.

“When was this built?” she asked, her voice hushed now.

Ozai didn’t answer immediately. He had pulled into himself again.

“Hm?” he said absently.

She repeated the question.

“Before Sozin’s reign,” he said at last. “Iroh showed it to me when I was a boy.”

“I never knew it existed.”

“That’s the point, dear wife,” he replied, his tone sharp but not cruel. “A secret passage isn’t something a Fire Lord advertises to his enemies.”

“I see,” she murmured. Then, after a pause, “I suppose they’re your chambers now, sweet husband. No one would follow Iroh… not after he abandoned his men.”

She said it plainly, but the ache beneath her words was hard to miss.

Ursa had liked Iroh, in her way. His tragedy had wounded her. Lu Ten had been like an older brother to her children, a model of what Zuko could one day be. Ozai had never been that.

But the Fire Nation would never forgive what it saw as cowardice. Not for a prince. Not even for grief.

There would be no time for Iroh to challenge Ozai. And though the thought pained her, Ursa knew—if he did, he would lose.

His son had meant more to him than the throne. And whatever was left of Iroh after Lu Ten’s death… it wouldn’t be enough.

As far as the world would know, Azulon’s final wish was that Ozai ascend the throne.

Ursa had once hoped Azulon might see his son’s worth. That it might not come to this. But in this family, violence was never a question of if.

Only when.

Chapter Text

“Stop fighting me,” Ursa snapped, pressing the damp cloth soaked in disinfectant to the side of her husband’s neck. “Do you want an infection before your coronation?”

Ozai flinched the moment it touched the wound’s edge. The skin there was angry—red, swollen, hot to the touch. He jerked away with a hiss.

“I’m fine,” he growled.

She reached for him again, but he slapped her hand aside. “Stop that! It stings.”

“So what? Hold still,” she bit out, her voice clipped with mounting irritation. “Men are such babies.”

It was muttered under her breath—but not quietly enough.

He shot her a withering glare over his shoulder, eyes narrowing. But he didn’t reply. Instead, he turned back toward the hearth, his posture stiff with defiance.

If I can survive two births, you can handle a little disinfectant, she thought bitterly, but kept it to herself—for once, refraining from insult.

He sat on the edge of her bed, shirt discarded, his bare back bathed in the flickering light of the hearth. The fire cast a molten glow across his skin, illuminating a canvas of scars. Fresh scratch marks, her own handiwork from earlier that evening, stood out, raw and red against older wounds.

Some she recognized from Agni Kais, the raised lines familiar as a soldier’s script. Others were older, fainter, the color of old parchment. A few, she suspected, were Azulon’s work. Ozai had never confirmed it, but the truth was there—in the tension of his shoulders, in the silence he wore like armor.

She reached for his neck once more.

Again, he flinched.

“You’re being ridiculous,” she said, her voice hoarse and strained. “Stop acting like a child.”

When he pulled away a final time, something in her snapped. Without a word, she looped her arm around his neck and yanked him close, locking him in place just long enough to press the cloth to the wound.

Ozai grunted, his muscles flexing beneath her hold. “Stop it, woman! I said I’m fine—”

“Shut your mouth and let me help you,” she muttered, holding firm for one more heartbeat before she let him go. “This one won’t sting.”

In the past, she’d had court healers or trembling servants to help restrain him. Most were too afraid, and understandably so. Her husband would fight back like an animal. He kicked at them, blasted fire, and sent more than one fleeing the room in panic.

When it was just her, she’d straddled him outright, one knee braced against his chest or back, shoving poultices onto blistered flesh while he cursed through clenched teeth.

But now there was no one else.

And explaining how the future Fire Lord came to be bruised and bloodied before his coronation was not an option.

For once, she thanked her lucky stars for having older brothers who ignored her mother’s endless complaints about her silk hems and poetry lessons. Instead, they treated her like another brother and taught her instead how to turn a man’s weight against him. This wasn’t the first time she’d put Ozai in a headlock to get her way.

Ursa tossed the bloodstained cloth into the basin, where the water had long since turned a murky pink—her blood, his blood, mingled and diluted into something unrecognizable. She reached for a small ceramic jar nestled within the healer’s kit, pried it open, and scooped out a thick smear of herbal salve with two fingers. The ointment smelled sharply of bitter root and mint.

Without ceremony, she leaned in and gently applied it to the raw gash along Ozai’s neck.

He tensed beneath her touch, his muscles drawing tight as bowstrings, then, slowly, he exhaled. His shoulders sagged and for once, he didn’t pull away.

“If it weren’t for me, you’d be dead twice over,” she murmured, wiping the excess salve from her fingers with a clean cloth.

“I told you—I’m fine .” He spoke through clenched teeth.

"You say that now, but if the infection had set in, you’d be a fine corpse,” she muttered, snapping the jar closed. “Maybe I should’ve let it rot. Might’ve taught you something.”

He groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Can you be quiet? Just for a moment. I need to think.”

Ursa raised an eyebrow as she tied the sash of her nightrobe tighter around her waist and set the kit aside. Ozai sat unmoving, head slightly bowed, not in pain, as she had first assumed, but heavy with something else.

Was it guilt? No. He had hated Azulon too deeply for that. Fear? Perhaps. Anticipation? Possibly.

But if he was Fire Lord now, what was there to fear? The truth no longer mattered. As far as the world would know, Azulon had died peacefully in his sleep— or at the very least, in his bed.

She hated when he grew silent like this. As if some unseen fog had settled over his mind, obscuring him from her. That distance—colder than any argument—had always been the worst part of him. He could vanish without leaving the room. And when he did, he stayed gone for days.

So she crossed to him and climbed onto his lap, straddling him. Her legs draped around his hips, her weight settling against him.

She cupped his chin, tilting his face up until his eyes met hers.

“What are you thinking, my sweet husband?” she asked, her voice low.

“Leave me be.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

A sly smirk crept across her lips, the kind that always infuriated him. A childish and defiant smirk. 

“Make me. Don’t tell me you have regrets now. Isn’t this what you wanted?” she asked, taunting. “You’ll be the most powerful man in the world, and all it took was a little poison and some motivation to save our son— again .” Her voice dropped to a murmur. “Is that what this is? Regret?”

Before she could go on, his hand clamped around her jaw. His fingers dug into her cheeks, silencing her mid-sentence as he yanked her face close. His breath was hot against her mouth.

“Listen to me, Ursa,” he said, voice low, emotionless, dangerous. “I have never been happier than I am today. I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to a funeral. I want to see the Fire Sages burn that old man to ash. I want to smell it—so I know he’s gone for good. But if I have to hear one more word from your wretched little mouth, I’ll burn those pretty lips off your face.”

He paused. His grip tightened. “Let me think—for more than two godsdamned minutes.”

She stared at him, her expression flat, unshaken. The heat from his hand was almost unbearable, his skin pulsing with tension and residual rage. In his current state, she believed he might actually do it.

“Do you understand me?” he growled.

She nodded, slow and deliberate. Only then did his grip ease. Her face was flushed, but her eyes remained cold, razor-sharp. She slipped from his grasp.

Ursa exhaled sharply through her nose and slid her leg off his lap. Her body still pulsed from the chaos of the evening. It had been years since they touched like that—years since he made her feel devoured and victorious all at once. On another night, he might have taken her again and again, using her like a favored weapon.

But not tonight.

Tonight, he wanted silence. Not her body. Just quiet and to be alone with his thoughts.

So she adapted, as she always did.

She knelt behind him on the bed, placing her hands on his shoulders, her thumbs easing into the tight knots beneath his skin. He didn’t need the coy seductress she’d been so many times before. Not the wicked mouth or the smirking eyes.

Tonight, he needed a quiet wife. A presence. Not a voice.

And so she gave him that… or tried to.

But stillness never came easily, not to her. Her blood still hummed, electric in her veins. Her thoughts were chaotic and loud. She felt more alive than she had in years, as though the air itself were laced with something volatile and sacred.

Still, her hands moved with steady, practiced grace, gliding down his arms in slow, rhythmic strokes. The silence between them deepened. Minutes dragged, stretching long and aching.

She hated this part. When he withdrew into himself. When his mind became a locked chamber and she was left outside, waiting. Wondering. What did he see when he stared into the dark like that? What voices whispered to him behind those golden eyes?

Her fingers brushed the bruise on her neck, tender and still blooming. She leaned forward and rested her head against his shoulder, her hair spilling across his chest like a silk curtain.

“May I speak?” she asked softly, voice fragile as ash drifting through smoke.

He grunted. “Fine. What?”

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

A pause followed, long and taut, like a string pulled too tight. Then, to her surprise, he answered.

“I’m going to be Fire Lord,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t feel real. I keep expecting to wake up – like this is a dream.”

Ursa smiled faintly, then pressed her mouth to the curve of his neck. Her teeth grazed the taut muscle and sank in gently.

He grunted, more annoyed than pained, turning his eyes toward her.

“Did you wake up?” she asked with a flicker of amusement.

A twitch of his mouth—almost a smile. “Cute,” he muttered.

Her hand came up to cup his jaw, turning his face toward hers. The touch was firm and possessive. The tincture of poppy had begun to work its way through her system, muting the worst of the pain. What remained was a dull, distant ache, softened at the edges.

“When you’re crowned,” she said, “you’ll be unstoppable. No one will command you—not your father, not the Fire Sages, not even your brother. You’ll never have to bow again.”

And we’re safe, she thought. Zuko is safe. Azula is safe. That monster is gone, and my son will never again tremble beneath his shadow.

Ozai pulled her against him. His grip tightened. The hunger returned to his eyes, a gold smoldering and volatile flame. The look of a man reborn in the ruins of his former self.

Ursa leaned into the heat.

She loved this game, the slow seduction, the art of threading words through the cracks in his armor. She hadn’t played it in years, but her instincts had not dulled. She still knew how to fold him like origami paper between her fingers.

“You didn’t need Azulon to give you the throne,” she whispered. “You took it. As it was always meant to be. You’re the stronger son. The greatest firebender the world has seen in generations. And now, at last, you hold all the power that should have been bestowed upon you long ago.”

Her lips brushed the edge of his jaw. Her arms coiled around him, soft as silk.

“Tell me more,” Ozai murmured, voice low and curling like smoke from deep in his chest. 

Ursa’s smile deepened.

He slid her easily into his lap, and she shifted against him, her thigh brushing the growing evidence of his desire. Her robe slipped from her bandaged shoulder as she leaned in closer, tracing the sharp line of his collarbone with delicate fingers. Her touch was reverent and intentional, like a cartographer mapping old territory.

“Years ago,” she whispered, “we said the road to power would be carved in blood and we chiseled it together.”

Her lips trailed along his jaw as his calloused hands gripped her hips, rough, possessive, and aching. She leaned into the pressure, desperate for the bruises he’d leave behind. Her own hands roamed his chest, reverent and greedy, tracing every scar, every hard plane of muscle like sacred ground.

“We fought for this,” she whispered, her breath hot against his skin. “We killed for it. And now it’s ours . Let them whisper. Let them fear. We’ve earned our place on the throne.”

He cupped the back of her head and pulled her into him, crashing his mouth onto hers with a ferocity that stole her breath. A low growl rumbled in his chest, vibrating through her lips—primal, unrestrained. Her moan answered it, soft and eager, as her tongue slipped into his mouth, twisting with his in a dance that was all teeth and fire. She ground her hips against him, slow and deliberate, teasing. Her nails scraped down his chest, dragging fire across his skin.

He hissed at the sting, but it only stoked the hunger between them.

She pulled away, fingers brushing down the line of his cheek, feeling the rasp of stubble. Her gaze met his—lustful, defiant—and she smiled, slow and knowing.

“The world will be yours, my Fire Lord,” she purred, voice rich with promise.

His hands tightened on her hips. “Say that again,” he growled.

“Say what?” she asked innocently, lashes low, lips curled into a wicked smirk.

He didn’t answer—not with words. His fingers slipped between her thighs, finding the aching center of her heat. A gasp caught in her throat as he rubbed slow, cruel circles over her swollen clit. Her thighs trembled, hips twitching forward.

“You’re going to get yourself in trouble,” he muttered, voice low against her chest.

Ursa leaned in until her lips hovered over his. Her fingers skimmed his shoulders, then down his chest, down his abdomen, each stroke drawing shivers from his skin.

“My Fire Lord,” she whispered again, voice like velvet and smoke. “The most powerful man in the world. Conqueror of savages.” She pushed him gently onto his back, straddling him with elegant control. “My Fire Lord Ozai,” she repeated, her voice steeped in hunger and praise.

He reached up, pulling aside her robe until it slipped off her shoulders. Her bare skin caught the dim light, soft and pale, glowing like fire-lit silk. His eyes drank her in—her breasts, her stomach, the curve of her thighs—as if trying to memorize every inch. He grabbed one of her breasts roughly, kneading, marking. She could feel him, hard and hot against her thigh. She rubbed against him, slow and firm, until a groan broke from his throat.

She tipped her head back, savoring the sensation of his hands on her. One found her nipple and pinched— hard . She gasped, the sharp pain threading through the warm throb between her legs. The contrast was exquisite. She whimpered, not from weakness, but from the unbearable fullness of it all. This was the part of him she missed—the raw, devouring need that mirrored her own.

They had clawed their way here, side by side through blood, lies, and quiet betrayals. And now? Now the crown was within reach. Lu Ten’s death had cracked the sky open. It had fallen into their laps like an offering. The Fire Sages would call it fate – if only they knew

Her hand drifted downward, over his taut stomach to the bulge straining beneath his trousers. She gripped him through the fabric, firm and knowing. He twitched in her palm, his breath hitching.

Agni, he was magnificent.

Not just in body—but in presence. In power. He radiated authority like a god in flesh. She could already see the coronation, the crown lowered upon his top knot, the ashes of Azulon still warm in their bones. She’d kneel before him if she had to—then rise and fuck him on that very dais.

Even in the training yard, when she had first truly watched him, she saw it. The dedication. The brutal concentration in his eyes. His ferocity and relentless will. That was when she knew—she had to have him. Had to marry him. His height, his strength, the chiseled beauty of him… those were simply perks. Her mother must have thought her a fool for chasing the second son in a secondhand dress. And maybe she was. But she hated how easy it had been.

She slid lower down his body, eyes locked with his—bright, challenging, unafraid. Her fingers moved with practiced ease, loosening the laces of his trousers. She knelt between his legs, the stone floor cold against her knees, but she didn’t care. The wet heat between her thighs was maddening, but she didn’t rush.

Control was sweeter when it was drawn out.

Leaning forward, Ursa purred, her voice a low, velvet murmur edged with seduction.

“May I, my Lord?” she asked, eyes dark with hunger. “I must confess—I’ve never had the pleasure of fucking a Fire Lord before. I’d very much like to remedy that.”

Her tongue flicked out to wet her lips, slow and deliberate, a teasing gesture sharpened by the unwavering eye contact. Beneath the thin sheen of sweat that clung to her skin, her body throbbed with need.

She knew exactly what she was doing.

She knew him too well. Knew how to draw him back from the silence of his mind, how to coax him with reverence and ruin. And she could see it in the flicker of his gaze, the way his jaw tensed, the way his breathing shifted. He loved this. Loved the performance of power laced with submission. Loved when she wielded her hunger like a weapon and bent her pride for him alone.

Ozai rose on his elbows, looking down at her. His golden eyes gleamed with a mixture of command and anticipation, and a slow, satisfied smile curled across his lips. He gave a single nod.

Ursa’s fingers ghosted over the waistband of his trousers, then hooked beneath the fabric, dragging it down with a deliberate, aching slowness. She watched as his cock sprang free—thick, flushed, already glistening at the tip with need. Her lips parted slightly at the sight of it. 

She inhaled—deeply, shamelessly—drawing in the sharp, musky scent of him like incense. Her pupils dilated. Her pulse fluttered. Then, without a word, she lowered her head.

She began with a kiss. just beneath the crown, soft and reverent. Her lips lingered, her breath warm against the sensitive skin. Then her tongue emerged, slow and sinuous, tracing the length of the pulsing vein along the underside of his shaft. She tasted salt, iron, the rawness of him, and smeared it deliberately with the flat of her tongue from tip to base and back again.

She took her time, wrapping around him slowly, drawing him in inch by inch with measured pressure. Dragging the heat and wetness of her mouth down his length until his thighs tensed beneath her hands. She wanted him to shake and unravel from her touch.  

A guttural sound rose from his chest—half growl, half moan. She swallowed him deeper in response. 

She heard the bedsheets stretch beneath his fists as he clenched them tight, resisting the urge to buck into her mouth. The tension in his thighs trembled under her hands. She flicked her tongue again, playful, cruel, just shy of mercy.

She took her time, savoring every inch of him—the smooth, velvety skin, the searing heat radiating off his body, the pulsing vein that curved along the underside of his cock like a path carved by ruin. Her tongue moved with practiced, unhurried precision—lapping, tasting, memorizing. Ozai’s frame stiffened, each muscle pulled taut as he warred with the instinct to lose control.

Just hours ago, he had been as feral as a starved animal. His rage and hunger had poured into her like wildfire after they left Azulon’s corpse cooling in silk. Ozai, who had once prized composure above all else had shattered like glass, and Ursa had welcomed it with open legs. She had coaxed it from him, stoked it, drawn it out until the man was nothing but flame and fury. She knew all the ways to provoke him. How to strike his nerves like flint, until even his silence burned.

Now, kneeling between his thighs, she met his gaze through damp lashes. His eyes were molten like amber set alight. Her lips curled into a wicked smile as she slowly took him into her mouth, stretching wide to accommodate his size.

He moaned again, his hands slipped into her hair, fingers curling at the nape of her neck in a grip that left no question of what he wanted. She obeyed, setting a slow, deliberate rhythm, a steady rise and fall meant to tease, torment, and worship. His cock slid over her tongue, deeper with each pass, until the head tapped the back of her throat. Her eyes watered, but she didn’t falter. Her nails sank into his thighs, dragging red crescents into his skin as her hips rocked in quiet, aching need. She could already feel him inside her—could already taste the violence of it.

In the early days of their marriage, her body had resisted the sheer force of him. Her throat was too tight, too fragile, untrained for the stretch of his cock as he drove forward without mercy. Ozai had never been one to wait. He didn’t soothe or coax. He took what was offered, and he took it brutally.

Tears had spilled down her cheeks then, helpless and hot. She had choked around him, breath catching in ragged gasps as he gripped her hair and forced her head down, filling her until she was gasping through her nose, drowning in him. Her tears didn’t soften him. They thrilled him.

And as always, she adapted.

She learned, as she always did. Her body reshaped itself into something useful, something pleasurable, something his. She learned to take him deep, to move with intent, to use her mouth like a weapon. She stopped fucking like a noblewoman and started fucking like a whore. And when she finished, he would be breathless beneath her, groaning, shaking, spilling himself down the throat that once tried to resist him.

Now, with each bob of her head, her eyes brimmed again, the old tears returning like muscle memory. They slid in slow, shimmering trails down her cheeks. It was almost humiliating how easily she had forgotten the shape of him, how her throat clenched tight as if to punish her for the years she had gone without.

But she wanted this. She wanted the ache, the surrender, the stretch of her limits. She wanted to earn back every filthy sound he made, every trembling breath he gave her. She was desperate to remember what it meant to be mastered—and to master in turn. She would take all of him until he begged for more. 

Ursa pictured him in the throne room, her place beside him no longer ceremonial but carnal. Flames would lick at her bare thighs while he took her again and again, her body slick with sweat beneath the blaze. Her moans would echo through the high marble chamber as he issued commands to generals and condemned entire provinces. The Fire Sages, silent and impotent, would avert their eyes, powerless to stop them. She would ride him there as his empress, adored and feared in equal measure.

His grip tightened in her hair, guiding her down until her lips met the base of him. She adjusted, deepened, letting the swollen head of his cock kiss the walls of her throat as she inhaled slowly through her nose. He groaned, low and guttural, his hips jerking forward. She felt the shift in him—his breath shortening, his thighs tensing, the rhythm of need rising in his body.

She watched him through fluttering lashes, studying him like sacred scripture. She read him with perfect fluency, knowing when to quicken, when to slow, when to hold him in the heat of her mouth until his breath caught and his body trembled.

Ursa believed she knew him better than he knew himself.

And yet, for all her skill, for all the fire and fervor between them, their marriage had burned low before it ever truly caught flame. The distance between them hadn’t come all at once. It grew in aching inches, until they were nothing but silence and blame.

But now?

Now, there was blood on both their hands.

She felt his muscles tensing beneath her, his grip in her hair tightening, breath shuddering through clenched teeth. He was close, but she wasn’t finished.

With a sudden stillness, Ursa lifted her head and pulled back, lips slick, eyes glinting with mischief. A wicked smile curled her mouth as she rose to her feet, slow and deliberate, and straddled his hips in one smooth motion.

She pushed him flat onto the bedding, palms firm against his chest. He could have resisted—could have easily flipped her beneath him—but he didn’t. He let her take control. His breath came fast and uneven, his golden eyes wide with hunger and reverence.

“Please,” she whispered. The word was soft as silk, a plea and a taunt woven into one.

Her hair fell like a curtain around them, the dark ends brushing his chest as she hovered just above him, teasing with the heat of her body. She held herself there, savoring his anticipation and her own. Then, slowly, she lowered herself onto him.

A guttural moan tore from her throat as she impaled herself on his cock, inch by inch. Her hips rolled forward, grinding down until he filled her completely. She leaned back, bracing her hands on his thighs, her body arching into a silhouette of pure, unrepentant lust.

His fingers clutched her hips like anchors, grounding them both as she moved faster, harder, chasing the friction that made stars burst behind her eyes. Their breath tangled. Her mouth parted. Her nails raked down his chest. Her neck rolled back, exposed and glistening.

And behind her closed eyes, she saw him—Azulon. Reaching for her as the poison seized his limbs, his mouth twisted in rage and horror, his hand raised to strike her one last time. And then—stillness. A lifeless body splayed across brocade sheets.

The image fed her. The memory was scorched into her blood.

She clenched around Ozai as it replayed, again and again, in her mind. The way Azulon gasped. The moment he realized—too late—that no one was coming to save him.

She should have felt shame. Or at least disgust. But whatever thread of conscience remained in her had long frayed beneath the palace’s cold traditions. She told herself it wasn't a victory. That murder should not taste like triumph.

And yet, she rolled her hips harder as the warmth gathered low in her belly. Her inner muscles tightened as she remembered placing the pillow over the old man’s face.

She climaxed with a cry, hips shuddering as her nails sank into Ozai’s ribs. He grunted, wrapped his hands around her waist, and thrusted into her—once, twice—before his release spilled hot and deep inside her. He pulled her close to him, groaning against her skin. His fingers bruised her hips, and for a moment, the world stood still.

Ursa clenched her teeth and exhaled, thighs trembling.

A part of her hoped his seed would take. That her womb would quicken.

I’m young enough to bear another child, she thought, hazy and high. A spring birth would be ideal. On the cusp of summer. He would have Azula’s fire and Zuko’s heart. A new Fire Lord crowned—and a child to mark the occasion. The beginning of an era.

She slipped off of him and fell onto the bed beside him. Curling close, she laid her head on his chest. One hand drifted across her sternum, fingers splayed over her heartbeat as she stared up at the high ceiling above them.

But the warmth drained too quickly, replaced by a chill threading through the air. The sweat on her skin turned clammy, cold. Her heartbeat no longer thrummed with pleasure but quickened with unease. 

Her body was still, but her mind raced—spiraling in the silence.

Earlier that evening, she had found him standing at the window, his gaze distant, staring at nothing. He looked like a soldier summoning the courage or the willpower to pick up his sword again. She watched him for what felt like hours, waiting for him to speak—to say something, anything.

But he hadn’t.

He never uttered a word. In fact, he never warned her.

That was what haunted her most.

They hadn’t shared a bed in months, but they still spoke. Or rather, they spoke at each other. Mostly about the children, palace affairs, the war machine grinding ever forward. It was all functional speech and necessary words drained of emotion. 

But something like this?

Surely he would have told her.

He wouldn’t have let her wake the next morning to find Zuko dead.

Would he?

Not to her. Not to her son.

Our son, she corrected herself.

She lay beside him now, wrapped in silence. The fire in the hearth had long since died down, casting only faint shadows across the canopy above them. She stared up at it, willing herself to ask the question curling like smoke at the back of her throat.

“Ozai?” she asked quietly.

He didn’t turn. “Hm?”

“I need to ask you something.”

“What is it?”

She hesitated. The words tasted wrong in her mouth. No matter how she phrased the question, it seemed too heavy or too fragile. She looked up at him. He was still lying on his back, gaze fixed on the canopy of the bed as if the answer were written there in ash and flame.

When her silence lingered too long, he turned his head to look down at her slowly. His eyes were sharp, gold, and unblinking.

“Would you have done it?” she asked at last. Her voice barely above a whisper.

He blinked. Just once. 

“Done what?”

Her brow tightened. “Killed Zuko.”

There it was. The wound laid bare.

He stared at her for a long, unbearable moment. He turned away again, back to the canopy’s stillness.

His shoulders rose and fell in a careless shrug. “What does it matter now?”

Ursa pushed herself up onto her forearms, the silk sheet sliding down her chest. “What does it matter?” she echoed, sharper now, her voice tinged with disbelief. “Don’t insult me. Answer the question.”

Still, he wouldn’t look at her. His face was a mask, expressionless, but not empty. There was something behind the detachment. Not shame—he was never a man to be ashamed—but calculation. Remorse twisted into contempt.

Finally, he spoke, voice low and even:

“Why ask questions you don’t want the answer to?”

Ursa’s breath caught itself in her throat. She rose from the bed to her feet in one swift motion, snatching her robe from where it lay discarded on the floor. She wrapped it tightly around herself, as though it were armor. Her fists clenched. She wanted to hit him, to scream. To throw something, anything. Even if it shattered the fragile peace between them.

“How could you?” she hissed. “To your own son… how could you be such a—such a poor excuse for a father?”

He sat up on the bed, his movements smooth and deliberate as he dressed himself again. He looked at her. Amused. The corner of his mouth twitched into a fleeting, cruel smile—gone before she could truly register it.

“It doesn’t matter now, does it?” he said, his voice maddeningly calm. “Azulon is dead. It’s best not to dwell on what might’ve been.”

But Ursa wasn’t finished.

“And if he’d ordered you to kill Azula instead?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous. “Would you have hesitated then?”

Ozai didn’t flinch. “Of course not,” he said. “She’s the future of the Fire Nation, of our family. Our first priority should be protecting your legacy at all costs.”

“And Zuko isn’t part of that legacy?” she shot back. “He’s the one who’ll carry on your bloodline. He will carry your clan's name.”

Ozai scoffed. “He’d be a disgrace to it. A poor excuse for a firebender.”

He leaned forward, hands resting on his thighs, eyes locked on hers.

“Put your feelings aside and think clearly for once. If you’d stopped coddling him—”

“Coddling?” she snapped, eyes wide.

But he pressed on, undeterred.

“—and let me train him properly. In the manner I was trained, he might’ve become competent. That little performance in front of Azulon? Embarrassing. Azula is two years younger and already knows twice the forms he does. Twice . She’s a prodigy. A genius. My legacy. And if you truly cared about our family’s future, you would see that.”

The manner in which I was trained.

The words clanged in her head like iron on stone. Her pulse quickened

She had heard the stories, some whispered by others, most recounted by Ozai himself, opium pipe nestled between his fingers, eyes half-lidded in reverie. He spoke of his firebending tutor, Master Si-Wei with admiration, as if enduring cruelty had been a virtue. As if the agony had forged him into something worthy. He never called it suffering—only discipline. A path to greatness and to manhood. He failed to see that he praised the very pain he still numbed with smoke, that the opium on his breath was not indulgence, but anesthetic. 

Si-Wei, he would say, had been a true master. Ruthless, but necessary. Tasked with turning him into something sharp enough to be feared.

She remembered he had told her that Ozai had walked back to the palace one night so depleted from training he couldn’t even lift his arms to wash the sweat from his skin. Worse, Azulon—ever the strategist of suffering—refused to let the servants assist him. And so, the boy slept in his own filth. When he arrived at the training ground the next morning, still reeking of old sweat, barely able to walk, Si-Wei sneered at him for his stench. Without a word, he ordered Ozai into a deep firebending stance, one leg bent, back straight, arms extended, and left him there for hours.

When his body finally gave out, collapsing under its own weight, Si-Wei scorched the ground beneath him. Flames licked at his heels until the searing pain forced him upright again.

All for the sin of offending his master’s nose.

There were other stories—ones Ozai told with a sharp edge in his voice, half amusement, half bitterness. He’d recounted being forced to fight his fellow charges bare-knuckled, no firebending allowed. How his master had made him run up and down the volcanic hills of Caldera until he vomited, the soles of his feet bloodied and torn.

She remembered one tale in particular—how Ozai had laughed, recalling the time a wooden board was hurled at his head during training. He’d only survived by ducking in time. The man should’ve been executed for that, but Azulon had granted him full immunity—to make a man of his son by whatever means necessary.

And those were just the stories she remembered.

Now he wanted to subject Zuko to the same ritual of cruelty. At five.

She had refused.

The argument that followed burned hotter than any fire either of them could conjure—fast, vicious, and ugly. They weren’t even speaking to each other; they were shouting past each other, red-faced and raw, hurling the sharpest words they could summon. And when he’d finally had enough, he shoved her—hard—against the wall and turned to leave.

That should have ended, but her rage didn’t fade that quickly.

Her hand found the nearest object—a perfume bottle—and without thinking, she hurled it at his head. It missed by an inch, shattering on the stone wall in front of him in a burst of glass and fragrance.

She regretted it instantly. Not because she might have blinded him, but because of the way he turned to look at her. His face twisted into something unrecognizable, something inhuman.

She had pushed him too far.

She defended herself as best she could, but he was stronger, and bigger. Fueled by something colder than rage. Her resistance barely registered. One moment she was clawing at his face, the next he was inside her. A violation blurred by exhaustion and silence. Neither of them spoke afterward. There was no apology. No resolution.

Only a compromise: she would meet the master before giving her final answer.

She hated Si-Wei on sight. The man was smug, and self-important. He walked the palace halls like he owned them, sharp-eyed and silent, like a ghost in red lacquered armor. Ozai had practically bent over backwards for his approval, still chasing praise that would never come.

She refused again. Another fight followed—not as violent, but no less venomous.

Eventually, another compromise was reached: Zuko would not train at five. He would wait until ten.

And then, a miracle occurred. Two years later, Si-Wei died in his sleep. Divine intervention. 

Ozai withdrew in grief while Ursa hosted a celebration for the summer solstice. Her dress was the most radiant crimson silk the nation’s tailors could weave, glowing like wildfire under the lanterns. The party was a thinly veiled excuse.

But they both knew what it was.

She had won and she danced. Only then did she forgive him. 

His words now and the memory of that night made the rage rise again, sharp and searing. Her nails dug into the soft webs of her bandaged hand, grounding her to keep her from striking him.

“Then why kill Azulon?” she asked, voice taut with fury. “You could’ve overpowered me. Denied everything. Killed a sleeping child in the dead of night. Why this?”

“Keep your voice down!” Ozai snapped, his tone sharp enough to cut. “Do you want the entirety of Caldera to know?”

Ursa inhaled deeply, forcing herself to calm. She folded her arms and stared at him, waiting.

Ozai stroked his goatee, his expression turning pensive.

“Simple,” he finally said. “It made the path to the throne cleaner, easier. And…”

He paused. His jaw clenched, his muscles twitching beneath his skin.

“…and no one is going to take what belongs to me.”

Ursa clicked her tongue in disgust, crossing her arms tighter.

“He’s my son, Ozai.”

“And mine—until proven otherwise.”

“Ha.” She let out a dry, mirthless laugh. “Your father said the same thing about you. One of the last things he managed to say— clearly —before he died.”

It was a lie, meant only to wound. And it landed. She saw the briefest flinch in his expression, the subtle tightening of his jaw before it flattened into something cold.

He looked away, collecting himself, calculating his reply. “Doesn’t matter now, does it?” he said coolly. “Zuko is still alive. That’s what counts.”

“But he’s my son. Mine,” Ursa growled through clenched teeth. “Murdering Zuko should have never crossed your mind. If someone had to die, it should have been that old man. You should’ve killed him where he stood.”

“And what would that have solved, Ursa?” Ozai snapped. “It would’ve cost me everything. Even my life. Then what? Who protects the boy? Who guides Azula? Who stops Azulon from placing your ashes beside mine?”

She let out another sharp, bitter laugh, jagged and joyless. A dark strand of hair fell across her face, veiling one eye like mourning silk. “You’d risk it all for Azula,” she said. “But not for Zuko.”

“What more do you want from me?” he roared, his voice cracking like thunder across a stone. “I let the boy live. You got what you wanted. Isn’t that enough? What else do you think I owe you?”

The truth—a truth she scarcely dared whisper even to herself—was that she wanted him to love Zuko. Not tolerate him. Not endure him. Love him, with the same fierce instinct he poured into Azula. She wanted him to see what she saw every time she looked at their son.

Zuko was nothing like his father or Azulon. There was no cruelty in him, no thirst for dominance. He was soft-spoken, quick to blush under scrutiny, and more at ease in solitude than amid noise and spectacle. When he failed, he recoiled, not from shame, but from an earnest desire to do better. He was sensitive—not weak, but attuned to those around him. Always watching, always listening. He didn’t need to be broken into submission; he responded to gentleness, and quiet encouragement.

Even now, beneath the small frame and unsure voice, something solid glimmered. A quiet strength.

She believed— knew —that with time and care, Zuko could grow into a leader. Not the kind who ruled through fear, but one who understood power’s burden, and the price of mercy. He could be different.

He had to be.

But Ozai couldn’t see it. Or worse—he did, and that was what he loathed.

He was grinding Zuko into ash, the same ash from which he had been forged. Trying to burn away the boy’s gentleness, to strip every softness until only steel and anger remained. Just as Azulon had done to him, and Sozin before that. A long, unbroken chain of tyrants birthing tyrants. Men raised in fire who knew no other way but to pass down the burn.

Round and round the wheel turned. Bitter men crafting bitter sons, each more ruthless than the last.

She remembered what Iroh once told her, that Ozai, as a boy, hadn’t been like the man before her now. He was quiet then. Eager to please, even gentle. He used to wave and smile at the servants as they passed and they would smile in return and bow. And when he spoke, he did so softly, reverently.

Iroh had once recounted, almost wistfully, how when he returned from the Academy, a young Ozai ran toward him, arms wide open. Iroh scooped him in his arms, hugging his little brother tightly. Ozai looked up at him with big golden eyes and whispered, “I missed you! You’re my friend.”

But softness doesn’t last, not in a place like this. It gets carved away until there’s nothing left but the shape of survival.

Ursa wished she’d known that boy.

She said nothing at first. Her silence wasn’t surrender—it was gathering force. When she finally spoke, her voice was a hiss, low and venomous.

“What do you owe me? You owe me everything, Ozai,” she said through gritted teeth. “I committed treason for you, for Zuko. I carried your children. Birthed them. Endured you . I soothed you during your fits. I helped you ruin your enemies to win your father’s favor, and when that failed, as it always did, I was the one who comforted you. I let you crawl into my bed. Let you… use me. I am your only friend. The only one who tells you the truth, even when you don’t want to hear it. And you’ve treated me like a burden for years. That’s why you hate me, Ozai. That’s why you look at me with contempt, don’t think I haven’t noticed, sweet husband .” 

She stepped forward, voice rising, eyes blazing

“What do I want? How about some fucking gratitude, Ozai.”

She hadn’t meant most of what she said—partially, at least. It was truth wrapped in poison. She wanted to wound him at the very least. 

He cocked an eyebrow. He sharply inhaled, tensing his shoulders and squeezing his hands together until his knuckles went white.  

“Gratitude? Applause?” His tone was cool, mocking. “You want a medal for doing what was expected of you? For fulfilling your duty?”

His voice sharpened.

“You don’t see me demanding a standing ovation for enduring your tantrums, your manipulations, and jealousies. You knew exactly what this was the moment you stepped into this palace. And you liked it.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off with a cruel finality.

“Don’t lie. You loved it.”

Ursa’s jaw clenched. Her breath trembled as she exhaled. She turned from him, arms crossed tightly across her chest. The silence between them was thick and stifling. She reached inward, searching for something— anything —she could throw back at him. A truth. A curse. A wound. But nothing came.

Then Ozai leaned forward, voice low and deliberate.

“Zuko… or our legacy?”

Her eyes narrowed, the question an insult, filth beneath her heel.

“That’s a false choice,” she snapped. “I can care about both.”

“No, you can’t,” he said. “Not in this world. It’s one or the other. Zuko, or the strength of our bloodline.”

The room seemed to constrict around them, thick with heat and unspoken violence. Ozai watched her with smug patience, daring for her to choose. But she saw the trap and refused to walk into it. 

“It’s a loss, no matter what I choose,” she said quietly. “If I don’t have Zuko, none of this matters. Your legacy is ash without him. You need a son to carry your name forward and I gave you that. I did my duty.”

Ozai’s mouth twisted into something colder than a smile. A sneer without teeth.

“Azula will carry my bloodline well enough.”

“Not when she becomes someone’s wife,” Ursa shot back. “Her children will bear his name. Serve his house, his clan. Not yours. You need Zuko—whether you care to admit it or not.”

His expression darkened, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Of course I do. Father would’ve wiped out my bloodline without a second thought. But we wouldn’t have had to fear such a thing if you had simply continued doing your duty—kept bearing children—”

“I told you, after the miscarriage—”

“—And the boy is weak,” he cut in coldly. “You can deny it, but we both know it’s true. He bends and he falters. He’s not made of what endures.”

Ursa stood her ground. Her voice rose, steady and sharp with defiance.

“Have you ever stopped to consider he needs a different approach? He shuts down when you scream at him. He doesn’t need to be broken—he needs to be built upon.”

But Ozai waved her words away with a scoff, as though they were beneath his notice.

“And yet you disregard Azula.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. This again?”

His hand rose, jabbing a finger at the space between them. “You barely acknowledge her talent. When you do, it’s like she’s an insect to brush aside. Can’t you see how badly she wants your approval? You’re a mother to one.”

She batted his hand away, disgust curling her lip. “The raven calls the crow black,” she muttered. “She’s fine, Ozai. She doesn’t want my approval, she wants yours. Besides, she’s made of stronger stuff, she doesn’t need me. Zuko was the one in danger. Azulon wanted to kill him, not her. And this—” her voice sharpened, venom-laced “— this isn’t about her. You’re deflecting.”

“And you’re running from the truth, as always,” Ozai said, voice cold enough to bite. “Azula is a diamond. You’re clawing through soot, trying to save coal.”

Ursa’s jaw tightened. “How dare you—”

“I dare, Ursa,” he growled, stepping closer, his fury simmering just beneath the surface. “We can’t afford weak links in this family. One flaw, one crack, and the whole line collapses. You would burn down the dynasty for the sake of one trembling boy.”

“Because he’s mine!” she shouted. 

Then her voice trembled like a candle’s dying flame.

“And he’s not the only weak link in this family.”

Ozai stilled.

His glare sharpened, the air around him shifting. The warmth left the room, replaced with something dense and predatory.

“Careful,” he said, his voice a warning growl. “Mind what you say.”

“Please,” she spat, stepping forward, tilting her chin defiantly. “Spare me the posturing, Ozai. You were ready to slaughter your own blood to save your skin. And who stopped you? Me. I came up with the plan. I brewed the poison. Without me, you’d still be groveling at your father’s feet—offering up Zuko like a bargaining chip. You spoiled, pathetic child.”

Ozai straightened, looming over her, his shadow stretching long and cold. But she didn’t flinch. Her gaze held his, steady and defiant. Her heart thundered. Her ears flushed with heat. Once, she might’ve looked away. Bit her tongue and yielded.

But not tonight. She had already tasted blood in the water. 

His eyes burned, hot and ruthless, but then, with chilling suddenness, they cooled. The shift made her skin prickle.

His voice dropped to something calm, almost gentle. Too calm.

“Shall we have a sincere conversation, dear wife?”

“It would be our first in years, sweet husband,” she hissed.

He didn’t blink. “You spoke the truth. You came up with the plan to murder Fire Lord Azulon. You created the poison. And you nearly spoiled everything.”

He stepped closer, each word deliberate. “And you botched the plan. You lost your temper and riled Azulon before the poison could take hold. And when he attacked you, you screamed and shouted like a harpy. If not for me, you would’ve alerted the entire palace. Gotten us all killed.”

Ursa’s throat tightened.

“There will be questions,” Ozai continued. “About Azulon’s death. About my sudden ascension. If Iroh returns, curious about what happened to our father, or why he’s had such a change of heart—an explanation will be needed.”

She scoffed and turned her back to him. “You’re Fire Lord now. That doesn’t matter. We’ll concoct a story. He fell— I helped into bed—he died not too long after. There will be questions, but who would dare ask them?”

He spoke casually as if his mind was already made up. “Nothing is official until my coronation. Anything could happen between now and then. What if Iroh returns beforehand?”

Her eyes snapped back to him. “For Agni’s sake, speak plainly.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Enlighten me,” she said, stepping in so close she nearly stood on his bare feet.

Ozai tilted his head slightly, almost amused. “Think, Ursa. If the truth comes out, if anyone uncovers what we did, it could unravel everything. The line of succession. The safety of our children. Everything. Someone will need to take responsibility.”

He let the implication hang in the air like smoke.

Her breath caught. Her shoulders sank. Her jaw loosened as the truth began to take shape, dreadful and inescapable.

The color drained from her face as panic bloomed in her chest

It was unlikely anyone would question their story. Azulon had been an old man, worn thin by years of rule and war, and haunted by ghosts only he could see. His death, however sudden, would appear inevitable—natural, even. A quiet end for a man who had ruled through fire and fear. And from what Ursa had seen in his final moments, death had been a mercy. His mind had begun to unravel. Better he pass before his dignity did.

There would be whispers, of course. Suspicion always lingered in the walls of the palace. But whispers faded, drowned by time. Even Iroh, noble and grieving, would be no true obstacle. If he had surrendered the siege of Ba Sing Se, if he had turned from victory when it was within his grasp, then he would not stand against Ozai now. He would mourn. Perhaps protest in private, but he would not contend.

No—Ozai had nothing to fear.

And yet, he still pointed the blame at her. 

Because it wasn’t enough to win. He needed someone to bury, so the throne would feel truly conquered. Someone to blame and humiliate. Someone to strip of power, voice, and memory. And it had to be her. 

He wanted to wear the crown as if it had always been his by birthright and blood alone. As if no woman had helped pave the path. As if Ursa’s sacrifice, her cunning, her silence, her sins, had meant nothing.

He would cast her as the mad wife. The grieving mother. The poisoner, so that he could claim the glory.

So no one would remember he’d once been the second son. The unloved.

“No…” she whispered. “No. You’re Fire Lord. The truth is whatever you say it is.”

“Exactly,” he replied, his voice silky.

“And you… you were involved too! Do you really think anyone will believe I killed those guards? That I acted alone?”

Ozai gave a slow, amused shrug. “Do you think anyone cares about a couple of faceless guards? Besides, as you said, the truth is what I declare it to be.”

Ursa’s breath hitched and her eyes burned. She slammed her fist against her chest with each word.

“Ozai… I’m your wife. This—this—was what we planned for years! I sacrificed for you! I did everything for you! I killed for you! I bled in the mud for your cursed family, and now you’re throwing me to the wolves? Pinning this on me as if I was the only one involved?”

Tears spilled down her cheeks—not from sadness, but from rage. Fury. Her voice rose, unsteady with emotion.

“This was supposed to be our moment! Everything I did was for you! I gave birth to your children. Your legacy! If it weren’t for me, you’d still be begging for your father’s love. It was me! It’s not my fault your father never loved you! It’s not my fault you came up with that pathetic plan to prove your worth! It’s not my fault!”

He looked at her with hollow, distant eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet. Softer than hers, yet far colder.

“Lower your voice.”

“NO! I REFUSE!”

She screamed until her already sore throat cracked and the tears flowed unchecked down her face.

Then instinct took over.

Her palm struck his cheek. The sound echoed through the chamber like a whipcrack.

He froze, stunned, but as she raised her hand again, he moved.

He caught her wrist in a brutal grip. Her other hand swung wildly, but he seized that too, his fingers digging into her flesh hard enough to bruise.

She struggled, panting, furious, but he held her fast. His expression didn’t shift. His eyes were a cold, unmoving void.

He looked at her like she was a stranger. As if the decade they had shared meant nothing.

Maybe it hadn’t.

Ursa pulled against his grip, writhing in desperation. She tried to kick him, to claw at him, to fight, but he was too strong.

“Let go of me!” she snarled. “Let go of me! Let go!”

He leaned in closer. Even as she struggled, he didn’t break a sweat. His voice was barely above a whisper.

“If you want to behave like an animal,” he murmured, “I’ll treat you like one.”

With sudden force, he shoved her backward. She nearly lost her footing, stumbling into the edge of her vanity. A sharp pain bloomed in her side as glass bottles of perfume and brushes clattered to the ground.

Still, nothing could dull her rage.

He advanced slowly, deliberately, like a predator toying with prey.

And still, he didn’t raise his voice. That calm terrified her. He was past fury now.

She had seen him angry, but she had never seen him like this.

“You forget who you’re speaking to, my dear wife,” he said, his tone smooth and poisonous.

Ursa straightened, ignoring the ache in her body. Her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths.

“I didn’t forget,” she said. “I know you, Ozai.”

She tried to sound brave, but her heart was thundering. For the first time in years, she feared he might truly hurt her.

Maybe kill her.

He stepped into her space, pressing her back against the wall. His hand closed around her chin, forcing her to look up at him. His fingers dug deep into her cheek, hard enough to bruise. 

“Let me ask you something,” he whispered, shaking her head with each word. Her skull bumped lightly against the wall with every jolt. Her back burned from where she’d struck the vanity.

“If I told the world you poisoned Azulon… that you lost your sanity from grief… that you wanted your children on the throne… do you think your pathetic whimpers would change anything?”

He leaned closer. His voice was calm, measured and terrifying. 

“I could have you killed or I could kill you myself. Would you prefer that?”

She tried to look away, but he forced her gaze upward again. His hand slid to her throat, tightening—not enough to choke, but enough to bruise. 

“Yes or no?”

She opened her mouth, but no sound came. Her head shook.

His grip loosened.

“I’m offering you mercy,” he said. “A mercy you don’t deserve.”

She grimaced. “What mercy?”

“Leave,” he said. “Leave and don’t ever come back.”

Her fury drained in an instant. Her stomach dropped.

“You’re… banishing me?” she whispered. Her shoulders wilted. The last of her defiance slipped away. “Why?” Her voice was small and wounded.

He grinned.

“As I told you. There will be questions…”

More tears burned her eyes and she turned her face away. She refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her pain. 

“Fine,” she said, brokenly. Her voice cracked like something fragile giving way. “Have your throne. Rule alone, if that’s what you want. But I bring my children with me.”

“No,” he said at once, the word sharp like the crack of a whip. “The children are mine.”

“They’re mine too.”

His grip tightened again—an unrelenting clamp around her jaw—until her teeth sank into the soft flesh of her cheek to keep from crying out. She tasted blood and swallowed it.

“You leave tonight,” he said. “And if you ever show your face here again, I’ll kill Zuko. You know I will.”

A lump rose in her throat. Her body sagged in his grasp, as if her bones were losing shape. For a moment she closed her eyes, just to block out the sight of his face. She wanted to fight back. To imagine a plan, a route, a miracle. Some plot she could concoct to escape with both children, but she knew him.

He meant every single word. 

He had already been willing to kill Zuko to satisfy his father's wrath. He would do it again, just to spite her. To win.

“Ha.” Her laugh came out brittle, almost unhinged. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“Would I?”

“Would you?” she echoed, mockingly, lifting her chin. Her face was streaked with tears, but the heat in her eyes was molten. These were not the tears of a heartbroken wife, they were the tears of a woman scorned, a mother pushed past mercy. “Before I confronted you, you hesitated when Azulon gave you the order. You could’ve done it minutes afterward. An hour, even, but you didn’t. You waited. Because you couldn’t make the decision.”

Her shoulders drew back. Her spine straightened. A sovereign fury lit her from within.

“You want to take my son’s life? You want to burn your legacy to ash? Then do it. Kill the boy. Kill his sister while you’re at it. Make me a mother of corpses. You know I can’t stop you.”

She lifted the edge of her robe in one hand, exposing the soft plane of her lower belly like a challenge, her voice rising.

“But know this, Ozai, I have everything I need to make more. One, two, twenty—as many as it would take. I have Avatar Roku’s blood coursing through my veins and their fathers will be stronger firebenders. Resilient and tempered by exile and war. Their fire will be monstrous, and unrelenting. And they’ll be raised on stories of what the tyrant did to their kin.”

She stepped forward now, barefoot and burning.

“Twenty years from now… I’ll be there. Watching. Laughing, as they burn your empire to the ground and slit your throat with your own legacy. Is that what you want?”

The words had barely left her mouth before his hand collided with the side of her face.

A crack rang through the chamber as her head snapped sideways. Her feet slipped out from under her and she crashed against the vanity. Something sharp caught the side of her head and the room pulsed white-hot behind her eyes. Pain bloomed like fire across her jaw.

When her vision cleared, he was already upon her. Eyes ablaze. Fist clenched. His fingers seized the front of her robe and wrenched her toward him with enough force to tear the fabric.

The neckline split and her breast spilled free.

And still, she lifted her arms—not to strike, but to shield.

But the second blow never came.

His chest heaved. His lips twisted in a snarl. The fury hadn’t left him—but it faltered. Something in her words had struck marrow.

His face flattened into a blank mask.

And she saw it. She saw him.

And he saw her.

“Leave,” he said. The word rasped through clenched teeth.

She forced herself upright, shoulders trembling, and her vision swimming as blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. Her robe hung crooked with one sleeve torn, and one side loose, but still, she gathered what dignity she had left and bowed her head. 

“Yes, my Fire Lord,” she said. Her voice low, but firm. Her gaze, unwavering.

He released her slowly.

His hands moved to her face, his fingers surprisingly gentle. Cupping her cheeks as if she were a beloved thing. His thumbs wiped away the tears, mockingly tender.

“You look so beautiful when you cry,” he murmured. “Maybe, if you’re good, I’ll send for you. You could come back. Maybe.”

She wasn’t a fool, it was an empty promise.

“You were such a good wife in the beginning,” he added, voice low and venomous. “Obedient, quiet, and legs always open. A shame.”

She didn’t speak. Refusing to give him further satisfaction. Her silence was sharper than any curse.

He leaned in, stealing the air from her lungs. His lips pressed hard against hers—a kiss in name only.

Her body went rigid, but she didn’t move and refused to kiss him back.

When she pushed at his chest, he didn’t falter and she had no more strength left to resist him. He never cared about her protests—not then, not now.

When he drew back, his face wore that familiar, loathsome grin.

“Safe travels, dear wife.”

He turned, his steps slow, unhurried as he headed toward the door

She watched his retreat, loathing rising in her throat like bile. And before she could stop herself, the words slipped from her mouth. 

“We’ll see each other again…”

He paused, half-turned, casting a glance over his shoulder. The smirk on his face deepened.

“It’s nearly morning,” he said. “Best leave quickly before the children wake.”

The door shut behind him with a low, hollow sound. It echoed through the chamber like a funeral bell.

Only once she was certain he was gone did her knees buckle. She collapsed to her knees, her body folding in on itself. She sank to the floor in a heap.

The tears came again—not hot with rage, but cold with despair. Her body trembled, wracked with a grief too heavy to bear in silence.

She wasn’t just angry, she was devastated.

A kind of devastation that hollowed her from the inside out. That left her breathless and empty.

Where was she to go?

What was she to do without her children?

Her fingers twisted into the folds of her robe as she curled tighter, her heart aching most acutely for Zuko. He had always needed her more. Always looked at her with those wide, trusting eyes.

Would he even understand why she had left?

And Azula, would she think that she abandoned her? She remembered their last conversation, how she snapped at her for the crime of telling her the truth. 

She meant to make it up to her, but now she couldn’t explain. 

Could she see them again? Could she come back? 

She didn’t have an answer. 

Ursa sniffled as she walked down the hall, pulling the hood of her travel cloak up over her head. Her eyes were raw, her throat sore and bruised. Each step had become more painful than the last, but she needed to pain to know she was awake. She had cried for what seemed like hours until she nearly made herself sick. More than once, she had pinched herself to see if this was real.

Ozai was mercurial. Cruel, yes—but part of her had still hoped he wouldn’t be so blind. That he wouldn’t cast her aside so easily and discard her for the sake of his own pride.

Azulon probably wasn’t even cold yet and he still needed someone to humiliate.

What would he tell the children?

Her steps slowed as she turned down the familiar corridor, her feet dragging as if they were made of lead. She reached their bedrooms and stood there for a moment, paralyzed by the weight in her chest.

She reached Azula's room first.

The little girl was curled on her side, knees tucked into her chest—just like always. Even as a baby, Azula had curled that way, nestling under Ursa’s chin as she sang her lullabies through the night as a newborn. 

Ursa stepped carefully into the room, her breath shallow, and her hands trembling. She knelt beside the bed, leaning in to press a soft kiss against her daughter’s temple. Her fingers brushed gently through Azula’s dark hair, as light as she could manage. Her lip quivered, and she bit down on it hard to keep from crying out.

She tried to memorize every detail about her—the tiny mole behind her ear, the way her small hands curled into fists even in sleep, the way her brow furrowed slightly as if dreaming fiercely.

“I love you,” she whispered, barely breathing. “My little dragonfly.”

Another wave of grief rose in her chest, but she choked it down as kissed her daughter’s temple again. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Thank you for saving your brother’s life.”

She stroked Azula’s head one last time, running her thumb along her brow before forcing herself to stand.

Behind her, Azula stirred. Ursa froze, her heart pounding.

If she woke up, she would ask questions and demand answers.

But to her relief, Azula only rolled over, sighing softly, and began to snore.

Ursa didn’t move until she heard her daughter’s breathing settle again. Once she was sure, she slipped out and crossed the hallway.

Zuko’s door creaked slightly as she pushed it open.

There he was, sleeping soundly, his face turned toward the window. The resemblance struck her like a blow to the heart. He looked just like his father. The same jawline, the same furrow in his brow even at rest. Their mouths both twitched in thought before relaxing with a breath. Looking at him felt like being stabbed with shears.

Who would protect him now?

Who would love him?

Who would teach him how to survive this world?

She didn’t want to imagine what Ozai would call “guidance.” She didn’t want to think of how many nights Zuko would lie awake, wondering where his mother had gone.

How many nights she would spend weeping into an unfamiliar pillow, praying her children were safe.

She leaned over his bed, her shadow stretching across his face. He looked so peaceful, so vulnerable.

Tears welled up again, spilling over from eyes already dry and aching. She kissed his cheek with a trembling mouth.

She wanted to hold him, to press him against her chest, and bury her face in his hair, but she feared she wouldn’t let go.

Her hand moved through his hair, slow and shaking.

Ozai, I hate you, she thought. How dare you take my son from me. How dare you steal my children. And worse, cast me aside as if I was nothing. 

She wished she had poisoned him instead. Watched the light die in his eyes or maybe she should’ve poisoned herself instead—spared herself the torment of surviving this. 

I still have the poison. She thought. I could take it right now. It wouldn’t hurt. It would be like going to sleep. 

It was tempting, but she pushed aside the thought. 

“My precious Bright Eyes,” she whispered. “Sleep tight, my darling.”

She turned from him, forcing her legs to move. One step. Then another. Then another.

“Mom?”

Her breath caught in her throat. She froze, heart lurching as she turned back.

Zuko sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes with balled fists, his voice thick with sleep. The sight of him, small and vulnerable, blinking through the dark—nearly broke her.

She pulled back her hood, forcing a smile onto her face, willing her voice not to tremble.

“Go back to sleep, darling,” she said gently, steadying herself for his sake.

But he only frowned, squinting at her in confusion. “What happened?” he asked. “Are you… going somewhere?”

Ursa hesitated. Her lips parted, then closed again. She crossed the room and sat beside him, the bed dipping under her weight. She cupped his cheek, hiding her bandaged hand behind her back. Her thumb brushed beneath his eye.

“Zuko,” she murmured, her voice thick. “Whatever happens… whatever you hear… I love you. Do you understand? I love you. Everything I’ve done has been to protect you.”

She wrapped her arms around him, clinging to him like she could burn his shape into memory. He tucked his head beneath her chin, not knowing that it would be the last time.

“Protect me?” he asked softly, the words muffled against her shoulder. “What happened?”

Ursa didn’t answer. She gave a faint, broken smile and stroked his hair.

“Go back to sleep, darling. Everything will be better in the morning.”

He looked up at her, drowsy and confused, and she kissed both his cheeks—left, then right, as if to seal him shut.

He blinked slowly, his body already giving way to exhaustion. He sank back onto his pillow, eyes drifting closed.

She wanted to tell him something meaningful. A piece of wisdom or a guiding truth that would follow him through the years. But her mind was blank. The only words that came were sharp and vengeful— Find me. Avenge me. Burn him to the ground. But she couldn’t curse him with that. Not now. Not when he was still so small.

Instead, she whispered, “Remember this, Zuko. No matter how things change… never forget who you are.”

He frowned faintly at her, as if trying to hold on to consciousness, but sleep overtook him again.

Ursa lingered for one more heartbeat, memorizing every inch of him, the shape of his nose, the softness of his hair, the little crease in his brow.

Then she rose and didn’t look back.

Each step away was a knife driven into her spine.

Tears burned behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

I’ll be back, she told herself, over and over. I’ll return to this place. And when I do… my son will be on the throne. I can feel it.

One day.

Chapter Text

Ozai did not know how long he had been staring at the turtle-duck pond. Minutes, hours—perhaps days or centuries. Time had unraveled around him until it was indistinct and meaningless. The water’s surface rippled now and then, catching stray threads of light, but his gaze stayed hollow, fixed on nothing.

Beneath the edge of his high collar, the wound on his neck itched where the poultice had dried and begun to pull at his skin. Ursa had placed it there before her banishment—days ago? Hours? He could not tell. His hand rose without thought, nails scraping at the edges until the herbs flaked beneath his fingers.

In his mind, she was suddenly beside him. He could almost see the arch of her brow, the way she would narrow her eyes with that infuriating mix of sharpness and weary patience.

“Does it itch? Good. That’s how you know it’s working, sweet husband,” she would say, not kindly, but with a dry, knowing amusement that made his jaw tighten.

Sweet husband.

She used words like a scalpel, polished, precise, and meant to draw blood.

And his answer—dear wife —always followed, clipped and deliberate. Their little ritual. A private war spoken in endearments.

He could not remember who had drawn first blood. Perhaps it had been his invention. Perhaps she had stolen it, reshaped it into something cruel, wielding it until every exchange left its mark. She had always been adept at that—twisting his words until they cut him, testing the limits of his patience just to watch him flinch.

He scratched harder at the poultice, the itch mingling with a restless heat beneath his skin.

She had not always been like this—quick to bristle, and quicker to retaliate. There had been a time when her defiance intrigued him, wrapped in silk instead of steel. In those first years, she didn’t bare her teeth so readily. She was never meek, never the pliant bride he had assumed would be foisted upon him and forgotten, but she had been… manageable. Proud, yes, but not yet sharpened into something dangerous.

She never lowered her head when he entered the room. She met his gaze and held it, daring him to look away first.

“I’m your only friend, ” she had told him before her exile. “The only one who’ll ever tell you the truth, even when you don’t want to hear it. And that’s why you hate me.”

Even now, she had the last word.

He was still thinking of her. Even after the banishment. Even after telling himself it was finished.

She should have been miles away by now, her absence sealed by distance and silence. Yet she lingered—woven into the palace stone, clinging to its air. Her scent haunted him: faint plum blossom, smoked tea, cedar. If he let his thoughts wander, he could almost hear the whisper of her robes in the next chamber, the soft click of her heels, the hush of her breath close to his ear.

I could send for her, he thought.

The temptation flared—dangerous, intoxicating—but the colder part of him knew better. It was done. To summon her back now would be weakness. And she would never let him forget it. She’d greet him with that slow smile, those unreadable eyes, and dismantle him piece by piece with veiled barbs and truths sharp enough to wound.

And then there was the other danger. He would never know if she had slipped something into his tea. Not to kill him, no, death would be too merciful, but to leave him ill for weeks, for months. Perhaps cripple him for life. She had the skill for that, and the will. Ursa never forgave, not even the smallest slight.

Only the spirits forgive, she had once murmured to him. We don’t, do we, sweet husband? It’s not in our nature.

He had seen her face in those final moments. Eyes gleaming, not with sadness, but with fury and calculation. 

His first act as Fire Lord and already he wasn’t sure it had been the right one.

I endured you, she had said.

She’d let him into her bed. Let him. Endured him.

Never loved him.

She always knew where to cut, where to twist. She had a gift for cruelty, for finding the precise fault line in him and splitting it open.

And still, she accused him of being the cruel one.

He clenched his jaw.

Someone had to be blamed. There had to be a story—something clean and palatable. That’s what he told himself. That’s what the court needed. But the truth? The truth was uglier. He had been furious with her. He’d wanted to humble her, strip her of that unbearable pride, and that quiet defiance. He’d wanted to see her broken and powerless.

But even now, she still had power over him.

He didn’t fear her. Of course not .

Except…

She had poisoned Azulon and she had done it without hesitation. Not for him.

For Zuko.

“Would you have killed him ?” She had asked. “Would you have killed our son?”

He had told her not to ask questions she didn’t want the answers to. But the truth wouldn’t have satisfied either of them.

Would I have killed Zuko? he wondered.

Azulon was Fire Lord. His word had been absolute, to be followed not just in spirit but to the letter. Disobedience wasn’t defiance—it was treason.

And Azulon was not a man to bluff. If Ozai had refused, the old man might have done it himself, killed the boy, or ordered Ozai to slit his own throat, or ordered Azula’s, just to prove his point. Mercy was never promised. Every choice came with a price.

But if he had obeyed…

It would have been a symbolic castration. A desecration of his legacy. A betrayal of blood and name and everything he had endured to claim his place. He would have allowed Azulon to unmake him and for what? Praise? Approval? Not even that. Just another order. Another trial by fire.

If he disobeyed, that was weakness in Azulon’s eyes, but if he obeyed, then he was nothing. This was a test, an impossible one.

Would I have killed my son?

Maybe.

Yes.

No.

Perhaps.

Azulon needed to die—of that he was still certain. But treason was treason. And if Ursa could do that for a child, what might she one day do to him? To spite him? Or just because she could. 

No one could trust a traitor. Not even one they loved.

It was the right decision, he told himself. For better or worse, there was no other option. Besides, she should be grateful he hadn’t killed her.

And yet the thought tempted him.

So why hadn’t he?

Because you couldn’t. Because you’re weak.

The voice in his mind was unmistakable. Cold, scornful, and heavy as iron. 

It was his father’s voice. Another ghost to haunt him. 

You’ll bluster and threaten, but you’re not strong enough to do what needs to be done.

You’re dead, Ozai thought bitterly. You have no power now.

And yet Azulon’s voice lingered. It always had. Even in death, it shadowed him.

Azulon had never needed to speak loudly to control a room. One word from him, and the walls themselves seemed to stiffen. Ozai had spent his entire life performing for that man. Every action, calculated, every word, tempered. He hid behind a mask of strength, stoicism, and dutiful silence. But no matter what he did, it had never been enough. Never the right gesture, never quick enough, sharp enough, or obedient enough.

Go left, and Azulon would insist he should’ve gone right. Show initiative, and it was arrogance. Show hesitation, and it was a weakness. Show emotion— any emotion —and it was disrespectful.

He had trained his entire life not to solely be strong, but to be worthy.

Worthy of Azulon’s praise. His approval. His love. And it never came. 

He couldn’t have been older than sixteen the first time he fought in a true Agni Kai. Not a ceremonial match, not a spar. A real one—until submission or worse. Master Si-Wei had brought his finest pupils before the royal court to demonstrate their skills. Ozai had been one of them.

By then, he had a reputation. No one who challenged him walked away unchanged. Some left with half their face burnt. Some with missing teeth. Others with mangled limbs or melted cartilage where their ear or nose had once been.

And he had never lost.

“Challenge Prince Ozai and you’ll go home with a new look,” one of his fellow students had once teased. Rion — another noble boy, his own age, and probably the closest thing Ozai could call a friend had said it with a smirk.

Eight years under Si-Wei’s brutal tutelage had honed him into a weapon, one of the master’s finest. But there were secrets even Si-Wei didn’t know. For years, in the silent hours between midnight and dawn, Ozai had taught himself something else. Something rarer. Lightning. Precision fire, stripped of heat and rage. Cold, focused death at the tip of his finger. 

His opponent that day was older, bigger, and meaner. A seasoned and decorated soldier who had come home to demonstrate his skills. Ozai remembered that much, though the man’s name had long since escaped him.

What he remembered most was scanning the crowd.

Azulon sat above them, hunched forward with his hands folded against his lips, brows drawn into a thunderous scowl.

Watching him. Waiting for him to falter.

Ozai didn’t hesitate. He waited until his opponent charged—then drew lightning faster than the crowd could gasp.

“Wait—” was all the man managed before the bolt struck him square in the chest. His heart stopped before his body hit the floor. For a moment, the arena fell silent, and Ozai held his breath. 

And then he caught Si-Wei’s gaze.

The old man’s expression, usually carved from granite, broke into something strange. A grin and a faint nod. It was small, sharp, almost reptilian on his gray face. In all the years Ozai had trained under him, he had never once seen Si-Wei smile.

Surprised, Ozai smiled back.

Then he looked to Azulon.

Fury.

It was written across his face like a brand, tight mouth, flared nostrils, and wide seething eyes—not with awe, but rage and disgust. 

That night, Azulon summoned him to the private chamber and beat him with a wooden rod so furiously that it broke in half over his back. Ozai didn’t raise a hand to stop him. He didn’t beg, didn’t scream. Every time he lost balance, he rose again, his forehead pressed against the floor at Azulon’s feet. He bowed, bled, and endured. The pain was so sharp he bit through his bottom lip just to keep silent.

And the reason?

He smiled.

Ozai’s tongue ran over the faint scar inside his lip.

He had stopped counting the scars on his body. Some of them were from Si-Wei’s training. Most from Azulon’s wrath. A few had nearly killed him. And what stung the most was that many came from moments he had tried to please his father. To impress him, to prove himself worthy.

“You who killed your mother just to be born,” Azulon had screamed. “And you have the audacity to smile when you kill again? The gall.”

Now he was gone.

Dead, finally.

Ozai had thought he would feel joy watching the old man die.

And in a way, he did. There was relief— yes, a breath finally exhaled after years spent suffocating beneath the crushing weight of impossible expectations. He was Fire Lord now. He had earned it. He was worthy.

He should have felt elated. Triumphant. Free.

But instead, it felt hollow. Like a throne carved from bone. A coronation held in a graveyard. A victory witnessed only by the deaf and blind.

He felt nothing.

His nephew was dead.

Ursa was gone.

Azulon— dead.

His father was gone, and there hadn’t even been a final word. No plea for forgiveness. No declaration of pride. No deathbed confession that he had been wrong all along.

Only silence. Cold and complete silence.

He had wanted to ask Ursa if Azulon had said anything about him in the end. A word. An admission of guilt. Some last fragment of truth between moments of lucidity and madness.

But she had said nothing—only that Azulon questioned his paternity. Part of Ozai wanted to believe it was a lie. That Ursa had said it only to wound him.

After all, Azulon had loved his mother Ilah. Practically worshipped the woman. Ozai knew his father would never question her loyalty—not truly. But then again, it had never been about truth. It was about cruelty. Either Ursa had spat venom or Azulon had.

He had hoped, absurdly, that as the old man’s final breath slipped from his body, as the pillow sank into his face, there would be a word. A look. Even a flicker of regret.

But there was nothing.

No justice. No vindication. No redemption.

Just—nothing.

The silence was deafening.

He oversaw the clean up of his and Ursa’s act of treason. Around him, the servants moved like whispers through Azulon’s chambers. They set the table upright, swept the shards of shattered porcelain from the floor, mopped the spilled poison tea, and gathered the broken teacups and kettle—tiny remnants of a quiet war. One wiped the blood from Azulon’s mouth. Another folded his cold hands over his chest.

When the room was restored, when the mess of violence had been tucked neatly beneath the surface, the servants were led away, one by one.

Not merely dismissed, but erased. Like smudges on polished glass.

The men who escorted them out were his wolves—those he had led in his years as Punitive Enforcer for Colonial Insurrections. Azulon had sent them to do what was too egregious for the Fire Nation’s military. His wolves had stalked through villages to break revolts, root out traitors, and strip away the illusion of safety. They were bastards, disgraced soldiers, half-mad mongrels, convicted murderers, and rapists plucked from the gallows.

He had saved them, broken them, molded them into creatures that knew the taste of blood and the scent of fear. In return, they served him with the devotion of hounds to their master. He could not trust them with killing Azulon, but he could trust them to finish the rest—to strip the room of witnesses.

The servants had begged, some weeping, others clinging to each other as if touch might anchor them. His men were silent, efficient, their violence precise and unhurried. A single choked sob was cut short; the faint drag of sandals across stone faded down the corridor. All without spilling a drop of blood on the freshly cleaned floor.

Ozai did not interfere. He did not grant mercy. He simply stood there, unmoving, his eyes fixed on the corpse.

His father was dead.

And he felt nothing.

The words had rattled in his skull then, and echoed even now. Half his family was gone in mere days.

Besides Ursa, what stung most was his nephew.

He had affection for Lu Ten. He remembered the boy as a toddler, watching Ozai train with wide, awestruck eyes, mimicking each movement with pudgy arms and stumbling through stances far too advanced for his small body. His technique had been clumsy, stiff, imprecise, but he had heart. Even then.

As he grew, Lu Ten became like an older brother to Zuko and Azula, always nearby as a gentle force. He’d let the children hop on his back, pretending to be a komodo rhino. Sometimes he’d bear his teeth and roar like a monster, chasing them until their faces turned red from laughter and fear. They would run until they found Ozai or Ursa and hid behind them, breathless.

He almost smiled at the memory—a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth before it vanished, smothered under the weight of habit.

Lu Ten had a natural paternal way about him, one Ozai wished had been bestowed upon himself. That thought lingered, sharp as glass, before he forced it away.

He recalled Lu Ten seated beside Ursa’s bed the night Zuko was born, listening carefully as she explained how to support a newborn’s head. Lu Ten’s arms had trembled with tension, his posture rigid as though a single breath might make him drop the child. But by the time Azula arrived, he held her with ease and confidence. He had become good at it.

And his death had devastated the family. For a fleeting moment—just a moment—Ozai had felt something like grief pressing at the edges of his composure.

But he had not allowed it in. There was no time. The stability of the Nation came first—then vengeance. He and Iroh could have burned Ba Sing Se to the ground for murdering one of their kin.

But the line of succession needed to be secure. Azulon needed to see that—needed to understand what was at stake if he insisted on keeping the succession as it was.

Yes, it had been self-serving. Ozai could admit that now. But Iroh had no heir. Ozai did.

He would have had more, if Ursa had done her duty.

If only you had seen reason, he thought bitterly. He wasn’t sure if he was addressing her ghost or the old man’s memory.

He had hoped—naively, perhaps—that his father would understand. That Azulon would see past pride and legacy, and grasp the broader truth: Ozai cared about the stability of the royal family. Azulon was aging. Iroh was grieving, half-mad, and hundreds of miles away. If both of them died, the capital would descend into chaos. The elder clans would circle like carrion birds, sniffing for weakness.

But Azulon had chosen spite.

He hadn’t just rejected Ozai’s appeal, he’d punished it. As if loyalty to the Fire Nation was a betrayal of family.

A stable empire mattered more than personal sentiment . 

And if that required my rise to power—so be it. What other option was there?

His thoughts splintered at the sound behind him, soft, distant, muffled like voices behind thick glass. At first, he barely registered it. But then it came again, closer, sharper, breaking through the phantoms in his mind.

“Father?”

The voice was small, but strong. 

Ozai turned.

Zuko stood behind him—small, stiff, and blinking up at him with those wide, pitiful eyes.

His eyes.

“You’ve got eyes like a winged lemur,” Azulon had once sneered across the table when Ozai was about the same age. No reason was given. Maybe he’d stared too long. Or not long enough. Or maybe he had simply existed, and that alone had been enough to offend his father.

Zuko’s gaze now carried the same fragile desperation, the kind that begged for answers it didn’t know how to hold.

“Where is she?” the boy asked, his voice trembling beneath a thin veneer of courage. There was a tremor in his lip. But still, he tried, tried to be brave.

Ozai blinked at the boy. He felt ancient. His mind was a wasteland, overrun with ghosts and the cold aftershocks of power.

He wanted to lash out. To kill the softness in that voice. To snap her name from his son’s tongue like a twig. Never speak of her again . He wanted to say that she had abandoned them. That she had walked away and never looked back. That her absence was her choice.

He wanted to watch that flicker of hope in Zuko’s eyes collapse into something useful. Something hard.

He opened his mouth—

—but the words turned to ash.

Instead, he turned back to the pond.

“Not now, Zuko,” he said softly, a breath more than a command.

He waited for the outburst. For protest or tears. Tears would have angered him. A sign of weakness and indulgence.

But Zuko said nothing.

No pleading. No weeping.

Just quiet steps on stone. The boy moved past him and sat at the water’s edge, legs folded beneath him, eyes fixed on the pale ripple of the surface.

Silent, for once.

Time slipped away again. It meant nothing. The sun crept across the sky. Shadows shifted. The air thickened. And then—

He felt something wrap around his leg. At first he didn’t know what it was —maybe Zuko— but the boy remained still, staring into the pond. He looked down.

Azula.

She stared up at him with wide, light brown eyes—Ursa’s eyes, and her face. Her lower lip quivered, and for a moment he thought she might cry.

Zuko’s tears annoyed him, but Azula’s pierced him.

Even if it was rare, when she cried, it tore something in him. It ignited something primitive, protective, and violent. If someone had made her cry, he would’ve crossed the world to burn them for it.

“I’m sorry about Grandfather,” she whispered, barely loud enough to be heard. “I don’t know what I would do if you…” She didn’t finish and she didn’t need to.

He placed a hand on her head, a small gesture. But it was all he had. She clung tighter to his legs and buried her face in his robes.

My father is dead. Lu Ten is dead. Ursa is gone, he thought. And I am Fire Lord now.

He wasn’t sure how long they stood there like that.

Only that eventually, his legs began to move, and he returned to the palace — the children following silently behind him.