Before the fire, before the wings, before the statues and the stories—they called her nothing more than a foolish girl.
Éirinn was born to a disgraced house, a noble bloodline too thin to matter and too proud to die quietly. She had silver-threaded hair, a laugh like riverlight, and the kind of heart that believed love could save her.
So when the Crown Prince Cianán chose her—publicly, grandly, without permission or apology—it felt like a story from an old ballad. The kind where the poor girl becomes queen and everyone claps.
She never saw the dagger waiting behind the applause.
He adored her once.
The court whispered of how the prince smiled only for her. How his hands never strayed from hers, how she ruled his attention like a queen long before the crown ever touched her head.
And she loved him. Fiercely. Completely. Fatally.
When he brought another woman into the palace—a cousin, he said, a political ally—Éirinn did not question it. She welcomed the girl with the grace expected of a queen.
Until the guards came.
Until her teacup shattered on the floor and she was dragged from her chambers in chains.
They accused her of treason.
Of poisoning the prince.
Of conspiring with foreign mages.
No trial. No mercy. No truth.
He looked at her, then.
Not with anger.
With disappointment.
And that, somehow, hurt most of all.
They hanged her at dawn.
Her hair braided in royal blue. Her hands bound in white cloth. Her lips still whispering his name.
She cursed him with her final breath.
Cursed his name, his line, his throne.
And when her neck snapped and the world went dark—
She woke up.
Not in heaven.
Not in hell.
But in a stone cell lit with orange light, beneath a window too high to reach.
She touched her throat.
The rope mark was still there.
She tried to scream, but no voice came.
And then the door opened.
He walked in.
Cianán.
Alive.
Unforgiving.
Carrying a glowing ring of royal gold.
"The artifact saved you," he said coldly. "Not out of mercy. Out of purpose."
He grabbed her chin.
"Death is too kind a punishment for betrayal."
And just like that, the man she loved disappeared.
Replaced by the king who would cage her.
But Éirinn was not made to be caged.
Betrayed.
Broken.
Buried.
She was never meant to stay dead.
Because deep beneath her skin—beneath the tears, the rage, the silence—
Something ancient stirred.
Stone scales.
Poison breath.
Wings.
Not a queen.
Not a woman.
Not anymore.
Let them write their histories.
Let them crown their traitors.
She would rise again—not to reclaim a throne, but to become the storm that shattered it.
This is the story of the girl they tried to kill—
And the dragon queen who came back to burn the world clean.