“Does it matter if you’re being selfish? You’re allowed to want things, Isara.”
“Mama!” Mireth’s voice broke through my spiral of guilt and want. She came running over, a slightly wilted flower clutched in her small fist. “Look what I found!”
I accepted the offering with a smile that felt more genuine than it had any right to. “It’s beautiful, sweetheart.”
She beamed and scampered back to her game, already distracted by a particularly interesting butterfly.
“They’re resilient,” Lira said quietly, watching her go. “Stronger than you think. The crossing proved that.”
I nodded, throat tight. They were strong. My fierce, brilliant, impossible children who’d survived hiding and hunger and monsters without losing their capacity for wonder.
Maybe it was time I stopped underestimating them.
“You’ll really look after them?” I asked, hating the tremor in the words.
“With my life,” Lira said simply.
Shaelith stepped closer, her presence somehow both commanding and oddly comforting. “You’re allowed to be both,you know. A mother and a warrior. They’re not mutually exclusive.”
I looked at her—really looked—and saw something I’d missed before. Understanding. Recognition. Like she knew exactly what it felt like to be torn between love and duty, between protection and purpose.
“The children will be here when you get back,” she added. “But the opportunity to help shape their future might not be.”
I closed my eyes and let that truth settle in my bones. When I opened them again, Mireth and Eryx were still playing in the dappled sunlight, whole and safe and utterly oblivious to the war brewing on the borders.
Still mine to protect, even if that meant leaving them for a few days.
“Alright,” I said, the decision crystallizing in my chest like ice. “I’m going.”
45
The wind whipped through my hair as I settled deeper into the saddle, Kaelen’s warmth seeping through the leather of my flight gear. Below us, the castle grounds shrank to miniature, the garden where I’d left my children becoming a small patch of green among stone corridors.
My chest tightened with familiar guilt, but before I could spiral into second-guessing myself again, Varyth’s dragon pulled alongside us.
“Your brooding lord looks particularly stormy today,”Kaelen observed, his voice rich with delight.“I take it the decision to come along wasn’t entirely his idea?”
“He thinks I’m being reckless,” I called back, not caring that the others could probably hear.
“Are you?”
I considered that as we climbed higher, the air growing thinner around us. Was I being reckless? Probably. But the alternative felt like a different kind of death.
“Maybe. But staying behind felt worse.”
“Good answer, wildfire. Calculated risks are far more interesting than blind safety.”
Behind us, Shaelith rode Ballaris with predatory grace, her dark dragon cutting through the air. Cindrissian was mounted on a dragon I’d never seen before—sleek and shadow-dark with eyes like burning coals. But it was Brynelle’s presence that surprised me most. She’d somehow invited herself along at the last minute, claiming someone needed to assess the wielders assigned to the border.
I suspected she just wanted to be with Shaelith.
“So, wildfire. Care to tell me what’s really going on between you and the High Lord?”
Heat flooded my cheeks despite the cold wind.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t.”His chuckle rumbled through my bones.“Just like you don’t know why you’ve been glowing with contentment during our training sessions. Or why your scent is permanently tangled with his now.”
“Dragons can smell that?” The words came out strangled.
