“How?” The word escapes before I can stop it.
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he turns away, facing the scorched training yard with his back to me.
“I don’t.”
I blink. “What?”
“I don’t contain it. Not really.” He half-turns, profile sharp against the morning light. “I just... give it something else to focus on. Something other than destruction. Stories. Jokes. Movement. Anything to redirect the energy instead of suppressing it.”
Redirect instead of suppress.
“That sounds like avoidance.”
“It is.” He grins, but there’s no humor in it. “Three hundred years of avoidance. I’m excellent at it.” The grin fades. “But here’s what I’ve learned: the dragon doesn’t burn out of control when I’m laughing. When I’m moving. When I’m so focused on something outside myself that there’s no room for the fire to build.”
Something clicks in my chest. A mechanism I’ve never considered, an approach entirely opposite to everything I’ve ever done.
“So instead of controlling the emotion...”
“You give it somewhere to go.” He turns to face me fully, that restless energy humming just beneath the surface. “You’re a surgeon, right? When you’re elbow-deep in a complicated procedure, are you thinking about your fear? Your anger? Whatever trauma’s haunting you that day?”
No.The answer is immediate, instinctive. In the operating theater, I’m nothing but focus. Nothing but skill. The rest of me disappears into the work.
“The fire’s the same.” He steps closer, close enough that I feel the heat radiating from his skin. “It responds to emotion, yeah. But emotion doesn’t make you lose control. Fighting emotion makes you lose control. You’ve been suppressing everything—and when it comes out, it explodes.”
I think about the candle rack. The training dummies. The fire that erupted every time I tried to force it into submission.
“What do you suggest instead?”
He tells me stories.
It sounds absurd—standing in a scorched training yard while a three-hundred-year-old dragon regales me with tales of battles gone wrong, of practical jokes that backfired spectacularly, of the time he accidentally set Auren’s entire research library on fire and had to flee the fortress for a week until his brother calmed down.
“He didn’t speak to me for a month.” Rurik paces as he talks, hands moving in animated gestures. “Amonth. Zyphon had to translate his glares. ‘Rurik, Auren says if you touch his books again, he’ll remove your hands at the wrist.’ ‘Rurik, Auren says your face makes him want to commit fratricide.’ Very helpful, Zyphon. Very supportive.”
Despite myself, a sound escapes me. Not quite a laugh—I’m not ready for that—but something close. An exhale that carries the ghost of humor.
Rurik’s head snaps toward me, something triumphant flickering in his gaze. “Was that... amusement? From the ice queen herself?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Frost princess? Winter monarch? Her Royal Frigidness?”
“I will set you on fire again.”
“See, that’s what I’m talking about!” He gestures at me with both hands. “Threats! Emotion! Let it out!”
I roll my eyes, but the corner of my mouth twitches. And as it does, something strange happens.
The fire in my veins settles.
Not disappears—I can still feel it simmering beneath my skin, ready to be called. But the chaotic pressure that’s been building since I woke in this fortress, the constant sensation of barely contained explosion, eases by a fraction.
“Your fire likes when you’re amused.” Rurik’s voice has lost its manic edge, gone observational. “Not when you’re forcingcontrol. When you’re actually feeling something other than fear.”
“That can’t be right.”
“Try it.” He nods at my hands. “Don’t think about control. Don’t think about fear. Think about something that makes you feel... I don’t know. Good?”
