“Three days, little flame. Then I start removing pieces.”
I wake screaming.
Fire erupts from my palms, scorching the sheets, the headboard, the air itself. Someone’s holding me down—weight across my hips, hands pinning my wrists—and I thrash against them, still half-trapped in volcanic stone and my cousin’s broken face.
“Aisling.Aisling.”
Rurik’s voice cuts through the panic. Not commanding. Not demanding. Just my name, over and over, until the flames gutter and die and I’m left shaking in a ruined bed with ash floating around us like gray snow.
“There you are.” He releases my wrists slowly, carefully, like I’m a wounded animal that might bolt. “Bad one?”
I can’t answer. Can’t make my throat work around the scream still lodged there.
He shifts his weight off me but doesn’t leave. Just settles beside me on the scorched mattress, close enough that I can feel his heat, far enough that I don’t feel caged. He’s learned that balance over the past weeks. When to push. When to wait.
“Vision,” I manage finally. My voice sounds like it’s been dragged across gravel. “Valdris.”
His whole body goes rigid. “What did she show you?”
“My cousin.” The words crack something open in my chest. “Niamh. She has Niamh.”
The war roomis full by the time I’ve pulled myself together enough to face the Brotherhood.
Drayke stands at the head of the table, Selene at his side. Auren has maps spread across every surface, his golden gaze tracking my entrance with clinical assessment. Zyphon lurks in his preferred shadows, darkness writhing around him like a living thing.
And Rurik. Rurik hasn’t left my side since I woke. His hand rests at the small of my back—warm, steady, grounding me when everything else feels like it’s spinning apart.
“Tell them.” His voice is low, meant only for me. “All of it.”
I tell them.
The vision. Niamh’s face. Valdris’s three-day ultimatum. The threat that plays on loop behind my eyes every time I blink:Then I start removing pieces.
When I finish, silence hangs heavy enough to suffocate.
“It’s a trap.” Auren’s assessment is immediate. Brutal. “She’s using your cousin as bait to draw you out.”
“I know.”
“You’ll be walking directly into her territory. Into whatever defenses she’s constructed. With the full knowledge that shewantsyou there.”
“Iknow.”
“Then you understand why?—“
“I understand that my cousin is going to die.” I cut him off, and something in my voice makes even Auren pause. “I understand that she’s only there because of me. Because she went looking for me when I disappeared. Because Valdris needed leverage and Niamh wasconvenient.”
My hands are shaking. Fire flickers at my fingertips, responding to the guilt that’s eating me alive.
“Niamh doesn’t know about any of this. Dragons. Fire-Bringers. Ancient relics. She’s a schoolteacher in Galway who likes terrible romantic comedies and calls me every Sunday to complain about her mother.” My voice cracks. “She’s the only family I have left that actually gives a damn whether I’m alive or dead. And Valdris is going to carve her apart piece by piece unless I do something.”
“Aisling.” Selene’s voice, soft with understanding. She knows what it’s like to be used as leverage. To watch the people you love suffer because of what you are. “We’re not saying we won’t help. We’re saying we need to be smart about this.”
“Smart would be not going at all.” Zyphon’s voice drifts from the shadows. “Smart would be accepting that your cousin is already dead and refusing to give Valdris what she wants.”
Rurik’s snarl rips through the room before I can respond. “Watch your mouth.”
“I’m stating facts.” Zyphon doesn’t flinch. “The queen has been planning this for weeks. She chose this cousin specifically because she knew it would work. Knew our Fire-Bringer would abandon strategy for sentiment.”
