“I noticed.”
“The darkness inside me works the same way. It’s not natural—it’s a reaction. To threats, to stress, to anything that triggers the survival instincts. Learning to control it means learning to control yourself.”
“And you’re going to teach me that?” Skepticism drips from every word. “The dragon who can’t even sit through dinner with his own brothers?”
The observation stings more than it should. “I choose not to sit through dinner. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
I let the question hang. She’s not wrong—not entirely. The shadows make crowded spaces difficult. But difficult isn’t impossible. I’ve simply found it easier to be alone.
“Show me your fire.”
She hesitates. Then she extends her hand, palm up, and calls the shadow-flame.
It comes in a rush—dark fire blooming in her palm, edges licked with purple and black. Beautiful and wrong. The flames writhe and twist, responding to something I can’t see. Her heartbeat, maybe. Her breathing. The fear she’s trying to hide.
“You’re holding it too tight.” I move closer, watching the way the fire responds to my presence. It reaches toward me—strains toward the shadows inside me, hungry for something it recognizes. “Trying to contain it instead of direct it.”
“If I don’t contain it, it spreads.”
“Because you’re fighting it. Treating it like an enemy instead of an extension of yourself.” I stop just outside arm’s reach, close enough to feel the heat of her fire, the pull of the darkness that wants to meet it. “May I?”
She stiffens. “May you what?”
“Adjust your stance. It’ll be easier to show you than explain.”
For a long moment, she doesn’t move. The shadow-flame flickers wildly in her palm, responding to whatever internal battle she’s fighting. Then, slowly, she nods.
I step behind her. My hands find her shoulders—light, careful, ready to pull back at the first sign of discomfort. She’s rigid beneath my touch, every muscle locked tight.
“Relax your shoulders.” My voice is low, pitched to carry no further than her ears. “You’re holding tension here. It’s feeding into the fire, making it harder to control.”
“Hard to relax with a dragon at my back.”
“I know. Try anyway.”
A breath. Two. Slowly, incrementally, some of the tension leaves her shoulders. The shadow-flame in her palm steadies, its wild flickering settling into something more controlled.
“Better.” I adjust my grip, guiding her arm to a slightly different angle. “The fire wants to flow outward. You’re trying to force it into a shape. Instead of fighting that instinct, work with it. Let it move, but give it boundaries.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It will.” I release her and step back, putting distance between us before she can feel trapped. “Again. This time, don’t try to contain it. Just... guide it.”
FOURTEEN
ZYPHON
We work for hours.
She fights me every step of the way. Snaps at my instructions. Bristles at my corrections. Argues with advice she asked for and then refuses to take it. The hostility is exhausting—a constant wall I have to push against just to make incremental progress.
But her power responds to mine.
I can’t explain it—can barely understand it myself. When I let my shadows loose, her shadow-flame calms. When she loses control, my darkness rises to meet it, wrapping around the wild fire and gentling it without conscious direction. We’re two halves of something that was never meant to be divided, reaching for each other across centuries of separation.
She notices. I can tell by the way her expression shifts when our powers touch—confusion giving way to something she can’t name. She doesn’t comment on it. Neither do I.
