ZYPHON
Two days after the attack, and I still can’t stop watching her.
She’s in the library with Auren, bent over a stack of ancient texts, her dark hair falling across her face as she concentrates. The wound on her shoulder has been bandaged and re-bandaged—Aisling’s work, precise and careful—but she moves like it doesn’t bother her. Like pain is just another thing to push through.
I know the feeling.
The battle plays on repeat in my mind whenever I close my eyes. Shadow dragons pouring through rifts in the sky. Fire and darkness clashing across the courtyard. And Nasyra—standing in the middle of the chaos with shadow-flame in her hands, fierce and determined and more beautiful than she had any right to be.
She fought beside me. For two brutal hours, her fire covering my flanks, her power reaching for mine without conscious direction. We moved as one—anticipating each other, protecting each other, synchronized in ways that shouldn’t be possible after only a week of training.
And then she’d saved Selene. Thrown fire across the courtyard without hesitation, destroying the shadow dragon before it could take the other Fire-Bringer’s head. I’d watched it happen from the air, too far to help, my heart stopping in my chest until I saw Nasyra standing amid the smoke, alive and fierce and magnificent.
She’d been wounded protecting someone who, weeks ago, she would have called an enemy. Bled for the Brotherhood. Fought for people she barely knew, simply because they were in danger.
That’s not the behavior of a weapon. That’s the behavior of someone finding her place.
She’s not the woman I lost. Death and Lakhu’s manipulation have changed her, hardened her, given her edges that weren’t there before. But underneath all of it, she’s still Nasyra. Still fire and fury and stubborn determination.
Still everything I’ve ever wanted.
“You’re hovering.”
Auren’s voice cuts through my thoughts. He hasn’t looked up from his research, but his attention has clearly shifted. He has an uncanny ability to sense when he’s being observed—a skill honed over centuries of being the Brotherhood’s spymaster.
“I’m standing in a doorway. That’s not hovering.”
“You’ve been standing in that doorway for fifteen minutes.” Now he does look up, his expression unreadable. “Either come in and be useful, or go brood somewhere else. Your lurking is disrupting my concentration.”
Nasyra glances toward me. Something flickers in her mismatched eyes—acknowledgment, maybe. Or wariness. It’s hard to tell with her now. She’s gotten better at hiding what she’s feeling.
But I remember the breakfast scene she’d described to Selene—the one where the Fire-Bringers had teased her about ourtraining sessions. About “moments.” The word had reached me through Rurik, who’d overheard and couldn’t resist sharing.
Moments. Such a small word for something that’s been building for weeks.
I step into the library.
Auren has transformeda corner of the library into a war room.
Maps cover one table, marked with locations I recognize—Shadow Clan territories, known strongholds, the routes their forces might take to reach us. Another table holds stacks of ancient texts, their pages yellowed with age, some of them written in languages that haven’t been spoken in centuries.
And in the center of it all, Nasyra sits with her hands hovering over a leather-bound journal, her brow furrowed in concentration.
“What is she doing?”
“Being useful.” Auren moves to stand beside me, his voice pitched low. “Her abilities include sensing magical signatures—enchantments, wards, hidden protections. She can identify which documents have been magically sealed and, in some cases, unravel those seals.”
I watch as her fingers trace patterns in the air above the journal. Shadow-flame flickers at her fingertips, darker than natural fire, responding to something I can’t see.
“This one,” she says without looking up. “There’s a ward here. Old magic. It feels like...” She pauses, searching for words. “Like it’s trying to hide something. The signature is familiar.”
“Familiar how?”
“Similar to Lakhu’s wards. The same style of magic, maybe the same source.” Her jaw tightens. “Shadow Clan.”
Auren moves to examine the journal, his interest sharpening. “Can you break it?”
“Maybe. Give me a moment.”
