“It’s not what most people think,” Selene says slowly. “It’s not ownership. Or compulsion. It’s a choice that forms when both parties want it. The dragon doesn’t claim the Fire-Bringer against her will. She has to accept it.”
“The mark appears during intimacy,” Aisling adds, clinical even now. “When both parties are fully present, fully willing. Magic responding to intent, not magic creating intent.”
“And once it’s formed?” I ask.
“You feel each other.” Nasyra’s voice is quieter now, stripped of its usual edge. “Not thoughts. But emotions. Presence. You know when they’re hurting, when they need you.” Her mismatched gaze goes distant. “Zyphon carries a curse that’s been eating him for centuries. Now I feel it too—the shadow in his blood. But I also feel his strength. Everything he is becomes part of me.”
“It sounds overwhelming.”
“It is.” Selene’s smile turns soft. “And also the most natural thing in the world.” She pauses, gaze sharpening with interest. “Why do you ask?”
I think of Auren’s frozen facade. The way his frost met my fire last night—not fighting, not resisting, just... containing. Holding.
“Just trying to understand the world I’ve landed in.”
Selene’s expression says she sees right through me. But she doesn’t push.
“Fair enough.” She raises her cup. “To understanding. And to surviving long enough to figure it out.”
I raise mine to meet hers. The gesture feels strange—almost normal in a way nothing has felt since Valdoria fell.
“To surviving,” I echo.
For the first time, the words don’t feel like a prayer. They feel like a promise.
They giveme a room in the Fire-Bringer quarters.
“Close to us,” Selene explains as she shows me to the door. “In case you need anything. In case your magic decides to throw another tantrum.”
“And if Auren comes looking for me in the middle of the night?”
“Then he has to go through us first.” Her smile turns fierce. “Fire-Bringers protect their own, Tamsin. Whatever else happens here, remember that.”
The room is simple but comfortable—a bed with clean linens, a wardrobe stocked with borrowed clothes, a fireplace that crackles to life the moment I enter. Responding to my blood. Recognizing the flame that lives inside me.
The Crown sits in a warded chest by the window. Selene had it moved here after dinner—said something about it being safer close to me than locked in general storage.
I feel it pulsing. Waiting. Patient in a way that should be comforting and instead sets my teeth on edge.
Soon,I tell it silently.Soon I’ll need what you can give me. But not yet.
I change into sleeping clothes—Nasyra’s, apparently, since we’re closest in size—and lie down on sheets softer than anything I’ve touched in days. The ceiling above me is stone, nothing like the painted murals of my chambers in Valdoria.
The silence is different too. No servants. No distant music. No comforting rumble of my father’s voice.
Everything I knew is ash and memory. And tomorrow, I begin the process of learning to function in this new world.
Dawn training with Auren. Hours of close proximity with a dragon who looks at me and sees his sister’s murderer. His frost against my fire, control against chaos.
But tonight...
Tonight I have a room in the Fire-Bringer quarters, with women who welcomed me despite every reason not to. Selene’s sharp humor cutting through my defenses. Aisling’s blunt care wrapped in threats about vegetables. Nasyra’s dark understanding offered without pity.
They call me one of them. Treat me like I belong.
I don’t know if I deserve it. But they offered it anyway—sisterhood extended without conditions, without demands, without requiring me to prove myself first.
And Auren...
