“That’s not a plan. That’s a death wish with extra steps.”
“I’m not dead.” I gesture at my very-much-alive body. “You caught me.”
Something shifts in his expression. That unreadable thing becomes something else—still impossible to decipher, but warmer somehow. More raw.
“You saved my life.” The words seem to cost him. “A witch princess from Valdoria just saved my life.”
“I’m also a Fire-Bringer.” I don’t know why I’m deflecting. Maybe because the intensity in his gaze is too much, too sharp, too overwhelming when I’m this drained. “And a generally reckless person, apparently. According to you.”
He doesn’t smile. But something in his face softens—a crack in the ice, a fissure in walls built over decades.
“Tamsin.” My name in his voice. It sounds different than it did yesterday, than it did during training. Less like a designation and more like... something else. “Thank you.”
Before I can respond, Selene’s arm wraps around my shoulders, steadying me against a swaying I hadn’t realized I was doing.
“That was incredible.” Her voice is bright despite her exhaustion. “Your fire just—I’ve never seen anything like it. You annihilated those things.”
“She burned through defenses that would have taken us hours to breach.” Aisling appears at my other side, her healer’s gaze assessing me even as she speaks. “And then she threw herself off a wall. You need to sit down before you fall down.”
“She threw herself off a wall to save a dragon who should have been watching his own back.” Nasyra’s voice is dry, but there’s something warm in it. “I approve.”
Auren doesn’t respond to any of them. He’s still watching me with that expression I can’t name, even as his brothers land on the rampart around us, even as the sounds of the battle’s aftermath fill the air.
Then Drayke’s voice cuts through the moment, grim and hard: “We have a problem.”
The smoke is wrong.
I see it now that the immediate chaos has faded—dark tendrils rising from specific points around the fortress, coiling into patterns that have nothing to do with natural combustion.The smoke isn’t dispersing. It’s gathering, forming shapes, spelling something in the air.
Magic. Witch magic. My stomach drops even before the voice emerges.
“Hello, little sister.”
Morrigan.
Her voice echoes from the smoke itself, spelled into the darkness, carried on currents of shadow magic. I’d know that voice anywhere—have heard it in nightmares, in memories, in the moments between waking and sleep when I let myself remember what she used to be.
“Did you really think stone walls could keep me from what’s mine?”
The smoke coalesces into a face—her face, rendered in shadow and malice. Same bone structure I see in my mirror. Same regal bearing. But the eyes that look down at me are wrong, shifting colors that speak to dark magic and darker choices.
“I’ve been watching you, Tamsin. Training with the ice dragon. Playing house with the Fire-Bringers. Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think I couldn’t reach you here?”
The smoke-face smiles, and it’s the smile I remember from childhood—the one she wore when she was about to teach me something, help me with something, be the big sister I adored.
The memory makes me want to vomit.
“This was just a taste, little sister. A reminder of what’s coming. You have something that belongs to me—the Crown that should have been mine, the power that should have been mine, the blood that runs in your veins.”
I find my voice. It comes out steadier than I expect, fueled by anger that burns hotter than my fire.
“Come and take it, if you think you can.”
The smoke-face laughs. The sound echoes across the ramparts, across the walls, across every corner of the fortress. Brotherhood warriors flinch. The Fire-Bringers go still beside me.
“Oh, I will. But not yet. First, I want you to know what’s coming. I want you to lie awake at night, imagining it. Every friend you make in that fortress—I’ll take them from you, the way you took everything from me. Every dragon who protects you—I’ll turn them to ash. And when you’re finally alone, when everyone who thought they could keep you safe is dead...”
The smile widens, predatory and cold.
