I don’t believe myself for a moment.
I gather her into my arms as carefully as I can manage—she weighs almost nothing, especially for someone who burned through so much power three days ago. She stirs but doesn’t wake, just turns her face into my chest and sighs. The sound does something to my heart that I refuse to analyze.
Her fire responds to my frost instinctively, even in sleep. Warmth spreads through the places where we touch, her flames meeting my cold without either of us consciously controlling the exchange. It feels like the training yard. Like that moment when our magic balanced instead of fought.
It feels like coming home to a place I’ve never been.
The fortress is quiet at this hour. I encounter no one on the way to the Fire-Bringer quarters—fortunate, because I don’twant to explain why I’m carrying the witch princess through the corridors in the predawn hours. The implications would be... complicated.
Her door opens at my touch—the wards recognize me from my security inspections, though I’ve never actually entered her room before. The space is sparse, impersonal, the quarters of someone who arrived with nothing and hasn’t had time to acquire more. A few borrowed items from the Fire-Bringer women. The warded chest containing the Crown. Nothing that speaks of who she is beyond her circumstances.
I lay her on the bed and immediately face the question of what to do next.
Her boots should come off. She’s still wearing the clothes she had on yesterday—probably should change into something more comfortable. But removing her clothing while she sleeps crosses a line I’m not willing to step over, even for practical reasons.
I compromise by removing the boots and pulling the blanket over her. She curls into the warmth immediately, a small sound of contentment escaping her lips.
Leave. The word echoes in my mind. Leave now, before you do something you’ll regret.
I don’t leave.
I stand beside her bed like a fool, watching her sleep, cataloguing the way her lashes rest against her cheeks. The way her fire flickers in soft patterns around her hands. The way she looks peaceful for the first time since I’ve known her.
I see you.
My own words echo in my memory. The way her breath caught when I said them. The way she didn’t pull away when I admitted she made me feel things I’d spent decades learning not to feel. The way she held my hand across the table, her fire meeting my frost, and said that terrified her too.
She wants someone who sees her. Not the power or the bloodline or the Crown. Just her. And I do. I see the fierce determination beneath the regal composure. The grief she carries for a kingdom and parents she couldn’t save. The guilt over a sister whose transformation she witnessed but couldn’t prevent. The loneliness of being too powerful, too valuable, too necessary to ever be simply wanted.
I reach out before I can stop myself. Brush a strand of hair from her face. My fingers linger on her cheek for just a moment—her skin is warm, so warm, and my touch must be cold but she doesn’t flinch. Leans into it, actually, unconsciously seeking the contact.
My chest aches.
I’ve spent decades perfecting the art of not feeling. Convinced myself that ice was safer than fire, that control was worth the loneliness, that walls protected more than they imprisoned. And now this woman—this impossible, fierce, broken woman—has made me remember what warmth feels like.
I withdraw my hand. Step back from the bed. Force myself to turn toward the door.
“Auren.”
I freeze. She spoke my name in her sleep—soft, barely audible, but unmistakably my name. Not a question or a call. Just an acknowledgment. Like she knows I’m here, even in dreams.
I leave before I can do something truly foolish. Close her door quietly behind me. Stand in the corridor with my back against the stone wall, breathing carefully, trying to rebuild walls that have been crumbling since she arrived.
And somewhere beneath the ice, buried so deep I’d almost forgotten it existed, something warm is starting to burn.
FIFTEEN
TAMSIN
Iwake in my own bed with no memory of how I got here.
The last thing I remember is the library. Research spread across the table. Auren’s voice, rough with admission, saying words that made my heart stutter. His hand beneath mine, frost meeting fire. And then—nothing. Sleep must have claimed me mid-sentence.
Someone removed my boots. Tucked the blanket around me. Left a glass of water on the bedside table with a folded note beside it.
War council at midday. Don’t skip breakfast. —A
I stare at the note far longer than two sentences warrant. His handwriting is precise, each letter formed with the same deliberate control he applies to everything. But there’s something almost soft in the instruction not to skip breakfast. Something that suggests he knows me well enough to anticipate my tendency to prioritize strategy over self-care.
