The Brotherhood fortressrises from the mountainside as dusk paints the sky in shades of amber and rose. The landing platform is crowded with dragons who stayed behind—those too young or too old for the assault, those assigned to guard thefortress in our absence. They roar a greeting as we descend, the sound echoing off stone walls that have stood for centuries.
Victory.
Tamsin doesn’t react to the celebration. When I land and shift to human form, she slides from my back with mechanical precision, her feet finding the stone without seeming to register the impact. Her amber eyes are distant. Hollow. The woman who burned through Morrigan’s defenses with unprecedented power now looks like she might shatter at a touch.
Something twists in my chest at the sight. Something I don’t want to examine too closely.
Selene reaches her first. Wraps her in a hug that Tamsin accepts without returning, her arms hanging limp at her sides. Aisling checks her for injuries with practiced efficiency, her healer’s hands moving over Tamsin’s body with clinical precision, pronouncing her physically unharmed in a tone that suggests she knows the wounds are elsewhere. Nasyra hangs back, understanding in her mismatched eyes—she knows what it is to lose family to violence. Knows that some griefs don’t want company.
“She should rest.” Aisling’s voice is quiet but firm, her Irish accent thickening with concern. “The power expenditure alone would have killed most Fire-Bringers. She needs food, fluids, sleep?—”
“I’m fine.” Tamsin’s words come out flat. Empty. The regal control she usually wears is cracked, letting something rawer bleed through. “I just need—” She stops. Doesn’t finish the sentence. Maybe doesn’t know how.
“You need sleep,” Selene says gently, stroking Tamsin’s hair with maternal tenderness. “Food. Time to process.”
“I need to be alone.” Tamsin pulls away from the group, her movements too controlled. Too careful. The kind of control that precedes breaking. “Just—give me tonight. Please.”
She’s gone before anyone can argue, disappearing into the fortress with steps that don’t quite qualify as running but want to be. The Fire-Bringer women exchange worried looks. Drayke places a hand on my shoulder—the solid grip of brotherhood, of shared concern, of centuries knowing when I’m about to do something inadvisable.
“She killed her sister,” I say quietly. “There’s no comfort for that.”
“No.” Drayke’s voice is heavy. “There isn’t.”
Rurik shifts beside us, his usual chaotic energy subdued for once. “Should someone follow her? Make sure she doesn’t?—”
“She asked for space.” The words taste wrong in my mouth. Every instinct demands I follow her, comfort her, do something other than stand on this platform watching her walk away. “We should respect that.”
Zyphon materializes from the shadows at the edge of the platform, his curse-cracked scales still smoking faintly from the battle. His violet-shadowed gaze meets mine briefly, and I see understanding there. We’ve both lost sisters. We both know there are griefs that can’t be shared, that require solitude to process.
I force myself to turn away. To walk toward my quarters through corridors that feel colder than usual. To pretend I’m not counting every step she’s putting between us.
To pretend I don’t feel her absence like a wound.
My quarters are in order.
Every item in its designated place. Every surface clean. Every book shelved according to a system only I fully understand. The space should feel like a sanctuary—the precision a comfort afterthe chaos of battle. Instead, it feels like what it is: a fortress within a fortress, walls I’ve built to keep the world at a distance.
Cold, technically. But there’s supposed to be beauty in the precision. Artistry in the organization. I’ve spent centuries perfecting this space, arranging it so I know where everything is, know when anything moves. Control made manifest in stone and furniture and the exact angle of every book spine.
Tonight, it just feels empty.
I strip off my battle-worn clothes. Wash the grime and sweat from my skin in water that feels warm to most but merely ambient to me. Pull on clean trousers and leave my chest bare—the ice in my blood keeps me comfortable in temperatures that would freeze most beings. For longer than most humans have been alive, this routine has been enough. Discipline. Order. Control.
Tonight, I can’t stop thinking about her.
The way she looked standing in her sister’s ashes. The tears streaming down her face. The fire in her that guttered and dimmed but never quite went out. The way she collapsed into my arms and let me hold her—this woman who doesn’t let anyone see her break.
She let me see.
I try to read. The words swim before my vision, refusing to resolve into meaning. A treatise on ward construction that I’ve been meaning to finish for months—tonight, the pages might as well be blank. I try to work—there’s correspondence that needs attention, reports from the assault to compile—but my mind keeps returning to the same images. Tamsin burning through defenses that should have been impenetrable. Tamsin facing her sister with grief and determination carved into every line of her body. Tamsin walking through flames untouched, radiant, more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen.
I set down the quill I’ve been holding without writing a single word. My hands are shaking slightly. My hands never shake.
This witch princess who should be everything I hate, who represents the bloodline that murdered my sister—she’s become something I can’t define. Can’t categorize. Can’t file away in the carefully organized system I’ve built to make sense of the world. She’s slipped past every defense I have, and I don’t know when it happened. Don’t know how to stop it. Don’t know if I want to.
That last thought terrifies me more than any enemy I’ve faced.
I want to protect her. Want to hold her. Want to take her grief and carry it myself if that would ease her burden. These feelings—whatever they are—have become so tangled and vast that I can’t separate them enough to analyze. They’re just there, demanding attention I’ve spent my entire existence learning not to give.
