This witch princess. This Fire-Bringer who burns brighter than any I’ve ever known. This woman who killed her own sister to protect the world and came to my chambers anyway, trusting me with her vulnerability in a way no one ever has.
I don’t know what to call what I’m feeling. Don’t have the vocabulary for emotions this vast, this complicated, thisterrifying. She’s become essential to me in ways I can’t quantify, can’t predict, can’t control. The realization should send me running—should trigger every self-preservation instinct I’ve honed over the centuries.
Instead, I pull her closer.
Tomorrow will bring new challenges. Ulrik will learn of Morrigan’s death and respond with fury. The Shadow Clan will strike back. The war we thought we were winning will escalate in ways none of us can predict.
But tonight—tonight she’s here. In my arms. In my bed. Taking up space in my chest that’s been empty since Lyric died.
I press my lips to her hair. She sighs in her sleep, nestling closer.
I’m not ready to name what this is. Not ready to examine the feelings that are growing faster than I can contain them. But I know one thing with absolute certainty:
I’m not letting her go.
Whatever that means, however dangerous it is, however much it terrifies me—I’m not letting her go.
The fire in my chambers burns low as the night deepens. But the warmth in my chest only grows—fed by her presence, by her trust, by the impossible fact that she chose me. Of all the dragons in this fortress, of all the beings in the world, she knocked on my door.
I watch the shadows change as the hours pass. Watch her breathe. Watch the subtle glow of her fire pulse in rhythm with her heartbeat.
And somewhere beneath the ice, buried so deep I’d almost forgotten it existed, something warm continues to burn.
TWENTY-THREE
TAMSIN
Iwake to cold arms wrapped around me and a room that smells of winter and woodsmoke.
For a moment, I don’t move. Don’t open my eyes. I just lie there, feeling the solid presence of Auren’s body against my back, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. His arm is draped over my waist, his hand spread across my stomach, and even through the sheets, I can feel the chill of his skin.
It should be uncomfortable. It isn’t.
Something has shifted in me since last night. Something I’m still trying to understand. When I came to his door, I told myself I needed something real—something to ground me after the horror of killing my sister. And he gave me that. Gave me his body, his bed, his carefully guarded space.
But it was more than physical. More than distraction. When he held me afterward, when he watched me sleep with those gold eyes soft in a way I’ve never seen from him—something clicked into place. A piece I didn’t know was missing.
This dragon who spent decades hating everything my bloodline represents. This ice-cold strategist who built walls so high even his brothers struggle to reach him. He let me in. Not just into his chambers, but past every defense he’s constructed.
And I don’t know what to do with that. Don’t know how to hold something this fragile without breaking it.
Morning light filters through the frost patterns on his windows—patterns that weren’t there last night. Evidence of what we did, written in ice across every surface. The headboard. The walls. The ceiling. We made a mess of his precise, organized quarters, and some part of me finds that deeply satisfying.
I shift slightly, testing whether he’s awake, and his arm tightens around me.
“Don’t.” His voice is rough with sleep, his breath cold against the back of my neck. “Stay.”
“I wasn’t leaving.” I turn in his arms until I’m facing him, our noses almost touching. His gold eyes are soft in the morning light, lacking the sharp calculation they usually carry. He looks younger this way. Less guarded. More human, somehow, despite being anything but. “I was just checking if you were awake.”
“I’ve been awake for hours.” His hand traces up my spine, leaving goose bumps in its wake. “Watching you sleep.”
“That’s either romantic or deeply unsettling.”
“Can’t it be both?” The corner of his mouth quirks up—the closest thing to a smile I’ve seen from him that doesn’t involve strategy or satisfaction at an enemy’s defeat.
My chest does something complicated at that almost-smile. This isn’t how I imagined falling for someone. Not in the middle of a war, not with a man who should have been my enemy, not while I’m still carrying ash in my lungs from my sister’s death. But here I am, tangled in ruined sheets with a dragon who makes my heart race when he quirks his lips, and I can’t bring myself to regret it.
I kiss him instead of trying to articulate any of that. Soft, unhurried, nothing like the desperate intensity of last night. His cold lips warm against mine as the kiss deepens, and when I finally pull back, his eyes have darkened.
