Her hands press flat against my armor. Warm even through the leather and metal. I cover them with my own, just for a moment, needing the contact. Needing to feel her pulse beneath my palm, proof that she’s here. That she survived.
“Ready?” I ask.
She looks up at me. Amber meeting gold. Fire meeting ice. “No. But that’s never stopped me before.”
Something fierce and tender swells in my chest. I press my forehead to hers—brief, stolen, the only affection we have time for. Her warmth seeps into me. Her breath mingles with mine.
“Stay close,” she whispers.
She pulls back, and the Crown is in her hands. Small. Beautiful. Deceptively harmless. The crystallized sphere catches what little light exists here, refracting it into patterns.
The battle rages in the sky above us. Drayke and Rurik hold the main force, fire and bronze and chaos keeping the Shadow Clan from regrouping. Zyphon and Ulrik tear at each other in a display of power that makes the ground shake beneath our feet with every collision.
And here, at the heart of the enemy’s domain, Tamsin closes her eyes and reaches for her fire.
THIRTY-FIVE
AUREN
The Crown opens.
White light explodes across the battlefield—not attacking, not destroying, just announcing. A declaration of power that silences every other conflict for a single, breathless moment. The crystallized sphere in Tamsin’s hands shatters its dormant form, geometric patterns cascading outward to create a corona that hovers above her head. White light pulsing in rhythms that match her heartbeat. The same color as her fire. The same color as stars.
Power pours from her in waves I feel against my skin. Heat that doesn’t burn, magic that resonates in frequencies that make my dragon instincts want to bow. She’s magnificent. Terrible. Something more than human, more than Fire-Bringer, more than witch.
She’s everything the prophecies promised. Everything the bloodline was bred to create. Everything I never knew I needed until she walked through my gates and refused to break.
And she’s mine.
The thought cuts through me, fierce and primal and undeniable. Mine. This impossible woman with power that dwarfs kingdoms, who chose me despite every reason not to,who reaches for my hand even as she holds enough magic to unmake the world.
I take her free hand. Lace my cold fingers through her blazing ones. Feel the shock of our opposite temperatures, the thrill that still runs through me every time we touch.
Mine. And I am hers. Whatever comes.
Tamsin raises her hand toward the fortress, and the universe holds its breath.
White fire erupts from her palm—not the controlled bursts I’ve seen her use before, but a torrent. A flood. Power amplified a hundredfold, directed with the precision her witch blood provides. It slams into the fortress wards and they shatter into a thousand fragments, eight centuries of protection dissolving in seconds.
The shadow constructs that have been reforming throughout the battle simply cease to exist. Her fire touches them and they’re gone, unmade by power they were never designed to withstand. Dragons in the sky scream as wards they’ve relied on for protection fail, leaving them exposed to attacks that moments ago would have been useless.
In the sky above, Ulrik screams.
The sound is rage and shock and something that might be fear, though the Shadow King would never admit to such weakness. Eight centuries of absolute power, and he’s never faced anything that could break his defenses. Never imagined that the Crown he sought to claim could be turned against him so completely.
He disengages from Zyphon, banking hard, diving toward us with void-fire gathering in his maw. Toward Tamsin. Toward the threat he should have eliminated when he had the chance.
I shift between heartbeats.
Gold-white scales erupt across my skin as I launch myself into his path. Human to dragon in the space of a breath, rising tomeet the Shadow King with fire building in my chest. We collide in midair—my flame against his void, ice meeting shadow. The impact sends shockwaves across the plateau, cracks spider-webbing through stone that has stood for millennia.
His power presses against me, trying to erase me the way his fire erases everything. I feel myself beginning to fade at the edges, existence unraveling where our magics meet.
I push back with everything I have.
“You dare?” His voice echoes with accumulated arrogance, booming across the battlefield. “You think you can stand against me, little guardian?”
I don’t bother answering. I just hold. Just buy time. Just give Tamsin the seconds she needs to finish what we came here to do. My claws rake against his scales, finding no purchase. His void-fire lashes my side, and I feel parts of me cease to exist—scales, flesh, things I’ll need to regenerate if I survive.
