Chapter 6
ELARA
Aeliana was waiting in the crypt.
Not where the tombs were honored and named, not where the ice shone clean and ceremonial, but deeper, where the corridors narrowed and the frost turned gray. Where even torchlight seemed afraid to stretch too far.
Her bare feet made no sound on the frozen stone.
“Why are you here?” I asked, but my voice came out small, like I was a child again, hiding behind pillars and pretending I wasn’t shaking.
Aeliana smiled.
It wasn’t cruel.
It was familiar. Worse than cruel.
“You keep leaving the door open,” she said.
Behind her, the ice blocks lining the walls began to cloud from the inside, as if breath was fogging them. One by one, faint shapes pressed closer beneath the surface, faces blurred and distorted, mouths frozen mid-sound.
I backed up until my shoulders hit stone. “Aeliana,” I whispered. “You’re dead.”
She tilted her head slowly, like she was listening to something I couldn’t hear. Then she stepped forward and placed her hand flat over my chest.
The cold didn’t burn. It sank.
It slid under my ribs, quiet and deliberate, and my heartbeat stuttered like it had forgotten the rhythm.
“You’re wearing me thin,” she murmured. “You should stop.”
My lips moved. No sound came out. Aeliana leaned in until her breath ghosted my ear. “Or you won’t know where you end,” she whispered, “and I begin.”
I jolted awake with my throat tight and my hands numb, as if they’d been holding something frozen all night.
The hand on my arm was not gentle.
“Up.”
Seraphine hauled me from the bed in a single, efficient motion, her grip locking around my bicep like a restraint rather than a hand.
Heat radiated off her armor, firelight glinting across the planes of her face as she dragged me fully upright.
There was no hesitation in her. No concern for my balance. I was either on my feet or in the way.
I sucked in a breath, pain flashing down my arm as I instinctively twisted. “Ancestors, must you wake me like?—”
“Like someone who might die today?” she interrupted coolly. “Yes.”
She released me only once I was steady, stepping back just enough to assess me the way one assessed a blade for flaws.
“If you want to survive Ashenveil,” Seraphine continued, “you will learn to wake when commanded, move when ordered, and endure without complaint. Dominus has instructed me to see that you become… useful.”
Her mouth tightened, the faintest tell of displeasure.
“Do not mistake that for mercy,” she said. “I still believe you belong behind stone and sigils. But you passed the trials. And our king does not waste what endures.”
She turned toward the door, already done with the conversation.
“Dress,” Seraphine added. “Training begins now.”
I stretched, letting the events of the past couple of days wash over me.
Everyone knew now.
Valen had seen to that. His proclamations had ridden the wind and flame, carried by flame-couriers until there was no corner of the realm untouched by the truth. Princess Aeliana was dead.
And the girl who had worn her name had shown Iceborn power before witnesses.
I felt it in the way eyes lingered too long, in the way voices dropped when I passed, in the sudden precision of how people looked at me, no longer trying to reconcile me with a princess they had been taught to revere.
I no longer had to pretend to be my dead best friend.
No longer had to smile as though she still breathed somewhere beyond reach.
I had never been allowed to grieve her while the world believed she lived.
Now her death was real. Named. Acknowledged.
And in that brutal honesty, she mattered more than she ever had.
“Stop drifting,” Seraphine said, her voice edged with heat and contempt. “Frost has no place here. Move.” I looked down at the frost gathering at my fingertips. I hadn’t even realized my cryomancy was slipping.
There was no pretense of patience in it. No illusion that I might be afforded softness. She watched me the way one watches something feral and inconvenient, a problem not yet worth killing but never worth trusting.
“You’re worse than the ghosts in the crypts,” I muttered, the words scraping out of me before I could stop them.
Her mouth curved, humorless. “At least the dead know when to stay silent.”
My body protested when I shifted, every joint aching from the journey, from cold that had seeped too deep to be chased away by fire. Sleep still clung to me in fragments, thick and disorienting.
Seraphine turned and flung a bundle of dark fabric at my chest. It struck harder than necessary.
The leathers were rough, utilitarian, cut for movement and punishment rather than ceremony.
Nothing like Emberfall’s silks or Icespire’s frostwoven lies.
These were clothes meant to bruise with you.
To sweat in. To survive or fail in without apology.
“Put them on,” she said. “Ashenveil doesn’t coddle Iceborn.” Her gaze lingered, already measuring how quickly I would break. “You’ll be bleeding before breakfast.”
I huffed a breath, fingers tightening around the leathers. “You say that like it’s a promise.”
Her answering smile was thin.
I got dressed, then we walked in silence. Seraphine’s steps echoed confidently while mine were quieter, more hesitant, as if the stone was trying to decide whether I belonged here.
Every turn revealed something new, columns carved with scenes of dragonkind in battle, glyphs glowing faintly with dormant power, soldiers training in alcoves where the walls bled lava and the air shimmered with heat.
Ashenveil wasn’t just a kingdom. It was a crucible.
Eventually, we stopped before two enormous doors. Unlike the others, these were split down the middle by a seam of obsidian and gold, the frame inscribed with runes that pulsed, almost like the heartbeat of the mountain itself.
Seraphine pressed her hand to the center. The doors didn’t swing, they growled open, the stone scraping against itself like it resented being disturbed.
Inside was not a room.
It was a proving ground.
The arena was vast, carved from stone, its walls scorched and scarred.
The ceiling arched high above, open to the ashen sky.
Pillars of basalt ringed the space, and from them hung tattered banners of dragonhide, scorched with the marks of long-dead rulers.
The floor was patterned with ancient glyphs, faded but still potent.
This was a place for testing fire and will.
In the center, a circular platform was ringed with charred bones and burn marks.
It was beautiful in the way a thunderstorm was beautiful. Terrible and awe-inspiring. A place meant to burn the weakness out of you.
Seraphine stepped into the ring like she’d been born of ash and flame.
“Your goal today is simple,” she said, tone flat as the blackened stone beneath our boots. “Dodge dragon fire.”
I blinked at her. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I think my brain just tried to crawl out of my skull in protest.”
“You heard me.” She stretched one arm across her chest with lazy confidence. “Dodge. The. Fire.”
My goal today was supposed to be breathing. Maybe eating. Possibly not dying in a new and creative way. But sure. Dragon fire. I stared at her, waiting for a punchline. “You want me to play fetch with a death lizard?”
Seraphine cocked a brow, clearly unimpressed. “I want you to learn not to die screaming when the fire comes for you. If we’re lucky, today’s the day you stop flinching and start thinking.”
“Or combust,” I muttered. I knew that the fire had not burned me in the crypt. It also didn’t burn when Valen captured our ship and he took me to the abandoned island of Sablemire.
But dragon fire was unpredictable, and I didn’t know how long its mercy would last.
“Either outcome improves your reflexes,” Seraphine replied.
Before I could argue that my reflexes were perfectly fine without being flambéed, the ground rumbled beneath my boots. A low, guttural growl vibrated up through the stone, crawling into my bones. The arena’s heat shifted, a pulse of raw power radiating outward.
I stepped back.
Too late.
The air exploded in a cyclone of embers as the dragon descended, the impact shaking the pillars and sending a shockwave through the floor. Heat slammed into me like a wall, curling my white-blond hair back from my face and coating my tongue in smoke.
No matter how many times I’d seen it, the dragon still shocked me.
Terrified me.
It was massive. Jet-black scales shimmered like liquid night, each one rimmed in gold, as though the creature’s veins carried fire instead of blood. Its wings folded with calculated ease, the movement slow and predatory.
Its eyes locked on mine.
And I forgot how to breathe.
It exhaled.
The temperature spiked.
“Ashenveil has one dragon and this is what he’s doing today? Playing catch the handmaiden with his fire?”
“Survive,” Seraphine said with a casual shrug, already walking to the edge of the ring. “Or try to. Either works.”
“You’re telling me your kingdom’s greatest weapon is currently scheduled to roast me like a festival pig?” I asked incredulously.
Seraphine didn’t answer, and the dragon moved.
Not with a roar, not with fanfare.
Just opened its jaws, and the world turned to fire.
I threw myself to the side with a half-formed curse, the heat screaming past me. I hit the ground hard, palms skidding across the stone, barely registering the pain through the adrenaline.
Another blast.
I rolled instinctively, the fire tracing the edge of my cloak and searing through the air behind me.
“Sloppy!” Seraphine’s voice echoed across the arena. “Too slow on the pivot!”
“You could try encouragement!” I shouted, breathless.
“Encouragement is for courtiers and cowards,” she called back. “You want encouragement? Don’t die.”
I scrambled behind a scorched pillar, lungs heaving against the choking heat. Sweat plastered my hair to my forehead, and my boots slipped slightly on the smooth stone.
“Footwork!” Seraphine snapped. “This isn’t a damn ballroom—you don’t get to glide around waiting for applause. MOVE.”