The Mistress of the Hearth
The little healer spoke with a mouth full of beans, bless her. “So you’re really going with Thorn to train?”
The moment Elara asked her question, I felt him stiffen around my flames. The boy was wound too tightly for such a simple day.
Bran grunted in reply, half-heartedly chasing broth-slick noodles around his bowl. “Apparently, the new Ember Warden wants me as far from the Reach as possible.”
“You’re in good hands. He’s Guide Fenn’s best friend,” the one who was not a girl said, arms behind her head, eyes skyward. The sun winked against the water, casting lazy patterns of gold across her expression. “And it’s just until you can control the power of the Great Phoenix better.”
As if they could control me. I could have snorted fire.
“Still odd,” Elara yawned, stretching overhead. “That basically a god would pick you, of all people, you misfit.”
“You think I don’t know that?” The boy bristled.
He shoved the bowl aside and glared toward the lake. Palm fronds whispered overhead. The wind carried the scent of lotus and something older, the kind of scent that clings to memory like ash.
Elara softened. “Hey. I didn’t mean it like that.”
He didn’t respond as Rynna turned onto her side, studying the water.
I sighed. He’s finally realizing he’s special. Chosen. Now he thinks he doesn’t deserve it.
Rynna broke the silence. “The Phoenix is the strongest of the Elementals. Do you know why that is?”
I preened, basking in the praise like any self-respecting divine firebird should.
“Fire. Duh.” Bran didn’t look at her.
Rynna scoffed. “Fire’s cool and all, and yeah, it can be one hell of a destructive weapon. But that’s not why she’s the strongest.”
“Then why?” Elara asked, flicking sand from her knee.
“Because fire doesn’t just destroy.” Rynna watched the sky. “It also creates.”
Ah. There she was. My little death-slayer, speaking truths she could barely accept in herself.
Bran snorted. “That’s just stupid.”
“They say the fire of the Great Phoenix is eternal. Older than stars. Not just destruction, but the first spark of life. Within her. Within you,” Rynna continued.
Elara leaned forward, ramen forgotten.
“Or. At least. That’s what the texts said.” Rynna smiled faintly. “From when Guide Fenn and I searched the Tide Reach Library for any reference to the Elementals.”
I remembered. The two of them, tramping across continents, scavenging words to make sense of destiny. As if it were a puzzle to solve instead of a flame to endure. I could only imagine what else they had gotten up to during those months alone.
The wolf. I’d seen her laugh with him—truly laugh. Something I hadn’t thought possible after the Weaving took her from us. But he was good for her.
“So what?” Bran picked up a pebble, rolling it in his hand. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Because you always get up,” Rynna said simply, sitting up now. “No matter what. No matter who you lose, how much it hurts, you keep believing. You never stop fighting.”
The pebble skipped twice before sinking. Plunk.
He didn’t look at her. “And someday it’s going to get me killed. That’s what Taren said. And he was right. It almost got us all killed with Renji. Or Kaelith. Or whoever he was.”
The name slithered through the air.
Rynna grimaced. I felt it before I saw it—that flicker of pain before she pasted on the same brittle smile she always wore when the Serpent came up. Or those few times he’d shown himself these last few years before disappearing.
“And then Taren left,” Bran added. “What if that was my fault, too?”
Elara reached for him. “Taren made his own choice. With the new Warden’s permission. He’ll come back. When he’s ready. That wasn’t your fault.”
“You think?”
“See?!” Rynna grinned. “That’s the spark. That’s why the Phoenix chose you.”
Bran puffed his chest a bit, bumping fists with Elara. “She probably just wants to make sure she’s in the next Ember Warden.”
I did.
“What?” Elara wrinkled her nose at Rynna, who rolled her eyes.
Then, before he could move, Elara tackled him, pinning him down and grinding her knuckles into his scalp. “Such an idiot!”
He writhed. “You’re the idiot! I can’t help that she chose me!”
Elara huffed, still straddling him. “Even now, you’re the same freaking—!”
“You’re just jealous,” Bran laughed. “I heard the Phoenix can bring people back from the dead. You’ll never manage that with your healing.”
“And now we’re spouting folk tales,” Elara muttered.
She was wrong, though the cost was high, I thought, watching the others.
The sun lit Rynna’s hair like burgundy thread. Elara’s laughter danced across the water. And Bran, beneath it all, was still trying to understand why I had come to him.
I watched them, and for the first time in ages, a quiet settled in my flames.
These past few years, I’d seen my young man grow in ways I hadn’t been strong enough to witness in his father.
Back then, after the Hearth fell, I’d been too lost in grief, and too shrouded in pain, trying to condense my full self in one versus hundreds without hurting him.
Grief and pain had been all we knew for many years, Ben and I.
But here, now—watching these fools laugh in the sun—I felt something close to peace.
Though peace, I knew, never lingered long. Not for those chosen by flame.
The final war crept closer with every breath. The Enemy—older than the world itself and no longer bound—was stronger than it had been since the first sealing. This lull, this laughter, was only the hush before the world burned again.
I looked to the girl who was not a girl, knowing the losses already behind us were only the opening notes of a much crueler symphony. One family. One love. One long-lost shard of her soul—torn from her by forces beyond her reach, beyond even mine.
And losing the Serpent a second time had nearly shattered her, though he’d stood as their enemy before the watching world.
Even after unveiling himself, he had not begged for forgiveness.
And yet, when the crowd cheered his supposed death months later, she had slipped from the wolf’s room unnoticed, ascending the sandstone cliffs alone.
I had touched Bran’s mind then, whispered for him to follow.
He hadn’t understood why she wept, curled in shadow, biting into her own arm to choke the sobs. But he held her. All through the night, until the desert sky burned pink and she rebuilt her smile like armor, never speaking of it again.
She didn’t know the Serpent’s soul had not yet crossed the gates. That I had nudged events to a different conclusion. That their story wasn’t finished.
She would need both halves of her missing self for what was coming.
And flame willing, we’d all survive it.