CHAPTER EIGHT
Ophira agreed to train Wren on the condition that Briar joined the sessions too, and Briar suspected, watching the dragon woman's carefully neutral expression as she said it, that this was less about convenience and more about keeping a close, watchful eye on both of them at once.
"You're stronger than when we started," Ophira said, circling Briar in the training yard a week after their return from the Hollow Court, Wren watching from the sidelines with fierce, focused attention.
"More controlled, too. Whatever you and my lord Kade have been doing in that old chamber, it's working. "
"High praise, coming from the woman who tried to break my arm during my first assessment."
"I was testing your limits. You didn't have any worth speaking of, back then." Ophira's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "You do now."
They ran drills until the light began to shift gold along the caldera's rim, Wren stumbling through basic forms with the earnest, graceless determination of someone who had never expected her body to be asked to do anything more strenuous than carrying linens, and Briar found herself laughing, genuinely and easily, for the first time in what felt like weeks.
"I look ridiculous," Wren said, flushed and breathless after her third failed attempt at a defensive stance Ophira had shown her.
"You look like someone learning something new," Briar said. "That's not the same as ridiculous."
"Easy for the Rootborn prodigy to say."
"I nearly took my own head off with my own power the first week I tried this," Briar said. "Everyone starts somewhere."
Ophira, watching the exchange with something unreadable behind her usual stern composure, said nothing — but Briar caught her expression softening, just slightly, in a way that suggested the dragon warrior had quietly decided both of them were worth the effort.
It was during one of these sessions, three days later, that word arrived of trouble at Duskmere's border — not an incursion this time, but something more human in its cruelty.
A splinter faction of dragon nobility, apparently unsatisfied with Lord Ashgrove's caution, had taken matters into their own hands, launching a punitive raid against a Duskmere outpost under the thin justification of "securing the border against wolf instability. "
"They're using the fractures as cover," Kade said grimly, spreading the scout's report across the council table that evening, fury banked but unmistakable beneath his composure.
"Blaming the incursions on Duskmere's proximity to the veil-gates, using it to justify aggression they've wanted an excuse for since long before any of this started. "
"Who authorized it?" Lord Ashgrove demanded.
"No one, officially. A faction loyal to Councilor Rook's old allies, acting independently.
" The scout, a young dragon soldier still dusty from the ride, looked deeply uncomfortable delivering the news.
"Three Duskmere wolves wounded, my lord.
One outpost burned. They've withdrawn since, but the damage is done, and Duskmere is furious. "
Briar felt something cold settle low in her stomach. "This is going to be blamed on me."
"It already is," the scout admitted, wincing. "The faction responsible is already circulating the idea that they were acting to contain the danger a Rootborn wolf represents. Whether or not that was ever the real motive."
Lord Ashgrove's jaw tightened, old fury and old caution warring visibly behind his controlled features. "Find them," he said flatly. "Every dragon involved in that raid answers to me directly, not to whatever private council Rook thinks she's assembling behind my back."
Briar rode out with Kade and a small honor guard three days later — not to fight, but to stand, visibly, alongside Duskmere's wounded as a gesture Lord Ashgrove had, somewhat reluctantly, authorized, in hopes of containing the diplomatic damage before it spread further.
She had not expected Rhys to be waiting for her at the outpost.
Her cousin looked older than his letter had suggested, worn thin by weeks of tension and now this — a fresh wound bandaged along his shoulder, his expression caught somewhere between relief and old grief when he saw her dismount.
"You came," he said, voice rough.
"Of course I came." Briar crossed to him without hesitation, pulling him into an embrace that neither of them had managed, she realized, in over four years. "Rhys. I'm so sorry. This happened because of me."
"This happened," Rhys said, pulling back to look at her properly, "because a handful of dragons decided fear was a good enough reason to hurt people who never threatened them.
That's not your fault, Briar. I need you to understand that clearly, the same way I needed Corrin to understand it, for all the good that did. "
Behind them, Kade dismounted and approached with careful, deliberate respect, aware of exactly how fragile Duskmere's trust in dragons currently was.
"Lord Ashgrove is committed to identifying and punishing everyone responsible," he said.
"That's not empty diplomacy. I'll see to it myself, if I have to. "
Rhys studied him for a long moment, old wariness plain on his face. "You're the dragon from Briar's letters."
"I am."
"She didn't mention you were quite this earnest about it." Something almost like approval flickered behind Rhys's tired eyes. "Good. She's going to need that, if even half of what the rumors say about her is true."
They spent the afternoon among Duskmere's wounded, Briar using her power, carefully and deliberately this time, to help stabilize a collapsed section of the outpost's wall, watched by wary but increasingly less hostile Duskmere eyes.
It wasn't reconciliation. It wasn't even close.
But it was a start, small and hard-won, and Briar found herself grateful for it in a way she hadn't expected.
"Come to Pyrhollow," she told Rhys, before they left. "Not to stay, if you don't want to. But I'd like you to see where I've ended up. And I think Wren would like you. She has strong opinions about terrible court fashion that I suspect you'd appreciate."
Rhys's mouth twitched, something like his old, easy humor breaking through the exhaustion. "I might take you up on that. Someone needs to keep an eye on you, and it clearly isn't going to be Corrin."
He embraced her once more before she rode out, and Briar carried the warmth of it back toward Pyrhollow alongside the heavier knowledge that the war Wren had started training for might be closer than any of them wanted to admit.
Torin arrived at Pyrhollow unannounced eight days after the raid on Duskmere's border, and Briar felt the old, familiar lurch in her chest at the sight of him — though this time, she was relieved to notice, it settled quickly into something calmer, more like seeing a friend than navigating a wound.
"I heard about the raid," he said, finding her in the training yard, Wren and Ophira pausing their drill to watch him approach with careful, measuring eyes.
"I came to see if Stormreach could help.
Officially, that's the reason." He hesitated, some of his usual easy confidence giving way to something more uncertain.
"Unofficially, I wanted to apologize properly.
For the Hollow Court. For putting you in the middle of something that was never fair to ask of you. "
"You already apologized," Briar said, though not unkindly.
"I apologized for the fight. I didn't apologize for the weeks before it.
" Torin ran a hand through his hair, old frustration and new humility tangling together.
"I spent a long time telling myself that pushing you was love, Briar.
That if I just cared enough, tried hard enough, eventually you'd see reason and choose the easier path.
I've had some time to sit with how selfish that actually was, dressed up as devotion.
" His jaw tightened. "You told me clearly, more than once, what you wanted.
I owe you an apology for not respecting that the first time you said it, instead of the fifth. "
Briar studied him for a long moment, old affection and new, hard-won respect settling together in her chest. "Thank you. That means more than you probably realize."
"I'd like to stay a while," Torin said. "Not to keep pushing. Just — as your friend. If that's something you'd still want, after everything."
"I'd like that," Briar said, and meant it completely.
Torin's presence at Pyrhollow, once the initial tension eased, proved to be a genuine gift rather than the complication Briar had half expected.
He fell into easy camaraderie with Wren almost immediately, the two of them trading barbed commentary about court fashion and dragon pomposity with a speed that left Briar laughing more in a single afternoon than she had in weeks, and he threw himself into Ophira's training sessions with the same restless, competitive energy he'd always carried as a boy, pushing Wren to work harder without ever once making her feel small for needing the push.
"He's not what I expected," Wren admitted to Briar one evening, watching Torin spar good-naturedly with one of the younger dragon guards. "From how you talked about him, I mean. I expected someone more — brooding, I suppose. Wounded."
"He was, for a while." Briar watched him too, something warm and grateful settling in her chest. "I think losing gracefully is a skill, same as anything else. I'm glad he's finally learning it."
It was Sable who found Briar unexpectedly that same week, in the quiet stone corridor where their first real confrontation had taken place months earlier — though this time, there was no cruelty in her expression, only something tired and unusually open.
"I refused Ilsbeth," Sable said, without preamble. "Formally, two days ago. She was not pleased."
Briar straightened, surprised. "What changed?"