Chapter 5 Rurik
FIVE
RURIK
She walks out with perfect posture.
Too perfect. Spine rigid. Shoulders squared. Head held at exactly the angle that suggests calm without actually achieving it. I’ve seen that walk before—on soldiers coming back from battles they survived but didn’t win. On dragons returning from losses they can’t admit.
On myself, more times than I want to count.
I give her a head start. She asked for alone, and I’m trying—I’m really trying—to respect the boundaries she’s erected around herself. But my dragon has other ideas. It’s snarling with an urgency I can’t ignore.
Follow. Protect. She’s breaking.
She’s not mine to protect. Not yet. Maybe not ever, given the way she flinches from touch and retreats behind clinical detachment every time something threatens to make her feel.
But I follow anyway. Because, apparently, I’m incapable of making good decisions where she’s concerned.
The garden is easy to find—I’ve spent centuries in this fortress, know every corner and hidden passage.
She’s standing among the overgrown herbs, shoulders no longer squared, hands no longer steady.
The shaking has spread from her fingers to her arms, visible tremors that she’s staring at with something between horror and resignation.
Clinical detachment.
That’s what Auren would call it. What the healers would note in their charts. Dissociation. Emotional suppression. Perfectly normal response to trauma that will become perfectly abnormal if it continues long enough.
But I watched her in that examination room, answering questions about her own torture with the precise language of a medical professional documenting someone else’s case.
Describing violation like it were happening to a stranger.
That careful, practiced distance from her own suffering—was somehow worse than if she’d screamed.
She’s retreating into facts because feelings are too dangerous.
I know something about that. I’ve built a whole personality around avoiding the feelings that might destroy me if I looked at them directly.
Selene brushes past me before I can decide what to do. Her hand touches my arm—brief, purposeful—and her expression carries a clear message: Stay back.
I stay back. Watch from the doorway as Selene crosses the garden and sinks down beside Aisling. Not touching. Just present. Close enough that Aisling could reach out if she wanted to.
“You don’t have to be strong all the time.” Selene’s voice is soft but carries in the quiet.
“Yes, I do.” Aisling’s response is immediate. Automatic.
“No. You don’t.”
Something cracks in Aisling’s rigid posture. Not a collapse—she’s too controlled for that—but a fracture. The first sign that the walls she’s built might not be as impenetrable as she needs them to be.
My chest aches.
Comfort her, my dragon demands. Hold her. Make it better.
But I can’t make this better. Can’t fix what was done to her with jokes or charm or any of the weapons in my usual arsenal. The only thing I can do is stand here in this doorway, useless, watching someone else provide the support I want to give.
Selene doesn’t try to touch Aisling. Just sits in the dirt beside her, presence without pressure. “When they had me, I thought I had to hold it together. Thought if I let myself feel what was happening, I’d shatter completely.”
Aisling’s hands have stilled. She’s listening, even if she’s not looking.
“But feelings don’t go away because you refuse to acknowledge them.” Selene’s voice carries experience. “They just find other ways out. Usually at the worst possible moments.”
“You’re suggesting I should schedule a breakdown?” Aisling’s dry humor is the first crack of actual personality I’ve heard from her since we brought her here. “Put it on the calendar between training and meals?”
“I’m suggesting that you don’t have to be alone while you fall apart.”
The silence stretches. I don’t move. Don’t breathe.
Finally, almost imperceptibly, Aisling leans into Selene’s shoulder. The contact is minimal—barely touching—but it’s contact. It’s trust.
It’s not me.
I tell myself that doesn’t sting. That I have no right to want her trust, her contact, her carefully rationed vulnerability. We’ve known each other only days. She owes me nothing. I’ve given her nothing except books she probably won’t read and intrusions she definitely didn’t want.
But my dragon doesn’t care about timelines or logic. It’s been pacing since the moment I caught her scent, since the moment in the infirmary, since the moment I saw fire in her hands and iron in her spine.
Ours, it insists. She’s ours.
“Shut up,” I mutter under my breath.
“Talking to yourself?” Zyphon materializes from the shadow beside me, violet-tinged eyes fixed on the scene in the garden. “Usually a sign of deteriorating mental state.”
I don’t startle. Centuries of living with a brother who appears from darkness without warning has cured me of that particular reflex. “Usually a sign of not having anyone better to talk to.”
Zyphon doesn’t rise to the bait. His attention remains on Aisling—studying her with the same unsettling intensity he brings to everything. The shadows around him writhe with unusual agitation, curling and uncurling in patterns I’ve never seen.
“The shadows in me are reacting.” His voice is low. Flat. Carrying information he clearly wishes he didn’t have.
The implications settle into my gut, cold and heavy. “Reacting to what?”
“The Relic’s awakening.”
The ice in my gut spreads to my chest. “Then we don’t let that happen.”
“We may not have a choice.” Zyphon’s gaze returns to Aisling.
In the garden, she’s straightened slightly, no longer leaning on Selene but not quite standing either.
The tremors have subsided. The mask is rebuilding itself piece by piece.
“Valdris is patient. She’s waited millennia for freedom.
She’ll keep reaching for what she’s already touched.
And that girl has been touched more thoroughly than any Fire-Bringer in centuries. ”
“Then we protect her.”
“From an ancient dragon who can invade dreams? Who can speak through blood rituals across continents?” Zyphon’s voice carries no judgment. Just cold assessment of facts I don’t want to hear. “You can’t stand guard against nightmares, brother. Some enemies attack from the inside.”
I don’t have an answer for that. Don’t have a solution or a strategy or even one of my usual deflecting jokes. All I have is the sight of Aisling in that garden, slowly reassembling her armor, and the bone-deep certainty that I will tear apart anything that tries to hurt her again.
My dragon roars its agreement.
PROTECT. CLAIM. OURS.
I tell it to shut up again. Louder this time.
“You should be careful.” Zyphon’s attention shifts to me now, those ancient eyes reading things I’d rather keep hidden. “I recognize what I see in you. The claiming instinct. The need to possess what you want to protect.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it?” He tilts his head, shadows pooling around his feet.
“You’ve been watching her for days. Hovering.
Bringing her gifts she didn’t ask for. Learning her habits.
Her preferences. The patterns of her behavior.
” He glanced at the garden again. “That’s not protection, brother.
That’s obsession wearing protection’s mask. ”
The accusation cuts deeper than I want to admit. “She needs—“
“She needs someone who’ll give her back what was stolen—her autonomy.” Zyphon’s voice goes quiet. Almost gentle, which is terrifying coming from him. “Not another person trying to control her. Even with good intentions. Especially with good intentions.”
In the garden, Selene helps Aisling to her feet. They’re talking in low voices, heads bent together. Aisling’s mask is firmly back in place—the professional distance restored, vulnerability locked away. But a change has occurred. Some of the rigid tension has eased.
Not because of me. Because I stayed back. Because I let someone else provide what she needed.
The realization burns.
“She’s not ready for what you’re feeling,” Zyphon says. “May never be. The claiming instinct doesn’t guarantee acceptance. Doesn’t guarantee anything except pain for both parties if it’s forced.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” He melts back into shadow, voice lingering after his form has vanished. “Make sure you do, brother. Some wounds don’t heal.”
I stand alone in the doorway, watching Aisling walk back toward the fortress with Selene at her side. She doesn’t look in my direction. Doesn’t acknowledge that I’m here, that I’ve been watching, that I care about what happens to her in ways I can’t explain and don’t entirely understand.
My dragon snarls its frustration.
Ours. She’s ours. Claim her. Mark her. Make her understand.
But she doesn’t need another person trying to own her.
She needs someone who’ll let her own herself.
Even if it kills me to wait.