Chapter 6
SIX
AUREN
I’ve been in the library since before dawn.
The texts spread across my worktable represent four hundred years of accumulated research on the Dominion Relics—scrolls so old, they crumble at the edges, bound volumes in languages that haven’t been spoken in centuries, stone tablets etched with diagrams that make my head ache if I study them too long.
I know every text in this collection. Know exactly where each one belongs on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that surround me.
Know which alcoves hold the most sensitive materials and which preservation wards need reinforcing.
The library is my domain. Temperature and humidity precisely controlled. Enchanted lights providing perfect illumination without damaging old paper. The smell of dust and leather permeates everything, threaded with the faint ozone crackle of preservation magic.
I know this space the way I know my own breath. And right now, I’m using it to avoid thinking about the woman sleeping four corridors away.
The Dominion Crown. I force my attention back to the text in front of me—a treatise on Relic amplification written by a scholar who died before the first Brotherhood fortress was built.
The Crown is more powerful than the other three Relics combined.
That much I already knew. What I didn’t know, what these texts are revealing in devastating detail, is the scope of what it can do in the hands of someone who can actually wield it.
Amplification a hundredfold. Fire-Bringer flame that could level mountains. Witch magic that could reshape reality itself. Power without apparent limit, constrained only by the wielder’s ability to channel it without burning out.
And Tamsin doesn’t just seal the Crown. She can open it. Wield it. Control powers that would destroy anyone else.
I set the text down and press my fingers against my temples.
The tactical implications are staggering.
If we can train her properly—if she can learn to harness that power without losing herself to it—she becomes the most significant military asset in the known world.
A weapon that could end the Shadow Clan threat permanently.
If we fail, if Morrigan or Ulrik gets their hands on her...
I don’t let myself finish the thought. Some scenarios don’t need to be mapped to their conclusions.
Footsteps in the corridor. Light, steady, approaching with purpose. I check the angle of light through the high windows. Just past dawn. She’s early.
Good. Punctuality is the first test.
She appears in the library doorway wearing borrowed training clothes—dark trousers, a fitted shirt that’s slightly too large, boots that have seen better days.
Her hair is pulled back from her face, copper highlights catching the enchanted light.
She looks rested. More solid than she did yesterday, though shadows still linger beneath her eyes.
“You said dawn.” Her voice is steady. No trace of the exhaustion that plagued her yesterday.
“I did.” I rise from my chair, gathering the texts into a neat stack. “You’re early.”
“I don’t sleep well in unfamiliar places.”
“Neither do I.” The admission slips out before I can stop it. I ignore it, moving toward the door. “We’ll start in the training yard. I need to assess where your control actually stands before we can establish a training protocol.”
She falls into step beside me, matching my pace without effort. “What did the research tell you?”
“That the Crown is significantly more powerful than we anticipated.” I navigate the corridors on autopilot, my mind still processing the morning’s revelations.
“The other three Relics are tools—dangerous ones, but limited in scope. The Crown is something else entirely. An amplifier without apparent ceiling.”
“I know what it can do.”
“Do you?” I glance at her, cataloguing the set of her jaw, the steadiness of her gaze. “Have you ever opened it? Used its power?”
“No.” Something flickers across her face—not fear, exactly. Wariness. “My mother was supposed to train me. We were going to start after my twenty-fifth birthday.” A pause. “That was two weeks ago.”
Two weeks. The timeline crystallizes in my mind.
Two weeks since her birthday. Only days since the Shadow Clan attacked.
She should be learning to wield the most powerful Relic in existence under her mother’s guidance.
Instead, she’s here, learning control from a dragon who has every reason to want her dead.
“Then we start with the basics.” I push open the doors to the training yard, letting the cold morning air wash over us. “Your dual abilities first. The Crown can wait.”
The training yard is empty at this hour—a wide expanse of packed earth surrounded by stone walls high enough to contain most magical accidents.
Targets line the far end, ranging from simple wooden dummies to warded constructs designed to absorb significant power.
Weapons racks stand along the eastern wall, though we won’t be using them today.
I position myself at the center of the yard and gesture for Tamsin to stand opposite me.
“We’ll start with your Fire-Bringer abilities.” I let frost gather across my palms, a familiar chill that grounds me. “I want to see your baseline. Don’t hold back—I need accurate data to work with.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You want me to attack you?”
“I want you to show me what you can do. The format is irrelevant.”
For a moment, she just looks at me. Assessing. Then fire blooms in her palms—not the desperate flare from the infirmary, but something controlled. Deliberate. White flame that burns so bright, I have to squint against it.
She doesn’t throw it at me. Instead, she moves.
It’s nothing I expected. I anticipated the rigid forms of formal combat training—structured, predictable, the kind of technique drilled into royal heirs from childhood.
What I get is something else entirely. She flows across the training yard, fire trailing from her hands in spiraling patterns, her body moving in ways that have nothing to do with military precision and everything to do with instinct.
She approaches this like a dance.
The realization throws me. I’ve trained warriors for centuries.
I understand the language of combat—the angles, the footwork, the calculated application of force.
This is different. She’s not fighting the air; she’s moving with it.
Not controlling her fire; she’s letting it follow the natural rhythm of her body.
“Stop.”
She halts mid-motion, fire guttering. “What’s wrong?”
“Your technique is...” I search for the right word. “Unorthodox.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It’s a variable I wasn’t accounting for.” I circle her slowly, analyzing the way she holds herself—loose, balanced, ready to move in any direction. Not the rigid stance of formal training. Something more fluid. “You weren’t trained in standard Fire-Bringer techniques.”
“My tutors tried.” She tracks my movement without turning her head, peripheral vision sharp. “I learned the forms. They just never felt right. My fire doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work?”
She’s quiet for a moment. Considering. “It wants to move. To flow. When I try to force it into rigid shapes, it fights me. But when I let it follow my body—” She demonstrates, a small spiral of white flame curling around her fingers. “—it responds.”
I file the information away. Instinctive magic rather than structured casting. It explains why her control is so volatile when she’s exhausted—she relies on physical awareness rather than mental discipline. When her body is depleted, her magic has nothing to anchor to.
“Then we’ll need to modify the training approach.” I let my frost spread across the ground between us, thin ice crackling over packed earth. “Your instincts are strong, but instincts fail under pressure. You need a foundation that holds even when your body can’t.”
“And you’re going to teach me that?”
“I’m going to try.” I meet her gaze. “Whether you learn depends entirely on you.”
The next two hours are an exercise in frustration.
My approach to training is systematic. Methodical. I break skills into component parts, drill each element until it becomes automatic, then integrate them into larger patterns. It’s how I learned control. How I’ve taught others. A proven methodology refined over multiple centuries.
Tamsin’s fire doesn’t respond to methodology.
“Again.” I watch her attempt the containment exercise for the fifteenth time. The goal is simple: create a sphere of fire and hold it stable for thirty seconds. Basic Fire-Bringer technique. Selene mastered it in her first week.
Tamsin’s sphere lasts exactly twelve seconds before it starts spiraling outward, transforming from a controlled shape into something wild and reaching. She grits her teeth and tries to force it back into form. The fire resists, flaring brighter, heat washing across the yard in waves.
“Stop fighting it.” The words come out sharper than I intended.
“I’m trying to control it, which you told me to do.”
“I told you to hold the shape. You’re trying to force the shape. There’s a difference.”
She lets the fire dissipate, frustration evident in every line of her body. “Then explain the difference. Because from where I’m standing, they feel exactly the same.”
I pause. Consider. The problem isn’t her capability—she has more raw power than any Fire-Bringer I’ve encountered. The problem is that my teaching methodology assumes a foundation she doesn’t have. I’m trying to impose structure on magic that operates according to entirely different principles.
“Show me again.” I move closer, close enough that I can feel the residual heat radiating from her skin. “The way you naturally work. Without trying to follow my instructions.”