Chapter 9
NINE
AUREN
The cleanup takes hours.
Bodies of twisted creatures that need burning before their residual magic can corrupt anything else. Injured warriors requiring Aisling’s attention, her steady hands and sharp tongue equally in demand. Wards to be repaired, walls to be inspected, damage assessments to be compiled and analyzed.
I throw myself into the work with a focus that borders on desperation.
Cataloguing casualties. Interviewing witnesses about enemy movements.
Calculating resource expenditure and estimating recovery time.
The familiar routine of strategic analysis, where numbers and patterns make sense in ways that feelings never do.
It doesn’t help.
Because beneath the calculations, beneath the assessments and projections and carefully ordered lists, one image keeps surfacing: Tamsin vaulting over the rampart edge. Falling toward stone and death with nothing but white fire between her and destruction. Throwing away her life to save mine.
A witch princess from Valdoria, risking everything for a dragon who spent five days treating her with barely concealed hostility.
The logic doesn’t compute. I’ve run the scenarios through every analytical framework I possess, and none of them produce an answer that satisfies.
Self-preservation should have kept her on that wall.
Strategic calculation should have told her I could handle my own defense.
Even simple self-interest—the Crown needs her alive, the Brotherhood needs her alive—should have prevented her from taking that risk.
Instead, she jumped.
For me.
The sun is setting by the time I finish my duties.
Orange light bleeds across the fortress walls, painting the stone in shades of fire and blood.
Appropriate, given what these walls witnessed today.
The attack is over, the enemy retreated, but Morrigan’s message lingers in the air like smoke that refuses to disperse.
Did you really think stone walls could keep me from what’s mine?
I find myself walking toward the eastern ramparts without consciously deciding to do so.
My feet know where I’m going even if my mind hasn’t caught up.
The same ramparts where the battle was fiercest. Where Tamsin’s fire turned the tide.
Where she threw herself into empty air because I wasn’t watching my own back.
She’s there.
Standing at the rampart’s edge, exactly where she landed after I caught her. The sun sets behind her, turning her silhouette into something that belongs in paintings—a warrior queen surveying her domain, unbowed by the battle that should have broken her.
Except she’s not unbowed. I can see it now that I’m closer. The slight tremor in her shoulders. The way her hands grip the stone wall hard enough to whiten her knuckles. The unstable flicker of white fire dancing around her fingers, responding to emotions she’s trying to contain.
She hasn’t noticed my approach. She’s staring at something in the distance—the direction Morrigan’s forces retreated, maybe, or the horizon beyond which Valdoria’s ruins smolder. Her fire gutters and flares in erratic patterns I’ve come to recognize as distress.
I should leave. She clearly wants to be alone. Strategic wisdom suggests giving her space to process, allowing her to regain composure before our next interaction. Emotional engagement is a complication neither of us needs.
I don’t leave.
“Staring at the horizon won’t change what’s behind it.”
She doesn’t startle at my voice. Just turns her head slightly, acknowledging my presence without fully facing me. “I know.”
“Aisling wants to check your reserves. You’ve been avoiding her.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” I move to stand beside her at the wall, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her skin.
Her fire is running hotter than normal—a sign of magical exhaustion, paradoxically.
The body compensating for depleted reserves by burning what remains.
“Your fire is unstable. Your hands are shaking. And you haven’t eaten since before the attack. ”
“You’ve been watching me.”
“I’ve been watching everyone. It’s my job.” Not entirely true. I’ve been watching her more than others. Telling myself it’s because she’s the primary tactical asset, the Crown’s only viable wielder, the linchpin of any strategy against Morrigan and Ulrik.
Lies are easier when you don’t examine them too closely.
“How many died?” Her voice is quiet. Controlled. The voice of someone who’s asked questions like this before and knows how to brace for the answers.
“Two warriors in the initial wave, one who didn’t reach the healers in time.” I don’t soften the numbers. She asked for the truth; she deserves it. “Seventeen injured, four seriously. Two may not recover full combat capability.”
“Because of me.”
The words hit harder than they should. I turn to look at her properly, finding her profile still aimed at the horizon, her jaw tight, her fire flickering with that unstable rhythm.
“Morrigan attacked because I’m here.” She continues before I can respond. “She sent those creatures, those... things she made from dragons... because she wanted to prove she could reach me. Those people died because my sister wanted to send me a message.”
“Your sister attacked because she’s a monster who tortures living beings into nightmares and uses them as weapons.” The words come out sharper than I intended. “You are not responsible for her choices.”
“Aren’t I?” She finally turns to face me.
Her eyes are dry, but there’s something shattered behind them—guilt so familiar, I recognize it instantly because I see it in my mirror every morning.
“She’s my blood. My family. I should have stopped her years ago.
Should have seen what she was becoming. Should have—”
“Should have what? Predicted that your sister would ally with the Shadow Clan and become a murderer?” I hear my voice getting harder and can’t seem to stop it.
“Should have somehow prevented choices she made before you were old enough to understand what they meant? Should have known, at fifteen, that the sister who left home would one day destroy everything you loved?”
She flinches. Something crosses her face—surprise, maybe, at the venom in my tone. Or recognition, of a kind.
“This sounds personal.”
The observation cuts through my composure like her fire through shadow constructs. Direct. Unavoidable. Precise.
I should deflect. Change the subject. Retreat behind the walls I’ve maintained for decades against exactly this kind of vulnerability.
Instead, I hear myself say: “I blamed myself for years. Still do, sometimes.”
The silence stretches between us. Tamsin’s fire stills, her attention fixed on me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. She doesn’t push. Doesn’t demand. Just waits, offering space for words I’ve never spoken to anyone.
I don’t know why I’m doing this. Don’t know what’s possessed me to crack open wounds I’ve kept frozen for decades. But her guilt is a mirror to my own, and suddenly, I can’t bear to let her carry it alone the way I’ve carried mine.
“Lyric was born when I was already over five hundred years old.” The words feel strange in my mouth—too soft, too revealing.
“A surprise, my parents said. A gift they hadn’t expected.
She was nothing like me. Warm where I was cold.
Spontaneous where I was calculated. She felt everything so intensely, so openly, while I’d spent centuries perfecting the art of feeling nothing at all. ”
Tamsin stays silent. Listening.
“Our Fire-Bringer. The first in our bloodline. When her powers emerged, she was terrified. Couldn’t control the flames.
Set her bedroom on fire twice before she learned to contain them.
” A ghost of a smile crosses my face. I can’t help it.
“She was so embarrassed. Kept apologizing for the scorch marks on the ceiling.”
“She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.” The smile fades. “Our parents died when she was still young, by dragon standards. A border conflict that shouldn’t have claimed anyone.
I raised her after that. Taught her control, discipline, how to manage abilities that came from a part of her heritage I couldn’t share.
She made me laugh. Actually laugh, not the polite noise I made at social functions.
She cracked walls I’d spent centuries building and made me think that maybe warmth wasn’t weakness after all. ”
The sunset has deepened around us, the sky bleeding into purple at the edges. Tamsin’s fire has steadied, burning low and constant around her fingers. She’s still watching me with that careful attention, not interrupting, not judging.
“She wanted to learn. Wanted to understand the Fire-Bringer part of herself, to connect with that heritage. I tried to help, but I’m a dragon.
I understood fire from a dragon’s perspective, not a Fire-Bringer’s.
So when she found someone who could teach her—really teach her, combining witch magic with Fire-Bringer techniques—I was grateful. ”
I feel Tamsin go still beside me. She knows what’s coming. She has to.
“Morrigan came to our territory under the guise of diplomatic outreach. A Valdorian princess interested in Fire-Bringer traditions, she said. Lyric was thrilled. Someone who understood both aspects of her power, someone who could help her integrate abilities that felt like they belonged to different people.” My hands have clenched into fists at my sides.
I force them to relax. “She talked about Morrigan constantly. Her wonderful new mentor. Her friend. The princess who understood what it meant to carry gifts you didn’t ask for. ”
“Auren...”
“I encouraged her.” The admission tears something in my chest. “I was grateful. Grateful that someone was helping my sister grow into her power. Grateful that she’d found a friend who made her happy.
I had Brotherhood duties, strategic planning, a war to prepare for.
I couldn’t give Lyric all the attention she needed.
So I thanked whatever providence had sent a Valdorian princess to fill the gap. ”
The fire around Tamsin’s hands gutters out entirely. Her face has gone pale in the fading light.
“Morrigan befriended her over months. Gained her trust with patience and apparent kindness. And then, when I was away on Brotherhood business—when I wasn’t there to protect her—she led Lyric to a ritual circle in the Valdorian forests.
” My voice has gone flat. Cold. The only way I can speak these words without shattering.
“I felt my sister die through our sibling bond. Felt her terror become agony become silence. By the time I reached her, it was over.”
“The blood ritual.” Tamsin’s voice is barely a whisper.
“The blood ritual,” I confirm. “Morrigan wanted to steal Fire-Bringer flame—thought she could drain it from a young Fire-Bringer and absorb it into herself. It didn’t work.
She lacked Fire-Bringer blood entirely. But Lyric died anyway.
Screaming. Terrified. Calling for a brother who arrived minutes too late to save her. ”
Silence falls between us. The sunset has faded to twilight, stars beginning to emerge in the darkening sky. The fortress is quiet around us—the cleanup largely finished, the wounded being tended, the living trying to process what the day brought.
“I held her body until dawn.” I don’t know why I’m still talking. Can’t seem to stop. “Couldn’t cry. The grief was too vast for tears. Something inside me froze that night and never thawed. I buried her in our family’s ancestral grounds and felt the last warmth in me die with her.”
Tamsin turns away from me. For a moment, I think I’ve finally pushed her away—that the truth of what her sister did to my family is too much, that she’ll retreat into defensive anger or justification or any of the reactions I’ve encountered when Morrigan’s crimes come up in conversation.
Instead, she presses both hands flat against the stone wall and bows her head. Her shoulders shake once. Twice.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks on the words. “Auren, I’m so sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“She’s my sister.” She lifts her head, and I see tears tracking down her cheeks. Not performance. Not manipulation. Genuine grief, for a woman she never met, caused by a woman whose blood they share. “She’s my sister, and she murdered yours, and nothing I say will ever make that right.”
“No.” I should feel vindicated. Should feel satisfaction at finally hearing a Valdorian acknowledge what was done without excuses or deflection. Instead, I feel something else—something uncomfortable and unfamiliar that I can’t immediately name. “It won’t.”
“But I’m still sorry.” She faces me fully, tears still falling, fire still extinguished.
Raw in a way I’ve never seen her. Vulnerable in a way that makes something in my chest ache.
“I’m sorry she did that to you. I’m sorry for the years you spent frozen.
I’m sorry that my blood carries the legacy of her cruelty. ”
“Tamsin—”
“And I’m going to stop her.” Her voice hardens, grief giving way to something sharper.
Something that burns brighter than any fire.
“I’m going to make sure she never hurts anyone else.
Never takes another sister, another daughter, another person who just wanted to learn and grow and be loved.
” She meets my gaze with eyes that have gone fierce despite the tears.
“I can’t undo what she did to Lyric. But I can make sure Lyric is the last.”