Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
AUREN
Someone is in my library.
I know before I reach the door. After six centuries, the library has become an extension of myself—I feel disturbances in its order the way some people feel changes in weather.
A book has been removed from its shelf. Several books, actually.
And the preservation wards have shifted to accommodate a living presence that shouldn’t be here in the middle of the night.
I don’t need to guess who it is.
The door opens silently—I oiled the hinges myself, preferring to approach my domain without announcement—and I find exactly what I expected.
Tamsin sits at the central research table, surrounded by texts I recognize immediately.
Dark magic theory. Blood ritual construction.
Countermeasures for curse-enhanced witchcraft.
She’s built herself a fortress of research, and she’s clearly been here for hours.
She doesn’t notice my entrance. Her focus is absolute, amber eyes tracking lines of text with fierce concentration, copper-highlighted hair escaping the knot she’s twisted it into.
A cup of cold tea sits forgotten at her elbow.
Notes spread across the table in handwriting that grows progressively more erratic—she started organized, but exhaustion has claimed her penmanship.
I should leave.
She’s working. Clearly doesn’t want to be disturbed. If she needed assistance, she would have asked. The strategically sound decision is to retreat, let her complete her research in peace, address whatever questions she might have in the morning.
Instead, I find myself moving toward the small preparation area where I keep supplies for long research sessions. Heating water. Selecting tea leaves—a blend designed to focus the mind without disrupting sleep patterns. I’ve used it countless times during my own late nights in this room.
She looks up when I set the cup beside her cold one.
“You should be sleeping.” I take the chair across from her without waiting for an invitation. “Exhausting yourself before we’ve even begun planning is counterproductive.”
“I couldn’t sleep.” She wraps her hands around the warm cup, and I notice for the first time how thin her fingers look.
How the shadows under her eyes have deepened since yesterday.
“Morrigan sent a message.” She stops. “She’s watching us.
Somehow. She knew about the hot springs.
And she didn’t give any warning about when she’d strike.
It could be tomorrow. It could be tonight.
I can’t just sit and wait for her to make the next move. ”
Ice settles in my chest. “You received a message from Morrigan and didn’t report it immediately?”
“I was going to tell everyone in the morning. I needed—” She gestures at the books surrounding her. “I needed to do something. She could attack at any moment. I refuse to sit idle while she plans my death.”
“What did she say?”
Tamsin’s jaw tightens. “The usual threats. Come willingly or watch everyone I care about die. She specifically mentioned the Fire-Bringer women.” A pause. “And you.”
“Me.”
“She called you ‘the ice dragon who can’t stop watching me.’” Her eyes meet mine, something unreadable in their amber depths. “Said she’d start with you. Poetic justice, she called it.”
I should address the security implications. Should focus on how Morrigan is gathering intelligence, what countermeasures we need to implement, how to ensure her surveillance is neutralized before the assault.
Instead, I hear myself ask: “Does it bother you? That she’s targeting me specifically?”
The question surprises us both. Tamsin blinks, and something in her expression shifts—becomes more open, more honest than the controlled facade she usually maintains.
“Yes.” Simple. Direct. No elaboration or qualification. “It bothers me.”
The admission settles into the space between us. I don’t know what to do with it. Don’t know what to do with any of the things I’ve been feeling since this woman arrived at my gate, carrying a Relic and a burden and nothing else.
“Show me what you’ve found.” I pull the nearest stack of notes toward me. “If you’re determined to research through the night, you might as well have assistance.”
The hours blur into each other.
We work in parallel at first, dividing the research into logical segments.
She takes the texts on blood magic—knows more about it than I expected, familiar with the theoretical framework from her Valdorian training.
I focus on curse construction, looking for weaknesses in the types of workings Morrigan has demonstrated.
But research has a way of becoming conversation when two minds are working on the same problem.
“This passage suggests that blood rituals become unstable when the intent doesn’t match the sacrifice.
” Tamsin slides a text across the table, pointing to a specific paragraph.
“Morrigan’s ritual on Lyric failed because she wanted something her blood couldn’t receive.
The power dispersed instead of transferring. ”
“But Lyric still died.” The words come out harder than I intended.
“Yes.” Tamsin doesn’t flinch from the harshness. “The ritual still drained her. It just couldn’t give what it took to Morrigan.” She pauses, something careful in her expression. “If we can force that same instability in whatever ritual she’s planning for me—”
“We’re not using you as bait.”
“I didn’t say we were. I said if we can force instability.” She meets my gaze steadily. “I’m not suggesting I sacrifice myself. I’m suggesting we understand the mechanics well enough to turn them against her.”
I hold her gaze for a long moment, searching for any sign of the self-destructive tendency Aisling warned me about. What I find instead is calculation. Strategy. The mind of someone who’s been trained for war and understands that knowledge is the most powerful weapon.
“Continue.”
She does. And somewhere between the third cup of tea and the fourth hour of research, the guards come down.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just... gradually. The careful distance we’ve both been maintaining starts to feel unnecessary. She stops editing her thoughts before speaking them. I stop analyzing her words for hidden meanings.
“I used to think duty was the highest virtue.” Tamsin is staring at a passage about magical binding, but her eyes have gone distant.
“My parents raised me to believe that service to Valdoria came before everything. Before personal happiness. Before individual desires. Before—” She stops. “Before love.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m not sure duty and love are as separate as I thought.” She looks up at me. “Selene serves Drayke and the Brotherhood, but not because duty demands it. She serves because she loves them. The duty comes from the love, not the other way around.”
“That’s a dangerous way to think.” The words come automatically, the response I’ve given myself a thousand times. “Love makes people irrational. Makes them take risks that aren’t strategically sound. Makes them vulnerable.”
“Does it?” Her head tilts. “Or does it make them stronger? Selene would burn the world for Drayke. Nasyra came back from death for Zyphon. That’s not vulnerability. That’s power.”
I don’t have an answer. Six centuries of carefully constructed philosophy, challenged by a woman who’s known me for barely two weeks.
“You loved Lyric.” Her voice is gentle. “Was that vulnerability? Or was it what made you strong enough to survive losing her?”
The question hits somewhere I wasn’t prepared to defend. I feel the impact in my chest, a crack in ice I’ve maintained for decades.
“I don’t know anymore.” The admission surprises me as much as it seems to surprise her.
“I used to think the love made the loss worse. That if I’d never let her in, losing her wouldn’t have destroyed me.
” I stare at the table, at the books we’ve surrounded ourselves with, at anything but her too-perceptive eyes.
Silence stretches between us. Not uncomfortable. Just... present. Two people sitting with truths they don’t usually speak.
“What do you want?” Tamsin’s question catches me off guard. “After this. After Morrigan. If we survive—what do you want your life to look like?”
I stare at her. It’s not a question anyone has asked me in centuries. Perhaps ever. Dragons plan for contingencies, not futures. We strategize survival, not happiness.
“I don’t know.” The admission feels dangerous. “I haven’t thought about ‘after’ in a very long time. The present has always demanded too much attention.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.” I lean back in my chair, considering the question seriously for the first time.
“I suppose... I want to feel something other than duty. I’ve been the Brotherhood’s strategist for so long that I’ve forgotten how to be anything else.
Every decision filtered through tactical considerations.
Every relationship evaluated for strategic value.
” I pause. “It’s exhausting. And lonely.
Though I didn’t realize how lonely until recently. ”
“What changed recently?”
She knows the answer. I can see it in her eyes—the awareness that she’s the variable that disrupted my carefully ordered existence. But she’s asking anyway, giving me the choice to admit it or deflect.
“You arrived.” The words come out rougher than I intended. “Carrying a Relic and enough power to level mountains and more grief than anyone should have to bear. And instead of being the threat my logic insisted you must be, you were... you.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s a fact.” I meet her eyes. “You don’t perform. You don’t calculate your responses for maximum strategic effect. You just... are who you are. Even when who you are is inconvenient or complicated or—” I stop, realizing I’m revealing more than I intended.
“Or?” She leans forward slightly, firelight dancing in her amber eyes.
“Or terrifying.” I force myself not to look away. “Because you make me want things I convinced myself I didn’t need. Make me feel things I’ve spent decades learning not to feel.”
The confession hangs between us. I expect her to deflect, to retreat into safer territory. Instead, she reaches across the table and places her hand over mine. Her fire meets my frost at the point of contact, and neither of us flinches.
“I want to rebuild Valdoria.” Her voice is quiet, intimate in the candlelit library.
“Not the way it was—the politics and the careful masks and everyone wanting something from me. Something new. Better.” Her fingers tighten on mine.
“And I want... I want someone who sees me. Not the power or the bloodline or the Crown. Just me.”
“I see you.” The words escape before I can stop them.
Her breath catches. For a moment, neither of us moves.
“I know.” She doesn’t withdraw her hand. “That’s what terrifies me too.”