Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
AUREN
The candles have burned low by the time we exhaust the research—and ourselves.
Tamsin has stopped pretending she’s not tired. Her head keeps dipping toward the table, her blinks growing longer, her responses slower. But she refuses to admit defeat, stubbornly reviewing notes she’s already read multiple times.
“There has to be something.” Her voice is thick with exhaustion. “Some weakness we haven’t found. Some way to—” A yawn interrupts her. “To ensure she can’t complete the ritual.”
“We’ve identified several potential vulnerabilities. That’s more than we had before tonight.” I close the text I’ve been reading. “But none of it will matter if you collapse from exhaustion before we can implement any of it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re listing.” I nod at her posture—she’s tilted sideways in her chair, propped up by an elbow that keeps slipping. “Your body is trying to sleep whether you permit it or not.”
“Just a few more minutes.” But her eyes are already closing, her head dropping toward the table. “I need to find...”
She doesn’t finish the sentence.
Her head comes to rest on her crossed arms, and her breathing shifts into the slow rhythm of sleep. Just like that—mid-thought, mid-sentence—her body finally overrides her stubborn determination.
I should wake her. Should tell her to return to her own quarters, to sleep in an actual bed instead of slumped over a research table. The library isn’t designed for overnight stays.
Instead, I watch her sleep.
In sleep, the tension leaves her face. The fierce determination that defines her waking hours softens into something younger, more vulnerable.
Her fire has dimmed to embers, flickering faintly around her fingers like the glow of a banked hearth.
The copper highlights in her hair catch the candlelight.
She’s beautiful. I’ve known this since she arrived—assessed it clinically, catalogued it as relevant data, filed it away under observations that shouldn’t matter.
But watching her now, unguarded and exhausted and so impossibly human despite her unprecedented power, beautiful seems like too small a word.
I think about what she told me. Watching her sister change and being unable to stop it. Losing her parents, her kingdom, everything she knew—and still fighting. Still researching. Still looking for ways to protect people who aren’t even her responsibility.
She’s not Morrigan’s sister.
The thought arrives with the force of revelation, though I’ve been moving toward it for days.
She’s not defined by her bloodline or her family’s crimes.
She’s Tamsin. Brilliant, fierce, carrying burdens that would break most people and refusing to bend.
A woman who throws herself off walls to save dragons who’ve given her no reason for loyalty.
Who researches through the night because she can’t bear to wait while others are in danger.
Who admits to guilt and grief and uncertainty with honesty that makes my own walls feel like cowardice.
She’s become essential to me.
The realization should be alarming. Should trigger every defense mechanism I’ve developed over centuries of careful emotional management. Instead, it settles into me with a rightness that feels almost peaceful.
I’m in trouble. Deep, dangerous trouble.
And I find I don’t entirely mind.
I can’t leave her here.
The library is climate-controlled, but it’s not warm—I keep the temperature low to preserve the older texts. She’ll wake cold and stiff, her neck aching from the awkward position, her body punishing her for the abuse she’s put it through.
I tell myself this is strategic. She needs to be functional for the coming confrontation. Allowing her to damage herself through improper rest would be tactically inadvisable.
I don’t believe myself for a moment.
I gather her into my arms as carefully as I can manage—she weighs almost nothing, especially for someone who burned through so much power three days ago. She stirs but doesn’t wake, just turns her face into my chest and sighs. The sound does something to my heart that I refuse to analyze.
Her fire responds to my frost instinctively, even in sleep. Warmth spreads through the places where we touch, her flames meeting my cold without either of us consciously controlling the exchange. It feels like the training yard. Like that moment when our magic balanced instead of fought.
It feels like coming home to a place I’ve never been.
The fortress is quiet at this hour. I encounter no one on the way to the Fire-Bringer quarters—fortunate, because I don’t want to explain why I’m carrying the witch princess through the corridors in the predawn hours. The implications would be... complicated.
Her door opens at my touch—the wards recognize me from my security inspections, though I’ve never actually entered her room before.
The space is sparse, impersonal, the quarters of someone who arrived with nothing and hasn’t had time to acquire more.
A few borrowed items from the Fire-Bringer women.
The warded chest containing the Crown. Nothing that speaks of who she is beyond her circumstances.
I lay her on the bed and immediately face the question of what to do next.
Her boots should come off. She’s still wearing the clothes she had on yesterday—probably should change into something more comfortable. But removing her clothing while she sleeps crosses a line I’m not willing to step over, even for practical reasons.
I compromise by removing the boots and pulling the blanket over her. She curls into the warmth immediately, a small sound of contentment escaping her lips.
Leave. The word echoes in my mind. Leave now, before you do something you’ll regret.
I don’t leave.
I stand beside her bed like a fool, watching her sleep, cataloguing the way her lashes rest against her cheeks. The way her fire flickers in soft patterns around her hands. The way she looks peaceful for the first time since I’ve known her.
I see you.
My own words echo in my memory. The way her breath caught when I said them. The way she didn’t pull away when I admitted she made me feel things I’d spent decades learning not to feel. The way she held my hand across the table, her fire meeting my frost, and said that terrified her too.
She wants someone who sees her. Not the power or the bloodline or the Crown.
Just her. And I do. I see the fierce determination beneath the regal composure.
The grief she carries for a kingdom and parents she couldn’t save.
The guilt over a sister whose transformation she witnessed but couldn’t prevent.
The loneliness of being too powerful, too valuable, too necessary to ever be simply wanted.
I reach out before I can stop myself. Brush a strand of hair from her face. My fingers linger on her cheek for just a moment—her skin is warm, so warm, and my touch must be cold but she doesn’t flinch. Leans into it, actually, unconsciously seeking the contact.
My chest aches.
I’ve spent decades perfecting the art of not feeling. Convinced myself that ice was safer than fire, that control was worth the loneliness, that walls protected more than they imprisoned. And now this woman—this impossible, fierce, broken woman—has made me remember what warmth feels like.
I withdraw my hand. Step back from the bed. Force myself to turn toward the door.
“Auren.”
I freeze. She spoke my name in her sleep—soft, barely audible, but unmistakably my name. Not a question or a call. Just an acknowledgment. Like she knows I’m here, even in dreams.
I leave before I can do something truly foolish. Close her door quietly behind me. Stand in the corridor with my back against the stone wall, breathing carefully, trying to rebuild walls that have been crumbling since she arrived.
And somewhere beneath the ice, buried so deep I’d almost forgotten it existed, something warm is starting to burn.