Chapter 20
TWENTY
TAMSIN
The chains descend.
They move with unnatural speed, enchanted metal seeking my wrists, my ankles, the pulse points where my fire burns brightest. I dodge the first set, incinerate the second, but there are too many. The chamber was designed for this. Every angle, every approach—chains waiting to bind.
One catches my left wrist. The manacle snaps shut, and my fire gutters.
Cold spreads from the contact—not physical cold, but something worse. The enchantment is suppressing my Fire-Bringer abilities, dampening the flame that lives in my blood. I try to burn through, but my power slides off the metal without effect.
Another chain catches my right wrist. More cold. More suppression. My fire dims to embers.
“There.” Morrigan’s voice is thick with satisfaction. “Not so special now, are you?”
She approaches, staying within her ritual circle but close enough that I can see the triumph in her shifting eyes. Close enough to see the madness that’s consumed her.
“The manacles suppress Fire-Bringer flame. Took me years to design them.” She traces a finger along my jaw, and I feel the dark magic crawling beneath her skin. “You’re just a witch now, little sister. Just like me. How does it feel?”
I don’t answer. I’m focusing on what she just said.
The manacles suppress Fire-Bringer flame. Just the flame. They’re not designed for witch magic.
Because Morrigan has witch magic. She wouldn’t build suppression for her own abilities into a ritual designed to drain them from me.
“Begin the drain.” She steps back into the center of her circle. “Let’s see what you’re really made of.”
The ritual activates.
Pain explodes through my body—fire and ice and something worse, the sensation of my essence being pulled from my veins. The channels in the floor light up as power begins to flow, directed toward Morrigan’s waiting form. She gasps with pleasure as the first taste of my magic reaches her.
This is what Lyric felt. This is how she died—screaming, terrified, her power ripped away inch by agonizing inch while she called for a brother who would arrive minutes too late. I understand now why Auren’s hatred calcified into something absolute. This isn’t just murder. It’s a violation.
I scream too. Can’t help it. The pain is beyond anything I’ve experienced, beyond anything I imagined possible. My body arches against the chains, fire trying to flare but suppressed by the manacles, witch magic flowing freely through the channels—
Wait.
My witch magic is flowing freely.
Through the haze of agony, I force myself to think.
The manacles suppress my fire, but the ritual is designed to drain my fire.
Morrigan built her system around Fire-Bringer power because that’s what she’s been obsessing over for decades.
That’s what she tried to steal from Lyric.
That’s what she needs to control the Crown.
But I’m not just a Fire-Bringer.
Mother’s voice echoes in my memory: Our bloodline carries two gifts. The fire burns hot, but the witch blood runs deep. Never forget what we are.
Morrigan forgot. She’s so fixated on what I have that she doesn’t, she’s forgotten what we share.
I stop fighting the drain.
Instead, I push.
My witch magic floods through Morrigan’s ritual circle.
Not the controlled trickle the drain was designed for—a torrent.
Everything I have, everything I am, poured through the channels she built.
Royal witch blood, the most ancient and powerful lineage in existence, unleashed without restraint.
I feel it leaving me—not as a loss, but as a weapon. As an attack.
Morrigan’s eyes widen. “What are you—”
She wanted my power. Now she has it.
The focusing crystals crack as magic surges through them—too much power, too fast. One explodes outward, shards of enchanted stone spraying across the chamber.
Then another. And another. The channels in the floor overflow, witch light spilling across the stone, pooling in cracks, seeping into every surface.
The ritual circle blazes so brightly, it becomes painful to look at.
Morrigan tries to sever the drain. I feel her magic grasping at the channels, trying to close what she opened. But it’s too late. The floodgates are open, and my power isn’t stopping.
“Stop!” Morrigan screams, her hands raised in a warding gesture that does nothing. “You’ll kill us both!”
“Maybe.” I keep pushing. The manacles are still suppressing my fire, but my witch magic doesn’t care. It flows and flows and flows, more power than Morrigan’s ritual was designed to contain. “But I’ll take you with me.”
The irony isn’t lost on me. She built a drain to steal my power, and I’m using it as a pipeline to destroy her.
Every defensive measure she created is now working against her—the amplification crystals magnifying the flood, the channels directing it straight to her, the barrier keeping her trapped inside her own ritual circle.
She’s drowning in me.
“You can’t—” Morrigan stumbles, magic crackling visibly across her skin. Her hair is lifting, floating in the current of power that flows between us. Light seeps from her pores. “The ritual—it’s supposed to—”
“Supposed to drain a Fire-Bringer.” I smile, and I know it’s not a kind smile. “But you forgot what else I am. What our mother was. What the Valdorian royal line has carried for generations.”
The manacles on my wrists crack. Too much power flowing through the system—even the suppressors can’t contain it.
White fire begins to leak through the fractures, my Fire-Bringer flame returning as the enchantments fail.
Heat surges through my veins, mixing with the witch magic that’s still pouring through Morrigan’s broken channels.
“I’m a witch, Morrigan. The most powerful witch born in centuries. And you just opened a direct channel to everything I have.”
The manacles shatter.
My fire erupts—white, blazing, merging with the witch magic already flooding the ritual.
Fire-Bringer flame and royal witch power combined, the full force of my dual bloodlines unleashed through Morrigan’s own amplification system.
The chamber fills with light so intense, it becomes its own kind of darkness, burning away shadows that have no right to exist.
She realizes her mistake too late. She wanted my power. Now she has it—all of it—and it’s consuming her from within.
“You wanted what I have?” I advance through the flames, untouched by power that’s burning Morrigan alive.
My hair streams behind me, copper highlights blazing.
My eyes have gone white—I can feel them, the incandescent light replacing amber.
“You can’t steal it. You can’t contain it. It was never meant to be taken.”
She falls to her knees, the ritual circle collapsing around her as my magic overwhelms everything she built.
Her dark hair is burning, the white streaks turning to ash.
Her skin is cracking with light that seeps from beneath, my power too vast for her body to hold.
She looks small suddenly. Fragile. The terrifying witch who haunted my nightmares reduced to a woman dying badly.
“Please.” The word escapes her like a sob. “Tamsin—sister—”
I stop.
Not because of the word. Because of the way she said it. For just a moment, she sounds like the sister I remember. The one who protected me before jealousy consumed her.
“I loved you.” My voice breaks. “I looked up to you. And you threw that away for power you could never have.”
“I know.” Tears stream down her cracking face—tears of grief or pain or both. “I know, and I’m—”
She doesn’t finish.
The power completes its work. Morrigan burns from the inside out, white fire consuming dark magic, decades of accumulated evil turned to ash. She dies screaming—the same way Lyric died, the same way our parents died, the same way so many others died because of her choices.
Poetic justice, delivered by the sister she spent a lifetime trying to destroy.
I stand in the ruins of her ritual chamber, surrounded by shattered crystals and melted chains and the ashes of the woman who was once my family. The walls are cracking. The floor is splitting. The whole fortress is coming apart, its wards tied to a life force that no longer exists.
My fire gutters. My witch magic recedes. The exhaustion I’ve been holding at bay crashes over me like a wave, and I sink to my knees in the crater where my sister died.
It’s over.
She’s gone.
I killed her.
The tears come before I can stop them—grief and relief and horror all tangled into something I can’t name.
I’m crying for the sister I lost twice: once when she became a monster, and once when I destroyed what was left.
Crying for Lyric Valek, who died in a room just like this one.
Crying for my parents, who died holding a door so I could escape.
Crying for myself, for the girl who used to worship her big sister, who never imagined it would end like this.
I press my palms against the scorched stone. It’s still warm from my fire—warm from the power that killed the last of my blood family. There’s nothing left of Morrigan. Not even ash to bury.
The door behind me disintegrates—burned through by magic that’s still leaking from my exhausted form.
Through the opening, I sense Auren. Feel his cold presence like a balm against the heat still radiating from my skin.
He stood out there the whole time. Waiting.
Trusting me to do what needed to be done.
Then his arms are around me, frost meeting fire, and I collapse into him.
“It’s done,” I whisper against his chest. “She’s gone.”
“I know.” His lips press against my hair. He smells like ice and battle and something that’s purely him. “You did it. It’s over.”
The fortress shudders around us. The wrong-angled architecture is losing its coherence, walls shifting, floors tilting as the magic that held it all in place unravels.
“We need to move.” His arms don’t release me. Can’t release me, maybe, or won’t. “Can you walk?”
I look up at him—this dragon who hated everything my bloodline represented, who has every reason to despise me, who just stood outside a door and trusted me to face my demons alone. His golden eyes are soft with something that might be concern. Might be something more.
“I can do anything,” I say, “as long as you believe in me.”
He kisses my forehead. Brief. Tender. A promise of more when we’re not standing in a collapsing fortress, covered in ash and exhaustion.
“Then let’s go home.”