Chapter 16 Nasyra
SIXTEEN
NASYRA
Isee it happen from across the courtyard.
Selene’s attention is focused forward, on the dragons attacking her barrier. She doesn’t see the shadow dragon rising from the courtyard floor behind her—materializing from the darkness itself, claws extended toward her unprotected back.
I don’t think. Don’t calculate. Just move.
My shadow-flame tears across the distance, faster than I’ve ever thrown it, driven by something that goes beyond training or instinct. The fire slams into the shadow dragon a heartbeat before its claws can reach her, unraveling it from the inside out.
Selene spins, eyes wide. She sees the dissolving shadow, the smoke where her attacker used to be. Her gaze finds mine across the chaos.
She nods. Once. Sharp. A warrior’s acknowledgment of a debt owed.
Then she turns back to the fight, and so do I.
But something has shifted. Something has been acknowledged between us that goes beyond words.
She would have died. If I hadn’t been here, if I hadn’t acted, she’d be gone. And I saved her—not because someone ordered me to, not because I was repaying a debt, but because she was in danger and I couldn’t let her fall.
That means something. I don’t know what yet. But it means something.
The battle turns against us twenty minutes in.
More shadow dragons pour through rifts that keep opening in the sky. For every one we destroy, two more take its place. This isn’t an attack—it’s a statement. Lakhu demonstrating that he can reach us anywhere, that no fortress is safe, that eventually he’ll wear us down through sheer numbers.
My control starts to slip.
The shadow-flame grows harder to direct. A few days of training isn’t enough—not for sustained combat, not for the kind of extended focus this battle demands. My fire starts responding to emotion rather than intention, flaring when I’m afraid, guttering when exhaustion sets in.
A shadow dragon gets through my defenses. Its claws rake across my shoulder, tearing fabric, drawing blood. The pain is sharp enough to white out my vision for a second.
A second is all it takes. The dragon pulls back for another strike—
And explodes in a burst of pure, clean fire.
Aisling appears at my side, her hands still raised from the blast. Her face is streaked with soot, her braid half-undone, but her eyes are sharp and steady.
“You’re welcome,” she says. “Now move.”
She drags me toward the fortress wall, her fire providing cover as we run. Another shadow dragon dives for us; she destroys it without breaking stride.
“I had it under control,” I manage.
“You have blood running down your arm and a shadow dragon about to take your head off. That’s not control, that’s optimism.”
“I could have—“
“Could have died.” She shoves me behind a stone barrier, pressing me flat against the wall. “Fire-Bringers protect each other. That’s how this works. You saved Selene; I saved you. The debt balances.”
She says it like it’s simple. Like the rules of sisterhood are as clear and immutable as gravity.
Maybe they are.
The attack ends as suddenly as it began.
The rifts close. The remaining shadow dragons dissolve into smoke and memory. The sky clears, morning light finally breaking through to illuminate a courtyard scarred by battle.
We won. If you can call it winning—several dragons wounded, the fortress damaged, the sense of safety we’d built shattered completely.
Lakhu made his point. He can reach us. He can hurt us. And next time, he won’t be testing defenses. He’ll be coming to claim what he believes is his.
Me.
The thought should terrify me. It does terrify me. But underneath the fear, something else has taken root. Something that feels dangerously close to belonging.
I fought for them today. Bled for them. Protected them.
And they did the same for me.
The infirmary is chaos in the aftermath.
Wounded dragons fill every bed. Aisling has transformed into someone I barely recognize—calm, efficient, snapping orders at assistants who jump to obey. Her medical training takes over completely, the warrior vanishing beneath the healer.
I watch her work for a moment, fascinated despite myself.
Her hands are steady as she stitches a gash on a young dragon’s shoulder, her voice low and soothing as she talks him through the pain.
This is a woman who was throwing fire at shadow dragons an hour ago.
Now she’s saving lives with the same focused intensity.
“She’s something, isn’t she?”
Selene appears at my side, her own wounds hastily bandaged. There’s soot on her face and exhaustion in her eyes, but she’s smiling.
“Where did she learn all that?”
“She was a veterinary surgeon. Before.” Selene steers me toward a corner where supplies are laid out. “Apparently dragon physiology isn’t that different from large animals. Who knew?”
We settle into the corner, tending to each other’s wounds while Aisling handles the serious cases. The cut on my shoulder is deep but not dangerous; Selene has burns on her forearms from a barrier that overheated.
“Hold still.” Selene applies salve with practiced hands. “This is going to sting.”
It does. I hiss but don’t pull away.
“Thanks,” she says quietly. “For earlier. I didn’t see it coming.”
“Neither did I, really. Just... reacted.”
“That’s usually how it works.” She finishes with the salve and reaches for bandages. “The training, the practice—it’s all so that the reaction is the right one. Yours was.”
I don’t know what to say. Compliments still catch me off guard—I’m not used to them. Not used to being valued for anything beyond the power in my blood.
“You fight well,” Selene continues, wrapping the bandage around my shoulder with careful precision. “Better than well. The way your shadow-flame cuts through their darkness—I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I don’t understand it myself.”
“Join the club.” She ties off the bandage and sits back, examining her work with a critical eye. “Fire-Bringer powers don’t come with instruction manuals. We figure it out as we go, make mistakes, set things on fire that probably shouldn’t be on fire.”
“Speaking from experience?”
“You have no idea. Ask Auren about the library incident sometime. Or don’t—he gets this look, like he’s reliving a very specific trauma.”
Aisling appears with fresh supplies, dropping onto a stool beside us with a heavy sigh. “The critical cases are stable. Everyone else can wait.” She grabs a roll of bandages and starts wrapping her own scraped knuckles, her movements efficient but tired. “What did I miss?”
“Bonding over near-death experiences,” Selene says dryly. “The usual.”
“Ah. My favorite.” Aisling glances at me, her sharp eyes assessing my bandaged shoulder. “How’s the wound?”
“I’ll live.”
“That’s the spirit. Low expectations, rarely disappointed.” She finishes with her knuckles and flexes her hand experimentally. “So. First battle with the Brotherhood. Thoughts?”
I consider the question. The terror. The exhilaration. The strange, bone-deep rightness of fighting alongside Zyphon, of protecting Selene, of being protected by Aisling.
“I think,” I say slowly, “that Lakhu is going to regret finding me.”
Selene grins. Aisling’s mouth twitches in what might be approval.
“Now you’re getting it,” Selene says.
We end up talking for hours.
The infirmary empties as wounded dragons are moved to their own quarters. Aisling’s assistants take over the remaining care. And the three of us stay in our corner, sharing stories the way soldiers do after battle—processing the fear by turning it into something we can hold.
Selene tells me about her first fight. How she’d been terrified, how Drayke had wanted to lock her in a tower for her own protection, how she’d set his shoes on fire for the suggestion.
“He still brings it up,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Every time he thinks I’m being reckless. ‘Remember what happened to my shoes?’ As if I’m going to forget.”
“To be fair,” Aisling says, “you did set them on fire.”
“He deserved it.”
“Probably. But you can’t blame him for being cautious.”
“I absolutely can and do.” Selene turns to me. “What about you? Any overprotective dragons in your past?”
The question hits strangely. I find myself thinking of Zyphon—of the way he’d positioned himself between me and the shadow dragons, the way his darkness had reached for my fire like it was trying to shield it.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m still trying to figure out what’s real and what Lakhu made me believe.”
“That’s fair.” Aisling’s voice softens. “It takes time. The memories he planted—they feel real. It’s hard to know what to trust.”
“You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Different kind of manipulation, but yes.” She doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t need to. The shadows in her eyes say enough. “The important thing is to hold onto what you know is true. The rest will sort itself out eventually.”
“What if I don’t know what’s true?”
“Then start with the small things.” Selene reaches over and squeezes my hand. “You saved my life today. That’s true. Aisling saved yours. That’s true. We’re sitting here talking instead of bleeding out in the courtyard. True.”
“Build from there,” Aisling adds. “One true thing at a time.”
One true thing at a time. It sounds so simple when she says it.
I’m starting to realize that nothing here is as complicated as I expected. The Brotherhood, the Fire-Bringers, the relationships between them—it’s not the tangled web of manipulation and control that Lakhu described. It’s messy and chaotic and imperfect, but it’s also honest. Real.
Maybe that’s what makes it worth protecting.
The dream comes that night.
I’m back in the forest. The same forest from my death—I recognize the trees, the path, the way the light filters through the canopy in golden shafts. But this time, I’m not dying. I’m walking. And someone is with me.
Balroth. My brother. His hand on my elbow, guiding me deeper into the trees. His grip is light but insistent, steering me away from the main path, into shadows that grow thicker with every step.
“Just a little further,” he says. “I found something you need to see.”
His voice is warm. Reassuring. The voice of the brother I loved, the family I trusted, the only person left in the world who shared my blood.
But his face—
His face is wrong. Twisted in ways I didn’t see at the time, couldn’t see because I trusted him so completely. The warmth in his voice doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s something else there. Something I recognize now that I couldn’t name before.
Jealousy. Resentment. The bitter satisfaction of someone about to even a score they’ve been keeping for years.
“You were always the special one,” he says, and suddenly his voice isn’t warm anymore.
It’s cold. Hard. The mask slipping to reveal something ugly underneath.
“Always the powerful one. Mother doted on you. Father praised you. Everyone looked at you and saw greatness, and they looked at me and saw nothing.”
I try to pull away, but his grip tightens. His fingers dig into my arm, bruising.
“I was nothing until I found people who valued what I could offer them,” he continues. “You. My special, powerful, precious sister. They wanted you so badly. And I was finally worth something because I could give you to them.”
The scene shifts. Fragments. The forest becomes a clearing. The clearing becomes an altar—stone carved with channels that I know, somehow, are meant for blood. Figures in dark robes wait in the shadows. And Balroth—
Balroth’s hand on my elbow becomes a grip I can’t break. He’s smiling. Still smiling, even as they strap me down. Even as the blade comes out. Even as I scream his name, beg him to stop, plead for an explanation that never comes.
He watches them cut me. Watches my blood flow into the channels. Watches me die.
And he never stops smiling.
I wake gasping, clawing at my chest, shadow-flame erupting from my hands before I can stop it.
The room is dark. Empty. My new quarters, since I burned the old one. The walls are intact. The door is closed. Safe. I’m safe.
But the dream clings to me. The memory—because it was a memory, I’m certain of it now. It felt different from Lakhu’s implanted lies. Tasted different. Real in a way his manipulations never were.
You were always the special one.
Lakhu told me Balroth loved me. Told me Zyphon killed the only family I had left. Made me believe my brother died protecting me, murdered by a monster who couldn’t accept that I’d never be his.
But that face. That smile. Those words.
They don’t match the story Lakhu told. They don’t match anything he made me believe.
What if Balroth wasn’t protecting me? What if he wasn’t the victim Lakhu painted him to be?
What if my brother—the only family I had left, the person I trusted most in the world—
I can’t finish the thought. Can’t bring myself to consider what it would mean if everything I believed about that night was wrong. If Zyphon wasn’t the villain. If Balroth wasn’t the victim.
If the brother I loved had led me to my death with a smile on his face.
I sit in the darkness until dawn, holding the fragments of a memory I don’t want to believe, watching the shadow-flame flicker in my palms like a heartbeat.
One true thing at a time, Aisling said.
But what if the truth is worse than the lies?
What if the truth is something I can’t survive?