"I want talk, Mama."
The words came out rough and crooked, but they came. Ezra heard them with the same faint horror he'd felt the first time his mouth betrayed him.
Aerwyna went very still.
She'd asked, quietly, what he wanted to do. She hadn't expected him to answer.
"Okay then, Ezra," she whispered, as if any louder might spook him. Her expression wavered between wonder and disbelief. She had heard him speak before—but a full sentence, shaped around a desire, was something else entirely. "You want to talk?"
He nodded, small chin dipping. It felt absurd, answering his own mother like he was in a lab interview.
His grasp of the language was still patchy. He understood more than he could say; words came with holes in them, missing joints. He'd been piecing together grammar in silence, collecting sounds, sorting them. Now, pushed into it, he could feel the gaps.
"Ezra, you're amazing," she breathed.
He could feel the warmth in her voice, the pride. It lodged somewhere uncomfortable in his chest. He didn't want to be amazing. He wanted to be coherent. There were questions he wanted to ask that this mouth couldn't shape yet, thoughts too big to squeeze through these clumsy syllables.
He sighed, a tiny, exasperated breath. Aerwyna's brows twitched at that—she recognized the expression. No infant should look that complicated.
"Can I eat bottle?" he asked, pushing the words out carefully.
Aerwyna blinked. "No, little one, you can't eat bottles," she said, lips quirking despite everything. "You'd hurt yourself."
He grimaced. Wrong word. Of course.
"No. Eat… out bottle." He met her gaze, violet eyes steady. "Not… Mama."
Understanding dawned slowly on her face.
"Ah. You mean drink from a bottle," she corrected gently, studying him. There was a faint pinch of hurt around her eyes, quickly smoothed away. "You want your milk there instead."
"Yes." He nodded again, relief and embarrassment tangling together. Trying to explain why was beyond his vocabulary. All he knew how to say was what he wanted, not the adult shame that drove it.
"Don't worry, it's okay for Mama," Aerwyna tried, voice soft. "It's normal."
Ezra scrunched his face up and shook his head hard. "No. Mama, no."
The refusal was small, but it hit like a slap. Aerwyna shut her eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them again, smoothing her thumb over his hair.
"Okay, okay," she murmured. "If you want that, I'll have them bring a bottle next time. My little one gets a say."
He hadn't expected capitulation so quickly. Something in him loosened. His mouth spread into a wide, unguarded smile, the kind of smile that belonged on a much simpler child.
Aerwyna's heart melted on the spot.
She lifted her hand, almost without thinking, and let her Field flare outward just a little, brushing over him like an unseen tide. It slid along familiar lines—bone, blood, breath, the quiet hum of his inner pulse. No foreign signatures. No invasive weave, no residue of another mage's imprint.
It's him, she thought, the knot in her stomach easing. Whatever he is, he's ours.
"And Mama, I want clean myself," Ezra said.
Her brows shot up. "Clean yourself?"
He nodded again, miming a wiping motion with both hands, cheeks coloring with a heat he couldn't control.
"But little one, you can't reach properly." She glanced toward the door, where Catalyna usually stood sentinel outside. "Let Catalyna help. That's her work."
"No want, Mama. I do," he insisted. He mimed it again, stubborn.
Aerwyna chewed her lip. The cradle beside her chair suddenly seemed much higher, the stone floor much harder.
"You might fall," she warned, unable to keep the worry from her tone.
"I careful," he said, with the absolute confidence of someone who'd never seen a broken neck.
She let out a breath. "All right. When you're on the floor. No standing on chairs, no climbing. You try while Catalyna is there to watch, and if you can't do it, you let her help. Yes?"
He pouted, but relented. "Okay, Mama."
She hesitated, then tried, very gently, "Why do you feel ashamed, Ezra? Babies are tended by their mothers, or by wet nurses. It's not wrong."
His mind lurched. Crap. There wasn't a version of that conversation he was ready to have, not with her, not in this body.
"I don't want! I don't want!" he burst out instead, kicking his feet, letting his arms flail. It was a bad tantrum, childish in all the wrong ways, but it served.
"Hush, hush, little one." Aerwyna gathered him closer, hand cradling the back of his head. "It's all right. I won't ask."
He forced out a few thin, frustrated sounds for show, then let them taper off, letting his breathing slow. Inside, his thoughts were already racing ahead again, cataloguing: bottle, cleaning, boundaries that she would respect if he pushed.
"You know," Aerwyna said, choosing her next words with care, "you're such a genius, Ezra."
He blinked. "Genius?"
She smiled, a little shakily. "It means you can do things children your age can't. You're very talented. You control your Field so well for a babe. Your senses, your… little tricks." Pride crept into her voice despite the fear. "Some Maesters would say a child like you appears once in an age."
He let that sit. Some part of him preened; the others filed it away as dangerous.
"What is… Field?" he asked. The word she used for it wasn't quite 'Field' in his terms, but close enough that he mocked it in his head with the capital letter.
Aerwyna's eyes brightened. This, at least, was something she felt on firm ground about.
"Hmm. How do I explain?" She shifted him so he sat more upright in her lap, one arm snug around his middle. "When you close your eyes and reach"—she let a faint pulse roll outward as demonstration—"you feel people, yes? Warm and bright, even when you don't see them."
He thought of the glow that clung to her when his mind sharpened, the way Reitz burned hotter, the way servants barely registered at all. He nodded, slowly.
"That feeling is your aura," she said. "Your magic. Your Field. You push it out, and everything inside it answers a little. That's how you know where I am even when you pretend to sleep." Her mouth twitched. "You are not subtle, little river."
He froze, then tried, weakly, "Pretend…?"
She arched a knowing brow. He gave up the act.
"What is magic, Mama?" he asked instead, seizing the deflection.
Aerwyna leaned back, considering. How did you explain something as old as breathing to a child who stared like a court scrivener waiting to catch a lie?
"Magic is… the power that lets us change things," she said slowly. "It's the strength our blood has to touch the world. It can harm or heal, destroy or build. It's how we call water from the river without a bucket, how we freeze a cup before it shatters." Her fingers flexed in memory. "It's part of us. Part of everything."
He understood maybe a third of the words, but the shape of the idea was clear enough. Power. Changing the world. Blood. Safety and danger braided together.
"Show?" he asked, before he could stop himself.
Aerwyna's lips curled into a faint, wicked smile. "You want to see, little one?"
He swallowed. "Yes."
"Very well. Just this once. And just a little."
She rose, carrying him. The nursery's shuttered window looked out over a narrow courtyard where no one should be walking at this hour. She nudged the latch open with her elbow and pushed the heavy frame aside. Cold air spilled in, brushing over his skin.
"Watch," she said.
Her voice changed when she worked. Softer, lower, the words settling into an old rhythm. She shifted him to her left hip and raised her right hand, fingers splayed toward the open air.
Ezra felt it before he saw it.
That strange clarity flooded him, the world snapping into edges. Her presence, usually a warm pool in his borrowed sense, surged—her aura thickening around her like liquid light. It condensed, layers folding inward. Most of it gathered along her raised arm, leaving the rest of her a dim silhouette behind a burning line.
The hair on his arms prickled. There was no measurable temperature change, no obvious ionization, but every instinct screamed that something significant was happening.
Aerwyna spoke.
The words weren't in any language he knew, even on paper; archaic syllables laced with intent, each one landing in the air with a weight his brain couldn't quantify.
"The heavens scorning earthborn flame," she intoned, in the old tongue. "Let water rise and answer. Flood, and drench, and drown."
Her last two words were crisp in the modern speech:
"Flood Cannon."
The air in front of her hand tore open into motion.
Water erupted from nowhere—no condensation trace, no pipe, no tank, just raw volume surging in a tight, roaring column. It shot out across the courtyard and smashed into the far wall with a crash that echoed up through the stone. Spray exploded outward, glittering in the light, before vanishing in a fine mist.
Ezra's mouth fell open.
What the f—
The curse choked off halfway, swallowed by sheer sensory overload.
There should have been a source. A tank above. A reservoir. A pressure differential, at minimum. And recoil—Newton didn't just politely excuse himself. Her shoulder should have wrenched backward. Her stance should have shifted.
She didn't move.
His mind scrambled.
High-output flow at that speed needed absurd energy. Where was it coming from? No visible heat signature. No collapse of structure around them. No drop in ambient temperature. It was as if she had reached into an equation and typed in a different answer.
The water obeyed her, arcing when she tipped her wrist, slowing when she narrowed her fingers, then cutting off clean when she clenched her fist. No sputter. No lag.
His scientist's brain screamed.
If this violated thermodynamics, why hadn't the universe torn itself apart already? If this was allowed, what else was? Did gravity still hold? Yes—the cup on the table hadn't floated away. The water fell, droplets tracking proper parabolas. It was the creation and control that were wrong, not the fall.
His thoughts spun faster and faster, hitting the same wall.
This shouldn't work. This can't work. And yet…
And yet he had just watched it happen.
The last of the water dissipated, leaving the courtyard damp and steaming faintly. Aerwyna's aura receded, flowing back into her body until she felt "normal" again in his strange sense. She lowered her hand, breathing only a little harder than before.
Ezra realized he'd been holding his breath. It escaped in a shaky exhale.
His reincarnation—if he let himself call it that—had been one violation. He'd forced that into a box and labeled it unknown.
This was different. This wasn't a one-time anomaly. This was a system.
"Perhaps… more rules," he thought weakly. "Hidden variables. A different set of laws overlaid on the ones I know. Or completely new ones."
The prospect was terrifying.
It was also… enticing.
He was still staring, eyes wide and unblinking, when Aerwyna glanced down at him. His face must have said enough; she chuckled softly, the sound a little breathless.
"Your mama used only a hundredth of her power," she said lightly, drawing her Field back in until it hugged her skin.
"If I didn't hold back, little river," she added, closing the window with a firm push, "I would have destroyed the castle."