Fia wakes to the taste of ash.
Not real ash—her mouth is clean, Mira would never let her sleep with blood or soot on her lips—but some ghost of it, a memory baked into her tongue.
She lies there and listens to her own chest.
Two rhythms.
Her human heart: fast, a little uneven, doing its best.
The other.
…thump.
…thump.
The deeper beat moves like a slow bell in a cathedral—too measured to belong to anything that ever worried about taxes or schedules. Each pulse sends a faint warmth down her spine and into the bones of her hands.
"Still here," she whispers.
The new mark at her wrist pulses.
Tiny, coiled dragon lines gleam for a second, dark red against pale skin, before sinking back into subtlety.
Seraphine is asleep in the chair again.
She's slumped in a posture that would make her etiquette tutors faint, boots off, tunic unlaced at the throat, hair loose and mussed, cheek creased where it's pressed into folded arms on the mattress.
Fia stares at her.
She looks like someone who fought for hours, then argued with stubborn priests, then refused to rest until she was sure her idiot girlfriend would keep breathing.
Guilt pulses, sharp and automatic.
Then the deeper heartbeat answers with a slow, unimpressed thump, like: we're not doing that today.
"Right," Fia mutters. "Trying not to weaponize guilt against myself anymore. Add that to the list."
She shifts.
Her lungs flare—a familiar ache—but the pain doesn't spike like knives this time. It's more like pulling on a healed scar. Stiff, sore, but not tearing.
The deeper beat swells.
Heat spills through her ribs.
The ache recedes another notch.
"Oh," she breathes. "That's…cheating."
A low, amused rumble flickers through the back of her mind.
Not words.
A feeling.
You took my bargain, the sense of it says. You do not get to complain now because it works.
"Watch me," she mutters under her breath. "Complaining is ninety percent of my coping strategy."
Seraphine stirs.
Her eyes open, blearily focused on the sheets.
Then on Fia's arm.
Then up to Fia's face.
For one brief second, her expression is raw—fear and relief and anger and love all tangled.
"Hi," Fia says, because she can't think of anything clever.
Seraphine exhales hard.
"Lung check," she raspes. "Talk more."
"I," Fia says dutifully, "am still charming and alive."
"Debatable on the first," Seraphine mutters, but some of the tightness leaves her shoulders. "The second is…good."
She sits up.
Every move creaks.
Fia studies the bags under her eyes and the bruises along her jaw where a demon probably got entirely too close.
"You slept in that chair again," Fia says.
"You slept in that bed again," Seraphine counters.
"Not a competition."
"Everything is a competition."
Fia snorts.
Her chest twinges.
The deeper heart answers; warmth spreads. The pain stays a few steps back.
Seraphine's gaze flicks to her wrist.
The Oath mark glows faintly, intertwined with the anchor sigil.
Around both, the tiny dragon coils.
"I've been staring at that," Seraphine says softly, "for four hours."
Fia winces.
"Did it…change?" she asks.
Seraphine shakes her head.
"No," she says. "That's what scares me."
Her thumb brushes the edge of the coiled dragon.
"It's just…there," she murmurs. "As if it's always been part of the pattern."
Fia swallows.
"It hasn't," she says. "I checked."
Seraphine's mouth twitches.
"Of course you did," she says.
She leans back a little, studying Fia like a general inspecting a siege engine that grew teeth overnight.
"How do you feel?" she asks.
Fia considers.
"Tired," she says. "But not…knife-in-the-lungs tired. More 'ran stairs' tired."
She flexes her fingers.
"They feel wrong," she adds. "Like they're attached to…more. And my vision keeps trying to go into 'dragon mode' whenever the candle flickers."
"Dragon mode," Seraphine repeats.
"You know what I mean," Fia says. "Everything gets too sharp. I can hear wax melting. It's very distracting."
Seraphine hums.
"Any…urges?" she asks carefully. "To…eat anyone? Set the curtains on fire? Claim a hoard?"
"Gold is pretty," Fia admits. "But that's not new. And I haven't wanted to eat anyone since the duchess's ball when Lord Karthis wouldn't stop talking."
Seraphine's lip twitches.
"Understandable," she says. "If your dragon side had arrived then, I'd have helped hold him down."
Fia smiles, small and crooked.
The deeper heart rolls another steady beat.
She presses a palm flat over her sternum.
"It feels like a furnace," she says quietly. "Low and…waiting. Not pushing. Just…there. If my old magic is a bonfire, this is…a star a very long way away that decided to move into my chest."
Seraphine's throat bobs.
"You're sure you're still you?" she asks.
The question is soft.
It lands heavy.
Fia lifts her gaze.
She lets Seraphine see all of it: the fear, the stubbornness, the flicker of excitement, the grief over what she's left behind and what she might become.
"Yes," she says. "But…more. Like someone found a room in the house I didn't know was there. The furniture hasn't moved. There's just…extra space."
Seraphine nods, slowly.
"Then we learn the floorplan," she says.
Whatever Fia expected, it wasn't that.
"What?"
Seraphine squeezes her hand.
"We map it," she says. "All of it. The dragon, the fire, the limits. We find out how far you can go without breaking. We don't let anyone else decide that for you."
Her eyes harden.
"And in the meantime," she adds, "we stop letting the council pretend you're a magical public utility they can plug into anything that scares them."
Fia's stomach tightens.
"The council," she echoes.
"They know about the dragon?" she asks quickly. "Please tell me you didn't tell them about the dragon."
Seraphine huffs.
"I told them the Final Calamity is out of commission and that if they even think about drafting emergency decrees involving your person, I will personally set fire to their budget documents," she says. "Lyriel backed me up by promising to move their tower three feet to the left while they sleep."
Fia tries not to laugh.
It makes her chest ache.
"You can't move a tower," she says.
Lyriel's sleepy voice floats from the desk.
"Can't I?" she mutters without lifting her head. "I have diagrams."
Mira stirs.
Elira groans and drapes an arm over her eyes.
Seraphine stands, stretches, then nods at the door.
"They'll be here soon," she says. "The council. The high priest. Whoever else thinks they get a say in how we rebuild after a demon army tries to take our roof off."
She looks back at Fia.
"You're not seeing them," she says. "Not yet."
Fia lifts a brow.
"You're going to hide me?" she asks.
"Yes," Seraphine says simply. "Until we know how your new…additions react to stress. The last thing I need is some sanctimonious archbishop saying the wrong thing and you waking up with wings through the ceiling."
Fia pictures that.
Councilors screaming; plaster snowing down; her mother fainting.
She winces.
"Point taken," she says.
Seraphine's mouth softens.
"I'll handle them," she says. "You rest. Let Mira and Lyriel poke you in controlled environments later. No heroics. No firestorms. No dragon antics unless we're prepared."
She bends, presses a quick kiss to Fia's temple, then straightens.
"Try not to spontaneously ascend while I'm gone," she says.
"I'll…keep it low-key," Fia says.
"You don't know what that word means," Elira mutters, half-asleep.
Fia sticks her tongue out.
Her chest twinges.
The deep heartbeat answers.
Seraphine sees the flicker of discomfort, frowns, but doesn't linger.
She has a kingdom to argue with.
She leaves the room with the walk of someone whose day is going to involve too many stupid people and not enough punching.
The door clicks shut.
Silence settles.
Then Elira sits up, rubbing her eyes.
"All right," she says. "Show us."
Fia blinks.
"Show you…what?" she asks, innocent as a cat covered in feathers.
Lyriel lifts her head fully now, eyes clearer than they have any right to be.
"The fire," she says. "The heartbeat. Whatever you can do that you couldn't do before. We're not waiting for the council to find out by accident. We're your disaster mitigation team. We go first."
Mira moves to the bedside, more gentle, but no less intent.
"Carefully," she says. "Slowly. Sitting down. With me right here."
Fia looks between them.
"…and Seraphine?" she tries.
"She said no heroics," Elira says. "We're not asking you to blow up a field. We're asking you to wiggle your new tail."
"I do not have a tail," Fia says, scandalized.
"Metaphorical tail," Elira amends. "For now."
Lyriel twirls the snapped quill between her fingers.
"Also," she says, "Seraphine would want us to know what we're dealing with when the dragon decides to…ahem…rise."
She glances meaningfully at Fia's chest.
Fia flushes.
"Don't call it that," she mutters. "It sounds like a very specific kind of romance novel."
"We live in a very specific kind of romance novel," Elira points out.
"Point," Fia concedes.
She exhales.
"Fine," she says quietly. "Let's see what happens if I…poke it."
Mira's hand is gentle on her shoulder.
"Slow," she repeats. "The moment you feel pain spike, you stop. I'll be watching your breathing, your pulse, your color."
"Terrifying," Fia mutters. "You sound like my mother."
Mira's lips quirk.
"No," she says. "Your mother would have already smacked a dragon with her shoe for suggesting you give up your human body."
Fia grimaces.
"She did that with a duke once," she says. "It was great."
Elira grins.
"Remind me to kiss your mother on the cheek later," she says. "Platonically. Mostly."
"Focus," Lyriel says.
She stands, brushing off her robes, and starts tracing sigils in the air.
Thin, translucent circles stack around the bed like layers of glass.
"What are those?" Fia asks.
"Containment and dampening," Lyriel says. "If you accidentally breathe fire, it'll bounce it inward and upward and—"
"Absolutely not," Fia says.
"I mean away from us," Lyriel clarifies. "Into the sealing lattice. It'll ventilate through the ward channels into the old chimney network. You'll scorch a few rats, at worst."
Fia makes a face.
"Poor rats."
"Shouldn't live in a demon siege capital," Elira says. "Choices have consequences."
Fia closes her eyes.
She has been many things in this world.
Villainess.
Calamity.
Sword.
Shield.
Sick girl.
Scapegoat.
Target.
She's about to add "draconic test subject" to the list.
"All right," she murmurs. "Let's…knock."
She turns her attention inward.
Past her lungs.
Past the damaged vessels.
Past the familiar churn of her human magic, which still smells like smoke and salt and old incense.
Down into that new heat.
It feels like a coiled serpent around her heart—except it isn't a serpent.
It's structure.
The suggestion of ribs larger than hers.
The echo of a spine that curves in a different geometry.
The potential of wings, tucked tight against something she doesn't actually have.
When she brushes it—mentally, cautiously—the reaction is immediate.
Heat blooms.
The deeper heartbeat speeds up by a fraction.
Her vision sharpens again; the room brightens.
She can hear Mira's pulse where the saintess' hand rests on her shoulder.
Elira's slow, controlled breathing.
Lyriel's quick, excited one.
The crackle of the hearth sounds like a storm.
Fia pulls back.
The heat recedes slightly.
"Okay," she says. "That's…responsive. That's good. That's terrifying."
Her voice has a rough edge.
Mira squeezes her shoulder.
"Any pain?" she asks.
"A bit," Fia says. "Like…growing pains. In my bones. But not like before. Not the…tearing."
Lyriel leans forward.
"Try something small," she says. "Eyes. Just your vision. See if you can…turn it up and down."
Fia frowns.
"You want me to glare at you," she says.
"Yes," Lyriel says, completely serious. "Hard."
Elira snickers.
"Don't get weird about it," Fia mutters.
She focuses again.
This time, instead of prodding the whole coil, she imagines…opening one eye of it.
Just a slit.
Just enough to see.
Heat flickers behind her eyeballs.
She gasps as her pupils contract sharply.
Lyriel's face jumps into high definition: every tiny crease at the corner of her eyes, the individual ink flecks on her cheek, the faint shimmer of mana around her like heat haze.
The world goes sharper.
Edges glow.
Lines hum.
The protective circles Lyriel drew flare in her sight, no longer vague translucence but intricate lattices of script and intention.
Fia blinks.
"Whoa," she says softly. "You are very smugly magical."
"Thank you," Lyriel says, preening.
"Your aura looks like a migraine," Fia adds.
Lyriel deflates.
"Less thank you," she says.
Elira leans against the bedpost, watching.
"What about me?" she asks.
Fia shifts her gaze.
She almost recoils.
Elira is a storm.
Not of fire.
Of motion.
Even sitting still, she hums with kinetic potential; lines of force curl around her like coiled springs, ready to snap in any direction. Her sword—propped against the wall—flares faintly, impression of hundreds of cuts layered over it like ghost-strikes.
"You look like a knife with legs," Fia says. "Standing in a thunderstorm of your own making."
Elira beams.
"Best compliment I've had all week," she says.
Mira touches two fingers to her own chest.
"And me?" she asks.
Fia glances.
It almost makes her eyes water.
Mira is…light.
Not the harsh, searing kind she used on the field.
Soft.
Layered.
Warm.
Her aura looks like a cathedral window lit from behind—colors hidden in white, patterns only visible if you stare long enough. Threads extend out from her to dozens of points in the city—places where her prayers and spells have settled before—faint impressions of healing and comfort.
"You're…" Fia struggles.
"Sapient lamp?" Elira suggests.
"Holy tea kettle," Lyriel offers.
"Beautiful," Fia says bluntly.
Mira goes pink.
"Oh," she says. "That."
Fia blinks a few times.
Her eyes sting.
She nudges the coil again, imagining a lid sliding down.
Her vision dulls back to normal.
She exhales.
"Okay," she says. "Eyes are…a thing. We can toggle dragon-sight. That's…useful."
Lyriel is already scribbling notes on a scrap of parchment.
"Enhanced perception, layered mana vision, structural reading of wards," she mutters. "We can work with this. Imagine you on a battlefield with that—seeing the weak points in a demon formation, the cracks in a spell, the stress fractures in a wall—"
"No," Mira cuts in.
Lyriel blinks.
"What?"
"We're not turning her into a better weapon yet," Mira says sharply. "We're learning how she functions. Then we talk about battlefield applications. Not the other way around."
Lyriel opens her mouth, closes it.
"…fair," she concedes.
Fia looks down at her hands.
The urge is there.
It hums under her skin like static.
What else? the dragon-heart whispers, not in words but in pressure. What can we do? How far can we reach?
Her fingers tingle, itching for flame.
She remembers Ardentis' voice.
Not all at once. Teeth come with time. Learn to stand before you try to fly.
She flexes her hands.
"No fire," she says aloud, mostly to herself. "We're not doing fire yet."
Elira looks faintly disappointed.
Mira looks relieved.
Lyriel writes NO FIRE (YET) in large letters at the top of the parchment and underlines it.
Fia rolls her eyes.
"Drama," she mutters.
Her lungs ache with the movement.
The deeper heart answers.
Heat spreads.
She feels, very distinctly, something shift in her chest—a new rhythm overlaying the old, like a second set of bellows kicking in to help pump air.
Her next breath is…easier.
Her ribs still protest, but the edge is off.
Mira notices immediately.
Her hand slides to Fia's sternum, not pressing—just feeling.
"Your breathing just changed," she says softly.
Fia nods.
"The dragon-heart…helped," she says. "When I laugh or talk too much, it kicks in. Like…someone took over half the work."
Mira's eyes flicker.
"That's…" she trails off, words catching.
Elira gives a low whistle.
"So the big lizard is playing backup lungs now," she says. "That's…unexpectedly wholesome."
Lyriel's gaze sharpens.
"Backup circulation," she says. "Backup breathing. Enhanced perception. All running in parallel with her human systems. This isn't just a power-up. It's…redundancy."
"Redundancy," Fia echoes. "Like bridges that don't fall when one beam cracks."
Lyriel nods, distracted.
"The more of that coil comes online, the less your old injuries will control you," she says. "Not instantly. Not painlessly. But…systemically. You're building a second architecture over the damaged one."
Fia swallows.
Hope is a dangerous thing.
It feels too much like arrogance.
"We don't know," she says quickly, before her brain can run away with visions of sprinting up stairs or fighting without tasting iron. "We don't know how far it goes. Or what it costs. Or what it does to the rest of me."
Mira's hand slides from her chest to her hair, smoothing it back.
"We will," she says. "Together. No rushing. No sacrificing. No letting anyone else shove you into tests that hurt because they want to see the edges."
Elira taps the hilt of her sword.
"And if someone tries," she says easily, "we'll cut their funding."
Fia blink-blinks.
"Funding."
"And also their faces," Elira adds.
"Better," Fia says.
The deeper heart thumps, amused.
Lyriel tucks the parchment away.
"I need more data," she says. "But later. For now, we convince the council you're still sick enough to leave alone."
Fia snorts.
"That part won't be hard," she says. "I can barely stand without my new imaginary skeleton helping."
"Not imaginary," the warmth behind her ribs notes.
"Metaphorical, then," she mutters inwardly.
The coil rumbles, faintly offended.
The door opens without a knock.
All four women tense.
A head pokes in.
Fia's mother.
The duchess looks tired in the way only parents of very sick children can look—like she hasn't slept properly in months, like every laugh has been layered over a quiet, gnawing fear.
Her hair is braided up, a few strands escaping. There's a smear of flour on one cheek. She's still in her house-clothes: a plain gown, no jewelry, no corset, just something thrown on fast to answer a summons no parent wants to receive.
"Honey?" she says, voice small.
Fia's stomach drops.
"Mother."
The duchess steps fully into the room.
Behind her, Fia's father hovers—broad-shouldered, weathered, eyes bloodshot—but stops at the door, as if afraid to bring his weight too close to something fragile.
They both go still when they see Fia sitting up.
Her mother's hand flies to her mouth.
"Oh," she breathes. "Oh, thank the gods."
She's across the room in three strides, skirts swishing.
Mira steps politely aside.
Elira moves to stand near the window, giving space.
Lyriel takes an unobtrusive step back, watching.
Fia's mother drops to the edge of the bed and takes Fia's face in both hands.
"You're awake," she says. "You're awake."
Her thumbs brush Fia's cheeks, as if checking for fever.
"It's not that impressive," Fia says weakly. "I've been doing it since birth."
Her mother's eyes fill.
"You almost stopped," she says.
Fia's throat tightens.
Her father clears his throat.
"That's…true," he says roughly. "Don't joke about that, little flame."
He steps closer, taking her hand gently in both of his.
His palms are still callused from decades of sword work.
He squeezes, careful.
Fia's dragon sense kicks on without permission.
Her parents' auras flare into focus.
Her mother is a storm of soft, furious light—worry and love layered so thickly they blot out almost everything else. Threads of that light tie her to half the city: staff, friends, charities, obligations.
Her father burns lower, steadier. His aura is steel over a banked flame, shaped by discipline, not piety. He's holding himself so rigid it hurts to look at.
Fia blinks hard.
The coil pulls back, unprompted, as if giving her space.
Her mother doesn't notice the flare.
She's too busy searching Fia's face.
"You look…different," she says slowly.
Fia's blood runs cold.
"Different how?" she asks too quickly.
Her mother's brows knit.
"Stronger," she says. "Not…healthier exactly. But…you used to look like every breath might break you. Now you look like…you could actually win the argument."
Fia lets out the breath she was holding.
"That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," she says.
Her father snorts.
"I've said nicer things," he rumbles.
"Yours had bribes attached," Fia says. "Candy doesn't count."
Her mother's hands drop to her shoulders.
"Lord Regent said there was…another army," she says quietly. "And that you…weren't there."
Her eyes flicker to Mira, Lyriel, Elira, then back.
"Thank you," she says, to them. "For that. For once."
Fia flinches.
Her mother feels it.
"What?" the duchess asks.
Fia looks down.
"Nothing," she says. "I just—"
Her father squeezes her hand.
"Don't do that," he says softly. "Don't swallow it."
His voice is roughened by smoke and grief and too many reports that began with we regret to inform you.
"You looked like I'd slapped you when your mother thanked them," he says. "Talk."
Fia swallows.
The words stick.
Then the dragon-heart beats again, slow and inexorable, pushing warmth up through her ribs.
It feels like a hand on her back.
Stand.
"I…" she starts. "I promised them—Seraphine, Mira, Elira, Lyriel—that I wouldn't…rush to the front and try to fix everything with my lungs again. That if something…big…happened, they'd fight without me. And they did. And I'm…glad. I am. But when Mother thanked them for keeping me out of it, my first thought was…"
She trails off, embarrassed.
Elira sighs.
"Say it," she says gently. "Or I'll say it for you."
Fia glares.
Then sighs.
"…my first thought was that I'm being…put on a shelf," she mutters. "Like a fragile vase. Pretty, expensive, used to be important, now mostly something people dust around while they fight real battles."
Her mother's eyes go wide.
"Oh, sweetheart," she breathes. "No."
Her father shakes his head.
"Absolutely not," he says. "You are not a vase. You are a sword we refuse to shatter just to show off how sharp it is."
Mira nods, fierce.
"We didn't leave you out because you're useless," she says. "We left you out because you're…irreplaceable."
Lyriel adds, more practical:
"And because once you crack, there's no warranty."
Fia's mouth twitches.
"That's…grimly comforting," she says.
Her mother takes a breath like she's steadying herself.
"Your whole life," she says, "we have been told to prepare for…loss. Quietly. Politely. Doctors with carefully empty eyes. Priests with gentle voices. Advisors with numbers that say 'make the most of the time you have.'"
Her hands tighten on Fia's shoulders.
"I refuse," she says simply.
Fia stares at her.
"That's…not how mortality works," Fia says softly.
"No," her mother agrees. "But it is how I work. I refuse to treat you like a candle that has to be watched burn down to nothing. I will treat you like a daughter who is allowed to be furious and reckless and selfish and alive. And if that means sometimes dragging you away from battlefields while you scream about how useful you could be—so be it."
Fia's eyes sting.
"That sounds humiliating," she whispers.
Her mother's lips twitch.
"Oh, it will be."
Her father makes a strangled sound that might be a laugh.
"You did something," he says, eyes sharp. "While you were out. I can feel it."
Fia swallows.
The room seems smaller.
Hotter.
"I…met someone," she says.
Her father raises a brow.
"Should your old man be sharpening his sword?" he asks.
"In a metaphysical sense, yes," Fia says. "In a literal sense, no. They're…not the stab-able kind."
She tells them.
Ardentis.
The rivers.
The offer.
She leaves out nothing—not the temptation, not the fear, not the options. Not the fact that she said yes.
Her mother goes still.
Her father's jaw clenches.
Mira listens with a healer's seriousness; Elira with barely concealed awe; Lyriel with the intense focus of someone seeing a brand new field of study open under her feet.
When Fia finishes, the silence is heavy.
Her mother speaks first.
"Dragons," she says faintly. "Of course. Why not. You couldn't just take up knitting like other sick nobles. You had to go and adopt a primordial fire-lizard."
"Adopt," Fia repeats.
Her father scrubs a hand over his face.
"All right," he says. "Dragon seed. Extra heart. Future…complications. Question."
He looks her dead in the eye.
"Do you feel more alive now than you did before?" he asks quietly.
She doesn't even have to think.
"Yes," she says. "I…do."
"Do you feel like yourself?" he presses. "Not just the parts we like. All of it. The sarcasm. The temper. The idiotic self-sacrificing streak. The way you sulk when you're told to rest."
"Wow," Fia says. "Call me out, why don't you."
He waits.
She sighs.
"Yes," she says. "I feel…like me. Just…with an extra…me."
Her mother exhales.
"Then we start from there," she says firmly. "Not from prophecies. Not from what some dragon thinks is appropriate. From you. We hold onto you so hard that anything trying to swallow you has to deal with all of us."
Her gaze slides to Mira.
"To the saint who refuses to let go of a pulse," she says.
Then to Elira.
"To the knight who would stab a god if it sneezed wrong at my child."
Then to Lyriel.
"To the mage who moves mountains out of spite."
Finally, to Seraphine's empty chair.
"And to the woman who will burn a council session down with words alone if they whisper about cages."
Fia's throat closes.
The deeper heart swells.
Flame curls along her spine, not painful—just…there.
She hears Ardentis in the back of her mind, smug and satisfied.
You see? the feeling whispers. You are not alone. This is a good hoard.
She mentally swats at him.
"Stop calling my loved ones a hoard," she mutters internally.
You are very protective of your pile, he notes, amused.
She flushes.
Out loud, she says:
"I'm not going to become some…apocalyptic beast overnight," she says. "We have time. We can…set rules. Boundaries. I can choose when and how much to let this change me."
Lyriel taps her chin.
"We should test that," she says. "In a healers' yard. Under half a dozen containment wards. With Mira ready to knock you out if you grow extra limbs."
Fia makes a face.
"You are terrible at being reassuring," she says.
"I'm very good at being realistic," Lyriel counters. "Reassurance is Mira's job."
Mira pats Fia's knee.
"You're not growing extra limbs," she says softly. "Probably."
Fia groans.
"You're all fired," she says.
Her mother kisses her forehead.
"Too late," she says. "We're tenure."
The council chamber smells like wax and fear.
Seraphine stands at the head of the long table, hands braced on polished wood.
She has changed back into formal armor—black and crimson, polished to a hard shine, cloak draped just so—but the circles under her eyes remain.
Around her, councilors shift in their seats.
Robes rustle.
Quills scratch.
The high priest sits at the far end, expression carefully controlled. Only the white-knuckled grip on his staff betrays tension.
"The demon army is destroyed," Seraphine says.
Her voice fills the chamber.
No one argues.
They've all seen the aftermath.
"The northern field will not grow anything decent for a decade," one councilor says faintly. "There are…pits…where the ward-circles burned through."
"Consider it an investment," Lyriel says dryly from her seat at Seraphine's right. "Cheaper than having the city razed."
Murmurs.
Seraphine lifts a hand.
"Lyriel's new ward grids worked," she says. "Mira's sanctified line held. The knights did not break. The demon champion is dead. The contract that bound them snapped when its heart did. We held the walls without the Final Calamity's fire."
There it is.
The part she's been aiming at.
A pointed pause follows.
Lord Varn, old and soft around the middle, huffs.
"Yes, yes," he says. "Commendable. Inspiring. But let us not pretend the demons would have even come if the Calamity's presence had not—"
He stops.
Because Seraphine is suddenly looking at him like a blade.
"The demons came," she says quietly, "because someone paid them."
The room goes still.
Lyriel lays a folded parchment on the table, sliding it toward the center.
"It took some…encouragement," she says. "But the warlocks left residue. Signatures. Echoes of the binding. We traced the anchor point."
She taps the parchment.
"Someone with access to old infernal rites and deeper pockets than sense opened that rift," she says. "Not the Calamity. Not the system. A human. Possibly more than one."
The high priest's jaw tightens.
"This is…confirmed?" he asks.
"As confirmed as anything that comes with singed eyebrows and a headache," Lyriel says. "We'll need time to narrow suspects. But make no mistake: this was not arbitrary. It was aimed."
Seraphine lifts her chin.
"We can argue about who painted a target on this city later," she says. "For now, the relevant truth is this: we held without her."
Lord Varn sniffs.
"At…significant cost," he says. "Hundreds of dead. Thousands injured. Walls cracked. Fields ruined. If the Calamity had fought, perhaps we would have lost less—"
Mira, seated to Seraphine's left, speaks for the first time.
"Or perhaps," she says coolly, "we would have lost one more. In a bed. Weeks later. Bleeding quietly while you congratulated yourselves on efficient use of a resource."
The word lands like a slap.
Varn flushes.
"Saintess," he begins.
"Do not call her a resource again in my hearing," Mira says, still quiet. "She is a person. As are the soldiers she would have killed herself to save. I am tired of choosing which lives you think count."
Another councilor, Lady Rhel, frowns.
"Nobody is suggesting she is not a person," she says. "But when the gods give us a weapon—"
"A girl," Mira corrects.
Rhel's lips thin.
"Mortal or not," she says, "we cannot ignore the tactical asset she represents. The next attack may not be defeatable without her."
"Then our job," Seraphine says, "is to make sure we have fewer 'next attacks' that require her."
She looks around the table.
"Fia is recovering," she says. "Under Mira's care. Under Lyriel's observation. She will not be fielded again without my direct approval."
A murmur.
"Is that wise?" someone ventures.
"No," Seraphine snaps. "It's compassionate. I will not burn her lungs out to spare us the work of building real defenses. If that's unacceptable, feel free to challenge my claim to the throne. Publicly. Preferably in front of the people who watched her turn the monster horde into ash."
Silence.
The high priest clears his throat.
"When she fought the horde," he says slowly, "our auguries…shifted. Prophecies we thought set…blurred. The system, such as it is, trembled. When the demons came, it trembled again. When the dragon mark appeared—"
He breaks off.
Too late.
The room erupts.
"Dragon mark?"
"High Priest, explain yourself!"
"Is she possessed?"
"Is there a risk of—"
Seraphine's hand slams down on the table.
"ENOUGH."
Silence snaps back into place.
She turns her head slowly toward the high priest.
His face is pale.
"You said," she says softly, "you would not speak of that outside of my presence and Mira's. Those were the conditions for you being allowed within ten paces of her bed."
He looks genuinely stricken.
"I did not intend—" he starts.
"But you did," Seraphine says. "So let us be very clear: if any of you attempt to drag her into a prophecy, a cult, a cage, or a convenient war, I will meet you on the field. Not as your future queen. As the woman who still has demon blood under her nails and nothing left to lose."
Her knuckles are white where she grips the wood.
Lyriel lays a hand on her arm, subtle pressure.
"Breathe," she murmurs.
Seraphine inhales.
Exhales.
The high priest bows his head.
"Forgive me," he says. "My…concern overrode my discretion. I am not blind to the…human…side of this, Your Highness. But we cannot pretend this is…ordinary. A mortal marked by dragonfire? Bearing two hearts? The last time—"
"—the last time," Lyriel cuts in, "the records are fragmentary and half myth. And in those myths, the dragon-blooded burned cities for amusement. Fia has repeatedly used her power to save yours. Perhaps we stop assuming she will follow old patterns just because they make for tidy sermons."
Mira nods, eyes cold.
"We will share what she permits us to share," she says. "If you wish to study anything, you can start with the medical records of how many times she nearly died because you all leaned on her harder than her body could bear."
A thin, humorless smile touches her mouth.
"I have charts," she adds.
Several councilors flinch.
Lord Varn mutters something about "youthful boldness."
Seraphine's gaze pins him.
"Say it clearly," she says. "If you have objections to me protecting my fiancée, do not hide them in mutters. Speak. Or be silent."
He swallows.
"I am simply saying," he manages, "that…passion is admirable, but the good of the kingdom must outweigh the fate of any one—"
"Finish that," Seraphine invites.
He doesn't.
The high priest raises a hand.
"Perhaps we…refocus," he says. "We have an external threat. Someone summoned demons. Someone may try again. Perhaps even with more…knowledge of her condition. Our priority should be finding them."
Lyriel exhales.
"On that," she says, "we agree."
She lays more parchments on the table—sketches of sigils, lists of possible summoning circles, notes on which noble houses have access to forbidden texts.
The conversation shifts.
Names are implied but not spoken.
Plans form: investigations, quiet audits of warehouses, interrogations of certain suspiciously well-funded cults on the outskirts.
The darkness of it sits heavy in Seraphine's gut.
They have enemies inside the walls.
They always have.
Now those enemies know the kingdom's most dangerous girl has more than one heart.
She forces herself to listen, to contribute, to authorize.
To be the future queen.
To be the adult in the room.
All the while, the thought needles at the back of her mind:
Fia is changing.
And if we mishandle this, the thing that rises may not be ours.
Four days later, the first accident happens.
It's small.
Stupid.
Nobody dies.
That does not make it less terrifying.
They choose the old drill yard behind the inner barracks for Fia's first real test: open sky, stone ground, thick walls, easy access to healers.
Lyriel weaves containment wards in a wide ring.
Mira prepares a dozen emergency seals and stacks them on a crate like a nervous baker layering talismans instead of icing.
Elira stretches like she's about to spar, rolling her shoulders, cracking her neck, bouncing lightly on her toes.
Seraphine stands with arms folded, expression carved from stone.
"You can still say no," she tells Fia quietly.
Fia stares at the open yard.
Her heart flutters.
The deeper one rolls a calm, smug beat.
"If I say no now," she says, "the first time this kicks in on its own will be in a crisis. I'd rather find out how bad it gets without demons watching."
Seraphine's jaw works.
"Point," she says.
Fia moves to the center of the ring.
The wards prickle over her skin—Lyriel's work, fresh and strong.
Mira stands at the edge, staff in hand, eyes never leaving Fia.
Elira lounges just inside the circle, sword point resting on the ground, casual in a way that fools no one.
"Okay," Lyriel says. "Goal for today: trigger a controlled partial manifestation. No full-scale transformations. No breathing fire at any structure I like. We're just poking the dragon and seeing which bits twitch."
"You explain things in such a soothing way," Fia says.
Lyriel smiles thinly.
"Close your eyes," she says. "Find the coil."
Fia obeys.
The yard drops away.
Inside, the world narrows to heat and rhythm.
Two hearts.
One fast, one slow.
One small, one vast.
She reaches for the coil.
It meets her halfway.
This time, it doesn't wait to be prodded.
It has learned her touch.
It unwinds a little, like a cat stretching in a sunbeam.
Fire runs down her spine.
Her shoulder blades ache, as if something invisible is pressing from the inside, testing the shape of bone.
Her ribs creak.
She opens her eyes.
The world has changed again.
Edges crisp.
Colors deepen.
Lines of force weave in the air—Lyriel's wards like glowing nets, Mira's sanctified presence like a soft pressure on her skin, Seraphine's aura like a red-gold blade driven point-first into the ground.
Elira…
Elira burns.
Not literally.
Her motion-potential flares, her muscles tensing and relaxing, her stance shifting in tiny, imperceptible adjustments.
She looks like every duelist story Fia ever read, compressed into one exhausted, stubborn woman.
"Eyes are back," Lyriel notes. "Pupils vertical. No visible scales. Skin lightly flushed. How's your chest?"
"Hot," Fia says. "But not…tearing. My lungs are…sharing the load."
She flexes her fingers.
Heat builds in her palms.
The urge to throw it—outward, upward, anywhere—is nearly overwhelming.
She clenches her fists.
"No fire," she grinds out.
"Good," Mira says. "Hold it. Let it…sit."
It's like holding back a cough.
Or a scream.
Or a laugh.
Her muscles shake.
The coil presses.
Not maliciously.
Impatiently.
We are made for this, the feeling whispers. Why deny it?
"Because I like my skin the way it is," she mutters under her breath.
Her teeth ache.
Her jaw feels wrong in her face, like it wants to stretch.
She focuses on her hand.
On the shape of it.
On the human geometry of fingers and knuckles and nails.
"Just the hand," Lyriel murmurs. "If anything. Don't think about wings. Don't think about teeth. One thing at a time."
"Great," Fia says through gritted teeth. "Now I'm thinking about all of those."
She exhales slowly.
Picks a target.
Her right hand.
She wills the coil to pour just a little heat there.
The fire obeys.
Heat floods her fingers.
Her bones creak.
Her nails darken.
Something slides under her skin—a new layer, a harder shell.
Her hand changes.
Not grotesquely.
The proportions stay roughly the same.
But her fingers lengthen slightly; the nails sharpen into small, dark, hooked claws; her knuckles thicken, cords of muscle and tendon rising beneath the skin.
Her skin takes on a faint, metallic sheen, like someone dusted it with powdered bronze.
She flexes.
Her right hand feels…dangerous.
Her left feels…frail.
"Oh," she says softly. "That's…new."
Elira whistles.
"Sharp," she says approvingly. "I like it."
Lyriel squints.
"No scales," she notes. "But the bone density just spiked. I can feel it in the ambient mana. That hand could probably punch through armor."
"Let's not test that today," Mira says quickly.
Fia raises the hand, examining it.
The claws catch the light.
The dragon heart purrs.
Better, it seems to say. Closer.
She tightens her grip.
The strength there is startling.
She feels like she could crush stone.
Or someone's throat.
Her human stomach flips.
The coil falters.
Heat surges, then jerks.
Pain spikes.
Not in her lungs.
In her ribs.
Like something is pushing from inside too fast.
"Stop," Mira says sharply. "Back out. Now."
Fia tries.
She imagines the coil winding back in, the extra structure dissolving, her hand going soft and human again.
For a second, it works.
The claws recede by a hair.
The metallic sheen fades.
Then something…resists.
The deeper heart slams a beat.
Her vision whites out.
The world tilts.
She hears Ardentis snarling, distant and furious.
Do not yank, the sense of him roars. You are not tearing cloth! You cannot reshape bone in one breath and expect no protest! Ease!
Fia gasps.
Her chest seizes.
Heat and cold slam together under her sternum.
Her right arm goes numb.
She staggers.
Elira is there in an instant, arms around her, holding her upright.
Mira's hands are on her chest, pouring gentle, cooling light into the overheated bone.
Lyriel's wards flare as Fia's aura surges against them, testing the containment with a sudden spike of power.
For a moment, everything is too loud.
The hearth fire roars.
The wind shrieks.
Their heartbeats hammer.
Her dragon heart thunders, furious—not at her, she realizes dimly—
at itself.
At the clumsiness.
At the vulnerability this moment creates.
Small steps, Ardentis growls, closer now. You walked before you crawled. No wonder you tripped.
"Can we not do metaphors right now," she wheezes. "My ribs hurt."
He snorts.
The pressure eases.
The coil withdraws bit by bit, carefully this time.
The metallic sheen on her hand fades.
The claws retract.
Her bones creak as they settle.
Her heart—a pair of hearts—stumbles, then resumes its rhythm.
She sags against Elira.
Mira exhales slowly.
"Better," Mira says. "Pulse…normalizing. Breathing…still shallow, but not collapsing. Color coming back."
Lyriel's wards dim.
She wipes sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, eyes bright with a mix of terror and fascination.
"Well," she says weakly. "We've learned something."
Elira snorts, still holding Fia like she weighs nothing.
"We learned the dragon gets grumpy when she tries to unsprout claws too fast," she says. "And that I'm right to be terrified of what that hand could have done if she'd swung it."
Fia lets her head fall against Elira's shoulder.
"Note to self," she mutters. "No panic-retracting limbs."
Mira squeezes her shoulder.
"New rule," she says. "We don't change anything unless we have time to change it back. Calmly. Slowly. Inhale, exhale. No frantic 'oh gods I'm a monster' thoughts mid-process."
Fia winces.
"Those are my default thoughts," she says. "That's like asking a fish not to be wet."
Elira snorts.
"You're not a monster," she says. "Yet. If you become one, we'll have a very serious intervention involving tea and maybe a carefully applied sword."
Lyriel adds, more serious:
"Every new power has a messy adolescence," she says. "You're…puberty with extra steps. We'll get through it."
Fia groans.
"I hate that you made that comparison," she says.
"You love it," Lyriel corrects.
"Shut up."
Mira looks at her, eyes soft and tired and fierce.
"You're still here," she says. "You're still you. That's the important part."
Fia nods.
She believes it.
Mostly.
The dragon-heart hums.
We will learn, Ardentis's presence murmurs. We have time. That, more than anything, is what you bought.
She pictures the battlefield.
The demons.
The monster tide.
The blood in the bowl.
She pictures a future version of herself—larger, scaled, winged—standing where she stood and not collapsing, not choking on her own attempts to save everyone.
It's a dark image.
An adult one.
Full of teeth and fire and the knowledge that power always comes with a shadow.
"I don't want to be the end of the world," she says quietly.
Elira snorts.
"You already walked away from that job once," she says. "If the world ends now, it's because it's too stupid to let itself be saved, not because you killed it."
Mira smiles faintly.
"You're not the apocalypse," she says. "You're…our catastrophe. That's different."
Lyriel nods.
"The system called you the Final Calamity," she says. "It wanted a neat ending. You just…refused. Dragons are very good at refusing neat things."
Fia lets out a shuddering breath.
"I'm tired," she admits.
"Good," Mira says. "We're done for today. Back to bed. No more sprouting partial dragon bits until I say so."
Fia tries to protest.
Her body votes with Mira.
Her knees turn to warm noodles.
Elira scoops her up with a grunt, ignoring Fia's sputtering.
"Put me down," Fia mutters, clinging anyway.
"No," Elira says. "You're a semi-liquid dragon egg. You get carried."
Lyriel drops the wards.
Mira walks beside them, one hand hovering near Fia's chest.
As they leave the yard, Fia glances back over Elira's shoulder.
The stone bears faint scorch marks where her aura flared.
Her palm print glows, faint and metallic, on one flagstone—heat-seared, an outline of the claws she almost kept.
The deeper heart thumps, slow and sure.
Rise, it murmurs. But slowly.
She closes her eyes.
For once, she listens.
That night, the nightmare comes.
It's not subtle.
No metaphorical corridors.
No symbolic river.
Just fire.
She stands on the capital's outer wall.
The sky is black.
Her arms are scaled.
Her hands end in claws longer than daggers.
Her shadow on the stone is wrong—horned, winged, tail swaying.
Below, the city burns.
Not with demon fire.
With hers.
Roofs blaze.
Streets glow.
People run like sparks in the wind.
She hears screaming.
Sees tiny figures on balconies and in alleys, mouths open in soundless horror.
On the plain beyond, armies char and crumble.
The monster tide.
The demon host.
Human soldiers.
They all turn to ash in the same heat.
She opens her mouth to say stop.
Fire pours out.
Not a neat column.
A roaring torrent that scours the streets, washing over stone and flesh and metal.
Buildings explode.
Bodies flash to bone.
The bone turns black and collapses.
She clamps her jaws shut.
Smoke pours from her nostrils.
Her eyes—huge, golden, slit-pupiled—reflect the city burning, bright and terrible.
There is no system text in the sky.
No genre label.
No helpful notification.
Just a voice.
See? it whispers.
She doesn't recognize it.
It might be the system.
It might be her own worst fear.
It might be something else, older and hungrier.
You were always meant for this. Fire. Ruin. Spectacle. They will write songs about this night.
Her dragon-heart beats.
Slow.
Loud.
She feels it in every stone.
Ardentis' voice cuts across the nightmare like a blade.
Enough.
The image shatters.
The burning city falls away.
She's back on the ledge of black stone, rivers of light below, stars above.
Her body is human again.
She's kneeling.
Sweating.
Shaking.
Ardentis looms, larger than before, wings spread just enough to block part of the star-sky.
His eyes blaze.
He is not looking at her.
He is looking at the thing that whispered.
Something coils in the distance.
Not dragon.
Not demon.
Something lattice-shaped and pale, like a constellation pretending to be a brain.
It flickers.
"I warned you," Ardentis snarls, voice hot enough to blister stone. "She is mine now. You do not get to run your little simulations in her skull to see if she cracks the way your models predict."
The lattice flickers.
When it speaks, the voice is too many voices at once.
We require outcome data, it says. Dragon corruption likelihood must be assessed. Risk models need updating. She has deviated from projected path by seventy-three point—
Ardentis' roar cuts it off.
It's not sound.
It's force.
The rivers below erupt.
Fire and light lash upward.
The lattice shrieks—a high, keening sound like crystal fracturing.
Lines of it shatter, segments winking out like dying stars.
"This one chooses for herself," Ardentis snarls. "Not within your metrics. Not within your neat tragedies. You will observe. From a distance. Or I will introduce your core nodes to heat you have not accounted for."
The lattice flickers, fragments spinning.
You interfere outside allocated bounds, it says. Dragon processes are supposed to remain in deep arc strata. Mortal realm narrative architecture does not include—
"Change the architecture," Ardentis growls. "Or watch it burn."
For a moment, Fia thinks they're going to fight.
Dragonfire versus…whatever that is.
The idea terrifies her.
And, deep under the fear, stirs something ugly.
A thrill.
Her.
At the center of such attention.
That is what they want.
A fulcrum.
A spectacle.
A fixed point around which catastrophe can spin.
She hates it.
She loves it.
She's ashamed of loving it.
The lattice seems to feel her attention.
Segments twist toward her.
Subject Fia, it says. You continue to display high variance. Our interest—
Ardentis moves.
One claw slams down between her and the lattice.
"I said," he rumbles, each word heavy as an avalanche, "enough."
The rivers surge.
Heat roars.
The lattice recoils like someone slapped it.
Light snaps.
Then the presence is gone.
Not destroyed.
Pulled back.
Leashed.
Muted.
Ardentis lowers his claw.
Fia realizes she is clutching the stone so hard her fingernails—human again—have snapped.
Her breathing is fast and shallow.
Her lungs ache.
The deeper heart beats, steady as a drum.
"You see now," Ardentis says quietly, "why I came."
She swallows.
"They're…still watching," she whispers.
"Of course," he says. "Systems are nosy. They cannot help themselves. But there are…levels. They used to have their hooks deeper. Their narratives tighter. That is…looser now."
His enormous head lowers.
"Because you chose," he says.
She laughs weakly.
"I chose to let a dragon move in," she says. "That doesn't feel like a win."
"It is refusal," he says. "Of something else. You stepped sideways out of their narrow track. They will try to model the new one. Let them. You owe them nothing."
She hugs her arms around herself.
"If I ever…burn the city," she says, voice barely audible, "I want it to be my choice. Not theirs. Not yours. Mine. So that at least the blame is…correct."
He huffs.
"Little one," he says. "If you ever burn a city, it will be because you chose not to hold back. And I suspect you will find that outcome…unpalatable long before you reach the point of no return."
He leans closer.
"Remember this," he says. "Power does not corrupt. It reveals. The coil under your ribs will not make you a monster. It will make it harder to lie to yourself about what you want."
"That's worse," she mutters.
"Yes," he says. "But it is honest."
The ledge brightens.
Reality tugs.
"Wake," Ardentis says. "Tell your saint and your queen what you saw. Do not spare their feelings. They need to know what tries to write your story for you."
She hesitates.
"What if telling them makes it…more real?" she asks.
"It already is real," he says simply. "Secrets only make their work easier."
The world blurs.
She falls—
—
—and jolts awake.
Her chest heaves.
Sweat slicks her skin.
The room is dim.
Seraphine is in the chair again.
Mira lies curled on the couch by the wall.
Elira is absent.
Lyriel is nowhere visible.
Fia's wrist burns.
The dragon mark glows.
She presses her trembling hand over it.
Her pulse skitters.
The deeper heartbeat pounds once, hard.
She hears Lyriel's voice in her head: Puberty with extra steps.
She hears Mira: You're not a resource.
She hears Seraphine: You are not a weapon. You are not alone.
She swings her legs over the side of the bed.
This time, when she stands, she does it without asking the dragon-heart for help.
It helps anyway.
Her lungs ache.
Her ribs complain.
She stays upright.
She crosses to Seraphine and touches her shoulder.
Seraphine wakes immediately, like a soldier on campaign.
Her hand goes to Fia's wrist on reflex.
She feels the racing pulse.
The double beat.
Her eyes sharpen.
"Nightmare?" she asks.
"Worse," Fia says.
She glances at Mira.
At the door.
"Wake them," she says. "We need to talk about…architecture."
Seraphine frowns.
"Architecture."
"And dragons," Fia adds. "And how much I really, really hate being someone's favorite variable."
Her voice is steady.
The shadow on her tongue tastes like ash.
The deeper heartbeat keeps time.
The rise of Flame Calamity Fia has begun.
Not in fire.
Not in spectacle.
In long nights, hard conversations, ugly truths, and the slow, dangerous work of not becoming the disaster everyone expects—
while carrying enough fire inside her to end a world if she ever stops caring.