Penn’s jaw works, but no sound comes out.
Dayn’s attention shifts slightly, a subtle angling of his shoulders that makes it clear he is now discussing me. “And then you involved her. A guest in Draethys, with no training in our arts, no understanding of how to channel her essence into these pillars. It never occurred to you that she should spend time with Master Luddo first? That an energy monk should teach her control before you threw her into a combat exercise?”
“Your grace,” Penn sputters, finding his voice. “Discipline requires testing one’s limits. She needed to learn?—”
“She needed to be taught,” Dayn snaps, silencing him with a glare that could melt stone. The prince’s authority settles over the room like a physical weight, crushing all argument. “Your methods nearly cost two students their lives and directly threatened a guest under my protection. Your session is concluded, Commander.”
A collective gasp ripples through the assembled students. Their eyes, wide with shock and a healthy dose of fear, dart between Dayn and the commander—making it clear that a prince, the heir to the throne, publicly intervening in a Tier Five training class was more than unprecedented, it was the stuff of legends.
Commander Penn’s face flushes a deep, mottled red, a battle of pride and duty warring in his eyes. The fight lasts only a moment. He draws himself up, his posture rigid, and executes a stiff, formal bow. “As you command, your grace.” He turns on his heel and stalks from the arena, his humiliation a palpable force trailing in his wake.
With the commander gone, Dayn takes a slow, deliberate breath, the tension in his shoulders easing. He dismisses the gawking students with a flick of his wrist. “Medics for Harding and Meraxis. The rest of you, dismissed.” They scatter like leaves in a gale, leaving Nyssa, me, and the bleeding dragons behind.
Then, he turns to me. The raw anger he showed Penn is gone, replaced by something far more unsettling. His eyes hold that familiar, darkly assessing glint, the one that sees right through mydefenses. His lips curve into a slow, deliberate smile that is all professor and no prince.
“Now, Ms. Salem,” he says, his voice low, calm, controlled—the exact instructional tone I remember from the depths of Heathborne. “Shall we begin again? Lesson one: Basic Energy Manipulation. This time, you’ll have a competent teacher.”
8
ESME
“After the ritual, back at Heathborne, I told you that you needed training, didn’t I?” Dayn says, voice cool, layered with that infuriating calm he wears like armor. “It seems I was correct.”
“I don’t want your lessons, ‘your grace’,” I spit out, stepping away from him until my back hits the pillar. The stone is cool now, inert.
“Don’t you?” His eyebrow arches. He gestures with a flick of his wrist to the medics now hauling a groaning Harding onto a stretcher. “Because your version of lessons seems to involve catastrophic shield failure and near-fatal trampling. It’s an unconventional approach to learning, I’ll grant you that.”
He steps closer, crowding me against the pillar. The heat rolling off him is a physical presence, wrapping around me, making the air thick and hard to breathe. I can feel the thrum of his blood, a deep, resonant hum that calls to the matching essence in my own veins. It makes my teeth ache.
“Let’s try this again,” he says, his voice dropping to a low murmur. He takes my hand, his grip firm, inescapable. His fingers are a cage of warmth around mine as he guides my hand back to the opening in the stone. “This time, without the theatrics.”
“Get your hands off me.”
“No.” The word is flat, final. His other hand comes to rest on the pillar just beside my head, effectively pinning me. His scent—ozone, fire, and something anciently wild—is overwhelming. “You are a liability, Esme. Your lack of control makes you a danger to yourself and, more importantly, to my plans. So you will learn.”
His hand covers mine completely inside the pillar’s recess. “Now, focus,” he commands, his voice a low rumble against my ear. “Don’t think about the dragons, the commander, or how much you want to stab me. Feel the energy inside you. The magic. Not just your own, but mine.”
I try to resist, to pull my magic back into its core, but it’s impossible. With his touch as a conduit, the power surges. It’s not a gentle wisp this time, but a roaring inferno. My own darkblood essence wars with the blistering heat of his draconic power, twisting together, coiling like serpents.
“Don’t fight it,” he breathes, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. A shiver I can’t suppress traces a path down my spine. “It’s part of you now. My blood knows the way. Let it guide you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and obey, not because he commands it, but because the alternative is being torn apart from the inside. I let the torrent flow. The pillar blazes to life with a vortex of black and gold light, shadows and embers swirling in a violent, beautiful dance. The dormant runes all the way around the arena flare in response, pulsing with a power they were never designed to contain.
A low groan escapes my lips, a sound of both agony and a terrifying, unwanted pleasure. The power is too much, a storm breaking inside me. I feel him in every part of it, his magic wrapping around my own, possessing it, directing it. This isn’t a lesson. It’s a claiming. A forcible union of power.
“There,” Dayn’s voice is a low growl, vibrating through his chest into my back. “Do you feel it? The balance. Your shadow, my fire. They don’t fight each other, Esme. They feed each other.”
His words are like poison, seeping into the cracks of my control. My breath comes in ragged pants. The heat from his body is a brand against my spine, and the pulse in his wrist, under my hand, is a wardrum calling to something dark and hungry inside me. It’s like our duel in Heathborne’s halls. The suffocating proximity, the exertion of will, the raw, electric friction between us that feels less like a fight and more like a prelude. Only this feels far stronger, far more intense.
My throat is sandpaper. A primal thirst, sharp and demanding, claws its way up from my belly. All I can think about is the memory of his blood, rich and alive on my tongue. The rush of it, the power. It was an addiction born in a single taste. The scent of him now is an agony. I want to sink my teeth into the column of his throat, to feel his skin under my lips, his pulse give way under the pressure.
“You’re trembling,” he observes in a whisper. His thumb strokes the back of my hand, a slow, deliberate circle that sends a fresh wave of fire through me. “Are you afraid of the power, or are you afraid of what you want to do with it?”
I want to spit the word in his face.Both. I’m afraid of this monstrous power, this unholy fusion of shadow and flame. And gods, I am terrified of the thing inside me that claws for him, that wants to taste him, to break him, to own him in the only way I know how. The craving is a physical pain, a hollow ache deep in my bones that only he can fill.
“It’s not fear,” I manage to choke out, the words scraping my raw throat. “It’s revulsion. At what you’ve made me.”
“I’ve made you powerful,” he counters, his voice a silken thread weaving through the chaos in my mind. He leans in closer, and his lips are so near my own I can feel the heat of his words as he speaks. “More powerful than any darkblood in your coven’s history. You can feel it, can’t you? The potential. All that raw energy, just waiting for a command.”
