He taught me how to hold a dagger today. Told me to stab him.
I couldn’t.
Not because I didn’t want to learn, but because part of me still clings to the idea that I’m not a warrior.
There was something in his eyes afterward. Not judgment. Something quieter.
I don’t think I’ll ever be a fighter.
But I could learn to stand tall despite things.
-W
I closed the book with trembling fingers and tucked it beneath my cloak. Across the clearing, Erindor turned slightly, enough for me to realize he’d heard the parchment shift. He didn’t speak. Neither did I.
But I sensed a companionship between us.
Tired, and still breathing.
I decided that tonight was enough.
My eyes finally closed.
Chapter Seven
Wynessa
Emberwood breathed around us, but not the way a forest should. It didn’t speak in birdsong or rustles of leaves. It murmured in pulses of pressure and silence, a hush that lived beneath the bark. Not dead but dreaming, watching, and waiting.
We should’ve kept riding.
But the fire betrayed us.
I should have known better. I’d read the old texts, written by moss-fingered scholars who warned never to light a fire beneath an amber canopy. But knowing and remembering are not the same thing.
The sun had barely kissed the horizon, casting the sky in watercolor gold and purples. We meant to rest only for an hour. My fingers were stiff. I tossed a twig into the flames, and something in the smoke caught my eye. A spark leapt upward and touched the mossy carpet.
For one suspended heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the world lit.
Not in violence, but in a sudden curtain of shimmering orange, like the forest had exhaled flames. These spores. I’d read about them. Ember Veil Spores: flammable as oil, invisible until touched by heat. They shimmered through the air like fireflies, drifting upward and vanishing into dawn.
We stomped it out quickly, the flare only a gasp of light, but the damage had been done. Spores drifted like burning silk, igniting midair and vanishing. The horses panicked. Hooves pounded. One guard nearly fell to the ground. My mare screamed next to me, wild-eyed, and bolted into the brush.
“Wynessa!” Alaric’s voice cracked sharply and loudly. He shoved through the smoke toward me.
I lunged for the reins, gripping them tight, murmuring whatever calming words came to mind.
She jerked back hard as I held on too tight.
For a few wild steps, she dragged me through the leaf-littered clearing; the reins burning through my hands as I stumbled after her.
Then she tugged the reins out of my hands, and I hit the ground hard, the breath slammed from my lungs, as the saddle blanket vanished into the trees.
When I rose to my knees, my horse was gone.
So was my pride.
