Exhilarating.
I inhaled. Opened. Let the fear and hate and judgment just... sit there. Not fighting or drowning, just existing inside me like shadows that had always been there, waiting for me to stop running long enough to see them.
My eyes snapped open.
Dreadscale wasbeaming.
He grasped my shoulder—warm, solid, the first real approval I'd seen from him. "Perfect."
We trained for four more hours.
The relentless cycle of release and absorption. Exercises I didn't have names for. Him holding the mirror while I learned to stand in front of it without shattering. My muscles screamed. Sweat plastered my hair to my temples. My mind scraped raw, every nerve exposed.
But by the end of it, the constriction in my chest was barely a whisper.
Eight heartbeats. I held the fusion for eight heartbeats, breath uneven, every nerve-ending screaming under a pressure I couldn’t sustain.
Dreadscale released his Mirrorheart. Stepped back and studied me.
"Tomorrow," he said. "We begin again."
I nodded. I didn't trust my voice.
Exhaustion weighed me down, but a new clarity took root. The door I'd spent years barricading was cracked open, and whatever lived on the other side hadn't killed me yet. Low bar. I'd take it.
I peeled my eyes open to find Serenya already gone, her bedroll neatly folded, a cup of broth left steaming by my head. Root broth—the dark, silty kind the camp cook made from whatever he could boil down. It smelled like earth and salt. That girl could weather a siege and still wake up in time to mother me. I didn't deserve her. But I’d drink the broth anyway.
My body had opinions about movement. My hips had locked overnight, seized into the shape of however I'd collapsed, andmy left shoulder screamed the moment I tried to push upright. The skin across my knuckles had split where I'd gripped the stone floor during the worst of it. Dried blood in the creases.
Last night I'd made it back to our quarters on pure stubbornness. Collapsed onto my bedroll still wearing my training clothes. Dead to the world before my head hit the thin pillow.
Now I was awake. And Dreadscale was waiting.
I got my legs under me. Wrapped both hands around the cup and chugged the broth—gritty and too hot. It hit me like a fist and I held still until the nausea passed.
Then I walked back into the dark.
The air in his chamber cut deeper at dawn. The stone walls swallowed what little warmth there was, leaving only chill. My breath plumed in the torchlight as I entered. Salt from yesterday's sweat had dried on my neck, tight and dry where my collar rubbed. I rolled my shoulders and shook out the tightness.
Dreadscale stood with his back to me.
"Eight is forgotten." He didn't turn. "Tonight it's ten, or we start again."
Gods help me.
The pyre had burned lower since yesterday. The embers threw more heat than light, and the stone floor radiated cold up through my boots and into my shins.
He unleashed the Mirrorheart before I could brace.
This wasn't the gentle unfurling from yesterday—the lowest volume, the careful approach. This crashed into me like a wave breaking against rock, wrenching me open, tearing through defenses I hadn't even known I still had. I staggered backward, caught myself at the last second.
One heartbeat. Two.
Dreadscale drove deeper.
He dug past the surface wounds and into the wreckage I'd hidden—clawing at memories I’d spent years burying. I recoiled, shame thickening in my throat.
A younger Serenya, eyes wide with fear. Me, smearing soot over my Shadowmark. Hiding myself. Protecting her from the truth of what I was.
