The capital finally goes quiet.
Not safe quiet. Not really. The war is still there in the background—distant bells, the low thrum of wards, the steady coming and going of messengers in the corridors.
But for the first time in days, no one is shouting Fia's name from the war room.
No one is trying to drag her back to the circle.
No one is asking how much more she can take.
Mira has made sure of that.
"This wing," Mira had told the council, voice level and utterly unyielding, "is on medical lockdown for the next six hours. Any general who tries to override my authority will find themselves fasting for three days under temple supervision. Voluntarily."
Nobody argued with the saintess.
Now, night has fallen.
The lamps are turned low.
Snow drifts soft and thin outside the windows, bright in the moonlight.
Fia sits propped against a mountain of pillows in her bed, hair down for once, wrapped in a soft night robe the color of ember ash.
Her lungs ache in that low, persistent way that means they're not actively plotting her immediate demise.
Her chest feels…crowded.
Two heartbeats.
One dragon coil humming under the bone.
And the heavier weight of four pairs of eyes on her.
"This feels like an intervention," she says.
"It is," Elira says immediately, sprawled sideways at the foot of the bed like a particularly dangerous cat. "An intervention against you trying to die of responsibility."
Seraphine is on the bed too, sitting close enough that their hips touch over the blanket, still half in formal dress from the day's council—jacket open, collar loosened, crown on the bedside table instead of her head.
Mira perches on Fia's other side, knees folded underneath her, hair braided back, sleeves rolled up, no holy vestments tonight—just a simple white shirt and dark trousers that somehow make her look more dangerous.
Lyriel has claimed the armchair by the window, but she's shifted it so close to the bed that it might as well be another corner of it. Her legs are tucked up, bare feet peeking from under a robe, a book discarded on the arm.
Fia looks at each of them in turn.
"You're all staring," she says.
"Yes," Lyriel says. "You're very stare-at-able."
Mira pinches the bridge of her nose.
"Subtle," she mutters.
"It's been a long week," Lyriel says. "My subtlety is in the laundry."
Seraphine's hand finds Fia's under the blanket.
Her thumb strokes along the back of Fia's knuckles, slow and steady.
"How do you feel?" she asks softly. "And if you say 'fine,' I will assume catastrophic lies and respond accordingly."
Fia considers the question.
Her chest hurts.
Her head aches.
Her muscles feel like someone swapped them for tightly wound wire.
Her magic is restless, the dragon coil under her ribs pacing like a caged thing.
And yet, under all of that, she is…warm.
Tired, but…warming.
"Like I've been used as a very inefficient lantern," she says. "But not…broken. Just…full."
Elira snorts.
"You look like you're about to keel over," she says. "A very pretty keel-over. 12 out of 10 would catch."
"Flirt more, sharpen less," Lyriel murmurs. "Saintess' orders."
"I did not issue that order," Mira says.
"You were thinking it," Lyriel says.
Mira's cheeks pinken.
Fia laughs—soft, raw around the edges, but real.
Something loosens in her chest that has nothing to do with magic.
"So," she says. "Is this the part where you all take turns lecturing me about self-preservation again, or…?"
Seraphine squeezes her hand.
"No," she says. "That was the afternoon meeting. This is the evening one."
"What's the agenda?" Fia asks.
Mira inhales.
Her eyes are very steady when she answers.
"Us," she says.
Fia's mouth goes dry.
"Sounds ominous," she tries.
"Good," Elira says. "It's supposed to."
Lyriel tilts her head, studying Fia like a complicated spell.
"You realize," Lyriel says, tone mild, "that we've spent the last few weeks treating you like a combination of holy relic, siege engine, and extremely breakable glass ornament."
Fia grimaces.
"Accurate," she says. "You forgot 'prophecy magnet' and 'walking lawsuit.'"
"And dragon incubator," Elira adds helpfully.
Fia glares.
"Thank you for that phrasing," she says. "I hate it."
"The dragon is the world's worst landlord," Lyriel muses. "Charging you in headaches and emotional revelations."
Mira clears her throat.
"This is exactly what we didn't gather here to talk about," she says. "We have six hours without generals, priests, or dragons in the council. I would like us to…take advantage of that."
Fia raises a brow.
"Of the six hours or the lack of dragons?" she asks.
"Yes," Mira says, surprising all of them.
Seraphine's eyes warm.
"We almost lost you," she says quietly. "Again. Several times. You gave a piece of yourself to Highwatch. You've been letting war and pain borrow your body like it's a public hallway."
She shifts closer, turning so she's facing Fia fully.
Her free hand comes up to cup Fia's cheek.
The calluses are familiar now, rough from sword hilt and training.
Her touch is not.
Soft.
Careful.
"Tonight," Seraphine says, "I want you to remember that it's yours."
Fia's throat closes.
"Is this that feelings thing again?" she asks, voice a little rough.
"Yes," Elira says. "Except with better lighting and more kissing."
Mira makes a strangled noise.
Lyriel massages her own temples.
"Subtlety," Lyriel reminds Elira. "We talked about this."
"Did we?" Elira asks.
"Yes," Fia says. "You said 'I am going to kiss you senseless the second Mira clears you' and Mira said 'please do not give her lungs ideas' and then you said—"
"Okay," Mira cuts in, ears going very pink. "Enough minutes from previous meetings. This is new business."
She looks at Fia.
Then at Seraphine.
Then at Elira and Lyriel.
Her hands twist together for a moment, then settle.
"You know what the worst part is?" she says quietly. "As your healer. As your…everything else."
Fia frowns.
"The coughing?" she guesses. "The blood? The part where my body treats basic tasks like they're endgame raids?"
Mira actually smiles, faint and crooked.
"All of that," she says. "But also…the fact that every time you almost die, I feel like we get…cheated."
Fia blinks.
"Out of what?" she asks.
Mira's voice goes even softer.
"Of time," she says. "Of quiet mornings. Of lazy afternoons that don't involve maps or charts. Of…this."
Her hand lifts.
Skims, very briefly, along Fia's jaw.
"You keep giving your hours to everyone else," Mira continues. "To the forts, to the wards, to the people who would gladly tear you apart if it meant one more day of peace. It's good. It's noble."
Her eyes darken.
"I want some of them," she says. "For us. Greedily. Without feeling like I'm stealing from the world."
Seraphine's hand tightens on Fia's.
"I second that," she says.
Elira's grin is softer than usual.
"Thirded," she says.
Lyriel's voice is dry, but her eyes are not.
"I'm terrible at romance," she says. "But even I would like to file a formal complaint with fate for interrupting our…development schedule."
Fia's face is hot.
"You're all…ridiculous," she mutters.
"Yes," Seraphine says. "Now answer the question you're trying very hard not to hear."
Fia hesitates.
"Which question?" she hedges.
Mira rolls her eyes.
"What do you want, Fia?" she asks.
Fia opens her mouth.
Closes it.
She's gotten better at this.
At saying "I want to live," at least.
At admitting she wants time.
But this is…different.
Specific.
Sharper.
She looks at them.
Seraphine's steady strength.
Mira's fierce tenderness.
Elira's reckless devotion.
Lyriel's quiet, relentless attention.
Her chest aches.
Her dragon-heart listens.
"I…" Fia starts.
Her voice shakes.
She hates that it does.
"I want…a night," she says slowly, "where nobody needs me to hold anything up. Where I'm not a relay or a symbol or a weapon. Where I'm just…"
She falters.
Mira's eyes are soft.
"A woman in a bed with people who love her?" Mira finishes gently.
Fia lets out a breath that's almost a laugh.
"Something like that," she says.
Elira slides a little closer on the bed, bracing her forearms on her knees.
"You know," she says conversationally, "it's very unfair that you look like that when you say things like that."
"Like what?" Fia asks.
Elira gestures vaguely at her.
"Like you're about to apologize for wanting something," she says. "It makes me want to ruin whoever taught you that wanting equals guilt."
"That would be…several institutions," Lyriel says. "We'd need a schedule."
"Focus," Mira says again.
Seraphine leans in.
Her thumb brushes Fia's lower lip, feather-light.
"Do you trust us," she asks quietly, "to keep you safe and to let you have that?"
Fia's breath catches.
She thinks of all the times they've pulled her back from the edge.
Of all the times they've also pushed her, gently, toward what she wants.
Her hearts beat.
Once.
Twice.
"Yes," she says.
And that's when the mood in the room shifts.
Not in a sudden lightning flash.
In a slow, deliberate tilt.
Like the world has decided to slide from "war council" to "something else entirely."
Seraphine smiles.
It curve is small.
Dangerous.
"Good," she murmurs.
She leans in and kisses Fia.
It's not the soft, careful brush from the rooftop.
Not a chaste press.
Not desperate, either.
Just…deeper.
Her hand on Fia's cheek tilts her head, angling their mouths together with an easy, practiced confidence that makes Fia's toes curl under the blanket.
Seraphine's lips are warm.
Steady.
Her mouth opens, slow and unhurried, inviting Fia to follow.
Fia does.
Her fingers tighten in the blanket.
Heat spills through her chest, down her spine, pooling low in a way that has nothing to do with magic.
Her lungs protest after a moment.
Seraphine feels it.
She eases back, breath ghosting over Fia's mouth.
"You're allowed to breathe," she murmurs.
"I was trying to impress you," Fia mutters, dazed.
Seraphine's laugh is low and pleased.
"You already do," she says.
She doesn't pull away completely.
She stays close, forehead resting against Fia's temple, thumb stroking along her pulse.
The dragon-heart is beating entirely too fast.
Fia is ninety percent sure Ardentis is smirking.
Mira clears her throat softly.
"I would like my turn," she says.
The bluntness of it makes Fia's face go hot.
"Your—" she starts.
Mira's cheeks are pink.
Her hands, however, are steady as she reaches up to cup Fia's other cheek, turning her gently away from Seraphine.
"I'm…not the queen," Mira says quietly. "I don't have the right words. I have…prayer books and medical charts and way too many rules in my head about what I'm supposed to be."
Her thumb sweeps along Fia's jaw.
"For once," she says, voice barely above a whisper, "I would like to forget all of them."
Fia swallows.
"What about the 'no exciting the patient' one?" she asks, a little shaky.
Mira's eyes darken.
"That one gets…bent," she says. "Strategically."
She leans in.
Mira's kiss is different.
Softer.
Shyer at first.
Her lips brush once, then twice, slow and lingering, as if memorizing the shape.
Fia sighs against her mouth.
Her hand lifts without thinking, fingers threading into Mira's hair.
Mira makes a small, startled sound.
Then she leans into it.
The kiss deepens, not in force but in intent—a quiet, steady heat that slides under Fia's skin and sinks into places even dragonfire hasn't reached.
When they part, Mira's breath is unsteady.
Her pupils are a little blown.
"I could write a hymn about that," she murmurs, almost to herself.
Fia's laugh is breathless.
"Please don't," she says. "I will never live it down."
"I'd sing it," Elira says.
Mira hides her face in her hands for a moment.
Fia's chest aches for an entirely different reason.
"You two are going to kill me," she says. "Slowly. With fondness."
"Correct," Elira says. "My turn."
She doesn't wait for permission.
She scoots up the bed in an easy slide of muscle and armor-scarred grace until she's kneeling beside Fia, one hand braced on the headboard, the other on the mattress by Fia's hip.
Up close, Elira smells like leather and steel and some spice she must steal from the kitchens.
Her grin is sharp.
Her eyes are softer than Fia has ever seen them.
"I am not good at gentle," Elira says frankly. "So if I get too much, you tap the bed twice, and I stop. Understood?"
Fia's pulse jumps.
The fact that they've thought about this—about signals—makes something warm and shaky unfold in her chest.
"Understood," she says.
Elira's grin softens into something almost reverent.
She leans in.
Her kiss is…inevitable.
There's no fumbling, no hesitation.
It's all heat and surety, the pressure just this side of rough, just enough to make Fia gasp and lean into it.
Elira tastes like the stolen grapes from the rooftop and long nights joking in war tents and every reckless choice Fia has made that somehow turned out all right.
Her hand finds the base of Fia's skull, fingers curling in her hair, anchoring her.
Fia makes a small, involuntary noise that she will later deny.
The dragon coil rumbles in approval.
She taps the bed once, not because she wants Elira to stop but because she needs a second.
Elira hears it.
She eases back, breath coming a little faster, eyes dark.
Her thumb traces Fia's lower lip like she's checking to see if it's still there.
"You do realize," Elira murmurs, "that once this war is over, I'm going to demand a rematch where we're not carefully counting your breaths, right?"
Heat rushes to Fia's face.
"Is that a threat?" she manages.
"A promise," Elira says.
Lyriel clears her throat.
The sound is small.
Somehow, it cuts through the thick, warm air of the room like a thread of cool water.
"If you say 'my turn' I will die," Fia says weakly.
Lyriel's mouth quirks.
"I was going to say," she says, "that I'm not…wired like they are."
Fia turns her head.
Lyriel stands up from the chair and moves closer, stopping just at the edge of the bed.
She looks…uncertain.
It doesn't suit her.
Fia finds that she hates that.
"I like you," Lyriel says, blunt as a blade. "A lot. In ways that are…new. I also associate physical touch with 'stop fiddling with the experiment' more than anything else."
Fia snorts.
"Romantic," she says.
Lyriel's lips twitch.
"I can learn," Lyriel says. "But it's slower. I don't want you thinking that means I'm…less here."
Fia's chest tightens.
She holds out a hand.
"Come here," she says.
Lyriel hesitates only a heartbeat before taking it.
Her fingers are ink-stained, calloused where she grips quills and crystals.
Fia gives a tug.
Lyriel sits on the edge of the bed, careful, as if she's handling volatile reagents.
"Look at me," Fia says.
Lyriel does.
"You've saved my life," Fia says. "You've made me laugh in the middle of me having existential crises. You've stared at my aura with the kind of focus usually reserved for a particularly interesting fungus. If you tell me that doesn't count as 'wired like they are,' I'm going to report you to your own research notes."
Lyriel actually laughs.
It's a short, startled sound.
"I am…fond of you," she admits.
"Good," Fia says. "Then do what you want to do, not what you think a romance story says you should."
Lyriel considers.
Then, very slowly, she leans in and presses her forehead to Fia's.
No lips.
No tongue.
Just warm skin against warm skin, breath mingling.
Her hand shifts, sliding up to cradle the back of Fia's neck.
And then Lyriel does the one thing that makes Fia's breath catch more than any kiss tonight.
She lets her magic brush Fia's.
Not with the clinical, measuring touch she uses in the circle.
Not the sharp probe of a diagnostic.
A soft, deliberate sweep of her aura around Fia's, like fog wrapping a flame.
Fia can feel her.
Her curiosity.
Her worry.
Her quiet, fierce affection.
Her arousal, yes—faint and startled and carefully reined in—but more than that, her commitment.
Her choice.
Fia's eyes sting.
"You're loud," she whispers.
Lyriel huffs a soft, breathy laugh, still forehead-to-forehead.
"You should see yourself," Lyriel murmurs. "You light up every time one of them touches you. It's obnoxious."
Fia chokes on a laugh.
Her dragon-heart hums, pleased.
Lyriel pulls back just enough to press a quick, almost clumsy kiss to Fia's temple.
"That's my pace," she says quietly. "For now."
"It's perfect," Fia says.
The room settles around them.
The air feels different.
Thicker.
Warmer.
The wards hum in the walls, a low, distant reassurance.
For once, they are not screaming.
Seraphine leans back against the headboard, tugging gently on Fia's hand.
"Lie down," she says. "You've been upright too long."
Fia makes a face.
She wants to argue on principle.
Her lungs disagree.
She lets them guide her back, shifting until she's reclining against Seraphine's shoulder, head tucked under her jaw.
Mira slides in on her other side, tucking herself in close, one hand resting lightly over Fia's chest, monitoring without being obvious about it.
Elira claims the bottom half of the bed, stretching out along Fia's legs like a human heater, one hand resting just above her knee.
Lyriel returns to her chair, but she drags it closer, close enough that her knees touch the mattress, close enough that Fia could reach out and grab her wrist if she wanted.
"This is a lot of people," Fia observes.
"Yes," Seraphine says, voice a low rumble against her hair. "You're very over-loved."
"That's not a word," Fia mutters.
"It is now," Elira says.
Mira shifts, her hand moving in slow, soothing circles over Fia's sternum.
Her touch is light.
Reverent.
"What are you thinking about?" Mira asks.
Fia stares up at the ceiling.
It's carved with stars.
She didn't know that.
She's never looked at it long enough before.
"You're all," she says slowly, "very…here."
Seraphine hums.
"We live here," she says.
"That's not what I mean," Fia says. "I mean…in my life. In my head. In my chest."
She taps lightly over her hearts.
"Even when you're not physically in the room, it feels like you are," she says. "Which is…a lot. For someone who spent most of her early life thinking she would die alone in a very tidy bed while people argued about what to do with her stuff."
The silence that meets that is sharp.
Heavy.
Elira swears softly.
Mira's hand stills.
Seraphine's arms tighten.
Lyriel's fingers curl against the blanket.
"You're not allowed to think about that version anymore," Mira says quietly. "I'm revoking your license."
Fia huffs.
"Yes, Healer," she says.
Seraphine shifts under her, nuzzling into her hair.
"There is exactly no reality in which you die alone," Seraphine says, voice low and almost frighteningly sincere. "If you get any bright ideas about doing it in secret to spare us, I will drag you back by the ankle and yell at you on the other side."
"I'll help," Elira says.
Lyriel's voice is dry.
"I'll take notes," she says. "For future generations. 'How Not To Handle a Terminal Condition.'"
Mira presses her forehead against Fia's shoulder.
"You're not allowed to die quietly," she murmurs. "If you insist on doing it eventually, you have to do it with us climbing all over the bed, complaining about your taste in curtains."
Fia laughs, startled.
It comes out half a sob.
"You are all," she says, voice shaking, "terrible at comforting people."
"Yes," Seraphine says gently. "But we're not leaving."
Heat builds behind Fia's eyes.
Not dragon-heat.
Human.
Pain and fear and love all tangled up.
She has spent so long flinching away from wanting.
From imagining too far ahead.
But now, with their weight around her, their warmth, their hands—
It feels…possible.
Not guaranteed.
Not safe.
But possible.
Her voice is small when she speaks again.
"Can I say something selfish?" she asks.
"Please," Elira says. "I live for this."
Fia stares at the star-carved ceiling.
"I want," she says, very quietly, "to know what it feels like to be…wanted. Not as an asset. Not as a symbol. Just…as a person. As a woman. Without someone checking my pulse every five seconds."
Mira's hand tightens around her.
"I will always check your pulse," Mira says, a little faintly. "But…"
She swallows.
"I know what you mean," she says. "You want to be desired without feeling like a medical liability."
"Blunt," Lyriel murmurs.
"Accurate," Fia says.
Her cheeks are hot.
"I keep thinking," she continues, "that if I let myself…go there…if I let myself want you like that, like a proper villainess in a very scandalous route, I'll…break. Or I'll make you worry. Or I'll make things harder when I—"
Mira's palm covers her mouth.
"Mm," Fia says indignantly.
"You don't get to finish that sentence," Mira says, eyes bright and hard at the same time. "Not tonight."
Fia glares at her over the edge of her hand.
Seraphine's chest shakes with quiet laughter.
"Take it from the queen," Seraphine says. "You are already wanted. In all the ways you're too polite to imagine."
Fia's brain short-circuits.
"Define 'all,'" she says, when Mira lowers her hand.
Elira rests her chin on Fia's shin.
Her eyes gleam in the low light.
"Well," Elira drawls, "there's the way I want to see you when you're healthy enough to spar with me again and you're too stubborn to yield and I have to pin you—"
Mira makes a strangled noise.
Lyriel coughs.
Seraphine covers her eyes with one hand.
Fia's entire body goes hot.
"Elira," she croaks.
"What?" Elira says. "She asked."
Seraphine peeks at Fia between her fingers.
"There's also the way I want," Seraphine says, voice quieter but no less intense, "to wake up next to you without having to check whether your chest is moving before I breathe. To see you rumpled and sleepy and annoyed at the sun. To claim you slowly enough that nothing hurts but your pride."
Fia's heart stutters.
Her breath catches.
Mira shifts, her hand sliding up to Fia's throat for a moment, thumb brushing the frantic flutter there.
She swallows.
"I…" she says, voice trembling, "have a very long list of things I want. Most of them involve you not flinching when I touch you. Or…reacting when I do."
Her fingers trail down, over Fia's collarbone, lingering where the dragon mark curls faintly under the skin of her wrist.
"And some of them," Mira continues, cheeks dark, voice barely audible, "are…not appropriate for a medical ward. Or…any ward."
Lyriel has her face in her hands now.
"Spirits," she mutters. "I'm in love with disasters."
Fia's skin feels too tight.
Her lungs are trembling for reasons that have nothing to do with illness.
"You all realize," she says weakly, "that, medically speaking, this is very bad for my heart."
"Two hearts," Lyriel says automatically.
"Not helping," Fia hisses.
Mira's hand returns to her chest, steady and firm.
"This," she says, "is not the night we put all that into practice. Not fully. I'm not putting that kind of strain on you while your body is still adapting to the dragon."
Fia deflates.
"Of course," she mutters.
Mira's eyes soften.
"But," she adds, "this is the night we stop pretending we don't want to. That counts for something."
Elira squeezes her knee lightly.
"You're allowed to want things in advance," she says. "Consider this…the planning phase."
Lyriel groans quietly.
Seraphine's fingers thread into Fia's hair, scratching lightly at her scalp.
It sends little shivers down her spine.
"You have been living in fear for so long," Seraphine says softly. "Fear of dying. Fear of hurting us. Fear of being used. I would like, very much, to see what you're like when you're living in anticipation instead."
Fia's eyes sting again.
"You all keep saying things that make me…feel things," she grumbles.
"Yes," Mira says. "That's the point."
For a while, they just…lie there.
Fia between Seraphine and Mira, Elira a warm weight across her legs, Lyriel a steady presence at the bedside.
The room smells like candle wax and snow and the faint, coppery tang that never quite leaves Fia's senses anymore.
The dragon coil hums.
She can feel it reacting to the warmth around her, the slow, steady heartbeats, the tangle of affection and desire and stubborn, fierce love.
Hoard, it murmurs.
She doesn't argue this time.
She just…lets herself sink into it.
"Tell me…" Fia says quietly, staring at the carved stars, "something you want. With me. Later. When we're not…like this."
"Specific?" Elira asks.
"Non-fatal," Mira says.
"Survivable," Lyriel adds.
"Anything," Fia says softly. "So I can…aim at it."
Seraphine thinks for a moment.
"An argument," she says.
Fia blinks.
"A what now?" she asks.
Seraphine's smile is small and fierce.
"A very stupid, very domestic argument," she clarifies. "About curtains. Or about whether you've been stealing my socks. Or about whose turn it is to do the dishes. Something so mundane that if someone wrote it into a war chronicle they'd get laughed out of the room."
Fia's throat tightens.
"That's…weirdly sweet," she says.
"I'm a queen," Seraphine says. "My standards for sweetness are unconventional."
Mira chews her lip.
"I want," she says slowly, "to watch you fall asleep without fear, and then…to wake up hours later and find you still there. Breathing. Alive. And to be mildly annoyed because you've stolen all the blankets."
Elira grins.
"I want to take you riding," she says. "Properly. Not 'we have to get to the front before the scouts die' riding. Just…out. To the hills. See how you laugh when you're not coughing up bits of your lungs."
Lyriel sighs.
"I want," she says, after a moment, "to bore you to sleep lecturing you about ward theory while you pretend you're not interested, and then catch you correcting my math."
Fia's laugh is wet.
She wipes at her eyes.
"You're all very demanding," she says.
"Yes," they chorus.
"And you?" Mira asks gently, fingers still drawing slow circles over Fia's chest. "Now that you've heard ours. Something…selfish. For later."
Fia thinks.
Not of death.
Not of sacrifice.
Not of war.
Of later.
Of after.
Her face burns.
"I want…" she begins, then stops, flustered.
Elira nudges her shin with her chin.
"Say it," Elira murmurs. "We can take it."
Fia takes a breath.
"I want," she says, voice very small but steady, "to get to a day where you're all so sure I'm not going to keel over that you stop being careful."
Silence.
Her cheeks flame.
"I want," she rushes on, "to kiss you until I decide to stop, not because my lungs demand it. I want—"
She catches herself.
Her voice drops.
"I want to be touched without anyone flinching," she whispers. "Including me. I want to be…unreasonable. Just once. To keep you all in bed until noon for reasons that have nothing to do with me being too weak to stand. I want to hear you complain that I'm insatiable instead of fragile."
The silence that follows is heated.
Electric.
Seraphine's breath hitches against her hair.
Mira's fingers pause and then resume, a little more firmly.
Elira's hand on her leg tightens.
Lyriel's ears go very red.
"That," Seraphine says, voice surprisingly hoarse, "is…achievable."
Mira makes a small, strangled sound that might be a laugh.
"Medically…eventually," she says. "Assuming you continue to cooperate with your treatment. And stop trying to give yourself a heart attack every time someone points at a map."
Elira snickers.
"I am absolutely going to complain about you keeping us in bed," she says. "Loudly. Repeatedly. For years."
Lyriel sighs.
"I will take notes," she says. "For the sake of magical research."
Fia covers her face with her hands.
"You're all impossible," she says, voice muffled.
Seraphine gently pulls her hands away.
"Look at me," she says.
Fia does.
Seraphine's eyes are bright.
Not with unshed tears.
With something hotter.
"Hold onto that," Seraphine says quietly. "That hunger. That selfishness. Every time the war asks you to give more than you have, remember: you haven't had that yet. We still owe you a morning where you are the problem, not the patient."
Fia swallows hard.
"I'll try," she says.
Mira leans down and presses a soft kiss to her forehead.
"Elira?" Seraphine says.
"Yeah?" Elira asks.
"Don't say anything," Seraphine says.
"Not even—"
"Especially not 'not even,'" Lyriel says.
Elira huffs.
"Fine," she mutters. "I'll save it for later."
They settle.
The candles burn lower.
Snow taps softly at the window.
Outside, the war goes on.
Men shout.
Wards hum.
Somewhere on a distant ridge, Lysa Kharan sharpens a different kind of knife.
Inside, in this small, warded room, a girl with two hearts and far too much fire lies wrapped in the arms of four women who intend to be her future, not her tragedy.
The dragon coil hums.
It feels their warmth.
Their want.
Their stubborn refusal to treat her like glass forever.
Good, Ardentis murmurs, ancient and amused. Want fiercely. Live fiercely. It makes the fire worth carrying.
Fia smiles into Seraphine's shoulder.
For once, the ache in her chest feels…bearable.
Not because the pain is less.
But because the promise is more.
She closes her eyes.
Lets the rhythm of their breathing pull her under.
Not into a nightmare.
Not into a system-triggered vision.
Into a sleep full of warm hands, tangled blankets, stupid arguments about socks, and mornings she hasn't had yet.
War will be there when she wakes.
So will pain.
So will dragons and kings and generals and maps.
But tonight—
tonight belongs to her, and to the people who have decided, very stubbornly, to love her in ways no prophecy ever accounted for.