Three Months After Naelira’s Birth

Early Morning - Victor POV

Naelira woke before the sun and informed the whole house.

Not with crying at first.

With the small warning noises that meant crying was coming soon if nobody negotiated properly.

I was already awake. She had that effect on people.

The loft was still dim, Elira’s blanket a lump beside me, when the first sharp little sound came from below. I sat up, listened, then heard Mama murmur something too soft to catch.

Another sound from the cradle.

Then Papa’s deeper voice.

Then silence.

Then the real cry.

I threw the blanket off and went down the ladder two steps at a time.

Mama was in the chair by the hearth with Naelira in her arms, hair loose, face pale from broken sleep. Papa stood nearby with one hand braced on the mantel and the look of a man who would have fought the dawn itself if it had helped.

“She’s hungry?” I asked.

“She’s offended,” Papa said.

“That too,” Mama murmured.

Naelira’s face was red with outrage. Her fists opened and closed uselessly. The room smelled of warm milk, damp linen, and yesterday’s ash.

“I can warm the bottle,” I said.

Papa looked at me once, measured something, and nodded. “Not too hot.”

“I know.”

I did know.

That was the point.

I took the bottle to the stove and crouched by the coals. Behind me, I could hear Elira coming down the ladder more carefully than I had, and Seraphine’s door opening in the alcove. The whole house waking by layers.

I held one hand near the stove, not touching, not summoning, just feeling for heat the way Seraphine had taught me. Fire in the hearth. Fire in me. Not the same thing. Related things.

Too much and the milk would scald.
Too little and Naelira would continue announcing the end of the world.

I breathed once and let a thread of warmth move through my palm toward the bottle.

Tiny.
Measured.
No flare.

The glass warmed in my hand.

“That’s enough,” Seraphine said from behind me.

I had not heard her cross the room.

I turned. She stood in the doorway of the alcove wrapped in a robe the color of stormwater, arms folded, eyes still half-shadowed with sleep. Her staff leaned near the table where she had left it last night.

“I knew it was enough,” I said.

“You knew after I said it.”

“That still counts.”

Elira, already tying back her hair, made a sound into her sleeve that might have been a laugh.

I handed the bottle to Mama. Naelira latched onto it with the fury of somebody settling a personal score.

“There,” Papa said. “Disaster averted.”

“Temporary,” Mama corrected.

That was babies. Victory measured in minutes.

Seraphine watched me a moment longer than the bottle required.

“What?” I asked.

“Later,” she said.

That meant training.

Good.

I liked when it meant training.

Mid-Morning - Gregor POV

Victor had started carrying his power more cleanly.

That was the good news.

The bad news was he knew it.

There is nothing more dangerous than a child who has discovered he can do something well and has also discovered witnesses exist.

I found him in the yard behind the forge, running the breath-and-balance sequence Seraphine had drilled into him until all of us could hear it in our sleep. Elira stood on the overturned rain barrel counting under her breath while Naelira dozed in a sling against Lyra’s chest under the apple tree.

Victor moved through the pattern barefoot in the grass.

Step.
Breathe.
Turn.
Center.

No fire yet.

That came after.

He held out one hand. A small flame appeared above his palm, steady enough at first. Then he shifted into the second turn and glanced sideways at Elira.

The flame sharpened instantly.

Not dangerously. But enough to tell on him.

“Elira,” he said without breaking stance, “you’re supposed to look more impressed.”

“I am counting.”

“You can count with admiration.”

“That is not how counting works.”

He was grinning now, which was precisely the problem.

Seraphine stood near the fence with her arms folded, letting it play out one breath longer than she approved of, likely because she wanted him to feel where he lost the clean line.

He went into the third turn.

The flame brightened again.

Too much pride in it. Too much speed.

Seraphine snapped her fingers once. The fire collapsed to a harmless ember and vanished.

Victor froze in place. “I had it.”

“You had most of it,” she said.

“That’s almost the same.”

“It is exactly not the same.”

Lyra hid a smile behind Naelira’s head.

I leaned against the forge wall and watched him process that. Shame first. Then indignation. Then, because he was six and not a monk on a mountain, the need to defend himself.

“I wasn’t losing control.”

“No,” Seraphine said. “You were decorating it.”

That hit harder.

Elira failed to suppress a laugh in time and got a glare for her trouble.

“What?” she said.

“You are unhelpful.”

“I am an excellent audience.”

“There,” Seraphine said, pointing at her with two fingers. “That is the second problem.”

Victor crossed his arms. “What first problem?”

“You,” she said. “Wanting an audience before you’ve mastered the thing itself.”

That sobered him faster than any raised voice would have.

I watched my son standing in the grass with his chin lifted against correction and saw both the child and what would one day make childhood insufficient to contain him.

Three months ago his control had needed constant guarding.

Now it needed shaping.

That was not the same comfort.