The world reassembled itself around me in pieces: grey stone walls, a high window letting in weak afternoon light, the smell of wood smoke and something herbal I couldn't identify. I was lying on a bed, though I had no memory of being placed there, and my body felt hollow and strange, as though someone had scooped out my insides and replaced them with cold water.
I tried to sit up and immediately regretted it. The room tilted violently, and I had to grip the edge of the mattress to keep from sliding onto the floor. My stomach heaved, though there was nothing in it to expel, and I spent several long moments breathing through my nose and willing the nausea to pass.
"The disorientation will fade." Caelan's voice came from somewhere to my left, calm and unsurprised. "Your body isn't accustomed to being moved that way. It takes time to adjust."
I turned my head slowly and found him sitting in a wooden chair beside the window, silhouetted against the pale light. He had removed his long black coat, revealing a simple dark shirt beneath, and without the billowing drama of that garment he looked almost ordinary. Almost human. The golden eyes ruined the illusion, catching the light in ways that no natural color should.
"Where are we?" My voice came out as a croak, barely recognizable as my own.
"My home. Or one of them." He rose from the chair and crossed to a table I hadn't noticed, pouring water from a clay pitcher into a cup. "The kingdom maintains residences for each Sovereign in several locations. This one is in the northern highlands, far from the border and the fighting. You'll be safe here while you learn."
He brought the cup to me, and I took it with hands that trembled embarrassingly. The water was cool and clean, and I drank it too fast, nearly choking in my eagerness.
"Slowly," Caelan said, though he made no move to take the cup away. "There's no shortage. You can have as much as you need."
I forced myself to take smaller sips, using the act of drinking to delay the questions I knew I needed to ask. The room came into better focus as the dizziness receded: stone walls hung with simple tapestries, a fireplace with low flames crackling against the chill, a desk covered in papers and books, a second door that presumably led deeper into the residence. It was comfortable without being lavish, the kind of space that suggested its occupant valued function over display.
"You said I would be trained." I set the cup down on a small table beside the bed, not trusting my grip to hold it steady. "I thought there would be... I don't know. A school, or a barracks, or something."
"There are no schools for what we are." Caelan returned to his chair by the window, settling into it with the easy grace that seemed to characterize all his movements. "Magic cannot be taught in classrooms. It requires individual attention, careful cultivation, the kind of focused instruction that only another Sovereign can provide." He paused, and something shifted in his expression. "I will be your teacher, Edrin. For as long as it takes you to master what lives inside you, your life is bound to mine.
The weight of that statement pressed down on me like a physical thing. I thought of the battlefield, of the way he had unmade an army with a gesture, of the terrible beauty and the terrible cost of what he was. And now he was telling me that I would learn to do the same, that this destroyer of thousands would be my guide into a power I had never asked for.
"How many of us are there?" I asked. "Sovereigns, I mean."
"In this kingdom? Seven, including myself. Eight, if we count you, though you won't be formally recognized until your training is complete." He turned his gaze toward the window, looking out at something I couldn't see. "There were more, once. Before the kingdoms decided that magic was too dangerous to exist unchecked. Now we are rare enough to be valuable and few enough to be controlled."
"Controlled by whom?"
"By the crowns we serve. By the councils that govern in their names. By the web of obligations and oaths that bind us to the political structures of the world." His voice carried a weariness that seemed too old for his face. "We are weapons, Edrin. The most powerful weapons in existence. And weapons must have wielders, or they become threats rather than assets."
I thought about the insignia on his arm, the crown wreathed in flames. He had been wearing the symbol of our kingdom when he walked through that battle, marking himself as belonging to something larger than his own terrible power. I had felt relief when I saw it, knowing he was on our side. Now I wondered what it cost him to wear it.
"What if I don't want to be a weapon?"
The question came out before I could stop it, raw and honest in a way that felt dangerous. Caelan turned back to look at me, and I braced myself for anger or disappointment or cold dismissal.
Instead, he smiled. It was a small expression, barely a curve of the lips, but it transformed his face in ways I hadn't expected. He looked younger suddenly, more human, like someone who remembered what it meant to feel uncertain about the path ahead.
"Then you'll have to find another way to be useful," he said. "The power doesn't care what you want, but the shape it takes is still partly your choice. Some Sovereigns are warriors, yes. They go where the battles are and end them the way I ended the one where we met. But others have found different callings. Healing. Protection. The mending of things that war has broken." He leaned forward slightly, his golden eyes holding mine with an intensity that made it impossible to look away. "The training will teach you control. What you do with that control afterward is a question only you can answer."
It wasn't the reassurance I had been hoping for, but it was something. A sliver of agency in a situation that had stripped away every choice I thought I had. I clung to it the way a drowning man clings to driftwood, not because it would save me but because it was the only thing within reach.
"When do we start?"
"Tomorrow. Tonight you rest, you eat, you grieve." He rose from the chair and moved toward the second door. "There's food in the kitchen, and you're free to explore the house as you wish. The grounds beyond are warded, so you needn't fear wandering too far. I have correspondence to attend to, but I'll join you for dinner."
He paused at the threshold, looking back at me with an expression I couldn't read.
"The boy who died," he said quietly. "On the battlefield. He mattered to you."
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway. "Tam. His name was Tam. He was my best friend."
Caelan nodded slowly, as though I had confirmed something he already knew. "Remember him. Hold onto that grief, even when it hurts, even when you want to let it go. The magic responds to strong emotion, and there is no emotion stronger than love that has been transformed by loss." He turned away. "It will be your anchor in the days ahead. Don't let anyone convince you to release it before you're ready."
Then he was gone, and I was alone with the silence and the fading light and the memory of Tam's face in the moment before he died.
I found the kitchen by following the smell of bread.
The house was larger than it had appeared from my small bedroom, a sprawling structure of stone and timber that seemed to have grown organically over many years. Corridors branched off in unexpected directions, leading to rooms I didn't dare enter, and the walls were lined with objects that radiated a faint sense of significance: old weapons, framed documents, portraits of people whose eyes seemed to follow me as I passed. Everything was well-maintained but not ostentatious, speaking to comfort rather than wealth.
The kitchen was warm and bright, dominated by a large hearth where a pot of something savory bubbled over low flames. A wooden table took up the center of the room, and on it sat a loaf of bread, a wheel of cheese, and a bowl of autumn apples that looked almost too perfect to eat. I stood in the doorway for a long moment, uncertain whether I was allowed to help myself, before hunger overcame hesitation.
I ate standing up, tearing chunks of bread and slicing wedges of cheese with a knife I found in a drawer. The food was simple but good, better than anything I'd tasted since leaving Millbrook, and I found myself eating more than I intended. My body seemed to remember that it had been running on fear and adrenaline for days, and now that the immediate danger had passed, it was demanding compensation.
When I had eaten enough to quiet the worst of the hunger, I took an apple and wandered back through the house. The corridors felt different now, less threatening, though I still avoided the closed doors and kept to the paths I had already explored. Eventually I found my way to a room that opened onto a wide terrace overlooking the grounds.
The view stole my breath.
We were high in the mountains, higher than I had ever been. The terrace looked out over a valley filled with late afternoon shadow, its slopes covered in evergreen forest that faded to grey rock as the elevation increased. In the distance, peaks capped with early snow rose against a sky the color of hammered copper. The air was thin and cold and tasted of pine, and when I breathed it in I felt something in my chest respond, a faint pulse of warmth that might have been my imagination or might have been the spark Caelan had seen in me.
I sat on the low stone wall that bordered the terrace and ate my apple and watched the light change as the sun descended toward the western peaks. For the first time since Tam died, the pressure in my chest eased slightly. Not the grief itself, which remained as heavy and present as ever, but the feeling of being crushed by it, of being unable to draw a full breath around its weight.
Maybe that was what Caelan had meant about holding onto the grief without letting it destroy me. Maybe there was a way to carry Tam with me that didn't require me to collapse beneath the burden.
Or maybe I was just tired, and the beauty of this place was giving me a temporary reprieve that would disappear as soon as I tried to sleep.
I stayed on the terrace until the sun vanished behind the mountains and the first stars began to appear in the darkening sky. Then I went back inside to find Caelan and learn what came next.
I found him in a room I hadn't discovered during my earlier wandering, a study lined with bookshelves that stretched from floor to ceiling. He sat at a desk near the window, writing by the light of a single candle, and he didn't look up when I entered. I stood in the doorway for what felt like a long time, unsure whether I should announce myself or wait to be acknowledged, before he finally set down his pen and turned to face me.
"You found the terrace," he said. It wasn't a question.
"How did you know?"
"You smell like pine and evening air." He gestured toward a chair across from the desk. "Sit, if you like. I was just finishing a letter to the Council, informing them of your existence."
I crossed the room and settled into the chair, which was old leather worn soft by years of use. The study felt different from the rest of the house, more personal somehow, as though the books and papers that surrounded us were extensions of Caelan himself rather than mere possessions. I found myself studying the spines on the nearest shelf, trying to read the titles in the flickering candlelight, but most of them were in languages I didn't recognize.
"What will they do?" I asked. "The Council, I mean. When they find out about me."
"Nothing, for the moment. They'll add your name to their records and assign you a designation, and then they'll wait to see what becomes of you." He folded the letter and pressed a seal into the wax, the imprint of a crown wreathed in flames matching the insignia on his coat. "The training process is long and uncertain. Many who show potential never develop it fully, and the Council has learned not to invest too much attention in unproven sparks."
"And if I do develop it? If I become like you?"
"Then they'll have opinions about how you should be used." His voice carried a note of something that might have been bitterness, quickly suppressed. "But that's a concern for another day. Tonight we eat, and you tell me about yourself, and we begin the process of understanding what kind of Sovereign you might become."
He rose from the desk and led me through another corridor to a dining room where a meal had been laid out: roasted meat, root vegetables, more of the excellent bread I had found in the kitchen. I realized with a start that I hadn't seen any servants since arriving, no cooks or maids or attendants of any kind. The food had simply appeared, as though the house itself were providing for us.
"Do you live here alone?" I asked, taking a seat at the table.
"Mostly. I have a steward who manages the property when I'm away, and he arranges for supplies to be delivered from the village in the valley. But I prefer solitude when I can get it." He served himself a portion of meat and vegetables, his movements precise and economical. "The life of a Sovereign involves more social obligation than most people realize. Councils and courts and ceremonies, endless meetings with people who want something from you. This place is where I come to remember who I am when I'm not being what they need me to be."
I thought about my own life before the war, the small cottage attached to my father's mill, the familiar rhythms of work and rest that had defined my existence for seventeen years. It seemed impossibly distant now, a memory belonging to someone else entirely.
"You said there were seven Sovereigns," I said, more to fill the silence than because I needed to know. "In our kingdom, I mean. Are they all like you?"
"Like me how?"
"Able to do what you did. On the battlefield."
Caelan set down his fork and regarded me with an expression I was beginning to recognize as careful consideration, the look he wore when deciding how much truth to share.
"Each Sovereign manifests differently," he said finally. "The power takes shapes that reflect something fundamental about the person wielding it, though no one fully understands why one spark becomes fire while another becomes healing or warding or something stranger still. Of the seven of us currently bound to this kingdom, three are primarily combat-oriented. Myself, a woman named Seraph who fights with lightning rather than the forces I command, and an old man called Mordren whose specialty is something I'd rather not describe while you're eating." A ghost of dark humor crossed his features. "The others have different gifts. Thessa can mend almost any wound, given time and access to the injured. Corvin sees things that haven't happened yet, though his visions are fragmented and often difficult to interpret. Yara speaks to the dead, or claims to, though I've never been certain whether she's communing with actual spirits or simply accessing memories that haven't fully dissipated."
"And the seventh?"
"Brennan." Caelan's voice shifted, something complicated moving behind his eyes. "He's young, only a few years older than you, and his training was completed less than a year ago. His gift is subtle, harder to categorize than the rest of us. He can... influence the way people feel. Not control them, exactly, but shape their emotions in ways that make them more amenable to suggestion."
I thought about what that might mean, the ability to reach into someone's heart and adjust what they found there. It seemed more invasive than anything I had witnessed on the battlefield, more violating than simple destruction.
"That sounds dangerous."
"All of it is dangerous. That's rather the point." Caelan resumed eating, and I followed his lead, though my appetite had diminished. "The question isn't whether power is dangerous but whether the person wielding it can be trusted to use it wisely. Brennan struggles with that question more than most, which is perhaps the best evidence that he deserves the power he's been given."
We ate in silence for a while, the only sounds the clink of cutlery and the distant crackle of fires burning somewhere deeper in the house. I found my thoughts drifting to Tam, as they always seemed to when I had nothing else to occupy them. I wondered if his body had been recovered from the battlefield, if someone had thought to send word to his family, if there was anyone left who would remember him besides me.
"You loved him."
Caelan's words cut through my reverie like a blade, and I looked up to find him watching me with those unsettling golden eyes. There was no judgment in his expression, no accusation or disgust, only the same careful observation I had seen when he studied the battlefield before wading into its carnage.
"He was my best friend," I said, and the words felt inadequate, a thin shell around something too large and painful to fit inside language.
"That's not what I asked."
I wanted to lie. The instinct was strong, honed by years of careful concealment in a village where certain kinds of love were tolerated only as long as they remained invisible. But something in Caelan's gaze made deception feel pointless, as though he could see through any mask I might construct and was simply waiting for me to stop wasting both our time.
"Yes," I said quietly. "I loved him. I never told him, and now I never will, and I don't know how to live with that."
Caelan nodded slowly, as though I had confirmed something he already suspected.
"The spark woke when he died," he said. "That's significant. Loss is a common catalyst, but the loss of someone beloved, truly beloved, tends to produce stronger awakenings than other kinds of grief." He paused, choosing his next words with visible care. "Your magic will always be connected to him, Edrin. To what you felt for him and what you lost when he fell. That's not a weakness to be overcome but a foundation to be built upon. The most powerful Sovereigns I've known have all been people who loved deeply and lost terribly. It gives the magic something to anchor itself to, something human to hold onto when the power tries to sweep you away."
"Is that what happened to you?" The question came out before I could stop it, bolder than anything I would normally have dared. "Did you lose someone?"
For a long moment, Caelan didn't answer. The candlelight flickered across his features, casting shadows that made him look older, more worn, as though the weight of years was pressing down on him in ways that daylight normally concealed.
"Everyone loses someone," he said finally. "That's the nature of loving in a world where nothing lasts forever. The question is what you do with the grief afterward, whether you let it hollow you out or use it to build something that honors what you've lost." He rose from the table and gathered the empty plates, carrying them toward the kitchen without waiting for my response. "Get some sleep, Edrin. Tomorrow we begin your training in earnest, and you'll need whatever rest you can find."
I wanted to press him further, to ask about the someone he had clearly lost and how that loss had shaped the Sovereign he became. But his dismissal was unmistakable, a door closing on a conversation he wasn't ready to continue. I stood and made my way back to the small bedroom where I had woken earlier, my mind churning with everything I had learned and everything that remained hidden.
The bed was softer than anything I had slept on in months, and the room was warm enough that I didn't need the blanket folded at its foot. I lay in the darkness and listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the house settling around me, the creak of old wood and the whisper of wind against stone. Somewhere in the distance, an owl called out, and another answered.
I thought about Tam. I thought about the way his eyes had gone wide with surprise as the spear took him, the way his hand had reached for mine in the instant before he fell. I thought about all the words I had never spoken and the future we would never share, the fishing trips and the quiet evenings and the confession I had rehearsed a thousand times without ever finding the courage to deliver.
And I thought about what Caelan had said, about using grief as a foundation rather than letting it become a prison. I didn't know if I was capable of that kind of transformation. I didn't know if I was capable of anything the man seemed to expect from me. But as sleep finally began to pull me under, I made a silent promise to the boy I had loved and lost: I would try. I would learn to wield whatever power lived inside me, and I would use it to protect others the way I had failed to protect him.
It wasn't much. It wasn't nearly enough. But it was the only honest thing I could offer.
I woke to the sound of birds.
They sang outside my window in a chorus that bore no resemblance to the sparrows and finches I had known in Millbrook, their calls strange and wild and somehow appropriate for a place as removed from ordinary life as this mountain retreat. The light filtering through the narrow window was grey and soft, suggesting early morning, and for a moment I simply lay there and let myself exist without thought or memory.
Then the previous day came flooding back, and I understood that nothing would ever be ordinary again.
I dressed in the same clothes I had worn the day before, since no one had provided me with alternatives, and made my way through the corridors toward the kitchen. The house felt different in the morning light, less mysterious and more simply old, its stone walls and worn wooden floors speaking of generations of habitation. I wondered how long Caelan had lived here, whether he had built the place himself or inherited it from some predecessor, whether other apprentices had walked these same halls before me.
The kitchen was empty when I arrived, but a pot of porridge sat warming over low flames and a fresh loaf of bread waited on the table beside a crock of butter and a jar of honey. I served myself a bowl and ate standing at the window, watching the sun rise over the peaks in the distance. The view was even more stunning than it had been at sunset, the snow-capped mountains glowing pink and gold against a sky that deepened from grey to blue as I watched.
"You're awake early."
I turned to find Caelan standing in the doorway, dressed in simple dark clothes that made him look almost like a normal person rather than a being of terrible power. His golden eyes caught the morning light and reflected it back in ways that no human eyes should, but otherwise he might have been any man of middle years emerging from sleep.
"I couldn't stay in bed," I admitted. "Too much to think about."
"That will pass. Once the training begins, you'll be too exhausted for excessive thought." He crossed to the hearth and poured himself a cup of something from a pot I hadn't noticed, something dark that smelled bitter and complex. "Today we establish your baseline. I need to understand what your spark can do in its current state before I can begin teaching you to expand and control it."
"How do we do that?"
"We go outside, find a place where any accidents won't damage anything valuable, and I push you until something happens." He took a sip from his cup, watching me over its rim with an expression of clinical assessment. "The process is unpleasant but necessary. Magic responds to stress, and your spark needs to learn that it can emerge without requiring you to be in mortal danger every time."
I thought about the battlefield, about the terror and grief that had apparently awakened something in me without my knowledge or consent. The idea of deliberately recreating those conditions made my stomach clench, but I understood the logic behind it. If my power only surfaced during moments of extreme crisis, I would be useless as a Sovereign and dangerous to everyone around me.
"All right," I said. "I'm ready."
Caelan smiled, and there was something in the expression that might have been approval or might have been anticipation of what was to come.
"No, you're not. But you will be."
He led me out of the house through a door I hadn't discovered during my exploration, emerging onto a path that wound down the mountainside through dense forest. The air was cold and sharp, carrying the scent of pine and the distant promise of snow, and our breath formed small clouds that dissipated quickly in the thin atmosphere. We walked for perhaps twenty minutes, following the path as it descended into a small valley where the trees gave way to an open meadow surrounded by steep rocky walls.
"This is where I train," Caelan said, stopping at the meadow's edge. "The walls contain most accidents, and there's nothing here that can't be regrown or repaired. Stand in the center and try to relax."
I walked to the middle of the meadow, feeling exposed and vulnerable in the open space. The grass beneath my feet was thick and soft, still green despite the cold, and I wondered if Caelan's magic had something to do with its persistence. I turned to face him, my hands hanging awkwardly at my sides, unsure what posture was appropriate for what was about to happen.
"Close your eyes," Caelan said. "Focus on your breathing. Try to find the same stillness you felt on the terrace last night, when the pressure of your grief eased slightly."
I did as he instructed, letting my eyes fall closed and turning my attention inward. The sounds of the meadow faded as I concentrated: the wind in the trees, the distant call of birds, the whisper of grass bending beneath an unfelt breeze. I searched for that moment of peace I had found while watching the sunset, that brief respite when the weight of Tam's death had lifted enough for me to draw a full breath.
It took longer than I expected. My mind kept returning to the present moment, to my awareness of Caelan watching me, to my fear of what was about to happen and my uncertainty about whether I was capable of doing it. But eventually, gradually, I found a thread of stillness buried beneath the noise of my thoughts. I followed it down into myself, past the anxiety and the grief and the confusion, into a place that felt older and simpler and somehow more real.
And there, waiting for me like a coal buried beneath ash, I found the spark.
It was exactly as Caelan had described it: a warmth that pulsed with its own rhythm, separate from my heartbeat but somehow connected to it, as though two different fires burned in my chest and only one of them was entirely mine. I focused on it carefully, afraid that too much attention might snuff it out, and felt it respond to my awareness by growing slightly brighter.
"Good," Caelan said, his voice reaching me as though from a great distance. "You've found it. Now I'm going to give it a reason to wake up."
The attack came without warning.
One moment I was standing in peaceful stillness, exploring the edges of my newly discovered spark, and the next moment the air around me turned to ice. Not metaphorically cold but literally frozen, a shell of solid frost that encased my body from neck to ankle and squeezed tight enough that I couldn't draw breath. Panic exploded through me, raw and primal, and I felt the spark flare in response to my terror.
"Push against it," Caelan called. "Don't think about how. Just push."
I pushed. I didn't know what I was doing or how I was doing it, only that something inside me was surging toward the surface and I needed to let it out or I was going to die. The spark that had been a gentle warmth became a roaring fire, and the fire wanted to be free, wanted to consume the ice that imprisoned me and everything else besides.
The frost shattered.
I stumbled forward as the shell around me exploded outward, shards of ice scattering across the meadow in every direction. The grass beneath my feet had turned brown and brittle, and I realized that the heat pouring off my body was intense enough to wither everything within arm's reach. I gasped for breath, my lungs burning, my skin tingling with residual warmth that felt like standing too close to a forge.
When I looked up at Caelan, he was smiling.
"Excellent," he said. "Now we have something to work with."