I woke to weight and warmth, the kind that didn’t belong to blankets. Cassie’s arm curved over my ribs, steady even in sleep, her breath feathering the back of my neck. On the other side, Alina had claimed a corner of the mattress. She’d kept her distance at first, but sometime in the night she’d drifted close enough that her shoulder pressed faintly into mine. Her heartbeat was quick—mortal-quick—even in sleep, a drum I couldn’t ignore.

Beyond them, Lucien sprawled in his cot, one long arm dangling like he’d fought through the night and lost. His chest rose and fell in slow, even waves.

And at the foot of the bed—my parents. Together. Elias slumped in a chair with his chin to his chest, Seara folded beside him. Two blankets draped across their shoulders had slipped into one tangle, and their hands, almost but not quite, brushed in the middle.

For a second I let myself breathe it in. A picture little-girl Mira had prayed for: her mother and father close, the air unbroken by politics or pride. A family, whole.

Hope pricked sharp as glass. And then Juliana’s face came, soft and laughing—Lucien’s mother, my stepmother, who had never been anything but kind. My throat caught. I couldn’t want one without breaking the other. I wouldn’t wish her away, wouldn’t make my brother bear that loss.

I shut my eyes hard, chased the thought out—only for pain to spear white-hot through my ribs.

The draught was gone.

Every breath clawed. My body felt strapped in iron. I braced my palms against the mattress, tried to lever myself up—

Agony tore through me. A grunt slipped free, thick, humiliating. I bit it back, but Cassie was already awake, pushing upright, hands at me before I could blink.

“Mira.” Fierce, low, jagged. “Don’t—don’t move like that.”

Her fingers barely pressed my shoulders but it felt like shackles. My pride screamed, but my body betrayed me; tears blurred before I could stop them.

Alina stirred, pushing hair from her eyes, concern etched raw in her face. “Is she—?”

“I’m fine,” I rasped. The lie scratched. “Just… needed to sit up.”

“You can’t yet.” Cassie eased me back, her arm anchoring me to the pillows. “Not without help.”

The words sliced deeper than pain. Not without help. Not a warrior, not a princess, not even a girl with agency. Just a fragile thing.

Cassie lifted a glass from the bedside table. Cool water glinted against the lanternlight. I reached for it—fingers trembling, useless. The rim slipped, almost spilled.

Cassie didn’t let me hold it. She pressed it to my lips, tilting slow.

Shame flared hotter than the burns. I drank because I had to, not because I wanted to, and the taste of clean water was drowned in the humiliation of not being able to lift a glass on my own.

And then the healer entered—silver tray balanced, brisk and clinical. “She needs to relieve herself,” the woman announced, like she was giving a weather report. “She cannot do it alone.”

Heat scalded my cheeks. My chest squeezed.

Cassie went rigid. Alina’s gaze darted away. My parents—thank the gods—still slept.

Selene’s cedar-scented presence followed the healer in, her face a mask of calm. “It’s necessary, Mira,” she said gently, but her voice had the firmness of law. “We’ll make it as easy as we can.”

The healer’s words landed like a blade.

Relieve herself.

Couldn’t do it alone.

My throat went dry. My pride scrambled for excuses. “I can—” The word splintered. “I can walk.”

“You can’t,” Selene said, voice calm but unyielding. She slid her arm under mine, cedar-scented steadiness wrapping me like iron. The healer flanked the other side, and between them I was lifted, bandages pulling, ribs shrieking. I bit down so hard my teeth ached, but a sound still broke free—half-grunt, half-whimper.

The washroom was too bright, too clean. Soap and lavender clung heavy in the air, undercut with the copper tang of blood that hadn’t left me. Porcelain gleamed cruel in the lanternlight. Cold tile shocked my bare feet.

“Here,” Selene murmured, guiding me down. My legs shook so violently I thought they’d give out. I lowered onto the seat with their help, the rib-stab of pain stealing my breath.

And then—silence, waiting.

Every nerve in me screamed. My cheeks burned hot as my fire. My heart pounded so loud I swore they could hear it.

I closed my eyes, tried to will my body into stone, but the pressure in my bladder won. Warmth spilled out of me in an unstoppable rush. I wanted to vanish. The sound of it hitting water echoed sharp, merciless, too loud in the tiled room.

Selene didn’t flinch. The healer’s hands were brisk, professional. Neither of them said a word, but I knew. They heard. They smelled. They knew.

Tears stung. My nails dug crescent moons into my palms. “Gods,” I rasped, “I can’t—”

The healer reached, efficient as ever. “I’ll take care of it.”

And that was worse. That was shattering. Because I couldn’t even wipe myself. I sat there while she did it for me—clinical, practiced, as though I wasn’t a princess or a warrior or even a girl. Just a body to be managed.

Shame flooded hotter than fire. My ears roared. I wanted to claw out of my own skin.

From the doorway, Cassie’s voice cut low, jagged, grounding. “Firefly.”

I dragged my eyes up. She leaned against the frame, fists clenched white, face raw with something fierce and unmovable. She didn’t look away. She didn’t pity. She just pressed her thumb into her palm, drawing that infinity again and again where I could see it.

And I broke. A sob tore out, raw and humiliating.

They got me back to bed, laid me down like glass, but the tears kept spilling hot into my hairline. My chest shook.

“You may as well put me on a shelf,” I whispered, voice shredded. “Porcelain. A doll that pisses when you tip it.”

And then warmth—my mother’s hand threading into my hair, her forehead pressing to mine. Not High Lady. Not a ruler. Just Seara. Her molten eyes wet.

“Not porcelain,” she breathed, voice ragged. “Not a doll. Mine. Especially like this—mine.”

Her words gutted me worse than the healer’s touch. Because I believed her. And I hated that I needed to.

Daylight was cruel.

It poured through Emberhall’s tall windows in gold sheets, catching dust motes in the air, outlining every edge sharp and merciless. No forgiving shadows like the night before. The world wanted me seen—bruises, burns, weakness and all.

The nurses moved around me in quiet rhythm, and I felt each touch too vividly. Bandages peeled back, linen sticking to wounds that hadn’t closed, the rip of dried blood snapping against skin. Salve dabbed across cuts smelled of mint and lilies, but under it I caught copper and smoke. My body catalogued everything: the cool sting, the drag of gauze, the pulse of spelllight seeping heat into raw places. My ribs screamed with every shift, my skin thrummed like it wanted to crawl off me.

Cassie stayed by my hand, thumb stroking infinity into my palm with a steadiness I didn’t feel. My mother’s fingers combed through my hair, deliberate, soothing, like she could smooth the jagged edges of me flat. And me? I wanted to sob, I wanted to vanish. Both at once.

Then came the vial.

“Pain draught,” the healer announced like she was reading the weather. Bitter honey and ash filled my mouth, thick enough to choke. It burned down my throat, then spread slow and heavy, flooding my limbs until I felt pinned to the mattress. The humiliation was worse than the taste. I wanted to spit it back out, to prove I could still endure without it. Cassie tilted my chin, soft command in her voice: “Firefly.” And I swallowed, because disobeying her was harder than surrendering to the draught.

“She must eat,” the healer added once the vial was gone. “Even a few spoonfuls.”

I muttered something about not being hungry. My father was already rising. “Then let me.”

The scrape of chair legs, the clink of silver against porcelain. He sat beside me, soup steaming gentle between us. “Open up, lightning bug. Don’t make me make airplane noises.”

Heat climbed my neck. “Dad,” I groaned, mortified.

“Then cooperate.” He smiled, calm as rain, lifting the spoon. The broth smelled of chicken and herbs and salt, normal food for an abnormal morning. I opened my mouth because I had no choice. Warmth slid down my throat, nothing like freedom but grounding all the same.

Seara fussed when he dripped on the blanket. “Elias, honestly.” She dabbed at the spot with a napkin like she couldn’t help herself.

“Messy hands,” Cassie murmured, smirking faint.

I wanted to hate it—the spoon, the helplessness, being treated like porcelain. But I didn’t. Not fully. My father’s voice made monsters small, his steady hand made the room stop tilting. I hated that I loved it. I loved that I hated it. The contradiction scraped me dizzy.

I tried to hate being fed, hated the helplessness that came with it. But his voice—low and unshakable—smoothed the edges. He told me in little asides about things that made up the steady background of my childhood: how he always forgot to take the band-aids off my knees, how he used to read physics problems aloud until I fell asleep on the rug. He said it like it was nothing, like it was a string I could climb back toward when everything else frayed.

“You remember when you tried to straighten that warped ruler and it snapped?” he asked, spoon hovering. “You declared revenge on geometry for the rest of the year.”

I hiccupped a laugh that was more air than sound. “I still hate geometry.”

He smiled, the crease in his cheek catching the light. “Well, then—promise me you’ll never let a ruler beat you.”

I managed a soft, sullen, “Promise,” and the bowl met my lips again. I let the broth go down, taste and salt and father, and the room slowed around the edges.

Cassie leaned close enough that her perfume—citrus sharp, vanilla warm—brushed my temple. She kissed the corner of my mouth where a stray smear of broth had landed; the press was so brief it felt like a punctuation mark. “You’re ridiculous,” she said into my hair, but the soft in her voice was its own kind of guard.

Seara watched us in a way that unspooled something inside me I didn’t have a name for yet—she was both High Lady and mother, and the two things sat on her shoulders heavy and separate. She dabbed at the blanket with measured motions, eyes flint-bright for a second before the softness returned. “Eat,” she said simply. “Restore. Then sleep.”

There was a cadence to it—nurse fuss, parental insistence, Cassie’s tether—and I inhaled until the draught’s weights settled under my ribs. The three-beat in my palm slowed as her thumb drew me back into a rhythm that matched my breath.

At the edge of the room, Roran appeared like a shape you expected to find on guard duty: precise, unreadable until he wasn’t. He’d been doing the rounds, always ten steps ahead. He straightened when he caught my eye and gave the smallest of nods.

“Rooms arranged,” he reported softly, voice folded to spare the hush. “Lucien and Miss Merrick will be in the west wing. You’ll have privacy and a direct line. Naomi and Kess take the north corridor. No one in or out without clearance.”

Lucien, who had been glowering somewhere between embarrassment and brotherly outrage, let out an exasperated sound when Roran spoke and offered a half-salute that was mostly a grimace. Alina watched him, cheeks flushed, determination fragile and bright. Roran’s hand rested briefly on her shoulder—formal, protective—and then he was already pulling a map from his head and moving to the door.

“Get settled,” he said to them, a command softened by the shape of his concern. “You can check on her when you’re settled. Now go.”

Lucien moved like a man carrying a storm under his ribs—angry, protective, and stubbornly practical. He ushered Alina out with him, one elbow crooked like he was shepherding something fragile that might run. The door closed with a sound that made the room smaller and then, somehow, safer.

When it thudded shut, my father’s spoon paused mid-air. “Enough,” he said, and the word had the weight of both chiding and lullaby. “Rest, Mira. We’ll let the world worry about the next piece.”

I swallowed, the broth gone warm, the last sip a small, ordinary triumph. The draught hummed low in my veins; edges of the room blurred into watercolor. Cassie’s thumb kept drawing infinity—slow, insistently, the only constant I could hold—and Seara’s hand found my hair, cool and precise as a spell. Elias’ voice folded into something like a story: small memories that didn’t demand I answer, only listen.

“Promise me one thing,” he said, suddenly, not joking. His eyes were wet with something that refused to be ironed flat. “Don’t take this as the end. Don’t let them write you into a cage, Mira. We will move the walls for you if we have to.”

The promise cracked open something that was more afraid than I’d admitted. I nodded, too tired for words. “Okay,” I breathed. “I won’t… let them.”

Cassie pressed her mouth to my temple in a quick, fierce kiss and whispered, “We’ll build the walls together.”

The room hummed with the low convenience of being seen after the terrible night. My lids sagged. The rhythm of spoon, of thumb, of soft hands in my hair, braided something warm and stupid into my chest.

Outside, Emberhall kept turning, guards walking their patterns, wards thrumming like a second heartbeat. Inside, Elias’ stories kept unspooling—comfort tiny as soup, steady as rain—until the words thinned and the draught pulled me under.

Before sleep took me, the last impression was a small, hot certainty: I was surrounded. Loved, fussed over, boxed and protected—and for a moment those two truths could live in the same breath.

I let myself slip, Cassie’s thumb mapping forever on my skin, Seara’s hand lingering, my father’s voice a buoy. The world narrowed to a little island of warmth.

The door creaked.

Even drugged, I felt it—the shift of air, cedar threading faint into the room before I saw her. My eyelids dragged open, heavy as iron, to catch Selene framed in the doorway.

Cassie stirred at the same moment, her arm tightening instinctively around my waist. Her breath hitched against my neck, protective even in sleep.

Seara lay above the covers beside me, her fingers moving slow through my hair, smoothing tangles I didn’t know I had. She didn’t look away, not even when Selene entered. Elias sat in the chair by the bed, posture carved from stone, his eyes shadowed and sleepless. He hadn’t left me—not once.

Selene’s gaze swept the room. Me, pale and bandaged. Cassie curled protectively against me. Our mother stripped of all her High Lady steel. Our father worn raw. Something flickered across her perfect face—a crack in the marble.

“You’re awake,” she said softly, as though naming a fragile miracle.

“Barely,” I rasped. My throat felt scraped, my body too heavy.

Her eyes, so calm and composed, lingered on mine for a beat longer than usual. “Are you stable?” she asked, but the question wasn’t really for me.

“She’s breathing,” Seara answered, molten voice too tight. “The draught holds her. But it is… fragile.” Her thumb traced my temple again, as though proof.

Elias added, quiet but steady, “She ate. She’s resting.” His hand flexed on the armrest, like he wanted to reach for me but didn’t dare with everyone watching.

Cassie muttered under her breath, groggy and fierce: “She’s mine. That’s enough.”

Selene’s mouth tightened—but not at Cassie. At the truth of it, maybe. She stepped closer, fingers ghosting once over my blanket, precise, measured. “You’re alive,” she said again, this time to herself.

I caught the scent of cedar stronger now, the faintest tremor in her breath. My perfect sister, the one who never faltered, looked like she might break if she lingered.

But she didn’t. She bent low enough that only I could feel her words on my skin. “I’ll be back, little star. The Court waits, but I do not forget.”

Then she straightened, mask snapping back in place, and addressed the room as heir. “Keep her safe. I’ll return when I can.”

Her footsteps whispered away, the cedar trailing after her like smoke, leaving me in the strange cocoon of warmth and watchfulness that held me fast.

The latch clicked behind Selene, cedar fading down the hall.

Silence swelled in its place. My body felt like it had been left in the sun too long—heavy, sticky, used. I shifted and winced. Sweat clung to my skin under the bandages, my hair plastered to my temples. The sheets held the sour tang of blood and herbs, and beneath it, me. Mortal. Animal. Not princess, not queen—just a girl who stank.

Seara’s hand smoothed over my temple one last time before she straightened, molten eyes scanning me head to toe. “She needs bathing,” she said to no one and everyone at once. “I won’t have infection take root.”

A healer was summoned. The woman bowed low, voice brisk as she rattled instructions—temper the water with rosemary and salt, unbind only the outer wrappings, dab, not scrub. Her words blurred into the background, my body already tensing at the thought.

Seara dismissed her with a flick of her fingers. “I’ll tend her myself.”

The words almost undid me. Not servants. Not nursemaids. My mother.

Elias’s hand squeezed the armrest, as if to argue, but Seara’s glare pinned him. He settled back, jaw tight. Cassie was already on her feet, steady as gravity. “I’ll help.”

Between them, they lifted me from the bed, each touch careful, every shift a flare of pain. My pride hissed, but my body had no say.

Steam wrapped around me, heavy and close. The en suite smelled of rosemary and lavender, sharp enough to sting my nose. Beneath it lingered copper, smoke, and the sour tang of my own body. I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

Seara dipped a cloth into the water, wrung it slow, and pressed it to my shoulder. Heat seeped in, sliding down over bruises. I hissed, but her hand followed the cloth, steadying, anchoring. My mother’s hand.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

Her sleeves were rolled, damp tendrils clinging to her cheekbones, and she looked nothing like the molten High Lady who commanded rooms with a glance. She looked like any other mother, tired and intent on getting her daughter clean.

Cassie crouched beside me, pale hair damp from the steam, wringing out another cloth. She was trying to look fierce and unflinching, but I could feel her gaze flitting to my ribs every time I winced. Her thumb kept brushing mine when she thought I wouldn’t notice, grounding me even here.

Seara’s voice was quiet, low enough that it curled under the sound of dripping water. “I should have done this before.”

The admission pierced worse than the cloth against raw skin. My throat closed. “You… never did.”

“I thought distance was strength.” She moved the cloth along my collarbone, careful of the bandages. “But now… I see what it cost.”

I stared at her hand against my skin, the careful circles she traced with the cloth. This was the kind of care nursemaids had always given me, never her. I almost wanted to sob. “Why now?” I whispered.

Her eyes met mine, molten dimmed to something unbearably human. “Because I nearly lost you.”

The words punched air out of me.

Cassie reached for me then, hand sliding into mine under the towel. She said nothing, just pressed tight. Infinity, infinity.

We stayed in silence long enough for the steam to feel like it might choke me. Then Seara broke it, voice lighter, edged with something sharper. “So. You and your consort.”

“Mother—” My face burned hotter than the water.

Cassie nearly toppled over, sputtering. “We haven’t—!”

I groaned. “We promised to wait. Until our birthday.”

Seara’s cloth stilled mid-swipe. Then it moved again, slower. “Restraint,” she murmured. “Remarkable for Fae.” Her lips curved, not cruel. “I can smell it, you know. Desire. Stronger in you than most.”

I wanted to sink into the tub and drown. “That’s horrifying.”

Cassie made a strangled noise, scarlet to her ears. “Gods.”

Seara smirked faintly, but her tone softened. “I only mean—I know how strong the pull is. That you’ve chosen patience means it is truly yours. That’s what matters.”

The weight of it landed strange. Not scolding, not mocking. Pride.

I didn’t know what to do with that either.

We slipped into quieter talk after that. Cassie wrung cloths and handed them to Seara, our strange rhythm. My mother asked about little things—school, what classes I hated, whether the mortal cafeteria food was really as bad as rumor claimed. Mundane things, normal things. And gods, it gutted me.

Answering felt like standing on alien ground. “I like chemistry,” I admitted, voice thick. “But I’m shit at physics.”

Cassie snorted. “Understatement.”

Seara only nodded, rinsing the cloth again. “Then perhaps I’ll find you a tutor. One you choose.”

I blinked. “You’d… let me?”

Her thumb brushed the edge of a bandage, careful. “Yes. Not every choice must be mine, stargazer.”

The ache in my chest swelled too big. Steam blurred my vision, and I pretended it was only that.

She finished with my arms and shoulders, then moved carefully down my sides, cloth dabbing at the worst of the burns. I tensed every time the water touched, but her hand was always there, smoothing after. Cassie stayed at my knee, silent sentinel, her presence a shield against the humiliation.

By the time Seara wrung the cloth one last time, my skin hummed with heat and clean herbs. I smelled like lavender instead of sweat, blood, and fear. I felt human again. Breakable, but human.

And then the thought struck hard and merciless: she wasn’t High Lady Firebrand right now. She was just a woman. A mother who had spent her life leading armies and burning cities, but who could still kneel by her daughter and bathe her because no one else would.

The realization split something open in me.

For the first time in my life, I saw her not as a queen, not as a blade—but as my mother. Ordinary and extraordinary at once. And it broke me, because it was all I’d ever wanted and I didn’t know how to hold it now that it was real.

Daylight slanted warmer now, less knife-edge than at dawn. Steam from the bath still ghosted the air, carrying rosemary and salt that clung to my skin. My hair lay in two damp braids over my collarbones—Seara’s handiwork, fingers deft as any lady’s maid, gentler than I knew she could be. Fresh linen whispered cool against the backs of my knees. The sheets smelled like sun and soap instead of blood and panic.

For a handful of quiet minutes, it almost felt like a life I recognized.

Elias had his chair pulled close, one ankle hooked over a knee, elbows on the arms in that relaxed way that was mostly for my benefit. Cassie perched sideways on the mattress, hip to my thigh, her palm warm around mine, thumb drawing soft, idle eights like the tide had slowed. We were together. Bandaged and bruised, yes; but arranged. Contained.

“Those braids will last ten minutes,” Elias said, mock-solemn, eyes on my hair.

“Eleven,” Seara corrected, which earned the smallest smile from him.

“They’ll last forever,” I muttered, trying for grand, getting drowsy. “Royal decree.”

“Mm.” Cassie’s mouth did that tiny tilt that always felt like winning. “I’ll frame the decree for the bathroom.”

“Mmm… bathroom.” The word melted. “That was… better.” Heat crept over my cheeks and I didn’t care, not quite; my mother had bathed me herself. New fact, bright as a jewel. Nursed by servants, guarded by wards, taught by tutors—always—yet Seara’s hands had been the hands. The memory of her careful touch made my throat ache in a way nothing else did.

Her fingers—cooler now—worked at the ends of my braid, smoothing a stray wisp. “We’ll keep everything clean,” she murmured more to herself than anyone, eyes scanning the edges of the bandages. “No infection. Not my girl.”

Not my High Lady. My mother. The two of them had always shared a face; now I could tell which one looked back at me. It was a ruinous relief.

The minutes stretched, soft and gold. The bath’s heat lingered under my skin, loosening the places that had felt locked shut. I let my eyes fall half-closed and listened to the room: Elias’s easy breath, the sibilant drag of Seara’s sleeve on linen, the faint tap-tap of Cassie’s thumbnail on the back of my hand as she traced. The house hummed through the floorboards—a big, old animal keeping watch.

Then the calm… shifted.

It didn’t break; it curdled.

The ache returned the way thunderheads roll in—so gradual you argue with yourself about when it started. Muscles that had loosened began to tighten again, one by one. The skin under the bandage at my ribs went from merely tender to raw, like a scraped knee catching on wool. A pinchy heat built along my side where the gash lived; every breath tugged it. The cool of the sheets turned to scratch. The pillow felt wrong under my neck, too high, too low, too something. Even the rosemary in the air sharpened into something intrusive.

My fire, which the draught had tamped into obedient embers, roused cranky and misaligned, pushing against the inside of my skin like a cat choosing violence. No blaze—just a restless pressure, as if it were offended at being asked to behave.

I shifted a fraction. Pain flared bright-white, mean and personal. Sound stuck in my throat.

Cassie’s attention found me instantly. “Scale of one to ten?” Soft but not coddling.

“Annoying,” I said, which wasn’t a number. I didn’t want numbers. Numbers made it real, and I was not going to give pain the satisfaction of math.

Her thumb pressed a firmer infinity into my palm. “Annoying noted.”

Seara’s gaze cut from my face to the wound, to the lines of strain in my shoulders. “We’ll dose you again soon,” she said, tone shifting toward the crisp.

Elias leaned forward. “Or we distract,” he offered lightly. “I could tell the story of the time your aunt convinced me to duel an enchanted rosebush.”

Cassie coughed into a laugh. “Of course she did.”

I tried to smile. It slid off my face. The ache kept building—heat under skin, grit in joints. My tolerance, already frayed from the bath’s intimacy and the morning’s humiliations, wore thin. A splinter in a sock you can’t take off.

I tugged my hand from Cassie’s. Not hard. Enough.

“Mira,” she said, and it was both a question and a warning.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, too fast. The word clanged wrong in the room. My skin felt too tight. “I’m—” The breath I pulled snagged the gash and turned into a hiss. “I’m fine.”

A soft knock. That careful healer-quiet. The door opened to white sleeves and a tray and the smell of broth.

And something went brittle.

“She needs protein,” the lead healer announced, efficient, clinical. “Redressing after. Then another draught.”

The word draught made my stomach turn. The taste of bitter honey climbed phantom up my throat. The last of its comfort had leaked away, leaving the memory of being pinned to the mattress by my own limbs.

“I’m not hungry,” I said, too quickly. “We just bathed. I’m… comfortable.”

“You need fuel to heal,” the healer replied, already setting bowls on the side table. “Half-fae metabolism requires—”

“I know what my metabolism requires,” I cut in, heat flashing sharp, petty. “It’s my metabolism.”

Seara’s hand stilled on my braid. Not harsh. Not yet. “Mira.”

“I said I’m not hungry.” The spoon clinked; the smell of chicken and herbs spiked bright and wrong. “It’s too hot. It smells weird. It—” My throat tightened; the air felt thick. “Can we just… not. For a minute.”

“Two bites,” Cassie bargained, voice gentle but dragging a velvet rope. “Then you can yell at me.”

“I don’t want two bites,” I said, childish. “I don’t want any bites.” The pain had been climbing, ratchet by ratchet; humiliation climbed with it. “I don’t want to be looked at while I—while I—”

“Eat?” Elias offered softly, trying to make a bridge of humor.

“While I fail at holding a spoon,” I snapped, and the shame shot through the anger so fast it made me dizzy. Words spilled, hot and ungainly. “I’m not a baby, okay? I’m not a porcelain doll. I can’t even walk without help, I can’t piss without an escort, I can’t—” heat flooded my face “—I can’t wipe myself, I can’t do anything by myself, and now you want to watch me choke down soup like a toddler—”

Silence did that terrible, generous thing where it makes room for you to hear yourself. I hated it. I wanted to fill it with anything: jokes, fire, noise. Instead I filled it with more of the same.

“I don’t want the draught. I hate the draught. It makes my head feel like—like cotton dipped in glue. And you,” I flung at the healers, immediate guilt already licking my heels, “touch everything like I’m a museum exhibit—”

“Mir—” Cassie started.

“Don’t Mir me,” I said, hearing the whine and unable to excise it. The pain had climbed to a sharp, impatient hum, pricking at the edges of me until I couldn’t sit still and couldn’t move. “I’m sick of being told to breathe, and to sip, and to hold still, and to—” I made a helpless, ugly little sound. “I’m sick of being… like this.”

The spoon in Elias’s hand didn’t waver. Not once. His eyes had gone a little shinier at the corners, that was all. “We can be sick of it and still eat,” he said, voice a warm thing I wanted to crawl under. “Both can be true.”

“I don’t want both,” I snapped.

Seara rose.

The room shifted around her the way a forest goes quiet when a predator passes through. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t have to. Summer heat gathered along the edges of her words, and the scent of stargazer lilies sharpened until it was almost a taste.

“MIRACLE EMBERHEART QUINVEIL FIREBRAND.”

It rang through the air like a wardstone struck. The healers froze outright—one’s eyes flared with the reflexive, reverent fear that comes when a true name is spoken aloud. Cassie’s head snapped toward Seara, shock cutting through ice-blue; I felt her hand jolt where it held the sheet. She’d never heard it. No one had—no one but Seara and Elias and me.

The name hit me in the sternum. Not scolding—summoning. Every syllable a key turned in a lock under my ribs.

Seara stepped closer to the bed and bent so we were eye to eye, and there was nothing High Lady in her. Only mother. Love like a weapon. Fury like a shield.

“Listen to me,” she said, every syllable perfectly placed. “There is no shame in being cared for when you have bled for the people you love.”

Heat surged up my throat, something between a sob and a protest.

“You fought,” she went on, softer, fiercer. “You saved your consort’s life. You likely saved others. And now your body is asking for mercy. You will give it. You will let them feed you so your blood can knit. You will take the draught so you can sleep without your pain turning cruel. You will let the healers touch what hurts so it does not rot beneath your pride.”

Her hand cupped my jaw, thumb at the hinge where I clenched. “Queens are not dolls. Queens are not stone. Queens learn when to yield so they can rise again.” A beat; heat trembled in her voice. “And, child, you are not too old for me to put you over my knee.”

A shocked laugh escaped me—wet, hiccuping. Gods. Gods, I’d pushed her there. And still the world didn’t end; it steadied. Cassie’s fingers slid back to mine and squeezed once, saying nothing, everything.

The shame in me didn’t vanish. It loosened its claws.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. The words scraped. “I’m— I know. I just—” I swallowed. “It hurts.”

“I know,” Seara said, and there it was: all the feral tenderness in the world, focused like a blade. “So we will help.”

The room exhaled. I did, too, and the breath didn’t catch quite as hard.

I turned my head—not away, but toward Cassie. Her eyes were fierce and wet. “Two bites?” I asked, small.

“Four,” she said, because she is cruel. Then, softening, “We can negotiate.”

Elias passed her the spoon without a word. Seara eased back but stayed close, one hand flat over my sternum like a promise that my ribs would keep the shape of breathing.

The first mouthful tasted like salt and thyme and surrender. It was warm without being hot, gentle as a good lie. Cassie timed it with my inhale so the swallow didn’t spike pain. We found a rhythm: her spoon, my breath, Seara’s palm, Elias’s quiet jokes about assassin rosebushes and duels with laundry. The healers hovered at the edge of the scene, wiser now; they let the family weight do what their training could not.

Four bites became six. The knot in my stomach unclenched enough to make room for a seventh.

“Efficient,” Cassie said, smug, wiping a dot of broth from the corner of my mouth with her thumb.

“Bossy,” I breathed, but it lacked teeth.

The healers returned to their work like tide reclaiming shore—measured, murmuring. Salve cool as shadow under summer leaves. Gauze whispering. Spelllight creeping warm through my skin, making my nerves hum a cleaner note. This time, I didn’t flinch from their hands. I watched Seara watching them, a lioness letting other creatures touch her cub, and the sight made something click quiet in my chest.

“Draught,” the lead healer said at last, the bottle’s glass catching the afternoon light.

I didn’t fight it. Cassie slid her palm under my jaw, thumb tapping once at my pulse, and I opened. The taste was still bitter honey and ash, but it met soup in my belly and didn’t scrape so hard on the way down. Heat bloomed slow behind my eyes, in my shoulders, along the ache at my side, until edges blurred and weight shifted from pain to gravity.

“Good girl,” Seara murmured, and I should have bristled at the words, but my bones decided to like them. My eyelids weighed double, triple.

“Stay,” Cassie said, voice low, the command cozy as a blanket.

“Trying,” I slurred, the room tilting in a way that didn’t scare me.

Elias touched the back of my hand with one finger—just the weight of presence. “Rest, lightning bug.”

I felt them all even as the world began to drift: my mother’s palm on my chest, counting breaths; my father’s chair creak as he settled; Cassie’s wrist under my cheek as she shifted to cradle me better. Water ran faint in the ensuite—Seara rinsing a bowl or washing her hands. The wards in the walls thrummed old comfort. The draught coaxed the frantic cat of my fire into a drowsy curl.

“Shower,” Cassie whispered at my ear, a promise, not a leaving. “One minute. Back before you miss me.”

“Always,” I mumbled, trusting a thing I couldn’t see.

Seara and Elias spoke low somewhere above me—nothing I needed to solve, for once. The healers’ steps withdrew. A door breathed open and closed. Steam and citrus teased the air a moment later from the bath.

I sank. Not the hard, panicked drop of earlier. The slow kind, like slipping into lakewater in summer with the sun warm on your face.

And beneath the drift, the new lesson settled: yielding wasn’t failure; it was a way through. Letting them lift me now didn’t mean I’d never stand again.

Cassie’s weight returned to the mattress, clean and heat-radiant, her arm sliding around me without disturbing bandages. Her lips brushed my temple—one kiss, precise and fierce. “Sleep,” she breathed.

I obeyed because I need to get my strength back to protect those I care about.