Laila had never expected to feel nervous at her own son’s Emberlight.
She had attended a dozen of these ceremonies before. She knew the choreography, but knowing and feeling were different animals.
Fire was its own beast.
She understood the theology. Invictus blessed through flame, which would recognise and accept the child. The priests trained for years. The engineering had been checked and rechecked. No heir of a noble house had been so much as singed in living memory.
But Maximilian was her son, and he was small. And the fire was fire. And every instinct she possessed predated theology.
Laila rested a hand on her belly. Human again, judging by how big I’ve gotten. Spriggan pregnancies were smaller, tidier. This one had ambitions.
The Pendulum had flung a generous ration of light across the occasion. The Church had advised her that divine providence and excellent timing were indistinguishable, and equally expensive.
The boulevards below heaved with bodies. Half the city turned out for a ducal heir’s Emberlight, or at least for the excuse to drink in public before noon.
The crowd pressed towards Notre Reine. The cathedral’s spires caught the light, and Laila felt the familiar twist of seeing Aeloria’s monument without Aeloria in it. Our Queen. Named for a dragon who had appeared human and claimed a year on Gallia’s throne.
A hand tugged at her skirts. Ondine, wide-eyed and solemn in her ceremonial dress, Elariana a half-step behind with one hand on the girl’s shoulder. Protector and custodian both.
Laila permitted herself a moment’s amusement. A spriggan, a siren, and an elf, standing together in a cathedral full of humans. We must make quite the picture.
She watched Alexios hold sway at the centre of the room, the Duke of Pharelle, eclipsed only by the Pontifex in this moment.
“The invitation was delivered?” she asked Elariana, though she already knew. She had drafted it personally; chosen every word with the care one applied to correspondence with dragons. “You know we cannot hold an Emberlight in Notre Reine and pretend she doesn’t exist.”
Elariana’s face suggested she had opinions about the invitation but kept them to herself. “Delivered. No reply.”
“Probably won’t come. But we must extend the courtesy.”
The priests brought her son forward. He was so small, red-haired and wide-eyed, and she was too far away.
Stop it. The priests know what they’re doing. Probably.
The flames rose to meet him, and Laila’s breath caught.
The fire moved with deliberation, unlike the random flickers of burning wood. The flames twisted, surged, parted around Maximilian like water around stone. Her son hung suspended above the brazier, untouched, wreathed in light that recognised him.
The cathedral went silent. Then it didn’t.
Laila heard fragments cutting through the noise: “Hero—” “—impossible—” “—did you see?”
Everyone was watching.
The priests recovered quickly: a credit to their training, or perhaps to the insurance premiums. Maximilian was lowered, blessed, returned to his nurse. The ceremony found its footing again.
Small mercy Aeloria didn’t come.
As soon as she saw Max safely in the hands of Alexios, she took Ondine by the hand. “Come, Elariana. There are too many eyes.”
The sacristy was empty, the priests all occupied with the aftermath. Laila closed the door behind them and leaned against it, one hand on her belly.
She looked down at Ondine.
Oh, child.
Slender even for ten. Blue skin and scales catching the candlelight, the delicate fins at her ears pressed flat against her head. She had learned that motion drew attention. She held still.
I know that pose.
Ondine was ten years old and she was collateral. They both were.
She’d heard a Gallian diplomat use the phrase once, thinking she wasn’t listening. Insurance written in small bodies. That’s what we are. A siren child for the de Vaillants, Alexios’s niece sent to the Autumn Court, two households holding each other’s children against future betrayal.
Laila knew what that felt like. The first year in Pharelle had been the loneliest of her life.
She had learned to smile, learned to manage, and even eventually learned to love Alexios.
“Ondine.”
“Yes, Madame?”
There were no crowds, no gilded throne for absent dragons. Just candlelight and stone and the faint smell of incense.
Laila knelt to meet her eyes.
“You’ve been with us for eight years now,” she said. “You’ve seen our customs, joined our celebrations. Today you stood with us for Maximilian’s Emberlight.” She paused. “You came to us as a hostage, if we’re being honest.”
Ondine’s face went very still.
“So did you,” she said quietly.
Laila hadn’t planned a response to that.
“But that’s not all I am anymore, and it’s not all you are either.” She reached out, brushing a strand of hair from Ondine’s face. “I am a de Vaillant now.”
“But I’m just Ondine Marinelle, and I don’t even know what that name means.”
Laila bit back a tear.
“I had a name, once. One I kept for a daughter I’d hope to have. But that name has been waiting far too long, I think.”
She watched those pale eyes widen.
“If you want it,” Laila said, “you could be Isabella. A name that means you belong to us. Not as a treaty. Not as a hostage. As family.”
Ondine mouthed the name. Trying it on. Feeling its weight.
“Yes,” she whispered. And then, louder: “Isabella.”
1774—14 Years Ago
The boy standing in her entrance hall was not anyone Laila recognised.
She descended the grand staircase with measured steps, her eye going first to Elariana, as it always did. The elven mistress-at-arms stood just inside the door, rain still beading on her cloak, one hand resting on her sword hilt. Escorting, not guarding. An important distinction.
Then the boy.
He was perhaps twelve, small and solemn and thoroughly waterlogged: flat black hair plastered to his skull, pallid complexion, clothes sized for a boy he hadn't become yet. He stood in a puddle of his own making, dripping onto an indulgent amount of marble.
Elariana stepped forward and held out a letter sealed with Alexios’ personal sigil, not the ducal crest; whatever this was, it wasn't official business.
Laila took the letter. Broke the seal. Read.
In the name of our marriage, Alexios had written. As you took in Isabella, I ask you to take in this child. He is my blood. He shows signs of divine affinity and should be protected. I trust your judgement in this, as I trust it in all things.
She read it again. The circumstances. The request. The timing.
She looked up at the boy. He was watching her face.
“You. What’s your name?”
“Lambert sol Pallas, Madame.” The voice was quiet but steady.
Manners. She’d expected something feral, given the state of him.
“Who taught you to comport yourself?”
“I was raised by the priesthood of the Pallas church, Madame. Under Monsignor Egbert.”
“I see.” She folded the letter. “And how old are you, Lambert?”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Twelve, Madame.”
Behind him, dominating the entrance hall as it had for decades, hung the portrait of Alexios de Vaillant. Golden. Commanding. The sun given human form, captured in oils and gilt framing. The boy stood directly beneath it, and the contrast was so stark it bordered on cruelty.
This is supposed to be his son?
“So, you’re Alexios’ son?”
“So he tells me, Madame.” The voice was flat, neither grateful nor resentful: a statement of claimed fact, held at arm's length.
Laila respected that, though she didn’t show it. A child who grovelled would have been easier to categorise. This one had edges.
She studied him more closely. The pallor. The flat affect. The way he stood too still, like someone who’d learned that motion drew attention.
“Are you human?”
Whatever Lambert had expected, it wasn’t that. He blinked. “I... think so, Madame?”
“You think so.”
“No one’s ever asked before, Madame.”
No, she supposed they wouldn’t have. A foundling raised by a parish church. No one looking too closely at what he was, only at what he cost to feed.
She glanced at the letter again. “It says here you’re touched by the divine. Are you a Cleric?”
“Not yet.” A pause, measured. “But Invictus does lend me his gifts.”
“Show me.”
No hesitation. Lambert raised his hand, and light bloomed in his palm. Pure radiance, the colour of dawn through cathedral glass. It cast his pale features in sharp relief, made his dark hair darker by contrast. For a moment he looked less like a drowned thing and instead became kindling ready to burn.
He closed his fist. The light vanished.
A child of Alexios, even a by-blow, was a political consideration. A child of Alexios with theurgic power was a weapon. In anyone else’s hands, he would be leverage, threat, opportunity. She could not afford to let him become a piece on someone else’s board.
So, he becomes a piece on mine.
The thought was cold, and she didn’t flinch from it. She had learned long ago that love and calculation were not opposites. She had calculated her way into loving Alexios, brick by patient brick, building affection where arrangement had placed her. She could do the same here.
She looked at Lambert. This pale ghost of a boy, standing in her entrance hall, wielding divine light like it cost him nothing.
Ghost of what, though? Of whom?
She didn’t know. Perhaps it didn’t matter. She might grow to love him as she had grown to love his father, or she might simply do her duty and call it enough.
Either way, he was hers now.
“You’ll need dry clothes,” she said. “And a room. Elariana will show you to the east wing.” She paused. “We’ll speak more tomorrow, when you don’t look like something the storm forgot to finish.”
Lambert’s mouth twitched. It did not reach a smile, but it acknowledged that humour had occurred.
Elariana moved to guide him away. At the foot of the stairs, Lambert paused. Turned back.
“Madame?”
Laila raised an eyebrow.
“Thank you.” Said carefully, like a word he was testing for weight. “For... not sending me back.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Laila said. “You haven’t met the other children.”
She watched them go. The elven warrior and the pale foundling, disappearing into the east wing. The portrait of Alexios watched too, golden and silent and very far away.
I claimed a siren as my daughter. I can do this.
But underneath that thought, sharper and colder: I will never be caught unaware like this again.
Perhaps it was time to add a spymaster to the household’s employ.
1781—7 Years Ago
Of all her children, Wylan was the one Laila worried about least.
This was, she knew, a terrible thing to admit. A mother should worry equally about all her children; distribute her anxiety with the same careful fairness she applied to inheritance and seating arrangements. But Laila had never been skilled at lying to herself, and the truth was simple: Wylan was normal.
Maximilian had sorcery. Lambert had divine light. Isabella had put an arrow through something with too many eyes.
Wylan was, by the standards of House de Vaillant, remarkably ordinary.
Laila treasured it.
She watched him from the window. Wylan hunched over the table, charcoal moving with careful precision, coaxing into existence a gryphon-dragon hybrid with dragonfly wings poised mid-flutter.
Let him have this, she thought. Let one of them be safe.
“That’s beautiful,” she said. “Here. Let me show you something.”
She withdrew a vial of pigment from the pouch at her belt, let a single drop fall onto her fingertip, and traced a line across the wing. The colour bloomed where she touched, spreading through the charcoal like water through cloth. The creature stretched, shook itself, and stepped off the page entirely, trailing wisps of green light as it fluttered up to perch on the edge of a bookshelf.
She waited for the gasp. The wide-eyed wonder.
Wylan frowned. “How does that work?”
Laila blinked. “It’s enchantment, darling. Pigment carries intention—”
“No, I mean mechanically.” He was still staring at the wing. “There’s no energy transfer. No chemical reaction. It doesn’t make sense.”
Coldness touched the base of Laila’s spine.
“Magic is an art, Wylie. Not a science. That’s rather the point.”
“Everything makes sense.” He said it simply, without arrogance. A statement of fact. “If something doesn’t make sense, it just means you haven’t found the mechanism yet.”
The cold spread upward.
“Wylan.” She kept her voice carefully light. “And where did you get that idea from?”
He brightened immediately, the frown vanishing. “Well, I started with levers. Simple force multiplication, the principle is straightforward. But then I thought, why external? The body already converts fuel into motion. Digestion, respiration, muscular contraction. It’s just chemistry.”
He’s eleven.
“So I started distilling metals into bioavailable forms. Iron for strength. Copper for reflexes. Tin for structural stability.” He was talking faster now, the words tumbling. “The first eleven attempts were wrong, but the twelfth worked. I drank it and lifted my desk with one hand. It only lasts about a minute, but the principle is sound.”
He drank it.
“And that’s when it happened.” His voice didn’t slow. If anything, it quickened. “When the formula finally worked, something... opened. Like a door I didn’t know was there. I could see how things fit together. Not just the formula. Everything. The way force propagates through matter, the way heat dissipates, the resonance patterns in—”
He caught himself. Swallowed. “It was like the universe is a machine, and for just a moment I could see the gears. All of them. Turning.”
He looked up, and for the first time his momentum faltered.
“Is that normal?”
The Bore of Chance. She’d heard the term once, years ago, from an alchemist who’d had too much wine at a faculty dinner. The door that, once opened, could never be fully closed.
“Wylan.” She knelt so their eyes were level. “What you saw. What you can do. We need to be careful about who knows.”
“Why?”
Because luminaries break things. Every generation produced them: minds that saw the machinery beneath reality and couldn’t stop reaching for the gears. They built wonders and levelled city blocks, often both in the same afternoon.
“Because not everyone would understand.”
“That seems inefficient,” Wylan said. “The room is too small for most of what I want to build.”
Despite everything, Laila almost laughed. She pulled him into a hug, holding him tighter than perhaps she should.
I wanted one of them to be ordinary. One of them to be safe. She should have known better.
She’d need architects who didn’t ask too many questions. Somewhere beneath the estate, perhaps. Wylan would see a laboratory. Laila would see containment.
1786—2 Years Ago
Notre Reine blazed with light. The great brazier roared at the altar, tended by priests who moved with the practised calm of men who had done this a thousand times and never once set fire to an infant. The pews overflowed with dignitaries. Outside, the boulevards heaved as they always did, vendors fanning smoke over trays of hastily blackened chestnuts, because Pharellians had never met a ceremony they couldn’t monetise.
? There is no canonical link between Emberlight and chestnuts, but wherever flames gather a vendor appears, insisting that the tradition is older than dirt. The chestnuts themselves are equally ancient.
Maximilian stood at the centre of it all, resplendent in ducal regalia. He had mostly grown into the role. Four years. It’s only been four years.
Laila watched her eldest son speak the sacred verses, his voice carrying clear and strong. When did that happen?
Mirembe stood beside him, Aurora cradled in her arms. The baby watched the flames. She had a solemn fascination with the fire, as do most infants who haven’t yet learned to fear fire.
Behind Laila, her other children had arranged themselves in what was probably meant to look casual. Wylan was fidgeting with something in his pocket. Laila chose not to ask.
The ceremony swelled towards its crescendo. Maximilian lifted the sacred oil and began the final blessing.
And Laila’s gaze drifted, again, to the empty throne.
Did he send the invitation?
She’d reminded him weeks ago. We must invite Aeloria. Protocol demands it.
Do we really have to? he’d asked. She attacked the city, Mother.
She’s still royalty. The cathedral is hers. We extend the invitation.
He’d nodded. But did he actually do it?
He didn’t.
The torches guttered.
Every flame in the cathedral dimmed as one, a shadow passing between them and the air they needed to burn. The crowd stirred, murmurs rippling through the pews. At the altar, Maximilian’s voice faltered.
Laila was already moving when the doors exploded inward.
Aeloria descended in golden mail, scales gleaming, presence filling the nave like a second sun. The crowd drew breath as one, pressing back against the pews, against each other, against anything that put distance between them and the dragon who had just torn the cathedral doors from their hinges.
“So.” Aeloria’s voice rang clear and sharp, echoing off stone that had been built to honour her. “The rumours were true. A grand state event for one of Gallia’s great houses, and yet the Sun Queen finds herself off the guest list.” Her pupils narrowed to slits. “How humiliating. For you.”
At the altar, Mirembe placed herself between dragon and child.
“You were not wanted,” Mirembe said. “Not after your conspiracy against the Dauphin and the changeling you placed on the throne.”
Aeloria’s head tilted. The gesture would have been amusement had it been a less lethal smile. “Not wanted? You choose that pretender over me?” She took a step forward, and the temperature in the cathedral rose by several degrees. “I am Aeloria, the first of my name, the Sun Queen. Not forged by intrigue, but by fire and will.” The epithet was a sneer in her mouth. “All these other Sun Kings are pretenders.”
The brazier roared to life behind her, flames leaping skyward, licking at the vaulted ceiling. The crowd screamed. Dignitaries scrambled for exits that suddenly seemed very far away.
And Laila’s children moved.
Maximilian’s hands came up wreathed in fire. Isabella already had a bow. Lambert glowed. And Wylan gulped something from a vial, his frame swelling, muscles thickening.
Brave. Foolish. Both.
Laila’s hand was already in her pouch. Cerulean blue, ground fine as silk. She scattered it in a single sweeping gesture, letting the colour carry her intention: calm.
The effect rippled outward. Shoulders loosened. The screaming subsided into tense silence. Even Aeloria paused.
“Your Majesty.” Laila stepped forward. “The oversight was mine. I failed to confirm the invitation was sent. If there is offence, it lies with me, not with my grandchild.”
“You,” the dragon said finally. “The spriggan. I remember you. You were at the other one’s ceremony. The boy who made the fire bow.”
“I was.”
“You looked nervous then. You don’t now.”
“I’ve had sixteen years of practice.”
Aeloria’s ancient eyes flickered. Laila had hoped for mercy. This was closer to recognition.
“It is custom,” Aeloria said, turning back to the altar where Mirembe still stood guard over Aurora, “to bestow gifts upon the child at such moments. Let it never be said the Sun Queen lacks generosity.”
The brazier flared. Aurora’s small fist worked free of her blankets, fingers splaying towards the light.
“I give you fire,” Aeloria intoned. “A gift sealed by blood and fate. Your granddaughter will know fire as none of you ever will.”
At the altar, Maximilian’s flames guttered and died, overwhelmed by Aeloria’s.
“In time,” Aeloria continued, her voice low and almost gentle, “the light shall burn brighter than ever. And fire shall consume all you hold dear.”
Then she turned towards the ruined doors. Her armour caught the last of the Pendulum’s light, eclipsing her before she vanished into the sky.
? Dragons are known for many things: majesty, power, and a fondness for gold. Forgiveness has never ranked high on that list.
For a long moment, no one moved. Maximilian stood frozen, his hands hovering above his daughter as if afraid to touch her.
Laila walked to the altar. “Give her to me,” she said quietly.
Mirembe placed Aurora in her grandmother’s arms. The baby stirred, settled, her eyes fixed on the flames.
“She’s a de Vaillant,” Laila said, loud enough for the nearest onlookers to hear. “We don’t break that easily.”