[Summerhall, c. 190 AC]

The wildfire had died hours ago, but Aerion still felt it pulsing in his veins, thudding behind his ribs like a second heartbeat that wasn’t entirely his own. The failure meant nothing. The fire never truly failed. It simply redirected him.

Tonight, it dragged him here.

To her.

The moment he opened the door, heat slammed into him — a wall of steam and scent and something else, something that felt like her hands on his skin even from across the room. The air was thick, suffocating, intoxicating.

Summerhall’s stones radiated warmth… but they bent toward her, not the flames that heated them.

Daelyra sat in the crimson bath, a pale shape carved from moonlight and prophecy, her silver hair drifting around her like a halo drowned in blood. She didn’t turn, and she didn’t need to — he felt her awareness snap toward him the instant he stepped over the threshold. It wrapped around him like a chain.

A welcomed one.

He approached slowly, as if pulled by some force older than either of them.

“The fire should answer to me,” he murmured, voice low and unsteady in a way he’d never allow before anyone else.

“But it doesn’t. It waits. It watches. It obeys you.”

He stopped close enough for the heat from the bath to scorch across his skin.

The steam curled around his throat like claws.

“They look at me and see madness,” he said, gaze fixed on her, drinking her in like something holy. “But they don’t understand.”

His voice dropped to a whisper — reverent, starved, certain: “You are the madness. The prophecy. The flame that answers itself.”

The red water rippled as if reacting to his words, and he leaned in, breath stirring the steam that curled around her shoulders.

“I am theirs to fear,” he said. “But you…” His eyes burned with something feverish, possessive. “You are theirs to worship. To dread. To kneel for.”

A beat. Silence thick enough to choke.

“Tell me, zȳha riña,” he breathed, Valyrian dripping from his tongue like devotion turned violent, “what did the fire show you tonight?”

Another heartbeat.

“Was it our destiny?”

His smile was small, sharp.

“Or the world we must burn to reach it?”