POV: Rena Vale
Dawn bites like frost and tastes like iron on my tongue.
“Bare feet,” Aunt Eloise says, voice clean and merciless as the morning. “Stone under you. Sky above you. Nothing else is real.”
Cold slaps my soles. Breath ghosts white. My veins hum silver under skin that still doesn’t feel fully mine. Kai takes his place at my left—heat, cedar, steady gravity—and Auren mirrors him at my right, hoodie shoved back, eyes intent, jaw bruised from last night’s war.
Eloise lifts two fingers. “Breathe light, not air. In for four, hold for four, out for six. Count with your ribs. Focus.”
Kai’s palm hovers an inch from my spine. “Shoulders down,” he murmurs, voice soft as dusk. “Neck long. Let the collarbones float.”
Auren’s hand brushes my forearm. “Don’t lock your knees, Rena. Wolves grounded, not statues.”
I inhale. Light gathers behind my sternum, a low hive of singing bees. Hold. It swells. Out. It resists leaving, like tide arguing with shore. Again. Again. Sweat slicks my hairline though the morning is knifing-cold.
“Center,” Eloise calls. “Your power answers posture. Crown lifted, weight over arches, low belly engaged. If you slouch, it scatters. If you clench, it claws.”
“I hate this,” I grind out.
“Good,” she replies. “Hate is honest. Honesty focuses.”
Kai’s fingertips nudge the base of my skull. “Let me lengthen you,” he murmurs. He coaxes my head back into alignment, thumb careful where my spine meets light. “There.”
Auren steps close enough that his breath warms my temple. “Hear Lyria,” he whispers. “Not the city, not the Council, not your aunt. Your wolf.”
I’m here, Lyria murmurs, low and steady inside my bones. I always was.
“Again,” Eloise says.
I drag light with my inhale, shape it with my hold, try to send it outward with my exhale like a ribbon, smooth and obedient. It snarls, glitters, slams against my ribs and ricochets back. Pain stings. Knees wobble. The silver at my wrists flashes brighter, lines skittering like handwriting trying to outrun a thought.
“Anchor,” Kai says.
“I’m trying,” I hiss.
“Try softer,” Auren counters. “You’re muscling something that wants music.”
“Again,” Eloise says, unforgiving.
I breathe. Light floods. It surges too fast. A heat wave rips through my arms, out my palms—blinding. Torches along the courtyard flare white and spit sparks. Stone under my feet shudders.
Kai’s voice stays calm while his eyes alarm. “Contain, Rena. Elbows in, wrists soft, exhale through teeth like you’re threading a needle.”
“Rena—eye on me,” Auren says, wide-palmed, steady. “Match my count.”
We try to ride it. It breaks me instead. The wave kicks my legs out. I collapse, hands catching cold flagstone, silver smearing the wet in streaks of shine. Breath saws. Rage spikes. I scream, raw and animal, because it hurts and it’s unfair and my mother is dead and dawn will not be kind.
Eloise doesn’t flinch. “Up,” she says. “Again.”
“I can’t,” I spit.
“You will,” she answers. “Royal bloodlines don’t bargain with the floor.”
My vision goes wet. I brace to stand. Kai’s hand slides under my elbow—careful, patient. He doesn’t lift. He offers. I take it. Auren is the same on my other side, palm braced at my triceps, warmth a current I can step into.
“Reset,” Eloise says. “Feet under hips. Toes long. Knees soft. Crown high.”
Kai’s knuckles ghost feather-light at the back of my ribs. “Breathe into my hand,” he murmurs. “Expand there.”
Auren’s mouth tips closer to my ear. “Let Lyria ride the breath. She knows the trail.”
I do, she rumbles. Trust, little flame.
“Again,” Eloise says.
In. Hold. Out. I guide the light into a long smooth line. For a heartbeat, it obeys. Then it bucks like something bridled wrong and smashes outward. A blast of brilliance punches from my palms and hammers into the far wall. Stone cracks like ice. Shards leap. Kai throws an arm up to shield me; a splinter slashes his forearm. Blood beads, red and clean against gold skin.
“Kai!” I choke.
“I’m fine,” he says, already angling his body between me and the wall. His blood slides, shines, stops with a thought. He doesn’t look away from my face. “You’re fine.”
Auren curses and kicks a chunk of stone away from my bare foot. “We adjust the angle,” he says, voice clipped with worry. “You’re sending it straight. We arc.”
Eloise’s eyes are flint and approval. “Better. Not controlled. Again.”
“Again,” I repeat, hate and hope holding hands.
We drill: breath count; elbow placement; wrist softness; exhale through teeth; pull back at the end like you’re reeling a net. I sweat through a shirt that never asked to meet this much grief. My thighs shake. My scalp aches where my braid tugs against insistence.
Light learns my timing, then betrays it. It slams upward. Torches scream. Heat surges in a column that turns the air to ripples. Auren lunges behind me—and pays for it. The wave hits him chest-high and throws him back into a pillar. His breath explodes out; he slides down, eyes squeezed, a pained laugh escaping like he’s angry at his own lungs.
“Auren!” I stumble toward him, but Kai locks an arm around my waist.
“He’s breathing,” Kai says, voice steadying me even as anxiety needles his mouth. “We don’t run to pain; we fix the cause.”
“Fix this instead,” Auren coughs, already pushing up, hand to his ribs. He forces a grin that looks like defiance with a fracture. “I’ve had worse from fall drills.”
“Stop lying,” I whisper, tears standing in my eyes.
“Fine,” he says, jaw clenched. “It sucks. Keep going.”
Eloise’s gaze cuts to his stance, reads the flinch, files it, returns to me. “You see? Power doesn’t care who stands behind you. You must.”
“I’m trying,” I snap.
“Try wiser.” Her tone never rises. “Aim where harm is useful. Stone. Water. Empty sky. Not men who love you.”
Shame bites. Fury bites back. “Again,” I say, and the word is a weapon I promise to aim well.
We change direction. Aim at the practice field’s empty stretch. Eloise draws sigils with chalk-ash on the stone—targets that drink light rather than reflect it. “Feed these,” she instructs. “Not because they deserve it, but because they hold it for you.”
Kai’s hands sculpt my stance—hip rotated a hair, ribs stacked, jaw unclenched. “Let the back of your tongue soften,” he murmurs. “It matters.”
“Since when does my tongue—”
“Since always,” he says, half a smile, too brief to stay. “Trust me.”
Auren positions himself in my periphery, hands loose, knees bent, ready to slip into my blind spot and catch me without catching the blast. “Talk to Lyria,” he whispers. “Give her a job. Don’t let her run the house.”
Guard the hearth, I tell her. Don’t burn it.
She presses against my ribs, warm, steady. Understood.
In. Hold. Out. I aim at the chalk sigil. The beam leaves me clean—tight, humming, true. It hits the ash mark and sinks. The sigil drinks and flares. Not a crack. Not a scream. My chest loosens an inch.
“Again,” Eloise says, softer.
We repeat until my lungs sting and my forearms tremble and the sigils glow like a nest of captive moons. Sweat slicks my spine. My braid sticks to my neck. The world tastes like metal and oranges and victory not yet safe to name.
Then the ground rumbles.
Telekinesis arrives like a tantrum. The light doesn’t leave; it grabs. Stones tick upward like teeth unrooting. A spear clatters across the flagstones, rises slowly, turns point-first toward nothing and everything.
“No,” I whisper, horror spiking. “No, no—”
“Kai—” Auren starts, seeing what I see—the spear learning hunger.
“I’ve got it,” Kai says, already moving, already in front of me, hand up like he can stop metal with skin. The spear twitches; I yank breath in and try to call it down.
It answers in the worst way—whipping sideways instead of forward. The butt end clips Kai’s shoulder hard enough to spin him. He grunts, catches it midair—and then the rest of the courtyard joins the rebellion. Torches lift. Pebbles swirl. My stomach drops.
“Rena! Downshift!” Eloise barks. “Tighten low belly, soften eyes, drop the back ribs, exhale long.”
Auren steps into the swirl, palms out like he’s talking a skittish horse out of bolting. “Rena—hear me. Not it. Me.”
“I hear—” I choke, shaking. “I hear everything.”
“Pick one,” he says. “Pick me.”
I lock my eyes to his. His mouth is tight, his right hand shaking the smallest degree from that hit, but his gaze is a line I can walk. Lyria presses low. Follow.
In. Hold. Out for eight, nine, ten. I drop my ribs into Kai’s waiting palm; his hand tracks the movement like a guide rail. My eyes soften. The world’s edges blur. The floating things shudder, tremble, lower inch by inch. Torches kiss their brackets and settle. Pebbles tick back to stone. The spear breathes out and allows Kai to set it down.
My legs fail. I break. Kai catches, bending under me with a hiss—the shoulder I clipped protesting—and still he makes it look easy, lowering me to my knees with his body a shield.
“I hurt you,” I gasp, tears and sweat indistinguishable. “Both of you.”
Auren drops to a knee in front of me, breath short, face open. “You’re learning. We knew this would cost.”
“I don’t want the cost to be you.” The words tear.
Kai’s hand cups my cheek, blood drying along his forearm, shoulder already darkening under his shirt where a bruise will bloom. “Then master it,” he says, eyes fierce, voice steady. “So it never chooses for you again.”
“I can’t feel my fingers,” I whisper, dazed.
“That’s fatigue,” Eloise says, stepping in at last, gaze sweeping the havoc, the men, me. Approval flickers; it doesn’t soften her. “You pushed far for a first dawn.”
I want to laugh. I can’t.
“Stand,” she says. “One more lesson.”
“No,” Kai snaps. “She’s done.”
“Done for comfort?” Eloise asks mildly. “Or done for safety?”
“Both,” he growls.
She looks at me. “Rena?”
My body is rubber and spark. My heart is a fallen bird. “If the lesson keeps them from bleeding next time,” I say, breath breaking, “I’ll take it.”
“Good.” Eloise kneels so her eyes level mine. Silver regards silver. “Then hear me without flinching.”
I brace.
“The final stage of Ascension requires blood—Rena’s or someone else’s.”