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“Soon enough.” He picks up his tablet, but doesn’t move toward the door. “Lila…” He hesitates, glancing at the cameras before continuing. “He’s different from Matthews. With a background like his, he’s going to be more… thorough.”

The warning in his voice sends ice through my veins. Be careful, he’s saying without words. This one’s dangerous.

“I’ve survived worse,” I reply, the statement both acknowledgment and reassurance.

His eyes soften momentarily; that look I’ve come to recognize over the years. The one that makes me wonder about the real man beneath the handler persona. The one that reminds me of our earliest days together, when he would slip me extra pain medication after particularly brutal sessions, whispering apologies he thought I couldn’t hear.

As much as I hate what he represents in this place—my captor, my handler—he’s a good man. I’m certain of it.

“I know you have,” he says quietly. “That’s what worries me.”

“I’ll be fine,” I say firmly, softening my tone with a small smile. It’s such an unfamiliar expression that my lips feel uncomfortable as they stretch slightly.

Hargen nods once, then heads for the door. “Session’s delayed until fourteen hundred. They’re showing him the facility.”

“Lucky me. A few more hours of bliss in my luxury accommodations.” I gesture to the tastefully furnished room that, for all its rudimentary comforts, remains a prison.

After he leaves, I return to the window, pressing my forehead against the cool glass. Beyond the mountain peaks, clouds gather on the horizon, promising a storm. Appropriate.

I close my eyes, reaching past the dampening field for the wisp of magic they can never fully suppress. It comes reluctantly, a trickle where once there was a flood, but it’s enough to quiet my mind, to open me to the currents of energy that flow beneath conscious thought.

And then it hits—not the gentle insight I was looking for, but a vision that sears through my defenses like a lightning strike.

Shit!

I clamp a hand to my mouth abruptly.

Fire. Not dragon fire—something brighter, purer. Wings of flame spreading across a midnight sky. A woman risingfrom ashes, her rebirth sending shock waves through the magical world. The Heartstone pulsing in response, calling to something ancient and forgotten. My daughter’s face, a woman now, standing beside a dragon whose scales shimmer with moonlight. And behind them all, the shadow of what’s coming—a confluence of powers that could reshape the world or destroy it.

Elena!

The image of her is so clear that I have to stop myself from reaching forward to touch her.

I stumble back from the window, gasping, my hands trembling. Blood drips from my nose, speckling the front of my gray facility-issued shirt. Too strong, too clear—this wasn’t supposed to happen without their extraction equipment, without Hargen’s reluctant assistance forcing my gift. They’ve made sure of that with all their damn magical controls.

Fire.

The word echoes in my mind, in my blood, a prophecy I’ve glimpsed before in fragments but never this vivid, this immediate. Something has changed in the world outside these walls. Something has awakened.

And the dragons have no idea.

I wipe the blood away with the back of my hand, breathing deeply to center myself. This vision wasn’t for them. It’s mine to keep, mine to understand. Another secret to hold close, another piece of knowledge they can’t take from me.

Moving to the bathroom, I wash my face, erasing the evidence. My reflection is pale, haunted… eyes that have seen too much. I look younger than my years, the curse of Rossewyn blood slowing the march of time across my face while my soul ages with each forced vision.

By the time I return to the main room, my hands are steady again. I retrieve one of my papercraft dragons from the shelf—this one folded from blue report paper—and carefully tear a tiny edge from its wing. On this scrap, with a graphite pencil stub hidden in my mattress, I write in microscopic script:Fire. Rebirth. Heartstone awakening. E with dragon mate. Shadow coming.

I fold the paper into a miniature star and slip it into the hollow wall panel behind my bed. Another fragment of truth hidden from my captors. Another weapon in my small arsenal. An arsenal that I have no idea how to use right now. It just seems right to keep track of these moments.

My fingers linger on the panel, feeling for the worn edge of the page hidden deepest within—salvaged from a newspaper Hargen smuggled in years ago. My most prized possession. A faded image of a high school debate team, with Elena standing second from the left. Her face older than my memories, but unmistakable. The only tangible connection I have to my child. Proof that my sacrifice meant something. That she lived.

Still, it hurts every time I look at her. My chest tightens around the void where our shared life should be. Her small hand never tucked in mine on walks home from school, her first day of high school with no mother to fuss over her clothes, Christmas mornings where my chair remained empty, the graduation where she scanned the crowd for a face she wouldn’t find.

I swallow against the burning in my throat as I imagine her blowing out birthday candles year after year, making wishes I wasn’t there to hear. The Syndicate didn’t just take me; they carved out the space between mother and daughter where love grows.

No. You gave it. So she could live.

The intercom crackles to life. “Asset preparation in thirty minutes.” The voice belongs to one of Creed’s faceless assistants. Crisp, efficient, impersonal.

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