All Chapters of Ashes of Six: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Smoke still rose from the shattered threshold of the arena, drifting lazily up into the washed-out sky like an injured breath. I stood at the very spot where she had been when the magic exploded from her, boot soles scuffed with ash and the detritus of spells burned too hot to take solid form. Even the Everley-stitched wards, designed over the centuries to handle a wide breadth of Arcanum, had not held against her power. The latticework of glyphs meant to contain and dampen her raw magic still sputtered along the stone like charred embers. It would take weeks to reset them. Maybe longer. All from one girl. One explosion of power.One dragon.I knelt, fingers skimming the edge of the ashen fissure that stretched from the arena’s center to its far reaches. The residual energy singed at my fingertips, not cold like Nerezza enchantments or crackling like Everley spells. It was heat, ancient and inherited, threaded through with something savage. Raw. Untamed. It wasn’t just power. It was le

I told myself I was here for research. It wasn’t a lie, not really. I had a half-finished report on elemental-channeling relics due next week and no intention of turning in another half-assed paper. But that wasn’t why I sat at this table by the restricted section, why I let the hours drag while I pretended to study a book I hadn’t cracked open for twenty minutes. I was listening. Watching. Eavesdropping. But unlike those brooding bastards of Nerezza and Hawthorne, I wasn’t above using my brain to fight instead of my fists. It had been two days since Nora Carver turned the training arena into a raging inferno of fire and magic, and the entire school still hadn’t stopped buzzing. Whispers flickered through every hallway. Dragon. Monster. Threat. I had even heard one Everley girl whisper that she might be a vessel for Seraphine herself. The last one almost made me snort out loud. Almost. I wasn’t that stupid. Not when so many interesting things were coming undone. Caelum had

I would not be still. I had not seen Nora Carver outside of the wild garden in days, but she had not left my skin. The confrontation we’d hadn't ended in blows, strictly speaking, but it hadn't ended clean. She had brushed against me, like I was merely an obstacle in her path, but her scent had clung to my clothes for hours after I could no longer see her in the shadows. She smelled like something ancient and something forgotten and something wild. I had not expected to find her. Not a week left till the Hunter’s Moon. But the part of me that answered to my wolf more than my mind had started to stir beneath the surface. It did not make sense. She was a dragon. She was not supposed to smell like home. And yet she did. I had tried to get on with things. Routine. Training. Patrols. Council meetings. It had not helped. I had found myself whipping my head around at the slightest hint of Aurelian magic on the breeze, or the back of a boy mentioning her name, let alone Lucien or Elias. Who

My father didn’t come unless he needed something. And when he did, he was always an omen before the storm. No pleasantries. No masks. Gerrard Nerezza never needed either, not when it came to me. I didn’t say a word as I trailed him through the empty hallways and up the crystal stairwell that spiraled around the inner walls of the faculty tower, a room set aside for visiting dignitaries and heads of state. I could already hear his voice, fast and low in my ear, insisting that I bring her close. Study her. Help us control the… situation. Control her, in other words. But it wasn’t lost on me that he took one of the higher rooms. Always looking down on everything. Everyone. Including me. He didn’t speak until we were alone and the wards sealed with a low thrum. “She’s more than a curiosity now,” he said, eyes still fixed on the window as if he could see her from here. “The girl. The dragon.” I said nothing. He would talk whether I responded or not. “She’s powerful,” he went on, hands

I wasn’t proud of how I froze. Everyone else was too busy yelling over each other to notice, but I had stood there like an idiot, watching her storm off with magic crackling behind her like thunder trailing a lightning strike. It wasn’t just the fire that left me speechless. It was the look on her face. Like she’d finally snapped that invisible thread holding her together and didn’t care what burned with it. She was right to yell. They had been circling her like she belonged to one of them. Like she wasn’t her own person, just some relic or weapon to lay claim to. And maybe I hadn’t said anything, but I hadn’t stopped it either. That’s what pissed me off the most. I couldn’t stop thinking about the magic. I’d never seen anything like it. Dragons were supposed to be extinct, whispers in old grimoires and fairy tales. But I’d grown up surrounded by magic, and what I saw in that arena wasn’t some unstable elemental surge. It was ancient. Alive. And it was tethered to her in a way I di