The Last Ember of Aldenhall — Chapter 2

It took three days for anyone in the castle to believe her, and by the third day, the ash in the hearth had begun, very faintly, to glow.

The steward came first, because it was his job to notice things and pretend he hadn’t. He stood over the cold grate for a long time, saying nothing, before he finally asked her the one question she hadn’t let herself ask out loud: whether she had done this.

She hadn’t. She was almost certain she hadn’t. But when she pressed her palm to the ash a second time, the warmth that answered her felt less like an accident and more like recognition — as though the fire, wherever it had gone, knew exactly whose hand it was meeting.

By nightfall, word had reached the council. By morning, it had reached the dragon under the mountain, who had not stirred in four hundred years and chose, with what could only be deliberate timing, to stir now.