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As Aemyra crouched in front of the laboring mother, she came to the sudden realization that she only enjoyed having her face between a woman’s legs when she was screaming out in pleasure, not in pain.

Aemyra had her own reasons for viewing childbirth differently than most women in Erisocia. Not least because her adoptive mother, Orlagh, had put her off the whole ordeal by beginning instruction in midwifery before Aemyra’s first bleeding.

“Is it almost over?” Màiri moaned exhaustedly.

Extracting herself from the thin chemise and tightening her headscarf, Aemyra worked what she hoped was a reassuring smile onto her face.

“Not long now,” she said, reaching for a clean rag to wipe her hands on.

The women of the capital city of àird Lasair were said to have been created in the image of the fire Goddess Brigid herself, as revered for their strength as they were their beauty. Even still, Màiri was tiring.

When she let out another peal of excruciating cries, Aemyra bit her lip and hoped Orlagh would arrive soon. If her mother hadn’t already been busy tending to a broken leg, she would have never come to assist this labor alone. Goddess knew she didn’t have the bedside manner required.

Looking over her shoulder and out of the window to the busy street beyond, she wondered what was keeping her brother. She had summoned him from the forge to help hours ago.

“I think it’s coming!” Màiri groaned.

Whirling back around, Aemyra lifted the chemise and gave thanks to Brigid when she spied a head full of dark hair. After a morning spent crouching on the cold floor, the babe had finally turned and Aemyra relaxed. She wouldn’t need Orlagh’s help after all.

“It’s almost over, just keep breathing,” Aemyra encouraged.

The sound of reluctant knocking alerted her to her brother’s presence. Turning, she saw Adarian peering in through the window.

“Finally,” she muttered.

Aemyra waved him in impatiently as she gently wiped the sweat from Màiri’s forehead with a damp cloth. She was definitely going to need a drink after this, her knees were numb and her back stiff.

The door slammed shut and Adarian’s cheeks flamed red as he got an eyeful of the miracle of childbirth displayed in front of him.

Màiri was too lost in pain to care.

Aemyra smirked. “Surely you’ve seen one before, Adarian?”

Gritting his teeth and squashing his broad shoulders through the narrow doorframe, he set the bucket of clean water he had brought with him on the floor.

“Not like that I haven’t,” he muttered, retreating hastily.

Before he could slip out of the house, Aemyra snapped her fingers. “Not so fast. I need more linens.”

To his credit, Adarian didn’t complain as he strode to the other room. While Aemyra may not have had the same affinity for midwifery as Orlagh, Adarian certainly didn’t have the stomach for it. Most days they squabbled like they were still in cloots over who got to work the forge with their adoptive father, Pàdraig, instead.

Aemyra rubbed Màiri’s arm encouragingly and noticed that the woman’s skin was cold to the touch.

The weather had been overcast and damp for weeks, and the inside of the house smelled like it. Without thinking, Aemyra thrust her hand toward the hearth, fingers pointed directly at the peat. She loosed a tongue of flame that was decidedly too strong to belong to an average Dùileach.

When she saw Màiri’s slack jaw, and the stern look in Adarian’s eyes as he returned with an armful of linens, she knew she had displayed too much of her gift.

“I didn’t know you had Bonded?” Màiri asked, her eyes agog.

Hearing Adarian’s heavy footfalls behind her, Aemyra could feel her brother’s disapproving gaze on her back. Many were blessed by the Goddesses, but few possessed her depth of power without Bonding as a way to amplify their elemental magic.

Except Clan Daercathian, the rulers of Tìr Teine. While most average Dùileach only had enough control to light a candle, the dragon clan had leveled battlefields with their fire.

“Uh, yes. Very recently,” she muttered, praying to Brigid that another contraction would come on as a helpful distraction.

Adarian stormed from the house upon hearing the lie, a tinkling noise sounding as a cold draft blew through the doorway. Aemyra’s gaze went up toward the low ceiling, where tokens made out of broken china, glass, colorful ribbon, and even a few silver sgillinn hung from the wooden beams to appease the air Goddess Beira.

She couldn’t help but think that those silver sgillinn would be better spent to pay for a new door, but determined to focus on the task at hand, Aemyra resumed her ministrations.

Thankfully, Màiri seemed too tired to notice the stray lock of hair that had fallen out of Aemyra’s headscarf.

“The Goddesses are discriminate with their blessings, but let us see if they have gifted this child,” Aemyra said.

The conjured fire’s warmth skittered throughout the damp room. Brigid was watching as they brought this babe into the world.

As the penultimate pain passed through Màiri, Aemyra watched the babe slither forward and couldn’t keep the grimace off her face. Màiri screamed so loudly that Aemyra felt her soul respond with an echo in the very part of her that understood what it was to be a woman.

A heartbeat later, the babe shot into her arms, already squalling.

The moment Aemyra caught her, for it was indeed a daughter, the fire in the hearth flared.

Blinking rapidly, Màiri raised her head and her eyes widened at the blessing. Aemyra deftly severed the cord and cauterized it in one fluid motion with her magic.

“A Dùileach…” Màiri breathed in awe as she reached for the newborn.

Finished wrapping her in the clean linens that Adarian had thoughtfully warmed with his own magic, Aemyra handed the little girl to her mother.

“Your first?” she asked out of plain curiosity.

Màiri looked up with tears shining in her eyes and nodded. “My grandmother possessed an ember, my mother and I barely a spark. I hardly dared to hope that one of our children might be Goddess blessed…”

With a nervous glance toward the glowing fire, Aemyra flinched as the door swung open again. This time the scent of comfrey and wild garlic accompanied light footsteps.

“You’re late,” Aemyra said with a wry smile as her mother bustled into the room.

In a no-nonsense fashion, Orlagh rolled up her sleeves to reveal smooth umber skin. Solas fluttered down from her shoulder to perch on a chair, his flaming tail a little too close to the wood for comfort. Aemyra eyed the firebird in trepidation, praying fervently to all the Goddesses that Màiri wouldn’t bring up Bonding again.

“I knew you would manage well enough here in my stead,” Orlagh said, setting her bag down and checking Màiri over with a practiced eye. “Judging by this bonnie babe and her contented mother, I was right.”

“A Goddess-blessed Dùileach…” Màiri said in a dreamy voice, enthralled in familiarizing herself with her daughter’s face.

Orlagh raised one shapely brow as she used her own gifts to cauterize Màiri’s small tear. Relinquishing the afterbirth rituals to her mother, Aemyra washed her hands and made to scurry out of the house in search of a very late breakfast.

“Aemyra,” Orlagh called out.

Pausing with one hand on the door handle, Aemyra turned. Orlagh’s deep brown eyes were tired but filled with pride.

“You have done well,” Orlagh said.

Solas flapped his tiny wings as if in disagreement.

Avoiding the penetrating gaze of her mother’s firebird, Aemyra slipped from the house.

The bustle of the lower town assaulted her senses the moment she closed the door behind her. The scent of roasting meat and fried onions slunk up her nose and her stomach growled.

She didn’t make it two steps toward the nearest cart before a firm hand pulled her off the sagging porch.

“What the—” she exclaimed, breaking the hold easily by twisting the large arm and whirling around to face her brother.

Adarian’s eyes were on the stray lock of hair escaping from her headscarf.

“Cover that up. Now,” he barked, his sapphire eyes darting nervously toward the other houses on the street.

Packed together as they were in the swarming lower town of àird Lasair, Aemyra wasn’t worried about anyone paying them attention.

She aimed a punch at her brother, which he easily dodged. “Don’t tell me what to do,” she retorted, but tucked the curl under the scarf anyway.

She strode off down the street, dodging puddles of filth and ignoring vendors attempting to flag their wares from carts, stalls, and even the backs of some horses.

Adarian, significantly taller and broader than she was, struggled to keep up as she wove her way through the crowd.

“What was that back there?” he asked between clenched teeth.

She smirked as they walked the cobbled streets. “It’s called childbirth. Dangerous business. I suggest you keep drinking the contraceptive tonic Orlagh makes.”

Adarian’s skin flushed the true color of the hair he kept shorn and dyed with soot.

“You know what I mean, Aemyra. You are growing reckless,” he muttered, pulling her into the shadows of a stinking alley. “Have you forgotten why you need to keep the extent of your magic hidden? Or do you simply not care anymore? Thank Brigid that Màiri assumed you were Bonded.”

Aemyra rolled her eyes and brushed dirt off of her breeches. “Hormones make women in childbirth say and do things they won’t remember the next day. It won’t be a problem.”

Adarian didn’t look convinced and Aemyra didn’t particularly like the way he towered over her now. She felt like it made everyone forget that she was the oldest. By a whole seven minutes.

“Just because your power outranks every un-Bonded Dùileach in Tìr Teine doesn’t mean you should use it,” he warned.

Aemyra smirked again. “I outrank most of the Bonded Dùileach too.”

Lifting her hand, she summoned flames into her palm, the light illuminating their faces as her magic surged forth eagerly. Adarian moved to block the flames from the view of the street and Aemyra struggled to contain her fire to her palm. It would have been only too easy to let it pour out of her like wildfire until it covered the ramshackle buildings around them.

A cart rattled over the cobblestones, making them both jump, and she quickly extinguished the flames. Only the smell of smoke lingered in the air.

“But not the king or his sons,” Adarian warned. “You’re no match for a dragon-Bonded Dùileach. If they found out…” His jaw tightened. “Perhaps you should Bond if it will conceal the depths of your original gift.”

Aemyra took one step toward him and he wisely backed away.

“What an excellent idea, Brother,” she said sarcastically. “Bonding would be a great way to amplify my magic and make it even harder to hide.”

Aware of the dangerous turn in conversation, she glanced down the alley in case a vagrant was crouched in a doorway unseen.

Adarian shrugged. “With your temper, you would do well with a chimera.”

“Don’t insult me,” Aemyra hissed. “You know what beathach I deserve.”

Adarian gazed at her flameless palm. While her brother also battled with keeping their gifts a secret, he had mastered an art of control that Aemyra could only dream of. With his lesser depth of magic, Adarian showed no sign of an inward struggle, whereas she always felt like a pot that had been left too long on the boil.

“The world is already on fire, Aemyra. We don’t need you burning anything else down.” Adarian sighed.

Her only response was a ferocious glare.

Adarian wiped a soot-stained hand across his face, his knuckles sporting fresh burns from the forge. It angered Aemyra just to see it. Not that she resented their parents for their trades, she saw the value in the skills they had both inherited, but deep down she knew they were destined for more. They deserved more than the secrets they had been forced to keep for twenty-six years.

“We moved to this stinking city from Penryth over ten years ago. Brigid gifted me for a reason, and I will fight with flame and steel for what is rightfully mine,” she said.

Adarian’s sapphire eyes, so different from her forest green ones, clouded with tiredness.

“Is it really worth wasting your life waiting for a birthright that might never come?” he asked.

Smothering her frustration, Aemyra elbowed her way past her brother and back out into the street. The smell of freshly baked bannocks was making her mouth water and her boots were sure-footed across the uneven streets as she headed for the baker’s. Her thin cloak was barely enough to protect her from the winter chill gusting in through the city gate.

A few people called out to Adarian as they made their way south, thanking him for repairs, or inquiring about a horse to be shod.

The bitterness took root in Aemyra’s heart again.

“Is this truly enough for you?” she muttered as her twin drew level with her.

He dropped his eyes to the dirty ground. “It is honest work.”

She was thankful that her brother could not see her eye roll. Pàdraig had molded them both into skilled metalworkers, but Aemyra had no passion for it.

Instead of ridiculing her brother, she looked away from the south gate and over the battlements. Above the crumbling rooftops of the lower town, she could make out the crimson spires of Caisteal Lasair. The lofty turrets lurked just beyond the bridge across the loch that separated the rest of the city from the nobility who called the caisteal home.

Aemyra had never been on the other side of that bridge. She had remained confined by the high battlements to the lower town of àird Lasair for ten long years. Yet she was still unwilling to leave her post.

Adarian, Orlagh, Pàdraig…they all had their parts to play.

Besides, Aemyra had no interest in exploring the rest of Tìr Teine on foot.

As if she had willed it with her thoughts, the ground under their feet trembled, the puddles of filth rippling. People turned their faces to the clouds in both anticipation and fear.

The overcast sky was suddenly brightened as the king’s magnificent golden dragon rose from behind the caisteal and spread his wings with an almighty roar.

Kolreath. The oldest of the last three dragons in existence.

As the pewter gray sky opened and the rain clouds finally spilled over, Aemyra was the only one in the street who didn’t shrink from the second screech the dragon loosed into the air. The rain droplets turned to steam on her cheeks as Aemyra gazed up at the beathach she had coveted for years.

“The king has to die eventually, Adarian,” she muttered, Kolreath’s enormous wing beats loud enough to cover their conversation as the mighty dragon flew overhead. “And when he does, I will be ready to take everything I was born to be.”