“I want talk, Mama.”

  The words came out rough and crooked. Ezra heard them with the same faint horror he’d felt the first time his mouth betrayed him.

  Aerwyna went still.

  She’d asked, quietly, what he wanted to do. She hadn’t expected him to answer.

  “Okay then, Ezra,” she whispered, as if any louder might spook him. Wonder and disbelief fought across her face. She’d heard him speak before—but a full sentence, shaped around a want, was something else. “You want to talk?”

  He nodded, chin dipping. It felt absurd, answering his own mother like he was in a lab interview.

  His grasp of the language was still patchy. He understood more than he could say. Words came with holes in them, missing joints. He’d been assembling grammar in silence, collecting sounds, sorting them. Now, forced into output, he could feel the gaps.

  “Ezra, you’re amazing,” she breathed.

  Warmth. Pride. It lodged somewhere uncomfortable.

  He didn’t want to be amazing. He wanted to be coherent. There were questions he wanted to ask that this mouth couldn’t shape yet—thoughts too big to squeeze through these clumsy syllables.

  He sighed, small and sharp. Aerwyna’s brows twitched; she recognized it. No infant should look that complicated.

  “Can I eat bottle?” he asked, pushing the words out carefully.

  Aerwyna blinked. “No, little one, you can’t eat bottles,” she said, lips quirking despite herself. “You’d hurt yourself.”

  He grimaced. Wrong word.

  “No. Eat… out bottle.” He met her gaze, violet eyes steady. “Not… Mama.”

  Understanding took her a beat.

  “Ah. You mean drink from a bottle,” she said gently, watching him. A faint pinch of hurt touched the corners of her eyes, then smoothed away. “You want your milk there instead.”

  “Yes.” He nodded again. Relief and embarrassment tangled together. Explaining why was beyond his vocabulary.

  “Don’t worry, it’s okay for Mama,” Aerwyna tried, voice soft. “It’s normal.”

  Ezra scrunched his face and shook his head hard. “No. Mama, no.”

  The refusal was small. It landed hard.

  Aerwyna closed her eyes for a heartbeat, then opened them and smoothed her thumb over his hair.

  “Okay,” she murmured. “If you want that, I’ll have them bring a bottle next time. My little one gets a say.”

  He hadn’t expected her to give ground that fast. Something in him loosened. He smiled—wide, unguarded, a smile that belonged on a much simpler child.

  Aerwyna’s hand lifted, almost without thinking. Her Field flared outward, just a little. It slid along familiar lines—bone, blood, breath, the quiet hum of his pulse.

  No foreign signatures. No invasive weave. No residue of another mage’s imprint.

  It’s him, she thought, the knot in her stomach easing. Whatever he is, he’s ours.

  “And Mama, I want clean myself,” Ezra said.

  Her brows went up. “Clean yourself?”

  He nodded, then mimed wiping with both hands. Heat climbed his cheeks; he couldn’t stop it.

  “But little one, you can’t reach properly.” She glanced toward the door, where Catalyna usually stood outside. “Let Catalyna help. That’s her work.”

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  “No want, Mama. I do,” he said. He mimed it again, stubborn.

  Aerwyna chewed her lip. The cradle beside her chair suddenly seemed higher. The stone floor seemed harder.

  “You might fall,” she warned.

  “I careful,” he said, with the absolute confidence of someone who’d never seen a broken neck.

  She exhaled. “All right. When you’re on the floor. No standing on chairs. No climbing. You try while Catalyna is there to watch, and if you can’t do it, you let her help. Yes?”

  He pouted, then relented. “Okay, Mama.”

  She hesitated, then tried, very gently, “Why do you feel ashamed, Ezra? Babies are tended by their mothers, or by wet nurses. It’s not wrong.”

  His mind lurched. Crap. There wasn’t a version of that conversation he was ready to have—not with her, not in this body.

  “I don’t want! I don’t want!” he burst out instead, kicking and flailing.

  It was childish in all the wrong ways, but it worked.

  “Hush, hush, little one.” Aerwyna gathered him close, hand cradling the back of his head. “It’s all right. I won’t ask.”

  He forced out a few thin, frustrated sounds for show, then let them taper. He slowed his breathing. Inside, he was already cataloguing.

  Bottle. Cleaning. Boundaries.

  She would respect them if he pushed.

  “You know,” Aerwyna said, choosing her next words with care, “you’re such a genius, Ezra.”

  He blinked. “Genius?”

  She smiled, a little shaky. “It means you can do things children your age can’t. You’re very talented. You control your Field so well for a babe. Your senses, your… little tricks.” Pride crept in despite the fear. “Some Maesters would say a child like you appears once in an age.”

  He let that sit. Some part of him preened. The rest filed it under dangerous.

  “What is… Field?” he asked. Her word for it wasn’t quite “Field” in his terms.

  Aerwyna’s eyes brightened. This, at least, was ground she trusted.

  “Hmm. How do I explain?” She shifted him so he sat more upright in her lap, one arm snug around his middle. “When you close your eyes and reach”—she let a faint pulse roll outward as demonstration—“you feel people, yes? Warm and bright, even when you don’t see them.”

  He thought of the glow that clung to her when his mind sharpened. The way Reitz burned hotter. The way servants barely registered. He nodded.

  “That feeling is your aura,” she said. “Your magic. Your Field. You push it out, and everything inside it answers a little.”

  She watched him over the edge of a smile.

  “That’s how you know where I am even when you pretend to sleep. You are not subtle, little one.”

  He froze, then tried, weakly, “Pretend…?”

  She arched a knowing brow. He dropped it.

  “What is magic, Mama?” he asked instead.

  Aerwyna leaned back, considering. He stared like a scrivener waiting to catch a lie.

  “Magic is… the power that lets us change things,” she said. “It’s the strength our blood has to touch the world. It can harm or heal, destroy or build. It’s how we call water from the river without a bucket. How we freeze a cup before it shatters.” Her fingers flexed, remembering. “It’s part of us. Part of everything.”

  He understood maybe a third of the words, but the shape was clear.

  Power.

  Change.

  Safety and danger braided together.

  “Show?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

  Aerwyna’s lips curled into a faint, wicked smile. “You want to see, little one?”

  He swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Very well. Just this once. And just a little.”

  She rose with him in her arms and crossed to the nursery’s shuttered window. It overlooked a narrow courtyard. No one should be there at this hour.

  She nudged the latch with her elbow and pushed the frame open. Cold air spilled in and brushed his skin.

  “Watch,” she said.

  Her voice changed when she worked—lower, steadier. Words settling into an old rhythm.

  She shifted him to her left hip and raised her right hand, fingers splayed toward the open air.

  Ezra felt it before he saw it.

  Clarity flooded him. The world snapped into edges.

  Her presence—usually a warm pool in his borrowed sense—surged. Her aura thickened around her like liquid light, then folded inward. Most of it gathered along her raised arm, leaving the rest of her a dim silhouette behind a single burning line.

  The hair on his arms prickled. No measurable temperature change. No obvious ionization. His body still flagged it as significant.

  Aerwyna spoke.

  The words weren’t in any language he knew. Archaic syllables laced with intent, each one landing in the air with a weight his brain couldn’t quantify.

  “The heavens scorning earthborn flame,” she intoned, in the old tongue. “Let water rise and answer. Flood, and drench, and drown.”

  [Flood Cannon]

  The air in front of her hand tore into motion.

  Water erupted from nowhere.

  It hit the courtyard like a compressed strike—one coherent lane, hard-edged, loud. It scoured stone, threw spray, and left a wet scar across the flagging before the mass broke and ran out in sheets.

  Then it was gone, the last of it dissipating into damp and a faint steam.

  Aerwyna’s aura receded, flowing back into her body until she read “normal” again in his sense. She lowered her hand. She was breathing only a little harder.

  Ezra realized he’d been holding his breath. He let it out in a shaky exhale.

  His reincarnation—if he let himself name it—had been one violation. He’d forced it into a box and labeled it unknown but plausible.

  This was different.

  This was a system.

  Perhaps… more rules, he thought. Hidden variables. A different set of laws overlaid on the ones I know. Or completely new ones.

  The prospect was terrifying.

  It was also… thrilling.

  He was still staring when Aerwyna glanced down at him. His face must have said enough. She chuckled softly, breath still a little high.

  “Your mama used only a portion of her power,” she said lightly, drawing her Field in until it hugged her skin.

  “If I didn’t hold back, little one,” she added as she closed the window with a firm push, smirking as if to boast, “I would have destroyed the castle.”

  Ezra’s mouth fell open.

  What the f—