Five days had passed since the “incident,” and Ezra’s quality of life had improved in specific, important ways.

  For one, he no longer had a breast in his face every time he was hungry.

  Now, instead of being pressed against his mother’s chest, he drank from a contraption that looked like a beaker with a cloth-wrapped tip. A wet nurse had muttered something about a “feeding flask,” and that was as close to a name as he got. It relied on gravity and suction instead of proper valves. The flow wandered, and the pressure curve would have made any engineer twitch.

  But it was better.

  He could close his eyes and pretend it was a badly designed lab apparatus instead of a person.

  Hygiene was the next battlefield.

  Ezra refused—instinctively, irrationally, and with every ounce of adult shame he still possessed—to be scrubbed by a stranger.

  Once, Catalyna tried to wipe him down. Ezra endured three seconds before he seized the cloth with both hands and yanked it away. He still couldn’t form I’ll do it myself, so he acted it out: tug, scowl, then a clumsy but unmistakable attempt to copy the motions over his own body.

  It should have been impossible for hands that small to coordinate that well.

  He used mana.

  “This is not… how babes are,” Catalyna murmured, brows knitting as she watched him scrub at his own stomach. “My lady, he will slip. Or choke. Or—”

  “In Riverrun, they are taught early,” Aerwyna said smoothly from the doorway, arms folded as if this were routine. “We encourage independence. It trains their control.”

  Catalyna pressed her lips together. She was careful, prompt, and not the sort to argue directly with a Countess. Her gaze moved from Aerwyna to Ezra, still stubbornly wiping, tongue peeking out with concentration.

  “…As you say, my lady.”

  She didn’t believe it. Ezra saw it in the tension of her jaw. Still, she stepped back and let him finish, hovering close enough to catch him if he slipped.

  It was humiliating work. His arms trembled. His grip wobbled.

  But it was his humiliation.

  For five days, the nursery settled into a fragile equilibrium.

  Days blurred into half-conscious cycles—sharp, lucid stretches where his awareness expanded and he catalogued everything, followed by long, mushy periods where his brain fogged and his body won. In the sharp windows, he mapped the room, routines, and patterns of light and sound. In the fog, he slept like the infant he technically was.

  Then the door exploded inward.

  The oak panels slammed open hard enough to rebound off the stone stops and rattle the iron hinges. Dust sifted from the rafters. The candle in the wall sconce flared, guttered, then steadied.

  A man strode in like the room belonged to him.

  Reitz Blackfyre was the kind of handsome that looked engineered—sharp jaw, straight nose, dark red hair that refused to sit politely and instead fell in loose, confident waves. Wearing a gambeson in house colors and a dark surcoat thrown over one shoulder, half-unbuckled as if he’d forgotten it. Dust clung to his boots. His smile was bright and cheery.

  Ezra felt him before he finished crossing the threshold. Heat rolled into the nursery—not temperature, but the inner sense Aerwyna called his Field. Where Aerwyna felt like a deep, cool pool, Reitz was a furnace barely banked. Dense. Bright. Hot.

  His gait didn’t so much telegraph a walk as occupy the room

  “Where is my son?” Reitz shouted, laughter already mixing with the words. “My genius, powerful, heir-to-my-domain son? My firstborn! My boy! Where is he? Where is my son!”

  Each line climbed in volume.

  Ezra winced. His hands flew to his ears, which were too small to cover much.

  Does this man have no concept of an indoor voice? Ezra thought. You’re in a nursery.

  “Lower your voice,” Aerwyna snapped, appearing between Reitz and the crib with the speed of a trained duelist. She planted a hand on his chest and shoved—more message than force. “The castle can hear you. We have enemies, Reitz. There may be spies in our halls.”

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  Reitz blinked down at her hand, then met her eyes.

  “So what if those knaves know?” he said, grinning. “Let them. At least then they’ll know I have good seed.”

  Ezra exhaled through his nose.

  “I thought we already discussed this,” Aerwyna said, rolling her eyes up, “We protect Ezra at all costs. If it were only about you, I wouldn’t care. Our son’s life hangs in the balance. Who cares if you die anyway?”

  “Oh?” Reitz put a hand to his heart like he’d been stabbed. “That’s not what you said when we were making him.”

  His mouth twisted into a lecherous, self-satisfied grin—an expression that probably made half the keep swoon and the other half want to drown him.

  “You scoundrel!” Aerwyna hissed.

  Her fist thumped his shoulder. The blow didn't carry the weight of mana. Reitz barely rocked.

  “If you want,” Reitz murmured, leaning in, “we can make another one right now.”

  “Are you insane?” Aerwyna yelped, color rising. “Ezra is right here, you perverted pig!”

  “Well, the earlier he knows, the better.” Reitz winked toward the crib. “I could show him a technique or two.”

  Ezra’s thoughts stalled.

  Absolutely not.

  “That’s enough,” Aerwyna growled.

  The room shifted.

  Ezra felt it before he saw anything: air tightening, moisture shivering at the edge of perception. Aerwyna’s Field surged—cold and vast—swallowing the warm edges of Reitz’s presence.

  “The waters cover the sea and in the—” she began, voice settling into the old cadence of a formal chant.

  Mist beaded around her fingers.

  “Wait, wait—Wyn. I was joking,” Reitz blurted, hands snapping up in surrender. His swagger drained mid-sentence.

  “Come clothe and cover and upon this body hover—”

  Droplets coalesced around her outstretched hand, gathering mass and momentum. The air pressure shifted. Ezra’s instincts flagged one clean outcome.

  Wet.

  “Ezra is watching!” Reitz yelped, stabbing a finger toward the crib.

  Aerwyna froze.

  Her eyes held on Reitz for a heartbeat, pupils wide, mana churning in a tight storm. Then she blinked, looked to the crib, and the spell failed like thin ice.

  Aerwyna drew a sharp breath and smoothed her hair back with a hand that trembled once.

  “Lucky for you,” she muttered.

  She straightened her dress, squared her shoulders, and pointed toward the crib.

  “Stop fooling around and talk to Ezra,” she said. “You should begin his training. He needs a head start. I don’t know how House Blackfyre does it, but you start early here.”

  Reitz dragged a hand down his face. The grin returned by degrees.

  “Bossy,” he tried to sound annoyed but there was a fondness in his voice.

  He turned to the crib, and for the first time since he entered, the room quieted.

  Up close, Reitz’s features softened. The roar faded into something warm and uncertain.

  “How are you, my boy?” he murmured.

  Ezra regarded him.

  This idiot, he thought. This overgrown, loud, hormonally deranged idiot.

  Useful, though.

  This was his father. A Blackfyre. A battle-line mage. A Seat-holder. A man raised in the deadliest close-quarters system in the Empire. A man who knew things Ezra needed—how magic behaved in motion, on a body, under pressure.

  Ezra scowled.

  Reitz flinched.

  “Oh,” he said, giving a shaky laugh. “He… doesn’t like me.”

  “There,” Aerwyna said, arms crossed, glare sharp. “You upset him with your stupid boisterousness.”

  Reitz glanced between them, caught between offense and guilt. “Come on, Ezra,” he said, leaning closer. “You can talk to your father, can’t you?”

  Ezra weighed it.

  He could hold back. Petty satisfaction existed.

  Information mattered more.

  He took a breath, and anchored his his mouth with mana, and shaped the syllables carefully.

  “Could you teach me… magic, Father?”

  The effect on Reitz was immediate.

  “My boy spoke!” Reitz shouted, half-turning toward Aerwyna. “Did you hear that, darling? What did I tell you? I have good stock. It was a good thing you chose me! Look at him—such a genius boy!”

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  Aerwyna smacked the back of his head with a hollow thump.

  “Stop being a conceited imbecile,” she snapped. “It’s luck that we have such a smart son. His talent definitely comes from my side of the family.”

  She jabbed a thumb at her chest.

  Reitz rubbed his head, still grinning. “Haha—but you can’t deny I helped.”

  He leaned over the crib again, eyes bright, and for a moment the swagger dropped away. Pride stayed.

  “Hey, Ezra,” he said, voice lowering into something almost conspiratorial. “We’re going to have a rough road, you and I. The Blackfyre Method starts with the body. We’re close-combat specialists. We move in, we hit hard, we don’t miss. Our art passes from father to son, from the first Lord Blackfyre until now.”

  He paused and looked down at Ezra’s pudgy arms and wobbling head.

  “Blackfyre magic is the deadliest in close quarters,” he added, dark pride threading through.

  Reitz frowned, assessing Ezra’s build.

  “Hm. Normally we start by hardening bones and tendons. We teach you how to fall, how to roll, how to breathe through a hit. But…”

  He poked Ezra in the belly.

  “You’re soft,” he declared. “Like a pillow.”

  “There’s no point training the body yet,” Reitz admitted, more to himself than to anyone else. “You’re an infant. It would warp your growth. The Maesters would throw scrolls at my head.”

  He drummed his fingers on the crib rail, thinking.

  “We’ll do it differently,” he decided. “We start here first.”

  His fingertip tapped Ezra’s forehead.

  “I’ll teach you the incantations,” Reitz said. “The visualizations. The way you shape the Field inside before it ever leaves your skin. That’s the spine of Blackfyre magic. Anyone can scream a battle phrase and throw Fire. Only Blackfyres make it bite.”

  Ezra’s heart kicked.

  Visualization. Internal structure. That he could map. If Reitz described it cleanly—if he could be made to describe it cleanly—it would be Ezra’s first real data point.

  Reitz straightened, rolling his shoulders.

  “We’ll start with breathing and seeing,” he said, half to Aerwyna. “No output. No flares. Just him learning how his own Field moves when he’s calm, when he’s angry, when he’s afraid.”

  “That sounds almost cautious of you,” Aerwyna said, studying him.

  Reitz gave her a quick, crooked smile. “I do have a brain. I just don’t use it in bed.”

  She went scarlet. “Reitz Blackfyre—”

  He leaned down and kissed her on the nose, cutting off the oncoming spell.

  Then he turned back to the crib, expression settling into something firm.

  “But still,” he said softly, meeting Ezra’s gaze. “We start tomorrow, my boy.”