Aric
Most days, I told myself it would happen soon.
It had to.
The Ferguson blood didn't skip generations. No one in our family had ever been born without it. No one had ever been ordinary.
I repeated these things as I walked down the long corridor from the main hall to the smaller training chambers. My footsteps echoed back at me, too loud in the hush.
In my head, I could still see Aurelia standing in the circle, her hands alight with perfect, disciplined flame. The memory should have made me proud. Sometimes it did. Other times, it felt like pressing a bruise over and over.
Instructor Corvin was already waiting when I stepped into the chamber. He was older than Galen, with a face like carved stone and a voice that could quiet an entire hall without rising above a whisper.
I bowed automatically. "Instructor."
He inclined his head, expression unreadable. He always looked at me the same way, a kind of careful neutrality that made me wonder if he pitied me.
"Aric," he said. "You know the drill."
I crossed to the center of the ring marked out on the floor. Here, there were no other students. No witnesses. Just me, the instructor, and the silence.
I closed my eyes, drawing in a slow, deliberate breath.
Resonance training had dozens of steps, each meant to coax the buried spark to the surface. I'd memorized them all. Visualization. Breath control. The recitation of the old words in the old tongue, the ones meant to call fire home.
I began with the words. My voice sounded thinner than I wanted it to.
I pictured the flame in my chest, the way the tutors had described it, the way Aurelia had described it, a seed of heat waiting to unfurl. I imagined it blooming behind my ribs, bright and inevitable.
Nothing happened.
My lungs felt empty. My hands were cool.
"Again," Corvin said, his tone soft but implacable.
I swallowed and tried again.
Nothing.
I knew the steps. I'd done them a hundred times. A thousand. The only thing that ever changed was how hollow I felt afterward.
When I finally opened my eyes, the instructor was watching me with that same steady, measuring gaze.
"You're not failing," he said quietly, as though reading my thoughts. "This is simply how it is, for some. The power comes late. But it comes."
I nodded.
Not that I believed him. I'm slowly losing hope.
Corvin gestured to the bench at the side of the room. "Rest a moment. We'll try another set before dusk."
I moved numbly to the bench and sank onto it, my shoulders curving forward.
I pressed the heel of my hand against my sternum, as if I could feel something there, some spark, some hidden ember that would prove I wasn't broken.
But all I felt was the same hollow space I'd carried for as long as I could remember.
And in that emptiness, the thought I tried so hard to ignore whispered again:
What if it never comes?
I closed my eyes, and the memory rose unbidden, clear, as if it had happened an hour ago.
I'd been twelve. She was twelve, too, though she'd already seemed older. She always did.
We'd been sitting by the eastern windows after her lesson, the smell of scorched practice dummies drifting in from the yard. I'd tried to sound casual when I asked, "What does it feel like?"
She'd looked at me for a long moment, as if she were deciding whether to answer at all.
"It's like…" She'd paused, her brow furrowing. "It's like there's a fireplace here." She'd pressed her hand to her chest, just the way I was doing now. "And it's always lit. Always warm. When I need it, I just…reach in. Like taking a torch and lighting it from the hearth."
A fireplace.
Warmth she never had to question.
I lowered my hand. My chest was as cold as ever.
And no matter how many times I tried, no matter how many words I recited or breaths I took, I had never once felt even the smallest flicker of flame.