Here is my first chapter - Thoughts anyone? Six Weeks Later
Allie’s apartment smelled like burned toast.
She emerged from the bedroom with damp hair and a towel looped around her neck, following the scent like a warning. Erik stood at the stove with a spatula in one hand and a look of intense concentration, as if he were defusing a bomb instead of making breakfast.
The pan in front of him hissed ominously.
“You’re a dragon,” Allie said. “Literal fire magic. How are you this bad at cooking?”
“Fire magic burns things,” he said without looking up. “Cooking requires not burning things. The skills are opposed.”
She stepped closer and peered into the pan. “That’s definitely burned.”
“It’s caramelized.”
“It’s carbon.”
He sighed and turned off the burner. “Coffee?”
“Please.”
They had been living together for six weeks now.
Temporarily.
Just until Erik healed. Just until the city settled. Just until they figured out what the bond actually was and how to keep it from tearing something else apart.
No one had suggested a better plan.
Neither of them had suggested he leave.
Allie moved past him and reached for the mugs. The kitchen window over the sink looked out onto the street four floors below. Cars passed. A jogger moved through the morning light. Trees pushed up through cracks in the sidewalk, stubborn and out of place against the concrete.
She had never paid much attention to them before.
Now she could not seem to stop.
Something about them felt wrong. Not dangerous, not exactly, just aware, like the ground beneath them was listening in a way it never had before.
She looked away before the thought could settle.
She filled the mugs while Erik scraped the ruined eggs into the trash. Morning light slanted across the counter and caught the pale threads of the bond mark at her collarbone. She had stopped trying to hide it when people noticed it anyway every time she wore something that dipped too low or the pendant caught the light.
Semicircles of silver and gold braided together where Morna’s curse had once tried to cut them apart.
The mark hummed quietly beneath her skin.
It was not the sharp crackle of storm she had come to expect. It was deeper than that. Slower. Almost like a second heartbeat under the first, as if something in the earth itself had started breathing again and had forgotten how to stop. Like something beneath her was answering, not just the storm, but something deeper.
She reached up without thinking, her fingers brushing the pendant at her throat. Mara’s pendant. She still wore it every day, not out of habit anymore, but because taking it off felt wrong, like removing something that had rooted itself too deeply to separate.
Her thumb pressed lightly against the metal, grounding herself in its familiar weight.
For a split second, the air tightened, like something beneath her skin had shifted out of place. She forced it down before it could surface, steadying her breath as if nothing had happened.
She thought of the last journal entry. She had been reading Mara’s journal slowly, learning pieces of a history that felt less like inheritance and more like memory.
Some entries read like stories.
Others felt like instructions.
The bond beneath her skin pulsed once, low and steady.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Erik said.
She passed him a mug. “Like what?”
“Like you’re about to file charges on my breakfast.”
“It left evidence,” she said. “There are crumbs everywhere.”
The corner of his mouth tugged up. He looked older some days, shadows etched deeper at the edges of his eyes, but there was something looser in his posture now. Less of the constant braced tension he had carried when the curse still sat on his shoulders like a second spine.
He had looked nothing like this the first time she saw him in the alley.
That night came back in flashes she could never quite stop. Blood on brick. Sirens still far away. Her hands shaking. And then him, stepping through the chaos with those impossible eyes, pale and sharp and locking onto hers as if the rest of the world had fallen away.
She had been standing in Lena’s blood.
He had been a stranger.
It should have been the worst possible moment to notice anything about him.
Instead, she had dreamt about his eyes every night since.
Some of those dreams had been hot.
Some had been frightening.
Most had been both.
The memory tightened low in her chest, warm and sharp and unwelcome.
She took a careful sip of coffee and looked away before the bond could betray any of that.
That had been another lesson.
The first week, neither of them had understood how much the bond amplified everything. Emotion did not stay contained. It spilled. Heat, anger, attraction, it all bled through whether they wanted it to or not.
Too close, and it became difficult to tell what belonged to her and what belonged to him.
Too much, and the magic answered.
Not gently.
They had nearly cracked a wall the second time it happened.
The hospital room had not been built for that kind of magic.
Neither of them had been ready for what the bond would do when it was not held back.
Since then, they had set rules.
Distance when it mattered. Control before instinct. Training before anything they could not take back.
It was easier in theory than in practice.
Especially when she looked at him like that.
“Come on,” he said. “Balcony. Before the smoke alarm adds its opinion.”
They stepped out onto the narrow balcony that overlooked the street. The city rose around them in glass and steel, morning light already catching on windows and distant cranes. Somewhere below, a bus hissed to a stop. A jogger’s footsteps tapped out a steady rhythm on the sidewalk.
Allie leaned against the railing, forcing herself to breathe evenly.
The feeling was still there, faint but persistent, like something buried deep was trying to reach her and did not yet know how.
She had the sudden, irrational thought that if she looked too long, something might look back.
“You’ve got training today,” Erik said, leaning against the railing.
She glanced at him. “I’ve got training most days. Your point?”
“You nearly set the kitchen on fire yesterday.”
“I was experimenting.”
“You were losing control.”
She exhaled slowly. “It was a controlled loss.”
“It was a flame climbing the cabinets.”
“I was thinking about it.”
“It wasn’t thinking at all.”
She shot him a look. “You’re enjoying this entirely too much.”
“Immensely.”
Her mouth twitched despite herself.
Six weeks, and she could finally tell the difference between her emotions and his. They had learned how to build a kind of barrier between them, not perfect, but enough to keep the smaller thoughts from bleeding through.
Most of the time.
“Besides,” she added, lifting her chin slightly, “you’re the one who told me to push it.”
“I told you to test your limits,” he said. “Not redecorate the kitchen with fire.”
“Details.”
He stepped a fraction closer, not enough to break their rules, but enough that the air shifted.
The bond stirred, quiet but not entirely under her control.
“Control first,” he said quietly. “Then power.”
Her breath caught, just slightly.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’ve heard that somewhere.”
“Kael needs to learn to keep some things to herself.”
“You could tell her that.”
Allie huffed a breath that was almost a laugh.
The pendant at her throat thrummed once, then settled.
Beneath the familiar flicker of stormlight, she felt it again.
Stone.
Roots.
A slow, patient awareness brushing the edge of her senses.
It lingered.
Unresolved.
She frowned slightly.
“What,” Erik said.
“Nothing,” she said after a beat. “Just something feels off.”
His gaze sharpened, but he did not push.
“After training,” he said, “we should go see William.”
Her attention shifted. “Why?”
“He sent a message earlier. He says he found something about the transformations. About why most of them still cannot shift.”
“And he wants Eleanor’s book,” Allie said.
“Yes.”
The bond at her collarbone pulsed once in answer.
Allie exhaled. “Of course he does.”
Erik set his empty mug down on the railing. “We should not ignore it.”
“I know.”
The wind shifted, cooler now. It carried the faint scent of rain and something older beneath it.
The feeling tightened.
Not strong.
Not urgent.
But there.
Aware.
“Come on,” Erik said. “Let’s see if you can get through one training session without breaking anything important.”
“Define important,” she said, stepping back inside.
“Load bearing walls,” he said.
“Those are optional.”
She grabbed her keys, her jacket, and Eleanor’s book from the nightstand.
They stepped out onto the street. The air felt heavier here, closer to the ground. Her mark pulsed once, slow and deep.
Allie paused without meaning to.
Something brushed the edge of her awareness.
Not sight.
Not sound.
Just presence.
Watching.
Awake.
And closer than it should have been.
She shook it off and kept walking.