Minerva held her hands poised between the two layers of needles. Row after row of metal fangs waited for her focus to waver. If her hands moved a fraction of an inch, the tips of the needles nipped her skin and tiny beads of blood dripped into the cobalt-blue bowl waiting below.

Five minutes in and her hands shook as if she had the palsy.

"This is an exercise in concentration that you shall undertake," Amarante had begun without greeting upon Minerva's entering her hut. The imperial kirukist abode high up in the mountains among the dragons, where the cloud cover was constant. "We can't replicate the Trial of Fire, but this is the closest we've come to it."

Minerva looked at the woman—with her sunken amber eyes and hands withered to paper overlaying bone—and wondered whether her attention to her work was such an all-consuming passion that she forgot to eat and sleep.

Kirukists were the stuff of legends, craftsmen given wholly to the pursuit of refining kishuki stone into the unbreakable metal of the Pyros. The metal the Terron wars had been waged over.

Kirukkan.

"Meditation is about emptying the mind of everything," Amarante had said, dragging the torture contraption out of the room's corner. Her dwelling appeared to be kept in better shape than her person, if only because it was barer than a soldier's quarters. "Crafting kirukkan is not meditation. It requires the mind to focus solely on one image for an extended period of time."

Minerva watched the woman scurry around. First, she wrestled her creaking window shutters open, coughed at the dust, then gave a shrill whistle with her stick fingers shoved in her prune-creased mouth. Then her bare feet pattered across the bamboo flooring and she cranked the handle on the thin wooden box she'd moved, exposing the needles. When closed, they meshed together like teeth.

Amarante tapped her finger on a needle and yelped. "Still sharp," she'd remarked, sucking off the blood and spitting it to the floor.

Minerva revised her former opinion of the hut's cleanliness.

"How long is an extended period of time?" she'd asked.

Amarante cackled and shook her finger as if Minerva had asked for a pastry right before meals. "Can't tell you because you won't know until you're done or you're dead!"

She's mad. Absolutely burning mad, Minerva thought, regretting her agreement to stick her hands between the spikes. She hissed at a sharp nick of pain. The blood drop surfaced on her skin and she couldn't help but watch—with a morbid fascination—as it grew before slithering down her hand and plopping into the bowl.

"I hate this," Minerva said, not caring whether Amarante heard. The woman would be paid a hefty sum if Minerva passed her Trial so she could stand a few bitter complaints.

The renowned kirukist had her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms pulled out of the sleeves and back into the dress that hung like a rice sack on her thin frame. She rocked back and forth, mumbling to herself.

Minerva found she could pick out words when she tried.

"Three-eighty-one, three-eighty-two, three-eighty-three—"

Amarante sat up straight. Minerva flinched at the sudden flare of lucidity in the woman's eyes as she stared her down.

"Most of them do hate it," she answered. "But you don't seem like a bad egg, so you listen when I tell you that you better do this exercise. The ones who don't last through this part until I tell them to stop don't make it. They go" —Amarante's fingers ignited into flame with a snap— "poof."

"Poof," Minerva repeated in disbelief.

Amarante nodded. "Poof."

"Isn't it more like 'burn to death while screaming and slowly dissolve to ash'?" Minerva's voice shivered like her hands.

Amarante hastily pressed a finger to her lips and shook her head. "We don't talk about that around children like you." She returned to her rocking and picked up the numbers as if an internal clock had continued to run the whole time.

Minerva bit her lip to keep from yelling at this madwoman who set her to bleeding her hands out but thought speaking of people burning to death too gruesome.

The trees outside began to groan. Minerva stabbed herself in a dozen places when the hut swayed from the lashes of wind.

Amarante jumped to her feet and rushed to the window. She pushed her hands back through her sleeves and slapped them against the windowsill. "You're late!" she crowed. "Ryuichi, you blasted son of a fat, overgrown worm, you're late!"

Amarante didn't appear angry despite her choice of words. Instead, her voice rang with unmistakable triumph. "I counted to three hundred before you arrived, so you owe me a dumpling dinner!" she shouted, shaking a fist. "Ha! 'King of the Winds' indeed!"

A gold dragon's head shoved its way through the window, almost knocking Amarante off her feet. "Peace, Amarante. I was on the other side of the mountain teaching the newly-hatched of the wind currents," the dragon's deep voice growled. His mouth contorted to spit out the human words and still he mangled the r's and w's. Ryuichi bared his fangs. "I'm not a dog to be whistled for as I've told you."

"Just make sure I get my dumplings," Amarante said with her hands on narrow hips.

"I'll drop a wild toka carcass on your doorstep. The dumpling part will be your prerogative." A snort from Ryuichi's nostrils released a heady perfume into the now cramped space.

Minerva sneezed. Needles lanced tracks across her skin. Now her hands looked as if she'd gotten into a brawl with a bramble and come out on the losing end.

The dragon swiveled his head and blinked at Minerva. "Amarante, who's this?"

"New girl," Amarante giggled. "You remember that boy over a year ago? The one I kept calling 'Wren'? She's his sister."

The slits in the dragon's eyes morphed as he scrutinized Minerva. Before, his silver eyes had looked almost human, now they resembled a snake's. "So she's the Heir Apparent now." Ryuichi looked back at Amarante. "Vren Pyroline wasn't a good one if I'm remembering right."

Minerva wanted to clench her fists. Speaking of the dead in specific instances was taboo, though dragons were exempt from the rule.

Vren's death fell under the specific instances category. He'd failed his Trial.

"This one's a good one though," Amarante said, patting Minerva on the head. "I give her a sixty percent survival rate."

Minerva stiffened, both from the pat and the odds. Another prick of the needles and she winced. "Can I—"

She couldn't be sure, but it seemed as if both Amarante and Ryuichi leaned forward to catch her next words.

"Can I turn my hands over so my palms are up? I would've put them in that way if I'd known."

"You're not going to ask if you can take your hands out?" Amarante sounded stunned.

Minerva looked between the kirukist and the dragon. "No."

I don't want to go 'poof', as you call it.

Amarante sniffed and turned the handle until the jaws flew wide open. "Seventy percent survival rate," she said to Ryuichi, "she's got a high pain threshold."

Sighing with relief at being able to relax her arms, Minerva carefully took a small cloth out from one of the pockets sewn to the inside of her sleeve. She used it to dab at the small spots of blood.

"Next exercise!" Amarante waved at the needle device. "Hands back in now."

Minerva blinked at her. "You mean we aren't done?"

Ryuichi raised his sleek head. His two horns knocked against the ceiling and sent a shower of dust raining to the floor.

Amarante rushed to grab a broom. "Look what you've done!" she shouted, "Look at my clean floor!"

"Clean your ceiling too then, woman!" Ryuichi roared. He turned his head to Minerva. "No, we aren't done. The first exercise is the easy one—it's about being able to push through pain. The second exercise is the hard part."

"What's the second part?" Minerva asked warily.

"I'm going to watch your mind to see that your focus does not stray."

Minerva had remembered to put her hands in palms up, that was something.

"Mind is wandering," Ryuichi murmured.

The needles pressed closer and pinned her hands for a moment as Amarante narrowed the gap.

Minerva's face twitched as she fought to regain control. She'd already closed her eyes to limit sensory input to her mind. Only think of what you wish to craft, she thought, repeating Amarante's words, the blacksmith shapes metal with their hands. The kirukist shapes metal with their mind.

She focused on the image of a simple oval-shaped stone. She turned it over in her mind, smoothed its surface with imaginary fingertips. It would only be as large as her thumbnail.

Kirukkan was unique in that the creator would be permanently bonded to the first piece they crafted. Oftentimes, the power a fire wielder held was too great to be contained in a single vessel and would seek an outlet. Thus, when a wielder reached the height of their potential—marked by the hue of their eyes transforming to gold—they would undergo a Trial of Fire to invest some of their strength into a kishuki stone.

Kishuki hardened to kirukkan and the bonded metal would be called a heart stone. Other kirukkan could then be crafted with more ease, though it would never hold a bond. Wielding was prohibited upon the climax in potential to prevent a premature bond or one with a lesser metal. A breakable one that would leak power or release it completely.

"Mind is wandering," Ryuichi said again.

"What's the girl thinking of this time?" Amarante snapped. She turned the handle of doom once again.

Minerva bit her lip against the pain.

"Kirukkan crafting and heart stones," Ryuichi hummed in amusement. "Close to the right subject. At least it's not fantasies about some secret lover."

Heat crept up in Minerva's cheeks as she painstakingly brought her thoughts back in line. Oval-shaped stone with a clear, smooth surface like glass, about the size of my thumbnail—

She repeated the mantra endlessly, giving no heed to flitting butterflies of notion. She constructed a protective dome that guarded this one focus. Any sensations of pain from her hands or weariness from the passage of time were unwelcome intruders who could not, would not, enter.

Oval-shaped stone with a clear, smooth surface like glass, about the size of my thumbnail. It glows with the radiance of pure moonlight—

Something foreign brushed against her inner layer.

She instantly became cognizant of an awareness larger than her own: Ryuichi.

Unlike Terron superstition proclaimed, dragons weren't creatures of fire. They were not Pyro beasts held on a leash, designed to bring destruction and chaos upon enemies.

Minerva had been disgusted at her first glimpse of what the Terrons believed dragons to look like. They'd drawn lumbering, giant things, with jagged scales and claws and unwieldy wings like a manticore's. Ugly, wide snouts with uneven teeth. Fire and brimstone being belched from between their jaws.

No, dragons were creatures of spirit. She hadn't been able to grasp the concept at first and still didn't presume to fully understand, but dragons had no need of wings to fly because they were lighter than air when they wished.

They could speak human tongues, but mainly spoke in what they called 'Animamea', or what the Pyros termed 'soul-speak'. When they did, it most closely resembled pure ancient speech. Humans could be soul-spoken to, but could not speak back unless their spirit was strengthened, therefore dragons would have to access the mind to hold a two-way conversation.

But the human heart a dragon should never touch.

Inochi, an Elder of the white dragons, had once informed Minerva of the grave consequences of such an action.

"It might come from a desire to heal," she had said, "the wish to feel your pain or to experience the short-lived ecstasy of human joy."

Minerva remembered her experimental tugs on Inochi's flowing whiskers. They never touched the ground, instead floating on a solitary wind. The dragon had enclosed her child-sized hand in a delicate claw.

"If we touch one of your hearts then corruption seeps into us and we become one of the black dragons, full of rage," Inochi had said, her voice trembling with controlled sorrow. "It is from them that the Terrons draw their terror-filled ideas of monsters wreaking havoc and sowing chaos."

But Minerva had never seen a black dragon. She knew only the pure nobility of the gold and white. She would describe them as regal, elegant, with sinuous bodies, shimmering scales, and soft fur—

Her eyes snapped open. She hadn't been thinking of her heart stone for awhile now.

Darkness had fallen over the room as the ceiling lamps burned lower. Amarante dozed, eyelids fluttering and head lolling to the side.

Ryuichi watched her from the window.

Can you hear me? Minerva asked him.

Yes, he answered, do not wake Amarante yet. Unlike the voice that came from his body, this one spoke unhampered by physical constraints.

Minerva ducked her head. I did not keep focus well.

Hush. Ryuichi chuckled. You know how long you kept focus?

Still with her hands between the spikes, Minerva lifted her head.

Your mind did not waver all through the night and what you see now is the light of dawn approaching, Ryuichi said. He drew his head back from the window so Minerva could glimpse the rose-tinted sky and sunrise.

Impossible, she thought more to herself than the dragon.

Ryuichi's face reappeared again. His eyes twinkled with amusement. You may have lasted much longer if I hadn't brushed against your mental barrier.

Amarante's shadowed eyes and hollow cheekbones weren't so surprising now. Minerva nodded at the slumbering kirukist. Can we wake her? My arms are beginning to seize up.

Amarante startled out of sleep. "I'm awake! No need to scare me half to death, giant lizard. Was resting my eyes." She stilled and nodded along to a silent monologue, only grunting at intervals.

Minerva assumed Ryuichi had finished relaying the night's events when Amarante opened the tool's clamps for the last time.

"So you were admiring the aesthetic of dragons, were you?" the woman said with a wry smile.

"No- I mean, not really," Minerva stammered.

Clicking her tongue, Amarante shook her head. "Don't be embarrassed. Ryuichi is a rather pretty boy." She winked at the dragon, who snorted another perfume cloud into the room.

"Thank you both for your teaching," Minerva said as she stood and bowed.

Amarante waved a hand from where she'd slumped against the wall. "Ninety percent passing rate as long as you aren't an anomaly. And if you ever find the weight of an empire too much to bear, you run on up here and apprentice to me, you hear?"

"Yes, ma'am. I hear and obey." Minerva smiled slightly. Perhaps Amarante wasn't mad, only unorthodox in her teaching methods.

A yawn split Amarante's mouth. "You're a good one, just like your aunt." Her speech slowed and her eyelids drooped. "There may be hope for the Pyroline family after a—"

"Someone's landed outside," Ryuichi interrupted. His head tilted to the side. "I'm told it's the Empress."

Amarante flew into action. She sped to grab her broom, spouting expletives the whole way. Minerva hurriedly stepped aside.

"Told that blasted woman never to— Gonna bash her head in!" Minerva caught as Amarante banged out the door.

A chill ran through Minerva's veins. Kovine rarely sought people out except to exact punishment or warn them not to cross her. Her chosen methods for carrying out these two objectives often were to challenge them or order an execution.

Truth be told, Minerva didn't mind if Amarante managed to assassinate the most powerful woman in the Empire.

Her mother.