Five days had passed since the "Incident," and Ezra's quality of life had improved in very specific, very important ways.
For one, he no longer had a breast in his face every time he was hungry.
It hadn't been easy. There were no whiteboards, no flowcharts, only stubborn crying, deliberate turning away, and, when that failed, very pointed staring at the cup on the table while patting his stomach.
Aerwyna was the first to understand.
Now, instead of being pressed against his mother's chest, he drank from a contraption that looked like an alchemist's 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 was inconsistent, and the pressure curve would have made any engineer twitch—
But it was, undeniably, better.
He could close his eyes and pretend it was a badly designed lab apparatus instead of a human being.
Hygiene was the next battlefield.
Ezra refused—viscerally, irrationally, and with every ounce of adult shame he still possessed—to be scrubbed by a stranger.
The first time Catalyna had tried to wipe him down, he'd endured three seconds of it before seizing the cloth with both hands and pulling it away. He couldn't form the words I'll do it myself, but he did his best: tug, scowl, and then a clumsy but unmistakable attempt to copy the cleaning motions on his own body.
It should have been impossible for hands that small to coordinate that well. He knew that. Catalyna certainly knew that.
"This is not… how babes are," the wet nurse had murmured, brows knitting as she watched him struggle through a passable attempt at washing his own stomach. "My lady, he will slip. Or choke. Or—"
"In Riverrun, they are taught early," Aerwyna lied smoothly from the doorway, arms folded as if this was the most normal thing in the world. "We encourage independence. It trains their control."
Catalyna pressed her lips together. The woman was careful, prompt, and not the sort to argue directly with a Countess. She looked from Aerwyna to Ezra, who was still stubbornly wiping, tongue peeking out in concentration.
"…As you say, my lady."
She didn't believe it. Ezra could see it in the tension of her jaw. But she stepped back and let him finish, hovering close enough to catch him if he slipped.
It was humiliating work. His arms trembled from the effort. His grip on the cloth wobbled. He missed spots.
But it was his humiliation. That made all the difference.
For five days, the nursery settled into a fragile equilibrium.
Days were a blur of half-conscious states—sharp, lucid stretches where his awareness expanded and he catalogued everything, followed by long, mushy periods where his brain fogged and his body won. During the sharp windows he mapped out the room, the routines, the patterns of light and sound. During the foggy ones, he slept like the infant he technically was.
And then the door exploded.
The oak panels slammed open so hard they bounced off the stone stops and rattled the iron hinges. Dust sifted down from the rafters. The candle flame in the wall sconce flickered wildly, then steadied.
A man strode in as if the room belonged to him and had simply been holding its breath while he was gone.
He wasn't a scarred brute. He wasn't stiff in court silk. Reitz Blackfyre was the kind of handsome that looked like it had been designed by committee—sharp jaw, straight nose, dark red hair that refused to sit politely and instead fell in loose, confident waves around his face.
He wore leather and mail without fuss, a dark surcoat thrown over one shoulder, half-unbuckled as if he'd forgotten he still had it on. His boots were dusty. His smile was blinding.
His presence hit harder than his entrance.
Ezra felt him before he finished crossing the threshold. A wave of heat—not real temperature, but in that strange inner sense Aerwyna had called his "Field"—rolled into the nursery. Where Aerwyna's presence was a deep, cool pool, Reitz was a furnace barely banked. Dense. Bright. Hot.
He didn't walk so much as occupy.
"Where is my son?" Reitz boomed, laughter already spilling out with the words. "My genius, powerful, heir-to-my-domain son? My firstborn! My boy! Where is he? Where is my son!!"
Every sentence went up in volume.
Ezra winced. His tiny hands flew instinctively to his ears, which, regrettably, were still too small to cover much.
Does this man have no concept of indoor voice? he thought miserably. You're not rallying troops. You're in a nursery.
"Could you tone down 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, not enough to move him, but enough to make the point. "The whole castle might hear you. We have enemies, Reitz. There may be spies even in our own halls."
Reitz blinked down at her hand, then at her face.
"So what if those knaves know?" he said, grinning. "Let them. At least then they'll know I have good seed."
Ezra exhaled slowly through his nose.
Right on cue, he thought. Men are a constant across dimensions.
"I thought we already discussed this," Aerwyna said, rolling her eyes heavenward as if appealing to the ancestors. "We must protect Ezra at all costs. If it were just 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, as if wounded. "That's not what you said when we were making him."
His mouth twisted into an expression that could only be described as lecherously pleased with himself. It was the kind of look that probably made half the court swoon and the other half want to drown him.
"You scoundrel!" Aerwyna hissed.
Her fist thumped his shoulder. Ezra noticed, with clinical detachment, that the blow had the weight of affection, not fury. Reitz barely rocked.
"If you want," Reitz murmured, leaning in, "we can make another one right now."
"Are you insane?" Aerwyna yelped, color blazing across her cheeks. "We are in front of Ezra, you perverted pig!"
"Well, the earlier he knows, the better." Reitz winked at the crib. "I say I could show him a technique or two."
Ezra's brain flatlined.
Absolutely not, he thought, horrified.
"That's it," Aerwyna growled.
The temperature in the room dropped like a stone.
Ezra felt it before he saw anything. The air tightened, moisture vibrating at some frequency only his new senses could touch. Aerwyna's Field surged, cold and vast, swallowing the warm edges of Reitz's presence in an instant.
"The waters cover the sea and in the—" she began, voice dipping into the old, measured cadence of a formal chant.
Faint mist beaded in the air around her fingers.
"Wait, wait, wait, my Wyn, I was joking," Reitz blurted, hands shooting up in surrender. His voice cracked halfway through the sentence, all swagger gone.
"Come clothe and cover and upon this body hover—"
Droplets coalesced around her outstretched hand, gathering weight and speed. The air pressure shifted. Ezra's instincts screamed that someone was about to get very, very wet.
"Ezra is watching!" Reitz yelped, stabbing a finger toward the crib.
Aerwyna froze.
For a heartbeat, her eyes stayed locked on Reitz, pupils blown wide, mana churning around her in a miniature storm. Then she blinked, really looked at the crib, and the spell shattered like thin ice.
The water lost cohesion and fell in a harmless patter onto the stone floor. The tension in the room snapped.
Aerwyna inhaled sharply and smoothed her hair back with a trembling hand, as if she could smooth away the impulse with it.
"Lucky for you," she muttered.
She straightened her dress, squared her shoulders, and pointed—rather imperiously—at 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 you do it in House Blackfyre, but you start early here."
Reitz dragged a hand down his face, then let it fall, the grin slowly returning.
"Bossy," he said fondly.
He turned toward the crib, and for the first time since he'd stormed in, the noise fell away.
Up close, Reitz's features softened. The battlefield roar quieted into something warm and bewildered.
"How are you, my boy?" he murmured.
Ezra regarded him.
This idiot, he thought. This overgrown, loud, hormonally deranged idiot. This… useful idiot.
Because for all the bluster, 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. The kind of man who knew things Ezra desperately needed to know about how magic worked in motion, on a body, under pressure.
Ezra scowled.
Reitz flinched.
"Oh," he said, giving a shaky laugh. "He… doesn't like me."
"There, you upset him with your stupid boisterousness," Aerwyna said, crossing her arms and glaring.
Reitz glanced between them, caught somewhere between offense and guilt. "Come on, Ezra," he tried, leaning closer. "You can talk to your father, can't you?"
Ezra considered.
He could keep withholding. It would be satisfying, in a petty way, to watch this man sweat. But he needed information more than he needed petty victory.
He took a careful breath, feeling the small, unfamiliar lungs expand. He shaped the sounds as precisely as his clumsy mouth would allow.
"Could you teach me… magic, Father?" he asked.
The effect on Reitz was immediate and explosive.
"My boy spoke!" Reitz shouted, half-turning toward Aerwyna. "Did you hear that, darling? What did I tell you? I have good seed. It was a good thing you chose me! Look at him—such a genius boy!"
He threw his head back and laughed, loud enough that dust dislodged again from the beams.
Aerwyna smacked the back of his head with a hollow thump.
"Could you 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 for emphasis.
Reitz rubbed his head, still grinning. "Haha—but you can't deny I helped."
He leaned back over the crib, eyes bright, and for a moment the swagger melted away entirely. What was left was raw, uncomplicated pride.
"Hey, Ezra," he said, voice dropping to something almost like a conspiratorial murmur. "We're going to have a rough road, you and I. The Blackfyre method of training starts with the body. We're close-combat specialists. We move in, we hit hard, we don't miss. Our art is passed from father to son, from the first Lord Blackfyre until now."
He paused, as if hearing himself, and looked down at Ezra's pudgy arms and wobbling head.
"Blackfyre magic is said to be the deadliest in close quarters," he added, a hint of dark pride in it.
Ezra filed the phrase away. Deadliest in close quarters sounded like a marketing tagline, but behind it there was likely real technique, real structure. Footwork. Angles. Timing. Magic integrated with muscle and bone.
Reitz frowned thoughtfully, tilting his head as he assessed Ezra's "build."
"Hm," he mused. "Normally, we'd start by hardening your bones and tendons, teaching you how to fall, how to roll, how to breathe through a hit. But…"
He poked Ezra in the belly.
"You are soft," he declared. "Like a pillow."
Ezra glared, swatting at the offending finger. Reitz laughed, delighted.
"There is no point in 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 edge of the crib, thinking.
"We'll do it differently," he decided. "We start here first."
His fingertip tapped Ezra lightly on the 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, once, hard.
Visualization. Internal structure. That, he understood. That was something he could map. If he could get Reitz to describe it clearly—or as clearly as a man like this could manage—it would be the first real data point in this world's operating manual.
Reitz straightened, rolling his shoulders.
"We'll start with breathing and seeing," he said, half to Aerwyna now. "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, eyeing him.
Reitz flashed her a quick, crooked smile. "I do have a brain, you know. I just don't use it in bed."
She went scarlet again. "Reitz Blackfyre—"
He leaned down and kissed her quickly, right on the nose, cutting off the oncoming spell.
Then he turned back to the crib, expression settling into something resolute.
"But still," he said softly, meeting Ezra's gaze. "We start tomorrow, my boy."