JADE
I callfire to my fingertips and watch Yale turn to ash in a champagne flute.
We regret to inform you that…
The rejection letters burn one by one, each Ivy League seal blackening as fire consumes dreams I never wanted in the first place. Yale. Harvard. Princeton. Even Cornell, my so-called “safety school.”
This isn’t how my life was supposed to go. I was supposed to follow the plan—graduate from Dalton, attend Yale like my parents, marry someone from the right family, and keep the Harrington dynasty burning for another generation.
Now the Gulfstream’s engine hums beneath me—the familiar sound of my family’s jet, a song I’ve known since childhood. But strapped into this flying prison bound for a school I never applied to, I’d trade it all for a beat-up Greyhound that smells like gasoline, headed literally anywhere else.
“Jade?” T’s voice cuts through the cockpit door. She’s been our family’s pilot for as long as I can remember, although she looks barely older than my sister. Her dark hair always whipslike there’s wind following her, and her presence makes the air prickle, like a storm waiting to break.
I extinguish the flames with a thought and snatch up my lighter, sliding it across the table as if that explains the smoke.
“Everything okay back there?” she asks. “I smell?—”
“Smoke. Yeah. Turns out rejection letters make excellent funeral pyres.” I raise a champagne glass in mock salute as she steps inside. “Did you know Blaze Academy doesn’t even have a website? Like, nothing. They’re a digital ghost.”
Her expression goes carefully blank. “The school must be… selective.”
“Come on, T.” I roll my eyes and set the charred glass down on the table. “You don’t actually think that, do you? Don’t you also have questions? Don’t you also think this whole thing is just alittlebit weird? Just a little?”
“I’m sure you’ll love it there, Jade.” She glances out the window, her eyes catching the light in a way that makes me wonder if she’s seeing something I can’t. “Now, buckle up. The weather’s changing.”
“The forecast said clear skies all the way to Maine.”
“Forecasts are only suggestions.” She gives me a small, knowing smile. “The sky has its own plans today.”
Before I can press her further, thunder crashes so loud the jet shudders, lightning flashing across the sky in jagged silver veins.
“What the hell—” I’m cut off when another strike slams close enough that ozone scorches through the cabin’s filtered air, and then lightning is everywhere, webbing the sky with violent electricity that looks more like special effects in an apocalyptic movie than something in real life.
“T!” I shout over the thunder. “We need to land!”
But she doesn’t head back to the cockpit. Instead, she moves toward me with impossible calm, the lights in the cabinflickering and dying one by one as she approaches, leaving only the silver glow from outside.
“Your time has finally come.” Her voice carries over the chaos with unnatural clarity, like something possessed.
“Are you crazy? We’re about to get struck by?—“
Lightning hits us dead-on.
The cabin floods with a brilliant silver glow, electric rivers racing across the walls and ceiling. And through the bone-shaking turbulence, there’s a high-pitched whine, like electronics dying, as if the jet is screaming in protest.
Ice-cold terror floods through me as I grip the seat and glance around the quickly deteriorating plane, the last few minutes of my life feeling like they’re moving in slow motion. So slow I can barely comprehend it, other than knowing this is all totally, horribly wrong.
T reaches me as another bolt strikes, and she’s incredibly calm, even thoughthe plane is about to crash.
“Jade. I need you to relax and trust the storm.”
Then her palm is on my forehead, and light’s crashing through me. Not the shock of electricity, but something deeper. Starfire and storm winds. Power I can’t name. It pours into me, burning through my veins like molten silver, awakening parts of myself I didn’t know existed.
Every nerve in my body lights up like a live wire.
The cabin dissolves into brilliant silver.
And then, darkness.
