So, I close my eyes, reaching deep inside to where my magic lives. Not the electricity that comes so easily now, but the fire I’ve always struggled with. The pathetic little flames that barely answer my call unless I’m in the Ember Ring or the Fury Loop.
Except... something’s different tonight. Maybe it’s the adrenaline. Maybe it’s the anger from being abandoned down here by Logan. Maybe it’s all the training I’ve done in the FuryLoop. Maybe it’s the memory of Logan’s hands on me, his fire mingling with my electricity in ways that shouldn’t be possible.
I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care. Because all that matters is the heat building in my chest, spreading outward like liquid sun through my veins.
Power.It’s there inside me—it always has been—waiting for me to let it free. I’ve just been so obsessed withcontrolthat I haven’t allowed myself to let it wildly loose on purpose.
Time to change that. Because Logan just made fire travel—a skill that only the most advanced witches in the world can do—look easy. But he’s taught me a bit about fire travel before, given me tips on it, even though I’m far from reaching that level.
Just think about where you want to be and?—
The fire answers, roaring through me with a vengeance, every nerve ending screaming as reality frays at the seams. Next comes the pull of being turned inside out, my organs rearranging themselves as space folds around me. I can hear my heartbeat echoing in the void between spaces, taste ash and ozone on my tongue, and feel the burn of magic rewriting physics.
Then, suddenly, I’m whole again.
My knees slam into volcanic rock, and the world spins, my stomach lurching from the journey that should have been impossible for a witch at my level. But I did it. I’m here. At the Crown. The highest circle, the one with raw magical amplification and no safety nets, where students are forbidden to go, ever.
“Jade?” Logan’s voice cracks with disbelief as I struggle to my feet. “How did you?—”
I barely hear him. Because in that same split second, Thaddeus moves faster than should be possible. One moment he’s standing over Oliver, and the next his dagger plunges into Oliver’s chest with sickening precision.
“No!” The scream rips from my throat, but it’s already too late.
Oliver’s eyes go wide with shock. Blood blooms across his shirt. He crumples to the volcanic rock, and I know with horrible certainty that he’s gone.
I’m barely aware of my screaming as Thaddeus spins toward me, that same dagger covered with Oliver’s blood already flying through the air and sinking into my stomach with a sickening thud.
Pain explodes through me. Not just the sharp agony of metal piercing flesh, but something else. Something cold and wrong that spreads through me like poison.
Seconds feel like minutes. Like hours. Because this can’t be happening. This can’t be real. But the ice spreading through my veins says otherwise, freezing my blood, making each breath a losing battle.
The world tilts sideways, volcanic rock rushing up to meet me, but strong arms catch me before I hit the ground.
“Jade.” Logan’s voice breaks as he lowers me to the ground, his eyes wide with panic and fear. “Stay with me.”
I try to say Logan’s name, but only manage a wet cough as blood fills my mouth, tasting like copper and defeat.
I’m dying.
The thought hits with crystal clarity, no room for denial or jokes. Because this is it. My parents will never know what happened to me. I’ll never get to go home. It will be as if I never existed at all.
My lids are half closed when fire erupts around us. But this isn’t normal fire. This is pure, terrifying black fire—shadows that swallow light instead of creating it. I’ve seen darkness tinge the edges of Logan’s flames when he’s angry, but never like this. The entirety of his fire has never been void of color, howlingwith a storm that makes the air scream, existing everywhere and nowhere at once.
The world tilts and spins, fracturing into a vortex of shadowed light and impossible heat, and then?—
I’m standing at the base of the Scorched Circles.
My hands fly to my stomach.
There’s no wound. No blood. No pain. My dress is pristine white fading to black, exactly as it was when we burst out of the passages.
“What the actual hell?” I spin to face Logan, my body trembling. “I had a knife in my stomach. I was up there and?—”
I pause to point up at the Crown, expecting Thaddeus to be there, holding his dagger to the sky and cackling like a villain in a bad horror movie.
As expected, heisthere holding up his dagger.
But Oliver is standing again, and then Thaddeus’s blade is sliding between Oliver’s ribs.Again.
