A heat signature registers at the Crown’s perimeter. All I can pull from it is fragments—core temperature elevated, moving fast and controlled, not winded from the climb—but the details won’t sharpen into a face or a name. My magic is too saturated with the impossibly huge thermal blast to process anything new.
“We need to get you out of here.” He lies down beside me on the volcanic rock, flooding my senses with intense, radiating heat.
Then he’s wrapping his arms around me, fire engulfs us both, and the world dissolves into flames.
EVIE
When reality reforms,I’m lying on a bed.
It’s not my bed. The sheets are darker and softer, and there’s warmth pressed against my back—arms wrapped around me, a solid chest rising and falling against my spine, and the scent of smoke and steel filling my lungs.
Kieran.
I know it’s him before I even open my eyes, thanks to his heat signature that burns hotter than anyone else’s at the academy. It’s fierce and steady, like a forge that never goes cold.
But I’ve only read him this close twice before. The most recent was this morning in the dining hall, when he dug his nails into my skin and told me to focus. The first was in the Fury Loop, with his weight pressing me into the stone and his body doing things neither of us have acknowledged since.
The memory hits so fast my breath catches, and the heat radiating off his chest against my spine might as well be that burnt red rock all over again.
Then there’s the most important question—how am I in bed with Kieran Cross?
As the reality of this impossible situation continues to set in, my heart launches into my throat and starts hammering so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
Heartbeat elevated but steady. Approximately seventy-two beats per minute. That’s… wait. No. Stop cataloging his vital signs like he’s a research subject.
Except cataloging is what I do when I’m panicking. And I am definitely, absolutely, catastrophically panicking right now.
“You’re awake,” he says sharply enough to make me suck in a breath.
This is a dream. It has to be a dream. In what other universe would I be waking upin Kieran Cross’s bed,with him talking to me as if I belong here, and not like a colossal, career-ending mistake has been made?
At least I’m still clothed. That’s one catastrophe averted.
At the same time, it doesn’t explain why I’m here, in his bed, with his arms around me.
But I can’t stay like this with my brain short-circuiting. I have to say something. Do something.Anything.
So, I roll over and find myself looking into the deep green eyes of the man who pinned me to the ground in the Fury Loop and counted to five while the entire class watched.
His hands on my hips. His weight pressing me into the stone. Those green eyes holding mine while he counted, his voice dropping low, like the words were meant for a room with a locked door and not a training circle full of first-years.
Heat floods my cheeks at the memory.
Is that even possible? I’m already at maximum capacity. My face might actually combust. Especially because I’m suddenly, viscerally aware of how solid he is—all lean muscle and controlled strength, the kind of body that’s been forged from years of weapons training instead of magical shortcuts.
Focus, Evie. Data points. Why are you here? How did you get here? What’s the last thing you remember?
I pull away and sit up, and just like that, the memories flood back.
Searching for Oliver.
The Crown.
The explosive heat signatures scorched onto the stone.
The man who found me, put his arms around me, and fire traveled me out of there.
It washim.Kieran Cross.
