My boots left the ground. My stomach dropped as I rose—three feet, five, ten—suspended in the center of the library’s vaulted ceiling. The fire swirled around me in a slow spiral.
“Max!” Caspian’s voice, beneath me. All four heirs had charged through the empty doorway after me.
“Put out the fucking fire, Drakken!” Nikolai shouted.
“It’s out of my hands!” Drakken’s voice was raw. “It isn’t supposed to…Shit.”
I kicked my feet against nothing.Let me down!
The fire crackled, burning the uniform off my body.
The fatigues went first, disintegrating in strips that floated away as ash. Then the shirt beneath. Then the chest-bind. The fire consumed every thread carefully, precisely, leaving my skin untouched. It suspended me in the air while my disguise turned to cinders and drifted down like black snow onto the marble floor of the grand library.
I’d be bare in front of thousands. The ultimate humiliation. Years of deception—my parents’ design, my survival, my identity—incinerated in seconds.
No. This isn’t fucking happening. Please!
Now I understood what Drakken had said about the Sorting. The trial of fire would reveal your true self.
My loyalty wasn’t in doubt. My true self was.
The flames lowered me, spinning me slowly for the show, for all to witness.
My bare feet touched cold marble. The fire unwound from my body in lazy ribbons—pulling away from my arms, my legs, my torso—until only three patches remained. Three palm-sized flames that clung to my skin, burning without heat. One over each breast. One between my thighs. A bikini made of dancing dragon fire.
I stood in front of the assembly. Naked. Exposed. And unmistakably a woman.
My horrified, humiliated gaze found the heirs.
They stared back at me.
Caspian’s jaw dropped, burning heat in his green gaze. Nikolai’s eyes were blown wide—not with hunger this time, but shock and unbridled lust. Aelindor’s cool mask slipped. Relief, longing, and adoration shifted like a storm in his deep blue eyes.
Drakken stared at me as if the floor had opened beneath his feet and he was still falling. His massive frame was rigid. His lips parted.
“He walks in shadow, she in flame,” Nikolai whispered in awe. “It fits, Aelindor.”
I had no idea what the vampire prince meant. But there was a glint of tears in the Fae prince’s eyes before it vanished like mist, as if it had never happened.
Then my hair started to grow. It flowed down my shoulders.
The color is still the deepest midnight blue,the demon informed me.But all the gold is gone. Replaced by a splash of glowing white.
They said one of the White Witch’s distinguishing traits was her glowing white hair.
Shit.
The dragon prince’s gaze homed in on my hair.The White Witch’s spawn.He’d say it. Even though I’d walked through his fire and lived.
26
MAX
Aelindor shrugged off his silver coat and wrapped it around me.
The assembly grew even quieter than it had been when the fire stripped me bare. A prince of the Zodiac Covenant draping his uniform coat over a naked, questionable cadet. Caspian and Nikolai were already unbuttoning theirs, but the Fae prince had beaten them both without rushing.
“Everyone face the wall!” Drakken bellowed, as if suddenly remembering.