The Crucible was an amphitheater suspended over pure hellfire, but standing across from Dark Flarera felt ten times more hazardous.
"Feet shoulder-width apart, Reid," Dark commanded, circling her, bespectacled rabbit that she was. "Drop your center of gravity. You look like a bowling pin waiting for a strike."
Flora scowled, adjusting the fogged bridge of her glasses with a trembling finger. The heat from the magma lake beneath their floating ring of obsidian was baking her sneakers, and her oversized NYU hoodie felt less like armor and more like a sauna blanket. "I don't play bowling, Your Arrogance. I read books. In air-conditioned libraries. Where the floor doesn't consist of melted tectonic plates."
"Tragic," Dark murmured, coming to a halt three feet away. "Well, consider this your remedial physical education."
He snapped his fingers.
A tight bead of black-tinted crimson flame danced along the knuckle of his gloved index finger, sharp as a needle. He flicked his wrist. The cinder shot forward, striking the flagstones right beside her left sneaker with a sharp crack.
Flora yelped, leaping sideways into an uncoordinated tumble, barely catching herself on one knee. "Are you insane?! You just shot at me!"
"You didn't burn it," he pointed out smoothly, folding his arms behind his structured black uniform coat. "You flinched. Instinct says dodge; royal blood says incinerate the threat before it touches your hem. Try again."
"I am not your sparring dummy!" Flora yelled, pushing herself up from the scorch mark, her cheeks flaming with mortification. "I don't know how to trigger it! It happened in the room because I panicked, not because I—" Another spark whizzed past her ear, singeing the fray of her hood.
"Stop thinking with that mortal syllabus and feel it," Dark taunted, stepping closer. His golden eyes were bright, brimming with that infuriating, wicked amusement. "Come on, valedictorian. Prove Lady Vivienne didn't drag an imposter across the dimensional rift. Throw something back. Or are you only lethal when you're giving sarcastic lectures?"
A violent prickle of frustration flared behind her ribs. "You are the most obnoxious, entitled, insufferable jerk I have ever had the misfortune of breathing the same air as!"
"Adjectives won't extinguish my fire, sweetheart." He smirked, that crooked, razor-sharp smile that made her want to commit treason. "Burn me, Flora. Let's see it."
He flicked a third cinder directly toward her shoulder.
Flora didn't think. The suffocating terror, the exhaustion of the dimensional hop, the mockery from the elemental princes, and the relentless prodding of this impossible boy all boiled over into pure, white-hot instinct. She threw both palms forward and screamed, "I said stop!" The chamber detonated with light.
It wasn't a spark it was a wall of solar fire that roared from her hands in a wide arc. The heat was so pure it vaporized the ambient sulfur from the magma pit in an instant, turning the red glow of the cavern into daylight. The sheer kinetic force of it ripped through the ring, catching Dark entirely off guard. His eyes widened in genuine shock a split second before the wave hit him.
He threw up an instinctive shield of swirling shadow-flame, but her fire slammed into his barrier like a battering ram. The impact shattered his ward with a sound like ringing crystal, knocking his boots clean off the ground. He skidded violently backward across the obsidian, his cloak whipping in the backdraft, only stopping himself by digging the heel of his boot into the stone rim just inches from the sheer drop into the magma below.
Silence came back over the cavern, broken only by the magma's slow churn below.
Flora stood frozen, her chest heaving, her hands smoking with wisps of white-gold vapor. Her glasses had slipped crooked down her nose, and her hair was a wild, static halo around her face. She blinked through the haze, staring in horror at the edge of the platform.
"Oh, God," she squeaked, the anger vanishing into frantic panic. "Dark? Did I... did I just kill the crown prince?!"
A low, coughing laugh scraped out from the smoke.
Dark pushed himself up from one knee, shaking charred ash from his dark curls. His silver collar buttons were blackened, and the edge of his sleeve was smoldering, but when he lifted his head, he wasn't glaring.
His golden eyes were blazing.
"Kill me?" he breathed, his voice rasping with genuine exhilaration as he stalked back toward the center of the ring. His stride was predatory, deliberate, eating up the distance between them. "Not quite, Reid. But that was magnificent."
Flora backed away until the small of her back hit one of the cold, massive anchoring chains supporting the platform. "Stay back. I swear, if you shoot at me again, I'll—"
"You'll what?" he challenged, stopping barely six inches in front of her.
He didn't give her room to breathe. He planted one gloved hand against the iron chain just beside her ear, effectively caging her against the cold metal. The heat coming off him smelled of cedar and ozone. Up close, beneath the soot on his cheekbones, his pupils were blown wide, flecked with dancing flakes of amber.
"You'll turn me to ash?" he whispered, leaning down until his lips hovered beside her cheek, his breath warm against her temple. "Go ahead. Try it."
Her pulse was still going, but the panic had left it. Her throat locked up. She could count his eyelashes she could see the faint golden veins pulsing beneath the thin skin of his throat.
"You're... you're too close," she managed, her voice barely a breath. "Personal space, remember?"
"I don't recall taking that class," Dark murmured, his smirk returning, softer this time, edged with a quiet fascination that made her skin tingle. His free hand reached out, slow and deliberate, giving her every opportunity to slap it away.
She didn't. She couldn't move.
His thumb, clad in supple leather, gently nudged the bridge of her thick-rimmed glasses back up onto the bridge of her nose, tucking a wild, stray lock of dark hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed the sensitive curve of her jawline.
A jolt of static snapped between them and thrummed straight down Flora’s spine. She inhaled sharply.
Dark froze, his golden eyes dropping to her parted lips, then rising slowly back to her gaze. For the first time all night, the arrogance slipped from his face, replaced by a vulnerable stillness. The tension that usually held his shoulders rigid had gone out of them.
"You have no idea what you do, do you?" he whispered, his thumb lingering against the soft skin beneath her cheekbone.
"I... I don't know what you're talking about," Flora lied, her voice trembling.
"You quiet it," Dark said softly, his voice dropping an octave, raw and honest. He tapped his gloved chest, right over where the Umbra venom thrummed in his veins. "The noise. The cold. It’s been screaming in my head since I was eight years old. But around you? In your fire?" He shook his head, a wry, almost helpless smile touching his lips. "It shuts up."
Flora stared at him, her hands loosening on her books. The insufferable, arrogant, peacock prince was staring at her as if nothing else in the corridor existed.
She swallowed hard, trying desperately to find her snark to save herself from whatever this terrifying pull was.
"Well," she whispered, her lips twitching into a defiant smile, "don't get used to it, Prince Charming. I'm still rooming with the girls. And you're still completely intolerable."
Dark’s low chuckle vibrated right against her chest. The dangerous smirk returned to the corner of his mouth, but the golden fire in his eyes was warmer now, steady and bright.
"Intolerable, maybe," he said, slowly stepping back just enough to let her breathe, though his gaze never left hers. "But you're stuck with me now, little flame. Because nobody else in this kingdom can stand the heat when you burn."