Chapter 1 The Girl Who Should Have Burned

POV: Vaelis Renn

“Sixty seconds,” the instructor shouted. “That’s all you need. Sixty seconds and you’re in.”

I stared at the flame in my palm. It was small. It was supposed to be small. Just a candle-sized fire, floating above my skin, waiting for me to hold it steady while the Crimson Moon burned red and heavy in the sky above the arena.

Sixty seconds, I could do sixty seconds. I was wrong.

The moment the Crimson Moon’s light touched my skin, something inside me twisted. It felt like a fist closing around my ribs. The flame in my hand jumped, doubled, tripled. I tried to pull it back and it laughed at me, that’s the only way I can describe it, like the fire knew it owned me now, not the other way around.

“Renn, control it!” someone yelled.

I couldn’t.

The fire jumped off my hand and hit the air, and the air caught like it had been waiting for an excuse. In two seconds the whole platform in front of me was burning. In five seconds the fire had eaten through the ropes holding the practice banners. In ten seconds the entire arena was screaming.

Not just the fire. The students too.

I stood in the middle of it, hands shaking, heart slamming against my chest so hard it hurt, and all I could think was: not again. Not again. Not again.

They’d told me my whole life my magic was too much and highly unstable. A danger to everyone around me. My old tutor used to flinch when I got angry like I was a blade someone had left lying around. I came to the Conservatory anyway, because I was a scholarship student and scholarship students didn’t get second chances. If I failed this trial, I didn’t just fail. I went home. Back to nothing. Back to being the girl nobody wanted to teach.

So I couldn’t fail. Even if it kills me, I have to do it.

Instructors were shouting orders, other students were being dragged back by their collars, and I felt the fire pulling more of itself out of me, feeding on my fear, growing bigger every second I let myself panic. And I knew — I knew — there was one thing I could do. Something we were never, ever supposed to do.

Pull it back in. Take the magic back into my own body instead of letting it burn outward. It was forbidden for a reason. I found out why the second I did it…

The pain hit me like a wall of ice and fire at the same time, ripping through my arms, my chest, my throat. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t breathe. I felt my own magic tearing back into me the way water rushes backward before a wave crashes, and then everything went white, and I hit the ground.

When I opened my eyes, the fire was gone. The whole arena had gone silent. I lay there on the scorched stone, skin smoking faintly at the wrists, and I heard someone whisper, “Is she dead?”

I wasn’t dead. I wished, for one very tired second, that I was, because dead would have been easier than what came next.

An instructor in gray robes walked over, looked down at me like I was a stain on the floor, and said loud enough for the entire courtyard to hear, “Provisional. High Risk.”

That was it. That was my rank. Not a name. Not even talented or promising like the boy two platforms over who’d controlled his flame like it was nothing. Just high risk, said the way you’d warn someone about a cracked bridge.

Someone near the back laughed, low and mean. “That’s the girl who should have burned.”

I felt my face go hot. I wanted to stand up and tell every single one of them exactly where they could shove their comments, but my legs wouldn’t hold me yet, so I just lay there and let them stare. Let them whisper. I was good at surviving humiliation.

Eventually two attendants hauled me up by the arms and pushed me forward with the rest of the surviving candidates, toward the main spires of the Conservatory. My knees were still shaking. My hands still smelled like smoke.

That was when I looked up and saw him.

He was standing on a high balcony above the courtyard, arms behind his back, spine straight like someone had built him out of iron instead of bone.

Silver-moon uniform, sharp and clean, not a single hair out of place. Everything about him looked controlled and real and untouched by the chaos still smoking below him.

His eyes found mine. I don’t know why. Out of every burned, terrified, humiliated student walking across that courtyard, his eyes landed on me and stayed there.

He didn’t look shocked. He didn’t look impressed. He looked at me the way you’d look at a puzzle that was annoying you like I was a problem he hadn’t decided how to solve yet.

One second passed, two and three.. Something cold slid down my spine, slow and sharp, like a blade being drawn out of its sheath.

Then someone stepped between us, blocking my view, and the moment broke..

I kept walking, telling myself it didn’t matter who he was or why he’d looked at me like that. I had bigger problems. I was smoking. I was humiliated. I was one bad trial away from being sent home in disgrace.

I didn’t get five more steps before a silver-robed official stepped directly into my path, holding a scroll against his chest like it was something sacred. He looked at me the way people look at something they feel sorry for.

“Vaelis Renn,” he said, loud enough that every single person in that courtyard turned to look. “Report to the Headmaster’s chamber at once.”

My stomach dropped before he even finished the sentence.

“You have been selected,” he said, “for Balanced Pairing.”

The courtyard went dead silent.

I didn’t know what those words meant. But I didn’t need to know the details to understand the one thing that mattered, every single face around me, every student who had just been laughing, whispering, mocking me, had gone completely, utterly pale.

Like I’d just been handed a death sentence…