The fire inside her had changed.
Again.
Ivy lay still in the infirmary, the flame humming through her bones like a lullaby and a war drum at once.
The Fifth Flame had awakened.
And the academy no longer whispered about her behind closed doors—they knelt when she passed. The same elders who once wanted her banished now feared her in silence.
She wasn’t just the Flameborn Queen anymore.
She was something else.
Something new.
Kael sat at her bedside, his hand holding hers even as she slept.
He hadn’t left her side in two days.
Not since Ravencourt.
Not since Lucien nearly stole her soul.
Not since Ivy touched the altar and the Fifth Flame carved its mark into her spine.
When she finally woke, he was the first face she saw.
“Still here?” she whispered, voice hoarse.
“Always,” Ka
