VOLUME ONE: HEART OF TWO DRAGONS:[forbidden flames]

The fire was never supposed to hear me. Brindlemark’s solstice bonfire roared thirty feet high, and I stood at the edge like I always did — coppersmith’s daughter, quiet, keeping my hands busy with a half-finished cuff. Copper doesn’t burn. Copper doesn’t call back. That’s why I liked it. Then the flame bent. Not from wind. From me. A sound cracked through the air, low and ancient, like a mountain splitting its throat to speak. Only I heard it. Only I _felt_ it in my teeth, in the hollow behind my ribs where breath lives. “Lyra.” My name, spoken in fire. I dropped the cuff. The copper hissed when it hit the dirt. Around me, people cheered, drank, threw more wood on the pyre. No one else turned their head. “Lyra.” Again. Closer. The flames split down the middle. For one impossible second, I saw _eyes_ in the fire — not reflection, not illusion. Eyes like molten gold, slit-pupiled, ancient. And then the other half of the fire went cold. Ash-black. Smoke without heat. Eyes like the space between stars. Two voices, one word: “Mine.” I hit my knees. The bond snapped into place like a brand, twin lines of fire carving themselves across my chest — one searing, one freezing. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I could only feel them, both of them, inside me, claiming space they had no right to. The law was clear. The law was old. _No human shall bond to more than one dragon. The Forbidden Flames will burn the trespasser to ash._ I had just broken it. “Lyra!” Mara’s voice, distant, panicked. Hands on my shoulders. “Your skin—” I looked down. The cuff I’d been working was now fused to my palm, red-gold on one side, ash-black on the other. And between the two metals, my flesh glowed faintly, like embers under skin. The fire in the square dimmed. The gold eyes vanished. The ash eyes lingered one second longer. Then both were gone. But they weren’t gone from me. I felt him — _them_ — coiled behind my ribs. One hot, one cold. One claiming, one waiting. Both burning. “Mara,” I whispered, and my voice came out layered, like two voices speaking with mine. “I think I just got caught.”