CHAPTER TEN

One week in, and I had already set fire to two textbooks. I flooded a bathroom—again, a completely different bathroom this time—and caused a small tremor during Control Dynamics that made three students grab the walls like the floor had suddenly betrayed them. Yesterday at lunch, I accidentally summoned a wind column that lifted trays, cups, and someone’s carefully stacked pancakes into the air and scattered them across a twelve-foot radius. Professor Elijah called it “an energetic redistribution event.” I called it mortifying. By any normal standard, I was a disaster.

The embarrassing part was that I was also improving. Not dramatically, not in any way that would make a motivational speech sound convincing, but the progress existed. Sometimes a flame stayed steady longer than a minute. Sometimes the water in the practice basin stopped trembling when I told it to. Professor Elijah documented everything with the same clinical focus he used for earthquakes and rainfall patterns. No praise, no criticism, just careful notes in his leather notebook. Oddly enough, that made me want to do better more than encouragement ever had.

“Forty-three seconds today,” he said one morning during Control Dynamics as the flame in my palm finally flickered out. His pen scratched quietly across the page. “That’s seven seconds longer than Tuesday.” He closed the notebook with a soft snap and looked at me over the rim of his glasses. “Progress.” Then he stepped aside like he had simply announced the weather and moved on to the next student.

My life at the academy had settled into three distinct gravitational pulls. Blaze appeared the most visibly, usually during outdoor training or meals and occasionally in the evening when the courtyard grew quiet. He never arrived with any ceremony, just dropped into the space beside me like he had always been planning to be there. The thing that had happened between us existed in a quiet way—acknowledged, but never turned into a conversation. Blaze treated it like a fact rather than a dramatic event, which somehow made it easier to breathe around him.

Raven operated differently. He appeared at the edges of situations, observing more than participating, his emotional resonance apparently cataloging everything I felt whether I liked it or not. Sometimes he would say something precise and oddly insightful, then vanish back into his controlled silence before anyone could ask a follow-up question. It was unsettling how accurately he could read me without making it seem like an intrusion. There were moments when I suspected he knew my reactions before I did.

Lucian, meanwhile, had developed the habit of leaving things behind. Not conversations, not explanations—just objects that appeared in places I was guaranteed to notice. A book once appeared on my desk with a single paragraph marked neatly in the margin. Another day I found a folded note tucked into my Control Dynamics notebook. It contained only one sentence written in careful handwriting.

‘The elements respond to your certainty more than your calm. Consider the difference.’

I spent the rest of that day thinking about it.

The strange part was how the air shifted whenever two of them occupied the same space. Blaze and Raven together caused subtle temperature swings that had nothing to do with my control issues. The air around them warmed and cooled like it couldn’t decide which element wanted dominance. Neither man acknowledged it, but the tension hovered between them like an unspoken argument. If Lucian entered the room while Raven was already there, Raven’s posture changed almost imperceptibly. His emotional resonance must have picked up something Lucian kept completely hidden on his face.

Whatever history existed between the three of them was old and complicated. I could feel it every time they crossed paths, like stepping into the middle of a conversation that had been happening for years. The uncomfortable realization was that I had somehow become the center of that invisible triangle.

Imara explained part of it to me during lunch one afternoon. She leaned across the table, lowering her voice like the academy walls had ears. “Blackwood’s pack was destroyed during the last Prime collapse,” she said. “They were the ones trying to contain it.” I blinked at her. “Wait—Raven’s pack?”

She nodded once. “Dragonheart’s clan is a different story. Dragons were designed to bond with Primes, but his family spent generations waiting for one to awaken and nothing ever happened.” She pointed her fork at me. “Until now.” I stared at my tray, trying to process that level of expectation.

“And Lucian?” I asked.

Imara’s expression shifted into something thoughtful. “Ashworth bloodlines are cursed,” she said simply. “They’re drawn to Primes whether they want to be or not.” She leaned back in her chair. “So all three of them have complicated reasons to orbit you.”

I rubbed my temples. “Is that supposed to make me feel better or worse?”

“It’s supposed to make you informed,” she replied. “Better or worse is your business.”

The academy courtyard looked peaceful most afternoons. Students crossed the stone paths carrying books or arguing about assignments, the fountain in the center sending steady arcs of water into the air. During a free period later that week, I sat on the low wall nearby and watched people pass by while pretending to read my notes. A couple walked through the courtyard laughing quietly at something only they understood. The girl leaned toward the boy while he whispered something in her ear.

The posture was identical to the one Emma and Jake used to share in the alcove near the library.

The memory hit like a sudden shove. Before I could stop it, the fountain behind me surged upward in a violent column of water that shot fifteen feet into the air. Three students standing nearby got drenched instantly, their notes and bags soaked in seconds.

“Oh my god,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “I’m so sorry.”

They stared at me like I had personally declared war on their afternoon.

“I didn’t mean— I mean I did mean it, just not—” I stopped talking and apologized again. And again. And once more for good measure.

That night I sat on the edge of my bed staring at my phone. The screen glowed faintly in the dark room, stubbornly displaying the same empty signal icon it had shown since the day I arrived. No service in this dimension, no way to call anyone from my old life. The academy used its own communication systems that apparently didn’t translate to human networks. I turned the phone over in my hands, wondering what Emma and Jake were doing back home.

Then I remembered the fountain and laughed softly at myself.

Blaze found me on the mountain ledge outside the main hall sometime later that evening. I had slipped out there because the air was colder and quieter than inside the building. The stone wall behind me held the last warmth from the day, and the valley below stretched into darkness under a sky full of quiet stars.

Blaze approached without making a big deal about it. He sat beside me like the spot had been reserved for him all along. For a few minutes he didn’t say anything, just leaned back against the stone and watched the valley.

“You look like you’re thinking too loudly,” he said eventually.

“That’s unfortunately accurate.”

He didn’t ask what about.

I appreciated that.

The silence stretched comfortably between us. The air around him held a faint warmth that made the mountain wind less sharp. After a while, my shoulder drifted against his almost without permission.

Blaze didn’t move away.

Instead, he shifted slightly so the contact felt natural rather than accidental.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

“Define okay.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Still breathing. Still not leveling the academy.”

“Barely meeting the criteria.”

The warmth around us stabilized, steady and calm like a quiet fire burning somewhere nearby.

At some point I must have dozed off.

The dream slipped in without the usual falling sensation. One moment I was on the ledge, the next I stood in the middle of a wide field under a sickly yellow-green sky. The air felt heavy and still, like the moment before a thunderstorm breaks.

The girl stood in the center of the field with her back to me.

This time she turned.

Her face was my face, but older somehow, carved with a kind of exhaustion that made my chest ache. Her eyes were enormous and silver, reflecting a grief so deep it almost looked physical.

“They’re going to try to use you,” she said quietly. Her voice sounded like the last rumble of thunder before rain. “The way they used me.”

I tried to speak but the words stuck in my throat.

“The difference,” she continued, “is that you have something I didn’t.”

“What?” I finally managed.

Her gaze shifted past me.

Not behind me exactly—more like she was looking through the darkness where the ledge should have been. Her eyes paused on Blaze sleeping against the stone wall beside me.

Then they moved to two other empty spaces further out in the dark.

“Don’t let them separate you from them,” she said.

I jerked awake.

Blaze’s eyes opened instantly beside me, his body already shifting upright. One hand lifted slightly, a small glow of contained fire flickering in his palm.

“What happened?” he asked.

My breathing slowed as I looked down at my hands.

Fire curled softly around my fingers. Water glimmered like liquid light between my palms. A thread of wind spiraled through them while a faint vibration of earth hummed beneath my skin.

All four elements moved together.

Slow.

Controlled.

Like breathing.

For the first time since I arrived at the academy, they weren’t fighting each other. They were working in perfect, quiet harmony.