Page 132 of Silver Storm

“It means change is coming,” Constance interrupts my stream of thoughts. “The kind that reshapes worlds, topples kingdoms, and rewrites the laws of magic. The kind that requires champions willing to burn the old world to create the new, and to destroy those made from a darkness that shouldn’t exist.”

I shake my head, still not understanding.

There’s so much I want to know. But Logan told me to act clueless. To lean into the role ofgirl who knew nothing about the supernatural world before coming here and is terrible at using magic.

So, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

For now.

“Why did you pull me aside to tell me this?” I ask. “I’m a first-year who barely has any magic. I’m nobody.”

She studies me as if she thinks I have the answer to my own question. Which, fair.

“Return to your dormitory.” She straightens, dismissing me without giving me an answer. “Tell no one of this conversation. And Jade?”

I pause at the edge of the alcove.

“When the time comes—and it will come—remember that the gods chose their champions for a reason. Even if that reason ends in lightning and ash.”

With that, she’s gone in a burst of flames, leaving me standing alone in her fiery wake, wondering what in the fresh hell type of craziness I got sucked into.

These past few hours changed everything in ways I haven’t had time to process yet.

All I know is that tomorrow, I’ll have to wake up and play the confused first-year who has no idea why Oliver Thorne and Professor Thaddeus are missing. I’ll have to comfort Evie while knowing I watched her brother die. I’ll have to look Avery in the eye and pretend I don’t know why her emberlink bond is shattered.

But tonight, I crawl into bed, close my eyes, and see the Unity Flame dying. A thousand-year-old tradition murdered by my hand. I see Oliver’s blood mixing with rain. I see the future rolling toward me like the storm I called into my hands—dark, terrible, and inevitable.

If everything I learned tonight is true, and Tempest chose me as her champion, then gods help us all.

Because I’m no savior. I’m the storm. And storms don’t save.

They destroy.