Page 82 of Crowned By Roses

Heat explodes in my chest. My instinct is to step back, throw my armor off lest I burn alive within it, but I fight the urge. Let it flow. I see the fire running within me the way heated metal rolls into a mold. With a deep breath, I concentrate that feeling on the palm of my hand.

A flame appears, flickering with pink sparks.

Dayton rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck. Then with a confident grin, he yells, “The flame of Summer!” A turquoise light flashes in his palm, filling the air with the smell of seawater. Embers flick off it, looking like the spray of a tide.

“The flame of Autumn!” Farron calls, and a brilliant orange light bursts to life in his hand.

Kel stretches his fingers. “The flame of Winter!” Blue fire, reminiscent of his eyes, sizzles across his palm. A chill creeps into me as Kel’s flame creates twinkles of starlight over our skin.

Our eyes turn to Caspian. For so long, I deemed his magic unnatural. Evil. But now I know it is not the magic itself but the wielder. And without Caspian, we will never light this forge.

“Flame of the Below,” he says, and that phantasmal green light streaks up. But instead of devouring, the flame seems to hover above ours, strong and protective.

Rosalina’s eyes reflect the five flames of her mates. Her fingers curl delicately, but she says in a voice rich with command, “The flame of the Queen’s Realm.”

Not the Briar. But its first name. The Queen’s Realm. The home of Castletree. A name it may one day reclaim.

A white flame flecked with gold bursts to life on her palm, luminous and graceful, the edges curling like petals. The magic radiating from it bathes me in its warmth. She has held nothing back, offering herself fully, completely. But what else to expect of Rosalina?

Six flames now burn between us. But there are seven realms.

Wrenley’s hand trembles in the circle. Her eyes are wide, the flames making her pupils appear to shift in size. She staggers backward. “I–I can’t…”

“You are the daughter of Queen Aurelia,” Rosalina says. Her words are calm, and yet they seem to clamp around Wrenley like a vice. “This realm is your birthright. Claim it and reclaim your magic!”

“I don’t know this place,” Wrenley hisses.

I breathe deeply, trying to hold the link to my flame. “Your heart remembers this land. There is ancestral memory within you.” I seize her gaze. “Why was Kairyn obsessed with the Above? Because he felt a connection here. He felt it through you.”

Her lower lip trembles—then stops. Her brow furrows, and her blue eyes shoot to her palm. I can practically feel the tensing of her muscles.

“Flame…of the Above!” she shouts.

Black fire explodes on her hand, flicking with every color of our flames: pink and turquoise and orange and blue and gold. No longer does it remind me of an oil slick; this fire is the night sky, the cosmos hanging within.

“The hearth!” I roar.

We move as one. Our flames intermingle, and I feel the excitement in Dayton and the determination from Kel. There’s fascination in Farron, strength in Caspian, and fear in Wrenley. But in Rosalina, there is gleaming, glittering hope.