25. Max
MAX
T he grand library stood at the eastern end of the fortress. I’d wanted to visit it ever since I first spotted its peaked roof from the track. In my mind, I walked through its doors on a quiet afternoon, running my fingers along rows of books, filling in a decade of stolen education.
This wasn’t how I’d pictured it.
The building rose in three stories of pale stone.
Its facade was carved with the merged sigil of the Zodiac Covenant—the four houses of Leo, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Aries intertwined in a circle of gold and silver.
Wide marble stairs swept up from the courtyard to a pair of twenty-foot-tall double doors. They stood open.
Between those open doors, dragon fire burned. Steady. Patient. Malice made visible.
The flames filled the entire doorframe, floor to lintel, edge to edge. A wall of amber laced with threads of blue-white magic. The heat reached the bottom of the stairs. The air above the entrance shimmered .
The four heirs stood at the top of the stairs, two on either side of the flaming doorway. They wore full dress uniform in the colors of their houses.
Nikolai wore a high-collared military coat in oxblood, the color of House Sagittarius.
Dark slacks, polished black boots, a belt with a gold clasp.
On him, the uniform looked less like regulation and more like a warning.
His gaze swept the assembled cadets with detached assessment before it landed on me.
Heat flashed through me. I remembered what we’d done in his penthouse. His wicked tongue. The pleasure I never thought possible.
Drakken stood in Leo’s dark charcoal. He radiated the particular menace of a man who had designed this trial and intended to see it through.
Aelindor wore silver, House Virgo. He stood with the stillness of a blade in its sheath. Always graceful. Always lethal.
Caspian wore storm blue, House Aries. The coat was fitted to his broad-chested, combat-ready frame. Structured enough to hold its shape, flexible enough to shift in. He was the most easygoing among the four. But today, his ease seemed stretched thin over sharp edges.
Thousands of cadets packed the courtyard below the stairs.
First-years in standard fatigues: gray and slate-blue, no insignia.
A blank slate that said you hadn’t earned anything yet.
Behind us, the second-years stood in formation in their silver and steel-blue—the visible step up, the color of survival.
They’d made it through Drakken’s first year and come back.
They were here to watch the first-years go through the Sorting.
Every face in the courtyard was turned toward the fire. Thrill. Fear. Anxiety. The air tasted of heat and magic.
The first group filed forward, shoulder to shoulder. They climbed the marble stairs and walked into the flaming doorway.
The fire parted for them. It split down the middle like a curtain drawn by invisible hands. The flames pulled back to either side, and the cadets walked through untouched. Not a hair singed. Not a thread of their fatigues scorched. They passed into the library, and the fire closed behind them.
Cheers erupted from the courtyard. Loyal soldiers. Loyal to the bone.
The second group climbed the stairs. One hundred cadets, moving in tight formation, faces set.
The fire parted again. Bodies flowed through. Then, midway through the group, the flames surged.
A male cadet at the center of the column didn’t make it half a step past the threshold.
The fire closed around him like a fist. He screamed, a raw, animal sound that lasted less than a second.
The flames turned white-hot. The man was gone.
No body. No collapse. Just a column of white fire that flared and subsided, leaving a scatter of ash that lifted on the updraft and drifted into the afternoon sky.
His uniform burned with him. Nothing remained.
The cadets on either side of where he’d stood stumbled sideways. The lines behind them buckled. Cadets pressed backward, boots scraping stone.
“Hold formation!” one of Drakken’s senior commanders barked from the base of the stairs. “Keep moving forward!”
They moved. Bryn was in that group. My palms went clammy.
Please don’t let her die. Let her through. Let her through.
I watched her pass through the parted flames, her chin high. She made it. I exhaled. My fists unclenched.
The third group passed clean. The fourth did not. Two cadets were burned in rapid succession. The twin flares of dragon fire turned white, so close together that the screams overlapped. The courtyard went silent. The smell of ozone hung thick.
At the front of the fifth group, a female cadet broke from the waiting ranks and ran. She bolted down the stairs, shoving through the cadets behind her, sprinting for the far end of the courtyard.
“Seize her!”
She didn’t make it ten yards.
The sixth, then seventh…then tenth group passed clean. They walked through the parted fire and into the library.
Then it was the last group. My group.
One by one, the cadets ahead of me climbed the stairs and passed through. The fire parted. They walked. They lived. Cheers followed them.
The line shrank. Twenty ahead of me. Ten. Five.
Then it was my turn.
I was second from last. Behind me, Thane waited to conclude the trial. He’d been promoted recently. No one doubted his loyalty. He’d go last as a show of confidence.
I stood in front of the double doors, staring up at the wall of fire.
The heirs’ gazes stayed with me.
Caspian’s green eyes burned between faith and fear. His jaw was tight. His fingers twitched—the reflex of a man restraining himself from reaching out.
Nikolai stood rigid, his crimson eyes fixed on me with an intensity that bordered on violence. Not aimed at me. Aimed at the fire. At what it might do to me.
Aelindor’s impossible blue gaze held mine. Steady. Certain. But I could see the subtle tension in his shoulders.
Drakken stared at me. His gray eyes held the familiar loathing.
But beneath it, conflict and doubt churned with something else.
Regret? He’d called for this trial. Set the fire.
And now, watching me approach, the dragon prince looked like a man who’d lit a fuse and wasn’t sure he wanted to see what it reached.
Every officer’s eyes fell on me. The warlock their general had singled out, humiliated, punished. From the hawkish looks on their faces, they expected the fire to solve their problem.
Show them what you are. What we are, the demon sneered at the hostility radiating from behind the curtain of flame. We’re superior in every way.
The creature always had a flair for drama and delusions of grandeur. Right now, it was the last thing I needed to deal with. My palms were cold and damp. My heart hammered against my ribs. My eyes darted between the fire and the heirs.
I hated the White Witch. She’d enslaved my people. Worked my parents to death in her mine. My loyalty was to any enemy of hers. I’d never betray the Zodiac Covenant. I’d never betray Aelindor, Nikolai, or Caspian.
But I didn’t extend that loyalty to Drakken. He hadn’t earned it. The fire was his—his dragon’s—and the spells woven through it could read intent. What if it sensed my grudge? What if the dragon burned me for pettiness? I’d known from the beginning that Drakken wanted to get rid of me.
“Get moving, cadet!” one of Drakken’s aides barked from the top of the stairs. “We don’t have all day.”
I hadn’t realized I’d frozen while I studied the fire, its intense heat on my skin. But I wasn’t holding the line. There was only Cadet Sergeant Thane behind me.
“Give the private a moment,” Nikolai growled. Caspian turned a look on the aide that could’ve peeled paint off a wall. “This isn’t a fish market. Stand down.”
Drawing a breath, I squared my shoulders, lifted my chin, and stepped into the fire.
Stop grinding your teeth like you’re constipated, the demon commanded. Not even holy fire can burn us.
That just confirmed my theory. The creature in me was unholy.
The dragon fire closed around me. It did not part.
For every cadet before me—the loyal ones—the flames had split open like a curtain, letting them through clean.
For me, the fire only thickened. It pressed in from every side, a wall of amber that shrank around my body like a living cage.
I pushed forward. The magic in the flames shoved back, holding me in the center of the blaze.
Heat seared my skin. I swallowed a scream.
The Sorting was meant for me. It was Drakken’s sinister plot, and I’d walked into it like a fool.
Rage threaded through my fear. I couldn’t die here. Missy was waiting for me. I’d promised to return for her, to give her a better life—a life of freedom and no hunger.
I tried to summon the force that had blasted Slade and his men across the barracks. I reached for it. The wind, the shockwave, the demon’s power.
Nothing came.
Yet the fire didn’t burn me either. It held me, pressed against my skin. Hot enough to make me gasp, but not enough to char. My heart kicked in confusion at its tease—or taunt.
The flames licked along my arms, my neck. Probing, testing. And it was playful.
What the fuck?
The dragon plans to give you a proper bath, the demon chortled.
I heard murmurs rise outside the fire. Collective gasps. The assembly had noticed me being stuck in the flames while everyone else had walked through in seconds.
“What the fuck did you do, Drakken?” Caspian shouted in alarm. “Why is the fire acting like this?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Drakken snapped.
“Release your dragon fire, Drakken.” Nikolai’s voice was soft and dangerous.
“It’s not up to me now.” Drakken’s voice was hard, but I detected confusion in it. “It’s the same fire for everyone. Are you fucking doubting my honor?”
“I don’t give a shit about fucking honor!” Nikolai said. “I want Max alive!”
“The warlock will either pass or he won’t,” Drakken grated. “We agreed on this. His fate lies with his true allegiance.”
Quit it, I commanded the fire. Stop playing and let me pass.
You’re making me look bad! Dragon, if you can hear me—since this is your fire—listen.
I have a little sister I need to go back for.
She’s six and a half years old. Her name is Missy, but I call her little viper.
I’m all she has. If you burn me, I swear I’ll come back to haunt you until you regret the day you hatched.
Did I get it wrong technically? How did the dragon come to be? Did it bond with Drakken at some point? Or was he born a dragon shifter?
I shoved forward with everything I had.
The flames peeled away from the doorframe, abandoning their post and following me. They wrapped around my body like flaming armor as I stumbled through the threshold and into the library.
I crossed into the vast marble hall like a fucking human torch.
The first-years packed inside the library let out alarmed shouts and scrambled backward. The front row shoved into the rows behind them, putting distance between themselves and the burning cadet staggering toward them, trembling hands reaching out.
Chairs toppled. Books slid from the shelves against the walls.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I screamed at the fire. “I’ll haunt you!”
It didn’t. Instead, the flames lifted me off the floor.
My boots left the ground. My stomach dropped as I rose—three feet, five, ten—suspended in the center of the library’s vaulted ceiling. The fire swirled around me in a slow spiral.
“Max!” Caspian’s voice, beneath me. All four heirs had charged through the empty doorway after me.
“Put out the fucking fire, Drakken!” Nikolai shouted.
“It’s out of my hands!” Drakken’s voice was raw. “It isn’t supposed to…Shit.”
I kicked my feet against nothing. Let me down!
The fire crackled, burning the uniform off my body.
The fatigues went first, disintegrating in strips that floated away as ash.
Then the shirt beneath. Then the chest-bind.
The fire consumed every thread carefully, precisely, leaving my skin untouched.
It suspended me in the air while my disguise turned to cinders and drifted down like black snow onto the marble floor of the grand library.
I’d be bare in front of thousands. The ultimate humiliation. Years of deception—my parents’ design, my survival, my identity—incinerated in seconds.
No. This isn’t fucking happening. Please!
Now I understood what Drakken had said about the Sorting. The trial of fire would reveal your true self .
My loyalty wasn’t in doubt. My true self was.
The flames lowered me, spinning me slowly for the show, for all to witness.
My bare feet touched cold marble. The fire unwound from my body in lazy ribbons—pulling away from my arms, my legs, my torso—until only three patches remained.
Three palm-sized flames that clung to my skin, burning without heat.
One over each breast. One between my thighs. A bikini made of dancing dragon fire.
I stood in front of the assembly. Naked. Exposed. And unmistakably a woman.
My horrified, humiliated gaze found the heirs.
They stared back at me.
Caspian’s jaw dropped, burning heat in his green gaze. Nikolai’s eyes were blown wide—not with hunger this time, but shock and unbridled lust. Aelindor’s cool mask slipped. Relief, longing, and adoration shifted like a storm in his deep blue eyes.
Drakken stared at me as if the floor had opened beneath his feet and he was still falling. His massive frame was rigid. His lips parted.
“He walks in shadow, she in flame,” Nikolai whispered in awe. “It fits, Aelindor.”
I had no idea what the vampire prince meant. But there was a glint of tears in the Fae prince’s eyes before it vanished like mist, as if it had never happened.
Then my hair started to grow. It flowed down my shoulders.
The color is still the deepest midnight blue, the demon informed me. But all the gold is gone. Replaced by a splash of glowing white .
They said one of the White Witch’s distinguishing traits was her glowing white hair.
Shit.
The dragon prince’s gaze homed in on my hair. The White Witch’s spawn. He’d say it. Even though I’d walked through his fire and lived.