Chapter 33 Shielding the Fire
SHIELDING THE FIRE
Aplume of vapor surged from the spring’s surface and into the cool morning air. The roar of the crowd faltered, caught in the throats of thousands, until an unnatural hush fell over the Grand Arena.
She was on fire.
Not metaphorically.
Flames curled from her hair, danced over her shoulders, wound down her arms to lick the water still dripping from her skin.
They burned white-gold, the color of lightning behind closed eyes, shimmering through the rising steam.
Her skin was unmarked, her breath steady.
This was not the wild, uncontrolled blaze she’d feared for years.
This was all her. Ella’s Orchid magic was wholly her own again.
Realization hit all at once. She was naked before them—bare to thousands—the fire crowning every inch of her. A jolt of vulnerability shot through her, instinct sending her toward Jakobav’s arms, toward shelter, the flames exposing her in ways nakedness never could.
He caught her without hesitation, hauling her tight against him. The wet heat of her body met the slick coolness of his skin, steadying, comforting, and she forgot about the arena’s crowd.
Jakobav had risen from the final phase alive, power singing against hers like steel meeting steel.
The flames answered her need, flaring higher, and she pressed closer without meaning to.
The answering pressure of his body met hers, sensual and slow enough to make her breath catch.
His arm tightened around her, a low sound catching in his throat that was part growl and part claim, holding her as though clinging to a victory the entire kingdom now witnessed.
She realized he wasn’t burning.
The flames spilled over his shoulders, curling down his arms, but left no mark. An unseen power shimmered in the air around him, bending the heat away from his flesh without breaking their hold on each other.
Her breath caught as the flames climbed higher across her bare skin, bright and wild.
“My fire,” she whispered, hardly daring to believe it, though she could still feel the ghost-touch of the golden strands that had tried to drag her underwater.
She’d evaded their grasp, but she couldn’t shake the thought that there’d be a cost for her power restored outside Orchid soil.
She said none of it aloud. Instead, she lifted her gaze to him and confessed, quiet and certain, “The sacred water brought it back. It Claimed me.”
She watched her flames roll against his skin but leave him untouched, unease sparking in her chest with a fleeting thought. Was her fire broken?
The look on her face must’ve told him what she didn’t say.
He spoke low and steady, his voice carrying the weight of absolute truth. “You will not burn me,” he said. “Not anymore.”
Ella blinked at him in disbelief. “What do you mean, not anymore? And—” Her eyes narrowed as she whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to announce who I am?”
His jaw flexed. “It wasn’t exactly planned.”
“Nothing with you ever is,” she countered, though her voice trembled with the shifting weight of the moment. “So what happens now? Jakobav, what—”
“I’ll explain everything,” he said, low but urgent, leaning in until she could feel the warning in his voice. “But your safety hinges on what happens next. Do exactly as I say.”
High above, the High Vexari had started to draw the crowd’s gaze, staff in hand, her inked face darkening. Her eyes followed every ember unfurling from Ella’s skin to Jakobav’s, and in their black depths, calculation gleamed with something deeper than ritual.
Movement at the edge of the spring pulled Ella’s focus. Attendants surged forward with arms full of heavy ceremonial robes, hurrying toward the steps, reaching out as if to drape the fabric over both of them.
But the flames hadn’t dimmed.
They swept down Ella’s arms in a sudden, eager flare, spilling outward.
Maeren stepped closer, her expression etched with something that twisted in Ella’s chest—concern and maybe shock. Gods. It had to have been triggering, watching them struggle beneath the water, unsure if they were drowning. Had she been reliving the nightmare of her brother’s Claiming?
What is Maeren feeling now?
Her pulse spiked, and with it, her power.
“Ella,” Jakobav said, voice low and urgent. “Could you rein it in, please?”
She tried. The fire answered by leaping higher.
Maeren lifted a hand, motioned the attendants back, positioning herself between them and Ella’s still-raging flame.
“Maeren, wait—” Ella’s cry tore out, panicked, protective.
Too late.
A tendril of fire snapped outward, curling toward Maeren as if it recognized her. The steel at her wrist caught the light a heartbeat before the flame raced higher toward bare skin.
Maeren shouted, reflexively raising her arms to block it.
But before the fire could land, Jakobav moved with unnatural speed, his arm locking around Ella’s waist and twisting them both until he stood between Maeren and the strike.
The shimmer around him surged outward, snapping into a dome that flared bright enough to swallow Maeren from sight.
The flames slammed into it and broke, deflected harmlessly away.
The shield vanished as quickly as it had formed.
Maeren lowered her arm, flexing her reddened hand once, her eyes narrowing as she looked from Ella to Jakobav. “New trick?” she asked, the bite in her tone undercut by the faint tremor in her fingers.
Jakobav’s mouth curved, a note of intensity shaping his voice. “I learn quickly when it comes to protecting those I care about.”
Attendants approached again, this time with ceremonial robes of rich fabric layered with inked designs.
But the moment one brushed Ella’s arm, the cloth ignited with a hiss.
The attendant jerked back, dropping the robe before the flames could catch their hands, and it crumbled into blackened ash at their feet.
Gasps rippled through the closest rows of spectators.
Jakobav swore under his breath, steadying her as the flames around her surged upward. “Soren,” he commanded, jaw tight, “my chambers. Bring one of the garments I had Kalenya make for her—now.”
Soren vanished instantly, Earth-Vating into the stone like a shadow swallowed whole.
Another attendant stepped forward with a robe for Jakobav, but he shook his head once.
Thank the gods. He isn’t leaving me uncovered alone.
The crowd erupted, their voices surging all at once into chaos—cheers, boots hammering against stone. The High Vexari’s voice cut through the noise, cracking like a whip, summoning guards, attendants, and ceremonial stewards with commands that echoed across the arena.
The eruption swelled, deafening, but then faltered, thinning into uneasy murmurs as the crowd seemed to sense a shift.
The arena fell silent as mist drifted thicker across the floor, and beneath it, a presence twisted like a shadow taking shape.
The High Vexari was no longer above them.
She was at the water’s edge, robes whispering against stone, her inked face foreboding in its calm, unreadable expression.
In three soundless strides, she was face to face with them, staff lifted high. With a crack, she drove it into the stone right beside them, leaving it upright and quivering as if rooted there by the realm itself.
She reached for their hands, cutting through Ella’s fire without hesitation, seizing their wrists at once. Ella’s flames, shrunk back at the touch but still kissed her flesh, reddening her fingers.
“Show me,” she hissed.
Her grip was iron, turning their palms up in the same swift motion, exposing skin to light.
The High Vexari didn’t flinch, nor did she loosen her hold as her gaze darted between their upturned wrists.
The steam gathered on her lashes as her face changed from disbelief to fury.
A vein rose at her temple like a cord drawn tight.
“What have you done, Prince?” she asked, almost a whisper.
Ella looked down and saw it only because the Vexari made her see. A small black rose had bloomed on the inside of her wrist, ink dark as midnight, seemingly carved into the skin. Jakobav bore its twin, and the sight of it tilted her world.
It sat exactly where his teeth had closed over her, where his mouth filled with her blood beneath the water. The skin around the rose was raised and hot, as if it had been branded.
Sweat broke along her spine. Her knees almost slipped on the stone.
The High Vexari didn’t look at her. She held both wrists like evidence and fixed Jakobav with a gaze that could have split rock.
She’d never seen someone so terrifying in ceremonial robes.
“We have kept outsiders from the sacred waters for five centuries,” she said, voice deepening as the cathedral’s weight gathered behind it. “This is why. An outsider has been Claimed, Jakobav.”
The name struck like a verdict. She released his wrist last, almost with contempt, and her voice rose, cold as iron.
“Two souls should never be Claimed at once. You have broken a law older than your line. You have contaminated the sacred spring.” She turned to look at Ella. “And both of you will pay for this.”
Ella shuddered, and her flames guttered out at once.
Jakobav adjusted his shoulders, fury leaching from his posture, and his expression was that of a man who would not yield. “Enough,” he said, quiet and dangerous. “Mind your place.”
She leaned in so close Ella could taste pear and juniper and the scorched-skin scent of her burned hand.
“All of Orchid will pay for this,” she murmured. “If they accept you at all. Unlike your kingdom’s fickle ink, this mark will never fade. The rose endures. You are bound to it forever…and to all the spring poured into you.”
Jakobav stepped between them, the movement so familiar it felt inevitable. “That is enough,” he said, and this time, the command carried the room.
He took Ella’s hand from her tight grasp and turned, drawing her away, and the inner circle closed around them like a shield.