The heat roared like a living thing.
Caelin Mor staggered through the smoke-clogged corridor of the royal library, one arm shielding her face, the other cradling a crumbling stack of manuscripts against her chest. The fire had spread faster than it should have. Magic? Sabotage? She didn't know. Didn't care. Not yet.
All she saw were names—forgotten ones—melting off ancient bindings and tumbling into flame.
"Dammit," she hissed, swatting at a falling ember. Her sleeve caught a spark and she beat it out with a frantic slap, coughing as ash clung to her mouth and hair.
Behind her, a great marble column groaned.
The ceiling would go next.
And still, she stayed.
She dropped to her knees before a splintering shelf and pried free a half-burnt volume. Its cover bore the old rune—the eye within the flame. She gasped, blinking through smoke. A book of pre-Oath origins. Forbidden.
She ran her gloved fingers along its edge, then reached—
A crash.
She didn't have time to scream before someone tackled her from behind, sending them both tumbling across the scorched floor. Her books flew in every direction, pages curling midair like dying birds.
"What in every flaming hell are you doing?" a voice growled.
She kicked at him instinctively, but the man was already hauling her to her feet.
"Let go of me!" she choked. "Those were—"
"Kindling," he snapped. "All of them."
She spun on him. He was tall, armored, face smudged with soot and fury. "You absolute brute. Those texts were irreplaceable!"
"They were on fire."
"Do you think enlightenment burns?" she spat. "Knowledge isn't measured in temperature!"
"You're going to be measured for a coffin if you keep running toward collapsing ceilings."
She coughed, doubling over. The air thickened. Another groan rumbled overhead.
He pulled her up again. This time, not gently. "We're leaving."
"I'm not done—"
"You are now."
He threw her over his shoulder.
"You can't just—!"
"I can. And I will."
They burst out of the collapsing archway just as it gave way behind them. Flames spilled in their wake, hungrily devouring everything Caelin had fought to preserve.
He set her down roughly in the palace garden, where the ash fell like snow.
She shoved him away and staggered back, fuming.
"You don't get to touch me. I had it under control."
"You were five seconds from being crushed to death by a burning thesis on dead languages."
"It was a commentary on pre-Oath dialect structure!"
"Exactly."
She narrowed her eyes. "I can't decide if you're illiterate or just proud of being ignorant."
He didn't smile. Didn't blink. Just crossed his arms and looked down at her with absolute, unbearable calm.
"My orders were to find the idiot in the fire and get her out. I've done my part."
"Then go."
"Can't."
"Why not?"
"Because I've just been reassigned."
She blinked.
He nodded toward the gate. "Congratulations, Scholar Mor. I'm your new guard."
She stared at him. "No."
"Oh, very much yes."
The ash always settled slowest in the Queen's Garden.
Caelin knelt beside a scorched marble bench, her gloves still blackened with soot. Charred roses crumbled under her boots, their petals burned to delicate husks. The fire had been "contained," they said. "An accident."
But accidents didn't start in royal libraries. And they didn't leave coded symbols etched in blood beneath the floorboards.
She pulled a half-burned book tighter to her chest, her heart thudding. One fragment had survived:
When love and fire meet—bind or break.
Footsteps crunched behind her.
"I thought I told you to go," she said coldly.
"You did," Aren replied. "The Queen disagreed."
She turned to face him fully now, brushing soot from her coat.
He stood in worn armor, leaning lazily against the wrought-iron gate. His tone was casual, but there was steel under it. The kind honed on battlefields, not in libraries.
"I don't need a babysitter."
He shrugged. "Good. I'm not one. But it seems I was assigned to you just in time, as I was on may way to introduce myself only to find I was already on the job."
She narrowed her eyes. "Don't you have a war to return to?"
"I'm told I've already seen too many."
"You're insufferable."
"And you're combustible."
They glared at each other across the ash-littered garden.
In the upper chamber of the Ivory Citadel, Queen Elaris stood at the window, watching the smoke drift beyond the hills.
"Both of them?" her steward asked.
She nodded. "He saved her. She'll resent that."
"And the reassignment?"
"They'll keep each other busy," the Queen said softly. "Or get themselves killed. Either way…"
She turned from the window, her gaze settling on the binding rune etched into her palm.
"…the Oath remains intact."