Page 222 of House Ignis

Except the echo that slammed back into me wasn't the one I expected. It was steady.

Fierce. Unyieldingly protective.

It rattled me to my core. My knees faltered, my chest seizing as something inside me pulled in the wrong direction, tugging at a cord I hadn't known existed.

I stumbled, clutching at the ache in my ribs.

Ezra was already there, his shadows curling low around his boots. His jaw flexed, his orange eyes searching mine.

“Let’s stop. You're flagging.”

“No.” My voice snapped sharper than my fire. “Again.”

“Ava—”

“Again!” I shouted, flames bursting hotter, desperate and wild.

Ezra’s mouth tightened into a grim line, but he stepped back into his stance.

Shadows swirled at his fists—perfectly controlled where mine were pure, unadulterated chaos.

I launched at him again, fire slashing through the air in blazing arcs that hissed against the morning mist.

My lungs burned.

My skin felt like it was blistering from the inside out. But I didn’t care.

All I saw behind my eyelids were silver eyes. A wicked, shadow-drenched grin. Shadows gone feral on a blood-stained field.

Jeremy on his knees.

Blood pouring into the dirt. And me—too late to stop any of it.

The memory broke something loose inside me, a dam finally giving way.

I screamed as I hurled a massive wave of flame, the sound ripping from my throat, raw and ugly.

Ezra blocked and countered, his shadows wrapping around the fire and smothering it before it could bite.

He moved with a measured precision, each strike calculated to disarm rather than hurt.

Where he was a mountain, I was a landslide. Wild. Desperate. Tearing myself apart from the inside out just to feel something other than the silence.

“Again!” I gasped, stumbling back to my feet, the fire eating through my reserves.

His jaw clenched, his eyes tracking the frantic rise and fall of my chest. He didn't move.

He just watched me, a wall of sunset and shadow that refused to let me break myself against him.

“Ava—”

“I said AGAIN!”

I lunged, desperate to lose myself in the heat, to drown out the silence with the roar of my own power. Fire tore from my hands in a jagged, blinding arc—

But my knees buckled.

The blast went wide, scorching the damp earth and sending up a cloud of bitter steam.