Stars stain the dark velvet carpet of night. He keeps his eyes trained on their scattered brightness, and when I look over, I see that his eyes shine with the same light.

              “Are you alright?” he asks. We’re sitting in the overgrown field behind the castle. I twirl long stems of grass between my fingers.

              “Yeah,” I answer automatically.

              He must sense the lie because he turns and looks at me. I drop my gaze to my hands, twisting a dandelion stem.

              “Aurie.” His voice is warm and familiar.

              He’s the only one who calls me Aurie. To everyone else, I’m Leah, an easy-to-pronounce truncation of my real name, Aurelia. Gold. Or, in the old language, fire. But the nickname sounds nice when he says it—it always has. Despite everything, it makes me smile a little.

              “What’s going on?” he asks.

              And I’m just so scared, and angry, that I tell him the truth. I know what will happen. But I’m tired of lying. And he would see through me, anyways. So, I let the emotions wash over me.

              “I can’t control it,” I whisper hoarsely. “I feel like I don’t know myself anymore, and I’m—I’m terrified.”

              The inevitable spitfire of anger and frustration blazes inside of me. I clench my hands into fists and dig my nails into my palms, but my efforts are to no avail.

              A spark. A flicker. A flame.

              And then fire, dancing in my palm. Twirling around my fingers, like the long forgotten dandelion stem, but with a mind of its own. This is uncontrolled.

              This is dangerous.

              He flinches, and I feel worse. But then he puts his hand over mine, and his cool, controlled touch extinguishes the flames. He’s always been able to extinguish my flames.

              “I know.” His grey eyes reflect stars at me. He says nothing else.

              It is a long time before I speak again. When I do, my voice is weak, breaking.

              “You know what scares me the most? That I—that I can’t be—that I’m too far gone,” I tell him bitterly, thinking about last night.

              1:00 AM. Tears tracking down my face while everything went up in flames.

              I shelve the memory with the all the other fires I couldn’t put out.

              “I’m gone,” I repeat.

              I don’t realize that I’m crying until his cold fingers graze my cheek, wiping away a hot, salty tear. His hand slips into mine, and his grip is tight. It grounds me.

              “You’re not gone,” he tells me. The stars in his eyes burn like he has never believed anything so strongly. “You’re here. Right here.”

              I desperately want to believe that he’s right.