Page 52 of A Lady’s Guide to Fae Kings

For now, right now, she would learn how to not set herself on fire.

Theoretically.

She knew magic as well as any witch, the science behind it and the mystery. She had tried countless exercises gleaned from countless books, from memoirs and instruction manuals to random poetry written in the thirteenth century. Anything at all that might prove useful. But regrettably, none of it had.

She had not yet tried the devilish exercises created by one Professor Lachlan J. Thorn, King of the Owl Court.

Mostly because she was not sure they could be survived more than once.

He was relentless, patient, sharp-eyed. Nothing deterred him, not the way she huffed curses at him or the stones burning under his feet. He only had the same reply as she floundered, rallied, tried once more:

“Again.”

She calmed her breathing, as instructed. She felt the spark inside her chest, the answering scorch under her fingertips, the air growing warm in the back of her throat. The building of it, the whip of fear that she would lose control of it. That someone would be hurt. Books would burn. She would burn. Her moth fluttered frantically.

She was a volcano when she wanted to be a candle.

“Again.”

She took another deep breath, and another.

She burned the top stone on the small cairn in the field, without burning the others.

She melted the cork of an empty bottle of dandelion wine.

And then she exploded the bottle.

“You’ve spent too long trying to smother the fire. It’s like a hound finally free of the cage,” Lachlan said. “Open the door gently and then let go.”

Heat rolled through her. She clenched her teeth against the shocks of pain, the waves of nausea. Every muscle ached. Her skin felt too hot and too tight. The pond water turned warm as bathwater, then kettle water.

She thought she might hate Lachlan Thorn.

He nearly smiled. Exasperating, contradictory man.

“Again, Pippa.”

She sucked air into her burning lungs. She was full of smoke, made of ashes. “I can’t.” Her heart was a gray coal.

“One more, little wisp,” he murmured. “I know you can give me one more.”

Flustered by his tone, she very nearly burned his eyebrows right off his face.

She was mostly sorry about it.

Partly.

Not even a little.

Somewhere in the bushes, Hedgewort cheered.

Pippa spent the next few hours breaking icicles off various parts of the house and slipping them into her bodice and pressing them to the inside of her wrists. It helped some. Her fever did not swallow her whole. She had released enough fire, had paid enough attention to the caged hound, as Lachlan called it, that it retracted its teeth. Just a little. It still snarled, but it did not bite as deep. She was simply too depleted.

Hedgewort brought her ices flavored with violets and roses and mint in a small parlor with paper moths dangling from the ceiling. He provided tea and scones and salted toffee.

It was quite nice for the ominous prelude to her demise.

She decided to have another cup of tea. And another scone with clotted cream.