CHAPTER FIVE: fire beneath the skin

Olivia didn't sleep that night.

Not even a minute.

She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling, the edges of her world unraveling one thread at a time. The painting bearing her name haunted her from the corner of the room. She'd tried to shove it back into the closet but it refused to stay hidden—something kept dragging her eyes back to it.

It was her signature.

Not similar. Not forged. Her exact handwriting.

But how could she have painted something two decades ago?

I was a baby. A newborn.

She tried to rationalise it. Maybe it was another Olivia Sinclair. A coincidence. A strange trick of fate. But her gut knew better. This was no accident.

Somehow, the painting had always been hers.

And that made everything more terrifying.

By morning, her skin felt too tight. Like her body was holding something in—heat, pressure, memory. Something she couldn't name. She showered, got dressed, and called in sick to the gallery for the second time in a row. Marcus sounded irritated, but she didn't care. She needed answers more than she needed his approval.

She headed straight to the bookshop.

The same violet-eyed woman was there, as if waiting.

"You came back," she said without surprise.

"I need to know everything," Olivia said. "No riddles. No half-truths. Start from the beginning."

The woman gestured for her to sit at a small round table in the back. The shop smelled like sandalwood and old ink.

"I'm called Nara," she said softly. "And what you are—what Seraphina was—is called a Flamebearer."

Olivia blinked. "That sounds… made-up."

"It's not." Nara pulled a thin black book from a nearby shelf and flipped to a marked page. "Flamebearers are descendants of the Velvet Bloodline. Women born once in a generation. They carry a unique form of soul-magic—tied to desire, creation, and destruction."

"That's dramatic."

"You'd be surprised how often the three are intertwined."

Olivia frowned. "What does that even mean?"

Nara looked at her with an odd mix of sympathy and reverence. "Your power is emotional. It's tied to love. Lust. Grief. When you feel intensely, it manifests. In visions. In fire. Sometimes in creation—like your paintings. Other times…" She paused. "In devastation."

Olivia remembered her dream. The forest. The fire. Aiden turning to ash.

"So I'm dangerous."

"You're powerful," Nara corrected. "That power has always scared the world. So they hunted the Flamebearers. Burned them. Buried them. Tried to erase their legacy."

"And Aiden?" Olivia asked. "Where does he fit into this?"

Nara hesitated. "He was a Guardian. The only one Seraphina ever loved. She tried to bind him to her—to keep him across time. But the magic went wrong. Now he's cursed to return with each new Flamebearer."

"To do what?"

"To protect her… or destroy her. Depending on what she becomes."

Olivia felt her pulse thrum in her ears. "You're saying he might be here to kill me?"

"Not exactly," Nara said. "But if your power threatens the balance of the line, the curse will push him to act. Even if he doesn't want to."

Olivia stood abruptly. "I need air."

Nara reached for her wrist gently. "The fire inside you is waking. You don't have to face it alone. There are others like you."

"Where?"

"Sleeping. Or hiding. You're the first to awaken."

Olivia pulled away. "Then maybe I should go back to sleep."

She left the shop.

**

Outside, the sky had shifted to a dull grey. London looked the same—buses screeching, people moving too quickly, the air smelling faintly of rain—but Olivia felt worlds apart. Like everything she once understood was now dust in her palms.

She needed grounding.

So she went to the only place that ever felt sacred to her.

Her mother's grave.

The cemetery was quiet, tucked between rows of terraced houses and overgrown hedges. The headstone was modest: Anna Sinclair, 1973–2005. Beloved mother, fierce heart.

Olivia knelt beside it.

"I don't know if you knew," she whispered. "About what I am. About what you were."

Her fingers brushed the cool stone.

"I remember you used to paint. Not like me—nothing magical, just watercolours. But I always wondered why you never talked about your past. Why you didn't have family photos. Why your eyes looked haunted when you thought I wasn't watching."

A breeze passed through the cemetery. A crow cawed in the distance.

"I think… I think you were running. From all this."

She looked up at the clouds.

"I'm scared, Mum."

And for the first time in years, Olivia cried. Not pretty tears. Ugly, messy ones. Tears that soaked her sleeves and burned her cheeks. But with them came something else.

Heat.

Not anger. Not pain.

Power.

She felt it pulse in her palms, radiate from her ribs, coil beneath her skin like a second heartbeat. The grass around her swayed as if touched by an invisible hand. The air shimmered.

And then, just for a second, the letters on the gravestone glowed gold.

Flamegold.

Olivia scrambled back, breath shallow.

"Did you see that?" she asked no one.

But she had seen it.

And it was her first true sign.

The power wasn't just dreaming anymore.

It was real.

**

That night, Olivia returned home and didn't hide the book.

She placed it on her bed.

She lit candles around it, remembering something Seraphina had written on the final page:

To awaken the flame, you must stop running from it.

So she didn't run.

She opened the book. Pressed her palm to the final sketch of herself. Closed her eyes.

And whispered:

"Show me who I am."

The pages flipped on their own.

Wind swept through the flat.

The candle flames rose, flickered—

—and turned blue.

In the centre of the room, a sigil burned itself into the floorboards—curved lines and ancient symbols pulsing with light.

And in the mirror—

—for the briefest moment—

—it wasn't Olivia staring back.

It was Seraphina.

And she was smiling.