"You don't know?" Nolan says, leaning in and lowering his voice. "It was a long journey from Marrow's Edge to here, which gave me quite some time to press my selector for answers. Tight-lipped fellow, but I did gather this much: they're going to test us for elemental affinity. Dangerous as all hells, of course. But people like me with affinities should survive."

"Test us? How?" My pulse quickens, a birds's panicked flutter trapped beneath my skin.

"He wouldn't say. I did get the distinct impression it is a rather... deadly process, though. I'm afraid our numbers will thin dramatically before day's end."

A thick lump forms in my throat as I look at Mireen. Her wide eyes say she's just as unhappy with the news.

"You never answered before. Did you meet the other 'V' yet?" Nolan asks suddenly.

I shake my head.

"He's just coming into the room now. Right there," he says, pointing through the crowd.

I follow his finger and feel the air rush from my lungs.

The other volunteer is tall, broader and more muscular than anyone else in our group, standing apart like a predator among prey. The space around him is conspicuously empty, as if everyone senses the danger rolling off him in waves.

He's beautiful in the way dangerous things often are—like the perfect stillness of a viper before it strikes. The moment of collapsed time when the danger is as clear as the impossibility of escape.

His features are carved perfection, sharp and soft in all the right places. He has a strong jaw, a mouth that looks made for both cruelty and pleasure, and those eyes—gods help me—they're the deepest shade of amber I've ever seen, almost molten gold in the fading light.

He turns to look straight at me, and everything else fades. The world narrows to a tunnel with him at the end of it, and my heart forgets to beat. Even across the distance, those eyes burn into me with an intensity that makes my chest tighten and my throat dry. Heat rushes through my body unbidden—a reaction I can neither control nor understand.

The left side of his face is twisted with burn scars that begin at his temple and disappear beneath his collar, yet somehow they only enhance his dangerous allure, like veins of fire frozen beneath his skin.

It's impossible not to hold my breath as his attention lingers on me.