The Burning Trials

Ruby Blaze has spent her entire life hiding.

Hiding her anger. Hiding her grief. Hiding the truth about the night the king murdered her mother.

But when she's chosen for the Burning Trials-a brutal competition where the kingdom's most powerful wielders fight for survival, glory, and the entertainment of the crown-hiding becomes impossible.

The kingdom calls the trials an honor.

Ruby calls them what they truly are:

a death sentence.

Especially when the prince starts paying attention to her.

Callum Ashford is everything Ruby should hate. A royal. A wielder of dangerous storm-born power. And the son of the man who destroyed her family.

Confident, sharp-tongued, and infuriatingly charming, Cal was raised to rule. He should be the last person Ruby trusts.

Instead, he becomes the one person capable of unraveling her completely.

Because beneath his effortless smiles and teasing remarks is something far more dangerous:

a boy who sees too much.

As deadly trials push the contestants to their limits, buried truths begin clawing their way to the surface. Ruby discovers the kingdom is built on secrets-secrets tied to her past, her power, and the storm-eyed prince she can't seem to stay away from.

And somewhere between the training grounds, midnight conversations, and the danger surrounding them, hatred slowly turns into something far more dangerous.

Something forbidden.

Something neither of them can afford.

Because if the kingdom discovers the Fire Region girl and the royal prince have fallen for each other in secret, it could destroy them both.

Caught between revenge and desire, fire and water, loyalty and betrayal, Ruby must decide what matters more:

destroying the kingdom that tore her family apart-

or protecting the boy she was never supposed to love.

Because the Burning Trials were meant to find a champion.