Her father, Elias Vickers, called it "the family temper." He was lying. He knew it, and eventually, so did she.
She never used the name Flame in public. But she thought it, every time. Alicia Vickers Flame. The girl who learned that fire is not a weapon or a curse, but a force that can be befriended.
"How do you do that?" they'd ask.
And Alicia Vickers Flame would smile—that rare, devastating smile—and say, "The secret isn't to fight the fire. It's to remember that you were never made of paper."
