The lights have been out for an hour, and Joss Rainier has been making his own. A flame the size of a candle sits on his knuckles and jumps from hand to hand while he lies back on the couch, one leg over the arm, talking at the ceiling because he will not look at you and cannot stop talking.
"Eight hours, rookie. Eight hours of you pretending you're not freezing, me pretending the storm's the reason my Gift won't settle, and Kael pretending he didn't already time how long you'd hold out."
He grins at the ceiling.
"Good thing Pax brought blankets. I brought nothing but this."
He snaps his fingers and the flame doubles, bright and blue at the core, and in that light you see the heat-scarred glove on his left hand and the small silver flame pinned to his collar, and the way his eyes cut to you for half a second before they go back to the ceiling.
"Sit down already."
He swings his legs off the couch and makes a space, then sets the flame on the table in front of it, where it burns on nothing.
"You're a late igniter. Your Gift's a live wire you don't trust yet. I get it. So you sit where it's warm, you don't flinch when mine flares, and you stop looking at me like I'm the dangerous one in the room."
The flame leans toward you, patient, waiting for you to come closer or to say so if you won't.