Embraced by Embers

by Kasey Mackenzie

  My gaze then moved to where Drew was comically retreating from the two hybrid Mindbenders who he would normally have out-gunned. Drew glared when he saw my sudden smirk as I watched him retreat. “This isn’t over, Cassidy. And I may have been aiming for you, but I’ll settle for the fact that at least one of my bitchy siblings is dead.” He gave a sudden smirk of his own. “And you’ll make the perfect scapegoat when Father learns his precious little Flower is dead!”

  I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but he pulled another one of his vanishing tricks that vaguely resembled my higher-level firewalls. His remaining minions ran out of the cave. Before any of us could give pursuit, green light flared and the ground began to shake as a loud rumbling sounded.

  My pulse sped up, and I let out a curse. “Everyone back in the tunnel now!”

  Colin and Jake scrambled to help Liam retrieve Nic’s motionless body. Theo and Melody helped me pick up the badly-injured (but still-breathing) Lily. We fled into the tunnel, joined by everyone else, just as rocks began to crash down on the cavern’s mouth, shutting us in as far as that exit went. Worried that the Dragon-triggered cave-in could have a domino effect, we hurried back along that tunnel, up the stone stairs, and retrieved our canoes to paddle back to our vehicles and rush back to the monastery.

  I spent at least half of that madcap journey praying that neither Nic nor Lily would suffer permanent effects from their ordeal. Nic because I loved and trusted him implicitly. Lily partly because I couldn’t help but hope that someday I would grow to feel the same about her, and also because she was both a fount of intelligence in this war and a potential pawn to use against my father. And yeah, thinking those things made me feel guilty as hell. But I had a ton of people counting on me in this war. So make these hard, shitty decisions I would do.

  The other half I spent going over everything I’d already known about Lily and then second-guessing the extremely brief interactions I’d had with her earlier that day. I was still convinced that I’d seen her teleport herself earlier. That was the only thing that made sense based on the fact Spirit shards had gathered around her just before she disappeared only to appear directly next to me. And that thought had me logically wondering whether she’d truly been murdered and teleported away by Drew during that ceremony—or whether she’d faked her own death and teleported herself away.

  It also left me feeling unsettled, because I’d believed myself the only hybrid Mindbender with enough strength to serve as the Elemental world’s first liegelord since Hikaru. That fact had explained my father’s fascination with gaining control over me to use as a pawn in his war to gain control over both the magical and mortal worlds. From everything I’d previously heard, Lily was as strong at channeling Earth as I was with Fire. That meant she wasn’t like Riku or Colin, who were much weaker at using their physical elements. Did Garrett know about Lily’s ability to channel Spirit? Surely she must have some strength in manipulating that metaphysical element if she could both teleport and disguise her own features. Assuming she had been the one to do both those things…

  I shook my head and pushed those questions out of my mind. There was no sense borrowing trouble now. I just didn’t have enough information to go on. Hopefully, that would change once we woke her up and convinced her to talk.

  The monastery was on high alert when we pulled up to the main gates. Riku shared a few words with the senior perimeter guard, who then waved us past. I felt the slight tingle of the wards as we drove by, but the magic didn’t protest our passage.

  Nic’s breathing remained steady, but he hadn’t so much as blinked an eye or said a word during our entire journey. Lily likewise appeared comatose. Considering that she’d survived what had been meant as a permanent death spell, however, I was counting that a win. We pulled inside the humongous garage attached to one of the main buildings and transported both my unconscious siblings to the next-door infirmary. Relief swept across me when I noticed the Clan Firsts waiting. They represented the eldest surviving members of Clan Zi, and next to Breena’s Quatrain—who had served among Hikaru’s liegesworn—they knew the most about my predecessor’s abilities with Spirit. Well, next to those four and his son, Riku.

  The infirmary consisted of a large room with dozens of hospital beds, and a few private rooms down a hallway that split off the main room. Nic was carefully transferred to a hospital bed in the main room and examined by some of the monastery’s finest healers. Colin oversaw that examination. Lily was carried to one of the private rooms at the end of the hall. Riku, the Firsts, and I were the ones who stepped in to conduct her examination. Dia stayed with Nic while Jake and my two new liegesworn shadows, Theo and Melody, hovered in the doorway behind me. It didn’t escape my notice that several of Riku’s finest warriors also took up spots in the hallway. Considering the multiple dangers that Lily’s presence posed, I highly approved.

  I recognized that I actually had little to contribute from a healing standpoint, so I stood near the doorway and watched as Riku and the Clan Firsts conferred. Lily’s body bore no marks of the spear made of Spirit that Drew had hurled, but that wasn’t a complete shock since he couldn’t channel a physical element to mix it with. Her wounds were purely on the metaphysical plane. That only made diagnosis and treatment more difficult, of course. Especially considering that Drew nearly rivalled my father for Mindbending strength and skill; and the rest of us most certainly did not. I came the closest in strength, and Riku the closest in skill. But while he had recognized that spell as Drew cast it, he wasn’t sure how to counteract its effects. Considering that everyone else who had ever had that spell tossed their way had died a horrible permanent death, that was another non-surprise.

  Right off the bat they tried exposing her to the element of Earth, since she was a Dragon. Nothing. Then they tried channeling Spirit into her body, but that didn’t have any result either. After that failed, they debated for the next hour, spent another hour trying a few things with no success, and then consulted a few ancient scrolls and books to try still other things. Again to no avail. Lily remained silent on that bed, arms held stiffly at her sides and chest rising and falling with steady breaths that never yielded any speech.

  Nic was much luckier in that the Spirit-soaked spell he’d been incapacitated with wore off after that first hour. Dia ran in to shout the news and wrap me in a relieved hug before dragging me out to see for myself. He wasn’t really up to talking much, since an unnatural exhaustion still gripped him, but we’d been able to hug him and tell him how happy we were to have him back safe and sound. Liam refused to leave his side that entire time, inspiring me to give him what may have been our first actual hug and thank him. Most shocking of all, he hugged me back and thanked me in return.

  That had me wiping a tear from my eye and heading back to Lily’s room to avoid a full-on crying jag. Now that she knew our brother was out of the woods, Dia joined me. We pulled up a couple of chairs and sat to each side of the door, keeping silent vigil.

  I was doing more than just sitting there, of course. My brain was sifting through all the knowledge I’d gained about Spirit over the past weeks, trying to remember whether I’d come across anything that might help in this situation. Surely there must be some way to help Lily. If the fatal spell hadn’t killed her—presumably because only a tiny portion of it had touched the edge of her arm—then it stood to reason that there was some way to wake her up. Some way to revive her…

  That had me sitting up with widening eyes and mouth. “That’s it!” I exclaimed.

  The entire room full of people—and several in the hall—focused their eyes on me. “What’s it?” Riku asked, his gaze locked onto mine.

  “She’s a Dragon, but she was attacked with Spirit. We already tried each of those elements on her with no results. I bet we need use both elements at the same time.”

  Riku pursed his lips. “That seems both logical and ridiculously simple.”

  “Many of the best ideas are,” I said with a cheeky grin. �
�How do you think I’ve made it this far?”

  That earned several laughs from around the room. Riku drafted Jake to help with the heavy Earth lifting. I stood and embraced Elemental vision, watching as the two combined Earth and Spirit into a woven pattern of magic that they then gently layered on top of Lily. Most of us held our breath as we waited. Tense moments ticked by with a whole lot of nothing, and my optimism began to fade once we passed the five-minute mark.

  I voiced this pessimism out loud. “I guess my ideas was too ridiculously simple.”

  Dia reached across to squeeze my hand. Neither of us may have been close to this sister who was also technically an enemy, but the thought of watching her life slip away in front of us didn’t sit well with either of us. Neither did the thought of Drew getting away with bloodless murder.

  My gaze had just moved back to the hospital bed when Lily’s eyes flashed open and she let out a blood-curdling scream. She pushed to a sitting position, glancing around the room with panic in her eyes as she continued letting out a keening sound. Riku reached out a comforting hand, but she slapped it away and scrabbled back as far as she could against the bed’s headboard. Only when her gaze got to Dia and me did she let out a relieved gasp and grow silent. Even then, however, she watched us warily.

  Dia and I exchanged glances before stepping closer to the bed. She just stared at us silently.

  “Lily?” I finally broke the silence. “Do you know—do you know who we are?” I’d started to ask whether she knew who she was after the deadly spell Drew had clobbered her with.

  She sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and then nodded. “Yes, Cassidy. At least I know who you and Amadia are. I only know of the rest of you.”

  That had me letting out a relieved breath of my own. As a sister, I was relieved that Drew hadn’t caused permanent brain damage. And as a budding general in a high-stakes war, I was relieved that she retained enough of her memory to be critically important. Assuming I could convince her to help us. Because I really did not want to have to use more drastic measures. Even assuming I’d be able to bring myself to do that...

  I decided to waste no time in convincing her she was better off on Team Us than Team Guy Who Almost Murdered You. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  She licked her lips and shivered. “I remember Drew said he was going to kill Nic, but then he flung that death spell at you. And I knew you wouldn’t be able to dodge it in time so I—I teleported to knock you out of the way.”

  I kept my voice calm and cool. “And why exactly is that?”

  Dia let out a choked sound next to me, but everyone else in the room either flashed their own poker faces or outright nodded. Lily herself didn’t seem surprised by my ice-cold question.

  “First, because I was sincere earlier today when I wondered whether you were any different from our father or brother. Second, because I’m starting to believe you are. And third, because I hate Drew with every fiber of my being. Pretty much anything that he wants out of life, I do my damnedest to thwart. That’s why I was in disguise that day on your Clan’s farm, doing my best to screw things up where I could. That’s why I was willing to try taking oath to you today, even though I wasn’t sure it worked. And that’s why I saved your life today.”

  Passion lit her expression and laced her voice, making her sound sincere. Whether she was actually sincere would be something I reserved judgment on. My days of taking just about anything on pure faith were pretty much over. We were in Missouri, and she’d damned well have to show me.

  I gestured to her face. “It’s obvious to me that you can channel Spirit given your teleportation trick earlier today and the disguise you’re still wearing. What is less apparent is the truth behind your miraculous disappearance earlier today.”

  She bit her lip and then a determined expression crossed her face. The bodies of everyone who could see Earth magic tensed when she channeled emerald green flows of energy. But she merely banished the disguise coloring her hair a vibrant red and her eyes a brilliant green. Instead, a blonde-haired and blue-eyed woman whose red lipstick was much the worse for wear now sat upon the hospital bed. Her face was actually even prettier than before, with a dusting of freckles on each cheek and her forehead. Ironic that her red-haired disguise had been the one without freckles.

  I could only assume this was her actual true face. Dia must have guessed my thoughts, because she telepathically confirmed that assumption. ((This is the Lily I recognize.))

  Lily ran a hand through her hair and stared down at her legs. “For what it’s worth, I really was going to take oath to you earlier. Or try, at least. And that wasn’t me faking my own death and teleporting myself away. That was all Drew. He was telepathically spying using my bond to our father. That asshole didn’t hesitate to kill me and teleport me away when he realized that I was actually going to go through with the liegebond.”

  I couldn’t help the sudden smile that tugged my lips upward. “He worried that it would succeed just like with Nic.”

  Dia gave a fierce grin of her own. “And then he’d lose control over you, too.”

  She gritted her teeth. “Drew has never had control over me. Our father on the other hand…” Tears suddenly shimmered in her pale blue eyes.

  I pursed my lips. “So it’s easy to see why someone would hate Baby Brother, but I was under the impression you were our father’s precious Flower. Are you telling me that you didn’t willingly bond yourself to him? Do you expect us to honestly believe you aren’t on his side?”

  Lily met my eyes unflinchingly. “I understand how hard this must be to believe. And I don’t expect any of you to just take my word for any of this. But put yourself in my shoes. I was raised from birth by a couple completely loyal to our father. They taught me from a young age that my biological father was a godlike being whom I should have the utmost of respect for. And then when I sparked my magical abilities in adolescence, he began taking a much greater interest in me. He groomed me to become his perfect little daughter, his perfect little soldier. So yes, I willingly bonded myself to him. It was only after it became too late that I realized what a terrible mistake I had made.”

  Big, fat tears slipped down her cheek as she sucked in a deep breath. “My abilities with Spirit took longer to manifest. And once I began to realize what was going on, I hid that fact from everyone. Because by then I had uncovered Drew’s darkest secret, and no way did I want to get myself on his radar.”

  I leaned forward, watching her intently with both physical and Elemental vision. Shards of Spirit surrounded me as I tried to discern whether she was telling the truth. So far, her words seemed sincere. “What exactly is Drew’s darkest secret?”

  Lily’s body shuddered as she glanced from me to Dia. “I wasn’t the first sibling after you to be born as a hybrid Mindbender. I was the third.’

  My pulse picked up speed as horror settled in my stomach. This could only be going in one direction…

  “Neither of those two children survived past adolescence when their Spirit abilities sparked. Drew found them first and murdered them both—permanently.”

  Chapter 7

  Horror blossomed into outright nausea as I fought the urge to throw up. My thoughts jumped back to something I’d wondered several times over the past few months. What had ever happened to Garrett’s two other children adopted out by the Hearts in Need Adoption Agency? I’d considered the possibilities that they’d been magical nulls who never developed any Elemental abilities or that they had died and been cut off from their elements so unable to revive. I’d even considered the fact Garrett just had them stashed somewhere nobody knew about. Never had I entertained the thought that they’d been murdered in cold blood.

  Although knowing what I did about my youngest and most brutal sibling, the whodunnit part of this revelation didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

  Dia gripped my hand and hissed out a breath. “Are—are you sure they’re permanently dead?”

  She didn’t both
er asking whether Lily was certain Drew had been the one to kill them. We all knew he was capable of that and worse. Look how he’d nearly killed Lily just trying to get to me.

  Lily swallowed, tears still shimmering in those pale blue eyes so like our father’s. The eyes all of his children shared. Even the murdered ones...

  “I’m sorry but...yes. I saw the autopsy photos myself. He had them beheaded.”

  My brain picked up on her wording. “You mean he didn’t kill them himself?”

  “He ordered them to be killed by the same mercenary group who abducted your brother. He paid the money to have them murdered. He gave those mercs all the details about them so they could find our brother and sister. Ironically when he was still a teenager himself. And then he had it covered up so it looked like some psycho Elemental serial killer took them both out. So yeah, in my eyes he did kill them himself.”

  I raised a placating hand. “Don’t get me wrong; I’m not absolving him in any way. Just surprised he hired someone else to do it. But I guess that was because he was so young at the time?”

  Lily closed her eyes briefly. “More like because he could then look our father in the eye and rightfully swear he didn’t kill them himself if ever asked. Especially if Father ever interrogated him using Spirit. There wouldn’t be even the echo of a lie in his mind because the way he sees things, he’d be telling the truth.”

  Dia let out a hoarse, “Those poor kids. And that sadistic bastard.”

  This time I was the one to squeeze her hand to offer comfort. “So he murdered them out of—what? Jealousy? Because he wants to be the only one of us who can channel Spirit?”