by Ella M. Lee
“And I’m part of that now?” I asked.
“You are,” he said. “I want you to feel less anxious. Trust me. I’m keeping you. I’ve said it a dozen times over.”
But I was having a hard time letting his words truly sink in, still not sure I was safe, still not sure my future was secure.
At night, Nicolas held my hands while I fell asleep, shivering and worried. He told me that everything was fine, that I shouldn’t waste energy on apprehension, that his plans hadn’t and wouldn’t change. He had begun putting his arms around me as he repeated his reassurances.
Each night I crept closer to him, and he hadn’t rebuked me. If anything, he’d been getting less careful, content to be more playful and casual in his handling of me, and I didn’t mind. If attractive, brilliant Nicolas wanted to curl up next to me and hold me, that was fine.
On the third night, I had fallen asleep with one of his arms cradling my head and the other lightly resting on my rib cage. His face was almost pressed into my hair, and I could just barely feel his breath on my neck. I rested my fingers on the loops of my necklace, trying to keep my thoughts off how nice it felt to be held by Nicolas.
His embrace kept me near him, but not too close. I could have pushed myself further into his warm body, pressed us together like lovers, but I couldn’t bring myself to bridge that final inch of space between us.
Five days after my transmutation, I was still weak and groggy, but at least I could stay awake for more than an hour at a time. Nicolas was finally less busy, more frequently doing work in his apartment as he had during my first week with him. Daniel continued to hang around, glued to his laptop as he sat in the sunlight by the windows.
“Fiona,” Nicolas said, joining me on the couch. “There are some things we need to discuss.”
I cast my eyes over to Daniel, but he wasn’t looking at me. In fact, it seemed a lot like he was pointedly ignoring us, his gaze locked on the screen in front of him.
“You asked me to explain what happened from the beginning,” Nicolas said. “I won’t lie. I’ve been keeping some things from you, but now I would like to be completely honest.”
“I’d like that too,” I said nervously.
He hesitated. “This won’t be easy to hear.”
“Just tell me, Nicolas.”
“I’ve suspected it for a while,” he said, “but I only just received the confirmation I needed that it was Derek who was behind your Flame group’s assassination attempt in Vienna.”
I nodded. Luckily for me, I was still exhausted and drained and barely had any energy to put toward an emotional reaction.
“I thought we’d find out something like that,” I said, looking away.
“Oh?” Nicolas asked.
“Derek was very interested in me, like he knew something, you know?” I said. “Even Dan commented that it was strange. I think he was probably panicking, with no idea what I knew about the details of our mission or what I had told you. I’m sure he would have loved for you to sell me to him. He could have made me dead very quickly.”
“I did find his interest in you odd, but he was very good at hiding any incriminating thoughts from me,” Nicolas said. “Impressively so.”
“Maybe that’s why he went to Flame,” I offered.
“What do you mean?” Nicolas asked, tilting his head.
“Flame is a strange choice for an outsourced assassination attempt,” I said, shrugging. “We’re not the most peaceful of the clans, but we’re also not usually violent or risky, and we don’t involve ourselves in other clans’ problems. But you have no connections in Flame, which makes it perfect. Derek wouldn’t want you able to read people’s minds or use your intelligence network to figure out what was going on.
“My group knew far too much about you. The reason we took the job in the first place was because it seemed so easy. We knew your location, your skills, your defenses. Things that only an insider could tell us.”
“Funny how you never bothered to mention any of this to me before,” Nicolas said, but his tone was light and teasing.
“You never asked,” I said. “For someone who told me I could evade torture and execution if I told you what you wanted to know, you asked very little.”
“I didn’t need any information from you. I was merely testing your ability to cooperate.”
“Quit complaining, then,” I said, and he laughed. “I imagine you already had it figured out?”
“There were very few people who knew about my work in Vienna outside of my group,” he said. “A request like this had to originate from inside Water, and there aren’t many people who would so brazenly target me.
“Derek hasn’t said or done anything that proves he is responsible for my assassination attempt, but there are several hints I’ve gotten throughout his interrogation that point in that direction. For instance, he knows the name of your former commander and has met him. Odd, given that Water and Flame rarely interact. Yulia confirmed that what they were meeting about was an assassination attempt on a Water commander. Flame didn’t work out, so I imagine he was off to Meteor.”
“What will Derek be tried for?” I asked.
“Treason,” Nicolas said darkly. “I am a council member, and council members are considered clan leaders. He will likely be executed. That is what I will push for, and my words carry weight.”
I closed my eyes. “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said. “My friends are dead because of him. My life is ruined because of him. Execution doesn’t change that.”
“I’m sorry, Fiona,” Nicolas said.
Tears were falling down my cheeks. A few moments later, Daniel’s delicate arms encircled me. I leaned into him as I cried myself back into numbness, trying to sublimate my pain into some sort of closure.
The next day, I felt well enough to walk around and eat real food, but it was still two more days before Nicolas would gift me magic and allow me to start working with Daniel again.
He had given strict orders to go easy, so Dan and I had merely stretched, done some light cardio, and sparred one brief round. I was out of breath and glad to settle down at the training room table to play with magic afterward.
“What does your tattoo say?” I asked as he pulled his shirt back on. The Chinese characters on his skin were a complete mystery to me.
“It’s poetry,” he said. “‘Your heartbeat calls to me like lightning calls to distant thunder.’”
“That’s beautiful,” I said, smiling. “I didn’t know you liked poetry.”
“I love poetry, and this poetry is special. It’s my mom’s. She was sort of a famous poet.”
My eyes snapped to him in surprise. He was looking away from me, out the windows at the mountains. I felt a pang of sadness for him, but Daniel’s temperament made so much sense. A mother who was a poet, a brother who had protected him, and Nicolas and Ryan who had taken over raising him. No wonder he was confident and powerful while still maintaining all his sweetness.
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“This line is from a poem about me,” he offered, his dark eyes meeting mine. “She wrote it when I was a baby.”
I took his hands in mine. “It’s like she knew you’d have lightning lurking under your skin, like she gave it to you.”
He smiled, and I could see that he appreciated the words. He squeezed my hands, and I thought that it was definitely not so bad that I had ended up with him as my friend.
He twisted one hand so that it was palm up between us. I watched as he called out lightning magic, letting it crawl over his fingers in lacy, spidery webs. His expression was completely at ease.
“Yeah, it reminds me of her,” he said softly.
“I wish I had such a beautiful piece of my family to hold on to,” I said, sighing.
It hurt to think about the broken fragments of my life. If I wasn’t careful, grief would creep in during unguarded moments and choke me. Each day was better. A step forward, more of my nest built.
But I knew it would take a long time before I felt whole again. I just wasn’t the type who could be so easily put back together.
Daniel tilted his head at me and offered an encouraging nod.
“You do,” he said. “You have things to hold on to, and that’s good. You’ll need that. Being in our group will be tough. Our operations are never easy, and I’m going to push you in training, and I guarantee that whatever is going on between you and Nicolas will be difficu—”
“Hey,” I said, startled and embarrassed. “I don’t know what you think, but—”
He held up a hand. “I don’t care,” he said, but he eyed my necklace with a knowing smile. “I’m your lieutenant, not your therapist. Nicolas likes you, and you like him. It’s not my business what either of you do with that information.”
I looked away. Nicolas likes you. I resisted the urge to ask for clarification on that statement. Of course Nicolas liked me. He wouldn’t have let me join his group if he didn’t like me. He wouldn’t have treated me closely or kindly these past few days.
Would it be so bad if his feelings toward me were more than friendly? I felt relaxed and comfortable with him, butterflies fluttered in my stomach when I looked at him, and I found myself missing him when he was gone. All the fear I had felt in his presence had disappeared, replaced by the memories of him soothing my shivering and reassuring me.
Nicolas had protected me from the very first moments he spoke to me. I reminded myself of his encouragement to be strong, of his insistence that I could be worth something to him, of the way he had defended me at every turn.
What exactly did I feel for Nicolas, with his radiant smiles and calm demeanor and lovely tawny eyes? I didn’t know yet, but I was curious to find out.
Daniel rapped his knuckles on the table. “Stop daydreaming,” he chided, but his tone was kind. “I’m just trying to tell you that you’ll be working hard, and you’ll need to hold on to that strength you used to get yourself this far. I know you still have Flame in you. Now, show me the fire under your skin.”
I laid my palms on the table and smiled. “I’d love to.”
But I hesitated. I closed my eyes briefly as I thought of my home for the last six years. Having Water magic that could turn into fire wasn’t the same as Flame.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
Daniel placed his hands on mine. “In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on. Robert Frost said that.”
I nodded. Of course Daniel would take comfort in those words. I could too. I had always been able to take comfort in poetry, and it eased my heart to find that Dan knew me so well already.
One of the first lessons you learned in a clan was that magic gave you time. Time to grow, time to change, time to heal. With the lifespan I’d have as a magician, I couldn’t afford to give in. I had to find ways to move forward. Letting go was hard, but I had a new life to build, a new family to learn and understand, something to run to when I thought I’d drifted completely into hopelessness.
I was just about to call up my magic when Nicolas came through the door of the training room. He was dressed in one of his most formal black suits, and his serious expression told me he had been conducting clan business, and that it hadn’t been going well.
Daniel seemed to sense Nicolas’s mood as well.
“Arturo just called,” Nicolas said. “Derek is gone, escaped from his holding cell. Liam is dead, as are the two Meteors and three of Arturo’s security team. The shield on the fifth floor that offers access to the building lobby was shattered.”
“What?” I asked. “How?”
I traded an alarmed look with Daniel. Derek would have been held in a cell similar to mine, wearing the same shackles that had completely incapacitated me during my first day here. How anyone could have broken free and overpowered the guards was beyond me.
“I think we’d all like to know the answer to that,” Nicolas said. “He must have had help from inside or outside of Water, but it’s too early to say anything for certain. Dan, Arturo wants to see both of us immediately. We’ll need Teng. Inform him that he can give all due assistance to the clan for this issue.”
Nicolas sighed and beckoned to us. “There are many questions that need answers. I’m frustrated that I didn’t see this ahead of time. I dislike having to play catch-up. Pull your team together, Dan.”
“Of course,” Daniel said.
“Never a dull day here, is there?” I asked as we followed Nicolas out the door.
“Well, I do hate being bored,” Daniel replied, and the calculating gleam in his eye told me he was already ten steps into figuring out our new problem.
It wasn’t so bad to have ended up here among people so driven and so capable of protecting their own interests. I could have ended up a lot worse, and I was relieved that I could now find my future intriguing rather than horrifying.
Nicolas’s magic lingered in me, making my blood rush and my fingertips tingle, and I was eager to show what I could do with such beautiful power.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my husband, William Lee. He provides constant support and encouragement for my writing and deals with far too many discussions and hypothetical questions about characters, plot development, and Hong Kong culture. He also suggested the title of this novel because the last one was laughably bad.
I received excellent feedback from several people during Fire Within’s revision process. Thank you first to Samantha Linzi, my best friend of twenty years, who read the earliest drafts of this story despite them being terrible. She is a fantasy and romance expert extraordinaire and provided invaluable insight and advice (and more than a few hilariously snarky remarks). I’d also like to thank Courtney Kelly for her amazingly thoughtful developmental feedback and beta reading, and Bailey Taylor for her enthusiastic and encouraging beta reading.
Crystal Watanabe provided comprehensive and compassionate line editing for Fire Within. For proofreading, I engaged the services of iWordyNerdy to ensure none of my clumsy mistakes made it to publication. Any factual or language errors that remain in the text are my own.
I would also like to thank Hong Kong, my favorite city in the world, for its inspiration. I’ve taken some liberties with details and the exact locations of scenes. There is not—as far as I know—a wet market just as I described in Sha Tin, nor was I referencing a specific cute French bistro in Central, but I hope I’ve captured the excellent qualities and spirit of the city I love so much. 多謝 (thank you).
This book was written in cafés and bubble tea shops, on bullet trains between Tokyo and Fukuoka, during transpacific flights, at temples in Japan, in cha chaan teng in Hong Kong, in hidden corners of the Louvre, and in ice skating rinks all around the world as I waited for competitions to begin. This story traveled with me for two years, and it’s a pleasure to finally get to share it with you all.
About the Author
Ella M. Lee is a graduate of Bennington College who spent years in the tech industry before getting back to her story-crafting roots. In her spare time, she likes to travel, cook, drink tea, and spend Saturday mornings repeating moves, spins, and jumps over and over again for her figure skating coach. She has a loving husband and two semi-loving cats who share her home near Boston, MA. For more information about Ella and the Fire Within series, please visit www.ellamlee.com!
