The Fire Within Series: Books 1 - 3

by Ella M. Lee

  “Dan,” I said, turning to face him, barely making out his features in the dark.

  “How was your week?”

  “Amazing. I love it here. Thank you for bringing me along. I needed a break.”

  “I never thanked you for saving my life,” he said, after several long moments of quiet.

  His tone of voice was fragile. Dan didn’t often open up about his feelings, but something about the darkness seemed to grant him a chance at vulnerability.

  “No need,” I replied. “I hardly did anything.”

  “Nico told me that you don’t think you mattered in that operation, but you did.”

  “Nicolas needs to stop rifling through my thoughts and telling everyone my fears,” I said, annoyed.

  “Don’t be mad at him,” Dan whispered. “He’s concerned about you. He loves you. I’ve never seen him look at anyone the way he looked at you in those first few days. The way he handled you, like you were glass. How he hated hurting or scaring you.”

  Dan’s words warmed my heart. It was hard to believe someone as perfect as Nicolas could love me. Love was so random, so imprecise, so overwhelming and disarming.

  “I love him. I love you too. Nicolas said that I could be your naggy sister. I wish I truly were your sister.”

  “You are,” Daniel said. “We’re most certainly family. Can’t you feel how connected we are?”

  I smiled. “Yeah.”

  Daniel and I had clicked into best friendship without any effort at all.

  He fell silent for so long I thought he had probably fallen asleep. I was on the verge of unconsciousness myself.

  “You were there holding me, after Farhad’s extraction, while Irina healed me,” he said very quietly.

  “Of course. We were all there for you.”

  “Even you,” he said. “Even though you’re new and you feel… alone with us.”

  I could tell my little speech before our trip had affected him. I was trying to think of a way to reassure him. I remembered Nicolas’s words—that Daniel was young. He may have gone through a lot in his life, he may have seemed mature to me, but he still had only experienced a fraction of what I had.

  I would adjust to this. I would live, and thrive, and be happy. I had known it from practically my first night, when Nicolas revealed to me that Flame had cast me out, when he told me to be strong and make choices for myself.

  I reached out to take Dan’s hand. “Less alone every day.”

  I had loved Osaka and loved getting the chance to spend time with Daniel outside of training, but being home was incredible. It was also incredible that I missed it so much, this place I hadn’t even known a few months ago.

  Nicolas wasted no time in finding me after I arrived. Seeing him again was like regaining my footing after being off balance. Touching him, feeling him against me—it was like breathing air for the first time.

  I hadn’t realized how worried I had been while away from him. I trusted Daniel, and I trusted myself, but there was just something about Nicolas. It was impossible to feel anything but complete safety with him. I had gotten used to his protective presence near me, some sort of odd Stockholm syndrome from when he’d taken care of me as a mortal.

  It hadn’t been the same in Osaka without him.

  And whatever was between us? Five days away had only intensified it. When he took me to bed and laid me out under him, I thought I would burn up completely into ash. When he moved inside of me, I could barely breathe between waves of pleasure. When he held me afterward, I felt like the only person in the world to be loved that much.

  Chapter 13

  Days passed. Weeks passed.

  There came a point where my frantic studying and training transitioned into competence.

  I wasn’t fighting for every inch of magical control. I owned my magic in a way that I hadn’t ever owned Flame. If I had been good at Flame, I was ten times better with Water, completely natural.

  Okay, so I wasn’t a great healer, and I couldn’t open portals like Keisha could. But I could do all the normal Water tricks—the manifestation, the elemental control, the shielding and warding. I could transmute my magic into fire with ease. It became as though it wanted to do nothing else, in fact. I had finesse that impressed even Ryan and Teng, who had both become my regular magic teachers.

  Teng’s advice on control of elemental Water magic strengthened my transmutation abilities. He and I weren’t friends, exactly, but we had a good rapport. Teng appreciated fast learners—and students who would bring him dumplings from his favorite place in Sham Shui Po. Daniel had let me in on that secret.

  My physical training was going well. I wasn’t barely holding my own against Dan in our sparring anymore; I was beating him. I couldn’t beat Sylvio, but no one faulted me for that. Sylvio trained for hours every day and had honed his techniques over decades. I also couldn’t beat Chandra, whose physical skills could be enhanced by her magic, but I became strong enough to defend myself in fights with most of them.

  Under Daniel’s guidance, I became better at intelligence work. I was already a fast and excellent writer, and I took pride in putting together reports for the group. I completed several reconnaissance missions for Shatterfall on my own, mostly collecting books or data from hard-to-reach locations or persons. They were all well within my specialty, and I enjoyed doing them.

  Eventually, Daniel had to gently discourage me from relying on him so much.

  “Fi,” he said, after the fifth time I double-checked my report formats with him, “you don’t have to keep asking me if these are good enough. Just file them with Teng.”

  He rolled his eyes, spreading his hands in front of himself in a gesture reminiscent of Nicolas.

  “You’re good,” he said. “Act like the other members of my team and stop leaning on me.”

  I did officially report to Daniel now. It had been a natural transition, mentor and teacher turned boss. Nicolas seemed happy with the arrangement, and I liked that I didn’t have to have business conversations with him regularly. Daniel had already proven himself to me again and again, and he seemed to think I was an excellent addition to his highly skilled team.

  As the weeks passed, I got to know our whole group better.

  I spent time with Athena, whose quiet, frosty exterior disintegrated once we bonded over our mutual love of classic American literature. We had even done a quick operation together, traveling to Seattle to pick up some rare books from an antique bookstore while also indulging in coffee and artisanal doughnuts and shopping at Pike Place Market.

  Farhad was busy all the time, but one rainy night I practically forced him to get a drink with me. My goal was to ask him curious questions about being undercover with Smoke, but the conversation went beyond that—to his childhood in Iran, his first months in Water, and our shared fondness for sweets.

  Cameron, it turned out, was a tough nut to crack. He was polite enough to me, but he didn’t have an interest in being my friend or interacting too much more than what was required for our work. That was fine, and it helped me understand how he and Teng got along so well. They both had a keen interest in privacy and protecting their secrets.

  “Are Cameron and Teng together?” I asked Daniel one morning after training.

  “Uh…” he said, pausing.

  I watched him, confused. I had never seen Daniel at a loss for words before.

  “I don’t know what you’d call them,” Daniel said finally. “Teng likes the company. That’s why they live together. He gets bad nightmares and doesn’t like being alone. He had, uh, a rough childhood. As far as I know, they sleep together. I think Teng is bisexual—I’ve seen him with women before—but I’ve never asked. Cameron is gay. I have no idea what they consider their relationship. It’s probably mostly a convenience thing.”

  “I see,” I said, although I couldn’t say I understood. Neither was my type, and I couldn’t understand their attraction.

  Then again, I was surprised to find that my rela
tionship with Nicolas was baffling to most of the group too. With the exception of Daniel, they all seemed mildly confused by my choice. Keisha and I went out together frequently, mostly to shop and eat, and one day she asked me about Nicolas.

  “He’s handsome, sure, and nice enough, I guess,” she said, “but aren’t you intimidated by him? Does he even have real emotions? I thought he was made of stone. Why not Daniel? You two get along so well, and he’s actually sweet.”

  “Nicolas is sweet!” I said, taken aback. “He’s really romantic!”

  She looked at me not exactly like I was crazy, but perhaps like I had called a rattlesnake “cute.”

  But Nicolas was, in a lot of ways, the perfect boyfriend. His mind-reading meant he never got jealous. Daniel and I were closer than I’d ever been to any other friend in my life, but it didn’t bother Nicolas. Daniel could flirt with me, spend time with me, put his hands on me, and Nicolas didn’t care. The mind-reading also meant he understood my feelings and intentions without me needing to be able to articulate them perfectly every time, although he preferred when I did.

  He was also beyond considerate. He bought me gifts and took me away on lavish weekend trips around Europe and Asia. I’d never been to Barcelona, Bali, Seoul, or Bangkok before—now I had, with the added bonus of flying first class and staying at luxury hotels. We would spend these weekends talking nonstop. He was a font of knowledge on almost every topic and could hold his own in any conversation.

  It was a shame he and I were both so busy. If I could, I would have stayed in his arms hour after hour, exploring every corner of his mind and body.

  One morning in the middle of October, I looked everywhere for Daniel and couldn’t find him. He hadn’t shown up to work out or spar that morning. Dan adhered to a rigid schedule, and I usually saw him in the training room on Tuesdays.

  He hadn’t responded to my playful texts either. I sighed. I thought we had worked this out the previous month after the disaster that had been his birthday.

  “Where’s Dan?” I asked Nicolas, entering his apartment just as Cameron and Irina were leaving it. “I can’t find him, and his schedule on the group calendar just says busy.”

  Nicolas glanced at his watch and pointed out the date. I shrugged and shook my head. He raised his eyebrows, studying me closely.

  “Today is the date of his brother’s death,” Nicolas said. “The date he was captured and brought to this clan house. The date I bought him.”

  “Oh,” I said, frowning.

  Another thing I hadn’t known about him, something I hadn’t even bothered to ask.

  “He usually disappears for the day. He likes to be alone,” Nicolas said.

  I could understand that. I still remembered all the dates that were important to me: my grandparents’ deaths, my parents’ deaths, my brother’s death, Lars and Damon and Violet’s deaths, even the deaths of the few people I had killed while part of Flame. I, too, found myself hurt and brooding at certain times of the year.

  Regardless, I wanted to be there for Daniel like he had so often been there for me. After dinner, I was about to send him another text when I noticed that he was in his apartment, his magic alerting me to his presence.

  “Dan?” I said, knocking on the door.

  No response.

  “Hey,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Nicolas told me about today, about the date. I’m here if you need anything. I love you.”

  I lingered outside the door for another thirty seconds, but it didn’t open, and I heard no sounds from the other side. I put my hand against the wards on his door frame, brushing them with my magic. I smiled, trying to pour warmth into my touch.

  I went back to Nicolas’s apartment. He was still out. He scheduled many of his meetings at night, and he often didn’t return until late. I was halfway through yet another boring book on healing magic, which did not come naturally to me, when there was a knock on the door.

  Daniel.

  I lowered the shield, and he came through the door hesitantly. He was certainly not his usual self—his shoulders were slumped, his hair was flat and limp, and he was paler than normal.

  I opened my arms wide, and he fell into them. I hugged him tightly.

  “Lieutenant Darling,” I murmured, feeling his rapid breathing against me.

  He didn’t say anything, and I didn’t speak again. Words were unnecessary between us. He didn’t have to hear my love for him, and I didn’t need to hear his voice to know his sadness and grief.

  When Nicolas returned two hours later, he took one look at us and pursed his lips in understanding. He poured a couple of fingers of whiskey into two glasses.

  He handed one to Dan—who took it with shaky fingers—and they clinked their glasses together, draining them simultaneously.

  To my surprise, Nicolas put his arms around Daniel and held him. Dan clung to him, and I was touched by their closeness. Both of them had their eyes closed.

  They stayed like that for a long time, and it was easy for me to see exactly how much of a father Nicolas was to Dan, and exactly how young Dan still was in the grand scheme of both human life and the extensive history of magic.

  Our work slowed around the holidays. My life was falling into a pleasant rhythm. I rarely did field work; I preferred research and analysis. I spent much of my time poring over books about previous clan creations, filling in the gaps we still had when it came to constructing our new clan’s sanctum.

  Daniel and I worked on my transmutation, getting to know each other’s magic and seeing how we could make them work together. Daniel also traveled to Osaka several times, looking at property more seriously. On these trips, he took Irina and Cameron for reasons he didn’t explain to me. I had so much work to do that I barely had time to think about it.

  Time was flying by, and it felt like I had so much to catch up on. When I checked my phone one day and realized that it was December, I winced. I had hardly noticed the transition to winter in Hong Kong’s subtropical climate.

  I didn’t think Christmas would be a big deal in Hong Kong, but it was. The city even went as far as to have big Christmas displays and holiday fairs with fake snow. I laughed at the absurdity of Christmas in the humid, balmy seventy-degree weather. Everyone in Nicolas’s group was festive about the holiday season, and we all exchanged gifts in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

  Finding presents for them was a trial. To those I knew less well, I gave gifts of food. Persian sweets for Farhad, expensive Scottish shortbread for Cameron and Teng that Keisha helped me procure, homemade peanut butter cups for Athena that Daniel had helped me craft, and maple sugar candy for Sylvio. Sylvio, I had learned, was Canadian, which was a shock to me.

  I even left a box of fancy ginger cookies outside of Irina’s door, with a formal but bland note about holiday well-wishes. I didn’t think it could hurt. No one hates cookies, right?

  For Keisha, Nicolas and I had teamed up. He gave her a set of chunky gold bracelets that matched the gold lace gloves I managed to find from a boutique Singaporean designer.

  Chandra was hard to shop for, but I wanted to give her something more unique than food. She and I weren’t friends, but our polite truce had held over these months. She had done a lot for me, training me and supporting me in my transmutation.

  I found her gift almost by accident while shopping for Keisha. The same designer made a gorgeous length of hand-woven fabric that was the finest gossamer I had ever seen. It was chocolate brown and could be wrapped into a scarf, a skirt, a shirt, a belt, or anything else someone might desire. It was perfect for her complexion and her tall, lithe frame.

  Ryan was another difficult giftee. He had discerning taste and a lot of money. He never needed anything—no one in Nicolas’s group did, really—and was picky enough that buying something for him was a risk. Nicolas pointed me toward Ryan’s favorite expensive scotches, one of the rarer ones I managed to get my hands on for him.

  Daniel was easy. He had never received g
ifts growing up as a child, so he was appreciative of literally anything he got, especially if it was interesting and unique. There was a semi-famous glassblower in Hong Kong who had studied the art in Okinawa. I commissioned a little lucky cat statue for Daniel—delicate, smiling mischievously, and in the exact shade of coppery red as his vibrant hair.

  Perfectly representative of him.

  Dan had picked up a detail about me that I mentioned in passing and ran with it. He knew I liked figure skating, and he had gotten the two of us tickets to see the Figure Skating Grand Prix Final, one of the most exciting competitions of the skating season. We had a great weekend together in Vancouver, eating excellent food and watching some of the best skaters in the world compete. Dan was an attentive student and learned a lot about ice skating, cheering for the Japanese skaters in particular.

  Nicolas was the most difficult challenge. Nothing I could give him would ever compare to what he could buy for himself. Instead, I gave him a part of who I was. We spent three days away from Hong Kong. With Keisha’s gracious portal help, we bounced from Nebraska to New York City to Toronto.

  I showed him around the places that had been so dear to me during various points in my life and told him endless stories. With his talents for glamour and our block-sync rings, we avoided unnecessary attention as we explored.

  He was serious and quiet on our trip, paying careful attention to me the whole time. I could tell without hearing the words that he was moved by how I opened up to him. When he held me each night, it was like he understood me more and more.

  When we returned from our short trip, he gave me my Christmas gift. Wrapped in brilliant red was a gorgeous lacquer box from Shanghai Tang, vibrantly colored and with a design of twin Chinese dragons on it. I thought the box itself was the gift, beautiful and wild and fierce, until he told me to open it. Inside was a lovely but simple ring, a delicate band of rose gold set with tiny oval diamonds. He had an impeccable eye for style, and it was perfect for me.