Ashes (Fire Within Series Book 3)

by Ella M. Lee

  Upon what instrument are we two spanned?”

  “Sounds like us,” Dan whispered.

  “It does,” I agreed. “Our souls were most certainly drawn together. We are in this together.”

  “I didn’t… protect you earlier,” he said. “I’m… sorry.”

  I tightened my arms around him. “Put that out of your mind. You protected yourself. That was more important.” I gave him the sternest look I could summon. “You have to think of yourself, Dan. You can’t give away all that you are to others.”

  He shrugged. “I belong to Nico.”

  “You belong to yourself,” I said. “I’ll tell you something: Just because Nicolas paid money for you doesn’t actually mean he owns you. No one can own you unless you let them.”

  He shrugged again, and I shook my head. Dan was stubborn and young. He would learn and grow. I imagined a world in which we all lived together in Osaka, decades from now, with the new magic I was absolutely certain we could create.

  That world seemed nice, and so very real.

  “Your brother is awake,” Nicolas said.

  It was well into the evening, and he had just returned to his apartment. Daniel was asleep, and Nicolas checked him over, drawing blood from him and hooking him up to an intravenous line for fluids.

  “Well?” Nicolas asked, studying me.

  “Well, what?” I asked, annoyed.

  “You brother is still dying. He will, in fact, die in about twenty-four hours if I can’t fix him. Aren’t you at all interested in seeing him?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m still considering whether I’d like to murder him or not. I don’t understand how you can be so magnanimous. He attacked Dan knowing full well that the virus can kill a Water magician in hours. I’m with Chandra on this one. Mark is a dick, and I don’t know why you’re helping him.”

  “You are asking that of someone who chose not to hunt down and kill the father who tortured him relentlessly for months,” Nicolas said.

  I rolled my eyes and looked away. Of course Nicolas could one-up anyone when it came to how he handled stress.

  Well, I wasn’t as perfect as him, and that was fine with me. Mark had caused me a lot of grief, and I was sick of it. He’d always been a spoiled, indulged kid, and he was a spoiled, indulged adult too.

  Nicolas cupped my chin, pulling my attention. “Listen, lamb. I love how you defend Daniel. Truly, I do.” He brushed his hand over Dan’s hair affectionately. “Dan is alive and safe, and I need you thinking about our long-term goals.

  “We’re going to need allies when we are a newly formed clan. Mark and Evie are a good opportunity for us, and it will be easy to earn their loyalty if we save their lives a few times over. I’m not going to force you to be friends with Mark, but I’d like you to shelve your ire and consider my perspective right now. Things are dangerous, and I need you focused.”

  I studied his lovely eyes. “How bad is it, really?”

  “Stephan could cause some serious issues for us, if he chooses,” Nicolas said, bringing his fingers together. “The trick will be figuring out his trigger and avoiding it. I have a deep well of goodwill here in Water, but a new clan would be a rumor even Claudius could not ignore. I fear for Dan’s safety—Smoke would love to run experiments on him, should they manage to get their hands on him.”

  “Why didn’t Stephan just have Katherine take him from us earlier?” I asked. “Smoke could have trapped us in a circle and killed us if they had brought enough magicians.”

  Nicolas shrugged. “I don’t know. I can only guess that Stephan didn’t know Daniel would be there, else he might have arranged his plans differently.” He paused. “We need to get out of this clan house. There are too many eyes here, even when we keep to ourselves.”

  “No one will find us in Osaka,” I said. “We’ve been very careful with the planning.”

  “I know,” he said. “Let’s get through fixing Mark, and then we’ll figure out what needs to be done. I’m not seeing any instabilities for the next couple of days, although a change in decisions can alter that. I’ve let up on the hold I normally keep on my visions. These days, I almost always suppress them. If I let up on that suppression, I receive visions constantly. I’m using them to alert me to changes.”

  “Can you do that and still focus?” I asked.

  He grimaced. “I’m trying. We’ll see how it goes.”

  I took his hands in mine. “I love you,” I said a little desperately. “Please take care of yourself. Do you want me to come with you to see Mark?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t want you any more stressed than you already are.”

  A non-answer, which meant the real answer was likely “yes.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I just… need a minute.”

  Nicolas wrapped his arms around me carefully. He pressed his forehead into mine for a moment and then leveled his gaze on mine.

  “Do not crumble, Fiona. We will get through this, and we will all be better for it. Trust me.”

  Chapter 19

  Teng’s apartment was a flurry of activity. Cameron’s bedroom had been turned into a makeshift recovery room. Mark, still covered in blood but looking stable, was laid out on the bed, hooked up to an intravenous line and a heart monitor. He was in shackles, unconscious.

  Evie was slumped in a chair at his side, also in shackles, holding his hand. She had cleaned up—she was wearing some of Chandra’s clothes, and her wet hair was pulled back into a messy bun. She was pale and distressed, but I had a hard time summoning any sympathy right now, with my mind still on Dan’s near-death and Nicolas’s shakiness.

  Teng was at his desk, his eyes on the dizzying array of text boxes on his four monitors. I went to stand behind him, and his eyes flicked to mine.

  “Lai-Ming?” he asked.

  “He’s alive,” I said. “Complaining.”

  Teng’s lips twitched into a small smile.

  Nicolas, Ryan, and Irina were having a serious conversation as he unloaded samples of Daniel’s blood and fiddled with one of Ryan’s magical devices.

  Nicolas looked serious and driven, and I wondered if stress managed to hold him together in ways it had never done for me. He was at his most competent and effective when the stakes were high, and I envied that about him.

  I went into the bedroom and sat in the chair on the opposite side of Mark’s bed from Evie. She watched me warily.

  Mark looked terrible. Pale, slick with sweat, his breathing ragged and shaky. I frowned, trying to dredge up a bit of compassion for him.

  Nicolas was right—I needed to be smart about this situation. Nicolas had vastly more experience when it came to political interactions, alliances, and managing clan relationships than I did. I needed to swallow my pride and annoyance and learn from him. I needed to play another game.

  “How did you and Mark meet?” I asked Evie, studying her worried expression.

  She looked at me with wide eyes, startled. “He saved my life. His group pulled my group’s ass out of the fire. When we got back to the clan house, he told me I could pay him back by letting him take me on a date.”

  I smiled. That sounded like Mark. He always had a cocky sort of audacity that made him a ladies’ man, and often the class clown. That sort of bravado made many women swoon, and the fondness in Evie’s eyes told me she was completely dedicated to him.

  “When did you get engaged?” I asked.

  “A few weeks ago. Right before this most recent job,” she said, glancing out into the living room toward Nicolas. “We were thinking of getting married in May.”

  Her lower jaw trembled, and her hand tightened on Mark’s hand.

  “May is pretty,” I said awkwardly, trying to figure out a question I could ask that wouldn’t be about Meteor. I didn’t want to put her on edge by making her think I was digging for information about her clan. I was trying to make a human connection with her, not a clan connection.

  She sighed. “I don’t think that’s going to ha
ppen anymore.”

  “Nicolas will fix Mark,” I said.

  “Even if he does,” she said, leaning in and whispering, “I don’t think we’re going to get out of here alive.”

  “No need to lower your voice. He can hear you regardless,” I said, tapping my temple.

  She turned her startled gaze out the door, and I laughed at her chagrined expression.

  “I’m sure he’ll tell us his decisions when he makes them,” I said, trying to walk the line between reassurance and giving too much away.

  “Your commander… How is he?” she asked.

  “He’s fine.”

  “He’s strong,” she said. She smiled faintly. “I think Mark is jealous.”

  “We’re all jealous of Daniel,” I assured her.

  “Mark didn’t tell me much about you,” Evie said. “I didn’t know he had faked his death. I just thought the two of you were estranged.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Why am I not surprised?”

  But in a way, I understood. It was not common to talk about your life pre-clan, even with close friends or significant others. I knew very little even about Nicolas and Daniel, aside from basic facts and anecdotes from before they discovered magic.

  Evie grimaced. “He talks about you fondly. Really, he does. He’s said more than once that he misses you.”

  “He’s known how to find me for years.”

  Evie brushed his hair back. “He’s stubborn,” she said, smiling. “He makes a decision, and he never goes back on it. I’ve tried to talk him out of half a dozen bad ideas, and he never listens.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “He’s always been like that.”

  “I sort of like it,” Evie said. “I wish I had his confidence. But then shit like this happens, and I remember that confident people are reckless. I rein him in when I can.”

  I knew what she meant. Everyone in my life here in Water was confident. They all believed strongly in their powers and convictions, and it always seemed like it was up to me to do the worrying.

  I was about to speak, to tell her that if Mark was anything like he used to be, it wasn’t possible to rein him in, but Nicolas interrupted us.

  “Out,” he said, entering the room swiftly, tilting his head. “Both of you.”

  He came around to my side of the bed and ran those strange metal hoops attached to handles over Mark’s still form. I edged past him, knowing better than to interrupt him when he was focused and working. He was blinking frequently and subtly flinching here and there, and I wondered how much annoyance his visions were causing him. I wasn’t about to push his limits.

  “I can’t leave him…” Evie said weakly.

  Nicolas narrowed his eyes at her. I thought he would say something cruel, but he merely said, slowly and carefully, “I’m not going to hurt him. He is lucky that his blood type is the same as Daniel’s. We are simply going to try an experiment to see how Daniel’s blood reacts to Mark’s blood. It should be innocuous. Ryan and Irina are both here if anything goes wrong. Irina is Water’s best healer.”

  Evie looked like she was debating whether to say anything in response, but Nicolas was giving her a look that said it would be foolish to argue. She glanced at me. I gave her a tiny beckoning gesture with my hand, and she moved to join me by the door. I didn’t think Nicolas would do anything extreme like strangle her again, but I didn’t like the sheer amount of crushing stress on him these days, and I hadn’t known him quite long enough to guess the exact point at which he might snap—if it was even possible for Nicolas to snap.

  “Sit,” I said to Evie, pointing to Teng’s couch. “Have you eaten anything?”

  She shook her head, twisting her ponytail in her hand nervously. She watched as Ryan and Irina went into the bedroom. Nicolas shut the door firmly behind them.

  I texted Keisha, asking her to bring some food for all of us. I got a string of excited thumbs-up and smile emojis in reply.

  “Nicolas is an excellent researcher,” I said. “He has a Ph.D. in immunology, and he studied magic’s effect on the human body for years. If Mark can be fixed at all, Nicolas will do it.”

  “But why?” Evie asked in barely a whisper.

  She was still staring at the closed door, her hand at her throat. Her dark-blue eyes were murky. She was picking at her nails absently, breathing fast. I reminded myself to have a little sympathy. We wanted her on our side, after all, and it wasn’t like I couldn’t empathize. I remembered how hard it had been a few days ago to see Nicolas stop breathing. I might have attempted to kill someone if I had been made to leave the room and forced to entrust his fate to complete strangers.

  Hostile strangers, at that. Strangers who had recently been wronged several times by their patient.

  “This is just how Nicolas is,” I said. “He promised to try, and when he promises something, he doesn’t go back on it.”

  There was no sound from the other side of the door. I checked my phone, pulling up the new chat channel that Teng created to discuss Mark and Evie. Sylvio had done some digging in Meteor on Evie, and Teng had begun putting together a background report on her. I followed the link to the document.

  Evie, full name Genevieve Hayes. Twenty-seven years old, born and raised just outside of New York City, of Irish descent. She had only been in Meteor for three and a half years, and she had a background in social media marketing. Teng had linked to several active and inactive social media accounts. Even I had used Instagram in Flame, mostly to post photos of food—like the rest of humanity—and videos of my figure skating and pathetic attempts at judo with Violet. Evie’s accounts had a lot of images of beaches and sunsets and city skylines with inspirational quotes and hashtags beneath them.

  I wanted to laugh. It was amazing how tame all of us were without magic. Nicolas the researcher. Daniel the chef. Ryan the lawyer. Evie, writing sappy inspirational content on Twitter and Facebook for some faceless corporation. Me, the librarian.

  Magicians were, at their core, humans, gifted with power we probably shouldn’t have. None of us ever did anything helpful with it, anyhow. Sky preserved our secrecy. Smoke furthered magical knowledge, building upon itself over and over, a snake eating its tail. And the rest of us? We just fiddled with whatever seemed shiniest at the moment, like spoiled and selfish toddlers. Sometimes we destroyed things. Sometimes we killed people. It never seemed to matter because most of the world was disposable to us, including each other.

  Keisha had come and gone with our food, and I was getting tired of watching Evie bite her nails nervously, when finally the bedroom door opened again.

  Evie jumped up but immediately drew back as Nicolas swept out of the room, pulling off his latex gloves and tossing them into the bag Ryan was holding.

  “He’s still alive and stable,” Nicolas said. “I need Dan, and then we can move forward with the final steps. You can visit him, but don’t bother Irina.” He looked in my direction. “Fiona, with me.”

  Evie hesitated. I gave her an encouraging nod as I got up, and she hurried into the bedroom. I watched, catching a glimpse of her kneeling by Mark’s side and taking his hand.

  “You’re going to bother Dan?” I asked Nicolas once we were safely in the hallway and heading to the elevator.

  Nicolas sighed. “I have no choice. We need his magic to heal Mark.”

  “He doesn’t have any magic,” I said, my tone terser than I intended.

  “He’ll have enough for this. Mark’s Meteor magic is doing a decent job of beating this virus back, but we need Dan’s lightning to finish the job.”

  “You’ll have to convince him to save Mark,” I said. “He doesn’t seem particularly pleased right now.”

  “I don’t have to do any convincing,” Nicolas said as the door opened on our floor. “I simply have to give him an order.”

  “Nicolas!” I said, grabbing his arm.

  He spun, giving me a half-offended, half-alarmed look. I had never handled him like that before. His gaze flicked between my face a
nd my hand on his sleeve, his eyes flashing in a way that reminded me that Nicolas could still be a dangerous creature.

  I withdrew quickly.

  “You can’t just…” I started, but I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  I had no idea what to say. Getting between them was a terrible idea. No one did it, especially now that the two of them were commanders. How they interacted was partially dictated by their longtime closeness, but also by the social norms of Water.

  But I felt as though I needed to defend my commander. I had no idea why; he was perfectly capable of defending himself. Lately I was jumpy, terrified of anything else happening to our group, and I hated seeing Daniel shredded to pieces.

  Nicolas, to his credit, given his current level of patience, merely waited for me to continue. His expression was stony, and he looked like he was trying very hard to hold his tongue.

  “I’m sorry,” I said weakly.

  “I have no intention of harming Daniel,” Nicolas said. “I would never choose anyone or anything over him. I don’t know how you keep forgetting that I love him. He is like my child, and I will always protect him when I can.”

  Nicolas’s expression bordered on a glare, and I knew to back off.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “Never mind,” Nicolas said, pausing for a moment with his hand on the apartment door handle. “I am the one who should apologize. I’m exhausted, and I’m taking that out on you.”

  “Nicolas…” I started.

  I wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to be perfect with me, that we were all under a lot of pressure, that I understood completely. But he was already through the door.

  Dan, surprisingly, was awake. He was lying down, shivering under a blanket, but his eyes were open, and he was dazedly watching the news in Cantonese on Nicolas’s huge television. His skin was pale, and he looked completely zoned out.

  “Hi,” I said, sinking to my knees at his side.

  “Hey,” he whispered, reaching his hands for mine.

  Nicolas went to the kitchen and mixed lemon and honey into a mug of hot water from the water boiler. I helped Dan sit up, and he took the mug with shaking hands. He was breathing hard, as though he’d run for miles.