by Jessica Gunn
The wound Giyano had suffered at the hands of Zanka would be enough to prove his innocence, though I wasn’t sure how long he’d had it for. Definitely not longer than an hour or two. Giyano wouldn’t have had time to kidnap Riley if he’d been fighting with Zanka and then nursing his wound.
But Giyano had said Riley wasn’t safe. He’d known that Zanka knew where to find Riley. Which meant Giyano must have been trying to stop Zanka.
Shit. Then how did Giyano end up on that video?
A knock on my bedroom door made me jump. I looked at my clock. I’d zoned out for almost three hours.
“Yeah?”
“It’s me,” said Shawn. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Not like I had a choice. Depending on what Jaffrin did with us after this morning’s fight and me admitting I’d seen Giyano, I might be locked away for good.
Shawn turned the doorknob and pushed open the door. Once inside, he shut it again. “I wanted to check in on you, if that’s okay.”
“Why not? I know Ben probably wants me babysat.” I scooted over on my bed and invited Shawn to sit next to me. He did. “The twins are dangerous, especially now.”
“I think he knows that.” Shawn leaned back against the wall, as if he’d had the most exhausting morning. Then I remembered Ben had struck him with lightning.
I frowned and gave him a sidelong glance. “How are you feeling?”
“Exactly like you’d expect.” He sighed and held out his hand. The shards of his shattered power-binding crystal lay in his palm. “You’re right about these.”
“Either keep it on or don’t. You’re a good enough fighter without the magik, Shawn.”
“That’s not the point.” He pocketed the shards and then sat with arms crossed. “All my life, I’ve been told to keep this part of me a secret. And then I come here and it’s like the Ember witch side of me is the only thing keeping this situation stable.”
“I know the feeling. Except my magik only makes things worse.” He lifted an eyebrow. “It made me an unstoppable demon-fighting force. But for this team, for what you and I are set to accomplish, it only invites chaos.”
He looked over at me, his dark brown eyes focusing on mine. His irises were kissed with a caramel highlight, verging on gold. The Ember witch inside of him. “Maybe it’s your power we should bind.” He said it with the barest hint of humor.
I rolled my eyes. “It won’t help. Even with this new magik, my power’s nothing but wild. It took me years to master my old magik. This new fire…” I glanced down at my hands. “It’s impossible to tame.”
“Bullshit,” Shawn said as he reached out to grab one of my hands. I let him and he unfolded my fingers, placing something in the center of them. A shiny, smooth black stone. Hematite, for grounding and protection. To stabilize and battle negativity. “All magik is tamable. Even Riley’s. But elemental magik responds to emotions. To whatever the user is thinking and dealing with.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you about that. I’m going to be dealing with a lot until I know if I’m destined for life in prison or not.”
Shawn traced a circle in my palm with one corner of the misshapen gemstone. The contact tickled and sent trickles of pleasure down my arm. “You’re not. Like you said: worst case, we run. Alzan is more important than what the Ether Head Circle thinks you did or didn’t do.”
“But I did do what they think I did.” I turned my body to face him so there’d be no mistaking my next words. “I went to Giyano. He was hurt pretty bad. So I helped him and in return, he told me Riley was in danger from Zanka. I didn’t get back here in time to tell Ben because I was trying to heal Giyano. To keep him from dying.”
Shawn’s brown eyes held my stare, not blinking once. “I know.”
“You know,” I said. “Then you know that Giyano had no part in this. He’s been trying to protect Riley in his own twisted way from day one. I’d never side with Giyano if that wasn’t the case. It’s just… he’s a demon. No matter what good deeds he does, no one will believe me.”
“I believe you.”
My eyes narrowed. “How do I know you’re not just saying that?”
“Why? To appease the Ether Head Circle twins?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s exactly my point.”
His mouth thinned. “You don’t trust anyone on the team.”
“No, I don’t trust anyone who isn’t me. That’s how it’s been my entire life.” I looked away from him, straight at the wall opposite my bed. The room was tiny, so it wasn’t far enough for me. Freedom stood on the other side of these walls—on the other side of the city limits. If only I could just get there. But ditching the Fire Circle meant ditching Shawn unless he came with me, and I wasn’t ready to sacrifice Alzan and all of existence to escape Jaffrin and the Fire Circle.
“I made mistakes,” I admitted. “I’ve never been a good soldier. But I’ve always been a fantastic Hunter. I fight for Good’s side, Shawn. But the world isn’t as black and white as Jaffrin and the Ether Head Circle want us all to believe. Allies can be found in the most unlikely places.”
Shawn reached for my hand again and I let him take it. His skin was warm and sent goosebumps riding up my arms. I was cold. So cold. Shawn balanced me out. Maybe that was what the Son and Daughter of Alzan were meant for. Balance.
Maybe Giyano was right about everything.
“You’re right, Krystin,” Shawn said. “And because of that grayness in the middle, I side with you. If you want to run before this mess blows up, I’ll run with you. But I don’t want to leave Ben and Rachel and Nate adrift. We have to make sure the Ether Head Circle won’t imprison them because of Giyano or what they think you’ve done. We need to stay long enough to see this part of things through.”
“And if they take me back to Ether Circle Prison before that?”
Shawn nodded in small motions, looking down at our touching hands. “Then we raise hell. Run. Escape the United States and find a way to Alzan on our own, preferably before Lady Azar shows up to burn it to the ground.”
My stomach fluttered at his words, so determined and reassuring. I closed my eyes and forced deep breaths into my lungs. Fresh oxygen. Fresh reasons to keep fighting. “Okay. Deal.”
“Good,” he said and gave my hand one last squeeze before letting it go. “As for your magik…”
“It’s fucked, I know.” I pulled my hand from his. “Ben is lucky I didn’t lose control earlier.”
“Not that Ben’s the poster boy for control of anything.”
“You said it, not me.” I smirked bitterly. “What have we become, anyway? Who fights their friends with magik? That’s so not normal.”
“It’s become part of who we are. Just another extension of ourselves. I think we forget sometimes the damage we can do. And sustain.”
“I should apologize to him.”
Shawn cringed. “I wouldn’t, not yet. Give him space. We all need it.”
“I need a way to fight with this new fire magik that won’t get us all killed. Lady Azar… she’s gotta be back soon, especially if she’s the one who sent Zanka after us. If she returns while the team is divided…”
Silence fell between us. Shawn made no more moves to hold my hand or otherwise comfort me, but the quiet between us was easy. Calm. Reassuring. Like his very presence balanced me out on a level I didn’t comprehend. Not love or attraction or something like that, but soul deep. Magik deep, even now.
“I keep wondering if it’s best to bind our powers until we make more sense of the Alzan prophecy,” Shawn said. “Or if we should let them be free and force the magik until Alzan appears.”
“Maybe it has to do with those stones,” I said. “It’s the first line of the prophecy. If the Powers broke a pair and saved them for us, it’s got to be tied to either activating this city-saving magik or transporting us to the city itself.”
“Which would be helpful because no one knows where it is, much less how to get there.”
<
br /> I nodded. “Right.”
“So we keep our magik and start looking for these stones?” Shawn asked.
“That’s the best plan. Do you… would you like to spar? I want to practice the fire magik, but I’m worried it’ll hurt the others.” I looked to Shawn, who wore a relaxed expression. Like none of this fazed him, although I knew the truth. “You’re not immune, but you seem to be the only one capable of protecting everyone else from other magik.”
“It’s because of the Ember line. Our magik is malleable because of where it comes from.”
“I know.”
Shawn hopped off my bed and held a hand out to me. “Down to the training room, then?”
“Yes.”
I joined him in the hall and we made our way down to the first level of the house. No one, not even Alexander and Iris, were in the living room, so we bypassed them quickly and marched down to the basement.
Shawn flicked on the light switches and I headed right for the mats tucked against the walls. We took them down and spread them across the floor. We might not have needed them since we’d be focusing on magik, but I figured it was just safer.
When the room was set up, Shawn and I stood opposite each other in the middle of the mats. Without the crystal around his neck, the orange flame of his Ember witch aura whipped around him like a storm. That one power, it seemed, was the only magik remaining from before Kinder’s attack. But on the outside of the flames, the very tips of each wave, a white light had started to twinkle.
The Alzan magik.
“Start with a fireball,” Shawn said. “Just throw it right at me, but keep it smaller than a football.”
I nodded and lifted my hands in front of me, holding my palms about a football’s length apart. I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly. Exhaled. Centered myself. And then I thought of fire, of power in this raw of a form.
My fingertips warmed, then my palms, until I opened my eyes and found a ball of fire swirling around itself. The flames flickered orange and yellow and red, tumbling over each other in front of me.
“There you go,” Shawn said, his voice even and smooth, like a glass of cold iced tea in the middle of summer. “Now grow it.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Grow it?”
“Make it bigger. The size of a kickball or large watermelon.”
That would require putting more power into it. A lot more. But not so much that—stop thinking. Isn’t that what I’d told Ben not three months ago when teaching him control? Don’t think—feel.
I could do this. It was fire and nothing more.
Another inhale, then I moved my palms farther apart and thought about a bubblegum bubble. More air, more force, more magik and this football-sized flame would grow.
But nothing changed.
“It won’t grow,” I said.
“Yes, it will. Trust yourself.”
Easier said than done. I shifted my weight from foot to foot and shook out my shoulders without losing the ball of fire I already had. Then I pulled my palms even farther apart.
Nothing.
Okay. Enough. I’d gone from magik guru to newbie all because of Kinder. And I was not used to being the newbie. And Ben and Jaffrin, my mother—what would they say to all of this? To me not being able to grow a single fireball into something actually intimidating?
The flame between my hands warmed, turning from red and orange to a lighter yellow-white. Heat seared my fingertips but didn’t burn or hurt me. It was just hotter than hell.
Then, suddenly, the fireball grew—much bigger than a watermelon, larger than a garbage can. Wider than the mat beneath my feet.
“There you go,” Shawn said. “Good job.”
But I could feel the fire beating against the mini cage my palms made, the sort of force shield keeping it together. The fire wanted out, like the sun in Giyano’s metaphors. It tackled the walls of my magik, whipping around and around faster than anything I’d ever seen before.
“Krystin?”
I shook my head, wincing with the effort it was taking to keep the flames from breaking free. “I can’t hold it. It’s too much.”
Shawn walked toward me, toward the growing firestorm in my hands. “Yes, you can. You’ve held more magik before and lived.”
“Lived but not controlled,” I said through gritted teeth that gnashed together. “I went crazy when Kinder dumped all that magik into me.”
The firestorm grew with the memories of that night. Of me losing control of my body and mind—and my magik. Of becoming a weapon for Kinder to use, a human shield. Much like the things she had warned the Hunter Circles wanted to do to me. What they had done to her. Was exiling her the worst of it?
I blinked and the firestorm erupted from my hands, exploding in all directions. I ducked from my own attack, bringing the cloud of flames down around me. Shawn dodged a wave of fire and summoned an orange ether shield around himself.
Waving my hands, I tried to ignore the pull of my fire-elemental magik and call upon the air-elemental inside of me. The elusive magik that I’d used once and never again.
Put out the flames, I willed it. Act like wind.
I waved my hand in front of me, hoping it’d smother the flames, but instead the motion only spread them out farther.
“Krystin!” Shawn called over the fiery din. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t put it out!” I cried. Stilling my breath didn’t work. Motioning for the flames to die down didn’t either.
The fire alarm went off above my head, blaring in my ears. The rest of the team appeared moments later, Rachel with a massive wave of collected water in tow. She doused the flames and encircled my hands with water gloves.
“Breathe,” she said, watching the water around my hands start to steam. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” I grunted. “Magik isn’t a problem for me.”
Shawn came beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder. A wave of calm rushed over me as the white tips of his aura seemed to slip onto my shoulder beneath his touch. Finally, after long moments, the flames in my hands died down.
I pulled my hands from Rachel’s and looked up at my team. “I’m sorry. Shawn and I were training, and—”
“No need to apologize,” Ben said, staring at me, his mouth agape. “We might just have to, um, fire proof the training room?” He glanced over at Nate. “Can we do that?”
“I’m surprised you think I’ll still be living with the team for long enough to justify that,” I said under my breath.
Ben’s gaze cut to mine, hard as steel, but he didn’t say anything.
“Ms. Blackwood,” Alexander said as he and Iris strolled into the training room. I’d managed to avoid them since Ben had come back from Canada, but after this incident, I doubted I’d ever be left unattended again.
But Shawn had been there. And even he couldn’t help me.
“What?” I asked Alexander.
Iris came to a stop next to him and placed a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Easy, brother.”
Alexander’s hardened, cold stare reached mine. “You are becoming a risk to your own team in addition to the Fire Circle as a whole.”
I lifted a brow. “Newsflash, asshole: I’ve been a danger since Jaffrin placed me here.” And it wasn’t like Jaffrin hadn’t known that either. I’d told him on multiple occasions how stupid putting me in Boston had been. But no one had listened to me.
“Krystin,” Shawn warned. Nate and Ben stood behind him, offering me more warning glances. It was too late for that.
I shook my head. “No, you know what? I’m over this routine, Alexander. Either you and Iris bring me back to Ether Circle Prison now and stop being creepy guard babysitters, or you leave our house for good. Just because I have new magik doesn’t mean I’m a threat to the team.”
“You nearly burned down the house,” Iris pointed out.
Leveling her with a glare, I said, “And you probably would have let it happen, too. Just like the Ether Head Circle let Kind
er kill a dozen Hunters and get away with it three months ago.”
“Watch yourself, Hunter.” Alexander stood straighter, his hand inching toward his waist.
“That’s unnecessary,” I said, pointedly looking at his hand. “I’m going back to my room and I plan to stay there until Jaffrin un-grounds us. Let me know if the Ether Head Circle determines that they want to imprison me again.”
It was a risk. I didn’t know what orders the twins had. They could have killed me on the spot and the team would have been in cahoots with me for living in the same space, for all the logic that Circle had. But they were the leaders for a reason, so I had to believe that all of this had a purpose.
Even the twins.
I walked by them without saying another word.
Chapter 17
BEN
The twins left. Krystin had walked out of the training room. Rachel had put out the rest of the small fires and shut off our alarm. And then Alexander and Iris had just left.
Not a good sign.
All I could do was hope they weren’t about to turn Krystin in. But a large part of me didn’t care anymore. She’d gone to Giyano. Helped him. And now Riley was gone—again.
All while Hunters and witches were dying at his hand.
Did he ever stop being a monster?
I locked up the house again after the twins left but stayed in the living room, too unsure of everything that was going on to even hope of sleeping.
Riley and Krystin. All the demons. The fate of Boston itself.
I plunked onto the center cushion of our couch and scrubbed my face with the palms of my hands. Tonight. All I had to do was make it through tonight, see what the twins had gone off to do, and then take it from there.
I could do this.
A rush of warm air blew through the living room, much hotter than our heater. Then came the smell of wood burning. I jumped up from the couch, looking for the source of the burning, and found it in the kitchen. Or rather, I found her.
Kinder stood, her hands on the back of one of our wooden dining chairs. The wood underneath her hand smoldered, smoke rising from her fingers.
