by Ella M. Lee
“Of course I am,” I said.
I touched my glass to his and leaned in to kiss him lightly. He caught my chin in his hand and held me still, kissing along my jaw and my neck. My breath caught, my heart kicking a few gears higher.
For a moment, I felt fire and warmth bloom in me, the same feeling I had experienced early in our relationship.
I pressed my lips into the hot skin of his neck and ran my hand through his hair, content for a brief minute.
Stay, stay, stay, I begged that feeling.
Nicolas pulled back to study my face. Nothing made his eyes prettier than flickering candlelight, and my heart raced. I smiled at him, drawn in by his gaze.
He touched my cheek. “Beautiful Fiona,” he said. “I would do anything to see you smile like that more often.”
His proud, pleased expression sent anxiety rippling through me. He liked nothing better than impressing me. It had always been Nicolas who put more effort in, who tried harder, who always knew what to say and do.
Nicolas, who had taken me to temples and mountaintops and foreign cities on dates. And now to a tiny, beautiful cave of glass.
I wanted to love it, but it felt like a reproach.
“I’ll try harder,” I said, an anxious shiver running through me. “I’m sorry.”
Tears filled my eyes, and Nicolas’s expression crumpled into devastated concern.
“Lamb, I wasn’t trying to make you cry,” he said quietly. “Not at all. I merely wanted to do something nice because you have been so unhappy lately.”
“It’s not you,” I said. “It’s never been because of you.”
He gave me a slightly impatient look. “Of course I know that. I am not upset with you, not at all.” He sighed. “We all loved him.” No need to specify which him. “There isn’t a person here who isn’t hurt and grieving, even still. No one here will forget him. That would be impossible. His magic runs through us. You are in more sympathetic and understanding company than you seem to believe.”
“I want to feel something again,” I said. “Anything at all.”
“You aren’t the only one who is numb lately,” Nicolas said. He took my hands in his. “We have a great deal of time. We are magicians, and we’ve been gifted longevity, more lifetimes than any other humans will ever receive. You don’t need to heal quickly; you need to heal correctly. I will be here for you through all that.”
I closed my eyes. “I have never deserved you,” I whispered.
“Lucky for me, you don’t get to decide that,” he said. “I do.”
I smiled weakly. “I love you. And I will try harder. Because you deserve that.”
“Will you start by eating?” he asked. “You worry me sometimes. You are too thin.”
“I’m just busy. We all are.”
But I ate a piece of sushi to prove that I could. And another. And another. Nicolas had ordered the sushi from my favorite restaurant in Osaka, and I was grateful and appreciative.
“What are you going to do with this thing?” I asked, looking at the stunning, glassy cage around us.
He shrugged. “Move it to the garden? Make it a piece of modern sculpture? After I study it, of course. It holds residues of my magic, which likely gives it interesting properties and tells us fulgurite has potential for our uses.”
“Hmm… Nicolas Demarais, sculptor,” I mused. “That might be a nice turn of career for you.”
He gave me an exasperated but amused look. “I’ve never been an artist. I’m too logical and orderly for that.”
“You play the piano,” I said.
“That isn’t art. Maybe to some people, but not me. It’s merely reading notes, math, marks on a page,” he said, his tone dismissive.
“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” I said. I refilled his sake glass. “Will you play for me later, please?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “If you eat your half of the sushi.”
He gave me an endearing smile, teasing me. Nicolas would always give me anything I asked for. The tiniest shreds of happiness collected in my chest, and I kissed him again with more feeling than I had in weeks, letting his touch soothe and still the tangle of harsh emotions in me.
Three days later, my mood continued to improve. Talking with Nicolas on our mini date had lifted some sort of weight from my shoulders, the heaviness of guilt and uncertainty and creeping failure.
Now when I saw Nicolas, I didn’t see our current distance as a problem but instead as an opportunity. His encouraging words had helped me reorient myself. I could now view bridging that distance as a fun challenge and a goal rather than a desperate race.
I found myself lingering in his arms in the mornings more than I had since before Dan’s death. I was eager to get home to him at night rather than reluctant. I looked forward to his small touches, whereas before I’d shied away awkwardly.
On the third night, I couldn’t keep my hands or mouth off of him. I had leaped into his arms and let him carry me to bed. Nicolas was incredible in bed—mind-reading was a godsend in that regard—and it was impossible for me not to implode under his attentive touch.
But I was done with allowing him to do all the work, as fun as it was to let him caress his tongue teasingly and languidly into my most sensitive areas.
So I put my tongue all over him in return, prideful and delighted that I could make him pant and groan, his muscles tightening under me.
Nicolas and I understood each other very well at this point, and I wasn’t surprised when he gracefully but firmly rolled me onto my back and thrust swiftly into me.
I pulled him closer as he settled into the fast, yearning rhythm that undid both of us. I finished quickly, barely able to breathe from pleasure, and he finished soon after, stilling in me.
“Mon Dieu, Fiona, I love you,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to mine.
I kissed him, running my fingers down his strong back. “I love you.”
He withdrew carefully and collapsed onto the duvet. I pressed myself against him, twining my legs with his and letting my lips wander gently over his collarbone and chest as he held me. My flushed skin still trembled with desire, and each of his slight movements sent pleased shivers through me.
We hadn’t had sex in well over a month, and it seemed a lot like we had both needed it. Nicolas had never been sex-obsessed, but he gained a certain relaxed quality afterward that I loved seeing in him.
I fell asleep content, breathing in Nicolas’s delicious scent and listening to his strong heartbeat.
Chapter 3
When I woke, Nicolas wasn’t in bed. I heard him typing at his desk in the next room over. I crept to the door of his office, and he looked up.
“Our invitation is here,” he said, his eyes lit with excitement, his shoulders thrown back proudly. “Would you like to see?”
I winced. “Not really, no,” I said, but I walked around to his side of the desk.
He pulled me onto his lap and clicked into his email. There was a message from Gemma Young, one of the pinnacle members of Sky. It read:
Greetings Nicolas,
I hope this note finds you well. Sky would like to invite you, Ryan Zhang, and Fiona Ember to a conclave of clans. All pinnacle members from all clans are being invited. Verdant and Wind have kindly offered to host and secure the location. You will find the details of the place, date, agenda, and safeguards attached. Sky would like to offer your clan the chance to detail your previous and ongoing actions in order to familiarize the rest of us with your plans and goals. We are all looking forward to understanding Lightning Clan more. Please send your RSVP promptly.
Regards,
Gemma
I read the note twice before looking at Nicolas. “Do you know Gemma well?”
“No. I’ve only met her once in passing.”
“What’s with the tone of this email?” Most people didn’t talk to Nicolas like that, as though he should be glad they were bothering to notice him. Usually they were glad he was noticing the
m.
“It’s a power move,” Nicolas said. “She’s condescending to me intentionally. She’s letting me know that Sky doesn’t consider us a threat.”
“Great, so she’s being a bitch.”
Nicolas laughed lightly. “I am encouraged by her tone, actually. If Sky and the others considered us a threat, that would be a much harder place to start from.”
“Don’t we want to seem threatening?” I asked, thinking of how bad it would be if we seemed like easy pickings to the other clans.
“Seeming strong and seeming threatening are not the same thing,” Nicolas said. “We are strong, and we will seem that way. That is in our favor. But I’m glad we do not threaten them. It’s not my intention to be a trouble-making clan. I want to prove our worth and earn their respect. I don’t want to seem hostile like Meteor, or contrary like Flame, or inscrutable like Wild. How we present ourselves at this gathering is very important.”
“Do I really have to go?” I asked. “Can’t you and Ryan handle it? I’m bound to screw something up.”
Nicolas gave me a sharp, uncompromising glance. “Yes, you have to go, and no, you won’t screw anything up.”
“But we have so much work to do here…” My mind went yet again to the weird oddities in our magic, its constant desire to confound us and present us with new challenges.
“The others can handle that,” Nicolas said, his tone leaving no room for further whining.
But I couldn’t help myself. “I wish Dan were here,” I said. I had no doubt Daniel would enjoy himself in a room full of other magicians watching his every move. He had loved his magic, and he always taken any excuse to show off.
“Don’t we all?” Nicolas asked. He clicked the attachment on the email. “I’ll be sending this out to everyone momentarily, but there’s something here I want you to see…”
Nicolas extended a finger, pointing to the first three lines of the document. The middle line stuck out to me. It was an address… in Hokkaido, Japan.
“The conclave is here?” I asked.
“It appears so.”
It wasn’t really here, per se. Hokkaido was a thousand miles north of our home outside Osaka, but it was an interesting coincidence. To our best knowledge, very few people outside of our clan knew our location—and they were loyal to a fault.
“Do you think they know?” I asked.
He tilted his head back and forth. “Probably not. It might simply be that Wind and Verdant wanted somewhere in reasonable proximity to their primary homes in Sendai and Xi’an. But the meeting is in four weeks. We have time to figure out what they know or don’t know, or whether it’s important at all.”
“Will it be safe?” I asked.
Nicolas scrolled down and pointed to the section on safeguards. “Quite safe. There will be magic dampeners in place, not that I think anyone will pick a fight. It would reflect badly on a pinnacle member’s clan to be outwardly hostile. But there will be a lot of conniving. Intelligence gathering and exchange. Alliances formed or dissolved. Deals made. In fact, there will be a magical binder in place over the entire property—any deals struck can be bound by magic, if the parties choose. It’s a way of increasing security, something only Wind’s magic can do.”
“So we need to be careful what we promise to anyone.”
“Always, lamb,” he said, running his fingers through my hair.
“Fiona!” Chandra’s voice rang through the lab. “Oh, Mother of Lightning!”
I rolled my eyes before standing up, gritting my teeth at the sound of my annoying epithet. I’d been crouched down behind the workbenches, picking up broken glass after I’d dropped one of Ryan’s magic orbs. I’d been trying to use it to shape a new weather ward, and power had reverberated so hard through me from the arcane feedback that my arms had gone rigid, and I’d dropped it on the floor.
It had been a bizarre reaction, and one I hadn’t experienced before. Almost like a sudden surge of magic. I’d have to study that feeling some more. Although Lightning magic was often persnickety and playful, it was docile unless urged into a shape or direction. I’d been doing nothing to provoke it.
I wondered idly if it could be related to our shattered protective shield, and I made a note for myself to enter the experience into the file. Something deep in me trembled nervously, afraid of what any small issue could mean for the health of our clan.
I dumped the glass onto the counter, pushing away my nagging worries. “What’s going on?”
“Nicolas asked me to get you. I thought you’d be in the Aviary.” She jutted her chin toward Nicolas’s apartment, using our clan nickname for the building. “We’re having a commander meeting to discuss the conclave. He said you probably weren’t looking at your phone. I told him, yeah, duh, she never looks at her phone anymore.”
I sighed. I didn’t look at my phone because it still sent a pang of grief through me to know that I wasn’t going to see a text alert from Daniel on its home screen. When he’d been alive, he had messaged me constantly, our smooth and casual banter a constant thread running through my life—now gone.
Chandra tugged on her dark ponytail, throwing up a hand. “I haven’t seen Nicolas this keyed up in ages. He really does love being on stage, huh?”
We left the building, and I activated the dampening wards with an absent touch. “I think he’s been taught that life isn’t worth living if you aren’t the center of attention.”
“I guess that’s what happens when you grow up as French nobility,” Chandra said, skipping ahead of me into the cool day.
French nobility? Was Nicolas nobility? If so, he’d never mentioned it, but his upbringing had been extravagant. And if it had given him the confidence to do the crazy things he did, like invent new magic and defend it ferociously, then all the better. One of us had to have that sort of internal drive, because it wasn’t me. I dreaded every second of the upcoming conclave, still annoyed and blindsided at having been picked to be the pinnacle member to replace Daniel.
I glanced behind myself, out toward the temple, swallowing the bitterness that rose in my throat like bile. Life wasn’t interested in stopping or getting any easier just to please me, and I was worn down by its tenacity.
But today was no different than any other day—my annoyance melted away when I entered the common room and saw our commanders collected there happily, saw the ease at which everyone held their magic, saw the glow behind Nicolas’s brilliant tawny eyes.
How could I be anything less than strong and sure in front of them?
I took notes as Nicolas spoke about the conclave. Of the five commanders in Lightning—me, Ryan, Nicolas, Chandra, and Sylvio—he was the most knowledgeable about the pinnacle members of other clans.
In three weeks, we’d all be meeting and staying together at a large ski lodge owned by Wind in the wilderness of Hokkaido. The conclave was planned for three days: a meet-and-greet day for everyone to get settled, and then two days for various topics of discussion. Lightning was the first item on the agenda, and our presentation and discussion would take up most, if not all, of the first day.
While most other clans would likely only send two pinnacle members, Nicolas wanted all three of us to attend in order to present a unified front. There wouldn’t be any other magicians allowed on the grounds except a few of Sky’s assistants for note-taking and archiving purposes, and some of Wind’s staff for logistical purposes. The whole stressful weekend would be oddly intimate, with only the very powerful pinnacle members vying for one another’s attention.
“Will Stephan show up?” I asked.
“Certainly,” Nicolas said. “He wouldn’t miss this opportunity to study Lightning magic, nor to be part of some historic decisions about the magical world.”
“And to needle you,” Sylvio added.
“That too, yes,” Nicolas conceded. “He’s likely to come with Juniper. Stephan influences everything Smoke does, but Juniper is the most tenured of their pinnacle members, and she prefers to have her
hands in everything. We can talk more about the attendance list when we get it. For now, we simply need to prepare our presentation and defenses, and make sure our magic is as strong and secure as possible.”
I frowned, studying the rows of notes on my laptop. Guilt crawled over my skin uncomfortably. Of the five of us sitting here, I was by far the laziest when it came to my own magic. I did a lot for the clan. I had partially created Lightning. In some ways, it was more responsive to me than to anyone else. I had a knack for it in ways the others didn’t, understanding it and coaxing it like it was a living thing.
But when it came to my own magic? I hadn’t honed it. I hadn’t practiced much with it. I hadn’t learned my sanctum inside and out like I knew the other commanders had. In fact, I hadn’t even visited my own sanctum. And although the clan’s sanctum often called to me like anything associated with Daniel did, I hadn’t visited that sanctum, either.
But as I studied the date of the conclave, I found it too close for comfort. I needed to work harder on myself and my magic, and I needed to do it soon.
Chapter 4
“What would you say to a little weekend trip?” Nicolas asked me. We were in the Aviary, stretched out on our backs on his couch, with me crushed between him and the seat cushions. His eyes were trained on the wooden beams of the ceiling, although they were distant and unseeing.
I shifted, putting myself more on top of him and less on the cold leather of the sofa. “We haven’t taken a trip in ages.”
Although Nicolas had frequently spirited me away when we’d been in Water, being part of Lightning had made us more cautious. In fact, we’d only taken two trips in the last nine months—one to Hong Kong, where we felt secure because of Water’s general goodwill toward us, and the other to the middle of nowhere in Thailand, where we’d done some hiking in the jungle and eaten heaps of tom yum goong and refreshing som tam.
