by Ella M. Lee
“How did you meet?” I asked.
“We were lawyers at the same firm,” Ryan said. “He was a couple of years younger than me. I met him shortly before leaving to join Water, but I was far too in love to let him go. I’d been in Water for maybe a year before I brought him to the clan, too.”
“So the two of you were in Water together?”
“Yes. He wasn’t in the same group as I was. By that time, my transference abilities were off the charts, and I was in a group that specialized in creating magical objects for the clan. Yan-Lin joined another commander, now long dead, and mostly did legal work for the clan. But that didn’t matter. We spent every night together, and some very memorable long weekends. I don’t think we ever said the word, but if he wasn’t my soulmate, then I don’t have one at all.”
Ryan smiled warmly, and I couldn’t help but mirror him even though my throat had tightened with emotion.
“It was my fault, really,” Ryan said. “I should have kept him out of Water. You see, Yan-Lin was… fragile. He had a bad life growing up. He was often depressed. Some days I could barely get a smile out of him, could barely get him to open his eyes and get out of bed. Other days? Well, he was a painter in his spare time, and he’d paint manically. I’d come home to find he’d painted murals on the walls or covered the floor with fabric and flooded it with swirls of color. Bipolar disorder, they’d say now. But at that time? He was just my beautiful partner, with all his oddities and peculiarities. I loved him so much that I couldn’t help but keep him by my side, but Water was not a good place for him.”
“What happened?”
“A terrible accident. Yan-Lin’s group was tapped to assist in a very high-profile raid on a Meteor clan house, back when the two clans clashed more than they do now. Yan-Lin was finishing up work on another project, so he was left behind. The rest of his group didn’t come back from the operation. Meteor had set a trap for them. They all died, along with members from several other groups involved.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
Fighting between clans was practically at an all-time low right now, but thirty years ago it had been a completely different story. Tensions had been particularly high between Meteor and Water and Meteor and Sky, as Meteor was attempting to expand into both their territories. On top of that, Wild had been seeking approval from Smoke for access to research that Smoke wasn’t ready to release, making them nervous and jumpy.
I was lucky to have come into the clans at a time when everyone was calm. It was yet another reason why Nicolas had been so eager to form Lightning quickly—who knew what issues could blow up the magical community at any moment? Better to have their attention while everyone was more docile than usual.
“Yes, it was awful,” Ryan agreed. “And it broke something in Yan-Lin. My commander, who felt bad for both of us, took him into our group, but his spirit was gone. There were no more manic days, no more balanced days, just hour after hour of bleakness. One day, his mood brightened. He apologized, told me how much he loved me, said I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. I thought he was on the mend. When I came home that night, he was dead. He’d hung himself. There was a note on the floor under him. It said, ‘The days aren’t sunny anymore, even with our love.’”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. I felt like an idiot for repeating that over and over again, but I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t imagine coming home to that, to find that the person I loved most in the world had chosen to end his life. Chills crept up my spine as I thought of Nicolas—if he did that, I’d be in agony. Soul-destroying, heartbreaking agony. The faint echo of it crept through me now just at the thought.
“I am sorry too,” Ryan said. “I knew how hard it was to be in a clan. I should have kept him away. He might have lived. He might have been happy.”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” I said. “And you can’t know that he would have been better off without you. He said you were the best thing that ever happened to him. Don’t you think he meant it?”
“I do,” Ryan said. “Yan-Lin loved me. It was impossible not to know that. There was just so much else about him I didn’t know. Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have Nicolas’s gifts. Maybe I would have known.”
“Nicolas didn’t know about Daniel, not until the very last second,” I pointed out. “No one is infallible, not even Nicolas. He does his best. You did your best.” I glanced down at the picture again. “I wish I could have met him.”
Ryan’s expression, when he lifted his gaze to meet mine, was grateful. A small smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I would have loved for you all to have met him.” Ryan took a deep breath and pulled the photo back toward himself. “Thank you for listening, but I imagine you didn’t come here expecting a story from my past. I can see you have things on your mind, too.”
“You were right about today being an interesting day,” I said. “I’m worried about Nicolas.”
Ryan’s brow furrowed in confusion. “He seems fine to me. Do you think he is upset?”
“That’s the thing…” I said. “I find it weird that he isn’t upset. I’m a mess. Even you’re a mess. Nicolas just calmly accepted all of this and went off to do more work. I’m worried he’s a little too detached about this whole thing.”
Ryan cast his eyes out toward the lab; he knew where Nicolas likely was right now, too. “He is more affected than you think.”
“But not so much that it’s showing,” I said.
“That is Nicolas,” Ryan said. “He is rarely outwardly emotional. It’s his way of surviving. He has… natural walls. He only lets them down for certain people, after careful consideration.”
“Shouldn’t his walls already be down for Daniel?” I asked.
“Perhaps he’s intentionally rebuilt them. It doesn’t do us any good to be emotional about this, even though you and I are both prone to that response. It’s possible Nicolas doesn’t want to get his own hopes up, so as not to be devastated later if this turns out to be an unsuccessful venture.” Ryan sighed. “He is easier to hurt than you might think.”
“So he’s okay?” I prodded.
“As far as I can tell, he is okay. Let him do his work. Let him handle this in his own way.” Ryan reached out and touched my hand, which still rested on his desk. “Nicolas is very lucky to have you.”
I looked away. It didn’t usually feel like that. It felt like I was lucky to have Nicolas, and sometimes I had no idea how I kept him interested.
“What if it is Dan inside our sanctum?” I asked in a whisper.
Ryan smiled. “Then we have been granted a gift from whatever force out there is giving and taking and balancing our universe.”
Chapter 8
When I arrived back at Nicolas’s apartment, he wasn’t home, but I had an email from him. It contained a dossier on each pinnacle member of every other clan. Homework. Great.
But I needed to learn these things. I was behind compared to the others. Nicolas and Ryan knew some of these people personally, having met them during their long tenures in the magical world. I had no such experience. At best, I’d seen some of them in passing.
I closed my laptop and tucked it under one arm, making my way across the gardens to our lab. Although I’d expected to find Nicolas working with magic tonight, when I arrived, he was lying on floor on his back in the center of the room, his hands tucked behind his head, staring up at the dark skylights.
His laptop and a notebook lay next to him, discarded. His expression was relaxed and thoughtful, his lips slightly pursed, one of his legs drawn in close to him and the other stretched out, his toes elegantly pointed.
“Hey,” I said, shutting the door quietly behind myself. “Am I disturbing you?”
He tilted his head toward me. “No.”
I took a seat near him. “What are you doing?”
“Thinking. I wasn’t making much progress staring at my laptop.”
“What are you think
ing about?”
“Daniel. This new issue. How to figure out what we’re truly working with here—magic, or life.”
I reached out to gently brush his arm. “I’ve never seen you at a loss.”
“I used to spend much of my time thinking in Smoke. Thinking is a massive component of any experimentation.”
I laughed dryly. “And here I was, believing myself to be lazy for sitting around and just thinking sometimes.”
Nicolas smiled. “You are not lazy. You work tirelessly in your own way. It’s interesting that you don’t notice it, and that you don’t notice other people noticing it.”
“Working with new magic… it feels like nothing gets done. We discover new things every day, yet we have no refinement. We have dozens of wards. Other clans have thousands. We have practically no knowledge of things that other clans take for granted. Of course I work all the time. There’s so much to discover.”
Nicolas sat up. With a gentle touch of my cheek, he leaned in to kiss me. “Ah, a woman after my own heart.”
“I don’t need to be after your heart,” I said, catching him for a second kiss as he pulled away. “I already own it.”
His wide-eyed expression was delighted, his brown eyes glinting. “Well, that is a level of sentimentality I rarely hear from you.”
I took a deep breath. “I needed to come see you. I was talking with Ryan a little while ago… he told me about his partner, about his death.”
Nicolas nodded, his expression darkening. “Yan-Lin, yes. A tragedy, from what I understand. Ryan has only mentioned him in passing, but I feel for my brother.” Nicolas always referred to Ryan as a brother, although they weren’t related. “That love left a deep mark in him. Was there something specific bothering you?”
“No… I was just thinking about how I’d feel if I lost you. I wanted to see your face, to make sure you were still here.”
He laughed uneasily, gripping my hands in his. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Will it bother you if I stay here and work?”
“Never, lamb.”
I settled onto my stomach, pulling my laptop toward me and opening it. Nicolas lay down on his back once again, staring into nothing with unfocused eyes. Occasionally, he reached over and stroked his fingers down my back while I read, and the tight coils of anxiety that circled my chest loosened one by one under his affectionate touch.
I didn’t remember how I got to bed, and when I woke up in the morning, Nicolas was nowhere to be found. I had only made my way through half of the dossier last night, so I settled down to read the rest. I got about fifteen minutes into my task before I found myself unable to focus.
I followed my feet, letting them guide me mindlessly to the clan’s sanctum. Of course it had always drawn me to it—Daniel was there. Or… his essence was. Something about him lingered, and I hoped that part really was life. I didn’t think I could stand to be disappointed.
I laid down on the smooth, worn wood floor, near the sanctum but not touching it. Nicolas had asked us not to go inside, and I understood why—he wanted to control our experimentation as much as he could.
But I was here for a different purpose. It was time to explore myself.
I needed access to my own sanctum.
I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, letting my limbs relax into the floor. I centered myself, drawing my magic inward, focusing my mind on it, stabilizing it with gentle caresses.
Tentatively, I reached for my core, the well within me that housed my power. If I could touch that and make a connection, I could enter my sanctum—the same process as entering the clan’s sanctum.
In my mind’s eye, the core of my magic burned so brightly that it hurt. When I tried to stretch for it, pain ricocheted through me, a fierce snap of current that shook me.
I gasped and pulled back quickly.
Calming my racing heart, I centered myself again. I reached for the second time, but the same thing happened: Rejection buzzed through me like sharp pain and ruffled my magic. I gasped, needles shooting through me, twisting my lungs in my chest.
I tried again and again until my head ached and my magic felt raw, tingling as though agitated and frightened. When I finally gave up and walked out into the cool morning air, I was so dizzy that I stumbled. My stomach heaved, my skin immediately damp and flushed, hot and cold at the same time. I only got two steps into the garden before I vomited, breathing as though I’d run a marathon.
A panic attack. I hadn’t experienced one in years, but the feeling drew me back, instantly recognizable.
Crouching with my head on my knees and taking deep breaths, I growled in frustration. There was no reason—absolutely no reason—I shouldn’t be able to enter my own sanctum. Absolutely no reason it should reject me painfully and harshly. Absolutely no reason it should push me into complete panic.
It was mine. It was me.
When I’d pushed the tendrils of anxiety aside, fierce determination filled me, calming my racing heart. Nothing about Lightning had truly defeated me yet, and I wasn’t about to let this ruin my streak.
But it might be that I needed a little help.
I spat several times, my throat burning. After ascertaining that I wasn’t about to fall over, I trudged toward the lab. Nicolas was there, kneeling on the floor, drawing wards around the circle of our main experiment space.
“I need you,” I said without preamble, staggering through the door.
He dusted his hands together and stood, alarmed. “What for? What’s wrong?”
I panted. “Can you push me into my sanctum?”
He took a startled step toward me. “Pardon?”
“You know that thing you did for Dan, when he needed to fix his sanctum?” I asked. “You pushed him into his sanctum and helped keep him there. Can you do that for me?”
Nicolas hesitated. “You are having problems accessing it?”
I swallowed my acute embarrassment and said, “Yeah. The connection keeps rejecting me. Painfully.”
His brow furrowed and the corners of his lips quirked into a frown. “Show me what you’re doing. I’m sure we can figure this out.”
Relief flooded me, both at Nicolas’s confident words and his refusal to make a big deal out of my inability to access the most important piece of my magic.
He waved me over to where he was and pointed at the ground. I took a seat cross-legged, and he did the same facing me.
Nicolas’s eyes scanned me, catching on the rapid rising and falling of my chest. “Relax, Fiona.”
“I can’t. I’m afraid to try this again.”
He reached his hands out to me, and I placed mine in his.
“I’m right here with you,” he said. “Everything is all right. Let me see what you’re doing.”
I closed my eyes and found my center again, struggling to keep myself calm. Once again, I reached for that connection to my core, gripping it, trying to push myself into it.
Needles of pain met me, tossing me back with a start.
Nicolas steadied me. “I see.”
“I’m broken,” I said, fighting a wave of nausea.
Nicolas gave a small, startled laugh. “You’re not. You’re simply new to command. These issues are natural.”
I studied his tawny eyes. “Really?”
“Yes,” he said. “Listen, I’m not going to force you into your sanctum. I did that for Daniel because time was of the essence, and because it was disobeying him. I needed to be sure he would make it in.”
“What do I do, then?”
“I’m going to give you some advice and guide you in. You don’t need nearly as much help as you think, lamb. You are an excellent magician.”
I looked away, embarrassed and feeling undeserving of that praise.
“Come now,” Nicolas said. “Everyone here admires your skill with Lightning, me included. Lightning magic adores you—that’s easy to see.”
I smiled weakly. I loved my magic, and it did love me in return. Danie
l had given Lightning love, and it had taken that and learned to show it in return.
“So what do I need to do?” I asked.
Nicolas retook my hands. “You’re trying too hard. You need to lighten up on your hold and your grip on the connection. Your former Flame instincts are taking over… that constant shaping and reining and pressing that Flame magic needs. Lightning is wild and volatile sometimes, but it likes to find structure. It will do it by itself. There’s no need to force it.”
“Okay,” I said, uncertain. I closed my eyes again.
“Center yourself,” Nicolas said, but the moment he spoke, my eyes snapped open.
“Can you do your silent talking thing instead?” I asked. “Your voice is distracting.”
He laughed. “No, because I need you in your head, not mine.”
I frowned, studying him. “What? What do you mean?”
He laughed again, genuinely amused by this conversation. “I know you like to think I’m sending you my thoughts when I do that, but that’s not what happens at all. Talking mind to mind requires me to pull you into my head. That’s why I can become a communication bridge for multiple people—because I’ve brought you all into my head.”
“So you’re not in my mind at all?”
“No. My abilities are contained within me. Your thoughts come to me. Visions of your future—when I receive them—come to me. Speaking silently means you’re in my head.”
“Huh,” I said. “I’ve never noticed. It just feels like I hear your voice over something. Like a telephone.”
“It is a very different experience for me. It is more like… transference,” he said. “When I touch someone, a channel is opened between us, and I can use that channel to draw you in and make you hear and see what I want. In fact, it’s hard not to draw someone in. That is another reason I avoid touching others—it’s extra work on my part to handle that connection.”
