Blaze of Secrets (Asylums for Magical Threats)

by Donovan, Jessie

  Nearly sixty years after amending Article III, with Feiru poverty and unemployment rates on the rise, some argue that our society is facing a similar tipping point that requires action. One of the people who shares this opinion is the local head councilor of Eastern Australia, Dean Kelly. Here is what Councilor Kelly said at a press conference earlier today:

  “Over the past two years, our local council has conducted research, interviewed our constituents, and consulted economic and financial experts. We dedicated a large amount of our time to this effort, not wanting to dismiss any idea, no matter how unconventional, that would help steer us toward the most successful future possible for our people.

  “After hours and weeks of debate and discussion, we have arrived at an important conclusion: we can no longer hide our existence from humans if we wish to thrive and be successful. We must be able to help steer global economic and political policy if we are to keep our people out of poverty and the Feiru identity alive.

  “In order to accomplish this, I’m proud to say that the Local Feiru Council of Eastern Australia supports the repeal of Article I and will do everything in its power to help achieve that goal.”

  Over the last few months, comments have emerged about the effectiveness of repealing Article I, primarily from fringe and minor economists. The Council of Northern Brazil made a statement similar to Councilor Kelly’s last month, but they were quickly dismissed as a one-time anomaly. But with the addition of another large local council—the Council of Eastern Australia, responsible for four hundred thousand Feiru—the Head Council may be forced to start discussing the merits and pitfalls of repealing Article I. Change in itself is difficult, especially when we have lived our entire lives believing one way. Is now the time to step out of the shadows and confront the human world, like our ancestors before us?

  When the broadcast moved on to the latest developments in America, Sinclair switched off the radio and raised an eyebrow. “Well? That announcement should be enough to convince the others.”

  Kumar’s face was expressionless. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  The screen went blank.

  Lavani wasn’t the only one keeping tabs on Kumar; Sinclair’s other contact would report the councilor’s actions over the next few days.

  Now that was done, Sinclair focused on another thread in the overall web of his plan, one that could be problematic if his contact didn’t follow through on his promise.

  After all, Sinclair hadn’t had an update from Dr. Ty Adams in nearly a week.

  Adams had been working on a formula for years that nullified elemental abilities. The first success story had spurned a larger trial group, and the results were promising. Adams had assured Sinclair that he needed a little more time to test the formula’s effectiveness before he could shift into mass production. He’d promised to give a full report within the next few weeks.

  But after previously receiving daily updates, the sudden lack of communication made Sinclair wonder if something had gone wrong. The formula was a pivotal part of a later phase of his R&C campaign. If the formula was failing, Sinclair needed to know so he could adjust his strategy accordingly. He hadn’t spent the last ten years working toward this point only to have some scientist ruin it all.

  Sinclair opened his email program, but finding nothing from Adams, he took out his cell phone, scrolled through the contacts, and pressed call.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jaxton stood near the edge of a rock formation, its jagged edge pointing toward the valley below. The contrast of the dark rock and the rolling green fields was one of his favorite sights. Twilight gave it an eerie quality, the pinks and purples in the sky making it magical and formidable simultaneously.

  He was back in England, standing on Hen Cloud, near his childhood home in the Peak District.

  Turning around, Jaxton saw two figures standing farther down the hill with their heads together, talking. Curious, Jaxton walked down the hill. The outlines of the two people took shape and he could just make out two females, one with fair hair and the other dark.

  He approached them, but even when he was no more than ten or fifteen feet away, the women’s faces remained blurry. He called out a greeting and the women raised their faces, linked their arms together, and walked toward him. Soon he recognized their faces and froze.

  The fair-haired one was Garrett’s ex-fiancée Marzina, and the dark-haired one was Kiarra.

  Jaxton took a step forward, but the women took a step back. Each time Jaxton tried to reach out and pull Kiarra away from Marzina, they backed just out of his reach.

  “Kiarra,” he shouted, but his voice was lost to the sudden wind. He tried running down the rock hill, but the women continued to move farther away until they eventually walked off the sheer side of the hill. Jaxton shouted Kiarra’s name as he dove for her, but he was too far away to save her. His heart pounded as he reached the edge of the drop-off and looked down. He steeled himself for the worst, but saw nothing unusual. No bodies, no blood, only the wilderness.

  Jaxton heard a snap of fingers behind him and the scenery shifted to the inside of a cave. He turned around and saw a woman dressed in rambling gear.

  Neena.

  His consciousness was trained to notice her, and Jaxton realized none of this was real. He was in a dream.

  He remembered why he was here.

  Neena took out a plastic sandwich bag, opened it, and offered it to Jaxton. “Trail mix?”

  Jaxton shook his head and got straight to the point. “A shadow-shifter compromised our safe house. Marco said you needed to speak to me, so I’m waiting for your orders.”

  Neena tossed a handful of trail mix into her mouth, and with her mouth half full, said, “Have you asked Cam and Kiarra about their uncle?”

  “Their uncle? What does that have to do with relocating my men?”

  Neena waved a hand in the air. “You should know by now not to question me. Ask them about their uncle. And while you’re at it, work a little harder at stoking Kiarra’s fire.” Neena winked. “I mean her elemental magic, of course.”

  “She lost the ability, or at least believes she did. She can’t gather fire.”

  Neena tossed more trail mix into her mouth. “Nonsense. A Fire Talent can most certainly gather fire. It’s right there in the title.”

  Jaxton’s heart skipped a beat. “Kiarra’s a Fire Talent?”

  Neena tilted her head. “Stop shadowing me. That’s what I just said, isn’t it?” She tucked her trail mix away and adjusted the straps on her pack. “Ask the Melini sisters about their uncle and you’ll know where to take Kiarra. Going alone with her is best.” Neena moved toward the cave’s exit, but stopped and said over her shoulder, “Oh, and get to work on releasing Kiarra’s magic. You’re usually quicker than this with assignments and I really hate waiting around for something so simple.”

  Neena snapped her fingers.

  Jaxton shot up in his bed and tried to get his head around what Neena had just told him.

  He was one of the few who knew that Neena possessed more than one latent ability. One was dream-speaking, but the other one was more powerful, and if it ever became public knowledge, Neena would be forced into hiding.

  Neena was the first Feiru in nearly a thousand years who could see visions of the future.

  That was why Jaxton took her words seriously. If she said Kiarra was a Fire Talent, then it was probably because Neena had seen it in a vision. He didn’t try to comprehend why Neena hadn’t told him about this earlier. Neena worked to her own beat; Aislinn was the only one who could even come close to controlling her.

  He’d talk again with Neena later. Right now, all that mattered was the fact that Kiarra had lied to him about her elemental fire.

  Kiarra had slept poorly, but rather than toss and turn or stare at her ceiling all morning, she’d gotten out of bed early and gone to check on Garrett.

  She’d needed a distraction, and Garrett had been the perfect excuse. When she looked at hi
m, she felt nothing but concern for his health and a desire to help him. A huge contrast to how she felt about his younger brother.

  She’d spent half the night lying awake, replaying events from the day: Jaxton’s touch, the way he needled her to forget about her troubles, the odd flares of heat between them. She’d tried getting up to read, but after staring at the same page for ten minutes, she’d given up and gone back to bed.

  Eventually she’d fallen asleep, but then she’d been plagued by images of him nipping at her lower lip before kissing his way down her throat, to her breast, where he’d taken her nipple into his mouth and sucked hard.

  Even remembering it now made her skin tingle and her lower body tighten. It might have been ten years since she’d last had sex, but her body still remembered the feeling.

  Garrett moaned, snapping Kiarra out of her sex dream to focus back on his care. Even as Garrett calmed while she hummed, he continued muttering unintelligible nonsense. The only word that she understood was a name: Marzina.

  Then, out of the blue, he fisted the blankets with his hands and mumbled, “Why did you betray me, love?”

  She nearly stopped humming at the heartbreak behind his words.

  It seemed that Garrett had also had a rough time of it. First he’d been betrayed by someone he trusted, then broken by experimental trials too horrible to ponder. She hummed louder, and Garrett calmed again.

  He was only one out of hundreds, if not thousands, of first-borns who’d been abused and broken under the AMT system.

  Kiarra would never forget the first broken person she’d seen inside the AMT, on the way back from her yearly medical exam. A girl, no more than fourteen, with a vacant expression, scratches covering her neck, and scabs on her head where her hair had been torn out. They’d tied her hands to her sides to prevent her from harming herself further. As a guard had escorted her down the hall, she’d slipped free for a few precious seconds to ram her head against a steel doorframe. Hard. While Kiarra had been shut back into her cell before the girl had died, the news had traveled fast. F-368 had died within minutes of the event—some said with a smile on her face.

  After watching the girl’s actions, Kiarra had decided to fight for her sanity and find a way out. The dead girl’s family, and others like hers, needed to know what was happening inside the Cascade F-block. The High Council might be using fear to “persuade” parents to give up their children, but Kiarra wanted to believe that parents would fight the cruelty she’d seen if they only knew about it.

  She’d only changed her mind, and attempted to kill herself, when staying alive would’ve caused more harm than good. But now that she was out of the AMT, surrounded by people who might even help her, Kiarra was once again determined to expose the AMT’s actions. She needed to become stronger, build a network, and find a way to attack the issue.

  Once Kiarra was sure Garrett wouldn’t wake back up, she eased out of his room and went to hers.

  Garrett had reminded her of what was important. She would forget about what had happened with Jaxton and what Cam had told her about their parents. Too many people needed her help—but in order to help them, she needed to focus on training and becoming strong enough to have a chance of success.

  She looked through the clothes Neena had given her and had started to decide what to wear when someone banged on the door. The handle turned, but after Jaxton had barged in earlier, Kiarra had learned to lock it.

  There was another pound on the door before she heard a shout.

  “Kiarra, let me in.”

  Jaxton needed to calm the fuck down.

  But he had every right to be pissed off. The periodic emergence of the Four Talents was always followed by one thing: some sort of catastrophic disaster. And not just any kind of disaster, but one that threatened not only the existence of both humans and Feiru, but also the exposure of elemental magic.

  Each of the Four Talents was a master of their element, to such a degree they could both heal and destroy; all other first-borns only had the ability to do one or the other.

  There was only one Talent for each of the elements, meaning that Kiarra would be the Fire Talent. He had no idea about the identities of the Earth, Water, and Wind Talents, but now that Jaxton knew the Talents’ abilities were emerging, DEFEND would have to find the remaining three.

  Never before had all Four Talents been gathered in time to fully prevent whatever was coming; they could only stop it from worsening. The Black Death in the 14th century had been a case in point.

  The increasing appearance of latent abilities—dormant and rare powers that only emerged when the Talents started to awaken—also made sense. The Four Talents needed the equivalent of a Secret Service to keep them alive. Many Feiru would do anything to have a Talent under their influence, especially in the current politically charged times. This made the Four Talents targets.

  Maybe the AMT enforcers were after Kiarra because she was a Talent. It would’ve been easy enough to condition her to believe that her abilities were gone, allowing the AMT to reawaken them when needed.

  The lock clicked and Kiarra opened the door a crack, but after one look at his face, she retreated into her room.

  The sight of her face once again flared his anger. Jaxton pushed his way into her room and cornered Kiarra against a wall with his arms. “You’ve been lying to me,” he said coolly, proud to sound more civilized than he felt.

  Kiarra didn’t flinch from his gaze. “Care to tell me what I’m supposed to be lying about?”

  He leaned in closer. “Stop playing games with me, Kiarra. I know you can gather fire.”

  She poked his chest with her finger. “I already told you, I can’t.”

  “And you’re still lying to me.”

  Kiarra stilled and narrowed her eyes. “Not being able to feel the elemental energy in the air is like being forced to breathe through your mouth. You can do it, but it doesn’t feel quite right.” She raised her chin. “Wait for the test results from my blood. You can apologize to me later.”

  Either she was a good actress or the AMT had done a good job of making her believe that her fire was truly gone.

  Threats and intimidation were going to get him nowhere. Hell, she’d grown used to them as part of her training and reconditioning. If he wanted the truth, he’d have to think of a clever way to trick her when she least expected it. But now wasn’t the time.

  No, right now, he needed to get the Melini sisters together and ask about their uncle.

  He leaned in and said, “You’ll tell me the truth eventually.” He dropped his arms from the wall, no longer caging Kiarra. “But in the meantime, we’re going downstairs to talk with your sister. She’s waiting for us now.”

  If Kiarra was confused about the topic change, she didn’t show it. “I’m in desperate need of a shower. And I’m not going anywhere with you until you calm down and start making sense.” Kiarra slipped to the side and headed toward the bathroom.

  Jaxton’s arm shot out and he grabbed her wrist. “This can’t wait. The longer we stay here, the more dangerous it becomes. Do you want the AMT to catch you?” Kiarra pulled her arm, but his grip was firm. “This is your last chance to come willingly.” He gave a tug, careful not to hurt her. “Either way, you’re going downstairs with me.”

  What Kiarra did next was unexpected—she dropped down and sat cross-legged on the floor. “Somebody needs to teach you some manners. You can’t just bully me into doing whatever you want. I will go downstairs after my shower.”

  Kiarra knew she was being childish, sitting on the floor like a toddler, but something had stoked Jaxton’s temper and he wouldn’t listen to anything she said.

  Why was he so convinced that she was lying?

  She raised an eyebrow at Jaxton. “I can do this all day.”

  “Pet, I only spend the day in a woman’s bedroom if she invites me to do more than hold hands, and somehow, I don’t think that’s the case here.”

  Kiarra’s skin flushed at the impl
ication of his words. But before she could get her voice working again, Jaxton grabbed her other arm and pulled her upright. A second later, he tossed her over his shoulder.

  She squealed before the air was knocked out of her. “You’ve crossed the line from unreasonable to insane.”

  “I gave you fair warning, and you ignored it.” Jaxton patted her ass. “I can be immature too. If you want down, use your fire. Otherwise, enjoy the ride.”

  “I already told you, I don’t have any magic. If I did, you’d be toast by now.”

  “Then this is a missed opportunity because right now, I give you permission to set my arse on fire.”

  Kiarra made a noise at the back of her throat. “‘Fucking asshole’ isn’t strong enough to describe your behavior.”

  Jaxton patted her ass again before he started walking. As annoyed as she was, she still felt the searing heat of his hand through her clothes. Kiarra fisted Jaxton’s shirt and forced herself to ignore it. She needed to find a way to get down.

  With each step Jaxton took, Kiarra felt his shoulder blade jab into her stomach. She snaked an arm behind her and tried to grab Jaxton’s throat. But Jaxton caught her hand, and twisted it behind her. The hand on her ass moved to hold it in place. Shit.

  Next she tried kicking him with her knee, but his torso was like a wall, covered in muscle, and Jaxton acted like he didn’t feel a thing. He then jostled her like a sack of potatoes.

  “If that’s all you’ve got,” he said, with another jostle, “you clearly haven’t been paying attention to my lessons.”

  “Just be glad I can’t gather elemental fire right now, or you wouldn’t be sitting comfortably for weeks.”