Nerve

by Kirsten Krueger

  Adara’s fists clenched at her sides, and the fires flared even brighter. “You know I can’t.”

  “You think you can’t. I doubt you acquired your Affinity by needing to create fire. It seems more likely that your ability originated from the need to stop a fire—to save yourself from burning. Now you’ve been presented with the need to save Calder from burning, and you claim you can’t? Adara…this is your purpose—this is your natural inclination. You can spark fire, and you can quench fire. The only inhibitor is your own mind.”

  Adara had about five snarky comments to combat the King’s oh-so-majestic advice. Before she could pick which one she wished to utter first, a massive chunk of the ceiling broke loose, tumbling down into the corridor outside their cell.

  At the impact, both Adara and Angor buckled to the floor and coughed at the wave of dust. Blinded by the cloud, she fought to clear the air by waving her hand in front of her face, only to find the concrete boulder wedged between the bars of their cell and Calder, who had yet to awaken. She was about to verbally thank the devil that the lethal slab hadn’t flattened him when she noticed the blaze had crept closer to him with the boulder’s collapse. Wisps of fire flicked at his jeans until the fabric began to combust.

  Suddenly more alert than she’d been in weeks, Adara scrambled toward the metal bars and used them to hoist herself upright. Beside her, Angor panted, but at her quick movement, his vision whipped into focus. Noticing the flaming jeans, he immediately screwed his eyebrows together and stared intently at Calder. Although the Pixie Prince’s eyes remained closed and his mouth continued to droop, his body started to push off the floor and roll back and forth in the hall, smothering the fire that had ignited his clothes.

  The problem was that the fire was everywhere, growing at a pace too rapid for Angor to thwart. Every time the rolling quelled one fire, another flame latched onto Calder’s clothes.

  “Can’t you make him walk out of here?” Adara demanded, clutching the bars so tightly she could barely feel her hands.

  “I can,” Angor conceded, relaxing his eyebrows as he pushed to his feet. Calder stopped flopping throughout the hall, and Adara knew it was only a matter of minutes before his stagnant body became a pyre.

  “Then do it,” she snarled, the heat of her irritation increasing the intensity of the conflagration, putting the Pixie Prince in even more danger. “He needs to get out!”

  “If Calder stands and walks out of here, he will continue to burn along the way, and I don’t know how far the range of my abilities extends. I might be able to guide him out of the building, but I might not be able to extinguish the fire once he gets there. He will burn inside or outside of this police station. You’re the only one who can stop that from happening.”

  The words were stated with a calm Adara could not fathom. She’d been uneasy earlier when she’d thought Nero would pummel Calder, but this would not be a beating he could recover from. This would be the end of the Pixie Prince, and she would be the cause of it. No, she hadn’t detonated the building, but she possessed the power to save him now and didn’t use it.

  The flames spread to his sweatshirt, eating away at the black material and threatening to sear his skin. Though the fabric was thicker than that of her prison attire, the fire would still consume it—and then it would consume his flesh and his bones and his soul and she could stop it but she couldn’t—

  “Wake up!” she cried, shaking the bars as if the attempt hadn’t proven futile already. “Wake up and drench yourself, you lazy sack of water!”

  The taunt should have provoked him, but he was still dormant, still doomed to die.

  Abandoning the bars, she sprinted across the cell and launched toward the sole window embedded in the unharmed wall. Her fingers grasped the ledge, but when she attempted to heave herself upward, her elbows barely bent. She was too weak to pull her own weight, and if she couldn’t get over this wall, she couldn’t drag Calder out of the police station and save him. Mere feet away from her, he would burn, and she would have to watch.

  “I should have trained with you,” Adara complained, sounding so pathetic that she even pitied herself. In a lame attempt, she shoved the concrete wall, but her own momentum shoved her back, and she stumbled until she was against the bars again, so incredibly close to the Pixie Prince but so incredibly far.

  “I’m afraid it would take more than a few weeks for you to accomplish a pull-up,” Angor informed her without any consolation.

  “I’m not talking about your exercising shit. I’m talking about—about this.” With a grand, imprecise gesture, she motioned toward this entire blazing building. Angor didn’t have to ask to understand.

  “Adara,” he said, brushing some of his ash-laden hair from his face, “any one of your friends could have found a way to free you from this prison over the past month. Calder had multiple opportunities—in fact, I’m surprised he never used his mysterious lock-picking skills to simply open the door for you. I’ve seen him sneak into many places throughout campus—the boy’s got a real knack for—”

  “Does this rant have a point other than to enrage me?”

  “The point,” he amended hastily, “is that anyone could have freed you, but they all wanted you to free yourself. Calder’s been encouraging you for weeks to gain control of yourself. He wants you to be strong and capable—he doesn’t think you need rescuing.”

  Biting her lip, Adara closed her eyes and involuntarily felt the flames riddling this room, permeating this town. Unlike ever before, their presence was soothing to her, as if she had hundreds of friends dancing brightly in the night. Her flame-friends were demons like her, though, plagues that would gnaw away at places and people and…the Pixie Prince.

  His Affinity’s instinctive water secretion repelled the fire temporarily. Normally, he could have soaked this inferno with the snap of his fingers, but now…his fate was in her hands.

  “Do you agree with him?” Adara asked quietly—timidly. Emerging during this crisis was her true self: a fearful little girl who wanted nothing more than to curl up under a blanket and watch movies while eating donuts with her friends. Maybe that’s all she’d ever been—a coward hiding behind a monstrous façade.

  “When you believed I’d killed Hastings,” Angor said, “you didn’t hesitate to step forward and avenge him. You didn’t think about erupting in flames; you simply did, because you knew it was what you needed to do. Don’t wonder if you can, Adara. Just know what you need to do and do it.”

  Her eyes inched open, and she found the former principal standing before her, eyes filled with faith. “You know,” she began dryly, “you’re really good at sounding inspirational, but not so good at actually training me to use my Affinity. No wonder you decided to be principal and hired a bunch of teachers do all the hard work for you.”

  Affronted, his lips parted for a reply, but she didn’t give him the opportunity to speak, because he’d already said all he needed to say. She hadn’t hesitated to avenge Hastings, and she couldn’t hesitate now, not with the heat starting to melt Calder’s skin.

  This was not an outburst, as it had been after Hastings’s death. This was not what Adara was good at. She had never practiced control because she’d never thought she had it. Her parents had abandoned her, her brother had left her, and her bully had tormented her, all shaping her life without her consent. The struggles of her childhood had led her to relinquish power over the one thing she could control: her reactions. Emotions ruled her, and now they ruled her Affinity as well.

  There was one skill she was practiced at, though. It wasn’t necessarily the suppression of her fury, but the capturing of it—the willful act of saving that useful emotion for a more appropriate occasion. Since arriving at Periculand, she hadn’t bothered to utilize the talent, but her formative years had been characterized by the bottling of her wrath against Kiki, which she then chose to release by playing sports in the backyard with Seth, verbally harassing Tray, or sneaking into the Belvens’ mansion.


  Before it had been a habit—a defense mechanism—but now she had the chance to apply that aptitude to a situation of actual significance, an act of selflessness.

  Shutting her eyes, Adara drew in all of the anger and alarm overwhelming her. They were the same sensations that had always arisen due to Kiki’s victimization, and so she imagined she was back at that wretched high school, snuffing her sarcastic remarks and pretending nothing miffed her.

  She pictured each flare as an insult, because as with Kiki’s jabs, fire didn’t bother her any longer. For the majority of her life, the two had been her greatest fears, both remnants of her childhood that haunted her daily. In her eyes, the anxiety had been a weakness, but over the years it strengthened her, forging her into a creature that basked in that which plagued her youth.

  Now she beckoned for it, siphoned from it, thrived in it. The heat seeped into every pore, flowing from every corner of the room to fuel her. Flames were not her friends, she realized, as they rippled into her skin; they were her servants, and she was their master. The power she had always craved was finally in her grasp, absorbing into her flesh, merging with the fabric of her soul.

  Angor had been right. Even Calder had been right. For when she squinted her eyes open the police station was desolate, utterly devoid of light and fire—except that which radiated directly from her.

  It didn’t terrify her, not anymore. In fact, she relished this view of the world through the glow of her flames, because they belonged to her now, and she would wield them to her advantage.

  Stepping forward, she reached for the bars with her rock-encrusted hands, but this time she didn’t have to wrap her fingers around them. Just her proximity melted the metal, disintegrating it into pool of silvery liquid that Angor scampered to avoid. Any rational person would have been apprehensive, especially when the slabs of concrete softened, but Adara simply smirked, sauntering through the puddles of substances that should have been solid like she was walking through a shallow pond.

  The hard part, she acknowledged, had not been summoning the flames but would be extinguishing them. They weren’t consuming her clothes—for the moment, she possessed that much control, at least—but she couldn’t remain a fire demoness forever. Only once had she been this monstrously ablaze, and then she’d been thwarted by unconsciousness. She would have to accomplish it by her own volition this time, and she had no idea how.

  Positioning herself atop a slowly thawing mound of rubble, Adara stared down at Calder and tried not to fall prey to the helplessness this predicament bred. The rage had dissipated, but the fire remained. How was she to douse a conflagration that’s source was already depleted?

  Ease your mind, Adara, a voice cooed from within her, too sweet to be her own. Advice usually didn’t sit well with her—even good advice, like Angor’s—but this voice compelled her to believe without question—without even wanting to question. Release your emotions, positive and negative. Even happiness can drive you out of control.

  Happiness had never been a familiar concept to Adara, but there had been a spark of something in her chest after summoning the fire, disintegrating the bars, and saving the Pixie Prince. Perhaps that moment of elation had perpetuated the flames.

  But how could she remove herself from the situation entirely? There was no way for her to deny that she was proud of what she’d done—and that she was relieved to have finally accomplished it. What was the point of doing something that had no impact on her?

  Sometimes we must do things not for the sake of ourselves but for the sake of others…

  Her jaw clenched at that. That sounds a hell of a lot like doing something for the ‘greater good,’ and you know I’m not into that bullshit, Brain.

  There was definitely an amused lilt to her brain’s voice when it responded, Maybe not, but you still have to turn off your emotions. Now.

  The need for feelings immediately evaporated. All worry, fear, pride, and relief drifted away, banishing the fire’s presence and morphing her into a hollow volcano. The dark layer that had enveloped her skin soon withered as well, leaving the same filmy ash she’d become so closely acquainted with over the past few weeks. She felt nothing. She was nothing.

  Then her numb eyes settled on Calder.

  At some point, her mind had instructed her to walk forward, because she stood above him, safely away from the swiftly solidifying metal. Angor’s forced rolling had left Calder lying on his back, head tilted to the side, eyelids peacefully closed. She had been ordered to dispel her emotions, but without them, this new wave hit hard, dragging her to her knees.

  “Are you all right, Adara?” Angor called from afar. He was in the cell, probably, but between the darkness and the dizziness, Adara couldn’t see him. Everything was a blur except Calder. Her eyes barely had to adjust to the lack of light for her to distinguish his ash-coated cheeks. His hair had come undone from its typical bun, and it cascaded around his face like motionless waves. The sweatshirt was in ruins, exposing most of his torso, the skin now red and crusted with dried blood—and burns.

  Adara had not seen serious burns in quite some time, but the sight of them now dredged up memories of her past, of scars that had completely faded. She’d always been convinced she had a tough stomach, but staring at the welts induced a sense of nausea that she couldn’t fight.

  Doubling over, she heaved out the contents of her last jail meal—into Calder’s splayed locks of hair.

  “Shitnuggets,” was the next thing that spewed from her mouth.

  Calder’s lips contorted in disgust. For a brief, disoriented moment, she thought nothing of it, but then she realized it was a voluntary movement—that he was awake.

  “That’s really all you have to say right now?” he groaned, squeezing his eyelids together before revealing those deep blue irises. Though they were glossed with pain, there was still a crafty smirk surfacing on his face.

  “You—you’re—That was what it took to wake you up?” Adara spluttered, lamely attempting to mask her mortification with incredulity. “I just had to puke in your hair?”

  “Oh, no—I’ve been awake,” he grunted as he tried to lift his head. The effort provoked an intensely pained wince, and Adara almost helped him lower back to the ground—almost. She had never willingly touched him—not in a kind way, at least—and to do so now when he was in such a fragile state…she was afraid she would break him. Also, she didn’t particularly want to touch her own vomit.

  Mostly, she was too paralyzed to consider doing anything, because Calder had said that he’d been awake.

  “For how long?” she demanded in a voice shrill enough to pass as Fraco’s.

  “Since you started worshiping the devil for your undeserved longevity.”

  “You—” Her wide eyes cut toward his burns, the ones he’d somehow suffered consciously, without screaming or crying or moving an inch. Calder had been awake the entire time and she’d had no clue. “How? Why? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Even through his grimace, he managed a roguish grin. “A lot of things, obviously.” His eyes dipped down toward his injuries, which he somehow looked at without barfing. “As for the why—well, I think that should be obvious by now, Stromer. Like Angor said, I wanted you to do it on your own. What would you have gained if I’d done all the work for you? As for the how, I staved off the fire with my Affinity.”

  “Not very well,” she growled, glaring at his face since she didn’t want to view the damage he’d endured—for her. Because for some twisted reason, he thought the development of her Affinity was more important than his own life. And for some equally unfathomable reason, she hated that.

  “Well enough,” he dismissed. “I’ll heal.”

  Adara couldn’t compile an adequate answer to that. Her mind was still bogged down with the weight of what he’d done—the absolute trust and the unnecessary sacrifice.

  “Did you know?” She whirled around to glare at Angor. He was positioned in his corner of the cell again, a
healthy distance from the hot metal that obstructed his path to the hallway.

  “I had a hunch,” he admitted with a shrug.

  “You sick bastard—he could’ve died!”

  “I was in complete control of the situation.” Calder inclined his head toward her in protest. Apparently that was enough to trigger pain, because he cringed before adding, “Mostly.”

  “Clearly not.” Expelling a breath, she ran a hand through her greasy hair and shook her head at him. “You are insane. I don’t even feel bad for you. You deserved to be puked on.”

  “That sounds incriminating,” a voice huffed, and Adara swore aloud before her eyes even confirmed it was Nero. His silhouette was unmistakable in the half-crumpled doorway to the front lobby. As he glanced between Adara and Calder, his lips curled around his teeth, not in a snarl but in a grotesque smile, like he’d stumbled upon a priceless prize. “You burned him to a crisp and now you wanna puke on him, too? Should’ve joined me, Mardurus. I’ve always told you Stromer’s a lost cause.”

  “Oh, don’t be so harsh, Nero,” a female voice chided as three other figures appeared behind him: Mr. Grease, Devil-red, and the Affinity ambassador. Though Olalla blended with the shadows, her amethyst eyes gleamed through the dark, almost entrancingly. “Adara’s the one who saved this town from disaster. Buildings were burning until she conquered all the flames a few minutes ago. She’s a Periculand hero.”

  “A Periculand hero?” Adara repeated, oblivious to the woman’s deceptive tone. “Let’s erect my shrine right next to Hastings’s then, shall we? Oh wait—the Reggs never bothered to commemorate him because they murdered him. Where are those assholes, anyway? I’ll gladly reignite the fire to end them.”

  “The Rosses have received their punishment…for now,” Olalla said in a way that should have disturbed Adara but didn’t. She was too peeved that she hadn’t been the one to dole out the punishments for the Rosses—her own freaking parents. She supposed Angor deserved his own revenge against them, too, and she gladly would have shared the privilege with him, but he seemed unfazed about the Rosses had finally being overthrown—suspicious, almost.