Fire Within

by Ella M. Lee

  I had no idea what to say or do. Nicolas didn’t seem upset, but he was on a higher level of unreadable from the average person, and this could just be him putting on his best show.

  I couldn’t stand the awkward silence between us.

  “You’re good at this,” I said.

  I was trying to make the words sound natural and teasing, but they came out a little bitter. His eyes snapped to me for just a moment.

  Come on, I thought. Give me something to work with here.

  “I’ve never done it before,” he said.

  I looked up at him with wide eyes, and he laughed.

  “Kidding,” he said. “I have a lot more experience than you. Don’t be discouraged. Yours look excellent.”

  I let out the breath I had been holding. Nicolas’s tone of voice was even, with none of the harshness or deadly cold I’d heard from him earlier. I was encouraged by the fact that he had just made a joke in the same playful way he’d been doing intermittently all week.

  “Daniel is an excellent teacher,” I said, still feeling awkward.

  My voice shook, and Nicolas glanced at me in concern. I looked away quickly, unnerved by his intense look.

  “I am happy to see that you work well together,” he said.

  Nicolas, too, seemed to be trying for a casual tone and wasn’t quite succeeding. He was studying me closely between glances down as he laid wontons in neat rows on the tray. I was breathing fast, trying to keep focused despite my shaking hands, ignoring his penetrating gaze.

  “I liked… I liked working with Daniel,” I said nervously. “I appreciate how nice he’s been to me.”

  I had spent the last couple of hours trying to figure out what I would say to Nicolas. I had decided that while begging and groveling were still off the table, there was no reason not to be grateful for the good things I’d experienced here. And while I had told myself I didn’t want to apologize for breaking his rules, I would do what I could to hear him out.

  My plan was a lot harder to stick to with him in front of me. I was glad I had something to do other than sit quietly and look at Nicolas. This task was a great excuse to keep my eyes down.

  “Daniel has never taught within the clan before,” Nicolas said, “but I’ve always thought he’d be good at it. I’m pleased to hear your positive review of him, and his of you.”

  I glanced up at Nicolas for the first time in a while, meeting his tawny eyes. He was as calm and collected as usual, and I was comforted by that. This conversation had better potential if neither of us were angry.

  Daniel had been right. Nicolas did not seem to be upset in a way that spelled certain death for me. I breathed in shakily. Daniel was a friend I didn’t deserve. He was doing his best to keep me sane, and he was fighting harder for me than I was. I didn’t know what I had done to merit his good will.

  I couldn’t speak past the lump of anxiety in my throat. My fingers felt numb as they moved over the smooth wrappers, trying to shape them into little triangles.

  One wonton.

  Two wontons.

  Three wontons.

  Nicolas had made eight.

  “Would you mind telling me what you’re thinking?” I said. “I know… I know that’s asking a lot from you.”

  Our eyes met for one scant moment.

  “I’m trying to figure out if you are all right,” he said.

  “You could ask,” I suggested, shrugging slightly.

  I was being a smartass, but I just couldn’t resist, not when we’d been so good at teasing one another and it had had such positive results in the past.

  Were we still playing a game? I hoped so.

  “Are you all right?” he asked dutifully.

  “No, no I’m not fucking all right,” I said.

  He winced. “Would you mind telling me why? I’d appreciate it if you were honest and specific.”

  I hesitated. “Could you just tell me if you’re here with good news or bad news? Because… well, I’ll leave the rest of this work to Daniel if I’m going to be executed shortly.”

  I laughed, unable to get over how absurd it was that we were discussing my life over dinner preparations.

  “Good news,” he said. “Lamb, breathe. I’m not angry. I’m not upset. I have no intention of harming you. Tell me more about how you’re feeling with that in mind.”

  There was a roaring in my ears at his words. Not angry. Not upset. That didn’t necessarily mean I was safe, but it was infinitely better than what I had expected.

  Another opportunity. Time to make good use of it.

  “I’m… I’m…” I took a deep breath. “This is stupid, but… thank you. I broke your rules. I realize it’s a miracle that you didn’t beat the shit out of me or just snap my neck in the middle of the café. That decision can’t have been easy on you.”

  Nicolas frowned. “Don’t tell me how I’m feeling,” he chided. “Tell me how you are feeling.”

  “Miserable,” I said, sighing.

  “Yes, I can see that. Give me a little more, Fiona. Be honest. You won’t annoy me. I’d like you to get used to talking openly with me.”

  I watched Nicolas make several more wontons before I spoke again, my thoughts lingering on his words. The implication that I’d be here for a while, as though he and I would be talking often and at length.

  Opportunity, I reminded myself.

  “It’s ridiculous, I know, but I feel betrayed. That’s not your fault. I’m the one who got too comfortable and forgot my place here. I just… I just feel sad and confused and scared, and that’s all completely draining. I’m exhausted. Life sucks, and I’m sort of over it at this point. I’m done, I’m just fucking done. And that’s fine, it really is. I knew there was a slim chance this would go anywhere. No hard feelings. Don’t feel guilty or anything. I don’t blame you. Just remember that you said you’d light incense for me.”

  Nicolas patiently waited out my rambling. I had cried myself out earlier with Daniel, so thankfully there were no tears in my eyes for this sad confession.

  “You said you liked working with Daniel.” Nicolas said the words carefully. “Were you feeling miserable and hopeless then?”

  I hesitated. I wished he hadn’t changed the subject. I just wanted this conversation to be over. I wanted everything to be over.

  Peace and quiet sounded nice.

  Nicolas was still watching me, waiting for an answer. I sighed. He wasn’t easy to ignore when he gave imploring and impatient looks.

  “No,” I said. “Yesterday was nice. Like my old life. Training and learning and… and… I don’t know, drinking coffee at a café. Normal stuff. So nice, in fact, that it made me forget that this isn’t my home, and we aren’t friends, and I can’t run my mouth off without getting hit in the face for it.”

  Nicolas flinched, his expression now upset. “I’m sorry for that,” he said. “Truly sorry. Even though I warned you, you didn’t deserve it. You did something that I would have applauded and rewarded in any of my other subordinates, and I hated that I could only hurt you for it. I hate myself for it.”

  “Yeah,” I muttered. It was all I could manage to say through my closed throat.

  He did look rather disgusted with himself, his jaw tight, his mouth set into a hard line, his usually glowing eyes hooded and dark.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “If you never trust me again, I will have earned that.”

  I glanced at him. “If it makes you feel any better, you were doing so well before,” I offered.

  “I was?” he asked. “Damn.”

  I smiled at his reaction, and his eyes lit up hopefully. This was a more vulnerable side of Nicolas than I had thought existed.

  But this was the man who had raised Daniel. Daniel had said Nicolas taught him to be strong, but Daniel was still sweet and sensitive and kind. Nicolas had to have fostered some of that, too.

  Were Nicolas’s apologies enough? He was practical, and he had made a reasoned, calculated move earlier. It had all bee
n by the book. The weirdest book ever, the book of clan hierarchical interactions, but valid and expected.

  Nicolas cares for you. Daniel’s words from before came back to me again. Were these emotions of his showing me that?

  If he cared for me, he had done an excellent job of hiding it up until now, especially earlier today. But maybe that was for the best? Daniel was right; no good could come of Derek or any of Nicolas’s other rivals thinking I was important.

  I watched him make wontons. Nicolas was complex as hell. Most people in clans were. The fingers that shaped those delicate wrappers had killed who knew how many people, including my closest friend in Flame. They had injured me in the raid, had hit me hours ago.

  But they had also played the piano with passion, and healed me, and held my hands as he showed me magic that had eased my heart.

  “Can I fix this?” he asked. “How do I gain your trust back, whatever pieces of it that I had received?”

  “Maybe don’t hit me like that?” I suggested bitterly.

  He flinched again. I would have felt bad, seeing the hurt expression on his face, if I could have managed to feel anything at all.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I offered wearily. “Like I said, I’m done. This is ridiculous, and I don’t know why I’ve been killing myself slowly all week instead of choosing a faster way.”

  Nicolas hadn’t dropped his hurt expression. “I’d prefer if you didn’t simply give up,” he said.

  I sighed. That was so like Nicolas, to say something vague and encouraging and hope that I would cling to it. And the worst part? I would. My dumb brain just wouldn’t let me sink completely into nothingness—or death.

  Fight, it kept telling me. Try. Live. Succeed.

  But I felt weak and drained and dead fucking tired.

  “How long do I have to do this? How long am I your slave, for you or anyone else to abuse? What’s the plan?” I asked, my hands shaking so badly I had to stop what I was doing. “Daniel said you have one.”

  “You are doing well here,” he said. He must have caught my incredulous look because he held up a hand. “Truly, you are. You’ve played by my rules—well, most of them. You are competent with Water magic. You’ve impressed me, and Ryan, and Daniel. You feel shattered, but I’m pleased with how well you’ve been handling yourself. I know I haven’t made it easy on you, but you are working excellently under this much stress.”

  “You still want me to keep trying?” I asked.

  “I do,” he confirmed. “But you have a choice. If this incident has changed your mind, if you don’t want to stay here in Water…” He frowned, pained. “Well, I’ll make what happens then as easy as possible, as I promised.”

  My chest tightened. Nicolas had probably killed a million people. What was one more? What was my life to him? Merely a few days of inconvenience and another story to add to his long, varied life. Fiona Diana Ember, who outlived everyone she had loved in her life by a week. How lucky.

  “You said I could be happy and safe here, that you saw a future like that,” I said. “Were you lying to get me to behave, or was it actually true? What do you see for me now?”

  “You’ve asked me that question before. I wasn’t lying. I don’t lie about my visions. That can have unintended consequences,” he said.

  He closed his eyes, his hands stilling for a moment. I waited, watching his eyes flick back and forth under their lids. After a moment, they reopened, lovely gilded brown in the fading sunlight.

  “Yes, I still see that you could be happy here,” he began slowly. “Despite your feelings right now, I can’t find any futures in which you choose death over Water. That can change, since your mind can change, of course.”

  I threw up my hands. “Great. Apparently I can’t commit to anything, not even escaping this fucking agony. Why can’t I want to die?”

  Nicolas’s expression was thoughtful. “It is human nature to cling to life. There was a time where I did it for far longer than any sane person would have.”

  I glanced at him, frowning. More allusions to whatever had happened in his past, whatever horrors he had faced.

  “I want to hear this crazy story of yours,” I said.

  “Later,” he said. “Neither of our moods need to be worse than they already are right now.”

  “I don’t think my mood could possibly be worse.”

  “You’ll be fine in the morning,” Nicolas said.

  “Did your visions tell you that?” I asked, more snippily than I had intended.

  He smirked. “No, but I’ve talked many people off of ledges. You have the same mercurial emotions as Daniel.”

  “Daniel doesn’t seem like the type,” I said, thinking of how deftly he’d been handling my mental breakdowns these past few days.

  “Daniel has grown quite a bit in five years,” Nicolas said. “He’s now able to talk himself off of ledges, thankfully.”

  “My emotions are killing you, aren’t they?” I asked, remembering that he probably understood exactly how sad and hopeless I felt.

  His eyes focused on mine, their normal intensity softer than usual. “Only slightly,” he said, offering me a breathy laugh.

  I couldn’t imagine being Nicolas, having everyone else’s feelings and lives and fears and concerns in his head all the time. I felt irrationally bad that I was contributing to what was no doubt a wretched week for him.

  Typical Fiona, I told myself. Caring about things I shouldn’t. He was making my life terrible, and I couldn’t help but worry about him.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said calmly.

  “Do you ever give a different answer to that question?”

  “No,” he said. “I have too many people depending on me to not be fine.”

  “Who takes care of you?” I asked.

  He didn’t speak. I thought about rephrasing the question, but perhaps that was unnecessary. Perhaps his silence was the answer: no one.

  I offered him a sheepish smile. “Maybe… maybe if I stay here, that can be my job.”

  His completely startled and disarmed expression made me laugh.

  “That would be a nice change of pace,” he murmured, smiling. His eyes sparkled, and I was relieved that he seemed to enjoy my suggestion. “Does that mean I have earned some of your forgiveness?”

  I examined him under my lashes. His posture had relaxed since first sitting down, and his expression had opened up. He was closer now to the Nicolas I had come to admire these past few days.

  “You did what you had to do,” I said, feeling choked.

  “That isn’t a yes or no.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I forgive you. Did you hit me this one time because you knew I would?”

  “I didn’t know,” he said darkly. “I had about half a second to react. I had to hope you’d be understanding, that I wouldn’t completely ruin what we were building together.”

  “I understand what you did and why,” I said. “I didn’t like it, obviously, but I get it. I just hope it never happens again.”

  I didn’t know if I could handle getting hit like that again. I had barely gotten myself through this time, largely because of Daniel.

  I was barely getting through any of this.

  I wanted to see more of the Nicolas who had laughed with me and teased me under the sun, who had gifted me magic and enjoyed my successes with it, who had been slipping me subtle compliments about being pretty and clever.

  I was seeing a little of that Nicolas right now—charming and a little vulnerable, humbler and more cautious than usual with me.

  I want to like you, I thought to him. And it’s easy to do when you’re kind.

  If he heard my encouragement, he didn’t give any indication. His hands were moving again, his focus now on our delicate task.

  “How do you do that so quickly?” I griped, watching him fill a wonton, wet and seal the edges, and then fold it one-handed—all in about three seconds.

  “Practice,” he sa
id. “The same way I manage to handle everything else in my life. I’m sure Daniel would be happy to have you make a thousand more wontons and then judge each one of them.”

  I hesitated. I needed this conversation to resolve. I needed answers. I thought I might literally fall apart all over the table if I stayed in this excruciating holding pattern for any longer. Bantering about wontons was fun but useless. I couldn’t ignore the important things forever even if it felt easier.

  “Will I have time for that?” I asked.

  One glance at Nicolas told me he knew what I meant: Will I be alive for that?

  “Your call, lamb,” he said. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I—” I began. “I—”

  He was offering me my life—again. I shouldn’t be stupid about it. How many times was I going to consider rejecting him?

  I closed my eyes and swallowed, but no amount of coaxing could free the words I needed from my throat.

  Please don’t execute me, I thought. That wasn’t what I wanted. I was ashamed that I couldn’t say it aloud. Please.

  “Open your eyes, Fiona,” Nicolas said. “Look at me.”

  I did as he asked, trembling, blinking back the first inkling of scared tears. It was impossible, as usual, to tell what he was thinking, but his expression was gentle.

  “I don’t want you to fear for your life anymore,” he said. “I’m not going to execute you. And while you’re still mortal, no one—including me—will lay a hand on you again. This is where our deal changes and our games end. I want you to focus on the very near future where you join Water and get your life back.”

  Chapter 23

  “I will clan you to Water like we discussed, as long as it’s what you still want,” Nicolas said. “I haven’t decided whether to extend you an offer to join my group, but for now we’ll train you and see where things go. If my group doesn’t work out, I’ll place you in another group. I will take care of you, I promise, and nothing bad will happen.”

  I was shaking again, unable to speak. I wanted very badly to believe him, but along with my relief came skepticism.