Ashes (Fire Within Series Book 3)

by Ella M. Lee

  I, too, was stuck as a commander, when all I had really wanted was to work for Daniel forever. It was too risky to attempt to declan me or turn me back into a normal magician. No one, not even Nicolas, knew what it meant to have been given a sanctum by someone else.

  But the others got to choose. Sylvio wanted command—unsurprising, given that he’d held it before in Meteor. Chandra wanted it as well, and I was glad to count her among us.

  The others seemed content without that additional burden.

  Ryan helped me promote Nicolas first, clumsily and haphazardly, trying my best to follow his instruction and watching carefully as he struggled to create his own Lightning sanctum and destroy his Water sanctum.

  The next day, he promoted the others, even though he had hardly more experience than I did when it came to these things.

  I had my own talents. I knew the magic best, and it responded to me the most. Inventing new things—wards, shields, techniques—came easiest to me. So that’s what I did, working with Ryan and Irina and Cameron to create things that could help us and protect us.

  Although it kept my mind busy and distracted, my gaze was constantly drawn to the temple. I had no idea if it was the lingering effect of Dan’s death, or simply our clan’s sanctum calling to me constantly, humming reassuringly in my mind.

  I wondered if it would always sing to me like that.

  Our family began settling into patterns. Keisha and Irina adopted Ryan as a commander. Athena had chosen Chandra. Farhad had gone with Sylvio; I hadn’t understood why, until Nicolas told me they were old friends.

  Nicolas was a commander without a group, and so was I, but only for a little while.

  It was late at night, and I was drinking tea and drawing wards at the kitchen table when Teng appeared in the doorway.

  “Commander?” he said.

  I grimaced. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Can we talk?” Teng’s voice was tentative, and he looked more sallow than usual, his expression drawn.

  “Uh, sure,” I said.

  He took a seat across from me. I picked a teacup off the stack and added it to the tea tray, pouring him a cup. He tapped his curved index finger against the table, a Hong Kong gesture of thanks.

  He peered at my work. “Blast protection?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nicolas thinks we’ll need it when we start doing serious experimentation with Lightning. I thought bringing over some designs from Flame might work better with this magic.”

  Teng gestured for my pen. I handed it to him. He drew some scribbles in the corner of the page, variations on my designs. “Try something a little straighter here. I’m starting to think Lightning likes straight lines. Makes sense…”

  “Thanks,” I said as he handed the pen back.

  “Fi-ah,” he said, meeting my eyes for a bare moment. “Do you want group members?”

  “What?” I drew back, surprised.

  “Do you want people to join your group?” he said. “Like… me. And Cameron.”

  I hesitated. “Did Nicolas turn you down or something?”

  He seemed surprised by my question. “Uh… no. I didn’t ask him. I am asking you first.”

  “Why?”

  I had been our group’s lieutenant, but Teng and I weren’t close. We had almost nothing in common—except for our love of Daniel. He was from a completely different world, and I didn’t think I would ever understand what he’d been through in his life. Nicolas had told me that very few people could handle Teng as a subordinate, and I doubted I was one of them.

  I would never be as good as Daniel at anything.

  Teng shrugged. “I like you.” He paused and took a sip of his tea. “Someone has to take care of you. Lai-Ming would have wanted that.”

  I shook my head, but he was right. Daniel had always taken care of me, and I knew he wanted our family to do that in his place. I am happy that I’m not leaving you alone, his letter said.

  Where had he learned to care for others so deeply? And could I do the same in return for the people he loved? I didn’t know what he’d written in Teng’s letter. Had he suggested this? Or had Teng simply known that I felt alone and that I didn’t know how to change that?

  “I guess… I guess we could try that,” I said, clearing my throat. “I don’t know how it will go. I’ve never been a leader before. I might suck at it. I’m sorry. But I’ll try, if you want.”

  “I want,” he said, nodding.

  “Okay,” I said. “Um, good. Great.”

  “Where do we start, Commander?” he asked.

  “We start with you never calling me that again,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  He smiled. “No. You’re stuck with it. Sorry.”

  I sighed. “I can see this will be enjoyable.” I closed the notebook. “We have a million things to do. Everyone is going to need to start putting their work into tasks, like what we did in Water. We don’t have the time or manpower to be duplicating work. Let’s schedule a commander meeting, and then a clan meeting. We need to figure out who does what. Nicolas will go completely off the rails and do his own thing if we don’t rein him in, especially since he’s best used in diplomacy with other clans right now. We need to make sure people like Keisha and Irina are supported in their research…”

  Teng laughed, and the low sound startled me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I don’t think you will suck at being a leader,” he said.

  For the first time since creating Lightning, I couldn’t help but laugh, too.

  Nicolas was shattered.

  He was adept at pushing past grief—I’d seen him do it before—but he wasn’t himself. He was inordinately focused, his motions quick, his sentences clipped and brusque. He was busy, of course, but all of that indicated to me that he was also hurt.

  “Hey, you,” I murmured, coming up behind him and wrapping my arms around his shoulders as he worked at his desk.

  “Lamb,” he said quietly, leaning into me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, burying my face in his hair.

  He reached a hand up to touch my cheek. “I will be.”

  “Are we okay?” I asked.

  He brought my left hand to his lips, kissing my fingertips. “Always.”

  “I should have tried to stop him,” I said. “I should have known.”

  Nicolas’s whole frame tensed. “If anyone should have known, it should have been me. The one person Daniel looked up to beyond anyone else was his brother, who sacrificed his own life for Dan’s. I’ve always known he had that mentality rooted within him. He thought he needed to sacrifice for me, to repay me. I never told him he didn’t have to. I would give anything to be able to tell him that now.”

  “He planned it this way?” I asked. It had been haunting me, the idea that maybe Daniel had always planned to die and just hadn’t told anyone. And Nicolas hadn’t known, hadn’t even sensed it in Dan’s mind.

  “No, certainly not,” Nicolas said. “I think he was confident until just short of the end that he could pull it off. We all thought we could pull it off. And if he had ongoing doubts? He hid them well and kept me in the dark. It isn’t as hard to hide intentions from me as you might think. By the time I understood, it was… fait accompli. All of my gifts, and still this happened. I am cursed.”

  “Don’t say that. We desperately need your abilities, now more than ever.”

  He sighed. “I know. I will try my best.”

  I stroked his hair. “That is all any of us can do.”

  “Lamb, will you do something for me? You can say no, if it’s too difficult.”

  He broke away from my grasp and leaned down to open his desk drawer. From a manila folder, he pulled out three photographs. They were eight-by-ten photos, glossy and crisp. Each one displayed Daniel.

  “The temple needs an altar for him. These were the best pictures I could find,” Nicolas said. “Will you choose one?”

  The first was Daniel at an open-air market in Hong Kong. It ha
d been taken from the knees up, the fruit and meat stalls slightly blurred in the background. The day was bright, and he had sunglasses on top of his head, pushing back his dark hair. In his hands were red shopping bags overflowing with mangoes and oranges. He was studying the camera with an impatient expression. He looked very young; this picture had likely been taken a few years ago.

  The second was of Daniel sitting at the meeting table in our training room at Water’s clan house. He had headphones on. There was a pen in his right hand, and his left hand cupped his chin. He looked like the epitome of every college student that had ever taken boring notes in preparation for a test. His expression was one of focused, grim concentration.

  The final photo was a full-body shot of Dan. He was standing on a rocky ledge, framed by brilliant blue sky and endless expanses of Hong Kong’s cityscape behind him. His hair was the bright coppery color I’d come to associate with him, and his smile was radiant.

  “When was this last one taken?” I asked.

  Nicolas narrowed his eyes in thought. “Back in June, a couple of days after his college graduation. That’s Lion Rock, right near Water’s Hong Kong clan house.”

  That photo embodied Dan. The hiking. The relaxed pose. The brilliant smile. His home spread out behind him.

  “Definitely this one,” I said, sliding the photograph closer to Nicolas.

  “Yes, I thought so,” he said.

  He put the other two photos away and stood. Very carefully, he drew me into his arms then lifted my chin and kissed me, a quick and affectionate kiss, letting his hands wander over my arms and down my back.

  I smiled. Nicolas was supportive beyond belief. He had held me every night since Dan’s death, stoically putting up with my emotions while I cried. I hadn’t asked how he’d managed to deal with all of our grief; he’d done it before, but I couldn’t imagine that sort of torture. It was time for me to give him comfort in return. Nicolas had lost a child. I had lost a best friend. We had all lost one of the greatest magicians we would ever know.

  “I love you,” I said, wrapping my arms around Nicolas’s neck and going up on tiptoes to press my cheek against his.

  “Oh, lamb, I love you,” he said. “I wish you knew how much.”

  I pressed my lips into his neck. “I do know. Don’t doubt that.” I was shaking again. “I’m not ready for this, for any of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We changed everything. We changed the whole world.” My words were choked. “And… and… I need Dan. I don’t know how to do this without him. And he just left me here.”

  Nicolas held me closer, pressing my face into his shoulder gently. “You could have prepared for a hundred years, and you would never have been ready for this loss or this gain. Life is unfair that way.”

  “He was my shield,” I whispered. “I’m… not strong enough to do this myself.” An involuntary sob escaped my parted lips. “I mean, come on, look at me.”

  Nicolas sighed. “Daniel didn’t leave you alone. He said it himself. He left you with a family, and a home, and the most beautiful magic in the world. You will use all that to build a raft, a raft that will get you through the hard waters of grief to your new shore. And once you no longer need the raft, you will break it down to build a shield, which will get you through danger and to the sunlight on higher ground. It is the way these things work. Magic is one opportunity after another, enticing us to accept the challenge. You have always been strong and capable, Daniel or no Daniel.”

  I wiped my eyes. “It will be worse without him.”

  Nicolas swallowed, flinching. “That is true, too. Like a night without stars, but not without the hope of a coming dawn.”

  Chapter 33

  It had been seven days since Daniel’s death, and I was attending my first commanders’ meeting. We were all seated around the large kitchen table, watching each other, waiting for someone to speak.

  “So… what are our biggest concerns?” I asked finally. I had a notepad in front of me, still scribbling wards alongside my notes, my magic yearning to find its way into new shapes and patterns.

  “My phone has been ringing off the hook from Water Clan magicians,” Nicolas said. “We’ll need to address that sooner rather than later. While the rest of you can disappear, I’m a council member. Well, I was a council member. Eventually, not showing up to appointments will seem suspicious. It’s time to refine our plan for approaching Water. Doing it the right way is important. With the right strategy, we could have Claudius on our side.”

  “We need more stability first,” Sylvio said. “Better defenses and stronger obscuring magic to make sure we’re safe and anonymous here.”

  “And backup plans,” Chandra said. “Places we can go, people we can lean on. If anything happens, we need to be able to move fast to survive.”

  “We have to mature past magical infancy as quickly as possible,” Ryan chimed in. “If we can stabilize healing, and portals, and binding Lightning magic to items, and figuring out what advantages we have that are unique to us… then we’ll have a chance.”

  I sighed, taking notes. “That’s a long list. We have, um, only days to get some of that done with Water breathing down our necks.”

  “And one more thing,” Nicolas said.

  He placed his phone in the middle of the table. It displayed a single text from an unknown number.

  Congratulations on your success. Keep in mind, each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

  “Who is that from?” I asked, although I had a suspicion that I already knew the answer.

  Nicolas smiled wryly. “I’m going to hazard a guess and say Stephan. Not many others would quote Henry Kissinger to me.”

  “How could he know?” Chandra asked, shaking her head in frustration.

  “I’m not sure there’s much that Stephan doesn’t know,” Nicolas said, and his face twisted in annoyance at the idea that he was offering a compliment to his former commander.

  “Are you going to respond?” I asked.

  “No,” Nicolas said. “I have stood by my rule of no contact with Stephan for fifteen years. I’m not about to change it without a very good reason.”

  I frowned, wondering if that sort of very good reason was about to come up in our lives.

  “Will he tell others?” Ryan asked.

  Nicolas studied the text for another few moments. “Who knows. But we should plan as though the world knows our secret or will soon find out. Smoke isn’t the only clan who will demand knowledge and access, and who will make our lives difficult if we don’t obey. We still don’t know why Stephan wanted Daniel. If it was because of Lightning magic, we now all have targets on our backs.”

  “Great,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Anything to add to our woes, Mother of Lightning?” Chandra asked, raising a brow at me.

  Wait, what? I stared at her. “Did you just… give me a title ripped off from Game of Thrones?”

  She shrugged. “Why not? It fits.”

  “No, definitely not.” She waited a beat, then flashed a wicked smile. “Mother of Lightning.”

  I groaned. “No, stop.”

  I cast a pleading look toward Nicolas and Ryan. Ryan’s lips were pursed in an attempt to not laugh. Nicolas spread his hands.

  “You are appealing to someone with not one but two stupid epithets,” he said. He paused and then murmured, “Mother of Lightning.”

  “I hate you,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I hate all of you.”

  “Oh no, she hates us,” Chandra said, laughing. She put a hand to her chest in mock agony. “Whatever will we do?”

  Sylvio’s strained smile broke into a laugh, and I knew I had lost this battle. Mother of Lightning. I sighed. Fuck me. I’d helped create a new magical clan, and all I got was this crappy title. I scribbled find a better epithet at the bottom of my list.

  “Well, I guess we should get started, huh?” I asked. “We have a lot to do.”

  “No t
ime like the present,” Chandra added.

  I lingered in the doorway of the temple, peering into the cool, dim room. It smelled of wood and incense.

  We’d all been collected together a couple of hours ago at daybreak, holding a memorial for Daniel here. His altar stood to the left of the large Buddha statue. It held his framed picture along with a platter of fruit and a small bowl of his possessions, including the string of yellow jade beads he often wore on his wrist. At the base of the altar was a large basin of grayish sand with sticks of lit incense standing upright like pussy willows.

  Although we’d all said goodbyes in our own ways, it was Nicolas who had bowed the longest, his forehead pressed to the floor, confessing who knew what to the silent and stoic building.

  But I hadn’t said enough. I was back now because Dan’s memory called to me, because the sanctum of our clan called to me.

  I stepped into the temple and bowed in front of the Buddha and then in front of Dan’s altar. Dan would never have let me get away with not kneeling to the Buddha first; he’d be a staunch believer in spiritual traditions, even if he hadn’t been overly religious himself.

  Bowing to the Buddha meant ostensibly bowing to the sanctum, seated right at its feet. Magic swirled and churned and bloomed in its glass container, emanating power and radiance. There was space inside it, I could tell—a whole world, infinite breadth, beaches and oceans and who knew what else.

  Another thing we needed to find out, another thing to add to the long and arduous list of starting a clan.

  I kneeled by Dan’s altar. Not the formal, stiff kneeling that indicated worship. No, instead, I drew my legs up under myself and relaxed, letting my head rest against the pedestal of the platform.

  “Hi,” I whispered.

  I glanced down at my right wrist. I was wearing Dan’s fancy black watch, and I was not yet used to its weight. Wrapped above it was my zodiac bracelet. It was no longer imbued with magic—that was in me now—but it would always and forever be a part of me.