Shadow of Flame

by Caitlyn McFarland

  Now, several hours later, Kai was wedged into one corner of her parents’ kitchen, pretending to be normal. She stuck her finger into a mixing bowl and scooped out a ball of cookie dough studded with chocolate chips. She opened her mouth and popped the dough in. Sweet and salty, with a hint of bitterness. Perfect. But she registered the taste from a distance.

  Flames. The smell of charred flesh, like barbecued meat and burnt hair.

  Kai forced herself to swallow the ball of dough and gagged.

  Juli had lied to Kai’s parents. Rifle was too small for the news of the fire not to have reached them, and they’d started to interrogate Kai as soon as she’d opened the door. Kai wasn’t recovered enough from killing someone to deal with her parents being her parents, so Juli took over and said that they’d gone to Rifle Falls State Park to show Ashem the waterfalls along Coyote Trail, swearing up and down that they hadn’t been to the gym since yesterday.

  The lie about Coyote Trail might have fooled her parents for now, but two dozen people had seen them at The Quarry. Ashem didn’t seem to be worried about the police, but Kai was freaking out. A woman was dead. Someone had to have seen her go into the locker room with Gina. What if they showed up? What if she got arrested?

  Kai imagined the glee on Jacobsen Starnes Smith’s bearded face as he typed the headline: Girl Who Lied About Being Lost Also Arsonist/Murderer.

  Kai’s niece and nephew, Mindy and Caleb, charged into the kitchen, snapping her hard into the present as they chased each other with Mom’s decorative stuffed turkeys and screeched with laughter.

  Out the dark window, marshmallow-fat snowflakes fell. On the other side of the bar in the warm, well-lit kitchen, her brothers and Ashem sat at the table, laughing and eating a cheeseball while Ashem attempted to teach them some kind of card game. His gaze slid to Kai and Juli so often that even her oblivious brothers would notice soon. Ancient warrior he might be, but Ashem was not great at deception.

  Juli, who had hardly gone two feet from Kai since leaving The Quarry, leaned over Kai’s shoulder. “Is it edible?”

  Kai resisted the urge to shrug her off. Too close. She was so tired of people hovering. “By your standards or mine?”

  Juli raised a hand, but let it drop. “Mine, of course.” She grabbed the spoon, stepping back to lean against the counter and take an experimental lick. She raised an eyebrow. “Not bad. Don’t burn them.”

  “Golden-brown is not ‘burned.’” Grateful for the space, Kai hid a smile. It was an exchange they’d had dozens of times. She could stick to a script.

  “It is on sugar cookies. Chocolate chip is more forgiving. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” Juli patted Kai on the head and slid the tray into the oven.

  Kai took a shaky breath, backing up until she couldn’t feel the oven’s glowing, beckoning heat.

  The doorbell rang.

  Kai froze. It’s the police. Oh, hell. They’re here for me. She couldn’t let her parents know.

  With a shriek of laughter and a stampede of tiny feet, Kai’s niece and nephew rocketed through the kitchen and toward the door.

  “It’s my turn to answer!”

  “Mine turn! Mine!”

  “Hey!” Praying her panic didn’t show, Kai ran after them down the hall into the foyer. The kids would be too excited to keep quiet if they saw a policeman at the door. Aside from that, Caleb was likely to go zooming past whoever it was and into the storm. “It’s mine turn!”

  “Kai!” Juli called. “Wait!”

  Not bothering to remove her flour-spattered Keep Your Hands Off My Buns apron, Kai leapt in front of the squealing kids, wiggling her fingers. “Anyone shorter than Aunt Kai who touches this door gets tickled!”

  Screeching, they sprinted in the opposite direction. Kai watched to make sure they were gone, then hesitated a few more seconds. Taking a breath, she put her hand on the knob and turned.

  “Kai!” Juli jogged down the hall toward her. “It’s—”

  The door swung wide, and there he was.

  The world compressed into one bright point. Then the tension, the storm that had been building in her head for days, for months, broke.

  “Rhys.” His name tore from her mouth, strangled and constricted. His scent blew in on the frigid night air: clean, wild wind and male with a hint of woodsmoke.

  The porch light turned him gold against the backdrop of black night and white snow. For long heartbeats, Kai couldn’t do anything but stare. Rhys, with fire-blue eyes and snowflakes in his red hair. Her knees gave out for an instant, and she clutched the door frame. So much wanting for so long, and there he was. Pale. Exhausted-looking. Real.

  “Kai.” His voice was quiet but resonant, his entire body rigid. His eyes devoured her from toes to face once, then again. He dragged in a breath and swore softly in Welsh.

  She squeezed the door frame until her knuckles turned as white as his and the wood gave an ominous pop. “What—you’re here. Why are you here?”

  “I—Blood of the Ancients.” He stepped forward, close enough that she had to tilt her head back. Close enough to feel his heat. Close enough to touch.

  She almost reached out, but curled her fingers and kept her hand at her side. It felt as if her mental wall had become physical, and neither of them dared to test it.

  She hadn’t forgotten what he looked like. Not really. But now, standing on her parents’ doorstep, he was so much more than her faded mental picture. His eyes bluer, shoulders broader, face a masterpiece of shadowed lines and strong planes. Memory was an awful photographer.

  “Kai?” Her mother’s voice bounced from the living room. “Who is it, sweetie?”

  The spell broke. The night air stuck and froze in her lungs. She let go of the door frame and stepped back.

  Rhys wasn’t looking at Kai anymore. He looked beyond her, his face changing from dazed to grim. “Ashem.”

  Kai whipped around to see Juli and Ashem behind her. Ashem scowled. No, it was more than a scowl. Ashem was livid. “I told you to wait. I told you I would bring her.”

  “Excuse me?” Kai said through gritted teeth. “Bring her where?”

  Rhys’s eyes snapped fire-blue. “Don’t cross me, Commander. Not right now.”

  For some reason, Ashem plastered a ridiculously pleasant smile on his face. Then he turned, and Kai realized her father had come into the foyer. Next to Rhys and Ashem, he looked so...normal. Even small. Though he was average height, he was thin, with salt-and-pepper hair and gold, wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

  “Can I help you?” Her father’s voice was polite and businesslike and so very Dad that Kai experienced a moment of cognitive dissonance.

  “Mr. Monahan.” Juli beamed angelically. “This is Rhys. He’s Ashem’s friend.”

  “Mr. Monahan.” Rhys gave her father an easy smile and offered his hand, his accent making his words quick and clipped. “I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Dad took Rhys’s hand and shook it.

  No. This has all got to be part of a nightmare. Kai widened her eyes at Juli, who gave Kai a “play along or die” glare. So Kai bared her teeth. “Yeah, Dad. He’s Ashem’s friend...from Montana.”

  “He doesn’t sound like he’s from Montana.” Kai’s dad caught her eye and chuckled. “Are you all right, honey? Have you been eating your own cooking again?”

  Kai’s skin went hot and prickly from neck to hairline. As if things weren’t surreal enough, now Dad was making dad jokes. In front of Rhys. Who was here.

  Kai did her best not to look at the man standing next to her—the man who happened to carry the other half of her soul. It was like pretending not to notice a burning coal pressed against her skin.

  Rhys didn’t seem to have the same problem. He glanced at her, but his face remained pleasantly neutral. “I’m originally from Wales, near Sno
wdonia.”

  Dad nodded. “Wales! That explains it. Please, come in.”

  Rhys shook snow from his hair and took off his coat. His scent assaulted Kai, going straight to her brain and knees and turning both to jelly. She brought her apron-wrapped hands to her face and attempted to fill her nostrils with the dull scent of flour. Her attempt worked too well. She sneezed, exhaling forcefully so she could breathe. Her eyes watered.

  “Sweetheart?” Dad asked, true concern in his voice this time. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Fine.” Kai wheezed.

  Nothing was fine.

  Kai’s mother finally bustled in from the living room, small and dark-haired, with the same fey green eyes she’d passed to Kai. She gave Rhys a delighted once-over. “Oh, you’re handsome! What brings you here?” She gave Kai a significant look.

  “I...” Rhys shifted his feet.

  “He’s staying with us at the apartment while he looks for a job in Colorado.” Juli turned her brilliant smile on Kai’s mother. “I’m so sorry. We weren’t expecting him quite this early. He was going to meet us at the apartment, but we were all here...”

  Kai relaxed slightly. Not for the first time, she decided they would all fall apart if they didn’t have Juli.

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” Rhys said.

  Kai closed her eyes. His voice, that accent, his presence in the same freaking room...she was about to fall apart in a very public way.

  “Of course he can stay! Do you need to eat?” Kai’s mother gestured to the large messenger bag slung over Rhys’s shoulder. “Can Stephen or one of the boys to take your bag? You know, we have an extra bed since Kai lives with Juli and Ashem. You can stay here if you’d like.”

  “No, thank you. It’s been too long since I’ve seen...Ashem...and I’d like to stay close.” Rhys smiled, and Kai thought her mother might swoon. “But I wouldn’t mind putting this bag down. Where can I set it, Mrs. Monahan?”

  Kai’s mother sighed dreamily. “Call me Leila.”

  Kai’s father raised an eyebrow. “Honey?”

  Her mother flushed. “Oh! Yes. Kai, show—what was it?”

  “Rhys,” Kai muttered. “Like the peanut butter cups.”

  Kai’s mother waved her away. “Obviously, sweetheart. Show Rhys where he can put his bag.”

  Kai took off her apron and shoved it at Juli. She needed to be alone with Rhys, just for a second. Just until she got her bearings. “If I’m not back in five minutes,” Kai whispered, “tell my brothers I’m alone in the basement with a man.”

  * * *

  Ancients, if he didn’t touch her soon he was going to go mad.

  He hadn’t been whole in his own skin since the moment she’d left him standing on that roof, and now here she was, with flour on one freckled cheek and a halo of wavy black flyaways coming out of that high bun she liked to wear. Her sea-green eyes were huge with surprise—which was odd. Ashem had known Rhys was coming for days.

  Only centuries of diplomatic experience allowed Rhys to get through the conversation in the foyer. He hardly noticed Ashem, Juli or Kai’s parents. He was too aware of Kai, the heat of her tugging at him, calling to him. Her nervousness made her normally smooth movements as sharp and quick as a bird’s. Her spicy sweet scent nearly broke his control. He drank in every detail of her like a man who’d been lost in the desert for weeks flinging himself into a river.

  Then he was following Kai downstairs, so focused on her that he nearly tripped twice. Here. Mine. He reached out, but she’d kept her distance so assiduously and her shields were still firmly in place around her mind. If he moved too quickly, she’d only push him away.

  To distract himself, he studied her parents’ home. This was the place Kai had grown up, and besides, he hadn’t been inside a human house in centuries. It was quite a bit less drafty than he remembered, and cleaner.

  Kai chattered, filling the silence—probably for the benefit of anyone who might be listening upstairs—and he let her voice wash over him. Though it wasn’t as mellow as it normally was at the moment, it was still lovely to listen to.

  The basement was, she informed him, finished. Rhys wasn’t sure what that meant, but the large, open room had cream-colored walls, two worn, sagging brown couches, a cabinet and a TV screen mounted on a wall.

  He let his eyes slide down her body again, his mind taking him back to the roof in Seattle. Kissing her. Feeling her presence fade. Pressing his palm against the window and feeling glass melt beneath his hand.

  He took a breath. “You...you’re well?”

  Kai nodded, still facing away from him. Rhys clenched his shaking hands into fists. Ancients, why wouldn’t she look at him? He hadn’t expected her to fall into his arms—she’d kept her mind closed to him for two months, after all. But would it be too much just to look?

  You were the one who asked her to heartswear and then told her to leave, he reminded himself. You were the one who couldn’t bring her home to your people. Ancients, his people. They still had such a long way to go. This could be a disaster.

  But now that he had her again, he would not leave her.

  She toyed with a loose thread on the arm of the couch. “Did they know you were coming? Juli and Ashem?”

  Rhys exhaled slowly. So Ashem hadn’t told her. “Yes.”

  Kai nodded, showing no sign of turning to face him. Something in him snapped, and he stepped close, brushing his fingers over her sleeve, craving skin instead of fabric. When she didn’t pull away, he turned her to face him. So small. Her head didn’t even come to his shoulder.

  Pulse quickening, he slid his arms around her waist. She closed her eyes and made a small sound in her throat as their bodies collided, leaning her head against his chest and clutching fistfuls of his shirt. The solid warmth of her, the supple pressure of her body against his...

  Rhys groaned.

  He skimmed his hands up her back, dropping his head to rest on her hair, breathing her in. He couldn’t touch her enough. Both of them were shaking. How had he gone so long without this?

  His fingers tightened around her waist. Rhys tried to ignore the desire to be closer, touch skin. It wouldn’t go. “I need you to come to Eryri.”

  Kai stiffened. Fire magic gathered around her, pooling in her hands, and she pushed away from him. “Why? Why now?”

  Rhys shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t reach for her. “Seren had a vision. She saw you being kidnapped by Owain. I want to take you home before it’s too late.”

  Kai stared at him for a long moment. Then she started to laugh. It held no humor, but she clutched her stomach and wiped tears from her eyes. “You’re too late.”

  She might as well have slapped him. “Too late?”

  “Yeah. Owain already sent someone. She posed as a new employee at the gym, but it turns out she was an undercover dragon. Earlier this afternoon she tried to kill me. Or maybe kidnap me.” Kai pressed her lips together, and despite the harshness of her voice, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “If you meant to fly in here and save me, you missed your chance. I saved myself.”

  His voice came out feral and hoarse. “Someone attacked you? Here? Today?”

  “Yeah. I guess that means your prophecy has already been undermined.” She looked away and gave a one-shouldered shrug, arms still folded over her stomach. “If that’s the only reason you’re here, I guess you can—” she paled, but bit out the words “—you can go.”

  Sunder it. He had spent seven weeks dying inside. Hadn’t she? How could she even think of telling him to leave? Frustration kept his voice rough. “You knew I would come for you.”

  She made a derisive noise. “I just told you, your prophecy was averted. You came for nothing.” More magic gathered around her.

  He would not grab her. He would not. “I ca
me for you.”

  She hugged herself. “It’s only been two months. If I disappear again, my parents are going to lose it. People will think I did it for the attention. I doubt the cops would even agree to look for me.”

  He tried for reason. “Owain knows you’re here. You can’t stay.”

  Her expression softened into uncertainty, so he pressed his advantage. “Kai, you know about my parents. I don’t want to force you into this. I want us to find a balance. As friends, if nothing else. But, Ancients, what other option is there?”

  She rubbed her face. “Friends? Rhys, you jumped into my head and then left for almost two months. You hurt me and then you sent me away. Yeah, I blocked you out, but don’t you think I had reason? I don’t know you, I just know that this stupid magic makes me want you. How can we be friends? How can we be anything?”

  Rhys stepped back. “So, the problem is that you don’t trust me.”

  Kai threw up her hands, her frustration exploding into movement. “Of course I don’t! We’ve been heartsworn like twelve hours in Relative Dragon Time. I just—” She paled. “Oh, hell.”

  Her palms burst into flame.

  Rhys caught her wrists and pulled at the magic. Flames circled his wrists, singing the sleeves of his shirt before they disappeared into his body, absorbed into the fire at his core. Even that surge of power—and Kai was powerful—hadn’t been enough to dampen the shockwave of rightness that rolled through him when his hands came in contact with her skin.

  “I killed her. The dragon.” Kai lifted her gaze to his, but her eyes were far away. “I—the fire. I can’t control it. It just erupted, and she burned. She won’t stop screaming. What if she never stops?”

  Rhys tugged her closer, still draining excess power. “You killed her? Where was Ashem?”

  Kai flipped her hands, gripping his wrists. “Right around the corner. She had a bracelet with a black stone that blocked him. He couldn’t read her. It wasn’t his fault.” Her words tumbled over each other, as if she were afraid. As if she thought he might take out his frustrated fury on Ashem.