by Ella M. Lee
And there, lie number three detected. Nicolas knew what he was doing with these tests. Not only was Daniel’s memory superb, but he also had a penchant for correcting anything he heard that was incorrect, just like he was doing right now. I couldn’t fault Nicolas’s research and experimentation techniques—he was a genius.
I smiled weakly. “Honestly, I just let Teng handle all of that right now. I don’t even want to know.” I paused, trying to think of a way to segue into my final story. “I probably should’ve taken care of more of that for you, as your lieutenant.”
He shrugged. “Nah, I’m a… what does Ryan say? I like control.”
“Control freak?” I asked. “I don’t know, you’re not that strict. Nicolas is a control freak. You like to have your hands in everything. You are your own lieutenant!”
Behind us, Ryan laughed, and Daniel joined him.
“Being a lieutenant isn’t just about doing tasks,” Dan said. “It’s about… teamwork.”
“That day you asked me to be your lieutenant…” I started. “Was I really your first choice? You can tell me if I wasn’t. I won’t be mad.”
“You were my first choice. Really.” His affectionate expression was genuine and open.
“What would you have done if I said no?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t have had a lieutenant.”
“Would you have been mad at me?”
He rolled his eyes. “Are you seriously asking me that? No. Why would I be mad? Not a great way to start a new group. Or a new clan.”
“Did you really think of nothing else but Lightning?”
“I made a new group because Nicolas wanted me to become a commander. I made a new clan because Nicolas wanted me to make a new clan. It was all steps on a path. Having you as a lieutenant was nice, but not necessary to the rest of the plan. So… I would have lived without it. My thoughts were way ahead of that, really.”
I looked away. I hated when Daniel talked about his life as something he’d only used to serve Nicolas. It wasn’t my business, but I couldn’t help but feel like Nicolas hadn’t raised him well enough if Daniel saw himself as good for nothing else.
But that was unfair. Nicolas had given Daniel everything. Money, freedom, education, power, encouragement. Which made me wonder—could Nicolas have done anything to change the course of Dan’s thoughts? Or was Dan the type who sacrificed above all else?
He and I had that in common along with all the other things—constantly giving ourselves away with no thought at all.
The mere idea of it choked me up. Sometimes I didn’t know what was left inside me, after so many restarts and so many adjustments made for others.
Daniel sensed my discomfort. He took my hands. “And here you are brooding over me, Fi. You have to stop.”
“Can you read minds now?” I asked, clearing my throat, trying to use the joke to cover up the fact that he’d hit a little too squarely on the nose.
“Nah,” he said. “But who needs to read your mind when they can just read your face?”
“I wish…” I shut my mouth, knowing I shouldn’t finish my sentence.
But Daniel was like a dog with a bone when it came to my emotions. His dark eyes bore into mine as he prodded, “Yeah?”
“I wish…” I swallowed. “I really miss being your lieutenant. I wish I still were.”
That seemed to satisfy him, even though it wasn’t what I’d originally started to say.
I wish you’d come back and take all this responsibility off my shoulders.
Because I’m not cut out for it.
Chapter 11
When I got back to Nicolas’s apartment at about nine p.m., Nicolas was at his desk on the phone, speaking in smooth, low French. He beckoned to me, rolling his chair back to allow me room to sit in his lap. He wrapped an arm around my waist and kissed my temple briefly. I glanced at his laptop, which currently displayed a plethora of numbers in a spreadsheet. He clicked between that and something that looked like a PowerPoint presentation.
I closed my eyes and leaned against him, enjoying the rise and fall of his chest and the casual way he touched me as he meandered through what sounded like a pretty boring conversation.
Finally, he said his extensive goodbyes and hung up, bringing both arms up to encircle me and kissing me so deeply that my heart dropped into my stomach.
“Who were you talking to?” I murmured, letting my lips wander over his neck and jaw, enjoying the tiny catches in his breath at my touch.
“My financial advisor,” he said.
“Clan stuff?” I asked.
“No, personal,” he said. “My investments are managed by a firm, but they call me to discuss returns and strategy every six months.”
I looked at the laptop screen again. The text on the current slide was too large to ignore, citing month-over-month gains and total investments. “That’s, um, a lot of digits and a lot of commas. Many more than I’ve ever seen.”
Nicolas laughed lightly. “Are you trying to tell me you would like more money, lamb?”
I tensed. I didn’t like financial discussions with Nicolas. They were awkward, and I couldn’t help but feel like he always had the upper hand. I wasn’t poor by any stretch of the imagination, mostly due to him, but I would never have what he had.
“No…” I said. “I just… I can’t really fathom that amount of money. I think you can buy private planes and military jets and small islands with it. Maybe medium-sized islands? I don’t know.” I paused. “Chandra said you are French nobility. Is that where all this money comes from?”
Nicolas pulled back so that he could study my face, his mouth set into an unhappy frown.
“Sorry,” I said quickly, unsure if I had somehow offended him.
“My family is French nobility,” he said finally. “They are wealthy, yes, but most of my money comes from judicious use of my visions and mind-reading.”
I was drawn to this nobility thing. “Do you have a title?”
“My cousin, Pierre, is the head of the family. He is a count.” Nicolas’s tone wandered into mild bitterness. “I am simply a bastard half-breed. Another complication in my life that I can thank Stephan for. As though I do not have enough reasons…” He sighed.
Ah. Nicolas was an outcast in his family. Of course they would not have liked his mother running off with a Hong Konger and getting pregnant. That must have been a once-in-a-generation scandal when it happened. And then for her to be abandoned, raising Nicolas as a single mother...
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” I said.
My eyes strayed once again to the numbers on his screen. To the best of my knowledge, Nicolas didn’t care about money. I had no idea if that was because he’d never lacked it, or because there were things that were more important to him, like family. A family of his own, anyway, one that loved him. Not Stephan, whom he’d disavowed I didn’t know how many times. Nicolas was always so generous with those he loved—was that his way of showing gratitude for their affection?
His expression had opened up again as he watched me, leading me to believe I was right. He appeared to be searching for something in my face, his hesitation indicating that he was trying to glean more from my thoughts. “If there was ever anything you desired, lamb, you need only ask. What is mine is yours.”
“I’m fine, really,” I said. “I have plenty of money. Enough to, I don’t know, fund a few extra lives. I could support a secret family or two. Maybe a husband in Germany, and one in Colombia…”
Nicolas kissed me. “If you ever run off, I’ll know to check Germany and Colombia.”
I offered him a teasing smile. “I’ll probably have a farm, a dog, three or four cute little children…”
His arms tightened around me. “Not if I never let you go.” He kissed me again, his tongue parting my lips and finding mine. I sighed into him, and he chuckled. “Perhaps I need to offer up a little persuasion…” His fingers crept up my rib cage, brushing my breasts as
his mouth moved gently over my clavicle.
“I’m staying, I’m staying,” I gasped, running my fingers through his hair and down his back.
“Are you sure?” he murmured, his voice low and husky.
My whole body tightened and ached as his lips found mine and his tongue pressed into my mouth again.
I whimpered, clinging to him. “I am…” I could barely breathe. “I am beyond sure.”
When he pulled away slightly to survey my heaving chest and flushed cheeks, his wide smile was smug and pleased. In one smooth motion, he hoisted me into his arms and carried me to bed.
For once, I was awake before Nicolas, reading the daily digests Teng wrote about our experiments with Daniel. He didn’t add a lot of detail to them; most of the data was still under lock and key. Regardless, I tried to read into what I could. It seemed like things were going well.
We were moving through the roster of clan members. Jasmine had conducted her own interview the day prior before leaving to finish whatever business she had in the area. “Positive progress made” was a common note, although it was hard to tell if Teng meant those words to signal anything specific about Daniel’s nature.
Nicolas, who also had access to the data, was tight-lipped as well.
When he woke to find me stretched out on the bed with my laptop, poring over Teng’s sparse sentences, he frowned.
“Fiona,” he said, rubbing sleep from his eyes, “you have to stop worrying for now. There simply isn’t enough to draw conclusions from yet.” His clipped tone indicated annoyance.
“You say that as if it’s so easy for me,” I snapped back. At his startled look, I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I just… I’m not used to this, you know. I’m not like you. I can’t just think of Daniel as some thing, and I can’t talk about all of this like it’s normal.”
Nicolas took my hand, gripping it tightly in his. “I know this is hard on you. It will be over soon.”
I studied his eyes in the dawn light. Their shadows dulled his normal golden hue. “Is that true? What if we don’t know what to do? What if we can’t figure it out?”
“We’ll have to,” he said. “We don’t have a choice. We’ll need to make the best decision we can, knowing our circumstances and our abilities.”
“What if what we have isn’t enough?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Tell me honestly,” I said. “What if Daniel is alive in there, but we don’t know how to get him out? Our sanctum can’t stay unstable forever.”
“I know,” Nicolas said hoarsely. “If that is the case… the decision is harder than we might desire, but it will still need to be made.”
“Say the words plainly.”
Nicolas’s eyes narrowed. “We have to think about our clan. The people who are here and alive and using this magic. Stabilizing our sanctum is the most important thing. Daniel, in whatever form, is secondary to that.”
“I see,” I said, even though I didn’t, even though I only bit the words out because I couldn’t manage to swallow them.
Nicolas’s expression darkened. He opened his mouth and then shut it, swallowing hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Let’s get back to the soubou. We need to meet with Ryan this morning. We’ve put it off too long.”
I wanted to press him, to understand why he was suddenly shutting Daniel out so viciously, but I couldn’t get into it with him just then. We had something equally important to worry about: the conclave.
“I don’t want to harp on the details of our preparations,” Nicolas said, swirling coffee around in his cup. “Too much will come up that we can’t plan for.”
Nicolas, Ryan, and I sat at Ryan’s long workbench, our mugs and notebooks scattered among the gold wire, gemstones, and pieces of spelled glass that often cluttered his space.
“That said,” Nicolas went on, “we have two main goals for the conclave: keep our sanctions to a minimum and make as many useful connections as we can.”
As part of the conclave, Lightning was expected to give a lengthy presentation on our clan’s creation, our magical abilities, and our future plans and goals. Based on what the members of the conclave heard, they would impose “sanctions.” If they thought we were dangerous and erratic, they could request things that would limit us severely: investigations by Sky or Smoke, limiters to be put in place on our magic, or even breaking up our clan.
With us being so small, we were largely at the mercy of the other clans right now, and we needed to gain their support rather than their animosity. How to do that? Alliances.
Water would likely back us up, at least privately if not publicly. Ideally, we could get them to make a public showing of their support, but Nicolas was trying to temper our expectations. Claudius and Arturo both liked Nicolas and Ryan, but they were allied with Smoke and Sky—meaning that they also needed to keep those relationships solid.
“Flame is an easy one to decide on,” I said. “We should ignore them. They don’t have anything we need.”
“Your prior connection to them might make that door easier to open,” Nicolas said.
“I doubt that.” I laughed dryly. “The only thing Flame likes less than outsiders is people who were once insiders and then left.”
If “leaving” is what you could call being sent on a suicide mission and then abandoned, left for dead.
“I think you should try,” Nicolas pressed. “If they are open to speaking to you, excellent. If not, then we’ve lost nothing.”
“Fine,” I said, “but don’t expect much.”
“So no need for an intense focus on Water or Flame,” Ryan said. “I think I have a good chance of swaying Verdant. Carlos and I are acquaintances, and they all like Jasmine quite a lot.”
“Convincing Verdant that we have no intention of causing trouble is paramount,” Nicolas said. “But I think we can also lean into the weather control aspect of our magic with them. Both Verdant and Wind would likely appreciate our help with their own clan goals. I would gladly lend our expertise in exchange for a favorable outlook from them.”
“I can work on Wind, too, then,” Ryan said.
“I can handle Sky and Smoke,” Nicolas said.
“I’m sure they are both anticipating that,” I said. “Since you are the unofficial head of our clan.”
“They see me as the most dangerous, because of my abilities,” Nicolas conceded. “They will want to keep a close eye on me. But I’ve known Juniper for decades, and I’d rather deal with Stephan myself than have either of you navigate that relationship. Stephan is a master manipulator, but he can’t manipulate me.”
I exchanged a look with Ryan and cleared my throat. “Is that true?” I asked, and Nicolas’s wide gaze fell on me incredulously. “I just mean that you are tense around him. He can’t actively manipulate you, sure, but it seems like the passive effect he has on you is… detrimental.”
Because they were related by blood, Nicolas’s abilities didn’t work on Stephan. Similarly, Nicolas was convinced that the abilities Stephan had—and hid—likely didn’t work on him in return. But that didn’t mean Stephan couldn’t make a serious impact on Nicolas.
“It’s fine,” Nicolas said. “Keeping him away from both of you is still more important. I’m hoping to limit our interactions with him in general. Juniper should be open to an alliance with me, at least in some way. And Sky? Well, if the other clans are supportive of us, they will follow suit. Sky looks out for the greater good. We need to convince them that we fall in line with that.”
“What about Wild?” I asked. “Do either of you know their pinnacle members?” I checked my notes from the RSVP list. “Yuki and Kostas?”
Both Ryan and Nicolas shook their heads.
“That will be a complete wild card,” Nicolas said. “I was hoping you’d work on that, Fiona. You’re empathetic, and you’ve had one of the dangerous magics before. They might see a kinship with you.”
I drew back, startled. “Okay, sure. I can try.”
“We have a great advantage with Nicolas attending,” Ryan said.
“Mind-reading,” I said, nodding.
“That, yes,” Ryan said, “but there’s more. Nicolas is distracting. He’s frightening, powerful, confident, and—occasionally—erratic. All eyes, whether they like it or not, will be drawn to him. That leaves you and me the chance to work more subtly.” Ryan winked at me, and I laughed slightly.
“A smokescreen,” I said. “Speaking of that… what about Meteor? Do we approach them? Or do we hang back and see what they do? What if they are planning something we can’t predict?”
Nicolas sighed. “I’ve been trying to review their actions in visions, but I can’t lock anything down. I’m waiting for Mark to get back to me with what he digs up. More information might help me clarify the visions. Often, it’s a matter of finding the right target.”
Nicolas’s visions were sometimes worse than useless, and this seemed to be one of those occasions. He’d been unable to tell us much about the conclave so far, mostly due to his presence and Stephan’s presence there.
When I’d first stood in front of Nicolas as his captive, he had seemed all-powerful to me. How could someone who read minds and saw visions of the future not be all-powerful? But living with him had shown me those abilities were sometimes so severely limited as to be no help at all. They were their own brand of magic, and their secrets had not been completely unlocked by their owner.
I doodled in my notebook, making circles and squiggles around clan names. “So, priorities: Wind, Verdant, Sky, Smoke. Figure out the rest later. Got it.”
Nicolas smiled. “We’re smart enough for that.”
“Fiona and I are, at least,” Ryan said, and I laughed at his rare joke.
“Thank god I have you both,” Nicolas murmured. “Now, something equally important to plan: our outfits.”
I rolled my eyes, but Nicolas and Ryan began speaking excitedly about fabrics and color palettes and the character of clothes. I smiled. Even though I didn’t quite understand their fascination, it was hard to not find happiness in their enjoyment.