Spark (Fire Within Series Book 4)

by Ella M. Lee

  I got up and went to Ryan’s bar, surveying the selection of wine. I selected three glasses, a bottle of tawny port for myself and a dark-red Cabernet Sauvignon for the men.

  This would be a long conversation.

  That night, I was stretched out on Nicolas’s couch reading the backgrounds for Laurine and Ivan, the two Flame pinnacle members who’d be attending the conclave, over and over again. I’d met them each once before, but only in passing. I tried to grasp for anything we had in common, anything I could say that might endear me to them, but I was drawing a blank.

  Nicolas’s arrival home interrupted me. He was dressed in workout gear, panting, his neck and ears flushed, making me think he’d been out for a run in the cold evening.

  He removed his earbuds and joined me on the couch. I hauled myself into his arms, burying my face in his shirt, enjoying his warmth and musky scent.

  “Lamb?” Nicolas kissed my hair, cuddling me closer.

  “Mm?” It was hard to focus with him sending shivers of pleasure up my spine.

  His fingers crept gently over my back. “There are a couple of things I wanted to add to our conversation from earlier, about the conclave.”

  “Mm.” Seriously, he needed to stop distracting me.

  He kissed my temple one more time, his lips curving into a small smile before he pulled his hands back. I sighed and sat up.

  “I want you to put your excellent detection skills to good use while we’re there,” he said. “Don’t forget that every single magician present will be out for themselves—us included. I want to know what they’re thinking.”

  I laughed. “You know what they are thinking.”

  He shook his head and kissed me so deeply that my heart pounded like I was the one who had just run for miles. “I don’t see the things you see,” he insisted. “Do not diminish your abilities.” He touched my nose gently. “Keep your eyes open. I will need your opinions and assessments.”

  “Anything for you,” I said.

  “One more thing.”

  “Mm?” I said, freezing. I’d been just about to run my fingers through his hair and tug him close.

  “We will need to be careful when it comes to binding agreements.”

  “Do you think we’ll need to make any?” I asked.

  “Almost certainly,” Nicolas said. “Especially if Sky sanctions us. They will want a guarantee those sanctions will be adhered to. And bindings like that will protect us, too. Other clans might try to strike deals as well—and they will want guarantees.”

  “What does the binding do? What happens if we break it?”

  “Binding spells are specific to Wind, something they can do because of the empathetic nature of their magic. For a binding, each party indicates their intent, which is assimilated into ink. That ink is then tattooed onto both parties’ skin. If either of the parties fails to adhere to the terms of the binding agreement, the ink reacts to that. It can injure, it can sicken, it can even kill—if the breach is severe enough.”

  I must have looked pretty disturbed by this idea, because Nicolas took my hands reassuringly. “We won’t agree to anything we can’t fulfill. And, if possible, I’m intending to personally take all the binders for the entire clan. I don’t want you or Ryan guaranteeing anything if it can be helped.”

  “You don’t need to take everything on yourself,” I said.

  “I’ve told you before—I would do anything to protect you all.”

  The fire burning behind his handsome gaze told me everything I needed to know about how much he cared for Lightning.

  Chapter 12

  Over the next week and a half, there were two more strange sanctum flare-ups, as well as a handful of other small blips in our magic. I’d gone into the sanctum both times for the flare-ups, only to find a freaked-out Daniel and no clear root cause for its instabilities. But there was no denying that whatever was happening was occurring more frequently now, and more dramatically.

  My anxiety multiplied tenfold as the issues continued to stump Nicolas, Ryan, Cameron, Irina, and Teng—all competent magical researchers who had more than enough experience and expertise to tackle this problem.

  Despite Nicolas constantly telling me to relax, my helplessness frustrated me and weighed on me heavily. Nicolas reminded me that collecting data was often a long process, and right now we were doing that on two things: Daniel’s presence and the sanctum issues.

  No one seemed to be sleeping, throwing themselves instead into brainstorming ideas for how to get Daniel safely out of the sanctum. We hadn’t officially moved into Problem Two, but the threads of it ran through all our conversations and chats. In fact, we had just finished up all the interviews, and Teng was compiling his observations and final reports.

  Ryan, Irina, and Cameron were having a more difficult time with the sanctum. They tested it with a number of Ryan’s magical scanners and devices from both the inside and outside, but none of the results came back with any inconsistencies. All of the results of our magic’s power and throughput were normal. If there was an issue, we had no way to detect it.

  Which meant we also had no way to fix it.

  “Fiona? Is that you?” I heard Ryan call from his office as I was coming in from taking the kitchen trash to the dumpster.

  “What’s up?” I said, poking my head inside.

  Ryan looked like he had just gotten back. He set his work bag down and undid the buttons at his sleeves. His dark, serious expression bothered me.

  “I just had a rather troubling conversation with Daniel,” Ryan said. Unlike Nicolas, Ryan used Daniel’s name for whatever was inside our sanctum. “He is certain that he’s the cause of whatever is happening in the sanctum, and he’s pretty upset about it.”

  I sighed. “I can go talk to him…” But I was unsure of what I’d say. Even without concrete data, we were all pretty convinced that Daniel was the cause of our issues.

  Ryan and I stared at one another, his brow creased, his hands frozen in the process of removing things from his bag. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, the sounds of arguing made their way down the hall toward us.

  I turned my head. One of the voices was Nicolas’s low, clipped tone in Cantonese. I squinted. Did the other, softer voice belong to Teng?

  Ryan, too, had snapped his head in that direction. By silent agreement, we made our way toward the voices. Ryan’s expression grew darker as Nicolas’s tone shifted toward sharp annoyance.

  Nicolas and Teng were in the common room, having something that looked like a standoff. Teng’s black-clad hand held a tablet, and he gestured aggressively with it while speaking. Nicolas had his fingers pressed to the bridge of his nose, stressed and frustrated.

  Neither of them seemed to care that Ryan and I stood in the doorway watching, stunned.

  “What are they saying?” I asked Ryan in an undertone. His eyes shifted to each of them as they spoke.

  “Teng seems to think the data points to Daniel being alive in the sanctum.”

  Roaring filled my ears, so loud and forceful that my head spun. Alive. Real. My heart thrummed, my magic vibrating around me, blooming out, crackling softly. My knees turned to jelly, and it was everything I could do to stop from collapsing on the floor and thanking God—even though I didn’t believe in one—for such a gift.

  Ryan’s next words snapped me back to reality. “Nicolas doesn’t agree that the data is conclusive enough to say that for certain.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Teng is arguing that it doesn’t matter. Why not proceed as though Daniel is alive? If he isn’t, we won’t be able to retrieve him from the sanctum anyhow. And if he is alive, then… there’s a chance we could rescue him. Teng is basically saying the results don’t matter.”

  “And?” I asked urgently, nodding my head toward Nicolas.

  “Nicolas is pointing out the reasons that proceeding is risky.” Ryan paused. “I know it sounds like it to you, but Nicolas isn’t angry, he’s impassioned.”

&
nbsp; “So this isn’t an argument?” I asked, unsure.

  “Not truly, no,” Ryan said. “They are disagreeing in some ways, but they agree that action needs to be taken now that we have as much information as we can get.”

  Nicolas slammed one palm down on the other, gritting out another sharp string of words. Ryan stepped forward, holding up a hand and speaking in a low, placating tone. Ryan asked a couple of questions—I could tell from the repetitive structure of the sentences in Cantonese—and silence fell over the room.

  “This isn’t a vote,” Nicolas said, shaking his head. “Action has to be taken in order to deal with the entity and stabilize the sanctum. The only choice now is to form the next stage of the plan and move forward.”

  “How do we do that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Nicolas admitted. “And it will have to wait until after the conclave. It’s too close now to focus our attention on anything else.”

  “Commander,” Teng said, addressing me. “I’ll make the data fully available now that the tests are over. We’ll have a few days to review and see if anyone has ideas.”

  “Sure,” I said, looking to Nicolas for approval. He spread his hands, agreeing.

  Ryan cleared his throat. “Every outcome would have resulted in its own complexities. There is no reason to celebrate yet, but this is a positive step.”

  His measured words were meant for both Nicolas and me. Nicolas looked aggrieved and strained and worried, his expression tight, his lips pressed together.

  Meanwhile, my entire body sang at the mere idea that I could have Daniel back, wondering if for once I’d be given a gift instead of only having the things I loved taken away from me.

  Two days later, it was time to leave for the conclave. I’d done practically nothing in those days except sleep and fret over packing the right dresses for the upcoming meeting. When I thought too closely about the conclave, my body went into fight mode—nervous and shot full of adrenaline and working too hard.

  I wasn’t even there yet, but I already found myself weighed down by exhaustion and stress. I couldn’t even look at the presentation Nicolas had put together about our clan. I lied to him, saying it was great. I didn’t doubt my words, regardless.

  When he told me that all I’d need to do was demonstrate our magic for the pinnacle members and answer questions if asked, I found myself relieved. Nicolas was the star of the show. He liked it. He was our distraction. That was fine.

  Because I was too busy feeling distracted and torn over Daniel. I’d looked through Teng’s compiled research, just to see if anything stuck out to me, but I didn’t need any of it to be certain of Daniel’s state.

  I had known since he’d touched my hand that first time in the sanctum. It had been an intrinsic, instinctual knowledge, like how I knew the difference between an animal and a rock. One was alive, one wasn’t.

  And Daniel was alive.

  Now we needed the rest of the puzzle to fit together. But that was a task for three days from now.

  Three days in the icy ninth circle of hell known as Hokkaido, Japan, stuck in a ski lodge with sixteen powerful, temperamental strangers who had mysterious agendas.

  Excellent.

  “Fiona?” Nicolas called up the stairs. “Are you ready?”

  I took one final look over my suitcase—dresses, undergarments, toiletry bag, jewelry, shoes—before snapping it shut.

  I carried it down the stairs in one hand, with my heels dangling from my other hand. Nicolas met me on the second-floor landing and hastily took my burdens. He already wore his coat.

  Ryan was ready to go, standing demurely by the front door with his black suitcase at his side. He and Nicolas carried laptop bags, but I had only tossed my tablet into my purse. My laptop would only distract me, and I didn’t need any more distractions while we were at the conclave.

  I had enough to worry about.

  Keisha and Sylvio waited just outside the entrance of the soubou. No one else had bothered to see us off, which almost made me feel better about the whole thing—like this event was so routine that it didn’t merit attention.

  When really much of our future depended on the outcome of this meeting. On what Nicolas and Ryan and I could manage to do among a room full of other pinnacle clan members.

  Keisha set up the portal according to the instructions Nicolas had received from our hosts, and then she hugged me tightly, giving me one of her signature brilliant smiles.

  Nicolas held his hand out to me and also offered me an encouraging smile. I took it, and we walked through together, just after Ryan.

  The only difference between our side of the portal and the conclave’s side of the portal was a slight drop in temperature. We were still in Japan, and it felt that way. The sparse landscape and distant mountains and contour of the land was everything I’d familiarized myself with in the past year.

  The coordinates we’d been given set us out near a huge house. It had been billed to us as a “lodge,” but it was more like a mansion—three stories high, wooden, with chimneys and a dark slanted roof. Snow coated the ground except for a path from the road up to the house, lined with beautiful old-fashioned glass lamps. Groves of trees, bare in the winter cold, were set in clusters around the house, along with bushes and sculpted gardens. It was a beautiful place, at once huge and imposing but also inviting and homey. Well-used and well-loved.

  The double doors of the front entranceway opened, and three magicians hurried toward us. We waited until they got close. They were all dressed in black and white—the Wind staff members we’d been informed would be present for the conclave.

  “Welcome,” one of them said. Female, redheaded, tall. “Allow us to take your bags. The cocktail hour has already started.” She led the way toward the house. As we entered, she continued. “Let me take your coats. We’ll be settling you in on the third floor, and we’ll bring your belongings upstairs promptly. If you need anything at all, please ask the staff.”

  I smoothed out my dress and hair, looking around carefully. The entryway was huge, with a tiled floor and a wide, curving staircase that went all the way up from the first floor to the third floor. Several hallways led deeper into the house, headed toward the back. To the right of the front door was a formal dining room with a long table large enough to seat twenty-five or thirty people, set behind closed glass French doors.

  The French doors to the left had curtains on them, but talking and laughing emanated from behind them. I swallowed. No backing out now. A host of powerful magicians waited in that room, and I somehow had to walk in there with poise and confidence.

  Nicolas touched my hand, squeezing my fingers in his for a brief moment. He looked me and Ryan over, offered one of his wolfish smiles, and said, “Show time.”

  Chapter 13

  We made a striking trio, that was for sure.

  It was intentional on Nicolas’s part. I’d let him and Keisha agonize over my outfit, and I was surprised when they came up with a simple plum-colored V-neck sheath dress. It had a tiny bit of lace detail at the hem and collar, and the buttery fabric fit tightly to my curves. Nicolas had presented me with silver shoes embellished with Swarovski crystals, as well as a purple teardrop tanzanite that reminded me of the color of Lightning magic.

  I felt self-conscious in the outfit, as I did in any of the fancy clothing and jewelry Nicolas gave me, but I couldn’t deny that I matched the two dark princes at my side perfectly.

  Ryan entered on my right, in a tailored black three-piece suit. The shirt under it was pink, and his tie contained pops of purple, magenta, and violet, but there was nothing jovial about the look. The pink softened the severe black, but no one in the room could ever doubt the power and knowledge behind Ryan’s dark gaze.

  Nicolas had no desire to soften anything about himself for this little get-together. His black suit, white dress shirt, and black tie were almost brutal in their simplicity. He hung back, just behind my left elbow, and I could practically feel the frostiness
in his proud posture and imposing aura.

  All three of us wore block-sync rings, hiding our magic. This had been a mutually agreed-upon decision; none of us wanted to tip our hand tonight, and we had all thought it best to look as unassuming as possible. Lightning magic was wild and intimidating, and we wanted to start off with the other pinnacle members seeing us as humans rather than forces of nature.

  Scaring them could come later, if we needed to resort to that.

  Every set of eyes turned to us as we entered the room. I scanned around, feigning indifference. The two pinnacle members of Sky stood talking amiably with the two pinnacle members from Wind and one of the ones from Smoke. The two from Flame were off on their own, drinking champagne by the broad windows. The two from Verdant were conferring quietly and attentively with Claudius and Arturo from Water, as well as Stephan from Smoke. My eyes lingered on him the longest, and he gave me that thin, snakelike smile he had, his head tilting in a gesture reminiscent of Nicolas.

  Meteor and Wild hadn’t arrived yet.

  A distinct lack of magic permeated the air. Almost everyone in the room was hiding their power with block-syncs. Whether they did that as a courtesy or a threat, I didn’t know.

  I froze, waiting. Nicolas had planned this, too. He wanted to see who would approach us, if anyone. Plan B was to split up and approach people ourselves, but we were hoping someone would go out on a limb for us. It would be a sign of respect for a pinnacle member to extend that olive branch.

  I counted in my head. Just as I was about to approach our Sky and Wind hosts, Claudius detached himself from his group. With sure strides, he came to stand in front of me. A smile touched his lips. He shifted his glass of whiskey to his left hand and held out his right hand to me. I took it delicately.

  “Fiona, how good to see you,” he said genially.

  “Always a pleasure, Claudius,” I said, trying not to let relief creep into my voice.