Palmer and Vivian Sloan simultaneously pulled their swords.
“You’ll hurt Maya!” Aedan screamed.
Vivian hesitated, but Palmer lunged. Aedan didn’t even think. He felt a tug and Palmer’s sword melted to the ground. This time Palmer was ready, however. He dropped the weapon in anticipation and pulled a dagger from his belt. But Vivian grabbed his arm before he released it.
“What are you doing?” Palmer screamed.
“He isn’t attacking us! He’s protecting her, Palmer. Can’t you see how he’s looking at her? The pain in his face? If he wanted her dead, she’d be burned to a crisp.”
Palmer looked ready to boil over. He growled and snapped in Aedan’s direction as the floor beneath them shifted from the fire beneath. “He’s making it slow. He’s torturing her. Look at her, Vivian! Think of Corey.”
Vivian backed up like he’d struck her, but recovered almost immediately, her face hardening with anger. “Look at her, Palmer. Those injuries are not from fire.”
The floor buckled and the three of them stumbled, backing instinctively toward the walls.
“We have to get her out of here!” Aedan shouted, desperate to pound some sense into them. “Take her.” He stepped forward, and Palmer moved to counter, but Vivian stepped between them, a hand thrust toward both men.
“Please,” he said, and he shifted Maya gently to her mother’s arms.
“And we’re just supposed to let him go?” Palmer spat.
“I’m not leaving.” Behind Aedan, the wall and door burst into flame. “Toby is in here somewhere too. I’m going to get him out.”
Vivian pulled Maya close and with one last uncertain look, fled for the door.
“I’m coming with you,” Palmer said, throwing an arm across Aedan’s chest to hold his progress. “I don’t trust you.”
“I get it,” Aedan said, and heated up enough to force the man’s hand away. Then despite the flames rapidly engulfing the house, he bolted for the hall he’d seen the two girls take Toby.
Shouts rang from the room at the far end even over the roar of the fire. The distinct howl of wind and clang of metal followed.
“You brought some more friends,” Aedan said with some relief.
“Disappointed?” Palmer asked.
Aedan didn’t bother to respond. Instead, he ran for the door only to be slammed back into the wall by a gust of wind from inside. The young female Operative he’d seen in Tucson came flying out and landed in his arms. She shook off the daze and realizing where she was, screamed in terror like she was already on fire.
“Kill her!” Kari screamed, backing out of the room with the last Operative pointing a gun at her. Each bullet he fired was deflected in the wind, the last one tearing back through his own arm so that blood spurted out carried on the current.
Palmer stared at Aedan, waiting for him to show his true colors he supposed. That thought alone was enough to stoke the fires in his stomach again. Aedan pressed his eyes closed and spoke. “I won’t be killing any of these people, Kari.”
“What?” she shrieked, and the wind swirled through the crowded hall carrying embers from the now raging fire.
Aedan stood firm. “Where is Toby?” he asked, as the girl who’d fallen on him slipped off to help the wounded Operative out through the window of another room. But Aedan should have known that Palmer wouldn’t sit by while two Elementals hashed things out.
The Operative pulled a knife and lunged at the Wind Elemental with a cry that seemed to ring from his soul. Aedan saw it happen as though in slow motion. The glint of the blade in the light of the fire, the look of pure hate on Palmer’s face, and Kari, who had turned away from the danger because she thought the bigger threat was Aedan.
“No!” Aedan screamed, and he threw himself on Kari, knocking her to the ground. Momentum carried Palmer forward, and he began to fall. Kari blew, and Palmer stumbled into the blazing wall.
The screams echoed off the walls as the fire clung to him, lapping at his flesh and clothes as though it was starving and he was the food. Aedan’s mouth dropped open.
“No!” Maya’s voice was unmistakable. She stood at the other end of the hall, her mother holding her struggling form back from running into battle. Smoke was filling the house quickly, but it didn’t impair Aedan’s vision. He could see clear as day the fading bruises on her face, the healing wounds on her skin. The Circle may have used special healing magics, but they couldn’t take away the agony she now felt. And Aedan knew it. He felt it. He recognized it.
“No.” He spoke softly. But something new tugged inside of him. Not a flame or hate or despair, but something in his chest that made him want only one thing. To take away Maya’s pain. “No!” He said louder, and every bit of flame in the hallway disappeared.
“Let me up!” Kari coughed. But Aedan stayed put, pinning her to the ground and watching as Palmer’s body stilled. Badly burned and quiet.
“If you so much as breathe too hard I will blow you up like that cactus,” Aedan said, wrestling her arms to the sides of her head below him. He was very aware of the awkward position they were in, and he cleared his throat.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Maya
The moment Maya was healed, she rushed back into the house. Her mother followed behind, but Maya barely noticed or cared. She rushed to the back of the house – the only place not yet completely consumed by fire, leaping over gaping holes in the ground out of which flames shot as though coming straight from hell.
The sight of Aedan throwing himself on Kari – saving her at the expense of Maya’s own father – that was the thing that finally brought her to a stop.
He stopped it. He put everything surrounding Father out. She kept telling herself. But not soon enough. And her father was badly burned. Her mother had used almost all their healing supplies on Maya, leaving precious little for her father.
She couldn’t look at Aedan, which is why she busied herself with working on her father’s wounds after they’d laid him on the beach. But she listened as he negotiated Kari’s imprisonment. It was obviously important to him that the bitch didn’t die.
Tears stung the back of her eyes, but she wouldn’t set them free.
Toby was still missing as was Terra, the Earth Elemental. They hadn’t been in the bedroom, and the other Operatives had reported both of them disappearing into the ground after falling through the window during the battle.
“It was like quicksand,” Tanya said while wrapping Matt’s wound tightly with his shirt. If not for the bullet hole in his arm, he would have looked like a surfer ready to catch a wave.
Behind them the house continued to burn, collapsing into cinders with a series of final sounding crashes. They’d set up a shield charm that concealed them from view, so the firefighters now working on containing the blaze wouldn’t see them. Though Maya seriously considered asking them to take her father to the hospital. The only thing that kept her from marching over there was her own appearance and the questions it would cause.
Maya felt bad for the men fighting so hard to put out what was unwilling or unable to die without fulfilling its intention. Only magic could put out that blaze.
“I’m going to pull the other car around,” her mother said. Maya managed a curt nod but did not turn around.
She finished applying what salve she had to her father’s hands, and wrapped them carefully in the white gauze her mother had given her. He drew a deep and ragged breath, and his eyes fluttered open. Maya swallowed as he gazed up at her, eyes just as cold as ever.
“Maya?” Aedan’s hand on her shoulder opened the wound in her heart, and she shrugged away. “I need to talk to you, Maya. Please.”
“I have nothing to say, Aedan.” She glanced pointedly at Tanya and Matt, now loading a drugged-into-submission Kari into the back of a van.
Aedan sunk to the ground beside her, and her father’s eyes slid to settle on him. Aedan didn’t seem to notice the fury in those eyes. Maya sighed.
“I know you don’t want to see me,” Aedan said, carefully taking her hand and playing with her fingers. “I get it. I just – I needed to tell you that I’m sorry. Oh God, Maya, I am so sorry.”
Maya couldn’t dislodge the lump in her throat enough to speak. She stared at his hand, playing with hers. She could feel the heat still emanating from his body. How could she ever have missed what he was?
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she said. “You destroyed both an Elemental and Morgana. We didn’t even know Morgana was still around.”
“If I could change everything – if I could give myself up to you I would. It scared me, Maya. The feeling of power, the loss of control.” He sighed like he wasn’t getting the words quite right.
She couldn’t stop it. She looked at him. And the moment she saw him, she cracked. “You get a pass, Aedan. You killed the bad guys.” Tears leaked from her eyes, and the dam burst open.
Aedan gathered her into his arms as she gasped, and hiccupped, and shook with sobs. When she was spent, she spoke into his chest. “I’m so confused.”
He stroked her hair tenderly, burying his mouth in her hair. “It’s understandable. Lord knows I am.”
“You took almost everyone I’ve ever loved. You killed Corey.” Saying his name out loud was like feeling Sergey thrust the blade through her shoulder again.
“I never meant to hurt anyone.” Aedan’s voice was weak and childlike. “Not then. Not until today.”
Maya bit her lip to stop it trembling. “You killed Toby.”
“What? No! No, I didn’t. He’s still alive, he has to be. He was faking it when I brought him in the house and-”
Maya drew a deep breath and shook her head, flinching as the breeze from the ocean brushed at her hair. “Not on purpose. But if Morgana’s dead, he is too. He told me himself – Merlin did. They’re two halves of the same whole. If one dies, so does the other.”
Aedan seemed to deflate as he processed this information. “I should have understood when he said she’d want him alive. God, I can’t believe this. I would have never-”
“But you had to, Aedan. Don’t you see? Someone had to.” Tears came again, and Maya pushed them away impatiently. It was like they were trying to make up for eighteen years of imprisonment. “I thought I could do it. They made me into a killing machine. But the reality…” She lost her voice, staring into the sunset over the ocean. The burnt orange mirrored the fire behind her, and yet she couldn’t help but think it was beautiful.
Aedan pulled her closer, and she settled into the heat of his chest. It was so wrong, but despite everything, she couldn’t stop her feelings. He kissed the top of her head.
“When I saw you down there,” he said. “Something snapped. I…I couldn’t control it. I wanted to burn them. I wanted them to feel pain. It was so strong, I couldn’t stop it.”
“You did though,” Maya said, burying the unease his words created. “You didn’t hurt me. You controlled it. You only hurt them. I would have done it if I could have. I still wish I could. I owe Sergey.” She pulled away from Aedan and stood to watch the last of the house go down. The fire was dying. It only wanted the building and what was inside, nothing else. She shivered and hugged herself in the rapidly cooling air.
“No you don’t,” Aedan said. But it wasn’t condescending. The words were from the heart of someone who understood it from experience. “It should be me. I’m already a murderer, Maya. I’ve been doing it for at least fourteen years. I’m a freaking serial killer.” He let out a little laugh. “Who knows how many people they made me kill when I was just a baby.”
Maya steeled herself and turned to face him. She could never have been prepared for the tears falling from his golden eyes or the way they disintegrated into steam. “Aedan bad people don’t hurt like that.”
“Yes, we do. Well, some of us anyway.” He jerked like he wanted to come closer but didn’t trust himself. “You don’t know about the others.”
“Yes, I do. I know about the girls you visit in the graveyard, Aedan.”
He swallowed and averted his eyes. “The V’s. The Victims. My victims. And I thought now that I knew what I was doing it might be safe but it isn’t. Merlin said if I gave into it – if I killed – the darkness would win.” His hand clenched at his side.
Maya tensed. “You don’t seem any different.” But he’d almost killed her father to save an Elemental that had tortured her.
“I don’t feel different. Not now. But what about next time I get angry? Or… or excited?” Aedan looked out toward the ocean.
“You aren’t the Incredible Hulk,” Maya said, but she couldn’t follow it up with a smile.
“You should drug me and take me away too. Just like you did to Kari,” Aedan said.
Maya winced. Mostly because her head hurt like hell, but also because her brain was screaming at her that he was right. That he was dangerous. But her damn heart didn’t want to listen.
Her mother’s voice interrupted from behind. “If you come willingly I see no reason we should have to drug you.”
Maya spun on the woman, ready to scream, but Aedan’s hand found hers and squeezed.
“Thank you,” he said, maintaining a tight hold on Maya. “May we have another moment?”
Her mother’s large, sad eyes, flicked to her father, now passing in and out of consciousness as he was gently loaded in a black sedan. “Only a moment. We must get back.”
Aedan pulled Maya over a few feet and held her close against him, his strong body warm and comforting against her wounds. She sighed and leaned into him, looking up into his eyes, which seemed to reflect the fire behind her.
“It’s over,” she said, reaching up to brush his stubborn, stray curl from his face. “Not only is the Water Elemental dead, so is Morgana.”
“What will they do with us?” Aedan asked and it took her a moment to realize he was referring to Kari in the “us”.
“I don’t know what will happen to her. But you saved the world, Aedan. You deserve a pardon.” Maya pushed her petty jealousies aside and focused on her words. She wouldn’t let them hurt him.
“I don’t care,” Aedan said. “They can do what they think is right. All I want is to be with you as long as I can.”
Maya felt a different kind of heat curl through her body down to her toes as he leaned in. She tipped her head up to meet his lips, firm and insistent as the world melted away around them.
Thank you for reading Flame and Fury. As an author, reviews are my greatest tool and always appreciated.
Ready for Merlin’s Legacy Book 2? Keep track of the release date and sneak peeks and deals by signing up for my newsletter at LisaGailGreen.com
About the Author
Lisa Gail Green lives with her husband the rocket scientist and their three junior mad scientists in Southern California. She writes books so she can have an excuse to live in the fantasy world in her head. She likes to share these with readers. She has a parrot but would most definitely get a werewolf for a pet if she weren't allergic.
Connect with Lisa!
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Acknowledgments
This series may never have seen the light of day if it weren’t for some very amazing people. I want to thank Leslie, Julie, Ian and Deborah for their help and support as my second eyes. Martina, Shona, Sarah, and Miya for their support. Susan Kaye Quinn for her book that encouraged me to take this huge step. And my family for their love.
Thank you to the crazy characters in my head that won’t leave me alone. Life would be boring if it weren’t for you. And most importantly thank you to the readers. You are the most important people of all!
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Flame and Fury (Merlin's Legacy Book 1) Page 26