Igniting the Spark

by Fleur Smith

  “I might be able to help.”

  “You might be able to get yourself killed,” he snapped.

  I shook my head. “There’s no way you can know that.”

  “Just pause for a moment and think seriously about your request, Lynnie. If what you have said is true, Clay is effectively a blank slate at present, but all of his natural instincts are driven by the Rain. His lineage is one of executioners, an elite family of murderers, each generation more dedicated than the last regarding the eradication of non-humans. He went against that instinct to spare your life once. Whilst I think that is terrific and extraordinarily commendable, and whilst it goes a long way toward telling us about the sort of man he was, there are zero guarantees that he would willingly release you from harm again. If he was to discover what you once were and deemed yourself or your child to be a threat because of it, do you honestly believe you would be able to defend yourself against him?”

  “I did a good enough job when he was training me,” I said defensively.

  Aiden rolled his eyes. “That was practice, it is much easier to defend yourself under those conditions. Not to mention that you have lost your special abilities since then. Any advantage that you might have once had, that could have given you some small chance against him, is now lost.”

  I opened my mouth to argue, but he continued on.

  “Then there is the simple fact of your constantly expanding waistline. Right now it appears as though you have consumed a watermelon whole. Despite any arguments you might have to the contrary, you are not in an optimal, agile fighting condition. You cannot honestly believe that you would stand a chance in a battle against a hunter with a strong natural instinct and no memory of your shared history.”

  His statement earned him my best bitch brow, but I didn’t have an actual argument against it. Even if I didn’t want to admit it, he was right.

  “Imagine this for a moment,” Aiden continued. “Suppose he saw you as an imminent threat and attacked you, could you halt his assault even if it meant ending his life? Could you slay him to ensure your continued survival? Or could you sacrifice his existence for that of your daughter’s?”

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have to,” I said as I forced the images his words had created from my mind—pictures of the hunter that two years ago I was certain pursued me relentlessly. “You said he’d be a blank canvas, right? He’d have the muscle memory but not the knowledge. Maybe he wouldn’t see me as a threat. Maybe I’d be able to talk to him and prove that I’m not dangerous.”

  Aiden sighed. “There might be some truth in that, Lynnie. After all, you have made him pause once before. However, I am unwilling to allow you to put additional lives in jeopardy to test the theory, and I am positive that every single member of my family and yours would agree. You should not be so willing to throw away the life of your fledgling. If you cannot stay in New York for yourself, or for your fledgling, then consider doing it for Fiona. She has just lost her son. Please do not make her suffer the loss of her daughter-in-law and first grandchild as well.”

  Aiden spoke with such certainty, his words making it sound as if Clay had died rather than just sustained an injury in the field—albeit a serious one. I tried to block out the pain his beliefs caused me. I had to keep hope, because hope was the only thing keeping me upright and operational.

  “Besides, how exactly would you propose to travel to Alaska? I have already explained there are no fairy rings. You will find no one willing or able to create one. You would not exactly be comfortable on a commercial airliner in your condition and certainly not on a float plane.”

  “Stop,” I murmured, unwilling to hear his reasoning any longer. I couldn’t stand silently by as he gave up on Clay, but as much as I wanted to shout at Aiden for his immediate despair, I couldn’t. I didn’t have the energy because there was a piece of me missing and it would remain that way until I knew that Clay was safe. Images of him, lost and alone in the wilderness, stole my usual fire. “There has to be hope, Aiden. There has to be! I cannot survive this without some hope.”

  His whole stance softened and he reached out to place his hand on my shoulder. “I understand that need, please believe that I do. However, I also require you to attempt to comprehend just how absolutely dire this situation is.”

  I stepped closer to his arm, allowing him to wrap it around my shoulders in comfort. “I just can’t stand to think of the fact that he might be out there, lonely and scared, with no memories to console him.” My own years of loneliness came back to haunt me; some of it had been spent unthinking and uncaring, but even then I’d had the ability to draw on my memories on a particularly bad day and they’d kept me company at night—even when I hadn’t wanted them to.

  What would I have done if I had nothing to keep me moving?

  The answer was too terrible to consider. There were enough times that I was ready to give up, even with the promise of brighter tomorrows and memories of happier yesterdays.

  Would Clay just give up?

  “I understand,” Aiden said. “You will have to put your faith in Ethan. He has proven himself to be a remarkable tracker and I am certain he will find Clay before too much time has elapsed.”

  “But then what?” I asked. “You said Clay will never get his memories back. Will he even be the same man?” Is the man I loved dead? The way Aiden spoke, it was easy to believe that he was. The hope I was holding tightly to slipped through my grasp.

  Aiden didn’t have an answer, which started a fresh round of tears. I twisted my fingers around the plain gold band that adorned my hand—the symbol of our promises to each other just a few short months ago.

  “I can’t lose him,” I said quietly.

  “Maybe he is not completely lost,” Aiden said and, even though the lack of confidence in his voice told me he was lying, I accepted the platitude without argument. He accused me of not accepting the reality of the situation, but when it came down to the wire, he didn’t want to force me to endure the agony it caused either. His thoughtfulness, more than his actual words, gave me a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dark world.

  After sitting side by side with Aiden for almost an hour, lost in my own thoughts, I finally realized there was someone else that needed the information he’d given me. I picked up the phone and called the number in Alaska that Ethan had left with me. He wasn’t available, but I left a message with Terry just as Ethan had requested.

  Eventually the weight of it all became too much and I needed to get some sleep. Before he left, Aiden promised he’d assign himself as a regular guard around the house so that I would have someone to talk to if I needed to.

  A FEW hours of fitful, broken sleep later, I woke to the sound of the phone ringing. Hopeful that all of the terrible things I’d been told were just a bad dream, I rushed to answer it.

  “Clay?” I breathed into the mouthpiece with a desperation that seemed to seep from my very soul.

  “Sorry, Evie, it’s just me,” Ethan said. “What did you find out from Aiden? Weren’t you going to call me?”

  “I did,” I said. “I left a message just like you asked.”

  “That’s strange, I didn’t get it . . .” he trailed off. “Anyway, what do you know?”

  “That you need to coordinate better with the resources you have at hand,” I snapped. “That whole area is off-limits to fae. You shouldn’t have been there, Eth, you shouldn’t have taken him there!” I hadn’t even realized that the volume of my voice was steadily rising until I was shouting by the end of the sentence.

  Staccato breathing came down the line and I regretted taking my anger out on Ethan. Clay was only there because of him, but Ethan couldn’t have known that there were areas that even the fae dared not tread. They didn’t consult the fae on every case; there was little need to. It was a lesson for the next time.

  If there was a next time.

  If that lesson cost me Clay though, it wasn’t worth the price.

  “I’m sorry, Evie,” Ethan whispered
.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I know you didn’t mean for him to be hurt, and I know you couldn’t have done anything more to help him, but I need him back, Eth.”

  “I know,” he said with a shaky voice. “I do too.”

  A quiet sob passed my lips. I felt like a woman in mourning. I was doing exactly what I’d been angry at Aiden for—giving up on Clay before we really knew his fate.

  “Did Aiden tell you why the area was off limits?” Ethan asked, no doubt eager to know more about what I’d learned—and possibly also to ease his own guilt.

  “The river, the one you said Clay fell into, it springs from Hades.”

  “You mean it’s really the River Lethe?” he asked suddenly. “I thought the name was just a coincidence.”

  “You know about the River Lethe?”

  “Think about what I do for a living, Evie. It’s my job to know mythology and to decipher the real from the imagined.” He paused for a moment. “Guess I didn’t do too fantastic a job this time.”

  I choked down the “you think” that sprung to my lips. There would be time to be angry with him later, sometime after Clay had been found and we’d done everything we could to restore his memory. Aiden’s beliefs be damned, I would try anything to bring back my Clay. I had to believe it was possible—otherwise what was the point?

  “It’s just so strange,” Ethan murmured, voicing some thought in his head out loud.

  “What is?”

  “The púca was acting odd, even by their standard I mean. It was almost as if it was jumpy and nervous. Like something else was controlling it. Then there’s the fact that there haven’t been any attacks or sightings since Clay disappeared.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I wonder if someone harnessed the púca and set it up so that Clay and I wouldn’t be able to resist coming to hunt it. I just don’t understand why? Most people wouldn’t know that the River Lethe is real. And even if they did, what would anyone gain by stripping away our memories?”

  “I don’t know,” I murmured as I ran through a list of the potential suspects in my head. I knew so little about their life with the Rain that I couldn’t possibly know all the threats to Ethan and Clay. There was only one person I knew of that might have held a grudge against what Ethan and Clay had become, but I couldn’t see him doing anything to harm his own children. Although look at what he did to Louise . . . “Do you think it could have been your father?”

  “After Bayview, who the hell would know?” Ethan’s voice was thoughtful. “But it’s more likely to be one of the factions. This is exactly the sort of thing they’ve been trying to warn everyone about—a compromised mission because of Clay’s nature. It’s quite likely that we’ve been set up for failure.”

  “Did you go into the water?”

  “I did, but it didn’t affect me. I guess I should be glad those fae genes missed me after all.”

  I knew it was his attempt at a joke, but I couldn’t find laughter anywhere within me. “Do you think he’s okay?” I asked to try to begin to unravel the knot residing in my stomach.

  “I’m positive he is,” Ethan reassured me.

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because even if he doesn’t have his memories, he’s got a natural survival instinct that he won’t have lost. The long days and warmer weather here at the moment won’t hurt his chances either.”

  We talked around in circles for another couple of minutes, trying to decipher meaning in every small event since our attack on Bayview to see if we could find answers about who could have led Ethan and Clay out there and why. In the end though, we couldn’t be certain there even was a grand plan. For all we knew, it was just a tragic accident. By the time we hung up, we were no closer to answers than when we’d started, but I felt a thousand times worse about everything.

  I walked to the sofa and sat staring at the blank, oddly reflective surface of the lifeless TV screen. My original intention had been to turn it on to distract myself from my thoughts, but even the small effort of having to find something to watch was overwhelming.

  Clay, where are you?

  I remained motionless on the sofa until I eventually couldn’t stay awake any longer and I curled into a ball to try to get some sleep. While I slept, I was plagued by my usual visions; smoke and ash curled around my body while voices shouted to me about being a freak. Only now, Clay stood in the middle of the fire staring at me and in his blank, lifeless eyes I could see the reflections of everything we’d lost.

  Tumbling off the sofa and onto the floor, I woke with a scream on my tongue. The nightmares were back, and worse than ever. Only now, there was no one to comfort me.

  And maybe there never will be again.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AFTER WAKING FROM the nightmare, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Honestly, I didn’t want to try. I began to pace around the small house, walking from room to room without a purpose. Each time I entered a new room all I could see were the various traces of life that Clay had left behind when he’d gone on his most recent trip.

  A stray wrapper from the chocolates he’d bought home for me was tucked into the side of the sofa, obviously pressed into the gap between the cushions when we’d been overtaken by passion. His favorite cup was washed and back on the shelf; I could see the handle each time I entered the kitchen. The toothbrush he always left at home rested alongside mine in the bathroom. His clothes, washed after his last return home, were folded and stacked up on the dresser, waiting to be put away.

  There was only one room I couldn’t enter and strangely it was the one that should have given me hope, and a reason to go on. Instead, the nursery caused me an unlimited amount of grief. If I closed my eyes, I could picture the room in perfect detail, but to enter reminded me of the effort Clay had gone to in order to ensure that our daughter had a comfortable place to live from the moment she was delivered into our arms. It was the strongest reminder of his love for the two of us, love that was now lost if Aiden was right about the history of the valley and the origin of the river’s water.

  Eventually, I tried to sleep again, but every time I closed my eyes, the same recurring nightmare assaulted me, so I gave up once more. I was sitting upright on the sofa, staring at the blank TV again when the phone rang. I raced to answer it, hoping that it was Ethan with more information—or better still that it was Clay himself to tell me that it was all a misunderstanding and that he was on his way home.

  When I first picked it up, I thought there was no one at the other end. After a moment of silence, I heard a deep breath echo down the line.

  “Hello?” I asked again, only to be met once more with heavy breathing.

  “Clay?” I risked, hoping with everything I had that he’d found his way to a phone. “Is that you Clay? If it is, please say something.”

  There was still near-complete silence from the other end of the phone line. My already frayed nerves fractured at the sound. “If this is someone’s idea of a sick joke, you’ve picked the wrong girl! I’m not someone you should mess with!” I screamed before hanging up on the call.

  The next time the phone rang, I expected it to be the same caller, but it was Ethan. I listened desperately as he told me about that day’s search, but my hope fell quickly when I realized he was simply filling me in on the places he’d explored without success. He wasn’t calling to tell me he’d found Clay. I wanted to tell him not to bother calling unless he had some news, but it was clear he needed to feel like he was being useful. I also wasn’t sure I could handle days passing without learning something new.

  The next week passed in a slow series of phone calls, visitors, and nightmares. Time dragged on endlessly as I held out hope for news about Clay. It was almost as if every aspect of my life was on hold—even the more mundane tasks like cleaning and shopping seemed beyond my capabilities during the wait.

  Even the duty of hosting guests became a troublesome chore, especially because Aiden’s and F
iona’s regular visits were marred by the fact that they insisted on talking about Clay in the past tense. It was as if he were gone forever. I’d expected Fiona to hold onto the same hopes as I did, but instead she appeared to be in mourning for her lost son rather than asking for any information about his possible return. When I confronted her about it after a particularly difficult day, she told me it was because she knew her son was gone. Even though he was physically still alive, every part of him that made him her son—his personality and his memories—were all gone.

  “But even if he never gets his memory back, he can still be a good person. The way I understand it he’s a blank slate.”

  “I appreciate that,” she said. “However, he could be anywhere, and he might be dangerous. I cannot risk the lives of any fae in my court on a whim, not even for my son. Even if I could, it is not a mandate that I have issued that prohibits us from entering the park.”

  “I’m not asking you for help to try to find him. I’m just asking that you don’t give up on him. Even if it’s just for my sake.”

  She placed her hand on my arm. “I wish nothing more than for him to come home, but he will do so as a stranger and not the son I have grown to love or the husband you remember. You need to accept this fact or it will only be more difficult with the passing days.”

  It killed me to hear her give up on him, and I resolved to not forget him so easily.

  The phone rang at least twice a day. One phone call each day was Ethan who called without fail, and each phone call with him progressed in roughly the same manner. He would tell me that he was still looking for Clay and describe his searches for that day. Each new day made my hopes fade a little further. Even after a week, I was beginning to doubt that Ethan would ever find Clay. Day by day, the search area only continued to widen, and Ethan grew wearier and less able to cover the area. If Clay’s survival instincts had indeed taken over, as everyone kept telling me they would, then enough time had passed for him to be able to travel to so many places. On particularly dark days, my mind offered up the fact that the only way Ethan would find Clay in Alaska now would be if he stumbled across a corpse.