Kings of the Fire Box Set

by Lily Cahill

  There were too many social layers involved in being a person.

  When Felicity and Damion were married, they would be part of the same family. He would just have to think of her like a sister, he decided as he heard the trunk close and she walked around the car to the passenger’s side door. She slid into the seat next to him, still giving him that same bright grin.

  It would all be easier if she were just a little less beautiful.

  “Nice car,” she said, running a hand over the leather armrest. “Wouldn’t have figured any of you Dragomir boys for the sports car type.”

  “I like to go fast. If I can’t be a dragon, this is the next best thing.”

  Joy looked at him, all raised eyebrows and amusement. “You couldn’t just fly to the wedding?”

  She said it like it was a ridiculous notion, which Vincent definitely did not agree with.

  “I asked, actually. They said it’d draw too much attention to the location, and since they’re trying to keep it hush-hush…”

  “Makes sense.” She laughed. “Shame, though. That’d be a hell of an entrance, wouldn’t it?”

  He nodded and pulled onto the street, navigating his way out of Augustus and onto the highway headed north.

  “We’re going to get here in time for the rehearsal, right?” she asked, fiddling with the seat adjustments and reclining a bit.

  He hoped she fell asleep. It would be so much easier to resist her if he didn’t have to talk to her, or watch the way her lips formed words, or think about her mouth in general.

  “Yes.”

  There were a few miles of country back roads that led to the highways—not quite as direct, but also very rarely monitored by police. No speed traps. He could go as fast as he wanted, and that was always a plus.

  Vincent pushed down on the gas, heard the purr of the engine. God, that was a satisfying noise. If the roads stayed this clear and he kept his speed up on the highway, they’d make it with plenty of time.

  Joy sighed. He didn’t take his eyes off the road to look at her, but he was tempted to.

  “Not much of a talker, are you?” she asked. He shrugged, and that startled a laugh out of her. “God, point proven right there.”

  She gave another little laugh, this one a bit—disbelieving. He slowed down on his speed just so he could look at her face out of the corner of his eye.

  “Well, I’m not much for being quiet, personally.”

  She kept talking, regardless of his silence, and he kind of liked it. He’d never been the most communicative of his brothers. Most people got awkward in his presence. They either waited in vain for him to fill the gulf in conversation (something he rarely ever did) or they talked and talked in order to do the same.

  And sure, Joy talked, but he had a feeling it wasn’t because she felt weird in his presence. She wasn’t trying to cover for his lack of skills as a conversationalist so that things didn’t feel too quiet and strange. No, it seemed like she was jabbering on and on because she was comfortable.

  It made a surprising difference.

  “—and Marta was all, did you pack your potions?” Joy rambled, doing a fairly good Ukrainian accent. “Which, yes, is part of her job, but come on. I’m 23, not an idiot. I know how to pack for a trip, for one, and I’m not going to forget the things that help me function as a human being.”

  He tuned in in time to hear that. Little was known about the poison that had nearly killed Joy—even the people who had delivered it to her had admitted to having very little practical knowledge beyond what they’d found in a book. So far, Joy had refused to do interviews or address the topic at all, choosing instead to address her substance abuse issues and take time to recuperate.

  Or so he’d heard through the grapevine. He was curious about what had happened to the girl—it was only natural. After all, they were practically family now. Or, well. Sort of.

  “What potions are these?”

  Joy turned to him sharply. “A-ha! I knew you were listening!”

  Had she thought he wasn’t? He wasn’t that rude.

  “Was I not supposed to?”

  “No, I just…” She faltered, frowning. “I thought you were affecting some kind of ‘too-cool-for-you’ façade where you act all macho and aloof when really you want to gawk at the car crash that is my current existence.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Well. I wasn’t.”

  She was still frowning. “Yeah, I get that now. You genuinely don’t talk much.” Joy fell back into her seat with a sigh. “How do you expect me to survive the next few hours?”

  He shrugged and did his best to suppress a grin when she groaned at his reticence.

  He wasn’t one hundred percent successful, but that was fine.

  The next few minutes went by quietly. Joy fell to staring out the window. She rested her head against the glass, and he took a moment to look at her before merging onto the highway.

  The whole not-being-attracted-to-her thing was just not going to work. He was, and it was as simple as that. Not acting on that attraction, though. He could manage that, as long as he kept his wits about him. She was in a bad place, she was soon going to be distantly related to him through marriage. None of these circumstances were ideal.

  But she looked so sad, staring out the window with no one to talk to.

  He could make an effort to engage with her, at last. He could keep a distance between them, and make sure everything still worked out, right?

  Right?

  The answer felt like no, but he plunged ahead anyway.

  “So,” he said, startling her.

  She looked over at him with her wide, dark eyes, and he had to force himself to keep his gaze fixed on the pavement ahead of them.

  “Truth or dare?”

  Chapter Three

  Joy

  NO. FREAKING. WAY.

  SHE HAD to be hallucinating. Or maybe some sort of witch magically sensed that the pair of them were passing by, and she’d quickly done some elaborate spell that put a person who would actually talk into that unfairly attractive package.

  Those were the only two plausible explanations for the words that had just come out of Vincent Dragomir’s mouth.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked before she could stop herself. Part of her knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the same time, he’d broken after only a half-hour of silence. There was no way that was right.

  She’d been fairly certain he could go all night—and not in the fun way.

  He frowned, and she rushed on before he could take it back, “Sorry, sorry! I pick truth!”

  “We don’t have to play a game. I have some CDs in the glove compartment we could listen to.”

  God, had he just said he had CDs? Was this 1996? Was she supposed to be impressed?

  “I want to play,” she insisted, even as she opened the glove compartment. Who could blame her? She had to know now or the curiosity would kill her.

  “What are you—why are you looking at them, if you want to play?”

  God, these CDs seemed as old as—well, as the first CDs. Which wasn’t that old, some logical part of her insisted. But phones had been capable of storing and playing music for years, and MP3 players had existed for years before that. In terms of technological evolution, CDs were some sort of species that bridged the gap between Neanderthals (aka records, 8 tracks, and cassettes) and modern man.

  “David Bowie,” she announced to the car. “’The Man Who Sold the World.’ Hm, never heard of it.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve never heard of it.” Joy knew he’d heard what she said, but she also knew that the face he was making was hilarious. All pinched and offended. It was cute. She probably shouldn’t be thinking that. Definitely not. He would never look at her the same way, anyway. Not know that she’d ruined all the best parts of herself.

  Thinking about it made something go tight in her chest, so she flipped to the next CD. “Metallica? Were you feeling fourteen years old?”
/>
  “I think you should put the CDs away before you say something you don’t mean.”

  “What else? What’s a Flaming Lip? That sounds painful and also like they got it from kissing someone diseased.”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Vincent leaned over and grabbed the CDs from her hands. “All right, that’s enough of that. CDs were a terrible idea.”

  The glove compartment was still hanging open, and Vincent leaned across her lap to shove the CDs inside it. His hand brushed across the tops of her thighs, and for a moment, she forgot how to breathe.

  I’m being ridiculous, she told herself. This isn’t even real touching.

  But it still left a brand of fire across her legs.

  Vincent cleared his throat, bringing her back to the present.

  “Right, so. Let me think of a good truth question.”

  He was obviously a rookie at this game. Good.

  “Nope,” she said, popping the ‘p’ just to be obnoxious. “You already asked me one. More than one, actually.”

  “What! When?”

  “You asked me if I preferred to listen to a CD.” She motioned toward the now-closed glove compartment and wished for a reason for it to be open so he’d slide his hand across her again. “After looking at the options, I can safely say that not, I do not prefer that. At all.”

  Vincent glared at her, just for a second, but there was also a smile at the corner of his mouth. Warmth flared up inside her. She had managed to do that.

  “You haven’t even heard that Bowie album,” he argued.

  Joy sighed. “But he looks way better in that dress on the cover than I would, and that makes me jealous, so I think I would probably hate it on principal.”

  Groaning in a way that suggested what she’d said was blasphemy, Vincent nodded. “Fine, you cheater. At least now I know to watch out for you being tricky.”

  She wasn’t sure why he’d been so slow to talk before. It seemed easy between them, like they’d known each other forever.

  Joy liked it.

  “Okay,” she said. “Truth or dare?”

  Vincent smirked. “Dare.”

  “I dare you to go the speed limit.”

  There was another grimace. It was mostly to tease him—the car really was beautiful—but he also drove a bit like he believed someone was chasing him. She wondered if he had ever believed that somebody was, in the past.

  Her family had really thought that all the Dragomirs were dead. No one had been looking for them.

  She knew better than to tell him that, though.

  “Fine.” The word came out hissed between clenched teeth as the car slowed to a more-sober 55 miles per hour.

  She’d grown so used to going fast that now that they’d slackened off, she was surprised by how slow it felt.

  “How long do I have to keep this up?”

  She illuminated her cell phone screen and checked the time. They were still a few hours away from the city. They’d make it to the rehearsal dinner if they kept this speed, but just barely.

  Maybe a little speed wouldn’t hurt.

  “A half hour,” she declared. That seemed sufficiently long to make him go crazy, but not long enough to make them have to worry about being too late.

  Vincent grumbled but acquiesced. “I have this weird feeling that you’re going to win this game.”

  “I don’t think this is the kind of game you win,” she said, trying her best not to smirk and failing.

  “And yet,” he muttered.

  Cute and snarky and a little bit grumpy. He was like Joy kryptonite. She’d have to be careful, here, to not let her head fly away with any sort of delusions about where their relationship could possibly go.

  “Truth,” she declared again, a half-hour later. So far, they each had a few under their belt. She knew his favorite color was green—a cop-out question, but after the fuss he’d kicked up about slowing down, she figured she owed him an easy one—and had managed to get him to pull into a rest step and make uncomfortable eye-contact in the public restroom.

  Well, he claimed to have done it. She’d tried to follow him and hide in a stall, but he’d absolutely refused to let her tag along, even when she’d promised she wouldn’t look.

  Joy had been lying, but he didn’t need to know that.

  “You’ve picked truth every time!”

  “As is my right.”

  It was kind of lame of her, to not take any dares, but she knew trouble when she saw it, and Vincent was just that, and with a capital ‘T.’ Worse, he was the kind of trouble that pretended not to be. He was clearly quiet, maybe shy—but once he opened up a little, there was a very sharp tongue in that mouth.

  That very plush, oh-so-gorgeous mouth.

  That she would definitely stop thinking about in three…two…

  Oh, who was she kidding? There wasn’t a lot of sight-seeing to do in north central Pennsylvania, unless the person looking was a very big fan of farms. Which Joy was not.

  So now Joy was stuck staring and lusting after a guy who was more focused on the road than on her and who now knew her most embarrassing moment was when she peed her pants in Kindergarten and that her hidden talents included excellent, on-pitch whistling.

  He’d tried to make her demonstrate, but she’d refused. He’d have to dare her to do that in order for it to happen, and there was no way she was giving him the opportunity.

  “Fine,” he said, letting it go. He went quiet instead of barreling on to the next question.

  She looked over at him as she settled back into her seat and put her feet up on the dashboard. He narrowed his eyes but said nothing.

  There was something about the tension in his shoulders—he had a question he wanted to ask, but he wasn’t sure whether or not he should. An hour in the car, and she already felt like she could read him like a book. It was a little scary, to be honest, the strength and force of their connection.

  “Okay, so,” he started, then stopped. Cleared his throat. “Can I, um. Can I ask something personal?”

  Personal. Great.

  Everyone always wanted something personal, didn’t they? Paparazzi always yelled the vilest things, and any magazine in the country would print it just because they knew it would sell. They wanted to know who she was dating and for how long and if it was serious. If she was screwing someone on the side. What her favorite drugs were, and how often she did them.

  Not one of them had ever asked her about her hidden talents. But then, that wasn’t gossip, was it? It wasn’t information anyone was interested in learning. No one wanted to know Joy Valdez.

  Now any time a photographer braved Augustus, it was just long enough to snap a shot of her while she was out with Marta getting groceries, and every article was about her “ballooning weight” and “imminent relapse.”

  People could be really fucking unfair.

  “You’re not going to sell the answer, are you?”

  It was an unfair question to ask, and she knew it the second it popped out of her mouth. She wished the words had physical form so that she could reach into the air and snag them back before they could do any damage.

  Instead of getting angry, though, Vincent looked chastised.

  “Right,” he said. “I can see why you’d ask that.”

  But now that she’d said it, she couldn’t see why she’d asked it. Vincent was the most reclusive of all his brothers. She knew from what little time she’d spent with Blayze and Damien that he preferred to live as a dragon as much as possible. He was probably as disinterested in tabloids as a person could be.

  She was a dick.

  “Sorry. Sorry, that was rude of me. I just have a permanent case of foot-in-mouth, which is probably why photographers delight in following me around.”

  “No, I shouldn’t have said anything. We’re playing a fun game, and I don’t have a right—“

  “Ask the question, Vincent. Seriously. Please.”

  He glanced at her, and his eyes—bright blue and strik
ing against his dark hair and tan skin—cut her to her core. She felt the force of them linger, even after he looked away.

  She wasn’t sure what he saw in her, but whatever it was, he nodded. “All right. So. What are the potions for? The ones you mentioned earlier, that you have to take every day?”

  Blood rushed to Joy’s cheeks. It was a stupid thing to feel embarrassed about. After all, it wasn’t her fault she’d been poisoned and nearly died. But there was something terribly awkward about surviving that potential tragedy and then being unable to get past the after effects of it all.

  She knew it was more important to be alive and in good health that it was to be the same size as she had been before this had happened. She knew it. If someone asked her, that’s what she would say.

  But that didn’t mean that accepting the other changes was easy, or even natural. Wasn’t she allowed a little bit of pettiness?

  She swallowed down all the emotions rising up her throat. “They’re—well, the poison I was given, there are some lingering effects. It kind of makes my blood clot too easily, so I have to be on this special magical blood thinner, and an anti-seizure potion, just in case, since I had a few of those while I was in the hospital.”

  “You sound less than thrilled about them,” he said.

  Part of her wanted to tell him. Would he judge her? Would she come off as petty?

  “It’s…not ideal. I’m not a witch, so I can’t brew them myself, which kind of sucks.”

  “You’re not a witch? But Felicity is so powerful.”

  She rolled her eyes. God, how many times had she heard that in her life? As if she needed yet another reason to feel inferior to perfect, smart, polite, lovely Felicity.

  She loved her sister dearly, she really did—especially all those qualities. She just wished people wouldn’t compare the two of them. The comparison never really ran favorably for her, except for in terms of things like “number of dance partners at a club.”

  Her sister was the most powerful Valdez witch in recent history. Being able to attract a bunch of horny idiots in a place full of horny idiots was hardly some great feat.