by Mia Marshall
“You can’t give in to her.”
She moved from one thought to another with little explanation. “You mean Eila? I’m not sure I have a choice. She won’t let me go until I relinquish my fire side. Won’t let any of us go.”
“She told Tricia to bring Sera tomorrow. She said she wished for a new fire.”
Oh hell.
“But if you feed her your power regularly, as much as you can, she won’t need Sera.” The woman glowered at me, daring me to argue.
“To be clear, the mother who abandoned her daughter to follow a semi-mythological creature is now demanding I live on this mountain for a few centuries to save Sera?” I’d do it if necessary, but I wanted that said aloud.
“Yes.”
Ani met my eyes. I’d give her this—the woman didn’t deny her past.
It didn’t make me like her any more. “Why don’t you save her? You can volunteer to be Eila’s caged pet.”
I was being cruel, but Ani didn’t even flinch. “I’ve been trying to get Sera away from this horrible place since you arrived. I tried to stop you at the beach. When that failed, I said words I can never take back, hoping Sera would give up on me and leave.” It was hard to tell in the firelight, but I thought her eyes darkened. “And then she made me repeat them.”
If my hands were free, I’d have used them to smack Ani. “You didn’t. An hour with your daughter, and you spent it telling her you don’t love her?”
“So she’d leave!” It was a desperate plea for understanding, though I thought she spoke to herself more than to me. “But she won’t. Not without you.”
“She’s a little stubborn. If you’d stuck around, you would know that.”
Ani sat on the rocks that covered me. “I didn’t come to argue. I’d take Sera’s place with no hesitation, but Eila wouldn’t allow it. Sera is stronger than both me and the woman next to you. It’s her turn next.”
I softened a little, but I couldn’t honor her request. “There’s a whole sequence of events here. If I keep fighting, Sera, Vivian, and Mac will be stuck here forever, and Sera will still be in danger.”
Ani’s lips tightened. “That isn’t an issue. The earth left the island and the bear is dying. Sera is all that matters now.”
I jolted up, forgetting the pile of stones holding me in place. “What did you say?”
“He’s dying. He doesn’t accept any food or water. Eila has tried everything, and still he fades. She’s with him now.”
I clenched every muscle and forced myself upwards. One rock moved an inch.
“Free us.”
Ani hesitated.
“Trust me, whatever you believe Eila might do to you, I’m thinking of something worse.” I’d just spent days regretting my more murderous impulses, but at that moment I’d never been so glad for my dual nature. Whatever Ani saw in my eyes, it convinced her to start lifting rocks.
I hadn’t thought Mac and I were that far apart as the crow flies, especially considering how far my power could stretch. I’d been wrong.
When I made the mistake of flying a thousand miles from Tahoe, Mac had grown ill from the moment I stepped on the plane. Our friends believed he was dying and brought him to me. The moment I drew into range and he could access my power, he recovered.
I was Mac’s element, and he’d been denied it for too long.
Mac was not going to fucking die, not when the cure was so simple. The cure was me.
God, I’d been a selfish bitch. I’d been so determined to accept my punishment that I let myself forget everything else. Mac’s illness, Sera’s vulnerability, my family’s incarceration—I could help fix those, but only if I got off this damn mountain.
“Faster,” I ordered. Ani cursed at me, already moving as fast as she could. In that moment, she sounded a bit like Sera.
I needed more power. I grabbed all the water I could from the air, but it wasn’t enough. We were almost a thousand feet above sea level, but I sent all I had flying to the ocean’s surface—then I kept going. I punched through the water, and while half my magic feasted, the rest dug into the ocean’s crust, seeking the pulsing magma below. I pushed it further from my body than it had ever been before, and I was rewarded with the purest source of energy I’d ever felt.
This, I realized, was why fires lived near volcanoes.
I didn’t need Ani anymore. When I sat up, rocks as large as my head scattered like pebbles. “Work on him instead.”
Luke was trying to free himself, but his desert side limited the power he could access. Plus, he didn’t have that whole desperation thing working for him quite as hard.
“Luke, find me after you’re free. After everyone is free.”
“You got it. And Aidan?”
I was already running. I turned, my face twisting in frustration.
Luke didn’t cower under my glare. “If you’re going to save him at the cost of your own mind, you might as well leave him to die. He’d prefer it.”
I took a ragged breath. He was right. If I barreled into that camp ready to burn things, the situation would only get worse.
Mac would hate for me to risk myself, so I wouldn’t. Instead of arguing about which of us was allowed to die for the other, I’d make sure we both lived.
I raced downhill. I created small fires to light my path, and I never stumbled. I knew roughly where camp was, and my magic knew where its lost piece would be found. As I ran faster than I ever had, my mind cleared until I could see with a clarity I’d been denied—or denied myself—for too long.
I was guilty. That wasn’t going to change.
But I was more than guilty. I was a friend and a lover, and I tried to help people, even if I often made a mess of it.
That could all change, but only if I let it. I had to be more than what I’d done. I needed to be the things I did now, and what I would do in the future.
As I ran down the mountain, I let that clarity finally bring a measure of peace—and for the first time, I thought I might deserve that peace.
To my surprise, when I finally released the guilt and torment I’d clung to for months, I freed up a whole lot of brain space I could now devote to planning how I could defeat Eila.
I burst into camp in the middle of the night with something resembling a plan. All the camp residents were asleep—all but one.
“Aidan!” Sera ran toward me, meeting me halfway. “Is it done? Are you cured?”
“Not yet. Where is he?”
She didn’t ask how I knew, just pointed to a spot at the far end of camp. It was at least two hundred feet from the nearest tent.
I paused to check my control and took several deep breaths. Then I walked to the giant bed laid beneath the stars.
Like the others, it was made from leaves, but it was covered with piles of bedding and it looked soft and even. It was also large enough to hold an enormous bear shifter and an all-powerful first creature of magic.
She was wrapped around him more like a mother than a lover, and her expression was almost as desperate as mine.
Mac was covered in a thin film of sweat, and he’d definitely lost weight, but the color was already returning to his cheeks. He didn’t look weak anymore.
“Let me go.” He struggled against Eila’s rigid bonds. “Don’t touch me.”
Her eyes widened. “You heal,” she breathed.
“Aidan? Where’s Aidan?” He fought to sit up, pushing at the hated creature’s limbs.
I’d seen Mac angry before, seen him uproot trees and fling appliances into the ocean. Mac’s anger could be enormous.
At that moment, it was a condensed ball of rage, and it was more powerful than any of his rampages. Even Eila recoiled under its force. He continued to scream my name.
“I told you. She is resisting, but it will happen. There is no reason for us to wait.”
“I can think of a reason or two.” I moved forward.
Eila didn’t sputter or ask questions. She blinked at me, as if uncertain how I could be there when I was also
on top of the mountain with her other food. “It is you.”
I’d expected Mac to relax once he heard me, but instead he struggled harder. He forced both hands under her inflexible arms and pushed. When that yielded no results, both hands changed into paws. He dug sharp nails into her flesh.
Eila disappeared, only to reform next to me. “You,” she repeated. This time, it was an accusation. “I tire of your interference.”
“Well, I tire of your face.” I brushed past her and crouched in front of Mac. He’d already swung his legs around so that he was sitting upright and was ready to move—or pounce—as necessary. “You okay?”
His fingers grasped mine, a rough touch. “I felt you coming when I started to heal. It had to be that. Otherwise…” He couldn’t finish.
Otherwise, it meant I was dead, our bond permanently severed. The only time Mac was free of our connection was when my magic was silenced—and death was a pretty permanent way to do that.
“Not an option.” I pushed a spark of power into him, strengthening our connection and giving him the energy to stand upright. After another minute of feeding our bond, he appeared recovered. If it wasn’t for the unwashed hair and sweat-dampened clothes, no one would believe he’d been tapping on death’s door only minutes before.
He scanned my body, performing a similar assessment. “You look the same, except dirtier. The cure?”
I glanced back at Eila. “Needs to be renegotiated.”
“That is unnecessary.” Eila kept her distance from us, though her ever-changing eyes watched our every move.
“I disagree,” I said. “You gave me a few days to think and a fair bit of new information to process. Now, I can’t say I understand it all, but I know a little more than I did before I went up the mountain.”
“What do you believe you have learned?” Eila’s voice didn’t change from its usual music, but the words sounded more alien in her mouth than they had before, as if she needed to reach harder for her humanity. Her face gave nothing away.
I looked past her. Sera had joined us.
“I know you need to feed off elementals, though I don’t know what happens if you miss a meal.” I paused for an answer, though I didn’t expect one. “I know you say giving up half my power is the cure, but I also know that if I hand over my fire side, you’ll need to replace me with the next strongest fire—who happens to be my sister. Somehow, that didn’t come up before. One might accuse you of negotiating in bad faith.”
This time, Eila’s face was a little easier to read. The black eyes and dark curling hair were a pretty decent hint.
“So if I’ve got this right, the old deal gave you half my magic, a new elemental food source, a vague promise to be allowed off the island sometime before the apocalypse, and a night with my boyfriend. That’s a crappy deal. If we took it, Luke and I might have our sanity, but we’d be broken in a whole new way. I’m glad we didn’t shake hands or do anything that would cause me to feel obligated to keep that deal, cause I’m about to break it.”
Eila grew several inches taller. I rushed through the last of my speech before I either chickened out or she flung me so far into the Pacific I could see Tokyo. “You get one of those things.” I looked at both Mac and Sera, certain they’d agree but needing confirmation. “You either get a new elemental plaything, a night with a shifter, or you get to devour my magic. In return, you heal Luke by fusing his threads together. Then you do the same for me, assuming you don’t choose to consume my fire. That’s the deal. No taking half our power and calling it a cure. We’re duals, and we’re going to remain duals. You heal us and we’ll give you something in return. Whatever you choose, you let us leave the island with the next sunrise. What’ll it be?”
The three of us had spent months arguing over who got to be noble and self-sacrificing. Nothing like putting your money where your mouth was.
Eila was dangerous and horrifying and probably three thousand other negative adjectives I didn’t have time to list, but as far as I could tell, she wasn’t a liar. In her own way, she’d kept her promises. We just hadn’t been careful enough when extracting them from her. I hoped I’d done a better job.
And if I hadn’t… well, there was always the backup plan.
I did my best to picture boring items. Beige paint chips. Vanilla custard. Seventies progressive rock. Anything to prevent my face from showing my actual thoughts as Eila sorted through my proposition.
“This is my island. You do not offer me choices.”
“And yet that’s what’s happening. You don’t have many options. Either you take our power, or we lose control, or you heal us. We have to agree to the first one unless we’re weak, and I’m feeling pretty damn strong right now. Keeping our powers dampened indefinitely will require putting tons of energy into the land. That seems like a lot of work. And if we lose control…well, maybe you could stop us, but who knows what damage we’ll do first? It could be Godzilla versus San Francisco levels of bad.”
Eila didn’t move while she considered my argument. “I do not understand what that means. I will kill you now.”
“Okay, there is that option. But if you choose it, you won’t get your night with the shifter, cause that whole willing thing is obviously important. You’ll lose Sera, because trust me, if you kill her sister, that woman will starve herself before she’ll feed you a single ounce of power. You’ll get nothing. Is that what you want?”
I held my breath. That was all I had. The thin belief that Eila desired one of us so much she’d surrender a fraction of her control. We’d soon learn if I was wrong—or at least our next of kin would.
Eila’s eyes settled on Mac, hungry as ever. “I will have the shifter.”
He sighed with relief. “It’s a single night,” he said. “Better than Sera being food or you being torn in two. It’ll be okay.”
I agreed, but only because I’d been ninety-nine percent sure that would be her choice. “Done. Now cure Luke.” I pointed to the far edge of camp. Luke was stumbling toward us, still weak. He hadn’t stopped to heal himself.
Thankfully, he was alone. I suspected seeing all her food following him like the Pied Piper would have led to further contract negotiations.
“Afterwards.” Eila hadn’t removed her gaze from Mac.
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” I watched her carefully. It was only there for a second. If I hadn’t been anticipating it, I’d have missed it. Fear.
I’d long assumed elementals’ emotions came from our human halves rather than the magic. After meeting Eila, I was beginning to question that. Perhaps the world really had been built on love and fear and desire. It would explain a few things.
“Very well.” The words were the sound of waves crashing. They contained only the barest hint of humanity. Eila undulated the ground, drawing Luke toward us. When he was closer, she began her assault.
My friend fell to the ground, though this time he didn’t scream. I didn’t think he could. His back arched and he threw his head back, and for several moments he shook uncontrollably. The pain was short-lived. Soon, the agony in his face melted, replaced with an expression I could only call bliss. His beatific smile suggested nothing but peace.
Before Luke opened his eyes, he flew through the air a hundred feet above us. An enormous wave caught him mid-air and dragged him backwards. In seconds, Luke was no longer on the island.
“He can swim, right?” Sera asked.
There was no time to answer her. No time to celebrate that my theory was correct. Eila already moved toward me, and with no warning, I was unmade.
CHAPTER 20
I was a full-blooded elemental. Fire and water might coil in my core, but magic lived in each cell of my body.
Eila gripped every drop of power I possessed and ripped it from its moorings. With each tear, my anguish increased. This wasn’t the drug, silencing my power. This was violence, an assault on everything that made me what I was.
Luke’s expression had transitioned from torment
to peace within a minute.
Perhaps Luke really was insane.
This was the cure I’d crossed deserts and oceans to find. I’d fought and begged and connived my way to this moment. I should be celebrating.
Instead, I panicked. Eila grasped both threads and pulled them one way and then the other, stretching them like taffy, then compressing them into a tight ball. She was like a child playing with a new toy, except when I managed to crack my eyes long enough to see her, her face contained no innocence. It was focused and hard, only a step below cruel.
Magic was birth and creation, but it was also death and destruction.
There was a viciousness to her touch I hadn’t seen when she cured Luke, and rising paranoia demanded I fight back. I wrenched my power toward me, desperate to reclaim it.
It didn’t matter how fiercely I struggled to keep it. It was tug-of-war between a professional football player and a toddler.
With a final yank, she separated my magic from my body. The threads were loose, no longer tethered to my core. Rocks dug into my shoulders, and that was how I knew I’d collapsed to the ground.
Keening filled the night, an unearthly sound coming from my own throat. My face was soaked with tears. I was a fraction of a person, sliced into sharp pieces that didn’t know how to work together. The magic connected my bones and muscles and organs as much as my blood and nerves did. I couldn’t function without it. It was like asking a human to live without their heart.
Already, my blood slowed with nothing to push it through my veins. Gaps appeared between my heartbeats, each longer than the one before.
Eila paid me no attention as I forced air into lungs unwilling to expand. Her fingers made small, steady movements, as if conducting an unseen orchestra.
They ceased moving, but my magic wasn’t returned.
“Not possible.” She pointed at Mac and hauled him closer, using the earth to drag his feet toward her. She released him just out of my reach. He tried to get to me, but the earth tightened around his ankles.
Mac’s eyes willed me to live. I’d do anything for him, but that request might be beyond my control.