Inside the Flame (Elemental Mages Book 2)

by Rose O'Brien

  She nodded like she understood, but he knew she didn’t. Her gaze was locked on the middle distance again.

  Gently, he took her by the elbow and brought her to her feet. Her gaze drifted to his face again. Gods, she was beautiful.

  He looped his arm around the small of her back, pressing her into his side, supporting just a little of her weight and took her into the bath. Hitting the tap, he shut the water off.

  She seemed to like it when he told her stuff, so he kept talking.

  “Have I told you about the Svarturans? I don’t think I have. You might know them as dark elves, but they hate that term, so don’t ever use it to their face. The Svarturans and the elves don’t exactly get along. I mean, they can work together when they have to, but they’re not happy about it.”

  She sat down on the edge of the tub and he started unlacing one of her boots while she watched him.

  “You’ll probably meet some Svarturans at the Citadel. They have really dark skin, like printer ink, white or silver hair and pointy ears. And they have kind of pronounced canines, so try not to stare when you see one for the first time.”

  He slid her boot and sock off and went to work on the other boot.

  “They’re a matriarchal society, so it makes politics kind of interesting. A friend of mine is actually the exiled prince. His name is Dumeril. You might get to meet him. Watch out, though. He’s kind of a flirt, but he doesn’t mean anything by it. He actually only dates guys.”

  He set her other boot aside and tucked her socks in the top of one.

  “I’m kind of rambling,” he said, running out of verbal steam. “But you’re kind of freaking me out here.”

  Her voice was so quiet, he almost didn’t hear her when she said, “Please don’t stop.”

  “I want to give you some privacy,” he told her, rising to his feet.

  Her laugh was half-hearted and weak, her tone derisive.

  “You fucked me last night, I think we’re past modesty at this point.”

  He wanted to correct her. That hadn’t been fucking. Not for him. Fucking had been the only thing he’d done up to that point. Last night had been something else. It had been uncontrollable, unbelievable, a connection that rocked him to his core and spun his world on its axis. He wasn’t sure what he’d call it, but fucking would be the last word he’d use.

  This wasn’t the time to argue about it. There would probably never be a time to argue about it.

  Shaking himself, he moved over to the old fashioned vanity and pulled out the padded bench, facing it away from the tub.

  “How are the ribs?”

  “Scabbed over,” she said. “Your ward must be doing its thing. Do I need to worry about washing it off?”

  There was a rustle of cloth and the metallic hiss of a zipper. One by one, her clothes hit the floor.

  “It’ll hold for now. I can redo it when you get out. Might add a couple more for good measure.”

  He heard the soft splashing as she slid into the water and when he turned to look, she had settled in amongst the bubbles. They were so thick and so many that they came up to her ears.

  He almost laughed at the sight, but he stifled it and settled for flashing her a grin. It was a good bet Jen hadn’t thought about a bubble bath in years, much less actually sat in one. She pushed bubbles out of her way like she was shooing flies, mounding the foam at the opposite end of the tub and looking slightly annoyed with the stuff, like it didn’t have the right to be so exuberant.

  Theron watched as she let her head fall back in the water. As she rose, her back arched, and water and bubbles sluiced down her midnight hair. It looked extremely dark blue when it was wet. He wondered if she knew that. He took a mental snapshot of her, hoping he could remember that exact color later.

  With a start, he realized that he was supposed to keep talking, but he’d gone silent as he watched her.

  “Have I told you about my sister, Alayna?” he blurted.

  Jen’s gaze drifted slowly over to him, like it took her a lot of effort, and she gave a barely perceptible shake of her head.

  “You’d like her, I think. She’s bossy, like you, but a lot louder. Has a dark sense of humor, like you. She has this way with people. I don’t really understand it. She’s disarming, especially with the people that are determined not to like her. She’s not very diplomatic, but somehow, everyone that meets her falls in love, in their own way.”

  Jen just stared at him, so he kept talking.

  “She has these teammates, well, they’re her subordinates, but they’re also her friends. They’re so loyal to her, they’d walk through hell and back if she asked them to. And I’m so jealous of that…” He trailed off.

  He’d had that once with Jas and Bren. Except, they’d burned to death and he hadn’t. No one was ever going to trust him again like that, and rightly so. He’d failed his two best friends in the world.

  When he looked up, Jen met his eyes and nodded.

  “She’s the one I told you about who’s probably never going to speak to me again. She’s got a,” he paused for a second looking for the right word, “man now. He loves her. So, she doesn’t need her big brother to look out for her anymore. Not that I was ever very good at it in the first place.”

  The truth was, he was intensely jealous of Alayna. She had friends who loved her. She had Alex. Those two were beautiful together. In the short time he had seen them together, an intense love had been written in every gesture, every glance between them. When he’d seen Alex put his arms around his sister, it had made Theron hungry for something he’d thought he’d never want.

  “She has a pet dragon,” he continued.

  Jen cocked an eyebrow.

  “Those are real?”

  Theron let a small cocky smile pull up one corner of his mouth. He knew that would get her attention. Jen was an intensely curious person.

  “His name is Z. He’s Alayna’s familiar. He’s got these impossibly black scales and big leathery wings.”

  “How big is he?”

  “About the size of one of those short school buses, not counting the wing span.”

  “How many dragons are there? You’d think someone would have spotted one and put it on YouTube if they are real.”

  “We’re pretty sure Z is the last one. The rest of them left this dimension a long time ago. Z was a runt and he got left behind.”

  Jen nodded and trailed her hands absently through the bubbles, creating mounds, towers and spires in the foam.

  “Do you have a familiar?” she asked, quietly.

  He was just so glad she was talking again, he’d answer any question she asked.

  “I was never that lucky. Familiars have a really tight bond with their mages. That kind of bond doesn’t happen for everyone. And familiars usually match up with a mage’s element. Air mages usually end up with birds. Water mages are partial to sea life or animals that spend some time in the water. Earth mages get dogs and cats, sometimes the odd badger or chipmunk. Fire mages are usually out of luck. Phoenixes are very rare, and not too many animals like fire. Although, reptiles are somewhat partial to fire mages because we run hot. Some of the other fire slingers I know have snakes and bearded dragons and such. They like to curl up on them, like they’re giant heating rocks or something.”

  A slight smile touched Jen’s lips when he said that.

  “There it is,” he said softly. “I was starting to wonder if I’d ever see that again.”

  ***

  Jen was disgusted and embarrassed with herself. She had only shut down like this a handful of times in her life. The last time it had happened was when she’d lost the pregnancy.

  It was like her hard drive had crashed, she was completely locked up and unable to perform anything beyond breathing and maybe blinking once in a while. These episodes left her unable to make even the simplest decisions. But when she snapped out of them hours—maybe even a day later—she tended to act rashly. It was like all the decisions she should have been
making had collected behind a dam. When the dam broke, all those unmade decisions coalesced into a huge wave that went crashing through her life.

  The last time this had happened, she’d been booking a flight to Baghdad from her hospital bed before she’d realized what she was doing. She shuddered to think what kind of terrible decision she was going to make this time around.

  But, honestly, how much more fucked up could her life get?

  She realized with the sudden clarity of struck crystal that she didn’t really have a life anymore, fucked up or otherwise.

  She had no living family. Her so-called friends hadn’t spoken to her in years. Some of her colleagues didn’t know her real name, just one of her pen names. The few possessions she’d had were gone and she’d traded the tools of her trade to bandits to buy her safety and the safety of the strange man who sat across from her. The work she’d almost died for was over. She’d never work as a reporter again as long as she was being hunted for her power.

  There was a strange kind of freedom in owning nothing, in having no ties, in being no one.

  She had no idea what the future held for her. It was like standing in a doorway, looking into a pitch black room and trying to decide if she wanted to live in it.

  It was terrifying and exhilarating and lonely all at once.

  And then there was this man, this impossible, gorgeous, funny man who controlled fire with his mind and made her laugh until her sides hurt and killed monsters to keep her safe. Maybe this new place she was headed wouldn’t be lonely with him. She’d shown him some of the darkest parts of herself and he’d seemed to accept that, but after she’d shared her body with him, shared her feelings, he’d acted like she’d done something wrong. No, not wrong. Disgusting.

  She was secretly dying to ask him what had got his panties in a bunch, but she wasn’t about to open her mouth and give away the fact that she was thinking about it. In fact, she wasn’t thinking about it. She closed the mental image of the way he’d looked last night, first coming inside her, then later as he’d tossed her those wet wipes and sat himself on the other side of the fire, in a little box and wrapped it all in mental chains.

  She didn’t know why he was being so nice to her now. He was chatting, trying to fill the silence, pull a smile out of her. The gesture was appreciated, but she didn’t understand it.

  It was hard to admit it, even to herself, but Theron’s rejection the night before had hurt. It had taken a lot of courage to open up, to lay out all those dark things on the table and let him look at them, but she had. He was literally the only person on earth she’d told any of that stuff. And then she’d let him into her body.

  None of the guys she’d slept with in the past five years had known anything about her, really. They knew what she did, they knew what she wrote, but they didn’t know her. That handful of men had fucked her because she was hot and mildly entertaining company, if you enjoyed sarcasm and a razor wit.

  Theron had known all her dark stuff, and he’d held her like she was...like she was precious. There had been passion in the way he’d kissed her, the way he’d touched her.

  So why had he pulled away suddenly?

  Getting answers to questions was her job. And she was very good at it. She had a question to focus on now, and she was going to find the answer. She might not like it when she found it, but she’d worry about that later.

  She rose from the water, pausing to let the bubbles slide down breasts and stomach and thighs. Theron’s eyes went wide for a split second before he turned away. Now he was a little off guard. Good. All a part of her plan.

  She laughed. “Theron, you came inside me last night. I think it’s okay if you see me naked.”

  A blush crept up the back of his neck. He cleared his throat, but he didn’t answer her.

  Stepping from the tub, she snagged one of the luxuriously plush white towels from the rack beside her. Toweling off quickly, she squeezed the water out of her hair and wrapped it up in the terry cloth on top of her head. Redoing the bandages on her ribs didn’t take long. The wounds seemed to be healing faster than normal. She pulled on one of the oversized plush white robes and opened the bathroom door.

  A cloud of steam followed her out and Theron trailed in her wake, looking like he was trying to figure out what was going on.

  When conducting an interview with a difficult or hostile source, it was always best to start the conversation by putting them a little off balance. Mission accomplished.

  The next step was to make the interview subject more comfortable. It engendered a certain amount of subconscious gratitude toward the interviewer.

  Jen padded in her bare feet across the soft rug to the bar built into one wall. Opening the cabinet, she found what she was after. A minute later, she wordlessly handed Theron a crystal tumbler with a generous measure of Blue Label whisky.

  He met her eyes as his fingers brushed hers. The dark look in those indigo eyes of his made her stomach do a little flip, and she had to remind herself that with Theron, she was literally playing with fire.

  She took up her own tumbler of whisky, flashing him a glance over the rim as she sipped. The whisky burned her throat and warmed her from the inside. Something that tasted like courage curled on her tongue.

  Theron moved to the window that overlooked a city that sparkled with lights in odd patches because parts of the city still struggled to maintain power. For a moment, she was struck by the dichotomy of her situation. Dozens of stories above a city at war, she was surrounded by luxury and guarded by the fiercest of protectors, while down below, some people didn’t have electricity. She shook off the dark thought and focused on her objective.

  She put her hand to the glass of the window. “It’s almost beautiful from up here, isn’t it?”

  He nodded without saying anything and cast a sidelong look at her, taking another sip from his glass. He was still a little on guard, but the whisky would probably take care of that soon.

  She frowned and looked back at the window. Something was off about it. At her narrow-eyed expression, Theron spoke up.

  “It’s not a window. It’s a high-definition LCD screen with a feed from a camera outside the building,” he said, moving closer to her side. “The high security wing doesn’t have any windows. Too risky.”

  She looked up and realized his eyes had been on her, not the window. He was too close, too big. He was taking up all the air, damn him.

  Stepping away from the window, she moved to the small sitting area. There was a little couch and two wingback chairs done in dark wood and white silk brocade. She had to fight the urge to fling herself into one of the chairs. Instead, she sat slowly, displaying an ease and nonchalance she didn’t feel.

  Theron moved to the chair across from her, but he didn’t sit. He leaned his forearms on the padded top and cradled the tumbler in his large hands. The casual pose made the muscles in his shoulders and chest bunch beneath his t-shirt. Did he have any idea how delicious he looked?

  Shaking off that thought, she launched her initial volley. “Tell me about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  Theron was silent a long moment, not looking at her. Finally, he said, “I’ve already sent word that we’ll head to Damascus HQ in the morning. I’ll brief the mages on that team about the death cult and what I’ve found out about what happened to the dead mages in the region. After that, we’ll access the portal chamber. There’s a lot of security to get through.”

  He didn’t look at her as he spoke, his eyes on the glass in his hands.

  “The portal can be a little spooky if you’ve never seen one. It’s bright. Really bright. Lots of colors. But it looks like a tear in reality and that freaks some people out.”

  “I’m a little nervous about that whole thing. You’re telling me, we just walk through a tear in space and we’re suddenly on another continent?”

  She wasn’t actually nervous at all, but she wanted him to think she was. It was more likely to keep him talking.

&nbs
p; “Nothing to be nervous about, really. It’s the safest way to travel, believe me,” he said. “It can be a little disorienting, at least the first few times, but it only lasts a few seconds. People almost never throw up.”

  She shot him a look and he gave her a sly smile behind the rim of his glass.

  “Are you ever serious?” she asked him.

  “Sometimes.” He wasn’t smiling when he said that and his eyes were locked on her face.

  Jen took a deep draw on her whisky and as the warmth spread through her, something that felt like calm wrapped itself around her.

  “What happens when we get to this Citadel of yours?”

  His eyes darkened and again he wouldn’t look at her.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “And that’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, genuine anxiety trying to crawl its way into her chest.

  He sighed and moved around the chair to sit down. He braced his forearms on his knees and leaned forward. The muscles in his shoulders weren’t just bunched from his position, they were tense. He was tense.

  Finally, he spoke. “I’ve sent instructions to my handler that we are not to be separated when we reach the Citadel, but I’m just a ranger. There are a lot of people there that outrank me. You and I might have no say in whether we stay together.”

  “I thought you’d be glad to be rid of me,” she said, laughing a little.

  He was silent and she looked back at him.

  “It’s not like that,” he said.

  “What is it like, exactly?”

  He gave her a hard look that gave nothing away and took a long drink from his glass.

  His voice was rough. Jen didn’t know if it was from the whisky or something else. “I dragged you into this mess. I’ve put you in so much danger. What happened today, the blood magick—they weren’t trying to kill you. They were trying to slow us down long enough to catch us. I’m going to stick with you until I know you’re safe and in as good a place as you can be and then I’m going to put some distance between us. For your safety.”