Feudlings In Smoke (Fate On Fire Short Story) (3 page)

He didn't need to hack into the Edren world. He had a spy there already. Although there was a chance that even she didn't know everything that went on in the Family. A very small chance, but a chance.

He settled at his desk, shaking the mouse on his three different computers, one with two monitors. “Wake up, my pretties,” he muttered, drumming his fingers impatiently until they hummed to life. He had work to do — work that actually paid money and kept the colony running. He was, in his humble opinion, amazingly good at his job, and his online company was growing faster than his colonists could keep up with. But that work would have to wait while he played hacker for a while.

Feeling optimistic, he did an online search for Edren and Carules. And found blogs.
Blogs
. Sorcerers, who were supposed to live in secret, blogging about their magical lives. He felt like smacking them in the forehead. Luckily, there were only a handful, but it still took him over an hour to read all their posts, muttering under his breath about their stupidity the entire time. On the bright side, he found three more battles to add to his map.

Beyond the blogs, though, there was nothing, as he'd suspected. So he dug deeper, winding his way through obstacles designed to stop him — to block him out. Instead, they only amused him.

He was so involved in his fun little project that he didn't hear Dani come in several hours later. It was past midnight when she leaned on the back of his chair, looking over his shoulder. “Whatcha working on?” she asked.

He could feel her breath against his neck and felt the flames in his blood burn to life.
Not now. Not now not now not now.
He pulled his mind back against his reckless thoughts, he blinked hard and tipped his head up so he could see her face. “I'm hacking.” He grinned.

She laughed, leaving his chair to find one of her own. She hauled it across the room and settled next to him. “I wondered why you were up so late. Any luck?”

Will turned back to the screen, trying not to notice the barest hint of her floral perfume, or the way her dark hair shimmered in the lamp light. “With the Edrens, yes. Because I know them personally and it's easier to dig things up once I've found their trail. But the Council…” His voice trailed off and he shrugged.

She tucked rebellious strands of dark hair behind her ear and dragged his keyboard closer. “I know some of the Council member's names. Will that help you?”

Would a name help him? Oh yes. Will could hack into the highest government databases in the country. He could create a virus that could end the online world as it was known… if he were evil. Which he wasn't.

But still he stopped her, grabbing her hands off the keyboard. “Dani, this is treason to your Council.”

She raised an eyebrow at him like he'd lost his mind. “I'm a Renegade, Will.”

“I know, but—”

She shook her head, cutting him off. “They are
hunting
me, Will. I swore to never fight again and they want to kill me for it. If I can help stop them, I'm going to do it.”

Will studied her for several seconds, hating the thought of her being in danger. Dani was tough, he knew that. But that knowledge didn't help. She was the only constant thing in his life. He'd left his family behind. He rarely saw Ari. Through everything, Dani was there. If something were to ever happen to her…

“Nothing will happen, Will,” she said as if reading his mind. Maybe she
was
reading his mind. He'd heard that Carules had seers. He'd never met one though, so he had no idea how to tell if she was or not. He squinted, looking for seer qualities… He’d never actually met a seer before. They had never needed asylum in his colony.

She waved her hand in front of his face, smirking. “Hello?”

“I'm here!” he cried, jerking his attention back to the office. He scrubbed his face with his hands and stretched. “I think sleep is calling for me.”

She rolled her eyes, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. “It is not. You're just trying to make me forget I was about to help you.”

He chuckled. “Well, sorta. But I really am tired. Can I walk you home?”

She finally smiled, after staring him down for several more seconds. “Fine. But—” She snatched the keyboard away and her hands flew over the keys, typing in a name and a city — Charles Bitworth in Detroit. She hit enter and stood up, grinning triumphantly. “There. Now you have all the information you need. Walk me home, Will.”

****

Will and Dani worked for several more days, slowly narrowing down the biggest threats in the country for Ari to walk into. Trying to find the Carules database took longer, so Will worked on it when he could. He was up early, swearing loudly at yet another block, when his phone vibrated next to him. He snatched it up as soon as he saw that it was Ari.

“Hello?”

She paused, just briefly, and that pause told him everything he needed to know. “Will? Can you send me a shroud?”

She was going into battle, again. On her own, without her Guard to protect her. Will thought he might be sick. “Again?” She didn't answer. “How about I open a doorway and you just come to me? They—”

Ari cut him off, using brusqueness and anger to hide her pain, he knew. “Will, I don't have much time. Can you send a shroud to me or not?”

He thought over his options — he could tell her no, and she would go anyway. He could tell her yes, wait 'til they opened the doorway and wrestle her through to his side. In that case, he would have probably ten seconds of comfortable breathing left before she punched him in the stomach and went back out. He sighed. Or, he could open the portal, send her the shroud, and offer her the only help he could. “Yeah, I'll send it. Open your doorway in ten…”

He silently counted down until he got to one, matching his numbers to hers, and then his hand swirled through a
saldepement,
a spell that would open a doorway between its two casters. It had to be done at exactly the same time, which made it difficult. Most Edrens couldn't do it — in fact, in all of Will’s life, he’d never met or even heard of another Edren who could do it, besides him and Ari. Almost all the Carules warriors could, though. Luckily, Will and Ari had both mastered it, or he would never have gotten pizza. Or seen his sister, even.

He was right, he saw, when the doorway shimmered open in front of him. Ari stood before him, dark hair shoved into a braid, her face hard and her eyes blank. Right now, she wasn’t his sister — she was the warrior. Will knew the only way to hold on to her sanity was to do everything in her power to keep her Normal life separate from her other life — going so far as locking her heart away in the deepest corners of her soul, where it wouldn’t break. To do that, she shut down one when she had to face the other. Without a word, Ari held out her hand and he threw his shroud spell over her, and for just a second, he saw her eyes stray to the townhouse behind him. Pain flashed across her face before she shut down again.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He shook his head sadly, his heart aching for his baby sister. “Be careful, Ari.”

And then she was gone and the doorway was gone and his chance to fight by her side was gone.
Don't be ridiculous. If those warriors out there got a glimpse of you, they'd know immediately who you are. You'd be dead before you even got to the battle.
Still, it hurt, and the worry nearly ate him alive. He paced the house for hours, back and forth, wearing a path in the carpet. Dani came and watched him for a while before life called her away, and still he paced. Also while he paced, he ran his hands through his wild hair, so he knew he looked like a multicolored beast, but it was on the list of the least of his worries. Finally, with nothing else to do, he went back to trying to find the Carules files.

When his phone rang again, his heart finally stopped its constant pounding, and for the moment he was pretty sure he would not have a heart attack at such a young age. “I'm alive.” Her voice was listless and, if he didn't know better, slightly drugged.

“What happened?”

“I went in. Killed everything. Saved the day.” She didn't sound happy about the saving the day part. At all. As if reading his mind, she said, “I'm okay though. Just need sleep.”

She was alive. That was all that mattered. The Edren Prodigy had survived another battle, another tempting of fate. “Call me if you need me.”

“I will, big brother. And Will?”

“What's up, buttercup?” he asked, and heard her chuckle.

“I love you. You're the best big brother ever.”

The words were so completely unlike Ari that he was taken aback for several seconds. “I love you too. Get some rest.”

****

The sun had long since set when Dani busted through his door. “Ari got hit. Did she tell you that?”

Will looked up from his crossword puzzle. He had a love/hate relationship with crossword puzzles. He loved them. They hated him. This one had long ago given him a blasted headache. “She what?”

“She got hit. I don't know how bad. My family has only heard rumors.” Dani's face was flushed from her run down the street and up the stairs, and her hand shook where it still clutched the doorknob.

Will stood up, meeting her in front of the coffee table. Slowly, as if of its own volition, his hand reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I talked to her earlier. She was okay, but yeah, now that I think about it, she sounded drugged.” Edren healers, apparently, had been unable to heal her. Again.

“Oh good. I was so afraid…”

“Was the Prodigy there?” If Ari had faced the Carules Prodigy, he could have hit her with something slow and lethal. Those Carules had all kinds of sneaky spells up their sleeves. And in her quest to not worry him, he could totally see Ari “forgetting” that she'd faced the Prodigy.

But Dani shook her head. “No. No, he wasn't there. But what if the prophesy is wrong, Will? What if Ari can be killed?”

Will smirked, although it was a fear he faced every single second. Aloud, he said, “If the prophesy was wrong, Ari would have been killed years ago. Probably by her own grandfather.”

****

Two days later, Will was just dragging himself out of bed when his phone rang again. “‘ello?” he mumbled.

“Will? Can you draw me a door?” Ari sounded small and lost. One day he would remind her that even the mighty Arianna Delacour could sound meek, but right now he just nodded. He then cleared his throat and said yes because she couldn't see him nodding, and started counting down until he could open the doorway. She stepped through, dragging her bag behind her. It reminded him of a little girl dragging a teddy bear. Ari had never had a teddy bear. She had a blood-stained cloak that was over three hundred years old.

“You're a mess.” He grinned at her. Her scowl darkened and he laughed. “Sit down. This, I can help with.” She stumbled past him to collapse on the couch and he went into the kitchen. She curled up and stared out the window while he worked, digging out weird ingredients the Carules healers in his colony had given him years ago, since healing Ari was a regular occurrence. Will could heal a little before he met the Carules, but they had taught him many things the Edrens did not know.

“Here, this will help.” He handed her the steaming drink and she wrinkled her nose at it, squinting at him like he might be trying to poison her with something served in a cute little blue teacup covered in white flowers. Where had he gotten that cup, anyway? He wracked his brain but couldn't remember. It must have been something he'd stolen from Dani at one point or another.

He raised an eyebrow and gave her drink a pointed look. “Where'd you get hit?”

She frowned at him, watching him pace slowly around the room. He was aware that pacing was probably ninety percent of what kept him in good shape. Who needed to take up jogging when your sister worried you almost out of your mind?

“How do you know I got hit?” When he glanced at her, she was watching the fluid in the cup like it might jump out and drown her.

He rolled his eyes. She was worse than a picky three-year-old. “It's a Carules recipe. It will help, I promise.” Crossing his arms over his chest, he finally answered her question. “Rumors. We might not be able to leave but we all have someone on the outside who keeps us updated.” He frowned, massaging the back of his neck like the pain there was a physical one. “It was all anyone talked about yesterday.”

“It's a miracle the whole world doesn't know who I am.”

Will dropped his hand so he could glare at her properly. “These people are better than family. They aren't going to tell, Ari. You know that.”

It was a conversation they'd had many, many times, and he knew where it was heading. Ari would suggest getting captured so they could all be free, he would tell her how idiotic that was, and then she would change the subject. Just like always.

“I forgot your pizza,” was the way she did it this time. Which worked, because she knew how much Will loved his pizza.

“I see.” He glanced around the room before mock-glaring back at her. “Well, you're not welcome here. Out ya go.” He made shooing motions with his hands and Ari rolled her eyes.

“Why, Will?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Because you forgot my pizza?” he said slowly, wondering if she'd been hit in the head again sometime recently.

“No no.” She frowned at him like he clearly should have followed her jumpy train of thought. “Why do we have this stupid war?”

Ah. Her jumpy train of thought had jumped back to the war track. He dropped his head to his chest in defeat and went back to sit next to her. “Because Ada Aleshire was a spoiled, rich brat who hurt the wrong guy one too many times.” His mother had told him the story many times, and in her opinion, Ada was completely at fault. Her opinion, though, was not popular among the Edren Family, so she had only told him.

“What do you mean, hurt?” Ari asked. So, Vivian had not told Ari the story. Interesting. Maybe Richard had done his complicated little “forget” spell on Vivian, too, and now she couldn't even remember what she was fighting for. If she fought, that is. Vivian hadn't fought in a battle for as long as Will had been alive. He’d only heard rumors of her fighting — old, old rumors.