Feudlings In Smoke (Fate On Fire Short Story) (2 page)

Since she could take out entire armies all by herself, he'd say he'd done a pretty good job. Will smiled to himself. Nevermind that she'd called him a tireless tyrant probably over a hundred times.

No matter how often he walked into the training grounds without her, he remembered all the times he'd walked in
with
her. Ari faced training the same way she faced everything — with gritted teeth and a steely determination. She would not fail. And, as always, his heart ached just a bit, wondering when he'd see her again, wondering if she'd survive the next week or the next battle. It was a different relationship than most had with their siblings — knowing he should be out there fighting with her, and knowing if she died in battle, it was his fault because he was trapped in a prison of his own making.

Without Ari there to up the tension factor by a thousand percent with her fierce approach to all things spells, there was a more relaxed atmosphere in the training grounds. His colony loved to train, but it wasn't a matter of life or death for them. It was fun, and
maybe
a preparation for the future. They stood in small groups, talking and laughing while the smaller kids raced around and screamed a lot. He smiled. Fun was okay, too.

“Okay, let's get started!” He clapped his hands to get their attention and could almost hear Ari's voice in his head.
Really? Clapping? What are you, a kindergarten teacher?
He smirked and dropped his hands. “What should we work on today?”

“How about something difficult?” Dani called. She stood right in the middle of them all, dark brown hair shining in the sun as her equally dark brown eyes sparkled mischievously. “How about we try that spell the Prodigy does?” She glanced around her as the others nodded.

Will arched a brow, sensing he wouldn't like her answer. It might have something to do with the way she grinned — like she was about to cause him trouble, and she enjoyed every second of it. “Which one is that?”

“The one that takes out many enemies at once.
Masas,
I think it's called?”

Will scowled at her. He'd been trying to teach that one to Dani for months and she couldn't get it.
He
couldn't even do it. As far as he knew, Ari was the only one who could. But hey, why not frustrate the entire colony with a spell no one could do?

A little girl, Sienna, tapped lightly on his arm. She was ten, looked eight, and had the biggest eyes he'd ever seen. “Will, can we learn a pretty spell?”

With those eyes, how could he possibly say no? He grinned and nodded, sending an apologetic shrug Dani's way. “Of course.” He crossed his arms and paced, thinking. “Pretty. Pretty. Hmmm.”

Sienna's little brother, Carson, shoved his way to her side. “Will! Let's do this one!” He twirled his hand through the air, burning a spell that most of the adults hadn't mastered yet. But he had the same big eyes as Sienna, and again it was impossible to say no. Instead, he laughed. “You can already do that spell.”

“Yeah, but everyone else can't.” Those mischievous eyes, surrounded by long dark lashes, sparkled. Will could do nothing but admit defeat.

He threw up his hands, turning to the rest of the crowd. “The children have spoken. We'll learn a
rewo
.” A
rewo
was basically useless in battle — it couldn't kill anyone. All it did was shoot little sparks, like the fireworks on the Fourth of July that spun really fast across the ground and made a buzzing noise, but that was it. In fact, Will wondered if the idea for those weird little fireworks hadn't come from the Carules spell.

“But, Carson,” he continued, “I'm not going to teach this one. You are.” Carson's entire face lit up, and then he straightened his spine and raised his chin, turning with tiny authority toward everyone waiting. Will sat back and watched, because a child teaching grown-ups was way more fun than teaching them himself. The only one who refused to be led by Carson was Carson‘s littlest sister, Cali. Her older siblings had light brown hair, but hers was nearly white. She did share their big eyes, so when she came up to him, little lip quivering because she couldn't get the spell to catch, Will was only too happy to help. He squatted in the dirt next to her and led her tiny hand through the
rewo
again and again. When it finally caught and hung, burning in the air in front of her, almost as big as her head, she squealed in delight and clapped her hands. “It's pretty in your blue flames,” he told her, laughing.

He looked up to see how everyone else was doing and found Dani watching him, the barest hint of a smile creasing her face as her blue Carules flames swirled around her. She left the group she'd been helping, weaving through the crowd until she stopped next to him, “You're adorable.”

He squinted up at her, shading his eyes. “So I've been told,” he said, giving her his best lopsided smile.

“I'm adorable, too,” Cali piped up without looking away from her spell.

****

“Feel better?” Dani asked as they walked back down the dirt street toward their homes. Dani lived three houses down from Will's, in a blue house with flowers out front. His house was white. No flowers.
I should add some flowers,
Will thought.

When the developers had dreamed up this village in the middle of a forest in Washington, they must have had some sort of fairy tale in mind. All the townhouses looked like cottages, with the house above the garage. The roads were still all dirt because the construction company had run out of money before they'd finished the subdivisions. Will, with the help of Edren money he shouldn't have had access to, bought the entire village for next to nothing. Then he'd gathered his roving band of Renegades, and they'd created the most powerful wards in the world. The only one who could get through them was Ari.

The sun was all but set, only a few rays still fought to stay above the horizon. It was Will's favorite time of day. And he'd forgotten to answer Dani's question. “Yeah, I do. Ari will be fine. If she gets in trouble, she'll get out of it. That's what she does. She's very good at it.”

Dani nodded. “Yes, she is.” She kicked a rock down the road like a miniature soccer ball before looking up, her eyes dancing. “You know what might help? We should plot battles on a map. It might help us know where bigger groups of warriors are. And then we'd know how dangerous an area is for Ari to venture into.”

Will could have kissed her. If, of course, kissing her wasn't completely out of the question.
War first. Help Ari win the war and then you can have Dani.
“That is an awesome idea. I can't believe we didn't think of this, like, ten years ago.”

Dani grinned, her cheeks flushing under his praise. “Well, computers weren't what they are now. Ten years ago the Normals barely had the Internet. I'm not entirely sure the sorcery world had the Internet at all. But I bet both the Family and the Council are using it now.”

Will raised an eyebrow. In his modest opinion, he was one of the best hackers in the world. If the Family or the Council had a database, he could get into it. Suddenly, his blood was humming with excitement. He could protect Ari from inside the colony.

Finally, he could do the job he was born to do. The job he'd deserted and couldn't return to without being killed by his own people.

He grabbed her hand, running his thumb across her soft skin. He knew he shouldn't. He knew she was waiting for him to decide they could be together, and this wasn't fair to her. But he couldn't help himself. He could only be strong for so long. Eventually, even the Guard of the Prodigy broke, just a little.

They came to his house with its complete lack of flowers and climbed up a very long staircase to the front door. The actual townhouse itself was above the garage. He went straight to his office, where he pulled up a map on his laptop, and then he and Dani spent the next eight or nine hours, well into the earliest hours of the morning, plotting every battle they'd heard about for as far back as they could remember. Every time her dark hair brushed his hand as they leaned over the monitors, or every time she smiled or met his eyes or their hands happened to touch, he cursed the war that kept them apart.
One day, Dani. One day, I'll be who you need me to be.

Chapter Two

Will listened to the phone ring. And ring. What if she’d been captured? What if she’d been attacked? What if Richard had sent her somewhere and she was trapped? What if— “Will! Hey!” Ari answered, and relief flooded through him. She sounded… happy. With a hint of annoyance. Typical Ari.

“Hey, baby sister. How's the new school?” He leaned back against the couch, releasing the death grip he had on his cell phone so he could switch to the other ear.

“It's… okay, actually. I even made some kind-of friends. At least, I have people to sit with at lunch.”

He cracked a smile. Ari rarely let anyone get close enough that she'd call them kind-of friends. This bit of information made Will all kinds of relieved. “Through no fault of yours, I'm guessing. You're probably doing everything you can to keep them away from you.”

She didn't answer.

He sighed, heaving himself up off the couch so he could pace his living room. Sitting still while talking on the phone felt beyond wrong to him. He needed to move when he spoke on the phone. “I knew it. Ari, we've talked about this. You need friends.”

They'd had the friend discussion over and over and under and around… he wanted her to have as normal a life as possible, and she stubbornly insisted she should follow her destiny and kill everything in sight so she could save him. And save their mother, if he had to guess, although Ari would never admit it. She and Vivian had… issues. One day, though, Ari would realize how very much Vivian had given up to keep her safe. It wasn't his place to tell her, but sometimes he came pretty close.

She was already arguing with him, and he struggled to catch up, so as to effectively argue back. “I can't have friends, Will. You know that. Not with this…” she paused, and he heard her heave a frustrated, exhausted-with-life sigh of her own, “this life.”

He knew her better than anyone in the world, and he heard the pain under the frustration and the exhaustion. His baby sister was lonely and sad and she thought of herself as the worst kind of monster. Clearly, it was time he stepped in and made her smile. “I think this life you lead should come second. But hey, that way of thinking is what got me here in the first place.”

Thankfully, his light-hearted tone made her relax, as he hoped she would. “How are things in rebel country?” He could hear the smile in her voice. The real smile, not the forced one she gave people when she had to be polite. His baby sister rarely smiled. His goal in life, besides keeping her alive, was to change that. One day, Ari would smile on a more-than-once-a-week basis. And laugh often too.

“Oh, just peachy. Are you coming by any time soon? I am having a serious craving for junk food.” He groaned, nearly drooling at the thought. “Anything not home grown.”

She laughed, and he raised his fist in triumph. Success. Sadness, frustration, pain — momentarily forgotten. He won.

They talked for a few more minutes — he told her all the news from the colony and pestered her for details about school and these
kind-of
friends of hers. He was starting to think maybe things really were okay when she blindsided him with mention of a headache.

He sat up abruptly, feeling his blood pressure skyrocket. For Ari, a migraine, which she got frequently, could be a death sentence. They debilitated her, made it hard to even sit up or see straight. And when she was hunted by thousands just for being the Edren Prodigy, being debilitated was completely out of the question. “What? Why didn't you tell me? How bad is this one?”

He could picture her big brown eyes, identical to his own, pleading with him to stop worrying. But since she wasn't here, he could effectively ignore her pleading. “It's not my normal headache. I… um… fell off a ladder. Or rather, I fell off and it landed on me.”

Will held the phone away from his head and swore. He loved the girl, but sometimes he wanted to strangle her. Then he counted to ten, waiting until his head ran out of steam. “When did this happen?” he demanded. Unfortunately, he hadn't paid close enough attention to the fury of his pacing and stubbed his toe on the coffee table, which meant he had to pull the phone away from his head to swear again. And then he counted. By the time he could put the phone to his ear again, she was already talking.

He interrupted her. “Did they take you to the hospital?”

“No,” she said sheepishly.

“What?” Will ran through an entire angry e-mail he was going to write and send to her school as soon as they finished this conversation.

“I'm fine, Will,” she said quickly. “I'm just tired. I'll try to get some pizza to you somehow or another, okay?”

Little weasel, trying to distract him with the mention of pizza. It wasn't going to work. “Ari…” he growled.

She cut him off. “Will, I promise, if the headaches continue, I'll visit a healer the next time I'm home. I'm due for a visit anyway. It's been over a week since they've wanted me to kill anyone.”

And bam, the sadness was back and he had to give up being furious with her… and maybe the school too. He hadn't decided yet. “You could always walk away, Ari.” But he knew what she would say — the same thing she always said.

“I can't. Somehow I have to find the Prodigy and kill him so I can stop the war and set you free. I'll talk to you soon, Will, okay? Have a good night.”

He sighed, admitting his defeat, wondering what he'd done to get stuck with a sister who possessed such a stubborn streak. “You too, Ari.”

He dropped the phone on the couch and ran a hand through his hair. He didn't care about the war. He didn't care about the people fighting it. But he did care about Ari and his goal of making laughter a part of her daily routine. To accomplish that goal, he had to stop the war.

It was as simple as that.

Since Dani had been at his place so often lately, helping him plot battles on their map and going over what this information meant, he hadn't had a chance to see if he could find any Carules traces on the Internet that he could hack. But tonight she had gone to help Ward's wife with their new baby, so he was on his own. He could snoop for Carules traces on the web all he wanted. He didn’t imagine she’d have a problem with it, but he didn’t want to risk it. Just in case. Plus, anything she knew could put her in danger.