Page 99 of Our Radiant Embers

A lit cigarette on a rainy road. A chef’s flambé in a high-end restaurant, flames dancing atop a pan. An explosion of fireworks during a festival. Electrical energy sparking within the underground.

It had been a while since I’d lost myself in my surroundings. Liam, though? With four elements at his fingertips, the world might seem abruptly overwhelming.

“You’ll learn to set boundaries,” I told him gently. “It’s like opening or closing a door, and you’ll get better at consciously choosing which one it’ll be at any given moment.”

He pressed his lips together, then exhaled. “Yeah, probably. I’ve got some control, you know—like now, with you, it’s not like I’m half-listening to water gurgling in the sewers or the like. And it is amazing, in a way. Sensing so much, I mean. But it’s also...”

“A lot,” I finished for him.

“Yeah.”

I watched him for a quiet second. “Most of us, you know—we grow into this gradually. When we’re kids and coming into our powers. For you, it’s just…a bit more of a knee-jerk impact, I guess. But you’re good, you’re so good—you’ll handle it.”

“I think it’s already getting easier.” Liam’s gaze slid to my mouth, just for a blink of an eye, before his focus relaxed. “What Gale said earlier, though? About how it can take a while for magic to connect with a new place.”

“You asked if it could be multiple generations.” I lightly squeezed his fingers. “What did Nan Jean say?”

“That her biological father was from a powerful French family.” Liam’s voice took on a pastel shade. “They met during the Second World War, and he returned home before he learned she was pregnant.”

“French magic is different,” I said. “Or—parts of it are.”

That was how my father had put it. He and Eleanor had taken a trip to the Palace of Versailles a couple of years ago, when a client had asked us to remodel part of his mansion in the style of King Louis XIV’s former royal residence. They’d met some bigwigs of the Parisian magical elite, and for a while, the idea of a London-Paris business alliance with the Blanchard family had hung in the air.

As one half of the feud that had set Notre Dame on fire, the Blanchards had been looking to forge new ties, and my family never said no to a powerful ally of questionable repute. With a mere two train hours separating Paris and London, I was sure that if either of my youngest cousins had commanded enough magic to make for an attractive marriage prospect, arrangements with the Blanchards’ only son would have been made.

“Different,” Liam echoed.

I tucked a foot between Liam’s ankles and tried to remember what my dad had said on the topic. “Something about…It’s elemental too, but it differs in certain aspects.”

“What aspects?”

“I’m not sure. I think that’s all my father said on the topic—he’s not the sharing type.” I sent Liam a lopsided smile. “Now, which family was it your great-grandfather belonged to? I’m sure there’s something in our library that’ll let me find out more.”

The corners of Liam’s mouth pulled down. “Nan Jean doesn’t know. Her mother never told her—just that the family was powerful, and that she wasn’t sure how they would have reacted to illegitimate offspring. Possibly badly, possibly by demanding a move to Paris so Nan Jean could be raised there.”

“Oh. That’s not a lot to go on, is it?”

“No, it’s not.” Then Liam paused. “Well. Also, he came over as part of the Dunkirk Evacuation. And he broke off an existing engagement to someone else when he returned to see my great-grandmother one more time, after the war. But she’d already married and didn’t tell him that Nan Jean was his child.”

“He broke off an engagement?” I asked. If the French community was anything like ours, it would be considered an enormous slight, almost unforgivable in nature—succession planning was a matter of life or death. Literally.

“Apparently, yeah.” Liam reached out to trace one of my eyebrows with his index finger, and only then did I realise I was frowning. His voice dipped low. “Hey. Let’s drop it for now, okay?”

I didn’t want to drop it. My brain was sifting through vague questions and possibilities, not really settling on anything, just spinning out in three directions at once.

Powerful. France. A broken engagement, some eighty years ago. Dunkirk.

But when I met Liam’s eyes, I caught the tiredness etched into their corners. Yesterday morning, when we’d woken up together at the beach house, he’d looked bright and well-rested, if a hint wistful as he’d watched me.

Let’s run away together.

I coaxed a smile onto my face, drawing it up from the pit of my stomach. “How about a nap?”

Liam studied me for a beat before he nodded, hair whispering against the pillow. He moved in for a gentle brush of our mouths.

I closed my eyes and held onto him.

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