Page 116 of Our Radiant Embers

“It seems so,” I said as though it made no difference to me either way.

“Liam Morgan?” Christian sounded like the idea was laughable. “Doubt it.”

I forced myself to stay cool—just another one of Christian’s and my disagreements, hardly out of the ordinary. “And how would you know?”

“It’s in the way he carries himself.”

That was surprisingly insightful from someone so self-centred.

“I suspect he didn’t really understand what he could do,” I said. “Not until he had to step it up for the Initiative. I don’t know about the other Morgans, but I’ve seen Liam crush rocks with water.” If anyone asked, I had an explanation ready—we’d wanted to see if we could replace parts of the cement production process with something more sustainable. Unnecessary details often embellished amateur lies, though, and my aunt had an excellent eye for it.

“He crushed rocks with water?” My father leaned back in his chair, his face carefully controlled in the evening light streaming in through tall windows.

I took another unhurried bite of salmon before I nodded. “It was a formidable display, I’ll give him that.”

“And yet you yourself told us they’re not a threat,” my aunt said. “Did you not?”

I had, hadn’t I? Right after the Initiative had been handed to both our families and I’d sought to dissuade any notions of violence.

“I didn’t know how powerful he was at the time.” This was thin ice, so I moved carefully, aiming for an even yet slightly regretful tone. “To be fair, no one else did either. I stand by what I said, though—they’re not a threat. Not while we are on good terms with them, and I’m making sure of that.”

“Are you?” Something swung in my father’s voice that gave me pause. I met his eyes and found him watching me with a sharp crease between his eyebrows, calmly assessing as I willed myself not to react. Me jumping at shadows, that was all.

“I am.” I curled my mouth into a confident smile. “Liam Morgan considers me a friend, and he’s the kind of guy who takes that sort of thing seriously. Should word about his powers get out? Well, I am quite certain that if the Ashtons were to approach him about an alliance, he’d decline and tell me about it.”

Hook.

My uncle leaned forward, frowning. “You think they might?”

“Jasper Ashton wasn’t pleased about losing the Green Horizon Initiative to us.” And to the Morgans, but no need to weaken my own argument. It wasn’t a lie either—according to Cassandra, the Ashtons had complained to Archer Summers about the decision being a stitch-up. Apparently, she’d pointed to the Morgans’ co-lead to prove it was not.

“They’ve been suspiciously quiet lately,” Eleanor said, ever willing to believe that foul play was afoot.

I didn’t comment, turning back to my food as my father and uncle debated the likelihood of an imminent move by the Ashtons. I’d made mine, and this wasn’t a one-day sprint.

Patience was the only route to winning this.

21

LIAM

Days flowed into a week that melted into two, June into early July, and my magic started to settle. Adam, who’d been trained to control his powers from a young age, taught me how to centre my mind, and whenever I stayed over at his flat, he guided me through a morning meditation that quieted the white noise under my skin.

I stayed over a lot.

Adam’s cooking skills wouldn’t earn him a Michelin Star anytime soon, but they’d sure improved since that first attempt. In turn, I learned how to make credible cappuccino although the wiggly milk foam leaf was still beyond me. There was actual food in his fridge now, a second pillow on my side of the bed, and a shelf in his wardrobe that belonged to me. My siblings teased me about my city flat; I didn’t know what Adam told his family. That he was busy with the Initiative, maybe.

I visited the construction sites nearly every day. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the contractors, George, and Gale to do a fine job, but our prototypes were unfamiliar. Beyond my family, only Adam knew them nearly as well as I did. If I’d ever thought he’d earned his position by means of a pretty face and superior people skills, I would have taken it back a hundred times by now. He more than pulled his weight, and when the kinetic tiles suddenly refused to function outside my family’s workshop, he and I were up until two in the morning to find a solution before we fell into bed at his flat, tangled and exhausted.

There were notes too. I wasn’t a writer, but something about putting a pen to a scrap of paper seemed to appeal to Adam. There was a sweetly wistful element to finding little notes in odd places, about leaving my own for Adam to discover—from his ‘I wish things could be different’ that I found under my pillow, to my ‘If they were, I’d want to wake up to your coffee every morning’ that I left in his car; from my ‘Can’t buy you flowers, but here’s a drawing of one. It’s a tulip, I think’ to his ‘Even in a crowded room, you’re the only one I see’ that was tucked into a pocket of my jeans.

It felt like we were folding into each other, reality right outside the door while we pretended we could have this.

* * *

“I should take you dancing sometime.”

Adam huffed out a laugh as he glanced at me, fading evening light washing out the details of his face. “Like at Archer Summers’ annual gala? That would cause a stir.”

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