Page 143 of Our Radiant Embers

“What did you say?” I asked Gale.

“That I know your parents and grandmother, and I’ve never heard of a French connection.”

Good. That was good.

Was it enough?

“Is she still there?” Adam asked.

“No, she left last night.” Gale’s tone changed, his voice growing softer. “Guys, is this—you’re okay, right?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “We’re okay.”

Were we? It felt like the air was getting thicker around us, making it hard to breathe. All in my mind.

Or maybe not.

* * *

It was a shame we only had our own model for the Green Horizon Initiative at hand given the Harringtons had done a far better job capturing the equilateral triangle with St Paul’s at the heart of it.

“Ley lines?” Dad repeated after I’d mapped it out on our kitchen table, Adam my sad, silent shadow. “Didn’t everyone but a few nutters give up on that in the seventies?”

“Not in France, it seems.” Adam tugged on the hem of his T-shirt, no traces left of the cocky teenager I’d admired from afar. He’d been an illusion, yet this wasn’t quite the Adam I’d come to love either—too quiet, too small. I touched his back, and he sent me a tiny smile.

“And you think this Blanchard woman might have told your father how to—what?” Mum frowned. “Boost a mage’s power by channelling magic through the ley lines?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Adam looked to me for help, and I stepped a little closer to him.

“Adam was the one and only plan his family had—and suddenly they act like they don’t need him anymore. To me, that sounds like they found a way to make the others more powerful. Or at least they think they found a way.” I gestured at our model with its off-kilter representation of the equilateral triangle. “Our best guess? The Green Horizon Initiative was designed to make it possible.”

“We think the energy towers double as…” Adam hesitated. “Conduits, of sorts. That they were built to tap into the ley lines.”

“You mean they redirect magic in a way that boosts someone’s rank?” Jack asked.

“It’s the best explanation we could come up with,” I said. “Only it all feels wrong. Like…Do you remember those videos of people adding Mentos to a bottle of Coke, and it turns into a geyser? That’s what it feels like. Like something’s about to blow.”

“They’re desperate,” Adam said softly. “If there’s a chance, they’ll take it. And Isabelle Blanchard hardly seems like the kind of person who’d preach caution and restraint.”

Brief silence fell as everyone stared at the model on the table, expressions ranging from confusion to disbelief to unease. Then Mum turned to me. “Do you think she realised who you are?”

“Maybe not that.” I shrugged, feigning calm I didn’t feel. Adam shifted just the faintest bit so our shoulders overlapped. “I mean, it’s apparently several families in France that wield four elements, and it could also just be a British oddity. So, yeah, she wanted to know if I had French relatives. Doesn’t mean she has any idea just who they might be.”

“Oh, dear.” Nan Jean shook her head, slightly pale in the glow of the dinner table lamp. Lightning flashed outside, rain throwing itself against the kitchen windows as though seeking entry. Credit to my weather app—its thunderstorm warning had been on point.

That was when the ground rolled under my feet.

I clutched the back of the nearest chair to keep upright. When the world steadied, everyone was staring at me. I glanced at the round of confused faces and cleared my throat. “You didn’t feel that, did you?”

“Feel what?” Jack asked.

“Something like an earthquake?” I wasn’t sure why I’d turned it into a question, my stomach still quivering with the aftershocks.

“No,” Laurie said quietly. “I didn’t feel a thing.”

Nan Jean inclined her head, tension etched into the wrinkles around her eyes. “I may have felt it—just the faintest echo, mind.”

No one spoke for a moment. The raging storm outside filled the gap, nearly drowning out the sudden buzz of Adam’s phone. He pulled it out of his pocket, checked the screen, and inhaled sharply.

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