Page 155 of Our Radiant Embers

“You thought I was hot,” Adam corrected with a playful touch of arrogance.

“I still think you’re hot.” I let a warm tendril of my magic curl around his wrist, twining around the leather bracelet he still wore. It mirrored the one on my own wrist that he’d got me during his beach house trip, the week after he’d walked away from me. Sentimental? Yeah. But I couldn’t be bothered to feel embarrassed about it.

His smile softened into something small and private. “Well, good. You’re kind of stuck with me now, so…”

His ability to contribute in meaningful ways was a lingering source of insecurity for him—unsurprising, maybe, for someone who’d grown up with no concept of personal wealth, his own finances fully interwoven with those of his family. Though the Covent Garden flat was in his name, and we were in the process of selling it, he had no savings or steady income. His discomfort with financially relying on me and my family still occasionally bumped up against his deep-rooted anxiety about being useless, no matter how often I told him that one, he was part of this family now, and two, he more than pulled his weight. I was confident that time and repetition would eventually quiet his fears.

This time, I reached out physically and wound an arm around his back. “I’ve got no escape plans, babe.”

“I can tell when you’re humouring me,” he complained even as he tilted further into my embrace.

For a minute, we simply sat like this—on the floor of our new bedroom, snow clinging to the branches of a magnificent oak tree outside. Light flooded in through one wall that consisted entirely of glass. The original, rather dark space had been redesigned by Gale to feel bright and airy, much larger than it actually was. At only twenty-six, he had a steep road ahead. It would take considerable effort to rebuild the family business from its ashes while the older Harrington generation faded from the public eye. Sometimes, well-placed rumours could be harsher judges than a fair trial.

Adam still mentored Gale. In the beginning, it had been primarily focused on how to control his new abilities. Even though a slice of both his and Christian’s initial powers had vanished, the magic not sufficiently anchored to them, they were mid-level Suns at this point, outranking the vast majority of the magical community. Both had been struggling under the sudden weight of their magic, to the point where even Christian had lost his attitude and accepted Adam’s help.

Now, it was less about control and more about how to actually use the magic. While Gale wasn’t powerful enough to melt sand into glass, he was capable of making it malleable for shaping. Combined with his eye for aesthetics, I was confident that he’d soon make a name for himself with designs like the one he’d done for this room—structural and luminescent elements directly incorporated into the window, with delicate frostwork to ensure privacy where needed.

“Gale’s done an incredible job,” Adam said as though privy to my thoughts. “Hasn’t he?”

“You taught him well,” I agreed.

“No, I only pointed him in the right direction. I couldn’t have done this.” It was pride rather than self-deprecation that coloured Adam’s voice, so I didn’t mention all the things he could do that Gale could not.

“We should hire him for the next phase of the Initiative,” I said instead. “Make future areas look even more amazing. I mean, we better step it up now that we’re—what was it?”

“The Morringtons,” Adam said, and right, yes. It had topped a recent London Morning newsletter poll, coming in just ahead of Sustainable Sweethearts. As it turned out, the general public had taken rather well to our romance, perhaps a result of extended exposure to high-profile couples like His Royal Highness Prince Joshua and his husband Leo—not that we were anywhere near as famous. The magical community, on the other hand, was less accustomed to deviations from the classic heterosexual formula. Sure, I’d been out for years, but it seemed that some found the theoretical existence of gay mages far more palatable than the reality of my relationship with Adam.

“Let them choke on their own outdated notions,” was how Cassandra had put it. She was right, but I hadn’t expected Adam to be equally indifferent to the talk. Given he’d picked me over his father and the family ties that bound him, maybe I should have.

When he’d told me I was his choice, he’d meant it. I’d learned to believe him.

“Do you ever wonder…” I paused, glancing at the line of his profile. “If Archer Summers hadn’t insisted on a co-lead—we wouldn’t be here.”

“No,” he said softly. “But London might not be here either, so…”

“There is that.” I tipped my head to rest our cheeks together, closing my eyes for a moment. Beautiful silence claimed my mind.

Once in a while, I still woke up with the taste of fear thick in my throat, wispy impressions of a tsunami-torn cityscape clinging to the edges of my mind. Adam dreamt of ropes sometimes, thick as tree trunks, that wound around his chest and sought to crush his ribs. We were fine, though. Just a few invisible scars.

The energy towers had been dismantled, and while another attempt wasn’t unthinkable, the formula was so specific that it would be hard to replicate—an equilateral triangle around a major mystical site, with ley line conduits that were within a certain proximity to each other and the core they were meant to feed.

“Hey.” Adam’s quiet voice startled me out of my thoughts. “You all right? Seems like you’re a million miles away from me.”

I opened my eyes and pulled back just enough to smile at him. “Just thinking.”

“Quick,” he said, “alert the media.”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Laurie.”

“She’s got things to teach me.”

Now that sounded ominous.

“Such as?” I prompted.

“All the wonderful and flattering things you said about me when you were fifteen.”

“She was four. Whatever she tells you is entirely made up.”

---