Page 94 of Our Radiant Embers

“Adam thinks that if there’s any record of this, Gale would know.” I rubbed a hand across my brow. “But, yeah. First the dreams, now this? I just…”

I’m scared.

I didn’t say that. Ever since the Aqua Reclaimer, more and more I’d become the person my family looked to for answers. Not on everything—my parents organised our lives, and Nan Jean was an excellent judge of character. But when it came to our standing in the community, to the economic and business side of things, everyone turned to me. I didn’t want to worry them.

“Dreams?” Mum asked.

“Just stupid stuff. Never mind.”

I pushed my chair back and got up to carry my plate over to the sink, then began cleaning up the kitchen counter. Initial shock clearly fading, the rest of them launched into a spirited discussion about theories that veered into increasingly ridiculous territory. Jack and Laurie were chattering about the possibility of them, too, getting a magic boost, while Dad advised everyone to keep quiet about this, my mum and Nan Jean talking quietly between themselves.

Between the continuous strain of my magic bouncing around like a toddler on a sugar rush and my family’s buzzing excitement, tiredness gripped me. I mumbled an excuse about wanting to unpack my bag and left them to it.

A Sun? No, that wasn’t right. I was supposed to be just a Blaze, and not even a particularly powerful one at that. Maybe it was a temporary surge—someone somewhere had crossed the wires and caused a short circuit. Tomorrow, or next week, I might wake to find it gone. But what if something fundamental within me had shifted?

Right now, weighed down by exhaustion and uncertainty, it was hard to see clearly.Impossible to tell whether I was standing on the brink of something unprecedented or on the verge of losing myself entirely.

* * *

The art of meditation was taken seriously in the magical community—or maybe that was only in London. My experience with other communities was limited to one exchange in school when we’d spent a week in Inverness. The magic there had felt different, more mystical somehow and rooted in the rugged landscape, with a small, close-knit community that was far less hierarchical than our London one.

Cross-legged on my bed, I opened my eyes and allowed reality to fully filter in again. Fifteen minutes of focused breathing had soothed my magic, calmed it down to the point where it seemed to wind around me in a sweet, sleepy rhythm.

Stop. Breathe. Focus.

It was Adam’s mantra that I’d borrowed, more practical than the one I’d developed for myself back in school as part of the curriculum. Even as I recited the words to myself, it was his smooth voice that I heard.

He’d explained it to me during our first evening at the sea, over the dinner he’d helped cook. Originally, his motto had been more like mine—‘present, calm, collected’. But it had felt too much like the destination and less like the path to getting there, so after his mother’s death, when grief had threatened to choke him on a daily basis, he’d grappled for something else. No, a motto couldn’t fix what was irretrievably broken, but it was an anchor, comforting in its repetitive familiarity.

Breathe.

I stretched my back and listened for the sounds of my family. Running water in the upstairs bathroom meant someone was taking a shower, and I could hear Laurie singing to herself as she brushed her teeth, the words garbled. A muffled bass line hinted that Jack had sat down for a programming session.

They hadn’t changed. But I had.

The air around me felt crisper, and if I closed my eyes, I could sense the tree outside my window, trace its roots into the ground. I could have drawn a diagram of the water pipes embedded in our walls, and the flick of a lighter on a neighbour’s porch registered as a brief flare of brightness.

Breathe.

I reached out further.

The grass in our backyard needed water, and a rose bush further down the road was slowly recovering from mildew. Swallows sailed high on thermal currents that I could have altered without breaking a sweat, and the pool in a nearby sports complex groaned under a heavy dose of chlorine. The forested area I often ran through? I could have burned it down in a matter of minutes.

I was a Sun.

I was a Sun, and it was damn near overwhelming. How did Adam handle the…God, how did he handle the truly mind-blowing amount of power he wielded?

‘I’m used to it.’

Would I get used to it too? Or was this a temporary situation, a glitch in the system that would soon right itself?

Fuck, I needed sleep. Exhaustion had crept into the very marrow of my bones, turning them thin and brittle. I scrubbed both hands through my hair and exhaled in a rush, then forced myself to move.

One foot in front of the other. Laurie seemed to be done in the bathroom, so I went to grab my toiletries from the bag I’d brought on the trip. As I unzipped it and reached inside, my fingers met soft paper.

Paper? I retrieved a slightly wrinkled napkin filled with Adam’s handwriting.

‘You said you’re no one’s secret, yet here we are. That’s on me, and I’m sorry.’

---