Fire Games: A Young Adult Fantasy (Arcturus Academy Book 3) Page 21

  Eira straightened slowly, like a victor. Surveying her handiwork. A smile crept across her face. The details of her features were lost, but my murky vision was enough to see it.

  I grit my teeth and snarled. It was a small sound only I could ear, I hadn’t enough air to talk. I could produce thousands of degrees of heat. I had this.

  Panic backed away like a frightened mutt.

  My fire hissed and bellowed. Steam rose through the fabric of my clothes. Heat baked from the top of my head. I closed my eyes and redirected it down, sending out through my legs. The ice compressing my thighs relaxed. The pressure around my ribs lessened.

  Wait. The word whispered past my ears from some unknown corner of my brain. Patience. She had to come out onto the ice.

  Sending invisible heat below the surface of the ice, I opened my eyes. My hips were free now, water sloshing around them. I could burst the ice away from my torso in a moment, but Eira didn’t know that. She thought she had me trapped.

  Eira took a step on the ice toward me, then another, and another. Cautious, but not cautious enough. She was halfway to me now.

  Oozing heat into the water, the ice encasing me grew thinner by the moment, crackling as it surrendered to my fire.

  The water around me began to bubble. Then it began to roil. I was free, standing shoulder deep in a hole in the ice.

  I turned up the heat. A satisfying crack filled the air with me as its center. The ice spiderwebbed, breaking into chunks.

  Eira stopped, her eyes widened. Her arms shot out for balance as the surface beneath her came apart.

  I wasn’t locked in ice any more, but I had to get out of the water. With all the heat I’d built—enough to melt copper—if I detonated like this it would be overkill. It didn’t matter, I had to jump.

  Dull pops of sound echoed through the gym as I vaulted from the water like I’d been shot from a cannon, aiming wildly for the platform. A wash of liquid and chunks of ice trailed me, making a calamitous sound. I landed on the edge of the platform, teetering for balance and cushioning my landing with fire.

  I spun to see Eira following, desperately leaping from floe to floe. I half-squatted, waiting. With a final jerky leap, she landed on the opposite side of the platform in a crouch.

  Our eyes met.

  “What are you?” I asked, hands up but relaxed, unafraid enough to be curious.

  All the fuss so far had served to settle a kind of patient confidence within me. I’d observed and tangled with her enough now to know that Eira was fast and strong, but I was better. I was going to win this. I just had to keep an eye out for those freezing pellets.

  Mirroring my stance and breathing hard, Eira let a few breaths pass before giving a sarcastic answer. “I’m half-mage and half-mage.”

  She advanced and we exchanged a flurry of punches and blocks, her movements jarring and electric, mine smooth and liquid.

  We broke apart, panting, circling like a couple of wild dogs, teeth bared.

  We advanced again, but she was visibly flagging now. Biding my time, deflecting a few glancing blows, I watched for the opportunity I knew would come. When it came, I drove a fist through an unguarded pocket. She took it full on the chin. She wobbled, dazed, and probably seeing stars.

  I shot out a foot and swept at her ankles. She jumped valiantly but too late. She stumbled and fell, rolled away then scrambled to her feet. Her bottom lip was bleeding.

  She was at the edge of the platform now. Any further back and I could push her into the water, except I didn’t want that. I needed to get her down on her back.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I said, as she panted and recovered her balance. I allowed it. I’d have her down with my next attack, but before that, I wanted an answer. All of my insecurity was gone. In its place was a sense of dominant power. It surfaced in my thoughts that this feeling could be dangerously addictive.

  I could see in her eyes that she knew she was about to lose, too. Which meant she was at her most unpredictable right now.

  “I’m nobody,” she said quietly, wiping a trickle of blood from her chin. It left a smear of pink across her jaw.

  I arched a brow. “Self-pity doesn’t become you.”

  “Fine,” she grated. “Look at me. I’m what they say, just a doll. What are you?”

  My skin prickled at her words. I recalled what Harriet had said, how sad it was that a woman was known for her looks rather than her abilities.

  I’d had enough. I wanted this finished now, before I started thinking too much and made a mistake.

  “I’m pure fire-mage,” I replied, then lunged.

  Twenty-Seven

  Catastrophic Consequences

  Someone was crying, a woman. It had to be Babs because I was surrounded by men. I should be crying too but my mental processes were weighed down with shock.

  I stood in the academy’s lobby. Someone put a blanket around me. Silly thing to do for a fire mage who was never cold. On top of that, I deserved no charity.

  It was Gage. He had his arm around me. I was thankful for his solid bulk against my side as I stared at the gurney with Eira’s body on it. She was covered head to toe with a white sheet. I was glad for that small mercy. I couldn’t bear the look of her gray skin, the blue lips. The dead eyes.

  Gage was talking. His words echoed like they were coming from far away.

  “Dr. Price did everything she could,” he was saying. “The other medics arrived in moments, but it was just too late.”

  There had been more blood. Not a lot, but its vivid brightness was the hook from which all my other memories hung.

  Eira shouldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be dead. But somehow, she was.

  The gurney was almost to the lobby doors now. Eira was going into the back of a van.

  My face felt numb, my lips and legs were numb. I couldn’t stop staring at the sheet, the shape under it. The head that would never raise itself. She’d never see through those pretty doll-eyes again, thanks to me.

  My eyes felt so dry they ached.

  Basil was there, and Dr. Price too. Davazlar looked grim and ashen pale. Guzelköy looked like he’d already been sick.

  I wished I could be sick, could cry, could anything. I felt like I was made of wood.

  “Come, sit down,” someone said. I was led to a couch and given a glass of water. I wanted to ask where they would take Eira’s body, I wanted to ask what would happen to her next. I wanted to ask about her family.

  “This is all your fault,” Babs said to Basil with a choked whisper. “If you’d just accepted the will as it was, she wouldn’t have died.”

  “That’s not helpful.” Christy’s voice, sounding very calm. Maybe she was better able to handle death than the rest of us, being a doctor and all.

  I lifted my eyes to look for Basil. He was seated at the other end of the sofa, looking like he’d aged a decade. Another death. The death of an aged father was one thing, horrible enough on its own. The death of a young woman, barely out of her teens…

  And it was my fault. I’d killed her.

  “I don’t understand.” Basil put his hands on his face and rubbed up and down, bringing a flush to his skin. “She’s been trained to deliver non-lethal blows, even at speed. It’s automatic for her by now—”

  “Clearly, your training has been inadequate,” Babs snapped. Her wailing had ceased and had been replaced by hostility and anger. “And you, young lady, will answer to a tribunal for your actions.”

  I supposed she was talking to me, trying to instill fear. But I wasn’t afraid of a tribunal, they could do what they wanted with me. I was still back in the fire-gym, reliving the events of the past hour.

  I’d never gotten any of Eira’s limbs into the hafnium cuffs. We’d exchanged blows at the edge of the platform. Hers were delivered in desperation. Mine, with confidence. In spite of that she had caught me with a fist in the mouth, a glancing blow but it stung. I fired one back.

  There was a moment when all I saw was the
bright blood pouring from her nose. Then Eira coughed and gathered spittle and blood in her mouth. She spat. It landed in my eye, a heavy gob of bloody saliva. Half-blinded and momentarily lit with rage, a monster surged to the forefront, something dark and uncontrollable. I detonated into a single shot.

  There was the solid sound of my fist connecting with flesh and bone, somewhere below Eira’s collarbone. Yes, I’d detonated, but even half-blind I knew how to make non-lethal contact.

  That sound filled my mind. Helplessly, I watched her eyes roll up in her head.

  She collapsed, folded in on herself and crumpled. She slipped into the water with hardly a splash. She’d gone boneless, totally limp, with an unconsciousness impossible to fake.

  Still, I’d been surprised that my strike had knocked her out. It wasn’t like I’d hit her in the head, or the throat. I expected her to come to at any moment. She’d leap from the water with renewed strength and I’d take her down again and put her into the cuffs.

  But she lay still and face down, a swirl of red drifting from her head, staining the water with a little pink cloud. Spread-eagled and motionless, she drifted between half-melted ice floes.

  Then I was in the water, splashing and floundering to get to her.

  “Eira!” I screamed, repeating her name over and over.

  Voices yelled. A red emergency light flashed.

  I rolled Eira’s body over. Her eyes were open. Dead. Her pink lips already turning gray. Her hair stuck to her jaw in clumps and lay across one open eye. My heart convulsed, my brain froze.

  Numbly, I floated her to the closest dock and hauled her body onto the platform. My whole body was trembling. Footsteps coming. The water draining away… swirls and funnels, floes jostling.

  I began CPR, but then Dr. Price took over, her movements confident, well-timed.

  My eyes dried out as I stared, straining, begging and hoping to see life. All I could see was how Eira’s body moved as Dr. Price worked on her. I sat on the dock with my knees pulled to my chest, my arms around my shins, my body shaking with desire to see Eira’s chest rise with an inhale. I’d have given anything to bring her back.

  Christy lowered her ear to Eira’s chest. She checked for a pulse under the jaw, that small place at the wrist. It felt like Dr. Price worked on her forever. More medics arrived, in their dark clothing encrusted with equipment, they lifted Eira to a gurney. A complicated looking box, wires hooked to Eira. Her body bucked under the paddles.

  I couldn’t remember getting from the fire-gym to the lobby. There was a lot of shouting as the medics continued their fruitless efforts.

  Babs couldn’t seem to do anything but emote at the top of her lungs. A glass of water was shoved into my hands. Someone asked me something but I didn’t answer. I thought it was Gage, maybe. My backpack appeared at some point. Someone had set it on a coffee table. I’d retrieved my phone and put it into my pocket, wondering who I should call first when I could piece together rational thought.

  The front door of the villa slammed closed behind the medics.

  “We need to analyze the recording. She shouldn’t have—it shouldn’t have… killed her,” Basil mumbled.

  I gathered the presence of mind to move closer to him and take his hand. It was trembling but he squeezed back and we shared a look of torment and shock.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

  He put the fingers of his other hand on his lips, as if to keep them from quivering and shook his head. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I felt too weary to converse further.

  I thought of Eira. Where was she from? Did she have family? I knew nothing about her, and now she was dead. She’d signed the release just like all of us had. There would be no legal repercussions for Babs or Basil or the game-makers. But for Eira’s family, there would be nothing but repercussions. Shock waves. For years. Shock waves from a death weakened over time, but never truly went away. I knew that from personal experience.

  “Babs?” I croaked, looking around for Basil’s twin.

  She was conversing with Guzelköy. She paused and looked my way.

  Getting off the sofa I crossed the lobby. As I approached she seemed to draw herself up to her full height and lift her nose, like I was something disgusting that had emerged from under the carpet.

  “I cannot begin to say—” I paused. Sorry didn’t even begin to cover it, there weren’t words for what I wanted to express. “Have you called Eira’s family yet?”

  “Of course I have,” she snapped. “What do you take me for? Do you know they have no other children? Eira was their only baby. I don’t know how you’re going to live with that.”

  Steeling myself against her barbs, I kept on track only with great effort. “So you have their contact information in your phone?”

  I fished my cell out of my pocket, turning it over and over in my hands.

  Her gaze flashed down to my phone and back up to my face. Her expression seemed to open fully for a moment. It was like driving by a large house at night when all the lights were on. The interior made stark and radiant. Fear came into Babs eyes, then it was gone, shuttered up so quickly I wondered if I had really seen it.

  Her upper lip curled and her superior disdain was back. “You’re insane if you think they’ll want to hear from you.”

  “They will.” My voice calm in spite of the grief in my heart. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. They’ll need an apology from me. It will help them heal.”

  She stared at me, her expression horrified. She lifted her hands up, turning her torso away from me in a defensive posture, like she thought I was going to snap and attack her, or maybe like she thought my vileness was contagious.

  “They’ll need one from you, too,” I added softly.

  Her expression darkened. “How dare you speak to me in this way. Basil, get her under control.” What started as a bark soon became a shriek. “It’s not enough that she’s murdered one of my best students, she has to turn the blame back on me?”

  I caught Basil out of the corner of my eye, getting to his feet but moving like he needed a cane.

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  It was a struggle not to raise my voice, but if I did I would lose it. I was already teetering on the edge. The wooden numbness was being replaced with emotion as reality took hold. A breakdown was inevitable but I needed to have it in private, not here in front of Babs. I might be numb and in shock for the moment, but the real pain was lurking at the edges of my consciousness, waiting to sweep me up in its arms and cradle me in a nest of razors I might never fully extricate myself from. I’d taken Eira’s life. What that meant was yet to fully manifest itself.

  Babs shoved her face into mine, her breath hot and sour. “You leave those poor people alone.”

  “She is right, Barbara,” said Basil, who was now at my elbow. “The Nygaard family will need apologies from all of us. It will help give them closure. You and I are indirectly responsible for Eira’s death.”

  “I do not agree, and I won’t be giving you any access to her family whatsoever.” Babs words came out on an acid hiss.

  “You don’t have to,” Basil replied wearily, and I felt his hand against my back, a silent and invisible support in the face of his sister’s mania.

  I appreciated that small touch more than anything in that moment, and clung to it the way kittens cling to trees.

  Guzelköy raised his hand cautiously, like he was sneaking up on a nest of snakes. “I have all the contact details for next of kin. I can give you Mr. and Mrs. Nygaard’s information.”

  Babs rounded on him. “You what? I am the sole contact for all of my students.”

  Guzelköy stepped back, alarmed at her venomous demeanor.

  Davazlar materialized out of nowhere, his height and breadth imposing. I’d never stood this close to him before. Authority radiated from him.

  “It’s a matter of course, Headmaster,” he said, smoothly and with a low, powerful voice I could feel vibrating in
my knees and ribcage. “The day you were late in arriving we collected all the pertinent details. It’s a basic before all tournaments.”

  Babs eyes widened then shrank to slashes. Two red spots of color rose high in her cheeks. “I forbid it.” Her gaze slid around the group. “You will not disturb the grieving family.”

  Dr. Price released the medic she’d been speaking to and caught the tail end of this. She approached, a mildly interested look painted on her face. “Who wants to disturb the grieving family?”

  Babs pointed a finger at Basil, then me, and the game-makers, as if we’d been colluding behind her back. “They do. The body is barely cold and the first thing they want to do is impose themselves upon the girl’s family. Their privacy needs to be respected. I’ll not allow it.”

  Dr. Price crossed her arms in a casual gesture. “Certainly the family will need privacy and time to grieve, but my good friend and psychologist Dr. Bud—you may know him from the agency—has waxed long about the grieving process. At some point, they will be ready and needful of an apology.”

  I felt like I’d slipped into a twilight zone of weirdness. Why had this become such a big deal? Why was Babs fighting so hard to keep us from reaching out to Eira’s family? The idea of talking with them made my palms sweaty, but I couldn’t walk away without giving the bereaved a chance to vent at me, look into my eyes and see real remorse.

  Babs seemed to become aware that her behavior was drawing attention. She puckered her lips and crossed her arms, but made no more screaming attempts to bully us. I could see the gears turning under that glamorous auburn hair.

  After a moment of tense silence, she said, “Then, let’s leave it up to Dr. Bud. Shall we? If he gives his consent for Saxony to reach out to Eira’s parents, I won’t intervene. But let’s give them at least a week before we consider it.” Her voice softened and she sounded almost reasonable now. “Let’s do that. Yes?” She raised her brows at me, pointedly.

  I nodded, but my hackles rose with dislike and suspicion.