12. Adam

The interviews went fine. I took the lead, oozing the kind of charm I'd been trained for. Liam chimed in with made-up details about novel combinations of known materials, about modular construction techniques that allowed for building components off-site, about drastically improved construction workflows and resource allocation.

Neither his tan nor the light blue shirt that flattered his skin tone could hide how tired he looked. It wouldn't be obvious in the photos that positioned us in front of a panoramic London view, breathtaking from the thirty-first floor—but to me, it was.

After the second interview, we exited into the lunchtime rush. The Shard's spire-shaped glass facade reflected the midday sun, towering above a fast-moving sea of suits and phones in pursuit of a decent bite to eat.

"I thought you were sleeping better?" I asked Liam as we turned left. With one of the construction sites just a short walk away, we'd agreed to take a look at how they'd veiled it from the public.

"I am, yeah. Generally speaking." Liam threw me a sharp glance before he faced forward again. "Why do you ask?"

"You seem a bit tired, that's all." Or was I not supposed to care? We were friends, though. Only that, but…friends. I swallowed against the metallic taste at the back of my throat.

"Oh." Another glance, softer this time. "It wasn't the Initiative keeping me awake, in this case. Just some nightmare—woke up early and couldn't fall back asleep. Was it obvious in the interviews?"

No regret about us, then. Of course not. I wouldn't want to date me either—a guy more comfortable in a bespoke suit than with his true self.

"No." I hoped my smile passed inspection. "You did well. I just know you."

I hadn't meant to imply anything by it, but Liam's brow furrowed briefly before it smoothed out. This was...God. It sucked. I didn't want to weigh my every word around him. We'd moved past that, hadn't we?

"I guess you do," he said softly, attention not on me but on the crowds around us.

We turned onto a narrower side street that seemed to have largely dodged the lunch hour rush. Red brick buildings lined one side, an active construction zone on the other, bordered by a small community garden. It was slightly cooler here, the sun blocked by cranes and scaffolding.

The silence between us provided a counterpoint to the hustle and city noises around us. I fumbled for something to say—the weather, an update on our first fully functional energy tower, how much I wanted to kiss the dip of his throat since he'd undone the first three buttons of his shirt. Nothing quite made it out.

"So how does it work?" he asked eventually. "Next Monday, I mean. With the first demolition."

"I'm the sledgehammer." That's how my family mostly saw me—a tool that got the job done. "So I'll set the site on fire, very high heat to get a more complete combustion process. We'll have air mages create a containment barrier, and then earth mages will draw the smoke and CO2 and all into the soil, transform it into calcite."

"That should be a sight." Liam's voice was tinged with warmth. "Haven't seen you in full action since you tried to scare me with a bottle of sand."

"You've seen me in action plenty." I hadn't meant to pack it with innuendo, but the immediate upwards twitch of Liam's lips told me he'd caught it.

"I wouldn't say it was plenty." Then he seemed to remember the line he himself had drawn yesterday, and his face sobered. "No, I just meant—what you and I worked on, that was all about precision. I know what you can do—better than most, probably. But it's a difference, knowing and seeing."

My mind went hazy with the memory of Liam under me, of sending tendrils of my magic out to caress the insides of his thighs. Precision. I blinked away the image.

"I expect a standing ovation," I told him, and he sent me a shrewd look.

"I'll bring my ‘Team Harrington' T-shirt."

It was a slightly dated joke. About a decade ago, when tensions had last escalated between us and the Ashtons, some jokester had designed Twilight-inspired T-shirts that pitched Team Harrington against Team Ashton. They'd sold them in school, and while I'd already left for uni, Gale had borne the brunt of the teasing.

The T-shirts were a light-hearted side note to a feud that, to this day, had my uncle walking with a limp. And my mum…

My expression must have gone flat because Liam reached for my wrist, halting us both. I should have been used to it by now from hours of us working on prototypes, with touch the only way for me to see magic the way he did. A distant shiver still zipped down my spine.

"Okay." Liam's voice was quiet as he released my wrist. "Pretty sure I just came off as a bit of a dick. Is an apology in order?"

It was strange to think that it went both ways—he knew me too. Few people did.

"Not exactly." I sighed and glanced away, at where two pigeons were having a spirited debate about an ice cream cone that someone had dropped on the pavement. "I mean, it's not like...Things have been calm lately. For a while now. So."

Liam stayed silent, waiting.

"It's just that sometimes, you know…" I lifted a shoulder and inhaled, pressing my lips together. "Sometimes, I wonder if things might have turned out differently. With my mum. Like, if we hadn't been so focused on the Ashtons, maybe we'd have paid more attention to her headaches and how she started getting dizzy."

It was just a fleeting touch against the back of my hand, but it brought my attention back to Liam. He was watching me intently, a sad twist to his mouth. "Brain tumour?"

"Yeah." Not exactly a secret, but we also hadn't communicated it widely. The magical community was superstitious, and some considered cancer a family weakness. "It wasn't...Maybe she wasn't perfect, but she was my mum."

He didn't offer any cheap words of sympathy—just lightly nudged his fingers against mine, a lingering moment of contact that made me blink against the sun in my eyes.

"Sorry," I said on a measured exhalation. "Not like I cry myself to sleep every night, right? It's been almost a decade."

"I don't think there's an expiry date on grief."

"Maybe not." I shook my head, smiled. "Anyway, let's keep moving."

He didn't budge, eyebrows knitting together as he levelled me with a direct look. "Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"That whole…" He waved one hand in a vague arch around my face. "Fake persona thing. I thought we were past that."

I wasn't sure why it hurt—not in a sharply acute way, more the sweet ache of wanting something you knew you couldn't have. Liam wasn't for me. One day, some lucky guy would snatch him up, and the best I could hope for was watching from the sidelines. Just a friend.

I swallowed against the shards of glass in my throat. "You're right—we are. Force of habit."

"Oh, excuse me." His lips twisted into a small, fond smirk. "Could I get you to repeat that, please? The part about me being right."

Some of the heaviness in my chest dissipated. This time, my smile came much more naturally. "Sorry, but it was a limited collector's edition. I'm afraid we're fresh out."

Liam's chuckle blended with the city noise and the rumble of a crane. "And there goes my ego boost."

God, I liked him. I just really, really liked him.

"You'll live," I said, and if my gaze lingered on his lips for just a second? Well, so what of it?

We started walking again, our earlier silence slightly lighter now. The construction site wasn't much further. It was also hard to miss—sturdy material stretched four stories high, depicting a vision of wondrous things to come. Happy, shiny people wandered among happy, shiny buildings, thriving greenery completing the scene. Even the energy tower looked less like a penis and more like a work of art dropped by a benevolent alien race from a jungle planet.

I believed in this—really, I did. What we'd planned meant a leap forward in greener living, and it could have happened much sooner if not for the slow evolution of trust between the government and our community. But did they have to make it look quite so...kitschy?

"Funny." Liam's tone was dry. He stood next to me, gazing up at the picture of paradise with a mild smile, hands in his pockets. "You'd think it was just one family running this show."

I glanced back at the veiled construction zone. He was right—my family's name was all over it. I couldn't spot a single mention of the Morgans.

"I'd like to claim it's an accident, but it probably isn't." Turning to face him, I offered an apologetic grimace. "I'm sorry, Liam—this one's on me. I should have taken a look at the design before it went up. Chances are they sent it to me in an FYI kind of email, and I didn't pay enough attention."

"Hey, no." He half-raised his arms, palms facing downwards. "It's fine."

"It's not."

"No," he said, "it is. Listen, I'm so grateful for all your help, all right? You have no idea." Sunlight caught the blue of his eyes and the glint of his smile. "If that means you weren't reading your emails quite that carefully? I'm okay with that. And I don't need our name all over this construction site—I really don't."

I lost a second staring at the curve of his upper lip. "But it would be fair."

"Who says life is fair?"

I thought about tracing the curve of his jaw, about kissing my way down his throat, fingers slotted together. No good response came to mind, nothing that wouldn't seem out of context to him. So I nodded and dragged my attention away.

It wasn't fair, no. But such was life.

* * *

"It'sokay to be sad, you know?" Cassandra took a swig from her bottle. It contained some electrolyte-rich vitamin drink that smelled like unwashed laundry, so I'd declined her offer of a taste. "This is the closest thing you've had to a breakup."

"Last I checked," I said, "a relationship is a precondition for a breakup. Also, you weren't sad."

Before Amit, she'd dated a couple of other guys, back in uni. When things inevitably fell apart, she'd been more the type to drag me to a paintball field rather than sob her way through a bunch of rom-coms.

"True." She leaned back on the sleek leather sofa, a reflection of electric fire flickering over her features. The gym lounge was quiet at this time of day, after lunch and before the evening rush. "But I'm hardly a role model for healthy coping mechanisms, am I?"

"Not going to challenge you on that."

She arched an imperious eyebrow. "Rude."

"Do you want the truth or something beautiful?"

"And on that note…" No one knew how to level me with a stare quite like Cassandra. "Generally speaking, yes, a relationship is a precondition for a breakup. But honey, you've been spending more time with him lately than with me—and that's saying something since I see a lot of your stupid precious mug."

I swallowed my instinctive denial. The facts were on her side—ever since Liam had accepted my offer to help, I'd been over there most days. It was good to feel useful.

"Okay, yeah." I slid lower on the sofa and gazed at the modern interpretation of a chandelier above our heads. I preferred Liam's playful version. "But that was partly down to the Initiative, right? Not like we spent that time holding hands and whispering sweet nothings to each other."

"You had dinners with his family," she said. "More than once."

Because dinners at the Morgans' were much more fun than the formal atmosphere at home. While Gale quietly ate his meal, my father and Eleanor tended to catch up on business with my uncle chiming in on occasion, Christian mostly sulked to himself, and his sisters talked about school only when prompted. I joined the business discussion sometimes, but it wasn't like my opinions mattered.

Children should be seen, not heard.

"We're friends," I said. If the word caught in my throat, well, so be it.

"No," Cassandra said. "You and I are friends. You and Liam? You're the very definition of ‘it's complicated'."

"I think he drew a pretty clear line to erase those complications."

She was quiet for a beat, then leaned over to rest her head on my shoulder. "He might come around, you know?"

"Even if he does…" I inhaled. Exhaled. "I can't ask him to be my secret. He deserves better."

"That's his call, not yours." Cassandra gave my knee a gentle squeeze. "Also, just think about it for a second—what if there was some way to be open about it?"

"I can't. You know I can't." I wasn't sure why the words held a tinge of desperation when I'd long since made my peace with it. "I can't expose Gale and the others like that. If people realise that I'm the only Nova…"

It might happen anyway, sooner or later. But I wouldn't be the reason it happened sooner.

"Gale wouldn't want you to put your life on hold for him." Cassandra sighed. "Christian—well, he's an immature brat who feels the world owes him, so who knows. And the girls are too young to get it. But Gale? You know he wouldn't want that for you."

"It's not his choice whether I'm going to protect him or not."

"Wow, babe." She raised her head to send me a flat look. "I rarely say this, but you just sounded like your father's son."

I fought down the flare of annoyance. "There are some things he's right about."

"Maybe. But I'm not sure that this is one of them." Her eyes narrowed in calculation. "What about a formal alliance between our families? Forget marriage—let's sign a proper contract, make it official."

If only.

"Your parents would never agree, your dad in particular. They want children, not an alliance with a family whose power is dwindling."

"They don't know that."

No, the Hartleys didn't. There were only two people outside my family who knew—Cassandra and Liam. Not a list I would have foreseen three months ago.

"They might suspect something," I told her. The one time Alaric Hartley had asked me about Gale's tendency to skip society gatherings, I'd explained it away as shyness. "And anyway, doesn't change that they want us to have a boatload of powerful kids."

"Fuck that," Cassandra said, heartfelt.

Amen. But I still couldn't see a way out.

* * *

I went back to the Morgans'the next day.

For a blink of an eye, Liam looked surprised to see me—rain drizzling down and Lila the Drone fluttering around my head like an excited puppy. Jack must have played with her programming again. Then Liam's face softened, relief bright in his eyes. Maybe he'd wondered if his rejection would prompt some distance between us.

Honestly, I didn't even know how to stay away from him anymore.

I went back the day after as well, even though progress had been swift lately and Liam could have done without me for a day, or the rest of the week. It was fine; we were fine. Yes, there were isolated incidents here and there when things dipped into awkwardness—like when I turned and almost bumped into him and we both froze for a second. In the end, I was the one who took a hurried step back. I couldn't meet his eyes for several minutes after that.

Usually, I was so much better at hiding my emotions. Yet I knew this was right there on my face, and a glance was all it would take for Liam to read me. Except he wasn't quite looking at me either.

We didn't mention that moment in his bedroom.

But it was fine.

Really.

Fuck—no, it wasn't. It was so far from fine that my skin felt stretched too thin, like it had shrunk overnight and was meant for someone else. A weird, dizzying lightness sat in my bones each time I caught myself staring at his hands or mouth or eyes, at the hollow of his throat or the swell of his biceps.

If I wanted to keep him as a friend, I'd need to get over it. And I would. I would. I just...God.

I just needed a little time to stop wishing for something more.

* * *

This was my Nero moment.

Two dated office buildings along with an empty mall were going to come down to make room for our new commercial area. It was the Covent Garden site close to my flat, veiled from the public in a manner similar to the site in Southwark that Liam and I had visited last week. Today marked the official beginning of construction—and I was the wrecking ball to kick it off.

In my early twenties, I'd fancied myself a rockstar. Whenever they took me to a construction site for maximum damage, I'd put headphones on and had done the job to the tune of what my dad called angry young men music. Ignite the night and watch me glow. I'm the spark that twists the blaze. We dance, dance, dance in our ashes.

It seemed silly now. But I'd been brimming with sadness and frustration back then, and being someone else, even just for an hour, had felt liberating.

I was more aware these days—deliberately letting my magic off its leash carried risks. My control might be excellent, but potent magic loved the sweet power of destruction, and whenever it got a taste, it wanted more, bigger, better. I couldn't afford to get distracted.

Yes, a small part of me craved to impress Liam. I would also never outgrow my childlike desire to make my father proud. But right now, I banned it from my mind. Outside the containment barrier that a handful of air mages had erected around the doomed buildings, Liam stood with my father, Eleanor, the site manager, and a few more workers and onlookers. Inside the barrier, I was alone. I closed my eyes for several deep, even breaths. Calm and collected.

When I opened my eyes again, another protective barrier shimmered around me. While I was immune to the effects of my own magic, I wasn't immune to smoke, falling ashes, and steel.

Without Liam, I couldn't see the cloud of orange light that swirled around me. I sensed it, though—like a lioness inspecting her claws, keenly intelligent and ready for a hunt.

I set her free.

At first, nothing happened. Then the office building closest to me began glowing, an eerie, unnatural red creeping over its surface. Like an infection, it jumped over to the next building, and the next. I watched, feeling the fire's pull as temperatures soared. Obey.

The concrete didn't ignite like wood or paper. Instead, tiny explosions erupted across the buildings as trapped moisture turned to steam and sought an escape. Next came the groaning. Steel rebars within the concrete twisted and warped, softened by the heat. Failing. Then the concrete itself began to disintegrate—walls crumbled in a cascade of ash and dust, as fragile as sandcastles. My magic roared in triumph.

No. You answer to me.

Where the heat was fiercest, buildings seemed to almost melt, oozing and sagging into themselves. The air around them shimmered like a mirage, distorting reality as smoke thickened under the translucent dome of the air mages' barrier. Then the earth started swallowing it up—slowly at first, then ever faster, a swirling dance of ash and debris and embers.

Obey.

I stood alone among the inferno. When I wiped my face with the back of my hand, it came back wet. Sweat or tears? I didn't know. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but the gradual ebb of my magic, still greedy where it licked at the smouldering remains of buildings that had stood several storeys tall, now hardly more than piles of rubble. How long ago? I didn't know. My vision swam, and I blinked to clear it.

When I called the fire back to me, it resisted at first. It was weakened though, had exhausted itself tearing through what would have taken months to build. But I was tired too.

I closed my eyes and recalled the gentle weight of Liam's touch, how it revealed the bright, calm glow of my magic where it wrapped around me. Right now, it must be sparkling with red-hot agitation.

It?

She.

Other times I'd done this had taught me that this moment marked the start of a fight, my will against hers until eventually, I wrestled her into submission. This time, I simply called her to me—not like one would call a dog but sweetly coaxing, come on, that's quite enough for today.

She heeded my call.

Like an affectionate cat rubbing up against me, she returned. Gentle warmth brushed my skin as she settled down, weakened yet sated. I sat where I stood. Around me, the earth mages finished their work of sealing away the pollutants, the air barrier dissipating slowly. God, I was tired.

One down, two to go.