17. Liam

"So are you, like, in love with him?"

Laurie's question startled me out of contemplating the mixed vegetables on my plate. So far, my family had been remarkably restrained in their commentary, which really just meant they'd been saving it up for dinner when we all united around the table.

"Don't be ridiculous," I told her. As far as denials went, this was a hastily built sandcastle trying to withstand the incoming tide. And wow, look at that—even my metaphors featured beaches and the sea. Go figure.

When I glanced around the kitchen, all eyes were on me. Right. So, I had two choices: delay the inevitable by means of evasion or admit defeat right off the bat. I'd never been the type to go down without a fight.

"That"—Laurie set her knife and fork down with the precision of a surgeon—"was not a no."

"Made any plans lately to marry Nathaniel Hartley?" I countered.

"Oh, are we engaging in a round of whataboutism?" She tilted her head. "Weak, Liam."

She had a point. While it had been years since I'd easily won a verbal sparring match with my siblings, this was me practically down for the count before the opening whistle. I blamed the distracting weight of my magic. It didn't feel rebellious, nothing like the overwhelming force in my dreams that crushed buildings like cardhouses—more like swimming in a restless sea, the current pulling me this way and that, or an excited child tugging on my sleeve to show me fifteen things at once. But between that and memories of the weekend like iridescent soap bubbles in my mind, well, I wasn't at the top of my game.

I took a bite of my mum's vegetable stew and chewed with pointed slowness before I swallowed and sent her an unimpressed look. "You seem to be under the illusion that I intend to share my feelings with the class."

"So you don't deny that there are feelings," Laurie said primly. Jack mimed throwing a handful of popcorn into his mouth before passing an imaginary bucket to Nan Jean while my parents watched me with a mix of amusement and concern.

Maybe it was the latter or maybe it was sudden exhaustion prompted by my magic's relentless agitation. Either way, I sighed and put my fork down. "Look. Even if I was emotionally compromised, it wouldn't matter."

I didn't quite look at any of them, choosing instead to focus on the chipped wood of our table. Dried paint marked some of its grooves, a relic of when us kids had done everything at it, from homework to more or less capable attempts at art. Mine had scarcely surpassed caveman quality; I was an engineer, not an artist. Jack, on the other hand, had some actual talent and was able to bring the same single-minded concentration to a drawing that he applied to fiddling with software.

"Why would it not matter?" It was Mum who asked, her voice gentle.

I glanced up briefly, and then back down at the table. "Because he's trapped by family obligations."

There was something poignant about the exceedingly rare event of my entire family being silent for a whole five seconds. It echoed hollowly in my chest.

"I like that boy," Nan Jean said in a decisive tone, as though that somehow changed things. My chuckle caught in my throat.

"Yeah. Me too." I shook my head. "Anyway. Like I said, it doesn't matter."

"But it does." For once, Laurie's voice held no teasing edge, and when was it that the women in my family had all joined Team Adam?

My question to that effect was met by another moment of silence before my dad raised his hand. "Count me in, too. He's a good lad. Shame about his family."

"His brother's all right," Jack put in, and right, he and Gale had spent an afternoon trying to outrace each other in Mario Kart. In Jack's book, that counted as a reliable test of character.

It was true, though—Gale was all right. He was also a Spark. Meanwhile, I was…something. A caterpillar turned butterfly, wings still stuck in an awkward tangle.

"Nan?" I straightened in my chair and turned to properly face my grandmother. Time to steer this conversation away from my hopeless feelings. "My magic has been off. Like, restless. And Adam thinks I'm growing stronger. Can you…?"

"Stronger?" Laurie repeated softly, her eyes wide.

"Like…" I flattened my hands against the table, hesitating. All my life, I'd barely qualified as a Blaze. Now? "Maybe upper-level Blaze? I'm not sure."

Nan Jean levelled me with a clear look before her eyes turned distant. I held my breath.

A moment passed, then the colour drained from her cheeks. "Oh my."

"What?" Jack's voice was sharp. He'd always been impatient for explanations, hated feeling like others knew more than he did.

"Mum?" my mother asked, much more quietly, and Nan Jean's gaze refocused. She was quiet for a beat, staring at me with an odd tilt to her mouth.

"Honey, you are…" The words were halting. "I do believe you qualify as a Sun now."

With a jerky nod, I twisted my hands in my lap and didn't dare look at my family.

"A Sun?" Dad echoed, disbelief coating the question. "How is that even possible?"

I inhaled. "I don't know."

"Maybe Adam rubbed off on him." That, of course, was Laurie illustrating her ability to bring innuendo to any situation. It made me bite down on a slightly hysterical smile.

"I really don't think that's how it works."

"Well." Laurie arched an eyebrow. "Seeing as there is no reliable data on gay mages because we collectively pretend they don't exist…"

My mum pushed her plate away and fixed my grandmother with a serious look. "Tell them."

"Tell us what?" Jack asked.

Nan Jean's lips pressed into a thin line.

"Tell them," Mum said again, with heavy emphasis.

For a moment, it looked as though Nan Jean would refuse. Then her chin dipped down in a near-imperceptible nod, her gaze taking us all in—Jack nearly vibrating in his chair, my dad silent and stoic, Laurie's eyes bright with curiosity, and my mum tense. Me, I sat very still, belly tight with something like nerves.

"My father—" Nan Jean stopped. "My biological father was a powerful mage from a powerful family."

Jack opened his mouth. Laurie elbowed him to keep it shut.

"I don't know much—not even his name." Nan Jean's attention drifted to the window, voice growing translucent. "What I do know is that he was French?—"

"French?" my mum interjected, crisp surprise edging her tone.

"French, yes." Nan Jean continued after a beat. "He took part in the Dunkirk evacuation as a civilian. Helped ease the passage of some smaller rescue vessels, from what my mother told me. They met after, and he remained in London for a couple of years before his family called him back."

Powerful. A powerful French mage. From a family that wielded all four elements?

I blinked to stop my thoughts from spinning.

"So he just ditched a woman and a baby?" Judgement coloured Laurie's question.

"He didn't know my mother was pregnant." Nan Jean's forehead creased as she laced her hands on the table, her thin fingers hinting at a fragility I didn't usually associate with her. "The way she tells it, he was engaged to another woman, the usual family arrangement to maximise power through alliances. Being in London also weakened his magic. So he left. He returned after the war, said he'd broken off his engagement—but by then, my mother had already married my father. She claimed I was his child."

"And he believed it?" Laurie asked.

"He did." Nan Jean drew a deep breath that lifted her bony shoulders. "I never learned my biological father's name. Just that his family must remain unaware that I exist." Her gaze swept across us—my mum and Jack, Laurie and me. "They are the kind that might have reacted badly to illegitimate offspring thinning out the gene pool. Either that, or they might have insisted on my mother moving to Paris with me so I could be raised there."

All right. That was…

Something. I didn't know what—my brain spiralling through questions that had no immediate answers. If my great-grandfather had been powerful, could his magic have leaped over three generations to now manifest in me? Who had he been? French. From Paris? Or another, smaller community in France? I didn't know much about them, just that much like in the UK, a few pockets of magical activity were scattered across the country.

"You never told me he was French." My mum sounded like she was still processing things, one of her fingers tapping an absent beat against the tabletop.

Nan Jean inclined her head. "I've been raised never to speak of it. That kind of conditioning is hard to shake."

"Did you ever try to find out who he was?" I asked. It felt like I had to drag the words up from somewhere around the soles of my feet, the smell of our dinner lurching in my stomach.

"Of course I did." Her smile was quiet, yet it carried just a hint of her usual mischievous energy. "But no luck, my dear. There aren't exactly swaths of English books available that detail the nature of France's magical communities."

Valid. But I knew one family in London that might just have a book or two that could provide some answers.

Nota question to ask Gale. Adam, though? I trusted him, completely and irrevocably.

I also wanted him here. I didn't want him at a fraught birthday dinner with only Gale and Cassandra on his side, head held high even as his family's expectations nearly flattened him.

"So…" Jack drew out the word, tongue tucked up against his teeth. "If your dad"—he gestured at Nan Jean—"was powerful, how does that explain Liam suddenly going Nova on us?"

"Sun," I corrected faintly.

Nan Jean paused, her eyes going slightly distant. "Well, magic is about bloodlines, isn't it? Yet it's also rooted in our environments, the stories and places that shape us. My father's powers were diluted here—but perhaps, in the right setting, they might help explain the unexpected shifts in Liam."

"I've never heard of anything like this." Dad shook his head. "Seems to go against everything we thought we knew."

"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 artof 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.'

A nauseating kind of softness washed through me. I sat down on the edge of my mattress, staring down at the words, rereading them. They slid into the empty gaps between my ribs, a heaviness to them, my throat tight as I imagined Adam writing this message and slipping it into my bag so I'd find it later.

‘That's on me, and I'm sorry.'

I didn't want him to be sorry. I wanted him here, right here, so I could look him in the eye and tell him he was worth it. My pride didn't matter—I wanted him for as long as I could have him. I dug out my phone to call him, then remembered that he'd still be stuck at the dinner hosted in his honour. Even if he picked up, he wouldn't be able to talk freely.

Typing a message was not the same, so I locked my phone and set it on the bedside table.

I'd see him tomorrow.