18. Adam

Building things had brought my family into power. Oh, we dabbled in related areas, but ask anyone what we did? The answer would be construction. It was our brand ever since an ancestor had brought the sweeping iron-and-steel structure of the Crystal Palace to fruition.

As such, I was used to the sight of hard hats and clipboards, to portable toilets and safety footwear. The residential area of the Green Horizon Initiative was not so different, if larger in scale than anything I'd publicly fronted before. Now that the ground had settled, earth mages were gearing up to stabilise the soil before construction would start in earnest.

Gale had arrived just before me, already in a discussion with the site manager as I walked up. The man, a wiry guy in his late forties with a take-no-prisoners attitude, had worked for us before. He greeted me with a respectful nod, yet none of the nervous deference I detected on the faces of some men and women who'd witnessed me clearing this very site just under a week ago. Many people enjoyed the theory of watching a Nova in action while the practice turned weaker stomachs.

As Gale and the site manager wrapped up their discussion, I reminded the man about CDM Regulations just as Liam joined us, drawing up next to me. Even just looking at him hurt a little. He seemed tired too, muted light catching the shadows under his eyes, but the smile he shot me was genuine. I smiled back and wished I could touch him.

God.

"How was the party?" he asked once the site manager strode off to assemble his crew.

I glanced around to make sure no one other than Gale could hear us. "About as fun as expected."

"That bad, huh?"

Three people asking Cassandra and me when we'd get married. Her father delivering a speech about the virtue of strong alliances. Christian joking about how our social gatherings may soon turn into live episodes of Guess Who Isn't Pregnant?

I lowered my voice. "It would have been far more bearable with you there."

Gale's attention flicked from me to Liam and then back to me with a tiny smile. I'd had very little unobserved time with him since my return, just enough to tell him that yes, something had happened, but no, I wasn't sure what it meant. (A lot. A lot.) We'd arrived separately because he'd stay to oversee this site, so I also hadn't asked him yet about the idea of someone's magic growing stronger during adulthood.

"Hey, well." Liam lifted one shoulder, his eyes soft. "I did invite you to have dinner with my family. Not my fault you preferred the shark tank."

"Since when does it matter what I prefer?" It came out rather bitter. Liam raised a hand as though to touch my shoulder, seemed to remember our audience, and combed back his own hair instead.

"And here I thought..." He stopped for a glance at Gale, who shot him a quirked grin. I tilted my head at Liam to continue. "And here I thought," he repeated, "that the weekend was all about exploring your preferences."

"Should I leave?" Gale asked, voice wryly amused, and I liked that he was comfortable enough with Liam to be just a tad cheeky. I liked that Liam fit.

I couldn't afford to think in those terms.

"Nah," Liam said. "This is about as explicit as it's going to get."

"Oh." I let the corners of my mouth tilt down. "Now that's disappointing."

"Well," Liam said with a wave at our surroundings. "People, yeah?"

Right, yeah. We weren't alone anymore.

Had he found my note? Briefly, our eyes met, and something about the way he inclined his head told me that yes, he had. I'm sorry.

It was Gale who steered the discussion towards what we were actually here for, namely the status and plan for the site. We'd start by laying the base for the underground car park, the waste recycling chamber, and the energy tower that rooted deep in the soil. The rest of the site would spiral out from there, a puzzle that was clear in Gale's mind. Thinking in three dimensions came easily to him, always had—even when we'd been younger, he'd effortlessly beaten Christian and me at Jenga, never the one who made the tower of wooden blocks collapse.

In addition, this area was his baby. He'd worked with other architects, of course, but the overarching vision was his. For all that my brother was the quiet type, he held strong opinions on aesthetics and construction quality. I saw no issue with leaving the oversight of this area largely to him.

Liam and I were slotted to move on to the next site. Just as we turned to leave, I halted as though something had only just occurred to me. "Hey, Gale? Someone mentioned…It seemed odd, but are there cases of people's magic growing stronger even as adults?"

Gale's face shifted with a flash of wistfulness before it smoothed out. "There are cases, yeah. But as far as I could tell, it's really rare and limited to people who moved communities. Like, it can take a while for their magic to adapt and connect with the new place."

Liam made a small sound of intrigue, his tone light. "Interesting. And makes sense, I guess. Wonder if that's the kind of thing that could take multiple generations?"

Multiple generations? I carefully didn't look at him.

"Probably." Gale shrugged, exhaled. "Not something I've looked into in any detail—hardly relevant to our family."

There was nothing I could say. Maybe I shouldn't have asked him in the first place, but other than my father, Gale was unparalleled in his familiarity with our library.

"Okay, so Liam and I should move on. You're in charge here, all right?" I shot him a gentle smile, and the tense line of his mouth relaxed a little.

"Thanks."

"Thank you," Liam told Gale. "It's a great help, knowing you're handling things around here."

Maybe I loved him.

No.

Gale's features brightened noticeably. "My pleasure."

Funny, wasn't it, how both he and I liked feeling useful—a result, perhaps, of how we'd grown up under the weight of expectations that neither of us could truly fulfil.

After a quick further exchange, Liam and I headed towards the exit. With security cameras all over the place, I was acutely aware of the relative distance between us, the hazy light that filtered through the veil adding a sense of abstractness to the moment. We were quiet until we emerged onto the road and into the brightness of a sunny morning, our cars parked a couple of minutes away.

As we started walking, I brushed my fingertips over Liam's palm for a fleeting point of connection. He slid me a warm look.

"Hi," I whispered.

"Good morning," Liam whispered back before I could begin to feel silly or sentimental.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, still hushed as a harried man in a suit stepped around us and continued his speed-walk.

Liam tilted his head to the side, sunlight slanting over his face. "A little calmer. And there's also…Nan Jean told us some stuff last night."

"Stuff?" I echoed.

"About…" He paused, then shook his head. "Later, okay?"

"My flat?" A chance to be alone in a space that I'd always thought of as mine—yet after just a few times of Liam staying there, it felt like maybe he belonged there too. At least a little.

He sent me another warm look, laced with a promise. "Yes."

I didn't know how to put words to the bright, weightless feeling in my chest. So I stayed silent and kept walking, perhaps a tad closer than before.

* * *

When we arrivedat the Finsbury site, George was already there. Responsible for the planting aspects in what would become a green oasis with a central community cafe, he went to greet us with a knowing smirk and a, "So! Great weekend, I've heard."

"Please raise your voice," Liam said. "I'm not sure everyone on the other side of London heard you."

"I am as subtle as a ballerina on her tiptoes," he declared grandly, and I bit down on a laugh. There was something disarming about George, an easy air of acceptance that meant I didn't worry about what he knew. Anyway, he'd kept my secret for over a year already.

"Seems there's a bit of a perception gap between your own self image and how others see you." Liam's focus moved from George to me. "But also, yes. It was a great weekend."

I met Liam's gaze and inhaled, warmth rising to my cheeks. To draw attention away from myself, I asked George, "So, any further dating disasters lately?"

George was all too happy to launch into a tale about a woman who'd thought that their lunch date meant she could also order a round of takeaway sushi for dinner, on his tab. He'd fired the matchmaker after that and had instead reached out to a woman who'd been a year above and out of his league in school.

"She's interesting," he said. "Like, she has opinions on the revival of heirloom plant varieties, and we discussed historical gardening styles." His nose wrinkled. "Although she has this weird fondness for Japanese Zen gardens—which, no."

Heirloom plants and Japanese Zen gardens? Not my idea of a thrilling date, but to each their own.

"You're such a nerd, mate," Liam told George. It was laced with open fondness, and for some reason, it weighed heavy in my stomach. Not jealousy, not quite—I'd never detected anything more than friendship between them.

Liam and I, though? We weren't friends. Or…we were, but not primarily. I'd wanted him before I'd liked him, the physical pull an inextricable part of our connection. If he moved on—when he did, dissatisfied with everything I couldn't offer…Fuck, it would hurt to be his friend.

But it was better than nothing.

Liam and George had segued into debating the merits of dating someone who kept you on your intellectual toes. "If you think she's the kind of person who won't bore you even twenty years from now?" Liam's smile turned out crooked. "That's who you want to hold onto, isn't it?"

"I don't get bored half as easily as you do," George stated, only to shoot me a quick look. "Present company obviously excluded."

Liam glanced at me just as I glanced at him. I looked away first.

‘I wouldn't get bored with you.' It was what he'd told me at the beach house, wasn't it? A faint echo of his words was lodged behind my ribs like an impossible promise.

"Well." I cleared my throat and shot Liam a weak grin. "Fair warning—if you're looking for stellar insights into heirloom plants, you've come to the wrong person." Acknowledging our…thing, our whatever-this-was, in front of Liam's friend felt different from hinting at it with Gale. More daring somehow, closer to something that was real and tangible.

"Liam and plants?" George snorted, friendly exasperation in his tone. "He's got the kind of brown thumb that may kill a cactus if he looks at it the wrong way."

Not with the kind of magic now coursing through him. I held my tongue, not sure how much Liam had already shared.

"Thanks, mate," Liam said dryly. "I can always count on you to make me look good."

"It's what I'm here for."

"Thought you were here to do a job."

George pursed his mouth, a grin tucked into the corners of his eyes. "I'm a multi-tasker."

"With a PhD in bullshit?" Liam asked.

"Nah, that's more of a personal hobby."

I suspected they could go on all day if left to their own devices. Much like a spectator at a tennis match, I made an exaggerated show of watching their banter bounce back and forth until the arrival of the site manager cut things short. After a brief exchange on how George and his people would work with the rest of the crew in charge of the cafe and energy concept, Liam and I left them to it.

The Covent Garden site was in full swing by the time we arrived, earth mages reshaping the terrain. Originally, J. Brown had been meant to lead here. The new contractor was less experienced with large-scale projects and seemed both motivated and subtly daunted, in particular by the untested technomancy elements. While I was confident they'd grow into the task, I made a mental note to drop by a tad more than I usually would.

"It's really happening, isn't it?" Liam asked as we left the site and our cars behind, my flat just a few minutes away on foot.

I took half a second to study his profile. He was stunning. Perhaps not classically beautiful, the cut of his nose a hint too stubborn to tick the box, but God, he stole my breath. "Yeah," I said then. "It is."

Something about my tone might have tipped him off because he glanced over and smiled, slow and quiet. Surrounded by tourists and locals, it felt safe to let our elbows bump, so I did.

Liam's focus dropped to my mouth. His voice blended in with the shadows cast by high-rising buildings. "I can't wait to get you alone."

Heat rose to the back of my neck. I bit the inside of my cheek to stop myself from reaching for him, crowds be damned. "Me too," I managed.

We didn't talk much as we walked the rest of the way, gazes tangling every so often. The interior of my building welcomed us with cool shade, and I stopped to exchange a few bites of small talk with the doorman while Liam hung back, hands in his pockets. He followed me towards the lift.

I entered first, waited for the doors to slide shut behind us—and was about to erase the gap between us when Liam shook his head. His gaze darted up, and fuck, right, camera. I dipped my chin as Liam crossed his arms and leaned back against the mirrored wall. Silence stretched like a brittle rubber band.

Yet here we are.

We exited into the top-floor hallway. I unlocked the door and held it for Liam, followed him inside. For a beat, my heart twisted in my throat, unsure. Then Liam reached for me and we crashed together, my fingers fisting in his T-shirt, his hands flat on my back to bring me closer. Our mouths slid together.

Finally. Finally.

Just us now.

* * *

Languid sweetness swirledthrough my blood like heavy wine.

Liam used a corner of the sheet to wipe the mess off my belly before he sprawled out beside me. We hadn't closed the curtains around the bed, had seen no need to—the roof windows showed only sky. Sunlight gleamed on his naked back, and I leaned over him, kissed his shoulder and the nape of his neck.

He turned his head for a smile, his face relaxed like it hadn't been all morning. "Feel better?" he asked.

I smiled back. "Isn't that my line?"

"We can timeshare." His gaze skimmed over my chest and throat before he met my eyes. "You just seemed a little…sad this morning."

Huh.

Maybe, yes. I hadn't thought anyone would notice.

I settled next to him on my side, sharing my pillow. "Just crash-landing back in the land of family expectations," I said quietly. "Hit me a bit harder than usual, I guess."

He watched me with warm focus, like nothing outside this shared space truly mattered. God, I wished.

"Let's run away together." I hadn't planned to say that—it was errant daydreaming, silly afterglow notions. "Somewhere where our magic doesn't matter. Sicily. Corsica."

"We could get a fishing boat." Liam's eyes were blue like the morning sky. "We'll spend what remains of our magic so it runs on an empty tank, and then it's just us and the sea."

We wouldn't. Of course we wouldn't—we both had people who depended on us. But a boy could dream.

I reached out to tangle my fingers with his and brought our laced hands up between us. "Deal. I'm sure I can learn how to cook fish the normal way."

"Pack our bags, meet at the port at midnight?"

"I'll bring the coffee machine."

"Won't need that in Italy. Great coffee everywhere."

"Excellent point," I said. "Sicily it is."

We lay there, skin cooling and sunlight flowing around us, distant urban sounds spilling through the open windows. Minutes slipped away as though time had become inconsequential.

If only.

With a small sigh, I reached down to draw a corner of the duvet over us. "I know I asked earlier, but really, how are you feeling?"

A corner of his mouth quirked. "Like my brain just melted and I'm trying to scoop up the remains?"

"Well, same." I puffed out a laugh that floated in the air for a second before it evaporated. "But I meant your magic. You said it's calmer?"

"A little, yeah." His eyes turned thoughtful as he studied me. "Nan thinks I'm somewhere around Sun-level now. Which—Jesus, Adam. That's nowhere near the power you wield, and already it feels like I could go mad with it."

Sun-level. Did he mean each element, or the combination of all four?

"You mean because of how it weighs on you?" I asked. The drain was mental rather than physical—a constant deviation of attention that I only noticed when returning to London after a few days away.

"No. Well, yes. That, too." He shifted, attention drifting away. "But it's even more how…aware I am of everything."

Right, yes—there was that. For a while, after my mum's death, I'd taken to letting my magic roam freely, taking refuge in all those little blips and signals that drowned out the noise in my head.

A lit cigarette on a rainy road. A chef's flambé in a high-end restaurant, flames dancing atop a pan. An explosion of fireworks during a festival. Electrical energy sparking within the underground.

It had been a while since I'd lost myself in my surroundings. Liam, though? With four elements at his fingertips, the world might seem abruptly overwhelming.

"You'll learn to set boundaries," I told him gently. "It's like opening or closing a door, and you'll get better at consciously choosing which one it'll be at any given moment."

He pressed his lips together, then exhaled. "Yeah, probably. I've got some control, you know—like now, with you, it's not like I'm half-listening to water gurgling in the sewers or the like. And it is amazing, in a way. Sensing so much, I mean. But it's also..."

"A lot," I finished for him.

"Yeah."

I watched him for a quiet second. "Most of us, you know—we grow into this gradually. When we're kids and coming into our powers. For you, it's just…a bit more of a knee-jerk impact, I guess. But you're good, you're so good—you'll handle it."

"I think it's already getting easier." Liam's gaze slid to my mouth, just for a blink of an eye, before his focus relaxed. "What Gale said earlier, though? About how it can take a while for magic to connect with a new place."

"You asked if it could be multiple generations." I lightly squeezed his fingers. "What did Nan Jean say?"

"That her biological father was from a powerful French family." Liam's voice took on a pastel shade. "They met during the Second World War, and he returned home before he learned she was pregnant."

"French magic is different," I said. "Or—parts of it are."

That was how my father had put it. He and Eleanor had taken a trip to the Palace of Versailles a couple of years ago, when a client had asked us to remodel part of his mansion in the style of King Louis XIV's former royal residence. They'd met some bigwigs of the Parisian magical elite, and for a while, the idea of a London-Paris business alliance with the Blanchard family had hung in the air.

As one half of the feud that had set Notre Dame on fire, the Blanchards had been looking to forge new ties, and my family never said no to a powerful ally of questionable repute. With a mere two train hours separating Paris and London, I was sure that if either of my youngest cousins had commanded enough magic to make for an attractive marriage prospect, arrangements with the Blanchards' only son would have been made.

"Different," Liam echoed.

I tucked a foot between Liam's ankles and tried to remember what my dad had said on the topic. "Something about…It's elemental too, but it differs in certain aspects."

"What aspects?"

"I'm not sure. I think that's all my father said on the topic—he's not the sharing type." I sent Liam a lopsided smile. "Now, which family was it your great-grandfather belonged to? I'm sure there's something in our library that'll let me find out more."

The corners of Liam's mouth pulled down. "Nan Jean doesn't know. Her mother never told her—just that the family was powerful, and that she wasn't sure how they would have reacted to illegitimate offspring. Possibly badly, possibly by demanding a move to Paris so Nan Jean could be raised there."

"Oh. That's not a lot to go on, is it?"

"No, it's not." Then Liam paused. "Well. Also, he came over as part of the Dunkirk Evacuation. And he broke off an existing engagement to someone else when he returned to see my great-grandmother one more time, after the war. But she'd already married and didn't tell him that Nan Jean was his child."

"He broke off an engagement?" I asked. If the French community was anything like ours, it would be considered an enormous slight, almost unforgivable in nature—succession planning was a matter of life or death. Literally.

"Apparently, yeah." Liam reached out to trace one of my eyebrows with his index finger, and only then did I realise I was frowning. His voice dipped low. "Hey. Let's drop it for now, okay?"

I didn't want to drop it. My brain was sifting through vague questions and possibilities, not really settling on anything, just spinning out in three directions at once.

Powerful. France. A broken engagement, some eighty years ago. Dunkirk.

But when I met Liam's eyes, I caught the tiredness etched into their corners. Yesterday morning, when we'd woken up together at the beach house, he'd looked bright and well-rested, if a hint wistful as he'd watched me.

Let's run away together.

I coaxed a smile onto my face, drawing it up from the pit of my stomach. "How about a nap?"

Liam studied me for a beat before he nodded, hair whispering against the pillow. He moved in for a gentle brush of our mouths.

I closed my eyes and held onto him.

* * *

Liam left around two,after we'd slept for a couple of hours and had shared leftover cheese, nuts, and an apple on my balcony. It wasn't until I got ready to head out myself that I noticed the folded note sitting next to my wallet and keys.

‘Even if it's hiding, you're worth every second.'

Was I?

I bit my lip against the sting of tears and took a deep breath. Another. Then I tucked the note into my wallet.

A reminder, just in case I forgot.

* * *

When I arrived backat the manor, my family was largely absent. Only my youngest cousin Arabella practised the piano in the wing that housed my aunt, uncle, and their two daughters. Christian was old enough to have his own space.

I used the chance and ducked into the library. Years ago, Gale had sorted our books on magic by topics, and it took me precious minutes to locate the section that dealt with other countries. China, Italy, Egypt…There—France.

Six books in total. Neither France's mythology nor its magical society in the Middle Ages seemed likely to yield much relevant information, so I dismissed those books along with two more on the witchcraft trials and on Catherine de Medici's ties to the occult sciences. More promising was one titled Parisian Arcana, and another on France's most prominent magical families, published some twenty years ago.

It was a place to start. I turned to make my escape, books tucked under one arm.

And found my father standing in the doorway.

He was studying me with an air of aloof surprise, and how had I not caught his approach? Maybe because the tinkling notes of my cousin's practice still filled the air. But I wasn't doing anything forbidden, not at all—just browsing for a thrilling read, felt like developing a sudden niche interest in France's magical tapestry, don't mind me.

"Now that's an unexpected sight," he said, one eyebrow arched as he stepped into the room.

Casual, casual. It wasn't like he'd be able to sniff the connection to Liam on me. And maybe, longer term, Liam might even want to make a subtle show of his growing powers—but not yet, not while he was still adjusting.

My shrug turned out suitably dismissive, tone light. "Now that I'm thirty, I figure it's time to sharpen my mind along with my body."

"How commendable." My father glanced at the books. "And your chosen intellectual gateway is France?"

"Cassandra mentioned she'd love a trip to Paris sometime. It reminded me that you said magic is completely different there." My expression was pleasant enough to qualify for a monarch's royal portrait.

"Not completely different," my father corrected. Like most people, he found it hard to leave an imprecise statement uncommented. "But there are nuances."

I tilted my head. "Nuances?"

"A small number of families are capable of controlling more than two elements, for one." My father put it out there as a casual statement.

"Oh?" Polite interest was what I aimed for, and I hoped I succeeded. "How strange. I thought it was one of those elemental rules. Pun unintended."

My father pursed his mouth, watching me with a strange kind of attention. "Not for those rare few who draw power from the ley lines."

Ley lines. Really?

In the UK, the concept of magical currents that connected geographical and historical landmarks, monuments and sacred spaces, had fallen into near-obscurity. Sure, there were some who still defended the idea, pointing to how the biggest magical communities had evolved around storied sites—magic thrived where a great many people got together and shared tales and beliefs.

I shifted the books in my arm. "Right, you might have mentioned that. Isn't that just a myth, though? It seems odd that they would have learned how to do it and everyone here has failed."

"As always, innovation is the result of circumstances, determination, and happenstance."

Something about his tone resonated oddly with me. My father was no fan of answering endless questions, though, so I'd have to select them carefully. "The Blanchard family…" I hesitated. "Do they control all four elements?"

They'd fit the bill, wouldn't they? Not that I knew much about them, but they certainly were powerful—the burnt ruin of Notre Dame could speak to that. What were the chances, though?

"Since when are you taking a vested interest in strengthening our alliances?" The words were laced with pointed criticism. All right, time to make my escape if I didn't want another debate about when to announce the engagement.

"Since always," I said. "I just happen to think there are various ways of going about it."

The words carried slightly more challenge than I usually dared with my dad, and the way his eyes narrowed told me he'd noticed. With measured steps, I moved towards the door—I better get out before I lost my embryonic backbone.

"Adam." It was sharp as a whip. Fuck.

"Yes?" I turned slowly, calmly. Showing nerves would only encourage him to come down hard in the hopes that I'd finally crack—we'd been here before. Last time things had escalated, I'd ended up in a pub and, some time later, with Liam's cock down my throat.

"Need I remind you"—my dad's clear enunciation sought to make a point—"that you have a duty to this family?"

"Trust me, I'm well aware." I rolled my shoulders back and raised my head, allowing bitterness to tinge my tone. "Hard to forget, really, when that seems to be my sole purpose around here."

"I do not have time for this."

"Oh, excuse me." I bit out a sharp laugh. "I do damn near everything you ask of me, Dad—just like a good little foot soldier. But of course you don't have time for my…what? My drama?"

"My job is to protect this family, Adam—and by God, I will." He shook his head in exasperation. "Coddling you hasn't accomplished anything, now has it?"

"Coddling me?" I repeated blankly. "Is a simple ‘I see you' really too much to ask for?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake—I am not your mother."

I drew back, a harsh intake of air rasping along my throat. Faint piano notes floated by, the sickeningly sweet piece turning my stomach as I stared at my father and he stared back. His face was impassive even though I caught a brief glint of regret in his eyes.

"Message received," I said softly.

He inhaled as though to speak. Then he nodded once, a dismissal, and I honestly didn't know why I'd expected more from him. I should have learned by now.

I slipped out of the room and into the hallway, my steps echoing on the polished marble. ‘You're worth every second.' I tried to focus on the warm weight of the words rather than the fact that Liam deserved better.

He did, yes.

But I was his for as long as he would have me.