Fire Stones (The Fire Wars #2) (13 page)

           
I’m sixteen
, I said to myself.
I’m supposed to be going to high school, making good grades, planning for college, picking a career, hanging out with friends, dating boys.
But instead I was embroiled in a war in which there was no side I could trust, nobody I could truly count on. Fire or Water – Mars or Poseidon – Abzu, Hephaestus…danger lurked around every corner. And the one person who should have warned me, the one person who should have protected me, had lied to me my entire life, and left me to fend for myself.

            How could I ever get over that?

            “Mac, please!” Chance insisted. “What’s going on – what’s wrong? You left so suddenly, without even eating anything. Are you feeling okay?”

            “No,” I cried. “No, Chance, I’m not! I just found out that my Mom’s an Embodiment, that she’s working with my enemies, that she lied to me my whole life…”

            “Hold up!” Chance put out a hand to steady me. “What are you talking about?”

            I took a deep breath and started again, more slowly this time. “My mother,” I cried. “She’s an Embodiment too. That’s what all this is about. She’s the goddess of Rivers, Yami.”

            “Rivers? You mean…”

            “She’s a Water goddess,” I said. “Apparently she’s closer to Fire than most of the Water deities – but still! She’s not Yami – she’s Rose Evers! My mom!”

            “Oh, Mac….” Chance pulled me close, leaning my head against his chest. “Mac – I know this is a lot for you to deal with; I know it’s been hard…”

            “
Hard
? Only my entire life uprooted in a matter of months! You knew about your destiny from the beginning – you and Varun both! You had Antonio to guide you. But me, I’ve had to figure this all out from scratch.”

            “You had me…” Chance kissed the top of my head. He hesitated. “…and Varun. Both of us. To show you the ropes. To rely on.”

            “But my destiny! If I’m supposed to have all these Fire powers…but my mother’s allied with the Waters.”

            Chance’s face fell. His eyes darkened with sympathy. He stroked my hair, his touch gentle and yet possessive. “You must listen to your own heart, Mac. You must go with what feels right. Listen to what your strength tells you. You found the stones, didn’t you? And each stone will bring you closer to your nature as Vesta – and the choice that she had to make.”

            He pulled me in for a kiss – a kiss that was so strong that it made me see stars. My head started spinning. The heat between us began to flame up; my skin was scorched and yet I felt no pain, only the ecstasy of his touch, his kiss. He had never kissed me like this before. This wasn’t the kiss of Chance Cutter, high school student. This was the kiss of Mars – the fire deity – in all his power. I had experienced this kiss before in my dreams and my visions, but this was reality.

            I gasped as he pulled away, my heart severed in two by the pain of parting from him. I looked around in surprise. All around us, flames had sprung up from the earth, blazing wildly in a circle around us.
Vesta’s flames.

           
“Did you feel that?” Chance looked at me.  “That pain – as we sprang apart just now. It was so physical – so visceral. It hurt to let go.”

            I was trembling. “It hurt me too,” I whispered. “I know – my one, my love, my only.”

            Chance stopped in surprise. “What did you just say?”

            I blushed. I hadn’t meant to let myself get so emotional.

            “My one, my love, my only – that’s what Vesta and I always used to say to each other. Our special phrase for one another.”

            I clapped a hand over my mouth. So Vesta was taking over now. I remembered the words from  my dreams, but this time they seemed to spring from a hidden place within my soul – rushing from my lips with a new power.  Vesta’s words in my mouth. Vesta’s spirit in my body. She was taking over – kissing Chance with my body, calling him
my one, my love, my only.

           
We parted as lovers, and I somehow managed to get through the next day without blowing up at my mom. She’d been ill, I knew, and had been through a lot, and right now wasn’t the time to get angry at her or blame her for her lack of honesty with me. I had to swallow my bubbling confusion – save my questions for later. Yet the next night, when I met Chance out in the open fields, I felt a vast sense of relief. Being with him was easy – it felt natural, right. All my worries and anger about my mother seemed to vanish when he wrapped me in his arms and ran his tongue so lightly across my lips. He gave me a long, deep hug, looking into my eyes. But something was strange about him. He seemed oddly tense – his shoulders straight, his expression dark.

            “I’m glad you’re back, Mac,” he said.           

            “I’m glad to be back, too.” I smiled up at Chance. “I missed you so much – the ocean was so dark, so lonely without you. I missed flying through the air with you. I missed our fire.”

            Chance frowned. He opened his mouth –as if to say something – but then shut it again. His cheeks colored slightly and at last he cleared his throat and spoke. “Going back down into the ocean like that – it was dangerous, wasn’t it?”

            “Yeah,” I admitted. “I don’t know what might have happened if I’d tried to go down there alone. For starters, I’d have drowned.”

            “I…uh…” Chance swallowed hard, his jaw twitching almost imperceptible. “I’m glad that Varun was able to help you, I guess.”

            “You don’t have to worry,” I said to Chance. “Nothing happened between me and Varun, I promise you that.” After all, infidelity in thought wasn’t the same thing as acting on those feelings in real life. “It was perfectly platonic. I know it was hard for you to admit that – that you two aren’t on the best of terms…”

            “That’s how I lost her, you know.” Chance turned from me. “The other one. That’s how she met him. I sent her – she decided to go – on a mission to the ocean, to the Water gods. Another flood had started to wash away the earth, and she decided to go see if maybe some of the more moderate Water deities might be willing to compromise, to make an alliance against the extremists. Poseidon – Varun – was one such deity. She went to his palace as a diplomatic gesture, asking him for help against those who, like Abzu, would see the earth destroyed and covered in waves. And…she never truly returned – not in spirit. His shining pearl palace, the beauty of mermaids, the rainbow scales of flying fish – all these things enchanted her, so that she forgot the heat of the flames and the feeling of soft earth between one’s fingers. She forgot me, and her love for me.” He sighed. “When she came back from the sea, she was different, somehow. Paler. Her fire abilities didn’t work as they once had. She didn’t kiss me with the same fire. And then, one night, she simply left…walked into the ocean and let the waves take her to her new lover.” He pulled me in for another kiss, desperate in its urgency. I felt his passion shiver through me.

            He pulled away and smiled.

            “But you’re happy now.”

            “I am happy,” Chance almost laughed aloud. “I’m overjoyed, my darling. You see, you came back. You returned to me. You didn’t leave me for Varun the way Vesta did. I can feel it in your kiss that you still love me. I can feel your passion for me.”

            I looked up at him, my eyes making contact with his. After all this time, his beauty still had the power to surprise me, to make me tremble with desire – even now!

            “Come with me, Mac,” Chance put out a hand. “I think it’s time. I think you’re ready.”

            “For what?”

            “To see what Fire can really do.”

            In an instant his arms were around me, and we were flying through the air – up, up, higher than we had ever been before. The island was but a tiny dot surrounded by water – and yet we flew higher, the whole globe spread out before us, pin-pricks of land surrounded by waves.

            “Where are we going?” I cried. But Chance did not reply, flying faster and faster until I couldn’t see the earth below us at all but only the darkness of the night and the stars all around us.

            And then I saw it. A small blue globe – as small as the moon had looked from the field. Millions of miles away.

            Earth. 

            “What’s going on?” I started screaming, terrified – but somehow I was still alive, still breathing. Defying gravity as we flew through the darkness like shooting stars. “Where are we?” My heart was beating a thousand times a minute.

            “We’re where we belong, Mac. Our true home.”

            “I don’t understand. Where are we going?”

            “Somewhere you’ll love, my darling. Somewhere you once loved. The heavens – where the sun and sky were born.” He held me closer, kissing me. His lips tasted so sweet; they gave me life and air. “I would never have dared attempt this without you – I have not been up here for thousands of years. But now that you’re here…” 

            “I don’t understand.”

            “As you Awaken, you are not only becoming stronger, you’re making the rest of us stronger too. All Embodiments are reaching their full potential. And I am becoming the Mars I once was – capable of flying into the very heart of the sun itself. Once, Vesta and I used to fly out here, fly into the center of the sun, luxuriating in its heat. Now, I want us to do the same.”

            “But won’t it hurt us?”

            “You’re with me, my darling. We can Unify. Nothing will hurt you now.”

            And so we flew into the heart of the sun, golden fire shooting and kindling all around us. I was  intoxicated by its beauty. Its heat did not burn me, but only warmed my skin – a pleasant glow that filled me with passion and power.

            And then Chance put his hand on mine, and placed it into the heart of the sun. To my surprise, I felt something there – something hard in my hand.

            “Another stone!” I looked down to see a topaz stone glimmering in my palm. “But how did you know…?”

            “I guessed,” said Chance. “That Vesta would hide a stone here where our hearts first united. But I couldn’t bring you here, couldn’t get here myself, until I was sure you truly loved me, sure that we could Unify. But now I know – you have made me stronger than ever. You have made me a better man – and a better deity. You are my one, my love, my only. And now the stone is yours. The topaz that protects against death. Keep it always, my love. Keep yourself safe.”

            The journey back no longer frightened me. I looked around in awe at the stars and planets swirling all around us – at the enormous surface of the moon. If the ocean had left me breathless, it was yet nothing when compared to the beauty of the heavens. I felt a sudden sense of surety: this,
this
was my home.
This
was where I belonged. When we landed safely on the ground at Aeros, I felt a sense of sadness – even loneliness – homesick for a place I had only just seen.

            “How did you do that?” I asked Chance, when we had landed. “Find the stone.”

            “My chance to help you retrieve the Topaz stone was given to me by the great powers of Fire on one condition.”

            “What was that?”

            “That you returned from the sea, my darling. Home to Aeros. Home to me.”

Chapter
16

           
T
hat night I dreamed once again of Mars and Vesta, of our glorious palace built of flames and gold. I dreamed of his lips against mine, of his bare chest against my naked body, of his arms tracing the contours of my back. I dreamed of the sweetness of his kiss, the softness of his words, the roughness of his embrace. I dreamed that he called me once more by the names I had called him on the field, the names that proved our love: “my love, my one, my only.” I woke up drenched in sweat, exhausted and yet invigorated at the same time.

            But real life had to continue, one way or another. Now that my mother was better I was heading back to school, doing my best to make up for the work I’d missed in my absence. I hadn’t spoken to her much since the illness – while she was better, she was still weak enough for Antonio to insist that she take a week of paid leave to stay in bed, and so our conversations mostly revolved around what kind of soup she wanted me to heat up for dinner. Neither one of us brought up her confession; we both assiduously avoided the subject. Too dangerous for both of us, I reasoned. I just had to treat her like my normal mother, like the Rose Evers I knew. Maybe she’d never bring it up again – maybe I’d just be able to forget…

            My daily shopping trips thus became a longed-for afternoon escape from time at home with my mother. I couldn’t stand the awkward silences, the conversations about nothing that glossed over the  most important confession she had ever  made to me. The farmers’ market at Aeros was one of the best in the Archipelago – after the Erosion, fruits and vegetables had grown scarce, and farmers’ markets in our old home had been limited to a couple of dessicated zucchini and maggot-eaten carrots. But here, the produce was fresh and luscious – free even of the chemicals the government sprayed into most Archipelago fields to make them grow. I enjoyed tasting the free samples – an unheard-of delight back home, where things were too dear to be made available for less than a princely sum – and smelling the sweet aromas of oranges and tangerines, bananas and pineapples, tomatoes and leeks – each item brighter and more colorful than the last. I purposely lingered over the eggplant, haggling with the couple behind the counter, just to avoid going home and dealing with another night with my mother. She’d just gone back to work that day, but I knew that she’d be home in a few hours, and I wanted to stay out as long as possible.