Revealed in Fire by K.F. Breene

Fifteen

The day had been unpardonablydull so far, and given we were sliding into early evening, it didn’t seem like it would get much better. The soggy toast soaked in what tasted like sugar and honey and spices for breakfast had been decent, but the egg-like things served with them had been a little gross. I couldn’t put my finger on why, though. Maybe because it was an unidentified type of animal, and I tended to like knowing what was going into my mouth. What if they’d stolen those bad boys, and now we’d have a pissed-off magical creature after us? It would be a good hazing situation.

Wandering around, looking for more of Penny’s rocks, had only been fun because she tromped into people’s yards and they pretended not to notice. That was a green light for me to peer into their windows to see how far they’d go before saying anything. Turned out, it was really far. Sometimes they didn’t even glance over in annoyance. Didn’t even flick their eyes my way! It was a lesson in self-restraint that had me really admiring these people. I never could’ve pulled it off.

The cucumber-like sandwiches for lunch were gross. I didn’t know what they were attempting with those, but whatever it was, it had failed. I ate them, because I was hungry, but told Darius in no uncertain terms that he’d better start cooking or we’d have a problem. I didn’t know how he was going to manage without an oven, but I had faith he’d figure something out.

Now, early evening, kind of dreading dinner, Penny, Emery, Darius, and I had been wandering around aimlessly, but we were running out of things to do. Per Charity’s request, we were giving her people time to sort themselves out. But man, this place boasted some horrible hobbies to pass the time. I didn’t want to do any of them. Painting? I suck at it, thanks. Cross-stitch? Why bother? Table making? Good Lord, where is the alcohol…

Callie and Dizzy, tired from the traveling, were taking time to lounge. If only I was tired enough to do the same thing.

“What’s this…like a fighting thing?” I asked, at the edge of a large expanse of spongy grass filled with organized groups moving in a dance-like way. One guy flipped over a woman and then landed on his back. She swung her wooden sword down and stopped at his neck.

“What was your first clue?” Emery said with a smirk.

But it didn’t look like any kind of fighting I’d ever known. They were almost civil with each other, stopping the moment it might get dirty, swinging their silly practice swords and ignoring their other body parts, like elbows, feet, or foreheads. What a waste of time. When, in the real world, weren’t things dirty?

It took me a moment to spot the shifters out there, because they were all in human form, Roger’s muscular body standing out among the lithe, graceful forms of the fae flitting around him.

I spotted Devon next, his bare back shining in the faux-sunlight, his movements nearly as quick as Roger’s. He’d be a serious alpha one day. I hoped he headed up to some other country, though. He seemed much too stuffy.

Even Cole had taken to the fields in human form, and that guy liked to show off his yeti.

“How dumb.” I started forward because…well, why not?

“Hey, pretty lady, fancy a fuck?”

Aaaaand my trajectory was altered immediately.

Steve lay within the shade of some big tree that I was sure had a long name, utterly relaxed with his dong hanging down. He caught sight of Darius trailing us, taking everything in.

“What’s up, bud?” I crouched down near his head.

“Oh, pity, you have that neck sucker with you.”

“He doesn’t just suck necks, if you know what I mean.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “You’re all battled out?”

“Didn’t bother. I got plenty to do in this place.”

“Oh yeah? Is it hanging your dick in people’s windows and seeing if they’ll notice? If I had one, I’d absolutely try that. I bet they wouldn’t even look.”

“The women would. All the little fae come running when this big lion shows up in town.”

“And yet…” I looked around us. “You are alone. That bad in bed, huh?”

His smile was lazy. “Just taking a break. Also, I think they are getting ready to put the First on trial. The fae are all distracted by that.”

Darius stilled, looking down at Steve for the first time. “Emery,” he said, “can you hide me from view in this place? I’ve never heard that fae can sense spells.”

“No, they can’t. Yeah, sure.”

“Fantastic. I intend to witness it, though it might be wise to ascertain when it will be held and scope out the location beforehand.”

“Should you do that, though?” Penny asked in a small voice. “What if they catch you listening in on private matters? They aren’t really cool with strangers.”

“Understatement,” Steve murmured.

“Reagan,” Darius said. “Can you distract the village so no one is bored enough to look for me?”

Steve started laughing. “Livin’ the dream, huh, Reagan? Causing mayhem.”

He had that right. Another green light to act against social norms? Yes, please. “Yup.”

“Don’t get us kicked out,” Penny said, grabbing Emery’s arm. “We can’t afford to be kicked out. We need their protection.”

“We have Lucifer’s heir.” Emery wrapped a comforting arm around her. I rolled my eyes on reflex. “They won’t kick us anywhere.”

“So good to be needed.” I grinned at Penny. Her expression darkened.

Steve pointed at the practice field. “You headed in?”

“What’s the deal with the shifters being in human form?” I asked.

“Ah…” Steve sighed and then scratched his chest. “These people are taking a while to warm up to us. The ones that were more receptive are either in the Brink watching the back door, or are busy with Romulus and Charity. These cats out here are still a bit iffy. They like fighting with us but aren’t sure yet about the animal form. Roger decided it was best just to fight in human form.”

“Huh.”

“You gonna go make them uncomfortable?”

If you can draw people here somehow, it would help Emery and me, Darius thought. I would like to get more information about their inner workings—their politics—but I need to get closer. They mistrust vampires.

“And for good reason, given you plan to skulk around and eavesdrop.”

“The first sign you’re cracking up is answering out loud questions that you asked yourself in your head,” Steve drawled.

“Only the first sign? Man, I’m way ahead of the curve.” I glanced at Darius. “How long do you need?”

You have a shelf life before people run screaming. Try to draw that out as long as possible.

Yeah, that might be hard.

Ever determined, I started forward.

“No, you’re going with her,” Emery said, and Penny had the look of someone who’d just realized she’d pulled the short end of the stick.

The soft breeze felt a little cooler here than it did elsewhere in the Realm. I wondered if the warrior fae had requested that of the elves, since it was a practice yard. The sun hung up there in the orange sky innocuously, and I really wanted to see how that whole thing worked, but I didn’t dare tear it away. The real sun would be up now, and Darius wouldn’t do so well in its rays.

“I don’t want any part of this,” Penny said, catching up to me.

“Then you should get more comfortable hanging out on your own. Co-dependency is a real issue for some, Penny.”

“Oh.” I could tell she nearly hesitated. “Is hanging out by myself an option?”

“No. Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“It almost never is!”

No one noticed me as I approached the weapons area on the side of the yard. There was a stack of wood and a chest filled with…balls? Hard rubber tennis balls, they seemed like. How odd.

I picked one up. Kind of heavy. Let’s see if it hurts.

I turned, aimed at Cole, and fired it off. He’d probably be the least forgiving of anyone in this whole practice yard. At least with me. We had beef. I planned to reignite old flames. Literally, since our first altercation had ended in me lighting his fur on fire.

The ball just barely missed his big melon.

“You throw weird,” Penny said, pushing me out of the way.

“I’m used to throwing knives. I never did get around to learning baseball.”

“Here, I’ll show you.” She grabbed another ball. “If you point with your other hand, and follow through with the throwing arm…” She turned and rocketed off a shot. It flew straight and true. “I had to learn baseball so I wasn’t made fun of. Then I was made fun of because baseball is apparently for boys, and I thought softball was just plain stupid. We have smaller hands—why should we get the bigger ball?”

The ball clunked off Cole’s head, knocking him to the side and giving his opponent a clear shot to stab him with a wooden sword. The dulled point obviously wouldn’t kill him, but it would definitely hurt.

“Do you know what you just did?” I asked with a grin as Cole cradled the side of his head. He shook his head, then snapped it back in our direction, looking at me. I pointed at Penny. “He gets real mad. He moves slowly, though. You’ll be okay.”

I grabbed a couple of the smaller practice swords.

“Wait…” Penny’s face turned bleach white, her hands now hanging loose at her sides. Sometimes she was so determined to show me up that she forgot what was at stake. I considered it my duty to remind her. “No.” She pointed at me, but her guilt was etched clearly on her face.

I laughed, picking out Roger’s tree-trunk frame amidst the reeds. “Good luck. Light his fur on fire. He hates that.”

“I’m not associated with her,” Penny yelled, and waved her hand. She shook her head for good measure, then pointed at me again. “I was forced into this friendship. If you knew me, you’d know that is entirely plausible.”

“He does know you. He’s not fooled,” I called back.

Cole started toward her.

“Tom Hanks’s doppelganger! I don’t want to fight! I’m not the fighting sort!” Penny started backing away, but I could already feel the spells stuffing the air. She was absolutely amazing under pressure, and given she had sneaky magic that allowed her to borrow the gifts of the people around her, she could use my magic to defend herself. Poor Cole. He’d learn to pick on someone his own size, and save the small, mousy types for the power hitters.

Roger took a wooden sword to his side on purpose, making the opponent commit, turning and lifting his arm so it would hit him in the thick slab of lateral muscle. That wasn’t the place you went for with a shifter like him. It wouldn’t hurt him with a practice sword, and it wouldn’t kill him with a blade. He was pure strength and power. He’d spent his life building that up just so he could withstand basic attacks. His brawn alone would make him a solid predator, but paired with his superior intellect and uncanny ability to read his opponents, it made him nearly unstoppable. It was why he was the alpha of the North American pack, generally heralded as one of the best alphas in the world. It was also why I always got a little nervous around him. But if Vlad didn’t give me pause, Roger sure shouldn’t either. I just had to rip off the Band-Aid.

“Hey, little doggy.” I whistled like I was calling him.

His focus snapped to me, and he took a jab to the shoulder without flinching. Boy did he hate when I riled him up.

“Here, little doggy, come to your master.” I whistled again, and then used air to push the fae he was fighting out of the way.

I needed to get the shifters really fighting. If these people were wary of them, all the more reason to show them what the shifters could do. Respect might come from that wariness. Or at least a hasty truce. I was no master negotiator.

Roger turned to me slowly, and a sheen of green magic flowed around his body. Good. I considered that progress.

“Don’t make me do it again!” Penny screeched right before a yeti’s pain-filled roar rolled across the field. “Sasquatch-shedding sonuva donkey! That throw was Reagan’s idea!”

She’d be fine. She was still stuck in the phase of blaming everything on me.

Roger rolled his shoulders. “This isn’t the time for this,” he said as I stopped twenty feet from him. I wanted a running start.

“Two thises don’t make a right.” I hefted the practice sword. “It’s a practice field. It’s the perfect time for this. And look.” I tossed it up, grabbed the blade end, and threw it like a knife. It did a lazy half-turn, right for him. He stepped to the side, and it flew past him. “That would’ve hit you. See? I have aim.”

“I commanded the shifters to stay in human form. You undermined that command.”

I furrowed my brow, then gestured to Penny, who looked pretty funny jogging backward and wagging her fingers, her hands raised in front of her body. I couldn’t feel the spell from the distance, but given she was still facing the (quite slow) lumbering beast rather than blindly running in the other direction, she was handling everything pretty well. The spell wouldn’t be that nasty. It would just really hurt. “I didn’t do anything. She did it. Punish her.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Roger asked.

“Do you really want me to answer that in front of all these people? It wouldn’t be a good look.” His stare made my bowels a little watery. So I gave him a little spur to get things moving. “Big, dumb doggy.”

The green, swirling magic intensified. He was trying to keep control. The guy was hard to crack.

“Isn’t it a rule that shifters can defy a command when their life is in danger?” I asked, going about this a different way. I didn’t want to keep belittling him, or he might hold a grudge. Or more grudges. But I did need him to change, so as to allow his people to change. Romulus said that shifters and fae fought incredibly well together—they loved the pairing—and these particular fae would never see that unless the shifters were in animal form. Roger needed to make that command, and to do so, he needed to give in to his beast.

But also, trying to get him to lose control was a little bit of fun, and I was doing insanely well on my job of turning everyone’s attention our way. This whole situation checked all the boxes. As long as Roger didn’t hate me forever because of it, obviously.

“Cole’s life was not in danger,” he growled.

“I suppose not, though Penny could certainly take him on. But I was talking about you.”

“We’re on the same team, Reagan Somerset.”

He’d used my full name. He knew what was coming.

I grinned. “I know. You’re welcome.”

I slapped him with air. Then I ran at him, catching up as he tumbled ass over head across the ground, and thwapped him in the head with the wooden sword, something that required perfect timing. I only got it wrong a couple of times—slapping his face—before getting it right. The instant he completely stopped, his legs flopping everywhere, I jabbed him between the butt cheeks. Strangely, he didn’t jolt as I would’ve. Then again, he probably hadn’t occasionally gotten prodded in the wrong hole during an intimate moment. That kind of thing made a person jumpy.

He jumped up as if on springs, so I punched him in the face. He jolted backward. I kicked him in the balls. Would nothing break this guy and force him into his wolf form?

“Enough, Reagan,” he commanded, and a stray thought curled around me. Or I’ll make you beg for mercy.

“Oh, kinky.” I jabbed at his jugular, expecting him to dodge—which he did—and roundhouse-kicked him in the face. He staggered back. You couldn’t increase face muscle like body muscle. It left him wide open to people who knew what they were doing. Or to those who were crazy enough to try.

“Here, doggy.” I whistled again, back-pedaling a little. Hunching over, he wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. A sliver of red interrupted the line of his lips. “Does the itty-bitty-widdle doggy want a treat?”

“You sound ridiculous.”

“You look ridiculous. Your mom said so, and that’s saying something.”

“Two saids don’t make a right.” He ran at me.

“Different tense! Doesn’t count! Don’t steal my jokes—” I dodged his punch, felt his other hand press against my side, and knew I’d screwed up. “And don’t steal my moves!”

His other hand touched down on my ribs, and just like that, I was airborne, his strength easily that of an elder vampire.

I wrapped my magic around me and slowed my flight, then stopped, hovering in the air. His eyes widened.

“Yep. This bitch can hover. And you are starting to annoy me. Your life is officially in danger, Roger. Give in. Fight me how you were meant to fight me. Show these little fae what an alpha shifter can really do. Fight me!”

I lit him on fire. First his clothes, then his hair, definitely his eyebrows. Callie was on hand, after all. She could fix him right up.

He took a running leap at me, ignoring the pain. Ignoring the burns. He would heal, and he knew it. He also knew I wouldn’t actually kill him.

He did not know, however, how far I was willing to go to press the issue.

I pushed up higher into the air so he couldn’t reach me, then encased him in a bonfire. The heat was reduced, so it wouldn’t kill him nearly as quickly as real fire, but it would hurt more than the beejeebus.

He screeched, and I called that a huge win. I wished I’d recorded it. I had never heard that sound from his mouth.

A moment later, a wolf on fire jumped from the flames, big, burly, and mad as hell.

“Now.” I lowered to the ground as he rolled around to douse the flames. I sent a shower of ice to put them out and ease the pain while he healed. I took off my pouch and tossed it aside, then took off my throwing knives, daggers, sword—all of it. It would be his wolf, and Lucifer’s heir. These fae would get a taste for what real fighting was. If they planned on lasting any time at all in a war, they’d need to up their game. Or at least start to fight dirty. Roger and I would set the bar quite high. It would help us all.

“Wait.” A familiar voice rang out across the practice field.

“Dang it,” I murmured as Roger got to his paws, his head a little lowered, his eyes on me. He wanted blood. I cocked my head, my focus sliding back toward him. “Come at me, bro.”

“Wait, please,” Romulus said, and clearly the trial wasn’t happening right now. Pity.

I clenched my jaw. I did not need Romulus’s politeness to distract me.

“Alpha.” Romulus put a hand on his heart as he stepped to the side, making a triangle out of our group with lots of space between the points. “Your control is incredible. We are all amazed. Very few could resist going against their word under such conditions.”

A thick line of fae stood at the edge of the grass, watching. Everyone had stopped what they were doing to look our way. Cole lay on his back some ways off, his arms and legs spread wide, making a star with his body. Penny and someone else crouched beside him, probably trying to patch him up.

“I must side with Reagan on this, however.” Romulus bowed. “You should be fighting in your animal forms. Had I known you’d decided against it, I would have raised the issue myself. Fighting beside shifters in their animal form is a joy few here have experienced. I would ask that you give them a taste. A real taste. Stage a battle with your shifters against these custodes.”I knew custodes meant warrior fae. It was what they called themselves. I had no idea why. “Seeing your pack work together will open a few eyes.”

Roger lowered his head just a bit, but he didn’t change back into his human form. Given his fur was still smoking in places, it was probably because he wanted to use all his energy to heal.

“Now.” Romulus turned to me. And bowed.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly. “Nice to see you again. Kinda.”

“I realize I am interrupting a practice session, but I wonder if Roger would do me the great honor of stepping aside so that I might try my hand at Lucifer’s heir?”

I took a deep breath. “I’d really rather not. Do you heal quickly? No, I’d rather not.”

Though I kind of did, if only so I could punch him in the mouth for always making me feel so freaking socially defunct. Vampires might be equally debonair and polite, but most of them were morally bankrupt, and they all changed into horrible monsters. That evened the scales a little. This fae was just…lovely. Attractive, pleasant without being sickly sweet, polite, and morally sound—he was really tough to be around, if I was being honest. Total goody two shoes.

“Please, come. We will make a show of it.” He motioned behind him. “Half the village has assembled to watch your fighting. They’ve already heard rumors of you from our journey here. They wish to see what you can do.”

“I’ll gladly show them…with Roger. He has it coming.”

“Yes, of course. Only”—he smiled—“he does not have the capability to use hellfire.”

I turned my head to the side and squinted one eye just a little, thinking, trying to confuse him with my body movements. If I didn’t know what it meant, he surely wouldn’t, yet he’d think he was missing something.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t actually work on me,” I said.

“Correct. And I’d like everyone to see it.” He clasped his hands behind his back. “In case they doubt.”

So there were doubters. I honestly didn’t care, but had the feeling he’d keep pushing for this.

I glanced behind him at the crowd again, not because I felt pressured to perform for them, but because it was a good showing. Fighting the boss would probably bring out a few more, thus emptying out the village and giving Darius ample room to skulk around.

“Yeah, sure, why not.” I pointed at Roger. “This is postponed. I will make you do doggy tricks before we leave this place, just you wait.”

He backed away slowly and then turned toward Cole, who was still lying in the grass. Baby.

Penny had left him and sidled closer to the practice field, picking at her nail, watching me. If I could find a way to get her involved, I would, but Romulus was talking about hellfire, and that was one sandbox she couldn’t play in.

It was a sandbox Romulus shouldn’t be playing in either. Not with me, anyway. Some of my reactions were built in from years and years of practice. If he triggered one, I would fire back. And I didn’t think he could withstand hellfire like I could. I really didn’t want to kill the Second Arcana.