“Way ahead of you.”

Wesley thrust his hands out farther and thick black fire pooled from his fingertips, slowly at first, like shadows retreating from the dawn, but then it sprung to life and reached for the tornado.

It was like hands, burning and scratching and clawing.

Fire ready to devour the storm whole.

The base of the tornado turned to soot and the wind screamed, but the fire didn’t cease. It flowed from Wesley’s hands, such a pure and familiar black that Saxony almost lost her concentration.

She had seen fire like that before.

Just once, as a child.

The sight of it nearly brought her to her knees, seeing those flames in reality when she’d spent years only ever seeing them in her nightmares. Her heart thumped loudly and she tried to shut the memories out.

The last time she had seen her mother and her baby brother, before those flames swallowed them whole.

Saxony squeezed her fists together, her concentration on the tornado wavering. Though thankfully it didn’t matter, because under the flames it had crumbled to dust.

The fire slithered quickly back to Wesley’s fingers like an obedient servant.

“Where did you learn that?” Saxony asked him. “Who taught you that?”

Wesley only smirked back at her, blissfully unaware. “I don’t know,” he said. “Guess I’m just full of tricks.”

Tavia stepped beside Wesley and let out a whistle to echo the one he had given her earlier. “Nice moves,” she said. “Looks like you’ve got a taste for being the hero.”

Wesley’s smile was unrivaled. “It’s pretty easy.” He picked up her knife from the ground and handed it back to her. “We should do it more often.”

Tavia twisted the knife in her hands, grinning like the world owed her one. “Nah,” she said. “Sounds boring.”

Saxony caught her breath back, shaking her head as the shock of seeing that fire again started to subside, only to be replaced with a new ache. Seeing Tavia and Wesley together like that reminded her of Karam. Of the other half of her, that was out there somewhere. Saxony had half-expected Karam to show up in the height of battle, frowning at how easily the rest of them were ambushed, before saving everyone.

But she hadn’t.

Karam was still gone and there was no sign she’d be back anytime soon.

“You really did it,” her amja said, marveling at the scene. “You both saved us.”

Amja stared between Saxony and Wesley, like together they were a marvel, or an oddity, and then she scanned the staves up Wesley’s arms—as though she were translating the language of magic that marked him—and smiled, warmer than any smile she’d given Saxony since they’d come back.