Ember Born

Chapter 8: What The Future Cost

Jade had turned fourteen two weeks earlier, and if anyone had been paying close attention, they might have noticed something about him had quietly shifted since then.

He'd always been fast and strong for his age, but lately it had become impossible to ignore. He could out-sprint every kid on his track team by a wide margin, and he'd once caught a falling stack of textbooks in the school hallway so quickly a teacher stopped mid-sentence to stare at him.

Daniel and Mary noticed, of course. They'd noticed a lot of things about Jade over the years, the birthmark, the strange moments where he seemed to know things before they happened, the way he was simply better at almost everything than kids his age. But somewhere along the way, they'd stopped asking questions about where it came from. Jade was happy. He was healthy. He was theirs. Whatever explanation existed for the rest, they'd quietly decided it mattered less than the life they'd built together.

At school, Jade had become something of a legend, though not in the way most fourteen-year-olds become popular. He was, without question, the brightest student in his science classes. For the school's science fair, he built a working rocket model that launched successfully on its second attempt, earning first place and a nickname that stuck instantly: the Science King.

Helen, meanwhile, had found her own path. While Jade buried himself in equations, Helen threw herself into art class, filling sketchbook after sketchbook, though her actual plan for the future had nothing to do with art at all.

"I want to be a lawyer," she told him one afternoon, doodling in her notebook. "Art just helps me think."

"A lawyer who draws," Jade said.

"A lawyer who draws," she agreed, grinning.

Over the years, Helen had grown from the curly-haired girl who used to argue about sandcastles into someone who turned heads in the hallway, though she never seemed to notice. Jade noticed anyway, more than he usually let himself think about.

The trouble started during the school's basketball tournament.

Jade wasn't officially the star of the team, he'd only joined that year, mostly because his coach had begged him after watching him casually outrun the entire track team in gym class. But once the tournament started, it was obvious he was operating on a different level than everyone else, moving faster, jumping higher, reacting quicker, stealing the ball at moments that seemed impossible to predict.

By the final game, the gym was packed, and when Jade sank the winning shot in the last few seconds, the crowd erupted. Teammates lifted him onto their shoulders, and for a moment, Jade simply enjoyed being an ordinary kid who'd done something impressive for his school.

That was when Zora found him.

Zora was the school's head cheerleader, easily one of the most striking girls in school, and she knew it. She'd had a crush on Jade for as long as anyone could remember and rarely bothered hiding it. The moment the game ended, she pushed through the crowd, threw her arms around him, and kissed his cheek in front of practically the entire gym.

The crowd cheered louder. But Zora didn't let go. She stayed pressed against his side as the celebration spilled into the parking lot, looping her arm through his, laughing at everything he said, posing for photos whether he'd agreed to them or not.

Both families had come to watch, Daniel and Mary, Grace and Helen, waiting together near the gym entrance. Helen stood a little apart, watching Zora hang off Jade's arm, her smile growing tighter by the minute.

"Jade, you were incredible out there," Zora said, squeezing his arm. "Are you even human? That last shot was insane."

"Thanks," Jade said awkwardly, trying to ease his arm free without being rude.

Zora didn't seem to notice, launching into another story, her hand finding his arm again almost immediately.

Helen finally couldn't hold it in. "Are you just going to let her hang all over you?" she said, loud enough that both families turned. "In front of everyone?"

The parking lot went quiet. Zora blinked, startled, stepping back half a step.

"Helen," Jade said, caught off guard. "What are you—"

"You didn't even try to stop her," Helen shot back, tears gathering despite herself. "First the kiss, now this. You're letting her act like she owns you, and you don't even care."

"That's not fair," Jade said. "I didn't ask for any of this."

"It doesn't matter if you asked for it! You could've said something. But you never do, do you? You just let people pull you away, and you never fight it."

"Helen," Grace said gently, reaching for her daughter, startled by how upset she'd become. "Maybe we should talk about this at home."

"No," Helen said, pulling her arm back, tears spilling over. "I'm done pretending this doesn't bother me." She looked at Jade one last time, her voice breaking. "You're doing exactly what my dad did. He was around my whole life, and then one day he decided I wasn't worth staying for. I guess I'm just used to people leaving eventually."

She turned and walked quickly toward Grace's car. Grace, giving Mary and Daniel an apologetic look, hurried after her.

The parking lot fell into an awkward silence. Zora, visibly uncomfortable now that the attention had shifted away from her, mumbled an excuse and slipped into the crowd.

Mary put a hand on Jade's shoulder. "Go talk to her," she said quietly. "Tonight, if you can."

Jade didn't wait for tonight. He walked straight across the street the moment they got home and knocked until Grace let him in, gesturing tiredly toward the stairs.

He found Helen sitting on her bedroom floor, knees pulled to her chest, eyes red from crying.

"Can I come in?" he asked from the doorway.

She didn't answer, but didn't tell him to leave either, so he sat down across from her.

"I didn't ask Zora to do any of that," he said. "I don't even like her like that. I've never encouraged it."

"I know," Helen said, wiping her eyes. "That's not really what I'm upset about."

"Then what is it?"

She was quiet for a long moment. "You've been my best friend since we were five. And lately I feel like everyone's starting to notice you and want a piece of you, and I get scared that eventually you'll get tired of ordinary stuff. Ordinary me. My dad was around my whole life, and then one day he decided we weren't worth staying for. I guess some part of me is always waiting for people to do that."

Jade sat with that a moment. "Helen, you're not ordinary to me. You never have been. Zora, or anyone else, none of it means anything compared to you. I could never get tired of you."

Helen looked up, surprised by how certain he sounded.

"I like you, Helen," he said. "Not just as my best friend. I think I have for a while now."

Her eyes filled with tears again, though for a different reason. "I like you too," she admitted. "I have for a long time."

They sat together for a long moment, both a little embarrassed, both quietly relieved. From that day on, something between them had gently, permanently changed, though neither felt any need to rush it. They were still Jade and Helen, still best friends who argued over silly things. They were just, now, something a little more than that too.

Thousands of miles away, in the Chemari tribe, King Zeno stood alone in a fenced pasture outside the palace, ten cattle grazing peacefully in front of him.

For years, Zeno had quietly refined the power he'd claimed the night he made his terrible choice, learning exactly how to pull from the flame's power beneath the earth, how to shape it, how to aim it. He believed a war was coming, something tied to the boy the old prophecy still whispered about, the boy he'd failed to find all these years. He didn't know when that day would come, only that it would. And when it did, he intended to be ready.

He raised his hand toward the cattle, focusing on a single point in the air.

A moment later, all ten animals collapsed at once, their bodies suddenly hollow, as if something invisible had pulled everything living out of them. Zeno felt the power surge through him, sharp and cold.

He stood there afterward, breathing heavily, feeling the familiar ache settle into his bones, a small piece of himself worn away each time he used this power, though he'd long since stopped letting himself think too hard about the cost.

"Getting stronger," he murmured. "Good. I'll need to be."

Back in California, Daniel came home one evening with news that should have been entirely good.

"I got the promotion," he announced at dinner. "Head of the entire engineering division."

Mary and Jade cheered, and the family celebrated properly. But not everyone at Daniel's company was happy for him, and in the weeks that followed, whispers of resentment spread quietly through certain corners of the office, whispers that eventually turned into something far more dangerous than gossip.

Jade had no reason to know any of this. But one evening, finishing homework at his desk, a vision hit him without warning, sudden and vivid.

He saw his father's car. The parking garage. A small device tucked beneath the driver's seat, wires connected to a timer counting down. He saw the explosion, felt the heat of it somehow, and saw his father's car consumed in flames.

Jade snapped back to reality gasping. "Dad!" he shouted, sprinting downstairs. "Dad, where's your car?"

Daniel looked up, startled. "I'm right here, what's wrong?"

"Is it at work? In the garage?"

"Yes, I got a ride home with a coworker because—"

Jade didn't wait for him to finish. He grabbed the spare keys and ran, faster than should have been possible, cutting through backstreets until he reached the garage in minutes instead of twenty. He found Daniel's car sitting quietly in its usual spot, reached underneath the seat, found the device exactly where he'd seen it, and ripped the wires apart with both hands.

The bomb detonated early, a small, contained blast instead of the one meant to happen once the car was moving, throwing Jade backward and knocking the wind out of him. Alarms blared. People came running.

Jade lay there, dazed but alive, before something else hit him just as hard, a crushing exhaustion pressing down from somewhere deep inside his own mind.

The world tilted sideways.

Then everything went black.