KingSweet

Apologies

"Most," I corrected. "You spend most of your life looking after me. Last year I was on my own. I did fine without you."

"You burned half of my captain's face off, stole my earring, and then made yourself such a target that Vinyé and Tempest were in talks to charge Captain Mají-jalio's camp rather than let you live. You managed to fall in love with your captain, light up half the forest in a rage when he broke up with you, and literally stabbed him in the back when he tried to make things right. You call that doing fine?"

"You skipped the part where he'd been lying to me for most of the year, was using me for my powers, and killed my best friend after failing to kill me" I grumbled. "Your version makes me sound like a stupid teenager."

"You were only sixteen. All sixteen year olds make mistakes."

"Most sixteen year old mistakes get teens grounded, not their friends killed."

"Drinking and driving can."

I sighed. It was pointless to argue with him when he insisted on being grown up and rational about things. We sat there in silence for a few minutes, sun warming our faces as the rest of the world slept.

"You didn't come up here to demand an apology" Red prompted. "If you had you would've been discreet, but not nice."

"I finally figured things out," I admitted. "You probably got it weeks ago, and that's why you volunteered and showed up in my cabin in the first place. I need a representative of Storm's crew on my mission, and I don't trust anyone else in your crew. Even if you're working in someone else's best interest, I know you won't slit my throat while I sleep. You know as well as I do that I'd hunt you down in Effugere and announce your game name, bringing you to etiquette hell with me."

Red nodded. "Captain would've killed that compass kid rather than let Vinyé get an advantage over him. We would've fallen into war... and something tells me that you'd never be able to bring down the walls while we fought internally. It'd be counterproductive."

I leaned back to lie down on the rooftop. For a moment I closed my eyes, tempted to fall asleep right there, safe in my knowledge that my older brother would protect me.

"We'll need to agree on a story," Red said softly, shattering my moment of peace. "You haven't made your dislike of me a secret. I mean... if I'm being honest I already have a story planned. I had intended to use it as an excuse to follow after you once your group left, other than the fact that Captain Storm would have sent someone."

I opened my eyes slightly to let him know I was listening.

"That and it's better if you learn this now. It's not something you'll take to knowing happily, and if you were to push me off the roof I wouldn't blame you. I'm not used to this. It doesn't exactly come with the job description."

"You're stalling" I interrupted. "Who's coming?"

I jumped to my feet, turning to flee over the rooftops. Red lunged, grabbing my ankle. I felt a stream of warmth flow through my body, bringing a soft ball of yellow flame to my right hand.

I hadn't summoned it.

"I was wondering if that would happen," Red said. "It's been mostly useless for anything else. The coolest thing I've done until now was heat wood enough that it catches fire within a minute... and no one is impressed by that when there's a girl who can set a sword alight."

"I was going to ask if you could teach me."

I pulled my ankle from Red's hand, plopping beside him once more. I studied the ball of warmth in my hand for a moment. This wasn't my fire. It barely counted as fire at all; there was no danger within it, no passion. It was a wispy ball of warmth. The little ball was soothing, like hot chocolate, a warm shower, or a heated blanket. I shook my head, tossing the ball to Red.

"Your powers are different than mine. I think I'm just meant to be your tool, a vector for your power."

"Or..." Red said, passing his fingers through the ball slowly. "I'm your back-up, a magical reservoir of heat so you don't have to want to rip someone's head off to be powerful."

"Either way, this solves our excuse problem. No one else has an ability strong enough to realize how difficult it is to mesh powers. I'll say I can feed off your energy because it's similar to mine because you do heat and I do fire. It's close enough to the truth, no one should think twice."

"I'll go back to camp then," Red said. "It looks like I've got some packing to do."

"You'll have a few hours at most. I'm going to take a nap before we leave; buy you some time. Be back by noon."

I headed home, leaping from roof to roof through the twisting maze of the city. I had my people picked, my gear was being packed, and we had a heading. If only I knew how to actually bring the walls down, I might begin to feel confident about my mission.