Page 12 of The Lost Elemental

Lainey: Some hella hot guard dude told me that you’re being escorted to Kingwood Academy? AURA! ANSWER YOUR PHONE!

I hurried to type up a message as quickly as possible.

Me: Sorry, Lainey Loo! I don’t know what’s happening exactly. They’re taking me home right now and then said I have to go to that academy.

I couldn’t even bring myself to mutter the name of the place. As if that would make it a reality.

Lainey: I miss all the fun! Tell those hotties to find me my own harem. I’m not giving up on my dream.

A laugh startled out of me, but it morphed into a strangled sob. I couldn’t leave Lainey. My mom. Charlie. They were my life. And as much as I’d dreamed of an existence far away from here, where I didn’t have to worry about money or working myself into exhaustion, my family was always going to be a part of that.

Kai spun around in his seat, cutting off his argument with Riven. “Are you crying?”

I bit down on the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. “No. Just laughing at a text from my friend.”

He didn’t look convinced. Riven looked like he didn’t give a crap.

“Do I have to go to this academy? Isn’t there some kind of work-around? Like they can strip me of all my powers or something?”

Riven let out a low growl. “It’s an honor to have elemental gifts.”

“For you, maybe. But I have a life I need to get back to. I don’t want to leave my home. My family.”

Riven pulled to a stop in front of the town house. “You don’t want to leave here?”

I looked up at the dilapidated building. It might not seem like much to him, but we’d worked so hard to have a place that wasn’t an apartment with paper-thin walls. This place had been a victory for us.

Kai smacked Riven on the back of the head. “Dude, it’s no wonder the only action you get is from the Ice Queen. Have fun getting your dick frozen off for the rest of your life because you’ll never get a warm-blooded woman like that.”

“Fuck off, Kai.”

I silenced them both in my mind, sliding out of the vehicle now that we were in park and the child locks had turned off. I walked up the path, stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk and chipped cement.

“Wait up,” Kai called, a door slamming behind him.

I ignored his honeyed-whiskey voice and kept walking. As I climbed the stairs, the front door opened and my mom stepped onto the front stoop, wringing her hands, face pale. All it took was one look.

“You knew.”

7

In an instant, tears flowed down my mom’s cheeks. The sight was so shocking, I stood frozen to the spot. When was the last time I’d seen her cry? Maybe when Charlie had fallen out of a tree and knocked himself out. She’d sobbed until his eyes had opened again.

But everything was okay. It had just ended up being a mild concussion. This wouldn’t be okay. Because nothing was what I thought it was.

“Why?” I croaked.

“I’m so sorry, Aura. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“Who was he?” I wasn’t sure I even wanted to know. I’d been curious about my father for as long as I could remember, but my mom’s reaction every time I’d asked about him as a child had stopped me from any further investigation.

She looked behind me at Kai and Riven and swallowed before focusing back on me. “I don’t know, not really. It was a whirlwind sort of a thing. I was at a music festival with some friends. I met Adam.”

Riven made a sound behind me and my mother’s eyes narrowed on him. “I knew it likely wasn’t his real name, but I didn’t care. We were young and free, and I fell half in love with him that weekend. We didn’t make promises or exchange phone numbers. And I never cursed that more than when you came along.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “He deserved to know you. And you deserved to have a father.”

Empathy flooded me for what my mom must’ve been through, for how scared she must’ve been. But as soon as that sympathy filled me, I tamped it down, anger quickly replacing it. “You should’ve told me. You let me be completely blindsided. I sent the entire building into a power outage.”