My nerves lit up like that tree and not in a bad way either. “I think that’s the most Irish you’ve ever sounded.”
“You liked it,” he quipped.
I did.
Eamon led me down the cliff walk until the celebratory sounds of the crew died away in favor of the rushing surf over gravel. He walked ahead, and the floodlights ebbed until his back and shock of hair sealed into one lean shadow.
“Eamon, are you going to move to LA?” I called out.
“Why would I do that?” He looked back over one shoulder.
“Because you’re going to be a famous actor when this comes out. Don’t you want to do other movies? LA is the heart of film.”
“I haven’t thought that far out.” He waited for me, and I took a few hurried steps to catch up. “Iris, will you play guitar for me if I promise not to say anything?”
“I don’t play in front of people.”
“Never? Why?”
I sighed. “That’s how you lose control. My dad loves each and every story he writes. Loves them fiercely. Then he sends them to his editor who comes back with notes, and then my dad starts hating them. He doesn’t even open the boxes of finished copies when they arrive anymore.”
“That’s awful sad, Iris, but that’s your da. Not you.”
“You don’t know how similar we are. It’s like a curse.” I honestly couldn’t believe I’d said the words. They were too fantasy. Too true.
Eamon dug his hands in his pockets, and we walked in silence.
“How was your date with Julian Young?” he asked out of the blue.
Hello, jealousy.
“I never said it was a date. I was helping him for Cate. Besides, Julian has a fiancée.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.”
“Oh, I’ve known since I met him. What’s the American saying? He’s losing his religion.”
“If that’s American, it’s not from my side of America. You mean that old REM song?”
“Means he’s so far gone on this girl he’d lose his religion for her. My best friend Charlie went Protestant for his lady.” He looked at me. “Have you ever done that?”
“Gone Protestant? No way. The Thornes are strict atheists.”
He cringed. “No, I mean, go wild for someone.”
Was he asking if I’d ever been in love? I shook my head, feeling sort of strange.
“So no one back home should object to my feelings for you?”
I shook my head one more time, dazed.
“Grand.” With that, he disappeared.
Gone.
“Eamon!” Good grief, had our relationship talk literally pushed him off the cliff? I sunk down to my hands and knees to look over the edge.
He was scaling down the rocks to the beach. “There are steps here. A bit. Come on, girl.”
ELEMENTIA
A Family History?
I climbed down the rock wall to the beach, my shoes crunching on the wet gravel.
Eamon was sitting on a large rock in a hollow space, the cliff yawning up and over us. “I think I found a portal to another world this afternoon.” He tapped his ear and gestured to the way the waves hummed inside the cliff’s overhang. “It’s even got music.”
I sat beside him and realized I was staring at his soft profile a little too obviously. I turned to the black glass of the water, tiny slivers of white moonlight reflecting on the surface. There was no way around it; I was developing a crush. And to date, my crushes had, well, crushed me.
Plus, they made for very bad songs.
“Tell me why Sevyn ended up in Elementia,” I asked. “What happens before chapter fourteen?”
His smirk drew a tiny shadow on his chin. “Do I start at the beginning?”
“Give me the abridged version. We don’t have all night.”
“I bet we do.” His words made my chest swell, and then I kind of wanted to smack him for being slick. Or for getting away with it. “That was so smooth!” he said, breaking the moment and making me laugh.
I bumped my shoulder into his, lingering a tiny bit. “Get on with it.”
When Eamon spoke again, he used that low, storyteller voice that made him sound older. “It’s starts off a familiar story. On an island called Cerul, off the coast of a cursed land, a medieval people have a monarchy, complete with king and queen and castle. They also have an island to the north run by a monastery of women who worship the elements. The Draemon. It’s more than worship. They harness individual elements into—”
“Orbs. You’re going to say orbs. It’s not a ridiculous fantasy without orbs.”
“Say orb once more.”
“Orb.” I laughed, and he moved his leg closer until our knees kissed.
“They can harness energy into…round balls of concentrated power…and gift them to the heir to the throne. Which is why the king can control the wind. He’s also knocked up his wife, and she gives birth to a large, healthy girl. And a runt of a boy. The queen dies giving birth because it’s not a ridiculous fantasy without the queen dying while giving birth to twins.”
“Naturally.”
“The Draemon come to bless the new heir with fire, only the king refuses to acknowledge his daughter, choosing his sickly son instead, even though the girl was born first.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“It is.” He turned to face me, crossing his legs under him and looking delighted. “When they’re doing the ritual, one of the teen Draemon, a supremely gifted girl, is up in the tower with the baby Sevyn, and she’s pissed about the sexism. She tries to do the ritual to bless Sevyn with fire, only she calls down the lightning. From that day on, Sevyn can’t be touched. She’s pure energy.”
I thought back to the tree and Sevyn screaming. “The girl Draemon was Maedina.”
“Well spotted. But that’s later. We’re still on Cerul. When the head Draemon, Bronwyn, finds out what Maedina did, she tries to help Sevyn but gets struck.” He clapped his hands, and I jumped. “Dead. Maedina is horrified and disappears. Sevyn is labeled a killer and spends the next thirteen years in the
