I tried to push out of his embrace. “Why? Because my dad used those same fucking words when my mom disappeared?”
Clay joined the hug, followed by Bryan, and finally Leo. Just as it had when they’d extracted me, the group hug worked. I drew in several breaths as the calming effect took over, relaxing me.
“Because we didn’t want to upset you,” Rob clarified.
The clarity hit me hard. Here I was, making this about me when this needed to be about them. God, I was a selfish bitch. I nodded and wiggled out of their joint embrace. “I’m sorry. When memories of that day take over, I tend to lose my shit.”
“Let’s talk about something else.” Bryan eyed my hand.
“No,” I snapped and hid it behind my back. “I want to know what happened. How’d the kid die?” They all flinched on the last word, and I felt like crap saying it. I softened my tone. “Please tell me.”
“I sensed fire in him,” Rob went on. “But…”
“It was different,” Clay explained. “I felt it too.”
I bounced my gaze between them. “Different how?”
“Like when I shook hands with your fandler. It didn’t seem real, like the element was out of place.”
Leo and I exchanged glances.
Rob went on. “It was angry. I thought that was just because it was fire, you know? Fire tends to be pretty antsy and unstable anyway, so I ignored my instinct that something was off. I should have listened to my element. It was trying to warn me that something wasn’t right.”
“What happened?”
“He screamed.” Bryan closed his eyes as his expression pinched in painful memory, no doubt of the time he’d heard another kid’s screams when his grandfather had taken him to a summit of dark elementals. They’d tortured the poor Nelem just for sport.
“Right before he burst into flames.” Rob lowered his head. “He… He was gone before I could call the fire from him.” His shoulders fell. “I failed at the one job I had.”
Bryan spoke up. “No way, bro. Don’t you dare do that. You weren’t the one who did this.”
“I didn’t stop it,” he countered, his tone thick with emotion.
“Did you try?” I asked as a theory began to form in my brain. It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t anything I wanted to believe could happen. But it was the only thing that made sense. When hurt flashed in Rob’s expression, darkening it, I hurried to explain. “I mean, did you call fire and it maybe ignored you?”
He held my gaze for several seconds before nodding. “How’d you know that?”
“The same thing has been happening to me with my air element.” I looked to Leo.
He nodded to pick up the explanation. “I think Spencer is a leecher.”
The guys all stilled, blinking at him until the news sank in. It was Clay who shook his head. “They’ve been extinct for years. The last known leecher died during the plague at the turn of the century.”
“Last known leecher,” I pointed out. “What if there were more in hiding? The Council was gathering them up and destroying their powers. What if Spencer’s family fled to the UK, hid out there for the next couple hundred years or so, and emerged via this powerful quad? What if his entire family are leechers?”
Bryan sided with Clay—shockingly enough—with a shake of his head. “He’s got to be something else. Something more. Leechers are easy to identify, even easier to capture. They’re weak. Spencer isn’t.”
Rob ground out a curse. “Then what the hell is going on? First Spencer stealing elements, now our own primaries are betraying us?”
“Out of balance,” I muttered, recalling what Cressida had said. The shock of my epiphany had me panting to process it all. I glanced around, fully expecting the original elemental to appear. When she didn’t, I nodded, accepting it. I’d have to be the one to explain. Hopefully I had it right. Then again, it was a pretty terrifying theory, so I really hoped I had it wrong.
“Cressida told me things were out of balance, but she didn’t know why. I think I do.” They all watched me, waiting. I had their undivided attention. I paced the length of the ruins as I worked the theory through. As I explained, I purposely avoided Bryan’s gaze, knowing what this news would do to him, considering his family’s history. “What if the dark side is trying to increase its numbers by creating elementals?”
Leo stiffened. “How? You either have the power to control the elements or you don’t.”
“The same way the leechers used to steal elements. Magic. The worst kind of magic. What if the dark elementals have figured out how to reverse the powers the leechers had?”
“You mean push an element into someone instead of steal it?”
I nodded. “What if they’re turning Nelems into elementals? Into dark elementals?”
We all exchanged glances as we let that sink in.
Bryan eventually tilted his head back and forth. “That would explain why Rob couldn’t control the fire. It was being forced into the kid.”
Rob darted his attention between us. “Are you saying even if I had gotten to him on time, I wouldn’t have been able to stop the element from killing him?”
“That also explains how Professor Layden is getting some of the primaries wrong in the new students. They aren’t natural elementals.” I left out the part that I could feel their primary from a distance even if the professor couldn’t when she touched them. I was already unique enough. I didn’t need to add another abnormal log to the weird fire. “She even mentioned something in class yesterday about how dark magic upsets the balance.”
“That’s right,” Bryan agreed. “Yin and yang.”
I nodded and continued to explain for Rob and Clay since they weren’t in the class. “You’ve got regular elementals who are good, then you’ve got dark elementals who are bad. Evil. You have to have one to have the other. She said magic was the same way. You
