Fire's Daughter: A Reverse Harem Urban Fantasy (Arcane Rebels Book 1) Read online

  Contents

  Book Info

  Terms

  1 AURORA

  2

  3 EDWARD

  4 AURORA

  5

  6 EDWARD

  7 AURORA

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16 BLAZE

  17 AURORA

  18

  19

  20 EMBER

  21 AURORA

  22

  23

  24

  25 STERLING

  26 AURORA

  27

  28 EMBER

  29 AURORA

  30

  31

  32 EMBER

  33 AURORA

  Author's Note

  FIRE’S DAUGHTER

  Arcane Rebels #1

  INDIA ARDEN

  Fire’s Daughter - Arcane Rebels #1. © 2018 India Arden. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Electronic Edition 1.0

  Terms

  Arcana - A system of magic that allows control of the elements

  Arcane Masters - Powerful social/political figure who can manipulate the element of his House—each major city has four Arcane Masters

  Arcanum - A dangerous, slowly-distilling mystical substance that allows its recipient to wield Arcane magic

  Aspirant - Candidate for the Arcanum

  Bonding - Combination of four Arcane Masters

  Elemental Houses - The Masters of Fire, Air, Earth and Water, and their families and domains

  Rebels - Radical group challenging the reigning Masters’ policies

  Riots - A historic uprising against the Arcane Masters in the city of Corona

  Sigil - The designating mark of an Elemental House

  Tetrad - A complete team of four Arcane Masters consisting of one mage from each Elemental House

  The Great Machine - A vast distiller that gathers Arcanum from the atmosphere. A single dose can take up to a generation to collect.

  Transfiguration - The change that occurs when an Aspirant takes the Arcanum and is transformed into an Arcane Master

  1

  AURORA

  My name is Aurora, but when most people look at me, they only see Fire’s daughter.

  All my life, I’ve done my father’s bidding—worn what I was told to wear, said what I was told to say, and certainly never left the estate unescorted. My one small act of rebellion was to slip my brother a few spare parts.

  Worst. Decision. Ever.

  Now the Arcane power balance has been disrupted and I don’t know who to trust. Someone needs to stop my brother, so I join forces with the Rebels, hoping to put things right.

  I never planned to fall for any of them.

  Most definitely not all four.

  ___

  From the Source, Derived

  I saw those words engraved on the pediment every time I looked up from my work. I can’t say if people actually spoke like that in the nineteenth century, back when The Great Machine was first created, or if they were just compelled to come up with something that sounded important to commemorate the technology that allowed man to control the elements.

  Can’t say I blame the inventors for their hyperbole. It was a bigger deal than sliced bread. And maybe even the internet.

  The world around us—earth, water and air—had been distilling magical essence for eons, possibly since the Big Bang. And now mere humans were able to control and replicate the process.

  It was an amazing time to be alive.

  The distiller was over eight feet tall and twice as wide, an entire wall of conduit in a giant maze of copper tubing. The channels were wound in complex patterns, forming shapes that coaxed Arcanum from its surroundings—miles of channels that resemble the intricate workings of a musical instrument, or the fittings of a great engine. It was a marvel of pipes and valves and gauges that would make any steampunk cosplayer drool.

  All the machine’s fittings were made to order in secret locations throughout the country. Even if The Great Machine hadn’t been fabricated back before things were standardized and streamlined, all the parts would still be proprietary. This wasn’t a plumbing system, after all, or a home brewing kit. It was the technology that allowed us to gather Arcanum even after its original source went dry. The invention that changed the world.

  My job—my privilege—was to help keep it running.

  I unwrapped the replacement copper pipe from its casing and checked the threaded fittings for irregularities or burrs under the magnification of a loupe. Clean. Double-checked that the redundant pathway was off-line. Check. Then carefully, lovingly, began to unscrew the worn channel I was scheduled to replace.

  The only people allowed in the distiller chamber were the technicians, and we knew better than to interrupt one another while we were working. So, when one of the other techs hurried over, I knew it must be important—not only because I was working, but because they never talk to me if they can help it.

  “Aurora,” he said breathlessly. “It’s happening.”

  Heart now pounding, I quickly re-tightened the old fitting back into place and hurried around the machine to the end of the line, the point at which all the conduits and valves converged: the decanter.

  The other techs gathered around, six of us in all, and together we stared at the silvery nozzle where a single drop of precious Arcanum quivered. That drop had been gathering for a whopping eleven months, two days, and—I checked the clock overhead—five hours.

  Certain natural phenomena, though spaced far apart, still happen within set parameters. While some cicadas take seventeen years to emerge, they do it on a set schedule. Other phenomena don’t care about man’s timeframes. The aurora borealis, for instance—the northern lights I’d been named after. There were certain months, and certain times in which they were more likely to appear. But you can’t set your watch by them. They follow their own internal rhythm, nothing so mundane as a schedule.

  I’d been maintaining the distiller since I was nineteen, and in the past half-dozen years, I’d grown to recognize the look of a drop that’s just about ready to fall. Arcanum has a milky, silvery glow, thick with surface tension, and strangely resilient. A liquid solid, like mercury. Twice as heavy, but with such dense internal cohesion that on a vertical surface, it ran upward.

  As the Arcanum distilled, the drops fought to climb back up into The Great Machine, so it was all a matter of temperature and weight. Although Arcanum has the physical properties of a metal, it has the boiling point of a solvent. Passed through a heating coil, the Arcanum remained a gas. The trick was in cooling it precisely at the point of decanting. When enough mass gathered that the capillary action could no longer withstand the weight, a single drop fell. Cause for celebration? Always. But this particular drop meant so much more. Dignitaries would gather far and wide once it fell. Because with this drop, the Vessel would be full, and the Transfiguration could occur.

  The Chief Distiller, a creaky old man named Vernon, tutted over the techs as if we were a bunch of unruly children—but he didn’t order us back to our stations. Even he couldn’t deny this final drop was a big deal. Cell phones weren’t allowed in the distiller chamber. Not only were they useless this far underground, but the cameras would be a major security leak. But the aging intercom installed at the dawn of electricity s
till worked just fine. The old man buzzed for my father, and gravely whispered, “Master Torch, it’s almost time. No more than a day—likely a few hours.”

  Silence for a moment, and then my father said, “I’ll make the arrangements. And, Vernon? When it does fall, I’d like Aurora to bring it up.”

  All the techs sucked in a collective breath. A woman? Bearing the Vessel? Unheard of.

  Then again, a woman maintaining The Great Machine was just as unseemly. I was the only one in the room who didn’t pee standing up.

  The other techs were already none too thrilled with me, either because of my lineage or my gender. But now, whatever small kindness or tolerance they showed me would undoubtedly dry right up. I was polite to them, unerringly professional, and always willing to work just as hard as they did, if not more. Not once did I flaunt the fact that I was Fire’s daughter in hopes of receiving any sort of preferential treatment. Yet, it was obvious in the way they’d stop speaking when I entered the room, the way they stiffened whenever I got within a few feet of them, that my presence was unwelcome. And now that I was given this huge honor? I could practically feel the temperature in the room drop enough to freeze the gaseous Arcanum through the shielding of the distiller’s channels.

  Fine. It was a small price to pay to play a part in history.

  It was several long, uncomfortable hours before the final drop fell, hours in which I was in close proximity to all the other techs. As we clustered around the decanter, I observed a few of them in my peripheral vision. The younger ones were closer to my age, and I’d grown up with them on the estate.

  Fresh blood was rare, but we did get one new tech a few years ago on an exchange program between Corona and its sister city in Portugal. My crush on Rufino hit me hard and fast. Not only had he been nice to me the first day we worked together, but downright flirty. I wasn’t even imagining it. Dark eyes sparkling, he’d asked me, with his musical, lilting accent, why such a beautiful woman would dirty her hands on such a temperamental machine. I’d been so thrilled to finally connect with someone—let’s face it, a handsome someone who actually seemed enthused about talking to me—I could hardly sleep. But the next day when I greeted him, all smiles and fluttering eyelashes, he answered me with a curt hello, told me he had to get to work, and turned his back.

  That was the last time Rufino and I said more than a handful of words to one another.

  I suppose I’ll never know what the other techs told him about me. And I suppose it didn’t matter. One day, when I became Chief Distiller, it wasn’t as if I’d be able to fraternize with the techs working below me.

  My fantasies had devolved into the stunned looks on all the men’s faces when I walked in wearing the official seal of the Chief on my apron. Or maybe I’d have it redesigned into something more like a lab coat. Heck, maybe a tiara. Okay, probably not a tiara. But it was nice to imagine.

  Maybe I wouldn’t be able to have a relationship with any of them, but I could certainly prove myself. I’d be fair, I’d be creative, and I would encourage every member of my team to be the best Arcanum tech they could be. Together, we’d bring Arcanum production up to speed for this day and age. And if they still didn’t like me well enough to look me in the eye and say hello, then that was on them, not me.

  I was brainstorming a new system of performance incentives when the men around me all shifted, and I realized the drop of Arcanum poised at the end of the nozzle was wobbling. I held my breath—as did everyone around me—terrified that a wayward gasp would send the drop crawling back up into the distiller. And just as that suspended breath began to really burn, the Arcanum drop shrank, paused…and then swelled.

  I was seeing black sparkles on the edges of my vision from lack of oxygen. No doubt everyone else was, too. But no one moved, no one breathed. The Arcanum twitched, jiggled, and finally…fell.

  The Vessel was full.

  All the techs backed away, murmuring, as Vernon approached. How many times over the course of his life had he capped the Arcanum vessel? Three times? Maybe four? Although it was no more difficult than twisting the top onto a bottle of ketchup, Chief Distillers actually train their muscle memory to ensure there are no accidents. Once a month, the old man was forced to do speed drills to prove his technique was both accurate and fast.

  You don’t want to be the guy who drops the Arcanum.

  Sure, it doesn’t spill, not like water. But the last time someone lost his grip, over a century ago, they spent nearly a week chasing all those little beads around the floor—and despite their best efforts, even lost a few. It was months before their Transfiguration was back on track. Meanwhile, their Earth Master died of old age, and Corona went nearly half a year without a full Arcane Tetrad.

  I didn’t actually anticipate any spillage today. But when I saw the old man raise the vessel’s lid, I detected a slight tremor in his hand. I’d always presumed that by the next time the vessel filled, be it five years from now—or ten, or twenty—there would be a new Chief. But now I wondered if he would be replaced even before the next drop was distilled.

  Suddenly, all my planning and brainstorming didn’t seem quite so pie-in-the-sky.

  Vernon capped the vessel and handed it to me. “Take this straight to your father,” he told me, as if I was five, and not twenty-five. “Do not announce to anyone that you have it, do not speak to anyone, do not make eye contact. You will not snap a selfie, you will not Twitter. Your single purpose at this moment is to deliver the Arcanum safely into your father’s hands. Do you understand?”

  I looked him directly in the eye. “I do.”

  Despite the fact that I was totally calm and entirely capable, it was obvious the last thing Vernon wanted to do was give me that Arcanum.

  But it wasn’t his call, was it?

  Grudgingly, he handed me the Vessel. The insulated, double-walled steel surface felt strange, cold and hot at the same time. Arcanum—two centuries after its discovery, it’s still not entirely understood.

  Pretending as if I noticed nothing strange whatsoever, as if this hot-cold touch of preternatural energy was something I experienced every day, I turned away from Vernon, from the crowd of men now staring at me in envy and disdain, walked placidly to the stairs, and began to climb, leaving them all behind.

  It’s two hundred steps between the distilling chamber and the main floor. It normally takes me ten minutes to climb, and I struggled to keep myself from sprinting. I wanted to be the first woman to bear the Vessel, not the first woman to drop it. With measured steps and a hammering heart, I made my way up the stone staircase and into the grand colonnade, where a pair of stoic security guards in black suits flanked the door. “Come with me,” I said, and one peeled away while the other radioed for backup to replace him.

  I crossed the colonnade to my family’s wing. The doorway was carved with our family’s crest, the sigil of Fire—a diamond with a series of interlocking diamonds within, its angles symbolizing the piked edge of flame. The guard opened the door for me. Normally, I’d leave him behind in the colonnade, since there’d be nobody in our wing but my father, my brother, and our thoroughly vetted servants. Today, I didn’t. Not with the precious item I carried.

  I proceeded to my father’s quarters, where the fire sigil is everywhere. Embossed on the drapery, stamped into the drawer pulls, leaded in the window glass. But I think, even if he wasn’t the Fire Master, my father would be partial to our elemental color: red. His hair, when he was young, had been a startling Auburn. My brother had inherited that bit of genetics, not me. I was as blonde as our mother. And although I didn’t mind the color red as an accent, between the carpets and the curtains and the red lacquered furniture, I found it not just stodgy, but overwhelming.

  “Master Torch,” the security guard said.

  My father regarded him with as much interest as my fellow techs showed me. He waved a hand dismissively and said, “That’s all. Go.”

  The estate’s security guards might be more heavily armed than t
he rest of the staff, but they blended into the background just as seamlessly when they needed to. The man who’d followed me backed away in utter silence.

  My father had no need for security. Not as the embodiment of Fire. To be honest, though, he didn’t look particularly imposing to me. When most people saw him, they saw the Fire Master from Corona’s reigning Arcane Tetrad, strong and sure, capable of quelling a forest fire, or incinerating an attacker where he stood. I, of course, saw my father—not the sort of dad you see on TV shows that tuck their daughters in and read them storybooks. More like the one who vetoed my request to take ballet lessons, or learn to skateboard, or go to a real college. But family, nonetheless.

  And today, he looked particularly diminished, ensconced in a claret red wing chair with his foot up on an ottoman. His gout was bothering him again, and his swollen ankle looked tender and angry. His edge, however, was not dulled. “I would’ve liked to have seen the look on Vernon’s face when I ordered my special delivery.” He gestured at his gouty foot. “But for obvious reasons, that moment will have to exist only in my imagination.” He gestured, and I came forward and handed over the vessel. It felt as if there should have been some sort of pomp or ceremony, but Arcane dealings had always been shrouded in secrecy, and most of our key events are lost to the shadows of time.

  Still, I must have expected something, because when my father shooed me away, I hung back, and waited for…what? Approval? Thanks? A few words, at least.

  “Well? What is it?” He asked, already sounding annoyed.

  “I was just thinking, it seems as if Vernon is getting on in years—”

  “Which was why I couldn’t risk him making the delivery, obviously. Can’t afford for him to have a stroke and take a tumble down those stairs while he’s carrying the Vessel. Anything else?”

  “Someone will need to take his place eventually, and I thought—”