A Moonrise in the Fire, page 1
part #1 of An Element of Fire Series
A Moonrise in the Fire
Copyright © 2024 by Tessia Ives
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author or Silver Raven Press, except for the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Silver Raven Press
Publishing History
First Edition, 2024
Paperback ISBN 979-8-9900687-0-4
Digital ISBN 979-8-9900687-1-1
Published in the United States of America
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1
September Love Song
Chapter 2
Queen of Nothing
Chapter 3
Caelan
Chapter 4
Super Sad Love Song
Chapter 5
Movie Night
Chapter 6
The New Door
Chapter 7
Spirited Away
Chapter 8
The Mirror-Temple
Chapter 9
Time After Time
Chapter 10
A Thousand Shadows
Chapter 11
The Metal Realm
Chapter 12
Lost
Chapter 13
Dig A Hole
Chapter 14
The City of Moons
Chapter 15
Avyié
Chapter 16
Falling from the Sky
Chapter 17
Reimi
Chapter 18
Nightmare
Chapter 19
The Museum Realm
Chapter 20
The Red Guards and the Metal-Beaked Badgers
Chapter 21
Power
Chapter 22
The High King Infiero and Rian
Chapter 22.5
A Prologue
Chapter 23
The High King’s Castle
Chapter 24
Rian and the Night Sky
Chapter 25
Next Door
Chapter 26
An Apology
Chapter 27
The Feast of Realms
Chapter 28
Escape
Chapter 29
Rian
Chapter 30
Choices
Chapter 31
Love Is a Choice
Chapter 32
A Garden Party
Chapter 33
Caelan and the Ocean of Fire
Chapter 34
Home Sweet Home
Epilogue
Chapter Preview of Book Two
The Night of Fallen Realms
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
To entering doors through which we leave our pasts behind.
“That’s how it always works with love. You take turns saving each other.”
There must be more out there for her. She hopes.
And, there is.
My name is Talvi, and I have no powers. They say we are the person we choose to be, but it isn’t true when there aren’t choices in the first place. At nineteen, I’m desperately trying to finish school while working as the sole caretaker of Starstone Gate and Temple, an ancient monastery passed down through my grandmother’s family for over seven centuries.
I fell off the roof of the Temple when I was five, trying to touch the iridescent northern lights weaving across the sky that evening. I still have a long white scar that cuts from my right eyebrow to my ear, becoming thicker and more jagged as it snakes down my neck. It gives me the look of a villain, so I kind of like it. Plus, I can usually arrange my bangs to hide it. The scar is a reminder of how Starstone is such a big part of my life that Grams and I joke it’s a third family member we can’t escape.
The egg I’m frying for Grams’ breakfast sizzles in butter when I flip it, making my mouth water.
Grams isn’t my real grandmother. When she was Keeper of the Temple, she found me in the altar room one winter’s night, abandoned as a baby. After grumbling for a week that Starstone wasn’t an orphanage or hospital, she said I grew on her—and since then, she’s given me all the homemade cookies and love anyone could want.
A timer chimes, so I pluck the cheese toast out of the oven, trying not to burn myself.
My gran taught me that the universe is made up of four Elements:
Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire.
And everyone is born with a little bit of a single Elemental power.
Everyone except me.
I glance down. I’ve over-mashed the avocado. Oops.
Not that Elemental powers are terribly useful. Says the green-eyed monster. A small fire at your fingertips to light a candle, a bit of water to drink out of nowhere, a rock or dirt removed with the flick of a wrist. Nothing like in the movies where thunderstorms or wildfires or tidal waves are summoned out of nowhere. That would be useful.
Still, no one wants to be the dud. My birth parents didn’t want a dud; it’s probably why they left me at the Temple and never looked back.
It’s fine.
I do not allow myself to want something that clearly did not want me. Parents or powers.
The rooster clock in the kitchen says 7:55 a.m. Gah. It better be running fast—I can’t be late again. I pack up one of the egg sandwiches (leaving the other for Grams) and dash back into the bedroom to throw on a cozy taupe sweater dress the same color as my short, wavy hair. I used to wonder if my mom or dad had my moon-eyed look with light brown eyes that pick up the colors around them, but now I just imagine I’m one of Gram’s long-lost relatives. There’s no time to style my bangs, so I tousle the soft waves and sweep them over my scar. Low boots with a bit of heel because I am short, peach bubble-knit scarf, book bag. Done.
On the way out, the screen door catches my scarf and yanks me back.
The door slams and scares my gran, who launches into a wailing scream, even as I tell her it’s okay. The scream peters out into a long whimper but doesn’t stop, perhaps because a part of her knows it’s not okay.
Poor Grams.
She’s broken—after it was my turn to find her in the Temple’s cemetery one evening last year. No one knows what happened, and she hasn’t spoken since.
That’s why I take her place running Starstone.
“I love you, Grams,” I call to her and sling my bag over a shoulder as I work to dislodge the scarf choking me.
A concentrated blast of air pushes the door open, setting me free.
“Thanks, Rian.” I rearrange the hair out of my eyes.
Rian lowers his hand, and the breeze stops. He’s a Wind Element.
Okay, maybe sometimes Elemental powers are useful.
“Good morning, sugar bean.”
Sugar because I’m sweet and bean because I’m short, he likes to say. Rian is always on time, and he’s leaning an elbow on the white railing at the bottom of the stairway. His plaid shirt is tucked into his jeans. When I land on the second to last step, his sturdy arms clasp around my waist in a tight embrace. A big, warm body is so nice on a chilly morning, and I love the familiarity of our routine.
He’s a head and a half taller, so his kiss lands atop my head. When he pulls back, he brushes the hair out of my eyes with two fingertips. Adorable.
Rian, my boyfriend.
Devoted and handsome and friends since kindergarten, he rides horses, makes the best lingonberry pie, and fixes anything from a sheep’s shed to the classic red convertible his mother left him after she died.
“Made you a breakfast sandwich.” I offer up a brown paper bag, knowing he’s up before daylight breaks over the jagged lavender peaks to tend the sheep his family raises to clear brush—to prevent the wildfires common in our forest province.
“I don’t deserve you, TJ.”
Only he calls me TJ. Talvi Jorde.
I slide my nails down his muscled pitching arm (knowing it makes his spine tingle), past the birthmark shaped like a splotch of paint by his elbow. But instead of clasping his hand, I retrace my path back up his arm.
My eyes narrow as I twist his arm, concerned. “Is your birthmark changing color? It looks blue. And sort of higher up on your forearm.”
“I noticed it too. Maybe it’s from all the sun this summer. But it’s always been a muddy brown. And birthmarks can’t move, right? I’m stupid, but not that stupid.”
We laugh, and then his mouth is on mine, kissing me fiercely. It’s minty. Even after an entire year of this, my stomach still tumbles, half-wild with desire.
I forget about getting to class on time.
It’s ridiculously wonderful. I’m grinning like an idiot.
His chin scratches, and his nose presses into my cheek, cold from the fall morning chill.
I rise up to meet him, barely able contain myself when he murmurs into me, “I missed you since yesterday.”
Who says adorable stuff like that anymore? Rian does, and I eat it up.
The muscles of his chest tighten when I place a hand there. He smells like lemon drops and the laundry deterge
It takes us exactly twenty-seven minutes to speed through the dense forest, halfway around Violetwild Lake to the local two-year college most of the kids around here attend after high school before moving on to jobs or, more rarely, transferring to university.
Every morning, Rian tries to beat his best time around the lake.
Halfway around the lake is as far as I go. There isn’t much else around here. I torment myself dreaming of leaving Starstone to see the world, to live in a big city, even somewhere flat and open, like a tropical island Rian always wants to visit. But with the state of my Grams, and needing the income from guests staying at the Temple, moving away isn’t an option for me now.
But most of all—it is difficult to admit—not having an Element gets me anything from pity to disdain once I tell people, and I dread a whole new city of people finding out. The doctors ran all sorts of tests when I was little—and no, I am not just a late bloomer. This has never happened to anyone before, so it was easier for everyone to accept it and look the other way.
Rian never looked the other way, though.
I kiss him harder because I don’t want to think about any of this anymore.
“You’re my everything,” he tells me. Often. He’s a classic rock ballad about eternal love and soul mates and forever.
I’m not sure if I believe in sappy love songs or soul mates like he does, but it’s nice someone believes.
At least we’ve made it to his car, parked under the row of golden aspen trees lining the dirt lane in front of my house.
He swings open the passenger door of his convertible for me, but I pause at the edge of the lawn.
“Oh, a grass snake died.” I bend over to examine yellowed bones among the gold leaves.
I pluck the skull out of a shell of desiccated skin and thrust it up to Rian’s eye level. A few red ants crawl out of its eye sockets, so I blow on it before shaking it off. I’ll add it to my collection.
Rian’s lips form a thin line, as if he is holding his breath. “Uh, yuck, Talvi. You still collect skeletons?”
“Just the skulls.” I still scour Starstone, its surrounding woods, and Rian’s property (when he isn’t looking) for dead animal skulls. My stash consists of small bird and snake skulls, part of a bear jaw, an owl, a lynx, a wolf skull, two elk—one with antlers. The dormice, hare, and vole heads are in a clear plastic bag. Part of the fun is identifying them.
No—fun is the wrong word.
I don’t know why I do it.
Rian’s crumpled look of horror says he thought I’d outgrown it. “Aren’t they better when they’re…alive? It’s so…” He can’t finish his sentence.
“I know. But they’re already dead, and they’d just rot or break apart.”
He doesn’t know what to say.
To him, I’m sweet, girly Talvi who loves to prance around in dresses when the weather permits—and that’s who he loves.
Lately, I’ve been fighting hard for the prancing, sweet version to win.
“Let’s steal a day, you and me. We could drive out to Wolf’s Head Fjord and see the fall colors. Skip class?” he asks with a roguish gleam in his blue eyes.
I break into a smile, but I pull away and slide into the worn leather seat, tossing his baseball mitt into the back seat with the rest of his practice gear. Reality calls.
I remind him that I will catch the bus home instead of waiting for him to finish baseball practice. “Two guests are leaving this week, and I need to prepare for the next one.” I turn to him. “Can you believe someone rented out the entire thing for the next six months? All eight bedrooms for just one person?”
A bitter autumn wind twines between us as Rian confidently accelerates down the serpentine road with the car’s top down.
“I thought you were going to help me with my homework,” he says. “You already took Physics.” His tawny brown hair flips up and down and the muscles of his sun-bronzed forearm flex as he steers.
“I didn’t pass,” I murmur.
“Only cuz you couldn’t take the final. You had all A’s. This is easy for you. Please?” he grovels. “You’re the brains and the beauty in this relationship.”
I let out a too-high laugh. It feels good to hear, but I’m afraid it’s not true. After all, I couldn’t keep up while I took care of Grams in the hospital last year and won’t graduate in the spring with Rian. I’m terrified of being left behind to play tour guide at Starstone while my friends and classmates move on to internships, university, and adult lives outside our forest town.
I wish I had more choices in life.
But I shrug it off and plaster a smile on my face. “If you really can’t figure it out on your own, you can stop by for dinner. I’m making spaghetti and mini meatballs.” It’s one of the few meals Grams will eat these days.
“Mini meatballs? I’ll bring my mini fork.” He glances askew at me with his crooked half-smile that crinkles the speckles across his nose.
His easy grin could light the darkest recesses of Starstone.
This time, I cackle with genuine laughter. He can be so stupid funny sometimes.
He reaches over the gear stick and clasps a calloused palm on my knee, stroking with his thumb under the hem of my dress.
A quiver runs up my leg.
“Love and spaghetti are all I need in this world,” he says. “It’s all anyone needs, right?”
So wise.
The autumn winds reply with a roar and ripple through us. Chilled, I pull my gran’s scarf tighter as Rian shifts gears and surges forward, leaving the sudden vortex behind us. Speeding ever faster, he whisks around one of those curves tourists always brake for but the locals spin around.
Behind a thick spruce tree, I see a young man—a Fire Element, ablaze. Not just his fingertip lit like a match—his entire silhouette burns in flames. No one has that kind of power.
The Fire Element waves at me once before vanishing when Rian whips around another sharp turn, throwing me into my seatbelt.
I lurch, head thrown forward, but Rian thrusts his arm out for me on instinct. What a good guy.
My breath catches. The birthmark near his elbow has definitely turned a dark turquoise, and the shape has mysteriously changed again.
Isee the same Fire Element at Rian’s baseball practice later that week.
The baseball stadium is lined with moonstone to prevent cheating on the field. It stops a Wind Element from summoning a breeze to push the ball farther and prevents an Earth Element from splitting the dirt to trip an opponent running to a base. Players and spectators also wear bracelets of sunstone or moonstone.
Both gems block Elemental abilities.
Mine is an iridescent moonstone with lavender streaks; it was my gran’s when she was young. Even though I don’t have to, I wear the moonstone when everyone else is supposed to. Especially if there are strangers around.
It makes me feel both normal and abnormal at the same time.
There are plenty of strangers here today, and the bleachers are crowded because another school’s team is here for the off-season baseball clinic, and students from both sides are watching. When you’ve seen the same handful of faces your whole life, there’s nothing more exciting on a Wednesday afternoon than scoping out other kids.
But I’m trying my best not to get too distracted from the textbook I was supposed to have read last year. To my dismay though, more interesting than the History of Elements book in my lap, more interesting than the players on the field, is the Fire Element sidling through the crowd.
He pauses, lingering on the far side of the bleachers near third base. The edges of his tall, lithe frame flicker. Are those faint flames, despite the moonstones? Pale skin, even paler hair, graceful features pulled into a look of disdain. What’s he scowling at?
I feel guilty for staring and pry my lingering eyes off him.
He drifts behind the bleachers, disappearing from view.
