The Man In The Midnight Blue Suit

Chapter Thirteen

Jonathan pours over a book with a tatty, purple cover. I sit in my window seat, letting the afternoon sun warm my stiff bones. A book lies open in my lap. It's about the differences between an Elite mind and one of a regular human. I don't pay much attention to it.

In the hours after Lucian's explosion – the only way to describe his outrage at me – my breathing has been irregular and strained. It's as if my chest is still frozen in his mind's grip. My lungs struggle to draw in a steady breath. I flex my fingers every few minutes, reminding myself that I can move. I hope these side effects of having every muscle in my body stiffened in place will wear off. Soon. For now, I focus my attention on drawing in air tinted with the musk of books and slowly letting it out again. It's calming, the way I can control it.

I haven't told Jonathan about my training. He doesn't need to know. Although, I think he can already tell that something happened. Sometimes I think he can read me like one of his books.

"Found it!" Jonathan says, tearing through the peaceful silence where my breathing was the only sound. He picks up the book and leaves his table to sit next to me on the window seat. A page falls out as he walks, drifting slowly to the ground. Jonathan doesn't even glance. I put my unread book aside as he sits next to me. He carries the tatty purple book with a reserved carefulness as if it's an ancient artefact that could fall apart at any moment. I suppose that to him, it is. Having books as his main company for so long would have given Jonathan weird respect for them. Not for the first time, I realise how much my presence must mean to him.
"This is what I wanted to show you, yesterday." He says excitedly. "Remember?"
I look up at him apologetically. He sighs and shakes his head. "This is the chapter that touches on our unique relationship with fire." He passes the book into my lap. I stare at the scribbling text. Today, after my training, I am not in the mood to read about fire.
Jonathan sighs again and moves to sit in front of me. "Here," He says, pointing to the paragraph. "There is a theory that fire was the beginning of intellectual abilities. When humans discovered fire, it wasn't because some caveman got lucky. Fire was born out of pure need and will, so much that it unlocked an ability in the person and allowed them to create a source for what they wanted – warmth and light." Jonathan points to a chart of some kind. A long time ago it might have been a scale of colours, shades varying to bright red to a deep blue, but now the colours have faded. From what I can tell, they're not in a normal rainbow order either. The colours at each end of the scale have nearly faded into oblivion. A cluster of deep blue and violet hues at one end, with what seems to be a deep, stark red, and orange, weak yellow, and more natural reds at the other. Various shades of lighter blue, green, and pink are mixed in between. The rest is impossible to tell.

"Fire is viewed as a raw display of potential and power." Jonathan continues. "Each Elite has their own unique representation of fire. Our strength is displayed through our flame. It cannot be covered up or changed. From the first time an Elite brings their flame to life until the last, the colour will stay the same. This is a rough scale of what is believed to be weak to strong colours."
"Lucian's fire – it burns midnight blue, right? What does that mean?"
Jonathan falters. If he's annoyed that I interrupted him, he doesn't show it. When he speaks again, it is slowly, his words carefully picked.
"A midnight blue flame is a symbol of immense strength, held by those with great potential. Lucian has taken hold of that potential ever since it became known that he possessed it. Now, his fire only confirms what we already know." Jonathan runs a hand through his hair, as he often does. After a moment, he looks up with a flicker of amusement on his face. "It does explain his obsession over the colour, though."
I grin back at him, but only for a moment. Lucian really is more powerful than I realised. I shiver. A man as ruthless as him could have done a lot worse than freeze my body in place.

Jonathan's grin is replaced with curiosity. "I haven't seen your flame yet, Casey."

I hesitate. "I haven't really trained with it since... Since the first training. You know it didn't go so well."
"Yes," Jonathan pushes on eagerly, "but that was under extreme pressure. Without extreme pressure, your ability wouldn't have surfaced." He jumps up and hurries over to a cabinet pushed against the wall. He opens a drawer, muttering under his breath as he rummages through it. After a minute he produces a candle. He almost runs back to me and sets it on the table nearest us. "Here," he says, "Try lighting and holding a flame on this. I know you light the sconces in your room with ease now. This shouldn't be any trouble."
He looks at me expectantly. I don't know why I'm hesitant to show my fire to Jonathan. The knowledge of what it might represent scares me.
"Go on," He says.
I look at the candle. Without any effort, a flame appears on the wick. It burns a bright white. So bright it's hard to look at. I can always make the flame smaller, of course, but I want to show Jonathan what it really looks like. The flame flickers and dances, all the qualities of a normal fire – apart from the colour.

Jonathan stares at the flame, transfixed. His hands lie slack and unmoving in his lap. The white flame is reflected in his light blue eyes. Slowly, he begins to smile. But before he can say something, my white flame flickers out. My eyes snap back to the candle. I had complete control over it. I had felt the invisible tether tying to me to it. I hadn't seen the blade coming down to break that tether, but I felt the loss immediately after. The little energy I had spent on lighting the candle wasn't coursing through me anymore. It had been extinguished with the bright white flame.

Jonathan's hands clench as his smile is wiped from his face. He knows as well as I do that I didn't extinguish the flame myself.

We sit still on the window seat for a long time. Nothing else happens. We had forgotten the danger that lingers inside. Why Lucian had bothered interfering with us I didn't know. I had lit candles often enough before. Why did it cross a line now?

When it had been long enough for the sun's light to dull, Jonathan abruptly moved to put away his papers and books. He lifts the tatty purple volume from my lap without looking at me. Before he goes to leave, he turns to me. His eyes avoid my gaze. Quietly, as if Lucian were standing in the library with us, he says, "Your passing out wasn't the only reason Lucian lashed out at you that first training."
Without saying anything else, he leaves. I hurry out the doors after him, not willing to be alone in the book filled space.

An hour later, I pace the wooden floors of my room. My bright white fire burns in the single sconce I have lit. The light casts long, stretching shadows along the white and green walls. I turn on my toes, only to find a wavering shadow where I thought was a person. I can't sit still. I have to be moving, making my heart pump and my brain think. Jonathans cryptic words echo in my head, twisting and turning only to take me back to the beginning again. The beginning of this whole goddamned mystery. I keep ending up back at the party, with Lucian, a stranger to me then, leaning against the wall and watching me. And now, weeks later, I'm standing neck deep in the unknown and unable to find a single answer to my questions.

I collapse onto my bed, defeated. Lucian's white card tumbles onto the floor. Staring at it, I take a deep breath. The white card begins to float up off the floor and in front of my face. It hovers there, twisting around in beat with my thoughts. Slowly, the midnight blue letters are pulled off the card, one by one. As they leave their paper shackles, their shape begins to flop. The letter they once spelt becomes illegible. Midnight blue ink drips from the floating shapes, staining the white bedspread. The dark blue puddle grows as the letters drip, the ink that once held their shape now unrestricted. Eventually, all the letters are pulled from the card. The midnight blue ink forms an opaque splash on the simple white fabric. The white card has no meaning now, no promise of a challenge.

I sit up, my focus suddenly in tune. The card isstill here. It hadn't disappeared. All the others had. They were gone as soonas I turned my back. This one was still here, as real as it had been thismorning. I didn't believe that Lucian had lost his taste for mystery. It didn'tmake sense. Unless... he had been distracted. And Lucian wasn't the kind ofperson to be distracted easily. Whatever he did to make that card disappear, hehad forgotten. Something had happened. It caused him to make a mistake. And amistake was all I needed.