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It was beautiful.
The flames began to dance upon the curtains, casting a reddish glow upon all of the wooden furniture in her father’s old study. Tiny embers broke free and danced down to the floor. She delighted in the way they quickly turned to ash as they fell. If she squinted through the smoke, she could see the pink-and-orange sunset sky just beyond the bay window. But the world outside had nothing on what she had created in here. In a space that was completely hers, completely within her control.
Hers.
She laughed freely as sparks flew from her hands once more. She sent them wherever whim guided her: towards the bookshelf filled with her father’s old textbooks; to his oak desk, brought from his office at the university; to the leather-bound photo album of relatives, who were both long-dead and long-disdainful of her (even from the grave, she presumed). The memories of their whispers ghosted past her ears as she cast spell after spell. One particular memory still made her smolder with rage, and made her fires burn brighter.
“How will you sustain your legacy?” Her aunt had asked her father. It was at her sixth birthday party. She remembered sitting at the long table in the dining room with her slice of cake, a glorious vanilla confection with lavender icing. Her aunt had pulled her father to the window, admonishing him in hushed tones. No one believed in the incredible hearing of children during that time, much to her misfortune. “You can’t possibly expect that she’ll have children and that they’ll come out normal, Malcolm.”
“I don’t know,” her father whispered defensively. “We don’t know how she could possibly have been born a mage. Leandra and I did DNA testing, we traced our family trees -”
“Well.” She could remember her aunt’s expression, no better than curdled milk, clear as day. “You’ll just have to find some way to get that all sorted. I know of a clinic - they might be able to perform an outpatient procedure, simple and quick, before she begins to menstruate-”
“We are not sterilizing our daughter,” her father snapped. “At least not now.” She quickly looked down at her cake while her father cast a sidelong glance in her direction.
“At least not now,” he repeated softly, turning away.
“I’ll schedule a consult, darling,” she heard her aunt reply. Even now, she remembered how quickly she pushed away her cake. Nothing tasted the same after that.
They’d done it, in the end, three years later. Once she re-awakened within perfectly clean white walls and in a silken hospital gown, they greeted her with a teddy bear, a slice of cake, and warm adoring eyes. For days after they gave her anything she wanted, lavish gifts that surpassed even her unfettered imagination. “You’re our daughter, now,” they cooed. “How could we not give you your heart’s desires?” She had not had the wherewithal to ask what she had been to them before. Nor had she had the wherewithal to ask why, when she first came into her magic, the warm adoring eyes had suddenly gone flat.
But in the here and now, her parents were dead.The house they once called their home was hers. And her heart’s desire, nearly twenty years later, was to burn down what their hatred of mages had wrought.
Sweat pooled on her skin as she basked in the heat from her flames. She would burn it all. The Mathematics League trophies; the countless thank-you letters from the Templar Order, for her mother’s numerous and generous donations; the chair that she used to curl up in when she wished for her father to pay attention to her, if only for a moment; the ornate globe that she’d spin when he was absent, dreaming of places she wished to escape to. She would reduce it to cinders, just like how her parents turned joy into ashes in her mouth.
Without warning, someone cleared their throat behind her. Out of reflex, she immediately extinguished her flames. She sucked the air out of the room as she turned, while darkness crept into the office at last. Leto was leaning in the doorway, green eyes sparkling with amusement beneath silver bangs. His tattoos glimmered sympathetically, as they did whenever a mage was near. She noticed the smile playing about his lips and frowned.
She crossed her arms beneath her chest. “Well?” she said testily.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to, Leto, and you know it.”
He chuckled, lifting his slender frame off the door-frame to saunter into her father’s office. He gracefully skirted around the broken glass and still-burning embers on the floor. “Well,” he started.
“I see you’ve decorated.”