Burn With Me

BURN WITH ME GODS OF HAZELWOOD: ICARUS 1 LUCY SMOKE CONTENTS Introduction Prologue: Rori 1. Isaac 2. Rori 3. Isaac 4. Rori 5. Rori 6. Isaac 7. Rori 8. Isaac 9. Rori 10. Isaac 11. Rori 12. Isaac 13. Rori 14. Rori 15. Isaac 16. Rori 17. Rori 18. Isaac 19. Rori 20. Rori 21. Rori 22. Isaac 23. Rori 24. Rori 25. Isaac 26. Rori 27. Rori 28. Isaac 29. Isaac 30. Rori 31. Isaac 32. Rori 33. Rori 34. Isaac 35. Rori 36. Isaac 37. Rori 38. Rori 39. Isaac 40. Rori 41. Isaac 42. Rori 43. Isaac 44. Rori 45. Isaac Epilogue: Isaac Thank you for Reading! About the Author Also by Lucy Smoke In loving memory of my grandfather. My number one supporter. I loved you as Icarus loved The sun— Too close, Too much. — David Jones, Icarus in Love INTRODUCTION Icarus was no God. He was a mortal with aspirations. A genius. A perfect specimen who desired to attain that which was out of his reach. So he labored day and night. Under the hot sun and the frigid moon. Until his creation was complete, and then, only then, when he and his father made their escape from Crete, was the truth realized. Three things became impossibly clear to him in the end: One. Wings were not meant for man. Two. Scars lasted forever. And three. No one could reach the sun … at least … not without getting burned. PROLOGUE: RORI It’s empty. The hallway. The living room. My fucking bedroom. The whole house is empty. I’m standing in the center of it all, holding what is now apparently a useless set of keys and my cell phone, when the front door bangs open, followed by the telltale sound of my mother’s heels clicking across the wood floor. Something insidious awakens in my gut. A curdling sense of dread that only seems to revive when she returns from wherever the hell she’s been for the last several months. “Oh good, you’re here,” she says as she breezes past me. Where the fuck could she be going? is my immediate first thought. She looks like she’s dressed for a goddamn gala in a long black tank dress with a slit almost all the way up her thigh. The only things making it seem even remotely casual are the big floppy black hat, the shades, and the gray shawl over her shoulders. A shawl … in the May heat. But I know it’s because she’s afraid of getting sunburned; tanning ages a person, and even in her early forties, she looks closer to a twenty-five-year-old than someone who has an eighteen-year-old daughter. “Hurry up and double-check to make sure the movers didn’t leave anything behind,” she calls over her shoulder as she reaches the kitchen, and I find myself drifting after her, needing answers. ‘What the fuck?’ seems to be more than a question I keep asking myself; it’s my new motto. “The movers?” I repeat. “Why did we have movers? Where’s our stuff? Are we going somewhere?” My mother pulls down her shades, tossing them to the granite countertop as she reaches into the fridge and pulls out a bottled water. Over her shoulder, I note that a single case of it is all that’s left. Am I in the Twilight Zone or something? When I left for the last day of my senior year this morning, everything had seemed normal—and by normal, I mean my mother hadn’t been home in weeks, and I’d received no phone call or messages saying when she’d be coming back. To us, that was normal. This is not. “Yes, we’re going somewhere,” my mother says. Ignoring my first two questions, she sets her bottled water on the counter and then thrusts her left hand in my face. It takes me a moment to realize that she’s trying to shove the giant diamond sitting on her ring finger toward my eyes as if I could miss the damn thing, especially now that it’s front and center to my vision. “What did you do?” The words come from my throat like glass shards being pulled from a wound. Dizziness assails me. My stomach sinks, and then, as if she doesn’t hear the horror in my voice, she says the words I’ve always come to hate. “I got married!” This is not happening. My mother pulls her hand back, the sound of her heels clicking across the floor as she moves away. “Now, hurry up and check the house. We’re flying out to California in a few hours.” “California?” My voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away, but one thing I do know is that her voice doesn’t get any quieter—it remains the same steady volume, which must mean that I’m following behind her even though I can no longer feel my legs. “Why are you going to California?” I know why I would—I’m supposed to go to California. In two months, to be precise. Because in two months, I’ll be joining my brother at Hazelwood University, one of the premiere colleges in the world, exclusive to the upper echelon. But she was never supposed to go. She was supposed to stay here. My mother’s face comes into view again and I blink, catching sight of the open front door, and realize we’re at the entrance again. She laughs and reaches forward, tucking a flyaway hair behind my ear. It’s one of her rare maternal quirks. “Oh, sweetie,” she says, “because we’re moving there. Damien’s businesses are based there—he’s so amazing, oh! I just can’t wait for you to meet him. And isn’t it great that he’s based in California? You and I will be able to spend more time together even though you’ll be going to college. It’ll be like nothing has changed.” With that, she pats my cheek, turns around, and disappears out the front door again, like she didn’t just barge back into my life like a