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men, and Sulien couldn't get a proper look at the man's eyes to gauge what might be behind those words. Damn child had taken to wearing a hooded cloak that clung to his lean frame and hid his face in half shadows. Sulien waited impatiently. He hated that Guardian held any dominion over them, hated his oh-so-bright Fire, his aura shimmering golden and intense, so new and fresh and alive. Jealousy and desire for what Guardian had was like acid inside him. The call for the Council to attend Guardian had been clear, succinct; in his bones, Sulien knew Guardian was somehow aware of the Cariad in their prison. He wasn't wrong. As long as none of them admitted to anything, everything would be fine.
    "The Cariad has gone," Guardian offered and then pushed himself up, standing away from his chair. "I understand he was held in the prison here."
    "He was trying to—" Ephraim said, but he stopped as soon as Guardian inclined his head in question. Sulien sighed inwardly. Ephraim was always the one who lost control first.
    "Why was there a member of the Cariad in our cells?"
    No one answered him, least of all Sulien , who saw the spark of orange that colored the area about them. Guardian was angry, frustrated, and the edge of brilliant white made Sulien want to be anywhere other than here. They may be the Council , the g overnment that acted in Guardian ' s name, but at the end of the day it was Guardian who pulled the strings. He was a new guardian, not yet fully grown into his power, but Annwn , he was already so strong.
    Sulien cast a quick look to his left. Ephraim stood hunched in on himself, affected the worst by their dying Fire. Madoc was similarly cowed.
    " We needed his Fire, " Sulien finally said . He was dying anyway. Why not be honest and then die quickly at the hand of Guardian rather than slowly as their Fire decayed more ? " H e came here of his own free will . H e is a Cariad ; he is nothing. " He spat the word Cariad as the venom inside him colored his words . T hey were nothing more than vermin , with their transient ways and their inability to live in civilized society .
    Guardian said nothing and indicated nothing in the way he stood silently. It was intimidating and overwhelming, and it was the straw that finally broke the camel's back. He shouldn't rise to it, but this was all too much, and he was so damn tired.
    "If you gave us some of your Fire then we wouldn't need a Cariad." Sulien spat the words, part of him wanting to pull them back as soon as they were said but the other part so pleased to finally have the words out of him and into the open. It was only what all three thought, and nothing they hadn't discussed when alone.
    "Give you my Fire…" Guardian's voice was low, modulated, his syllables carefully spoken. "You believe you deserve to live on through my Fire when your time in this world is drawing to an end? A new Council is long overdue."
    Sulien's stomach twisted at the words, and anger glinted in his Fire. "We made you." He sneered. He covered his face as gold and white sparked from Guardian's hands, pricking and sparking at his skin and blinding his eyes momentarily.
    "You made nothing." The words were final, abrupt, dripping with derision. "I owe you nothing." Guardian lifted his hands to the hood of his dark cloak and pushed it back. Sulien swallowed in sudden fear.
    "Guardian—"
    "I may be Guardian of the Council Fire but it is not by choice that I became so. I will not give you my Fire before the last breath leaves my body."
    Temper built in Sulien, pushing past any fear he may have had of the boy who stood in front of him. Guardian had been nothing more than a youngling when they took him from his first Fire. Young, inexperienced, flooded with amber Fire so perfect, so absolute, his immolation had been manipulated as immediate, the scars the only thing that remained from receiving his Fire on his twenty-first birthday.
    It seemed Sulien was not the only one whose temper had peaked. Madoc was