Meet the survivors, believers, skeptics, prophets, and ancient powers caught amid the fire.
THROUGH THE FIRE · BOOK TWO
SPOILER-FREE
AMID THE FIRE
Three years ago, Maricel disappeared.
Now she lives in Dallas under another name.
She works in a bookstore. She attends community college. She studies scripture. And after years spent rebuilding her life from almost nothing, she has found something she once desperately lacked:
purpose.
But Maricel hasn’t forgotten what happened to her.
She hasn’t forgotten Azazel.
And while the people around her see political unrest, strange events and a world becoming increasingly unstable, Maricel sees something else.
Prophecy.
Volatile was about stepping into a world Maricel didn’t understand.
Embers begins with Maricel understanding enough to be terrified of what may come next.
THE CENTER
MARICEL
The woman who escaped one life only to discover the story wasn’t finished with her.
SURVIVOR · SEEKER · PROPHET
The Maricel who begins Embers is not the young actress who once dreamed of meeting an angel.
She has already met one.
And she knows what extraordinary things can cost.
For three years, Maricel has lived publicly as Patricia, trading Hollywood for books, school and a quiet life in Dallas. Her growing faith has given her a new way to understand the things she experienced—and the things she believes are still coming.
Because Maricel doesn’t believe the instability around her is random.
She believes she can see what’s ahead.
The problem is convincing anyone else.
Can you become someone new when the world keeps calling you back to who you were?
THE ONE WHO LISTENS
MASON
The one who takes her seriously when almost no one else will.
BOOKSTORE OWNER · BOSS · BIBLE STUDY LEADER
Dr. Mason Richmond is Maricel’s new boss.
Even-tempered, intelligent and interested in many of the same theological questions that consume her, Mason offers Maricel something increasingly rare:
He listens.
When others find her ideas strange, Mason encourages her to speak. When Maricel questions whether she has any authority to interpret what she’s seeing, Mason sees potential in her.
Their shared interest in prophecy draws them closer.
And being believed can make someone extraordinarily important to a person who has spent years being doubted.
What happens when someone finally tells you the things everyone else doubts might be real?
THE ONES WHO REMEMBERS
LESLIE
The best friend who has already seen Maricel through one impossible life.
BEST FRIEND · CONFIDANTE · LOYALIST
Leslie knew Maricel before Dallas.
Before Patricia.
Before prophecy became something Maricel studied instead of something that happened to her.
As Maricel’s best friend, Leslie doesn’t need to understand every supernatural force surrounding her to recognize when Maricel needs someone beside her.
She listens when Maricel is afraid.
She tells her things she may not want to hear.
And when Maricel’s life becomes impossible again, Leslie does what she has always done:
she stays.
That loyalty is particularly explicit when Erich volunteers them for a dangerous mission with the simple answer, “Leslie and I as always.”
Some friendships survive because neither person ever learns how to leave.
ERICH
The skeptic who learned that disbelief doesn’t make danger disappear.
SKEPTIC · WITNESS · FRIEND
Erich has never needed Maricel’s supernatural explanations to recognize danger.
He remembers Hollywood.
He remembers Claudius.
And he remembers watching someone he cared about become entangled with something he never trusted.
Years later, Maricel has found faith and a new explanation for the world around her.
Erich remains willing to ask the questions other people don’t.
But skepticism has never meant abandonment.
When Maricel walks toward danger again, Erich is still there.
You don’t have to share someone’s beliefs to believe what happened to them.
THE FRIENDS WHO JOINED THE JOURNEY
CAROLINE
The friend willing to listen before she understands.
BELIEVER · FRIEND · HEART
Caroline enters Maricel’s life knowing her as Patricia.
What she eventually receives is a much more complicated truth.
Warm, devout and open-minded, Caroline doesn’t always understand Maricel’s interpretation of the world.
She doesn’t have to.
Where others respond to uncertainty by becoming rigid, Caroline leaves room for compassion.
And as Maricel’s world becomes increasingly divided between believers and skeptics, prophets and impostors, Caroline offers something deceptively simple:
someone willing to stay beside her while still asking questions.
Sometimes believing someone begins with listening.
KEVIN
The husband who discovers that his wife’s new friendship comes with a much larger world.
HUSBAND · FRIEND · COMPANION
Kevin enters Maricel’s world through Caroline.
But as that world becomes stranger—and considerably more dangerous—he doesn’t remain merely his wife’s plus-one.
He becomes part of the group itself.
Practical, social and willing to follow his friends into situations none of them could have anticipated, Kevin helps make Embers feel less like the story of isolated prophets and supernatural beings and more like something happening to ordinary people alongside them.
When the group faces one of its dangerous missions, Kevin’s answer is telling:
if Caroline is going, so is he.
Sometimes loyalty means entering a story you never expected to be yours.
WARREN
The friend who never quite stops asking whether any of this is a good idea.
FRIEND · REALIST · COMPANION
Warren brings something Maricel’s increasingly prophetic world desperately needs:
another person willing to question it.
He can joke when everyone else is terrified, challenge plans that sound suicidal and still climb into the car when the group decides to go anyway.
That combination makes Warren part skeptic, part comic relief and part reminder that not everyone traveling beside Maricel has to experience events with the same solemn certainty.
When an extraordinarily dangerous mission is proposed, his eventual answer is simple:
“Count me in.”
You can think the plan is insane and still refuse to let your friends face it alone.
HE RISING POWER
JALEN LOVELL
The politician whose ambitions are becoming impossible to separate from prophecy.
POLITICIAN · REFORMER · CONTENDER
Jalen shouldn’t be introduced through everything we know about him from later material or the AU. He should be Embers Jalen only.
His section should essentially establish:
Jalen is a rising political figure entering a world already destabilized by fear, religious upheaval and questions about what comes next.
To most people, he is a politician.
To Maricel, politics can no longer be separated so easily from prophecy.
And as Jalen’s influence grows, his place in the changing world becomes increasingly difficult for her to ignore.
When you’ve spent years studying the end of the world, how do you look at someone promising to build a new one?
THE OTHER PROPHET
LEO
The stranger who sees what Maricel sees.
OUTSIDER · PROPHET · SURVIVOR
For years, Maricel has carried knowledge that sounds impossible when spoken aloud.
Then she meets Leo.
Unkempt, unpredictable and operating by a moral code very different from the people Maricel has surrounded herself with, Leo isn’t an obvious answer to anything.
But he understands things he shouldn’t.
He sees patterns Maricel recognizes.
And most unsettling of all, he possesses the same strange gift Maricel has been struggling to understand in herself.
For someone who has spent years wondering whether anyone could truly understand what she sees, Leo represents something Maricel didn’t expect to find:
recognition.
But recognition and trust aren’t necessarily the same thing.
What happens when the person everyone tells you not to trust is the first person who truly understands what you see?
THE LIFE HE LEFT BEHIND
CICELY
The woman everyone once thought Leo would marry.
RIVAL · TRADITION · LOYALIST
Cicely knew Leo long before Maricel did.
In Flo, their future once seemed almost predetermined. Their families expected it. Cicely believed in it. And even after Leo walked away from the life chosen for him, the possibility of his return never entirely disappeared.
Then he comes home with Maricel.
To Cicely, Maricel isn’t simply another woman competing for Leo’s affection.
She’s an outsider.
She carries beliefs Cicely distrusts, a history tied to people Cicely has every reason to hate, and a connection to Leo that threatens the future Flo once imagined for him.
The manuscript makes that pressure explicit: Leo’s father tells him that his mother’s dying wish was for him to return, marry Cicely and have a normal family in Flo.
So Cicely represents more than romantic rivalry.
She represents the life Leo was supposed to choose.
What happens when someone else’s freedom means losing the future you thought was yours?
That question makes her much more dimensional than simply labeling her “Leo’s jealous ex.”
THE THRESHOLD
Now the entire page changes.
Everything above has been contemporary:
Dallas. Books. Friends. Faith. Flo. Human relationships.
MARICEL LEFT THEIR WORLD.
THEIR WORLD NEVER LEFT HERS.
THE ANGEL SHE ESCAPED
AZAZEL
The angel Maricel once knew as Claudius.
WATCHER · KING · FORMER FIANCÉ
For three years, Maricel has tried to construct a life beyond Azazel.
But Azazel was never simply someone she loved.
He is an ancient angel—a Watcher whose history stretches far beyond Maricel’s own—and Maricel now understands his world far better than she did when she first met him as Claudius.
Whatever Maricel believes she escaped, Azazel hasn’t forgotten her.
Nor has he abandoned his vision for what she could become beside him.
THE QUEEN
TESS
The woman who steps willingly toward the world Maricel ran from.
BELIEVER · QUEEN · COUNTERPOINT
Maricel has spent years trying to escape a world of ancient powers, predetermined roles and beings who seem certain they know what she should become.
Tess sees that world differently.
Where Maricel has learned to question extraordinary promises, Tess is willing to consider what might be waiting on the other side of them.
That makes her a counterpoint to Maricel:
two women confronted with the possibility of becoming something larger than the lives they once knew—and responding very differently.
What looks like a cage to one person can look like a kingdom to another.
ONE FACE IS MISSING.
BELIAL
There is another angel woven through Embers.
Ancient. Calculating. Mocha-eyed.
A name Maricel has encountered before.
But showing you which face belongs to him would answer a question the novel should answer first.
TWELVE FACES
MARICEL · MASON · LESLIE · ERICH · CAROLINE · KEVIN · WARREN · JALEN · LEO · CICELY · AZAZEL · TESS
Some believe her.
Some doubt her.
Some remember who she was.
Some understand things no one else can.
Some represent the lives that might have been.
Some have already decided what Maricel should become.
And somewhere between prophecy, faith, friendship, love and power, Maricel is trying to answer something for herself:
WHO AM I SUPPOSED TO BE?
FROM THE AUTHOR
What interested me in writing Embers was what happens when escape doesn’t mean the story is over.
Maricel begins the novel believing she has already survived the most dangerous part of her life. She has changed her name, rebuilt herself and found a faith that gives meaning to things she once couldn’t understand.
But Embers isn’t the aftermath.
Maricel is still amid the fire.
The difference is that now she knows she’s burning.
As her old world collides with the new one, nearly everyone around her seems to have an idea of who she is supposed to become.
Some see a prophet.
Some see someone they need to protect.
Some see someone they can love.
Some see someone who belongs to them.
And some see a role for her in a future she isn’t sure she wants.
Others see something much more dangerous.
Where some see prophecy, others see obsession. They see a woman losing her grip on reality, drawing the people around her deeper into beliefs that sound increasingly impossible. To some, the little community forming around her doesn’t look like fellowship.
It looks like a cult.
And there are others who don’t merely doubt Maricel.
They want to stop her.
At the center of all of it is a question Maricel is finally beginning to ask:
If everyone believes your life has a purpose, how do you know which part of that purpose you actually chose?