Ramsey Pierce is the firestarter from Hyacinth. Tall and muscled, with dark red hair and bottle green eyes, he has an intense personality that is a hallmark of his volatile gift. In Blue Violet Ellie taught him control over his gift that probably saved his life. My Facebook followers voted almost unanimously that Ramsey is the character they would most like to see next after Hyacinth. So for the final excerpt from Hyacinth before it’s released on Feb. 28th I decided a scene with Ramsey would be a good choice…
“I’m just saying that my family comes first.” Ramsey paused a beat. “Did you know that I left my original family?”
Selene tapped her pencil on her notebook. “No. I’m still learning all your backgrounds. Except Ellie and Griffin, of course. I know all about them.” She tilted her head to him. “What happened?”
A small bitter grimace twisted his mouth. “You have to ask? I’m a firestarter.”
“But you have so much control over it,” she observed.
Ramsey leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees, his green eyes serious. “That’s only recently. And with a lot of help from Ellie and Lila.”
“Who’d you inherit your gift from?”
“Through my mother’s side. But it skipped her generation. I think she assumed it would skip us as well. I was only six when things started happening.”
“Stuff would suddenly go up in flames when you were around?”
He nodded and leaned back in his chair. “Yeah. Luckily, we lived on the frontier. We were pretty isolated, so it was fairly easy to hide. When I was eight, my mother explained to me what was going on. Although she didn’t tell me everything at the time.”
“What happened?”
Ramsey’s mouth compressed and shadows filled his eyes. Selene reached forward to lay her hand over his. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
Ramsey cleared his throat. “Two things happened around the same time. First, when I was ten, my mom discovered she was going to have a baby. And then I discovered my grandfather’s diary. It was through him that I’d inherited my power. And it turned out that he killed my grandmother. By accident, of course. He just couldn’t control his power and it got away from him.”
“I’m so sorry,” Selene murmured.
Ramsey frowned and nodded. “Thanks. Anyways… I knew I had to protect my family from that, especially—my new baby brother or sister—I had to protect them from me. So I left.”
“When you were only ten?!”
Ramsey gave her a pointed look. “You were only ten when your brother turned your world upside down. And he was only ten when he became King of the Vyusher. I did okay.”
Selene pictured how Ramsey’s life must’ve been. At least she’d had food and a roof over her head. Ramsey not only had to fend for himself, but wrestle with a power that was usually a death sentence. It was a miracle he’d survived at all.
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