Chapter 6
Callan
My ears are ringing as I kneel on legs that certainly don’t feel like mine.
The sound of distant shouting rattles in my ears, echoing as if there is too much empty space in my head. Daylight burns into my eyes, and I squint against it, blinking until the Yard comes into view.
Complete destruction. Albatross…is nothing but rubble.
Smoke plumes from piles of charred and fallen stone. Phoenix and Easton lift Pax out of the wreckage, helping him to his feet with one arm slung over each shoulder. Hunter and Devon are moving to my side, ash falling over their dirtied uniforms.
“Boss?” Devon calls, but his voice is distant, the ringing in my ears having yet to fully cease. “Cal!” he shouts again. “You okay?”
I nod vacantly, glancing down at Cin.
My grip on her wrists has held somehow, but she’s still fighting to get out from under me.
Very much alive and seemingly unaffected by what she’s just done.
Her wild curls are sprawled in the dirt, some still damp and clinging to her forehead.
Her skin is soaked and slick from the rain, and her cheeks are pink from overexertion.
At least she isn’t dead and pale.
“Lucina.” My voice comes out as a croak.
She stops squirming long enough to look around, slowly realizing what she’s done.
Then, to my surprise, her busted lip splits into a triumphant grin, flashing teeth no longer covered by lightning. “Let me up, I won.”
“You—” I gape at her. “You what?!” She nearly breaks free of my hold, and I slam her wrists back down to the dirt. “Lucina, you didn’t win. You nearly killed yourself!”
“Are you fucking serious right now?” She’s still thrashing against my hold, but I can feel her strength waning. “Nearly killed myself!? That whole godsdamn place was a death trap, and you sent me into it! Risked my life?!” Lucina lets out a mocking laugh. “You risked it first!”
I stare blankly into her bloodshot eyes, and she glares up at me, chest heaving.
She thinks she’s right. And in her defense, I needed her to think that. I needed her to feel that way for it to be real.
Lucina had to have some sense that her life was at stake, or else she wouldn’t understand Albatross and why we do it.
Yes, it’s about trusting your own instincts and breaking through the obstacle of your own mind, but it’s also meant to show the kind of fighting you do when your opponent is death.
In the end, that’s the only fight that matters anyway.
For Lucina’s Albatross run to be legitimate, I needed her to believe she was in danger. But there are limits to what I can stand when it comes to her, and letting Lucina do this was just as stressful for her as it was for me.
“Lucina.” I do my best to clear the anger from my voice. “I had eyes on you the whole time. I watched everything. I’m not allowed to intervene in Albatross, but do you really think I wouldn’t have?”
She says nothing, her eyes growing a bit heavy now that the adrenaline is wearing off. She must be utterly empty. Or as close to it as someone with her kind of power can be—I’m not sure how deep that well runs.
Lucina licks her dry lips, a kindling of anger still burning in the depths of her stare, but she doesn’t respond.
“For you?” I look down at her like she’s gone completely mad, and when I loosen my hold on her wrists, she keeps them flat in the dirt. “Fuck, Lucina, seriously? I’d do anything for you.”
It’s bitter when it leaves my mouth because that’s how it makes me feel. Raw. Vulnerable. Defenseless. It isn’t meant to be romantic; it isn’t a declaration of that kind of love. It’s a harsh and terrifying truth… the lengths I’d go to keep her heart beating.
“You are out of your godsdamn mind if you think I’d let you die in there.”
Something in her stare softens then. She swallows, licking her dry lips before parting them wide enough to say, “So, you were playing chicken with me?”
I exhale, blowing out the last of my anger.
Her words come out slower, each blink longer than the last. “Was it you who put that hatch there?” Lucina’s eyes drift closed. “Under the water,” she mumbles.
I wonder how much time she thinks has passed. Everything in Albatross is skewed, but Lucina ran Albatross in three hours and twenty-six minutes.
Seven minutes quicker than I did at sixteen.
I have no plans to tell her that.
“No, Lucina,” I huff a laugh, remembering how confidently she’d stepped off that plank. “You were supposed to jump. I could have gotten you out of there in less than a heartbeat, and believe me, there were moments when I wanted to, but you did all of it on your own. You did it perfectly.”
She cracks an eye open at that. “Even the ending?”
She must be referring to the ruins that surround us—a centuries-old maze reduced to rubble. If she has any ounce of fear, regret, or remorse, she isn’t showing it.
“The ending,” I start, “was reckless and stupid, and you’re lucky to be alive.” Grabbing her hands, I help her to her feet, switching my hold to her waist when her knees buckle.
Lucina’s head wobbles as she turns to face the rest of the coven. “Sorry about your death trap, boys,” she slurs. “Blame Devon.”
My eyes lift to his. That’s why she did that?
Hearing what he said to her pissed me off, but knowing that she nearly died trying to prove herself to him makes my blood boil. If he had just kept his mouth shut—
“Callan,” Lucina exhales. She looks up at me and then down at her feet. “I can’t feel my legs.”
Right.
“Yeah, I bet.” I pull her wrist across the back of my shoulder and bend down to help her up onto my back. “You’ll need to sleep for a while, okay?”
“Okay,” she breathes against my neck, arms falling loosely around my neck.
“Cin.” I lightly tap her wrists. “I need you to hold on.”
Her elbows bend as she tightens her hold around my neck. Once I feel like she’s situated, I start walking, and my coven—who are all thankfully uninjured—follow in silence.
When we start on the path, Lucina’s head shifts, nearly sliding off my shoulder. I slow my walking to maneuver her around until she’s settled against my chest. It’s the same way I held her when I raced to the Infirmary for the antidote to the Ashvine.
Lucina’s eyes drift shut, her breaths deepening, while I fight to keep my pulse steady.
She was dying. Limp and frail and lifeless. The memory of it is violent enough that I have to force myself to focus on something else, not wanting any of my triggered panic to stir her.
The sun is in full bloom, but not nearly as hot as it was this summer.
Thankfully. The trees still hold most of their color, leaves swaying with the passing breeze that jostles wind chimes somewhere nearby.
The soft melody echoes through the dense forest around us as we make our way back to camp—Pax, Easton, and Devon up ahead, and Hunter and Phoenix trailing a few steps behind.
I’m doing my best to dodge the dips in the path when Lucina whispers, “Callan.”
I glance down at her. “You should be sleeping.”
“Did you hear what Devon said?” she asks. “By the mud pit.”
My shoulders tense, my gaze drifting to his towering frame where he stalks a few feet ahead of us.
“Cin.” I shake my head. “He shouldn’t have said that to you.”
Silence.
Then, “Do you think it’s true?”
I slow my steps, watching her with furrowed brows. She asked the question earnestly—as if she doesn’t know the answer. As if Devon made her doubt what she’d been so confident in just days ago when she stood up to the Dame and her coven without an ounce of fear.
I could kill him for it.
Doing my best not to let that anger show, I revert my attention to the path. “Do you?”
“I didn’t,” she exhales, “I don’t…not really…I just—”
“Lucina, there is nothing in this world that you are not capable of.”
Her fingers stiffen where they had been fidgeting with the silver pendant around my neck.
“I can scream it in Devon’s face,” I offer, glancing down to gauge her reaction.
“I could torture him until he believes it. But you are the only person who needs to believe it. I’ll take on anything in this world that hurts you, Chaos, but if you let that doubt creep in, then you’re your own worst enemy. And I can’t do anything about that.”
Lucina blinks once. Twice. Then she averts her eyes, pressing her cheek back into my chest as she mindlessly winds her fingers through the silver chain. Exhaling a relieved breath, I dodge another dip in the path, praying that doubt isn’t still settling over her shoulders.
“I wasn’t scared,” she whispers, right when I think she’s fallen back asleep. “When I jumped off the plank, I wasn’t scared.”
I smile. “Because you knew I was watching?”
Lucina shakes her head, brushing her fingers across the etched silver. “I knew you would catch me.”
“I’ll always catch you.”
I had Gemma meet us at the cabin. She helped Lucina shower, healed any lingering wounds, and the second her head hit the pillow, she was out again.
She’s been asleep for several hours, long enough that her dinner is cold, and I’m growing impatient.
Every time I open the door to check on her, Gemma scowls at me from the bed, curled up beside Lucina, with one hand clutching a book and the other monitoring her pulse.
The best way to replenish magic as a Sol is sleep and sunlight. So, we’d left the curtains open for her, drenching the room in the last of the day’s sun.
But the sun set a while ago, and she’s still asleep.
I should be glad she’s recovering—and I am—but I hate the waiting. It makes me uncomfortable.
My foot taps impatiently, my eyes locked on the closed door of the office as if I can see into the hallway beyond and through the bedroom door.
“Cal?” It’s Pax that pulls me out of my thoughts, forcing my stare to break. He’s leaned back in his chair, head tilted as he surveys me. “Do you think you’re going to make it, or do we need to hold this meeting at her bedside?”
It’s not the worst idea he’s ever had.
I exhale, scrubbing a hand over my face. “No.”