Chapter 14 #2
“You’re a monster,” Lucina all but screams, and when Pax hauls her back to face him, I notice the tears that have fallen onto her cheeks. “A fucking monster,” she repeats, shaking her head furiously.
“It’s okay,” he tells her, forcing on a smile even though I know how deeply the memory cuts him. “Cin,” Pax urges, squeezing her arms when she shakes her head. “I’m okay. I swear. It made me stronger.”
His last sentence makes her pause, Lucina’s tear-streaked face softening as anger melts into…understanding. With how close they are, I didn’t think she could see him any clearer, but the sudden clarity in her stare makes me wonder if she does.
In the crowd, Ceres jumps from her seat, a finger pointed at Lucina as if she has something to say.
Please say something.
Delia tugs on her arm, but Ceres shrugs off the touch, red-painted lips pursed, so angry she can hardly stand it.
Anything.
The words burst from her mouth like she just couldn’t hold them in any longer. “You’re the monster!”
“Get out.” The order is a whip lashed through the audience, and every set of eyes swings in my direction—Lucina’s watery ones, Pax’s wide ones, and Ceres’s furious ones. “Leave. Now,” I repeat when she doesn’t move.
Ceres broke the rules. And gods, I couldn’t be happier that she did.
Delia and Laverna glare up at their coven member as Ceres’s jaw grinds, fury simmering in her dark stare. It isn’t until I step forward with the intention of helping her out that she turns, shooting a pointed look at Lucina before stomping out of the training ring.
The Dame watches me with narrowed eyes, as if I had anything to do with Ceres’s inability to keep her mouth shut. Pulling my attention from Delia, I wait until the fabric of Ceres’s yellow robes disappears down the path leading back to camp—
And then I take Pax’s place at the dais.
Lucina watches every step I take, fingers trembling as she swipes at the tears on her cheeks.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, distracting her with a question as I prick my finger. A bead of blood pools at the wound, and she still hasn’t responded. I look up at her. “Lucina.”
“Raw.”
She’s exhausted. Mentally and physically. At this point, I remember feeling raw, too. I remember wanting more than anything for all of it to be over. I didn’t think I could take much more agony.
“I know,” I tell her. “You’re almost done.” Taking her hand in mine, I pause with my thumb hovering over her bloodied palm. “Exhale, Lucina.”
The breath I could tell she’d been holding releases in a rush, and I use the brief second of relief it likely left her with to press my thumb into the center of her hand.
The crimson smear of my blood is the last thing I see before the world shifts. The memory builds around us, and then that red…It’s everywhere.
Screams rip through the air—blood-curdling from every direction. The sky is dark and full of smoke, and people rush past me in frantic blurs, shouting at others to move. Shouting for people they love.
Deep rumbles fracture the earth, knocking me off balance. There’s a crack, an explosion, and then the building beside me crumbles to the ground. More screaming spills from the street as ropes of black burst through the smoke, flashes of yellow eyes burning through the rubble.
And then there I am.
At four years old, I’m screaming. Tucked under my father’s arm like I’m the most important thing in his world. Another building falls, and he picks up speed, sprinting as fast as he can to the edge of the city.
In this dream-like state, I’m forced to run to keep up with the memory, and it doesn’t take long for my body to feel the effects of the scene.
My lungs fill with smoke, and my father’s grip tightens around my ribs as the blurry images of people being dragged away and homes being blown to pieces flash before my eyes.
I can’t see Lucina, but I can feel her. I can sense the fear rippling through both of our bodies as my father pushes himself as fast as he can go, dodging spears of shadows and smoke. Jumping over pieces of our city that now lie broken in the streets.
He moves like a sharp gust of wind, squeezing past and slipping through utter mayhem like he can anticipate it all. Like he’s three steps ahead.
He always was.
Terror comes in waves now. You can see it in the face of a younger me as he’s being jostled and twisted in the arms of his father, and I brace myself for what I know is coming. I wish I could brace Lucina, too.
Pain bursts along my hip, as bright as it did that day, the hard surface of a truck bed catching my fall. My limbs slam against it, and by the time I’ve righted myself, my father is running after me, pushing himself to a sprint behind the moving truck.
“Callan!” he screamed, pumping his arms faster, grey eyes focused. Always focused. “Are you okay!?”
It wasn’t until I relived this memory for the first time at my initiation that I realized why he had asked me that. When I was four, it didn’t make sense. Of course I’m not okay, I remember thinking. Our entire world is burning.
But that wasn’t what he meant.
My father was worried that he threw me too hard and I landed too roughly in the truck bed. As if my scraped knees are a more pressing issue than the truck moving faster and his pace faltering. More threatening than the Rogue rushing up behind him.
“I’m okay!” I screamed back, scrambling towards the tailgate. “Hurry!”
“Stay there!”
It was the last thing he said to me before a rope of black circled him like a lasso, snapping tight around his throat and yanking him to the dirt.
The heartbreak hits me tenfold.
There are no words to express how it feels to watch the strongest person you know fall, but it slams into my chest so violently that for a second, all I can think about is my next breath. And Cin. I think about Cin. Gods, I hope she’s okay.
One after another, I force down each breath, grief and pain and fear suffocating me from the inside.
The little boy in the truck bed is screaming now, and I feel her next to me. Lucina. Rosemary and vanilla, lingering through the ash and smoke, making a bitter memory… sweet. Heavenly. Safe.
The final burst of pain lances straight through my chest, seconds before I pull us out, and when I snap back into my skin, tears are streaming down her perfect face, black smudged under her eyes.
It takes me a second to clear the emotion from my throat, but my voice comes out hoarse anyway. “I’m so proud of you,” I whisper, fighting the urge to reach across and wipe her tears away. “You’re almost done.”
“What?” Lucina sniffles, her watery gaze sweeping over the line of men beside us. “You were the last one. I thought—”
She wants so badly to be done, and I want that too. I hate seeing her this way. I hate having to put her through this. “Chaos, you have to show us yours.”
All color drains from her face. “What?” Her voice is quiet, hardly a whisper.
“You don’t have to relive it with us,” I explain, hoping that gives her some kind of relief. “The hard part is over. Show us yours, and you’re done.”
The apprehension in her stare makes me think that the hard part isn’t over at all.
I’d been so focused on getting her through our memories that I hadn’t had time to worry about what hers might be.
I assumed it would be the fire she nearly died in or the Ashvine Fenton gave her at Selumira, but the look in her eyes is one of hesitance.
Like she’s guarding whatever her memory is.
Like it’s not something she’s told me about.
But what could be worse than her near-death experiences this summer?
Gods, what could be worse?
Lucina stares back at me, wiping the tears off her cheeks as she attempts to collect herself. The audience remains silent as her eyes fall shut, brows pinched in concentration.
When nearly a full minute passes, I lightly touch her hand. “Lucina?”
“Okay,” she exhales, eyes cracking open. Nodding to herself, she holds a hand out for the knife, and relief mingles with the dread swirling inside me.
Handing her the blade, I watch as she pricks the top of her finger and moves to the start of the line, smearing blood from her wound on Easton’s palm first. He freezes, tumbling into whatever memory she chose.
Lucina keeps moving, slowly making her way down the line of us, eyes downcast on what she’s doing.
When she finally makes it to me, she hesitates.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Lucina says, lifting her gaze to mine. The dread in my stomach multiplies. “And please don’t look at me any differently.” She glances to Pax, who is already frozen in her memory, and then she repeats the same words he’d told her: “I’m stronger now.”
Lucina doesn’t give me time to reply before smearing her blood over my open palm.
The ground crumbles away, the world shifting around me, and then I’m falling headfirst through a dark sky.
When my body lands, the room I’m in is quiet, the stench of cigarettes pungent in the air.
My eyes focus on old hardwood floors—worn and cold.
Rising slowly, I take in the walls around me.
They’re just as worn as the floors, with various chips and cracks in the paint.
Aside from a few childlike drawings taped low on the wall and a small window beside me, nothing is hanging around. No decorations. No art.
Turning, I notice the door. It’s wooden, the hinges rusted, and when my gaze trails down to the doorknob, every muscle in my body tenses.
There’s a chair tucked under the door, with a glass jar balancing on top.
No.
Heavy footsteps thump from somewhere in the house, and when a whimper sounds from behind me, I’m convinced there’s nothing in this world that will prepare me for what I’m about to see.
Forcing my feet to shift, I turn, taking in the small bed against the wall and the little girl pressed tightly into the corner of it.