Chapter 38 #2
I’m eager to know, but just as afraid to find out. All I’ve ever wanted was answers, and now it’s like they’re barreling towards me too fast. What if I’m not ready to hear them? Does it really matter whether I’m ready or not?
Something about the condolence in Grey’s stare makes me think it doesn’t.
“The curse against the Disciples is an infection of poisoned magic. It began eating away at their souls, trapping them in a prison of their own mind, and with them being immortal…it’s continued to do so ever since.
It’s a fate worse than death—to be tortured with an illness that would never be strong enough to kill you. ”
The image of a dark tomb flashes before my eyes. I can only imagine what’s become of the Disciples now, fifty years later.
Grey shudders as if he’s imagining it too. “But Esme believed that it wasn’t so much breaking the curse as it was extracting the curse.”
“Like…removing an infection?”
The former Captain shakes his head. “Like exorcizing a demon.”
And there goes my heart again, pounding at my ribcage so violently I fear it might burst.
“Esme believed that the Disciple’s souls are lost, and they just need someone to show them the way out. Someone to find them in the dark and bring them back to the light. She believed that to do that, this theoretical someone would need access to—”
“Fuck,” I curse.
“Both.”
My head falls.
I wish he hadn’t said it. I wish he could take it back. And selfishly, I wish Esme had been wrong because if what he’s saying is true, then I was created to solve a problem. My existence is a means to an end and nothing more.
“Lucina.” He reaches through the bars for my hand. “Are you okay?”
Lifting my head, I blink back at him, opening my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.
“It was Esme’s idea to merge their bloodlines,” he tells me. “You were a hope for us long before you’d even taken your first breath. What you’ve been created for is an honor—”
“I was born here?” The revelation takes over my entire being.
Grey nods. “Kage kept you hidden in old servant tunnels your mother told him about. They had to keep you here until he could find a safe way to get you and Esme out.” His gaze softens. “You were only a few months old when she took you.”
Gods.
The room I found while exploring the tunnels—the mat on the floor, the rocking chair in the corner…
It had been mine. My room.
The nightmares I had this summer…the memories my father was showing me of some place dark and cold and loud with coughing. The sound of quick footsteps and his urgent pleas to hurry and to stay quiet. They were memories of the dungeons. Of my father getting us out.
“The plan was for Esme to take you and find our people—whoever had survived the attack. And once she found somewhere safe for you, and for all of us, she and Kage were going to get us out.” Grey’s eyes glaze over as if he’s recalling that plan.
A plan that clearly didn’t work out the way they’d intended. “But she…”
I exhale the tight breath in my chest, leaning most of my weight against the bars. “She never came back.”
He shakes his head. “Alaric had figured out what Kage had been doing. They hadn’t been prepared to get you out that night, but your father came here in a panic. He took Esme out of her cell, handed you to her, and it was the last time I saw either of them. The last time I saw you.”
I glance around the space, the details of Kage’s memories coming back to me in waves. The way it smelled, the fabric covering my face, the fear in his voice…
Suddenly, I have conflicting feelings about my father. Only minutes ago, they were absolute—he was a terrible man, and he’s been haunting me ever since. There was nothing redeemable about him, but now…I’m not sure if there was love between him and my mother, but perhaps he had love for me.
However much his dark heart allowed him.
“What happened to him?” I ask softly, throat tightening around the question.
Grey shifts his weight, readjusting his chains again. “Kage was captured shortly after Esme got away with you,” he tells me. “He was charged with treason, and Alaric had him executed.”
I mutter a curse under my breath.
Executed? By his own father? It’s all so very tragic, and I don’t have the capacity to absorb it all. I’m not even sure where to start, and in the midst of replaying it all through my head, I get caught up on one seemingly insignificant detail:
“How did he get Esme past the ward?”
Grey shrugs, shaking his head as if it’s something else he’s wondered about and never got the answer to. “I don’t know.”
I force down a deep breath, but the air is uncomfortable in my lungs, and my brain feels ready to explode.
I’m the reason for all of this. It’s because of me that Esme never made it back to save them. My father was executed before he could help, and then all of these people were left with no one to defend them. In my parents’ desperation to save me, nobody was there to save them.
Suddenly, I don’t feel worthy of standing on this side of their cages. I don’t even feel worthy of standing down here at all.
But I do know one thing for certain: If I thought I was determined before, I’m hell-bent now. The only thing that could stop me from saving them is death, and I’ve already made a bargain with its dealer.
I glance over my shoulder, in Salem’s direction, not realizing how far into my own thoughts I’d spiraled until Grey says, “Did you find him or did he find you?”
I look back with furrowed brows, realizing that Grey is looking down at the silver of my Sol medallion peaking out from the top of my collar.
“The Hound?” I ask.
Grey smirks, nodding to the necklace. “No, my boy.”
At the mention of Callan, the tension in my shoulders softens. Just the thought of him pulls me back to the ground, and the bittersweet expression on Grey’s face makes me smile.
“Callan found me,” I tell him. “Right after my Split. He’s actually the reason I made it to Pirn. I never would have—” My smile falls, a sudden uneasy feeling churning in my gut. “Sorry, how did you know that we’d found each other?”
Grey blinks back at me, confused at my question, and when he points to my necklace, my heart falls to the floor.
“It was a fail-safe,” he says, like it’s information I should have known.
“What are you talking about?”
He swallows. “Esme and I had many backup plans. We wanted to make sure that if something happened and you were forced to grow up without her, you’d find your way to our people eventually.
” Grey nods to my necklace. “The Lure was my idea. I put one in Callan’s when he was just a boy because after his mother died, I couldn’t stomach the thought of anything happening to him.
I always wanted to know where he was.” His attention falls to his medallion.
“Mine is embedded with the same magic I put in yours—a Lure that calls to his.”
I face the bars fully, gripping them until my knuckles turn white. “What is...How is that even possible?”
Grey replies as if it’s simple, “Esme gave me her necklace, the one she intended to give to you, and I embedded it with a Lure that connected to Callan’s.”
“You said you didn’t have access to magic in those chains?”
“Kage helped.”
I watch him blankly for a moment, trying to gather the sense to form words. “A…Lure?”
“Callan didn’t tell you?”
“Callan didn’t know,” I grit out.
Grey chuckles, and I hate the way it makes me feel. Like I’m on the outside of an inside joke.
“Oh, he knows, Lucina,” he says with full confidence. “Learning how to find me with the Lure was one of the first lessons I’d taught him.”
I’ve never gone so numb so quickly.
I back away from the bars, shaking my head. “That can’t be true.”
That would mean Callan’s known this whole time. Ever since he found me on that beach and every day since. What reason could he possibly have to keep something like that from me?
“What…” I look down at my necklace, hesitant to ask the question because I’m terrified of the answer. If Callan knew, then there was a valid reason he didn’t tell me…Right? “What is a Lure?”
There’s a sudden rigidness in Grey’s posture. Like he’s just now realized I didn’t know, and he’s wondering if he said something he shouldn’t have.
But it’s too late now.
“Lures…act as magnets,” he explains. “If they’re in the vicinity of each other, they’re drawn together. You’d feel a need to be close. Well, your medallions would.”
I’m silent for a long moment. Long enough that he grows visibly concerned, but I can’t find it in myself to care.
“Your mother and I agreed that finding Callan would be your best chance at finding the Sol that survived.”
Pirn.
“The Lure was the only way to guarantee that.”
I’ve gone completely still, my arms hanging slack at my sides. The light above us vanishes. I don’t have the strength to hold it any longer.
It isn’t possible. That’s the only thought that passes through me. It simply isn’t. Callan would have told me, and if the Lure is anything like Grey described it, I would have known from the start. I would have known that—
I never did ask him how he found me on the beach that day.
I never stopped to wonder why I felt so drawn to him from the start. Why, when Gemma led me through the infirmary that first day, I had wanted him to come with me. He was a stranger, and I felt wary at being led away from him.
Is that why I can sense him in the room before I’ve even seen him? Why being close feels comforting? Why I feel for him in a way I’ve never felt for anyone else?
The insatiable, constant pull between us…I thought it was just…I guess I believed it to be…
“Lucina.”
I hadn’t heard Salem come up behind me, but I hardly react to his voice. Or my name.
“Hey,” he puts a hand on my shoulder, and Grey’s eyes widen as he trails that arm all the way up to the Hound. “It’s time to go.”
I blink a few times, searching for the strength to function like a normal person—like I didn’t just receive all kinds of shocking news.