Lucy
By the time morning arrives, I am drenched in sweat. My skin burns from trying to force the runes to power up and every muscle in my body aches.
As I thought, the runes have a hybrid etymology. Their structure is partly demonic, partly celestial. It’s why their shapes were so familiar and yet I couldn’t read them.
Architecti said there wasn’t time to learn to read them, instead she taught me to feel for their shapes, to lean into the rhythm of the vibrations. But more than anything, she made me realise I need to stop resisting the power because I am the power.
It is me.
Her point, I think, is that if I can recognise the fact I don’t need to wield the runes because I already am the runes, I should be able to control their power regardless of what the cuffs are doing. She seems to think I am far more powerful than a set of magically pissy handcuffs.
“Rest,” Architecti says. “I’ll return, I need to locate my sister. She’s been missing since I threw her back into Ora City.”
“The quakes?” I ask.
She nods. “She’s been stealing more mortal souls and continues to try and unravel the fabric. There have been cuts deep enough they’ve punctured all three realms.”
I wince. “Go, I’ll be okay here, and thank you…”
She smiles and disappears up the corridor. I must sleep for a while because I’m next roused by the sound of heavy boots. The stride pattern is hesitant and slow, almost as if the owner is broken.
Midnight.
I sigh.
I don’t turn around. Not when she shuffles to a stop outside the cell. Not when she makes the tiniest of murmurs, like the words rose up and caught on her tongue.
And not when she clears her throat, clearly trying to signal my attention.
No. I am in control. While I recognise we have both fucked up, she sold me and to fucking Ignatius, of all people.
She can wait. In fact, I make her wait an agonising amount of time. Long enough that I hear her slide down against the bars of the adjacent cell.
Finally, I turn.
Midnight flinches. Whatever she sees, it isn’t the Lucy that was dragged out of the apartment. Maybe it’s the fact I am dishevelled and dirty. My hair askew, my face streaked with dirt and dried tears, my arms smeared in dried remains of blood where I hit the stone floor.
I don’t think it’s any of those things, though. I think Midnight sees through that to what I am becoming: new. And dangerous.
They may have broken me down brick by brick, but I am the one piecing the armour back together again.
“Lucy—” But she falls silent when the heat of my furious gaze lands on her. She does not get to say my name. If I could scour it from her mind, I would. I’d cut it like a gangrenous limb from her body.
Fuck her.
Instead of saying anything else, she hangs her head. Her body slumps as if the inevitable weight of us ending has finally slid over her shoulders. She looks like she’s been awake for a week.
But the way she appears niggles at me. As if I’m forgetting something important. Oh well.
I tilt my head at her, the fucking gall of this woman.
She wipes a hand over her face.
I sniff. It’s such a dismissive sound, it makes Midnight recoil.
I should have known she was only out for herself. She’s not even going to apologise for selling me back to my torturer. The person I gave up everything to escape.
I should have fucking known. Should have read her like any other contract or academic text. I’d have realised then. Knowledge is the only thing I can trust. But I let her blind me, take my objectivity and replace it with a deception: love.
Not anymore.
She lurches forward, gripping the bars. Even from the middle of the cell I can feel her warmth. I stop breathing because for all the simmering heat raging in my gut, I know if I even let a single hint of her back in, I’ll crumble.
She opens her mouth to speak and then hangs her head.
It’s the thickest silence I’ve ever felt. As though it fossilised our history over millennia and turned them into poisonous lies.
I turn away.
We’re done here.
Midnight draws a sharp breath, probably realising her attempt at whatever the fuck this was is futile.
Instead, I hear a tiny splash. And then the slide of paper against stone.
I spend a long time listening to her steps fade. I spend longer waiting for the cold tears sliding down my cheeks to fade.
For all the fury I felt seeing her, I am not naive, I recognise that I hurt her too. She is not the only one to blame. I made her kill me. Or perhaps more accurately, she transformed me. If she hadn’t reaped my soul, I wouldn’t be here now, trying to harness a power beyond anything I can conceive.
And that removes some of the sting. The fire in my belly douses, and I realise that perhaps I was too cold, too hard on her.
I hurt her, too.
No matter how long I wait, the sharp pain in my chest doesn’t fade.
Finally, when the sky outside the bars shifts and brightens once more, I find a single piece of paper.
One dried tear stain in the corner.
It’s sketched. Celestial runes. The paper is so threadbare I know it’s the one she carried for months while trying to help me.
And beneath it is a single word that slices through my chest and carves me wide open.
A peace offering. A plea. A safe word I can’t ignore.
My hands tremble as I grasp the note to my chest, that one word repeating:
Satan.