Chapter 48 Old Habits Die Hard
Old Habits Die Hard
Desdemona
L
ucian reaches for my hand, probably intending to give it a reassuring squeeze, but I pull away before he gets the chance.
This was something I thought about. Of course, I thought about it. I’m a Phoenician. An Arcane. How could Mom be my mom? The way she treated me in those memories makes sense now. She thought I’d never remember. She’s not my mom.
She is scared of me.
Lucian steps in front of me, blocking the headmistress from view—and from reach.
“Lucian,” the headmistress says. “I still want what you want.”
“After Azaire died,” Lucian whispers, staring into the distance. “You told me ‘my condolences.’” He pauses, taking a deep breath. “My condolences, Cynthia! You, who’ve claimed to be a mother figure to me. What would you have said if it was me?”
“Lucian—”
“You’re selfish, Cynthia. You always have been. Were Marbella and Annabeth even your kids?” he scoffs.
“I,” the headmistress breathes, “can’t have kids.” She shifts, moving away from Lucian and looking at me. “Because of what the Soul Ruby did to me. I kept you safe.”
“You could have let me die,” I whisper. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”
Headmistress Constance glances at me sideways and, much to my surprise, starts laughing. “Have you not been listening?” she says, breathless between laughs, twisting the Soul Ruby between her fingers. It’s a shame I can’t just take it. “You are divine! You are fated! How could I let that go?”
“Fated to destroy!” I shout. “Did you know that when you saved me?”
The headmistress stops laughing, stands straighter, and rolls her neck. With a frown, she answers, “Yes.”
This time, when Lucian reaches for my hand, I let him hold it. I need something real, flesh and human, to hold me.
“You might not believe it,” she says. “But the universe needs that—needs you.”
“It needs me to destroy everything?” I scoff.
“It needs balance.” The headmistress meets my gaze. “The potential of destruction. The same way humans need to die.”
“And immortality?” I ask.
“A mistake.”
“Thanks,” I spit.
The headmistress doesn’t like that. Her voice turns harsh as she continues, “You are not the first hard decision Zola had to make. You are one in a long line of reparations for her mistakes.”
I’m really the daughter of a queen? A queen of a dead world—which means it holds no weight. But a queen who lived a thousand years ago… that’s the part I can’t wrap my head around.
Lucian turns toward me, pulling his hand from mine and placing it on my shoulder. He holds me steadily, but I feel in his grip—the slight tremor of his breath—that he’s scared of me. I’m fated to destroy, and he’s fated to kill me. To save the universe from me. What will he do when he knows this?
I move his hand off me, looking at him. “We should go.”
“The ruby—”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. His eyes widen, and I nod. “It’s okay,” I say again.
I tell myself it really is.
Maybe it’s better that no one remembers me. My mom wasn’t really my mom—I was just a nuisance to her. My life was hardly my own. I was doomed to implode. Maybe the headmistress is telling the truth—maybe I don’t need the Soul Ruby. Maybe she’s lying. I can control nothing, so I let it go.
My life has been a long line of disappointments, but that line ensured one thing: I’m used to it.
Meeting Lucian’s gaze again, I smile—my sadness surely showing through—and say, “I have you.”
But I don’t think that’s true, either. Not for long. One day he’s going to make a decision. He’ll save the rest of the universe and kill me, just like he was always meant to.
Gently, I touch Lucian’s cheek, letting my fingers linger for a moment. “Let’s go.”
Then Lucian reaches up, holding my wrist tight. I keep my hand on his face, for him.
“Where to?” he asks.
“Folkara.”
?
No one stops us when we portal to Folkara. As we walk through the castle town, merchants shout at us, and buyers bustle by. Lucian holds my hand tight.
He knows Olwen’s wife and where she’s being kept—in the sanatorium of Folkara’s kingdom. We walk through the town to avoid the castle.
Despite living my entire life in Folkara, or at least the entire life I remember, I’ve never been this close to the kingdom.
It’s more sprawling than I imagined as a kid, but less so than Ilyria.
The cobblestones are almost impossible to walk on without making a sound, but we make it out of the town quickly.
The woods we enter are dense and overgrown, much like those around the septic. Apparently, the sanatorium was built on the outskirts of the town, close to the kingdom but far enough that diseases wouldn’t spread.
As we travel, something tugs at my limbs like a string, pulling me in a different direction. I glance to my left. In the distance, the peaks of a mountain region rise. I ignore the summons.
Lucian is going to help Olwen’s wife, like I promised him.
I can’t compromise that now, even if I don’t know how he’s going to help her.
The headmistress said the Soul Ruby’s power lives in him.
Maybe he’s just like me—another experiment.
Me, the destiny of destruction, and him, the destiny of creation.
I wonder why I got the short end of that stick.
We continue walking, and it reminds me of trudging through Ilyria alongside him before I went to The Void. Before I was forgotten. I wonder if he’s thinking of it, too.
“You remember,” I mumble, maybe because I want to revel in it.
“There were some things I could never forget,” Lucian whispers, his voice low and hoarse.
“Oh, yeah?” I look over my shoulder at him. “Humor me.”
“When I first saw you after you came back from The Void,” he pauses, “I felt your power just like when we met by the lunar lake. I knew you were something special, and I hoped to steal it for myself before I realized I never could.”
I try not to laugh. “Like, prone to destruction, special?”
His gaze turns intense, his footsteps heavy as he slows to get a better look at me. “Like one look at you and I understood why men throw themselves to the sirens.”
I continue walking. “Isn’t that a bit dramatic—”
“Yes,” he says immediately. “And I mean it all.”
He almost makes me hate myself—for wanting him all along, even when he drove a knife through my heart.
“I can tell,” I say with a small smile. “You’ve been throwing yourself at me for a long time now.”
At that, Lucian laughs. “Are you going to catch me?” he asks, a sarcastic edge to his tone.
I take another step, still smiling. “I think I’d prefer you to fall on your face.”
“That’s fine,” he says, his voice quieter now. “I’d rather your torture than anyone else’s tranquility.”
I stop walking. He’s always done this—said the right things at the worst times. We have more to do.
But we aren’t in danger like we were in the castle. For better or worse, we’re alone.
Things are quiet.
I turn to face him. It must be something in my eyes, a look I give, because he moves toward me, sealing the space between us in a single step.
I’m quick to put my hand on his chest.
“Lucian, we can’t,” I whisper.
He wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me close. My hand is trapped between us. “You don’t believe that.”
“No,” I breathe, glancing at his lips.
We’ve been dancing around this since the moment he remembered me.
“Can’t is a strong word. Shouldn’t is the right one,” I manage to say. But all I can think about are his hands on my waist and how his lips would feel on my neck.
“Then you have to be the one to walk away,” he says. His breath hits my skin. I want more of it. “Because I’ll never pass up an opportunity to touch you.”
I push onto the tips of my toes. My lips meet his. His hand presses hard against my lower back. I arch into him, fingers in my hair, his hand firm against the back of my head.
Then a sharp pain shoots up my shin and through my thigh. I stumble, nearly tripping.
Lucian holds me up. “Are you all right?”
I glance to my left, spotting the mountain region. I shake my head.
“What is it?” he asks.
I struggle to say, “There’s something— It needs me.”
Lucian holds my hand tightly, pulling me in the opposite direction. “Let’s keep moving toward the sanatorium?” he says, as if it’s a question.
I nod. Hardly manage to mumble, “Mhm.”
We do. But my bones stiffen, legs aching. The summons scrapes at the corners of my mind. Moments of darkness steal my sight.
Every step grows more taut. The scrapes at the corners of my mind become fully fledged tears. I stop, clutching my temples. Don’t scream. It’s not pain, but something far more uncomfortable—a turmoil inside me, like the dull end of magic cutting into me, a slow saw through my bones.
“No,” I say, my voice tight as I turn.
“Des?”
My body turns before I can stop it, walking toward the command. I don’t know what it is, but it’s the only thing that alleviates the pain. My calves finally calm, the strain fading.
“We have to,” I say, swallowing hard as I move.
He grabs my wrist, tight. But the pain isn’t just in my arm. It reverberates through my entire body.
“Lucian, that hurts.” My voice shakes, and his hand softens—exactly as I needed.
I keep walking. For a moment, his grip holds me back. Then, he follows. The pain in my legs eases, a small relief as I keep moving.
“Is it the Soul Ruby? A favor?” he asks, reminding me that I’m Royalty now.
Or that I always was.
I’m just grateful he doesn’t stop moving.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Des,” he breathes. “We have to be careful.”
I look forward, toward the mountain peaks. “I followed you through Cynthia. I gave up the ruby.” I glance over my shoulder at him, the turn too sharp, my neck pulled tight. Tension climbs into my shoulders. Something burns beneath. I’m not sure where it comes from. It isn’t mine.
“You can follow me.”
“Where am I following you to?” he asks.
I look forward, walking fast toward the mountain peaks. I hear Lucian following behind me.
Would it matter if he didn’t?