5. Lucina
LUCINA
It takes everything in me to hold on to my consciousness, but I’ll be damned if I faint again in front of a stranger.
My skin feels…wrong. Out of place. Not…mine.
Like I’m a stranger in my own body. The world is blurry and slurred for a moment, like my body is awake but my brain isn’t.
Or maybe it’s the other way around. I can’t be sure.
I’m not fully convinced that this isn’t hell. I don’t know what the third planet looks like, but maybe it’s miles of rocky earth, a small grove of trees—magic trees? And men covered in blood that threaten to steal my memories and…catch me when I faint?
“Chiaros,” he curses—Callan. A witch. A Sol. Grey eyes bore into mine, the same shade as…well, actually, I have nothing to compare them to. They’re grey but they’re also silver, and his skin is filthy but…gilded? Glowing? Some sort of warmth there that certainly isn’t normal. Isn’t… human.
“Okay,” Callan bends at the waist, throwing one of my limp arms over his shoulder. “Now, I’m adult-napping you.”
“NO!” I shout, and the world tilts as I’m thrown over his shoulder, high enough in the air that it makes my stomach queasy. I fight back… to some degree…but there isn’t much fight left in me.
“Woah, woah, woah, wait!” I blurt when he carries me up to the trunk of the massive tree.
I dig my elbows into his shoulder, pushing myself up when I feel a rush of warm and foreign air.
My eyes widen when the bark splits and that pool of shimmering gold reappears.
“Holy shit, wait!” I beg, my throat dry enough to start a fire. “Just wait a second. Please.”
Callan sets me down, and then I’m pinned beneath a silver-eyed stare. An impatient one. “Where did you come from?” he asks, moving towards me until I’m inches from the velvet gold archway.
My heels dig into the ground, but I don’t dare drop my gaze. “Draycott.”
“Draycott?” Callan almost laughs. “The commoner lands?”
“I-I guess so.”
He takes another step towards me, and I teeter backwards. “And what the fuck were you doing there?”
Dying. Suffering. Wasting my life away.
I choose not to answer.
Callan sighs, running a hand through his mess of dark hair. “Well, I can… take you back.”
I’m snapped back into my body with a jolt, as if I’m just now waking up. Go back? Of course, I need to go back. I mean, I have Ivy and Jude, and…
Well. That’s it.
Why does it feel like the wrong decision to go back? The two most important people in my life are there. But I…
“No,” I reply softly.
“No?”
My heart starts pounding, made even worse by the small step forward he takes. I take one backwards, close enough now that I can hear the groan of the velvet gold archway behind me.
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Great question.
I can’t bring myself to move. I want to go, and Fate is begging me to listen. She dragged me here kicking and screaming. But still, I’m frozen to the spot.
“Make a decision before I make it for you,” Callan advises.
“Okay,” I tell him. “Okay, okay, I’ll go.” I half-turn to the trunk of the tree, stalling just to give my body more time to prepare. “So, how does it wor—”
I’m pushed into the archway. Pushed.
That motherfucker pushed me.
The world erupts into a blinding white haze, and something foreign rifles through my thoughts, digging through my entire being as I tumble through blank space at the whim of it.
Magic prods at my brain. It has to be. I’ve never felt anything like it.
My soul is torn apart and laid bare before some ancient beast, who picks through it like second-hand scraps. The darkest parts of me are scrutinized, and I can feel it as I fall— the judgment.
I’m spit out before I can properly put all the pieces back together, and I come crashing to my hands and knees, my palms sinking into…healthy soil. Soft. Rich. Fertile.
When my gaze lifts, I see the massive tree looming above me, and people with glimmering eyes, gathering in the clearing I’ve landed in. Their skin has a gossamer warmth to it, like even the underside of their flesh is sun-kissed, a silver chain wrapped around every neck I can see.
Friendship necklaces, Callan had called them. The mark of a witch.
Men, women, and children of all ages stand frozen along the clearing, our arrival having halted them mid-step.
My gaze jerks at the movement in my peripheral vision, the five men who follow Callan, shifting impatiently on their feet.
All of them are tired and filthy, but none of them are as bloody as—
A set of boots lands gracefully in the dirt behind me, making a mockery of my landing, considering I’m still trying to get to my feet. My body just…doesn’t feel right.
Theere’s a ripple of bowed heads, subtle and short, and Callan’s face is grim as he strides right past me. I’m barely able to take in the sight of the crowd bowing before him before he grabs my arm and pulls me in step beside him.
I force my legs to cooperate as Callan pulls me through the clearing, his grip tightening the closer we get to the crowd. It isn’t a malicious hold; I think he just doesn’t want me to fall.
“Where are we going?” I ask, holding the jacket around my body with my free arm.
“I can’t put you in front of The Dame looking like that. She’ll never take you seriously.”
“Me?” I rear back, offended, but he snaps me back in place with a sharp tug. “You can’t insult my appearance when yours is worse.”
I glance at him when he doesn’t reply, hoping to read something on his face, but he’s giving nothing away. Cool, calculated, and impassive, though his dark-stubbled jaw is working, as if what’s going on in his brain is anything but.
The world seems brighter here, as if it’s overlayed in some sort of golden filter, and I feel hueless and dull within it.
I don’t see any magic, but I feel it. Everywhere. The air is full of it— a playful sentience that swells and swirls around us. It gathers in my chest, then doesn’t want to be exhaled, clinging to my lungs like it belongs there.
The crowd parts as we approach, and those not staring at him are staring at me. The eyes I catch lingering are curious and… stunning. All of them. Metallic shades of every color imaginable—blues, greens, golds, and browns, catching the light and glittering back at me.
“Lucina, you need to understand that the Sol operate on rank,” Callan says, tugging me along a crowded dirt path lined with bright pink Althea trees in full summer bloom. They move as if they’re breathing. “And right now, you’re the lowest. The weakest.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Did you want me to sugar coat it?” Callan veers right at a split in the path, and more people with warmth to their skin and shine to their eyes stare as we pass.
“Guess not,” I reply as we approach a wide wooden structure with a rock-shrouded pond behind it; everything beyond is dense forestry. “And what are you ranked?”
Judging by the glare he pelts me with, that was an ignorant question to ask. “Second to the Dame,” Callan says reluctantly, his arm staying firm on mine as he pulls me up the wooden stairs.
“Who’s the Dame?” The doors he takes me through are large and covered in frosted glass panes…a bright red cross on the front. Oh, good, a hospital. I need that.
If there is a part of my body that doesn’t ache, it’s numb, and that’s just as concerning.
My brain is a splintered rock rolling around in my skull, and I’m pretty sure there’s still water in my lungs.
Who knows how long I was in the sea for, and who knows how I managed to survive it?
I’m still not fully convinced that I did.
Callan hauls me right up to the front desk, ignoring my question entirely, and when the woman behind the mahogany table lifts her gaze, she’s immediately on her feet.
“Captain,” she blurts, bowing her head, and he stiffens at the title. “You’re back! Thank Vita,” the woman prays. “What can I do for you?”
“We need Gemma,” Callan—or the Captain, tells her. My friend here is…” he assesses me head to feet, and my brows rise. “Sick.”
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Nurses in bright red smocks move past us in a flurry, all of them freezing in their tracks when they see the two of us at the front desk. The routine is the same—they bow to Callan and stare awkwardly at me.
“Ah, Gemma. Of course.” The nurse rifles through whatever papers she has on her desk. “She’s had a busy morning, Captain, I don’t know if she…"
They begin speaking too low for me to hear, which is fine, because I’m not listening.
The windows here are frosted glass, dulling the shine of the afternoon sun enough that it isn’t blinding to look into.
A few potted plants line the windowsill, drinking in the sunshine, their soil likely just as rich as it is outside.
There’s a blue pot of bright pink Zinnias, rounded and vibrant.
Lavender grows beside it, a pot full of long lilac stalks sprouting up to different heights.
And the third plant is young, just a tiny green stub in the soil.
I squint at the handwritten label at the base of the pot.
Then I flinch at the name.
Ivy.
The word slices me in two, shredded bits of myself falling lifeless to the ground around me.
“You’re back!” A girl with golden hair and fair skin rounds the corner so fast, she all but slides to a halt, then she’s slinging her arms around Callan’s neck with such force he stumbles backwards.
She’s young, like Callan, maybe a few years older than me.
They don’t look related, but she must know him on a personal level, because she’s the only one we’ve encountered who hasn’t bowed in his presence or thanked the gods for his return.
“Are you hurt?” she asks, pulling away, her blue eyes piercing.
“Not really,” he replies, and her face falls flat.
“What kind of answer is that?”
“The simplest kind.” Callan turns before she can say anything else, gesturing a hand back to me—or what’s left of me. “Gemma, this is Lucina. I’m not sure where she’s hurt, but I know she is. Do you have time?”