7. Lucina
LUCINA
It’s dark, and all I can hear is coughing. A symphony of it.
Someone is begging me to stay quiet.
“Shh…” A woman’s voice, hushed and broken. “Shh, don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”
Desperate footsteps echo off the walls, then a second voice floats in, deep and breathless. A man’s voice. “Hurry, we’re almost there.”
I startle awake, my breathing ragged, and there is someone in the corner of my room.
My room—no, my cabin. The one right next to Gemma’s.
The black figure shifts, standing to its full height—seven, maybe eight feet tall. There’s a deep, dark void where its face should be and long, shadowed fingers that hang at his sides. But when it steps out of the shadows—
Blood rushes to my ears, fleeing my limbs so suddenly that they go numb.
Its silhouette has twisted, smoke rippling in the shape of a man. He’s wearing a suit, all-black, and as he crosses the room, I hear the clack of dress shoes on the hardwood.
I’m still dreaming. I have to be. I’m in a drift between worlds; stuck in some seam of space that comes right after dreams. I just haven’t woken up yet.
The shadowed man comes to an eerie stop at the foot of the bed. Then the springs creak as he sits down.
That’s when I scream. But nothing comes out. The blood rushes faster, thicker, my heart throbbing with fear.
He turns slowly to face me, in a way that’s feline. Animalistic. Unnatural. His face is still nothing but a black hole, a swirling pool of darkness that ripples. No mouth, no nose, no eyes— but he’s looking straight into mine. I know it. I feel it.
His fingers, long and spindly, unfurl.
No.
They reach up, stretching across the linen sheets—
No, no, no.
Holy gods, I can’t move. I can’t feel anything in my body.
But I feel his frigid fingers on my cheek. I feel tears slip past them. Then I hear it—
His voice.
Dark and cold and ruthless.
“Shh, don’t cry, Lune Sylra.” There’s nothing human about it, that voice, not as it vibrates off the walls and ripples through the air. “I’m here now.”
I wake up swinging, my arms flailing wildly around me as I fight the air. Thin air.
He’s gone.
My eyes adjust slowly to the sunlight that bathes the room.
My cabin is set up like a studio: A bed, a two-seat couch, a coffee table, and a worn armoire in the corner.
The humid air flushes my skin, loose curls clinging to the thin layer of sweat along the back of my neck, but the sheets are too soft to slide from.
I don’t have nightmares. Never like that.
Is this cabin haunted? Maybe that’s why it was empty. I swear to the gods if Gemma put me in a haunted cabin, I’ll—
I shoot straight up in bed when a heavy fist pounds at the door.
“The Dame is expecting you,” a male’s voice booms through the wood. Devon’s, if I had to guess. One of the Captain’s men that was sent to my cabin yesterday, with strict orders to stay on the porch all night. All because they can’t see my ‘cards’ or whatever it was Ceres said.
I can’t see my damn cards either.
But hey, at least a magic tree said my soul was clean. That’s got to mean something, right?
Gemma strolled right through the front door last night, startling me to my very bones, but I was too distracted by the full plate of steaming food she held to be upset. She sat with me while I ate, and I told her about Ivy and Jude. I told her I felt guilty.
Gemma understood it, the guilt, she said she’s felt that way before. Still, it kept me up late into the night, even after she’d left. And when I saw the bag of clothes, she’d set by the door…toiletries and a second pair of boots alongside it…
I don’t deserve it…that kindness. It makes the pit in my stomach heavier.
My bones protest as I roll out of bed and pad barefoot to the door, twisting the lock and coming face to face with Devon.
He’s about seven feet tall, only a few inches taller than Callan, with arms as big around as the roots of the Banyan tree.
The scars across his skin are wild, inconsistent, and stark against his deep brown skin.
Devon is Laverna’s son and Callan’s third in command, but that’s the extent of what I know about him. He isn’t much of a talker, but in his defense, I wasn’t yesterday either.
His black dreadlocks are pulled into a low bun, the corners of his mouth tilted down in a scowl that I’ve yet to see him without. He wears the same padded black vest as Callan does, except the clasps on his are black, and the Captain’s are silver.
“Get dressed,” is all he says.
“How long was I asleep for?”
“Twelve hours.” Devon folds his massive arms across his chest. “Get. Dressed.”
I don’t have the energy to fight it. Despite the sleep, I feel drained, emotionally more than anything, and that nightmare certainly didn’t help.
What I did to Ivy and Jude is killing me…
breaking me down slowly. I’ll never fill the hole in my chest that leaving them has left behind, but I can’t have them mourn me; I’m not fucking dead.
Leaving Pirn isn’t an option unless I want my brain tampered with, so maybe…. I can convince someone who can leave to help me. Maybe I can get a message to Draycott.
Gemma told me yesterday that the only people with access to the Banyan tree are the Captain, his coven, the Dame, Laverna, and Ceres.
I can rule out Delia and her coven; there’s no way they’d help me when they’re already suspicious of my stupid cards. Certainly not Devon either, considering he can hardly stomach the few words he does say to me, and… I don’t know any of those other men.
Which leaves the Captain.
Which means I’m fucked.
I’m going to have to grovel my ass off if I want his help, but if that’s what it takes…it’s worth it.
They’re the two most important people in my life—Ivy and Jude. Anything would be worth it.
The Dame is waiting for me in a field of wildflowers, behind the building where I’d met her yesterday. Gemma calls it the Den—the massive wooden structure on the hill. Delia and her coven live here.
She told me that the Dame’s coven and the Captain’s coven are made up of the highest-ranked Sol, witches born from one of the five major bloodlines.
Each bloodline traces back to one of the original disciples, the first five followers of the Chiaros.
They got their magic and immortality from Vita: the two-faced matron of man, and ruler of our planet.
She is good and she is evil. Vita is the flaws of man, just as she’s the successes.
She’s the perfect mix of both, but the Disciples worshiped the virtuous side to her, and in turn, they were gifted her light but not her darkness.
Vita’s magic was passed down, though her immortality was not, and now the blood that runs through the Dame and the Captain is thick with gods-blessed power.
As potent as it gets.
I bow my head as I approach, breathless from Devon speed walking the entire way here. He veers off, plopping down on a bench only a few feet away and I scrunch my nose at the invasion of privacy. I feel like a child on a leash.
“Did you get settled into your cabin?” Delia asks.
Her light brown hair is pulled up past her ears and tucked into place with thin gold pins.
Her cheeks are dusted with a shimmering pink, navy eyes are stern and assessing.
She’s glowing in the early morning light, her diadem and her silver robes catching the sun.
Meanwhile, I’m wearing a wrinkled T-shirt, a pair of jean shorts, and boots that I’ve already managed to get dirty. My hair is in a poor excuse for a bun, tendrils of it falling into my face, which is still puffy from sleep.
“Yes.” My haunted cabin. “Slept like a baby.”
Delia doesn’t respond; instead, she just turns, looking out at—
Holy gods. I turn with her. Never in my life have I seen such a thing.
Bright green rolling hills fill the horizon, the dew on the grass sparkling in the rising sun.
That slowly waking, burning ball of fire casts a honey glow over the land, making the sky bleed in deep shades of yellow, orange, and pink.
We’re up high enough that I can see endless rows of crops out in the distance, and all around us are hundreds… if not thousands of wildflowers.
Daisies, foxgloves, and marigolds…all sprinkling the pasture, growing aimlessly through the patches of grass.
“This is… beautiful,” I mutter in awe.
“It is,” Delia sighs. “It’s not something I will ever get used to.” My brows rise when she casually sits down amongst the flowers, star-lit robes melting into the grass like a silver oil spill. Then she gestures for me to do the same.
The ground is warm and damp as I sit, and the Dame squints out at the rolling hills.
“When my coven and I created this place, those hills were my addition,” she says proudly. “They remind me of home.”
It takes me a second to piece it together.
Delia’s home was the City of the Light; the northern part of the continent that went dark a little over twenty years ago.
Callan told me that the people here are survivors of the attack on their city.
Which means Pirn is a refugee camp of sorts, and now… . I guess it’s their new home.
“Streatham?” I clarify, and she nods. I hesitate with my next question, readjusting my legs in the grass before I blurt, “What happened to it?”
The Dame turns to me. “Something evil.”
“I’m sorry,” I exhale. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Delia shakes her head, pulling her gaze from the rolling hills. “Where there is good, there is also evil, Lucina. That is the way of Vita, of Fate, and of magic, too. What we have is light in its purest form…Solian light…and the only thing that rivals light is—”
“The dark,” I breathe. “You’re talking about dark magic?”
The Dame nods, her hands folded neatly in her lap. “In its purest form.”
“Wait, so—” My brain is churning now, spitting out random thoughts and questions at a rate that I can’t keep up with. “So, you’re saying Streatham was attacked with dark ma—”
“This isn’t history class, Lucina.”