8. Lucina #3
“I understand,” I reply, and a muscle in his jaw feathers. I quickly tell him about a place only Ivy and I know. I tell him how to get there, and I tell him where to leave it, and by the time I finish, the crowd that had previously faded away has gone silent.
I hesitate before walking away. “Thank you,” I tell him, but still my legs won’t move. My feet feel frozen in the dirt.
And for a minute I wonder if his are too—
“Boss,” Devon calls, and Callan rips his gaze from mine. “It’s starting.”
I take the moment while I have it and weave my way back through the crowd to Gemma and her friends. Gemma’s brows rise as I approach, silently asking how it went, and she shakes her head in disbelief when I smile.
I smile brighter than the full moon above us, and Selene and Kimber are too focused on the basin to notice.
I find my seat beside Gemma and heads bow in unison when the Dame walks through with Laverna and Ceres on her heels.
They take a long bench beside the Ajax coven, my eyes trailing over the long picnic table that’s been swallowed whole by five massive men in black armor.
Callan sits down between them, turning backwards on the bench so he can face the crowd, his elbows braced on the table behind him, and his foot taps impatiently.
His silver-eyed stare flicks to me. Just once.
I quickly pull my focus back on the golden basin in the center of the crowd, though I feel the weight of his stare as if it’s a tangible thing. Gemma squeezes my hand as if she can sense the relief flooding my veins. As if she can see the guilt and worry sliding off my shoulders in real time.
Ivy will take one look at that letter, and even if she doesn’t believe a single word it says, she’ll know it’s from me. No one else knows where Nana is buried.
Just me, Ivy, Jude… and Callan.
“Who’s that?” I ask Gemma, when an older man makes his way through the crowd, coming to a stop in front of the first row of benches. He gingerly observes everyone who has gathered, his back hunched as he rests both hands on his worn wooden cane.
“That’s Pa,” Gemma explains quietly. “Kimber’s grandfather and Leader of the Diviners. He always tells us a story before Selumira commences. It’s usually some piece of history, something for us to remember while we celebrate.”
Pa’s long, grey beard puffs as a soft breeze floats past, cooling the sticky air around us briefly. His robes shift as he begins circling the golden basin. “How fortunate are we to have been blessed with a night like this one?” he says, and the crowd murmurs in agreement, then silences once more.
“These nights are handpicked, controlled by the moon in the same way it controls the tide. We move at the whim of it, don’t we, children?
” Soft murmurs break out again, heads bobbing up and down.
“But did you know that it was on a night like this one that Vita called ten people out in a field and had them dance under the light of the stars? Under a moon so bright they didn’t even need a fire? ”
“The ten original disciples,” Gemma helpfully supplies when she sees how lost I am.
“Ten?” I whisper back, “I thought you said there were five?”
“Half of them converted—dark magic, remember? Rogues?”
Pa starts at a slow pace around the basin.
“The original ten worshiped our virtuous Vita fiercely. They would have danced for her in the rain or snow. They would have prayed for the Matron even without their tongues, their faith unwavering. Back then, the world was new, and much was uncertain, but their love wasn’t—It had always been and would always be. ”
“Not always,” Gemma leans in and whispers. “I don’t know why he still says that,” she huffs, “half of them betrayed us.”
“But they still worship the same god, right? Just a different side of her?” I ask, my hushed voice not hushed enough for the man who whips his head in my direction. I smile apologetically, and Gemma waves him off.
“The wrong side,” she tells me. “Their kind ruined us, Lucina.”
I press my lips tightly together, trying to focus back on Pa’s story.
“Yet, none of the ten noticed when an eleventh joined them under the moon. None of them ceased their revelry long enough to recognize her, a god given flesh. But when they reached for each other’s hands, it was Etis Van Reenan who grabbed Vita’s, and life burst through her, hot and new and heavenly.
Her skin began to glow, her eyes shining brighter than every star in the sky, and as all their hands linked, that life burst through like a rope of gold tethering them together. ”
Pa stabs his cane in the dirt.
“It was magic. Immortality. A gift from a god who’d been danced for, sung to, and worshipped blindly for years.
Vita shone like a ray of sun underneath that moon as she looked out at her faithful followers, their tear-filled eyes taking her in like the reincarnation of Fate herself.
‘Live,’ she told them, her voice unlike anything of this world.
A world she had created. ‘Live forever and know I will always burn through you.’”
“And then she slipped right through their fingers, finding her place back amongst the stars.” Pa cast his gaze upwards—to the dots of silver twinkling there.
“But the original ten didn’t mourn the loss of her; they knew she’d always be there, in the sky and in their hearts.
Her blood had become their blood—divine and everlasting.
Her light had become their magic, ancient and raw and powerful.
Live forever, she’d told them, then she gave them eternity. ”
Kimber is the first to raise her glass. Then, in unison, everyone does the same.
“Tonight,” Pa says, looking out over the crowd, “as you bathe in the heat of the fire, and the shine from the moon, don’t forget their names when you pray—even the ones who’ve betrayed us.
But remember, first and foremost, our fearless leaders: Constance.
Aurelia. Orion. Taranis. Etis. Remember what we lost, but celebrate what they can never take from us.
Tonight, children, sing loud enough for them to hear, wherever they may be, and dance as if each step is for them.
Dance in protest of the evil that lurks in the south.
Dance amidst all their best efforts to break us.
Dance, because despite it all…they never could. ”
With a roaring cheer, everyone clinks glasses, and Pa dips his head low to the Dame and the Captain, before hobbling back through the parted crowd.
“Gemma,” I practically shout over the symphony of praises, and she gives me half her attention. “If they were immortal, where are they now?”
Her smile fades. “They were cursed, Cin. No one’s told you that?”
I shake my head.
Her blue eyes falter, swelling with an emotion I can’t name.
“It happened years before the attack, and it’s why we were so vulnerable that night.
The converted Disciples, Rogues—the evil in the south that Pa was talking about, they sent a curse in the form of madness.
Our five disciples quite literally lost their minds.
When things got bad, and a cure hadn’t been found, they hid themselves away to protect us.
Wherever they are, they’re still alive, just without their minds. Completely mad.”
“And there’s no cure?”
“All curses can be broken, we just haven’t found the answer,” Gemma tells me. “The rug was ripped out from underneath us when Rogue’s sacked our city. They knew we’d be vulnerable without our Disciples’ protection, and they took advantage of it.”