13. Lucina #3
I grit against the weight of it, my head swarming with static and thrumming with the strength of his magic as it races through my brain, prodding at the most vulnerable bits of it.
“Do you feel that?” he says low enough that chills break out across my skin. “Is this what you wanted? To try and get a rise out of me?” His hold tightens, razor-sharp talons, threatening to cherry-pick whatever he wants from my brain.
“I didn’t…have to try…that hard,” I grind out, signing myself up for the dumbest game of chicken I’ve ever willingly participated in. It’s not worth it, losing all my memories just to keep my pride, but I don’t think he has the balls to do it.
Callan’s eyes darken as if he can feel my fear. As if he holds my capacity to feel and breathe and live between those phantom claws, and one squeeze of his fist could disintegrate everything I am or ever was.
He rifles through my memories like they’re pages of a book, but there are chapters that I’d rather die than let him see, like that hellish cottage I grew up in, and those monsters I grew up with—
And the Eldral. Shit.
A fury unlike anything I’ve ever conjured rises within me like a spout of fire, my very bones trembling from the weight of it, and that ancient power races towards his probing claws.
I see no mercy on his face or in his eyes, and I wonder if Delia broke that part of him. I wonder if she chiseled that humanness out of him when she carved him into her personal weapon. For her protection, for her people’s protection.
Only one way to find out.
“Do it,” I hiss, the singe of fire along my veins forcing his grip on me to loosen.
His talons are still sunk deep, but I swear they retract an inch, something akin to shock passing through his stormy expression.
“Take my memories of this place,” I dare him.
“But only do it if you’re certain that robbing me of my friends will make you feel better. ”
His grip tightens. “Maybe it will.”
He tangles himself with the memory of the first time I’d met Gemma.
He tugs on that string of time until it becomes fuzzy, and I scramble to keep it in place, desperate to remember how she’d made me smile even when I was hollow.
Even when I was afraid that I was incapable of feeling anything at all.
“Maybe then you’d be less infuriating,” he grits out, his voice like gravel.
“Doubtful.”
I force him back with everything I have, engulfing his parasitic talons in white hot flames as I defend my memories with the heat of a thousand suns.
He squeezes until a traitorous tear rolls down my cheek, and then all at once, he retracts, vacating my brain as quickly as he’d entered it.
My head throbs from the puncture wounds he left behind.
The Captain blinks as if shaking himself from a trance, and I sag against the door when he takes a step back. The key had fallen, the door still locked, but I don’t dare pick it up, not when I’m looking into the eyes of a predator ready to pounce.
You never take your eyes off a predator; something I taught myself at the ripe age of thirteen, when I realized how much power there is in pretending to be stronger than I am. I’d imagine it so vividly—that strength.
Imagine until you believe, Nana used to say. But I pretend until I become.
Callan’s gaze remains fixed on me. Had that been tiring for him?
Had I put up a decent fight? Remnants of that crackling fire trail beneath my skin, and I gently coax it back down to the base of my spine.
I suppose it was pure instinct to fight back, but there was no skill in how carelessly I fought, throwing magic I didn’t even know how to properly control.
“Scared of a single tear, Captain?” I clear my throat, and his stare snaps to mine. That is, after all, why he stopped. It has to be. It wasn’t my struggle or the way I recklessly fought against him; it was that traitorous tear—
“Yes.”
He bends down and snatches the key in one quick motion, keeping me pinned beneath his gaze as he slides it into the lock and twists until the latch springs free, but he doesn’t open the door.
I can’t bring myself to say anything.
I can’t bring myself to move either.
“Here’s how this is going to go,” Callan says slowly.
“While I’m your watch, you’re going to behave and follow the rules.
Don’t make my life harder, and I won’t have to do the same to you.
I have a million other responsibilities and no time to babysit.
I’m not sure what you did to Pax, but you won’t do the same to me. We’re not friends, Lucina.”
If I had the energy to, I’d laugh. “I have no desire to be your friend, Captain.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
A heaviness settles between us, and the amber porch light flickers on while we stand there, anger and frustration and childish loathing making the air thick.
“Do you need help with the door, Ms. Carmine?” he drawls, settling back against the porch railing, and that snaps me out of my trance.
I throw the door open, force myself inside, then slam it hard enough to shake the entire cabin.