15. Lucina
LUCINA
“That’s not funny,” I tell him, my voice distant, but nothing in his wide eyes suggests he’s joking. “No, that’s not possible, Callan. There’s… been a mistake.”
The Captain is dead silent, but I can tell by the harsh look on his face that his thoughts are screaming.
When his eyes fall down my body, I move my shawl in a poor attempt to cover the gold still inked in my arms. “This is crazy,” my voice rises in panic. “I’m not a Van Reenan—"
Faster than anything has the right to move, the Captain has one hand behind my head and the other clasped over my mouth.
“Keep your voice down,” he says in a tone that leaves no room for argument, then I watch in real time as the mask of the Captain slides back into place—cold, detached, and strategic.
“Now take a deep breath…” he waits for me to do so, inhaling with me, then exhaling slowly. “And put your magic back. All of it.”
It's never been easier to lock it all away, now that it moves and breathes at my whim, and within seconds, the bright ink fades.
“Good.” The Captain exhales, like he’s relieved that it’s gone, then he slowly removes the hand covering my mouth and untangles his fingers from my hair. “Lucina—"
“That doesn’t make sense,” I cut him off, rifling through everything I know about that bloodline. “That would mean I… and I can’t be—”
The daughter of a traitor.
Esme was the last in that bloodline unless you count its founder, but Etis Van Reenan was cursed and locked away too long ago to be my…mother.
I stumble backwards a step. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
And I think the Captain might be, too. Callan turns to the forest, raking an unsteady hand through his hair and down his face, collecting himself for a moment before he locks eyes with me.
“Let’s go.” He grabs my arm and tugs me off the rock we stand on.
I force my legs to shift, trying my hardest to navigate the uneven creek bed, but the speed he is walking is making it difficult for me to keep up.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, my boot slipping between two moss-covered rocks.
Callan’s grip on my bicep tightens as he yanks me back into place. “To the Dame.”
Delia sits on a brown leather couch near a roaring fireplace, thin black glasses resting on the tip of her sharp nose as she reads through a thick stack of papers.
I thought for sure she’d be asleep, but Callan insisted otherwise.
I was hoping he was wrong. Only, so I’d have more time to prepare myself for this.
More time to sit with this information and… process it—if that can even be done.
Van Reenan.
It has to be a mistake.
When the Dame looks up from her papers, she snatches the glasses off her face, navy eyes narrowing on me. “You can’t just barge into my chambers unannounced, Captain, you know this—"
Callan ushers me forward, and I take a weak step towards her. “Show her,” he says to me, and Delia straightens slowly in her chair.
I sink into as much calm as I can muster, then I let magic sully my blood, just enough for the mark beneath my skin to flare. I watch the warmth in her face pale, as it twists up and over my body, then I lock it away as soon as I’m certain she’s seen it.
Logs snap in the fire, the crackling of embers filling the sudden silence that’s settled over the room.
The Dame sets her papers to the side and locks eyes with the Captain. “I’d like a moment alone with Lucina.”
Fear trickles into my gut when Callan nods and slips out into the hall, and the door clicking shut turns that trickle of fear into a full-blown storm.
“Have a seat, Lucina.”
I hesitate for a moment, then I make my way over to the leather couch, the fabric hot from the fire as I sink into it.
“I’m afraid I haven’t been honest with you,” the Dame starts, forcing down a deep breath. “I recognized you the second you walked through that door three weeks ago—you are a spitting image of your mother.”
“My—” Anger flares, and I cling to it, letting it drown out all the other things I can’t feel right now. But anger…anger is easy. “You knew this whole time who my mother was and didn’t tell me?”
“I was hoping I was wrong.”
Her words trigger a ringing in my ears, setting off a thunderous pounding of my heart.
Delia stands, making her way to a wooden bookshelf in the corner of the room. She plucks a thin book with a black cover off the shelf and sits back down in her chair, flipping through the pages until a faded picture slips out from between them. She views it for a second, then hands it to me.
My heart is ripped from my chest and thrown into the fire.
It’s the woman from my dream…or my Velkan’s memory. She’s looks about my age, with long dark hair that curls and waves down her shoulders. Her eyes are honey brown, nearly identical to mine, and she has freckles. Lots of them.
I reach up to trace my own–
“Esme was beautiful,” Delia says softly, and my eyes begin to burn. “The kind of beauty that turned heads in every room she ever walked into, but her beauty was the least interesting thing about her.”
Traitor—the word rattles in my brain, unable to be silenced.
“You knew her?” I choke out, and the Dame rolls her lips together, navy-blue eyes welling with…
tears. “I grew up with her. I knew her better than most. When the time came for her to become High Priestess, I was to be her second.” Delia casts her gaze to the fire and says, “I looked everywhere for her. I stayed in the palace that night longer than I should have, but I ran out of time.”
She wipes a tear quickly, then turns to face me.
“Esme was fearless. She was brilliant and kind and had the world at her fingertips. I’d never met anyone like her. She would have known how to handle the manner of magic you possess, but I…don’t. I’ve been trying to teach you, Lucina. Really, I have. But what you’ve inherited is just…different—”
“So that’s why you’ve ordered the Captain and his coven to keep an eye on me?” Frustration leaks into my voice, sharpening my tone. “You knew this whole time that I was the daughter of a traitor—”
“Esme wasn’t a traitor!”
Her words burst from her like shattered glass, and the crackle of the fire fills the silence that follows. I stare back at her stoically. “What do you mean? Kimber said she killed—”
“She killed no one,” Delia hisses. “Esme loved her mother. She loved her city…she’d have done anything to protect it. There’s simply no way she’d aid in its destruction.”
I stare down at the picture of her. She was so young when all this happened. Now, the city she supposedly loved so much is ruined, and the people she was meant to rule aren’t strong enough to do anything about it.
“But people saw her—”
“I don’t know what happened, Lucina. But I knew Esme. She wouldn’t have done this.”
Maybe Esme fooled Delia…led her to believe she’d never do such a thing, but had some ulterior motive she kept secret. Maybe the version of my mother that Delia knew was fabricated.
“I tried to stop the accusations when they started, but no one believed me. The speculation caught fire, and when the dust settled, there was nothing I could do.” The Dame swallows thickly. “Lucina, if people find out who you are, they’ll kill you.”
My spine snaps straight as everything clicks into place— her orders for the Ajax coven to follow me around, insisting that Callan spare one of his men to watch me at all hours of the day…she led them to believe it was out of suspicion, but it was out of—
“You wanted them to protect me,” I breathe in revelation.
The Dame falls still, her lips a tight line. And then she nods. “If I’d given him the explicit order to protect you, the Captain would have wanted to know why, so I was as vague as I could be. I just wanted someone there with you, just in case someone in Pirn found out who you were.”
My mouth hangs open as the Dame calls the Captain back into the room. His boots are heavy on the hardwoods as he comes to lean against the mantled fireplace. When I look up, he’s already staring back at me.
“Captain.” His attention snaps to the Dame. “This is Lucina Van Reenan—daughter of Esme Van Reenan, and your new orders are to protect her until—”
“Until we clear her name,” I blurt, the words coming out before I can even make sense of where they came from. Maybe it was the smile Esme’s wearing in the picture I hold of her…or maybe it’s the blood we share…but something deep in my bones rejects her betrayal.
“Right?” I clarify when the Dame doesn’t answer. “You just said she was innocent.”
“We have no way of proving that,” is all she says.
Believing she’s innocent and accepting her false conviction anyway…what a cowardly thing to do to someone you claim to have loved. She said she grew up with my mother…knew her better than anyone…then she enabled the tarnishing of her reputation.
The Dame watches me expectantly, but I decide to keep my thoughts to myself. I have nothing constructive to say.
She straightens her starlit robes and slides the papers back into her lap. “Get some sleep, Lucina. We can skip our lesson in the morning, but we start back tomorrow—”
“I don’t want to train with you anymore,” I spit out, and Delia’s brows rise.
“Lucina, there is no one else who can teach you—”
“The Captain can,” I blurt and Callan stiffens in my peripheral vision. “He taught me in a few minutes what you and I have been working on for two weeks.”
She sits silently for a moment, her stare cutting to the Captain, and when I scrounge up the courage to look at him, I’m fairly certain he’s plotting my murder. He hardly has the time to sleep, and I’m asking to add more onto his already full plate.
“Very well,” Delia sighs, “Captain, you will take over Lucina’s training.
” I rip my gaze from his before he can find a way to kill me with it.
“We’ll meet once a week, so I can monitor your progress, and until you’re strong enough to defend yourself, be careful of who you trust with the knowledge of your bloodline. Understood?”
“Yes,” the Captain and I say in unison.
“Good.”
Callan says nothing the entire walk back. Not. A single. Word.
I shoot him a glare when I see that my front door is wide open, and he breaks his bout of silence to say, “At least it’s still on its hinges.”
I trudge up the porch steps, a detached numbness that feels a lot like exhaustion, wearing on my bones. I’m about to step inside when Callan yanks me back by my arm.
“What the fuck?” I snap, tugging against his hold.
“I forgot about the glass. Stay there,” he orders, then leaves me on the porch.
I watch from the doorway as he uses magic to gather all the broken pieces from the shattered lantern, casting all of it into the trash.
The chair that I’d wedged under the doorknob lay halfway across the room, and he picks that up too, setting it gently in the corner.
My brows rise when he closes my back window, then triple-checks that it’s locked.
“Okay,” he says on an exhale, giving the space one final walk-through. “You can come in now.”
“You sure?” It’s a poor attempt at teasing him, but his nostrils flare all the same. “You didn’t check underneath my bed. What if there’s a monster down there?”
Callan snorts, then strides across the room. He grabs hold of the flimsy metal bed frame with ease and lifts it—mattress and all. “See anything?” he asks.
I make a show of checking, then shrug. “Nope.”
“Good.” The frame hits the ground with a heavy thud. “Come inside.”
I hesitate for a second longer, then I plop down on the edge of the bed, freezing when he tosses something silver onto the mattress beside me.
His key to my cabin.
“I’ll rip through this door if I have to,” he starts, capturing my attention. “But I don’t want to be the reason you tuck a chair under your doorknob at night.”
I don’t respond. I can’t. He has no idea how deep certain wounds run.
“Get some sleep,” Callan advises, then takes two graceful steps to the door. Moonlight streams past his towering frame as he turns back to face me. “You won’t like the way I train you, Lucina. I won’t have you playing with wildflowers.”
My thoughts are impossible to wrangle, but I manage to find my voice. “I killed them all, remember?”
“They were too delicate for you.”
And then he leaves.