16. Callan
CALLAN
Van Reenan. It’s all I can think about.
Gods, the thing that runs through her blood…I’ve only ever heard stories about it. Lucina has inherited a matchless kind of power. Nothing has ever compared to it. For centuries, it was worshipped—until we witnessed firsthand what possessing that kind of magic could turn a person into.
A murder. A traitor.
I’ve been ordered to protect the daughter of a traitor.
Can we trust her? The Banyan seems to think so. Lucina claims she never knew her mother, but what if that’s a lie? What if she’s known the whole time and—
“Callan, please share with the group before you pop that vein in your forehead.”
Pax’s face is flat when my eyes refocus.
I readjust in my chair, surveying my coven.
Everyone but Devon is crammed into my office, the small second room in my cabin.
I told D the news this morning when he came to take over Lucina’s watch, but if we are going to protect her the way Delia insists on, they all need to know who she is.
I clear my throat. “Lucina is a Van Reenan.”
More than one face pales.
“Sick.” Pheonix grins, his mismatched eyes flickering with something sinister, and Pax shakes his head at him.
Hunter looks wide-eyed back at me. “That would mean she’s—”
“Esme’s daughter,” I finish for him. “And we’ve been ordered to protect her.”
Easton tenses from across the table, noticeably enough that my gaze swings in his direction. “You want us to protect a girl who has the same magic as the woman who betrayed us?” he grits out, crossing his arms over his weapon-clad vest.
“The Dame’s orders,” I reply.
Pax chimes in when I say nothing else. “Lucina shouldn’t be held responsible for her mother’s actions,” he tells Easton.
Easton’s dark shoulder-length hair shifts across his shoulders as he turns to Pax. “Her mother’s actions cost us our families, Samora.”
Silence falls.
My grip on the leather armrest tightens. Pax cares for her, I can tell. He insists it’s platonic—not that I care personally—but I can’t have his emotions interfering with his duties.
“I’ll rotate all of you through her watch at some point,” I say on an exhale.
“There is no room for argument.” When no one objects, I continue.
“On a more positive note, I think I found a way into the palace dungeons. I just need Delia to approve the details, but we’ll leave at the end of next month. ”
“A rescue mission?” Hunter asks, and I nod.
I answer a few more of their questions before concluding our meeting, then everyone gets up to leave. I’m reaching for the stack of papers beside me when Pax turns back on the threshold.
“They’ll kill her, Cal,” he breathes, and my eyes dart up from the page. “If someone finds out who she is…”
A wave of anger crests through my veins, and it feels out of place yet…instinctual. I’m oath-bound to protect all Sol. Perhaps that’s what it is. “They’ll have to get through us first,” I remind him.
“But we can’t protect her forever, Cal.”
Something foreign tightens in my chest. Then a jolt of apprehension trickles through the fresh cracks in my previously impenetrable armor.
“We don’t need to,” I tell him. “She’s a Van Reenan, Pax. Once she’s trained, Lucina will be more than capable of protecting herself. She just needs someone to teach her how.”
After our meeting, I spent a few hours reviewing the mission plans that Delia returned to me. Her own opinions were crammed into the margins—things I’ve already considered but am prepared to risk anyway.
None of this will be possible without risks.
Our plan is simple; the next mission we take will be to get us as close to the dungeons as possible. Entering across the eastern border will be our best bet. It’s the same area we found Iris in—one of the lower districts that we once utilized for mining precious metals.
Delia thinks entering through that quadrant is, quote: the worst idea she’s ever heard.
She underlined that note in the margin, explaining underneath that there isn’t a direct route to the palace from there, at least not one that would allow us to bypass the Rogue guard posts set up on either side of the gates.
But…if she had kept reading, she would have known that I didn’t pick the district with the most complicated path without reason.
I picked it because the mines underneath run parallel to the palace.
According to the sublevel layout of Streatham that Pa pulled for me, there is an old mine shaft right beside the palace. That is exactly where we need to be, Iris said as much with her final breath.
Slaves. Cages. Underneath.
If we can get into the mines, we can potentially break into the dungeons through the wall they share without needing to enter through the palace gates.
It’s our only option as of right now.
The rest of Delia’s notes are barely worth reading. I don’t need her to happily agree with every detail of my plan; I just needed her to approve them, which she did…reluctantly. And only after I agreed to read her notes.
Reading them doesn’t mean I have to apply them.
I poured over the pages until nightfall, and now I’m here, approaching Devon, who leans casually against the front of Lucina’s cabin.
“Any problems today?” I ask, the sound of muffled laughter from inside intensifying the throb of my headache.
“None that were life-threatening,” Devon replies, kicking off the wood siding.
“Great.” I dismiss him and climb the porch steps, then I knock once. Twice. No one answers.
And that’s the end of my patience.
I raise my right hand and snuff out every light inside the cabin, wincing at the high-pitched shriek that follows. Selene yanks open the door with a snarl on her face, and I throw the light back into the lanterns.
“That was fucking rude," she growls in greeting, her dark hair braided back and her sharp nails piercing the wooden door frame.
I don’t acknowledge her attitude. “Tell Lucina it’s time for her training.”
“Training?” Selene turns, and I catch a glimpse of the room behind her. Gemma and Kimber are draped across the couch cushions, and Lucina is cross-legged on the floor. Her cheeks are slightly flushed, and that’s when I notice the almost empty bottle of wine on the coffee table between them.
Gods help me, is she drunk?
“Lucina. Training. Now,” I reiterate.
She groans as she stands, then Selene turns to face her. “Lucina, why the hell is he training you?” Guess she didn’t tell them what happened last night.
Lucina’s eyes meet mine, and they stay there as she snatches her glass off the table and downs what’s left in it. Then cuts her gaze to Selene. “I asked him to.”
The Lakelet whips around to face me, dark eyes narrowed into slits.
“You’ll need shoes you can run in,” I tell Lucina when she reaches for a pair of boots. She freezes, a flash of fear passing over her face. “You asked for this, remember?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Cal.” Gemma stands, making her way over to me. “Can I talk to you for a second?”
I gesture to the porch, and she steps out in front of me, the door clicking shut behind us. “What is it?” I ask, and Gemma takes a generous sip of her wine.
“What’s your plan?”
“Be more specific.”
She rolls her eyes so hard I swear they almost fall out of her head. “I know you, Cal, and I know that look.”
“What look?”
Gemma jabs a finger into my chest, then repeats her question. “What. Do you have planned. For Lucina?”
“I’m training her, G. She asked me to,” I grind out, and her blue eyes narrow. “Is this you being protective?”
“Is this you playing dumb?” she fires back, then takes a deep breath and lets her shoulders fall.
“Look, I’m worried for her, okay? Lucina told me everything that happened last night, and it’s been a lot for her to digest. Just promise me you’ll be patient.
Help her, train her, but don’t be a dick about it. ”
I snort, folding my arms across my chest. “I won’t go easy on her, Gemma.”
“Go easy on her?” she laughs incredulously. “Callan, that girl can take whatever you throw her way; I’d bet my life on it.”
“You’ve known her all of three weeks.”
“Yes, but I pay attention.” Gemma grins knowingly. “And I know where you sleep, so don’t be a dick,” she mouths her last words to me as the door opens and Lucina steps out onto the porch.
“What’s this about?” she asks, a hand propped on each hip as she stares between the two of us, ultimately settling on Gemma. “G?”
“Nothing, baby,” Gemma says sweetly. She’s drunk. “Give him hell, Cin.” Gemma winks at her, then stumbles back inside.
“Ready?” I ask, checking her shoes. She found a pair of white sneakers and has changed into a grey tank top and black shorts.
“Probably not.”
“Great.” I take off down the porch steps without warning, setting a fast pace to see where she’s at with endurance.
It only takes a few muffled curses, and about fifteen seconds for her to catch up to me.
Not bad. She has a good stride for someone of her height, and even her core is engaged—the bare skin between the hem of her tank top and the waistband of her shorts flexed, just as it should be.
“What’s with the cardio?” she huffs, the wine flush on her cheeks burning brighter now that her blood is pumping. “Not what I signed up for.”
“Do you even know what you signed up for?” I reply, and she glares at me, a flash of fire kindling in her eyes. The kind of fire I’ve only ever heard stories about. “That’s what I thought.”
I pick up our pace, cutting down past the Banyan and hooking right towards the area of camp reserved solely for my coven.
After everything I’d read this afternoon on the Van Reenan powerline, I can confidently say that I’m about to wing this entire training session. I had no plan last night, and that seemed to help her, so I’m thinking that no plan is the plan.
“If I’d known we’d be running, I would have—"
“Had less wine?” I finish for her, and she laughs, taking a double step to catch up to me.