17. Lucina
LUCINA
“Tell me about her,” Gemma asks over breakfast a few days later. The constant ache in my muscles makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything she’s said except that. That I perk up at, despite the lingering hangover from last night’s Selumira festivities.
“Who?” I ask, shoveling eggs into my mouth, my appetite having multiplied tenfold with all the near-fatal training sessions Callan’s been putting me through.
Mentally, I’m stronger, but physically, I’m wrecked.
Between the runs to and from the Yard that keep getting faster, the pushups, and the weighted lunges he started me on yesterday, everything is sore.
But my magic? My magic is mine. Tamed, leashed, and completely in my control.
The Captain teaches in a way that makes sense to me.
I’ve asked many times what his fascination is with pushing me to the point of spilling my guts in the dirt, but his response is always the same: Strong body, strong mind.
That’s a bullshit answer if you ask me, but as long as he’s willing to teach me, I’m willing to learn.
“Ivy,” Gemma answers with a smile, picking the seeds from her slices of watermelon.
My heart lurches. Ivy. I miss her more than feels humanly possible, and Jude…Gods, I can’t even think about him without also thinking about who I’d left him to endure… alone.
The two of them would be leaving for school soon, and that’s the only thought that keeps me from spiraling. That and the knowledge that they’ve surely gotten my letter by now. They’ll be starting their lives and making new memories—
Without me.
But at least they know I’m alive.
“Ivy is smart,” I say the first thing that comes to mind, “stupid smart. She has an eidetic memory.” Gemma tilts her head, soft blonde waves tumbling over her fair-skinned shoulder.
“Her brain is like… a roll of film. She keeps snapshots of everything she’s ever read, and she never forgets it once she sees it. Ever.”
“That’s… pretty badass.”
Coming from the girl who can heal and mend virtually any ailment.
“She is.” My chewing slows, nausea tossing around the food I just scarfed down.
“Ivy is loyal. And protective. And sometimes stubborn when it comes to those she cares about, but that’s only because she…
” My grip on the fork tightens. “She knows loss, heavy loss, it’s why she loves so few so fiercely. ”
Nana and I were the only ones on that list as far as I know, and now…
She’s not lost me, and I’ve not lost her, we’re just…separate. Really, my old life is only a Banyan portal away—I just don’t have the clearance to get through it.
“She sounds a bit like Selene,” Gemma raises a blonde brow, plopping a piece of seedless watermelon into her mouth.
“She’s Selene with Kimber’s brain and your sound advice.” I push my tray forward, my appetite fleeting.
Her blue eyes glimmer, and I find myself smiling even though the expression is so at odds with everything I’m feeling inside. Guilt. I feel so guilty for leaving them without any explanation other than a lousy letter that I’m sure Ivy denied the legitimacy of, then ripped to shreds.
Gemma prods at another piece of seeded fruit. “What about your brother? Is he—"
“G.” I shake my head, a hellish burn stinging my eyes. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Gemma abandons all attention she had on her breakfast to look at me.
“Cin, just because I offer you the chance to talk about them, doesn’t mean you ever have to.
” She slides her fingers through mine, the familiar twinge of healing magic eating away at all the physical aspects of guilt and grief and longing.
She takes it all—the shortness of breath, the leaden weight in my gut, the lump in my throat.
“That offer will always stand, Lucina. I know what it means to miss someone.”
I squeeze her hand back, wishing I could take pain away like she does. Lucky and undeserving—that’s what I was.
“Dammit,” Selene growls. “Why are you upset?” I flinch as she slams her tray down on the table and thrusts an arm out behind her. “Was it him?” she all but shouts, pointing a crooked finger at the Captain.
My cheeks redden when Callan whips his head up from the conversation he’d been in with his coven.
His silver eyes scan me first, panic flaring as if he half expected to find me bleeding out over the breakfast table.
I freeze under his stare, much like I always do, and his eyes narrow on Selene once he realizes all my blood does, in fact, remain in my body.
She just glares back at him, with all the wrath of a high-ranked Lakelet witch. The Captain might be the only one that can stomach the weight of her stare—I know I can’t.
“He didn’t do anything,” I assure her. “Please. Stop.”
Selene raises a brow at him, and he faces her fully, folding his arms across his chest in final warning.
Selene might have her own arsenal of deadly weapons, but none compare to what the Captain’s capable of.
The strength and sheer size of him alone keep everyone at a distance, but Selene’s never been—and won’t ever be— everyone else.
Though right now, I wish she’d have the good sense to at least try.
“Fine,” she huffs, breaking her stare, and I make the rookie mistake of thinking that meant she’d leave it be.
“Selene,” I groan when a heavy weight settles in the front of my brain, slithering through my thoughts like a snake. I’ve at least gotten good at noticing when she was there, but gods, I’m so tired of having my thoughts tampered with. “Get out of my head.”
“Make me.” The pressure intensifies, and I grit against the weight of it as sharp scales scrape against my most recent thoughts. “Guard your shit, Cin. Or am I wasting my time teaching you?”
“I’m. Trying,” I grunt. My fingers flex, my mind muddying as I compartmentalize her serpentine presence, boxing it up just like she taught me, then I force her out with all the strength I can muster.
The weight lessens, then I leave a fuzzy sheen across the front of my brain, reinforcing it with a crackling wall of white flames.
There. Done.
I feel her tap along the outside of it, testing its strength. “Weak,” she says, slithering back out the same way she came in, then she points a fork in my direction. “Let me find your shields wide open like that again, and I’ll out everything you’re thinking.”
She would threaten the Captain on my behalf and then threaten me a minute later.
“I wasn’t thinking anything I wouldn’t outright tell Gemma,” I grumble, rolling out my stiff shoulders.
A lazy smile carves dimples in Selene’s ebony skin. “You sure about that?”
Gemma raises a brow, blue eyes darting between Selene and me.
I have no idea what she could be referring to. What had I been thinking? Gemma looks super fucking eager to know. “G,” I turn to her, “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
Selene’s smile widens, and my stomach sinks. “I’m talking about the way you freeze when the Captain—"
“Where’s Kimber?” I blurt, my eyes bulging as I desperately force a new subject, and by some otherworldly miracle, Gemma doesn’t fight it. I death glare Selene when the Mender turns to search the busy Tavern, abandoning our topic of conversation.
Thank the gods.
Early morning light streams in through the stained-glass panes, a rainbow of colors painting the hardwoods, reflecting off the silver cutlery and frosted water glasses.
I spot a table of Diviners, most of them with their heads in books, likely preparing for the same exams Kimber has been studying for.
She’ll pass with flying colors, we’ve told her as much, but she hardly looks up from her books long enough to acknowledge that she’s hearing us speak.
“No clue,” Gemma shrugs, “maybe she’s—”
A boulder slams down on the tabletop.
No, not a boulder, a book. If you can even call it that.
“For the love of the gods, Kimber, that book is bigger than you are,” I laugh, and she glares at me, blowing a strand of cinnamon hair out of her heavy green eyes, exhaustion wearing them down.
Her patchwork tee is wrinkled, her jean shorts stained with what looks like ink and coffee and…
I don’t even know what that green spot is.
“Bigger, smarter,” she prattles off, “and a giant pain in my ass.”
Gemma ceases her chewing, my brows shoot up, and Selene barks a laugh. “Kimber, did you just…curse?”
She sighs, “I’m not myself. The words they’re just…” She crawls over the bench, plopping down in a puddle of exhaustion. “There are too many of them and they’re all competing for spots in my head, busy little bees buzzing around and sucking the life out of me.”
Her head falls to the table with a thud.
“Take the book,” Selene orders quickly, but Gemma is already on it, attempting to pry it from Kimber’s papercut-ridden fingers.
“No!” she argues, pulling it back towards her.
“Gods, Kimber!” Gemma finally wrenches it from her hands, and I quickly replace it with my half-filled breakfast tray. The Diviner groans as if I’d shoved another book in front of her instead.
“Kimber. Eat,” I beg, practically holding a piece of toast up to her mouth, but she’s still attempting to reach for the book. “Finish this tray and you can have it back.”
She huffs, yanking the toast out of my hand and biting off the end of it, crumbs flaking off and into her hair. “Toast isn’t the answer to any of the exam questions,” she mumbles as she chews.
“Neither is starvation,” Selene retorts, eyeing the book like an unwelcome breakfast guest. “You’re spreading yourself too thin.”
“You’re wrong!” Kimber thrusts the toast towards Selene as if she might stab her with it, and Gemma and I exchange concerned glances.
“Am I?” Selene bites back. “You’re not sleeping, you’ve spent so much time in the Archives you smell like book-binding glue, and earlier this week you chugged enough coffee to make a grown man pass out—"