17. Lucina #3
We don’t speak as we run back to camp, but he sets our pace fast enough to jar my thoroughly wrecked legs. I can’t believe I gave him the satisfaction of rendering me speechless. That wasn’t fair, my brain is mush. How the hell am I supposed to think straight when my body feels—
The world tilts, and my knees buckle, sharp bursts of black cutting across my vision until it’s all I see. I anticipate the impact with the ground as I fall, but it never comes.
Callan’s arm shoots out across my chest, catching my weight inches from the ground. He hauls me back to my feet as quickly as I had fallen. The world is fuzzy, and there’s a faint tingling in my fingertips and toes.
“Look at me,” he orders, but I see four of him. I would look at him if I knew which one was real, but genuine concern flares in all four sets of grey eyes.
Gods, he really is handsome—devastatingly so.
A strong jaw that he keeps close-shaven, piercing eyes behind heavy black lashes, and not a single flaw aside from a few peppered scars above his right brow as if they were quick cuts from shattered glass.
I want to touch them. I want to know what they feel like—
Why is he smiling at me?
Callan’s hand comes up under my chin, and he uses his thumb to turn my face to the right, wrenching my eyelids open from their squint, and I wince against the pound in my head.
“You okay, little Reenan?” he smirks, and my body jolts back into place.
“I’m fine,” I assure him, clearing my throat when my voice comes out hoarse. “Stop… calling me that.” I stumble over my words and my footing as I try to get free of his grip, but he tightens it, bracing his other hand on my hip to keep me upright.
“Why?” he asks, dipping in one quick motion to slide an arm under my thighs. “That is your name.”
I wrench myself backwards to try and get away, but I’m in the air before I can so much as shout. “Put me down,” I grit out, fighting against his hold, but he ignores me completely.
“What else should I call you if not your name?” he ponders, carrying me down the path as if I’m just another discarded dumbbell.
“Callan,” I warn, mentally gaining some sense, but physically, my body’s still failing me. There’s no way I can stand. “Put. Me. Down.”
“Why?” His head tilts. “You like falling flat on your face?”
“I won’t fall,” I growl, wiggling my limbs to try and free them.
He drops my legs, and the lower half of me crashes to the ground. I catch myself against his arm that remains wrapped under my shoulders, wincing as the world rights itself once more. I take back the brunt of my weight, my thighs burning in protest, but I get my footing. Barely.
Callan releases me entirely, and his assertive chin jerks to the path ahead of us. “Go on, then.”
I turn my nose up as I take a daring step forward, landing on the outer edge of my foot, but I quickly recover, shockwaves rolling up my legs that cause my thighs to quiver.
My hands fist, gaining a bit of confidence as I skillfully cross a system of roots spreading from the trunk of a nearby tree.
Each lift of my leg is tedious, but only because it throws me off balance, and right now balance is my greatest enem—
The ground tilts and I hitch forward, falling onto… Callan as he hoists me up and over his shoulder.
He’s fast, I’ll give him that.
His arm locks around my legs in anticipation of a kick that I have no strength to give, and my fight winks out as he takes off walking, meticulously navigating the rough parts of the path while ducking under low-hanging branches.
“Chaos.”
I lift my head. “Excuse me?”
“Chaos,” he says again, as if he’s feeling out the word on his tongue. “That’s what I’ll call you.”
Great.
“Speechless, Chaos?” he teases when I don’t respond. “That’s twice in one night.” A low branch nearly takes off my head, but he ducks under it just in time. “I’m dying to hear your opinion.”
“Then you might as well stop breathing.” I prop myself up on my elbows, catching the glint of a dagger hilt peeking out from the side of his vest. If I were careful, I could—
“Is that what you’re going to do with that dagger?” I freeze at his question. “Try to kill me?” He makes no move to set me down or swipe the dagger from its sheath before I get the chance to… he just keeps walking.
It isn’t because he underestimates me, it’s because his greatest weapon isn’t a blade, it’s something I’d never win against. It runs through his blood.
It’s a sharp talon scraping through my bank of memories; it’s a hawk swooping down to steal them or rewire them, mesh them into whatever he desires. Quicker and sharper than any blade.
“No,” I breathe, shaking the thought away. “That’s not how I’d kill you.”
“Was that a death threat?” he chuckles, my ribs cutting into his shoulder as he steps over a particularly large tree root, heading towards the Banyan and the rows of cabins beyond.
“Just speaking my mind. Thought you were dying to hear it.” My body rocks back and forth with each step he takes.
His laugh is low and raspy. “Well, don’t stop now. How would you kill me?”
“Why on earth would I tell you that?”
“So, you’ve thought about it?”
I snort, “Obviously.”
We pass into the lodging section of camp, my stomach pinched from being folded over the hard surface of his shoulder, and his arm tightens around my legs when I start squirming again.
“That’s sweet,” he deadpans, readjusting me on his shoulder. “I’ve thought about killing you, too.”
“Is that what you thought about when you were claws deep in my brain a few days ago? Rifling through my memories until you found one worthy of stealing—”
He suddenly sets me down in front of my cabin and my feet hit the ground with a heavy thud. He keeps hold of my weight with a hand braced on either hip. “I will never take a single memory of yours,” Callan says in a tone so serious that I almost laugh.
“Do you think I’m stupid or something?” The Captain could steal a memory from me at any time—my shields aren’t strong enough yet to block him out. And how the hell would I even know if a memory is missing? I wouldn’t fucking remember it.
He smiles then, the intensity in his stare softening. “I don’t think you’re stupid. I think you’re a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for. I think you’ve been dealt a shitty hand, and somewhere along the way you’ve adapted the mindset that it makes you weak to trust other people. I think—”
“I don’t care what you think.”
“I think,” he trails on, releasing me, and my stance quakes, “that I understand you in a way no one else has before, and that scares you.”
“You don’t know me at all.” Frustration simmers low in my gut, but something else stirs alongside it…something like fear.