23. Lucina
LUCINA
My hands slam into the ground, and the world erupts in fiery ribbons of gold. Flames burst through the floorboards, then there’s a flash of silver, and a bellow of pain, and my Dark Velkan roars against the onslaught of the fire.
I run. Straight to the middle. Straight to the Sol Marks. I run faster than my feet can carry me—
Those frigid fingers snatch my ankle, and pain bursts through my knees as I fall to them.
“She tells lies, Lune Sylra.” His shadow flashes, dark as night, across the walls, swallowing the entire room as it burns.
A bright burst of light cracks across the floor, skittering like lightning, and it severs his hold on my leg.
“Here!” Sable’s scream cuts through his shouts of pain, and when I scramble to my feet, she’s standing right where I need to be.
In the circle of Sol Marks.
Fire rises around her. “MOVE!”
His shadow flashes, prowling closer. Cold and grim and angry. He’s so angry I can feel it. I feel it festering under my skin, as if he’s found his way into my very blood. As if he’s lived there all along.
Sable erupts; fury incarnate, and I fall through the flames, crashing at her feet.
“Home,” I cry out—
Crickets.
I hear crickets. And the rush of a nearby stream.
I breathe a sigh of relief and peel myself off the cold stone, staring off vacantly at the Eldral still gripped in my palm. My limbs burn, and my insides are hollow as I stand.
A twig snaps.
I wait a heartbeat. Then another. Jolting forward when the shrubbery rustles. I thrust my hands into the creek, splashing water across the stone to wash away the chalk, and frantically wrap the Eldral in the wrinkled parchment, shoving it underneath the rock behind me.
I stand in time to see Ceres step out of the tree line.
She freezes, the corner of her lips tilting in a knowing smirk, then she prowls forward. “I don’t see any Ajax…” she notes, her moon white skin nearly translucent, a stark contrast to the red tendrils of her hair and the dark tunic she wears. “Are you all alone out here, Lucina?”
I clear my throat, my palms suddenly thick with sweat. “Yes.”
She pauses, arching a crimson brow, her gaze sweeping across the rock I stand on. “Then who were you talking to?”
My hands flex, the rest of me going numb with fear. If she finds the Eldral…I’m as good as dead. “No one, I—”
Pax bursts through the trees, his face a mix of relief and anger when he sees me. “You’re going to sneak off the first godsdamn night?!” he snarls, barreling towards me. “Callan’s going to kill me—” His voice cuts when he sees Ceres. “What are you doing here?”
She only glares at him. Chiaros, you could cut the tension with a knife.
“I thought I heard something.” Ceres’s dark eyes slide to me, then down to the rock I stand on. “You really shouldn’t let her out of your sight, Paxton,” she chastises as she turns to leave. “Not with a killer on the loose.”
He glares at me with enough anger to fill the creek we stand by, and I wait until Ceres is gone before opening my mouth. “I know you’re angry—”
“Angry?” he chuffs. “Angry doesn’t cover it, Lucina.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.” I subtly use my feet to kick the Eldral fully under the rock, deciding that’s the best it’s going to get as far as hiding it goes. I can’t very well throw it in my pocket with Pax here. “I-I just needed some air.”
“Some…air—” Pax’s eyes blow wide, his hand running through his hair like Callan does when he’s stressed.
“Lucina, someone is trying to kill you. As in burn you to the ground, kill you. And you want me to believe you risked your safety for… air?” He laughs, but I can tell it’s not funny.
“Either you think I’m stupid, or you aren’t nearly as smart as I thought you were. ”
“I’m not that smart.”
He glares at me.
“Pax.” I move forward to grab his hand. “I’m sorry. I really am. It won’t happen again.”
He rubs a hand down his face, glancing once to where his mother disappeared through the trees. When he looks back at me, it’s not with anger, but I kind of wish it were. It would make lying to him a whole lot easier.
“What were you really doing out here, Cin?” Pax whispers.
I suck in a breath, chewing nervously on my bottom lip.
“Lucina, you can trust me.”
My eyes dart up to him, to the sincerity flickering there and the hope that burns alongside it. I know I can trust him, but this isn’t about trust. It’s about not wanting to implicate him in something that could get him killed.
The irony isn’t lost on me. If something had happened to me tonight, and if Callan’s threat was real, Pax and Hunter would have paid for it. But I can’t drag him into this—into the Eldral. He’d either try to protect me and what I’m in possession of, or he’d go straight to Delia.
And I can’t have either scenario.
“I just needed air Pax; I couldn’t sleep.” The lie stung even as I told it, so I supplemented it with a seedling of truth. “I- uh, I’m worried about them.”
“Bullshit.”
My eyes snap up to him, violent denials ready to fly off my tongue. “It’s not bullshit.”
He exhales, then swings a heavy arm across my shoulders, pulling me in step beside him as we start across the creek rocks. “I know your ass isn’t worried about Phoenix or Devon.” Pax smiles down at me, then shrugs. “It’s not them keeping you up at night.”
I jab an elbow into his side, and he laughs.
“He’ll be okay Cin, I promise.” Pax helps me up the steep drop that separates the forest floor from the creek bed. “You’re lucky I found you before Mommy Dearest skinned you alive.”
“What’s her deal?” I ask, letting curiosity for other things overshadow the reality of what I’d just endured. I can’t process it now. Not in front of him.
No one has ever told me why Pax resents his mother so much, though I’m sure he has a damn good reason. You don’t look at your own blood like you want to rip their throat out, unless something seriously fucked up is going on.
“My mother is motivated by power, simply put, and she doesn’t understand why I’m not.
” There’s no anger in his voice, just brutal acceptance.
“She made my life a living hell, torturing me under the guise that she was making me stronger, but really, all she wanted was for me to rise in rank. When it came time to reform the Ajax, Ceres wanted me to be the Captain. I told her I didn’t want it.
I told her the position belonged to Callan, and it had been long before he was even born. ”
“I take it she didn’t like that.”
“She was furious,” Pax fires back. “She blames me for wasting her time.”
For a long moment, it’s just the sound of twigs snapping and dead leaves crunching as we cut back through the forest, the lights from Callan’s cabin only barely shining through the trees.
“I’m sorry, Pax.” I squeeze his arm. “You didn’t deserve that.”
He waves off the apology and smiles. “Don’t be, I found my brothers. Good ones. Granted, one of them can’t keep his head straight because of you, but he used to be sane.”
“He’s still sane,” I assure him, glaring back at his incredulous grin, cursing the color that blooms across my cheeks and hoping it’s too dark for him to see it.
When we make it to the cabin, Hunter is pacing on the porch.
“Oh, thank fuck,” he curses when he sees me, and my brows shoot up; I’ve yet to see him so… disheveled. “Moving your pillows around? Really?” he snarls. “What are you, sixteen?”
“Twenty,” I reply plainly, climbing the stairs to the porch. “I’m a perfectly fine and steadily breathing twenty-year-old, but my birthday is soon, I think—”
“THEN WHY DO YOU SNEAK OUT OF WINDOWS LIKE A PRETEEN?!” A vein pops out on his forehead as he pins me with a piercing blue-eyed stare.
“Hunter,” Pax intervenes, with a hand raised. “It’s fine. She’s already been properly scolded.”
Properly scolded? Gods, I can’t wait for Callan to come back.
“She doesn’t look remorseful,” Hunter snarls, and I roll my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. “It won’t happen again. If you don’t believe me, move me to a room with no windows.”
Hunter scoffs, turning away with both hands on his hips, and instantly begins bickering with Pax.
“I’m going to bed,” I tell them.
Neither of them hears me.
As soon as the bedroom door latches shut, I slump to the ground behind it, festering in the eerie silence as my gaze trails across the room.
There’s a darkness lingering in the corner, and he’s not finished with me yet.
Pax took me to the Yard after dinner the next day. He’s forgiven me, but Hunter hasn’t.
Surprisingly, I didn’t wake up to bars on my window, and I’m sure I have Pax to thank for that. I still have to re-hide the Eldral, which will require me to sneak past them again, but I’ll be quick, and I’ll be armed.
The blade strikes its target, a little to the right of where I intended it to go, but Pax gives an approving nod.
He gave me twin daggers this morning, long and sharp blades with ivory pommels, but he wants to make sure I know how to use them before we move on to my first lesson in light manipulation.
We have one week until my next meeting with the Dianic coven, and Delia expects mastery with illusions at the very least.
“Throw one without your hands,” Pax calls, pulling the first dagger out of the target, then moving off to the side.
His black vest is on, but unclipped, hanging loosely at his sides, and his hands are casually folded across his chest, the dagger resting against his forearm.
His short red hair is hidden underneath a navy-blue hat with an AX embroidered on it in white.
Callan has a few T-shirts with those letters on them.
I slept in one last night then made a mental note to get my own damn clothes.
So after lunch, Gemma and Selene took me to the markets.
I nearly cleared out an entire tent, but Selene helped me bargain everything– she said Lakelets can be swindlers.