27. Callan #4
His words barely finish ringing throughout the space when he nods to the Dianic coven. Delia, Laverna, and Ceres raise their hands over the golden fire pit.
“Tonight, my children, let us dance and sing loud enough for them to hear us.”
With that, the sky goes dark, and the full moon dims as Delia, Laverna, and Ceres cast fire into the pit.
Everything comes to life: the crowd, the music, the cheers, and the moonshine.
All of it is electrified and even without a drop of the magic-bound liquid, there is a ravaged beat to my heart and a singe of heat up and down my skin.
I’d spent myself almost entirely over the last three weeks, but magic was replenishing, like a river of gold being poured down my throat.
I force out a trembling breath, steadying myself against the weight of it all, and keep my attention on Lucina, who’s already forgotten entirely about her jar of moonshine and is in the center of it all with her friends.
The fabric of her red dress flies out around her, her boots scuffing the dirt as Gemma takes her hand, then passes her off to Kimber.
The four of them are laughing, heads thrown back to the sky, completely giving into the kind of euphoria that only captured moonlight can bring.
They’re drunk off it, enough so that their eyes shimmer in the same way their drinks do.
Sparks dance in Lucina’s hair as it whips around her face, her magic flaring so hot I swear I can feel it from here, and her eyes are bright when they land on me.
Bright and hopeful and happy. I find myself regarding her in the same way I regard everything she does, completely mesmerized by the way she moves.
She’s nothing like the girl I found two months ago, frail and clinging to life as if it’s always been that way; a fight.
This girl…she’s alive. She’s sun-kissed and vibrant and stronger.
She has new muscles along her thighs and arms, armor of her own that I felt like she needed, a surface-level strength to match the deep-rooted kind she was born with.
She’s magnificent.
Pax slams his half-filled jar of moonshine in my lap, and I roll my eyes up to him. “Drink up, you obsessive bastard.”
“I’m not obsessive,” I snap, finishing off the rest of his moonshine just to take the edge off and then I force it back into his hands.
I search for Lucina again, keeping a close eye on everyone around her.
My fingers flex against the bench I sit on when she’s spun around the fire and handed off to a Diviner boy who looks a little too excited to get his new dancing partner.
“Possessive then,” Pax notes my death-grip, and I side-eye him. “I know you’re out of practice, but in my experience, staring menacingly from the sidelines is a sure-fire way to scare any woman off.”
“She’s not any woman.”
He raises a bushy red eyebrow, then pats me sympathetically on the shoulder. “Right, well, have fun up here, try not to…pop a blood vessel.”
I fold my arms across my chest and try not to do just that, but Lucina is wrapped up in the arms of the oldest Thorneveil boy, Fenton, I believe.
He’s a lower-ranked Diviner who has an unfortunate case of wandering hands.
He spins her once, then pulls her back in, keeping her even as everyone else trades partners.
A girl stumbles past aimlessly, before she’s swept up by someone else, and Fenton’s hands trail the fabric that I clung to earlier tonight.
Hm.
I roll out my shoulders, trying to ignore the way every bone in my body is screaming at me to move. Staring might not scare her away, but I have a feeling making a scene and punching his lights out will.
I bounce my knee up and down fidgeting like a drug addict that’s having his source fucked with. I’ve been through harder things; I can do this. It’s only a dance, harmless enough, and she looks like she’s having fun—
Fenton hands her his jar of moonshine, coaxing it to her lips, holding her tighter when she tries to pull back, and I’m up and moving before I can even register my own steps.
I clear the space in a matter of seconds, slamming my palm down on his shoulder hard enough that his whole left side dips down.
Fenton’s eyes widen into saucers when he sees me, and Lucina’s face saturates with fear. Fear for Fenton, I presume.
“Time to go,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Callan,” Lucina snaps, still clutching his jar of moonshine, her cheeks rosy from all the dancing, and I sense anger rising to the surface of her skin.
I can’t for the life of me imagine why she’d be angry; it was obvious from where I sat that he was pressuring her into something she clearly didn’t want. At least…that’s what I think I saw.
Fenton’s face flashes in alarm, his mouth opening as if he has a protest, and my brows rise. “You aren’t planning to talk back to me, are you, Thorneveil? If you are going to forget your manners, perhaps I’ll help you forget other things too.”
It’s instinctual, the way phantom claws rip free from my careful hold and tear through his malleable mind, scraping against the wall of his most surface-level memories just enough to scare him. “You might not like the things I leave you with—”
“Stop!” Lucina shouts before I can get to his deeper memories, and I release him then, his shoulders slackening as he looks once at his jar of moonshine that Lucina still holds. Then he averts his eyes to the ground and flees, pushing his way quickly through the crowd.
“Did that make you feel better?” she grits out, and when I look back at Lucina, she’s fuming, sparks trailing up her arms as if she intends to use them on me.
“Pardon?”
“You scared him senseless.” Those hazel eyes are burning, doused in gasoline and fury. “You marched down here like a dog, pissing all over your territory and it wasn’t necessary. If you wanted to dance with me, you should have gotten up off your ass and grown a pair.”
I can do nothing but blink back at her, stunned to silence.
She groans, rolling her eyes as she downs a gulp of the moonshine, then slams the jar into my chest. “Look, I can’t confidently say that I wouldn’t have also stormed down here if the roles were reversed, but that was childish.
” Lucina turns, pushing through the dancing crowd, and I chase after her, weaving through the drunk fools laughing and stumbling about.
I manage to get hold of her wrist, halting her just on the outskirts of all the revelry, then I whip her around to face me. “Hey, you’re right,” I force out, and she blinks up at me. “You’re right, and I’m sorry, but please don’t ever walk away from me again.”
She doesn’t flinch at the words, she almost understands them, the same way she sympathized with the part of Pa’s story that used to always make me angry.
“I don’t trust other people around you, and you shouldn’t either. It looked like he was forcing you to drink—”
“Poison,” Lucina chokes out. I freeze when she looks down at her hands as if she sees something I don’t. Then her gaze snaps up to me, utterly terrified. “Callan…”
I take one look at the liquid swirling in the jar—
And the tiny black specks floating in it.
I jolt forward to grab her face, the jar of moonshine crashing to the ground. “How much did you drink, Lucina?” I feel her knees buckle, and fear surges in my veins, so potent it blots out the world. No. No, no, no. “HOW MUCH DID YOU DRINK?!”
Red splotches break out across her cheeks and chest, and when she looks up at me, teary-eyed, time stops. “Enough.”