49. Lucy
Lucy
Two Hours To Go
“W ill you come with me?” I ask.
“I’ll go with you anywhere,” Midnight whispers. “We have until twelve tonight. Ignatius will come for me on time, I’ve no doubt.”
I give her a soft smile. I was never going to let that happen.
“Let’s walk,” I say.
Midnight’s brow cinches. She wants to ask what the runes showed me. What I know. But I’m not ready to tell her. Not when there’s so many other things I want to say.
I was so determined to believe we controlled our fate, that we could change our future.
But this all feels inevitable. Like we joked, maybe meeting in a graveyard was an omen after all.
Perhaps this was always where we were heading to.
Are some loves destined to fail, while some are destined to soar?
I smile to myself, wondering if I was wrong all these years. Was Midnight right? Was this always going to happen because our fate is sealed?
Maybe we never stood a chance.
My chest hurts. Every breath aches like a cancer in my marrow. The words I know I have to say build and build in my throat until I swear they’re going to suffocate me.
“Okay, I’ll get dressed,” she says and climbs out of bed.
She knows. She has to. Or perhaps it’s subconscious.
I wonder if she’ll enjoy the fact she was right, that we were always destined to end up here: the demon and the reaper.
I hope she’ll forgive me for what I have to make her do.
We slip out into the night, hand in hand, no longer hiding. What’s the point? None of the academy rules matter anymore. Nothing other than what we do tonight matters.
We walk through the maze and enter the Garden of Death.
“Tell me what our life would be like,” I say.
Her fingers stiffen where she holds me, and she draws in an audible breath, but whether it’s a defence mechanism or denial, she doesn’t question my tense.
“I’ll tell you what it will be like,” she says, stroking the back of my hand with her thumb. “We’ll have a modest house, but an enormous library, filled with books and texts and contracts.”
“I like the sound of that,” I say and close my eyes trying to imagine it. Nothing appears. My mind is blank because it won’t lie to me. Not tonight.
“We’ll always eat dinner together and every evening, I’ll massage your feet because you’ll have spent all day standing and lecturing.”
“Mmm, you would make the perfect wife,” I say.
“I’ll spend my days fixing bikes, and I’ll build my own garage and business on our land. People will come from all different realms to bring me their bikes.”
“I’d run you a bath every day,” I add.
“We’d summer in Lantis, finding some secluded beach to read on.”
My chest burns, as if each memory we’ll never make nestles between my ribs and swells.
We draw to a stop at the centre of the garden. There’s a fountain that runs all day and night; it’s dark, the liquid reflecting the night sky. It glistens with stars and dreams, and I think this is a nice image to end with.
The ground rumbles, another Veil tear somewhere on campus, a seemingly constant occurrence these days.
“Midnight… I?—”
“Don’t,” she says. “If you say it, you’ll lose your power.”
I give her a sad smile. She doesn’t even realise my power is already gone.
I lean in and kiss her, surrounded by the scent of night blossoms, her grapefruit and vetiver perfume filling the air. My lips move over hers.
So soft, so slow.
She tastes like moonlight and memories. I savour every drop, trying to burn the feel of her onto my soul. I want to take her with me and never forget any part of her.
My lips are wet. I ease away to see streaks carving her cheeks.
“Please don’t do it,” she says.
“Do what?”
“Whatever it is that made you kiss me like that. It felt like goodbye.”
My mouth thins with the desperate need to hold in the words I’d rather keep secret. I glance at my watch. It’s five to midnight.
“We’ve run out of time,” I say.
This is the truth I have to share.
That to be free, I have to lose everything that means anything to me. But worse, this will make me the villain in her eyes. And yet, I’m setting her free. I just have to break both our hearts to do it.
This is right. She’ll understand eventually.
“I’ll fight him. I won’t go down without trying. I got you back from the Societas, remember. Maybe he’ll negotiate…”
I cup her cheek, and she stills.
“I need you to do something for me,” I say.
She shakes her head, a soft no before I’ve even told her. Funny how the heart already knows what the mind refuses to accept.
“Please,” Midnight says, her voice cracking. She gasps as several entropy moths materialise.
It’s already done. The moths are here, there’s no going back.
A shift happens inside me, my crystalline heart cracking as my power siphons out, slow and steady. Red smoke twists in the air around us. I thought it would hurt. I thought I’d shatter and burn and every bone in my body would crumble.
But this is none of those things.
I just feel free.
She has freed me.
One final crimson ribbon bursts from my chest and spirals around us. A lightness comes over me as if I have shed a thousand burdens.
“No, no, I won’t accept it,” Midnight says, waving her hands, swatting the magic away. I grab her wrists and pull her against me.
“You don’t love me. SAY IT, TAKE IT BACK,” she screams.
“But I do, Midnight. I’ve always loved you.”
Ribbons of magic swirl faster, spinning around us. I expected some godsawful stench, like stale coffee and broiling flesh. But instead, it smells like spring mornings, the crisp heat of summer’s first warmth and evergreen sap.
The ground rumbles, harder this time. Several slate tiles fall from the roof of Finis Tower. I know what is coming tonight. I just hope the Academy survives it.
“I don’t want your magic,” she says. And this is where I realise it doesn’t matter how much I try and explain who I am, or what I am to her, she won’t accept it. She’ll fight no matter what.
“It will save you,” I whisper.
The last ribbons hover around her head, finding any and every way inside her body even though she swats at them and tries to push them away.
“I’m already doomed, Lucy. You don’t have to do this to yourself. Not for me. You can’t save me.”
I can’t bring myself to look at her when I say this, because for all the sacrifice she’s going to have to make, this is selfish. I will make her do this no matter what. It’s the only way I can truly be free.
“But you can save me,” I whisper.
She trembles against me, but it doesn’t seem to matter how close I hold her. Nothing can make this better.
“Do you remember you promised you’d help me break my contract?”
“Y-yes,” she whispers. Her sob breaks me in two. My chest aches so much I swear my heart will stop beating before I can do this.
“I need you to fulfil that promise for me.”
“I can’t,” she says.
“You have to. Take out your scythe, Midnight.” My voice is cool and calm, so steady where hers is shattering.
“No, I won’t.” The tears run freely now.
“Don’t make me force you,” I say and release her from my grip.
She shakes her head at me. “You can’t. I have your magic, you said that yourself. You can’t make me”
“You made a deal. It’s binding no matter who holds the magic. Take. Out. Your. Scythe.”
She shrieks as the weight of my words forces her to her knees. This is the last time I’ll feel the surge of power coursing through my body; the last time I’ll wield demon magic for my own cause.
A sheen of sweat covers her brow as she fights herself, fights the weight of contractual magic controlling her limbs.
I see the moment she shifts from devastation to anger. This is what I needed—her furious—it’s the only way she’ll survive this. Her face contorts, deep lines carving canyons through her features. She grips the blade in her hand.
“How could you do this to me?” she says.
“There is no other way.”
“So you make me responsible for bringing back a fallen angel? For the massacre of millions of innocent Ora City residents? All for what? To free you from your father?”
“Will it make it easier if I’m the villain?”
“You were never supposed to be my villain, I was…”
“You were what, Midnight?”
She laughs, it’s dry and humourless. “I was supposed to reap you. And I never told you, this whole fucking time. I made a deal with the Tower in my Severance Rite. It would break my contract if I reaped a single soul. It wasn’t until after that I discovered that soul was yours.
But I couldn’t do it because I fell in love with you. ”
The ground rumbles as if hearing her confession. I smile. “Don’t you see? You were always meant to do this. You’re the one that believes in fate. So fulfil your destiny, Midnight. Take my soul, free yourself from Ignatius. No more contract…”
“Fuck y—” she starts but I place my lips on hers, one more kiss. One more goodbye.
“LUCY, NO,” Father screams behind me. But the ground quakes. The Veil rips, and the screeching of freshly freed wraiths fills the air.
I wrap my fingers around Midnight’s and pull the scythe up to my neck.
“One little cut, and it’s all over.”
“Lucy,” she begs. The way she whimpers my name slices through the air. It’s hollow, so much pain held in four little letters.
A tear rolls down my cheek as I draw the scythe tighter to my throat. But I can’t do it myself, she has to reap me.
“Midnight…”
She holds my gaze, her eyes watery, brow furrowed all the way down to her soul. Her bottom lip quivering.
“I was going to let Ignatius take my soul to save you, I wasn’t going to do what the Tower asked. Fucking ironic that I’m here, again.”
“Don’t you get it yet? It was never the Tower, it was always her, Architecti.
She is the one you made a deal with. This was always going to happen.
We were always meant to end up here. Do you want me to say you were right?
That we can’t fight our destiny? That everything I fought for was for nothing? ”
She shakes her head, tears rolling over her lids. “I don’t believe that anymore.”
I laugh; it’s bitter. “Well, I do.”
“I won’t reap you.”
“You don’t have a choice. There’s no time for me to explain who I am, what I am.”
“I don’t care what you are, I need you, here with me.”
“That’s not how it’s meant to be.”
“LUCY,” Father screams again behind me, but it’s swallowed by the campus siren, by the screams of students, the campus coming alive with lights and professors.
“It’s time,” I say. There are so many things I wish I’d said, so many things I should have told her. Perhaps that is my lesson and my punishment.
I’ll never get to tell her that I love the way she frowns when she’s concentrating. Or that it makes me smile when I watch her polish and care for her bike. Or that I appreciated how hard she tried to like my moths.
Or that, no matter how much she professes to hate Mortem, I know that they secretly love each other.
“No,” she growls. “Fuck you.”
I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, that she would have the strength and understanding to take my soul and free herself.
“If you love me, you’ll let me go.”
“And if you loved me, you wouldn’t give up.”
I take a deep breath, my last, and I savour the fresh night breeze the way it coils in my throat and fills my lungs.
My watch strikes the top of the hour.
“Happy birthday, Midnight. May it be the first of many more.”
I close my eyes and use the bargain one last time.
She screams as the weight of the deal bears down on her hand, forcing her to slice through my soul, to cut me from my body and set me free.
Bright pain explodes in my chest. It sears white and hot and burns from the inside out.
And then there is only freedom.
Darkness plummets over my vision as my body disintegrates, and the last thing I see is the devastation written on Midnight’s face.