Chapter 38
We wait for night to fall and everyone to—hopefully—be in their rooms.
Saipha hovers at the door, sucking in a deep breath.
“You’ll be fine,” I reassure her.
“Oh, I know I will be.” She flashes me a confident smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. I don’t point it out, though, instead giving her shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll let you both know when everyone is definitely tucked in for the night.”
With that, she leaves, and I drift to Saipha’s bed, sitting heavy on its edge.
“Don’t worry,” Lucan says as he settles on the lockbox. “She’ll be fine. Most people are likely asleep already.”
As soon as she returns, we’ll leave.
I stare out the window. Suddenly, this tiny room feels both too large and even smaller than normal.
This is the first time I’ve been alone with Lucan in days.
The first time since we stood together at the statue of the Elder Dragon after the late admissions from the Undercrust arrived.
And, even then, there were inquisitors not far.
Right now, it is very much just the two of us, and the silence is unbearable.
“Do you want to be a Mercy Knight?” I blurt, and Lucan jolts.
“Well, that came out of nowhere.”
“I’m just making conversation, and we’ve never spoken about it.” I shrug.
“Of course I want to be a Mercy Knight. Everyone does,” he says, absolutely emotionless.
“Of course.” I roll my eyes at him.
“What is that tone?” He laughs softly. “What’s wrong with wanting to join the ranks on the wall?”
“As you said, everyone wants to go to Mercy. It’s such a boring answer.” And you also didn’t really sound like you want to, I refrain from saying, not sure if I know him as well as I feel like I do.
He shrugs his broad shoulders. “I’m a boring man.”
“You are anything but boring, Lucan.” As I say the words, it hits me how true they are.
He’s been my shadow for so many years, since we were just kids; I’ve never really let my thoughts dwell on him.
He was the enemy. The vicar’s watchdog. But now I realize I’d never really given Lucan a chance to be anything more.
Now that I have, I’m finding curiosity is getting the better of me.
“I assure you, I am. Orphaned and raised by the Creed, wanting to get into Mercy to avenge the misfortune that must have befallen my family… It’s such a standard story that you could throw a stone in any direction on the wall and hit a knight with similar motivations,” he laments somewhat mockingly.
It is, but that doesn’t make it less traumatic.
Then he adds so softly that I almost don’t hear him, “Plus, you’re going to be there. ”
Something in the rough timbre of his voice sets butterflies loose in my stomach. “Because the vicar asked you to keep watch over me?” I ask.
“I told you once, and I’ll tell you a hundred times: Screw the vicar.
” That elicits a smirk from me, but it’s abandoned quickly when he adds, “Not to keep watch over you. Though I will always protect you, if you’ll let me.
And not because of the vicar, or the Creed, or Valor Reborn, or any superstition or titles. ”
My heart catches. Those are all the reasons anyone in Vinguard has ever cared about me, outside of my family and Saipha. “Then why?”
“Because it’s you.” His gaze is steady.
I swallow and force myself to ask, “But why?”
He’s looking at me as if he hasn’t looked at me nearly every day of his life for years. “So many reasons, but the first is because of that day six years ago… You saved me that day.”
Wait. That makes no sense. My hunger must be affecting my mind. I scoot a bit closer to him. “What are you talking about?”
“I was there that day. On the rooftop with you.”
His words hit my chest with the same force as the cannon shot to the green dragon.
I’m suddenly back on that rooftop. The rubble. All those bodies scattered around, dead.
Was Lucan one of the people I’d thought dead?
“You were there,” I repeat. “Which means you survived, too?”
He nods.
“I—” The words stick in my throat. It all begins to click into place.
Why Lucan, even though he hates the vicar, remained in the Creed.
Why he was drawn to me—would want to look after me.
Why he endured the vicar’s horrors just to stay on a path parallel to mine.
Not because I was supposed to be a legendary hero, but because I’d been his hero.
And that’s why he was appalled when he first saw my terror at a dragon. He’d seen me as someone who saved his life, and there I was, running scared from the very first moment I was tested.
But right now, he looks at me with sheer admiration. I’ve seen it from him before, but I always thought him a zealot of the Creed. Now that I know where that admiration comes from, the truth inspires panic. It’s somehow worse than all the rest of Vinguard seeing me as their savior.
I actually saved him. And I don’t even remember him. I couldn’t even do it again if I tried. Guilt slips between my ribs, squeezing my scarred heart until it aches.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”
“You passed out from your injuries and the surge of Ether. I was unconscious when you would’ve seen me anyway. I understood perfectly why you wouldn’t have known.” His tone makes it clear there’s no animosity.
And just like that, a weight shifts in my chest. That day, that moment that had othered me—that placed me on an unreachable podium to most—is now shared with someone else. I wasn’t alone.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“The vicar said not to.” He shrugs.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Screw the vicar, after all, right?”
Lucan’s lips quirk in a wry smile, one I mirror.
“You’re right. Outside of here, we never really spoke.
And it didn’t feel like something I could just come out with right away when the Tribunal started.
” Lucan pushes off the lockbox, standing.
“So, I tried to look out for you as best I could, what little I could manage over the years.”
I look away, rubbing my scar, replaying that day in my mind. If I’m not careful, it’s so easy to get lost in the memories. Which is why I usually avoid them at all costs—I don’t want to remember that day, don’t want to let it have a hold on me.
But, for the first time in maybe ever, I let myself remember. To see it with a slightly new and different lens.
Mum has a meeting with some of her other guildmembers.
The guildhall is small and always smells of soil.
I love going because the saplings they cultivate are tiny wonders.
To think, from dirt, things could be grown—that, long ago, the world was filled with green and not the pale stone of streets and buildings, or the rust of the scourge, or the scars of dragon attacks.
I can’t hear what they’re speaking about—it’s always behind closed doors. But it sounds…tense. Even at twelve, I can tell that much.
She comes out of the back door in a whirlwind. We leave without saying goodbye and emerge onto the cramped streets of Vinguard.
The sky is clear.
So…strikingly blue.
It makes the dragon’s roar echoing over the rooftops all the louder. As if the clouds manage to muffle them somehow. They don’t normally attack in clear, daytime skies.
But the beast streaks overhead, trailing cinder and smoke like a cursed falling star. It rounds and hovers, as if looking for me. Mum pulls me aside and into an alcove of a doorway.
“Stay here, Isola. You’ll be safe here,” she says.
Is anywhere safe? I want to ask, but she’s gone before I can, running off into the street.
The dragon roars again, closer, louder. Fire lights up the sky and stings my cheeks. Flames catch on the shutters of the buildings down the street. I turn and bang on the closed door. “Let me in. Let me in,” I beg. But the door doesn’t budge. I hear people inside, but they don’t dare open it.
Looking back onto the street, I see people running, their clothes ablaze. They’re… No, it’s not screaming. It’s a guttural, horrible sound like a dragon’s roar. A dying breath as their skin blackens.
Tears well in my eyes. I bounce from foot to foot, clutching my shirt. The dragon roars again, and I flinch.
I don’t want to be alone. I go to find my mom. If I’m with her, she’ll keep me safe. She’ll know what to do. Mum always knows what to do. She’s brilliant like that.
Dragon fire explodes before me, hot enough to melt stone. Most of those fleeing are killed instantly. But I hear the screams of those who aren’t. I smell them. There’s so much fire and black smoke. Claws scrape against roof tile, and I see a flick of a dragon’s tail.
I run. The chaos pushes me down a narrow alley—I think I saw Mum go that way.
“Mum! Mum!” I scream, coughing up smoke to the point that I’m nearly sick.
So many screams. I get turned around, and soon there’s only one way forward. Fire behind me. Burning rubble in front of me. A single iron stairwell that goes up.
Up is death. But so is fire. Maybe there’s a rooftop door or hatch?
I crest the flat rooftop, between more rubble and bodies—remnants of some family enjoying their afternoon—and as I search for a way back down, the monster lands. Right behind me. Metal wrenches as the stairs I ran up break away from the stone that cracks under its weight, and I’m trapped.
My stomach is in my throat. My legs tremble. I stagger and fall, trying to scramble back. The bodies around me, singed, barely recognizable as human, now look like a promise. The building groans under the weight of the beast.
How would you like to die? its molten gaze seems to ask me.
Be it by crumbling building, dragon fire, or being eaten alive, I will not survive.
The dragon leans forward and huffs, clearing the dust and smoke enough that I can see the details of its face. Copper scales, dotted with gold, turn rusty and black around its glowing eyes. Curls of thick smoke trail from its nostrils. Teeth as large as my arm cut from its gums.