Chapter 14
Callan
Easton was sick as a baby. The Menders said he had a bad heart and wouldn’t live long enough to Split.
He was his father’s only heir, but to him, Easton was no good sick.
As a result of his condition, his father deemed him worth nothing.
After his mother died, he had no one left to defend him, and his father threw him out on the street.
He was minutes from a hypothermic death when Devon’s parents found Easton wandering outside the Estate in Streatham.
People think that it cured him somehow, being that close to freezing.
Whatever it was, it cured his bad heart.
Easton Split like the rest of us, trained like the rest of us, and became one of the strongest in this coven.
Not a single Mender could provide an explanation for it, but I remember May saying it was love.
The love he found in Devon and his parents. The love he found with his brothers.
That’s all he’d been missing, she’d said.
But Easton’s not showing Lucina that part. He’s showing her the corner he sat in on the streets of Streatham, and what he’s letting her feel is hyperthermia.
Lucina’s skin turns blue before my eyes, a few tears freezing on her cheeks. Winters in Streatham have always been brutal.
It feels like hours have passed when the two of them finally snap back into their bodies, and the gasp Lucina takes nearly breaks me. Her cheeks flush as warmth slowly returns to them, and she stumbles back a step, wiping her watery eyes.
Turning, Lucina looks at me, and there’s fear in her eyes. Or maybe it’s uncertainty? Concern? Now that she’s privy to what initiation is, I think she’s looking at the line of us and wondering whether or not she can do it.
“You can,” I tell her, cementing the statement with a nod of reassurance that she doesn’t seem to have much faith in.
Lucina glances back at Easton, her inhales coming faster when Phoenix switches places with him. The crazy bastard is grinning as he pricks his thumb, pressing his cut into her already bloodied palm. She looks terrified as they both freeze, tumbling headfirst into his memory.
I can’t even watch.
It doesn’t take long before Lucina’s sun-kissed skin breaks out in sweat, her hands tensing along the dais. Nix’s body begins to jerk, the muscles in his face twitching.
When he was young, Nix liked to explore, and even then, there was no taming him.
His nickname was Lion because he thought he was one.
He’d roar and snap his teeth at everyone and everything, and at first, it was innocent.
Until one day, he was exploring the outskirts of Pirn at seven years old, and he ran into a Boglen; the kind Devon and Hunter mimicked for Cin in Albatross.
The trick with Boglen, as Lucina found out, is to be deadly silent.
But Phoenix didn’t know this yet. So, he did what he always used to do when he came across scary-looking things—
He roared.
Most of the memory he’s showing Cin is the Boglen chasing after him.
The fear in his heart when he felt his legs start to give out.
The defeat he knew was inevitable. He was chased deep into the woods but managed to climb the trunk of a tall tree.
He’d been badly injured—shoulder out of place, and ankles twisted—but he survived.
He spent three nights in that tree before he dared to come back down, and that was the last time he ever roared. At anything.
When they snap back into their bodies, their chests heaving, skin pink and flushed. Lucina’s eyes are wide on Phoenix. He looks hardly fazed. We’ve all had to make peace with these memories. It’s impossible not to, with how many times we’ve had to endure them.
Ignoring the pained expression on Lucina’s face, I nod to Hunter, signaling him to go next. Time seems to be crawling, and I need it to go faster. I need this to be over with.
Lucina must want this over with as badly as I do, because when Hunter moves to the dais, her hand is already laid out and waiting. She hasn’t even fully caught her breath when he pricks his finger and presses his thumb into her skin.
I drop my head to my chest, a heaviness settling in my gut.
Like mine, Hunter’s memory is from the night of the attack on Streatham.
His parents had shoved him into a closet seconds before Rogues barged into their rooms. They dragged his mother and father out, kicking and screaming, while Hunter watched through the crack in the closet door.
He’s always been intelligent, even at that age, and he managed to sneak out of the Estate on his own.
He was scooped up by a Flora, and if it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t be here.
Two heavy tears slide down Lucina’s cheeks. Dripping past her jaw and onto her neck, then mingling with the thin layer of sweat that’s gathered there. Her breathing is steady, but it’s obvious by the pinch in her brows that she’s in pain.
What makes Hunter’s memory harrowing isn’t the sight of his parents being dragged away; it’s the sight of their bodies hanging from the gates.
He’s never forgotten what that looked like, and now Lucina won’t either.
The image is branded into my brain too, and the loss he felt will always be dull and sharp and too big.
Too heavy for anyone, but especially for a young heart like his.
As they come tumbling back from the memory, Hunter frantically wipes a tear off his cheek. He keeps his head down, moving to leave, but before he can step away, Lucina reaches for his hand, curling her fingers around his palm.
Hunter hates physical touch, always has, and for a moment, I think he’ll yank his hand from hers.
But he doesn’t.
Hunter stares down at her fingers, curiously, and there’s a twitch of a smile on his face when he finally looks up at her. It’s so subtle I almost don’t catch it. A fleeting moment that lasts only a second or two, before he pulls his hand away and silently falls back in line.
Devon’s next, and he spares no time pricking his finger and pressing it into the center of Lucina’s palm. I shift uncomfortably on my feet.
Gods, she’s about to experience a whole new kind of fear.
When their bodies freeze, Lucina’s shoulders immediately tense up. In the audience, Laverna stiffens.
It was winter in Pirn, and a fifteen-year-old Devon ventured out over the frozen lake. When he saw the flash of something moving just below the frozen surface, he decided to chase after it, his footsteps fast over the top of the too-thin ice.
Lucina’s chest flushes, the tip of her nose turning red, and despite the chill I know she must feel, sweat beads her brow.
Devon screamed when the ice cracked, his arms flailing as he plunged into the frigid water. When I experienced this memory with him, my entire body went numb. Immediately.
Lucina’s lips turn blue, and I can barely stomach the sight. Devon’s hands twitch over the Dais, his towering frame trembling before us.
He was frantic when he fell, and he lost the hole he’d fallen through. In the midst of his search for it, he felt the water move around him. A shift in the still current. Movement he didn’t make.
Before his vision could focus through the murky water, a set of large and sharp teeth clamped down on his ankle. The pain was…agonizing. One of the worst things I’ve ever felt.
Devon grunts, and Lucina’s body jolts forward as they both relive the feeling of his bones crunching. The paralyzing fear of being dragged deeper into the icy lake took root in his fast-beating heart. Down where the temperature is cold enough to suffocate.
Laverna was the one who dove in after him. She burnt the scaled beast to ash and pulled Devon out of the ice just in time.
His ankle healed, aside from a faint ring of scars, but he was never the same after that.
Before that day, Devon spent a lot of time caring what others thought of him, but when he was seconds from death, he was alone. And he realized other people’s opinions really didn’t matter when it was just him, the beast, and the icy depths of a frozen lake.
When the two of them snap back into their bodies, Cin is watching Devon as if she’s just now meeting him, a new kind of understanding behind the terror in her gaze. She’ll likely never look at any of us the same after this.
Devon dips his chin in her direction, wiping sweat off his brow as he turns, and when Pax approaches to take his place, Lucina stiffens.
She cares for Pax. Deeply. They have a friendship that only they understand. She’s told me before that Pax reminds her of her brother. His humor, his character, his glass-half-full perspective of the world.
It’s that comparison and Lucina’s fierce loyalty to the people she cares about that has me stepping forward to swiftly pluck the knife from her boot.
Lucina eyes me suspiciously as I step back in line, sliding the dagger into my pocket.
Nodding for them to continue, Lucina looks back at Pax and opens her palm for him, wincing before the memory has even started.
They both freeze, and within seconds of being in his memory, Lucina’s skin turns bright red. A few more seconds go by and fury twists her face into a snarl, her limbs twitching at each crack of pain Pax endured.
I flick my gaze upward, fisting my hands behind my back.
Right now, Lucina is watching the way Ceres, his own mother, trained Pax for this coven.
She’s witnessing the worst of it. The chains Ceres tied him in and forced him to break free from.
The poison he was given and the antidotes he had to find in a dark room while he suffered.
Lucina is seeing and feeling every lash and broken bone.
She’s hearing Pax call out to his mother, and she’s experiencing the emptiness that settled in him when she didn’t come.
As I suspected, when Lucina comes to, she whirls around to where Ceres sits in the front row.
Pax grabs her bicep before she can lunge off the platform, but his grip doesn’t stop the anger that spews from her mouth.