Chapter 46
Lucina
It feels much like a dream.
I shouldn’t be standing here, and I shouldn’t be alive. Maybe I’ve fabricated the three men staring back at me. Pax—with his tousled red hair and wide green eyes. Grey—chain-free, posture straight, and finally in the same place as his son.
His son.
Callan—waiting right where he said he’d be. Alive and seemingly unharmed. He looks a bit out of sorts with his ruffled hair and dazed look in his eyes, but the relief that softens his features overpowers anything else he might have been feeling.
Morning light catches the familiar planes of his face as he approaches, highlighting skin that I’ve traced with my fingers, features I know as well as my own.
I’m still convinced I’m dreaming even as he moves towards me with a purpose, climbing the hill I stand on while I take smaller steps to meet him.
It isn’t until he reaches out and I find myself swept up in his arms, exhaling a breath against his shoulder, that I allow myself to believe it might be real. That it might be over.
“Hi.” My voice comes out quiet.
Callan’s arms tighten around me, the deep thud of his heart pounding through his chest. “Are you okay?” he asks, fingers shifting through my hair.
The question isn’t funny, but a manic laugh bubbles up anyway, followed quickly by a cough when I find my throat is much too dry for laughter.
“Yes,” I croak out. “I’m okay.”
Callan pulls me back by my shoulders, hands sliding to cup my face.
Seeing him up close is a relief I didn’t realize I needed this badly. It was easy to get lost in the motion of the mission. Easy to focus on what I had to do instead of who I was missing in the process.
But watching silver eyes dart between my own, moving too fast for me to keep up with, the part of my heart that had been missing him blooms beneath his rapt attention.
Whatever he sees on my face makes him smile. “You did it,” he murmurs.
My spine stiffens as I glance around the space, searching for the Sol who aren’t there. “They made it?”
Callan nods, brushing his thumbs across my cheekbones. “They made it, Cin.”
A rush of solace floods me, settling the tension in my muscles, and I peer around his shoulder, grinning at Pax as he approaches. Even Grey looks happy to see me, the crinkle around his eyes deepening.
I’m still smiling when I look back at Callan.
Except he isn’t.
His stare is locked on something behind me, his blissful expression shifting into something much harsher.
Fuck.
I pull out of his grip, cursing myself for having forgotten who stands behind me. Salem, mercifully, is waiting politely at the top of the hill, hands casually stuffed into his pockets.
Where Callan’s expression is sharp, his is completely indifferent. Bored, even. Which…isn’t helping.
Swallowing against the dryness in my throat, I gesture for him to come over, and something about the subtle motion amuses the Hound, the beginnings of a devilish smirk forming on his face.
As he comes down the hill, I attempt to beg him with only my eyes to cut it out.
He either can’t translate the glare or simply chooses not to listen to it.
“Um,” I turn back to Callan, “this is—”
Before I can finish my sentence, Callan grabs my arm and throws me behind him.
The toe of my boot stubs the rocky ground, and Pax catches me before I fall. His narrowed eyes are on Salem too, fierce and accusatory.
The familiar sensation of static fills the air, pricking my skin, and the panic that follows sets my heart pounding.
“Wait!” I try to step around Callan, but he anticipates the movement, shifting his body before I can pass. “Callan,” I plead.
“Lucina.” His tone is sharp, with not even a sliver of room for argument. “Are you insane? He’s—”
“The Hound,” I supply for him, finally escaping the shield he threw me behind.
I boldly plant myself in front of Salem, who seems content to just quietly watch the whole interaction, crystal eyes never breaking Callan’s stare.
“I know who he is,” I explain. “He…helped me. Helped us.”
Callan’s brows immediately draw together, outrage overtaking his beautiful features, “He helped you?!”
“Yes!” I enunciate each letter of the word. “I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for him.”
It’s the truth. Salem saved me from the dungeons that first night, and he’s had my back ever since. I might have survived without his help, but it would have been at the expense of the Sol—there was no way I could have freed them all and kept my life.
But I can tell by the look on Callan’s face that he isn’t buying it. At. All.
“Fine,” I huff, swinging my attention to Grey. “Ask your dad.”
All eyes fall on the former Captain, who seems a bit defeated despite his newfound freedom. His shoulders are low as he pulls in a deep breath, confessing on his exhale, “It’s true.”
I resume my stare-off with Callan.
There’s less denial in his expression, but there’s a whole lot of worry and a suffocating amount of anger already taking its place.
“Lucina.” My name has never sounded worse on his lips. Concerned, grieved, and disappointed. He glances at the Hound as he steps in closer to me, his voice coming out so quiet—so afraid—that a crack splinters through my adamant exterior, “What did you give him?”
The breath I had inhaled gets trapped in my throat, stuck behind the lump that forms.
Somehow, in the midst of all I had to prepare for, I didn’t prepare for this. Because as badly as I want to…
I won’t be going home with Callan. I won’t be leaving with him today.
Salem clears his throat, and it might as well be a bomb dropping with how silent it has fallen. “Lucina agreed to help me break the curse on your people.” He says it so simply, so matter-of-fact, that it makes me feel stupid for being unable to voice the words on my own.
But a part of me is grateful because I truly don’t think I could have. Not when Callan is coiled up so tight I’m afraid he might burst.
Someone had to rip off the bandage, and I know it makes me a coward for not being the one to do it, but it was going to hurt either way.
Callan shifts his attention fast, glaring at Salem with every ounce of wrath trapped in the silver of his eyes. “Under what conditions!?” he snaps.
“What?” I gape at him.
“Conditions?” Salem asks.
Callan is fuming now, his tone menacing, his words absolute. He raises a pointed finger at Salem, and I can feel the energy crackling off of it. “You forced her into this,” he accuses.
“Callan. No.” I shake my head, wedging myself further between them. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this on my own.”
He isn’t looking at me as he pushes against the hand I have pressed into his chest.
“I did it for the Sol. If we cure the Disciples, we can take back Streatham. Is that not part of being in this coven? Being an Ajax? Putting our people before ourselves?”
That captures his attention. Barely.
I take a deep breath, forcing some calm into my voice and hoping it will rub off on him. “Callan,” I say softly, hardly more than a whisper, “your father wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t made this deal.”
He looks at me then, really looks at me, but it isn’t like he usually does. It isn’t with relief, or amusement, or love—it’s heartache. A brokenness that I can’t understand.
I knew he’d be upset, shocked perhaps, but Callan has always put the Sol first. A big part of why I made this decision was based on what I had learned from him—my duty to my people.
He’s done it so well. He continues to do it so well, and I knew a part of him would struggle to understand, but I guess I thought a bigger part of him would be… proud.
I wanted him to be proud.
“Callan,” I urge when nearly a minute has passed, and he hasn’t even blinked. “Say something.”
His throat works as he swallows, broken gaze flicking to the Hound, and then back to me. Callan shrugs, his arms falling heavy to his side. “I don’t know what to say, Lucina. What is there to say?”
In my peripheral, Pax shifts on his feet, and Grey averts his eyes.
The sudden tension is palpable, enough to make me nauseous, and I’m trying to understand where he’s coming from, but why should I try any harder when he doesn’t appear to be putting in even half the effort?
I can’t meet him in the middle if he won’t move, and I refuse to be handled like a child. I refuse to second-guess a decision that I felt so right in making when Callan’s the one who told me to follow my gut. To never hesitate. That’s exactly what this is.
I grit my teeth, trying to handle this civilly. “You’re upset.”
“Upset?” Frustration contorts his face. “Lucina, you…you made this decision without consulting us.” I flinch at the accusation in his tone. “You’re in a coven now. You have other people to consider!”
“And how exactly was I supposed to consult you, Callan?” Anger slips out before I can stop it. “With the fucking stars?”
At his silence, I look at Pax, hoping for some kind of confirmation or denial that my decision has upset him in any way. Pax shakes his head once, and I can see the plea in his stare, urging me not to involve him.
My attention shifts back to Callan. “It doesn’t bother my coven. It bothers you.”
“And it shouldn’t?” he fires back at full volume.
The last time I saw him this angry was when he stumbled out of the Infirmary the night Iris died. His skin had heated with the fury, turning his cheeks and neck red, and his eyes were alive with charged power.
I shake my head, struggling to stay level-headed. “I’m not saying it shouldn’t, I’m—”
“Do you hear yourself, Lucina?” There’s deep concern mixed with the anger in his voice now, and I can’t decide which is worse. “You’re telling me that you’re going to leave here with him, the Hound, and chase after a cure?”
I press my lips together, planting my feet in the ground as he steps closer.
“Do you know what he’s capable of?” he asks, dropping his voice to a low rumble. “Have you not heard Etis’s story?”
“No one has heard her story,” Salem interjects, throwing the statement at full force into the space between us.
Callan whips his head up, jaw clenched tight as he gestures to the four of us. “We have. Everyone has.”
“That’s impossible,” the Hound bites out, a slip in his perfect facade.
He bares his teeth, the same way he had that first dinner, when the Countess demanded to know why he was in Streatham.
As quickly as he snapped, he straightens, rolling his shoulders back and declaring with brutal certainty, “I haven’t told it yet. ”
Hairs rise on the back of my neck in the wake of his response.
There’s something so unsettling about it, and it’s heavy in the early morning air. A dense weight over the top of everything else, coiling around us.
I turn back to Callan, facing him fully.
“I don’t care how I sound,” I admit with confidence.
“I weighed my options, and I made my choice. I’d make it again for you to be standing here with your father.
” When I glance in Grey’s direction, he’s looking down at his boots.
“For Gemma to see her parents again. For Pirn to have their people back.” I gesture to Streatham.
“For the Sol to eventually have their home back. I’d do it again, Callan. I’d do it a thousand times over.”
I can see it then, a flicker of understanding dimming the burn in his eyes. Settling a fraction of the tension in his shoulders, and for a brief moment, I think I’ve finally gotten to him.
But the softening of his expression lasts all of two seconds before hardening back to anger.
Callan shakes his head, rejecting all progress of compromise. “What if he kills you?”
“He won’t.”
“What if you don’t come back?”
“I will.”
He laughs, and I feel like a child again, being reprimanded for concerning myself with ‘adult’ affairs. Being scolded for playing make-believe—like I’m not qualified to make these kinds of decisions on my own. It boils my blood.
“This is ridiculous, Lucina.”
My hands fist at my sides.
“You can’t do this.” He shakes his head again. “I won’t let you do this. There is no way you’re going to—”
“Callan,” I snap, unable to take it anymore. My heart is a thunderous thing in my chest, growing louder the longer he stares back at me, and when I gather the nerve to speak again, my voice comes out cold and final, “It’s done.”
He blinks, lips pressed tightly together as if he’s trying to hold back words.
A few brutal and silent seconds pass, and Callan holds my gaze through every single one. His attention shifts over my face, checking for any cracks in my armor, any room to argue, but he finds none.
“I’m sorry,” I start.
“Where’s your necklace?”
His eyes have fallen to the collar of my shirt, and my blood runs cold.
My stare flashes to Grey. His expression is grim, and there’s guilt there, in the dip of his brows.
It hadn’t been there when he first told me about the Lure, but it is now, and suddenly I feel small.
Too small to dissect the big emotions warring within me, and maybe that makes me a coward. If it does, I don’t care.
Looking out past the bunker, I squint into the slowly rising sun. “We can’t have this conversation here.”
Callan steps into my field of vision. “Where’s your necklace, Lucina?”
I’m forced to look back at him when he makes evading his eye contact nearly impossible.
I had wanted to know if he knew about the Lure, and here I am with the chance to ask, but for some reason, that question stays put in my heart. It doesn’t want to come out, and I think deep down…deep, deep down….It’s because I’m afraid of the answer.
Maybe that’s why I left my necklace in the servant tunnels beneath my mother’s room—tucked into the blankets that I was once wrapped in.
The only way to know if Callan knew…was to take it off. To see if he noticed.
And he did.
But I meant what I said about coming back, and while I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, I do know that I can’t walk away like this. With this horrible lump in my throat and splintering fissure in my chest.
This isn’t how I want to leave things with him—I can’t say goodbye like that. I want something sweet to remember. I want to close my eyes at night and see the dimples in his smile, not the hurt in his eyes. I don’t want to remember the anger in this moment. I want to remember the love.
Because I do love Callan. Beneath it all, in the deepest parts of me, I do.
I open my mouth to remind him as much, taking a soft step towards him. “Callan, I—”
Something flies by in my peripheral. Black. Faster than an arrow.
And just like that, our fleeting moment of peace vanishes into absolute chaos.