7. Lucy
Lucy
When something has kept you alive for years without being asked, do not mistake gratitude for safety. The kindest hands in any room are the ones still wearing a secret.
Snow fell like tears over Luneth Hollow.
That’s what the healer had called the city.
I’d never heard of it. I pulled the stolen journal from beneath my pillow and flipped past three days of careful, useless notes until I found my newest sketch.
The mountains. I settled into the window seat and picked up where I’d left off, eyes moving between the foggy peaks and the parchment.
The tallest peak tilted west. I studied the drop and rise of the range, the particular shape of it against the sky. I knew this ridgeline. I’d grown up with these mountains on the horizon, staring toward them my entire life.
My pencil stilled.
I was in the center of the Sorrow Mountains. Behind the poisonous fog. Looking northeast at peaks I’d always watched from Aventh Gate, and the only thing that had changed was the angle.
I tucked the stolen journal away and stepped back to the window, tracing my finger along the tallest peak, so far in the distance, the fog had nearly stolen its detail. I wasn’t that far from home. From a different kind of prison.
Though I was in a Keep nestled on a low ridge, the bustling city below could have been beautiful if I weren’t so lost. If I could remember how I got here.
If I knew how to leave. If I wasn’t relying on a mysterious city’s healer to keep me fed and warm while I tried to solve the mystery of my capture and the reason I was here now.
At least I had the mountains. Mountains meant home. Training grounds. My brother’s laugh echoing off stone while our parents critiqued every movement, every choice, every breath until we learned to stop breathing where they could see.
But the mountains were now prison walls.
And circling the peaks like a noose… frozen fog.
A wall of it, dense and impenetrable, blocking out the world that lay beyond.
Only one place in Fuerlis had that. One place that was notorious for the poisonous wall.
Touching that fog meant immediate death.
It was a warning laced within the tales parents whispered to their children.
I pressed my palm against the glass. Cold bit through my skin, grounding me in the only certainty I had left: I was going to have to find my own escape.
My reflection stared back. Blonde hair with braids tangled from restless sleep.
Dark circles under eyes that used to be sharper, clearer, before everything fell apart in that cave.
Around my throat rested a mysterious, gaudy necklace of blackened metal, its surface carved with runes that wound all the way around my neck.
The symbols fed into a jagged setting at the hollow of my throat, where a silver crystal gleamed like a captured star.
Heat radiated from the stone, steady and alive, and every pulse of its magic stirred an ache in my chest that I couldn’t explain.
I’d worn jewelry all the time when I was younger, before I had to turn it all over to the guards before the Mortalis, but this was different.
This wasn’t mine. And it wouldn’t come off.
I wondered if Syn would know what these marks meant. If she’d look at the symbols and see something I couldn’t. If she’d understand why wearing it felt like drowning on dry land.
Then I wondered if she was even still alive.
The blood oath had given us such a limited time. I didn’t know how many days had passed since the cave. Since Riot’s tail had tried to shield me and something else had swept me out, away, over the edge of a cliff.
Time moved strangely here. Or maybe I just couldn’t track it anymore.
I was always tired. Maybe that was the mysterious necklace’s fault.
I made a note about it in the journal. The ticking clock in my chest said I was dying.
That unless Syn and the others found the Phoenix, found Vitoria, I’d be dead soon anyway and being tired wouldn’t matter.
A scream echoed from somewhere in the city below.
I raised my shoulder, trying to block it out. Trying not to think about the hollowness in my chest that had nothing to do with the oath and everything to do with being here. Trapped and mostly alone. Watching dragons that shouldn’t exist fly over a city that also shouldn’t exist.
Dragons.
Plural.
There were only supposed to be four in the entire world. The Sister Furies’ bonded Guardians.
I was an anomaly.
But here, there were more. Three circled overhead right now. Massive and beautiful.
One was green, scales catching what little light filtered through the snow. Another blue-gray, nearly invisible against the sky. The third was smaller, younger maybe, dark blue with wings that moved like water.
They didn’t acknowledge the city below. Didn’t hunt or play or interact. Just flew in patterns that looked more like a patrol than lazy freedom.
I’d spent my entire life hiding what I was.
Because shifting into a dragon meant revealing to the world that I shouldn’t have existed.
So I’d learned to lock it down. Learned to play Nexus on pure skill and strategy instead of using the power burning under my skin.
Learned to be Lucette Varrow, trainer and sister and dutiful daughter, instead of the thing my parents had tried to bury within me.
And here I was. In a city full of dragons I couldn’t explain. Wearing a necklace I couldn’t remove. Dying from a Venatori oath I couldn’t break.
A quiet knock pulled me from the window.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly before I turned from the glass and whatever haunted reflection it held.
I hid the journal and said, “Come in.”
The door opened, and Tavian stepped through carrying a breakfast tray that smelled like peaches.
He was handsome enough. Maybe in his thirties, but tall, with sharp features that would have been severe if not for the easy warmth in his expression.
He kept his dark hair pulled back, revealing a strong, smooth jawline.
Around his throat rested a broader collar of black stone.
It bore the same ancient markings as mine, but where my necklace curved in elegant points, his had cleaner lines and fewer marks.
More like a collar where mine seemed like it was fit for royalty.
“Remember anything today, Miss Lucy?” he asked, setting the tray on the small table by the fire.
The question was the same every morning. My answer never changed. “No. Nothing new.”
“Maybe try the tea,” he said, gesturing to the cup. “Cook made you the kind you liked yesterday.”
“Thank you.”
He moved to the fireplace, stoking embers back to life. Over the passing days, I’d hardly taken in the details of my borrowed room. A bed. A dresser, the floor to ceiling window that frosted at the edges but gave me the most beautiful view of the city below and the prison walls above.
A knock sounded at the door, sharper than Tavian’s had been. Less patient.
“Come on then,” Tavian called without turning.
Emrys, Tavian’s apprentice, entered carrying an armful of firewood. He wasn’t young, exactly. Twenty-something, I’d say. His copper-colored hair reminded me of Syneca.
Ink marked his forearms in patterns I couldn’t make out from here, but I noted them as well as the way he distributed the weight of the wood without thinking about it. The quiet way his feet found the floor, balanced and easy.
The apprentice didn’t intimidate me. Violence had a different energy than his.
What moved through him was trained and contained, and I recognized it.
He must have been an athlete. I’d add it to his page later.
Along with what I could make out of his tattoos.
Everything was evidence, knowledge. Everything mattered right now.
His brown eyes found mine, held for a beat, then he nodded respectfully and began restacking the wood beside the hearth.
“Emrys,” Tavian said, “how’s the scorched with the fever in room four?”
“Broke this morning. I changed the bandages. Infection’s clearing.”
“And the binding on his ribs?”
“Holding.” Emrys set down the last piece of wood with deliberate care. “But he keeps trying to work. I told him another week of rest. He told me to fuck off.”
Tavian’s mouth curved. “They always do.”
“Yeah, well.” Emrys straightened, brushing bark from his hands. “I’ll check on him this afternoon. You want me to bring the salerian tincture, or are we letting him suffer until he learns to listen?”
The healer sighed. “Bring it. He’s suffered enough and we’re not in the business of prolonging.”
Something passed between them. Not quite affection. More like the understanding between people who’d seen the same darkness and survived it. More than survived, I guessed. They were fine here, having no idea what they were missing.
Emrys’s eyes flicked to me again. “You need anything?”
Yes.
“No. I’m fine, thank you.”
He dipped his chin and walked out.
“Tell me again,” Tavian said without turning around. “What do you remember? Perhaps if we keep revisiting it, something new will spark.”
I’d recited this enough times that the words came automatically.
“I shifted in the cave. It started collapsing. Riot tried to shield me with his tail, but something swept me outside. I fell from the cliff and hit the ground.” I pointed toward the window, toward the stone bridge crossing the frozen river dissecting the heart of Luneth Hollow. “I woke up down there.”
“Half frozen when I found you,” he said quietly.
“Thank you for rescuing me.”
“You’re far from rescued, Lucette. But I hope with time, we’ll get to the bottom of it all.”
I set down my tea, broaching a question I’d been holding back. “Could you tell me about the necklace? I know they are different, but since I have no memory of receiving mine, maybe that would help.”