7. Lucy #2
He touched his necklace, fingers avoiding the runes as if he’d memorized them all.
The same forlorn look I’d seen a dozen times crossed his handsome face.
He shook his head, reading over a note on his clipboard.
“They say those of us with an Ossira are blessed. But that’s pretty much all I know.
It doesn’t affect day to day activity. After all this time, I forget it’s there. ”
“How did you get yours?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’ve had it so long the memories are fading. I’m fairly certain I woke up one morning here in the Keep with it.”
I kept my tone light and conversational. “So strange you didn’t think to question it.”
“Being blessed isn’t strange. It’s a gift.”
I kept my eyes down. “If it’s a gift, then what do you get from it?”
He chuckled, scratching his head. “People say those with them are luckier.”
“Do you feel luckier?”
“No. But don’t tell anyone I said that. Next thing you know, they’ll be claiming I’m cursed.”
I perked up. “Can that happen? Do they say that?”
Tavian set his clipboard down on the dresser and crossed his arms. “You’re not cursed, Lucette. In our culture, the Ossira really only means you’re blessed. Maybe it means you’re a blessing to us, a gift.”
I sighed. “Then tell me why there are dragons here.” I gestured toward the window, toward the blue one still circling above the city. “There are only supposed to be four—five—in the whole world. Yet there are dozens.”
“If we’re supposing Luneth Hollow isn’t the whole world again,” he said, making another note, “maybe that’s why it’s veiled, as you’ve speculated.” Tavian’s voice went distant. “To hide the dragons. To protect them. They’re born here. They’ll die here. Many have.”
“Is that why you hide in your Keep?” I blanched the second the words had fallen free.
Without Tavian, I’d have likely frozen to death on that bridge.
Though there was a gap in my memories, I remembered the ache of the cold stone.
I remembered the tears frozen on my cheeks and lashes.
I remembered warm arms and his kind voice as he took such care with me.
The strange girl that entered a city full of people who didn’t even believe there was a world beyond the foggy mountains.
“You should go down into the city,” he said, changing the subject. “Pop down to Maren’s. Wander through the market. There’s culture here. Community. A life, if you want it.”
But I didn’t want it.
I wanted home.
No. That wasn’t true either. I wanted what I’d had for what seemed like minutes.
Calder’s terrible food jokes in that Solarien accent that made him sound crueler than I’d known him to be.
Syn’s sharp wit and Pip’s enthusiasm. I wanted anything other than this beautiful prison with its impossible dragons and frozen fog and the ticking clock in my chest counting down to death.
Only they could save me, and I wouldn’t even be able to thank them if they managed it.
From nowhere, there was a flash of memory, narrowed eyes in the darkness before everything went black. But it was gone before I could grasp it. A kernel of something that was lost before it could ever exist.
“Maybe I will go down today,” I said, thinking of the notebook hidden under my pillow, of the empty pages that needed to be filled to find my answer. My escape.
Tavian left without any pushing. He was good at that, I was beginning to realize and appreciate. He’d saved me, but was letting me navigate the rest without pressure.
I finished my tea and got dressed in clothes that weren’t mine. Just things Tavian had for the people he helped. Then I went anyway. Down the stairs carved into mountain stone. Out into streets that smelled like freshly fallen snow and frozen dirt.
The cold should have woken me up. It didn’t.
I’d noticed it these last few mornings, this exhaustion that sleep wasn’t touching, the sort that settled somewhere behind my eyes and made the world feel like I was watching it through warped glass.
I was going to bed. I knew that much. I remembered pulling the blankets up, remembered the dark, remembered deciding to close my eyes.
But I was waking up more exhausted than when I’d laid down, and no amount of tea was helping.
Something to add to the pages later, when I had enough pieces to make it mean something.
Luneth Hollow was beautiful. A wonderland.
The northbound road sloped downward toward the market district, and the city opened before me.
Steam rose from a bakery where, through a frosty window, I watched a woman pull small, golden loaves from a stone oven.
The smell of honey and cardamom was so rich, it made my mouth water.
I saw her grab a rune from around her neck, paired with a Life Rune.
She spoke a word. The oven door closed itself.
That was it. Just the door. The scorched had so little power, but at least it was something.
Next door, a shop displayed cloaks, and as I watched, the owner set a rune atop the fabric. Deep purple bled into silver for just a moment before fading back. He looked tired from the effort.
A child ran past chasing a paper bird that flew in stuttering bursts, its wings flapping with small sparks of magic that left brief trails of light.
Each flap seemed to cost her. I could see the concentration on her small face, the way she had to stop and catch her breath before willing it to fly again.
Her mother called after her, laughing, while snow caught in their dark hair and melted without leaving them wet.
The dragons still circled overhead. Four of them now, moving beyond the stretch of the city and closer to the northern side, tumbling and breathing fire at each other.
No one looked up. Not the vendor carefully arranging a few mushy fruit.
Not the old man selling something that looked like tea but smoked purple, though whether that was magic or just the blend, I couldn’t tell.
Not even the group of children playing some kind of game with glowing stones that flickered and died after a few seconds.
Just like home, the lampposts along the street burned with magical flames that hovered in glass globes, but I noticed several were dark, waiting for someone with enough power to relight them.
How different a city that relied only on scorched power functioned.
No witches had been here, that much was clear.
Or the spells they left behind would have kept everything functioning smoothly.
Still, Luneth Hollow could have been whimsical. Could have been the kind of place you’d want to stay, to build a life within walls that kept the world out, if I weren’t the only person here who knew there was anything beyond the mist to miss.
I pushed past my growing exhaustion and kept going. There had to be something here to trigger a memory. I was halfway down the road when the pull hit.
Not gradual but sudden and absolute, like a hook behind my sternum yanking me forward.
The Ossira warmed against my throat. Then burned.
It’d never done that before.
I had the necklace on when Tavian had found me on the bridge. Since that day, it’d sat dormant around my throat, quiet enough that I’d almost convinced myself it truly was just jewelry.
This proved it wasn’t.
My feet moved without my permission, carrying me down the street with a certainty I absolutely did not feel.
The surge of panic that followed was immediate as I lost my breath.
I knew how to fight. I knew how to resist. I knew how to plant my feet and refuse the world and every awful thing in it, and none of that knowledge was doing a single thing for me right now because my body had simply stopped listening.
I scanned the street with the only part of myself I still apparently owned, trying to find whatever had triggered this, trying to understand why my legs were so committed to a destination my mind hadn’t agreed to.
There. A woman ahead. She was cloaked, hooded, browsing a street vendor’s wares with casual interest. The pull intensified.
I couldn’t look away from her, couldn’t force myself still.
The collar seared against my skin, hot enough that I gasped.
That other part of me, the dragon I’d spent my life suppressing, rose up.
Not shifting. Just present within me. Aware.
Screaming to chase, to catch, to drag this woman somewhere I didn’t understand for reasons I couldn’t name.
The woman turned and walked into a shop.
I followed because I couldn’t stop myself.
A bell chimed when I shoved through the door.
The shop was small and warm and cluttered with displays of things that gleamed under lamplight. A man behind the counter looked up, surprised but not alarmed.
The pull… stopped.
Just gone. Like someone had cut the string yanking me forward.
The woman stood at a display case, examining something I couldn’t see from here. Completely unaware. I froze. Hand pressed to my throat where the necklace had been burning seconds ago. Waiting for the compulsion to return. For that hook to dig in again and force me toward her.
Nothing happened.
The woman made a purchase, smiled at the shopkeeper and walked past me toward the door. The bell chimed again when she left.
I stood there completely lost. What just happened? What had I almost done?
“Are you alright?” The man’s soft voice pulled me back.