11. Lucy
Lucy
The hunted run because running is all that’s left for them. Spare a thought for the hunter who starts to ask why, with the catch already in her grip.
The ocean stretched beneath me, swallowing my moonlit reflection in its inky depths. Black water churning white where it broke against rocks I couldn’t see.
I’d never flown this far before. Couldn’t remember why that mattered, only that something inside whispered I needed to turn back. Needed to return before—
Before what?
The collar pulsed. The question died.
Hunt. Find. Return to the moon beach.
Then I felt it. The resonance. Not strong, but there. A hook within my soul yanking me forward.
There.
Mountains rose ahead. Smaller than the ones I knew. Sharper. Cliffs that dropped straight into the ocean below.
And on one of those cliffs—people.
I folded my wings and dropped.
The landing shook the ground. My claws dug into stone as I faced them, wings spread wide to block any escape.
They stood in a cluster. Several of them. Eyes caught the moonlight, reflecting it back like gems. When they opened their mouths to scream, I saw teeth. Too long. Too sharp. Exactly right.
I took a step forward.
They took one back. Toward the edge. Toward the drop that would kill them all.
Crying.
They were crying.
Holding each other. Shaking with fear so strong I could taste it.
Why did they fear me? I was here to collect. Here to serve. Only one. The rest didn’t matter.
Another step.
They retreated further. One woman’s foot sent rocks tumbling over the edge. The sound of them hitting water came seconds later.
One more step and they’d fall. All of them. But I only needed one. I’d save him. Collect him. Deliver him. I was good. I was obedient.
I lifted my claw.
A roar split the air.
Purple scales erupted from below the cliff, soaring up from behind the people like a wall of dragon. The beast launched upward, wings beating hard enough to send the people stumbling toward me.
He soared over their heads and landed between us.
Amber eyes locked on mine.
Amber eyes I thought I knew.
Purple dragon.
Purple dragon. The thought circled uselessly. Purple—
Arrows struck my side.
I jerked back, confused. The people were moving impossibly fast. Taking advantage of the other dragon staring at me as if he’d seen a ghost. They had bows drawn, magic crackling along the arrowheads like lightning.
I shifted backward. The collar screamed into my mind, high pitched and senseless. There was always fire. Always pain, but now it was angry. I’d moved away from my target. Its target.
The purple dragon spun and his tail nearly hit me as he faced the people. Another volley was released. These didn’t pierce. Instead, thick ropes materialized from the magical arrows, wrapping around my legs, zipping around my wings, pulling tight.
I thrashed. Tried to break free. But more arrows came. More ropes. They wrapped around my neck, my throat, squeezing the collar until I couldn’t breathe properly.
The purple dragon roared again. Not at me.
At them.
He moved like violence. Fire erupted from his jaws, consuming three of them before they could scream. His tail swept another off the cliff. His claws found the woman who’d shot the arrows at my neck and crushed her against the stone.
Within seconds, they were all dead.
All of them.
Including my target.
No. No, no, no.
The collar burned me.
Rage.
Failure. I’d failed again because he’d killed them. He’d—
The purple dragon turned back to me.
I tried to flee. The ropes held.
The collar screamed and screamed until the only thing that existed was my failure.
He moved fast. Snapping the ropes with his claws. For a second I was free. I stepped back, coiling my legs to leap and fly away, but he was faster still as he tackled me, pinning me to the ground with his weight, his claws pressing my wings flat, his body covering mine.
The collar’s screaming quieted.
Just for a moment.
His weight on me. His claws holding me still. And there was a breath, one impossible breath, where I could almost think.
Almost remember.
Almost—
His claw reached for the collar.
Panic exploded through the brief clarity. I slashed upward with everything I had, feeling my talons connect with his chest, tearing through scales, drawing blood that steamed in the cold air.
He jerked back with a hiss.
I tore free, launching myself skyward. Wings beating frantically. Away. I needed away.
The purple dragon didn’t follow.
I fled. Raced back toward the mountains I knew. The frozen fog that waited. There was so little time. The sky was already lighter. Sunrise was coming too fast.
But I couldn’t think past the pull. Past the desperate need to get back before…
Before…
The light touched my scales as I passed through the fog.
Wings folded. I shifted mid-fall, landing hard on human knees that couldn’t support the impact.
Pain exploded through me.
I curled into myself on the frozen stone, gasping and shaking.
But it wasn’t the pain that stayed with me as I dragged myself back to the Keep.
It was his eyes. Eyes that I’d sketched in my book as if they would somehow help me.
And the silence.
That one moment when his weight had pressed me down and the collar’s screaming had stopped. When my mind had been my own for a heartbeat. When I’d felt… peace.
Something I hadn’t felt since the collar claimed me.
Something I didn’t know how to name but knew I’d been searching for without realizing. Each step stole a memory. Each second wiping away the night.
When I crawled into bed, it was gone.
Except the amber eyes that were there when I closed mine.
Except the peace.
And I didn’t know if I’d ever find it again. I closed my eyes letting that thought whisk me away.
I didn’t leave my room the next day.
Couldn’t make myself move past the door, past the window, past the bed that should have held rest but didn’t.
My body ached. Exhaustion sat heavy in my bones, pressing me into the mattress.
I couldn’t figure out why I was so tired when I’d slept all night.
It felt as if no amount of sleep would soothe me.
The dull light coming through the window said morning. My body said I’d been awake for days. Weeks even.
I stared at the ceiling. I counted the cracks in the stone because it was the only inventory I was capable of taking. Tried to remember what it felt like before the cave. Before the collar. Before this city that wasn’t supposed to exist.
My brother’s face came to me in fragments.
The way he’d looked at me that last time, relief and resignation tangled together when I’d agreed to give him mercy he couldn’t ask for.
Our parents had controlled every breath we’d taken.
Every choice. Every moment of our lives, shaped by their expectations, their ambitions, their need for us to be perfectly caged by their desires.
I’d escaped that. Only to become someone else’s prisoner.
The irony would have been funny if it didn’t make me want to scream. This wasn’t like Nexus. The strategy. The control. How I could have been one of the best because I could read opponents, anticipate moves. But I couldn’t apply that logic to this problem. I didn’t even know what the game was.
I thought about Syneca. About the moments we’d had that felt like the beginning of something real. Friendship.
But there was no time. The blood oath was counting down. She was probably dying somewhere, and I was stuck here, also likely dying.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Lucy?” Tavian’s voice carried through the wood. “I’m leaving lunch. You don’t have to eat it. Just... It’s there if you want it.”
I didn’t answer the healer. Couldn’t find words that would make sense.
The sound of a tray being set down echoed through the room, then footsteps retreating. The door never opened.
I’d been turning Tavian over in my mind since the bridge, trying to find the angle because everyone had one.
But the more days I spent watching him move through this Keep, the more I understood that his moral compass just pointed somewhere different from most. He was the healer of an entire city, and the code he answered to was older and quieter than law or loyalty or self-preservation.
He’d taken me in when he shouldn’t have, and asked nothing in return.
The guilt of that sat alongside the relief of it in a way I couldn’t fully separate.
The truth was simpler and harder than I wanted it to be. Without him, I had nowhere to go.
I’d repay it. However I could, whatever he needed from me when I was capable of being useful again, I’d find a way to make the debt mean something. I filed that promise away with everything else, a silent oath to him for when the exhaustion finally loosened its grip.
He wasn’t pushing. Wasn’t demanding I be normal when everything was broken. Just leaving food and space and the quiet acknowledgment that he was here. There was more kindness in that small gesture than he’d ever know.
I turned toward the window. Watched snow fall over Luneth Hollow. Watched people move through streets like they had somewhere to be. Watched dragons circle overhead with a freedom that made something old and aching move through my chest.
I was so tired the world blurred at the edges. So tired I stopped fighting it. So tired I didn't notice when sleep dragged me back under, into rest that should have helped and never did. Into the reminder of peace when someone had touched me in a dream.