Page 29 of Anomalies

“Just read it,” I beg, the edges of my voice soaked in irritation. I shove the paper into his chest. “You wouldn’t be jeopardizing anything, Callan, please⁠—”

He snatches it out of my hands and scans the scribbled words on the page thoroughly. When his eyes finally meet mine, they’re curious. Suspicious still, but there’s enough leeway there to suggest I haven’t fully lost this chance yet.

“I’ll do anything,” I say, and I mean it with everything I have.

That’s as honest as it gets.

A few beats of silence pass, him watching me as if he has a million questions but none that feel right to ask, and I watch him like a deer staring straight into the barrel of a hunter’s gun. A stupid deer.

“I offered to take you back,” Callan says finally, his gaze falling to the pendant hanging down my chest. “You love these people, right?” He holds up my letter, flashing the pieces of my heart I’d left plastered to the parchment. “Enough that you wrote this, marched over here, and had the nerve to ask me to break rules for you when we hardly know each other.”

I don’t reply.

“When I found you,” he starts again, “I offered to take you to the commoner lands, but you didn’t want to go back.” He eyes the way my mouth clamps shut, then he says, “I want to know why.”

I blink away the familiar burn of impending tears. “If I tell you, will you take my letter?”

He senses it then, the uneasiness in my tone, the wound he’d unintentionally prodded by asking what he thought was just a simple question. Callan watches me for a moment. “It depends on your answer.”

I rub a hand over my face, then finish off my moonshine.

Honest. I can do that. For Ivy and Jude.

I exhale a heavy breath, then roll my shoulders back and meet his eyes. “I didn’t want to go back because the man I grew up with was a violent drunk, his wife was a delusional enabler, and I was their burden.” My confession chases my buzz away, and the Captain falls still. “It was some cruel twist of fate that I ended up on their doorstep, but I’ve been trying to get out ever since. I never belonged in that town. I knew it, and everyone else knew it too.” The sound of the crowd behind us fades, and his silver-eyed stare darkens. I nod to the letter he still holds. “Ivy and Jude have dreams, aspirations, and I had nothing. Then I woke up on that beach with a second chance. I think I’d be a fool to go back.”

There it is—the truth. Raw, vulnerable, and bare. Laid in a messy pile before him.

Silence falls between us, and again, I’m just a stupid deer, and all he has to do is pull the trigger.

The Captain folds the parchment. Then he tucks the letter into his pocket. “I agree,” he says finally. “You’d be a fool to go back.”

“So, you’ll do it?” My heart beats with hope, dangerous hope, because if he doesn’t⁠—

He nods once, and I nearly melt to the ground. “But Lucina…” My gaze snaps up to his. “Don’t tell anyone I did this for you.” Oops. “I’d hate to have to send you back to where you came from.”

And just like that, any evidence of a pleasant version of the Captain vanishes.

“I understand,” I reply, and a muscle in his jaw feathers. I quickly tell him about a place only Ivy and I know. I tell him how to get there, and I tell him where to leave it, and by the time I finish, the crowd that had previously faded away has gone silent.

I hesitate before walking away. “Thank you,” I tell him, but still my legs won’t move. My feet feel frozen in the dirt.

And for a minute I wonder if his are too⁠—

“Boss,” Devon calls, and Callan rips his gaze from mine. “It’s starting.”

I take the moment while I have it and weave my way back through the crowd to Gemma and her friends. Gemma’s brows rise as I approach, silently asking how it went, and she shakes her head in disbelief when I smile.

I smile brighter than the full moon above us, and Selene and Kimber are too focused on the basin to notice. I find my seat beside Gemma and heads bow in unison when the Dame walks through with Laverna and Ceres on her heels. They take a long bench beside the Ajax coven, my eyes trailing over the long picnic table that’s been swallowed whole by five massive men in black armor. Callan sits down between them, turning backwards on the bench so he can face the crowd, his elbows braced on the table behind him, and his foot taps impatiently. His silver-eyed stare flicks to me. Just once.

I quickly pull my focus back on the golden basin in the center of the crowd, though I feel the weight of his stare as if it’s a tangible thing. Gemma squeezes my hand as if she can sense the relief flooding my veins. As if she can see the guilt and worry sliding off my shoulders in real time.

Ivy will take one look at that letter, and even if she doesn’t believe a single word it says, she’ll know it’s from me. No one else knows where Nana is buried.

Just me, Ivy, Jude… and Callan.

“Who’s that?” I ask Gemma, when an older man makes his way through the crowd, coming to a stop in front of the first row of benches. He gingerly observes everyone who has gathered, his back hunched as he rests both hands on his worn wooden cane.

“That’s Pa,” Gemma explains quietly. “Kimber’s grandfather and Leader of the Diviners. He always tells us a story before Selumira commences. It’s usually some piece of history, something for us to remember while we celebrate.”