Page 31 of Fallacies

I glance down at her. “You should be sleeping.”

“Did you hear what Devon said?” she asks. “By the mud pit.”

My shoulders tense, my gaze drifting to his towering frame where he stalks a few feet ahead of us.

“Cin.” I shake my head. “He shouldn’t have said that to you.”

Silence.

Then, “Do you think it’s true?”

I slow my steps, watching her with furrowed brows. She asked the question earnestly—as if she doesn’t know the answer. As if Devon made her doubt what she’d been so confident in just days ago when she stood up to the Dame and her coven without an ounce of fear.

I could kill him for it.

Doing my best not to let that anger show, I revert my attention to the path. “Do you?”

“I didn’t,” she exhales, “I don’t…not really…I just⁠—”

“Lucina, there is nothing in this world that you are not capable of.”

Her fingers stiffen where they had been fidgeting with the silver pendant around my neck.

“I can scream it in Devon’s face,” I offer, glancing down to gauge her reaction. “I could torture him until he believes it. But you are the only person who needs to believe it. I’ll take on anything in this world that hurts you, Chaos, but if you let that doubt creep in, then you’re your own worst enemy. And I can’t do anything about that.”

Lucina blinks once. Twice. Then she averts her eyes, pressing her cheek back into my chest as she mindlessly winds her fingers through the silver chain. Exhaling a relieved breath, I dodge another dip in the path, praying that doubt isn’t still settling over her shoulders.

“I wasn’t scared,” she whispers, right when I think she’s fallen back asleep. “When I jumped off the plank, I wasn’t scared.”

I smile. “Because you knew I was watching?”

Lucina shakes her head, brushing her fingers across the etched silver. “I knew you would catch me.”

“I’ll always catch you.”

I had Gemma meet us at the cabin. She helped Lucina shower, healed any lingering wounds, and the second her head hit the pillow, she was out again. She’s been asleep for several hours, long enough that her dinner is cold, and I’m growing impatient. Every time I open the door to check on her, Gemma scowls at me from the bed, curled up beside Lucina, with one hand clutching a book and the other monitoring her pulse.

The best way to replenish magic as a Sol is sleep and sunlight. So, we’d left the curtains open for her, drenching the room in the last of the day’s sun.

But the sun set a while ago, and she’s still asleep.

I should be glad she’s recovering—and I am—but I hate the waiting. It makes me uncomfortable.

My foot taps impatiently, my eyes locked on the closed door of the office as if I can see into the hallway beyond and through the bedroom door.

“Cal?” It’s Pax that pulls me out of my thoughts, forcing my stare to break. He’s leaned back in his chair, head tilted as he surveys me. “Do you think you’re going to make it, or do we need to hold this meeting at her bedside?”

It’s not the worst idea he’s ever had.

I exhale, scrubbing a hand over my face. “No.”

Ignoring the weight of my coven’s stare, I flip through the papers in front of me. I called a late meeting, hoping that Cin would be up in time to join it, but I’ll have to fill her in on it later.

Easton said he has more information on blood wards and how to break them. We can’t get our people out of Streatham with the ward in place, preventing our entry into the Estate, so the only option is to take it down. But time is running out on the deadline Delia gave us, and if we don’t come up with something soon, she’ll close the Banyan. Permanently.

“Easton,” I nod in his direction, “you first.”

He adjusts his arms over the back of his chair, his brown, shoulder-length hair shifting with the movement. There’s sweat and dirt on his bronzed skin. He and Devon were in charge of cleaning up Albatross—a punishment of sorts. Mostly for Devon.