Page 62 of Fallacies

The Dame watches me with narrowed eyes, as if I had anything to do with Ceres’s inability to keep her mouth shut. Pulling my attention from Delia, I wait until the fabric of Ceres’s yellow robes disappears down the path leading back to camp⁠—

And then I take Pax’s place at the dais.

Lucina watches every step I take, fingers trembling as she swipes at the tears on her cheeks.

“How are you feeling?” I ask, distracting her with a question as I prick my finger. A bead of blood pools at the wound, and she still hasn’t responded. I look up at her. “Lucina.”

“Raw.”

She’s exhausted. Mentally and physically. At this point, I remember feeling raw, too. I remember wanting more than anything for all of it to be over. I didn’t think I could take much more agony.

“I know,” I tell her. “You’re almost done.” Taking her hand in mine, I pause with my thumb hovering over her bloodied palm. “Exhale, Lucina.”

The breath I could tell she’d been holding releases in a rush, and I use the brief second of relief it likely left her with to press my thumb into the center of her hand.

The crimson smear of my blood is the last thing I see before the world shifts. The memory builds around us, and then that red…It’s everywhere.

Screams rip through the air—blood-curdling from every direction. The sky is dark and full of smoke, and people rush past me in frantic blurs, shouting at others to move. Shouting for people they love.

Deep rumbles fracture the earth, knocking me off balance. There’s a crack, an explosion, and then the building beside me crumbles to the ground. More screaming spills from the street as ropes of black burst through the smoke, flashes of yellow eyes burning through the rubble.

And then there I am.

At four years old, I’m screaming. Tucked under my father’s arm like I’m the most important thing in his world. Another building falls, and he picks up speed, sprinting as fast as he can to the edge of the city.

In this dream-like state, I’m forced to run to keep up with the memory, and it doesn’t take long for my body to feel the effects of the scene. My lungs fill with smoke, and my father’s grip tightens around my ribs as the blurry images of people being dragged away and homes being blown to pieces flash before my eyes.

I can’t see Lucina, but I can feel her. I can sense the fear rippling through both of our bodies as my father pushes himself as fast as he can go, dodging spears of shadows and smoke. Jumping over pieces of our city that now lie broken in the streets.

He moves like a sharp gust of wind, squeezing past and slipping through utter mayhem like he can anticipate it all. Like he’s three steps ahead.

He always was.

Terror comes in waves now. You can see it in the face of a younger me as he’s being jostled and twisted in the arms of his father, and I brace myself for what I know is coming. I wish I could brace Lucina, too.

Pain bursts along my hip, as bright as it did that day, the hard surface of a truck bed catching my fall. My limbs slam against it, and by the time I’ve righted myself, my father is running after me, pushing himself to a sprint behind the moving truck.

“Callan!” he screamed, pumping his arms faster, grey eyes focused. Always focused. “Are you okay!?”

It wasn’t until I relived this memory for the first time at my initiation that I realized why he had asked me that. When I was four, it didn’t make sense. Of course I’m not okay, I remember thinking. Our entire world is burning.

But that wasn’t what he meant.

My father was worried that he threw me too hard and I landed too roughly in the truck bed. As if my scraped knees are a more pressing issue than the truck moving faster and his pace faltering. More threatening than the Rogue rushing up behind him.

“I’m okay!” I screamed back, scrambling towards the tailgate. “Hurry!”

“Stay there!”

It was the last thing he said to me before a rope of black circled him like a lasso, snapping tight around his throat and yanking him to the dirt.

The heartbreak hits me tenfold.

There are no words to express how it feels to watch the strongest person you know fall, but it slams into my chest so violently that for a second, all I can think about is my next breath. And Cin. I think about Cin. Gods, I hope she’s okay.

One after another, I force down each breath, grief and pain and fear suffocating me from the inside.

The little boy in the truck bed is screaming now, and I feel her next to me. Lucina. Rosemary and vanilla, lingering through the ash and smoke, making a bitter memory… sweet. Heavenly. Safe.