Page 106 of Anomalies

“Again,” Hunter says.

The second hit comes from a furious place inside me, a dangerous well to tunnel into, but fury is easier to swallow than fear.

“Faster, Lucina.”

The third and fourth hits knock Hunter back, and then I’m gone entirely, slipping peacefully into the maddening calm that I can only achieve when my entire focus is on the strength behind the next punch.

I hit the pads until the white tape rips, but I don’t let Hunter pause to patch them.

I hit until the white turns red, and the coppery tang of blood makes my nose scrunch.

I hit until tears fall, and the crickets come out, the moon peeking over the horizon. The night he left, it was just a sliver, and now it’s nearly full.

“We’ll be back before Selumira,” he said.

Liar.

“Be good, Chaos.”

I miss you.

26

LUCINA

Ipour myself into Sol Marks over the next few days, rummaging through all of Callan’s notes in the few books he’d found on the topic. I’ve memorized nearly all of them just to keep myself busy. I’ve become engrossed with the dead language, Vaelith, though I’d hardly call it a distraction, considering I often find myself staring at his handwriting until my eyes water.

Stupid. It’s all so stupid to feel this way.

Sleep is sparse, but when I do doze off, I wake to a shadow at the foot of my bed, except he doesn’t show me memories anymore; he just stares. He stares and stares, as if he’s waiting for something, or conjuring up some plan to force me back into the Twilight Passage.

The Eldral, at least, is back in its hiding spot, and I have no plans on ever using it again. I mean it this time.

I grimace at the lukewarm temperature of my coffee, then lean back in Callan’s chair with a book I’ve yet to flip through.

Tonight is Selumira. I haven’t told Gemma yet that I’m not going, but I'd better have a sound argument when I do, because she’ll be prepared to drag me out of this house kicking and screaming. But with my current state of mind, adding moonshine would be a stupid idea.

Worse than stupid, it might be catastrophic.

Gemma’s in a similar headspace; she just copes in different ways. Callan has been the elephant in the room, and we’ve both been reluctant to talk about him, but I know she’s feeling it too, the worry.

Everyone is.

What I failed to realize was how important these men are to Pirn. Their disciple-born power aside, they’re symbols of strength and hope and protection. I didn’t know how much everyone here relied on them for those things. People don’t talk about it, the cruel reality in which they never come back, no one wants to speak that into existence, but it does exist…that reality.

Kind of like all those troops the governor of Draycott sent over the border. They might have been swept out to sea or pummeled by a storm, but the horror isn’t in declaring them dead; it’s in never knowing what happened to them.

Pax would kill me if he heard these thoughts.

Yesterday, we passed the Banyan, and someone had left flowers by it. He snatched them up and threw them in the grass. Then at dinner, there were candles set out over his coven’s empty table, and Pax left the Tavern without eating. He doesn’t make jokes anymore, and he hardly smiles.

It’s mainly Hunter overseeing my training, but we don’t speak about anything other than the placement of my hits and the movement of my feet. We have a mutual understanding to speak with magic, or sparring, or throwing knives into faraway targets. We leave everything in the Yard every night. It’s become more me training with him than him training me. It’s an outlet for both of us, another distraction, but if it weren’t for Hunter, I’d have nothing to show Delia and her coven today.

Another thing that Callan will miss.

I reach for the candle burning at the edge of the table, effectively snuffing the flame. I tug on that string and push it back through my hands, just like Pax taught me. I send heat into the mug through my palms, enough for steam to ripple off the light brown liquid, then I take a well-deserved sip.

The spine of the book creaks as I press the outer cover into the top of my thighs, skimming past the stuff I already know about Vaelith and it being the first spoken language of the Chiaros. The paragraph goes on to explain that the forgotten tongue was universal across all three planets. Supposedly, at one point, Vaelith was spoken by everyone⁠—