Page 34 of Anomalies

“Look, Lucina,” his shoulders fall. “I feel like I’m a pretty good judge of character, and if it makes you feel any better, I’m not suspicious of you in the slightest.”

I watch him skeptically. “I feel a ‘but’ coming.”

“But…” he starts, “you washed up on a beach, wearing a Solian necklace, claiming you came from the commoner lands, and you expect immediate trust? That’s not plausible. The Dame is just being cautious, and so is the Captain. You’ll gain their trust eventually, just be patient.”

When I halt in the grass, he turns back to face me. “So, you trust me?”

“Gods, no,” Pax laughs. “There are only a few people I trust, Lucina. But I think if you had some master plan to kill us all, you probably would have done it by now.”

That has me smiling again, tired bones and all. “Speaking of murder…” I glimpse the field of wildflowers and the billow of starlit robes waiting for me there. “If today’s the day Her Grace kills me, promise you’ll bury me somewhere nice.”

The corner of his mouth kicks up. “The rolling hills?”

“Perfect.”

Then I go to meet the Dame.

She picked a blue wildflower. A larkspur.

Make it move, the Dame said… two hours ago.

It’s not like I haven’t been trying, believe me, I’ve been trying so hard, I swear I’m close to going insane. I’ve done exactly what she says to do; I unleash that white hot magic until it pulses like a steady drum beat beneath my skin. Then I imagine the larkspur lifting off the ground, my magic as the phantom breeze that moves it.

I’ve done everything as instructed.

And still…nothing.

“Again,” the Dame commands, sitting cross-legged in the grass beside me. “You can do this.”

The word, again, lost all meaning about thirty minutes ago, the same time I lost all feeling in my hands. I told her that, of course, but all she said was⁠—

“Again, Lucina.”

I crack open that well of power inside me and let it run its course up my spine, whilst keeping the contents of my stomach where it belongs. I will it into my arms and down to my fingertips where it pulses expectantly.

Easy, that part is easy. It’s the next bit that makes me want to bash my head into a wall.

I focus all my attention on the deep blue petals and the long green stems. I imagine my magic as an extension of myself, like an extra hand or a third eye, and I’m seeing, moving, and floating with it.

With the wind of my creation.

Wind that will pick up the larkspur, because I command it so.

Heavy power pushes against my skin, begging to be set free. Power that’s ancient but new. Young yet old.

So very old, it whispers back to me.

Panic sets in, buried deep and blinding. I feel it coming up my throat and stretching out beneath my skin, as if there’s a beast inside trying to escape.

“Enough,” Delia shouts from some distant land she’s drifted off to.

Wait, no, it’s me that’s drifted off. Right off the face of the planet.

“Lucina!”

It takes more effort than it ever has to wrangle all that magic back into its home at the base of my spine, but once it’s all crammed inside, I find myself back on the grassy earth. Back in a pool of my sweat. Back on Vita and back in Pirn. Thank the gods.

My blurry vision focuses on the Dame, who’s wearing an expression I’ve yet to see from her. It’s discouraged and concerned—a twisted mix of the two. “That’s enough for today.”