Page 61 of Fallacies

Devon screamed when the ice cracked, his arms flailing as he plunged into the frigid water. When I experienced this memory with him, my entire body went numb. Immediately.

Lucina’s lips turn blue, and I can barely stomach the sight. Devon’s hands twitch over the Dais, his towering frame trembling before us.

He was frantic when he fell, and he lost the hole he’d fallen through. In the midst of his search for it, he felt the water move around him. A shift in the still current. Movement he didn’t make.

Before his vision could focus through the murky water, a set of large and sharp teeth clamped down on his ankle. The pain was…agonizing. One of the worst things I’ve ever felt.

Devon grunts, and Lucina’s body jolts forward as they both relive the feeling of his bones crunching. The paralyzing fear of being dragged deeper into the icy lake took root in his fast-beating heart. Down where the temperature is cold enough to suffocate.

Laverna was the one who dove in after him. She burnt the scaled beast to ash and pulled Devon out of the ice just in time.

His ankle healed, aside from a faint ring of scars, but he was never the same after that.

Before that day, Devon spent a lot of time caring what others thought of him, but when he was seconds from death, he was alone. And he realized other people’s opinions really didn’t matter when it was just him, the beast, and the icy depths of a frozen lake.

When the two of them snap back into their bodies, Cin is watching Devon as if she’s just now meeting him, a new kind of understanding behind the terror in her gaze. She’ll likely never look at any of us the same after this.

Devon dips his chin in her direction, wiping sweat off his brow as he turns, and when Pax approaches to take his place, Lucina stiffens.

She cares for Pax. Deeply. They have a friendship that only they understand. She’s told me before that Pax reminds her of her brother. His humor, his character, his glass-half-full perspective of the world.

It’s that comparison and Lucina’s fierce loyalty to the people she cares about that has me stepping forward to swiftly pluck the knife from her boot.

Lucina eyes me suspiciously as I step back in line, sliding the dagger into my pocket.

Nodding for them to continue, Lucina looks back at Pax and opens her palm for him, wincing before the memory has even started.

They both freeze, and within seconds of being in his memory, Lucina’s skin turns bright red. A few more seconds go by and fury twists her face into a snarl, her limbs twitching at each crack of pain Pax endured.

I flick my gaze upward, fisting my hands behind my back.

Right now, Lucina is watching the way Ceres, his own mother, trained Pax for this coven. She’s witnessing the worst of it. The chains Ceres tied him in and forced him to break free from. The poison he was given and the antidotes he had to find in a dark room while he suffered. Lucina is seeing and feeling every lash and broken bone. She’s hearing Pax call out to his mother, and she’s experiencing the emptiness that settled in him when she didn’t come.

As I suspected, when Lucina comes to, she whirls around to where Ceres sits in the front row.

Pax grabs her bicep before she can lunge off the platform, but his grip doesn’t stop the anger that spews from her mouth.

“You’re a monster,” Lucina all but screams, and when Pax hauls her back to face him, I notice the tears that have fallen onto her cheeks. “A fucking monster,” she repeats, shaking her head furiously.

“It’s okay,” he tells her, forcing on a smile even though I know how deeply the memory cuts him. “Cin,” Pax urges, squeezing her arms when she shakes her head. “I’m okay. I swear. It made me stronger.”

His last sentence makes her pause, Lucina’s tear-streaked face softening as anger melts into…understanding. With how close they are, I didn’t think she could see him any clearer, but the sudden clarity in her stare makes me wonder if she does.

In the crowd, Ceres jumps from her seat, a finger pointed at Lucina as if she has something to say.

Please say something.

Delia tugs on her arm, but Ceres shrugs off the touch, red-painted lips pursed, so angry she can hardly stand it.

Anything.

The words burst from her mouth like she just couldn’t hold them in any longer. “You’re the monster!”

“Get out.” The order is a whip lashed through the audience, and every set of eyes swings in my direction—Lucina’s watery ones, Pax’s wide ones, and Ceres’s furious ones. “Leave. Now,” I repeat when she doesn’t move.

Ceres broke the rules. And gods, I couldn’t be happier that she did.

Delia and Laverna glare up at their coven member as Ceres’s jaw grinds, fury simmering in her dark stare. It isn’t until I step forward with the intention of helping her out that she turns, shooting a pointed look at Lucina before stomping out of the training ring.