Chapter 175 175

Chapter 175 175
Emma's POV:

I went inside. Mom was in the kitchen wiping down the counter, her podcast on, the true crime one about the guy in Ohio, and she looked up when I came through the door.

"How was class?"

"Fine."

"Just fine?"

"Fine fine."

She did the mom scan. The dirt on my jeans. My jacket. My face, which probably looked like whatever it looked like when your whole understanding of reality had been rewritten in some hours.

"You okay, honey?"

"I fell. On campus. Tripped on the stairs by the science building. I'm fine, just dirty."

She accepted it. She would save the real interrogation for later, midnight in the kitchen while making tea, which was her signature move. I went upstairs. Showered. The hot water was good, normal, the one thing that still worked the way it was supposed to.

Sweats. T-shirt. Bed. Staring at the wall.

I'm a dragon. My family. We're all... that. Golden dragons.

Every sentence he'd said in that forest was sitting in my chest, heavy, rearranging things. Everything I thought I knew about him was still true, which was the weird part. He was still funny, still clumsy, still ate Doritos from his hoodie pocket during Sanders' lectures and grinned at me across the room and made my sister laugh until milk came out of her nose. He was still Lucian.

But Lucian was something more than what I'd thought, more than what anyone could be, and the word "dragon" kept turning over in my head and it didn't get smaller no matter how many times I looked at it.

Dinner was pasta. I don't remember what kind. Mom talked about a parent at school who kept bringing cupcakes with weird flavors, lavender or cardamom or something. Dad said that sounded awful. Evie said she liked purple cupcakes because purple was the best color. I ate and nodded and said "yeah" and "totally" at the right moments and nobody noticed anything, or if they did they let it slide.

After dinner, Evie went upstairs for the nightly toothbrushing negotiation, which always took fifteen minutes and involved the princess toothbrush and whether bubblegum toothpaste counted as a snack. I helped Mom load the dishwasher and then I went up.

Evie's door was open.

She was on the floor. Dinosaur pajamas. Crayons spread around her in that system she had, reds on the left, blues in the middle, everything else wherever it landed. Drawing something.

I sat down next to her. Cross-legged, on the floor, in my usual spot.

"Hey, bug."

"Hey." She didn't look up. She was working on something with a lot of red.

"What are you drawing?"

"A dragon that lives in a volcano. He has a TV in there."

"In the volcano?"

"Yeah. He watches cartoons. But the lava makes the screen fuzzy sometimes."

"That's rough," I said.

"He deals with it."

I picked up a blue crayon. Pretended to draw on a blank piece of paper. My hand was shaking and the line I made was supposed to be a wing and came out looking like a bent stick.

"Evie."

"Yeah?"

"I need to tell you something."

She looked up. Quick. The same way she'd looked up on Sunday when I asked about Lucian's hands. Alert, bracing, the pinky promise sitting behind her eyes like a wall.

"It's okay," I said. "It's good news. I promise."

She put the red crayon down. The paper wrapping was peeling from how hard she'd been pressing.

"I know about Lucian," I said.

She didn't move.

"He told me. Today. He told me everything." I kept my voice soft and even, the way you talk to a kid when you want them to understand that the scary part is over. "About his eyes. About his hands. About what he did for you that night when you fell."

Her chin wobbled. Once.

"I know he healed you, bug. I know what his hands can do. And I know you kept his secret this whole time because you promised him, and you're the best secret-keeper in the entire world, and I am so, so proud of you."

She broke. Not the loud Evie cry, not the full-volume thing that could be heard six blocks away and usually involved a grievance about bedtime or juice. This was quiet. Her face crumpled and her shoulders curled in and the tears came and she made this sound, small and tight, like she'd been holding her breath for weeks and could finally, finally stop.

"I wanted to TELL YOU," she said, her voice cracking everywhere. "I wanted to tell you so BAD, Emma, but I PROMISED, and you CAN'T break a pinky promise, and Lucian said not to, and I KEPT it, I kept it, and it was SO HARD because you kept asking me things and I had to lie and I HATE lying—"

I pulled her into my lap. She folded against my chest, small, warm, shaking, and I held her and she cried into my shirt and I cried into her hair because apparently that was just happening now and there was no point fighting it.

"You did so good," I said. "So good."

"Is Lucian okay?"

"Yeah. He's fine."

"Is he still magic?"

I laughed. It came out wet and broken. "Yeah, bug. He's still magic."

She pulled back. Wiped her nose with her hand, gross, and then wiped her hand on my shirt, grosser. Her eyes were red and puffy and her lopsided pigtails were coming undone and she looked at me very seriously.

"He fixed me," she said. The way she said facts. The sky is blue. Dogs are good. Lucian fixed me. "I fell off the bed and I hit my head on the nightstand and there was blood and it hurt really really bad and then Lucian put his hands on my head and they went gold, like GOLD gold, like coins, like Mario coins, and it stopped hurting. And his eyes were gold too. And I told him he was magic and he said yeah."

"I know."

"And then he cut himself with the glass so you wouldn't know. The sharp piece from the frame. And THAT made me sad because he was bleeding now and I wasn't and that wasn't FAIR."

"No," I said. "It wasn't."

She looked at the dragon wall. At Sparkles in the corner, purple and orange, bad at flying, the nicest.

"Is Sparkles Lucian?" she said.

The question hit me sideways. Not the words, but the way she said them: careful, testing, like she'd been turning this over for a while and hadn't been brave enough to ask out loud.

"I think Sparkles is someone Lucian knows very well," I said.

Evie nodded. Slow. She understood what I meant, or she understood enough, and the rest would come later in pieces.

"I'm glad you know," she said. "I was getting REALLY tired of the secret."

I hugged her again. Tighter.

"Me too, bug. Me too."