Chapter 190 190

Chapter 190 190
Lucian's POV:
Evie looked at me. I knew what she was seeing. Four days of not eating enough, dark circles, hair that hadn't been washed since the one shower, a T-shirt I'd been wearing for three days. She looked at all of it and her face didn't flinch and her eyes didn't change. She was wearing long sleeves, probably because she still had marks from the zip ties, and that made my heart hurt. She didn’t deserve a single second of all she’d been through because of me...
She pushed the door open and walked in and sat down next to me on the floor. Cross-legged. She picked up the drawing.
"You didn't look at it right."
"I did."
"Did you see the spots? I did them better this time. Orange, like you said."
"Yeah. Those are good spots."
"Are you sad because of what happened?"
I closed my eyes. "Evie..."
"Because I'm not sad. I mean I WAS sad. I was really really scared when those men took me. The window was open and I couldn't yell because one of them put his hand on my mouth and it tasted bad, and I couldn't find Mr. Rabbit and I was SO scared." She paused. "But then you came and I wasn’t scared anymore."
She was looking at me with those eyes. Too old for five. Always too old.
"Evie, I need to tell you something."
"Okay."
"The dragon in that building... That was me. That was actually me."
She blinked once. "I know."
"You... you know?"
"Your eyes were the same. Gold. Like Mario coins. And the dragon was gold. And then the dragon went away and you were there." She said it the way she said the sky is blue or cookies taste good. "So the dragon was you."
"And... that doesn't scare you?"
"No."
"I hurt those men, Evie. I hurt them really bad. They're not coming back."
"They were MEAN." Her jaw set, fierce, and the expression reminded me of Marlen so much it hurt. "They took me out of my room and they put those things on my hands and the man said bad words about you and he was going to hurt me and you STOPPED him. You saved me. Again. Like the magic day."
"This was different."
"How?"
"I killed people, Evie."
"Bad people."
"That doesn't make it—"
"Are you a bad person?"
"I don't know."
She crawled into my lap. Knees on my thighs, hands on my chest, face level with mine. "You're not bad. You're magic. Magic people have to do hard things sometimes, the stories Emma reads to me tell it. Like Sparkles."
"Evie..." I said. "Sparkles isn't just a dragon I know."
"What do you mean?"
"Sparkles is me. The dragon. The story about the knight and the princess and the chocolate river, that was about me and Emma. Sir Trips-a-Lot, the clumsy knight who trips over everything and breaks stuff, that's me. I was telling you about myself."
Her mouth opened. Perfect O.
"You're SPARKLES?"
"Yeah."
"But Sparkles is PURPLE."
I laughed. It came out broken and wet. "Sparkles is whatever color you want him to be. But the real me, when I change, I'm gold."
"Can I see?"
Five years old. Sitting in my lap. Bruises on her wrists under long sleeves. Asking me to show her the thing that killed three men four days ago.
"Yeah," I said. "You can see."
I didn't do the redirect. I did the opposite. I let the gold come up, not the heat, not the fire. Just the color. Just the eyes. I felt the shift behind my irises and I opened my eyes and they were gold. Full gold, solid. I held them there. For her. Just for her.
Her face went still. Then it broke into the biggest smile I'd ever seen.
"LIKE MARIO COINS!" She put her hands on my cheeks, one on each side, and leaned in and studied my gold eyes from three inches away, her fingers small and warm on my face, examining me the way you'd examine a treasure you found in the backyard.
"You're Sparkles," she said. Quieter. "You're a real dragon. And you're Sparkles. And you're Lucian. And you saved me!"
"Yeah," I said. "That's all of it. That's everything."
"Can Sparkles still eat pancakes?"
I laughed again and this time it was closer to real. Still cracked, still wet, but closer. "Sparkles can eat whatever he wants."
"Even the ones with blueberry syrup?"
"Especially those."
She hugged me. Arms around my neck, face against my shoulder, her whole body pressed against my chest, and I put my arms around her and held her and my hands were on her back and they were warm but not burning and the gold was steady behind my eyes and something that had been locked in the dark for four days cracked open.
I heard a sound at the door.
Emma was standing in the hallway. I don't know how long she'd been there. Her jaw was tight and her eyes were bright and she was looking at me holding Evie with gold eyes and there was no fear on her face. None.
"You're magic," she said. Quiet. Evie's word.
"I killed people, Emma," I whispered, in a bitter tone.
"I know. I was there. I saw."
"Then how can you—"
"Because you're also the person who put the rabbit back on the pillow before he ran out the door." Her voice cracked. She wasn't giving a speech. She was barely holding together. "You're the person who wrote me a terrible poem and healed my sister's skull and forgot to ask me to be his girlfriend. And you're the dragon who killed three men because they were going to hurt my little sister. All of it, Lucian. You don't get to just keep the bad part."
She came into the room. Sat on the floor next to us. Evie shifted in my lap to make room and Emma put her hand on my face, palm on my cheek, and my eyes were still gold.
"I'm not going to tell you it's okay," she said. "It's not. You know that. I know that. But you're not a monster. A monster wouldn't have been on this floor for four days unable to eat."
"Emma..."
"I'm right. Just let me be right."
Evie was looking between us, back and forth, the way kids watch when adults are doing something important.
"His eyes are really pretty," Evie said to Emma. "Like Mario coins."
"Yeah, bug," Emma said. "They really are."
I let the gold fade. Slow. Let it go back to blue-green, which wasn't normal either because nothing about me had ever been normal.
Evie slid off my lap. Picked up the drawing.
"Since you're REALLY Sparkles... can I make a new drawing? A GOLD dragon? With real gold crayons?"
I looked at Emma. She looked at me.
"Yeah, Evie," I said. "You can make a gold dragon."
"I'm going to put it on my wall. Right next to Lucian the Brave. Because now I have two Lucians. The one I made up and the real one."
She went out the door and down the stairs and I heard her telling my mom she needed gold crayons, RIGHT NOW, did they have gold crayons. And Kalessi's voice, soft, saying she'd look. And Marlen from somewhere saying she had a gold Sharpie if that worked. And Evie saying a Sharpie was EVEN BETTER.
Emma and I were on the floor. My room. Dark, curtain closed, the gaming monitor's red standby light.
"Come here," she said.
I went. She pulled me against her and I put my face in her neck and her arms went around me and I held on. My hands on her back. Clean hands. I'd washed them a hundred times in four days. But they didn't feel clean anyway. I didn't know if they ever would.
"I love you," she said against my hair. "All of it. Even the stuff you can't stand right now."
I didn't say anything. I held on and listened. Downstairs, Evie was negotiating with Marlen about the Sharpie. Something about how Sharpie was better than crayon because it was SHINY and regular crayon was NOT shiny and dragons had to be shiny.
It wasn't okay. It wasn't going to be okay for a while.
But the crack was open. And at least I could hear them through it.