Lucia Heartwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The heavy door shut behind Lucia. A key turned. She sat on the cold floor of the tower cell and hugged her knees. The heirs were down in the hall, listening at last. But now she could not reach them. Words had failed her. Then a locked door had beaten her. She needed someone on the outside to carry her message. She needed the one person who ever came near this cell. Boots scraped in the hall. A slot in the door slid open. An old guard peered in, fat and gray, his white beard spilling past his belt. He pushed a bowl of bread through the gap. His helmet sat crooked. He did not look at her the way the heirs did. He looked tired. "Eat, little thief," he said. "Then be quiet." Lucia took the bread. But she looked past it, into him. She saw what he hid. A grown daughter he never wrote to. A quarrel years old. A wish he could not speak. "You have a daughter," Lucia said. "You miss her. You think it's too late to say sorry." The guard went still. His hand froze on the door slot. "Who told you that?" "No one. I see it." Lucia leaned close to the gap. "It isn't too late. She's waiting for you to speak first." For a long moment he said nothing. His eyes wet at the corners. He rubbed them with a thick thumb and pretended it was dust. "You're a strange child," he muttered. "The heirs need help too," Lucia said fast. "They love each other. They're scared. If they stop fighting, this whole place gets warmer. But I'm locked in here. I can't tell them." She pressed her small hand flat to the door. "You can. Take them a message for me." The guard looked down the empty hall. He looked back at her. She saw the wall inside him crack, the same way the heir's anger had cracked over the letter. "What message," he said. Not a question. A surrender. "Tell them the girl in the tower says the truth doesn't stop being true just because it hurts. Tell them to finish what the letter started." He repeated it under his breath, once, twice, until it stuck. Then he closed the slot. His boots moved off, not away down the hall, but down the stairs toward the great hall. Lucia sat back. On the windowsill, her white rabbit watched with bright green eyes. She had no key. She had no freedom. But she had a voice now, walking on old legs toward the two people she needed to reach. She pressed her ear to the cold stone and waited to hear what her message would break loose.