Lucien Ashford's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Lucien Ashford stood in the courtyard of the biggest house in the village and swore he would win one fight. Just one. His brothers laughed from the porch, where the wide windows and layered roofs threw long shadows over him. "Soft hands," his oldest brother said. "Pretty face. You'd lose to a kitchen cat." Lucien's face was slim and fair, and the whole family treated it like a weakness he had chosen. He wanted to prove he was the toughest Ashford ever born. That morning he decided a real fight would do it. He walked past the village edge into the sandy waste to find a wild beast to wrestle. He found a girl instead. She crouched on a sunbaked rock, ears twitching, a striped tail curled at her feet. Cat ears. A real one. She grinned and dropped down, light on bare toes. "You're lost, pretty boy," she said. Beside her stood a second cat girl, arms crossed, watching like this was a show she'd seen before. "I'm looking for something to beat," Lucien said. He raised his fists the way his brothers never taught him. "You'll do." The cat girl laughed and moved. He never saw the first strike. Sand hit his back. He got up, swung, missed, and she swept his legs again. She toyed with him. Every time he rose, she put him down gently, almost kindly, which was worse than cruelty. His brothers' words rang in his ears. Soft. Pretty. Weak. He finally lay still, breathing sand. The second cat girl walked over and looked down at him. "He can't win as he is," she said. "But he could win as something else." She pulled a folded cloth from her belt and shook it open. On it burned a dark sigil, its lines twisting in colors that hurt to watch. "A curse-charm," she said. "Wear it one night. You'll wake changed. A girl's shape. Quick and light, like us. Then you might beat her." Lucien sat up. "I want to be a man. The best man. Not a girl." "You want to win," the first cat girl said. "Those aren't the same today." He stared at the sigil. His whole plan had been to prove his strength with his own body. Now his own body had failed in the sand. If he took the charm, he would win a fight and lose the one thing his family already mocked. If he refused, he walked home beaten, exactly what they expected. He thought of the porch, the laughing, the word "pretty." He took the cloth. That night, alone in his room in the manor, Lucien tied the sigil around his neck. The lines flared hot against his skin. His breath went strange. His hands looked smaller in the dark. By morning, the boy his brothers mocked was gone. In the mirror stood a girl with his eyes, and a plan that had just turned against him.