Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jinx’s mouth tasted of blood as she drifted back to consciousness. Her body felt like a single, massive bruise, and a groan escaped her as she cracked one eye open. Pain lanced through her with every breath. Everything hurt. Great. Still kicking.

Jinx let out a bitter laugh. “Can’t even blow myself up right.”

Her voice echoed in the confined space. She tried to move, but a mess of twisted metal and broken concrete pinned her legs to the ground.

Jinx shoved at the debris, shifting it just enough for her to drag herself out from underneath the wreckage, her legs screaming in protest. She collapsed to her knees, breathless, and wiped at her face with a trembling hand. Her hand came away streaked with blood and grime.

“I can blow up half a block, no problem. Vander? Done that twice now. But me? Nope. That’s where it’s too much to ask.”

Her mind flashed back to a night on the bridge, with Ekko hovering over her and another bomb in her hand. That hadn’t worked either.

And they say the third time’s the charm, she thought. Stupid Ekko. Probably wasted that one on him and his stupid do-over machine.

“Maybe next time, I’ll just swallow the damn thing,” she mumbled.

The laugh that followed was cut short by a wet, rattling cough. Her hand clutched at her side where warm blood gushed between her fingers, and she hissed, pressing down against the torn flesh to stem the flow.

Deep, angry, gashes ran across her body where Vander’s claws had torn through her like wet paper. If it hadn’t been for the explosion wrenching her out of his grip, he would have ripped her to shreds. Even then, he’d taken more than his pound of flesh. She looked at her ruined skin, at the blood pooling on the metal beneath her. If she were anyone else, she’d be dead.

“Can’t even sacrifice myself right,” she muttered. “I really am a Jinx, aren’t I?”

Her hand fell away from her side as her strength faded. She rolled onto her back and stared into the darkness above her. The pain and exhaustion weighed on her, pressing against her mind like the world's fuzziest blanket. She could just stay here until she drifted off. It wouldn’t take long.

Vi’s face came to her unbidden. Her sister would find her like this, broken and forgotten in some old, dusty ventilation shaft. Jinx’s throat tightened at the thought. She couldn’t leave Vi that image. It would break her.

Jinx squeezed her eyes shut. That couldn’t be the last thing Vi saw of her. She was supposed to be the big fat hero—and she couldn’t tell Vi she was a world away from her if she was only six feet under.

“Ugh,” she groaned, forcing her body to move. “Stupid sister, always telling me what I can’t do.”

Her hands shook as she pressed them flat against the floor, pushing herself up an inch at a time. Every motion sent fire through her injuries, but she kept going, gritting her teeth against the agony.

She was crawling now, dragging her broken body through the narrow space. “Up we go,” she muttered through clenched teeth. “You love this crap, don’t you, Jinx? Tight spaces, sharp edges. This is your bread and butter.”

It wasn’t as fun as it used to be.

There was a light ahead of her. Jinx forced her body to keep moving until she reached the grate. Her arms were trembling and it was all she could do to lean her body against it and shove. The metal fell away, and she collapsed onto the roof. Her knees hit first, the impact jolting through her and forcing a cry from her lips.

Her blood had soaked through her clothes, dripping in slow rivulets down her arms and leaving a trail into the vent behind her, but when Jinx pressed a hand to her side, she could feel that the bleeding had slowed to a trickle.

She clicked her tongue. “I just can’t catch a break, can I?”

The city lay in shambles beneath her. The fires had burned themselves out, but smoke still curled faintly from pockets of rubble. Makeshift camps had formed throughout the ruined streets, beacons of life amid the ruin. A man and a woman hauled beams from the wreckage of a collapsed building, and a group of Zaunites worked alongside a pair of enforcers, pulling debris from the road and guiding wagons through the wreckage. Across the street, soot-streaked children clustered around a woman handing out rations.

Jinx frowned. “What the hell is this?”

It was surreal to see the Pilties and Zaunites working together. These people were supposed to be enemies. That was the rule. That had always been the rule.

I can’t stay here. The thought punched through her with all the clarity of a gunshot.

If they saw her, everything would fall apart. She was a living reminder of what divided them. Piltover would never accept her, and Zaun would never let her go. She had to be the one to leave, the one to give it up for everyone else. Just like she’d done with Vi.

Jinx scanned the skyline, and her eyes caught on a dirigible idling at the edge of the platform, its engines humming as it prepared to take off. She forced her legs to move. Each step sent fresh waves of pain through her body, but she pushed on.

The crew of the dirigible were shouting orders at one another as they checked their supplies. The captain stood at the gangplank, broad-shouldered and imposing. 

“Oi!” he barked, stepping into her path as she stepped onto the gangplank. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Jinx stopped a few feet from him, her chest heaving as hot needles stabbed her lungs.

“Onboard,” She forced a crooked smile onto her face despite the pain radiating from her. “Unless you feel like stopping me.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed as they moved over her. She could guess what he saw. Hair clinging to her face in messy, sweat-streaked tangles. Soot smudged across her skin like war paint. Her actual war paint, hidden beneath the blood clinging to her skin. The bindings she’d wrapped around her chest were now nothing more than useless strips of red-soaked fabric hanging from her ribs.

Despite that, nobody could confuse who she was. Her face had been plastered all over the cities for the last month. Recognition flashed across the captain’s face as his eyes rose to meet her own.

“Jinx.”

She smiled through blood-stained teeth. “That’s me.”

For a long moment, he didn’t move. His gaze flicked between her and the city behind her. Then, with a grunt, he stepped aside.

“Get on. Quickly.”

She released a breath she didn’t know she was holding and staggered onto the deck. The hum of the engines grew louder beneath her feet, and the dirigible shuddered as it began to rise. She stumbled, catching herself against the railing. For a moment, she clung to it, her legs trembling under her weight. When the vertigo eased, she pushed off, gritting her teeth as she pressed forward, one step at a time.

Jinx barely made it into one of the cabins before a wave of dizziness slammed against her. Her knees buckled, the floor rushing up to meet her as the world faded into nothingness around her.

The hum of the ship’s engine pulled Jinx back to consciousness. Her body felt like it weighed twice what it should. Everything ached.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. The vibration of the ship thrummed through her ribs as a constant reminder that she was still alive. The blood that had soaked through her shirt had crusted over, sticking to her in stiff splotches that pulled at her skin. She pressed her hand to her side and winced at the tenderness of her flesh.

Jinx hauled herself upright, using the wall for support. The room tilted, and she braced against the wave of dizziness. She was in the cargo hold, empty but for a few empty crates stacked in the corner and a toolbox shoved against the wall. She glanced toward the window where she could just make out the setting horizon. Each step sent a stab of pain through her side, but Jinx managed to make it to the window, leaning against the glass as her breath fogged the surface.

There was water for as far as she could see. Jinx stared out over the vast emptiness. Piltover, Zaun. They were still out there, still tangled in whatever mess she’d left behind. Her hands curled into fists. Her nails bit into her palms, and she stared out the window, watching the horizon fade into dusk. 

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you’d make it.”

The voice startled her, but she relaxed at the sight of the captain. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Captain Sunshine.”

He crossed his arms, his frame filling the doorway. “What’s your plan?”

“Beats me.” Jinx shrugged. “I never really gave much thought to what happens after.”

That wasn’t true. It was all she’d thought about ever since Ekko found her. The only problem was that after didn’t pan out how she wanted it to.

The captain grunted. “Next stop’s Demacia. Then back to Piltover. I trust you’re not coming back with us?”

“There’s nothing left for me in Piltover.”

The captain grunted and turned, stepping back through the door. Before he closed it, he glanced over his shoulder. “I let you on because of what you did for us, Jinx. But not everyone here will feel that way. Keep to yourself. Don’t cause trouble.”

The door clicked shut behind him, and Jinx was alone again.

Jinx sank to the floor, the chill of the wall seeping through her coat as her body settled against it. She drew her legs up slightly, resting her arms on her knees before turning her gaze to the window. Her fingers brushed the cold glass, leaving faint streaks across its surface. Beyond the window, the ocean was a black expanse, its waters flickering faintly with the pale reflection of the airship’s lights.

Demacia. The name barely registered. As long as it wasn’t Piltover or Zaun one place was the same as the next. They were all meaningless.

Her eyes rose to meet her reflection in the window. She hated what she saw. Blood smeared her face, streaking along her jaw and down her neck. Her hair clung to her cheeks in messy strands, and her eyes—there was life in them, undeniable evidence that she’d made it out.

They should have been empty.

Vi had been right. Her sister was gone. Jinx was just a ghost masquerading in Powder’s body.

Apparently, ghosts were hard to kill.

Her fingers curled, biting into her flesh until she felt blood welling up. She let out a bitter laugh. “Ran off before they could even yell at you,” she muttered to herself. “Real mature, Jinx. Real hero material you proved to be.”

Her gaze drifted back to the window. Somewhere far behind her, Piltover and Zaun were still smoldering. Somewhere in the ruins, Vi was probably tearing through the wreckage in search of her, using her fancy Piltover gloves to sweep the rubble away.

“It’s better this way,” Jinx whispered, her voice barely audible. “She’s better off thinking I’m gone.”

She rested her head against the wall. “Let her think the big bad Jinx finally blew herself up. It’ll save her the headache of dealing with me.”

Her hand drifted to her ribs, her fingers playing with the torn wrapping. The pain was still there, but it had dulled. She pressed a little harder, just to remind herself it was real. Not that it really mattered. The pain was pointless if it wasn’t going to kill her.

Chapter Text

Jinx leaned back against the cold metal wall, and let its chill seep into her skin. The contact gave her something solid to focus on. She didn’t want to sleep, not when she knew what was waiting for her in her dreams.

But even awake, she couldn’t stop the flashes.

She was Powder again, tucked under Vander’s arm, where nothing could touch her. Then she was in Silco’s office, perched on the edge of his desk. His chair spun, and he was there. Smiling. No blood, no bullet holes. Just him, leaning close to tell her it was all fine.That he was still there. That he always would be.

She grit her teeth.

That was fake. She burned that stupid chair.

Silco only existed in her head, where she couldn’t shoot him anymore.

Jinx squeezed her eyes together and inhaled through her nose. The air tasted strange. It carried hints of green things she’d only ever seen in faded books. Without meaning to, she glanced out the porthole. 

The place was like a fairytale come to life. Rough stone walls surrounded wooden structures climbing unevenly across the land. Timber beams jutted at odd angles and, in the distance, open fields sprawled over the land until they met the horizon.

She’d never seen so much open space.

How long would it take before this city was just another pile of rubble?

“No.” She muttered. “That isn’t me. Not anymore.”

Jinx didn’t exist here. She wouldn’t let her.

The ship’s captain stepped into the room while she was staring out the window. “We’ll be docking soon.”

Jinx didn’t turn right away. She stayed at the window, one hand pressed against the frame, her breath fogging the glass. The city loomed in the distance, its edges sharpening as they drifted closer until she could make out every window and balcony dotting the stone spires.

She tilted her head, as if seeing it from a different angle might make it look less real. “Demacia,” she said, testing the name on her tongue. “What’s it like?”

He huffed. “Come up on deck and take a look for yourself.”

The sun blinded her as she stepped onto the deck. She winced, throwing up an arm to shield her face. After a moment, the sunspots faded and she could finally peer across the water at the approaching harbor. Her brow furrowed.

“What are they wearing?”

Hulking bodies walked along the perimeter, every part of them covered in metal. Not the fancy metal, either. They were wearing plain old steel. Pow-Pow could have cut through it like paper.

No, she scolded herself. You can’t think like that.

The captain chuckled. “Just wait until you see them on their horses, waving their lances around.”

Jinx squinted at the figures. “Don’t they know how useless it is to wear all that?”

“Maybe to you,” he replied. “But I don’t think you realize just how far ahead even Zaun is on these guys. They can’t look at a lightbulb without thinking it’s sorcery.”

“Sounds like Piltover could make a killing selling their junk,” she scoffed.

The image came too easily. Gleaming airships sweeping into the harbor, bringing with them all of Piltover’s latest inventions. In a year, the whole city would be remade, sculpted into Piltover’s perfect image—except this time, they wouldn’t have to deal with the scum under their boots constantly threatening to dirty their soles.

“There’d be a killing alright,” he muttered.

Jinx raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

He nodded towards the knights. “These people don’t change for anyone. It doesn’t matter what you offer them—gold, power, progress. They’ll die in those suits before they bend.” He glanced at her. “And if there’s one thing you need to know about Demacians, it’s that they despise magic and anything even remotely related to it. With the direction Piltover’s headed, it’s a surprise they’re even willing to keep the trade routes open.”

“Magic doesn’t exist,” she dismissed, forcing herself to lock away the memories of the past few days. Vander didn’t come back through magic. Whatever Viktor had done, there’d been logic behind it. “People just don’t understand what they’re looking at.”

When she was little, she’d tried to capture magic in a bottle. All she got was a clutter of half-put-together trinkets. Things didn’t just happen. You had to make them happen. Powder had never understood that. She’d thought that, if she believed hard enough, everything would line up. She never blamed herself or tried to figure out where she went wrong.

“Maybe it doesn’t.” The captain shrugged. “It’s not my place to say. But if you’re going to be staying here, you’ll be better off knowing what to watch out for.”

Jinx glanced at the men patrolling the harbor. The ship had drawn close enough that she could make out the swords strapped to their belts. “Why do they even bother with the whole charade? Someone has to have realized how easy it would be to plant their nest here and set up shop.”

Any one of the chembarons would have made a killing running a place like this.

“Don’t underestimate them,” the captain urged. “These Demacians spend their entire lives next to their weapons. It’s a way of life to them.”

Her eyes trailed over the figures on the docks. Their armor caught the sunlight, their swords riding high and easy on their hips. Everything about them gleamed.

She thought of the knives she’d used when she couldn’t find her guns. They didn’t gleam like that. They were scratched, the edges nicked in ways you couldn’t fix. She could still remember the feeling of her knife catching in someone’s muscle, the tip lodged in their bone while they squealed and bled all over her. You couldn’t just clean messes like that. 

With the way the knights shone, it was hard to believe they’d ever used those blades for anything more than standing around.

She leaned back, shaking the thought loose. It wasn’t her problem. She wasn’t here to care about them or their spotless little lives. She was here to start over, to forget the ghosts in her head and stop seeing them in every shadow.

Powder had fallen down a well, and Jinx had fallen through the hexgates. Both were gone.

But she was still here.

Demacia felt impossibly neat. Stone buildings lined the streets around her. Banners hung from the windows, waving in the breeze. Even the cobblestones fit together so perfectly it was hard to imagine they’d ever been laid by human hands or endured the wear of time.

Groups of people passed her by, talking and laughing without a care. A boy raced past her with a wooden toy in his hand, his sister chasing close behind. Jinx froze as they brushed past, the memory of another child tugging at her mind. She blinked, forcing the tears away before they could fall, and forced herself to focus on something else as she turned down a less crowded street.

The light reflecting off the walls made her head pound. Cities weren’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be dark, choked with smog, and soaked in poison so thick you could feel it in your lungs. They were supposed to remind everyone how shitty life was and make them fight for every breath.

A café stood on the corner, and she caught a glimpse of someone setting down a plate of warm pastries. Her stomach twisted. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Before the battle at least. She’d shared a meal with Isha at the commune, but that was days, maybe weeks, ago.

It was hard to care about eating when your mind wanted to swallow so many other things instead.

Jinx ducked her head and kept walking. 

She turned down a quieter street, where the voices behind her gave way to the soft clatter of hooves and the groan of wooden signs shifting in the breeze. Her gaze landed on a small tavern. Its slanted roof seemed ready to collapse under its own weight, and the door hung slightly crooked on rusted hinges. She stopped in front of it and brushed her hand against the splintered frame. The wood felt rough under her fingers, worn smooth in patches by years of use. She traced a shallow groove carved into the grain, faded and meaningless among the hundreds of others etched into the door.

Then she pushed it open.

The air inside was warm and heavy with a mix of woodsmoke and stale ale. A fire crackled in the hearth, casting uneven light across the stone walls. The warmth from the hearth pressed against her skin, prickling at the back of her neck. Jinx let the door swing shut behind her. Her shoulders tightened as her eyes darted across the room. The space felt too open, too exposed; it didn’t have nearly enough corners to disappear into. She shifted her weight, her fingers twitching at her sides, searching for something to do.

The space wasn’t like anything she was used to. It wasn’t grimy or loud. It wasn’t packed with shouting voices or the scrape of chairs as people jostled for attention. This wasn’t the Last Drop, where the noise swallowed you whole and let you disappear in the chaos. It wasn’t what she was looking for at all.

“Are you alright, dear?”

Jinx whirled around. Her fingers brushed against the fabric of her jacket, searching for something that wasn’t there.

The woman before her was short, with a frame stooped from a life of hard work. Her hands rested on her hips, and the worn leather of her boots peeked out beneath a patchwork skirt stitched together from mismatched scraps. But her face was kind, framed by loose strands of gray hair, her eyes locked on Jinx with open concern.

“I’m fine,” she muttered. “I just need a minute.”

The woman didn’t look convinced. “You look like you could use more than one.”

Jinx narrowed her eyes. “What’s it to you?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Crying girls aren’t exactly good for business.”

“Sorry,” Jinx muttered. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

She moved to step past the woman, but a hand caught her arm.

“Take a seat,” the woman said. Her voice softened slightly. “Catch your breath and then you can go back out there.”

Jinx tensed at the touch. She plastered on a smile. “I’m good. Really.” She gestured to her face. “See? All put together.”

The woman gave her a long look, her lips pursed. “Sweetheart,” she said finally, “you’re filthy, you look like you haven’t even seen a decent meal in weeks, and you’ve got the same look in your eyes as the strays out back. Don’t tell me you’re fine when you look like you’ll snap in two if the wind blows too hard.”

Before Jinx could protest, the woman tugged her deeper into the building, her grip surprisingly strong for someone her size.

“Hey, wait—” Jinx started, but the woman was already steering her towards the bar.

“You’ll have a bath drawn,” the woman said matter-of-factly, her tone leaving no room for argument. “And while we wait, you’re going to eat something.”

Jinx stumbled at the manhandling but the woman didn’t stop. She pulled out one of the stools and guided Jinx into it.

The woman nodded firmly. “Stay right there,” she called over her shoulder, already bustling into the kitchen. “I’ll be back with something for you to eat.”

Jinx blinked after her. “What just happened?” she muttered to herself.

She shifted in her seat, her eyes flicking toward the door. Her foot tapped against the floor as she debated leaving. But before she could make herself go, the woman reappeared.

“It’s nothing fancy,” she said, sliding a bowl of stew and a hunk of bread in front of Jinx. “But it’s hot, and it’ll do you more good than whatever you’ve been running on.”

Jinx stared at the food for a moment. The stew looked too good to be real—dark broth glistening with streaks of fat, chunks of meat, and soft vegetables just visible beneath the surface. Her hand moved toward the spoon, almost on its own. She dipped it in and watched the surface ripple.

Before she realized it, the bowl was empty.

The innkeeper’s eyes bored into her head. “You’re eating like someone’s about to snatch the bowl out of your hands.”

“Old habits,” Jinx answered, pushing the last of the bread into her mouth.

The warmth of the room pressed against her ribs, weighing her down. Her fingers curled against the chair, and she shoved it back with a sharp scrape before the feeling could root itself too deep. She couldn’t stay here.

Her boots barely made a sound as she moved, and she was halfway to the door when the innkeeper's voice stopped her.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She stood behind the bar, hands braced on her hips as she stared at Jinx.

“Thought I’d save you the trouble,” Jinx muttered, unable to meet her eyes. “Thanks for the food. I’ll get out of your way.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “You think I let you in just to send you back out looking like that?”

“I’m fine,” Jinx said. “I don’t need—”

“You’re filthy, and I promised you a bath.”

Jinx blinked. “What? No, I—”

“Don’t argue,” the innkeeper interrupted, her tone leaving no room for debate. “You’ll feel better once you’re clean.”

Jinx opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her hands curled into fists at her sides, and for a moment, she thought about leaving anyway but the room’s warmth settled around her. She exhaled sharply and let her shoulders slump as the fight slipped out of her.

And, maybe if she scraped the remnants of the battle off herself, she could let herself pretend that it had never happened, at least until it came creeping back in.

The water stung her skin, its heat cutting through the grime that clung to her arms and legs. Her fingers drifted to her sides. The new scars were still tender, thin and jagged against her skin. She ran her thumb over one absently. They didn’t hurt as much as they should, even as she dug her nail into raised skin.

Her hands moved up her body until her fingers tangled themselves in her hair. She dragged them through the knots, her nails scraping against her scalp until the water darkened with filth, faint ribbons of blood curling through the muck. She stared at it before submerging her head beneath the water. Jinx stayed like that even as her lungs burned.

She wondered what would happen if she never came back up, if she opened her mouth to scream and just let the waste crawl back inside of her until there was nothing left.

Her chest spasmed, and suddenly she was lurching upward, breaking the surface with a ragged, gasping cry. Air scratched the back of her throat as she hunched over the rim of the tub, coughing so hard it left her ribs aching.

When the wracking stopped, she let out a humorless laugh. What was the point? She’d been broken more times than she could count, and yet her body clung to life like it believed everything would be okay in the end.

She stood slowly. Water clung to her skin as she stepped out of the bathroom, leaving a trail on the floor behind her. There was a fresh set of clothes on the bed. The scraps she’d thrown on the floor were nowhere to be seen.

“Well, at least I have an actual shirt now,” she muttered, raising the tunic in the air. Her nose scrunched. “It could have at least tried not to be so boring, though.”

She slipped into the unfamiliar clothes. They didn’t fit perfectly. The sleeves were too long and the shoulders just a little wide, but they were warm and didn’t cling to her skin, so she supposed it was an improvement.

The innkeeper knocked lightly on the doorframe before stepping in. “Do they fit alright?” she asked, nodding to the clothes. “I know they’re probably not what you’re used to, but…”

“They’re fine.”

The woman leaned against the doorframe. “You should sleep. You look like you haven’t in days.”

“I can’t stay here,” she said. “I can’t pay you. Not for this. Not for the food, or the bath, or any of it.”

The woman snorted. “I knew I wasn’t getting a coin out of you the moment you walked through my doors.”

“Then why?” Jinx asked. “What do you want?”

The innkeeper smiled faintly. “Everyone deserves a moment to catch their breath, even if they think they don’t.” She appraised Jinx. “Besides, I’ll sleep better knowing that you have a roof over your head tonight. Think of it as paying my conscience.”

The innkeeper pushed off the doorframe and stepped back. “Now get some rest,” she said. “You look like you could use it.”

The door clicked softly shut behind her, leaving the room quiet again.

Jinx stayed where she was, staring at the door. Her fingers curled into the fabric of her clothes. If the lady knew even half of what Jinx had done, she wouldn’t have let her through the door in the first place.

But that’s what Jinx was good at, wasn’t it? Sneaking in under people’s noses with her big, snotty face and convincing them that she was harmless. Then she’d get them killed.

Chapter Text

Jinx slept. Eventually.

She hadn’t meant to, but the bed was too warm, the food too heavy in her stomach. Before she knew it, sleep had dragged her under.

When she woke, sunlight spilled through the window, painting the wooden floor a soft gold. For a long moment, she didn’t move, staring at the ceiling with her hands curled into the unfamiliar fabric of the blanket. Her clothes felt strange against her skin, soft where they shouldn’t be, and loose in all the wrong places.

When she couldn’t take it anymore, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, her bare feet brushing the floorboards. She hated how foreign everything felt. Every part of her wanted to claw her way back to something familiar, even if that something was jagged and broken.

That was where she belonged; she wasn’t supposed to be in the light.

The innkeeper was already preparing for the day when Jinx came down the stairs. “Morning,” the woman said, placing a plate of food on the bar as Jinx approached. “Hope you slept well.”

Jinx shrugged as she slid onto a stool. “It was fine.” She poked at the food before taking a bite.

“Good.” The innkeeper leaned against the counter. She set her rag down. “So, what brought you to Demacia?”

“I just needed to get away.”

“From what?”

Jinx swallowed. “Everything.”

Whatever used to tether her to Zaun, she’d either killed or it belonged to Powder.

It’s not that simple, her mind argued. You can’t cut yourself free that easily. They won’t let you forget.

Ghosts clung to her. Vander’s twisted shadow, Silco slumped against the back of his chair, Isha’s freckled face. They’d never leave her alone.

“Demacia’s not the kind of place that lets you blend in, if that’s what you’re after.” The innkeeper’s eyes swept over Jinx. “And that’s without you looking the way you do.”

Jinx shrugged. “I’m not looking to make friends.”

“No,” the woman said dryly, “but sticking out tends to invite attention. I don’t imagine you’re looking for that, either.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, tearing a piece off the bread and sticking it in her mouth. “People’ll notice me no matter what I do.”

The woman raised an eyebrow but didn’t press. Instead, she tilted her head and asked, “What are you going to do now?”

Jinx blinked at the change in conversation. “What?”

The woman folded her arms. “I’m not going to pretend to understand what happened to you, but I do know that sitting in here for the rest of your life isn’t going to get you anywhere. What’s your plan?”

“My last plan didn’t turn out too well,” she answered.

Or was it Ekko’s plan? Hers had been about dousing the Last Drop in oil and burning it all down. That one hadn’t panned out how she’d wanted it, either.

“Look,” the innkeeper said after a pause. “You’re too young to waste your life away. Whatever you went through doesn’t get to decide what you do with yourself next. You’ve got a chance to start fresh. Don’t waste that.”

Jinx’s mouth opened, but no words came. She dropped her gaze to the plate. “I’ll figure it out,” she mumbled.

The innkeeper gave her a long, appraising look before stepping away to grab something from behind the counter. When she returned, she set a pile of scrap in front of her. “These fell out of your jacket when I was washing it,” she said. “I figured they meant something.”

Jinx glanced at the pile before shrugging. “It’s just junk.”

The innkeeper picked up a cog and held it between her fingers. She turned it over, squinting at the notches carved into its surface. “It doesn’t look like the kind of junk most people carry around. What’s it for?”

“It’s not for anything,” Jinx replied. She reached into the pile of scraps and picked up a stray gear. Her other hand found a length of wire and began threading it around the grooves. A screw came next, then another. When she finished, she set the contraption on the table and gave it a flick. The mechanism twirled smoothly on the countertop, the gears barely whirring as they spun.

“It’s just a bunch of garbage,” Jinx said, watching it spin. “Nothing useful.”

The innkeeper frowned. “You’ve got a knack for putting things together.”

Jinx snorted. “Yeah, well, you get pretty good at it when everything around you breaks.”

She grabbed the mechanism and squeezed it between her fingers. A snap echoed from her hand, and she tipped it open to let the fragments scatter across the countertop.

The innkeeper stared at the shattered remains. “You know,” she said, “there’s a blacksmith down the road who’s been needing help. Someone good with their hands.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not,” the woman said. “He’s been short-staffed for weeks. He could use someone who knows their way around a workshop.”

Jinx’s lips twisted into a bitter smile. “That’s a terrible idea.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Her expression hardened as she gestured to the scrap. “Everything I make breaks. Nobody in their right mind would want me anywhere near their stuff.”

The innkeeper pursed her lips in obvious disapproval. “Unless you’ve got another idea for earning coin, I’d say you take the opportunity. Or were you planning on eating my food forever?”

Jinx bristled. “I didn’t ask for anything from you.”

“You didn’t,” the woman agreed, “but if you want to stay, you’ve got to pull your weight somehow.”

Jinx dropped her gaze to the counter. Didn’t she have enough weighing her down? She was supposed to be done. One last hurrah, that’s how Ekko had pitched it to her, and then nobody would ever ask her for anything ever again.

I guess he’s just as much a liar as everyone else. She should have known that he wasn’t going to keep his word.

Something moved in the corner of her eye. Jinx glanced at it, her heart constricting in her chest. Isha sat there, knees tucked under her chin, her wide, innocent eyes peering at her from behind her hair. 

It wasn’t fair. Isha had gotten her big send-off, and all Jinx wanted to do was join her. But that wasn’t how this worked. She could only kill other people with her weapons. They didn’t work on her. Nothing ever worked for her.

Her chest burned as she looked away, but Isha’s presence clung to the edges of her vision. Jinx knew what she wanted. Isha was giving her the same look she had when Zaun was demanding a hero. She didn’t want to be a hero.

“Fine,” she muttered. “I’ll go.”

“Good,” the innkeeper said, her face suspiciously tender. “I’ll let him know to expect you.”

The silence stretched between them for a moment before the innkeeper asked, “What’s your name? You never introduced yourself last night.”

Jinx’s grip on her mug tightened. “Jinx.”

The innkeeper’s expression shifted immediately. “That’s a cursed name if I’ve ever heard one,” she said flatly.

Jinx stared into her mug. “It’s all I’ve got,” she muttered.

The innkeeper’s expression didn’t shift. “I don’t know where you’re from, but here, that name will turn heads.” She shook her head. “Do you know what people in Demacia will think when they hear that? They’ll think bad luck. Misfortune. Ruin.”

“They’d be right.”

The innkeeper sighed. “Demacia doesn’t do well with names like that. You’ll have to pick something else. You’re asking for trouble if you walk around Demacia with a name like that .”

Jinx frowned. Her name was all she had left. If she wasn’t Jinx, she didn’t exist.

The name was tangled up in everything she was—every memory, every mistake, every sharp-edged fragment of who she’d been before, all mashed into one fucked-up mess of a person. Her grip tightened on the mug as the weight of it settled deep in her stomach. The name might be cruel. Maybe it was even cursed, like the innkeeper said. But at least it was hers.

“I didn’t want to be Jinx,” she muttered. “But now it’s all I’ve got.”

She stared at the wood grain of the counter, the lines twisting and curling into patterns she couldn’t follow. Jinx hadn’t been a choice. It had been the only thing left. Powder had been too fragile. She didn’t survive what happened to her. Jinx was what came after. The chaos, the wreckage, the hollow pit in her chest that grew wider every time she tried to fill it. That was who she was.

“It doesn’t fit,” the innkeeper said simply.

The innkeeper couldn’t understand that Jinx was the only thing she had, the only piece of herself that still felt real.

“I’ll think of something,” she said finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

She could try to pretend to be Powder again, but the name felt like a stone in her chest. Powder was gone. She’d stayed in Zaun, with Vi, with Ekko, with a life worth living.

The innkeeper nodded. “Good. Now eat up. I’ve seen alley cats with more meat on their bones than you.”

The forge wasn’t hard to find. The tang of burning metal clung to the air, and the sound of crashing steel echoed down the street in uneven bursts. Jinx paused at the doorway, the air hot against her skin.

The blacksmith stood at the far end of the forge, a hulking man with broad shoulders and arms corded with thick muscle. His hammer beat against an anvil, sparks flying as the metal beneath it bent to his will. He didn’t look up when Jinx entered.

“Hey!” she called out, shouting to be heard.

The hammer stopped mid-swing and the blacksmith turned, his eyes narrowing as they swept over her wiry frame, lingering on the tattoos crawling up her arm and the streaks of purple shooting through her hair.

“You lost?” he grunted.

“No.” Jinx crossed her arms. She should have asked for a cloak before leaving. “I’m here for work.”

The man let out a low scoff as he set his hammer on the anvil, giving her another glance. “You don’t look like you belong anywhere near a forge.”

“The, uh, innkeeper sent me,” she said, wincing as she realized she never caught her name. “You know, the one down the street.”

“Clara,” the blacksmith supplied. He wiped a hand over his face. “ This is the help she’d said she was sending?” he grumbled. “A stiff breeze would blow her over.”

“I can hear you, you know.”

He turned his attention back to her, eyes squinted. “Have you even lifted a sword before?”

Jinx’s face scrunched up. “Well, no, but what’s that got to do with anything?”

He heaved a great sigh. “Look, I’m sure you mean well, but this isn’t kid’s work and I’ve already got enough on my plate. I don’t have time to babysit you while I’m at it.”

Jinx bristled. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“You’re not the first to say that, and you won’t be the last,” he said gruffly. “You wouldn’t make it past your first set of blisters.”

“I’ve experienced my fair share of blisters.”

He stared at her for a long moment before giving in. “Fine,” he said. “You want to prove you’re tough? Start with those.”

Jinx followed his gesture to the pile of steel propped up against the wall.

“Hammer it until it’s flat,” he said. “You’ll have to get the impurities out before I can start shaping it.” He didn’t wait for her response, already turning back toward the main workbench. “And don’t break anything.”

Jinx bristled at his tone as she marched over to the pile. It would be a new low if she ended up breaking steel.

The heat from the forge rolled over her as she picked up the first piece. The tongs felt awkward in her grip, but she’d worked with worse before. The embers flared as she slid the steel into the forge, and for a moment, it reminded her of another fire, the flames licking up the walls as they ate away years of memories until there was nothing left but the smoking carcass of a dead childhood.

Jinx blinked hard and shook off the thought. Not now.

She pulled the steel out and set it on the anvil. One hand held it steady as she raised the hammer and brought it down. The clang of metal echoed around the room. The metal’s surface shimmered as it caught the firelight, and a face stared back at her. Jinx tightened her grip on the hammer. She swung again, harder, repeating the action until the face vanished.

When the blacksmith finally came to check on her, she didn’t look up.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he muttered, holding one of the bars to his eyes. “You’ve done this before.”

“I told you I knew what I was doing,” she grunted.

“You told me you’d never held a sword before.”

Jinx shrugged and dealt the metal another blow. “Maybe you should have asked more questions.”

He huffed something that might have been a laugh. “I don’t think I caught your name.”

Jinx swallowed as she set her hammer down. She’d like to say that she put some thought into what to call herself, but thinking never got her anywhere good, so she’d done what she always did when she was in a bind and started lopping off the parts that didn’t fit. But if Jinx was too much , then it was better to leave Jin in the bottle. Cutting off another letter left her with Ji, and that just wouldn’t do. If she was going to go around calling herself by a single letter, it would be the one that actually belonged to her.

“I’m J,” she said.

He gave a short nod. “Alright, J. Get back to it. You’ve still got the rest of the pile to get through.”

Jinx propped herself against the workbench. It wasn’t much of a front desk, but Bram used it like one whenever customers showed up, demanding attention—as was the case now.

She spun the damaged spade in her hands. A jagged crack spidered through the base where the head was supposed to fit into the haft.

“It fractured here,” she said, tapping the weak point with her finger. “Probably from stress.”

The man leaned forward, his face pinched with concern. “It worked fine last week.”

“I guess it wasn’t broken last week, then,” Jinx responded dryly. She set the spade down. “It’ll need a reforge. Maybe even some reinforcing to keep it from breaking again.”

The man sighed. “How long?”

“A few days, maybe more,” Jinx replied. “Bram’s slammed with orders, but he’ll get to it.”

The customer grumbled but nodded, glancing toward the back of the forge. “He’s too busy to talk to me himself, I take it?”

Jinx shrugged. “He’s a busy guy. Count yourself lucky I’m here.”

“Lucky, huh?” The man frowned, drumming his fingers on the edge of the bench. “It doesn’t feel that way when I’ve got a field to plant and nothing to dig with.” He looked at her. “You don’t look like you’re doing much.”

“Oh, Bram doesn’t trust me with any actual work,” Jinx said, covering her frustration with a smile. “I’ve only been here a week.”

“Fine,” he huffed. “Just make sure he gets to it. I’m already late as it is.” He stepped away from the workbench, casting one last glance at Bram before turning toward the door.

Jinx leaned against the counter and watched him leave. It was odd, living in a place where the worst thing people had to worry about was a broken tool. It was odder still to find herself with even less to worry about. Demacia was boring in the way nothing else in her life ever had been. No explosions, no shouting, no dead family members suddenly walking back into her life.

She found that she liked being boring. Boring was hard to mess up.

The door creaked open again, pulling her from her thoughts. Jinx straightened, ready to face another frazzled customer.

Her breath caught in her throat. The woman who stepped into the forge wasn’t anything close to frazzled. She was radiant.

Her hair spilled over her shoulders in shimmering waves of gold that framed a face so flawless it gleamed in the firelight. The sight of her alone made Jinx want to scrub the soot from her hands.

But it was her eyes that locked Jinx in place.

They weren’t just blue; they were the color of a sunlit sky, so clear and perfect that Jinx knew instinctively nothing close to them had ever reached the Undercity. When they landed on her, it felt like the heat of a summer day pressing against her skin.

They were the brightest, most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

Chapter Text

She had the brightest, most beautiful eyes she had ever seen.

They burned with the color of a dying sunset and Lux’s pulse quickened, a shiver running through her as those eyes settled on her. 

She wasn’t from Demacia. That much was obvious.

Blue hair framed her face in messy tangles, strands clinging to her forehead where soot and sweat streaked across her skin. She’d rolled her sleeves to her shoulders, leaving her arms bare, and exposing her tattoos to the world. Lux’s eyes lingered on those arms and the lean cords of sinew that rolled beneath her skin. The ink seemed restless as it shimmered under the flickering forge light.

This was her mark.

A few days ago, a ripple of magic had swept through Demacia, triggering every artefact the Mageseekers used to detect magic, and permeating the air for hours before dissipating. Whatever had caused it was a mystery, but it was enough to rattle the Mageseekers and, within hours of feeling the shift, they’d begun tracking the movement of every foreigner entering into Demacia in their efforts to ensure that no trace of that magic had arrived to their shores.

Lux, as part of the Illuminators, had been drawn into their efforts. Unlike the Mageseekers, the Illuminators were not enforcers of fear. They were expected to help the downtrodden and provide aid to the restless, often in the very communities the Mageseekers swept through in their search for threats. The distinction was little comfort to her at the moment. Tasking the Illuminators with this investigation may have prevented mass hysteria but she knew that the Mageseekers weren’t trying to keep the peace. They were hunting for threats, and their definition of that was alarmingly broad.

She took a steadying breath, trying to shake the unease creeping into her thoughts. The Mageseekers had their methods, and it wasn’t her place to question them—not openly, anyway. If all went well, the girl would never know that she’d caught the Mageseekers’ attention.

And if it didn’t, Lux would have to swallow her pride and admit that their paranoia had been justified.

The clang of the hammer smashing against an anvil snapped Lux from her thoughts. She blinked, realizing she’d been standing there like an idiot as she stared at the girl in front of her. Heat rushed to her face as she stepped forward, the greeting she’d planned on her way here hovering on the tip of her tongue.

The girl spoke before she could open her mouth.

“You lost?”

Her words vanished, and Lux stammered as those eyes pierced her. “I—what? No, I—”

The girl tilted her head, the faintest smirk tugging at her lips as she watched Lux stumble over words.

Idiot, she berated herself. What are you doing? Lux willed her brain to catch up, but the damage was already done. Her carefully planned entrance had crumbled, and now she was floundering, painfully aware of how out of place her polished boots and spotless clothes looked surrounded by steel and smoke.

“No,” she managed, forcing the word out with a practiced smile. “I’m not lost. I—uh—I was told this is the best place for repairs.” She winced at the stutter before raising the scabbard in her hand as if to prove that she was in the right place. “I need something fixed.”

The girl glanced at the scabbard before her eyes returned to Lux. “You sure you don’t want to buy something new, instead?”

She straightened and unsheathed her sword before placing it on the counter, ignoring the dismissal in the girl’s tone. “It’s a family heirloom,” she murmured, sliding it across the counter. “It cracked during training.”

She wasn’t lying. Garen had broken the blade during one of his training sessions, years ago. She could still remember the awful shriek as Garen smashed it against his instructor’s shield, the crack fracturing the blade as if it were glass instead of tempered royal steel.

The armory had swallowed it after that and by the time Lux unearthed it, its sheen had vanished, dust settling over it like a blanket as it lay forgotten and discarded. It was a relic of Garen’s youth, something she wouldn’t have thought twice about if she hadn’t needed an excuse to visit the forge.

The girl reached for the weapon, her fingers brushing over the surface of the metal. She turned it over, before raising it to her eye and examining the crack running through the blade.

“Metal’s too stiff,” she muttered, scratching her nail along the fuller. “If you don’t temper steel right, it gets brittle. Whoever made this probably cared more about looks than getting it done right.”

Lux’s expression tightened. “That’s not true. It’s been in my family for years before it broke.”

The girl set the sword back down with a deliberate clink. She tapped the gold inlay on the hilt with a finger. “You see this? Nobody inlays a weapon they actually plan to fight with. That’s for nobles who care more about looking tough than being tough.”

Lux pressed her lips together. If Garen had heard that, he’d be lecturing about craftsmanship and tradition by now. Aunt Tianna wouldn’t have dignified it with a response before stalking out of the forge. Lux wasn’t either of them, though, and she wasn’t about to start an argument over it. 

She smiled instead, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear as she rested her elbows on the counter. “Fair enough. Still, it’s not easy to hear someone call your heirloom impractical. Does that mean it’s not worth fixing?”

The girl ran her thumb along the edge of the blade. “Depends.” She shrugged. “You could cover it up and make it look like nothing ever happened. But that doesn’t mean it’ll work the same. The break’s too deep.” She chortled as her fingers drummed against the steel. “It’ll let you down when you need it the most.”

Lux frowned. “This sword’s a piece of my family. It doesn’t feel right to just throw it away.”

The girl snorted. “You can slap a story on anything and call it important, but that doesn’t mean it’s worth keeping around.” She pointed to the crack. “It already let you down once. What makes you think it won’t again?”

“I’d rather believe in something and be wrong than give up on it entirely,” Lux said. “Not everything broken stays that way.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” the girl muttered. Her gaze lingered on the blade. “You want to gamble your life on something that’s already failed? Fine. Just don’t say nobody warned you.”

“J,” Bram growled, crossing his arms over his broad chest as he walked into the conversation. His gaze flicked between the two of them. “I didn’t realize I was paying you to make friends.”

The girl, J, shot him a lazy glance. “Relax, Bram. I was just helping her out.”

Bram grunted. “You want to help, grab a hammer. Otherwise, you’re done for the day.” He jerked his thumb toward the door. “Out. Now.”

J bristled but didn’t argue. Pacing to a corner of the forge, she yanked her cloak off a hook and slung it over her shoulder before heading toward the door.

Bram’s attention shifted to Lux. “You’re Crownguard, aren’t you?”

Lux blinked, caught off guard. “I—yes, I am,” she admitted.

“Thought so,” Bram muttered. He gestured at the sword still lying on the counter. “That’ll take a couple of days. It’s not an easy fix, but I can make it work.”

Lux nodded, keeping her polite smile firmly in place. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Bram grunted, turning back toward the forge without another word and leaving Lux standing alone at the counter, their conversation clearly finished.

The door creaked and Lux whirled around in time to see J step out of the forge, letting the door fall closed behind her.

Her mark was leaving.

The thought struck her like a jolt of lightning, and she hurried after her, trying not to seem as desperate as she felt.

You idiot, she berated herself. Pay attention. Don’t let her get away.

“Hey—wait!” The words came out louder than she intended, but it was enough for J to glance back at her

“What?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Lux scrambled for something to say now that she’d gotten her attention. “I, uh… Look, I feel bad for getting you in trouble with Bram. There’s a café nearby. Let me buy you something. My treat.”

“You think I got kicked out because of you?” she asked, tilting her head.

“Isn’t that what Bram said?”

“I’ve been there all day,” she answered with a wave of her hand. “Bram would have kicked me out whether you were there or not.”

“Oh,” Lux faltered. She fiddled with her sleeve. “Still, I feel bad. Let me do this, okay?”

There was a moment of hesitation as the girl assessed her before, finally, she shrugged. “Fine. I’m not going to stop you if you want to buy me a free drink.”

“Thank you,” Lux breathed, relief rushing through her. She stepped in line with the girl and the two of them made their way down the street until the smell of baked goods and coffee wafting from a small café greeted them. Lux held the door for her as they stepped inside.

“Pick whatever you want,” Lux offered once they reached the counter.

“Just a coffee,” J told the barista. Her eyes lingered on the pastry case before she jabbed a finger at a sticky bun glazed with honey. “And one of those too.”

The barista nodded and looked at Lux. “And for you?”

“Just tea, thank you,” Lux said with a polite nod.

Moments later, they sat down at a table outside. Lux cradled her tea as J bit into her pastry. Honey clung to her fingers by the time she finished. She brought them to her lips, and Lux watched, transfixed, as her tongue flickered between the valley of her knuckles before dragging across her skin and swirling around the pad of her finger. She moved to her next finger, her tongue darting out to swipe along the underside of it, from the base to the tip, in a single sinuous motion. She twisted her wrist and brought her thumb to her mouth, wrapping her lips around the digit and—

“You’re staring.”

Lux’s face burned as her eyes snapped up to meet the girl’s amused stare. “Sorry.” She took a sip of her drink, if only to stop her from embarrassing herself more.

The girl’s eyes glinted. “You’re not great at being subtle.”

Lux let out a soft laugh, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I guess not. But you’re not exactly ordinary. It’s hard not to stare.”

J glanced down at herself. “Heh,” she clucked her tongue. “I guess I’m a sore thumb wherever I go.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Isn’t there?” She shrugged. “You wouldn’t know, I suppose. I mean just look at you,” she waved a hand in Lux’s direction.

“Me?” Lux asked. “I’m nothing special.”

There were a hundred girls just like her in Demacia. The only things that would differentiate her from any of them were her name and her secret. It was obvious that this girl didn’t know the first. And the second—

“Pfft.” she scoffed, leaning back in her chair. She looked at Lux through her eyelashes. “I’ve seen jewels that shine less than you.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Nuh-uh.” she shook her head. “I know a pretty thing when I see it.”

All at once, a heat spread through Lux, far different than the embarrassment she’d felt earlier. Lux was no stranger to compliments, and she’d heard hundreds that were more polished than what this girl had given her, spoken by boys with more wealth and status than she could ever dream of. None of them affected her like this.

She had to remind herself to be professional. Lux composed herself with a smile that might have come too easily. “My name’s Luxanna,” she said, extending a hand. “But please, call me Lux.”

“J,” she said, taking Lux’s hand in her own. “It’s short for... well, nothing actually.”

“What are you doing in Demacia, J?” Lux took note of the weathered skin beneath her fingertips. Even knowing that she was apprenticing at the forge, the roughness of her hands still surprised her. Wherever J had been before coming here, she hadn’t been living an easy life. 

“I needed a fresh start.”

“Was there a reason why you chose Demacia?” Lux asked. 

J shrugged. “I took the first ship out, and this is where I landed.”

“It must’ve been hard leaving everything behind.”

There was a beat of silence as J looked down at her coffee, her fingers teasing the edge of the cup. “Not really. Everything that mattered was already gone. I just had to follow suit.”

Lux took in the slouch in her shoulders. She wanted to reach out, but J’s body language was all tension and barbs.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve found a place in Demacia,” Lux said carefully. “Do you mind me asking where you’re from?”

“The fissures.”

Lux waited for her to elaborate, but nothing came. “I don’t know where that is.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” J said, tilting her head as she gave Lux a once-over. “You’d hate it. Not enough light, way too much dirt.”

Lux blinked. “I don’t mind getting my hands dirty.”

J’s lips curled. “I’m not talking about the kind of dirt that comes with planting petunias in the back garden.”

“I’ve dealt with more than you might think,” Lux returned.

“Maybe,” she said, not sounding convinced at all. “But I still wouldn’t put you anywhere near the fissures. That’s not a place for people who glow.”

Lux smoothed her hands over her skirt and changed the subject. “How did you end up working with Bram?”

J leaned back in her chair. “Not much of a story there. Clara shoved me in his direction. Bram wasn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat, but he let me stay.”

“He doesn’t seem like the kind of person to let just anyone into his forge,” she said. “You must be good at what you do.”

J shrugged. “You break enough stuff, and you’re bound to figure out how to put it back together eventually.”

Her eyes dropped to her coffee, and Lux couldn’t ignore the pang in her chest at the sight. No one who looked like this could be a threat—not in the way the Mageseekers feared. Whatever they’d felt, whatever ripple of magic they claimed had crossed the seas, it had nothing to do with the girl sitting across from her.

Then her gaze caught on J’s hand as her fingers tapped against the table, and she stilled. One of those fingers wasn’t flesh and bone but metal, jointed and gleaming in the light as it moved in rhythm with the rest of her fingers.

She was about to comment on it when a voice called out to her.

“Lady Luxanna?”

Lux turned, a practiced smile instinctively falling into place. The man approaching was familiar, though not anyone she cared to see. Aldred Hayle was a minor noble who always seemed to hover on the fringes of every social event and had an unshakable habit of inserting himself where he wasn’t needed, especially when it came to her or any other girl of noble blood. 

“Good afternoon, Lord Hayle,” Lux greeted, rising to her feet with a graceful nod.

Jinx watched her plant her feet just so, her shoulders squared in that diplomatic way Jinx had seen on far too many Pilties playing the same game. Even her neck, pale and slender, was stiff with effort. If Jinx reached out and touched it, she half expected it to feel like polished marble beneath her fingertips.

“Lady Luxanna, what a delight to find you here,” he said. “I hadn’t expected to see you outside the Crownguard estate.”

Lux’s lips curved, though the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I try to enjoy the city whenever I can. It’s a lovely day for it, don’t you think?”

“Indeed,” he agreed, though his attention lingered more on Lux than the weather. He finally turned to Jinx. “And you’ve brought company?”

“J,” Lux said. “A new acquaintance. She’s been working with Bram down at the forge.”

“Ah, commendable,” Aldred said. “It’s always heartening to see the more meager of us contributing to the city.”

Jinx’s fingers tightened around her cup as Alfred’s attention slid off her without a second glance.

“Speaking of contributions,” Aldred continued, turning back to Lux. “I’ve been meaning to suggest we collaborate on the charity gala next month. Your insight would be invaluable, and your presence would undoubtedly inspire generosity.”

Lux’s smile didn’t falter. “That’s kind of you, Lord Hayle, but I’m afraid my schedule is already spoken for. Perhaps another time?”

“Of course,” Aldred obliged. “Perhaps the equestrian show next week, then? A smaller affair, but one much more conducive to meaningful conversation.”

Lux hesitated just long enough for the pause to feel deliberate. “Tempting as that is, my family has prior engagements. I’ll have to pass.”

“Very well,” Aldred said, his expression carefully composed as his gaze swept over Jinx one last time. “It appears you are as busy as ever. Though I am glad to see that, even with a schedule as demanding as your own, you still have time for some diversions.” He returned his attention to Lux. “Until next we meet, Lady Luxanna.”

“Of course, Lord Hayle,” Lux replied, sinking back into her chair as he departed.

Her fingers curled around her tea as she let out a quiet breath. “I’m sorry about that,” she said softly. “I know he can be a bit much.”

Jinx shrugged. “I didn’t know you were such a big deal.”

Lux let out a soft laugh, though Jinx detected a hint of nervousness in it. “I promise, I’m not that important.”

Liar.

The word cut through Jinx’s thoughts like a knife, and she didn’t bother to stop it. People like Lux didn’t walk through the world unnoticed. Mylo’s voice spilled into her mind like blood from an open wound. “She’s humoring you, dummy. Look at her, putting on her little act. What would someone like her ever want with someone like you?”

Jinx’s stomach twisted as the words nestled in her head. She glanced at Lux’s teacup, at her carefully folded hands and the polite curve of her smile. Perfect posture, perfect poise, perfect everything.

“Right,” Jinx muttered, drumming her fingers against the table.

Lux frowned at her. “You don’t believe me.”

“Not really.” She shrugged. “That’s okay, though. We’ve all got our own roles.”

Hers just so happened to be ruining everything she touched.

Jinx had seen the way Ekko had looked at her when he came back from—wherever he’d been, talking about a different version of her, a better version of her. He still didn’t get it.

There was no good version of her.

What he saw was a world where Jinx didn’t exist, where Powder was still kicking and everyone was better off for it.

“Anyway,” Jinx said abruptly. “I should get going.”

“What?” Lux startled, her brow furrowing. “Why?”

Jinx shrugged. “I don’t want to be too much of a burden for you. And I’m sure you’ve got better things to do than sitting around with a sumpsnipe.”

“J—”

“Thanks for the coffee and all,” she said, rising to her feet. "but I’ve taken up enough of your time”

She walked away before Lux could stop her.

That was for the best, too. Even if Lux was genuine, she’d be better off without Jinx in her life.

Chapter Text

The hammer fell. And again. The forge rang with the sound of it crashing against the anvil. Jinx tried to let the sound swallow her. It didn’t work. It hadn’t worked ever since she’d met Lux. Their conversation wouldn’t leave her alone. It burrowed into her mind like a splinter. Jinx had spent the last few days trying to push it away, to drown it out, but it kept creeping back in, like sunlight spilling through cracks she didn’t know she had.

“Stop it,” Jinx muttered to herself. She clenched the hammer as she raised it over her head. “She’s not thinking about you, so quit thinking about her.”

The blade wobbled under the next swing, and Jinx hissed. So what if Lux had bought her coffee and smiled whenever Jinx said something? It wasn’t hard to be polite. All she’d done was show Jinx a bit of care and attention.

Jinx grit her teeth, the steel warping from the force of her next strike. The last person that tried to care for her had gotten herself blown up.

She threw the steel back onto the anvil. "Get it together," she muttered under her breath.

But she couldn’t.

Every time she tried to focus, her mind dragged her back to Lux and the stupidly perfect way her stupidly perfect lips had formed around her name as she looked at Jinx like she actually mattered.

The bell jingled as the door swung open. Jinx didn’t look up at first, but a prickle ran down her spine and, before she could stop herself, her eyes drifted over to the open doorway.

There she was.

Jinx stiffened as Lux walked into the forge, her hair trailing behind her like her personal rays of sunshine. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to pick up my sword.” Lux smiled at her, coming to a stop at her workbench. “Bram finished it, right?”

“Oh,” Jinx muttered. Stupid, she thought. Why else would she be here? “Yeah, it’s in the back.”

Lux glanced at the half-finished pieces of metal scattered across her bench. "Wow,” she breathed, picking up a horseshoe and running her fingers along the fullering. You’ve got a talent for this.”

Jinx scoffed. “It’s not that hard.”

“Well, I don’t think I could make any of this.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not exactly forge material.” Jinx trailed her eyes down Lux’s clothes and back up to her flawlessly soft face.

Lux let out a soft laugh. “I’m really not, am I?”

Jinx didn’t know why she felt compelled to say it, but the apology tumbled out before she could stop herself. “About the other day,” she said. “I didn’t mean to... you know, be a jerk or whatever.”

Lux blinked. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“Yeah, I do,” Jinx said. “I’m not used to people like you.”

“People like me?”

Jinx gestured vaguely toward her. “People who are nice just for the sake of it. To be honest, I didn’t think they existed until I came to Demacia.”

Lux’s eyes softened, and for a moment, Jinx let herself cling to the warmth she felt from them. Then Lux looked away, glancing to the back of the forge, and that warmth vanished. “I should probably go before Bram decides I’m distracting you again.”

The forge was suddenly frigid, all of its heat sucked away from her. “Right,” she muttered, picking up a chisel and twisting it in her hand. “Don’t let me keep you.”

Lux probably had better places to be. This is just another errand for her, she thought. You’re just another thing to check off her list. 

Lux paused at the door and looked back at her. “When do you get off work?”

Jinx’s head snapped up “What?”

Lux smiled, a little sheepishly. “I thought maybe we could do something together. If you’re free.”

Jinx tightened her grip on the chisel, her mind filling with reasons why that was a bad idea. “I’m off at six.”

“Great.” Lux smiled and, if it was bright before, it had turned radiant. “I’ll see you later, J.”

Jinx felt her face flush. Stupid heat, she thought. Bram needs to crack a window if he’s going to keep the furnaces running like this.

Lux stepped out of the forge, but Jinx stared at the space she’d been standing long after she left. It wasn’t until the furnace hissed with overheated metal that she snapped from her thoughts. She plucked the metal from the coals, her hands working without thought as she placed it on the anvil and began hammering it smooth, but no matter how loudly her hammer fell onto the metal, Lux’s smile stayed engraved in her mind.

The warmth in her chest had nothing to do with the heat of the forge, she realized. Jinx gripped the hammer until the bones of her knuckles showed through the skin. This was wrong. Powder felt things like this. Powder, who’d curled into Vi’s arms like a child, clutching her dirty, moth-eaten stuffed monkey as she drifted off to sleep, cozy and protected.

The metal screamed as she swung her hammer. Jinx didn’t do cozy.

“What’re you even doing?” she muttered under her breath.

She shouldn’t have said yes. She should’ve told Lux to take her fuzzy warmth and her perfect smile and find someone else to spend her time with. But she hadn’t. She’d nodded like some idiot and agreed to meet her after work like it wasn’t the worst idea in the world.

And now it felt like there was a bomb in her chest, every tick of her heartbeat bringing it a moment closer to exploding.

She set her hammer down and swiped a hand across her face, wiping away the sweat that had gathered on her brow. She glanced at the clock, and her stomach lurched. Fifteen minutes left on her shift. Fifteen minutes until—

No.

Jinx ran a hand through her hair. This was a bad idea. Lux shouldn’t even be talking to her, let alone waiting for her outside the forge like this was some kind of normal, friendly thing people did.

“You should leave,” someone—maybe Claggor—warned. He’d always been a coward. “Walk out the back door and let her get bored. She’ll give up and move on, and then you won’t have to deal with this.”

Jinx wanted to. She glanced at the back door, imagining how easy it would be to slip into the alley and vanish. But when the time to leave came, she grabbed her cloak and stepped into the street, her boots scuffing against the cobblestones as her eyes darted around her, half-expecting Lux to have changed her mind.

But there she was. Lux stood at the edge of the street, her hair spilling around her shoulders in glossy waves. Jinx’s eyes glided over the smoothness of her face, tracing over the curve of her cheek, the slope of her nose, gentle arc of her lips.

Lux looked like she’d been pulled straight out of one of those dumb fairy tales Powder used to love. The ones she’d even gotten Silco to read to her a few times when she couldn’t fall asleep.

Lux’s eyes lit up as they caught sight of her. “Hey,” she chirped. “You’re right on time.”

Jinx was suddenly acutely aware of the grease on her hands and the smell of smoke clinging to her clothes. She shoved her hands into her pockets and looked away. “It’s kind of hard to be late when you’re waiting for me to step outside. Afraid I’d run off or something?”

“Nothing like that,” Lux laughed. “I just didn’t want to keep you waiting.”

Jinx fidgeted. “So, what’s the plan?”

“I thought we’d just walk for a bit,” Lux said. “ The city is beautiful this time of year, and there’s a place by the river that has a great view of the sunset.” She gestured down the street. “Shall we?”

For a moment, Jinx hesitated. This was a bad idea. She’d mess it up. She’d—

She took a step forward, brushing the thoughts aside. “Lead the way.”

The street opened up into a market square the further they walked toward the heart of the city. Jinx’s attention caught on a group of children near the stalls, shrieking with laughter as they dashed in and out of the crowd. For a moment, her lips twitched, but it vanished as a new face joined them, her eyes wide and full of life that Jinx had personally seen snuffed out.

Jinx turned away, the knot in her throat threatening to choke her. She swallowed hard, forcing the memories back down where they belonged—buried deep beneath the rubble of everything else she'd destroyed in her life.

No, she told herself. That was your past life. You left that all behind.

She dragged her focus back to the present. Lux moved through the streets like she belonged, smiling at strangers and waving at merchants as the two of them walked through the street.

“They’re staring at you,” Jinx muttered.

Lux glanced at her. “Who?”

“Everyone. You’re like a walking sunbeam or something.” She caught one of the vendors watching her. He turned his head away at the sight of her staring back at him. “I’m just the grease stain tagging along.”

“You’re more than just a grease stain,” Lux said.

Jinx didn’t respond, even as Lux drifted closer, her sleeve brushing against Jinx just enough to be noticeable. It shouldn’t have mattered.

Lux paused at a stall selling pastries, her eyes lighting up as she turned to Jinx. “Have you ever tried one of these?”

Jinx shook her head.

“Two, please,” Lux said, handing over a few coins before Jinx could protest before taking them, pressing one into Jinx’s hand with a bright smile.

Jinx stared at the pastry. She wasn’t used to people handing her things without expecting something in return—not anything good for her at least. But Lux’s smile was so genuine, so unguarded, that Jinx found herself taking a hesitant bite.

It was sweet, too sweet, but she ate it anyway.

Lux grinned, a smattering of crumbs dusting the corner of her lips. “Good, right?”

Jinx shrugged, stuffing the rest into her mouth before she could say something stupid.

They moved on from the stall. “It’s different at night,” Lux said, glancing at the crowds of people milling around. “There’s this energy to it.” Her eyes lit up as they landed on a stall at the corner of the square. “Oh! The baker over there makes the best honey cakes. I’ll get you one next time we come here.”

Jinx frowned, unsure what to do with that. Lux talked like they’d be spending more time together, like this wasn’t a one-off thing. It was unnerving. “I’m not really a sweets person.”

“That’s okay,” Lux said without missing a beat. “More for me.”

Jinx huffed out a quiet laugh, the tension in her chest unwinding by a fraction. 

Lux grabbed her arm. “Come on. You’ve got to see this.”

Jinx followed along, more focused on the way Lux’s fingers wrapped around her than where they were going.

Lux stopped at the center of the square, where a fountain burbled gently. She knelt beside it, brushing her fingers over the stone. Jinx followed suit, her arm still held in Lux’s grasp. “This is from the Battle of the North Gate,” she said quietly. Her fingers traced the figures carved into the stone. “A handful of Demacian soldiers held off an entire Noxian raiding party. It changed everything for the city.”

Jinx frowned as she stared at the carving. She wanted to tell Lux that beating back a bunch of Noxians wasn’t that big of a deal, that she and Ekko could have done the same. Hell, she didn’t even need to mention Ekko. She could have done all of that by herself. The urge was absurd, but watching Lux’s fingers trace the stone sent a jolt through her. She shook her head.

What, are you jealous of a lump of rock? She thought. Get it together, Jinx. You’re not that crazy.

Lux sighed. “I used to come here when I was little. I’d sit by the fountain and pretend that I knew them. I’d make up names for them and everything.”

Jinx raised an eyebrow. “Sounds lonely.”

Lux’s smile dimmed for the briefest moment, and Jinx cursed herself for causing it to fade. “Maybe a little,” she admitted.

Lux stood, brushing her hands against her cloak.  “Let’s keep moving,” she said, her voice light again. “There’s more to see.”

The streets thinned as they left the market behind, the bustle fading until the two of them were alone in the street.

“It’s weird, seeing a city so quiet,” Jinx said, her eyes moving along the shadows and alleyways in search of movement.

Lux glanced at her. "The fissures aren't quiet?"

Jinx shook her head.

“You know, I did some reading and I still don’t know where that is.”

“It’s like I said before,” Jinx answered. “You’re better off not knowing about a place like that.”

Lux frowned. “It can’t be all bad. You came from there, didn’t you?”

Something like a laugh clawed at the back of her throat. She didn’t come from the fissures; the fissures were where Powder had been torn to shreds and haphazardly stitched back together. They were where anything good went to die.

“There’s not a worse place in the world.”

Lux hesitated mid-step, her smile faltering as she glanced at Jinx uncertainly. For a moment, Jinx thought she was going to press the issue, but Lux didn’t speak and the silence stretched between them, the faint sounds of the city around them doing little to fill the sudden void.

It wasn’t until the river appeared in the distance that Lux finally seemed to exhale, her gaze shifting forward as her shoulders lost their tension. Jinx let her own muscles relax at the sight. They stopped at the edge of the riverbank just as the sun began to set.

“What do you think?

Jinx looked up from where she’d been staring at her boots. Lux stood at the edge of the path, her hair shimmering in the breeze. The last of the sun’s light brushed over her skin, softening the angles of her face and making her eyes gleam brighter than anything Jinx had ever seen.

Jinx swallowed. "It's perfect," she murmured.

Lux smiled at her, and it was as if the sun had never set.

She nudged Jinx’s arm with her elbow. “Let’s sit.”

There were no benches, so they settled onto the grass at the edge of the riverbank, Lux pulling her legs underneath her while Jinx drew a knee to her chest, her fingers digging into her shin as she tried not to look like a spring about to snap.

“Do you always work so long at the forge?” Lux asked after a moment of silence.

Jinx shrugged. She pulled a blade of grass and twisted it in her fingers, if only so she’d stop sneaking glances at Lux. For once, she wished one of the ghosts in her head would say something to distract her but they were suspiciously silent. “Bram keeps me busy.”

“Do you like it there?”

“It’s a job,” Jinx replied. “It’s better than nothing.”

Lux tilted her head. “What were you doing before you came here?”

“Before doesn’t matter.”

Lux caught the shift in Jinx’s tone. “I think it does.”

Jinx finally let herself look at her. “Why do you care, anyway?”

“Because I think you matter,” Lux said. She met Jinx’s stare. “And I don’t think anyone’s told you that in a while.”

You matter. Jinx’s breath shuddered. Silco had said that once. Then she’d put a bullet through his heart. Ekko had said it too, as if it were enough to resurrect the girl she used to be. And Vi… she might as well have been a broken record with the number of times she said something like that. It still wasn’t enough to fill the sister-sized hole Jinx had left.

It wasn’t that nobody told Jinx that she mattered. It was that they were all too blind to see that she didn’t.

“It’s not pity,” Lux added quickly. “I just…I know what it’s like to feel like you’re out of place. Like you don’t belong anywhere.”

“You?” Jinx let out a short laugh. “What would someone like you know about not fitting in?”

Lux’s eyes darkened. “More than you’d think.” Then she shrugged, her eyes brightening as if her earlier expression had been nothing more than a cloud drifting through the sky. “Anyway, this isn’t about me. I was just curious about you. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone like you before.”

Jinx tapped her fingers against her knee as her gaze wandered past the river to the buildings on the other side of the bank. “There’s probably a good reason for that,” she muttered.

Lux didn’t answer, and Jinx didn’t know how long the two of them sat there, but the quiet didn’t bother her and Lux made no attempt to break it. The water crashed against the shore below them, the murmuring waves filling the silence as the sky darkened overhead.

Jinx let herself sink into the quiet, forgetting about the ghosts that were always lurking in the corner of her vision or the scrape of their voices against her ear. Looking up at the stars beginning to dot the sky and feeling the presence of Lux beside her, she could almost believe that they never existed in the first place.

Lux shifted beside her, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the chill that had seeped into the air.

“Here.” Jinx shrugged off her cloak and handed it to her.

Lux blinked, startled. “Oh, you don’t have to—”

“Just take it,” Jinx said. “You’re freezing.”

“Are you sure? What about you?”

“I don’t feel the cold.” Jinx kept her hand extended, waiting for Lux to take the cloak.

Lux smiled softly, her fingers curling into the fabric. “Thank you.”

Jinx grunted. She tried to brush it off, but her chest felt tight, a strange warmth settling over her. “Don’t mention it.”

Lux leaned into her and Jinx’s breath hitched. She wanted to pull away, but her body wouldn’t move. Instead, her gaze dropped to Lux’s hair, golden and soft in the moonlight. Her fingers twitched, itching to test if it felt as soft as it looked.

Don’t, a voice in her head hissed. You’ll ruin it. You always do.

Lux’s gaze lingered on Jinx’s arms. “Your tattoos,” she said softly. “They’re incredible.”

Jinx tensed under the attention. “Yeah, well they’re not exactly local.” Her fingers curled against her thigh as she looked away. “Most people here aren’t big fans.”

Lux’s eyes traced the lines of ink etched into her skin, following the sharp patterns that snaked from her shoulder down to her wrist. “I like them.”

Lux reached out, her fingertips brushing against the skin of her forearm. Jinx flinched at the contact, and Lux immediately pulled her hand back, her cheeks flushing. “Sorry,” she said quickly. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine,” Jinx said. She forced her muscles to relax and offered her arm to Lux. “Go ahead.”

Lux hesitated for only a moment before her hand returned, her fingers pressing against Jinx’s skin. “They must’ve taken forever to finish,” Lux said, her eyes fixed on the tattoos. “Do they mean anything?”

Jinx swallowed, suddenly aware of the tightness in her throat. “Not really.” She shrugged, trying to sound casual. “They’re just something I picked up. They looked cool at the time, I guess.”

Lux’s hand was warm, her fingers leaving trails of heat in their wake that left Jinx’s skin prickling with goosebumps. Jinx shivered at the feeling.

“Are you sure you’re not cold?” Lux asked, pausing to glance at her.

“I’m fine.”

Lux gave her another glance before her fingers resumed their journey, tracing the ink until she brushed against the pulse of Jinx’s wrist, her thumb grazing against the vein. Jinx swallowed, hoping Lux wouldn’t notice how quickly the blood surged beneath her fingertips.

Then her gaze dropped to Jinx’s hand, her eyes catching on the glint of her metal finger. She reached out again, slower this time, brushing her fingers over the prosthetic.

“I noticed this before,” Lux murmured, turning Jinx’s palm upward. Her thumb traced along the metal joints. “I didn’t even know people could make prosthetics like this.”

Jinx shifted. “It’s nothing special,” she muttered. Their fingers dragged across one another as she pulled her hand away. “It’s not even wired to my nerves.”

“You can’t feel anything with it?” Lux eyed the finger as if she wanted nothing more than to take it between her hands. Jinx almost offered it back to her.

“Nope.” Jinx flexed the metal finger, careful not to close her fist. “It’s just a bit of scrap and some wire.”

Lux’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Does it ever bother you?”

“Not really.” She shrugged. “Some things aren’t worth crying over. A finger’s one of them.”

“Have you…” Lux swallowed. “I mean, was it recent?”

“Recent enough.”

“Oh,” she murmured. “I’m sorry. It must be hard to bring it up. You probably have so many bad memories about it.”

Her finger was the least of her bad memories. “It’s alright,” she said. “You couldn’t have known.”

Lux fell quiet. But then she huffed a soft laugh, the sound catching Jinx off guard. “What do you even say to something like that?” she shook her head. “Of course, you don’t have good memories of losing a finger.”

The corner of Jinx’s mouth twitched despite herself. “Guess you don’t ask a lot of people about their missing bits, huh?”

“Not exactly,” Lux admitted, her cheeks pinking slightly. “Sorry. I won’t make you talk about it. I just—” She gestured vaguely at Jinx’s hand. “It’s part of you, you know?”

Jinx glanced at her, her expression unreadable. “It’s just a finger,” she said quietly. “I’ve lost worse.”

She leaned back on her elbows, her gaze drifting to the stars scattered across the dark sky stretching endlessly above her. She’d never seen a sky like this until she’d arrived in Demacia. The Undercity was too deep in the ground, the smog too thick for her to have ever seen the night sky with such clarity. 

“I know you didn’t have the best life,” Lux murmured, lying down beside her. “But, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re here, now.”

Jinx looked at her, taking in the way her face shone in the moonlight. “It’s not the worst place to wash up, is it?”

Chapter Text

The audience chamber was designed to make anyone who stood in its center feel small. Lux had first stepped into this room as a child, trailing in the wake of her uncle. Her hands had curled into fists at her side as she’d lingered in the shadows and silently watched the Mageseekers carry out their quiet verdicts. Now, years later, it was her beneath their gazes. Her uncle’s eyes locked onto her own, pinning her in place with their severity while the Mageseeker’s emblem loomed over his head, hanging from petricite chains that had been bolted into the wall.

“Luxanna,” Eldred began, “you know why you are here. Give us your account of the foreigner.”

Lux sucked in a breath, J’s grin flashing through her mind as she straightened her shoulders. “She’s troubled,” Lux said. “Both physically and emotionally, but not in ways that suggest magic. I’ve seen no evidence of the arcane in her behavior.”

Hesbeth, the Mageseekers’ lead scientist, leaned forward. “And what of her past? What did you learn of that?”

Lux hesitated. “Not much. She speaks little of where she’s from or what she’s endured. But the scars she carries—visible and otherwise—suggest that her upbringing was less than pleasant.” Lux raised her head to meet their eyes. “She’s come to Demacia in search of a new life. She’s brought none of her past with her to our land.”

“The magical disturbance we all felt coincides too neatly with her arrival,” Wisteria answered from her seat beside Eldred. “Troubled past or not, she cannot be dismissed so easily.”

“It is unfortunate timing,” Lux admitted. “But I found no evidence linking her to the anomaly, nor has she shown any interest in the arcane.”

Wisteria raised an eyebrow. “You believe her disinterest in magic absolves her of suspicion? We’ve encountered many mages who concealed their nature behind masks of duplicity.”

Lux swallowed the bitterness rising in her throat. They spoke so easily of deception, of mages lurking in their midst. If they only knew how close they sat to the very thing they despised.

“I understand the need for caution,” she said, careful to temper her voice with deference. “But fear without cause only weakens us. If we make an enemy of every stray caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, the real threats will slip past our guard.”

Eldred watched her for a monger before raising his hand to silence the murmurs swirling between the council. “Fear without cause weakens us, of that you are correct,” he conceded. “But vigilance is what has ensured that Demacia has not gone to wrack. Magic is insidious, Luxanna. It can appear harmless, even pitiable, but it is still the seed of ruin.”

Lux forced her expression not to change. They thought this was vigilance? She was a living testament to how far their vigilance stretched. They sought to condemn an innocent girl for no reason other than her arrival to their land while she was allowed to stand before them, receiving their trust without hesitation. The hypocrisy sickened her, but she could give them no reason to doubt her. Not now.

“She isn’t hiding anything,” Lux returned. “If she were tied to the anomaly, I would expect more concrete signs of magical disturbance. I saw none.” She swallowed. “I doubt she would even recognize magic if it appeared before her.”

Eldred’s expression remained unreadable, but there was a shift in his posture, a faint tilting forward that commanded the room’s attention. Lux felt the precipice for what it was and tried to steady her breathing as his eyes bore into her own. “You are certain of this?”

“I am,” Lux said firmly. “If she were a mage, her temperament would have betrayed her by now.”

She felt bad even saying the words, but it was the language the Mageseekers understood. They couldn’t reckon with the idea that mages could be just like them, that when they lived in fear of being discovered their entire lives, their temperament was the first thing they mastered.

The room lapsed into silence as the council exchanged glances. Eldred’s eyes lingered on her another moment before he spoke again. “You’ve done well to provide this insight, Luxanna. But the question remains. Whether you believe her to be connected to the anomaly or not, does this foreigner pose a threat to Demacia?”

Lux opened her mouth to answer, but Eldred held up a hand. “Do not let your sympathy decide our safety,” he continued coldly. “The treachery of magic is not always in its strength but in its subtlety.”

Lux knew the true weight behind her uncle’s words. The Mageseekers did not merely hunt for those who wielded magic openly. They sought to root it out wherever it might fester, no matter how benign it seemed. No matter who it destroyed in the process.

“She’s just a girl,” Lux insisted. “Whatever disturbance happened wasn’t her doing. She doesn’t even know what she’s walked into.” She shook her head.

“All the more reason to maintain our vigilance,” Eldred answered. “Until we discover the true reason for her arrival in Demacia, you will continue to interact with her. Should anything unusual arise, you are to report it immediately.”

Lux nodded. “I understand.”

Eldred held her gaze. “You have always been loyal to Demacia, Luxanna. Do not let personal feelings cloud your judgment.”

“Of course, Uncle,” she replied.

Eldred gestured toward the door. “You are dismissed.”

Lux turned, her boots clicking against the stone as she left the chamber. The weight of their scrutiny lifted as the doors closed behind her, but the ache in her chest only deepened, refusing to thaw even as she stepped out into the bright morning light.

She hated them. They wanted so desperately to find an enemy in J and justify their fear of something they didn’t understand. Lux clenched her fists. J wasn’t a mage. Lux was certain of it. But even if she were , what would it change? Would it make her less of the quiet, fragile girl Lux had spoken to? Would it justify the pain lurking in the depths of her eyes?

No , Lux thought fiercely. But it would make her their enemy . And enemies do not deserve kindness.

Lux pictured J at the riverbank, the moonlight casting her features in stark relief. She’d tilted her head to watch the stars, and Lux had been enraptured at the cut of her jaw, the pale curve of her neck. And her tattoos. They had seemed alive in that light. Lux had reached out without thinking, her fingers grazing the warmth of J’s skin. She’d barely touched her, but she’d felt the way her muscles had coiled beneath her fingertips, wound tighter than a harp quivering as her fingers danced over the cords. But despite that tension, she hadn’t pulled away. She’d allowed Lux her curiosity, had indulged her impulses, and offered herself up to her with barely any hesitation.

The Mageseekers wanted to turn someone like that into a monster.

Lux’s fists tightened until her nails left crescents in her skin. Lux had stood before them with magic in her veins while they sought to crush a girl who had done nothing but survive. They trusted her because she looked the part. Because her name and her manners allowed them to pretend she wasn’t the very thing they hunted. J had no such shield.

Lux had to protect her. She had to be her shield.

Morning light streamed through the shutters in soft beams that painted uneven patterns across the walls of Jinx’s room. She kicked her way out of bed, letting the blanket fall in a heap on the floor. She’d barely slept. Not because of the usual chaos in her head, but because of her . Lux. The warmth in her voice, the glow in her smile. It lingered with all the sweetness of syrup coating her teeth.

“Ugh, get out of my head,” she muttered, slipping into her boots and pulling her cloak around her. She glanced out the window before clucking her tongue at the brightness. She’d spent too long dreaming and now she was late.

The city was already moving as Jinx stepped into the street outside Clara’s tavern. She stuffed her hands into her pockets, staring at the cobblestones beneath her feet as she wove her way through the thickening crowd. Bram would already be hammering away, and if she didn’t get moving, she’d be on the receiving end of another one of his lectures.

The scent of burning coal met her before she even reached the forge, and Jinx quickened her steps as the forge came into sight.

“You’re late,” Bram grunted as she stepped through the door.

Jinx threw her cloak onto a hook. “Good morning to you too, sunshine.”

“Save it.” Bram straightened, wiping his hands on his apron. He grabbed a folded piece of parchment from the workbench and waved it at her. “We got an important job today. Take this to the imperial depot and pick up the order.”

Jinx took the parchment from his hand and turned it over. It was stamped with Demacia’s crest, the edges creased and smudged from Bram’s rough handling. “Petricite?” she asked, reading the order. “What’s that?”

“It’s a stone,” Bram grunted. “It suppresses magic. Demacia uses it to keep the mages under control.” He waved his hand at the parchment. “The guard wants it added to their gauntlets.”

Jinx’s frown deepened as she turned his words over in her head. “Suppress magic? How does a rock do that?”

“Hell if I know,” Bram shrugged. “All that matters is that it works. Petricite keeps us safe from any mages trying to ruin things.”

“When was the last time they did that?” Jinx asked. She pulled herself onto the countertop. “People around here are always acting like mages are waiting to burn the place down any second, but if they were really that dangerous, wouldn’t we have seen it by now?"

Hell, she hadn’t even seen a mage in all the time she’d been in Demacia. She was starting to believe they didn’t exist.

Bram’s eyes narrowed, his face shifting into a scowl. “You should count yourself lucky that you’ve never seen what a mage can do when they lose control.”

Jinx wanted to scoff. You don’t know what losing control looks like.

She doubted Demacia had ever been burned to the ground, its streets choked with ash and rubble lining the streets. They’d never had their council blown to bits in their ivory tower, had never seen the monument of their ideals shattered in a single explosion. They’d never heard the screams echoing through the alleys or felt the air burn in their lungs when the world was falling apart. They’d never stood in the wreckage of everything that happened and realized there was no way to put it back together, that everything you knew was gone forever.

Jinx had.

People had called Hextech magic, once. When Talis and the tin man first unveiled it, the idea of harnessing the arcane under human control had seemed like a revelation. But that was before people understood it, before they stripped away the mysticism and saw it for what it really was. 

Jinx clenched her jaw. What she’d done with Hextech couldn’t be passed off as magic. It couldn’t be pinned on some intangible force outside her control. It had been her, every step of the way. She’d been the cause of it all.

Her lips pressed into a thin line as she eyed the parchment. The Demacians seemed awfully proud of this rock. She wondered how well it would hold up against one of her rockets.

It wouldn’t , she thought. The rock would get blown to smithereens, nothing more than powder. A rock wasn’t enough to protect a city. She’d seen that firsthand. Piltover’s towers had been taller and stronger than anything here. They still ended up broken at her feet.

But what if the point wasn’t to stop the rockets? What if it was to make sure someone like her didn’t exist long enough to fire them?

The idea stuck in her throat like a stone of its own. What if someone had found her back then? What if they’d used their rocks against her and pulled the chaos out before it could spill into everything around her? What would it have been like if she was the one reduced to Powder instead?

Petricite wouldn’t have stopped Piltover from burning, but it might have stopped her. It might have stopped her before she ever had the chance to become Jinx.

She tried to shake the thought loose, but it refused to leave. What if someone had taken her apart back then, piece by piece, and rebuilt her into something that wasn’t her? Would it have made a difference? Would the cycle have stopped if she wasn’t around for it to happen? Or would it have just found another way to break her?

She’d already been taken apart and put back together, once. The doctor’s cold hands on her skin, the shimmer glinting in the dim light as he plunged the syringe. Shimmer had lit her veins on fire, rewired her thoughts, and made her see things that weren’t there. Maybe that was what having magic felt like. Maybe whatever the doctor had done to her had made her like them. Demacia had never had to deal with shimmer, but maybe petricite was just another needle only, instead of filling her head with too many thoughts, it sucked the wrongness out of her.

“Okay,” she said slowly, “but if it stops magic, what happens if there’s no magic to stop? Does it just sit in your stomach until you shit it back out?”

Bram shrugged. “Hell if I know. Most people don’t have a reason to go looking for petricite. Not unless they have something about themselves they need to get rid of.”

Her fingers brushed the counter as she mulled that over. You knew when you’d taken shimmer. You could feel it creeping through your veins. Petricite had to be like that, too, even if all it did was sit in your stomach and suck the magic out of you.

Maybe it did that to more than just magic. 

She straightened. The questions in her mind weren’t ones Bram could answer, and she wasn’t about to start asking them here. She slipped the parchment into her pocket and stepped out of the forge. Outside, the streets were alive with motion. It wasn’t like Zaun but it had its own rhythm. Jinx wasn’t sure if she liked it yet.

The clamor faded as she walked deeper into the city, the markets and inns changing to towering marble structures as she reached the heart of the city. Jinx slowed her steps as she approached the depot, its archways lined with golden banners.

She stopped just short of a wooden table stationed beneath an awning, where the quartermaster stood. His brow was furrowed as he ran his finger down a ledger. Jinx lingered for a moment, unsure of what to do. She glanced at the soldiers nearby, taking in the disinterest in their faces.

“Papers,” he said, holding out his hand without so much as looking at her.

Jinx handed him the parchment. Her fingers fidgeted with her sleeve as the quartermaster unfolded the parchment and scanned its contents.

He looked up at her. “Have you done this before?”

Jinx shook her head. The last time she’d seen a quartermaster had been when Silco wanted her to raid Piltover’s customs house. 

He gestured to a nearby crate. “That’s your order. You’ll sign for it here and take it straight to its destination. No detours, no delays.”

“Right,” Jinx said. “I’ll make sure not to take the scenic route.”

He didn’t respond to her sarcasm. “The contents are logged and sealed. If it ends up somewhere it shouldn’t, you’ll have more than just me to answer to.” He handed the ledger over to her. “Sign here to confirm the handoff.”

Jinx glanced at the tiny boxes before scrawling her initial in the open space and handing it back to him. As she did, two guards stepped forward, hefting the crate onto a cart stationed nearby.

“Bring the cart back after you’ve dropped the petricite off,” one of them said, pulling the yoke into her hands. “Otherwise we’ll have to charge a fee.”

Jinx rolled her eyes. “And here I thought Demacia was all about honor. Why’s there always got to be a fee involved?”

The guard gave her a flat look but didn’t bother with a response. Jinx wrapped her fingers around the cart’s handle and pushed forward, rolling the cart into the street. Her thoughts churned as she pulled the cart behind her. She’d never heard of petricite before, but it wasn’t hard to tell when something was valuable. Maybe it really was the magic solution.

“J!”

Jinx barely had time to register that her name was being called before Lux emerged from the crowd, waving as she made her way over. Sunlight caught in her hair, turning the strands into a glowing beacon as she glided through the crowd.

“I didn’t think I’d run into you here,” Lux said as she approached.

“Yeah,” Jinx replied slowly, her mind slow to catch up with Lux’s arrival. She wasn’t used to being noticed, let alone greeted so openly. “What are you doing here?”

Lux shrugged. “Oh, just taking a walk. I needed some fresh air.” Her eyes flicked to the cart. “What about you?”

“Delivery,” Jinx said, nodding toward the cart.

Lux tilted her head. “Need a hand?”

“Uh, no. I got it.”

“Then how about some company?” Lux offered, stepping closer. “I was just wandering around anyway.”

Jinx hesitated. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Lux around—she did. That was the problem. Lux made her feel things she didn’t know how to name, things she wasn’t sure she wanted to name. Still, she found herself nodding. “Sure. If you want.”

Lux smiled and fell into step beside her. For a while, neither of them said anything. Jinx kept her focus on the street ahead, counting the cobblestones to avoid glancing at Lux.

What was she even doing here?

Lux’s presence was like sunlight, but Jinx knew it couldn’t last. Either Lux would leave her or Jinx would pull her into the darkness and snuff out her light herself. And then her absence would hurt even more because she’d remember what it had felt like, and know that it was her fault that Lux’s warmth had vanished.

Jinx couldn’t find it in herself to push her away. 

“You’ve been working with Bram for a while, right?”

“A few weeks,” Jinx answered.

“It must be nice,” Lux mused. “Having something steady, I mean.”

Jinx shrugged. “It keeps me busy.”

Lux smiled. “That’s a good thing. I’d go crazy if I didn’t have something to focus on.”

“Don’t you already?” Jinx asked. She chanced a look at Lux from the corner of her eye. “I bet there’s plenty to keep a fancy noble like you busy.”

Lux laughed softly. “There is. Too much, sometimes. That’s why I sneak away every now and then. It’s nice to just let that all go and be yourself for a little bit, you know?”

Be yourself. Jinx knew what letting herself go meant. It wasn’t nice. It was rubble and corpses, smoke and ash, amber eyes and fractured smiles. Nobody wanted Jinx to be herself, least of all her.

“Do you ever take time for yourself?” Lux asked suddenly.

Jinx raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Like, do something just for you. Not for Bram or anyone else, but just because you enjoy it.”

“Not really.” She shrugged. “There’s not much point.”

Lux frowned. “You should.”

Jinx grunted. “What about you?” she asked. “Do you spend all your free time wandering around and picking up strays, or am I just special?”

Lux’s eyes widened. “You’re not a stray!” She exhaled, shaking her head. “It’s not like I just pick up people wherever I go! I mean, I do volunteer sometimes with the Illuminators—they’re a charity group that helps people in need—”

“So I’m a charity case now?”

“No!” Lux’s voice jumped again. “No, it’s not like that. You’re not like that. This—” She gestured vaguely between them, stumbling over her words. “You’re not a project, J.” She hesitated, as though uncertain whether to continue. “ You’re my friend. I like being around you.”

Jinx wasn’t sure what to do with that. Lux said it like it was the simplest thing in the world, like being her friend didn’t come with complications and risks. It made something twist in Jinx’s chest.

“Good to know,” Jinx said after a beat. “Guess I’ll stop worrying about being adopted, then.”

Lux laughed and Jinx felt herself relax at the sound. It was a nice laugh, she thought. The kind that filled her with warmth and made the corners of her mouth pull upward. Lux bumped her shoulder against her. “Anyone would be lucky to have someone like you.”

The warmth of Lux’s laugh evaporated. Lucky. That was the opposite of what she was to anyone who’d ever cared about her. Lux didn’t know what she was talking about. She’d never seen what it meant to let someone like Jinx into their life. Jinx was the most rotten bit of luck someone could ever get stuck with.

Her grip tightened on the cart’s handles, her muscles tensing as the thought dug deeper. The cart jolted suddenly as she yanked it too hard, and Lux flinched, her gaze snapping toward Jinx.

“Sorry,” Jinx muttered.

She focused on the road ahead, refusing to meet Lux’s eyes.

“What’s in the crate?” Lux asked.

“Petricite.”

The shift was immediate. Lux stopped walking, her expression shuttering closed. The warmth in her eyes flickered, replaced by something harder. “Petricite?” she repeated. “Why do you have petricite? Do you know what that does to people?”

Jinx raised an eyebrow. “It suppresses magic, right?”

Lux’s jaw tightened. “It doesn’t just suppress magic, it seeps into every part of you like a venom. Even after it's gone, mages still feel the scars it leaves inside of them. Some never recover from it.”

Jinx stared at the crate. She rolled her shoulder and tried to sound indifferent. “Sounds like a mage problem.”

“It’s not just mages,” Lux returned. “It’s anyone. The more you’re around it, the deeper it sinks, eating away every part of yourself until there’s nothing left.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

Lux hesitated. “I’ve felt it,” she said softly. “And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

Jinx’s frown deepened. “Wait,” she said, tilting her head. “I thought only mages were supposed to feel it.”

“Mages feel it the most,” Lux admitted. “But petricite doesn’t just suppress magic. It suppresses everything. Thoughts, emotions, anything that makes you feel alive.”

Lux’s gaze dropped to the cart again, lingering on the crate as if she could see through it. Jinx shifted uncomfortably, trying to ignore the knot tightening in her chest.

“You have to be careful with this, J,” she said quietly, her eyes rising to meet hers. “Promise me you will.”

Jinx nodded, though she wasn’t entirely sure why. There was just something disarming about the way Lux said it, as if she genuinely cared about her. “Yeah,” Jinx said. “I’ll be careful.”

Silence stretched between them after that, and it wasn’t until the forge appeared that it lifted.

“I’ll leave you here,” Lux said, coming to a stop at the corner of the street. “I don’t want Bram thinking I’m distracting you again.”

Jinx waved her hand. “You don’t have to worry about that. Bram’s been so busy the last few days, I don’t think he realizes I’m even there half the time.”

“I didn’t know I was causing a problem,” Lux answered, smiling at Jinx.

Jinx shook her head. “You didn’t cause anything. Bram’s always looking for a reason to kick me out. You just made it easier for him that day.”

“So you’re saying I was helpful, then?”

“I suppose you did buy me a coffee.”

Lux’s smile brightened, and Jinx returned it with a faint one of her one, hoping that Lux didn’t realize how impossibly broken it was. “Thanks for letting me tag along,” Lux said. “it’s nice having someone to talk to.”

Jinx nodded. “Yeah. See you around?”

“Of course.”

Jinx watched her disappear down the street, vanishing as she turned the corner. The silence that followed felt heavier than it should have as it settled into the space she’d left behind. She couldn’t see Lux anymore, but that didn’t mean she was gone, not when her eyes lined every one of Jinx’s thoughts and her smile illuminated every crevice of her mind.

Chapter Text

The forge had grown silent as the night dragged on, the embers in the hearth reduced to a dying glow barely strong enough to illuminate the room. Not that Jinx paid that much attention. She sat at her workbench, absently tinkering with leftover parts. She should have gone back to her room hours ago, but the thought of lying there alone, staring at the ceiling while the silence wrapped around her throat, made her stomach curl. Here, at least, there was the crackle of the fire, the scent of her tools, and the smoke lingering in the air.

It was her only defense against the one thought—the one person— who had been battering against her mind all day.

Every time she closed her eyes, Jinx could see her, with her stupid shining eyes, smiling at her with that stupidly bright smile—as if Lux didn’t realize how much it stood out against everything else in Jinx’s life.

“It’s nothing,” Jinx muttered to herself. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Lux didn’t know her. If she did, if she really understood, she’d never look at Jinx like that again. 

Jinx needed Lux to stop looking at her like that.

Jinx hoped that Lux would never stop looking at her like that.

Jinx squeezed her eyes shut and tried to will the image of her away, but it only sank its teeth deeper into her brain. It would be years from now and Jinx would still remember that look on Lux’s face, would still feel the warmth of her hands ghosting along her skin.

She would still yearn for that feeling. Because she cared about Lux.

The realization had been creeping in for a while now, but she hadn’t wanted to name it. Caring about people wasn’t something she knew how to do. Not right, anyway.

Jinx gripped the edge of the workbench. Every time she’d let someone into her life, it ended in ruin. The last person she’d cared for had—

No.

She tore the thought out before it could settle, but the damage was already done. It didn’t matter what she wanted. It didn’t matter what she felt.

You need to think about something else, she thought. Not the way Lux’s eyes sparkle or how soft her hair looks, or how soft her hands are when they’re running along your skin or…

Jinx shook her head and forced herself to look around the room. Her gaze fell on the slab of petricite leaning in the corner, untouched since she’d dragged it into the forge earlier that day. It was unnaturally still in the firelight, its surface absorbing the light like a gaping abyss.

Jinx rose to her feet and crossed the room, her boots scuffing against the floor until she stood next to it. She traced a fingertip along the stone’s edge, her hand almost jerking back as a sharp chill bit into her skin, before spreading up her wrist like a vine of frost.

Lux had claimed that it killed everything inside a person until there was nothing left, that it carved a hollow pit inside of them.

“Wouldn’t that be a damn treat?” she murmured.

Jinx pressed her palm flat against the stone and closed her eyes, imagining a perfect, endless nothingness where there was no clamor in her head, no ache beneath her ribs, no memories clawing at the edges of her mind. Just silence. 

But it was only ever a thought. Almost as soon as she imagined it, whispers prickled against her ears, and fuzzy shapes twisted in the dark behind her eyelids.

Jinx pulled her hand away from the petricite and turned back toward her workbench. She picked up a wrench and rolled the weight of it in her palm. So long as she kept her hands busy, she could ignore the itch in her head and pretend that she couldn’t hear the voices scratching at her ears.

“You’ll mess this up too, like you always do,” Mylo sneered . “She’ll see what you are. Everyone does eventually.”

Jinx’s grip tightened around the wrench until her knuckles ached. “Yeah, well, screw you,” she muttered, forcing the words through clenched teeth. “Maybe if you’d spent less time yapping about how useless I was, you’d have seen the bomb coming.”

“You’re too far gone,” Vi answered, and Jinx could just about see her standing over her, one hand raised, the other cinched around her throat as she pinned her in place. “You’re not my sister anymore. You’re just a—”

“Stop,” she hissed, bending over and pressing her hands to her ears before Vi finished speaking.

The voices weren’t real. They couldn’t be. They were just echoes, memories she couldn’t shake, loose bits of whoever she’d blown up rattling around inside of her head. But even as she told herself that, she could hear them pressing closer, like static building at the edges of her mind.

“This is who you are, Jinx,” Silco whispered in her ear, and she could hear the love in his voice. “You can’t change it.”

The forge felt too hot, the air too thick as it pressed down on her. Her pulse hammered against her ribs and her breath came too fast as the words kept circling back, layering over each other until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.

You’ll ruin everything. You’re just a Jinx. This is who you are.

“No,” she whispered. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!”

Her vision blurred as she slammed a fist against the workbench, sending tools flying across the surface before they clattered to the ground. A hammer hit the floor with a resounding clang. A jar of screws shattered against the wall. She kicked over her stool and hurled her wrench across the room, where it made a sharp metallic crack as it slammed against the far wall before pressing her hands to her temples, her fingers digging into her skin.

She sank to the floor, her legs sprawling out as she leaned against the bench. “I just want it to stop,” she whispered. “Is that too much?”

Her gaze flicked back to the petricite, its surface unmarred despite her outburst. Her fingers drifted across the floor, brushing against the scattered remnants of her outburst. A small file lay near her, its handle smudged with soot. She grabbed it absently before her gaze landed on a jar rolling next to her foot, a crack running down its side but still intact. She reached for that too, turning it over in her hands as she traced the grooves on its surface.

“I just want it to stop,” she repeated, staring at the warped reflection of herself in the jar before exhaling and pushing herself to her feet.

She knew what she needed to do.

The petricite seemed to watch her approach, its weight pressing down on her chest before she’d even reached it. Everyone here treated petricite like a relic, like it was some untouchable thing that demanded everyone treat it with reverence. But Jinx knew better. In Zaun, you learned to take what you needed without leaving a trace. A scrape here, a few slivers there, just enough that no one would notice. Taking from others was second nature to her.

She pressed the teeth of the file against the stone and scraped. The sound barely carried over the dying embers of the forge, but with every movement, another line of chalky powder gathered on the edge of the file. Jinx stopped after a few strokes to brush the powder into the jar, where it settled at the bottom in a cloud of fine dust. It wasn’t much—barely anything, really—but it was enough for now. She tightened the lid and slipped the jar into her cloak where it pressed against her ribs.

Jinx glanced back at the petricite, searching for any sign of what she’d done but the stone looked as untouched as ever. She couldn’t even see her fingerprints on it. A breath escaped her as she turned toward the door and began to leave, the jar’s presence undeniably real as it pressed against her chest. And for the first time that day, she felt the same.

Jinx locked the door behind her as soon as she closed the door to her room. The room was the same as she’d left it—cramped, dimly lit, cluttered with half-finished projects and scattered tools—but something in the air felt different now. A stillness pervaded it as if she wasn’t the only one holding her breath. She reached into her cloak and pulled the jar free, turning it over in her hands as she held it up to the light. The powder glimmered from within, and she felt her throat tighten as she tilted the jar, watching little motes of ground petricite topple over one another.

“Just a little,” she muttered.

Jinx twisted the jar open and dipped her fingertip inside. The powder clung to her skin as she pinched it between her fingers. Then, before she could think better of it, she pressed it to her tongue.

The petricite was bitter. She tried to swallow, but the powder stuck in her throat. A sharp cough escaped her, and she doubled over, her hand gripping the edge of the table to steady herself—and then she stilled as a chill shot through her. It started in her chest, before wrapping around her ribs and spreading through her body, each pump of her heart pushing the petricite deeper. A shiver ran down her spine. The edge of her vision blurred and the world tilted on its axis. She gasped, but it felt like breathing through a plastic bag, every breath stuttering as her body trembled.

And then she exhaled, her lungs deflating as the spasm passed. Jinx opened her eyes, forgetting when she’d closed them, and sank into the seat of her chair.

She didn’t know how long she spent there, drifting somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. Time turned in on itself, the minutes impossibly shapeless to her, but her awareness eventually returned strong enough for her to remember herself outside of the haze of colorless thoughts moving through her mind. Her desk blurred into a graveyard of half-built things. Jagged bits of metal, broken circuits, a twisted gear with rust eating through its teeth. A shattered lens caught the light, gleaming like an empty eye. If she cared enough, she could build something out of the mess, but the idea of doing so barely registered before it dissipated into smoke.

Her eyes wandered past her desk until they caught on the mirror hanging on the far wall. Something about it tugged at her, and she stood without thinking, her movements sluggish as she put herself in front of the reflection.

The eyes that met hers were steady as they watched her, and Jinx gasped as her brain finally realized what it was seeing. They weren’t the volatile pink mess she’d grown used to seeing, but a deep, placid blue. A blue that reminded her of a different time, before she’d lost everything.

Jinx tilted her head slightly, and the reflection tilted with her. She lifted a trembling hand, watching as the hand mirrored the gesture perfectly, down to the quiver in her fingers. Jinx swallowed, her pulse loud in her ears. This wasn’t a trick. It wasn’t another hallucination or cruel echo conjured by her mind. It was just her. Her heart thudded again, harder this time, and she held her breath, waiting for the reflection’s face to twist, for her eyes to fill with hate, for the screaming to start. But the silence didn’t break.

Powder. That was who was staring back at her. The girl she used to be, who hadn’t destroyed everything, who hadn’t become Jinx.

Powder.

The name curled around her thoughts as it filled her mind. It didn’t belong to her anymore and yet, there it was, scratching at something deep inside of her that she hadn’t even known still existed.

She turned away from the mirror. That girl didn’t exist. Jinx had killed her along with everyone else. Looking at those eyes now—it made her head itch the same way her body did when it stitched itself together wrong. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to see her old wounds cut open and forced back into place. She wanted to forget.

Her feet carried her to the desk on the other side of her room, and her hands drifted over the scattered tools and shards of half-forgotten projects until they closed around a piece of metal. She held it up to the light, tilting its surface away from her before she could catch another glimpse of those dead eyes. Once, this would’ve sparked something—an idea, a plan, a desperate need to busy herself before anything else could creep fill the space in her head. But now, her thoughts were distant, indistinct tendrils of smoke. The fire was still in her, somewhere, but Jinx couldn’t reach it. She didn’t even want to try.

She set the scrap back onto the desk as her gaze wandered back toward the mirror, caught again by the quiet face staring at her.

The edges of her mind began to stir, fragments of memories floating up from somewhere deep and dark. Silco’s face came first, his wide eyes staring into her own during those last, terrible moments. The blood pooled on his chest as it spread through his shirt in dark, uneven patches. He reached for her, his dark, unseeing eyes never leaving her face as the strength faded from his body. 

“You’re perfect,” he rasped.

Jinx stared into his eyes but, where she might have remembered her own emotion was an empty pit. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm as if her body didn’t understand what was in front of her. It should have meant something. She knew that this memory had stitched itself so deeply inside of her that it was inseparable from herself, but it felt hollow, and she couldn’t remember why she’d cared so much about it in the first place.

Silco’s outstretched hand thickened as the memory warped. Vi stood in his place, her lips calling out to her, but Jinx couldn’t hear what she was saying. The fog in her head was too thick. Vi’s face was stricken, pinpricks of tears collecting at the corner of her eyes as she strained her body just to push her hand a fraction closer. It moved something in Jinx but, before she could place it, the feeling guttered. 

Jinx barely had time to process that Vi had gone before Lux was leaning against her, silky strands of hair falling over her face as she pressed her body against Jinx and ran her hands along her arm. The riverbank had been quiet, the water lapping gently at the stones as Lux traced the lines of ink running across Jinx’s skin, but they were lifeless, the warmth leached from her touch.

They all felt like ghosts. The faces remained, but every imprint they left was washed away before Jinx could grasp them. All that remained was an ocean inside her mind, as dark as it was depthless. Jinx exhaled slowly, letting the numbness press deeper as it filled the spaces where feeling used to live. The memories retreated further beneath the surface and Jinx welcomed their absence, leaning into the fog that settled over her.

The warmth that Lux carried wasn’t meant for someone like her. The feeling that came when Lux looked at her, the knot in her stomach that twisted tighter every time she saw Lux smile, they weren’t things she deserved to feel. They were too light, too good, too far from the rot Jinx carried with her wherever she went.

It was better this way. Better to let it all fade into silence, better to keep everyone out of reach. Jinx couldn’t trust herself to feel. If she let herself feel, then the cycle would start again. She had to walk away or else Lux would be next. Lux, with her crystal eyes and gentle hands, would fall into the same trap Silco had, the same spiral as Vi.

All because Jinx let her get close, because she didn’t stop herself from destroying what she loved.

Jinx could see it, even now: Lux reaching for her from beneath the wreckage of Jinx’s existence, trapped and struggling as Jinx was forced to watch on, every step she took, every attempt she made to help, only sinking the weight deeper until, finally, Lux would disappear beneath it, crushed under the weight of Jinx’s care.

She turned again, and her eyes landed on the mirror without meaning to. Powder was still there, watching her with those steady, unbroken blue eyes. Powder, not Jinx. Jinx was full of sharp edges, with eyes that burned like an exploded chemtank. She was careless violence and incidental destruction. The girl staring back at her was none of that. Her eyes were missing that spark. They were an untouched puddle after a storm, a swollen artery that hadn’t yet spilled its fetid lifeblood into the world.

Jinx stared into Powder’s expressionless eyes. The silence pressed down on her mind, filling her head with cotton that soaked up every thought before they could bleed into being until there was nothing to focus on except for a pair of blue eyes staring back at her.

Chapter Text

Morning light slipped through the shuttered blinds as it fell over Jinx’s face. She grunted and turned into her pillow, but the movement only twisted the sheets tighter around her limbs. Jinx groaned, pressing her palms into her eyes until ugly colors sparked along the back of her eyelids.

"Lazy," Mylo’s voice sneered. "You can’t even get up without us holding your hand. Like always."

Her gaze fell on the mirror across the room. She didn’t want to look, not when she already knew what she’d see staring back at her, but something pulled her toward it, like a hook caught in her ribs. The pull was too strong to resist, dragging her across the floor in slow, reluctant steps.

The recognition was the worst part.

Her eyes had returned to their vivid hue, lurid pink pressing against the circle of her iris like a contagion. She hated them.

Jinx reached toward the mirror, her fingertips brushing the glass as if she could somehow reach inside and rip the color out. “Not you,” she whispered, leaning closer until her breath fogged the glass and her vision filled with broken eyes. “Let me see her. Let me see Powder.”

"Powder’s long gone, and you know it,” Vi snapped in her ear. “You killed her the second you decided to become Jinx."

Jinx’s eyes burned with unshed tears. “I didn’t mean to,” she muttered. “I didn’t want this.”

She turned away from the mirror. The petricite sat in the middle of her desk, surrounded by a mess of half-assembled pieces of scrap. The powder shimmered as it caught the morning light and Jinx swallowed, her tongue pressing against the roof of her mouth. She could almost taste it against her tongue.

Ekko urged her on, repeating what he’d told her the last time she’d wanted to step off the ledge: "Powder’s still in there, somewhere. I know she is."

Jinx let out a hollow laugh. “Powder’s not coming back,” she murmured, padding over to the desk and grabbing the jar. “Not while I’m still here.”

She pinched a bit of the powder between her fingers before tossing it onto her tongue. It scraped against her throat as she swallowed, but she didn’t retch and, between one heartbeat and the next, she felt the numbness seep into her veins and smother the buzz inside her head until it was finally silent.

She glanced at the mirror again. The pink of her eyes had fractured, splintering into shards that revealed a muted blue underneath. Jinx could almost imagine that they’d always been there, lurking beneath the surface, waiting for something to finally pull the Jinx out of them. And, now that she’d done that, she could watch as the drug dissolved, sinking beneath the image of the person she was always supposed to have been as the pink coloring of her eyes receded until they resembled burst capillaries instead of being evidence of who she’d become.

She couldn’t hear Vi in her head anymore, so she said the words for her. “Hey, Pow.”

The smile that answered her was a fragile, hollow thing. It wasn’t something that Jinx could have ever given to herself.

She turned the jar of petricite in her hands a final time before setting it down, the glass making a soft clink against the wooden desk. She stared at it for another moment, watching the dust swirl at the base of the jar, before turning away and slipping out the door.

The forge was already sweltering when Jinx stepped inside. The air clung to her skin, heavy with the tang of iron and smoke. Normally, the familiarity would’ve helped her breathe, but today it just felt like static in her ears.

Bram’s hammer struck his anvil in steady, rhythmic blows, the sound traveling across the room. “Took you long enough to get here,” he said, not looking up from his work. “We’re not running a charity, you know.”

Jinx didn’t bother with a reply. She grabbed a piece of steel from the pile and slid it into the furnace, the metal hissing as the flames crawled over the surface of the bar and linked at its edges until the metal turned a glowing orange. Her fingers flexed on the tongs, the rough handles digging into her palms as she watched the glow spread. If she wanted, she could look into the flames and see what this piece of metal could be. But her mind had never given her hands anything good to build, and she didn’t want to see what it offered her this time.

The heat from the furnace pressed into her skin, but the chill that rose in her chest wasn’t something that could thaw. She could see them too clearly, all the things she had made: jagged machines with teeth that tore through walls, triggers and barrels shaped from bolts and wire, bombs pieced together with her own hands so that they could blow up in the faces of others.

Jinx’s grip on the tongs slackened as the images formed in her mind, her lips pressing into a thin line with every new shape. Powder had never been able to make anything that worked. The machines she’d tried to build as a kid had been a mess of loose screws and dead motors, and no matter how hard she pushed, no matter how many times she took something apart and tried to put it back together, the pieces never fit, the spark never caught. Every single one of her creations were left empty and lifeless.

But Jinx’s hands were different. Everything she built—well, they made other things empty and lifeless.

The steel flared suddenly, and Jinx jolted as the heat licked at her knuckles. She yanked the metal from the furnace, dropping the hissing metal onto the anvil as she raised her hammer and brought it down on the bar.

Clang.

Jinx felt the miss before she saw it, the impact glancing off-center and throwing the metal out of line. She frowned, her lips pressing together as she repositioned the steel and tried again.

Clang.

“That’s sloppy,” Bram muttered, staring over her shoulder at the warped metal. He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been messing with that same piece for ten minutes.”

Jinx’s jaw tightened, but she didn’t look at him. “There’s nothing wrong,” she said.

Jinx adjusted her grip and struck again.

The shape was wrong, but she kept hitting it anyway, hoping it would mold itself into something passable. Her jaw clenched as she brought the hammer down a fourth time.

Bram grunted and stepped back, shaking his head. “Get yourself sorted, J,” he said over his shoulder as he returned to his anvil. “I’ve got enough work without cleaning up after your mistakes.”

Jinx stared at the warped steel, its edges bent at all the wrong angles. She sighed, replacing her hammer with the tongs and sliding it back into the furnace before resting her elbows on the bench as she waited for the flames to soften the metal. She should’ve scrapped it and started over, but fixing this one felt easier than beginning again, even if it wasn’t worth saving.

The thought came again, softer this time as it crept into the spaces left empty by the petricite.

Powder couldn’t make anything that worked .

Powder couldn’t hurt something if she tried.

Lux felt her spirits lift as the forge came into view and she exhaled as images of J flashed through her mind: the streak of pink in her hair, the tiny grin hanging from her lips, the tattoos winding up her lean arms, shifting across her skin every time J’s arms flexed.

The heat of the forge pressed against her as she pressed her hand against the door and Lux paused for a moment to gather herself before she pushed the door open and stepped inside. Her gaze swept the room until she spotted J at a workbench in the corner.

The sleeves of her shirt were shoved up, revealing her taut arms, slick with sweat and smudged with soot, and Lux’s lips curved upward at the sight. She adjusted the basket in her hands, filled with two wrapped sandwiches she’d picked up from the vendor down the street.

“Hey, J,” she called, stepping around a pile of metal leaning against the bench.

“Hey,” J muttered without looking up from her work.

Lux’s smile faltered. She moved closer, setting the basket down on a nearby stool. “I brought lunch. I thought we could eat together. You’ve been cooped up in here all day, right?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Lux frowned. There was something off in the way J moved, a dullness in her expression that Lux couldn’t ignore. “Are you feeling alright?” she asked softly.

J shrugged. “I’m fine.”

Lux took a step closer, and the words she’d been about to say caught in her throat as J finally turned toward her.

The vibrant pink of her eyes had fractured, revealing a muted, washed-out blue beneath. Fragments of pink still lingered, floating across her irises like petals drifting over a stream, but they were nothing more than flecks and it seemed only a matter of time before they vanished completely.

They weren’t the same eyes that hung in her mind every time she thought about J.

“What happened?” Lux asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

J blinked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Your eyes ,” Lux hissed. “What happened to them?” 

“Oh, those.” J shrugged as she turned back to her work. “I fixed them.”

“Fixed?” Lux echoed. “Why would you—” She stopped herself, swallowing hard. “How?”

J’s lips quirked, though the expression didn’t reach her eyes. “Does it matter? They’re better now.”

Lux’s throat tightened. “Yes, it matters. You’re—” She stopped again, searching for the right words. “You’re not yourself.”

“That’s kind of the point.”

Lux opened her mouth to respond, before thinking better of it. She glanced at Bram to check that his attention was still on his work before stepping closer. “Come outside with me. Just for a second.”

J’s hands stilled, and she glanced up at Lux. “Why?”

“Because I need to talk to you,” Lux said. “Privately.”

J’s eyes lingered on her for a moment before she sighed and set her tools down. “Alright.”

Bram’s eyes flicked toward them as J pushed herself to her feet but he made no effort to stop her from following Lux out the door.

The sounds of the city bled into the alley as they stepped outside. The sunlight slanted in from the street, illuminating J as she leaned against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest as she squeezed her fingers around her arms. Lux watched her for a moment, her stomach twisting as the sunlight pushed the shadows away from her face.

There should have been warmth in those eyes. Lux had seen them sparkle, but now they were glassy, the emotion fogged over and flat. Lux searched for some remnant of the life in them—just a single flicker—but everywhere she looked held the same muted dreariness as the rest of J’s expression. A cold dread pooled in her stomach, rising to press against her lungs the longer she stared at J’s eyes. She didn’t want to give a name to what she thought was staring back at her. Speaking it would make it real, it would mean that Lux couldn’t pretend it was anything else.

But she couldn’t ignore it, either.

“You’re taking petricite.”

J stiffened, her fingers curling tighter against her arms.

“You are ,” Lux breathed. She stepped closer, her brow furrowing. “Why, J? What are you trying to—” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “What are you trying to stop?”

J shifted, lowering her head as she refused to meet Lux’s eyes. “It’s not a big deal,” she muttered. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It is a big deal,” Lux pressed. She took another step closer to J, close enough that she could cup the girl’s chin in her hand if she wanted to. “Look, if this is about—if you’re a mage —it’s okay. I’m not going to judge you.” Her words tumbled out quickly, catching over themselves as she tried to assure J. “Is that what this is about? Is that why you’re taking it?”

J tucked her chin as she stared at the floor. “It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s about making it stop,” she murmured, slumping further into the wall. “All of it. The noise, the thoughts, the voices—everything. The petricite works. It makes it all go away.”

Her fingers twitched, curling into her palms before going slack again as she finally met Lux’s eyes. “Isn’t that enough?”

Lux’s heart ached at the rawness in her voice. “J,” she said gently. “You can’t just cut parts of yourself out. That’s not going to solve anything.”

“Why not?” J snapped, lifting her head to face her fully now, her eyes flinty. “Those parts shouldn’t be here in the first place. I shouldn’t be here in the first place!”

Lux fought back a wince. She could almost feel her own heart bleeding from the harshness in J’s voice.

“Don’t stand there pretending like you understand,” J spat. “You’re perfect, Lux. You don’t know what it’s like to be broken.”

Lux tensed. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard someone call her perfect—she’d spent years building that illusion, holding it up like a shield to deflect any scrutiny levied against her. It had never felt as heavy as it did now, wedged between the two of them.

“I’m not perfect,” Lux said, the words trembling as they left her mouth.

“Oh, yeah?” J scoffed. “What’s so wrong with you? Because I can’t see a single thing.”

A dozen memories crashed over Lux. Failing to control her magic as a child, the fear in her father’s eyes when he first saw the light seeping from her hands, the way he’d gripped her shoulders and made her swear to never show it to anyone, the endless lies she needed to live in order to keep her family’s name intact. Her hands twitched at her sides as she fought against the urge to throw those all away and tell J the truth. The words were on the tip of her tongue. I’m a mage. I know what it’s like. I know.

She couldn’t push them past her lips.

Lux could feel J’s gaze boring into her, waiting for Lux to say something, but if she told J what she was, everything would unravel. The Crownguard name, her family’s reputation, all of it would come crashing down. Not even J would be safe. The Mageseekers would come for her the moment Lux was out of the picture. She needed Lux’s shield more than anyone.

J’s shoulders sagged, her fists tightening at her sides. “That’s what I thought,” she muttered. “You can’t even think of a single thing that you’d change about yourself.”

Lux took a small step forward, her throat tight. “That’s not—”

“Don’t.” J crossed her arms over her chest as she turned her face away, her hair falling in uneven strands over her eyes. “You don’t get it. You don’t know what it’s like to want it all gone so bad that you’d tear yourself apart just to get a minute of peace.”

Lux reached out and rested her hand lightly on J’s arm, her heart pounding so loudly that she thought J might hear it. J froze, her entire body going rigid as Lux squeezed her arm, feeling the coil of muscle beneath her fingertips.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lux said softly, her thumb tracing circles over J’s skin. “Whatever you think is wrong with you—it doesn’t matter to me.”

J stiffened further, her entire body taut beneath Lux’s hand. Lux could feel the tension thrumming through her, the way J seemed poised to retreat at the slightest misstep. She reminded her of a wounded animal, and the thought made Lux’s chest ache. All she wanted was to wrap J in her arms, to hold her tightly and tell her that it would be okay, that she would protect her from whatever weight she was carrying. But J wouldn’t respond to that. She needed a gentler approach.

J’s eyes darkened, her breath quickening as Lux traced slow circles over her skin, and Lux fought against the urge to cup J's face in her hands, to smooth away the pain written into every line of her expression and bring back the girl she knew was underneath it all. The tension softened beneath her fingers, J’s shoulders dropping as she let herself lean into Lux’s touch. Lux shifted closer. J felt so fragile, as if she would fracture if Lux pressed any harder against her, and Lux felt her heartstrings pull as she slid her hand up J’s arm. “None of it changes who you are,” she murmured.

The moment shattered.

J jerked away from her as if she’d been burned. “Don’t,” she hissed, her arms, wrapping around herself as she pulled away from Lux. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I do,” Lux said quickly, stepping forward as her hand reached out again. “I do. I promise, I—”

“No, you don’t!” J interrupted. Her voice trembled with something Lux couldn’t name. She shook her head violently and backed away from Lux. “If you stay, you’ll get hurt. Just like everyone else.”

“J—”

“I’m a Jinx!” she shouted. “Don’t you get it? Everything I touch, everyone I care about—it all falls apart because of me. That’s who I am. That’s all I am!”

Lux took a step forward. “That’s not true. You’re not—”

“I am!” J shouted again, cutting her off. Her fists clenched at her sides, and her voice broke as she continued, her words echoing off the alley walls. “I ruin everything! Everything!”

J’s breathing was ragged, her eyes darting around the alley as her entire body trembled with the weight of the moment.

And then, she turned.

“No!” Lux reached for her.

But J was already gone, her footsteps ringing against the cobblestones as she vanished into the shadows before Lux could even move.

Lux stood frozen, her hand still half-raised, barely able to comprehend that J had left. A hollow weight settled beneath her ribs as she stared at the spot where J had been, as if this were all a trick, and that J would come back if only she waited long enough.

She can’t just be gone.

But J didn’t come back. Lux was alone.

Her hand fell to her side, and Lux swallowed past the lump in her throat, staring out the alley in the direction J had vanished. She’d been so close to reaching her, but something had set J off. Lux didn’t know what had made her flinch like that or who had made J believe those things about herself.

But if she ever found out—

Her fists clenched. They wouldn’t have to worry about J ruining them.

The room was dim, shadows pooling in the corners as they stared back at her with accusing eyes. The faint hum of the city barely registered in Jinx’s ears as she sat hunched over her desk, her eyes fixed on the jar of petricite.

Lux’s words echoed in her mind, threading through the murmur of voices that had begun creeping back into her head.

"None of it changes who you are."

Jinx’s jaw tightened. Her hands curled into fists against the desk. The words repeated themselves as they twisted into voices she recognized. 

"None of it changes who you are," Vi snapped. "You think anything’s different now? You’re still the same Jinx who ruins everything. You always have been."

"None of it changes who you are," Mylo jeered. "You’re just a stupid little girl who killed her family and thinks she can pretend it didn’t happen."

Jinx flinched, her eyes narrowing at the jar. She could almost see their faces in the reflection.

"This is who you are," Sevika’s voice rasped in her head. "A walking disaster. No amount of petricite will fix that."

"You’re a ticking time bomb," Vi spat. "No one’s safe around you, Jinx. You destroy everything you touch."

"You’re not worth saving," Sevika hissed, and Jinx could see the hate in her eyes. "Anyone who gets close to you ends up dead. Just like Silco."

Jinx pressed her palms against her ears, trying to drown them out, but the voices only grew louder.

"None of it changes who you are," Vi snarled again. "You’re still Jinx. You’ll always be Jinx."

“Shut up,” Jinx growled. She slammed her fists against the desk hard enough to rattle the jar, but the voices only laughed in cruel unison.

"She’s right," Sevika sneered. "You’re nothing but a liability—a problem waiting to explode."

Jinx’s breathing turned ragged, her hands trembling as they pressed against her ears. But it didn’t help. The voices didn’t stop.

“You’re a Jinx,” Mylo whispered in her ear. “And no one will ever forget that."

Jinx’s gaze locked on the jar, the faint shimmer of the petricite catching the dim light. Her hands shook as she reached for it. When the powder touched her tongue, the world folded inward, numbness spreading through her veins. The voices dulled, but it wasn’t enough. She swallowed another pinch and the room blurred, its edges slipping away as the cloying haze seeped into her mind, filling the cracks until everything was paved over with silence.

She leaned back in her chair, her arms falling limply to her sides as the tangle of emotions that had clawed at her chest dissolved into nothingness. The numbness settled over her like a weight, pressing into every corner of her mind and seeping underneath her skin until it became the only thing that existed.

Chapter Text

Lux sat cross-legged on the mat at the center of her chambers, her hands resting on her knees as the candles flickered around her, casting uneven shadows that stretched and twisted along the walls. She had intended to meditate, but her thoughts were scrambled, bouncing between the walls of her skull like so many fireflies trapped in a jar. She sighed and let her posture sag slightly before rising as she began to pace the width of her room. 

J’s face swam in her mind again, each word from their last encounter cutting deeper the longer she dwelled on it. Lux had replayed that moment endlessly, searching for something she could have said that would have made J stay, but no matter how she reshaped it, she could never stop J from leaving.

She’d tried to talk to J, but the girl was avoiding her. Two days ago, she’d caught J ducking into an alleyway and rushed after her, but when she turned into the alley, J had vanished so completely that Lux questioned whether she’d even seen her in the first place. Yesterday, it had happened again as Lux paced the streets in search of her. Lux had followed J further that time but again melted into the shadows without a trace. Lux didn’t know how or why J had become so astute at slipping away, but it left a sour taste in her mouth. J wasn’t supposed to be hiding from her.

She crossed to the window. Her pale reflection stared back at her, looking closer to her true feelings than the bright and polished mask she showed the world. Her hands tightened against the window frame. J wasn’t the first person Lux had seen at the edge of losing themselves. There was no shortage of those stories among the Mageseekers.

J’s face flashed in her mind again, but this time it was blank, lifeless, her eyes as cold as marbles as they rolled lazily in her head. The sight made Lux’s chest constrict, and she let out a soft curse under her breath as she pressed her forehead against the glass. No. She’s not going to end up like that. I won’t let her.

Lux closed her eyes. She had grown up surrounded by petricite, taught to revere it as the great equalizer, as Demacia’s last shield against the corruption of magic. But Lux had seen what it did to people. Petricite didn’t stop at magic. It reached deeper, hollowing out everything it touched until nothing remained but a lifeless husk devoid of any vitality. That was the true equalizer. All of a person’s magic in exchange for everything that made them who they were.

The memory of a boy surfaced in her mind, his wrists bound as he stood at the center of the Mageseekers’ council chamber. She had been young, barely a teenager, but her uncle had insisted that she pay witness to the trial. The boy couldn’t have been much older than her, not when he looked so small standing there with his wrists shackled in cuffs so large they enveloped his hands. He kept his head low, but his eyes were desperate as they darted to the council above, then to the guards at his side before returning to the stone floor beneath his feet, his shoulder trembling as he bit back sobs.

If the Mageseekers noticed his despair, they were unfeeling to it.

“Magic may seem harmless in its infancy,” Eldred said, staring someplace above the boy’s head. “But it is always waiting, biding its time for the moment that it will finally be free to rot everything it touches.”

Lux had sat among the audience, hands folded in her lap, her posture rigid as her uncle gave his speech. She had wanted to believe him, but as she’d watched the boy tremble in front of them, tears streaking down his face, she hadn’t been able to reconcile her uncle’s words with the scene before her. The boy hadn’t looked corrupted. He didn’t seem like an agent of chaos, waiting to destroy Demacia’s purity. He looked like a boy. A scared, little boy with nobody to shield him against the Mageseekers’ scrutiny.

Lux hadn’t been able to stop it. She hadn’t even tried. She’d stayed silent as the guards led him away, his cries echoing in the silence left behind, and as she sat there, her heart pounding in her chest, she couldn’t stop the thought that clawed at her mind—what made him any different from her?

She had magic, too. It hummed beneath her skin, a constant threat waiting to be unleashed. But no one had ever dragged her into the council chamber. No one had bound her in petricite or condemned her as a blight to everything Demacia stood for. Was it because she’d hidden it better? Because she was a Crownguard and her family’s name shielded her from the Mageseekers’ attention? Or was it merely luck, complete chance that nobody had witnessed the magic seeping from her before she’d learned to stop it in her veins?

It wasn’t just the difference in their circumstances that haunted her.

Another question had stayed with her, lingering at the back of her mind. What if I am corrupted? Every time her magic sparked to life, every time she felt it surge through her as it slipped her restraint, a part of her wondered if Eldred had been right. If magic was truly as dangerous as her uncle claimed, how long would it be before it turned on her? Maybe the boy hadn’t been different after all. Maybe the only difference between them was time.

Lux shook her head. It didn’t matter. Whatever the truth of her magic, she couldn’t let herself spiral. The boy had been doomed the moment he was born, his fate decided before he had a chance to prove himself. But J wasn’t like him. She didn’t have magic. She shouldn’t have been taking petricite in the first place.

Lux had seen enough hollowed-out expressions and dulled eyes to know that petricite wasn’t the cure the Mageseekers proclaimed it to be. It didn’t just suppress magic. J was using it to quiet whatever ghosts lurked inside her, either not realizing or not caring that it was stripping away more than just their voices. Every time she reached for it, every time she tried to bury herself beneath its weight, she was erasing pieces of herself that she may never get back. Lux couldn’t stand by and watch that happen. She would not let that happen. J wasn’t just another lost cause. She was hers , and Lux would be damned if she let J fade into nothingness.

Her fingers curled into fists at her sides. “You’re not slipping away from me,” she murmured to herself. She turned from the window. Tomorrow, she would find her. She would look in every shadow and chase her through every back alley in High Silvermere if she had to. She would bring J back, even if it meant dragging her, kicking and screaming.

Because once she got ahold of her, she wasn’t letting go.

The jar sat empty on the corner of her desk. Its surface caught the evening light, throwing jagged shadows across the wall. The longer she stared at it, the more the shapes seemed to take form, coalescing into familiar faces that whispered in her ears.

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the noise to stop, but they sat inside her skull, bloated and raw like a festering boil waiting to burst. The petricite was supposed to give her control, it was supposed to quiet everything that made her feel like she was unraveling, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough. The voices itched at her, their words overlapping until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began.

Jinx snatched the jar in her hands and shoved herself away from the desk, her chair scraping loudly against the floor as she began pacing.

Her supply was gone. Bram had finished the order early, clearing the petricite from the forge and leaving her with nothing. She couldn’t stop thinking about the way his eyes had lingered on her the last few days. Did he know? She’d been careful, only taking enough for a few days at a time, but there was always the chance that she’d missed something, that she’d been clumsy in her desperation or had failed to hide the signs of what she’d been doing to herself. After all, if Lux only needed a single look to tell that something was off—

No, she shook her head. You’re not thinking of Lux.

Every time she let that girl into her mind, she felt needles piercing her, their venom coursing through her veins, forcing her to remember Lux’s broken expression as she reached out for her, to hear the pain in her voice as she pleaded with Jinx to let her in and make her understand.

Lux didn’t know what she was asking for.

She was too good to dirty herself with even a little of Jinx’s baggage. If she got what she asked for, she’d be crushed beneath it like everyone else who thought they could help her.

Jinx’s hand tightened around the jar before hurling it across the room. The glass exploded against the wall, shards scattering to the floor.

“Pretending to be Vi now that Powder’s all gone?” Mylo sneered in her ear. “Or are you just throwing another tantrum? You better watch out, or before you end up killing someone else, Jinx.”

Her reflection in the mirror across the room caught her eye, and she stared at it in an attempt to ignore Mylo’s voice. Her hair was a tangled mess, and her skin was so thin that her tattoos seemed to jut against it. She could almost imagine Lux’s fingers running along them, her thumb catching on the ridges as—

You’re doing it again.

Her eyes glared back at her, their pink hue as sickly as the poison she knew was running through her veins.

The sight reminded her of the shimmer addicts in the Lanes, with their sunken faces and twitching hands, begging for another dose to keep the world from swallowing them whole. She’d used to scoff at their suffering. They were the only ones to blame for their misery.

But now, staring at herself, she couldn’t deny the resemblance.

“This is different,” she muttered at the person staring back at her in the mirror. “I didn’t choose this.”

She hadn’t asked for the people she’d killed to haunt her. She hadn’t asked for their constant presence in the back of her head. She’d been forced to survive by tearing herself apart, piece by jagged piece. The petricite kept her going, it was the only thing holding her together. 

The lie had barely settled in her mind before she grabbed her coat and slung it over her shoulders, her legs carrying her toward the door. She didn’t have time to second-guess herself. There had to be someone in the city willing to sell her petricite. There were always people willing to prey on the desperation of others, no matter where you were in the world. Demacia was no different.

She was right.

She’d only walked a handful of streets before coming across an apothecary tucked into a quiet corner of the city, its narrow doorway barely noticeable between a pair of worn-down shops. Jinx hesitated in the doorway before she forced herself to step inside. The room was dim, the only light coming from lanterns set into alcoves along the walls, casting long, flickering shadows across shelves lined with bottles and vials filled with unknown concoctions and mixtures. She took another step forward, her feet soundless against the worn wooden floor as she approached the nearest shelf.

“Can I help you?”

A man stood behind the counter. Her pulse kicked up, but she forced herself to face him, debating with herself for only an instant before speaking. “I’m looking for petricite.”

His expression didn’t change, but there was a shift in the air, a tension hanging over them that hadn’t been there before.

“Petricite,” he repeated slowly. “That’s an unusual request.” He leaned his elbows on the counter, his eyes appraising her. “Do you know what petricite is used for?”

Jinx’s fingers twitched. “Do you have it or not?”

The apothecarist studied her for a moment longer before stepping away from the counter and moving to a set of drawers near the back wall. He pulled a key from his belt and unlocked it before withdrawing a nondescript wooden box. When he returned to the counter, he set the box down, keeping one hand on the lid. “You’re sure you know what you’re asking for?” he asked.

Jinx’s jaw tightened. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Petricite isn’t harmless,” he said. “It silences magic, yes, but that is not all. You are aware of the risks involved with this?”

“I know what it does,” she snapped. “I didn’t come here for a lecture.”

“Of course,” he nodded. “Just making sure you understand the risks.” He opened the box and plucked a single packet from within. “Though I suppose for someone like you, risk is a rather relative term.”

Jinx snatched the packet from his hand and tossed a handful of coins onto the counter. She didn’t look back as she pushed the door open to leave. He wanted to talk about harm? Jinx hoped that he never had to understand that she wasn’t as harmless as she looked. Too many people had died from that mistake.

“Come back if you need more,” he called after her.

The city moved around her in a slow blur as she stepped into the street, lanterns flickering against cobblestones. Footsteps echoed somewhere nearby, but she didn’t look up. Her fingers curled tighter around the packet, her pulse still running too fast, too loud. The itch in her skull was clawing at her again, pushing under her skin, scraping at her thoughts, making the world feel too sharp at the edges.

She almost tore the packet open right there.

You can wait, she thought, squeezing the petricite between her fingers. You’re not that much of a junkie that you’ve resorted to taking pop rocks on the side of the street.

Just get to your room, she said, taking a step onto the street. Then you can let yourself go.

She made it less than a dozen steps before a hand closed around her arm.

Jinx’s instincts flared, and she spun around, jerking her arm free as she pivoted, her muscles tensing beneath her, fingers curling into claws at her side—and then she stopped, her mind tripping over itself as it failed to make sense of what she was seeing.

It had been years since someone had managed to get the drop on her—that time with Smeech didn’t count. She had other things on her mind. LIke the fact that her sister had joined up with the Pilties to assassinate her—but this was different. Lux had no right sneaking up on her. Not when she walked around like some kind of human lighthouse with her golden hair and sunny smile. She had no right sneaking up on Jinx.

“How the hell did you—” 

“What are you doing here?” Lux’s voice carried an edge Jinx hadn’t thought possible coming from her mouth. Lux’s eyes dropped to the packet in her hand before snapping back up to meet her gaze. “Is that what I think it is?”

Jinx took a step back and forced herself to shrug. “Depends what you think it is,” she said.

“Don’t deflect, J,” she said. “What is it?”

She forced a smile onto her face. “Wow, straight to the interrogation,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “You could at least pretend you’re happy to see me.”

“ J. ”

“How long have you been following me?” she returned. “Seriously, Lux, the way you keep running into me, it’s like—”

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Lux asked as she took a step closer.

I’m not—” she started, her voice faltered before she could finish the sentence. She cleared her throat and tried again. “It’s not like I’m doing anything dangerous. It’s just… it helps. That’s all.”

Lux’s expression thawed, but the determination in her gaze didn’t abate. “It doesn’t help, J,” she said. “It takes. It always takes more than it gives.”

Something smoldered in her chest. “What do you want from me, Lux?” she snapped. “You’re not my babysitter. I’m fine. I don’t need—”

“You’re not fine,” Lux interrupted. Before Jinx could argue, Lux grabbed her arm again. “Come on,” she said firmly.

“Hey!” Jinx stumbled as Lux dragged her forward. “What—where are we going?” 

“Back to your room,” Lux answered. “We’re going to talk about this, whether you like it or not.”

“This is ridiculous,” Jinx muttered. She tried to wrench her arm out of Lux’s grasp, but Lux only tightened her hold. “Let go of me!”

“No.”

Jinx groaned, her frustration spilling over as Lux pulled her along. “You can’t just haul me around like this!”

“I can, and I am.”

“You’re insane,” Jinx muttered under her breath, nearly tripping when Lux gave another tug.

“Maybe,” Lux returned without pausing.

“This isn’t necessary,” Jinx tried. “I’m fine. You don’t need to—”

“You’re not fine,” Lux interrupted.

Jinx huffed. “Okay, so maybe I’m not fine,” she said. “But dragging me through the streets isn’t exactly helping!”

“I wouldn’t have to drag you if you didn’t run away every time you saw me.”

Jinx threw her head back dramatically. “You’re so stubborn. Can you, like, not get your way for once in your life?”

Lux raised an eyebrow. “ I’m the stubborn one?”

“ Yes! ”

Lux huffed but didn’t answer, the street falling quiet except for the sound of their boots against the stones. Jinx kept her eyes forward, her lips pressed into a thin line as she tried to come up with something—anything—that would get Lux to leave. But every argument that came to mind fell apart before she could say it. She tried to pull away again. “Let go,” Jinx said, her voice low.

“I already told you, J, I’m not letting you go.”

Jinx’s frustration bubbled over, and she shoved at Lux’s shoulder with her free hand. “Damn it, Lux, let go of me!”

Lux didn’t budge. She grabbed Jinx’s other arm and pulled her around so they were face-to-face. “Not until you listen,” she said firmly.

“Why do you even care?” Jinx snapped. She jerked against Lux’s hold, her teeth gnashing together.

“Because you are evidently incapable of taking care of yourself.” Lux’s expression softened, and she let out a slow breath. “I’ve seen what petricite does, J. You can’t keep doing this. I’m not going to let you destroy yourself.”

“I’ve always had a thing for destruction.”

“ J. ”

Jinx glared at Lux. “Fine,” she muttered when Lux failed to let her go. “Let’s go sit up and talk about my feelings. ”

She turned away from Lux to stare at the ground. “Stupid stubborn princess,” she muttered beneath her breath.

The door clicked shut, sealing the tension inside the room like the lid of a pressure cooker. Jinx stalked over to her desk, tossing the petricite onto the surface before turning around to lean against it.

“Alright,” she said. “You dragged me here. Now what? Is it time for you to give me some speech about how I need to ‘get it together’?”

Lux crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not here to tear you down, J.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” Jinx laughed, her grin twisting. “You’re just trying to make yourself feel better, and you think that trying to fix someone like me will do that. But guess what, you can’t! No one can.”

Everyone who tried to save her only got themselves killed. Jinx winced as their faces flashed through her mind, each one looking at her with a tenderness she didn’t deserve. Not when she was the reason they died in the first place.

“That’s not what this is,” Lux said. She took a step forward. “I’m not trying to fix you, J, but you need to stop pretending you’re fine when you’re not.”

“I’m not pretending anything!” Jinx barked. “I know I’m screwed up, okay? I know that better than anyone.”

“Then why are you doing this to yourself?” 

“Because I don’t have a choice!” The words burst from her mouth before she could stop them. “You don’t want to know what it’s like to hear them, Lux. Reminding me every single day of how I’m always the reason everything goes to hell!”

Lux opened her mouth to respond, but Jinx barreled on.

“You don’t hear them, Lux,” she repeated, her tone shifting from anger to something fragile. “You don’t hear Mylo reminding me every second of how useless I was. Or Vi—” Her voice cracked as she stumbled over the name. “Telling me how I’m not her sister anymore. How I’m just broken, that nobody wants me. Or—”

Her breath hitched, and she clutched at her head as Silco’s voice came to life in her mind. “You’ll never be anything but Jinx. And that’s okay, because that’s all the world will let you be.”

“Shut up!” she snarled.

Lux froze, her brows knitting. “What?”

Jinx dug her fingers into her scalp as more voices joined the cacophony.“Not you ,” she said, glancing at Lux.

“ Not you,” Mylo mocked. “It’s never you, is it?”

“Just shut up!”

Lux took a step closer, her arms reaching for her. “J, what’s going on?”

“See Jinx, I told you that you’d mess this up.”

Jinx stumbled back. “I said shut up!” she screamed. Her knees buckled, and she hit the floor hard, curling in on herself as the weight of it all crushed against her. There, lingering in the shadows, Mylo’s face loomed. Vi followed, her expression cold as she glared at Jinx from over her turned shoulder. More faces began to emerge from the shadows. Faces she’d never had names for. A young man, his skin burned from one of her explosions as he lay among the rubble. A girl with blank, lifeless eyes, her lips dripping blood onto a discarded mask as her body slumped in the gutter.

“Stop it,” Jinx whimpered.

Lux was beside her in an instant. “J,” she said softly, despite the panic flickering in her eyes.

“They won’t stop.” Her fingers clawed against her scalp. “They’re always there.”

“Who?” Lux asked gently.

“They’re dead,” Jinx whispered. “But they don’t go away.”

Her eyes darted around the room frantically, as though searching for a way to escape the ghosts circling her mind. Her breaths came faster as they pressed closer, their voices snapping at her like a pack of hyenas. It was too much. Every time she thought she’d finally drowned them out, they returned to lurk under the surface, waiting to remind her that she didn’t deserve to be the one still alive, that she should have been the one to go.

“Look at me,” Lux said, and Jinx jolted as Lux’s hands settled on her shoulders. “Focus on me, J. You’re here. Just listen to my voice.”

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” Lux said firmly. “You’re not alone. You’re here with me. Just breathe.”

Jinx’s hands trembled as they slipped from the knots she’d twisted into her hair. Her breath hitched, but she cracked her eyes open, her gaze darting to Lux’s face. Everything else—the walls, the room, even the tension in Jinx’s chest—fell away as she focused entirely on the details of Lux’s face.

Her hair gleamed in the dim light, the honeyed strands falling in soft waves across her face. Her eyes were clear, their blue deep enough that Jinx felt like she could fall into them and never reach the bottom. Dark lashes rimmed their edges, casting faint shadows on her cheeks with every blink. A handful of freckles were smattered across her skin, so faint that Jinx could hardly see them. She traced the delicate slope of her nose, the curve of her jawline, the soft dip where her lips parted as she exhaled.

“That’s it,” Lux soothed, her thumbs brushing away the tears Jinx hadn’t realized were there. “Just breathe with me. One breath at a time.”

Jinx tried, her chest hitching with uneven breaths as she stared into Lux’s eyes.

“There you are,” Lux said, offering a faint smile. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

Jinx let out a shuddering breath, the tension draining from her shoulders. She sagged forward, her head resting against Lux’s shoulder as Lux wrapped her arms around her in a soft embrace. Jinx’s cheek pressed into the fabric of Lux’s tunic. She could feel the steady rise of Lux’s chest as she breathed, slow and steady. Jinx tried to match it, but her own lungs felt like they’d been ripped to shreds, and every breath she took cut through her in an uneven tremor. But she forced herself to try. For Lux’s sake, if for nothing else.

“You’re here,” Lux murmured, her fingers carding through Jinx’s hair. “I’ve got you.”

After her breath steadied, Jinx pulled back enough to sit upright, wiping at her face with the heel of her hand. Her gaze drifted to Lux, and she grimaced. “Gods,” she hiccupped. “I probably look like a wreck.”

“You’re not a wreck,” Lux replied. She brushed a strand of Jinx’s hair back from her face, the tip of her finger ghosting over her ear.

“Yeah, sure.” Jinx snorted. “Because puffy eyes and a face full of snot are so attractive.” She wiped her sleeve across her face. “You don’t have to lie, Lux. I know I look ugly.”

“You don’t,” Lux said. “You don’t need to say that about yourself.”

Jinx let out a short, bitter laugh. “Oh, come on. You’ve got to be crazier than me to think that—and I’m the one with voices in their head.”

“You’re not ugly,” Lux repeated.

Jinx stiffened as Lux cupped her face, stroking smooth circles beneath her cheek as she held her face in her hands. “What’re you—”

Lux leaned in and pressed a soft kiss where a tear had trailed down Jinx’s cheek. She angled Jinx’s face before kissing another tear near Jinx’s eye.

Jinx’s breath hitched, and she pulled back just enough to put a sliver of space between them. “You… shouldn’t do that,” she murmured.

Lux didn’t retreat. Her hands cradled Jinx’s face, their skin unbelievably soft. “Why not?”

Jinx swallowed hard. “Because I ruin everything,” she whispered. “That’s what I do, Lux. I hurt people. I don’t want that to happen to you.” Her hands curled into fists against her thighs. “I’d rather you just left. I’d rather you hate me than let me drag you down with me.”

Lux’s hands pressed against her more firmly as she shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere, J.”

Jinx’s chest ached with the weight of the words. Half of her wanted Lux to pull back, to make her see sense and save herself from the inevitable fallout. The other half wanted to grab hold of her and never let go.

“You’re an idiot,” she whispered.

They were so close, close enough that Jinx could feel the warmth of Lux’s breath against her skin. Slowly, hesitantly, she tilted her head, and her lips brushed against Lux’s in a whisper of contact.

The second their lips met, Jinx panicked. What if this was a mistake? What if all Jinx saw when she opened her eyes was disgust? What if she never saw Lux smile at her again? She trembled, her body shuddering as she forced herself to be the one to pull away from the warm softness of Lux’s lips—except, before she could, Lux’s hands slipped into her hair, holding her in place as she leaned in, molding their lips together. Jinx trembled, but Lux only held her closer as she deepened the kiss, as if to remind her that this was real, this was happening, and she wasn’t going anywhere. Jinx succumbed to the warmth. Her hands fell to Lux’s waist, and the girl scooted closer to her until their bodies fit against one another, more perfect than anything Jinx could have ever crafted.

“You’re not letting go, are you?” Jinx asked when they finally parted, her voice coming out in a raw, unsteady whisper.

Lux rested her hand against Jinx’s cheek, her thumb brushed over her skin as the other dropped to her waist, her fingers wrapping around Jinx’s hip. “I’m not going to let go,” she promised.

Jinx stared at the ceiling as she lay in her bed. She should have been asleep. The exhaustion pulling at her said as much, but her thoughts wouldn’t quiet. Not tonight. Not with everything still gnawing at the edges of her mind.

Lux was curled against her side. Her head rested on Jinx’s shoulder as her breath puffed against her collarbone, and her hair spilled across the pillow, turned golden by the faint light of the lanterns slipping through her window as one of her arms draped itself over her waist, her fingers curling into the fabric of her shirt, as if even in sleep she was afraid to let go. 

Looking at her made Jinx’s heart constrict inside her chest.

Lux shouldn’t have been here. She shouldn’t have stayed. It wasn’t right—not for her. Jinx wasn’t someone to hold onto. She wasn’t someone to care about. She didn’t deserve this. Lux’s kindness, her steadiness, the way she looked at Jinx like she was someone worth saving. It wasn’t meant for her. And yet, the thought of losing it, of losing her, was enough to send a wave of panic crashing through her.

Jinx’s throat tightened, and she looked away. Her lips pressed into a thin line. She knew how this story ended. She always ruined things. Always . It was only a matter of time before this followed the same path.

The shadows in the room seemed to stretch, the edges of her vision warping with the same familiar shapes. Mylo. Claggor. Silhouettes of others, nameless and forgotten to everyone but her.

Their voices began to creep in under the floorboards of her mind, clawing their way through the cracks. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned toward Lux. She clutched at her tunic as she buried her face into the crook of her neck. The soft scent of her filled Jinx’s senses, and she pressed closer, desperate to lose herself in it.

Lux stirred, and her arms tightened around Jinx instinctively, pulling her closer even in sleep.

Jinx let out a shaky breath as the voices dulled, retreating to the edges of her mind where they lingered in long shadows, waiting for their next opportunity to strike. Jinx ignored them, laying her head against Lux’s chest and letting the steady thrum of her heart lull her back to sleep. This was real. Lux was real. And she said she wasn’t going to let her go.

“The cycle is over,” Jinx whispered. “I walked away. I walked away from all of it.”

The chaos of her old life, the endless loop of death and destruction—it was in her past now. She wasn’t Jinx anymore. She wasn’t a grenade waiting to explode. The cycle had run its course; she’d left it all behind.

“I’m not Jinx anymore,” she whispered into the dark, her voice firmer this time. “I left her in Piltover. I’m just J now. Everything else is gone.”

Lux’s arms stayed firm around her, the warmth of her body anchoring Jinx to the moment. She let out a long breath as her body sank deeper into Lux’s embrace. Her eyes fluttered closed, and as her breathing slowed, she settled into the fragile peace she didn’t think she’d ever deserve.

Chapter Text

Lux’s thoughts churned as she replayed the events of the night before. She swore she could still feel the warmth of J’s body pressed against hers, the heat of J’s breath on her skin, the way her body fit against hers, the weight of her head resting on Lux’s chest as her arm draped over Lux’s waist.

She hadn’t planned to stay the night, but J had been trembling, hands fisted in Lux’s tunic like she was the only thing anchoring her to the world, and Lux hadn’t known what to do with that. So she’d done the only thing that made sense and wrapped her arms around J as he pulled her close enough to shield her from the ghosts that clung to her.

She hadn’t meant to kiss her. That hadn’t been the plan. Lux had only wanted to steady her, to remind her she wasn’t alone. But then J had leaned in, her lips brushing against Lux’s own, and her body moved to return the kiss before her mind could catch up.

When J finally pulled back, her cheeks were streaked with tears, her expression raw and vulnerable in a way that made Lux’s heart ache. Without a word, she guided J to the bed, laying beside her as J curled into the space Lux made for her. Her fingers drifted into J’s hair as she lay there, the minutes stretching into hours until, finally, Lux peered down at her and saw how sleep had smoothed out the edges of her face. She traced a path along J’s cheek before setting her hand on her waist and placing a final kiss on her temple before drifting off to sleep herself.

When dawn broke, J had burrowed closer, her head nestled into the crook of Lux’s shoulder as her hair splayed over the both of them. Lux’s breath hitched at the sight of J so at peace. The memory of their kiss flared in her mind, and her face warmed as she felt the heat of J’s body radiating between her arms.

A soft mumble pulled her from her thoughts, and J stirred, her brow furrowing as she blinked herself awake. For a moment, her eyes were unfocused, her expression caught somewhere between sleep and awareness. Then she glanced up at Lux, her eyes brighter than the dawn light seeping into the room.

“Morning,” J said, her voice rough with sleep.

Lux opened her mouth, but the words tangled somewhere between her brain and her tongue as she stared into J’s eyes.

“Hi—um, good morning,” she finally managed, her cheeks burning.

J chuckled softly, the sound vibrating against Lux. J stretched against her, their bodies rubbing together as J’s head left her shoulder. “You always this eloquent in the morning, Blondie?”

Lux’s blush deepened, and she scrambled for a response, but J’s grin softened before she could find one. She reached out, brushing a strand of golden hair away from Lux’s face. The gesture was so uncharacteristically tender that Lux froze, her breath catching in her throat.

“Thanks,” J murmured, her voice quieter now. “For staying. I... I didn’t think you would.”

Lux reached out and squeezed J’s hand. “Nothing would have made me leave.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Lux’s gaze flicked to J’s lips, and before she could stop herself, she leaned in.

The kiss was soft at first, as if they were both testing the edges of something fragile. But then J’s hand slid to the back of Lux’s neck, pulling her closer, and the kiss deepened, J’s mouth moving against hers with a quiet intensity while Lux’s heart hammered in her chest, her mind a whirl of thoughts she couldn’t hold onto as she felt herself melting into the kiss, the world fading away until there was nothing but J and the feeling of her lips against Lux’s skin.

J’s hands left her hair, trailing down her arms before settling at her waist. She pulled Lux closer until she was on top of her, the two of them fitting together seamlessly. Lux, with her knees pressed against J’s hips, and J, one hand nestled at her waist while the other grazed the column of her neck. Lux gasped as J’s tongue flickered against her lips, and—

“Luxanna.”

The warmth of the memory snapped away, and the chamber around her came into focus all at once—the stone walls, the cold air, the Mageseekers seated around her on their raised dais.

It had taken all of her resolve to pull herself from J’s bed and even more to extricate herself from J’s arms.

“I have to go,” she’d said, scrambling off of J as she pulled herself from the sheets. She urged her mind to work, but her thoughts refused to align, scattering uselessly as she struggled to think of anything beyond the press of J’s lips, her hands, her—

“There’s a meeting. I have to give a report. They’re expecting me, and—”

J chuckled. “Relax, Lux,” she said, running her tongue over her lips. Lux flushed again as she realized it was her J was tasting. “I get it. Don’t feel bad because you’ve got your big fancy noble life and all the doodads that go along with it.”

Lux winced, guilt curling in her chest like a knot. She ran a hand through her hair as she glanced toward the mirror across the room. Her reflection stared back at her, disheveled and flushed. Normally, she would have taken time to prepare herself, to steel her nerves before a summons from the Mageseekers, as she carefully fastened every one of her secrets beneath her skin. Instead, she’d woken up in J’s bed.

“I really am sorry about this,” she’d said, running a hand through her hair. She winced as her finger snagged on a snarl of hair and tried to work it free, but the more she tugged, the more stubbornly the knot cinched against her scalp. If she had the time, she could have brushed the snarls into submission, but she was already running late as it was. She tugged harder, hoping the tension might magically make her hair fall into place, but it only made things worse. Lux watched in horror as loose strands sprang up at odd angles, giving her hair a wild, uneven look.

She caught sight of J watching her from the bed, her pink eyes sharp with amusement before swinging her legs onto the floor and padding over.

“Stop fussing,” she said as she stepped behind Lux, her bare feet silent against the worn floorboards. Her fingers wrapped around Lux’s wrist and pulled it away from her hair. “You’re just making it worse.”

Lux stiffened as J ran her fingers through her hair. “I—what are you doing?”

“Helping, obviously,” J answered. “Can’t let you leave looking like you lost a fight with a haystack.”

Lux blinked as J gathered her hair in her hands, her fingers working through the tangles with surprising care. Her touch was gentle, completely at odds with the rough drag of her calloused fingers that had skimmed over her skin only moments earlier. Lux closed her eyes, exhaling slowly as she let J’s fingers slip through her hair.

“There,” J said, letting the braid fall neatly down Lux’s back. Her fingers lingered for a moment at the nape of her neck before she stepped back, her pink eyes meeting Lux’s in the mirror.

“Thanks.” Lux stood, smoothing the folds of her tunic. Something warmed low in her stomach as she met J’s eyes. “I should go. They’re expecting me.”

J rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, go be important. I’m not going anywhere.”

The guilt gnawed at her again. J had no idea what her true role was or the contents of her report. If she did, she wouldn’t be looking at her like that, wouldn’t let her into her arms or press her lips against hers. Lux would never see that tenderness reflected in her eyes ever again. Whatever warmth she felt now would freeze over inside of her, refusing to ever thaw.

No, she thought. I won’t let that happen. I’ll show the Mageseekers that J isn’t a threat. And once they finally accept that…

Lux felt her cheeks flush at the thoughts that seeped into her mind. 

Before she could lose her courage, she leaned forward and pecked J on the lips before fleeing out the door, too scared of what would happen if she stayed to watch J’s reaction.

“You were summoned to report on the foreigner.”

Lux drew a steadying breath. She could still feel the ghost of J’s touch, the warmth of her lips lingering on hers, and she shoved the memory deep down, locking it away where they couldn’t see. Those were hers. No one else was allowed to have them.

“My observations remain unchanged,” she said. “There is no evidence that she is a mage or involved in any magical activity. She truly appears to have arrived in Demacia in search of a new home.”

Hesbeth leaned forward in his seat. “No evidence?” he repeated, his voice laced with skepticism. “We have a record of her purchasing petricite. Is that not evidence enough for you, or were you unaware of that detail?”

Lux didn’t blink at the accusation. She had expected this line of questioning ever since catching J leaving the apothecary. Petricite wasn’t just tracked. Every transaction was reported to the Mageseekers. Its availability served the singular purpose of ensuring that every whisper of magic led straight back to them. It wasn’t about protecting Demacia from magic. It was about control and ensuring that they were the ones to expunge any hint of magic from the kingdom. The suffering caused along the way meant nothing to them.

“I was aware of it, yes,” she answered. “She told me about the purchase herself. She suffers from traumatic experiences and believed the material could help quiet her mind.”

“An interesting choice for someone not of Demacia,” Hesbeth mocked. “A foreigner, unfamiliar with our ways, seeks out petricite with the belief that it will cure her troubled mind? How convenient.”

Lux clutched the folds of her cloak.“She’s not a mage. She bought the petricite for her mind, not to conceal anything. I’m certain that, had any of you observed her, you would have reached the same conclusion.”

“Your confidence is admirable, Lady Crownguard,” another Mageseeker offered. “But we’ve seen countless mages who fooled even their closest allies. You say she isn’t hiding anything. Could it be that you simply aren’t looking hard enough?”

Lux grit her teeth. “I am thorough in my observations,” she returned sharply. “She isn’t a mage. Her interest in petricite has nothing to do with the arcane.”

Wisteria spoke from her seat at Eldred’s right hand. “Petricite isn’t a remedy for restless minds, Lady Crownguard,” she reminded, her tone as cold as a gravestone. “It exists to repel magic. Those who seek it either fear magic or wish to conceal it. There is a reason we monitor the sale of it so closely. Why are you so resistant to the idea that she understands far more than she lets on?”

“I’ve spent time with her,” she returned. The press of J against her flashed through her mind, and Lux beat it back before it could show on her face. “If she knew the toll of petricite, she would have never sought it out.”

Wisteria frowned. “And what do you imagine the toll of petricite to be, Lady Crownguard?”

Lux fought to keep the scowl from her face. The Mageseekers believed it a cure. “Petricite doesn’t just suppress magic,” she said. “It kills the mind. It drains the will to live, to feel, to be anything other than a shadow of your previous self.”

The room stilled, some of the Mageseekers exchanging glances with one another. Lux didn’t dare turn her head to gauge their reactions, keeping her focus on her uncle as he watched her from his seat at the center of the chamber.

Did she overstep? A dozen possible responses ran through Lux’s mind, each more damning than the last. But there was no taking the words back. Lux kept her chin raised as the silence stretched, waiting for the Mageseekers to cast judgment on her as they’d done to countless others.

“Your defense of her is impassioned, Luxanna,” Eldred said as he finally broke his silence. “But passion does not equate to certainty. Petricite is not just a tool of survival. It is a sentinel against chaos. Its use must always be questioned.”

“She is no threat to Demacia,” Lux replied, her voice quieter now but no less resolute. “I am certain of that.”

Eldred’s gaze lingered on her for a moment before he bowed his head. “I believe that is enough. You are dismissed. But remember, Luxanna—our vigilance ensures Demacia’s safety. Do not waver in yours.”

Vigilance. That was what the Mageseekers called their paranoia, that was the justification of their actions. Lux grit her teeth as she inclined her head before turning to leave the room, her skin prickling as she forced her hands into palms at her side.

Eldred waited until the doors closed behind her before speaking. “She sees the foreigner’s struggles through a lens of sympathy,” he said quietly. “That is the flaw of the Illuminators. They see peace as something to preserve at all costs, but they cannot see the cost of their own blindness. They are creatures of faith, not action.”

Wisteria nodded. “What do you propose, Commander?”

Eldred’s lips pressed into a thin line. “She bought petricite. I am not as ready to accept her motives as my nephew. I want proof. If she is truly as benign as Luxanna claims, she has nothing to hide from us. If she isn’t—” He paused, his expression hardening. “Then we will have our answer, and we will act accordingly.”

Wisteria bowed her head. “Consider it done.”

Jinx’s boots scuffed against the floorboards as she trudged up the narrow staircase of the inn. The corridor seemed darker than usual, the faint light from the windows leaving swathes of patchy shadows to dance along the walls.

It was probably just her mind playing tricks on her. Or maybe they’d forgotten to light the lanterns outside the inn. Or maybe it was that everything had looked darker ever since Lux left that morning.

Her room came into view, and she went to open it before her fingers stilled, a prickle of unease running down her spine.

She shook her head. “What, am I scared of the dark now?” she asked, forcing herself to chuckle.

That was ridiculous. She has Lux in her bed one time, and suddenly she needs a night light to keep her company. She was Jinx, mass murder and bombardier extraordinaire. She wasn’t afraid of a little dark.

Jinx pushed the door open. 

There was a man sitting at her desk.

His legs were crossed as he held the packet of petricite she’d bought in the palm of his hand. A petricite half-mask fitted to the right side of his face, the edges melding into his skin so perfectly that Jinx wondered if someone had chiseled it onto his face.

His eye peered out at her through the center of the mask as if he was looking through the world’s largest, stupidest monocle—and that was saying something. She’d seen what the Pilties called fashion.

“Evening,” he drawled. “Long day?”

Jinx narrowed her eyes. “Who the hell are you?”

“Oh, just someone with questions,” he said, rising from his seat.

“Too bad,” she scoffed. “I’ve got nothing to say to you. Now get out.”

“Hey, now,” he raised his arms in surrender. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I’m just here to talk.” He smiled at her. Jinx's lips curled over the edge of her teeth as she fought to hold back a snarl. “You can do that, can’t you?”

“What, are you some kind of enforcer?” Jinx crossed her arms. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.” His eyes wandered around the room. “But I am curious as to what sort of thing someone like you would need petricite for.”

“So long as you’re not in my room, you can be curious about whatever you want.”

He chuckled. “Petricite isn’t for just anyone, you know. It suppresses things—dangerous things. So when someone like you buys it, people start to wonder.” He tilted his head. “Would you call yourself a dangerous person?”

“Only to the people close to me,” she muttered. “And save me the lecture. I just needed something to shut out the noise in my head, that’s all.”

“Just looking for some quiet, huh?” The Mageseeker studied her like she was some curious specimen under glass. Jinx’s skin crawled. “You don’t look like someone with a quiet life.”

Jinx growled. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Oh, I think I do.” The Mageseeker’s eyes bored into her. “People like you don’t just drift into Demacia, especially not if they’re looking for petricite. So, let’s try this again. What magic did you bring with you? What are you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything,” Jinx hissed. Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I don’t even believe in magic.”

“Magic’s a difficult thing to ignore these days,” he returned. “Surely you’ve heard about what happened in Piltover.”

Jinx swallowed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?” He tilted his head. “You haven’t heard about their meddling with the arcane? I’m surprised. The hexgates alone caused quite the splash throughout Runeterra.”

“Hextech isn’t magic, ” Jinx said. “Anyone can use it.”

His smile grew, twisting his face into something sinister as it stretched beneath his mask. “Are you speaking from experience?”

“I don’t need to have used it to—”

The Mageseeker moved in an instant, lunging toward her within the blink of an eye.

Jinx was faster. She ducked to the side, her body a blur as she slipped past the Mageseeker, streaking across the room to the door before he’d realized she’d moved.

“Do you really think you can run?” He called after her. “We know what you are.”

“No,” she muttered, wrenching the door open. “You really don’t.”

Her breath caught.

A second Mageseeker was waiting for her. He raised his hand, fingers curling as the floor began to glow, rings of shining runes sparking to life around her feet.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked.

Jinx threw herself at the narrow opening between him and the doorframe, her shoulder brushing against the wall as she swept past him and into the open corridor. 

Chains shot from the runes along the floor, snapping around her arms and legs before she could blink, and panic surged through her as they pulled her back to her room, her fingers scraping against the floorboards as she tried to break free.

“Let me go!” she shouted, thrashing against the chains.

The first Mageseeker stepped forward. “Do you still think you can run?” he asked, smirking as he watched her struggle. “Or are you ready to admit what you are?”

“Shut up!” she jerked against her bindings, but they only coiled tighter.

“Tch,” he scoffed. “I guess we’ll have to do it the hard way, then.” He nodded to his comrade.

The second Mageseeker stepped forward, and Jinx barely had time to flinch before the pommel of his sword came down. Pain exploded across her skull, and her vision blurred, the room spinning. He heard the Mageseekers say something, but she couldn’t make out what. Then, another wave of pain crashed over her, and darkness swallowed her whole.

Jinx’s head throbbed as her eyes fluttered open, the room swimming into focus. Her wrists ached where shackles dug into her skin. She flexed her fingers in an effort to shake the prickling numbness creeping up her arms, but they remained stiff, her joints swollen and bruised beneath her skin.

“She’s awake.”

Her eyes drifted to the pair of Mageseekers across the table from her. One stood motionless, his arms crossed over his chest while the other paced back and forth, his boots clicking against the floor in a rhythm that made her teeth ache. They weren’t the two who had ambushed her at the inn.

“Then let’s get on with this,” the second responded. He stopped pacing and peered at her. “You purchased petricite yesterday. Why?”

Jinx’s hands twitched against the shackles, her gaze sliding over to the corner of the room, where the shadows twisted into familiar shapes. She closed her eyes and released a breath. They aren’t real.

“Look at me,” he snapped, slamming his hand onto the table.

Her head jerked up as the shadows flickered in her periphery.

“That’s better,” he said. “What were you doing with petricite?”

Jinx shrugged, her shackles clinking against one another. “I didn’t want to feel anything. That’s all.”

The second Mageseeker sneered at her. “You didn’t want to feel anything?” he repeated. “Do you take us for fools?”

“You said it, not me.”

He began to pace again. “Enough of this,” he snapped. “From your speed alone, it’s clear that you’ve been touched by the arcane. What we need to know is how. Were you born afflicted or has Piltover crafted another abomination in its pursuit of progress?”

Jinx frowned. “I’m not from Piltover.”

“Where are you from, then?” The Mageseeker looked her over. “There are only so many places that could spawn someone like you.”

Jinx didn’t answer.

He took her silence in stride. “Whatever you are, you thought you could hide by running to Demacia, of all places. Do you know what kind of mistake that was?”

Jinx’s stare dropped to the table. “It’s not like anywhere else would have wanted me . ”

“Do you blame them?” the Mageseeker asked. “You have the stink of misfortune about you.”

“Perhaps the Veiled Lady has marked her,” the second Mageseeker hissed. “Her latest effort to get revenge against the Divine Protector and bring Demacia to ruin.”

Jinx’s lips twitched into a bitter smile. “What, are you calling me a Jinx?”

“I’m calling you a threat,” the second Mageseeker said bluntly. “That much is obvious. And threats cannot be left to hide in the shadows. Especially not when they start making friends in high places.”

She stiffened, her eyes snapping up to meet his despite herself. There was only one person he could be talking about.

“Ah,” the Mageseeker crooned. “So you are aware. Lady Crownguard has a habit of seeing only what she wants to see, always rushing to help those she thinks are unable to help themselves. But you aren’t helpless, are you? You hang on to her for a different reason entirely.”

He continued. “It’s not for her kindness that you cling to her. You only want to use her to shield yourself. People like you always find someone to hide behind when trouble comes. And what better protection than a Crownguard?”

Her hands dug into her chair hard enough to score lines into the stone. “Leave her out of this,” she bit out.

“Do you think she’ll forgive you when she sees the truth?” he asked. “Once we show her what you are, she’ll regret ever helping you.”

A cold weight settled in her stomach. His words weren’t new. They’d been lingering in the back of her head for weeks now, whetting themselves against her mind so that every time they pressed against her, they cut just that much deeper.

Jinx knew what she was, just like she knew that Lux was too perfect to belong in her life. Not when Jinx ruined everything she touched. She thought she could have left that part of herself in Piltover, that she could pretend to be someone else. But that was wrong. She never could have been anyone but Jinx, could never cut that part out of herself no matter how hard she tried.

The Mageseeker smiled at her defeat. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small vial of liquid, its contents shimmered in the dim light as it sloshed around in the vial. “Distilled petricite essence,” he said, holding it up. “Far more efficient than grinding it to particulate.”

He stepped beside her, seizing her jaw with one hand and forcing her mouth open as he tilted her head back. She didn’t fight as the vial pressed against her lips, letting the bitter liquid slide down her throat where it calcified in her belly before spreading outward. Her limbs went slack at her sides as she lost feeling in everything around her, and drowsy splotches bloomed in the crevices of her mind like mold beneath the chemvents.

The Mageseeker’s grip tightened on her jaw as he watched the color fade from her eyes. “Fascinating,” he muttered, the words muffled as they leaked into Jinx’s ears. “It is not often the arcane possesses its host so overtly.”

Her feet scraped against the cold floor as the pair of them dragged her out of her chair, but she barely noticed as her head lolled to the side, her mind drowned in a sea of oblivion.

Distantly, like a lighthouse in the fog, Lux’s voice whispered in her mind, but Jinx turned away from it, sinking deeper into the abyss. Lux didn’t belong here, tangled in the mess Jinx had made of her life. She’d never belonged in the first place. It was better that she forgot her, that they forgot each other. Lux would be happier that way.

Chapter Text

Jinx sagged against the wall, her wrists raw where the shackles bit into her skin. Her thoughts churned like sludge in her head, and she tilted her head back to stare at the cracks running along the ceiling of her cell. It felt so similar to where she’d been in Piltover that she almost laughed.

It was supposed to have been different this time. She was supposed to have put an end to the cycle. Silco had told her that all she needed to do was walk away.

Silco was wrong.

Her lips twisted into a faint, bitter smile. This was where she belonged. The cycle didn’t care how far she ran. It always found a way to drag her back and take everything from her.

Her mind drifted, unbidden, to Lux, with her impossibly kind eyes and her irritatingly soft voice, all sunshine and naivety and hope. Her presence lodged itself in Jinx’s mind like a splinter she couldn’t dig out and, for a moment, she let herself picture her stepping into the cell and telling her that everything was going to be alright, that she was there for her and that she ca—

No. Jinx shook her head, killing the warmth before it could bloom inside of her chest. Lux didn’t belong anywhere near her. She already had enough ghosts to keep her company.

The rattle of chains pulled her back to reality.

Jinx blinked as she turned her attention to the figure leaning against the bars of the cell across from her. His hair fell over his face in a tangled mess, but she could just about make out the whiskers of his face, sprouting up from a face ravaged with weariness, the bones of his face casting hollows as they stretched his skin into a gaunt canvas. His arms hung limply at his sides, corded muscle pressing against his wan skin and leading up to broad shoulders and a sturdy barrel chest.

Oh, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt. 

Jinx frowned, taking in the way his ribs jutted against his skin. He looked almost as bad as she did.

“Well,” the man drawled, his voice gravelly, “they’ve really outdone themselves with you, haven’t they?”

Jinx stared at him. “Who the hell are you?”

He smiled at her before dropping into a sweeping bow, the movement pulling his chains taut. “Sylas of Dregbourne, at your service,” he said, his voice dripping with theatricality. “And you, little misfit?”

“You don’t want to know,” JInx muttered, her attention already fading as her eyes dropped to her hands, her fingers absently picking at her nail beds.

Sylas chuckled. “No need to be shy,” he said lightly. “I already know the story. ‘Dangerous.’ ‘Unpredictable.’ A ‘threat to the realm.’ That’s what they said about me, too, you know.” He winked at her. “The most dangerous, in fact.”

“Good for you.” She pried a line of dirt out from underneath her thumb.

“Doesn’t feel fair, does it?” Sylas pressed. “Getting cast aside because someone decided you don’t fit into their perfect little world.”

Jinx wondered why he was still talking. If Mylo were here, he’d have made some comment about people loving the sound of their own voice. Her eyes trailed to a corner of her cell, but it was empty. 

“They did the same to me,” Sylas said darkly. “They didn’t care what was true, only what served their story. But I’m guessing you already know how that feels.” His eyes studied her from beneath his hair. “I suspect you’re familiar with the feeling.”

“No,” she answered flatly. She raised her head to meet his eyes across the cell. “This is exactly where I belong.”

Sylas barked a sharp, bitter laugh. “Don’t tell me that you actually believe the lies spewed by the Mageseekers.” He smirked as his eyes lingered on her. “We both know that you aren’t a mage, girl. You don’t belong down here with the rest of us.”

Jinx’s lips twitched at the irony. “You’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

“They’re right to lock me up,” she said. “I killed people. Lots of people. My dad. The council. My second dad. My first dad again when he came back to life. A dozen other people I don’t remember.” She swallowed as amber eyes and blue-streaked hair flashed through her mind. “My kid.”

Sylas’s smile thinned. “You think this is what you deserve, then? That these chains are your due?”

Jinx scoffed. “If I got my due, I’d be six feet under along with everyone else I put there.”

“Unfortunate then that the Mageseekers don’t want you dead,” Sylas drawled. “That would be far too simple. No, they need you alive. You’re their proof that justice prevails, their little showpiece to parade when they need to tighten the screws and assert the righteousness of their cause.”

“I don’t care,” Jinx muttered. “They can do what they want.”

She’d be their little party trick so long as it meant she could stop hurting everyone around her.

“You should care,” Sylas urged. “They’ll take your identity and twist it into their own version of you, all while you’re left to rot in your cell, discarded and forgotten.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

Sylas stilled, his grin slipping from his face. “You’re pathetic,” he snarled, all signs of his former levity evaporated.

Jinx didn’t reply. She tilted her head back and closed her eyes as the chill of the stone pressed into her skin. He couldn’t understand. Maybe he had been thrown down here for something he didn’t do, or that he had been like Vi and been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but her situation was different. She’d earned this cell.

The best that could happen to her was if everyone forgot she existed.

The warmth of the inn wrapped around Lux as she stepped inside, sinking into her skin and chasing the cold from her body. Lux caught herself smiling as she exhaled and shook her head, tugging her cloak tighter as she began climbing the stairs. A few patrons lingered near the bar, but she barely noticed them. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about J all day, the memories carrying an entirely different warmth within her as they’d lingered in the back of her mind.

She’d been tempted to pay J a visit at the forge after her meeting with the Mageseekers, but she’d had too many obligations requiring her attention. Preparing her monthly report for the council, arranging the Illuminator’s supply routes, and overseeing the repairs being done to the Crownguard Estate, among a host of other inconveniences, had ensured that she couldn’t slip away to see J. By the time she’d finished, the sun had already set and J was certain to have left the forge.

So, Lux had come straight to the inn, intent on seeing her before the night was over. 

The hallway was dim, the stillness settling over her shoulders as she reached the top of the stairs. J’s door was the last on the right, and Lux hurried toward it, eager to see J’s face on the other side. She raised her hand to knock before pausing, her brow furrowing as she noticed a trail of scratches on the corner of the doorframe where the wood had splintered. She leaned closer, running her fingertips over the chipped paint as some intangible feeling prickled at her senses. 

Lux shook her head and dismissed the unease that crept into her thoughts. This was an old building. Scuffs and scratch marks were bound to happen over time—she’d clearly spent too much time at the Crownguard Estate if a little wear was enough to unsettle her.

Her knuckles rapped against the wood. “J?”

She waited, but the door didn’t open. A second thread of unease crawled up her spine as she knocked again, louder. “J? Are you there?”

Still no response. Her hand lingered over the door another moment before pulling away. She shouldn’t just barge in, but the silence on the other side felt wrong. She held her breath as she pressed her ear to the door, hoping to hear something on the other side.

It was completely, utterly silent.

Lux stepped back, her teeth worrying at her bottom lip. She glanced down the hall, then back at the door before turning and heading back downstairs. The inn was quieter now, a handful of patrons having left while she’d been waiting at J’s door. Lux looked around before catching sight of Clara at the bar. The innkeeper looked up as Lux approached, her eyes widening in recognition.

“Miss Crownguard,” she said, straightening her posture. “How can I help you?”

Lux forced a smile onto her face. “I was looking for J. Is she still at the forge?”

Clara’s eyes darted to Lux, then back to the counter, a line of tension running over her shoulders as she wiped a rag over the wooden surface. “She’s not here.”

Lux’s stomach twisted at the words, but she forced herself to dismiss it. “She’s probably just running late,” she said, though the words felt flimsy the moment they left her mouth. “Isn’t she usually back by now?”

Clara bit back a wince. “She’s not coming back tonight,” she muttered.

Lux frowned. “What do you mean? Where is she?”

Clara hesitated, her fingers tightening around the cloth as she glanced back at Lux, her eyes furtive. “The Mageseekers came through earlier,” she said, her voice low. “They didn’t say much, but it didn’t look like they were here for pleasantries.” She swallowed.

“The Mageseekers?” she echoed. The shock barely had time to settle before molten anger burst to life in her chest. 

“Why would they do that?” Her fingers clenched hard enough to leave crescents in her palms.

Clara shrugged. “I didn’t ask,” she said. “You know how they are. It’s better to stay out of their way.”

You let them take her, Lux wanted to say, but she swallowed the retort. This was how the Mageseekers operated—and Clara was right. If she had intervened, nothing would have except for the fact that she’d have gained their ire. Lux managed to smile at the innkeeper even as she felt a burning rage roiling within her veins. “Thank you,” she murmured, turning on her heel and marching toward the door. Guilt pressed against her ribs, but it was a shadow compared to the anger smoldering beneath her skin.

The Mageseekers had no right to do this. J wasn’t just a name in her report. She wasn’t a threat, or a criminal, or any of the things the Mageseekers would make her out to be.

She was hers . And Lux was going to get her back.

Lux’s boots echoed against the stone as she stormed through the Mageseeker’s compound. Her hands trembled at her sides, something within her straining to be unleashed, and she curled them into fists, nails cutting into her palms.

Two guards stepped into her path as she approached the council chamber, their spears crossing to bar her way.

“Lady Crownguard,” one of them said. “The council is in session. You’re not authorized to—”

Lux’s glare cut him off mid-sentence. “Move.”

The guards exchanged uneasy glances but didn’t step away. “My lady, the council—”

Lux growled before reaching out, her hand pushing one spear aside without a care as she swept between them, throwing the doors open with both hands and striding into the chamber as the wood slammed against the walls.

Every head turned toward her as she entered, whatever conversation they’d been having abruptly killed.

“Luxanna,” Eldred said, leaning back in his chair. He eyed the guards as they hastily pulled the doors shut. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Pleasure. The word hung in the air like a taunt. Lux bit the inside of her cheek and forced herself to meet his gaze. “Why did you take J?”

Eldred’s brow furrowed. “J?”

Lux grit her teeth. “The foreigner,” she bit out. “The one you assigned me to watch.”

Recognition flickered in his expression before fading into indifference. “Ah. Her.”

“Yes, her ,” Lux snapped. “I want to know why you arrested her. I told you that she wasn’t a threat.”

Eldred’s lips curled. “Your report claimed as much, yes,” he said. “But reports, as I’m sure you understand, are not verdicts.”

“Then what’s the point of asking for it?” Lux demanded. “If you already know what you’re going to do, why involve me at all?”

“You misunderstand,” Eldred replied. His brow tightened as he stared down at her from his seat. “Your insights shaped our understanding. But understanding must evolve when new evidence presents itself.”

Lux frowned. “What evidence?”

Wisteria leaned forward, her eyes narrowed into slits. “Your foreigner was uncooperative when approached by our agents. She resisted their questions and tried to flee—and during that attempt, she displayed a set of unnatural abilities.”

Lux blinked. “Unnatural abilities?” she echoed. “That’s not possible.”

“She moved with speed and reflexes far beyond the human limit,” Wisteria said coldly. “It was enough to justify escalation.”

Lux blinked. That didn’t make sense at all. J was just a girl, someone who’d had to pick herself up after everything around her had fallen apart. She wasn’t a force of nature. She wasn’t what Wisteria accused her of. To even suggest as much was incomprehensible to Lux.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “J isn’t capable of something like that.”

“People reveal their true selves when thrust into a corner,” Hesbeth rumbled. “All she’s done is prove her guilt.” He had the temerity to smile at her. “It is fortunate that we caught her before her presence festered.”

Lux’s frustration boiled over at the casual dismissal in his tone, as if they had a right to terrorize anyone they so much as suspected to be hiding something from them. “All she’s proven was that she was scared,” Lux said. “What did you expect her to do? Roll over and trust that you had her best interests at heart?”

She wanted to put a sword to his throat and see what he would do in response. Maybe then she could give breath to the thoughts running through her head.

“Luxanna,” Hesbeth sighed. “Your bleeding heart does you credit, but you’re too naive to see the reality of this situation. Her affliction is not an accident, not of birth or circumstance. It is proof of what she’s been hiding. Now we must determine how deeply her corruption has taken root.”

“It doesn’t prove anything!” Lux exclaimed as she stepped further into the chambers, the Mageseeker’s wrapping around her vision. “And there is no corruption! All she’s done since coming to Demacia is keep her head down and try to fit in, and you’re treating her like a threat for existing.”

Lux shouldn’t have been surprised. That was exactly how the Mageseekers had always carried out their judgment. Anything outside of their perfect vision of Demacia deserved to be expunged.

Her chest heaved as she struggled to contain the storm of emotions surging inside her. She glared at the council, meeting every one of their eyes, before looking at her uncle. His expression darkened as she held his gaze. “Luxanna, this is not your decision to make. Your role was to observe and report, not to intervene. And certainly not to question our authority.”

She opened her mouth, an argument already on the tip of her tongue before she bit it back, her nails digging deeper into her palms. He was right. There was nothing she could do that would change their minds. She turned and strode out of the chamber before she said something that couldn’t be taken back.

The doors slammed shut behind her, the sound reverberating through the halls as the guards jumped on either side of her. Lux ignored them as she quickened her steps to match the war drum of her heart beating in her chest. She should have done more. She shook her head, as though the motion could stop the cycle of blame battering her mind. It’s not too late, she urged to herself . I’ll fix this. I’ll get her out.

A second set of guards stood outside the door leading deeper into the compound. They stepped forward as she approached.

“My lady,” One said, holding his hand up. “You can’t be here. This is—”

Lux glared at him and, unlike the two stationed outside the councilroom, this one knew better than to protest, his hand falling limply at his side as she brushed past him and stepped through the door into the stairwell.

The chill clung to her as she descended deeper into the bowels of the compound, shadows dancing across the stone walls as they were chased by the flickering torchlight, her silhouette joining them beneath the guttering torches.

The walls narrowed the deeper she went and, by the time she reached the first level, the walls felt like they were closing in around her. It was almost a relief to step into the open corridor until she saw the cells lining either side of her, iron bars set like teeth as they swallowed their captives whole.

No matter how many times she walked through the Mageseeker’s prison, the sight of so many bodies languishing in the darkness never failed to pierce her. And now it was even worse as she prepared herself to find J staring back at her from within one of these cells.

Her footsteps echoed as she peered into every cell she passed, her heart sinking deeper into her stomach with every hollow face and empty shadow. She’d passed so many that the faces began to blend together in her mind, each one filled with the same sunken face, the same gaunt cheeks and glassy eyes.

If J really was down here, would Lux even recognize her?

She swallowed back thoughts of what J had already endured while she had lapsed in her duty of protecting her. Lux placed a hand against the wall to steady herself, the stone frigid beneath her fingertips, before exhaling and descending the stairs to the next level of the prison.

She wouldn’t stop until she found her, until she could take J in her arms and lead her as far away from this place as possible, but the deeper she descended, the more her hope sputtered in her chest, the cells growing darker, their inhabitants less and less animate, their bodies so still that Lux could almost believe herself in a crypt instead of the prison for Demacia’s greatest threats.

She didn’t realize how far into the catacombs she’d gone until she rounded a corner and saw Sylas staring back at her. 

“Little Light,” he exclaimed, his lips curbing into a wolfish grin as she stepped into the light. “To what do I owe—”

Lux ignored him as she caught sight of the person in the cell opposite his. J leaned against the wall, her head tipped back, her wrists bound and lifeless in front of her, their pallor so pale that Lux could make out the webs of arteries lining her arms.

For a brief, heart-stopping moment, Lux thought that she was staring at a ghost, that everything that had J who she was had been washed out by the Mageseekers until she resembled a shell of who she’d been.

What reason could they possibly have for putting her across from Sylas, of all people? Even if they believed she had magic, there was no justification for burying her like this. It was excessive and cruel, and there wasn’t a single justification that could make Lux believe otherwise.

She sank to her knees at the door to the cell, her hands pressed against the bars.

“J,” she whispered.

J lifted her head, peering at Lux through her hair with cloudy eyes. “Lux?” J croaked, her voice scratchy. “What are you doing here?” 

Lux squeezed her fingers against the bars. “I came to see you,” she said. “To make sure you’re okay.”

J huffed. “As far as cells go, I’ve had better.” She tilted her head back. “It’s fine, Lux. You don’t have to worry about me.”

The acceptance in Jinx’s voice scattered her thoughts, and Lux flinched, every reassurance she’d planned on giving her dissolving on her tongue. She’d braced herself for anger, for bitterness, for something that mirrored the same fury she felt in her chest for what they’d done to her. She hadn’t prepared herself for this..

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, her voice barely audible. “I should have been there. This never should have happened.”

Jinx turned her head away to stare limply at the ceiling. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “They would’ve caught me eventually. It’s what they do.”

“No,” Lux said. She stepped closer, pressing her forehead against the bars. “You don’t belong here. I’m going to get you out.”

J let out a faint, humorless laugh. “You don’t get it,” she said. “This is exactly where I belong.”

She opened her mouth to argue, but Jinx continued.

“I ruin things, Lux. That’s what I do. People, places—it doesn’t matter. I touch something, and it falls apart.”

“That’s not true,” Lux said. “You’re not like that.”

J’s gaze snapped back to her, and, for the first time, there was real emotion in her eyes. “Aren’t I?” she asked. “Do you know how many people I’ve killed? How much I’ve destroyed? They’re not wrong, Lux. They’re not twisting the truth. I am the monster they say I am.”

J’s words felt like a spike driving into her heart, but she refused to believe that J meant what she was saying. She knew J. She wasn’t a killer. She couldn’t be.

Lux didn’t know why J was trying to justify what the Mageseekers had done to her or why she’d accepted her punishment so easily, but she wouldn’t let the Mageseekers snuff out her light. Whether or not J fought for it or not, it didn’t matter. Lux wasn’t going to let her suffer.

Lux shook her head, tears stinging at the corners of her eyes. “That’s not true,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “You’re not—”

“Stop.” J’s voice cut through her attempt to speak. Her shackles clinked against the floor as she leaned forward. “You don’t know me, Lux. All you’ve seen is what I was pretending to be; that wasn’t the real me.”

“You’re wrong,” Lux insisted. “I do know you, J. I’ve seen the real you. I’ve held you. You can’t tell me that wasn’t real.”

J shook her head, leaning back against the wall with a bitter laugh. “Lux, I don’t even know what’s real half the time. There’s no way you can know about everything mucking around inside my head.”

A desperate helplessness settled in her bones. How could she show J the light she saw in her when J refused to even look for it within herself? Lux opened her mouth, but the words never came, tangling in the back of her throat as she watched J retreat deeper into herself. The silence lapped over them, and Lux felt her ability to salvage the situation vanishing as it dragged, the tide pulling tighter against her mind as more and more words dissolved, dead and useless.

“Why are you here?” J asked, her gaze still fixed on the floor.

Why was she here? Because she couldn’t stop thinking about J. Because the thought of her wasting away in this place made Lux feel like she couldn’t breathe. But how could she say that when she didn’t even have the words to describe her feelings to herself?

“Because I care about you,” Lux said quietly. “I couldn’t just leave you here.”

“Sure you could,” J said. “You should. I’m not worth it, Lux.”

Lux shook her head. “You don’t get to decide that.” She gathered her resolve. “Especially not when this is my fault.”

Jinx frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I was sent to watch you,” Lux swallowed, forcing the words out. “To decide whether you were a threat to Demacia and report anything I learned to the Mageseekers.”

Her confession hung in the air, filled only by the worst of Lux’s fears blooming within her mind. She glanced at J, searching for a flicker of emotion, but her face seemed hewn from stone until, finally, a soft, humorless chuckle emerged from her throat, carving through the silence as it rang in her ears. “I should’ve known,” she murmured. “When you kept showing up everywhere. Should’ve figured it wasn’t a coincidence.”

“J…” Lux began, her throat tightening.

“I guess it makes sense,” J went on, as if Lux hadn’t spoken. “You always had this habit of showing up at just the right moment. I thought it was strange. Of course, it wasn’t just luck.” She snorted. “Serves me right for thinking I could ever get the good kind of luck.”

Lux’s chest tightened. “That’s not—”

“You were watching me,” Jinx continued, cutting her off. “I was just another mark, wasn’t I?”

“No,” Lux said quickly. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Sure,” J said flatly. “You just happened to keep crossing my path. Just happened to want to stick around. And here I was thinking… I don’t know.” She shook her head, her lips twitching into a faint, bitter smile, and Lux never wanted to see J look at her like that. “Stupid.”

Lux’s grip on the bars tightened, the cold biting into her skin. “Yes, I was sent to watch you,” she admitted. “But I didn’t spy on you. I didn’t… I didn’t give them anything. I told them you weren’t a threat, that you didn’t deserve their attention.” Her voice trembled. “I thought I could protect you.”

Jinx let out another soft laugh, the sound sending shivers down Lux’s spine. “Protect me?” she repeated, her tone sharp with disbelief. “You were spying on me, Lux. You were part of the reason they were even paying attention to me in the first place.”

“No,” Lux said firmly. “The Mageseekers knew about you the moment you stepped foot in Demacia. They sent me because they thought you were dangerous. But I never gave them a reason to believe that. I only told them the truth—that they were wrong about you.” Her chest ached with every word. “You’re not just some assignment to me. You never were.”

Jinx tilted her head against the wall, her body suddenly empty as the tension bled away. Lux almost wished that J would go back to glaring at her. “It doesn’t matter what you told them, Lux,” she murmured. “It was always going to end up like this.”

Lux felt tears burning at the edges of her eyes, but she blinked them away. “You don’t deserve this.”

“You don’t know what I deserve,” she said. Her eyes closed as her body deflated further, limp and lifeless as it slumped against the wall. “You should go.”

“I’m not leaving you.”

J didn’t look at her, but Lux could see how her body had gone taut, her edges hardening as if she were raising her defenses against an oncoming blow. It was so different from the night before when J had crumbled against her and bared her heart to Lux—and the worst part was that J was preparing to defend herself against her. Lux’s heart splintered into a million pieces as the realization set in.

Lux lingered another moment, weathering the silence as her hands gripped the bars. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for, but J had nothing left to give her, had nothing she wanted to give her. She refused to even look at her.

Lux had come here to fix things, to make this right. Yet now, as the silence yawned between them, it was clear Lux couldn’t fix this. Not when she had been the one to cause it. Whatever had begun to grow between them had shrivelled and died, crushed beneath the weight of her betrayal.

Lux forced herself to step back, giving J a final glance before she turned and began to walk away. Every step felt like she was tearing out a piece of herself, but it was nothing less than she deserved.

Chapter Text

“Ah, the golden girl returns,” Sylas’s voice greeted her the moment Lux descended the final steps into the prison as if he’d spent his entire day waiting for her to walk into view.

He chuckled as she walked past him.

“Once upon a time, you hovered outside my cell with the same attention you give to the little misfit,” he mused, leaning against the bars. “Why I may even still have some of your books lying around.”

Lux didn’t respond as she sank to the floor in front of J’s cell and pressed her back against the bars. “J,” she began softly, her voice breaking the stillness. “It’s me.”

J didn’t answer, and the silence stretched heavier with every passing second. Lux closed her eyes and pressed her palms against her knees as if the physical pressure could stop her thoughts from spiraling. She could picture J sitting behind her in her mind, but Lux couldn’t bring herself to look at her. She couldn’t bear to see the marks left by the petricite shackles or the dull sheen that filled her eyes. Not when it was her actions that had put her there.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she whispered. “I swear, J. I was trying to protect you. I thought…” She trailed off, the weight of her own words crushing the air from her lungs. “I don’t even know what I thought.”

Sylas exhaled from his cell. “For all that you announce your guilt in the misfit’s imprisonment, you’re lucky she hasn’t decided to take matters into her own hands.” He eyed her before his eyes rose to glance over her shoulder. “One quick move with those chains, and—” He snapped his fingers, the sound echoing in the quiet. “Well, I think you know how that would go.”

Lux flinched at the suggestion, her chest tightening as she imagined J’s hands slipping through the bars, her chains coiling around Lux’s throat. She could almost feel the weight of them, could almost imagine the frenetic pull as J’s hands—hands that had once stroked her face with tenderness—choked the life from her, but she didn’t shy away. Why would she? If J wanted to punish Lux for what she’d done, Lux would let her. The marks she would leave on her body would be less than the black guilt that had rooted itself inside of her.

Lux drew in a shaky breath. “J,” she said softly, turning her head slightly toward the cell behind her. “I know you hate me. I—I don’t blame you. But I need you to know I’m trying. I’m doing everything I can to get you out of here.”

It was Sylas who answered her. “You’re fighting a losing battle, Luxanna. All you’re doing is punishing yourself at this point.”

Lux dropped her gaze to the floor, Sylas’s words dragging her thoughts back to her most recent failure.

The air in Eldred’s office had been stifling, the petricite lining the walls making her skin crawl as she stood before him, every muscle wound tight. “Uncle, just listen to me.”

Eldred set his quill down, leaning back in his chair as he regarded her. “The matter is not up for debate, Luxanna. The Mageseekers have made their decision.”

“Uncle please ,” Lux pleaded “This isn’t justice. You have to put an end to it.”

Eldred shook his head. “Sometimes we must harden our hearts to the world. I do not take pleasure in sentencing those born with magic’s taint in their blood, but it must be done regardless, else I risk the sanctity of the entire kingdom.”

“That’s not what this is,” Lux said, her voice rising despite herself. She composed herself before continuing. “This isn’t protection. You’re sentencing someone to rot for something she hasn’t even done.”

“Her magic has sentenced her to this fate the moment she was born with its curse,” Eldred returned. “The corruption is in her nature as surely as the magic in her veins.”

“That’s not true!” Lux snapped. “Whatever piece of the arcane resides in her, you cannot condemn her for existing.”

She winced as Eldred’s expression hardened.

“You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgment.” Eldred clasped his hands together, his eyes peering over them at her. “Even if you refuse to see it, she is dangerous.”

“She’s human, ” Lux countered. “She’s hurt, and she’s scared, and instead of helping her, you’re locking her away like she’s some kind of monster.”

“Do you think you understand her?” Eldred asked, his voice sharp now. “Do you think a few conversations make you an expert on who she is? Of what she’s capable of?”

Lux bit her tongue to hide her reaction. He couldn’t know how much his words mirrored the doubts that had already taken root. J’s voice echoed in her mind as she confessed to the lives she had taken, the destruction she’d caused. Lux pushed the images from her mind. That wasn’t the J she knew and, if she had ever existed, it wasn’t who J was now.

“I think she deserves a chance,” she said quietly. “I think everyone deserves that.”

Eldred assessed her from the other side of his desk, his expression devoid of a single emotion. When he spoke, Lux imagined statues with softer voices. “The Mageseekers have determined her fate, and it is not your place to interfere.” Eldred’s gaze softened, though his tone remained unchanged. “I know you mean well, Luxanna, but this is not your fight. She is no longer your responsibility.”

Not my responsibility. Did he think that J was nothing more than an obligation that she could set aside? The girl had burrowed beneath her skin, nestling beneath her rib cage, and now that she was gone, Lux felt her absence with every breath she took. She belonged to Lux as much as the heart beating inside her chest.

But of course, Eldred would never understand. Whatever shriveled organ resided within him was incapable of feeling such tenderness. If he even had one in the first place. If Lux cut him open this moment, it was just as likely that she’d pull stones from his flesh.

Lux turned on her heel as she wiped the tears from her face and stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind her. If Eldred wouldn’t help her, she’d find someone else. Someone who actually cared about people and their livelihood.

That night, she’d sat at her desk, her hand shaking as she drafted a letter to Jarvan, each stroke of her pen on the parchment heavy with desperation, every word an attempt to capture the urgency of J’s situation. She wrote of the injustices, the lack of evidence, the cruelty of the Mageseekers. With every new sentence, she clung to the belief that Jarvan would listen, that he would understand and make everything right.

The reply came early the next day. Her fingertips hesitated at the seal as hope flickered to life inside of her breast before the anticipation became too much and broke the wax, her eyes reading over Jarvan’s response.

This is beyond my authority, Luxanna. The Mageseekers’ jurisdiction is clear, and I must respect their decisions. I’m sorry.

The strength leached from her limbs as she stared down at the refusal written before her eyes. She’d begged and bartered away every last shred of pride in desperate hope that someone— anyone— would listen to her. But even Jarvan, the boy she’d spent her childhood alongside, had refused the only thing she’d ever asked of him.

A deep helplessness surged around her as she stared at the words, too numb to feel anything else. If the crown prince couldn’t help her, who else was there to turn to?

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” Sylas asked from across the hall. “The precious Crownguard daughter, down here with the likes of us. If only they knew what you’re hiding, Lux.” Sylas chuckled without humor. “Do you think they’d put you in the cell next to her or would they have to bury you even further to hide the shame that even Demacia’s brightest lineages are susceptible to magic’s taint?”

Lux’s stomach churned. She opened her mouth to respond but was interrupted by the sound of footsteps echoing down the corridor. Sylas’s eyes sparkled as he winked at her before retreating into the depths of his cell, vanishing into the shadows just as a group of Mageseekers emerged from the shadows.

Lux scrambled to her knees, her fingers gripping the bars as the Mageseekers reached J’s cell. As soon as the door swung open, the two of them stepped inside, seizing either side of J’s chains and pulling them taut until J’s body lifted off the ground.

J didn’t resist their rough handling of her, hanging between the Mageseekers like a broken marionette, her head slumping forward as the weight of her body dragged against the chains. Strands of her hair slipped over her face, casting her features in shadow as the remaining Mageseeker crouched in front of her, gripping her chin with his hand as he forced her face into the dim light.

Her eyes fluttered open, and he frowned at the sight. “Her eyes are glowing again.”

The man on J’s left let out a derisive snort. “Unnatural thing. She shouldn’t have any magic left after everything we’ve given her.” His grip tightened on J's arm as he glanced down at her with disdain. “I suppose that’s why they want her. She’s not human.”

Lux’s stomach twisted at the callous words. “She’s more human than any of you if this is how you treat her!”

They ignored her. “Hold her steady,” the Mageseeker holding J’s head commanded, pulling a vial from his cloak. Something inside of her recoiled at the sight of it, leaving a hollow ache as it retreated.

He pulled J’s head upright until her throat was bared to the world before pressing the vial to her lips, his knuckles whitening as he squeezed her jaw.

J’s throat convulsed as the petricite worked its way through her, and her eyes grew lidded, the unnatural glow dimming with every swallow.

“Stop it!” Lux shouted, gripping the bars so hard it hurt. “She’s had enough”

Her words had no effect. The Mageseeker continued to force the petricite down J’s throat, the pink in her irises bleeding out until all that remained was a dim, glassy blue. Only then did the Mageseekers step back, abruptly releasing their hold on her and watching as she collapsed under her own weight, sagging forward until her knees hit the stone floor with a bruising thud.

“Another ten milliliters,” the Mageseeker said, unbothered by the panting body at his feet as he held the vial up to inspect the remaining tincture. “Her tolerance is increasing.”

One of the Mageseekers sneered at J as he stepped around her. “Hesbeth will figure out what makes her tick soon enough.”

“She’s not your experiment!” Lux growled as they stepped past her. “You can’t keep doing this to her!”

They continued forward, the sound of their footsteps echoing down the corridor their only answer.

Lux stayed where she was, and pressed her forehead against the bars that separated her from J. She swallowed, forcing down the bile that had risen in her throat. “J,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

Sylas shifted in his cell. “Every day they feed her more of that poison. I’ve never seen anyone endure that much petricite.” He gave her a pitying look. “It’s a grim thing to witness, isn’t it?”

Lux flinched at his words, her fingers curling tighter around the bars.

“I wonder how much longer her body can take it,” he continued. “You might want to enjoy your little chats while you can. She won’t be around much longer at this rate.”

Lux looked back into the cell, her chest tightening as her eyes settled on J. Her skin was a sickly, translucent grey, the only color left in her face the bruised purple of her lips. Even her eyes had turned glassy as she stared unseeingly at the floor.

“Look at her, Luxanna,” Sylas said. “This can’t continue. Every day that passes, she loses more of herself to the Mageseekers.”

“I’m trying,” Lux said. “But what else can I do, Sylas?”

Sylas’s chains rattled as he pressed against the bars of his cell. “You’re a clever girl,” he said. “Surely you’ve thought about what it would take to free her from her bounds.”

Lux stiffened, her hands curling into fists against her knees.

“You’ve imagined it, haven’t you?” Sylas pressed. “The two of you could vanish together. You could find somewhere far away from Demacia where the Mageseekers would never think to look, away from all this cruelty and suffering.”

Yes, Lux thought. They could disappear, slipping between the cracks and vanishing into the night as if they’d never existed here at all. She could just about see Demacia shrinking in the distance as they fled. The tall, gleaming spires of her childhood fading into the horizon. The weight of its expectations finally slipping from her shoulders. Lux stared at the bars as she indulged in the fantasy. Why not tear the gate open? What was stopping her from taking what she wanted—from taking J—and running? 

She would have to let go of everything she knew—her family, her name, the Crownguard legacy that had been built on duty and sacrifice. But wasn’t that life already a lie? Every step she took was a careful dance as she forced herself to fit into a world that would cast her out if it ever saw the truth. Was that a life worth keeping?

The Mageseekers thought she was harmless. They thought they knew her. They didn’t know anything about who she was or what coursed through her veins.

If they even suspected the power simmering beneath her skin, she wouldn’t be on this side of the cells. She’d be shackled and bound as clearly as any other mage.

But they didn’t know. Not a single one of them cared to inspect her for magic, not when there were dozens of other, more vulnerable, targets to attack.

Her magic churned inside her as it fed on her agitation, urging her to loosen her hold and let it flow from her veins. She could show them how well their vigilance worked. What good had hiding herself done, anyway? It didn’t matter what she’d sacrificed to blend in with the rest of Demacia. Her blood alone was enough to taint the years of service she’d given to her kingdom.

Helping J escape would be a smaller sin than what already coursed through her veins. 

Lux glanced back at J, taking in her sunken cheeks and dull eyes, the sight of her enough to shatter the fantasy. Lux slumped against the bars and stared at the ground. “She wouldn’t come with me.”

“Wouldn’t she?” Sylas asked. He tilted his head. “You’re so sure she’d rather rot in this cell than take her chances out there with you?”

“She hates me.” Lux’s voice broke. “I put her here. I betrayed her. Why would she want my help now?”

Sylas studied her for a moment, and Lux wondered if he could see the marks her betrayal had left on her, if they were as evident to everyone else as they were to her. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said finally. “Perhaps she does hate you. But do you think her spite runs so deep she’d die just to ensure your misery? Hate isn’t enough to drown someone, Lux. And if you were the one to save her, well…” He let the words trail off. “It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?”

Lux closed her eyes tightly. Her breath trembled as she fought to steady herself. “You make it sound so simple.”

Sylas chuckled. “Fifteen years in chains simplifies many things, Little Light.”

Lux felt the faintest flicker of belief, but it vanished as quickly as it came, drowned out by the reality of the situation.

“She’s better off without me.”

“Better off?” Sylas echoed. He leaned forward. “I don’t think you believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t spend every spare moment of your life sitting in the dirt outside her cell.” 

Lux dropped her gaze to her lap as her hands clutched at the fabric of her cloak. She pressed her nails into her palms, hoping to feel something sharp enough to cut through the weight pressing down on her, but it was useless. Even as beads of blood welled up beneath her fingertip, the sting she felt was miniscule to the sea of pain rolling inside of her. It felt like she was drowning—except she knew that there would be no end to this, no final moment of reprieve before she faded into darkness. No, she would always be drowning, forever on the precipice of dying without ever being able to relinquish the weight pulling her down

The sound of metal dragging against stone caught her ear.

She stiffened as the chains shifted again, clinking faintly as something—someone—moved behind her. She twisted her neck around, her heart pounding as she saw J stir in the shadows of the cell, her movements sluggish as her chains dragged across the floor. Strands of blue hair fell away from her face as her eyes flickered open before settling on Lux.

After a moment of silence, J’s lips pulled into a faint, jagged grimace. “You’re staring,” she rasped.

Chapter Text

Lux flinched, her cheeks burning as she scrambled for a response. She’d been waiting for J to speak to her for days, but now that she had the opportunity, the words turned to ash on her tongue, crumbling beneath the pressure of J’s gaze.

“I—I didn’t mean to.” She forced herself to sit up, her knuckles brushing the bars. “I just… I’m worried about you.”

J’s lips twisted into a shadow of a smile. “Worried about me?” She tilted her head. “That’s new.”

“It’s not new,” Lux protested. “I’ve always—”

“Don’t finish that sentence.”

Lux flinched. “J, I… I just wanted to make sure you were—”

“Still breathing?” J muttered, her head lolling to the side as she exhaled. “Congrats, you did your job. Now you can skedaddle somewhere else instead of wasting your time here.”

Lux felt her chest tighten. “I don’t want you to feel alone in this.”

J let out a faint laugh. “Alone? I’ve been alone for a long time, Lux.” Her shoulders slumped further, her chains clinking together as her head fell back against the wall. “It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting there or not.” 

“It does matter,” Lux said quickly. “You’re not alone in this, J. I’m here, and I’m going to stay.”

J sighed. “You don’t have to promise me anything.”

Lux wrapped her fingers around the bars of J’s cell. “I’m trying to help you.”

Couldn’t J see that Lux was trying? That she was doing everything she could to correct her mistakes?

J let out another laugh. “Don’t waste your time pretending.”

“I’m not pretending!” Her voice rose before she could stop herself. “I do care about you, J.”

J’s lips curved into something that might have been a smirk if it weren’t so hollow. “What’s there to care about? I’m just a sad little misfit with a rap sheet longer than your castle walls.” She shook her head, her hair falling in messy tangles over her face. “You’re too pure to be spending your time mucking around in the bottom of a prison, Lux. Go home. You don’t belong here.”

“You don’t belong here either!” Lux’s voice cracked as her frustration bubbled to the surface. “You don’t deserve this.”

J snorted. “I’ve killed people, Lux. A lot of people. Blown them to pieces, burned them alive, left whole families with nothing but rubble to remember each other by. I even did it to my own family. Every time I could.” Her lips twitched even as her eyes remained dull. “So yeah, this is exactly where I belong. Locked up, out of the way, not hurting anyone else.”

“That’s not true,” Lux insisted. “Even if you did kill people—” And Lux still couldn’t see J doing something like that “—that doesn’t make it right for the Mageseekers to throw you in here like they did. You don’t belong here any more than I do.”

She was the mage! They had no right hounding after J when she’d done nothing to warrant their suspicion but exist. It didn’t matter what she may have done, the Magseekers didn’t know about that. They didn’t care about that. All they wanted was to punish someone who stood out from the crowd—and it was so much easier for them to do that to J than someone like herself.

“You’re starting to sound like my sister,” J scoffed. “There always has to be someone with the big, bright speeches trying to pull me out of the dark, doesn’t there?” She turned her head, her eyes meeting Lux’s own as a sardonic smile flitted over her face. “If I didn’t have a pound of cement in my stomach, I’m sure I’d hear my dad giving me a speech of his own, too.”

Lux growled, her knuckles squeezing the bars. “If everyone’s telling you the same thing, maybe you should actually listen instead of being a stubborn ass—or are you going to insist that you're the problem when it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that you’ve been treated terribly?”

The faintest flicker of emotion crossed J's face, but it was gone before Lux could name it. “It’s better if you just move on,” she said quietly. “Go home and live a life that isn’t…” She gestured weakly at the walls of her cell. “This.”

“Don’t tell me what I should do,” Lux snapped. “Not when all I want in my life is you , J.”

J blinked at her, surprise splashing over her features by the sudden outburst before she turned her face away, and curled her hands against her trousers. She rested her head against the wall, her eyes half-lidded, and Lux could feel her withdrawing into herself, sinking into some hollow place Lux couldn’t reach. Panic surged inside her like a hot coal smoldering in her stomach, its burning heat clawing up her chest, and wrapping so tightly around her that she struggled to breathe.

“We could leave,” Lux blurted. She shifted forward until her forehead pressed against the bars. “We could run away, J. Just the two of us.”

J turned her head just enough for Lux to see her eyes beneath the tangle of blue hair falling over her face. They weren’t the radiant pink hue that had followed her into her dreams, but a dull, foggy blue, like a winter lake that had been frosted over and leached of warmth.

“Leave…” J repeated softly, the word rolling sluggishly off her tongue. “And go where, exactly?”

“Anywhere,” Lux said, desperation bleeding into her voice. “It doesn’t matter where. Somewhere far away, somewhere they won’t find us. Somewhere we can just—” She stopped, struggling to catch her breath. “We could start over, J. We could figure it out together.”

J’s expression shuttered, and she laughed, a dry, brittle sound that made Lux’s chest ache. “You don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t get to start over. This is where I’ll always end up, Lux. It doesn’t matter how far I run or what I do. It always circles back to this.”

“You’re wrong,” Lux pressed against the bars. “You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to let them keep you like this.”

“I don’t let them do anything,” J replied without any fight. She turned her head to glance at Lux again. “This is just what happens. Everywhere I go, I break things, people get hurt, and it ends with someone locking me away. That’s not gonna change because we cross a border.”

“You don’t know that,” Lux said. “You don’t know unless you try.”

J laughed that same scraping, broken laugh again. “I have tried,” she said. “Trust me, I’ve tried. And guess where I ended up.”

The weight of how much J had already resigned herself to ruin hit Lux all at once. Something in her chest clenched, wrapping around her heart and squeezing until it was raw and bruised.

“This time will be different,” Lux said. “You won’t be alone, J. I’ll be there, every step of the way.”

J stared at her, something flickering in her eyes. “You don’t get it,” she said. “I don’t want you here. I don’t want you following me into whatever disaster I cause next.”

The words stung more than she expected, even as they’d been swarming around her mind. It was one thing to believe what J would tell, but to hear it from her mouth…

The shadows stretched in the wake of J’s voice. After a moment, J shook her head, turning away from Lux. “You deserve better,” she murmured, almost too quiet for Lux to hear. ”This was always going to happen.”

And just like that, the hole inside of her filled with heat. “Stop that!” Lux hissed. “I don’t care what happens or whatever punishment you think you deserve. I care about you .”

“Don’t,” J said, the weight of Lux’s words washing over her without effect. “Don’t care about me, Lux. You’re just gonna end up like everyone else that made that mistake.”

“You must think you’re special.”

Lux startled as Sylas’s voice slithered out from the darkness. He’d been so silent that she’d forgotten he even existed.

“Sylas, don’t—”

"Every day," he said, stretching the words out with deliberate slowness as he stared across the cell at J. "She comes down here. A Crownguard. The darling of Demacia. And she sits at your door like a dog, pleading, waiting, while you—" He gave a short, quiet laugh. " You just sit there. Like you're owed her attention, like she’s the one that should be groveling out of the two of you."

J’s expression didn’t shift, even as Sylas’s words grew pointed. Lux wondered if it was the petricite muddling her mind or if she’d retreated there on her own. She didn’t know which one scared her more.

Sylas exhaled. “Do you have any idea what people would give for a single visitor down here?" His voice lowered. “The darkness devours us, eroding everything we thought we knew until all that remains are these walls, carved into the deepest recesses of our minds. We forget what the wind feels like. What the sun feels like. Eventually, even the shape of our own names become foreign on our tongues, useless words to describe someone who had only existed in the past.”

“It’s going to have to take more than a dingy cell to make me forget what I stand for.” J shrugged. “But if the Mageseekers think they can do it, they’re welcome to try.”

“And what of Luxanna?” Sylas pressed. “Do you care so little about her that you’re willing to see her suffer alongside you?”

J’s eyes fixed on the cracks in the stone floor. “She doesn’t have to suffer if she doesn’t want to. I didn’t ask her to come here.”

Sylas laughed without any warmth. “Of course you didn’t,” he said. “No one does. But that doesn’t make it any less real, does it? She’s sitting here, begging for you something the rest of us can only dream about. But instead of cherishing that attention, you throw her kindness back in her face.”

“She’s wasting her time,” J muttered. She pinched a chain link between her fingers, refusing to raise her head from the floor. “Maybe she should get the message and give up on me already.”

“Do you know how many people down here would kill for what you have?” Sylas’s shackles strained as he pressed against the bars of his cell. “To have someone give a damn about them? To have someone even remember they exist?”

“Sylas, that’s enough,” Lux said sharply, her voice rising as she turned toward him. “You don’t understand—”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” he cut in, finally turning his attention away from J to stare at her. “I’ve been in this hole long enough to know how it works. Most of us rot in our cells without any sign that anyone remembers us. No visitors. No letters. Not even a whisper that they had ever existed outside of their cells.”

He tilted his head, the faintest smirk cutting through his expression as he turned back to J. “But not you. No, you’ve got yourself a miracle. A Crownguard, no less, standing at your door, throwing away her reputation just to pull you out of the dirt. And what do you do? You shrug. You mutter. You sulk in the corner like none of it matters.”

J’s fingers curled around the length of chain, her thumb biting into the metal. “Lux is a big girl,” she muttered. “If she wants to spend her time crying over someone like me...” J shrugged. “That’s on her.”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Sylas asked. “That you don’t have a say in any of this? That it’s got nothing to do with you?”

The chainlinks slithered out of J’s hand as she turned over and faced the wall, her shoulders curling in on herself as she closed herself off from the rest of the world.

“Maybe it’s easier for you to forget yourself if you pretend that you don’t have a say in anything,” Sylas spoke to her back. “But if that’s the case, why are you letting her throw herself at your feet?”

“I told her to leave,” J muttered. “She doesn’t listen.”

Sylas chuckled. “No, she doesn’t,” he said. “Because she’s got something you clearly don’t. She’s got hope, and she’s willing to tear herself apart just to give you a shred of it. You would think that if you truly cared, you’d do everything in your power to stop her from prostrating herself like this, but maybe you actually like it. Maybe it makes you feel powerful, having a Crownguard throwing herself at your feet.” 

“Shut up,” J growled. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Perhaps not,” he agreed. “But I do know what it’s like to be in chains. I know what it’s like to sit in a cell and wonder if anyone even remembers you exist. And I know that I’ve never had someone like her ”—he jerked his head toward Lux—“offering to break me from my bonds. Perhaps it’s you who doesn’t understand.”

J rolled over and threw a glare at Sylas. Her expression had sharpened, thinning her face and whetting her eyes to slivered points. Lux had never imagined that J’s face could look like that. It belonged to a different person, a crueler person.

“You really don’t shut up, do you?”

Sylas stilled, just as taken back by the change in J’s tone as Lux. He recovered quickly, rolling his shoulders as she leaned against the cell. “Finally decided to—”

J’s scoff cut through his words. "Honestly, I’m starting to think you like hearing yourself talk more than you actually care about what you’re saying." Her chains clinked as she pushed herself upright. "It’s no wonder Lux stopped coming to see you if all you do is yap at anyone who can hear you."

Lux could almost see the words flying across the cell as they struck at Sylas, and she watched in frozen horror as he recoiled before lunging forward, his chains snapping taut, metal biting against stone.

"You arrogant little brat, " he snarled.

Lux flinched.

Whatever softness had laced his voice was gone, leaving sharp-fanged words to spew from his lips unchecked. “You act like you’ve seen the worst of it, like you’re some wretched little creature the world chewed up and spat out. But you’re not.” His voice dipped lower, his lip curling with disgust. “I’ve watched men waste away in these cells. I’ve watched them scratch their nails from their flesh trying to claw their way out, praying for someone— anyone —to remember their name before they vanished from this world. But you? You have someone—someone breaking herself for you and you can’t even be bothered to care. You’re pathetic. ”

Something within Lux snapped at the vitriol thrown across the cells.

"Sylas, stop!" she shouted, moving to stand between them. “You don’t get to talk about her like that!”

Sylas finally glanced at her, but whatever fire had flared up in him had already started to cool, the final remnants vanishing as he exhaled through his nose and stepped back from the edge of his cell.

She gave him a final glare before turning her attention to J, her stomach curdling at what she’d see. But J hadn’t reacted to Sylas’s words at all. She just sat there, her legs splayed out in front of her, chains clinking lazily as she slumped against the stone, her eyes devoid of any emotion.

In that moment, whatever tenuous thread holding her together finally unraveled . Her nails bit into her palms as the rage surged with enough force she thought it might split her open. The blood pounded in her ears, heat roaring under her skin. Just shouting at Sylas wasn’t enough. She wanted to hurt him for the way he spoke about J like she was nothing, wanted to see his throat bob as she forced him to swallow his words and taste the same humiliation that he’d tried to inflict on her J. 

"Honestly," Lux spat as she whirled back to face Sylas. "For someone who's spent over a decade in here, you have no sympathy for others."

Sylas clicked his tongue. “Ah, there it is,” he murmured. “That famous Demacian righteousness. I was beginning to think you’d lost it.”

Lux stomped toward his cell. “You—”

He waved a hand as if batting away a moth. “No, no, you’re right. I should’ve been gentler.” He tilted his head toward J, his voice dipping into something that could almost be mistaken for sincerity. “Wouldn’t want to upset her, after all.”

Lux glowered at him. “All you do is sit there, stewing in your own bitterness, and the second you get a chance, you lash out with it.”

"That’s hardly fair," he huffed. "I just wanted to—."

“You wanted to take your misery out on someone else," Lux growled.

Sylas didn’t reply immediately, his expression shuttering as he appraised her. Lux met his stare head-on, her eyes boring into his own.

The moment held for a beat before something shifted in Sylas’s gaze, his eyes lowering to the floor as he dipped his head. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said at last. “I let my anger get the better of me. I’m sorry.”

He let out a slow exhale. “Old habits, you understand,” he muttered, offering her a reticent smile. “Bitterness makes an easy weapon—I’ll put it down.”

Lux wanted to snap back. She wanted to keep tearing into him. She wanted to cut him open the same way he’d tried to do to J. Her knuckles ached as she clenched them, trembling with an unseen force that itched to be set free.

As if he could sense her emotion, Sylas glanced at the back of his cell, his brow furrowing. “You said she was a tinkerer.”

The shift in topic was so abrupt, so casual, that it nearly knocked Lux off balance.

“What?”

"You said she worked at a forge," he said before retreating to the corner of his cell where he crouched beside a stack of books. Books she had given to him. Sylas ran his finger down the stack before pulling one free and reading the spine of it. “I don’t know much about that, but perhaps this will help make amends.”

Lux’s pulse was still beating in her ears, but the heat of her fury had begun to cool, just slightly. She exhaled as he neared, the book awkwardly cradled in his hands. The sight of it caused a strange giddiness to shoot through her.

Yes, she thought, her eyes locked onto the book, her mind wrapping around the possibilities it could open. It was obvious that she didn’t want Lux around her. She’d rejected her at every opportunity, and even now she only spoke to her in an attempt to make her leave. It made her heart feel like it had been carved into ribbons, but so long as J continued to live, she would survive. But that didn’t mean Lux had nothing left to give her, nothing that could help J and keep her from falling further into the abyss she’d carved for herself.

And maybe, if she waited long enough, if she brought J enough books and proved that she wasn’t going to leave her, then J could forgive her. They could work through this and, when she finally managed to take J away from here, the two of them could start over. No more secrets, no more betrayal. Nothing of anything except for themselves.

She reached through the bars to take the book.

“I really am sorry, Little Light,” Sylas murmured.

The book hit the stone floor with a lifeless thud as he dropped it, his hands shooting out to clamp around her wrist.

Lux gasped as something reached into her and pulled, ripping the magic from her veins, her whole body seizing as she staggered forward, the fingers of her free hand catching against the cold metal bars as a hollow pit yawned open deep inside her.

Dark spots encroached on her vision, each one feeling like a plug let loose as more of her consciousness slipped away, bleeding out from where Sylas’s fingers wrapped around her wrist. A light flashed against the back of her eyelids and Lux forced herself to look at it.

The runes lining Sylas’s shackles were glowing, the brightness fissuring through the petricite. They began to vibrate, crackling with overcharged power before, suddenly, the petricite splintered, arcs of effervescent light cutting deep grooves through the stone. The air around them thickened, and for a brief, terrifying second, she felt the pressure of her magic howling in her ears as it funneled through him, through her . Sylas’s shackles shattered, and Lux gasped, body lurching against the force as the world exploded around them.

She hit the ground hard, pain slicing through her ribs as her head smashed against the ground with a wet snap. The edges of her vision blurred from the impact, but she forced herself onto her elbows, wincing as the world tilted sideways, the scent of scorched metal burning her lungs as she choked out short, uneven gasps.

Lux blinked back the dizziness, lifting her head toward the source of the explosion. Sylas’s cell was reduced to a ruinous cavity. The bars had been twisted beyond recognition, the stonework split open where the hinges had been wrenched free while crumbling bits of debris fell from the ceiling, trailing motes of dust in the air that refused to settle.

And in the center of the destruction was Sylas, his chains in ruins at his feet.

Chapter Text

Sylas stood in the wreckage of his cell, years of imprisonment falling from his shoulders as he lifted his arms over his head, the muscles of his arms pulling taut against his flesh.

Then, he turned toward her, a wolfish grin flitting over his face.

Her breath caught in her throat, the horrible sensation of her magic being ripped from her still throbbing in her bones. She’d always feared that one day, it would escape her grip—she’d just never imagined that it would look like this.

Sylas stepped through what remained of his cell, stopping just beyond the twisted bars to brush the dust from his arms, the links of his shackles glinting in the dim light as they dangled from his wrists.

“Don’t look so surprised, Little Light,” he crooned. “You had to know I wouldn’t stay caged forever.”

Lux clenched her jaw, her fingers curling against the stone as she forced her back to straighten. “Sylas — ”

But he was already gone, slipping into the shadows like a man who had never been locked up at all, the torchlight swallowing his silhouette as his laughter rippled through the prison halls.

She stared after him for a minute before forcing herself forward, ignoring the flare of pain in her ribs. Every second wasted was another second closer to disaster. She started toward the stairwell before freezing. Sylas hadn’t been the only one the Mageseekers had locked away down here.

Lux turned to J, her pulse hammering as she took in the sight of her.

She hadn’t moved, still hunched against the wall in the same position she’d been before Sylas had broken from his cell. Shadows hung over her face, and she was so still that, for a brief second, Lux thought she might have slipped into sleep.

Lux’s heart slammed against her ribs. “J?”

J’s eyes opened. She blinked, as if just realizing that Lux was talking to her.

Lux clenched her jaw. “We have to move,” she urged, her voice raw. “Do you hear me? We have to go. The whole place is coming down.”

J tilted her head toward the collapsing ceiling, flecks of dust falling over her face. “Looks that way,” she muttered.

Lux swallowed down the spike of frustration that came with her words. “So move .”

Another tremor shuddered through the walls, the entire structure groaning under its own weight, and still J made no effort to me. Something inside of Lux snapped at the lack of urgency, burning through her as J refused to so much as try to save herself. “You’re not staying here.”

J watched her with vague curiosity as she dropped to her knees in front of the cell. “You really think you get to decide that?”

“I do.”

Lux wrapped her fingers around the lock.

The pain was immediate. A deep, biting cold that slashed through her nerves with the cut of a serrated blade. She jerked back, cradling her hands against her chest as angry blisters opened up across her palms, sparks of agony rushing up her arms that throbbed in time with the beat of her pulse.

J’s eyes furrowed. “Stop that.”

Lux ignored her and shook the pain out of her hands before setting her jaw and reaching for the lock again.

Her magic recoiled, trying to crawl deeper into herself, but Lux grit her teeth and pulled. The hasp groaned at the pressure but refused to give.

She gnashed her teeth and summoned what little of her magic remained. Light flickered to life beneath her fingertips, ethereal wisps rising like steam, and Lux had an instant of hope as they too vanished, too weak to so much as chip the petricite.

Fine, she thought. It’s not like I ever needed my magic before. She planted her feet against the bars and tried to pry it open again, but the pain only deepened, biting into her skin like the shackles that should have been on her wrists instead of J’s.

J shifted slightly from her place in the cell, her eyes locked onto the juncture of Lux’s hands. “That looks like it stings.”

Lux clenched her jaw. “I’ll manage,” she ground out, spots dancing in her eyes as she continued pulling the lock against the bars.

But, despite her efforts, the lock wouldn’t budge. Lux’s eyes swept the cellblock, searching for a solution. She spotted a jagged piece of masonry that had been torn from the wall, and she abandoned the lock to lunge toward it. The stone was heavier than she expected, and the edges bit into her already raw hands, but she ignored the pain, hissing through her teeth as she returned to J’s cell.

The first strike sent a sharp clang ringing through the cell, but the battered lock held firm, the keyhole leering at her with its single, stubborn eye. Lux imagined it to be the mask of her uncle and smashed the rock against it a second time. This time, a crack splintered through the lock.

She allowed herself a moment of success before gritting her teeth and lifting the rock again, rivulets of blood beginning to drip down her wrists from where the stone had cut into her flesh.

One more.

She brought it down with everything she had.

A sharp snap echoed through the space, the lock splitting in half as it fell to the floor with a final, lifeless thud. The door creaked open, but J didn’t so much as blink at the sudden freedom.

Lux’s heart hammered in her chest. Nothing was stopping her from rushing into the cell and pulling J into her arms. There was nothing she wanted to do more. If she could, she’d spend the rest of her life in there, her arms wrapped around J’s shoulders as she held her to her breast, whispering apologies in her ear until J finally forgave her.

But she couldn’t do that, not when every moment she spent here was another Sylas could be using to destroy Demacia. 

Lux swallowed. “J, you have to leave.”

J blinked, her eyes no more lively than before. “Why?”

Lux stared at her in disbelief. The whole place was collapsing, the Mageseekers would be here any second, and J was asking why they needed to leave? She grit her teeth. “Because if you stay here, they’re going to throw you in another cell. And this time, you might not get back out.”

J hummed, watching the dust swirl in the air. “Could be worse.”

Lux clenched her fists. “You don’t have to come with me,” she said. Just saying the words made her chest twist, but she soldiered on. “You don’t even have to see me again. Just get away from here. Run, before anyone can stop you.”

J didn’t move but when she looked up, her eyes were filled with a wretched stillness that told Lux more than words ever could. Whatever part of J she was trying to plead to wasn’t awake anymore. There was nothing she could say to convince her, nothing she could do to bring that part of her back to life.

Lux’s throat tightened. “I’m sorry,” she murmured before turning toward the stairwell, her hand pressing against the wall as her body protested the movement. Her limbs shook from exhaustion, but she forced herself forward. There wasn’t time to rest, not while Sylas was still free. Not when she was responsible for every wound he’d carve into Demacia.

Lux glanced behind her as she climbed the first steps.

J hadn’t moved.

Lux swallowed against the tightness in her throat and turned away.

She had to stop Sylas before he could make this worse than it already was—though she could hardly imagine what could be worse than the hole that had opened up inside her chest, its chasm larger than even the hollow where her magic had lurked.

Jinx watched her leave, staring down the corridor until the echo of footsteps faded into a silence that almost let her believe that Lux had never been here in the first place, that she was living happily ever after, basking in the sunshine and smelling flower blossoms—or whatever it was that perfect girls like her did. Maybe she was off sitting on a porch somewhere, sipping tea and nibbling on pastries. She did say that she liked sweets, Jinx remembered.

Yeah, she thought, settling deeper into the wall of her cell as she imagined Lux sitting there, book in one hand, the other smudged with crumbs as the sun fell over her flawless face, illuminating her hair like liquid gold. There’s no way someone like her would ever waste her time with me.

Except, when Jinx opened her eyes, she saw the door to her cell hanging off its hinges and the remnants of a shattered lock lying on the floor, drops of blood smeared against its surface.

The irony was almost enough to force a laugh from her. She exhaled instead, tilting her head back against the wall to watch the dust swirl in the air. How many times had this happened now? How many times had someone reached out, expecting her to take their hand?

The first had been Ekko, staring her down from across the bridge, his voice shaking as he told her she could still come back from this. That it wasn’t too late. Then Vi, looking at her through the bars of her cell like she was some broken, tragic thing, like she was still the little girl she’d left behind all those years ago. That all it would take was a little love and affirmation for her to fill in all the holes life had punched into her.

And now Lux. Another one trying to pull her out. Another one convinced she wanted to be pulled out at all.

Didn’t they realize that she was closer to nothing than whatever girl had existed before her? She’d lost too much. All she wanted was to move on. She could find the rest of herself in the next life.

Jinx exhaled and rubbed a hand down her face. You don’t belong here.

It was funny how people always thought they knew where she did belong.

She could still hear Lux’s voice echoing in her head. You don’t have to come with me. You don’t even have to see me again. Just get away from here. Run, before anyone can stop you.

As if running had ever changed anything.

Jinx had tried. She’d tried to listen to Silco. She’d tried to believe that if she just let go, if she just walked away, she could leave everything behind her, that she could cut herself out of the past and start fresh, taking whatever scraps of herself she still had a claim to and build something from them. But no matter how far she went, the cycle always found her again. There was always someone trying to pull her back from the ledge. Always someone thinking they could fix her.

But not this time.

This time, she got to do it her way.

Her joints popped in protest as she pushed herself to her feet. The corridors stretched ahead of her, empty except for the clang of metal and far-off shouts echoing across the walls. She didn’t bother keeping to the shadows as she made her way out of the prison. The Mageseekers—and the rest of Demacia’s shiny knights—would be scrambling to put the city back in order. They wouldn’t spare her a single thought until long after everything was over and done with.

Her body was still adjusting to something that wasn’t a cold, damp box when she stepped into the street. The sky was streaked black, flames licking hungrily at the edges of rooftops as smoke filled her lungs. Shouts echoed from the streets below, voices tangling into a single panicked noise that rang in her ears.

The scene carried a breeze of familiarity.

Piltover had burned like this, its towers turned skeletal as the air filled with the echoes of sirens and the fractured screams of people trying to escape. Zaun had burned too, the grey eating through the undercity in thick clouds of chemical smoke as the enforcers stormed the lanes, herding everyone who lived there deeper into the pit of a city that had never wanted them in the first place. Or even earlier, before Vander, when her memory was nothing but crimson skies and smoke and bodies strewn about with wide, glassy eyes staring back at her. 

She was an old hand when it came to burning cities.

Jinx let out a slow breath and turned her back to the flames, shoving her hands into her pockets. The back of her mind itched as the voices began to bleed into existence, their voices building like water dripping from a broken faucet.

“This is always how it ends, isn’t it?” Mylo asked. “You walk out of one fire, just to start another. How many more places are you going to watch burn before you realize that you’re the problem, Jinx?”

Jinx shoved her hands deeper into her pockets.

This was the last time. Nobody was going to stop her. Nobody could. Ekko wasn’t here to save the day. Vi wouldn’t get in her way. And Lux had already left. If she was lucky, Lux would get her wish and never see her again.

The thought was almost enough to make her stop.

But then, heat flared beneath her skin, curling over the edges of her ribs as it wrapped around the base of her spine, seeping into her bones and flushing out any hesitation she might have had. She felt something restless coiling inside her, something sharp and dangerous, something she had tried and failed to smother over and over again.

Jinx had let herself sink into the petricite’s embrace, believing that maybe that was how it would end. Not with the bang she’d always imagined or with her body slumping to the ground, but with every part of herself paved over and forgotten.

She should have known that her body would mess it up.

What had once been enough to shutter the curtains of her mind became useless within days, every dose wearing off faster than the last as the fire simmering beneath her skin splintered her thoughts and cut the world into a thousand fragments.

The Mageseekers hadn’t noticed at first. They only saw it in pieces, the way her eyes cleared too quickly or the sudden twitching of her fingers, as if someone had stuck a generator to her and shot her full of electric currents. But once they realized how quickly the petricite flushed out of her system, they tried everything they could to keep her down for good—not that any of it mattered in the end. The shimmer coursing through her veins always burned through the fog. It was the blood of Zaun, too spiteful to ever die a quiet death.

And, as surely as the sun rose in the morning, she would have this poison inside of her, corroding her thoughts with images of everything she’d done, of everyone she’d killed.

There was only one way to make it stop. Jinx had tried everything else. She’d tried to walk away. She’d tried to kill it with petricite. The shimmer wasn’t the problem. She was.

Jinx turned into an alley, her mind already thinking of where she could go, and how she would finally get her rest, her mind so focused that she barely caught the movement in the corner of her vision. She turned toward it, watching as a girl took shape from the shadows, peering back at her with wide eyes and arms huddled against her chest.

Jinx stopped. She knew that posture. It had trailed her for days before throwing itself over her.

“Figures.” Jinx clucked her tongue as she stared at Isha. “You never could let me be, could you?”

And just when she’d told herself that nobody could stop her, too. Her mind really did love messing with her. For once she wished it was Mylo staring back at her. He would have cheered her on.

Isha stared at her with an expression that made her fingers twitch at her sides. It was too earnest. Just like when she’d smiled at her before blowing herself to bits. It wasn’t right. Isha should have hated her. She should have been screaming voiceless obscenities at her, her tiny fists smashing against her in rage.

Instead, she stood there, eyes full of understanding as she stared Jinx down. If she didn’t know better, Jinx would think that Isha was trying to scold her—as if she were the one who needed to be put in her place.

"You’ve always been so certain, haven’t you?" Silco whispered, his hand ghosting over her shoulder as his specter appeared in the corner of her vision.

Jinx’s stomach twisted, bile rising in her throat. Jinx knew the voice wasn’t real—that this wasn’t actually Silco—but his words still settled into her mind, threading between her thoughts as they reopened wounds she’d tried to stitch shut.

Why couldn’t her brain be on the same page as everything else? Of all the people it could have conjured, why did it have to be these two? Her nails bit into her palms as she squeezed her fingers into fists. 

"You see yourself as something that can’t help but break everything you touch—but why is it that you never realize how much you’ve built?

Jinx clenched her jaw and squeezed her eyes shut. He’s not real. He hadn’t been there when she was stuffed full of petricite. He was just a figment of her imagination. If Silco was anywhere in the world, he was rotting in the sump.

Because she was the one that killed him.

Silco ignored her as he continued talking. He always did love a lecture. "Destruction and creation are two sides of the same coin, Jinx. Zaun wouldn’t have broken free from Piltover if you hadn’t pried their boot from its throat.

His eye glimmered as he glanced at her. “ And what of your sister? Do you think Vi would have survived the hexgates had you not been there to save her? You can count the bodies, if you like, but count all of them, my girl. Not everyone who gets close to you dies.”

“Tell that to Isha,” she muttered, glancing at the girl before turning away. She couldn’t look the girl in the face. If she did, she’d remember what it looked like after.

Silco sighed. "Do you really believe she would’ve been better off had she never met you?" he asked. "That girl would have died without you, just another gutter rat lost to the mines before she ever had a chance to be something more.”

“Instead she got to be a sacrifice,” Jinx returned. “And that’s soo much better, isn’t it?”

Silco’s hand brushed over her hair. “You gave her a life worth remembering, no matter how short. We cannot measure our time in the Undercity with how long we live, Jinx. It is what we accomplish down there that defines us. No one will remember Isha for how much of her life was left to live. They will remember her for what she did during it, for what she gave to the Undercity.”

Jinx scoffed. “Sounds like a shit business model to me.”

“Perhaps,” Silco acknowledged. “We give our bodies to a city that will never love us, but in doing so, we carve our names into its walls. The Undercity is volatile. One life can shape its history for decades and, so long as the city continues to live, so will everyone who had poured their blood into it. Even if we are forgotten, our actions will be remembered as forming the bedrock to the next generation of Zaunites—a generation that will not need to claw their way out from the sump, their hands torn and riddled with blisters.”

Something gave way inside of her at the words.

“They wouldn’t need to remember you if you weren’t dead,” she snarled. “But you are, because I killed you, just like I did to Isha, and Vander, and everyone else around me!”

Her shoulders heaved, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. She could almost feel Silco preparing for another speech. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “If you want to talk to me so badly, you can wait a bit longer and we can do this face-to-face with everyone else I killed.” She scoffed. “Then we’ll see just how many of them share your feelings.”

“You could have joined me earlier,” Silco said after a moment of silence. “But you let yourself be pulled back. It wasn’t your Firelight that saved you—it was you who decided that you could still make a difference. You knew that if you were gone, nobody was going to protect the people you love. Is that not a cycle worth repeating?”

“Piss off,” she spat. “You don’t get to talk about deciding to live when I didn’t give you the choice.”

Why did it always have to be Silco? Why couldn’t she get Mylo or Claggor or anyone who would have agreed with her? It always had to be him, looking down at her with those shrewd eyes, lecturing her as if she were still a kid who needed his guidance. She wasn’t that little girl anymore. That girl was dead.

“We both know you care for the girl,” Silco said, his voice fading from her mind.

Gods, even when he left, it frustrated her. Jinx ground the toe of her boot into the ground as she grumbled under her breath, “you always had to get the last word in, didn’t you? Not even putting a bullet in you could make you stop.”

Jinx gave Isha a final look before turning on her heel and walking out of the alley. The cycle was always the same. She wasn’t going to pretend like it would go any other way.

Chapter Text

Lux had known things would be bad the moment she left the dungeons, she just hadn’t known how bad. The streets were alive with chaos by the time she stumbled out of the Mageseeker compound, long fingers of smoke rising toward the sky as the scent of burning wood and melted stone filled the air. She stopped just beyond the threshold and tried to make sense of it.

Everywhere she looked, mages were swarming the streets, their presence so thick that her skin tingled, her head spinning as the magic pressed against her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen so many mages in her life, much less within such a small proximity of one another.

Sylas hadn’t just escaped. He had unmade the prison.

She’d spent so many nights listening to Sylas tell his story that she’d let herself believe that he had a good heart hidden beneath his bitterness, that the Mageseekers had been wrong about him. She’d thought that Sylas understood her, that he shared a connection with her that could only have been formed between people who knew what it was like to be born an outsider to the rest of their country.

All of it had been a lie.

Sylas had never wanted her friendship or her sympathy. He had only ever wanted her power and, when he realized that she wouldn’t give it to him willingly, he treated her like everyone else who refused him and ripped the magic from her body by force.

The Mageseekers had always told her to harden her heart to mages, and when she argued against them, they insisted that she failed to understand their true duplicity. But she had been stubborn. What did they know about the trials a mage went through? Lux would not withhold her kindness to someone simply because of the magic in their veins. If she did, she wouldn’t be able to look herself in the mirror.

Now, as she stood in the wreckage Sylas had left behind, she felt something inside her break, years of belief corroded in a single instant. She’d trusted Sylas. She’d done everything she could to help him—and when her attempts fell on deaf ears, she still took the time to visit him and make sure that he wasn’t left to waste away in his cell without a single person to remember that he’d existed.

This was how he repaid her.

Lux could understand why he’d grown to hate Demacia. She could see how that hatred had festered with every injustice branded into him until it became an intractable mark in his conscience. But to use her like this, to pretend to understand her, to build their entire relationship with this betrayal in mind… from the moment they’d met, Sylas must have contrived this. He’d probably laughed himself to sleep after every one of her visits, entirely satisfied with how easily she was falling to his manipulations.

When the stories of this would be retold, Lux wouldn’t be the one who stood up against tyranny and injustice. She would be nothing more than a stupid, naïve girl who’d doomed her city, the idiot who dared question her betters as she opened the pen to a hungry wolf without thinking it would devour her.

A knight stumbled into her path before collapsing mid-step, writhing as his armor warped and twisted around him, crushed by a pair of unseen hands, his scream cutting off in a wet gurgle.

She’d hardly turned away from the gore before witnessing a mage standing over the corpse of a Mageseeker, fingers still crackling with the remnants of magic. Lux sucked in a breath and forced herself forward, darting past the shattered remains of merchant stalls and toppled carriages, past crumbling walls and overwhelmed guards gawking at the destruction. She kept her head down, stepping past bodies whose chests she refused to look at in fear of noticing their stillness as the heat of the fires pressed against her skin.

She had to get to Sylas. She had to stop him from doing worse.

The palace rose through the smoke. The gates, once magnificently wrought stalwarts of iron, had been torn open until they resembled a decimated sternum whose ribs had been pulled back until they snapped.

Lux slowed as she approached. Weapons lay scattered in the dirt next to the bodies that had once wielded them, blood pooling beneath the bodies of the royal guard as it seeped into the dirt.

Lux swallowed back the bile rising in her throat as she knelt to the ground and wrapped her hand around a discarded sword. It was heavier than she expected, its weight unsteady in her hand, and the handle sticky against her palm. Lux forced herself to ignore the feeling, refusing to consider what was staining her fingers, as she stepped past the gates and into the palace.

A distant blast shook the hall, rattling the windowpanes in their frames. Beyond the smoke-streaked glass, Lux caught a glimpse of the city through the billows of smoke, the sound of desperate screaming just loud enough to reach her ears from within the palace walls. She inhaled before dragging her eyes away from the window. She had to keep moving.

Lux turned a corner, before coming to an abrupt stop. The doors to the throne room had been forced open, light spilling through the uneven gap like blood from an open wound.

She barely registered the weight of the doors as she slipped through the opening, her chest heaving as she sucked in lungfuls of air.

The sight that greeted her tore whatever breath she had left as good as if someone had reached down her throat and pulled it from her lungs themselves.

Jarvan lay collapsed against the base of the throne, one arm wrapped around his ribs. His armor had been torn open, the golden plate smeared with blood. Lux searched for his weapon, only to find it on the other side of the room, hopelessly out of reach.

Sylas stood over him, casual in his victory as his chains dangled from the shackles still clamped around his wrists, flecks of blood still falling from them.

She was too late.

Her mind hurtled toward the inevitable. If Jarvan died here there would be no peace. No chance of redemption for anyone caught in the middle. There would only be blood and violence as the kingdom tore itself apart.

The ends of Sylas’s shackles rattled against the ground, and Lux gasped at the violent intent lining every edge of his body as he lifted his arms over his head, fingers tangling in the chainlinks.

Jarvan turned his head at the sound, his eyes locking onto her from across the room. The panic that filled his expression pierced her and she barely registered the movement of her body as she raised her hand toward Sylas, a burst of magic erupting from her fingers. The light seared her eyes as it shot forward, slamming into Sylas’s exposed back.

He didn’t so much as flinch as her magic burst across his skin, skittering along his arms before it flickered into nothingness.

Lux felt her stomach plummet.

She’d spent her entire life being afraid of the power lurking beneath her skin, terrified that one day, it would slip free of her control and expose her affliction to the world as it destroyed everything she held dear.

She had never once considered what would happen if she lost that power.

Her hands hovered in front of her, her ragged as the well of magic she’d always struggled to contain refused to answer her, every attempt to urge it forward increasing the hollow in her chest.

“You—”

Her veins numbed at the voice, and Lux snapped her head toward the center of the room.

Jarvan was staring at her, his disbelieving eyes pressing into every inch of exposed, vulnerable space inside her. She knew what he was going to say before the words left his mouth.

“You’re a mage.”

Lux’s throat tightened as the weight of what she saw in his eyes settled over her.

Sylas let out a low, knowing laugh, as if Jarvan’s bewilderment was the exact thing he had expected to see painting the prince’s expression—and maybe it was.

“Oh, poor prince,” he drawled, a cruel glimmer dancing in his eyes. “Even the people closest to you were hiding under your nose, too scared to reveal themselves to you.”

Her fingers curled around the hilt of her sword, the cold steel grounding her, even as it failed to stop the trembling in her hands. “It’s not like that.”

Sylas’s smile twitched. “No?” he asked, stepping toward her. “Enlighten me then, Luxanna. What is it like to spend your life knowing that the very people you call friends and colleagues would never accept you?”

She opened her mouth to retort, but the words never came.

Sylas’s smile grew sharper at her hesitation. “You could have been so much more,” he said. “But instead, here you are, throwing yourself between me and a prince who wouldn’t have hesitated to put your head on a pike if he’d known the truth about you.”

He glanced at her upraised sword. “What a waste,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “I thought that after spending weeks visiting your friend in the dungeons, you would have learned that Demacia will never let people like us be anything but monsters in their eyes, yet you still choose to stand alongside your oppressors.” His gaze flicked back up to hers, something bitter edging into his voice. “I won’t let your misguided sense of loyalty stop me from doing what must be done.” 

His chains whistled as they cut through the air, and she barely twisted in time to avoid taking the full brunt of the blow as the metal snapped against her shoulder. Even that sent a shock of pain lancing down her arm that numbed her fingers.

Lux bit out a curse as she staggered backward before, raising her sword in front of her like a shield. Sylas’s chains snapped forward again, and she managed to deflect the strike with the flat of her blade, sparks shooting across the marble as the steel collided against itself. Lux firmed her muscles, bringing both hands to bear on the hilt of her sword before Sylas’s next attack could beat it from her grasp.

She barely had a moment to adjust before he moved again, the chainlinks snapping toward her like vipers as they curled around the length of her sword and pulled. Her arm twisted, pain flaring up her arm as Sylas wrenched his chains to the side. Her fingers slid against the leather, before losing their grip entirely as the sword was torn from her grasp, clattering to the floor with a metallic clang.

The sound rang in her ears, and Lux took another step back, her hand massaging the bruised ligaments of her wrist as she stared at Sylas.

He didn’t even look winded as he swaggered forward, his arms back at his sides. “Were you expecting that to go differently?”

Lux didn’t answer. She lunged forward, trying to close the distance before he could put an end to the fight. She aimed for his center, lowering her shoulder as she threw her entire body at him.

The moment she got close, he drove his fist into her stomach.

Pain exploded through her, and Lux choked back a cry as her knees buckled. She didn’t get the chance to recover before Sylas grabbed the collar of her cloak, lifting her off the floor and vaulting her over his shoulder. She crashed into the hard marble floor, her ribs bending as the back of her head cracked against the tiles, white light flaring behind her eyes.

Get up, she urged, fighting through the daze as the ceiling slowly came into focus. You can’t stop here. You’re the only thing standing between Sylas and his revenge.

Lux groaned and braced her forearm against the floor as she prepared to push herself back to her feet, only for Sylas’s foot to plant itself on her forearm, the sole of his boot grinding against her bones.

“You’re so blind, Little Light.” His voice was quieter now, almost gentle as he pinned her to the floor, the ends of one of his chains pooling beside her face. "You could have changed everything, but instead, you stand here, defending the people who would have left you in chains, who would have demanded that you burn for nothing more than being born with magic’s touch.”

Sylas sighed. “We are not so unalike, Luxanna. Can’t you see? The only difference between us is that I am not content to kneel before those who have done nothing to deserve my loyalty.”

“You’re wrong.” Lux glared up at him. “The difference between us is that I don’t need to burn Demacia down to prove it’s wrong.”

Sylas’s expression shifted as his lips pulled into a snarl. “In all your time, you’ve proven nothing. You couldn’t even save your precious J—and that was before you revealed yourself as a mage.”

He leaned over her. "Do you really believe they'll ever see you as anything other than a threat?” Sylas pressed. “No matter how much you bow your head, no matter how much you give, it will never be enough. The Demacians are as set in their ways as the petricite they use to enchain us. ”

Lux glared at him. “What do you know about giving to others?” Her eyes fell to his hands. “All you’ve ever done in your life is take from the people around you.”

A shadow crossed his face. “If you will not believe me, then let me show you what you could have been.”

He reached for her, and Lux felt the slow, inevitable drag of power being drawn toward him before his fingers even reached her. She sucked in a breath, trying to force her magic inward but it felt like she was trying to stop a river with her bare hands. Lux clenched her fists, forcing herself to breathe, but the pull only tightened inside of her, dragging whatever dredges remained of her magic from her bones, as if a bone surgeon were removing debris that had lodged itself there. Except this wasn’t some foreign object embedded inside of her. It was her and every piece that Sylas tore from her left a cavity in its wake.

“This could have been yours,” Sylas said, watching as her magic coiled into his palm, his veins glowing with iridescent brightness. “You could have remade this kingdom. But instead, you’d rather be their pet."

“You don’t want to remake Demacia,” Lux ground out, spots dotting her vision. “You just want to tear down anyone who had a hand in your own suffering.”

Sylas’s expression hardened. “It’s about more than just me, Luxanna. The cycle of oppression can only end when those at the bottom break free from their shackles, when they show the world that they were not meant to kneel in the dirt or suffer the indignity put on them by their oppressors.”

Sylas’s palm lay flat on her chest, light spilling from between his fingers. “You don’t deserve this power,” he said lowly. “Not if all you’re going to do is let it rot inside you while you kneel for people who would never do the same for you.”

Lux’s body tensed as another thread of her magic unraveled, her vision darkening at the edges. Sylas’s fingers dug deeper, rooting out every last spark she held within herself. With every mote he stole, the world dimmed, its vibrance fading from her vision, possibly forever. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for when that darkness overcame her completely.

Crack!

Sylas grunted as a chunk of broken plaster struck him across the temple, the blow snapping his head to the side as a gash opened just beneath his hairline, the blood vivid against his skin. Lux felt her magic fall back into her veins as he staggered back, the break so sudden that the recoil hit her like a punch to the chest.

“Gotta say, for a guy who loves to talk about freedom, you sure like to get grabby, huh?”

Lux’s heart stuttered. She knew that voice. 

J stood in the dust and rubble at the entrance of the throne room, her fingers twitching at her side, another piece of mortar held in one hand.

Her stomach dropped. “J,” she gasped. “You shouldn’t be here.”

J should have run. She should have gotten as far away from Demacia as possible. Lux hadn’t freed her just so she could—

J’s eyes flicked to her, and Lux froze at the hardness of them. “Didn’t you say you wanted me with you?” She cocked her head. “Always. Or did I hear you wrong?”

Lux felt her throat close. “J, this isn’t your fight.” She sucked in a shaking breath, the ache in her ribs sharp from where she’d hit the floor. “You need to leave.”

J’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not what always means, Lux.”

Lux’s pulse hammered in her ribs. She opened her mouth, words pressing against her teeth with inchoate desperation.

A low chuckle broke through the space between them. “She’s right,” Sylas said, his eyes narrowing as they flicked over J, undoubtedly taking in the gaps of her ribs and the press of skin against her lean arms. “You should’ve run.” 

J’s gaze snapped back to him, offering a lazy smile and a shrug. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she said, taking a handful of steps into the throne room. “But I’ve got this thing about making bad decisions.” 

“It’s not too late,” Sylas said, wiping away the last of the blood dotting his brow. “You have no stake in my revolution. Walk away before you become embroiled in it.” His lips curved into a smile. “Or better yet, stay and watch as Demacia receives retribution for its treatment of us.” He extended his hand to her, his eyes twinkling. “You have every reason to tear them apart for what they’ve done to you.”

Sylas’s words hung in the air, and Lux’s heart strained as she waited for what J would do. She couldn’t—but Sylas wasn’t wrong. J had no reason to stand beside her, not after everything she and the Mageseekers had done to her. A shudder crawled up her spine at the thought of J and Sylas standing together, the two people she’d tried to save from the Mageseekers’ cruelty raining destruction onto her kingdom, both of them the result of her own failure.

J snorted. “They didn’t do anything new. I was busted long before they laid a finger on me.”

Sylas scowled. “If that’s how you feel, then why aren’t you still in your cell, waiting for the Mageseekers to force another measure of petricite down your throat like an obedient little cretin?”

“Because,” she said, glancing at Lux, “ if I didn’t show up, someone was gonna let herself get torn to pieces like a complete idiot.”

Lux’s heart splintered.

“You’re another one, aren’t you?” Sylas snarled. “Another who’d rather let all that potential rot because you’re too scared to learn how to use it.”

“Scared?” J scoffed. “If you’ve seen what I’ve done, you’d be scared of letting me loose, too.”

“Do you think you’re special, girl?” Sylas asked, tilting his head in condescension. “Do you think that, of all the warriors in Demacia, it will be you that stops me?”

He waved his arm around the room as his lips tilted upward in a mocking smirk. “Not the royal guard, or a misguided mage, or even the crown prince himself, but you, a small malnourished girl who’s been wasting away in her cell who suddenly thinks she can play at being the hero.”

“Now that’s just rude,” Jinx muttered. “I’ll let you know that I can play a perfectly good hero. When I want to.”

Sylas’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been watching you. You don’t carry magic, but there is something about you.” His chains trailed blood across the floor as he stepped forward. “What are you hiding inside that body of yours?”

J shrugged. If she was at all threatened by Sylas, she didn’t show it, her arms hanging loosely at her sides. “Just enough ghosts to fill a graveyard.”

Sylas’s lips pulled into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Ah,” he said, his voice tilting upward, “The ones you’ve put there yourself. Your whole family, isn’t that right?”

Lux’s breath hitched. “Don’t—”

Sylas ignored her. “That’s a hell of a body count,” he continued. “Tell me, how strong must your ability be to leave that much ruin in your wake?” His eyes glinted. “The possibility is a temptation upon itself. I simply must know.”

He moved before the words had left his mouth, chains screaming through the air, but Jinx was already twisting, her body snapping sideways as the links scraped past her ribs with a hiss. She hit the ground in a roll, boots sliding on cracked marble as she came back to her feet.

Her bones ached, and each breath felt strange in her chest, as if her lungs had forgotten how to inflate. She’d spent too long cooped up in that cell, and now she was paying for it.

Sylas was on her before she could recover, his hands lurching forward as he attempted to grapple with her.

Jinx moved around him, ducking beneath his outstretched arm and twisting to the side before coming up on his flank. He turned just as her fist connected with his jaw, a sharp, ugly crack sounding out as his head snapped to the side.

Her knuckles stung, but Jinx didn’t stop as she pulled her fist back and slammed it into his face again. Sylas grunted, recoiling away, and Jinx followed after him.

She raked her hand forward, paint-chipped nails ready to tear a line of flesh from his face.

Sylas caught her wrist mid-strike, his fingers squeezing against her bones.

She growled as her bones creaked. She drew her other hand back, but before she could drive it forward, an icy coldness shot through her.

Jinx’s breath hitched, her body going rigid as the sensation burrowed into her bloodstream, settling deep within her body. Then it turned to hooks and pulled, her bones feeling like they’d had the marrow wrenched from them.

It almost felt like she was back in the Doc’s lab, his syringes filling with her blood under his watchful eyes. The air felt too thin. Her lungs refused to fill. Something had to give. Jinx wasn’t sure that it hadn’t already. Her heart stammered for half a beat before lurching inside her chest, her vision flashing.

The world shattered around her and her spine arched painfully backward, her knees nearly giving out if not for Sylas’s grip on her arm holding her upright. Her blood was burning inside of her and she trembled as it cut through her, flooding every nerve like an engine revving past redline.

“What is this energy?” Sylas muttered, raising his free hand in front of his face to study it. “I have never felt anything like it.”

Jinx barely heard him through the rush of blood in her ears, but a laugh bubbled up from somewhere cracked and jagged inside her regardless. It was a thin, sharp-edged thing full of teeth. She could feel the shimmer sluicing through her like a sump flood in the undercity, wiping the grime away even as it poisoned everything it touched. Her chest heaved, liquid heat curling beneath her ribs and, when she inhaled, it felt like flames were licking up the back of her throat. She’d never realized how much she’d felt until she knew what it was like to live without it.

Something had shifted inside of her, and Lux felt the bottom drop out of her stomach at the change. Perhaps it was the sharp edge of her smile, or the loose, predatory roll of her shoulders as she tore her arm free from Sylas’s grasp. Lux didn’t know, but there was an intangibility in J’s movement that unsettled some instinct buried deep within her.

This was the real J. Not the shattered thing in the Mageseekers’ cell. Not the broken shell of a person she’d held in her arms. Not even the timid girl she’d found working in the forge, blissfully unaware of the kinds of machinations that went on in Demacia’s shadows. The person standing there now was what the Mageseekers had always feared, what they’d been hunting ever since they’d learned of J’s existence.

And for one breathless second, Lux understood their fear.

It had always been there, she realized, lurking just beneath the surface. She should have recognized it, but she hadn’t wanted to. She’d allowed herself to miss it, had allowed herself to get lost in the possibility that J wasn’t anything more than what she showed the world, that she was the girl she pretended to be, the one who shivered under Lux’s touch and looked at her with eyes full of hopeful uncertainty.

But that wasn’t who she really was. Lux had been wrong to think she knew J. The Mageseekers had been right. Just like they’d been right to condemn Sylas.

No.

NO.

J wasn’t what they thought. Lux had seen J, even if she hadn’t seen all of her. J had done nothing to warrant Lux’s fear of her. If she truly were the threat that the Mageseekers believed, she wouldn’t be standing against Sylas. She’d have left the kingdom to burn—or she’d have taken up a torch herself for what they’d done to her. But she hadn’t. She was here.

Because of her.

After everything Lux had done to her, after all of her lies had been revealed, J was still here. She could have gone anywhere, could have vanished into whatever corner of the world she wished, but she hadn’t. She’d walked through the firestorm that had overtaken Demacia because she wanted to stand next to her.

It didn’t matter that she’d shed whatever image Lux held of her in her mind. Her J still existed beneath it all.

J cracked her neck, the sound echoing in the silence of the throne room. Her eyes had changed from the soft, bruised blue Lux had seen staring back at her from within her cell, reverting to the vivid pink that had captivated Lux’s attention since the moment she’d laid eyes on her.

Except, these eyes were different. They didn’t avert themselves. There was no self-consciousness lingering in their depths. In the days after meeting J for the first time, Lux had thought—not infrequently—that she could have stared at J’s eyes forever and not found their depths. These eyes were whirlpools that would have crushed her if she’d dared to lose herself in them.

“I don’t think we’ve met yet,” J said, tilting her head to look directly at Sylas, her eyes unnaturally bright.

Sylas’s eyes narrowed, and even Lux blinked at her words. “Your mind must still be addled from the petricite,” he said. “I’ve been a party to your entire stay in the cells.”

“That wasn’t me,” J huffed. “That was Powder—I was just pretending to be her, but Powder’s dead. She’s been dead for years.”

Sylas frowned. “Enough with your inanity, girl.” He shook his head. “What good is a riddle at this time?”

“There’s no riddle here,” J—no, Lux thought, not J—the girl rasped, her body unfurling, fingers tapping against her thigh. “It’s short and simple.”

“Spit it out then,” Sylas growled. “I tire of your preamble.”

Her eyes burned with hellish intensity. “You ever wonder what the J stands for?”

The girl who wasn’t J bared her teeth, her mouth carving a bloodless rictus across her face. “It stands for Jinx,” she said as a fire flared behind her eyes. “Because I ruin everything.”

Chapter Text

Sylas flexed his fingers, watching the faint, unnatural glow pulse beneath his skin, his veins straining to contain the power suddenly at his disposal. He could feel it spreading through his limbs, the rush enough to make him heady, and his lips curled into a slow, self-satisfied smirk. 

“So this is the power the Mageseekers had tried to wrench from you,” he mused, curling his fingers into a fist. “Perhaps their prejudice was justified. This amount of power,” he inhaled, feeling as his lungs flushed with heat. “Oh, it’s absolutely intoxicating.”

“Intoxicating, huh?” Jinx sighed. “I guess that’s one way to put it.” 

He peered at her through lidded eyes. “You really don’t get it, do you? This power—look at it.” He threw his arms open, feeling this new and unfathomable energy churning within himself, desperate to rush through every artery and vein within his body. His spine tingled at the feeling. “It was never meant to be buried. It was made to carve through the world, to be felt, to be feared . And you let it rot inside you.”

Jinx let out another breath. “Yeah sure, lecture me on what it’s like, why don’t you?” She rolled her eyes. “Let’s see if you can even string a sentence together in half an hour.”

The words irked Sylas. She should be trembling. Her power was his . Compared to him, she was nothing—and yet she stood there, as if nothing had changed, as if he hadn’t reduced her to nothing. “You don’t understand what’s happening here, girl,” he growled. “Do you think you matter in any of this? You are nothing. A footnote so oblivious to your role in history that you think that you can play at importance.”

Jinx clicked her tongue. "You know, I wish you were right about that.”

Sylas glared at her. He flexed his fingers again, rolling his wrists against the magic churning in his veins, but the more he tried to grasp onto it, the stranger it felt beneath his skin. He grit his teeth. It was hardly surprising. Power always felt wild at first. He had ripped magic from enough mages to know that. But this felt different, foreign in a way that he had never experienced before. He took a step toward her, but the moment he did so, the ground pitched beneath his feet.

No, not the floor. Him .

The edges of his vision blurred, his stomach twisting itself into knots. Something was wrong. His pulse slammed against his ribs, pressure building until his ears swelled shut. He clenched his jaw against the feeling and forced himself to breathe. He was in control of this magic. It answered to him.

Except it didn’t. His blood was metastasizing itself, like a million parasites eating him from inside his bones.

Jinx shifted across from him. She was grinning now, eyes glinting in the dim light.

“Oh,” she murmured, rocking on her heels. “You’re feeling it now, huh?”

“What is this?” Sylas demanded, his voice strained as he forced the words out.

Jinx giggled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“It’s wrong,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “This isn’t how magic is supposed to feel.” His eyes narrowed. “What did they do to you?”

Jinx shrugged. “Depends which they you're talking about.” She had the temerity to wink at him. “I’ve been around the block a bit. Kind of lost track of everything.”

“Your magic, ” Sylas hissed through clenched teeth. “It’s unstable. Violent. Unrooted.”

“ Oh ,” Jinx said. Her grin widened further. “That’s not magic, dummy. That’s shimmer .” She smirked. “Maybe you should figure out what you get your hands on before shooting yourself up with it, yeah?”

He bared his teeth, but the weight behind his glare felt lopsided, and the edge of his vision blurred. The power beneath his skin bubbled angrily as it took on a rhythm he didn’t recognize—jagged, sharp-edged, out of sync with his own. He reached for it, but instead of answering, it writhed beneath his flesh, unheeding of his attempts to corral it.

A flare of heat burst through his lungs, and he groaned at the sudden burn inside of him. His heart stuttered before surging in his chest as a new wave of uncontrollable energy filled his veins, rushing through his body with unrelenting ferocity. He glanced at Jinx again, taking in her easy stance and glinting eyes. "Why aren’t you affected?" His voice was tight, the edges fraying as he struggled to hold himself together. "Why isn’t your body breaking down like mine?"

Jinx tilted her head, violent, lambent eyes staring back at him. "How do you know it isn’t?"

How did he know? Sylas’s vision smeared before sharpening into such clarity he could watch as her lashes fluttered, her eyes glowing with colors he’d never seen before. If she felt so much as an iota of what was coursing through his veins, it would be painted over her entire expression. It was unfathomable that anyone could ignore the itch that writhed inside of his bones with the viciousness of a viper trapped beneath his flesh.

"You’re insane," he spat. It was the only thing that made sense. What now tore its way through his own mind had already ravaged hers. She was little else than an animated corpse, moved solely by the impulses of this strange and volatile concoction that split his nerves only to haphazardly stitch them back together.

Jinx’s grin split wider. "Took you long enough to figure that out!"

His pulse roared in his ears. He refused to stand here and let her mock him. He refused to let the sickness creeping through his limbs slow him down. His body rebelled as he planted his feet beneath him, but he ignored the tremor in his muscles and flung his chains forward. They , at least, obeyed his commands, snapping toward the pale flesh of the girl’s throat.

Jinx wasn’t there.

His breath hitched in his chest, his vision unable to comprehend as Jinx’s shape dissolved into the surroundings before appearing in the corner of his eye.

He twisted and sent another chain lashing through the air, but she was an apparition, her body folding into itself as she slipped out of reach, pivoting around the chain until, suddenly, she appeared inside his guard. His ribs groaned as her fist smashed against them, pain splintering through his side in a shock of pressure that left him gasping as the air was forced from his lungs.

He lunged forward, desperate to grab hold of her before she could vanish again. His fingers clamped around her forearm for half of a breath before her knee snapped up into his stomach, and spots exploded to life in his vision, where they danced merrily until he blinked them away.

By the time he recovered, Jinx had already broken free.

Her knuckles cracked against his jaw, and his vision tilted, his legs wobbling as he stumbled back. He touched a hand to his lip, his fingers coming away streaked with blood.

The sight of it smeared over his fingertips sent a fresh wave of rage coursing through him.

This would not be how his story ended. He wasn’t about to let some reckless, laughing street rat humiliate him after he’d spent decades waiting for his opportunity to exact his vengeance on Demacia. 

Jinx rushed in again and, before Sylas could so much as register it, his head snapped to the side, the tendons in his neck straining as darkness encroached at the edge of his vision, beckoning him to give in and succumb.

His head throbbed as sight returned to his eyes, vision filling with the girl—the creature —in front of him. That the Mageseekers had ever been able to apprehend her defied reason. If she possessed even half of the capabilities she was showing now…

He began to regret how easily he’d dismissed her claims of toppling cities. 

"What are you?"

"Dunno," she murmured, voice curling at the edges. "Why don’t you tell me? You’re the one with the magic fingers."

Movement flickered at the edge of his vision, and Sylas whirled to face it, but by then it was already too late. She slid past his outstretched arm, one hand grasping his forearm before she pulled.

Images of her were still lingering behind his eyelids as he slammed into the ground, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs as the stone shattered beneath his body, errant slabs cutting into his back.

And then she was on top of him, her elbow bracing against his throat as she slammed her knuckles against his temple with the force of a lightning bolt.

His head cratered against the marble of the throne room, light exploding behind his eyes in fractured bursts of color.

The world shrank to a pinpoint, and Sylas had a moment of disconnection from his body before another fist rocketed forward, lighting up his mind with painful color. How did it come to this? He wondered as the feral scrap of a girl on top of him brought her hands down again. His nose bent to the side, cartilage grinding against bone as it pinned itself to his face.

He didn’t understand it. Nothing should have stopped him. Not the Mageseekers, not the royal guard, not even having Luxanna—perhaps the only friendly face he’d had since his imprisonment—standing against him had been able to stopper his need for vengeance. But now…it was as if the Winged Protector herself had decided to revoke his justice. Except, for all that the aspects worked in mysterious ways, absolutely no one would believe that this was the workings of Demacia’s patron. She didn’t deal in demons.

His head wrenched to the side and, suddenly, he was back in his body. He peered up at Jinx through bruised eyes and knew that, as long as he lay here, her fists would continue to rain down on him until they eventually broke through his skull and reached the floor beneath him.

He was a failure. An utter and complete failure—and he wouldn’t even have the dignity of being felled by one of Demacia’s protectors. There was no grand opponent to rip the glory from his fingers or to deny him his justice. Just this viper masquerading as a girl that nobody had ever heard of and would never remember. And, if they failed to remember her, what did that mean for his story?

It was wholly unacceptable that this be his end.

With a guttural roar, Sylas heaved his body sideways, just enough energy left in his limbs to throw Jinx off-balance. Her elbow left his throat for half of a second, and he twisted his hips, coiling his leg until his boot lodged against her ribs and kicked her away with enough force to send her skidding across the cracked marble.

He scrambled upright the moment her weight lifted, ignoring the way his legs shook and the room tilted around him. Every motion felt off, like gravity had shifted a few degrees sideways, but he forced himself to keep going, his pulse pounding in his ears as his feet slapped against the ground. He snapped his arm behind him, his chains lashing toward where the demonspawn had been just a moment earlier. They smashed against the marble with a sharp crack, but Sylas was already moving.

The fight was lost. He could feel his own body disintegrating from within and, if he didn’t escape this demon given flesh, it would only be a matter of time before Demacia pulled itself back into order. He’d missed his chance—but so long as he survived, there would be another opportunity to claim his justice.

He’d waited decades for his moment. Let Demacia lick their wounds, he thought sourly. He would return and when he did, there would be no cretin around to stop him from achieving what he was due. 

Jinx let him go, her attention shifting as she scanned the room in search of the only thing that mattered.

Lux lay splayed over the ground, one arm braced against her knee while the other pressed flat to the floor.

The destruction behind her faded as she stepped toward Lux, the weight in her heels shifting as she dropped into a crouch at her side, her fingers hovering for half a second before she rested them on Lux’s arm.

"Hey," she murmured.

Lux’s head lifted slightly, eyes locking onto hers, and whatever breath she had been about to take caught in her throat.

Jinx knew that look. She couldn’t see her face, but she didn’t need to. She’d seen it often enough. 

Of course she’d look at you like this, Mylo whispered in her ear. What else were you expecting? You’re Jinx!

Her stomach twisted, some bitter feeling curdling in the back of her throat, and she exhaled before bringing her hands to her face, her palms grinding against her eyelids as if she could scrub off everything that was wrong with her, as if she could claw it out until all that remained was J.

She didn’t want this any more than anyone else did.

"Yeah, I know," she muttered. "I’m a bit of a freak."

She didn’t wait for a response. If she stayed any longer, she’d shatter into pieces. Her fingers twitched against Lux’s arm a final time before she pulled her hand away.

"I’m sorry," she mumbled.

Lux moved.

Jinx barely had time to react before there was a hand curling over the base of her neck, pulling her back around. Lux pressed their foreheads together, the space between them collapsing so fast that Jinx’s breath stilled in her lungs.

She could feel Lux’s breath against her skin, the warmth of it enough to ignite a wildfire in her nerves, as every thunderclap of her heart reverberated inside her chest. She trembled as Lux lifted her head slightly, just enough to tilt forward, and close the last sliver of space between them as she pressed her lips against Jinx’s own.

Jinx’s vision filled with the light of Lux’s eyes before her eyelids fluttered shut and the world outside of them disappeared.

Lux sighed into the kiss, and Jinx swallowed the sound like she could keep it for herself. Her lungs burned, but she kept her lips pressed against Lux’s, breathing her in as she molded herself around the shape of Lux’s mouth. Lux shifted, her arm giving out beneath her as she collapsed to the floor. Her weight pulled Jinx down with her, and Jinx barely caught herself before she collapsed on top of Lux, the stone cool beneath her palm as her body adjusted to the way Lux fit against her. Lux’s arm hooked around the back of her neck, her body leaning up from the floor as she kept their lips locked together.

Jinx made a sound in the back of her throat and leaned forward, her body pressing more tightly against Lux. She could feel the way Lux’s breath stuttered when she moved, the way her fingers curled against her skin, nails clawing at her neck as she worked to pull the breath from her lungs. Jinx let herself fall into it, her entire existence narrowed down to the softness of Lux’s lips, to the warmth of her panting breaths, and the way her fingers glided over Jinx’s burning skin.

She wasn’t used to this.

She wasn’t used to being wanted like this.

This wasn’t the same as when Lux had held her—that had been J. Little, broken, pathetic J. She was Jinx, and still Lux clutched at her like she was worth something.

The world was ruined around them. Smoke still curled through the shattered hall. The sharp rhythm of boots slapping against stone lingered in the distance. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she should be paying attention in case anyone else was lurking in the shadows, waiting for their opportunity to strike. But that would mean pulling away from Lux.

Jinx didn’t care if the entire world erupted in that very moment. She’d die happy.

The door slammed open.

Jinx ignored it.

She barely even registered the movement around her as bodies poured into the ruined hall. None of it mattered, not when Lux’s fingers were curled around the nape of her neck and her lips were tracing soundless words against her own.

She kissed her harder. Lux gasped as Jinx nibbled at the bottom of her lip, and Jinx devoured the noise, her hand leaving the floor to brush at Lux’s cheek.

Shhhk.

Lux stiffened beneath her as the unmistakable sound of steel being drawn sliced through the room, and it was that sudden tension that finally pulled Jinx back to the present. The warmth of Lux’s hands lingered against her skin as she turned to face the people who had interrupted her and Lux’s moment.

Knights had filled the room, their weapons glinting in the torchlight as they held them at their sides. Leading the troop was the man who’d drawn his sword. He was massive, almost twice as large as the men behind him, with broad shoulders and thickly corded arms that bulged with muscle. He carried enough armor stacked on top of his body that, even if she had Zapper, Jinx doubted it would have enough kick to core its way through the amount of steel layered over his chest. He didn’t bother with a helmet, which was unusual considering how much he invested in wearing armor everywhere else, but Jinx thought his face looked hard enough to have been carved from stone anyway. She figured it was a toss-up whether a blade would be able to make a scratch before shattering against his granite jaw.

His gaze locked onto her, flinty eyes taking in the way Lux was tangled beneath her, hands still looped around her neck as her fingers bunched in Jinx’s hair. His expression hardened further, and she barely had time to breathe before the sword that had been drawn tilted toward her heart.

“Step away from her,” he growled, glaring at her over the edge of the sword.

Jinx felt herself tense. It didn’t matter that Sylas had been the one to cause all of this or that she was the one who’d chased him off. People saw what they wanted to see, and what he saw was her crouched over Lux, face held between her hands, while the world burned around them.

Of course, it was going to be her fault. Everyone always blamed her for everything.

Her hands curled into fists against the floor as she pulled her legs beneath her, ready to bolt the moment big and burly decided he was done asking. But before she could move, Lux grasped her hand, fingers intertwining with her own.

“Garen, stop.”

Lux pushed herself onto her knees, her hand still locked with Jinx’s, as she squared her shoulders. “She’s not the enemy,” Lux said.

Garen’s brow furrowed. “You’re saying she—”

“She’s the reason Sylas failed,” Lux cut in. Her fingers tightened as they slotted into the grooves between Jinx’s knuckles. "She could have fled like anyone with sense would have done, but she didn’t and, without her…” Lux let her gaze sweep over the throne room. “Who knows what you might have found here?”

The silence stretched. She could see the way Garen’s gaze dragged over her, picking apart her stance, the looseness in her limbs, the unnatural burn behind her irises. Even by Zaunite standards, she had never looked like a hero—it wasn’t a look you built when you were cracking down on whoever thought they could challenge Silco’s position in the Undercity. She was meant to unsettle people, to make them nervous. The only reason the Undercity had united beneath her in the first place was because she’d gotten underneath the Pilties' skin enough to drive them rabid with bloodlust. They didn’t want her, they just wanted someone to stand up against Piltover, and Jinx just happened to be the only one who could do that without getting thrown in Stillwater or tossed into the Pilt.

Garen was still staring at her, flecks of suspicion lingering in his eyes. Lux’s fingers curled more firmly around hers. She didn’t even seem to consider that Jinx could be anything worth worrying about as she glared at Garen. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask Jarvan. He saw everything.”

Garen's attention shifted reluctantly from Jinx to where Jarvan had pushed himself to his feet near the shattered remnants of the throne. The prince looked exhausted, fatigue having cut deep lines into his face while blood streaked from tears in his armor as it dripped onto the marble at his feet.

It was as if Garen had seen him for the first time, lowering his sword as he stepped forward. Jinx considered taking the opportunity to flee, but Lux still had her pesky hand wrapped around her own. She’d have better luck breaking out of Kiramman’s handcuffs. “Jarvan?” he asked. “Does she speak the truth? This is who stopped Sylas?”

“It was,” Jarvan nodded. His brows furrowed. “I do not know how, but I witnessed her push the traitor back with my own eyes.” 

Garen turned around to look at her, his mouth open to speak, but before he could, another voice cut through the room.

“Do not deny what you saw, your highness. There is only one way that she could have foiled Sylas’s attempt on your life.”

Jinx’s stomach twisted as everyone turned to the voice, the knights parting as a man stepped past them into the center of the room. There was no hesitation in the way he moved, no sign that he felt out of place among the broken stone and lingering smoke. Silver thread trimmed the folds of his robe in clean, sharp lines that caught the light just enough to draw the eye, but Jinx barely registered the detail, too aware of how this newcomer’s eyes stared at her with a kind of glacial intensity that made Garen’s flinty gaze look gentle in comparison.

She had a feeling that he wasn’t going to be one of the people calling her a big, fat hero. Just when she thought her luck was on the up, too.

Chapter Text

“It is because she, too, has something unnatural coursing through her veins.”

Garen latched onto the words, his eyes sharpening as he clenched the hilt of his sword. “What do you mean, uncle? How do you know this woman?”

“How do I know her?” Eldred asked. “The Mageseekers have been aware of her presence since the moment she arrived at our shores. Yet, when we moved to question her intent in Demacia, she fled—and in doing so displayed the very set of unnatural abilities that had undoubtedly led to her triumph over Sylas.”

He drew a breath. “Once we managed to restrain her, we placed her under observation, where the true depth of the arcane’s corruption became evident—a corruption so strong that, given time, not even petricite would be able to contain it.”

Garen’s brow furrowed. “That’s impossible. Petricite has protected us against the arcane for centuries. Its strength was enough to end the Mage Wars. You are claiming that she —” Garen jabbed the point of his sword in Jinx’s direction “—possesses a magic potent enough to defy that?”

“I understand your skepticism,” Eldred nodded. “I, too, was doubtful—and you are correct that there has been nothing in our records that could explain this strange new ability. Petricite has always been a stalwart for us against the arcane. It is the very thing that has allowed our continued prosperity while the rest of Runeterra yields further to its siren call.”

He paused as his eyes fell onto Jinx. She resisted the urge to stick her tongue at him. “Before she broke out of her cell, we were attempting to understand exactly what it was that allowed her to bypass our strongest—our only —defense against the wiles of the arcane.”

The heat that had been building inside Lux’s chest suddenly became too much to bear. “You were trying to understand ?” she said, her voice sharp with disbelief. “You locked her in a cage and experimented on her!”

Eldred shrugged without the slightest sign of repentance. “Call it what you like,” he said evenly. “But you cannot claim that we were wrong to do so when she has so clearly proven her danger to Demacia.”

His gaze shifted to the vanguard as he motioned to the throne room’s wreckage. “You’ve all seen the destruction she wields at her fingertips.”

“You can’t be serious,” Lux snapped. “She’s not your enemy—she’s the reason any of us are still alive. She stopped Sylas.”

“Your Highness,” Eldred said, ignoring Lux as if she hadn’t spoken. “This is no ordinary girl. She is an affront to everything we have sworn to protect. You must have witnessed her true nature while she fought Sylas. If left unchecked, she will throw our country even further into anarchy.”

Eldred’s words settled over the room, and Jarvan seemed content to let them linger as he appraised the Mageseeker. Lux shifted on her feet as the silence continued to stretch. She felt like she was hanging from a precipice, waiting to see whether Jarvan would pull her up or let her fall from the ledge into the abyss below.

“You speak of justice,” he began slowly, “yet in the same breath, you suggest that we persecute her for the crimes she may commit instead of rewarding her for the deeds she has done. Where is the justice in that?”

Lux breathed a sigh of relief, but if Eldred was deterred by the statement, he showed none of it in his expression. “The question is not whether she has done inadvertent good, but of inevitability,” he replied smoothly. “Would you allow a wolf to roam the streets simply to see whether or not it will bite?”

He spread his arms open, returning his attention to the vanguard surrounding them. “Sylas had also once been seen as innocent. He had even worked alongside the Mageseekers to uphold our laws and protect the kingdom from magic’s influence, despite himself already being touched by the arcane. Indeed, he had displayed such conviction–such loyalty —to Demacia’s prosperity that we had been fooled into believing that he could resist the allure of the arcane taint that had already burrowed into his mind and soul, that his zeal for our kingdom could outweigh the corruption of his blood.”

Eldred shook his head. “It was that optimism that allowed him to become the most dangerous mage in our history. That very same optimism that we now consider giving to another, even more volatile creature.”

Lux’s fingers twitched in Jinx’s grasp as Eldred continued to talk, every word from his mouth dripping into the ears of the vanguard and hardening their hearts and minds as he reinforced every foul assumption they held for mages and the arcane.

“Sylas didn’t turn against Demacia because his magic had corrupted him,” Lux answered when it became evident that no one else would. “He rebelled because of you . Because the Mageseekers treated him as a weapon instead of a person.”

Eldred sighed, his eyes full of disappointment. “You think the Mageseekers are to blame?” he asked. “That if we stepped aside, these people would live in peace? That if we did nothing, they would remain in control? You are wrong.”

He turned his attention back to Jarvan. “You do not put up a fence because you hate the sheep,” he said. “You do so because you know that beyond it, there are wolves.” His gaze flicked to Jinx, then back to Lux. “And you do not remove the fence simply because one of the sheep insists that this predator is any different than the rest of its kin.”

“Mages are not wild animals,” Lux snapped. “They’re people.”

Eldred raised an eyebrow. “How many before her have sworn they could control their magic? How many before her have promised that they too were different?” He scoffed. “Magic is not a tool to be wielded, Luxanna. It is wild. It cannot be controlled.” Eldred exhaled sharply through his nose. “And to think, there was a time when I thought you might have the strength to lead,” he said. “But your father was the same. Always too willing to let sympathy blind him to the dangers at his back.”

Lux growled low in her throat. “My father has protected Demacia for decades. What have you done?”

Her words clearly struck a chord. Eldred’s expression hardened. He opened his mouth to respond—

“Enough.”

Jarvan’s voice cut through the space between them. Lux turned, watching as he straightened against the wreckage of the throne. Blood had dried at his temple, sticking his hair to his forehead in clumps.

“I will not debate this further,” he said. “Not today when the kingdom lay in ruins and my father dead.”

He let the words hang in the air, meeting the gaze of everyone who looked at him until it came to rest on Jinx. “She has borne the burden of her blood,” he said before turning his attention to Eldred. “You were not wrong to fear her.”

Jinx felt Lux tense beside her at the words, though Jinx didn’t know what else she expected to happen. She could do everything right, and they still would have found a way to pin the blame on her. It was just how these things went.

She squeezed Lux’s hand, wondering how much longer she’d be able to hold it before she had to run.

“Jarvan,” Lux began before he silenced her with a look.

“Yet unlike Sylas,” Jarvan went on, “she has not given in to vengeance, even after the suffering her fate has caused her. She had every opportunity to leave us to Sylas’s machinations. She had every reason to discard us for our treatment of her—but still she proved herself true.”

“Your Highness, you cannot be serious,” Eldred protested. He pointed a finger at Jinx. “She is chaos incarnate. Just because her whims had aligned with us today means nothing for the destruction she may cause tomorrow.”

Jarvan cast him a glare. “I have long heard speculation of the Mageseekers’ methods in protecting Demacia, though I have never questioned it before.” He paused to consider Eldred. “But now I wonder at the power you wield in the name of Demacia—at who you truly serve in your mission.”

Eldred’s shoulders stiffened. “We do what must be done,” he answered. “Without us, there would be a hundred others like Sylas.”

Jarvan raised a brow. “A hundred others?”

“Yes,” he said. “A hundred others, infesting Demacia as termites to bark.”

Jarvan’s expression didn’t change. “I have only ever heard of Sylas. Perhaps you should enlighten me, what crimes have these others committed?”

A hush fell over the room as everyone waited on Eldred’s response. What sordid creatures had they been keeping restrained in the bowels of their prison? Sylas was undoubtedly the worst, his legend too awful to be kept silent, but none of them doubted that there were more. Surely the atrocities committed by these mages beggared belief. Not a single member of the vanguard could so much as imagine what gruesome talents the Mageseekers had detained before they could wreak havoc on Demacia.

“You misunderstand, Your Highness,” Eldred returned. “It is not for the crimes they have committed but the threat they pose to Demacia’s integrity. Magic, as you know, is wont to fester—and when every one of them possesses the tools of corruption, it is imperative that we be diligent in rooting them out before they can infect the entire kingdom.”

Jarvan exhaled, and it was as if the entire room deflated. “If you have no concrete evidence of her corruption, this discussion is over. I will not treat someone who has risked her life for my kingdom as a prisoner, no matter her potential for destruction.”

“Jarvan—Your Majesty—I urge you to reconsider,” Eldred responded fervently. “You are setting a dangerous precedent. The city is raw. The people are grieving. They are afraid, and your first act as their ruler will be to absolve one of the very reasons for their suffering? The people need order, not uncertainty.”

“This is not uncertainty,” Jarvan replied. “It is judgment. And it has been made, regardless of your opinion on the matter.”

“And what of the people’s judgment?” Eldred persisted. “What of their faith in you, in the crown, in the laws they expect to protect them?”

“The people will see a ruler who does not govern by fear,” Jarvan answered. “They will see a ruler who listens to their people and weighs justice, not by the lottery of birth, but by the action every individual chooses to take.”

“They will see a ruler who yields .” Eldred’s voice did not rise, but the words carried a dangerous edge. “You intend to show them that their suffering means nothing, that Demacia’s enemies only need to play the part of an ally long enough to be rewarded.”

Jarvan shook his head. “I expect them to understand that if we continue to treat every mage as a traitor, we will only create more of them.”

“You risk undermining the very order that has protected Demacia for generations!” Eldred exclaimed. “The people trust their king to keep them safe, to uphold the law, to stand firm. You speak of justice, yet you would extend mercy to the very magic that had tried to topple this kingdom—and before Demacia has even had the chance to mourn their dead, no less!”

“My father is among those we mourn today,” Jarvan answered coldly. “Do not think that I am blind to the grief of my people.”

Eldred’s lips pressed into a thin line. “You are offering kindness to the ones who burned their homes.”

“Justice is not decided by grief, and the guilt of a single mage should not be shouldered by every mage,” Jarvan replied. “The Mageseekers left nothing unchecked, yet Demacia still burned. We cannot quash the embers of resentment through force.”

Eldred’s expression had contorted into disbelief. “You believe this rebellion happened because of the Mageseekers?” he asked. His eyes darted venomously to Lux before flickering back to Jarvan. “You would blame those who put out the fire rather than those who set it?”

“I would not ignore the hand that held the torch.”

Eldred glanced at Jinx, his expression curdling further. “Even if she has proven herself today, what of tomorrow? Will you pretend that this is the first time a mage has fought for Demacia, only to turn on it later? How many times must we see history repeat itself before we learn from it? Sentimentality is a luxury this kingdom cannot afford.”

Jarvan’s eyes dropped to the shattered floor, where the blood hadn’t yet dried between the cracks. “You are not wrong,” he said finally. “Mages have long been a source of misery in our history.” He paused for a fraction of a second as his eyes flickered to Lux before returning to Eldred. “And you are also correct that something must be done. The mages cannot remain in Demacia, not when the city is still raw from what has happened, and the mere mention of magecraft is likely to incite a new wave of paranoia.”

Eldred tilted his head. “Then what do you propose?”

Eldred turned his gaze toward Jinx, and for the first time since the fighting had ended, she felt him truly looking at her.

“You fought for Demacia,” he said. “You proved that you can be more than what others expect of you.”

Jinx winced. “Where have I heard that before?”

“Yet, I am not unaware of the hardship my kingdom has put you through,” Jarvan continued, either not hearing her or choosing to ignore her words. “You have no obligation to us, especially when so many of my people see only the stain of your blood.”

“Weird way of saying thank you,” Jinx muttered. Lux squeezed her hand, her grip a touch too painful to be reassuring.

Jarvan continued to ignore her mutterings. Jinx got the feeling that ignoring what everyone else in the room had to say was a requirement for people in power. “You are not alone in this discrimination, and I fear it will be some time before Demacia ever truly accepts your like. Which is why, in reward for your actions today, I am granting you jurisdiction over one of Demacia’s outer settlements. You will take any mage within our borders willing to live under Demacian rule and offer them something that they had never had before: a place to call their own without any fear of persecution.” Jarvan took a deep breath. “And, perhaps once the tensions have faded and the wounds inflicted by both sides have healed, we may look past the affliction of one’s blood and reshape Demacia into the kingdom it was always meant to be.”

Jinx blinked, not quite understanding what Jarvan was saying. She thought she knew, but it sounded insane, even to her.

“You want me to keep the peace?” she asked. “You do realize how terrible of an idea that is, right?”

“It is called Terbisia,” he said, again brushing over her words. If he wasn’t looking at her, Jinx would have thought that he was ignoring her completely. “A township near our borders, far enough from High Silvermere as to be peripheral from the rest of our kingdom.”

“You cannot be serious,” Eldred said, and for the first time, Jinx found herself agreeing with him. She shuddered at the realization. “You are granting her land? A township to govern—and one far enough as to hide from Demacian eyes? Doing so all but assures future insurrection. Your peace would create a mage stronghold at our very borders! This will not be a sanctuary. It will be a kingdom unto itself. One devoted to the destruction of Demacia and everything it stands for.”

Jarvan exhaled. “I am not a fool, Lord Eldred,” he said. “For all that she has done today, I am aware that it is only a single act taken amidst a hundred others. To forget the generations of mages that have come before her due to a single action would be the height of folly.” His eyes took on a bitter gleam. “And to make such my premier decree as king would undoubtedly cast a long shadow on my reign.”

Eldred’s shoulders eased as Jarvan spoke, the corners of his mouth turning slightly upward. He opened his mouth to speak, but Jarvan cut him off with a look as he continued, “That is why there will be oversight,” Jarvan said. “Someone I trust. Someone who has already proven themselves to be a stalwart defender of the crown.”

“Of course,” Eldred averred. He dipped his head. “It is a wise decision, and one I would be—”

“Lux will represent the crown,” Jarvan said as if Eldred had not spoken. Jinx took a moment to indulge in the visceral satisfaction that came with seeing that he was no safer than her at derailing Demacia’s talking head. “She will ensure that Demacia’s rule is upheld.”

And then the actual contents of Jarvan’s words registered in her mind, and Jinx lost interest in Eldred’s expression. Jinx stared straight ahead, her fingers curling at her sides as she envisioned a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, just her and Lux and a bunch of mages for company. And maybe a few chickens and trees or whatever.

“Lux and Jinx sitting in a tree,” someone giggled in her ear. “K-I-S-S–”

Lux squeezed her hand, and Jinx was brought back to the present as she remembered their fingers were still intertwined. She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat and looked around.

The throne room had emptied, the Dauntless Vanguard having left while she was lost in her thoughts. For the first time since the battle began, only Jarvan, Lux, and Jinx remained. Even the cranky old Mageseeker had hiked it out of there. Jinx guessed that ignoring people until they went away really did work sometimes.

Shame nobody I know can be like that, Jinx thought. All I have to do is close my eyes and they’re there.

Jarvan exhaled as he ran a hand through his matted hair. “How my father ever tolerated him, I have no idea.”

Jinx snorted. “And that’s without you getting thrown in a cell for existing, though I suppose I’ve done a bit more than exist— Hey!”

Jinx glanced at Lux, the other girl’s elbow still digging into her ribs. “None of that,” Lux hissed. She wrapped her arm around Jinx’s waist and pulled their bodies together. “What was done to you was completely inexcusable, and I won’t hear a word from you about having deserved it. Besides,” she turned to Jarvan, “if she’s getting thrown in another cell, then it’s only right that I join her. I’m just as much a threat to the kingdom.”

“I doubt that,” Jinx muttered beneath her breath, just low enough to avoid getting another elbow in her side—or maybe that was because her body was pressed close enough to Lux’s that she couldn’t get any leverage. Jinx didn’t really care about finding out. All she knew was that Lux could never be as awful as she had been. Not even if she blew up ten council chambers.

Jarvan’s brows had pulled together. “Lux, you’ve been around me since we were children.” He shook his head. “Dismiss any thought that you are a danger to Demacia. I will hear none of it.”

Lux frowned. “I’ve deceived you for years.”

Jarvan seemed to pull himself upright. “The only pain of your deception is that I did not prove myself worthy enough to hold your secret.”.

“Speak it plainly,” Lux returned. “I’m a mage.”

“You are many things,” Jarvan answered. “But foremost, you are Lux, the same girl who had played with me as a child and who, despite all of her reasons to abandon me to my fate, had instead rushed to my defense. If there is anyone under deception of your status to me, it is you, Lux.”

Jarvan continued, his voice quieter. “I hope that Terbisia will give you some peace,” he said. “A chance to be yourself without fear of condemnation, as you always should have felt.”

Lux didn’t know how to stand still under Jarvan’s kindness. She shifted her weight, but it did nothing to steady her. She curled her fingers in the fabric of Jinx’s tunic. She’d never imagined anyone would treat her like this after learning her secret, and especially not the king of Demacia.

“But more than that,” Jarvan added, “I hope we can show that all Demacians are welcome in our kingdom, no matter the affliction of their blood.”

Jarvan shifted before squaring his shoulders and raising his head. “Now, if you excuse me, I have a kingdom to hold together,” he said, before turning away from them and moving toward the doors of the throne room.

Jinx waited until the sound of his boots faded beyond the hall before tilting her head toward Lux.

“So…” she smudged the toe of her boot into the ground. “I guess the whole running away together thing’s out the window.”

Chapter Text

“So,” Jinx smudged the toe of her boot into the ground. “I guess the whole running away together thing’s out the window.”

It took a minute for Lux to process the words. Then she laughed, the sound spilling from her lungs in an uncontrolled burst. The sudden laughter caught Jinx off guard, and her body tensed, but before she could say anything, Lux surged forward, bridging the distance between them in a heartbeat and wrapping her arms around Jinx so tightly it nearly knocked both of them to the ground. Jinx grunted in surprise, her arms pinned awkwardly against her sides as Lux crushed her into the embrace before lifting the smaller girl up and spinning her around as another peal of laughter escaped her.

When she finally stilled, Lux drew back just enough to look at Jinx’s face. Then she jabbed a finger gently into Jinx’s ribs.

“You scared me,” Lux whispered. “You could have left,” she said. “Nobody would have stopped you. Why didn’t you run?”

Jinx stared at Lux from under her lashes, her entire frame taut beneath Lux’s fingers.  “And leave you behind?” Jinx shrugged. “Someone had to make sure you didn’t get yourself killed.”

Jinx’s gaze wandered to the cracked archway across the hall where a chunk of the wall had crumbled, revealing a sliver of sky in the distance. Her eyes returned to Lux.

“You’ve got awful taste, you know that?”

Lux blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift. “What?”

“Sylas,” she said, her mouth twisting. “Me. You keep picking up disasters.”

Lux looked down at where their hands were tangled before squeezing Jinx’s fingers, her thumb brushing circles into the back of her hand.

“Well,” she said lightly, “one of those disasters just saved my life, so clearly my judgment isn’t always terrible.”

Jinx didn’t look at her, but her fingers tightened imperceptibly around her own, and Lux reached over without thinking to brush a streak of ash from Jinx’s shoulder. Her fingers lingered there for a moment before falling away.

“Jarvan wants to send us to Terbisia,” she said softly. “Somewhere quiet. We’d be safe there.” She hesitated. “Do you… do you think you’d be okay with that?”

Jinx didn’t answer immediately. Her boot had found a cracked floor tile and was slowly tracing the edge of it with her toe. Lux studied her, letting her gaze settle on the sharp line of Jinx’s jaw, on the way her throat moved with each careful breath. There was something coiled in her posture, something rigid and barely held together, and it felt like the wrong word would splinter whatever was holding Jinx upright. So she stayed quiet, waiting for Jinx to open herself up to her.

“I never thought I’d settle anywhere,” Jinx said, after a moment. “Didn’t think I was the kind of person who’d ever stop moving until, well…” her lips curved into a bitter smile. “You know.”

Jinx gave a dry, humorless laugh. “And some little village in the middle of nowhere? What would I even do in a place like that?” She shook her head. “I didn’t even think I’d leave Zaun. I thought that was going to be the end of the line. But then there was Demacia and now… this. ”

Lux’s hand curled in her lap. Her throat worked around the sudden knot rising in it.

“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” she said. “We don’t have to do what Jarvan says. If you’d rather disappear somewhere else, we can. Wherever you want, J. I’ll go anywhere with you.”

Jinx glanced at her. “Don’t be so dramatic,” she huffed. “The guy stuck his neck out for you. I’m not gonna spit in his face after that. We’ll give country living a try.”

“Besides,” she added, “worst case scenario, we burn the place down, fake our deaths, and start over.”

Lux choked on a laugh. “That is absolutely absurd, ” she sputtered.

Jinx shrugged. “Eh, it’s worked before,” she said, a strange mirth flickering in her eyes as she watched Lux.

Her heart warmed at the sight, and Lux wrapped her arm around Jinx, pulling her in until their bodies fit against one another, every edge of Jinx’s body pressed perfectly against her side as she wrapped her arm around her. They stayed like that for a while, watching the last curls of smoke rise toward the shattered ceiling as the morning dawn shifted across the floor, painting the room in soft golds and greys.

The sounds outside the throne room were distant, but Lux could still hear boots scraping across marble and the sound of voices shouting. She didn’t know who they belonged to, whether it was soldiers or medics, or even just survivors trying to be useful—but it didn’t matter, and Lux couldn’t make herself care about it.

She leaned into Jinx’s shoulder, as her eyes fell shut. The rise and fall of Jinx’s breath was steady beneath her ribs, and Lux let her own breathing fall into rhythm beside it.

It hit Lux like a weight she hadn't realized she’d been carrying. After everything. After she had failed to stop the Mageseekers. After Jinx had realized the depth of her own involvement, that she was the reason Jinx had even ended up in her cell, she was still here with her.

She thought about the way Jinx had looked at her then, back in the dark after Sylas had broken free, her eyes dull and lifeless as Lux staggered away, believing that she'd never see Jinx again, that her last act of repentance would be the end of their relationship.

But Jinx had come back.

She hadn’t run. She hadn't taken the opportunity to flee. She'd come back to Lux when they both knew how little she deserved Jinx's loyalty.

“No more lies, okay?” Lux said quietly. “No more secrets. Not between us.”

Jinx held Lux’s stare, and for a moment it felt like the whole room had narrowed to that single thread of contact. Then she extended her hand between them.

“My name’s Jinx,” she said. “It stands for Jinx.”

Lux looked at the hand, lines of scars crossing over her skin and cutting through purple bruises that had formed along her knuckles, and she thought back to the first time Jinx had offered it. This was different.

There was no bashful smile, no down-turned shoulders or flickering eyes, and Lux felt her hand move before her brain had even realized the offering in front of her.

“I’m Luxanna,” she said, warmth infusing her tone. “But please, call me Lux.”

Lux brought her free hand up to brush her fingers along the edge of Jinx’s jaw. She leaned in until her lips hovered just shy of Jinx’s, close enough to feel the warmth of her breath as her heart pounded in her ears. It would’ve been easy to pull back. To turn it into a moment that hadn’t meant quite so much—but she didn’t want it to mean anything less.

So Lux leaned in the final inch and kissed her.

The warmth of Jinx’s lips against hers sent a shiver down her spine, and Lux felt her own lips part at the electric feeling of it. Her hands cupped the sides of Jinx’s face, holding her steady as she shifted closer, her head dizzy with the need to feel Jinx’s lips on her mouth. Jinx’s hand found her wrist, her fingers curling around it, and Lux felt a moment of horror as she thought Jinx was going to pull away, but her other hand wrapped around her waist, and all that fear melted away. 

Lux melted into the kiss. Her hand slid from Jinx’s cheek to her hair, her fingers tangling there until they pulled at the roots. Jinx hissed, and Lux leaned into the sound, her mouth moving against Jinx’s lips as she traced every movement of her lips.

But, even as much as Lux wanted to stay like that forever, lost in the taste and feel of Jinx, the moment had to end. Jinx let out another breath as she pulled back, Lux’s lips chasing after her until they were out of reach. "You better be sure you want this," she said, pressing their foreheads together. "Jinxes are hard to get rid of."

Lux nestled in even closer, her arms looping around Jinx’s waist. Now that she had Jinx back in her arms, she wasn’t ever going to let go. “Good,” she said, her breath ghosting against Jinx’s lips. "I never want you to leave me alone."

Jinx’s chest rumbled. "Stick around long enough, you’ll see the Jinx I was."

People never seemed to learn. It didn’t matter how much she warned them or how much wreckage had piled up beneath her feet. It was impossible to blame anyone but her for everything she’s done—but still they stuck around, as if they were waiting to be the one exception to her Jinx. As if everything that made her who she was could be washed away like grime down the gutter if they stayed around long enough to clean her up. 

Even Ekko, who'd spent his life fishing scrap from the junkyards, thought there was something salvageable in her. He was just as much an idiot as everyone else who believed in her.

Lux leaned in again, pressing her forehead gently to Jinx’s temple. "I can't wait to meet her."

Jinx winced. "You sure? I've got ghosts, Lux. Too many to count."

“Tell me about them,” Lux said softly, her fingers intertwining with Jinx's own. It didn’t make sense how something so soft and flawless could fit into her own hands so perfectly, as if they weren’t filled with scars and calluses. “I want to know everything.”

Jinx exhaled, finally letting her body relax into the touch as she squeezed Lux’s fingers. "Well," she said slowly. "I should probably start with my sister..."

Vi was staring out the kitchen window when Caitlyn stepped into the room, hair stuck to her skin with sweat and cheeks still flushed from her morning jog. She stopped in the doorway, her fingers curling against the frame as she took in the scene. Vi had kicked her feet onto the table, lips pressed to a chipped mug she'd taken a liking to ever since first moving in to the estate. Steam curled up from the cup, drawing Caitlyn’s eye to Vi’s jaw and up further to the tangled strands of hair that fell over her face. Caitlyn’s fingers twitched as she took in the disordered state of her partner, the urge to brush her fingers through Vi’s hair almost overwhelming.

The sight of her eased the knot of worry that had been wound tight for so long that she barely noticed it anymore. There had been nights when she imagined this moment and all the ways it could be ruined. Waking up to sirens, finding Vi gone, realizing that she’d never been there at all. But now she didn’t have to imagine it. She didn’t have to dream of this life; it was what she woke up to every morning.

Vi looked up and caught her staring. A slow, knowing smirk tugged at her lips, and she raised her mug in mock salute. "Something on your mind, Cupcake?"

Caitlyn rolled her eyes and tried not to smile as she stepped into the room. "Besides the fact that you’ve sprawled across my table like it’s a tavern bench in Zaun?" She gave Vi’s shin a swat with the rolled-up newspaper she’d picked up from the front door before tossing it onto her lap on her way toward the counter, where she flipped the switch on the kettle, pretending not to notice the heat of Vi’s stare at her back. Still, she couldn’t help but stretch as she reached for the tea tin on the top shelf of the cupboard. Somebody had moved it there ever since Vi began taking her coffee in the kitchen, and now Caitlyn had to stand on her tiptoes and press her body against the counter every time she took it from the shelf.

She’d just pulled a sachet from the tin when she heard Vi spit out her coffee behind her. Caitlyn whipped around, every nerve suddenly on edge. "Vi?"

Vi sat frozen, rivulets of coffee dripping from the side of her open mouth as her fingers clenched along the edge of the newspaper. Whatever flush had worked its way through Caitlyn’s body vanished at the paleness of Vi’s expression.

"You need to look at this," she said, wide, disbelieving eyes darting from the article to stare at her.

Caitlyn crossed the room in three strides and plucked the paper from her partner’s hands. It was immediately evident what had garnered Vi's reaction. All she had to do was look at the headline written across the front page of the Piltover Gazette in bold letters.

A Jinxed Attempt: Failed Mage Rebellion in Demacia

There was a sketch of a girl below the headline. A girl with a shock of blue hair that stuck out in every direction and eyes that looked like smoldering wildfires. It was uncanny—not that Caitlyn thought the composition was particularly difficult. Anyone who'd seen those eyes would have them lingering behind their eyelids for the rest of their lives. Not even losing your eye would get rid of them. She didn't even need to see that the girl had a sleeve of tattoos trailing down her arm to verify the girl's identity.

Vi leaned forward in her seat. "That's Jinx."

Caitlyn fell into the chair, her fingers numb as she raised them to her temple. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the first news we receive of your sister comes from her being at the heart of another insurrection."

"What do you mean, another insurrection?" Vi asked.

Caitlyn raised an eyebrow at her. What did Vi think Zaun’s rebellion had been, if not an insurrection? There had been hundreds, if not thousands, of Zaunites with blue-dyed hair packing the streets as they rallied around Jinx. By the Aspects, they had printed out posters of her and plastered them across Zaun just so they could defile them! Kaitlyn K. Kiramman and Commander Kill-a-man they’d called her , among a host of other slogans too repugnant to even think about.

But Caitlyn knew better than to ask for sympathy on that front, least of all from Vi. She wasn’t unaware of the part she’d played in Zaun’s suffering. And, yes, maybe she did deserve to have her image sundered for releasing the Grey into Zaun and resorting to…aggressive methods of interrogation while searching for Jinx. It was better to let those issues lie, to bury the hatchet as it were and let the ghosts fade into obscurity.

"At least she didn't start this one," Vi mumbled.

Caitlyn returned her attention to the article. It was unfortunate that some ghosts simply refused to disappear, seemingly intent on haunting her for the rest of her life, no matter what she did. "In the span of three months, both Piltover and Demacia have had attempted coups,” she answered, lips pursed. “As far as I can tell, there is only one common denominator between them."

She glanced at Vi, the edges of her lips curving upward imperceptibly. "At this rate, perhaps we should notify Mel that we'd like to spend some time in Noxus. There are only so many governments left for her to topple."

"Shut up," Vi groused. She snatched the newspaper from her hands before reading the article.

“Identified only as J, Demacia's unlikely hero was credited with stopping a rogue mage threat and saving the life of Demacia's newly crowned king, Jarvan IV. In recognition of her actions, she has been granted jurisdiction over a settlement in eastern Demacia, under the advisement of Luxanna Crownguard…"

Her brow furrowed as she looked at Caitlyn. "She's being put in charge of a town?"

Caitlyn barely heard the question over the sudden peals of laughter and clashing cymbals pounding in her ears. The blood drained from her face as her imagination filled with smoke and neon explosions. It was worse than even her nightmares. A land of lawlessness, of chaos and unchecked mania. Her mind rebelled against the very concept of it. A place like that should not exist. A place like that—

"We have to go," Vi said.

Caitlyn stilled. Absolutely not. It was bad enough that Caitlyn had to imagine the atrocity. To actually come within sight of it? To step foot onto that cursed land? Hell was meant for the afterlife, and Caitlyn had no intention of seeing it until then.

"Vi, we’re still recovering from the last time she flipped a city on its head,” she said, shaking her head. “Piltover hasn’t exactly found its footing again. And now you want to chase her into Demacia?”

Vi looked at her. "Cait, please ."

Damn it.

She hated when Vi used that voice. It made her forget that she was supposed to be the voice of authority, that there were things like her sanity—or laws —that were more important than what Vi wanted.

Caitlyn let out a slow, frayed breath. She didn’t want to say yes, but the truth had already nestled somewhere deep in her chest.

"Fine," she muttered, staring at the sketch. "But we’re not going just to find Jinx. We’re going to check on this Luxanna Crownguard. If she’s tied to Jinx, someone needs to make sure she isn’t being driven to an early grave."

Vi frowned. "Jinx doesn’t do that to everyone ."

Caitlyn arched an eyebrow. "Vi, dear, I understand that she’s your sister, but please, don’t pretend to be blind to the effect she has on others.”

“Maybe she’s changed,” Vi tried, though it sounded weak.

Caitlyn sighed. “The only way Jinx wouldn’t have driven someone to insanity is if they’re already there.”

She looked at the image of Luxanna again. She seemed a perfectly normal girl, nothing to indicate that she was in any way prepared to deal with Jinx. Staring into those guileless blue eyes was almost enough to draw a breath of pity from Caitlyn’s lungs. The poor girl had no idea who she was dealing with.