lucius valentine. three. fin.

Three —

She was a small girl, white-blonde and bright-eyed, with her sister at her side and the world at her fingertips. They were supposed to be happy. That was the promise they made she and Linaea. She wishes she'd seen it then, that incredulous smile that did not touch her mother's eyes — but the heart is a traitor and eyes so young just couldn't see.

Her name was Lucy back then, Lucy Valentine, and she and Linaea were the world to their parents, or so they told them every night before tucking them in.

It feels like a joke, now.


Six —

"You and your sister are going somewhere else, Lucy."

"Where?"

"An academy, for bright young children just like yourself."

"But won't you and dad —"

"No, it's a boarding school. You'll be living there from now on."

"Why?"

"It's for the best, Lou."

When they left, there were no goodbyes. There was only Linaea's cold hand curled around hers and the light tap of snowflakes against the back of her neck, exposed by the pair of blonde pigtails on the sides of her head. Once they left, they didn't come back. She had known that they wouldn't from the start, but she couldn't understand why. Her best guess is money problems, that they just couldn't take care of she and Linaea anymore.

They owed them a reason, but they gave none.

Her parents left her with the strangest people on Earth. Miss Meryl, the head of the academy, called herself the Supreme. She is a switch, she informed, she and Linaea on their first day. She told them of how they were oh so lucky to be trained in witchcraft and compete to replace her as the next Supreme, and showed them Ouija boards, books of incantations, shelves full of 'magical' herbs. The academy wasn't for bright young children, no, it was for witches, they soon found out.

Lucius immediately bombarded Meryl with questions, most of which were frivolous and she was not very keen on answering. ("Will I learn how to turn Linaea into a turtle?" "Can I teleport to the moon?" "Will we turn the sky pee-yellow?")

They were introduced to five other girls, who they found out were their competition to lead the next generation of witches. She knew quickly that she and them wouldn't be friends, but thought that maybe that was okay. Instead of making friends with the five other girls, she dedicated her time over the next few weeks to playing silly pranks on them, like putting purple dye in their shampoo, running beside them in the hallway to smash a pie of whipped cream in their face, or blowing an air horn in their ears to wake them up.


Ten —

She discarded her old self. When she threw the photos of her and her parents into the living room fireplace, Lucy Valentine burned, too. There were no tears in those big blue eyes, only the reflection of the flames flickering as they bit a hole into the first photo, chomping off her mother's head. She had already cried as much as she could in the past four years, and now she was done crying.

When Lucy Valentine burned, she was replaced with Lucius. She wanted a new name as a symbol of her leaving her parents behind and the feeling of her smile when they'd call her name ("Lucy"), so she chose Lucius — she knew her parents hated it when traditional boys name were used for girls. But she kept the name Valentine as a reminder, as a scar. Miss Meryl said scars have meaning, and Valentine definitely means something to her.

Miss Meryl told her that her destiny was never with her parents, it was with the academy, to become the next Supreme, to follow in Meryl's footsteps in running the academy to train future witches. Lucius, to this day, is unsure that magic indeed exists, but she enjoys her magic classes and interpreting dreams and reading the stars the way her mother would read one of her leather-bound books.


Thirteen —

She snorted crack in a back alley with her friends. They'd scraped it into three lines, one for each of them — Lucius was first, and all she remembers of the feeling is fire flaring up at her face and into her insides. She didn't like hard drugs, she decided, despite crack being the only second drug she had tried. (The first being two shots of Miss Meryl's finest whiskey, which tasted like shit, Lucius had declared, but one of the younger girls told her that the taste wasn't the point, and that if she wanted a good taste, she could go sip wine in a fancy glass with Meryl.)

Her friends were the kind of lowlifes or riff-raff that her parents would have narrowed their eyes at as they stared pointedly from the side. And maybe that's exactly why she liked them. A grin would twist up the side of her face as she thought of it, the kind of impish smirk her parents would have slapped clean off her face had they seen it.

It filled her with a kind of euphoria she could not explain.

At the academy, Miss Meryl had told her that she was special. Lucius was sure that she had said this to the other six competitors, but she'd never turn down a compliment. She said that it was her dreams that made her extraordinary. Lucius could admit that yes, she had strange, detailed and sometimes lucid dreams, and a reoccurring feeling and deja vu. Meryl swore to her that some of her dreams were the future, and that the deja vu was not a coincidence.

"It's the future that you're seeing, Lucius."

"So you're telling me my dream about Arletta Casterly riding a flying unicycle down the road is the future?"

"Not every dream will mean something. Trust me, I can feel it — one of my abilities is sensing what kind of magic others have, you know. You're a seer."

Lucius has always been a skeptic, never easy to convince, but she figured that even if it wasn't real, it would be fun to pretend.


Sixteen —

The heart is a traitor. She'd learned that long ago, but it took another knife in her back for it to really sink in — the heart is a traitor. Her old friends turned on her, simply because one of them decided she no longer liked Lucius. She wonders if it was perhaps because her jokes were too harsh or if she just truly is unlovable, but whatever the true reason, she'd never know. They owed her a reason, but not everyone pays their debts.

And maybe that is just a part of Lucius Valentine's destiny — to be alone. She's never had family except for Linnaea, and she's short on friends — the academy girls aren't much, in fact, six of them are her competition.

The heart is a traitor.

After that, she spent most of her time with some of the younger academy girls, trying to make friends and/or trying to forget about her old friends, experimenting with Miss Meryl's extensive stash of alcohol and playing games like Never Have I Ever, Paranoia, and Truth Or Dare.

On a dare, she was asked to dye her hair pink. She obliged, not wanting to lose the game as she had already refused to do the can-can in her underwear or ask Burdock to be her fuckbuddy. After she'd rinsed her hair and looked in the mirror, she decided that she liked the shock of cotton candy pink, and has stuck with dyeing her hair that color ever since. Linaea mirrored this, as they've always liked looking identical — especially Lucius, who enjoyed playing pranks on people by pretending to be her twin sister.

She had even made a few allies within the academy, especially after she proved she could be as hardcore as the fifteen-year-olds by successfully doing a keg stand. They weren't friends and they certainly weren't family, but it was something.


Eighteen —

The competition becomes more and more like warfare as the seven eldest girls grow older and older, and Lucius doesn't like it one bit. She'd rather team up with Linaea and take them all out one by one and then fight her sister for the title, but it seems that her preferred plan won't go her way.

Despite Lucius's skepticism of witchcraft, she can't deny that wants the power of Supreme. How couldn't she, when it's been glorified and brought higher and higher up on a pedestal for nearly her entire childhood? She wants to be the next Supreme, but she knows what it will take to get there.

She can't seem to bring herself to plot against some of them, namely her sister, and then Burdock Coy, a pale girl with strange but captivating eyes. Out of all the others, out of the scheming, unbearable, bitchy others, Burdock seemed different. And that wasn't her heart telling her, Lucius swears, it's her mind — the only thing she can trust.

"D'you have a soft spot for Coy, Luce?" one of the younger academy girls asked. "Maybe you'll dream about her naked and it'll come true."

"No," Lucius spat. "I don't have soft spots."

She didn't challenge her again.

Miss Meryl had once told her that smart men use their minds for battle, not steel. Lucius had said, "But I'm not a man, I'm a girl," and Meryl rolled her eyes. "No one cares what you've got in your pants — shut up and heed my words, Miss Valentine."

She understands now what Meryl meant, and she intends to heed her words this time.