Chapter 202: First Step
The air on the alien world was still, holding its breath under the five silent moons. Lucy stood across from her father, the pale dust of the ground cool beneath her bare feet. Alistair had changed out of his traveler’s clothes into simpler, darker garments that seemed to absorb the strange light.
"Your power isn’t like your brother’s," he began, his voice calm and measured, the way she remembered from childhood lessons. "Lucian bends what is already there—space, distance. Your bloodline... our bloodline... interacts with energy itself. Not creating it, not destroying it, but... persuading it."
He held up his hand, palm open. A tiny, brilliant point of light appeared above it, no bigger than a pebble. It wasn’t fire. It was pure, condensed light, humming with a gentle energy. "All light is a conversation. All energy is a flow. You just have to learn how to listen, and then how to speak back."
Lucy watched, fascinated and terrified. "How?"
"Stop trying to force it," he said, his silver eyes intent on her. "That’s your first instinct. To push. To grab. It’s what Lucian does. Your way is softer. Think of it like... finding the current in a river. You don’t fight the water. You just put your hand in and let it guide you."
He closed his fist, and the light winked out. "Now you."
Lucy took a deep breath, mimicking his stance. She held out her hand, palm up. She stared at it, her brow furrowed in concentration. She tried to make light appear. She tensed her arm, her shoulder, her entire body, straining for a spark, a flicker, anything.
Nothing happened.
A frustrated sound escaped her lips. "I can’t. It’s not working."
"Because you’re shouting at the river," Alistair said, a faint smile touching his lips. "You’re demanding it to part for you. Stop. Just... feel."
He came to stand beside her, not touching, but his presence was a steady anchor. "Close your eyes. Forget your hand. Forget what you’re trying to do. Just feel the world around you. The light from the moons on your skin. The heat rising from the ground. The hum of the very air. It’s all energy, Lucy. It’s all singing. Just listen."
Skeptical but willing, Lucy closed her eyes. At first, there was only the darkness behind her eyelids and the sound of her own nervous heartbeat. Then, slowly, she began to notice other things. The gentle warmth on her face from the pearl-white moon. A faint, cool tingle from the aqua one. A prickle of something sharper, almost electric, from the blood-orange sphere. It was like she was hearing a symphony she’d been deaf to her entire life.
"I... I think I feel it," she whispered.
"Good," Alistair’s voice was low, encouraging. "Now, don’t grab. Just... invite it. Imagine your palm is a quiet place, and you’re asking a little of that light to come and rest there."
Lucy focused on the gentle warmth of the white moon. She let go of the need to make something happen and instead pictured an open invitation. A sense of quiet welcome.
A soft glow began to bloom in the air above her palm.
Her eyes flew open. There, hovering just above her skin, was a small, steady orb of pure white light. It didn’t hurt to look at. It was peaceful. It was hers.
A laugh of pure, shocked delight bubbled out of her. "I did it!"
"You did," Alistair said, his own smile widening, pride evident in his silver gaze. "That’s the first word. There are whole languages left to learn."
As the light slowly faded from her palm, the initial excitement ebbed, replaced by a more sobering reality. The training, the strange world, her father’ return—it all circled back to the family that was shattered.
She looked at him, the question that had been burning in her since she woke up finally finding its way out. "Dad?" Her voice was small again. "What about Mom?"
The pride in Alistair’s eyes vanished, replaced by a deep, instant sorrow. The change was so swift it was like a shadow falling over the sun. He looked away from her, out towards the jagged mountains, his profile stark in the multi-colored light.
"Isabella," he said her name like a prayer, or a curse. He was silent for a long time, the only sound the faint whisper of the wind over the stone plains.
"When I realized my enemies were closing in, that they had found the trail to Earth, I knew I had to go," he began, his voice thick. "I thought... I truly believed that if I disappeared, if they thought I was dead, they would leave you all alone. That your mother and you kids would be safe. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, walking away from her."
He swallowed hard, the muscles in his jaw working. "I was wrong. They are thorough, these hunters. They don’t leave loose ends. They came to the house a few months after my ’death’. They were looking for anything—records, notes, any trace of my power or my origins."
He turned to look at Lucy, and the raw pain in his eyes made her breath catch. "Your mother... she was always so brave. So stubborn. She tried to protect the house, to protect your memories. She fought them. A human woman, against things she couldn’t possibly understand."
A single, silver tear traced a path down his cheek. It shimmered like mercury in the moonlight.
"They killed her, Lucy. I felt it, like a star going out inside me, from across the galaxy. They killed her because she was my wife. Because she loved me."
Lucy felt the world drop out from under her. The ground, the moons, the strange sky—it all swam. The image of her mother’s smiling face, the scent of her perfume, the sound of her laughter—it was all suddenly framed by this brutal, ugly truth. She had always believed it was a random accident. A tragedy. This was a murder.
"No," she whispered, the word a choked sob. "No, they told us... it was a malfunction... a hover-car crash..."
"A convenient story for a convenient death," Alistair said, his voice turning hard and cold. "I made sure the authorities found what they were meant to find. I couldn’t even give her a proper burial. I couldn’t even come back to hold you."
He knelt in front of her, placing his hands on her shoulders. His grip was firm, grounding her as her legs threatened to give way. "That is why I came for you, Lucy. I failed to protect her. I will not... I cannot fail to protect you. These same people, if they learn of you, will show you no mercy. You are not just a loose end to them. You are a living legacy. And that makes you a threat."
Tears streamed freely down Lucy’s face now, hot and salty. The grief was a physical ache, fresh and sharp as the day she was first told her mother was gone. But mixed with it now was a new, terrifying understanding. And a spark of something else. Something dark and fierce.
Her father wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "I am so sorry, my starfire. I am sorry for all of it. For the lies. For the pain. For not being there."
Lucy looked into his ancient, pained eyes, and she saw the same grief that had lived in her own heart for years. It was a shared wound now. A shared purpose.
She took a shaky breath, squaring her shoulders. The helplessness began to recede, burned away by a rising anger.
"Okay," she said, her voice steadier than she expected. "Then teach me how to be more than just a legacy. Teach me how to be a threat back."
Alistair nodded slowly, a grim determination settling on his features. The time for grief was not over, but it was now joined by the will to fight.
"Then we begin," he said.