Lucia
There was one more stop to make before she started to get herself ready to leave.
Leave! For the first time in her memory, she was going somewhere else. She felt lighter, as if the doors to the world had been opened to her.
She hadn't seen Maeve since before the council meeting, and part of her had hoped the older woman, the closest thing Lucia had to a parent, might have come down and spoken on her behalf. But she hadn’t.
Maeve never did when it really mattered, and Lucia's heart had long since hardened to those kinds of disappointments.
The cottage itself seemed to sigh in the dim light, its small windows glowing faintly with the erratic flicker of a dying lamp. Lucia had been staying at the lodge for a while now, and it was odd, but this place no longer felt like her home
