Lucien: The Gilded City of Illusions
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Book Three of Ten
Coming July 1st, 2026!
A Story of Memory, Guilt, and the Cost of Redemption in the Age of Unbinding
Lucien has never lacked power. What he lacks is forgiveness… especially his own.
Once a favored asset of the Bone-Eyed Court, Lucien’s gift allows him to touch memory itself, to share it, shape it, and when control slips, erase it entirely. When a moment of grief and rage leaves an entire city block hollowed out and empty, Lucien becomes something worse than a criminal. He becomes a warning.
Now hunted by the very Court that once elevated him, Lucien runs west with Reina Valdez and Aric Kaelen, following a prophecy he doesn’t fully believe but can’t ignore. The seer promised redemption lies at the end of Reina’s path. Lucien suspects the truth may be simpler… and crueler.
Their journey carries them from the Dustlands into California’s fractured territories, where bounty hunters wear smiles, sanctuary never lasts, and every escape demands a sacrifice. Each time Lucien uses his power to save them, he loses something of himself. A childhood memory. A moment of joy. A piece of who he used to be.
When they reach Los Angeles, the Gilded City of Illusions, Lucien finally comes home to a place that understands performance, beauty, and lies. A city where illusion floats above the skyline, glamour masks rot, and the cost of being seen may be higher than the cost of hiding.
As Lucien is drawn back toward the stage, the crowd, and the dangerous comfort of being adored, the Bone-Eyed Court closes in. Redemption demands more than survival. It demands ownership of the harm left behind.
And some debts can’t be paid without erasing yourself entirely. In a city built on illusion, how much of yourself can you give away before there’s nothing left to save?
Prologue
Lucien rode close to Reina, his motorcycle pacing hers as she guided them along the outer edges of the Dustlands. The road here was barely a road at all, a suggestion of direction worn into sand and cracked stone by people who didn’t linger. He stayed near her out of habit as much as instinct, trusting her sense of the Pattern more than any map or memory he carried. The wind pressed against him, warm and dry, carrying the faint taste of dust that seemed to cling to everything in this part of the world.
As the miles slipped by, his thoughts drifted to the two people he had fallen in with for this strange, unplanned journey. It still felt improbable, the way paths had crossed and then refused to separate again. Reina with her quiet certainty and eyes always half turned toward something only she could see, and Aric with his restless curiosity and stubborn belief that systems, even broken ones, could be understood. Lucien didn’t think of himself as someone who cared easily, or cleanly, but somewhere along the way he had begun to care for them in his own fractured fashion.
He wondered, not for the first time, if Mama Elise had known this was how his life would bend. She had always spoken as if the future were a thing you felt rather than saw, a weight in the chest or a pull in the bones. Perhaps she had sensed that his fate wouldn’t be solitary, that it would bind itself to strangers who would become something like companions, something like anchors. The thought lingered with him as the Dustlands stretched on ahead, endless and indifferent, while he rode on beside them, committed now whether he named it or not.
Lucien found his thoughts turning toward the city that waited somewhere ahead of them, the Gilded City of Illusions that their current course was quietly drawing them toward. He wondered whether Reina would be ready for it when they arrived. Vegas had not suited her at all, that much had been obvious, and from the fragments she had let slip about Concordia, he doubted that place had ever welcomed her either. She moved best through open spaces and honest danger, not cities that smiled while sharpening their knives.
He knew the rumors that clung to the Gilded City, stories whispered by performers, traders, and refugees who had passed through its glow and never fully escaped it. A place where memory could be bought and sold, where illusion was currency, and where truth was something you learned to hide if you wanted to survive. Lucien had lived too close to such power structures to dismiss those stories as exaggeration.
As much as he worried about Reina, he couldn’t deny the quiet knot of concern tightening in his own chest. He hoped that when the city finally rose before them, all light and promise and false perfection, he would be ready for it himself.
His concern for Aric ran along a different edge. Lucien was not less worried about him than Reina, only worried in another way. Aric’s curiosity burned hot and steady, a need to understand that rarely paused to ask whether understanding might come at a cost. It was a quality that had carried him this far and nearly killed him more than once already.
Lucien feared that in the places they were heading, that kind of openness would be an invitation rather than a strength. Cities built on illusion and control thrived on people who asked questions too loudly and trusted answers too easily. Aric still believed that if he looked closely enough, the truth would reveal itself and make sense. Lucien suspected the truth waiting for them would do neither.
Lucien’s thoughts drifted to the seer who had set him on this road in the first place. He had not gone to her seeking prophecy or power. He had gone to her asking for atonement, for some way to balance what he had broken and could never fully repair. She had listened in silence, eyes distant, as if he were only half present in the room with her.
When she finally spoke, her answer had been unsettling in its simplicity. He was to find the Pattern seer, the one who traveled with a man who had no place left in the world. He was to follow where they led, even if he didn’t understand why. Redemption, she had told him, was not a destination but a path that demanded movement.
Now, as Reina checked the Pattern again and again, each reading nudging them farther west, Lucien felt the weight of that instruction settle more firmly on his shoulders. He still didn’t know where they were truly going, only that the path was unfolding exactly as the seer had warned, one step at a time, with no promise of safety at the end.
Doubt crept in as it always did when the road grew long and the destination refused to take shape. It didn’t seem to Lucien that either Reina or Aric truly knew where they were going. The Pattern offered direction without explanation, and Aric followed with a faith born of momentum rather than certainty. Still, they pressed on with a determination that didn’t falter, as if movement itself were enough to justify the journey.
Lucien rode with them, matching their pace, carrying his own questions in silence. He wondered if this was what the seer had meant, not clarity or forgiveness, but endurance. A road that asked him to keep going without answers, to accept that redemption might not look like absolution at all.
As the engines roared and the Dustlands blurred past, a colder thought settled in his mind. Perhaps his redemption was not something he would live to claim. Perhaps it was waiting at the end of the road in the form of his own death. He didn’t slow for the thought. He leaned into the ride and kept going, doubts and all, as the world stretched out before them.
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