Page 125
And with that, the wooden doors slammed shut behind Lord Jace Ataen.
Lucan turned back to Elarian, still seated beside the fireplace with one bare leg stretched long in front of her. Her expression remained blank, eyes scanning the page while she pretended to read. But beneath the composure, he saw the faint tremor of her fingers, the quick rise and fall of her chest, and the way her eyes kept darting to his feet.
Content to let her pretend for a while longer, Lucan slowly removed his coat and draped it over the back of the velvet chair. Earth and the scent of smoke still lingered in Jace’s absence. Lucan smiled at the memory of his thick fingers delicately combing dirt from his white hair.
“Did he behave?”
Elarian turned another page she had not read.
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“He insisted upon informing me that peaches are a profound disappointment.”
Lucan snorted despite himself. “That does sound like Jace.”
Silence settled between them once more, thicker than blood. The fire cracked softly in the hearth, throwing amber light across the obsidian floor. Elarian kept her eyes upon the book, though Lucan doubted she could have recalled a single sentence if asked.
“He also informed me,” she said quietly, “that you once filled this palace with flowers.”
Lucan’s hands stilled over the cuff he had been unfastening.
“Did he now?”
“Moon lilies.”
The words landed harder than any blade. Lucan forgot to breathe.
Jace, you sentimental bastard.
He looked toward the fire rather than at her.
“He remembers too much.”
“Is it true?”
Lucan considered the question longer than it deserved. “Once.”
He offered nothing more; yet, he felt Elarian watching him over the top of her book, waiting for another fragment of the man Jace claimed had existed centuries ago. How was he supposed to tell her that everything he had become was all for her? That once—a lifetime ago, before Aurelion carved the last of his tender heart from his broken body—he saw a young elf in the Evermist and fell in love with her wild soul, but now that version of himself was long dead?
No, he could never tell Elarian that she had tormented him for three hundred long, excruciating years.
Elarian stood. The golden collar at her neck glittered as she moved closer.
“He also told me something I find impossible to believe.”
Lucan stiffened.
“He mentioned the Evermist.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, the word thick in his mouth. “It has been our battlefield for nearly a century.”
Elarian stepped closer. Lucan swore her eyes had darkened during the day.
“And before that?”
Her breathless whisper wrapped around him like a noose. Throat constricting, he barely managed to reply.
