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Lucan frowned.
“You have spent five centuries convincing everyone around you that you are impossible to surprise. Impossible to manipulate. You hid the scars from him—” He spat the word viciously, “—so deeply even you almost began to believe that happened to someone else.” Jace leaned closer. “And yet, you forgot the one vampire who disappeared the same night Anileta vanished. Your ghost stands in front of you, distracting you from the knife buried in your back.”
The shadows beneath Lucan’s feet stirred.
“Do not mistake familiarity for permission, Lord Ataen,” he said coldly.
Ataen only tightened his jaw. “And what of you? Obsession is not strategy. You may have rejected my love, Lucan, but I refuse to let you kill yourself for this woman. She will never love you back.”
The words struck deeper than Lucan cared to admit.
“Who said anything about love?” he snarled.
“No?” Jace tilted his head. “Then why did you spend half this council meeting staring at her instead of the people who could actually threaten you?”
Lucan stilled. Beside him, Elarian remained silent.
“I am protecting her,” Lucan said at last.
“You marked her.”
The shadows snapped outward before Lucan could stop them. They struck the stone floor between them, cracking obsidian. Jace did not move—didn’t even flinch—as Lucan lashed out at him as he had so many times in the past. That familiar white-hot rage returned, burning him from within until he ached.
“Do you know what the most terrifying thing about you used to be, Luc?”
Lucan said nothing.
“You never needed anyone.” A bitter smile crossed Jace’s face. “You could love someone—gods know you did—but you never needed them. You could cut away anything that threatened your survival without so much as a grimace.”
His expression hardened.
“But now?”
Jace looked toward Elarian. “You have placed a blade in your heart and convinced yourself you are the one holding it.”
“You knew the man I was, Jace. Don’t think you understand me now.”
“No, Luc.” He sighed deeply. “I know the man you are pretending you buried.”
The shadows beneath Lucan’s feet stretched across the floor like living, writhing creatures, their tendrils licking outward and reaching toward Ataen’s own darkness with an ominous hunger. They twisted around one another, two ancient predators locked in a silent game of cat and mouse. The air grew heavier with anticipation, as if the shadows themselves waited for the perfect moment to strike, their dark forms flickering softly in the dim light. Neither was willing to make the first move, their silent standoff echoing the unspoken tension that crackled like static in the charged atmosphere.
Once, there had been a time when their shadows melted together.
Now, they only ever fought.
“Lucan.”
Neither vampire moved. The shadows still crawled across the floor, darkening with every breath. Ataen’s hand remained clenched around the hilt of the dagger he had not yet fully drawn from his belt. Lucan stood, fangs bared as memories clawed their way through him. Every scar. Every blade drawn across his flesh as he fucked Jace into oblivion. Every battle they had waged against each other until neither could remember where hatred ended and hunger began.
Jace had known every version of him. The monster. The prince. The broken thing beneath both. He had never quite decided if he despised himself or Jace for letting his walls crumble around the man.
“Lucan,” Elarian called out again. “This will hardly solve anything.”
This time, he looked down at her. The soft look in her eyes melted his anger in an instant. Sighing, the shadows around him calmed.
“Gods, Luc,” Jace said sadly. “You truly don’t see it, do you?”
Lucan’s expression hardened as he turned back to the flame-haired vampire he once loved.
