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Lucan took a step forward, then another. His breathing hitched at the sight of the assassin he’d softened for. Even now, with sorrow and fear painting her face, she looked exquisite.
Alive, beautiful, and painfully vulnerable—everything Aurelion would delight in destroying before his eyes.
“Elarian…” Her name broke apart upon his tongue.
She looked at him with those impossible eyes, still searching for the man she insisted existed beneath centuries of blood and rot.
“I am still here,” she whispered.
No.
No, she wasn’t.
She was already dead; she simply had not realized it yet.
Lucan’s vision narrowed until nothing remained except the silver-haired woman before him. The room dissolved into little more than fractured shapes swallowed by restless shadows. Somewhere beyond them, furniture groaned beneath the pressure of his shadows, wood splintering as darkness coiled through every corner of Vaelor’s abandoned chambers.
“He is coming,” Lucan rasped.
“Let him.”
“Elarian.” His back burned, the nearly invisible scars from centuries of runes carved into him flaring with pain.
“Stop,” he whispered.
Lucan watched her hand rise, slow and tentative, reaching toward his face as though she meant to soothe a frightened animal.
Five centuries vanished in an instant. Her moon-pale hand melted into another. The walls around them shifted, and he stood in another palace.
Cold fingers lifted his chin so crimson eyes rimmed with gold could inspect the bruises beneath them.
“Do not make me regret sparing you, princeling.”
Something inside him shattered.
Shadows screamed.
They struck before thought ever caught them.
Black tendrils exploded through the room, wrapping around Elarian’s wrists and hurling her backward. Her body slammed into a marble pillar hard enough to crack the stone. The impact echoed through the silent apartments.
“Elarian!”
The name left him too late.
She hit the floor on one knee, one hand braced against the fractured marble. Blood dripped between her fingers as she collapsed to the floor.
“No,” Lucan whispered, unable to find his voice.
The shadows refused to obey. They surged again, wild and starving, fastening around her throat before he could recall them. Elarian clawed at the darkness, her jaw set against the pressure crushing her windpipe.
“Lucan,” she gasped, eyes wide with fear.
Gods.
Stop.
Please stop.
