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Faye visits him in Valentia Castle six years after he becomes a knight. Lukas’s men notice her long before Lukas does himself, and he assigns them ten laps around the castle before they tell him about the comely girl waiting outside the barracks.
He lets them go early (after the ten laps).
She looks the same even now. Taller, perhaps, and she’s filled out some. Her hair is twisted into a single braid over her left shoulder, wildflowers interwoven throughout. And yet, when she looks at Lukas, it is with the same piercing assessment she had regarded him with all those years ago at the castle gates.
“When you mentioned a visit in your letter, I didn’t think you meant this soon,” Lukas says. He’s still in his armor from drills, but the only indication Faye gives that she notices is a flick of her eyes over his attire.
“Maybe you should have,” she says.
“Maybe.” He quirks a smile. “Have you seen Alm yet?”
Faye shakes her head. The king and queen are expecting their second child. Faye had declined to visit when the crown princess was born, but Lukas knows she still writes letters to both Alm and Celica. “Are you going to invite me in or not?”
Lukas gestures to the barracks entrance. “Consider my home yours.”
The word thrills him. Home. To call something that and mean it.
He leads her to his room and closes the door after them. The kingdom has worked hard these past seven years, but the life of a soldier is still an austere one. Lukas has a bed and a desk, as well as a rack for his weapons and armor. The little daylily plant Clair had gifted him, Lukas left back in the south, but he’s since replaced it with a pot of snap peas.
Faye surveys it all impassively. The hem of her dress is smudged with dirt, and it looks out of place in the barracks. Lukas wonders how he looks to her, standing in the middle of his own room.
“The contents of your letter,” Faye begins. “What did you mean by that?”
Lukas had suspected that his proposal was what had prompted this visit. Faye is no stranger to stopping by at her fancy, to visit Clair or Celica, but this is the first time she’d given him a warning.
“I meant what I wrote,” he says. “I’ve given it careful consideration, and I’ve concluded that you are the one who understands me best.”
What comes next is a little harder to say, at least out loud.
“And I wondered if you had come to respect me too.”
“That’s not what you wrote,” Faye says.
Lukas gives her a small smile again. “Yes. I’d hoped you would marry me.”
Faye stares at him, but six years is a long time to know someone without trusting them. Right as she takes a breath to speak, her eyes flash, as defiant as she is steadfast. “I still love him. I’ll never be able to give you what you want, and you’ll never be able to change me.”
The words that come out of her mouth are not an outright dismissal. There’s hope there, a beautiful, fragile thing.
“You know,” Lukas says, careful not to talk over her, “for the longest time, I thought I had to want what everyone else thought I should want. But I’m not running away anymore. I have always thought that the way you love Alm is the most incredible thing about you.”
She’s trembling. It’s always different to hear the words you tell yourself from another person’s mouth.
“I don’t know if I could ever love anyone with that intensity. I don’t know if that intensity exists anywhere in me, but…if it’s possible for someone like me to have that small happiness, I want to try.” Lukas looks right at Faye, doesn’t even dare to blink so as to invite misinterpretation. He drops his voice into a whisper. “I want to learn.”
Then he takes her hands into his. This part feels like a role, like something he imagines Clive would do for Mathilda. Faye doesn’t resist. Lukas thinks he doesn’t know what he’ll do if she bursts into tears.
She doesn’t. For the longest time, she doesn’t do anything at all.
Then she asks, “Will you move back to my village with me?”
“Not yet,” he says. “I have duties here, and I want to fulfill them. But...in a few years, when there are new knights and new heroes, then we’ll work something out.”
“It’s so hard to believe that you won’t get tired of being second best in a few years,” Faye says.
“Third best is fine too. Make me fourth best even. Love whoever you want.” Lukas hadn’t believed in a love so fierce it didn’t depend on reciprocity. He hadn’t believed in love by itself, for the sake of love. “Just...show me that it exists.”
Faye looks at the pot of snap peas that Lukas has attentively watered since its first bloom. “I’ll bring you some onions,” she suggests. “Some coriander.”
Lukas smiles. “Yeah.”
Once he had imagined finding someone like Mathilda, someone who would slot into his world and knock it into focus. It is a dream, one that sprouts like dandelions underfoot and lures young men to war, but -
It’s not what Lukas needs anymore.