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“There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
She turns to look at him, a bouquet of pale flowers gathered in her arms, bursting against her cheeks. Petals scattering in the wind.
She gives him a slightly chafing look. Dainsleif finds himself staring at the soft petals brushing against the deepening pink blush of her cheeks.
“You have to stop saying things like that,” Lumine says. “I just asked if you could hold my flowers for me.”
Dain only shrugs, takes the bundle from her arms. The light, airy fragrance of its petals drifts across the air. He wonders if the scent has clung to her clothes, her skin.
“I mean it.”
This time, Lumine doesn’t turn from her position sitting in the grass among the field of identical wildflowers, leaning down to examine another stalk to potentially add to her rapidly growing collection. This variety of flower was quite common among these parts and tended to spring up voraciously this time of year, often covering whole swaths of land such as the hillside they’d wandered off to. Although only a brisk walk away from town, the field looked untouched, wild in its beauty. Lumine has uprooted a sizeable chunk of it.
“I know you mean it.” She picks up another flower, compares the size against her palm. “It’s your job. Doesn’t mean you have to say it every time I ask for a favour.” Seemingly satisfied by her find, she deposits the plucked flower in Dain’s arms with the rest.
The sun is setting. Lumine stands and stretches, dusting off pollen sticking to her dress. Dain watches the light play off her skin, remembers the scrapes and bruises covering every inch of her the day he found her in this very field. If he looked off away from the town behind them, he’d spy the remnants of the giant crater he’d found her in.
Lumine catches him watching.
He looks away quickly, knowing she doesn’t like his “fussing”, as she calls it. He hears a soft laugh and a hand comes to rest on his arm.
“Hold still,” she says and his gaze swings back to her, only to widen in surprise when he feels her fingers in his hair. Lumine’s wings have appeared, glittering on her back and helping her hover high enough to reach his head. A soft weight replaces her hand on his hair. “There,” she proclaims proudly.
Dain reaches up, feels soft petals against his fingers.
“It matches your hair!” she beams. Lumine has returned to the ground, her wings vanishing in a burst of light.
Dain feels a hard thump in his chest.
He takes a flower from the bunch in his arms and tucks one into her hair, matching her delighted grin with a smile of his own. “Beautiful.”
Golden eyes shine at him. He wonders when, if ever, he will stop seeing the chasm between them.
The world is falling apart around them.
“Dain,” she says, and he can feel it then. The depth to which she has found her way into his heart. “Dain. Come with me.”
He is rooted in place. There is blood on his hands, his clothes, everywhere. It’s not his blood.
The heir to the Alberich throne lies still and broken at his feet.
“We can fight this.” Her voice breaks. “Damn it, Dain. Why won’t you fight this? How could you let this happen?”
And that, more than anything, feels like a cold blade sliding home in his chest.
Tears are streaming down her cheeks and he wants more than anything to take her into his arms and run. Run as far and as fast as they can away from this crumbling nation.
He knows this is a fleeting dream.
He knows there is nowhere they can run where the gods cannot find them.
Lumine is grabbing at his arm. Tugging him as fast as his stumbling legs can go. “We have to try waking Aether again. We might just be strong enough together.”
“Lumine.”
“There’s still time, Dain. We have to try.”
“Lumine, stop.” He can hardly choke out the words, but he can’t deny it any longer. Not when the people he’d meant to protect fell one after another, right before his eyes. The pride of humanity, Khaenri’ah, brought to destruction in the face of the true power of Celestia. “It’s too late. We’ve lost.”
Lumine’s hand slips from his. She looks at him like she doesn’t recognise him at all. Her voice is small, hardly audible over the raging inferno that was the royal palace of the Eclipse Dynasty. “What?”
She steps closer to him. Beneath ash and blood, Dain catches the airy scent of the wildflowers in her hair. “There is nothing more we can do here. Everything is gone.”
The fury in her eyes scorches his soul. Her fists pound against his chest but he catches her wrists, places them over his heart. “How could you say that?”
“Lumine, please-- ”
Something in her gaze changes. He recognizes the look. For a moment, it is as if he’s travelled back in time, to when he was her guard and she was his assignment and nothing more. When all he could coax out of her was a small, reserved smile, the distance of a thousand worlds between them. She steps back, out of his reach. “If you try to stop me, I’ll never forgive you.”
He knows she means it. Can see it in her eyes.
He steps forward. She steps back. Her wings manifest in a shower of sparks.
She is beautiful like this.
He thinks about this moment often, after everything. Thinks about how he should’ve said something, done something to make her stay. Closes his eyes and recalls the way she looked as the flames reflected in her eyes and bathed her whole body in light. A smaller voice reminds him how this was the first (but not the last) time he’d ever refused her.
Some days, when his legs are sore from wandering and he catches the faint scent of wildflowers on the breeze, he wonders why he did.
Instead, he says nothing and Lumine takes off without him.
When next he wakes, Khaenri’ah is gone.
And so is she.
He feels like he’s dreaming.
When he sees her step out of the portal, shining and whole and unchanged, Dain thinks this must be one of his rare, good dreams. Dreams where the world is whole and right and she is there in his arms, all laughter and joy. Then she sees him, and her icy gaze grows colder still, and oh. It’s another nightmare after all.
His voice is a whisper. “Lumine…”.
The abyss mage he’d tossed aside gasps, kneels, says three words that shatter what remains of his world.
“Greetings, my princess.”
He remembers a time when he called her that. A happier time. When they would sit under skies untouched by the gaze of gods, her attempting to put tiny braids in his hair, idly saying, “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything, my princess.”
Dain runs to her then, only to be knocked down by a blast of hydro energy as an abyss herald emerges behind her. He gets up and is knocked back again. He’s panting, kneeling on the ground when Lumine approaches.
“Dainsleif,” she says. Her voice is flat, devoid of emotion. He’d never heard her sound like that before. “I’m only here to give you one warning. Don’t try to stop me and stay out of my way.”
It’s almost instinct when, despite everything, he desperately wants to say “Yes, of course. Anything for you.”
But the sight of her like this, dull gaze fixed upon him, transformed beings of the Abyss kneeling at her feet, makes the words stick in his throat, makes him see petals scattering in the wind on a gentle summer day.
And maybe she sees it in his face because her gaze softens, just a fraction. She leans down, caresses his face with a hand. Soft, warm, like the sunlight in his memories in a time and place long lost. Her breath brushes against the shell of his ear. “You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”
His eyes close and when he opens them again, the dream is over.