Chapter Text
Lucas stared at the sleeping man before him, annoyed, but not truly angry. Not yet.
Emperor Claude slept soundlessly, surrounded by memories of a treasure he didn't remember. Preserved drawings littered the floor. Keys to rooms full of treasure were piled high on his desk. In the corner, was a brand new portrait of him and his daughter. The artist's rendition showed a small, but happy family. A pair that shared a bond forged by blood and fierce love that could never be broken. It was impossible to think that the girl in the portrait wasn't around now… and yet, even as Lucas unleashed his magic to scan the castle for her presence, she was nowhere to be found. Instead, what he came home to after spending so long looking for the world tree was silence. Deafening silence. No one to welcome him back with faux annoyance followed by unbridled excitement. No one to break the tension in the air that he always seemed to generate by his mere presence. No one to—
He's sleeping, Lucas thought, looking at the thinning man before him. His hands twitched with the urge to unleash the coil of worry twisting his guts into knots. He's fucking sleeping.
Lucas breathed deeply to master himself.
He'd always been too quick to call upon fire whenever he felt unsettled. While he didn't particularly hold any fondness for Emperor Claude, despite mooching off of the palace's funds for so long, thinking about the face she would make if he were to do anything made him still. Lucas was used to upsetting her. He liked it even. It was a pastime of his to provoke her. A storm rose in her eyes whenever she was angry. Sinister energy would roll off of her in waves. But to genuinely upset her, to see her eyes darken and her mouth form into a hard line; to see the bottled, repressed blackness that was her fury drain every ounce of cheer from her being—that he could never do. If no person and only time could return any semblance of joy to her, then Lucas would never do it. There would be power in being able to aggravate her to such an extent, but there would be shame in it, too. He wasn't so twisted that he would casually hurt the one that he'd been with for so long by killing her father.
But he tried to kill her first. Lucas shook his head when his mind automatically came up with a reason to justify what his instincts so desperately urged him to do. Black magic or no, that doesn't excuse his actions. A second more… if she hadn't disappeared in that instant, then, no, I don't want to think about that. The things she went through while I was gone, the hurt she felt, I… I want to erase it all.
… Should I just burn this place down? Slaughter everyone who ever dared to look at her with malice?
Lucas gripped his head, forcefully controlling his base desire.
It didn't take him long to get the gist of what was going on when he returned. There was a deep sadness in the air, but it was especially potent in the princess' palace. Lucas had seen first-hand the consequences of grief, and her maids were afflicted by every single one. He didn't even bother asking normally about the current situation. He simply used his magic to loosen the tongues of those closest to the princess, and they told him all about what her loving father had tried to do to her in the rose garden.
A part of him—a part he liked to think of as tiny and insignificant—resented the fact that another was able to break her to such an extent. It felt, in a word, unacceptable. Barbed vines clenched around his heart. He rubbed the devastated spot on his chest to ease the pressure building there.
Lucas had never wanted to kill Emperor Claude before. In spite of their differences, he knew, without a shred of doubt, that they both favored Princess Athanasia; that they wanted her to live a long and joy-filled life.
Well, Lucas amended as an afterthought, maybe not anymore.
Black magic was a blight. After so many years, Lucas knew this better than anyone. While he might not have fully understood the emotions that drove people to use it, he did know what happened to the sorry souls of those the caster touched throughout their lives as they succumbed to the price of using such ancient and foul powers. Desperation, sadness, solitude, pain, death—all of these followed the caster to oblivion.
Centuries later, here he was again, seeing the consequences of it.
People never change, he thought with disdain.
Lucas was glad Athanasia escaped. He didn't think he could bear it if she were to permanently leave this plane. Lucas was no stranger to death. He had seen people offed in every fashion imaginable. Quick and effortless like a blade slashing diagonally across a young man's face. Slow and painful like the poisons the nobles used when one too many heirs were born; toxins that would blacken lungs and cripple movement, until the unfortunate saps were left frothing at the mouth and bleeding from their eyes. He'd even witnessed someone die painlessly somehow—a young girl whose virtue had been decided with a handful of coin. Lucas was sure she must have still been breathing somewhere, but she may as well have been lying in a puddle of her own blood when he looked into her lifeless eyes. Those were strangers though. Lucas felt no grief upon their passing.
He didn't want to imagine a future without Athanasia, and yet…
She's gone now.
Reality hammered into him like nails in a coffin.
… But Lucas had always existed just out of fate's grasp.
There are traces of her here. Lucas thought, as he looked around the room. It was especially powerful near where Claude slept and on the rooftop. These fools wouldn't be able to sense her sloppy use of teleportation magic… can she even control it?
To him, it appeared as though she was moving around erratically—too swayed by her emotions to properly command her power. He followed the trail like a wolf out for blood. Lucas spared one last glance at the withering man still asleep before him and raised his arm to cast a potent spell that would ward off the curse for a time. A parting gift, if nothing else, as gratitude for housing him all these years; for allowing him to venture so close to a girl he once held above all.
There was a way to cure him, but he wasn't feeling so generous. Not now. Not when there was more at stake.
Athanasia was gone, and while Claude might not have cared, Lucas would devote himself to finding her.
Finding Athanasia wasn't particularly difficult.
He just had to follow the tracks she left behind. While the second-rate magicians in the Emperor's employ may have struggled, it was easy for someone like him. Each trace of magic was more potent than the last. It was so obvious that at one point he had actually considered that she may have done it on purpose for him, but he knew that she wasn't so skilled yet at using magic to be able to do such a thing—at least not easily.
Her teleportations were erratic. An old inn first, the white-haired brat's house next, then near a river, on the edge of a great forest, beside a chicken coop, a city built entirely from gray stone, the list went on. While he grew progressively more annoyed, a part of him was also unbearably glad that she didn't end up anywhere near the Emperor again. It seemed as if she was allowing one simple thought to guide her—anywhere, but here. Lucas wasn't surprised. Those without concrete destinations in mind tended to appear in unpredictable places.
He finally caught up to her on a plain field.
She was lying on the grass dressed in peasant's clothes. Her satchel sat forgotten beside her. There was a despondent look in her eyes that he didn't like. She looked healthy enough, but he could see "dirt" plaguing her. It lingered on every inch of her skin. To him, she looked like only a few subpar protection spells were holding her together now.
Out of habit, Lucas looked around for the glint of moonlight on steel, before humming in satisfaction when he realized that they were far, far away from any traces of human life.
Athanasia watched the sun set above her. The sky was dressed in a purple and pink gown. Darkness slowly grew, but before it could encompass the full ambit of her vision, Lucas decided that he'd had enough of simply watching from afar.
As casual as ever, he sat down beside her.
"Did you miss me?"
Athanasia recognized his voice instantly. Rough, yet unendingly calm. A voice that took the air, expelled it, and made it his. Her entire body seemed to snap in his direction like a puppet whose strings were tugged. Her eyes brightened at the sight of him, as if his existence alone had smoothed every worry she'd had in the months they spent apart. Lucas reveled in the realization that his presence immediately spawned threads of sanity for her to hang onto.
"Lucas!" she shouted, and in that dying instant, as her voice echoed in the emptiness around them, she made him feel like everyone had been saying his name wrong his entire life.
Athanasia jumped into his arms with an urgency that made his blood burn. He wasn't prepared for such an exuberant welcome. She straddled him, hands pressed on the ground beside his head, as she shouted his name again. It was disgraceful the power her voice had over him. One call of his name and she commanded his attention the way so few things could.
A sudden wet spot on his cheek drew his attention away from her voice.
Lucas' eyes narrowed when he saw the tears sliding freely down her face. He resisted the urge to reach up and wipe them away.
I should've razed it all to the ground, he thought darkly. His chest swelled with wild, unmanageable heat. Affection mixed with rage. I should've killed him.
"Where have you been?" she asked, but before he could even open his mouth, more questions came spilling out. "Are you hurt anywhere? Have you been to the castle? Daddy, he's—"
What came next was a torrent of words that she looked pained to say. A rough recount of memories that were still too raw to touch. He reached out to rub away her tears with his thumbs midway, even as she continued to sputter for help. She believed in his power as surely as dawn bathing light over the horizon, but Lucas couldn't even feel proud of the fact. He was too busy cleansing the dirty aura on her left by who knows what.
Every soul had a price. Lucas struggled with the knowledge that hers was the well-being of a different man. He wasn't dense enough to not be able to admit—at least in his mind—that he was jealous. His envy hid like a knife in the dark. Lucas didn't know how to taper that particular emotion yet though, so he didn't try to. He ignored it instead. Lucas had lived long enough to be able to disregard everything, even the unyielding emotions eating away at him.
"I already know everything," he said, sitting up. She was still on his lap, and although their proximity made the scarred thing in his chest stammer dramatically, now wasn't the time for distractions. "Enough, Princess. You don't have to say anymore. It's going to be alright. I'm here. Everything, all of it, just… enough."
Athanasia slumped in his arms, and before he knew it, she leaned forward with her forehead against his shoulder.
He felt, rather than saw, her grin with the knowledge that he had finally returned to her.
Lucas brought her to one of his old hideaways. A tower deep within the heart of a land ruled by winter. A constant blizzard both hid the tower from view and kept people from venturing too close. Only he knew of its whereabouts, and once he had decided on the tower as their temporary haven, it took but a moment to transport them both there.
The tower was nothing more than an old and dilapidated structure when they arrived, but with one flick of his hand, its former splendor returned as if the reality before had been nothing more than an illusion. Magic could provide many comforts if one knew how to control it, and Lucas was nothing, if not a master of his mana.
With a critical eye, he made sure that Athanasia took a long, hot bath, ate a hearty dinner, and changed into comfortable clothes. When she was done, he led her to a common area on the tower's fourth floor. On the right, was a homely leather couch with a rich purple throw blanket and a low table with a house plant at the center. Hanging precariously from the edge of the table, was a glass flask with an amber liquid that he didn't remember the name of. On the left, stood a well-used hearth with a black bottom. There were high cedar beams scattered about that held up an even higher ceiling. No portraits adorned the walls. Instead, there were dried herbs slung over entryways and shelves overburdened with old tomes.
"I can vouch for the couch's comfort. It's plump from magic. Rest here tonight."
"What about—"
"Tomorrow," he insisted. The world tree branch in his possession suddenly felt like an unwelcome burden. "No one will ever find you here if I don't will it. No harm will come your way as long as I'm by your side, so for tonight, just forget about all of that and go to sleep."
Athanasia looked like she wanted to argue more, but when she saw the unrelenting look in his eyes, she eventually conceded. She spared a curious glance at the books on the shelves for a moment, before flopping down on the couch as easily as she did her own bed back at the palace. She sank into the cushions, but not so much that it would wreck her posture if she were to lay down for an extended period. It was exactly the way she liked her seats, and Lucas knew it.
"… It's comfortable," she mumbled with a sigh of relief. There was a ghost of a smile on her lips that disarmed him in ways she would never know. "Do you want to share?"
His jaw slackened at the sudden offer.
Lucas' cheeks heated. His heart skipped forward—hard. He even sputtered, but she didn't see it.
Her eyes fell shut the moment the words left her lips, seemingly unconcerned with whether or not he accepted. She'd sleep either way. Lucas would've thought she had already fallen asleep, if it wasn't for the rhythmic tap of her fingers on her chest. He watched it steadily lose life. It wasn't long before she barely lifted one. There was no way he was letting her fall asleep after dropping a bombshell like that on him. He didn't know when she had gotten so bold, but he figured that she might have just missed having someone familiar nearby to rely on.
"There's no room," Lucas objected eventually, even as he drew closer.
"There's plenty of room," she refuted, "if you turn into little Lucas."
Like hell I will.
Lucas braced one hand beside her. Distantly, he thought that maybe the floor would be better. That Athanasia was probably delirious from—something. That she'd be properly angry at him tomorrow for even accepting the offer. She'd wake up, groggy and unsure, before shouting at him until his ears bled and they both fell off of the couch and groaned from the pain.
He also didn't give a damn.
It was an easy thing to trick her senses into believing that he was smaller than he was. He felt like he was cheating by doing so, but he also didn't want to turn into a runt to ease her nerves. She asked for this when she invited him to lay beside her.
And though the couch was smaller than the ones they'd been laying on for so long in the palace, made for function rather than luxury, against all odds, they fit. They were arranged precisely so that no hands or feet hung uncomfortable off the side and no spots were pressed too roughly against.
He could feel her breathe.
"See?" she muttered, pleased. The smugness in her tone was drowned by a torpid yawn. Her eyes were still closed.
Lucas' response was a curt sound between a purr and a groan. It rumbled from deep within his chest. He inhaled, and there was barely enough space for even the rise of his chest between them. Here like this, it was easy for him to see how someone could be so utterly enraptured by another. Lucas knew that if the world abruptly diminished to only this, to her satisfied exhale, enveloping him in warmth and fire and an emotion he didn't want to give a name, then he could be happy. Irrevocably so. The only thing that he cared about in that moment was Athanasia's heartbeat, and how important it was that it never stopped beating.
If it were up to him, he'd stay locked away here forever with her.
He was a selfish man, but not when it came to her well-being. Athanasia wasn't a bird to be caged here in this tower. He knew that tomorrow he would need to speak to her about the world tree, about what they could do for her father and his curse, about all of the pesky things that would eventually make him take her back to Claude's side because he was so outrageously weak when it came to her requests.
But now, just for tonight, she was his—and his alone.
He stored up each and every moment like a man turning for one last glimpse at the sea. Lucas threaded his fingers through her hair and massaged her scalp. Nothing could steal her from the pull of sleep. He'd watched her fall asleep enough times to know that by now noise had disappeared completely for her and that colors had long ago bent into darkness.
It was only at times like this, when she was half-gone already, that he was comfortable saying what he felt.
"I know it isn't much," Lucas whispered, as he rubbed his chest where his stuttering organ beat in a vain attempt to calm it the same way one would a crying child, "but it's yours."
Athanasia didn't respond, though it wasn't as if he expected her to.
Lucas was perfectly content to live the rest of his life in the silent spaces between their soft, measured breaths.