Lucian ran
His boots splashed through muddy puddles, his breathing was erratic. His grey Soulflame raged furiously as he pushed his body beyond its limits, going faster with each stride.
'Why?!'
It was the only thought racing through his mind.
'Why am I going so far for a stranger?'
He got angrier every time he asked it, and he asked it the whole way.
He'd only known her a few days, yet his heart had dropped into his stomach when he found out those men were after her.
His mind told him to let her be. To forget her. He had a great deal of practice at forgetting people who seemed like trouble.
But he couldn't.
No matter how hard he tried as if he were under a spell.
It wasn't in his character to kill people senselessly, even before he abandoned himself. After he decided to throw away his name and live amongst the living as a dead man, he thought he'd lost all reason to care about anything or anyone. He was simply going to wander until he found a quiet place to lie down and die.
And yet…
At the mere mention of her, his heart jumped out of his chest. At the mere thought that she might be harmed, he lost all reason and killed people who didn't deserve to die at his hand.
The forest loomed ahead now. The rain gave out, and the clouds began to unstitch, the stench of blood and smoke came to fill the space the rain had left.
Amira's memory flashed into his mind. Her smile. Her silver hair dancing in the moonlight. Her red eyes bright as embers.
'What is going on with me?' he asked himself as he stood at the edge of the woods.
"I just need to see her. If I see her face, I can figure out why my heart feels so weird," he said, walking in hesitantly.
"ARGH!" Lucian yelped. "What the-" He looked down. The dagger that had impaled him earlier had caught on a bush and cut his side open a little more.
He pulled it free and tossed it aside into a shrub. Blood oozed from the wound.
The scent of smoke thickening in the air.
'I'd better hurry.'
He gathered his Soulflame around his hand into a ball and placed it over the wound. A slight hiss could be heard, and when he removed his hand, the wound had been cauterized. Without even checking to see if the bleeding had stopped, he rushed into the forest.
Following the trail she had shown him proved difficult; the moon's light barely pierced the canopy. Not only was his mind still a little fuzzy, but it seemed as if she had taken him in zigzags, deliberately trying to throw off his sense of direction. Thankfully, the demon hunters seemed to have marked the trees in order to find their way out, which made Lucian's progress faster.
When he emerged into a familiar clearing, his chest tightened.
Amira's home was ablaze. Flames roared, consuming the wood in a chorus of crackles, the sparks were flying like fireflies into the night sky. In front of the inferno stood Amira. She held a basket brimming with jars of jam and a very familiar book. At her feet was a bag that had been overstuffed with cloths and a shirt hung out of the top lazily.
The firelight carved shadows across her white gown that paired gently with her sad smile, yet a single tear slipped from her right eye, drying against her cheek before it could fall.
Lucian went still. He simply stared at her for a moment as he reeled in his raging Soulflame.
"Are you alright?" he asked, worry written plainly on his face.
Amira shifted her head, her lips curving softly.
"Oh… you're covered in blood again."
In that very moment it came to him, a painting, out of nowhere. One he had not thought about in twenty years.
He had never understood why people spent ridiculous amounts of money on art, so as a boy he had gone into a gallery to find out what he was missing. He walked the whole thing mostly unimpressed. No, it wasn't until he came across this one painting that he could not find it in himself to leave.
A husband and wife somewhere in the woods with a distance between them. The distance was not too far, but not close enough to reach out for one another. The wife was surrounded by three bears closing in on her. One had its mouth open ready to take a bite out of her another was stood up tall and mighty ready to bring its massive claws down upon her and the last one was directly behind her. While the bears were what caught most people's attention at first, they would quickly be drawn to the woman, not realizing she had an arrow in her heart the whole time. The husband stood furthest from the bears with a bow in his hand and a quiver with no arrows left in it. His head was hung low and his face was running with tears.
The wife's eyes were dull and void of a beating heart but she was smiling. A sad smile. The kind that said goodbye and thank you in the same second.
Lucian had stood in front of it for hours, putting himself in the husband's place, working through every other way it could have gone. He gave up, eventually, never finding one.
Poignant was the closest he came to putting it into words but even that doesn't describe the feeling he felt that day.
He'd all but forgotten that afternoon until now, standing in a clearing, looking at her.
"Did they hurt you?" he asked sternly.
"Hurt me? Who?" She blinked in confusion.
"The ones who burned down your house!"
Amira let out a sudden, snorting laugh, the sound oddly out of place against the backdrop of ruin. She brushed at her puffy eyes with the back of her hand.
"No one burned it down, silly!"
Lucian squinted in confusion.
"This was my fault. I left a pan on the stove and wandered into the garden. By the time I returned, the kitchen was gone." She knocked the side of her head with her knuckles, sticking her tongue out playfully. "I'm a klutz. What can I say?"
"But what about the—"
Lucian's gaze had fallen to the blood at the hem of her gown, then to the house that was burning from the outside in.
"Forget it." For he knew that if he asked those questions now he'd only push her away and never get the answer he came here to find.
Amira stepped closer, rising onto her toes so her red eyes could meet his. Her lips quirked into a small smile.
"Were you worried about me?" she asked, her voice carrying both innocence and something heavier beneath it.
Lucian faltered, caught off guard. He hesitated, but then answered.
"Yes."
Her face turned crimson. She stared at him as if the word itself had struck her silent.
"Yes," he repeated, uncertain if she had heard him above the crackle and pop of the burning house. "I was worried about you."
Amira turned her face away and set to work on a strand of hair with her fingers, which did nothing at all about the flush climbing her neck.
"Oh — uh — tha… thanks," she stammered.
Lucian exhaled softly, his heart no longer beating like a racehorse, and his mind had finally gone quiet.
'I was worried for nothing.'
He looked her over once more to be sure, then put his hand flat on his own chest.
'Looks like it's gone back to normal. But still, I don't understand why my body was doing that. I was hoping that once I saw her again I'd come to an answer, but now I'm just left with more questions.'
He sighed with exhaustion. The pain in his side and the strain of pushing his body past its limits were finally starting to wear on his mind.
Amira had focused back on the house. "This was the last thing I had that my brother left me, and now it's…" She stopped. "What a pity," she said sadly.
Lucian looked at the flames, and thought, without meaning to, of the last thing his own mother had given him.
Looking down at his right hand where his sigil was hidden "So… what now?"
The house collapsed in on itself, sending a spray of sparks into the night sky that faded with the stars. The smoke carried the scent of burning pine and rosemary.
"I plan to head to Roka," Amira said at last. "I have a friend there I need to see. And… I heard it's peaceful."
Lucian remained silent, watching the firelight dance with his dull grey eyes.
Amira watched him instead, captivated by the way the smoke tossed his brown hair and softened the hard lines of his face.
"What brought you here, anyway?" she said gently. "I thought I told you not to come looking for me."
Lucian's mind emptied itself of every excuse it had ever held.
'I can't tell her I rushed back here because I couldn't stop thinking about her.'
"I—" Lucian began. "I heard some Demon Hunters were looking for a demon in the forest, and thought they might get confused about your…" He gestured to all of her.
"Confused about what? You just gestured to all of me,"
"Do you believe in magic?" Lucian asked suddenly.
"What?!"
"Nothing. Never mind."
'It's the only thing that explains why i'm acting like this. She must've put me under some kind of spell.'
Amira stared at him like he was some kind of lunatic.
"Your eyes," Lucian said, regaining his distant composure. "Crimson eyes are a dead giveaway for demon nobility. So I thought they might mistake you for a demon and have you killed on the spot. Apparently they're known to do that," he added under his breath.
"Ah!" Amira's head went around, checking the tree line that had nothing in it. "I didn't know that, haha! Thankfully you found me first and I didn't have a run-in with them!" Her voice climbed a pitch. "That could've been really bad." Her eyebrows climbed a fraction too high, and stayed there a fraction too long.
Lucian stared at her flatly.
"Right."
'Does she think I'm stupid?'
An awkward silence stretched for a minute.
"Anyways. No point standing around out here all night. I guess I'd better get going," Amira said, breaking the awkwardness. Then, whispering without realizing it: "I wish you could come with me."
Lucian's heart started beating sporadically.
'There it is again.'
He didn't turn to her. "Why couldn't I?"
Her eyes went wide. She had been under the firm impression that had stayed in her head.
"Well - I… we barely know each other! Why would you want to travel with a stranger?"
"I should be asking you that. It was, after all, your idea," Lucian added, appearing calm on the outside.
"Uh - I, uh-" Amiras hands started moving on their own "I just thought it would be nice to have some company along the way. Maybe some protection." And then, without any apparent input from the part of her brain responsible for stopping: "I have seen you with your shirt off, after all, you look like you could be a good-" her cheeks flushed.
Lucian turned to face her, and the nervous sincerity in her eyes did something to his chest he had no name for either.
"I don't mind. If you wouldn't mind having-"
"It would be dangerous with me!" She was talking over him now. "And I- I can't offer you anything-"
"Amira," he interjected gently. "Consider me your company. I don't mind the danger, nor do I need any kind of payment. It's the least I can do, since you patched me up instead of leaving me half dead in the woods." He looked away, scratching the back of his neck. "Besides, I enjoy talking to you."
For a heartbeat, Amira simply stared.
The man who never showed emotion now looked almost… shy.
Her lips curved into a mischievous smile.
"Fine. As long as you don't get any dirty thoughts about me when we're stuck sharing a room. It is a long journey, after all."
Lucian froze. His face went a subtle scarlet.
"Ah-" was all he managed.
'…Did she catch me staring that day?'
Amira's own face flushed crimson at his reaction. She scrambled to cover her nerves.
"A-and no brooding!"
"I understand!" Lucian blurted, bowing stiffly.
When he straightened, their eyes met. Both looked away immediately.
"Good!" Amira huffed, lifting her chin. "Then let's hurry up and go. I'll say bye to my brother, and then we'll hit the road."
Amira went to the house that was now only a few feet tall. She put her hands together as if praying and gave a slight bow. Her lips moved as if she were saying something, but she was too far away for Lucian to hear. She looked back up at the house and gave it a long look and a sad smile.
After she said her goodbyes, she bent to scoop up her bag, balancing the basket of jam on her book. With a bounce in her step, she started down the pathway, her silver hair gleaming as the moon began to set.
Lucian lingered a moment. A smile tugged at his lips, warm as the sun peeking over the horizon. He didn't know why, but being close to her filled him with a sense of wholeness. For now, his goal was to follow her until he could find out why.
He took one last glance at the burning house and noticed what seemed to be a broken bow among the debris.
'She'll tell me when she's ready… probably.'
He ignored it and turned to follow Amira.
"So," she called. "You gonna tell me whose blood that is?"
"You first," he responded.
Amira went silent.
They walked a long way like that, the two of them, neither one asking again.