"Oryx!"
The fish beastman came up the slope at a run, out of breath. "He survived. The crazy bastard survived."
Oryx was sitting on a log with his double sided axe across his knees, working a stone down the edge of it.
"He survived the Night Prowler attack?" he asked without stopping.
"Yeah. I gave them the antidote like you said, but I didn't think he'd actually pull through." He was grinning through the heavy breathing. "Lunatic was up walking around the same morning he woke up. I'm glad too, I was sick of sitting in that damn bush watching the place." His smile went somewhere else. "At least the woman he's with is a world class beauty. Watching her change made the time go by, hehe."
Drool came out of the corner of his mouth.
Oryx did not look up.
"Good job. For once. This means I won't have to offer you up to the boss anymore, fish boy," Oryx said, adding the final touch to his axe.
"So what now? I say we hit him while he's still weak. He's gotta be awakened at least, surviving a thing like that. Don't you reckon?"
"Yes. That might be the smartest thought your mushy brain's ever conjured." He tilted the axe to look at himself in the reflection. "Gather the first and second squads. We're going hunting."
"But what about the boss saying not to attack Roka? The guy's holed up there."
"Don't worry about that."
Oryx's flat black eyes came back at him out of the reflection.
"I've got a plan that'll have those spineless people handing him over themselves."
***
"Amira?"
Lucian called as he walked through the door into the house.
"I'm in here,"
She was in the living room, standing in front of the painting.
The drape had been pulled all the way back.
He came and stood beside her, and looked into the crimson eyes of the man who had been covered up everytime he looked at it.
Black royal attire with white at the seams. Crimson eyes that came out of the canvas as though the painter had been frightened of him. And on his head a silver black crown set with polished soulstones that glowed a deep, magnificent purple even in oils.
"Your father," Lucian said.
Amira didn't answer.
"I saw him once."
She turned to him fast. "You did?"
"Yes. When I was a young boy, I watched him drive a dagger through my mother's stomach."
He kept his eyes on the painting.
"He took her light from me that day."
"I see." Amira's hands had gone very still at her sides. "I'm sorry to hear that. So I guess you're really not just some wanderer, then."
"No. I'm—"
He stopped.
"I suppose it's only right I be honest myself, since I'm the one asking it of you."
He licked his top teeth and clicked his tongue, and then said it the way a man reads out a sentence that has already been passed.
"My name is Edric Lucian Bloodthrone. Heir to the Bloodthrone household, firstborn son of Duke and Primearch Valerious Bloodthrone. Former General of Atheria's First Legion."
A pause.
"And now former general of the Ashen Dawn."
Amira took a step back. Her palms had gone damp.
Lucian turned and looked at her.
"I watched your father murder my mother for reasons that are still unknown to me. An innocent woman who was a light for others in this cruel world. The kindest sweatest soul thats every graced this world and your father murdered her in cold blood."
She took a step back.
Lucians voice went down to a rasp and a coldness laced it.
"So who does that make you, Amira?"
She swallowed.
"I'm really sorry, Lucian. I have no idea why my father killed your mother. I was only a girl at the time. I didn't know him well, but he was a good king, and when he was alive he was a good man too, and I really don't—"
She stopped.
His eyes had not moved off hers once, and the grey in them went straight through her and out the other side.
"I'm sorry."
Then she straightened.
Her shoulders went back and her chin came up, and something arrived in her that Lucian had never seen in the days he had known her. Her voice dropped an octave and settled into a register built for a hall full of people.
"My name is Amira Selvaron. Queen of Obsidia. Demon Queen Luna. Daughter of the former King Yealis Selvaron, the Moon Sovereign, the initiator of the first holy war."
She held his gaze.
"I do not know why our families carry this feud thats lasted centurys. I do not know why my father killed your mother. But I can assure you, on my name as demon queen, that every drop of bad blood between the Bloodthrones and the Selvarons died with him."
She did not blink.
"I harbor no hatred toward any Bloodthrone. Nor any human."
She paused and her voice went soft.
"Especially not you. So Lucian I ask that you please dont look at me any diffrently. Your the first perosn ive gotten close to in a long time and if all of that is simply undone becuase of my father then I think it'll-"
Her eyes got watery.
Lucian relaxed, slightly. His anger slowly undoing itself at her words.
"Nor do I toward you espically, or anyone else anymore."
He looked back up at the painting.
"Though I'd like to tell you the only time I've ever felt hatred died with your father, but it didn't. I still feel it when I look at that face."
He looked down.
"But as for you." He came back to her. "Strangely, I feel nothing but calm. A peace I did not think was available to me."
"The man standing here now carries no hostility toward anybody. Unless they come after something or someone I care about, I will no longer carry anger with me at this secnd chance I have at life." He let out a breath. "A recent event has made me realize I don't want to live the way I used to. That I ought to live for more than that. That I ought to have a better purpose."
"Which is?" Amira asked. "Your purpose. I mean."
Lucian searched her crimson eyes.
"You."
"Sorry?"
"I want you to be my purpose."
"What?" She took a step back, and the color came up her face.
"My whole life I have lived for other people. Fighting their wars. Guarding their sovereignties. Training in hopes that one day I could prevent what happened to me and my mother from happening to other people, because they made me belive that the demons were the problem..." He shook his head once. "Not one time did I do a single thing because I wanted to. And when I put it all down and walked away to find out who I was without it, I decided that from now on I would only do what I want."
He took a step forward.
"And what I want is you."
Amira's back met the wall.
"I think some of that poison might still be in your brain." She laughed. It came out thin.
"Amira."
He took another step, and now he was directly in front of her, a full head taller, close enough that there was nothing between them but the air they were both using.
"Yes?" she said quietly, never taking her eyes off his.
"Will you let me be selfish this once?"
He grabbed her waist and pulled her close, and lifted the bottom of her chin with his fingers.
Amira's face flushed scarlet. "I—"
"Its okay," Lucian whispered, running his thumb across her jaw.
"Ehm!"
She slipped out of his grip to the side and turned her back toward him.
"How do I know any of that's true?"
Lucian looked down at the hand that had held her face and rubbed his thumb and fingers together.
"Why would I lie? You know how I feel about lying." He turned and looked at her back. Her ears were bright red.
"When you released your soulflame on the mountain." She stayed facing away a moment longer. "And when I helped you back in Atheria. It was grey, and it was twice the size of any grandmaster I have ever seen."
She turned around. Her face was still flushed, but her eyes were entirely serious.
"Lucian. I have no idea what you're capable of. What if you decide to hurt me, now that you know who I am? Realistically, I haven't known you very long at all." She folded her arms. "And even if you're telling the truth, a soulflame like that doesn't come from training hard or being in a war or two. My war hardened commanders, who have fought their whole lives and were raised as weapons from birth, barely come close to what you've chosen to show me."
Her voice went quieter.
"And I don't even know how much of it you're still holding back."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying that you might not want it anymore, but people will be drawn to you regardless. To follow you, or to kill you. Especially with you a Bloodthrone and me a Selvaron." She let that sit. "We could go to the ends of the earth to hide and they would still come looking."
She searched his face.
"Lucian. I have lost every person I have ever loved. It has left a hole in me I don't believe I will ever fill." Her voice caught and kept going. "And if I give you the last piece I have, and then you die too."
She stopped.
"I'm afraid of what I might become."
She turned away from him again.
"Lucian in the short time I've known you I feel as if I have truly not been awake until now. So I cant say im ready to risk losing what we have right now for something I dont even know I want."
The words went into Lucian's chest and dropped his heart straight through it into his stomach.
"I understand."
The softness went out of his eyes and the old look came back over them, hollow, with nothing behind it at all.
Amira smiled and touched the back of his hand.
"You're brooding again."
Lucian didn't look at her.
"Look. I'm not saying no." She rubbed her thumb gently over his knuckles. "It's just, I need some time to think about it. That's all."
"Right."
He took his hand back and went and sat in the chair facing the empty fireplace.
Amira watched him a moment. "I have more questions."
"As do I. But I don't think now's a good time."
"Okay." She pulled a long breath in through her nose. "I'm going to make some lunch. Do you want anything?"
"Sure."
She stood there a while longer, looking at the back of his head, and at the painting he was looking at.
Her eyes went to the little girl in it, smiling like there was no tomorrow coming.
Then she went to the kitchen.
The whole time she was cooking she weighed the pros and the cons.
The cons ran away with it easily. They weren't close. And every time she reached the end of the list and got to the part where she told him no, her stomach turned over.
"Ugh. Why couldn't he have just been a normal man? He just HAD to be a Bloodthrone." She rolled her eyes and finished up the brisket sandwich she was making. She plated two of them and carried them to the living room.
"Lucian, I finished lunch."
He was asleep in the chair.
She set the plates down on the table and went over quietly.
His lashes were longer than she'd ever had the opportunity to notice. His chest went up and down slowly. Her eyes drifted to his mouth, and the memory of him standing over her with his fingers under her chin came back at full strength, and a blush went up her neck and into both cheeks.
"Agh. What the hell am I even doing." It came out as a whispered shout. "I meet the only person whos ever made my heart beat faster and I tell him I can't be with him because of his last name."
She crossed her arms in a fit and a piece of hair fell down across her face covering her eyes.
"Seriously, Amira!"
Her eyes fell back on Lucian.
"Yeah, people would be after us. Plus he's a human and I'm a demon, so having kids would be hard. And that's not even including whatever the hell's going on with his soulflame, or why it's that color."
She blew the hair out of her face and stuck her lip out.
Tapping her finger on her arm for a moment she let her thoughts run wild.
"But…" she said, uncrossing her arms. "If it's him, I don't think I'd mind the trouble that comes with it."
Her eyes locked onto his lips as she leaned in.
"I only get to live once anyway. Might as well be a short and happy life rather than a long and miserable one…"
Her face was right in front of his. She tilted her head sideways and brushed her hair back behind her ears and closed her eyes.
"I guess," she whispered.
And she kissed him.
It went through her like something striking a bell. She came off him and back on her heels with her hand clapped over her own mouth, heart going at a gallop.
"What did I just do!?"
She frooze waiting for Lucian to Say something.
Lucian hadn't moved.
She collected herself, and then circled him slowly, inspecting him from every angle to be certain he was still asleep.
His cheeks had gone slightly pink.
And his breathing had lost its rhythm entirely.
'Is he pretending to be asleep?'
She put her hands on her hips.
'Fine. Since you want to pretend to be asleep.'
Her eyebrows went up.
'I'll just do what I want as well.'
She crawled into his lap and rested her head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat. It steadily got faster, and a small smile spread across her face.
'I knew it.'
She gently guided her fingertips across his chest down to his side.
"What are you doing?" Lucian said slowly.
Amira froze in place. "Uh! So you were awake, haha," she said nervously.
"I wasn't. Up until a minute ago."
"I just came to tell you I made lunch," she said, easing off his lap slowly.
Lucian lifted his head and his eyes went straight to her lips. Amira noticed and blushed. "What are you looking at?!"
He looked up at her eyes.
"Nothing."
He stood and walked toward the table.
"I didn't take you for a quick thinker, is all."
"Excuse me?" She tilted her head. "What does that mean?"
Lucian ignored her and took a bite of his sandwich.
"Since I'm gonna be sticking around," he said in an unusually light tone, "we should know more about each other. I'll ask a question and you give an answer, and then vice versa. Sound good?" He said it offering her her plate.
"Sound good? Just who or what do you think you're—"
"First question."
He raised one finger, cutting her off. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"You say you're the queen. So why are you out here, and why is there a publicly acknowledged king sitting in Obsidia?" He took another bite. "Former lover, perhaps?"
"Ha!"Amira's whole face registered disbelief. "As if I'd let that loathsome bastard anywhere near me. Or any man, besides you, for that-"
She cleared her throat.
"As for why I'm out here, I expect you can guess the gist. I got run out of my own country because I didn't have the power or the respect to hold onto the throne." She sat down. "The people loved me. But the nobles decided I was too young and too soft to run a kingdom. So they framed me for my brother's murder, and chased me out, and I have been running ever since."
Lucian's smile grew noticeably larger for a brief moment before returning to normal.
"Besides me?"
he asked, with a hint of ego that was uncharacteristic of him.
"My turn!"
She turned away from him.
"Why is your soulflame grey, and how come you possess such a great amount of it?"
"That's two questions," Lucian responded, taking another bite of his sandwich.
Amira rolled her eyes.
"Fine. Answer the first one then."
"I don't know."
Lucian shrugged.
"I'm sure you've heard about what happened to the Ashen Dawn, right? Well, after we got ambushed, my soulflame went from blue, like any awakened human, to this ashy grey color, and then doubled in size. So if you figure out the reason, let me know. Because I'd really like to know as well."
Amira tapped her chin, studying him. "Huh. Not the answer I was looking for."
"Second question." Lucian wiped his mouth and swallowed his last bite. "I know demon soulflames are different from ours'. Whereas we can't physically control ours to form shapes or other things, but rather just infuse it into things like our body, fists, swords, and so on. But yours, even for demon standards, seems unique. Why's that?"
Amira shrugged as well.
"That's a question I don't know either. My father never lived long enough to tell me, and my mother died of illness when I was young, so they never gave me an explanation as to why my hair is silver, why my soulflame flows differently from my mother's, or why my personality and power change during a full moon."
Lucian narrowed his eyes. "Hmm."
Amira set her plate down and circled him.
"My turn. Now that I know who you are, I've obviously heard of you, and of what you did in the holy war." She came around behind his chair. "And I also know that Bloodthrones are given a custom sword as a birthright. One that answers to that person and nobody else."
She came around the other side.
"I've heard it's a lifeline. That if a Bloodthrone loses his, he loses the will to live."
She stopped in front of him.
"And yet here you stand without one. And I'm quite sure that if you had gone into war unarmed, the rumor would have reached even me."
She put her hands behind her back.
"So. Where. Is. Yours."
Lucian had followed her the whole way around with his eyes, the way a man watches a shark make its pass.
"I gave it up."
Amira froze in place. Those words were similar to a talented blacksmith saying he'd stopped using an anvil and hammer.
"Why?"
"It wasn't who I was."
He turned his cup a quarter turn on the table.
"From the time I was a child my father trained me to be a weapon for the defense of the kingdom. I put my blood and my sweat and every year I had into that sword." He looked up at her. "And on the day the Ashen Dawn was ambushed, and I killed demons and my own countrymen in the same afternoon, I decided that was no longer who I wished to be."
"So I put it down. And I made a vow to myself, and to the men I buried, that if I ever picked up a sword again it would only be for a purpose that cut deeper into my soul than the need for that sword ever did."
He shrugged.
"Which, as far as I can see, will be never. So yes. I, a Bloodthrone, gave up my sword. And all swords."
Amira turned it over. Something in it had gotten through to her that made her soften up.
"I see."
She folded her arms and put her chin up.
"Well. I don't have any more questions. Do you?"
"Just one." Lucian leaned back. "I know you're a demon. But I've spent a fair amount of time with you now, and I've yet to see where your mark is." He said it as a man asking about a woman, and not as anything else. "Do you have a way of hiding it?"
Amira snorted. "Like that's possible."
She giggled. Then she stopped, because a thought had arrived.
She had not yet paid him back for the wall.
Her mouth curved mischeviosly, very slightly, in a way that gave away precisely nothing.
"There's no way to hide a demon mark, silly. They're given to us by the gods." She let her head tilt. "It just so happens that some demons are born with very small ones. Or they turn up in… convenient hiding places."
She looked up at Lucian and her eyes twinkled with tease. Her voice dropped seductively and she spoke slowly.
"I can prove it to you."
She took slow, deliberate steps toward him.
"Do you wanna see mine?" she said softly, batting her lashes at him as she lowered her chin and raised her eyes, slowly undoing the string that held the top of her tunic together.
Lucian's cheeks went a little red as his eyes fell to her chest.
BOOM!
"Lucian!" Layla said, bursting through the door.
Amira and Lucian both turned to her.
"There's a group of members from the Flesh gang outside the village gates asking for you! They look like they wanna kill you!"