43. I Know What I Didn’t Before
LUCIAN
Soma is the world with the fewest casualties and deaths of civilians, losing only 10,000 of their population of 300,000. They claim this is due to the cleanliness of their genetics, as they are the only species of orphia to descend from a god.
— THE TRUTH OF THE ARCANIAN WAR (REDACTED)
This room of mine reflects a person I’ve lost. Someone I am not sure I want to hold onto. I look back to the mirror I’ve stepped out from, the hopeful part of me thinking she’s followed.
The better part of me knowing she’s gone.
The exhaustion I feel is being held at bay by adrenaline. A fight is coming, I’m certain of it. There’s one thing I have to do before it arrives.
Leaving my suite, I can’t tell if the academy is on some sort of lockdown or if the desolate nature of the hall is the product of the hour. Fleur opens the door, only by an inch, after I’ve knocked.
“What are you doing here?” she whispers.
“I need to speak to Lilac.”
“No, I mean, we were all told you wouldn’t be coming back.” Her eyes gaze over my body. “But I’m glad you did.”
“By who?”
“King Labyrinth made the announcement.”
If I could manage to not have to come back, I would’ve chosen that option.
Fleur’s tone shifts when I don’t respond. “Have you seen Eleanora? No one’s seen her since the lockdown began.”
I give it a moment of thought and answer, “No, I haven’t.”
“Okay.” The door opens and I walk past it, right to Lilac’s room. The moment I see her, she hugs me.
“Is it true?” she asks. “He’s dead?”
“Yes,” I breathe. “He’s gone.”
Lilac inhales unsteadily. “He’s gone.” It sinks in.
These are the consequences—my sister looking at me with tears in her eyes and pain in her veins as she realizes exactly what I can’t fathom: he’s gone. Our brother is gone.
“They say it was a fatta,” she squeaks.
It’s hard to get out the word, “Yes.”
“So, he’s…”
“Wendy took him to the mastick and anchored his spirit to a tree,” I say, though I’m not sure that’s what happened. I fear he was already obsolete by the time we made it. Lilac starts biting at her nails. Her eyes are on me, though I can tell she does not see me. “Have they evacuated the rest of the students yet?”
Her eyes become quickly alert. “Evacuate? Why?”
I whisper, “The Arcanes are coming. I can get you to Soma before they do?—”
“No.” Her hands drop. “I’m not going back there.”
“Alright.” I think. “We can find you somewhere safe to hide.” Could the Royal floor be safe? I don’t know where in any world would be safe against the Arcane.
Lilac shakes her head. “I’m not hiding this time.” She closes her door without moving an inch. “I’ve become a worthy adversary.” She stands a little taller too.
“If anything happened to you, Li…”
“Nothing will.” With a long exhalation and a crinkle of her eyebrow, she follows her last sentiment with, “I don’t know how many Lusia made me kill. But I have all of their power, I can protect you this time.”
Other people care about my life too. With Azaire, I think when I’d disregarded the consequences, I’d been thinking about them in terms of my life. To me, at that moment, it felt inconsequential.
It wouldn’t have felt inconsequential to Azaire.
Consequences be damned, as it turns out, was an entirely ignorant thing to say.
I should’ve never brought him into that battle, vision or otherwise.
“Azaire died,” the sentence feels anything but real, “because I pulled him into a fight. I’m not ready to…”
“I am.” Her hand extends to her side, and a shadow pulls a sword to her. “I’m probably even stronger than you now. Consider my fighting a favor.”
When Lilac grins at me, I can only hope this won’t end the same as it had with Azaire.
“Where’d you get that snark from?”
“Years spent with you, brother. Calista too.”
I jump into Lilac’s bed. “Hey!” she shouts when I untuck her sheets.
It isn’t until I’m lying and ready for sleep that I notice what’s missing. “Where’s your violin?”
Lilac doesn’t answer.
“Li?”
“In the closet,” she says hastily.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I got tired of seeing it.”
I sit up. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.” Lilac doesn’t meet my eyes.
“I spent a lot of our childhood in that dungeon,” I tell her, I finally tell her. “I must’ve watched at least a hundred people die before Lusia finally did the same to me.” I don’t look away from her. I want her to feel welcome enough to look at me. “I don’t know what it was like for you, but I’ll try to understand.”
When Lilac does finally turn to me, her eyes glisten with tears. She opens her mouth. Only a sob escapes.
I hold out my arms. “Come here.”
She collapses on her bed, crying into my shoulder.
“It was awful, Lucy,” she says, her words breaking between sobs. “Person after person. I can still feel them. Like I got more than their life force, I took their souls too.”
“We’ll figure everything out,” I whisper.
“There’s no escaping,” she says. “I see that now.”
“No.” I pull her back and look into her eyes. “We’ll get out from under their thumbs.”
Her bottom lip quivers and she shakes her head no. “I’m gonna be just like her, Lucy, I see it already.”
“You will never be her.”
“I have her power. I get it. Because even with the disgust, there’s the longing for more.”
“You have her power with your heart. You have what she never did.” I smooth out the hair at the top of her head. “If I know one thing, Lilac, it’s that you are better than her in every way.”
“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head.
“Whatever good is in Lusia lives in you. I promise you that.”
“Okay.” She nods. “Okay.” She wipes the tears from under her eyes and says, “You should get some sleep.”
“I’m more than alright to stay up.”
“You need your strength. I’ll wake up at the first sign of trouble.”
* * *
It’s dawn, and the taste of Desdemona is the only thing left in my mouth. I savor it as though she is here. Though, I’m not sure where I am.
“Lucian,” a voice calls, shaking my shoulders again.
I take in my surroundings, the pastel room and the sister in front of me. “Where did you sleep?”
Lilac blushes and looks down. “There’s trouble,” she whispers, and I sit up immediately. “Calista has this necklace, she thinks it’s the Memorium. Out of nowhere it started levitating, and then it was pulled under the door.”
It must be Desdemona’s.
For the first time, I’m relieved she’s not with me.
“Okay.” I get out of bed, strapping a sword that will do no good against an Arcane to my back.
“She said something else, about Desdemona.”
“What was it?” I ask, facing her.
“Melody and Easton have been asking Calista to watch her.”
“Okay.” I head for the door. Our parents must know the Arcanes want her. “Stay here.”
“Where are you going?” Lilac asks.
“I’m going to get Yuki and more weapons.”
Lilac throws on a coat, then her sword over her shoulder. “I’m coming.”
“Straight to my suite,” I tell her.
“Okay, Dad.”
“If anything happens, focus on the fight in front of you.”
“Okay!”
The moment I step into the hallway something feels off. There’s no better way to describe it. I glance at Lilac, looking to see if she feels it as well. There’s nothing registered in her face to tell me she does.
We’re close to the boys’ wing of the school when I see the first sign of life. A student, walking toward us.
Lilac grabs my wrist, stopping me. “Is that Wendy?”
I focus on the silhouette, which is looking more like Wendy by the second. As she approaches, I make out the red of her eyes. “Lilac, run.”
Lilac unsheathes her sword instead. I extend mine before me.
“Oh, my boy, I don’t want to fight you,” Wendy’s voice sings. Both familiar and foreign—the voice belongs to her, though the inflections and tone do not. “I know how skilled you are, and I’d prefer not to kill you.” Wendy walks closer, grabbing one end of the blade.
I flush the familiarity from my body. At least, I try to.
Lilac swings. “Don’t,” I say, too late.
Azaire loved her. We have to try to save her.
Before the blade hits her neck, Wendy’s arm raises and both of Lilac’s stop. “Neither of you, for that matter.”
“I can’t move,” Lilac whispers and the Arcane inside of Wendy grabs me by my chin, pulling my face down until we are eye to eye. It is not Wendy’s eyes I am met with. Here, there is life, death, experience. A familiarity I wish I never knew.
Wendy’s head nods, an approving smile flashing at me. “You know.”
I drop the spatha that it touches and rip myself from the creature’s hand. “Yes,” I spit. “I know.”
Wendy steps back. “Not the whole story, I presume.”
I step in front of Lilac. “Release her.”
“She seems… defiant.”
“She won’t strike again,” I promise, looking at her over my shoulder.
The Arcane sneers and the scar running down Wendy’s chin protrudes. “If I must.” With the wave of a hand Lilac’s sword falls forward, her body carrying through with the swing. “So who am I?” she smiles.
“Luc—”
“It’s alright,” I say without moving. This isn’t her fight. It’s mine. “You killed my parents.”
It starts laughing the deepest, throatiest laugh I’ve ever had the misfortune to hear. The body collapses forward and it claps, slowly, until the cacophonous noise ceases. “Well, yes. I must say, I am a bit ashamed you don’t know the rest. I always thought my offspring would be more astute.”
Lilac steps forward behind me and I raise my arm. “I’m no Arcane,” I spit.
“No.” It smiles. “Come on. I know you can feel it, boy.” It steps around me and hisses, “It’s in your bones.”
I step away from it. “What do you want?”
“A reunion.” Wendy’s hands are as hot as Desdemona’s when the Arcane pulls a piece of hair from my forehead. But Wendy’s only burn. “To bond with my son.”
Shaking my head, I say, “I am not your son.”
Wendy steps back. “There’s much hidden, my boy. Starting with Silas and Ramona. Give me your favor, and I will enlighten you of your history.”
“Don’t,” Lilac says strictly.
“Do,” Wendy says softly.
“What do you know of Silas and Ramona?” Father and Mother. Shadows materialize under my feet, and I block Lilac with mine.
“Everything where it pertains to you. Your favor?”
“Your name?” I answer.
“Lucian!” Lilac shrieks.
“Icarthus,” Wendy says.
“You have my favor, Icarthus.”
I feel my defenses diminish and I turn, grabbing Lilac’s shadow-ridden wrists before she strikes. “If you kill it, you kill her.”
Lilac yanks her wrists away from me. “What are you doing, giving your favor?”
“It knows my parents, Li. If you don’t want to hear it?—”
“I’m not leaving you this time.” She picks up her sword again. “You’re my brother by choice now.”
“I don’t simply know your parents. I went to Soma and I picked the two most powerful Lucents.” Lilac grabs my arm, pulling me back. Wendy’s face smiles but it is not Wendy’s smile. It’s sickening. “In the body of your father, I impregnated your mother and used the Soul Ruby to create the child with the power we require.” It whispers, “That’s how you got your scars.”
“That’s ludicrous!” Lilac shouts.
Icarthus ignores her. “I am ready for my favor now.”
My eyes do not leave the Arcane’s, even as Lilac tries to pull me back. “What was the first gift my father ever gave me?”
“I gifted you a silver carved wolf.”
“What was hidden about Silas and Ramona?” I ask.
“They—we—were the true king and queen of Soma. Onto my favor?—”
“I’m not ready!” I shout.
It speaks slowly as its voice dips into a deep whisper, “You didn’t ask me the clearest question.” It tries to mock my tone and fails, “What is the power you require of me? A fine question, son, as it pertains to my favor. Bring me Desdemona.”
The word forms in my chest but does not make it past my throat. No.
I will not.
“The two of you were never supposed to fall for one another. You were made to destroy one another. Lucian Aibek, I command you, in return for my favor, to bring me?—”
Shadows send Wendy back, and she smiles as a puff of orange-gray smoke extinguishes from the top of her head and she falls. It won’t stop the command. Already, every inch of my being is pulling me to find her—even more than I’ve already longed to.
For this isn’t longing. This is necessitating. I have to find her, and then I have to give her up. I can’t do it. Yet I know I will. The prickling in my bones has already begun, and it will turn to pain, and the pain will turn to debilitation.
And as I fight this need that courses through me, I finally realize, I wanted her to be responsible for Lilac.
Because just as I am doing now, I have to fight this feeling in my chest. I have to deny this longing in my being.
I have to face the fact that I fear my heart is opening, and I’m not prepared to let another one in. To have another person to fear for, another person to protect, another person to lose.
Another person to love.
Because love, for me, has been nothing but pain and torture. Torment and tactic. It’s having the life sucked out of me. It’s having to kill to protect. It’s having to die to save. But now, having to truly doom her against every part of my shattering will, I can’t deny the way I feel.
It’s like… I’ve laughed for so long that I have to force myself to stop. To breathe. And my whole body is humming with a feeling that dares to be so fleeting. I want to hold onto it. Wrap my hands around it and carry it with me for the rest of my life, whether it’s hours or days. Minutes or years.
But I can’t. I can only welcome the fleeting moment.
That’s what she is to me.
She is the fleeting moment.
She is the peace when I’ve finished laughing.
And I wish she were responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened in this world and the next.
“She’s dead,” Lilac says. I only now notice that Li is across the room with Wendy’s body, gently closing her eyes.
I crouch next to her and Wendy. Another part of Azaire gone. Will he slowly disappear from me too? The best parts of me have always come from him. His words in my mind. His beliefs in my bones.
Will that fade with time? Has it already?
“I have to go to Lorucille,” I say mindlessly. Lilac looks at me, bewildered. “No.” It’s beginning. “Don’t let me go, Li.” I shake my head, as if I can shake this madness from me. Pulling my jacket off and over Wendy’s body, I say, “We’ll come back for her when this is over. Until then, we fight.”
Then the night surrenders to the light.