Chapter 57 #2
I stare at her, and the image of Elara flashes behind my eyes, not as she was in fear, not blindfolded, not shaking in the chair I strapped her into. But as she was when she looked at me without flinching and said my name like it meant something other than threat.
Lucan.
My sister watches the shift on my face and makes a satisfied sound. “Her name?”
My throat tightens. “No.”
“Lucan,” she repeats, patient now. “Tell me her name.”
I exhale slowly. Smoke memory. Firelight. A notebook. A poisonous flower on a table, drawn in delicate lines. A woman who turned horror into language like it was worship.
“Elara,” I say.
The name tastes like a wound reopening.
My sister’s eyes soften. “Pretty.”
“It’s irrelevant,” I say sharply, because if I let it be relevant I will fall into something I can’t control.
She doesn’t flinch. “Is she the reason you’re here?”
I pause.
I could say no. I could say my sister is the reason. That would be true.
But Elara is the other truth. The one that gnaws. The one that I imagine would tell me to be here for my sister, to go, to be present. To try and to something good.
“I don’t know,” I admit, and the honesty of it feels like stepping off a cliff.
My sister leans back, breathing shallow again. “Do you miss her?”
I don’t answer. The silence is answer enough.
She nods as if she expected it. “You think you’ll damage her.”
“Yes,” I say, immediate, certain. “I will.”
“Because our father told you that?” she asks quietly.
The words make my stomach clench.
Because our father’s voice still lives in my bones. You ruin what you touch. You are a weapon. You are only useful when pointed at something else.
My sister continues, gentle but relentless. “Or because you’ve decided it’s easier to believe you’re incapable of change than to risk trying?”
I stare at her. Anger rises, quick and hot. Not at her. At the idea. At the hope. Hope is cruel. Hope sets people up to be disappointed.
“I don’t change,” I say.
She smiles faintly, tired. “That’s not true.”
“It is.”
“No,” she says, and her voice is firm despite the weakness in her body. “It’s a story you tell yourself because it keeps you safe. If you can’t change, then you can’t be blamed for staying the same.”
My hands curl into fists. My left tremor flutters. I press it down with muscle, with will.
She watches the effort and her gaze softens again. “You stood in front of me for years,” she says. “You took the worst of him. You did that. Not because you were programmed. Because you chose. You keep saying you’re a monster like it’s fate. But you’ve always made choices.”
I swallow. My throat feels tight, raw.
She continues, quieter now, as if she knows she’s touching something fragile inside me.
“You’re not a boy anymore. No one is standing over you with a syringe.
No one is telling you who to be. You have power now, Lucan.
Real power. Not the kind that makes other people afraid—, the kind that lets you decide what kind of man you become.
What you do with the trauma imposed on you. ”
My chest tightens. The hollow inside me stirs, restless.
“And if you’re afraid you’ll hurt her,” she adds, “then stop hurting her.”
I snap my gaze to hers. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is,” she says. “It’s just not easy.”
The words settle between us like a weight.
I can feel Elara’s absence like a phantom limb.
Like my body still expects her voice in the dark, her defiance, her breath catching when she realizes something about me.
The way she looked at me like I was both horror and holy text.
The way she wanted the truth even when it threatened to swallow her.
And the way I—
I don’t finish that thought. I don’t let it bloom.
My sister exhales slowly. “Is this the way you want to live the rest of your life?” she asks.
I don’t answer because I don’t know. I don’t know what “rest of my life” even means. My life has always been measured in contracts, in targets, in clean endings. There is no long future in my head. Only the next job. The next breath. The next body.
But now there is a void.
Now there is a woman-shaped absence that makes silence unbearable.
My sister watches me struggle with it. “You don’t have to be what he made you,” she says, softer. “You don’t have to keep reenacting the same cage.”
I swallow. My jaw aches. My hands ache. Everything in me aches.
“I rose to Level Three,” I say finally, as if the title can protect me from the conversation. “That’s what I am now.”
She smiles faintly. “That’s what you do. Not what you are.”
The simplicity of it hits me harder than any threat.
I sit there in that too-clean room, in front of the sister I failed by surviving, and for the first time in a long time I feel something dangerous crawl under my skin.
Not rage.
Not hunger.
Possibility.
It terrifies me.
Because possibility means responsibility. It means I can’t hide behind inevitability anymore. It means I can’t blame chemicals or fathers or underworld hierarchies for the shape of my life. It means if I stay the same, it’s because I chose to.
My sister reaches out slightly, not touching, just letting her hand hover in the air between us like an offering. Her voice is almost a whisper now.
“Maybe you don’t damage her,” she says. “Maybe you decide not to.”
I stare at her hand. At the space between us. At the idea that I could reach back.
I don’t.
Not because I don’t want to.
Because I’m afraid if I do, the dam breaks, and I don’t know what floods out.
My sister lets her hand drop back to the blanket, accepting my refusal without making it a wound. That’s what she’s always done. She knows how to survive disappointment.
Outside, wind claws at the windows. The fjord groans under ice. The world keeps moving above us, indifferent, unaware of the quiet war inside my chest.
I stand slowly, controlled. “Rest,” I tell her.
She smiles faintly. “Will you come back?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Promise?”
I pause. Promises are dangerous. Promises are things people use against you. Promises are how you get owned.
But she’s not trying to own me. She’s trying to keep me anchored.
“I promise,” I say.
Her smile widens, a rare bright thing. “Good.”
I turn toward the door.
Behind me, she speaks again, softer, like she’s throwing the words into my back and hoping they stick. “Lucan?”
I stop.
“If you miss her,” she says, “don’t punish yourself by pretending you don’t. It’s okay to feel when you can. When your mind allows it after all you’ve been through.” Her voice trembles, not from fear; from the effort of caring. “It means the missing is real. It means it’s strong.”
My hand tightens on the doorframe. The tremor in my left hand flares. I clamp down on it.
I don’t look back. Looking back is how you confess.