Chapter 66- How do you love someone
I wake like I've been ripped out of the dark.
Air slams into my lungs in a sharp, panicked gasp, my body jerking upright as if something chased me back into myself. My heart is racing too fast, too strong—
and for a moment I can't understand why.
I shouldn't be awake.
The last thing I remember is the weight.
The crushing heaviness in my chest.
The sound of Isabella crying like it was coming from very far away.
The quiet certainty that I was running out of time.
So why...
I blink.
I'm sitting up in bed.
Not drifting. Not fading. Sitting.
My hands move before my thoughts catch up, clutching at my chest, my ribs, my stomach expecting agony, expecting that sharp reminder of a body failing its owner.
But there's nothing.
No pain.
My breath stutters.
I look down.
Bandages still wrap my torso, layered thick and careful, exactly how I remember them. My fingers tremble as I press into them, testing, bracing for the burn that never comes. The pressure is dull. Distant. Like I'm touching someone else.
My pulse starts to roar in my ears.
Slowly almost reverently I begin to unwrap them.
Cloth peels away from skin that should be torn open.
It isn't.
My skin is whole. Smooth. Unbroken. Not even scars remain where wounds once split me open. I drag my hand over my side, then my chest, then my shoulder searching for proof that I wasn't imagining the pain, the blood, the dying.
There is none.
Fear coils tight in my gut.
A low voice, muttering in irritation and exhaustion, pacing somewhere behind me.
"—reckless, stupid, infuriating—"
I freeze.
That voice crawls straight down my spine.
I turn slowly, afraid that if I move too fast the image will disappear.
Silver hair catches the dim lamplight, loose and falling down a familiar back. A man stands near the table, hunched slightly, drinking straight from a bottle of wine like water after a drought. His shoulders sag with exhaustion, magic clinging to him like smoke after a fire.
My throat tightens.
Lucian.
He finishes the bottle and slams it down with enough force to rattle everything nearby. His head drops forward, forehead braced against the table for a long, shaking breath.
Then he snaps.
"Fuck!"
He punches the table so hard the sound cracks through the room. Books shift. Candles wobble. He drags a hand through his hair, tears streaking down his face without shame as he starts rummaging through piles of parchment and grimoires.
"You Should've waited," he mutters. "You idiotic king.... I knew you'd pull something like this—"
He grabs a book, turns sharply, magic beginning to gather around him
And stops.
The book slips from his fingers.
It hits the floor with a soft, final thud.
Lucian stares at me.
Standing. Barefoot. Alive.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moves.
Then his face collapses.
"Oh," he breathes—and then his voice snaps, raw and furious. "Oh, you asshole."
He crosses the room in three long strides and shoves a hand against my chest, not hard enough to hurt just enough to feel me there.
"Do you have any idea," he chokes, voice cracking, "how much magic it took to fix you? Do you know how much I had to rip out of myself to force your stubborn body back into line?"
Tears spill freely now, unchecked.
"You promised," he says, anger sharpening every word. "You promised you'd wait for me, and instead I come back to find you halfway into the grave like you thought you could just—just leave."
He laughs, wild and broken. "I leave you alone for one cosmic disaster and you decide to die on me?"
"you were suppose to wait ," he whispers. "For me."
Something in me breaks open.
I don't think. I don't speak.
I just open my arms.
"Come here," I murmur, my voice thick. "You bastard."
Lucian makes a sound that isn't quite a sob and crashes into me. His arms lock around me with desperate strength, fingers digging into my back like he's afraid I'll vanish if he lets go. His face buries into my shoulder, shoulders shaking violently as he finally breaks.
I wrap my arms around him, holding him just as tightly, breathing him in like air after drowning.
He smells like wine, smoke, and magic burned too hot.
"I thought I was too late," he whispers, voice muffled against my skin. "I thought I lost you."
"You didn't," I say quietly, "I'm here."
His grip tightens.
"You don't get to leave me," he mutters. "Not after everything. Not after I finally found a way back."
I close my eyes.
"I'm sorry," I breathe. "I should've waited."
Lucian pulls back just enough to glare at me through wet lashes.
Despite everything, a faint smile tugs at my mouth.
"Then I guess it's a good thing you're here to yell at me."
He huffs out a broken laugh and presses his forehead against mine, magic exhaustion weighing him down.
"I hate you," he says weakly.
"No, you don't."
"...No," he admits. "I don't."
He collapses back into my arms, and I hold him there longer than either of us needs, longer than the world allows
Lucian pulls away from me slowly, like the moment itself might fracture if he moves too fast like whatever tether brought him back could snap if either of us believes too hard that this is real.
For a heartbeat, neither of us speaks.
The room feels too small for the history standing between us.
I really look at him then. Not the way you glance at someone you recognize, but the way you study something you once lost and never expected to touch again.
He looks... better.
That's the first, cruel truth.
His silver hair is longer, fuller, falling down his back in smooth, deliberate waves instead of the uneven tangles it once held.
It's been cared for brushed, oiled, styled.
It gleams in the candlelight like molten metal.
His skin looks healthier too, no longer stretched thin by exhaustion and pain.
His body is stronger, broader in the shoulders, solid in a way that speaks of survival rather than endurance.
Lucian has always loved excess diamonds, silk, anything that glittered just enough to mock the world that tried to break him. And he's wearing them now: rings, chains, stones sewn into the seams of his clothes. At first glance, it looks like indulgence.
But it isn't.
It's concealment.
It's the way wounded people dress themselves in beauty so no one thinks to look beneath it.
Because when his eyes finally lift to mine, I see it immediately.
The cracks.
They run through the silver of his gaze like fractures beneath glass fine, controlled, but unmistakable. A thousand careful repairs layered over something that was shattered and never quite fit back together.
"Stop staring," he mutters, swiping at his face with the heel of his hand. "You look like you're trying to figure out what's wrong with me."
"I might be," I say quietly.
That earns me a sharp snort. He turns away and starts pacing the room, restless, circling like an animal that doesn't know where the exit is anymore. He grabs the wine bottle again, drinks straight from it, then grimaces like it doesn't burn the way he wants it to.
"How are you here?" I finally ask. The question has been clawing at my throat since the moment I saw him.
Lucian laughs, but it's brittle. "Oh, come on. You've seen stranger miracles. I guess the bastard grew a conscience. Or maybe he just got bored."
His fingers tighten around the bottle. "Don't do that," he says. "Don't look at me like you're about to ask something real."
"When," I ask instead, keeping my voice steady. "When did you get your freedom?"
He exhales slowly through his nose, eyes fixed on the wall like the answer is written there in blood.
"In your world?" he says at last. "Years ago."
My chest tightens.
"In mine," he continues, quieter now, "months."
He finally turns back to me. "The day your son was born."
The words land like a blow.
"That meteor shower," he adds quickly, almost defensive. "That was me. I wanted you to know I was watching. That I could still see you."
"You could have came back," I say.
"I know." His voice drops. "I should have."
He takes another drink, then lowers the bottle, staring at it like it's betrayed him.
"He gave it to me," Lucian says. "My freedom. No bindings. No commands. No price. Just... handed it over."
A humorless smile twists his mouth. "I should have left that second. I knew it. But it felt wrong. Like a trap that didn't bother pretending it wasn't one."
He looks at the bed, at the space where my body had been broken and failing.
"Seeing you like that," he says quietly, "burned the fear out of me. I was ready to beg. Trade anything. Give him whatever he wanted. I didn't care anymore."
His jaw tightens.
"I didn't expect him to open a portal and let me through," he admits. "Didn't expect him to say—" He stops, then forces the words out in a mocking imitation: "'If you can't save your friend alone, call for me. I'll be there.'"
Silence settles between us, thick and heavy.
Lucian drops into a chair like gravity finally remembers him. "The last nine months have been strange," he says. "Quiet. Too quiet."
"How?" I ask.
He hesitates, then sighs, rubbing his hands over his face. "For the first time in my life," he says slowly, "he treats me like an equal."
The words feel wrong in the room. Dangerous.
"And is that what you always wanted?" I ask carefully.
Lucian doesn't answer right away.
Then, barely above a whisper, he says, "Yes."
He looks down at his hands, flexing his fingers as if checking they still belong to him.
"And that's the problem," he continues. "Because it feels wrong."
He lifts his head, and the disgust in his eyes makes even me flinch.
"How does he expect me to love him," Lucian asks, voice trembling with restrained fury, "after everything he did to me?"
The diamonds at his throat catch the light as he breathes.
"I hate him," Lucian says. "And I hate that part of me still wants to believe him. That still wants to be chosen."
Lucian doesn't look at me when he keeps talking.
His gaze drifts to the window, to the place where the night presses its face against the glass, dark and endless. His fingers trace the rim of the wine bottle.
"No matter how hard I push him away," he says slower this time, like the words weigh more each time he repeats them, "he always comes back."
There's no humor in it now. No bite. Just bone deep exhaustion.
"I've tried everything," he murmurs. "I've mocked him so cruelly even I was surprised by what came out of my mouth." A breathy, hollow laugh. "I wanted him to hate me. I wanted him to finally snap and remind me that kindness from gods is always conditional."
Lucian's jaw tightens.
"So I tried to kill him."
The words land quietly. No drama. No flourish.
"I planned it carefully," he goes on. "No witnesses. No theatrics. I didn't want him to see it coming. I wanted it to be quick." His eyes flick to me at last, sharp and haunted. "I wanted him to feel what it's like to trust someone right up until the moment everything ends."
He swallows.
"When he caught me, I didn't beg. Didn't explain. I was ready for whatever he decided to do to me." His voice drops. "I deserved it."
I watch his hands shake slightly now, just barely restrained.
"But he didn't punish me," Lucian says, disbelief still threaded through the memory. "He didn't even raise his voice."
Lucian closes his eyes.
"He just looked at me. Like I'd reached inside him and torn something out." He swallows. "Like I'd confirmed his worst fear that even after everything, I would still choose to hurt him."
A tear slips free, unacknowledged.
"Then he walked away."
Lucian exhales shakily. "Do you know how terrifying that was?"
He laughs again, broken and brittle. "I waited for the storm. For the retaliation. For the chains. I slept with one eye open for weeks. I was ready to bleed."
He shakes his head slowly.
"Nothing happened."
His shoulders slump, the weight of it finally pulling him inward.
"He went back to following me," Lucian whispers. "Like a shadow. Like a ghost that didn't know how to leave." His voice turns raw. "Asking if I'd eaten. If I was tired. If I needed anything."
Lucian's lips curl in disgust at Caspian, at himself.
"He tells me he loves me," he says flatly. "Over and over. Like repetition might turn it into something pure."
He scoffs, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hand. "I spent centuries starving for a scrap of kindness from him. Centuries being good. Obedient. Quiet." His voice cracks. "And now that he gives it freely, I can't stand it."
He looks at me then
"All I see when I look at him is the man who taught me how to flinch," Lucian says. "The god who kissed me like I was a reward and punished me like I was a mistake."
His hands curl into fists.
"I wanted him to change," he admits softly. "I prayed for it. I dreamed about it. I told myself if he ever treated me like an equal, everything would be worth it."
Lucian laughs again, this time bitter enough to taste.
"And now he does," he says. "And it's unbearable."
Silence stretches between us, thick and heavy.
"I can't enjoy it," Lucian continues. "Because every gentle touch reminds me of the ones that weren't. Every soft word drags a blade across memories I spent lifetimes trying to bury."
His voice lowers, barely more than breath.
"I don't know how to love him without erasing the boy he destroyed."
Another tear falls. Then another.
"Tell me something, Dante," Lucian whispers, shoulders trembling now despite his effort to hold himself together. "How do you forgive someone who shaped you through pain?"
He presses his hand to his chest again, fingers digging in like he's trying to rip the feeling out.
"How do you love someone," he asks, voice breaking completely now, "when every part of you wants them to suffer the way you did?"
He inhales sharply.
"Because that's the sickest part of it," Lucian admits. "When he cries when he looks at me like I'm his redemption my heart wants nothing more than to wipe his tears."
He laughs weakly through his sob.
"And I hate myself for that," he says. "Because wanting to comfort him feels like betraying every version of me that survived him."
Lucian wipes his face again, forcing a crooked grin that doesn't quite stick.
"So," he says quietly, trying and failing to sound light, "if you happen to know how to love your abuser without losing your soul... do share."
The humor finally collapses entirely.
And for the first time since I've known him, Lucian doesn't hide behind wit or cruelty or charm.
He just sits there heartbroken, furious, conflicted caught between the man he was forced to become and the love he never learned how to let go of.