Chapter 345: Alone on the Road

Lucian left before the others could resume their arguing.

He left the shelf of stone, then the broken highland, then came to the last tenuous threads of voices and residual camp warmth. Wind slipped over featureless plain. The terrain ahead thinned into those places where regular distance loses its veracity. He could feel the void-route yawning forward, not a way designed for legions or families, only for things that knew what it meant to move without retrospection.

Every step made the parting cleaner,

he reminded himself.

If Cael’s rank reappeared through him, the reply should meet him singularly. If Alistair’s inheritance had been responsible for reanimating the old foundations, Lucian would greet that without dragging Lucy’s decision or the future of the children into the equation. If deeper authorities were already swiveling towards the flare, they would find the beacon, not the complete board.

He came to the edge of the air change.

The void was more a cancellation of standards than an entrance. Color, sound, the gravity of younger realms all detached themselves from his person, leaving only the weight of younger shoulders in his wake. He needed only one more step and the road would swallow him up entirely.

Lucian stilled.

The infinity pressed lightly against his skin and the wide black expanse lay bare before him

for a very long moment before he gave out a low and essentially human sigh and turned around.

He walked back the way he came, faster than when he’d left. The group had not gone far. They were still huddling around Lucy’s choice, some of them still rankled, others calculating the practicalities of the next steps. Evelyn looked up at once when Lucian’s proximity pushed the air back to normal around them. Whatever she saw in his expression wiped every word from her throat.

Lucian strode right up to her.

"Lucian," started Marc, already wary and questioning.

He ignored Marc in favor of taking up Evelyn’s wrist, firm enough that there was no mistaking his intent and yet gentle that the woman could have shaken free if she’d wanted to. She did not. Instead, Lucian led her a few paces back from the others, out of the heart of their hearing, but not far enough that location created a sense of privacy. There would be none left on this side of decision.

Evelyn searched his eyes. "You changed your mind?"

"No."

"Then why-"

"Because I was one breath away from the road that doesn’t permit half-sold answers," replied Lucian. "And I will not come at this with the most vital one left unspoken."

The wind kicked up little puffs of dust around their ankles. Those still watching the discussion had fallen silent.

Lucian regarded her as if measuring the very shape of this moment against every failed possibility of Lucian’s lifespan.

"I have marched through endings for you," he told her with an aching, unadorned sincerity, "I have latched onto my power while whole wars ground at my teeth, but always the concept of you outweighed the arithmetic of the day. I’ve walked the grey prisons on every end and false god’s kingdom, I’ve navigated through the grey and black periods, the places where silence reigned, and in every one you were never the prize at the end of the road. You were the very reason the journey mattered at all."

It stole her breath, but Evelyn did not interrupt.

"I love you," declared Lucian with finality. "Not as the soldier loves the standard he fights for, not as the man loves the ghost he can’t leave behind. I love you as the one point that remained in the sky long after the map went up in smoke. As the reason survival became more important than just staying alive. As the future that kept kicking me in the gut because I was too damned stubborn to think I deserved any."

Once more, he tightened on her wrist then loosened enough that his hand fit into hers.

"I’ve been infinity wrapped in patience, Lucian thinks to himself. Sealed Cataclysmic forces tricking themselves into civility," continued Lucian, "and all the while the small, everyday part of me was always more enamored of you than that big, spectacular mess. Your anger. Your loyalty. Your unwillingness to be what you’re not, even for someone else who thinks they deserve you. I loved you before Lucian regression finished its mucking around with me. I loved you in the places where title stole the name but your spine still stayed. I love you now, confidant beacon glowing, deep minds turning in the distance, knowing precisely what kind of life that is."

Evelyn’s eyes glistened, sharp and pointed. "Lucian..."

"I am still going alone," said Lucian, gentler but equally resolved. "That has not changed. I will not make your battlefield my prison. But I also will not enter that nothing with my lips sealed and my ears ringing. If I die out there, I die saying the truth with every part of me. If I make it back, it’s to you."

The declaration settled over them like a blade driven clean into the stone.

The people on the other side did not pretend to not hear. Lucy’s expression was all feral satisfaction tangled in something deeper. Marc turned away first, Silas let out what might have been a curse or a blessing under his breath, and Althea stared in rapt and solemn wonder.

Evelyn straightened, for a moment torn between striking him and keeping him close. Her other hand rose to grip his outer coat. "You absolute-," began Evelyn, her fingers digging into his fabric. "You pick the moment on the brink of nowhere to say this?"

"Yes," answered Lucian.

"And you won’t take me with you."

"No."

She bit harder on what the free hand gripped. "Then you listen to me, Lucian. You go back. Not a whisper or a rumor of a man who wandered away. You come back to me. Because if you think you can toss me this confession and vanish into your damned eternity, then you know nothing of love- or me."

Lucian bowed his head until his brow rested against hers. "I understand all the more to be afraid of wasting it."

"Good," said Evelyn with a whisper, "fear will be good for you."

Lucian kissed her once, firmly, without flourish, nothing more than a punctuation mark. When he pulled back her hand relinquished his coat with reluctance.

Lucy’s voice called from the others, "Now go before you talk yourself into an even more disastrous idea."

Lucian kept his eyes on Evelyn a moment longer before turning away to look at his sister then the rest, the choice settling into his bones, the love not erasing the parting, simply making it a little more equal.

Eventually Lucian disentangled himself from Evelyn’s grip.

"Keep what we have," said to all of them Lucian. "I will return for it."

Then, again, turned from them and marched forward into the evaporating distance. This time, he did not stop. The void gaped on the other side, stealing sound then solidity then the last color of the highland. Lucian walked into it wrapped in eternity, the name Evelyn still tucked against his tongue.

The rest of the group remained where they were.

In the distance, the void’s more attentive parts stirred, brushing against something only Lucian could hear.

He went on his own- but he did not go without.