Ch 88: Beautiful Night with Twins

How dare she think I want a reward?

Lucien could not help but glare a little harder at the girl's attempt to coax him with the promise of payment. How dare she assume he was someone who chased after coins. He had enough wealth that even if he spent the rest of his days in reckless extravagance, he would likely never exhaust it. Well, perhaps he might exhaust it eventually, but the point remained that he had more than enough to live out his life in complete comfort. But still that did not mean he wanted a reward from a girl who looked as though she might drop dead at any moment.

And what was with the boy cowering behind her? The boy had been leading ahead just moments ago, but now, as though a switch had been flipped, he had been tucked behind the girl, and Lucien could hear the faint, unsteady trembling in his breathing.

Lucien's eyes drifted to the dead bodies lying scattered across the ground. Is the boy shaking out of fear because of the corpses? Lucien did not know the exact reason for the boy's trembling, but he knew one thing: he liked the girl's attitude. Despite being visibly afraid, with fear written plainly across her face, she was shielding the boy behind her and standing her ground, even though she must have already realized that Lucien could cut both of them clean in half with a single swing of his sword.

Lucien was not so reckless as to actually do it, of course. But more than anything else, his gaze kept drifting back toward the girl's pointed ears. They were beautiful in a way that was difficult to explain, and before Lucien even registered what he was doing, he found himself reaching his hand toward them again. He did not understand the impulse.

Internally, he felt a strange calm mixed with a quiet, restless excitement at the sight of an elf. He had seen elves before in his life, yet this particular excitement was something he had never felt with such intensity. Was this the influence of Evan's memories bleeding through? In that previous world, there had been no elves. Elves existed only in stories and legends. Was Evan's love for elves pulling Lucien's hand forward, compelling him to reach for the girl's ears without so much as asking her consent? Didn't that make him look as though he were harassing her? The moment that thought surfaced clearly in his mind, he yanked his hand back and took a firm step away.

What am I doing? Lucien stared at his own hand, blinking rapidly. Why do I even care about her ears? I have seen enough elves before.

He pushed Evan's memories back down and sealed them off. As though his personality had been flipped back to its original state, Lucien felt a sudden rush of clarity, and with it came a sharp awareness of how strangely he had been behaving, staring at the girl's ears and nearly reaching out to touch them without permission. Now that Evan's memories were suppressed, he could feel clearly how poor his conduct had been. Then, irritatingly, another thought crept in. Why do I feel guilty about it? It was not me acting of my own will. It was Evan's memories driving me.

Damn it. Lucien raked a hand through his hair and met the girl's black eyes. "Sorry for touching your ears," he said flatly.

The girl's eyes went wide and her ears flushed a deep, vivid shade of red. "Then help us," she said, and with a long, steadying breath, added, "and I will forgive you." She took a careful step forward.

Lucien was struggling internally, his thoughts tangled and pulled in opposite directions. One part of him bristled at the idea of having apologized at all for something he had not done with clear intent, while the other part reminded him firmly that he would never appreciate someone touching his own ears without permission, and that regardless of intent, the act had been wrong. He had never, even as a character designed to be a villain in the novel, crossed certain lines with other people so far.

And while he was still wrestling with himself, the girl took another step forward. This time her hands were clasped tightly together at the front of her body, knuckles pale, as though squeezing strength from nowhere. She bowed her head low, her silver hair spilling forward and curtaining her face completely. "Please help us," she pleaded, her voice quiet but unwavering. "We will die if you do not."

To confirm her words, the boy who had been cowering behind her, still trembling without pause and refusing to let his eyes meet Lucien's for even a second, bowed his head as well. "We have been kidnapped and we are running from the people who took us," he mumbled, his voice thin and shaking. "Help us and we will offer..." He did not finish the sentence, seemingly catching himself as he remembered that Lucien had already made it clear he had no interest in reward.

Lucien shifted his gaze back and forth between the two of them. Both had silver hair, equal heights, and similar builds, and though their faces did not closely resemble each other, it did not take much effort to conclude they were relatives, or more likely, siblings.

His gaze settled on the boy's pointed ears. He had encountered elves before but had never spent much time in their company, and seeing two elves this deep in the northwestern reaches of the empire, which lay at the complete opposite end from the elf kingdom situated on the eastern side, made something stir in the back of his mind. He could not help but want to ask outright whether they truly were elves, because how in the world had they ended up in this corner of the empire, so impossibly far from where their kind lived.

"For how long have you been running, and when were you taken?" Lucien asked, trying to piece together a clearer picture of the situation. He could not stop wondering what reason the kidnappers could have had for dragging elves all the way out to this far west part of the empire when there were far easier entry points elsewhere.

"We do not know how long we were unconscious," the girl said, lifting her head. The boy lifted his as well, and for the first time, his eyes actually met Lucien's. "But we have been running for our lives for hours," the boy added.

Lucien gave a slow nod. "And who are you two that someone would bother bringing you all the way out here?"

The girl shifted her weight, scraping one foot quietly against the ground. The boy answered. "My name is James, and she is my twin sister Jenn-." His voice seized in his throat, and a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his neck.

"I may not know much about elves," Lucien muttered, a dangerous edge sharpening his voice, "but from the look on her face, I can tell you are lying." The sword's blade came to rest against the boy's neck, close enough against the skin that it threaten to draw blood at any moment.

"Stop!" the girl shouted. "I am Olivia Bright, and he is Joseph Bright. We are the twin prince and princess of the Sorayes Kingdom."

"Sis," Joseph protested, but his sister silenced him with a sharp look before the situation could deteriorate any further.

"Oh," Lucien said simply, and lowered his sword. He would not have claimed to believe her words entirely, but those eyes of hers burned too fiercely for any lie to hide behind them, and the pride ringing through her voice as she spoke left little room for doubt. The boy's attempt to stop her only sealed it further. And the last thing that drove the nail in completely was the quiet, almost absurd reminder that Lucien was standing inside a fantasy world, the kind of setting where this exact sort of encounter would happen to the protagonist. Though, he was not the hero of this story.

The girl glanced at his sword, still wary, still watching for any sign that he might raise it again toward either of them. "Don't you want to ask for proof?" she murmured, visibly puzzled by how readily he seemed to have accepted her claim.

Lucien met her gaze. "I believe you." She studied his face for a long moment, searching for any flicker of deception, but she would find none. His expression was perfectly still, perfectly unreadable, the kind of face that gave away nothing even when it had something to hide.

"Stay behind me," Lucien said.

Olivia, who had clearly been on the verge of saying something else entirely, closed her mouth. With a firm grip on her brother's wrist, she stepped behind Lucien, placing her trust in a stranger with a completeness that he privately thought was dangerously naive. Though, he supposed he could hardly judge her for it, given that he had believed her own words just as easily.

He had even gone as far as to believe that the siblings were the prince and princess of the elf kingdom. And, he had never once encountered them personally given how fiercely private the elf kingdom kept itself and how rarely its people moved through the outside world.

Beyond that, the empire and the elf kingdom had long ago entered an agreement of non-aggression, one that both sides had honored to the outside world without exception all the way to the present day.

Lucien’s thoughts were put to a stop as the bushes directly ahead of him rustled, and from the darkness, figures began to emerge, one after another.

All of them were dressed in tight, dark suits from head to foot, their faces completely concealed, leaving only the cold black gleam of their eyes visible. They were lean, built like people who had been stripped down to nothing resembling that of a human, and every single one of them radiated a dense, oppressive mana. Not one was ranked below Grandmaster [Mid] rank, the majority sat at Grandmaster [Upper], and one figure standing slightly apart from the rest registered unmistakably at Sky [Lower] rank. There were dozens of them, pressing out from the tree line in silence, some gripping daggers, some thin swords, and others cradling short knives on both hands.

Lucien felt his blood surge hot through his veins, his heartbeat hammering hard and quick against the inside of his chest, and a slow smile pulled across his lips. He had thought his bloodthirst had already been satisfied for the night. He had been wrong. Seeing these many enemies laid out before him like a feast set on a golden platter stirred something deep and dangerous inside him. He wanted to slaughter every last one of them. They were going to make this cold, dark night into something beautiful.

More figures materialized, pressing down from the branches overhead, and those already on the ground broke into a charge toward him all at once.

"We are dead," Joseph whimpered from behind him.

Tsk. Something bitter touched the back of Lucien's tongue at the sound of the boy's weak, hollow voice cutting through the moment. But Lucien would not punish the boy for it. He would not harm the boy at all, because in the end, Joseph had unknowingly delivered all these enemies straight to his feet.

Lucien vanished from where he stood and drove his sword downward through one of the dark-suited figures, cleaving the head clean from the body. It was over in a fraction of a second. The figures that had been charging came to an abrupt, stumbling halt, and the leader, who had been watching from the back with a short double-handed dagger in hand, swept his gaze across the scene and bellowed, "Kill the bastard! No one leaves alive!" The order sent every last one of them surging forward at once, those perched in the branches above leaping down to join the rush. It was like a single man standing in the path of a tsunami, dozens of powerful, terrifyingly fast bodies all converging on one point.

They are not kidnappers. They are assassins. Lucien's smile only widened, and he lunged forward to meet them, bending the very fabric of reality around himself until he vanished entirely from the sight of everyone watching.

***

On Patreon, you can read 50+ chapters ahead. Your support would greatly help me continue working toward completing the story.

Patreon link: /imissmysun