Chapter 175: Leon’s Story [8]

When he finally pulled back Drelan was there immediately with the expression of a man who has decided the best response to emotion is to immediately provide cake. "Alright. Enough tears. Come here son and let me give you the biggest slice this family has ever produced."

Leon looked at Drelan. Then back at Althea who was wiping her face with the corner of her sleeve. Then at Emilia who was wiping her own eyes and absolutely pretending she wasn’t.

The smile that came was real in a way that his smiles hadn’t been in a very long time. It started in his chest and came up through everything and by the time it reached his face it was a wide smile, a bright smile, and a complete real smile.

"Yes Father," he said.

He looked at Althea.

"Thank you Mother."

He looked at Emilia.

"Thank you little sister."

Then warmth came up so fast and full that it almost undid him again. "I’m home," he said.

And he meant it. Every part of it.

He was Leon Evercrest now.

A few weeks after the birthday a young girl with sharp curious eyes and an evaluating expression appeared at a family gathering and looked up at him. "Wait. So you’re my new kid cousin?"

Leon looked down at her. "And who are you brat?"

Emilia appeared immediately at his side and nudged him hard. "Be nice! She’s our cousin Brother! Roselle Evercrest"

Leon reached out and shook young girl’s hand vigorously. "I see. Hope we can get along."

The personality that had been dormant under all the grief and the loss and the years of being told he was lesser came out fully now. The chaotic extroverted laughing warmth-everywhere version of him that had only shown itself in glimpses before. He teased his family constantly. He pulled harmless pranks and got chased through the garden by an outraged Emilia more than once. He laughed until his stomach hurt at dinner and told stories badly and made Drelan lose his careful composure with a perfectly timed terrible joke.

He lit up every room he walked into and he didn’t even know he was doing it.

Life was genuinely perfect for a while.

Until the grand family gathering at the estate. Until he turned a corner in the garden and stopped completely.

Aurelia.

She was there standing in front of him greeting him. She looked older. She looked sad in a very quiet way that she was doing a good job of hiding.

The dam inside him broke open all at once.

Every memory that he had pressed down and buried and refused to think about came up simultaneously. Sunlit corridors. Her laugh. Her hands in his. The way she had looked up at him from the floor of her room with tears running down her face telling him she loved him and him choosing the wrong thing and stepping past her anyway.

His chest collapsed under it.

He wanted to call her name. He actually wanted to talk to her right after seeing her face.

Then the advisor’s voice came.

"If you stay her future is ruined. She deserves more than what you are. You would only drag her down."

Leon dug his nails into his palms until he felt something sharp. He turned around. He walked away. His face was very still and his chest was doing something he would not acknowledge and he moved away from her as fast as he could without running because running would have meant something he couldn’t afford.

He walked away from her a second time.

**

"ARGH!"

Leon’s voice tore out of him as another rib snapped.

He was still crushed on the ground in the ruined earth with Zeus’s aura crushing down from above like the sky had turned solid. The pressure wasn’t targeted. It didn’t need to be. It simply existed around Zeus and anything within range of it paid for that proximity in collapsed lungs and fractured bones.

Blood kept coming from Leon’s mouth. His hands were buried wrist-deep in the shattered dirt and he was using every bit of remaining mana to stop his chest from caving inward completely.

The human soldiers who had been fighting behind him had retreated. He could hear the sound of their boots on the stone getting further away. Getting safer. He had bought them that. Every second he stayed lying down on the ground, buying time was another second the wounded got to the rear. Another second the evacuation line could organize.

It wasn’t nothing.

But right now it didn’t feel like anything either. It just felt like pain and the specific loneliness of someone who has always ended up here. Alone. Between the danger and the people who needed protecting. Hoping someone would notice before it was too late.

Hundreds of meters back a young warrior at the end of the retreating line stopped walking.

His boots simply stopped moving. He turned and looked back at the figure lying on ground in the smoke with blood on his jaw and the impossible weight of a vampire lord’s presence pressing him into the earth.

His face changed.

"What the hell are we doing?!"

The older veteran beside him grabbed his shoulder and pulled. "Kid! Move! Keep running if you want to live!"

The young warrior slapped the hand away. "HELL NO!" His eyes were blazing with something that wasn’t just anger. It was shame. The kind of shame that comes from a moment of clarity about something you were doing that you can’t go back to after you’ve seen it clearly.

The retreating line slowed. Heads turned.

Tears were running down the young soldier’s face now. Not from fear. From something else. He drew his sword and pointed it at the silhouette of Zeus and his voice cracked and rose and carried.

"There is no way I’m going home like this." He looked at the soldiers around him. His voice broke open. "NOT WHEN SIR LEON IS STILL THERE FIGHTING ALONE!"