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LUCIAN x READER
Dispel Veil
ONESHOT . ANGST . DISTURBING IMAGERY
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x o x o x o
He feels like a ghost to you. Any given hallway you might find yourself in alone is always a hallway filled with two. And yet his footfall is soundless, his breath nonexistent. There is not enough of him to create a shadow, or disavow your imagination of fanciful thoughts.
A war of assassins is underway and Chevalier has been forced to play one of his most valuable pieces, in your favor. Until you decide the next king and make yourself scarce from the castle, Lucian is to be your protector around the clock.
But who is he?
You've only ever seen him once.
On a moonless night inside the chapel he bent the knee to you and promised his oath. Quiet, nondescript words in a voice like water that no memory, no matter how perfect, could ever clasp onto and soak in. And that is by design. To do his job well, Lucian cannot be allowed to exist.
So what does that do to a man?
"Lucian?" You whisper into the twilit alley as you board your carriage. "Are you here?"
It makes no sense, does it? But it makes no difference either, if you whisper or shout (not that you've ever screamed the name of your secret protector out loud for all to hear).
Lucian is not supposed to answer. If he answers, then something has gone terribly wrong.
A pair of crows barter past your feet. The rainwater reflects something on top of the carriage. But when you turn to look, you're only met with wide, vacant sky. Red with no black.
Later, back at the castle, when your head hits your pillow and the last of the candle-smoke pirouettes into the dark, you find yourself holding your hand out over the edge of your bed.
You have five more days before the rose sheds all its petals. Will you get to thank him before then? Shake his hand? Feel a pulse?
Again you think, you're being absurd. You're fascinated with the idea of him, but that doesn't change the fact that you don't know a single thing about him.
Only that he must have killed people. Many. Countless. Killed them so quickly that the air and the earth never tasted a drop of blood.
Chevalier is bladed spectacle. Lucian is something else.
But if all you know about him is that he is a killer, what in the hell are you doing chasing after him?
Two nights later you find out.
x o x o
The blade never touches you. A cry in front of you is muffled and cut short. Something heavy slumps to the ground. Something wet seeps over the flagstones. The smell. You'll never forget it.
A hand takes yours, and then you're running. There's scenery, and eventually there's people again, but all you can register is the body lying dead in the alley and the warmth against your palm, without which you'd be...
...You don't have a word for it. Your mind is pulling apart against itself, and there's worms in your stomach, knotting around your intestines like laughter coils around a tongue. There's bits of flesh tucked into every thought you think.
You can't run anymore. You need to stop. You need air. You need help. You need something to make you sleep.
Someone is holding you.
Your sobs come out as soundless, choking breaths.
Someone is holding you.
It's only then you realize that Lucian has a shape. Tangible beyond the hand that severs a life. That saves the one next to it.
There's enough space within his awkward embrace that the winter chill finds you everywhere it shouldn't. You're dully aware that part of his arm is muffling your mouth.
It's not like your tears will echo.
The humiliation is endless.
Lucian. Of course. He's always just been a dream of yours, to occupy you during this anomaly of a month. You designed him. And that Lucian is not here. That Lucian exists even less than the one holding you.
And holding you.
And holding you.
And then he says, in a voice meant for your memory, for you a day from now, a week from now, ten, twenty, fifty years from now to recall, lovely in how it sounds, lovely in how it sits outside your dreams but ignites inside your heart:
"Take your time."