Page 9

NINE

LUCIEN

T he girl didn’t ask questions right away.

She just looked at him like she could peel him open with her eyes alone.

Lucien had felt stares like hers before—from generals, assassins, and monsters in men’s skin. But never like this. Never wrapped in exhaustion and raw nerve, with the kind of steady focus that said I don’t trust you, but I need to understand you anyway.

She rose from the moss-covered tree root where she’d slept, brushing her hands down her pants. Her dark auburn curls were tangled. Her voice was scratchy with sleep.

“You knew where I was.”

He didn’t flinch.

“So how?”

Lucien adjusted his cloak and didn’t answer. He didn’t lie. But silence was its own kind of evasion.

Evryn folded her arms.

“Don’t feed me mystery-boy nonsense about instincts or ‘the wind told you.’ I want a real answer.”

Lucien looked away, toward the skyline cracking open with thin gray light. “The Veil’s not just geography,” he said. “It’s... layered. Certain threads echo louder. You were one of them.”

Evryn blinked slowly. “So that’s a fancy way of saying you followed my scent ?”

Lucien’s lips twitched, just barely. “Something like that.”

She wasn’t satisfied. But she let it go, for now.

They walked in silence for another mile, following the trail deeper into the Shatterroads. The trees thinned into ancient ruins—collapsed archways, toppled columns. A forgotten cathedral loomed ahead, half-swallowed by the forest, its windows shattered and spires leaning like drunks in a storm.

Lucien led her inside without a word. The wind sang through the broken rafters like a mourning song. He tossed down his cloak on the stone altar steps.

Evryn didn’t sit.

She was staring at him again.

“When are we going to find Eamon?” she asked.

Lucien’s jaw tightened.

“That’s not your biggest problem right now.”

Her brows lifted. “Excuse me?”

“You’re being hunted.”

“Yeah. I figured that part out. Fangs and claws gave it away.”

Lucien stepped toward the stained-glass shadow of a forgotten saint. His voice dropped low, cold. “You have no idea what’s coming. The moment my mother finds out you’re alive?—”

Evryn cut in. “She’ll kill me.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re just gonna wait until she does?”

“No,” he said sharply. “That’s why I haven’t taken you anywhere specific yet.

If I go to any known safehold, someone will talk.

Word gets out. And then Thalia will want her prize back, and my mother will want your head mounted in her throne room.

” He left out the part where he was supposed to be the one to give it to her.

“So instead,” she said, voice climbing, “you drag me through cursed ruins with no plan and no food?”

Lucien turned to face her fully.

“I’m trying to keep you hidden. Until I figure out what the hell to do with you.”

Evryn stared at him for a beat.

Then: “Do with me?”

He opened his mouth. Closed it. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“No?” she snapped. “Because it kinda sounded like I’m your problem to solve.”

“You are.”

“Oh, good. Glad we cleared that up.”

Lucien’s hand raked through his hair. “I mean—dammit, Evryn—I’m not supposed to be doing this.”

She stepped closer now, fire rising in her. “Then why are you doing it? Why are you saving me from your own mother?”

He didn’t answer. Because the truth, that he’d been sent to kill her and couldn’t —was the kind of thing that unraveled both of them.

Instead, he just said, “Because I couldn’t let them have you.”

She fell quiet.

Lucien turned away, tension bleeding from his shoulders like slow poison.

Evryn’s voice was soft this time. Careful.

“I want to find Eamon. That’s not going to change.”

Lucien nodded once, but didn’t face her.

“So,” she said, “we help each other. I stay off the grid. You keep your little rebellion secret. But we look for him. Deal?”

“Deal.”

Later, when she was asleep curled under a fractured stained-glass window, Lucien sat a few feet away—back against a column, shadows coiling lazily around his boots like old friends.

He watched her chest rise and fall.

Her lips were parted slightly. One hand tucked beneath her cheek.

Even here, smudged with dirt, wild hair tangled, dried blood on her collar—she looked untouchable. Sacred. Not in the way the Court defined royalty, with crowns and rituals and bone-deep arrogance. She was sacred like survival. Like fire refusing to go out.

Lucien leaned his head back, shutting his eyes.

He’d killed for less than she’d already seen. But he’d never protected anything before.

Not really.

He didn’t know what she was to him yet. A threat? A symbol? Or maybe a mirror. A girl molded by ghosts.

Like him.