Prelude (Underworld Lucian Fanfiction)

94 - Chapter XCIV: The Parting of a Veil

For Reinette, it felt like she'd been walking for miles. Cold air in her bones. Wandering in search of answers that were not there. Answers that could not explain the hurt in her throat. The pain of foresight. Able to see the end, but knowing she'd go mad if she pondered the order of things. But the final curtain falling nonetheless. When she returned an hour later...

...and realised the side-door was locked.

And the back garden.

Eventually forced to circle the house, climbing the grand staircase through ice and snow, opting to avoid looking at the transport lorry. Refusing to see the box they'd placed in front of it. Assuming it would be Allegra or Raze in her path, but realising—as she came up from the east and saw his back to her in the west—that it was just him. No advisors this time. No guard rota. He alone was making this choice. And Rena knew of course. Her guard opting to climb into the transport, leaving her to take the long road of farewells. Her bags already gone...and the travel-box waiting for its occupant...

...while he waited for her.

Seated on that top step, his head bowed as the snow collected around him. From afar, looking so lost without his clocks and his bone folder...the hoard of papers that he hid behind. Like he'd forgotten how to exist without them. To the point he could not even open it, the book he must have been holding for all that time. The one object he sought to protect from the elements. Its spine nestled between his hands, covered by the coat he was not wearing.

Theophrastus.

The first book they'd shared. 

And it broke through her anger. Reminding her suddenly of shattered glass and a carriage filled with fear and despair. The years she'd spent in his presence, clinging to a vision that in the end would have been her downfall. Her death. Hardly knowing now if it would...or would not happen. But she was too afraid to find out. Even though she wished he could have known.

That he could have seen.

All that she'd seen.

And felt.

Right to the end.

Each moment of their lives carried like a weight beneath her veil. Each step feeling as though it would bury her in the ground, that pain of walking away from him. Choosing life instead of death. Solitude instead of danger. And though youth was hers and she could finally...finally...slit his throat if she wished, it was fate that had changed her path. So that a blood-seer of a thousand years could steal behind a lycan in silence, knowing he could sense her all the same. The cold and the ice that she brought with her serving to set the tone, even though she burned inside.

"I suppose you'll be under house arrest after this," she said, seating herself next to him, so they could both stare ahead. As they so often did in a world where it was all they could do now.

He nodded.

She had expected as much. You could not stab an heir of the North in front of a hundred people without consequences. But it felt like standing on a train platform. Like he was going to war.

"How long?"

His brow pursed.

"It was..."