Lucian Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Xavier grabbed Lucian's sleeve at the pavilion steps. "She saw. She'll run. And you can't burn this thing off your back alone before the sun comes up." "Then help me," Lucian said. "I've been helping you. She's the one who has to stay." Lucian looked toward the terrace. The red gown was already gone. He knew what his brother meant. The locket at her throat was buying him hours, not a cure. The curse needed a witness who chose to stay anyway. That was the old shape of it. He had read it in their mother's book when he was fifteen and laughed. He found Elena in the coat room off the main hall. She had her jacket half on and her hand on the door. "Don't touch me," she said, without turning. "I won't." He stopped six feet back. "I did it to you too. A month ago. In the garden behind this place. You wore boots with a hole in the left toe and you told me your sister's name and I took all of it." She turned. Her blue eyes were wet and steady. "Why are you telling me now?" "Because if I lie again the thing inside me wins at sunrise." He pulled his sleeve back. The skin along his forearm had gone gray in a spreading map. "The locket is slowing it. It isn't stopping it. Xavier says the only thing that stops it is someone who knows what I am and doesn't leave." "That's a trap." "It is. I'm asking anyway." She looked at the door. She looked at his arm. She touched the locket at her collarbone and he watched her weigh three years of stranger's warnings against one honest sentence. "Give me the rest," she said. "All of it. Every name. Every girl. The fae in the pavilion. Say it out loud." He said it. It took a long time. Xavier stood in the doorway with his arms crossed and did not help him soften any of it. When Lucian finished, the gray on his arm had crept past his elbow and stopped. Elena did not touch him. She sat down on the bench against the wall and folded her hands in her lap. "I'm not forgiving you," she said. "I'm staying in the room. That's different." "I know." "When the sun comes up, I decide again." "I know." Xavier let out a breath he had been holding since the pavilion. He shut the coat room door behind him and put his back against it. Outside, the band started a slow song for the last hour of the ball. Lucian sat on the floor across from Elena, close enough to see her face, far enough that she could stand and go. The gray on his arm did not spread. It also did not fade. Dawn was still coming. She had not promised him anything past it.