Lucian Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Lucian climbed back to the painting room with the oath still tight around him. Thirty days. He had the threat's name now, and a deadline that would kill him if he missed it. But he had nowhere to take Lilith. A refuge far from Duskwood, far from Draemar's watchers—he had none. He had three centuries of this house and no plan beyond its walls. That was the wall he had to break tonight. He went down to the hidden room alone. In a locked chest beneath the old portrait, he kept the deeds of properties he had bought and forgotten over long years. He spread the papers on the floor. Most were nothing now—houses sold, land taken by the sea. He searched for a place no one would tie to his name. One deed stopped his hand. A lighthouse of dark stone on a far cliff, bought under a false name a century ago. He had never lived there. No watcher had ever followed him to it. Draemar's spies knew his house, his garden, his habits. They did not know this. Footsteps on the stair. Lilith came down, still in her black lace, the locket at her throat. She saw the papers scattered around him and stopped. "You've been strange since the garden," she said. "Tell me what they wanted." Lucian stood. He could not hide behind silence anymore. "They serve a vampire lord. An old one. He's wanted this house, and me, for years. I swore an oath to leave Duskwood within the month, or I die." He watched her face. "I'm asking you to come with me. Away from everything you know." Lilith's hand rose to the locket. For a moment she said nothing. He braced for her to refuse, to name all she would lose. "Where?" she asked. He held out the deed. "A lighthouse on a cliff, far from here. No one knows I own it. No watcher has ever seen it. We could vanish there." She took the paper and read it. Her thumb traced the false name at the bottom. "You've been ready to run your whole life," she said. It was not a question. "You just never had a reason before." "I have one now." Lilith folded the deed and pressed it to her chest. "Then we go," she said. "But I decide what we take. This house is yours. The next one is ours." Lucian felt the dread loosen in his chest. He had a refuge at last—a place off every map Draemar's watchers held. He gathered the deed and the lamp. Tomorrow they would begin to pack. Then he looked at the old portrait on the wall. He could not leave it. The proof of his human past would stay here, waiting in an empty house for the lord who hunted him to walk in and find it.