Chapter Text
It was raining when they finally went back.
The sky above them was a deep gray, almost blue, the clouds swollen with water and thick with lightning hanging low in the sky, as if they were so weighted down that they couldn’t be bothered staying higher like they were supposed to. Sheets of rain were cascading down, striking the ground like silver razors and collecting at the side of the road in gross puddles and turning the dirt into muck.
He could barely see the castle, which wasn’t all too comforting, owing to its sheer size and the fact that it loomed over every other structure in a forty-mile radius. It was apparently shrouded in low-hanging clouds and mist and the buckets of rain that were pouring from the sky. He couldn’t see a thing, not even when, followed by a deafening boom of thunder, slender cracks of lightning split the sky open and seared themselves into his vision.
The wind whipped around him, and stray raindrops sprayed onto his cheeks and neck like pinpricks of wet and cold. He was liberally soaked through already, despite being seated inside the wagon with an apparently perfunctory roof above his head and an equally perfunctory Speaker sitting beside him.
“Can’t you make a fire or something?” he shouted above the screaming storm, and Sypha glared at him, her curls waving madly in the wind as if sending out a distress signal. “Yes, of course it would be so practical to make a fire in this deluge!” she shouted back. “Of course I can’t make a fire! It’ll go right out, and then there’ll be no point—we’re almost there, anyway!”
“How do you even know?” He squinted at her, trying to hide his shivering. “I can’t see a fucking thing!”
She merely pointed mutely, and he looked behind him, peering into the torrents of rain to see dark hulking shapes rising from the ground, sparse and irregular. As the next round of lightning rent the air, the flashes illuminated the crumbling remains of the Belmont hold, the rusting gates sunken in a muddy puddle and the weeds pouring from the cracks in the facade flapping in the wind.
He turned in front again, feeling his throat close up as it usually did when he saw the house as it was now—it brought back too many bitter memories of how it had been when it was tall and proud and had light spilling from its arching stained-glass windows rather than dilapidated and shattered and decaying. How, when he was a child, he’d press his face to his window and watch the rain pour outside, and be safe and warm and happy within the walls of his home rather than outside in a rickety wagon, lashed by rain and mud, freezing and soaked and seeing it all in ruins.
“We should tie the horses here and walk the rest of the way!” Sypha shouted, small freezing fingers bunching in his sleeve. Her teeth were chattering. “They’ll get spooked, and there’s too much lightning!”
He made a complicated gesture that he hoped conveyed his agreement, then yanked hard on the reins. The wagon slowed, then stopped completely, and before the wheels could completely still, he’d leaped down, managing not to get kicked in the face as he untied the horses. And somehow in a jumble of rain and wet horse hair and rope, he tied them in a relatively shaded outcropping of the manor.
They shoved the wagon under another outcropping, hoping that would protect it from the worst of the storm. Then, Sypha grabbed Trevor’s arm determinedly, and they put their heads down and marched towards the castle, relentlessly being buffeted back by wind and lashed with rain that stung his face. He felt Sypha shivering and valiantly trying to hide it, but her shoulder where it brushed against his was trembling slightly, and he could hear her teeth chattering.
He carefully slid an arm around her shoulders, pulling her against him even though his clothes were soaked through and probably even colder than her robes, which were thinner. She said nothing, but leaned into him gratefully, shifting to align their steps as they trudged through the muddy path and the dripping trees that sprayed them with water as they walked. He felt water drenching his ankles and seeping a bit into his boots, which was supremely uncomfortable and gross.
Altogether, it wasn’t exactly the backdrop for the reunion he’d had in mind, which was more along the lines of sunshine and rainbows and actually being able to see where they were fucking going.
After what felt like years of slowly moving through the accumulated muck and puddles that lay like a minefield between the manor and the castle, it finally came into view, rising out of the ground suddenly and towering above them. There was another crack of lightning and a slow rumble of thunder, and in the accompanying flash he saw the turrets and towers of Alucard’s new home, imposing and massive.
They stumbled up the steps to the front door, then sagged against it, finally free of the rain. Trevor shook out his hair like a wet dog as Sypha wrung the water from her robes, making a face at the puddles that gathered as a result. Once they’d both sufficiently dried themselves enough to pass as human, they turned to the door, so tall that the top was lost in shadow. Standing below, he felt almost small, insignificant, as if the very door was designed to extinguish hope. Turn back, it seemed to say. You’re not welcome here.
“Should we... knock?” Sypha’s voice was oddly small, as if she shared his thoughts. He glanced at the doors, then back to Sypha, then shrugged. “No idea. I didn’t even think we’d make it this far.”
She rolled her eyes, then raised a fist and knocked thrice, hard. It produced a loud, clanging sound that seemed to echo all the way down to his bones, making him shiver again. She dropped her hand, biting her lip, and they waited.
No answer.
Trevor tried next, knocking louder and longer, his knuckles smarting when he lowered his hand. Still they were answered by only silence, a ringing, piercing silence that was somehow even louder than the echoes of their knocks. Sypha hunted for a doorbell, feeling along the walls and standing on her tiptoes, but eventually returned to his side, frowning and shaking her head.
“You think he’s gone back to sleep?” She sounded hesitant and even a little sad, though she evidently tried to hide it. He could tell she was disappointed, and a bit let down as well, as if she had also expected something better from finally going back after months to see Alucard again.
“Doubt it.” He frowned up at the doors. “He wasn’t injured badly, and he had plenty of work to do as well. And... I mean—it’s not like he wouldn’t have been expecting us to come back, right?”
Sypha’s frown deepened as she twisted her fingers together. “I suppose.”
He squinted at the doors. “Should I break the door down?”
“Trevor, no.”
“It’s just a suggestion.”
“It’s rude.”
“Well, he’s the one who locked us out, that’s also pretty rude.”
“Trevor—”
The doors opened.
It was slow, stone grinding against stone as they did. He could see the yawning mouth of the gap between them, dark and wide, a blast of frigid air rushing from inside. The doors slid open until the edges touched the outer wall, thrown open fully now. They were somehow even bigger like this, like two mountains that had split open to reveal a passage between them.
And inside the doorway stood Alucard.
He looked exactly the same as he had the day they had left him, but there was something else about his appearance that was different, something Trevor couldn’t quite identify. His blond curls were loose around his shoulders, and they seemed darker somehow. He was dressed in a plain white button-down shirt so thin he could see the paleness of his skin through it, his usual leather pants, and black boots that rose till his knees.
Trevor barely had time to get a proper look at his face before Sypha cried, “Alucard!” and rushed into his arms, hugging him tightly.
That was when Trevor first realized something wasn’t quite right.
He didn’t move, even as Sypha’s arms held him to her, his face entirely expressionless, even a little tight. He gently took hold of Sypha’s arms and pulled away, stepping back almost coldly. Sypha took a step back as well, arms still half-held out, the smile on her face slipping.
“Please, come in,” Alucard said, and it was stiff and formal, as if he didn’t know them at all. “Get out of the rain.”
He stepped aside to allow them inside, closing the door behind them as they went. Alucard looped his hands behind his back, and as the doors shut with a low boom, the sound of the storm was cut off suddenly and abruptly, enveloping them in silence. He couldn’t even hear the thunder.
“Where’s the wagon?” was his first question. “I hope you weren’t forced to abandon it?”
“No, we left it at the ruins,” said Trevor, eyeing him carefully. There was still something nagging at his brain and telling him there was something off about Alucard and he couldn’t see it, that what was off about him didn’t extend to his appearance alone. “It was raining too hard.”
“I see.” He nodded at them. “You must be freezing. Come, I’ll show you to a fire and perhaps you can clean up before you head back.”
“Head... back?” Sypha’s voice was incredulous, disbelieving. “No, Alucard, we’ve come to stay—if that’s fine with you, I mean...” She bit her lip, glancing at Trevor, and he was both surprised and a little shocked to see her eyes swimming with tears. “We’ve come to stay with you,” she finished, her voice small and quiet.
If Trevor had thought Alucard’s earlier look was cold, then this was downright frozen. “Oh?” His voice, however, was nothing but polite and formal. “You didn’t write telling me you would be coming to stay, I’d have cleaned up to anticipate you.”
“We... we wanted to surprise you.” Her voice was getting smaller and smaller by the second.
His face softened ever so slightly, and his lips curved up into the barest semblance of a smile. And in that one fleeting second when he did, Trevor’s brain finally seemed to wake up and present to him an entire catalog of ways in which he seemed different.
He was thinner, more wiry—he’d gone from svelte and slender to almost whipcord thin, but with a lean layer of muscle over his form, as if he’d been lifting weights all day but not eating. His hair fell in loose waves over his shoulders and back, and he realized it seemed darker because it was dirtier, and it was just messy enough to suggest that he didn’t care. He was even paler than usual, but it wasn’t a good sort of pale—it looked as if he got next to no sunlight, and there was a waxy sheen to his skin that Trevor didn’t like.
And perhaps the worst change of all—his expression, the vacancy in his face. He looked like a man caught in a bad dream and who was expecting to wake up any moment. His eyes were almost sunken, like golden bruises in his face, and there were permanent shadows beneath them. His face was more hollowed, as if someone had whittled down his bones to almost gauntness.
“Ah. I see—this is a pleasant surprise indeed, then.” Without waiting for a reply, he began to walk deeper into the castle, and Trevor and Sypha shared an uneasy look before hastening after him. “There are plenty of rooms for you to stay,” he was saying as they caught up. “Though thankfully I’ll only have to clean one, the rest are filled with dust and cobwebs—”
“What do you mean, only one?” Trevor asked, frowning.
Alucard’s cold golden gaze passed over both of them, his upper lip curling so slightly Trevor wouldn’t have noticed it if he didn’t know his face so well. “I assumed that since the two of you are together now, one room would suffice. Am I mistaken?”
Sypha’s cheeks flushed a brilliant scarlet, and Trevor imagined he looked similarly mortified as Alucard raised a single eyebrow. “I mean—well—”
“As I thought.” He moved ahead again, long legs carrying him effortlessly across the hallway. “Here.” He stopped by a door, opening it and gesturing inside. “It’s relatively cleaner, and it has a bathroom inside so you needn’t keep coming outside. We can talk later—for now, get some rest. Tell me if you need anything, I’m three doors down the hall to the right.”
And with that he strode away, not even looking back as he disappeared down the hall, rounding the corner and vanishing from sight within seconds. He heard the click of a door closing moments later.
“I don’t understand,” said Sypha, her voice wavering. “What’s wrong? What’s happened to him?”
“I don’t know.” He was still looking at where Alucard had vanished, at the dark, peeling wallpaper, as if it held all the secrets of the universe. “I don’t understand,” he said, echoing Sypha’s earlier words. “Isn’t he happy to see us?”
“Maybe it was a bad idea to come here.” She stormed into the room, wiping furiously at her eyes as she did. “Maybe we should have just stayed with my people a little longer instead of coming here and making everything worse—”
“Sypha, calm down.” He reached out, but she batted his hand away. “No,” she said, her voice shaking even more. “I was so happy to see him, Trevor. Weren’t you?”
“I... yeah, I was.” He looked down, sighing. Sypha went on, and when she looked at him, he’d thought he’d see tears on her face, but her eyes were dry. “And did he seem happy we came back?”
“No,” he said softly.
She sighed, sitting heavily on the bed. “No,” she repeated. “No, he wasn’t—isn’t.”
A puff of dust rose from the mattress as she sat, and she coughed angrily, scowling at the wall. “Maybe he just needs some time,” Trevor tried, sitting next to her, sending another plume of dust into the air. “It might all be a little overwhelming, being alone for so long and then suddenly having company again.”
“I hope for all our sake that you’re right, then,” was all Sypha said in reply.
He closed the door behind him, breathing hard. His heart was slamming its way right out of his chest, one of the first times he’d actually felt his heart beating inside him, a wild, frenzied pulse against his ribs. It made his whole body shudder back and forth, and he hadn’t ever felt like this, hadn’t ever been so keenly aware of his human senses, not since—
He turned his face away, driving the stake deeper into his father’s heart. He felt the rough wooden tip pierce through it, tear through his skin and out through his back in a burst of blood too bright to belong to a human. He could feel his own heart beating, wildly, as if to beat for his father’s as well, whose blood was dripping down Adrian’s hands like red tears. His pulse was loud in his own ears, drowning out everything else, every other sound, and he felt it overwhelm him—was his heart being torn apart the same way he was doing to his father’s? Was he paying for what he was doing, for killing his father, for committing the sin of all sins? Would he never see Sypha or Trevor again—?
He lurched back into his body, on his hands and knees by the dead hearth. He was gasping for breath, his chest contracting and spasming, tears running down his cheeks. He couldn’t breathe, feeling the panic and fear choking him, and felt his throat close up as his tears dripped down onto the carpet.
He felt himself calm gradually, as he had for... for however long he’d been alone. It had been days, at first, then the days had bled into weeks, which had bled into a meaningless blur of time and shifting seasons. It didn’t matter to him anymore; every single day, this would happen, this seizing up of his body and the shaking and the crying and the gasping. It just didn’t go away.
He had come to think of it as his father’s hands, the remnants of his anger and his sadness that festered inside Adrian now, the hands that held his throat so he couldn’t breathe and filled his head with memories that returned in flashes so vivid that he blacked out, sometimes for hours at a time. He would wake, cold and shivering and with the hands around his throat blocking his air, and he would wait for it to be over.
But now... now they had come back. After millennia, they had come back for him.
But they were too late.
He was already long gone.
Eventually Trevor had gotten Sypha to calm down and sleep for a while, but it had taken a lot of coaxing and swearing and a fair amount of kissing to get it done. She had protested until he’d lain down with her, kicking off his boots and crawling behind her so that her back curved against his chest, his chin resting on her shoulder and their legs tangled. His arms were wrapped around her waist, and he was so warm it was like being swathed in three blankets instead of one.
He didn’t say anything, just held her to him and closed his eyes. She felt his soft breaths on the back of her neck, and the faint tickle of his eyelashes brushing her skin as well. It was one of the many things that had made her fall for him in the first place—his willingness to give her space, to comfort her without words, to make her feel safe by simply being there.
Eventually he fell asleep, and she could feel the rumble of his breaths through her back, which was pressed to his chest. She closed her eyes, lulled by his warmth and nearness and the scent of him all around her, and tried to forget her sadness as she drifted off into an uneasy slumber.
She woke only a few hours later, her face mashed into the crook of Trevor’s neck and her arms loosely wrapped around his waist. Somehow she had turned around in her sleep, and his fingers were pressing to her back protectively. Their legs were so convoluted that she couldn’t manage to extricate herself from the tangle of limbs they’d become without waking him up, which she reluctantly did; he looked so peaceful.
He had opened his eyes blearily, then had mumbled something intelligible, leaning forward and kissing her. She returned it, fingers cupping his jaw, feeling the roughness of his stubble on the pads of her fingertips. She never tired of kissing Trevor; his technique was a little on the messier side, but she rather enjoyed the way his tongue slid against hers as she pulled away.
She’d always thought that if she’d ever kissed Alucard, he’d be more gentle, more sophisticated, the way he was for everything else. That he would hold her face between his long-fingered hands, that he would lean down since he was so much taller, that he would taste like gold and softness and silk.
And while the thought had once made butterflies swarm in her stomach and a happy blush steal across her cheeks, now it only brought with it a sharp stab of pain and disappointment. They had come back for him—for him, and only him. They had realized how empty everything had been without him, how incomplete their relationship felt without him.
He’d looked so empty, so blank. It was terrifying, as if someone had replicated her Alucard, their Alucard—had replicated him down to the last strand of burnished golden hair, but had forgotten to add what made him so extraordinary—his emotion, his odd quirks and rare smiles, his soft laugh and everything that made him human.
“Come on, we’ll be late,” Trevor said, peering into the mirror and tugging at his hair. Apparently giving up, he merely ran an impatient hand through it and stepped away, holding out a hand. Once she took it, they left the room together, moving down the stairs. Their footsteps were loud and echoed in the hallways, and she felt a sort of helplessness that made her want to run all the way back to her caravan and never come out again.
“It’s easy to get lost in here,” said a sudden voice, and both of them jumped, turning to see Alucard, standing at the bottom of the steps. His arms were crossed across his chest, and perhaps it was her imagination, but he looked, if possible, even more gaunt now, as if his skin was stretched tightly over the bones of his face.
“It takes some getting used to, staying here,” he went on. “I assume you were looking for the dining room?”
Trevor glanced fleetingly at Sypha. “Uh—yeah.”
“Right this way.” He turned fluidly, once again not waiting for them as he strode away. They stumbled down the steps, then managed to catch up, Sypha clutching her robes in her hands so as not to trip. “I hope you rested well?” he asked, without turning back to look at them. “I imagine you were quite tired.”
“We’re fine now,” Sypha said, trying to keep the waver out of her voice. “But enough talk about us—how have you been, Alucard?”
For a moment his steps faltered, and he shook his head slightly, almost an involuntary twitch of a movement. “I’ve been all right,” he said, and his voice was chilly. “There’s been plenty to do, here and in the Belmont Hold. Enough to keep me busy, anyway.”
“Horrible weather, isn’t it?” asked Trevor, gesturing at the ceiling. “How long has it been raining like this?”
A strange expression stole over Alucard’s face, one that seemed equal parts confused and distant. “I... I’m not... a few... days. Yes, a few days now. I’m not entirely sure how many.” He appeared to be lost in thought, his eyes trained on the floor. “But it’s dry inside,” he said after a while. “Mostly, anyway. There are still some rooms that need to be rebuilt, I... must take care of those someday...”
He shook his head again, as if to clear it of flies. “Here’s the dining room,” he said as they drew up to a massive set of double doors. “It’s not the cleanest, but I wasn’t expecting company so... so soon.”
Soon? It had nearly been a year. She sent him a sideways frown, but he didn’t appear to notice it; he seemed too absorbed in the task of opening the doors, pushing them in a screech of rusted hinges as he did. She could see the ripple of muscle that was his biceps even beneath the thin white cotton of his shirtsleeves, the deceptive leanness of his form hiding his strength.
“I must confess to never having stepped foot in here after you left,” Alucard said, walking inside. His voice echoed, distorted almost in the vast hall. It was dark, murky light spilling in from the high windows that were set far into the ceiling. The space was taken up by a massive table, one so long that it stretched all the way from one end of the hall to another.
They sat at the table, even if it was more than a little dusty and maybe even a little moldy—with Alucard at the head of the table and Trevor and Sypha on either side of him. She couldn’t help but think that it was the way a king and his consorts sat at the table this way, one on the right and the other at the left.
There was a brief silence, and finally Alucard broke it. He was sitting with his long legs crossed one over the other, his fingers steepled under his chin, elbows resting on the table’s surface. His eyes were slightly narrowed, and perhaps it was merely the murky light that spilled into the room, but they seemed duller.
“So you came back,” he said. He sounded flat, devoid of emotion.
“Yeah,” replied Trevor, leaning back in his chair, the front legs lifting off the ground. “It’s been a while, but—”
“It must have taken you quite a while to get here from wherever you were,” he said, cutting across Trevor calmly. “Didn’t it?”
Trevor glanced briefly at Sypha. “It took us a week or so—not too long, but the road is rough between there and here.” He leaned forward again, the legs of the chair meeting the ground again with an audible clack. “Look, we know it’s been a long time, but we’re here now. We’re here, Alucard.”
He twitched almost involuntarily at the sound of his name being spoken, and with a jolt she realized that it was probably the first time he’d heard it said by another person to him since they’d left. His flinty golden eyes fell on Trevor, latching onto him with something almost like disdain.
“That’s not my name,” he said shortly. “Not anymore.”
“What do you—?”
“I go by Adrian now.” He laid both palms flat on the table, inhaling deeply. “I left Alucard behind after I killed my father.” A muscle in his cheek jumped as he said the words. “He died with him.”
“Adrian, then,” Trevor said, albeit cautiously. His eyes were wary, his lower lip curling downwards in a familiar expression of concern. “We’re sorry we couldn’t be here sooner, but—”
“We needed to find my people,” cut in Sypha, scooting forward. “And once we did, we had to read our story into our memory stores so that people could remember it, and that took a while as well. We moved around quite a bit with the caravan along with that, and that took some time too...”
“You read our journey into your memory stores?” He sounded almost surprised, and Sypha nodded. “Well, I did my best to recount everything that happened since I met Trevor in Gresit, and I’m sure I did a terrible job, but—”
“Oh, spare us the modesty,” said Trevor, grinning at her from across the table. “She’s brilliant. She made it sound even better than it actually was, and she made about four Speakers faint at the end of it all. It can really boost a man’s self-esteem. I felt about ten times better than I am just sitting there listening to her.”
“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow, and Sypha blushed. “Well, I’ll tell it to you someday,” she said. “Sooner rather than later, I hope.”
“Well, after that we went along just bouncing around the countryside for a while,” continued Trevor, sliding a small, clever little blade from his boot and spinning it expertly in his palm before catching it deftly by the blade. “And... then we reached Braila.”
Sypha leaned across the table, biting her lip. “That’s where the problems started,” she said. “Because Braila—”
“Is the city from where you dragged this castle here when you cast that spell in the Belmont Hold,” finished Adrian. “Yes, I know.”
“Well...” She sighed. “It seems that we’ve got a bit of a problem. Do you happen to recall the names of all the vampire generals in your father’s War Council?”
He frowned, eyes darkening. “I can certainly try to.”
“Do you know who the vampire ruler of Styria is?” tried Trevor, raising a hopeful eyebrow. “Does it ring any bells?”
His eyes darkened further. “I know who it is,” he said carefully. “But I fail to see what this has to do with anything.”
“The general got away,” said Trevor. “He’s heading back to Styria with all his generals in tow, and they’re probably halfway there by now. The general betrayed your father, stranded the castle here, and left. Apparently to continue destroying the world. We don’t know.”
“She,” Adrian said faintly, his frown deepening.
“What?” Trevor’s brows drew together.
“The general of Styria is a woman. Her name is Carmilla,” Adrian said by way of explanation. “I haven’t formally met her, but I’ve heard plenty. They used to tell me she was my biggest competition should I ever have followed in my father’s footsteps; apparently she’s clever, cunning and thrice as evil as Dracula was.” He shrugged. “I don’t know how far that’s true, but if she could strike such fear in the hearts of the mightiest of generals, then perhaps she is a force to be reckoned with indeed.”
“Well, they say she got away with a Devil Forgemaster,” Sypha said. “We don’t know if that’s true or not, since that would mean she’s traveling with a human—”
“No,” said Adrian. “It’s true. It has to be. There were two Forgemasters here, in the castle. They were the ones creating the night hordes. They were who my father went to after my mother’s death, to avenge her. One is missing, and that means the other has to be with Carmilla.”
“Any idea who it might be?” asked Trevor.
“Hector,” said Adrian softly. “It must be Hector. Isaac is—was—too loyal to my father to go against him.”
Trevor and Sypha exchanged a look. “You know them?” Sypha asked carefully.
“We’re acquainted,” he said shortly. “So... what? They left Braila, heading for Styria, to resume my father’s plan of obliterating humanity?”
“Yeah,” said Trevor. “Basically. And we could use your help. Just like old times, right? There’s an evil vampire overlord—or, in this case, an overlordess, if that’s a thing—and we need to go kick some demonic undead ass.”
Adrian’s gaze turned even colder. “So you came here asking for my help,” he said slowly. “You’re here because you need me again.” That muscle in his cheek jumped again. “Would you ever have come back if you didn’t?” he asked softly.
“Of course we would have!” The words came out louder than Sypha had intended, and she forced her voice down with an effort. “We came back for you, Adrian, nothing else—this is just in the way, that’s all—”
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “You’re here because you know you can’t fight this war alone, and you need me—for my power and strength, and nothing else. Perhaps you thought of me once or twice while you were away, but what have I ever been to you besides the son of the vampire you were going to kill?” His breathing turned heavy and labored. “What have I ever been to you besides Alucard?”
“It’s not like that,” Sypha said, feeling a sort of numb horror spread through her. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She had ached for him every single day, ached to run to him, to hear his voice, to kiss him and tell him that she was nothing without him. But how could she say that now? “It isn’t.”
His lips twisted. “You’re right; it’s worse. I thought perhaps you’d forgotten about me, forgotten me in each other and found happiness, and I would have preferred it if you had stayed together, and not burdened yourselves with me.”
“You’re not a burden,” Trevor said, shaking his head. “You never have been, and you never will—what the hell are you saying, Adrian? Why are you saying these things?”
“Because you left me behind!” His control finally broke, cracking explosively in a sudden torrent. He stood almost violently, sending his chair skittering backwards, where it slammed against the wall and toppled with a crash. He hardly seemed to notice as he clenched his shaking hands into fists, his eyes wild. “You left me here, alone in the place where I murdered my own father, and you went off together, and I—” The words seemed to choke off in his throat, and he was breathing hard.
“It was so clear that you only needed each other,” he said, his voice shaking. “That what you both felt for each other was something that did not and would not ever extend to me. I understood that. But this—coming back here now, after so long—and with you two so clearly in a separate space of your own—I couldn’t—I can’t—” He broke off, running a hand through his hair, clenching his jaw.
“No, it’s not what you think,” Sypha pleaded, feeling a lump rise in her throat. She fought it down furiously. “We didn’t realize what you’d gone through, Adrian, how were we to know? You never told us—”
“So you assumed I was fine after I staked my own father?” He choked on a bitter laugh. “After I watched him die, just like I watched my mother die? You think anyone would be all right after that?”
“You acted like everything was fine,” Trevor said, his shoulders tense. He looked as if he were readying himself for a fight. “You never said a word, not when we were on the way here or when we got here, or after. You let us think it was okay to let you stay here for a while.”
“Three days,” Adrian said softly, shaking his head. His eyes had gone totally flat and glittering, like a snake’s. “Three days after the battle you stayed here, three days of which you both spent outside, as far away from here as you could get. And then you tell me it’s time for you to go. And I—I’d been a fool to think you’d stay longer than that, and an even bigger fool for ever thinking you could—” He swallowed hard. “And now, when you finally return after God knows how long, it’s because you need me. Not because you want me.”
Sypha could only stare, her lips parted but all the words she wanted to say dying at her lips. He had shattered, perhaps irreparably, and there were too many shards to put back together, too many broken pieces that cut her hands when she tried to pick them up. And she had done it—she had broken him like this, and she hadn’t even known.
“You shouldn’t have come back here,” he said finally, coldly, looking at them without a shred of remorse. “You should never have come back here. I wish you’d just stayed away from me like you did all these months. It would have done all three of us a great deal of good.”
He turned away. “I wish you’d never come back,” he said softly. “I wish you’d forgotten about me entirely and had never come back here ever again.”
The words hit her like knives, one lodging into her stomach, the other sinking into her neck, and another piercing her heart. It hurt beyond anything she’d ever experienced, more than anything she had ever felt. She felt the lump in her throat grow until it was impossible to swallow, and then she was standing, her chair scraping backwards on the stone floor, leaving marks.
She didn’t even look where she was going as she turned and left, the doors slamming shut behind her as she fled blindly. She didn’t even look as she did, running back towards the entrance hall and the rain, needing to get away from everything. She thought she heard a voice call her name, but she didn’t look back, and she didn’t stop running.