Chapter 108 Gone Before Dawn
The carriage slowed to a stop several paces from the hut.
Lucien did not wait for the coachman to open the door. He pushed it open himself and stepped down onto the packed dirt, the late afternoon sun warming his face but doing nothing to ease the cold knot in his chest.
Rowan followed, quiet and watchful.
Lucien’s boots carried him forward. Each step felt heavier than the last. His pulse thundered in his ears. The native doctor’s hut stood only a short distance away now, its door weathered and simple. Behind that door was Elian — the man he had searched for, obsessed over, and nearly lost.
He stopped just short of the threshold, one gloved hand hovering near the wood. For a fleeting second, fear rooted him in place. Then the image of Elian’s face — smiling in the cabin, flushed against the wall of his chamber, broken and bleeding in the infirmary — burned through the hesitation.
Lucien pushed the door open.
The moment of reunion was only heartbeats away, and Lucien’s carefully controlled world was about to collide with whatever waited inside.
Taking a deep breath, he pushed the door open...
Empty.
A cold, icy feeling washed over him as he searched the tiny hut with his eyes, making sure he hadn’t mistaken it.
His fingers curled aggressively by the side of the wooden door, his eyes turning a bright red.
"Shit," Rowan murmured as he realised what had happened.
They had traveled the whole day and night for nothing.
Slowly, Lucien turned away from the hut, his eyes falling on the fisherman who had led them there.
"They are not here," Lucien’s tone was calm, but the way he strode toward the man told a different story.
The man blinked around in confusion, shaking his head. "N-no, y-your Grace... I swear, I swear, they were right here, please—"
He trailed off, watching Lucien suddenly pull out a small blade from his pocket.
Lucien had just unsheathed the blade when Rowan placed a hand on his shoulder, stopping him.
"Look around you, cousin, people are watching..." Rowan spoke calmly. "The words will reach the palace and the manor before we do... the Duke killed a poor commoner in a fit of rage... they would question what you were doing here in the first place."
Lucien’s fingers clenched around the blade until his knuckles turned white. Slowly, he lowered the blade.
"Take the wooden box from the coachman and leave my sight," he commanded.
The fisherman bowed his head and scurried away for his dear life.
"Fuck," Lucien cursed under his breath, "Another dead end," he muttered, sheathing the blade.
"Maybe we can ask around–"
"No need, let us return–"
"The young man was right..." An elderly man’s voice spoke from the front of the tiny hut.
Lucien snapped his head toward him immediately.
He took in the man’s attire — a piece of rough-woven cloth dyed in muted earth tones, draped loosely over a lean but sturdy frame. Around his neck hung a string of dried roots, small bones, and polished river stones that clicked softly whenever he moved. His feet were bare and calloused from years of walking the forest paths, and his hands, though aged, looked steady and strong, stained faintly with the green residue of crushed herbs. Deep lines mapped his face like the cracks in old bark, and his eyes — sharp, dark, and unnervingly calm — held the quiet authority of someone who had seen too many lives come and go. A faint scent of smoke, bitter leaves, and damp soil clung to him, as if the forest itself had claimed him long ago.
The native doctor stood without fear, one hand resting lightly on the weathered doorframe of the empty hut. He did not bow. He simply regarded Lucien with a measured stillness that made the Duke’s power feel strangely distant in this place.
Lucien’s jaw tightened. The cold knot in his chest twisted tighter.
"Where is he?" Lucien demanded, his voice low and edged with barely restrained fury. "The brown-haired young man. And the noble who was with him."
The old healer’s gaze did not waver. "Gone," he said simply. "They left at first light yesterday. The injured one had woken... but his mind was clouded. The other man — the one who never left his side — decided it was no longer safe to stay."
Lucien took a step closer, green eyes burning. "Where did they go?"
The native doctor studied him for a long moment, as if weighing something heavier than words. Then he spoke again, his voice calm and unhurried, carrying the weight of someone who had already chosen his loyalty.
"I do not know the path they took. Only that the one who protected him was determined no one from the capital would find them easily."
The late afternoon sun slanted across the village, casting long shadows. Lucien stood frozen, the empty hut behind the old man feeling like a mockery of every desperate hope he had carried through the night and day of travel.
Rowan remained silent at his side, watching the tension coil tighter around his cousin.
"Let us leave," he stated and turned away, heading back to the carriage.
The search was not over.
It had only grown more complicated.
Rowan slid in front of Lucien and the carriage began to move.
Silence reigned for a while until Lucien suddenly chuckled.
Rowan was quiet, watching Lucien carefully. He was starting to pity his cousin; never had he seen him so hopeless, not even when he lost his mother many years ago.
"Cassian is messing with me. He knew I would come, he knew I would take what belongs to me, so he fled..." Lucien murmured.
"He ran with the man he knows carries a part of my soul with him... he knows how much Elian means to me, yet, he ran..." His face darkened.
"I’ll kill him–"
"Alright, alright, cousin... no one is killing anyone–"
"That is not your place to decide," Lucien slowly locked his hardened gaze on Rowan.
Rowan sighed. "True. But you also have to prepare your mind for a rejection –"
"Elian will never reject me... he loves me–"
Rowan’s low chuckle cut him off. "He loved you. I’m no shaman or witch, but I would want to believe that Elian no longer wants anything to do with you; if not, he would have found a way to make them stay... to let you find him..." He sighed quietly.
"He is running from you, Lucien. Do you not see it? You hurt him so much, you put his life on the line over and over again... I would flee too if someone I loved ever treated me the same way." Rowan gently shrugged, pressing his face to the window.
Lucien stared at Rowan blankly, the words settling slowly and deeply.
Elian was running from him?
Impossible.
He knew what Elian felt for him, and it was not something that could be washed away in a matter of two weeks. He knew Elian would be waiting, hoping, and so help him God, when he finds Elian, he would claim him for Cassian to see.
"He is human... not a property for you to claim..." Rowan murmured, almost as if he could read Lucien’s mind.
Lucien frowned, his fingers clutching his knees.
Elian was not a property, but he sure as hell belonged to him, and he would make sure Elian understood that too.
Meanwhile, in a small fishing boat, rowing gently down the river, Cassian sat behind Elian, who was covered in a thick blanket and staring into the fog ahead.
Elian had refused to speak to him after only asking who he was. He was scared, sacred that Elian may never recall his memories again.
He was taking them away, somewhere Lucien would never find them, because he knows that is what Elian would want.
Perhaps Elian’s loss of memory was not entirely a bad thing; it was for the good. It could be his only opportunity to truly make Elian love only him.
He was no longer going to try and make Elian remember; instead, he was going to make Elian live in the present.
He would be patient, kind, loving, and understanding. Not a moment will pass without him making Elian understand how much he loved him.
Maybe, this was the heavens and the gods rewarding him for being a kind human, and this was also the heavens punishing Lucien for being so unfair to a pure soul who did nothing but trust him.
"Sir, are you sure it’s this way?" The man rowing the boat asked Cassian as they approached a thin water path, flowing right into the thick, dark forests.
"I am sure..." Cassian nodded gently.
Slowly, their boat rowed between the thick trees, the atmosphere instantly dropping.
This was the way to his home, a land he had purchased a long time ago, almost forgotten.
There, Lucien will never find them; not even his sister, Lysandra, knew of that property.
He would heal Elian... he would love Elian.