To Love, Once Again

Sera can hear her heart pounding in her ears as Lucien cages her in..

They're surrounded empty pots and dirty pans, dry onions and leeks hanging from the ceiling with a tub of peeled potatoes in one corner of the kitchen.

Her eyes begin to flutter closed and her lips part, ready for his kiss.

Lucien's warm thumb tilts her chin up, and Sera leans forward as their lips meet, sharing a sweet kiss. With one touch of his lips on her own, Sera could feel her breath hitch, her cheeks growing hot like a live wire.

Tenderly engaging her parted lips with Lucien's, she responds to the kiss, but pulls away. Before she loses herself in the orphanage kitchen, of all places.

Cupping her hands around the back of Lucien's thick neck and craning her neck up at him, Sera asks.

"But that wish....it was never a promise between us, was it?"

Why had Lucien done this much for her?

"On that day you made your wish, I promised you in my heart to fulfill it."

Oh Lucien. Sweet, romantic Lucien. It was moments like this, when Lucien would share his sweetness with her...it would make Sera feel so violently, so deeply for this wounded man. He was a wounded man, she knew. Yet, she needed to understand the depths of the scars in his heart. Sera wanted to unravel more of the mystery that was Lucien. The fact that he chose her to love, her, an outsider, from a different world no less, never ceased to amaze her.

"I wanted to leave your mark for you, so that you knew that all this"

Lucien gestures around the room.

"It was real."

"That I"

Pounding his chest, Lucien clenches his fingers into the fabric of his rough shirt, over where his heart lay.

"was real"

No one, not even Sera herself, could tell them that what they had between them was some kind of illusion.

Only Lucien knew that mark that Sera had left on himself was more than enough. The light she breathed into him had unstained the dark emotions of loneliness, reaching further to the ripped and dirtied corners of his heart.

This desire to leave a mark on the world had been a new concept to him. He was born with the role of a Prince weighing heavily upon his shoulders, where, as he grew older, his actions created a larger impact on the world around him. It was the exact opposite of what he'd experienced.

Lucien hadn't cared, rebellious and angry at the environment, busy focused on fighting and killing, wanting to disappear. Yet Sera was the one who taught him to use what he had for good. What use was power and authority when it stayed unused?

It was a struggle when she left.

Though he could have left her mark by burning the world to ashes around him, destroying everyone and everything, he hadn't.

Because his infant son was still here.

Leo was the crystallization of the love that Sera and Lucien had shared was still here. Leo was the reason that small, indivisible, buried shred of hope that believed she would come back to him still existed.

Laying her hand over his clenched fingers, Sera softly uncurls them, one by one, relaxing them and pulling the hand so that it sits on her waist.

"It was all real, then." Somehow, this affirmation relieved Sera.

Sera leans her head against his hard chest, relaxing against the thick muscle as he breathes. So he'd taken care of Grandma Rosie's beloved orphanage, kept her program alive, all for Sera, to fulfill her wish. Swallowing the lump in her throat, Sera continues.

"How did you know about this orphanage, though?"

Lucien turns his head to the side, mumbling awkwardly under his breath. There was no way he would tell her that he kept a secret watch on her, the King's Guard of all things, to protect her. There was no way he would tell her how jealous he'd been of the guards who got to be by her side for longer than he ever could. It went against every instinct in his body to have a man protect her around the clock.

For her, he'd made sure to have female guards specially trained and placed by her side. In Thornmere, it had been unheard of for women do what was predominantly a 'male job'. There were no women like that in Thornmere. So he'd used his connections, brought in female warriors from a far-off matriarchal island country. He'd offered their Queen more than a fortune in exchange for the services of highly trained assassins for use as bodyguards for Sera. It was worth it, every golden coin he'd earned in war.

All of it. He would spend everything he had on Sera if he could.

Thud-thud. Lucien's strong heartbeat seemed to be thudding faster under her ear. Was he being shy? Sera strokes her palm over his chest, breathing in his scent.

"I did my best to keep up with your comings and goings, since we weren't able to meet once we became King and Queen so often."

Lifting her arm to his lips, Lucien trails slow and gentle kisses down the arms that bare themselves for him. Large fingers easily encircle her wrist, dry and warm, with a firm, gentle grip.

He remembered each spot that had been marred with deep scratches. The rose petals stuck onto the blood that welled from Sera's pliant skin. Never again, he promised himself. While the Elder's magic had healed her so perfectly well that there were no marks left on her skin, Lucien remembered, and he trailed kissed over the areas they had been.

The silk fabric of each sleeve falls like water down her wrist to her elbows, revealing soft, dewy skin. A wave of pure pleasure runs through Lucien's body with the scent of her skin under his lips. Her perfume was intoxicating, enthralling.

Was Sera being weak by opening herself up to Lucien like this again, when he'd made her believe that he hadn't wanted her, only wanted her body, for some sort of revenge against her leaving?

"Thank you" she breathes out, a warm feeling blossoming in her chest.

There was no way of knowing. Pop was right though. A Duncan would ride the momentum, as he loved to say. Sera should have ridden the momentum on her return, not wallowed in her own pain and guilt after leaving. They were both at fault, Sera and Lucien.

"Lucien?"

"Hmm?" Gazing upon her face, mesmerized in her presence, Lucien responds.

It was time to be more honest with her thoughts and feelings, Sera decides. "Why do I smell the scent of flowers on you so often?"

"Lois won't tell me, but I know it has to do with all those vials you've been drinking."

Pressing his lips together, Lucien responds with trepidation, figuring out which words would hold the truth, but keep Sera from worrying too much.

"It's a soothing drug.. They help me, when a red haze feels like it's descending over my vision...when I'm about to lose myself.."

"........But, that isn't all, is it?

".....yes"

Lucien didn't want to tell her it also helped with the pain. He would have to tell her about the experiments, what the Elder had been doing....In addition to that, if Sera were to find out his body was in pain from all the blood-letting, it would hurt her. Lucien didn't want Sera in pain. This pain was something he would take a hundred times over, and over, and over again, if it meant he could be with her.

"How bad is it?" With wide worried eyes, Sera searches Lucien's gaze, trying to decipher if he was in pain even in this very moment. All those scars she'd seen during his bath appear in the forefront of her mind, and she traces her fingers over the clothes on his body, where she knew the scars would be.

He was trying to play it off, lessen the pain. Sera could see it now, in the way his pupils would swirl, the small tick in his eyebrow that would jump if she focused closely.

"Really, it's not bad." Lucien strokes her waist, so thin and small, fragile under his hands. Sera doesn't seem to believe him, not when she's looking at him with her eyes squinted, a adorable distrustful expression on her face.

Leaning in, he gives a playful bite on the tip of her nose. Lucien wouldn't be surprised if he tasted sugar on his tongue, when everything about Sera was like meringue cream. Sweet and soft. Delicious to lick.

"They're my battle scars, and I wear them with honor" Truly, he was never ashamed of them. More than the outside, the inner scars were what made him nervous. Every man that went to war returned with a few scars. It was another fact of life.

Giggling at the ticklish feeling, Sera laughs, and standing on her tip toes, plants a smacking kiss on his sharp jawline. She savored his playful moments, even though she knew he was trying to distract her.

"All right. But you need to tell me when it hurts, I'll do my best to help." Though Sera was used to more emergency patch-up jobs, she would do her best to help Lucien, massage his muscles, monitor his medication. Lois would know what she needed to do.

Lucien swoops in for another kiss, a long one that leaves Sera breathless and weak-kneed. And another. And another. Angling their head towards each other, meeting and joining in the space between them, they revel in each other's taste.

'Lucien, I missed you.' Sera thinks, as their tongues slick together. It was fun to banter like this with him again, hearing the rumble of his low voice, and him making her laugh.

Unconsciously, her leg lifts up and rubs against the side of Lucien's thigh. The soft fabric of her dress made her feel itchy, more, starved for a stronger sensation against her man's hard body. Lucien was quick to respond to that light touch, gripping her knee and lifting her right leg so that it was wrapped around his waist. With her hips angled and opened wider to rub against him, Lucien groans, rubbing and squeezing her pert buttocks with his other hand.

Screeeach.

The kitchen doors open, and Grandma Rosie walks in, back with an empty pot in hand.

Sera jumps away from Lucien. Or tries to, but his hold was strong, keeping her in that same position, arms around his neck, one leg around his waist, as she buried her head in his chest in embarrassment.

Satisfied with the position they're in and seeing nothing shameful about it, Lucien gives a rare grin to the interloper that's stumbled upon their intimate moment.

Grandma Rosie looks at them, eyes looking glazed over at the devastatingly handsome smile. Slapping herself on the cheek, she blushes and shakes her head.."Ahh, to be young again.."

Elbowing her husband behind her, Grandma Rosie winks at him. "Do that to me too, sometime; will you?"

From behind her, Grandpa Robin harrumphs, in either embarrassment or some other emotion. It was hard to tell if he was displeased at the tooth-aching sweetness being displayed in his kitchen, with his furry eyebrows raising the tiniest fraction. Though he did seemed to give the slightest of nods to Gradma Rosie...

Yet, there was more to the story than this.

Lucien didn't want Sera to leave him. As Sera sighed with such sweetness within his arms, his heart told him he needed to tell her what he'd done. The true purpose of the magic that brought her back. Another half of himself was glad that Grandma Rosie had come back at that timing, interrupting the words percolating in his heart. Later. He told himself. He would tell Sera later.

He didn't want to lose her again. Lucien was willing to pay any price to tie her to him, and he'd done it, without Sera's knowledge.

——
Coos and flapping sounds, and Andre takes out a bird from its cage, strapping a small piece of rolled up paper to its leg.

He strides over to the window and throws the bird out, and it glides, up and out over the building below it.

From his location in the tallest tower in the Norwood keep, Andre, Head Knight of the Norwood family, brushes his blonde hair back, watching the grey dove make its way out towards the large castle sitting beyond the town, further past the green forest.