The Flames That Bind Us (Daughter of Fire #1)

✔Chapter Thirty Seven: The Honouring Day

"You have one second to get that hand off me," I told him with as much control I could muster, "before I melt it completely."

Luckily, he heeded my warning, and his hand dropped to his side. But he still stood like a boulder, parrying me from the cemetery's gate. "Lydia, I need to talk to you," he said with a desperate tone.

I rolled my eyes and folded my arms against my chest to try to put as much distance between us. "Yes, yes. You're here because you're sorry and all that. Save it, Lucius. I don't want to hear any of your bullshit today, and I don't have to anymore."

He flinched at the heat in my tone and sighed when taking off the white hat on his head. I noticed he was wearing all white, and somehow it was the cleanest I had ever seen him.

"I know you're mad at me, and you have every right to," I snorted at the obvious statement. "But if you could just listen to me, I would be very grateful."

"And what?" I snapped. "So you could tell me more of your ridiculous excuses."

"They're not ridiculous! I was trying to protect you."

I had lost count of the number of times my eyes rolled back in their sockets.

"And yet wizard hunters still attacked us," I argued, feeling the sleeping fire simmering within me. "They took Lis' magic, almost killed me, and Luxus is dead because of them!"

I was yelling at this point, nothing but a silent Lucius and an empty cemetery taking the fire slipping from me. But I heaved a breath as if slowly pulling back the flames. "So tell me, is that what you were trying to prevent? Because you've done shit for it."

I know it was unfair to take it all on him, but if he had been here from the beginning, things might have turned out differently. Luxus might have lived if someone else was protecting him.

But he didn't. And I couldn't help him. Not at the right time, at least.

"Why are you even still here?" I made a face of distaste. "Go ahead and leave. Go to your good friend Gerard. I'm sure you two will laugh about how you managed to fool everyone. How did you do it anyway?"

There was a body, mangled and broken and resembled only a little of Lucius. But it was identified as him.

He swallowed, something like shame crossing his features. "The body was a doll, glamoured by Gerard's friend in the Congress to present a corpse. The glamour would wear off as soon as the body was buried."

A glamour....that explained it.

"Well, that's smart, I presume," I shrugged, my voice laced with sarcasm. "I bet you're so proud of yourself."

A muscle in his jaw pulsed, and he ground his teeth in frustration. "I wasn't trying to deceive you. I have many enemies who would do anything to get to me. And I couldn't risk it with you, so I had to disappear."

"Disappear!?" I was appalled at the word. "You faked your death. You had everyone believe you were lying under piles and piles of dirt!"

The sheer audacity of him believing he wasn't in the wrong here made me want to bang my head against a tree.

"And I did that to keep you from harm!" he almost shouted in my face, and I took a step back. Lucius noticed my reaction and allowed himself to inhale through his nose. "Look," he said softly, "I have lost my family because of my own carelessness. I had a wife, and a daughter three years younger than you, who held the same name."

Shock registered in my body, but I didn't allow it to show.

Not once have I heard him speak of that, nor did any of the people who knew him. A wife and a daughter...there was no sign of them in the house, no pictures, no indications that someone besides him and I lived there.