Chapter Text
Lux is no stranger to looking over her shoulder. She is used to the persistent fear of being caught, and it lingers even here, in the safe haven of Terbisia. She still finds herself stifling her glow each time it spills by mistake. Still finds herself listening closely for footsteps when she is alone.
The mageseekers are disbanded, but they still cast a shadow that will take time to dissolve.
Even so, she knows herself to be paranoid.
She hears the scrape of metal on stone. One solitary scratch of a chain knocked against the wall by mistake. Above.
He does tend to favor an assault from the rooftops.
Lux continues shelving her borrowed books in what remains of the library. She does not let fear touch her body. He's behind her—up in the banisters beneath a substantial hole still gaping in the roof. She makes a note to ask for its expedited repair. This is where she sleeps, after all. It certainly creates an opportunity, if he can get up there from the outside.
The sound has stopped. She feigns ignorance and listens carefully, but nothing. She knows the way his chains must be wrapped around his fists and held tight. She knows that he must be holding his breath. Are his eyes tracking her as she shelves one more book?
What does she look like through his eyes? The curiosity betrays her own assertion that she's over him.
Lux crosses the room as if about to leave. Instead of swinging open the door, she locks it with a click and says, "You're more likely to be attacked if you're caught sneaking in like this, you know."
Sylas lands on the floor behind her with a thud, all his chains clattering down after him in an aborted attempt at stealth. She hears him grunt, half-startled, half-annoyed at being called out.
"I might be attacked either way. I know I'm not welcome here."
"And yet," Lux says as she turns to face him, watching him straighten up. She can't help it; the first thing she does is glance down to see what damage his chains have done to the floors. Her lips pull thin. "Here you are. Damaging the foundations my people have worked hard to lay."
He is silent as her eyes slowly drag back up his body.
There is more color in his skin these days, and he has been gaining a healthy weight that he had been starved of in prison. More muscle too; the fighting has toned his form more than he ever could doing push-ups in a cell just to pass the time. But his hair is still unkempt and in dire need of cutting. She wants to grab it in a fight and pull. There's a reason military men keep their hair short, and it would do Sylas well to learn.
Familiar bruises still stain his skin under the edges of the heavy collar around his throat, and her eyes trace the curve of his jugular, like there might be more markings there to find. She reminds herself that it wouldn't be her business if there were, and that probably not everyone is plagued by the impulse to tear into him the same way she is.
His shoulders are tense. Lux can't pretend she does not feel vindicated by the way he wears his nerves so openly around her. Having the upper-hand is a feeling she has been denied for most of her life. It can't be wrong to relish it.
Besides, he is the one who had come to her with a mouth full of too-late apologies and her family's blood on his hands.
He had not groveled for forgiveness as she thinks she is rightly owed, but he had apologized, and he had been uncertain; she knows the face he wears in those moments.
Today he looks unsure, but it's different from back then. So if it isn't his own guilt, then what? He hasn't been so wary of her lately. It sets her mind racing. Not with worry, but questions.
It's dangerous to humanize him, threat that he insists on remaining.
Lux finds it impossible not to.
She crosses her arms, impatient with herself. She knows better than to indulge him. "So? What do you want from me? Or are you just trying to get me in the habit of lowering my guard for intruders?"
"I need you to look after Rayn."
Lux arches an eyebrow and moves back to the comfort of her books. The tall shelves feel like guardians, looming over her, protective. "Why?"
"I'll be traveling. Might be a while," Sylas says. When Lux stares at him for too long, he clarifies, "We aren't headed North yet."
"I don't care," she says, quickly.
His voice goes clipped, a step away from the sincerity of asking a favor. "I don't expect you to."
Lux heaves a sigh and leans back against the shelves. The shadows of the building drape heavy and cold over her. Light used to stream in through broken roofing, but the only hole left isn't in the sun's path. There is just one solitary beam of sunlight to keep the room lit, slipped in through an open window above her. It doesn't fall on her, but slices through her line of sight like a bar between them.
Outside, she can hear people talking. Children laughing.
It's a problem that he made it this far into her territory without being noticed. But it's her own fault—her mages aren't fighters like his are. It's her job to protect them. Danger only makes it past her walls by her own failing.
"I don't mind taking in refugees. That's what Terbisia is for ," Lux says. "But I don't see why you can't just leave her with your own people."
He is quiet for so long that she thinks he may not answer, then finally he lets out an irritated grumble, rubbing at his right arm. Lux isn't sure how she had missed the mark on it before, but when his hand moves away she spots it: a red and purple bruise. An indentation that looks like teeth.
When she had considered that there might be bites on his body, she hadn't considered that they might be actual injuries .
Sylas says, "She wanted to spend time here. Would you condemn a child because of your personal conflict with me?"
"No," Lux says, distracted. "I—Sylas, this is not a personal conflict. For as long as we disagree on methods, we'll remain on different sides of this, and…" She struggles for words. She wants to stay diplomatic, but firm. Patient but willful. She's a leader, and she needs to act like it, but they've had this argument a hundred times now, and "—Did she bite you?"
"If that lowers her chances here," Sylas says slowly, "then no."
Lux bites the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. Fondness is as much a traitor as curiosity. "And if I say it doesn't change her chances?"
"Then yes," He says. Unlike her, he doesn't hide the grin; a wry, sharp-toothed thing. His eyes scrunch up and his head cocks to the side, even as he rubs at the bite mark again.
Her eyes drift from the bite mark to his bared throat for a moment too long. She pulls her gaze away to stare at dust in the sunbeam instead.
"I'm not saying yes," she says. "But how has her control been, lately? You said last time that she has trouble with… overflow. If she's a danger to others…"
"I was hoping that you would help her learn to control it."
A laugh bursts out of Lux before she can stop it. "Me?! What makes you think I can do more for her than you can? You were the one who taught me to control my own magic to begin with!"
"You learned fast. You hardly needed my help at all."
She swallows back an argument, because she knows it would only be contrarianism. He isn't wrong. Her training with Sylas had been like learning the basics of a math equation. Shockingly simple; then the world was suddenly much easier. Brighter. The dizzying complexities had fallen into obvious steps to follow, all separated by clear boundaries.
Praise for his help is undue, at this point. Any debt or gratitude she may have had, he's already taken payment for by force.
She says instead, "Well. I still feel I won't be of much help to her. I only know my own magic. Unlike you, who's had a taste of all kinds."
Her lips purse as she belatedly realizes this almost sounds like a compliment. Or jealousy. The dust in the sunlight is beginning to settle and she stares at the fluttering specks intently.
"Lux," Sylas says, with an imploring patience in his voice.
"I won't have more success if none of your mages have been able to help."
"You might. You're special."
Her eyes cut to him in warning and his hands raise in a placating motion, both of them treating this like it had been a cutting insult.
She is too angry to remind him how useless compliments are. He's told her before that they aren't an attempt to earn back her favor. That they're just simple pragmatism. It doesn't make the volcanic, angry heat in her stomach any cooler. She feels her cheeks flushing and prays he will not take this the wrong way.
It's a relief when, this time, he is the one to break eye contact first, glancing up and away as he admits, "I… had thought she might like to be around other children. There aren't many in our camp. Some—but after Leilani—"
"—You don't go out of your way to recruit children anymore, least of all those who can't fight," Lux says, with a pointed, cruel emphasis toward the end. "I know, Sylas. It isn't as if the ones you send to me don't speak of you."
Sylas shrugs, and they are quiet as this hangs in the air.
His stubbornness is such a frustrating thing. Lux doesn't understand it. He's gotten what he wanted. He's freed the mages and they have a place now. A city, not just some ruins in the woods, if his people would trade their weapons for farming and carpentry tools.
The people know the truth about their history and the laws are being rewritten. Those who threaten the peace of Demacia either come from the outside, or are outliers still clinging to the past.
Yet it's not enough for him. The people who have hurt him the worst are dead, and still it is not enough for him.
There's no use arguing anymore.
Things aren't like they were after he escaped his execution, when she had felt like there was still something left unsaid between them. Is this what closure feels like? This lingering ache of disappointment, when you know you've said all there is to say? When you can't see eye to eye, and know that any attempt to bridge your differences would only be a waste of breath?
Children are still laughing outside. Lately they have to be shooed out of the wheat fields where they like to play tag, ruining perfectly good grain. And she's going to have to tell them to stop drawing on the walls soon too. It's one thing to make the best of rubble and wreckage, but order has to be restored and silly impulses have to be subdued.
For now, their delighted shrieking feels like a guilt trip.
Despite Sylas, Rayn should be allowed this, just as much as them.
"Fine," Lux snaps. "Fine! A week, you said? I can look after her until you get back."
Frustration bubbles up in her gut at the way his shoulders relax, at the relief in his eyes. Seeing kindness in him is all the more blood-boiling, knowing its limitations. Her stomach feels hot and sticky and mean, the way she used to feel as a child when her toys were taken away for bad behavior.
"Thank you, Little Light."
She's told him a dozen times not to call her that anymore.
Lux gropes blindly for a book off the shelf behind her and throws it at him as hard as she can.
Sylas catches it too easily, grabbing it from the air with its spine flat against his palm. He takes the time to straighten it and make sure its pages aren't crumpled, which Lux resolutely refuses to appreciate.
Then he steps closer, through the streak of sunlight. The heat inside her redoubles as the distance between them closes.
He reaches out to slip the book back into its place on the shelf, and Lux is boxed in by his extended arm like a barricade. There's always a cage, somewhere. Her head tips back to look up at him, chin nearly brushing his broad chest. It takes a moment before his eyes cut from the book to meet hers.
He doesn't step back. His arm keeps her trapped, fingers curling around the edge of the shelf.
"You spoil me," he says, quiet, like he used to when she would bring him treats in his cell; like she hasn't just thrown a heavy book at his face.
As if she's just as endearing to him whether she offers him sweets or injuries.
"This isn't about you," Lux mutters. She doesn't let her gaze drift to his mouth, and it takes a concentrated effort. Fury ebbs at her edges, like the heat inside her is a waxing tide, and when the wave pushes too far, she snaps, "You could have just sent her here with word that she needed somewhere to stay. Did you really think I would turn a child away?"
He ignores the sharpness of her tone completely. He says, perfectly casual, "I'll bring her in the evening. I wanted to see you."
Alone , he means. Has to mean.
Lux holds her breath. It takes all her self control not to kick him in the ankle.
Her mind races for something to fill the sudden blankness that she forces into it. Like pushing all her thoughts out a window, she is left with open space that needs filling before the same thoughts can creep right back in.
A community center, maybe. The framework of the old council building is still strong and she likes how open the floor-plan is. Maybe a daycare. She needs to tell the others that once all the housing is weather-ready, they should focus on public areas. And there's a fence near the west side of town that needs repairs, so—
—Sylas's hand touches her shoulder. Not in a hold, but with a brush of his knuckles. As if, standing this close, shutting her in so purposefully, he still thinks it would be too much to grip her arm like a friend might.
He's right, but it annoys her even so.
"Distracted?" he asks.
Lux shivers, despite how warm she is. "I just have a lot on my plate at the moment. More now, thanks to you."
"Then I'll leave you to it," Sylas says, and the disappointment in his face betrays his indifferent tone.
This is good. She wants him gone, and selfish sentiments like having wanted to see her only send her mind spinning.
Lux finds her hand wrapped around a golden chain before he has even finished turning away.
The sharp edge of it digs into her palm, but she likes how solid it feels. Like the comfort of holding her staff in her hands, or the hard chest-plate of Garen's armor against her cheek when he had hugged her once, months ago.
She trained herself so long ago not to touch others, as if her affliction was contagious. Even now that she knows better, she often finds herself stepping away from a friendly hand at her back in the market. She keeps distance from the children most prone to throwing themselves into the legs of their siblings for fear they will try the same with her.
Even Sylas hardly dares, and she knows that he wants to touch her.
Not like that, she reminds herself. It's just—her affliction is contagious for him, if no one else. It's a power that he doesn't hide his lust for.
But he won't take it anymore. This should be a relief.
Holding onto his chains like this does not feel unlike holding the leash on an animal.
He is looking at her with his lips curled up at one corner and his eyebrows raised in interest. She fears too much what he might see in her, and lets his chain drop from her grip.
"You wanted to see me, didn't you?" she asks, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Then don't leave in such a hurry just because I want you to."
"You want my selfishness to outweigh yours?"
He looks halfway to laughter, and admittedly Lux has to keep her own at bay, too. She is being ridiculous. She knows she is.
"Of course not."
They stand like this. In the dim light, with a shelf beginning to dig uncomfortably into her back. In the cool shadows of the dusty library, just below the crumbling second-floor where she keeps her bedding and favored books.
With his arm caging her in again, this time without reason.
His other hand lifts to touch her again, making her shiver at the soft brush of knuckles down her jaw.
His chains are heavy as they drape against her shoulder, but the touch of his fingers stays light. A soft drag like he's exploring the shape of her face by touch. As if he has permission to take his time, tracing over her cheek, then carefully slipping further back. He brushes her hair aside, and she bites her lip as his thumb rubs behind her ear.
His shackle digs into her shoulder as his hand wanders to the nape of her neck. She is conscious of her breath and her pulse beneath his palm, and knows she does not steady them as well as she would like to. The feel of his shackle somehow bothers Lux less when she leans towards it. The texture tickles when it touches her lightly, but a harder touch is grounding.
It keeps her legs from going out as Sylas kneads her nape. Almost instinctively, her fingers find his chains again, and run along the smooth edge. A surrogate for touching him back, but of course, she doesn't dare.
His touch is a harsh, painful massage that she's surprised is to her liking. Lux has always thought of herself as a delicate girl. If not in terms of magic, at least in terms of her body. But there is an edge of pain to this that makes her want to melt, that empties out her head and turns that hot sea inside her into a rising tide.
Her skin is flushed. She feels dizzy and tired, as if she has been lying in the sun.
"Poor girl," Sylas murmurs. The arm caging her has shifted closer. His skin is scalding even through her sleeves where it presses against her. One thin strip of fabric away from having her magic drain into him double. "Leadership takes its toll on you."
Her breath stutters. It's gone heavy, she realizes, and as her chest heaves she finds that his is tantalizingly close to touching.
"It's nothing I can't handle," Lux whispers, unable to draw her voice louder.
His grip at her neck goes harder, just for a second, as if to scold her for the lie, and Lux hears herself exhale something too close to a moan. Hot shame floods her face; her eyes clenching shut like it could keep him from seeing how red she's sure to have gone.
"Turn around," Sylas mutters, and Lux barely hears him over the sound of her own pounding heartbeat.
She obeys without thinking, allowing his fingers to drag over her throat as she turns. Lux stares at the tidy row of books and thinks about how stupid she is for this—until Sylas's palm runs up her back.
He sweeps her hair from her neck and when he leans in to kiss her there, this time his collar presses against her. She feels the sharp dig of metal more than she feels his lips, and still she trembles, her legs going weak.
"Sylas."
The warning in her voice is an empty threat.
It only gives him a momentary pause. Then his hands are roaming. He gropes at her hips, one hand slipping under her tunic. His fingers touch her skin, a prism bursting inside her skull, and she can only pray her shudder is not so obscene as it feels. She shifts her weight with a greater impatience than she has ever felt before.
One finger hooks in her waistband.
"Arch for me," Sylas murmurs.
Lux obeys. She crosses her arms on the shelf and pushes her hips back towards him, putting her weight on her toes.
"This is—an embarrassing position to be in, you understand," she finds herself saying. Immediately she's awash with shame. Maybe it's better to stay quiet and not shatter the moment so clumsily. Maybe it makes it obvious how inexperienced she is. Maybe it draws attention to how well she should know better than to do this.
She doesn't know how to behave in moments like this. Her mind spirals out. Does Sylas? How, when he had been in prison since childhood? He's been out of prison for long enough now, she supposes. So who? Leilani? Someone else from his camp? It's none of her business, but sets her insides blistering angrily.
Sylas says, "Then it's a good thing no one will see you but me," before he slips his thumbs into her waistband at either side and tugs her pants down.
Lux squeaks, then buries her burning face in her arms.
"You locked the door once you knew I was here," Sylas murmurs. "Was that on purpose, Little Light?"
She doesn't answer, and there is a moment of stillness. She knows that she should at least tell him not to call her that. She should say no . That the thought never crossed her mind.
In the quiet, she still hears the distant sounds of her people. The reminder that they are just one wall and a locked door away while she is behaving in such an undignified way makes her skin buzz.
The next touch startles her badly; her shoulders jump as he slides one finger over her slit. She whimpers at how easily he rubs back and forth over her slick entrance, and at how suddenly this friction goes from overwhelmingly good to not at all enough.
Lux is not proud of the way she arches her back and pushes herself toward him. She feels needy in a way that she has never been able to put words to. She doesn't understand how Sylas does this to her so easily; how he opens up this pit inside of her every time he is near.
One finger pushes inside her, smoothly thrusting in and out without hesitation. His hands are so big that the intrusion feels like too much too fast—and satisfies the unnamed itch she has been fevered with for unbearably long.
He doesn't call her out for the way she rocks back against him, following his hand each time he pulls back.
He calls her out for something much, much worse.
"Do you remember," he murmurs, leaning closer to her and not quite whispering. "When I was in that cage? You came to visit me when you were supposed to meet a man you were engaged to."
His finger plunges deep inside her, his palm warm against her cunt when she presses back against him.
"That was—ahh—a very long time ago," she complains, knowing she is undercut by her own moan.
"Did you want this then?" His finger buries inside her; she can feel the dizzying press when it crooks. His other hand squeezes at her thighs as if to feel her desperate tremble, and that grounding scratch of his shackles helps her to focus on his words, though she wishes it didn't. He asks, low, "Have you wanted it since?"
"What about you ?" Lux snaps, squirming, face hidden in her arms. "Stop teasing me."
"I'm not," Sylas lies, easily.
But he is, though, even as a second finger joins the first. His rhythm matches the pace she sets, her hips rocking as she presses back against him. It feels like there are stars behind a veil that she is so close to seeing, but she doesn't know how to close that gap by herself, and she can't make him do it for her.
She hears his labored breathing, even hears the way he shifts his own weight, stuck with his own unsatisfied want. His hands refuse to leave her. One palm slides over her thighs and her ass, thumb roaming and rubbing into soft flesh. His fingers fuck into her, as deep as she craves and harder now, like he can read the growing desperation, like it isn't just her magic flowing between them but her thoughts too, no matter how incoherently they've begun to circle the word: more .
It just isn't enough. His hands are all she feels. Arching her back with her face to the shelf, she can't see him. Can't hope to read his expression, and worst of all can't feel his body against hers. She wants him pressed against her so hard she can't breathe, she wants her magic to melt into the full expanse of his skin.
A slight shift in angle finally sparks the stars, and Lux chokes on another moan. Her head drops, hanging heavy, forehead against her arms. Her skin is burning all over yet somehow his hands are hotter.
"—Please," she begs, her legs beginning to shake with the effort of pushing back against him so desperately.
The only response she gets is his seedy, heavy breath.
Still no body pressed to hers, still nothing to quench the demand she won't verbalize.
Lux tries again, refusing to ask clearly, refusing to clarify, refusing to even think about what she's asking for. Tears have begun to well up in her eyes and each thrust seems to push a moan out of her, making it hard to force out another pleading, "Sylas, please, I want—"
—But she can't say what she wants.
Because noble girls don't beg to be fucked against the the library shelves.
Sylas is breathing so loudly that he must want this too. She wouldn't deign to say she reads him well, but she's sure of this . The wordless refusal is devastating. Her unsatisfied want climbs higher than any peak she thought possible, and Lux bites her lip hard, feeling stray tears drop to the floor.
"Tell me what you want," Sylas says, his voice strained and gravelly, like it's been dashed to shreds against a rocky shore.
He can't not know. He has always taken whatever he wants from her without asking. So why, now, does he refuse to take her? Why, now, does he need her to say it?
She wants his cock inside her. She wants him to hold her hips so hard she bruises. She wants to grip the edge of the shelf to hold herself up and feel his hips against her ass and his chains scraping against her legs. She wants to hear the slap of skin as he pounds into her deeper than his fingers can reach, and she wants him to feel how wet she is for him. She wants his hands to pull her closer to him like he can't resist.
She wants him to answer her question. What about him? Had he wanted this, back then?
Would he still have betrayed her if he'd gotten it?
Lux shakes her head, and as if to punish her further, Sylas's hand slows. One finger rubs over her slit in time with each thrust of the others inside her.
"Go ahead, Little Light. Come."
Her head spins. Is that all he thinks she wants?
The pleasure builds with the gentle push against her clit, and the thought of reprieve starts to sound like a dream. Like reaching the peak of a mountain, so that she could once more push her real desires off the cliffside. Like she could pretend they won't just climb back to her. (This never works. Never.)
"You are so stupid ," Lux mutters between heavy breaths.
This gives Sylas pause again, but it hardly matters with Lux rocking her hips back against his palm, with Lux grinding back towards the finger at her clit.
"Faster," she whispers, allowing herself this much. He obeys, the immediacy almost satisfying enough to make up for what he won't offer. Her legs nearly give out at the friction as his finger rubs, slick and thick, faster over her clit. They tremble uncontrollably, making it difficult for her to arch and push against him how she needs.
Sylas praises her softly, "Good, that's it," because he is an idiot.
How can he know her so well and so little at the same time? To know half of what she wants and miss the rest so wholly?
Lux knows that she is whimpering as she comes, but all she hears are the wet sounds of his fingers in her cunt and the satisfied groan Sylas lets out when she clenches around him, as if he has gotten anything from this.
Her legs buckle. As soon as Sylas pulls his hands away from her, she slides down until she is sitting on the floor, surely looking like a mess with her skin flushed red and her pants still down around her thighs. Her chest heaves, and the aftershocks pull a quiet whine from her, even as she sits still.
Lux doesn't know how to turn around and face him. She had been right: coming was like pushing her desires off a cliff. Now she is watching them fall away, half horrified at what she sees and half relieved that she hadn't voiced them.
The image of being fucked here comes to her unbidden, though. Against the shelf. Bent over one of the tables. Lifted up, her back against the wall. On the second floor. In her own bed, like lovers, her hands wrapped around to flatten against his back.
She shudders, feeling hot enough under the skin to boil alive.
"I hope," Lux says, still struggling to catch her breath, "that you aren't expecting anything in return for this."
"No," Sylas says quickly, sounding mildly offended. Then after a pause he rethinks this answer and says, "Wait—childcare."
Lux holds her breath for a second. Releases it. "What?"
"Joking," Sylas says.
"I should hope so. This is… no way to ask for favors."
She risks a glance over her shoulder, and sees him tip his head back with a smirk. "No?"
The confidence does lose some impact when she can see that he is flushed, from his face down to his chest that still rises and falls dramatically with each uneven breath. When she can see that he's still hard, strained against his pants and—she has to look anywhere else.
Lux pulls herself up on shaky legs and is relieved he doesn't offer her any help. She rests one hand on the shelf and awkwardly pulls her pants back up. She straightens her tunic.
"Is this how you do things at your camp? How you barter?" Lux asks breathlessly.
Sylas has the decency to look alarmed at the idea. "No."
She can't help but narrow her eyes at him. As if she has ever been good at discerning his lies.
There's another question on the tip of her tongue. Then what does this mean, Sylas?
But she can't bring herself to ask, and he doesn't volunteer an answer.
Sylas doesn't stay much longer.
Once he has left, Lux spends the rest of her day lying in the wheat fields, where the children have trampled a decent spot to hide behind the tallest stalks.
She stares into the sun until her eyes hurt, then closes them and repeats her mantras until the night comes.