Chapter Text
September 2074
“Adeline, Adeline.”
Addie smiles, eyes closed, fingers running through the silky hair of a stranger as the deep voice of her lover rumbles behind her like soft, rolling thunder.
It has been a week since she’s heard her name rolling off Luc’s tongue, and despite everything, she missed it. She missed him. Of course she missed him. She always does.
The stranger she is straddling on a black leather couch — a 4D artist called Ranon, a rather charming man she met an hour ago at a bar before ending up in his apartment — has gone dead still in her arms, and Addie doesn’t need to look into his eyes to know his gaze must be blank emptiness now.
While there was a time she shuddered at the sight, at that lifelessness that washes over people’s eyes whenever Luc turns them into his puppets, it doesn’t faze her anymore. Not in the slightest. Which, perhaps, is another sign she truly is no longer human. The limpness of the stranger between her legs does nothing to dim the satisfaction of Luc’s arrival. She relishes the edge in his voice. The contained anger. A deceitful breeze before a thundering storm.
“Is this how you want to spend our sixtieth anniversary?” His voice is deep and smooth, but it’s silk mixed with poison. Poison that has been brewing inside him for sixty years.
Sixty years. It’s been more than half a century since they sealed their second deal. Sixty years of playing with him, tormenting him, toying with him like it’s her favorite occupation. Sometimes, she thinks it might be. She used to believe nothing could exceed the euphoria of tasting the beauties of life, of exploring new corners of the world, of finding novel art, and leaving her mark on history by carving her name on the pearls of humanity in silence.
But it seems she loves to carve her name into the god of darkness even more.
She doesn’t immediately get up. Instead, she remains straddled on Ranon’s lap, trailing her fingers through his hair just a tiny bit longer.
She smiles as a dangerous type of silence fills the air. She loves to drive Luc mad, to be the one to tear all possible emotions out of him as they circle around each other in an endless wicked dance.
Centuries ago, Estele warned Addie that gods are fickle, unsteady like moonlight on water, and Addie has learned to relish it. Or maybe she has always enjoyed it, the way Luc shifts from dark desire to burning irritation when she challenges him. The way he reacts, shifts, molds around her own emotions. The way he fights back and makes her ache every time she wins a round. Or the way his emerald eyes can flick from dark mock to softness at her words — a level of softness that he, the darkness himself, shouldn’t be able to provide. She has always loved it, because there’s something so deeply… human about it. Maybe that’s why their fates were inevitable. Because of that humanness, she could never have stopped herself from falling for him, despite him being a demon as much as a god.
Addie looks over her shoulder, eyes landing on the sight she’ll never grow tired of.
Luc is leaning back against the dark wall, wearing a sleek black suit, perfectly tailored. He looks deadly beautiful as moonlight and citylight pool through the window beside him, a pale halo brushing his jaw and carving his pretty features. His black curls frame his forehead, contrasting the stormy green of his eyes. His hands are in his pockets, pose laidback, but there’s a shimmer of yellow in his irises. Anger. And, swirling in that vicious darkness, is something darker. Jealousy, impatience, madness.
Addie smiles.
“What is wrong, my Luc? I’m not breaking our deal, am I?” she teases innocently as she turns around, rising from Ranon’s lap. “I said I’d be yours, and I am. My heart is yours, my home is you. But that doesn’t mean I can’t touch and explore. Fidelity of the heart doesn’t mean fidelity of the body, apparently.”
Luc’s jaw tightens while his gaze darkens into something nearly black. It sends another prickle of satisfaction through Addie, along with a rush of thrill. This has always been their dance, that push and pull, her resistance against his gravity, a game between a ghost and the night itself.
A game he designed. She may have whispered the promise, but he sealed the curse. Yet, she is the one winning.
She has, after all, found the boundaries of the curse. The slips and the cracks. It’s all in the semantics, the wording of her promise.
Do this, and I will be yours, as long as you want me by your side.
She can tell from his stormy eyes, their color akin to a raging forest in the night, that he’s currently recalling those treacherous syllables falling from her lips too. The one promise that has held them together for another sixty years. The promise she has exploited to make him suffer.
“You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” His voice is filled with displeasure as he gives her a slow once-over.
Addie stifles a smile, because yes, she does. She has managed to corner him. Luc may have quickly found out about her real intentions, her plan to get rid of him, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. On the contrary, it might be speeding up the process. After all, he knows how stubborn she is. She won’t give up, and he knows that. Her stubbornness is the very reason she’s been the only constant in his life for centuries, the reason he fell for her. It’s something he likes about her.
But her stubbornness isn’t doing him any favors now.
Her plan has always been to drive him mad until he doesn’t want her anymore, freeing her from their bargain. Freeing herself from him. To do that, of course, she first had to figure out how her new curse ties her down. It has taken Addie many years to discover what it exactly means to be his. The answer isn’t evident since Luc already holds her heart, and she holds his, and it has been this way for centuries. Thus, finding the boundaries of the curse has required many nights of prodding and searching.
Which, of course, has been driving Luc mad, but that is all part of Addie’s plan anyway.
She has discovered, to her surprise, that she is still very… free. Maybe this has to do with her previous curse — the promise of freedom — but deep down, she knows that’s not it. If Luc has the power to make a curse like Henry’s counteract Addie’s own curse, she’s sure he could’ve easily canceled out her plea for freedom with her new promise to be his lover.
But he didn’t.
“Being yours,” Addie begins as she takes a step forward, “could’ve meant being nothing but your possession. Forced in the home you gave me. Forced to stay by your side, only exploring the world along with you. Forced to do whatever you want. You could’ve prevented me from interacting with others, closed my throat when I talk, and frozen my fingers when I touch.” She shakes her head, remembering all the ways she initially feared the curse would entrap her. “But you didn’t make the curse that way, and now we’re here. Why?”
“You know that’s not what I want from you,” he replies, voice dark.
She does know that. Addie remembers all the times Luc smiled to himself whenever she traveled her own path and marveled at the beauty of the world. She remembers each time he chuckled as she eyed a new place with wonder. She can vividly picture all the moments his eyes glimmered with contentment when he showed her the works of another artist booming with talent (one he has blessed with a curse, of course), and she couldn’t hide her happiness.
He knows she can’t bloom when she’s tied.
Luc likes how Addie is when she’s free. He has told her this many times, whispered it against her naked skin at night. He enjoys her unapologetic cravings for earthly beauty. Her inexhaustible hunger for life. Her endless curiosity and joy. The way she has always known the sacredness of time and life. Her ability to live, fight, and shine, even when the world is suffocating her. Those are all traits he could only observe while she freely moved around the world, untied. It’s what pulled him to her.
In fact, one of the first times he couldn’t help but break the pattern of only visiting her during their anniversaries, was when she was playing in the snow, as free as a bird, laughing and enjoying the magic of the moment. That was in 1899. He told her later on, during a night they were sipping on a glass of wine while staring over a quiet coast in Greece, that he was intoxicated by it. Intoxicated by her smile and exhilaration, and the way she was so dedicated to enjoy the small arts of life. In his own words: ‘beautifully stubborn.’
“Two hundred years, and still behaving like a child,” she remembers him saying as he kneeled beside her in the snow. But in truth, his words were ones of growing fondness.
Trapping her by his side would smother who she is, and Addie knows he doesn’t just want her presence. He wants her as a whole. He does not want to crumble her in his palm.
And currently, she is using this to torment him.
“You wanted me to be yours,” she says as she takes another step in his direction, “but you also wanted an untrapped version of me. You have both. Yet, you’re not getting what you want. I’m never going to do you any favors, Luc. How long until you free yourself from all the trouble and cast me away?”
He doesn’t say anything, but something in him flares. His presence takes over the entire room in a sudden rush. The air fills with the rich scent of dark woods at nightfall, moss, earth in pouring rain, and ancient forests swaying in violent winds. The space between them feels like him, tastes like him, and she’s submerged once more in the ancientness of his power. Older than the earth, more vast than light, as infinite as the universe itself. It’s overwhelming, it’s terrifying, but it’s also beautifully addictive, a pulling force she wants to curl into, something she can’t ever seem to get enough of.
She's endlessly addicted to his essence, perhaps because he is so unfathomably grand that the invisible threads tying them together are as infinite as Luc himself.
The thought scares her, but deep down, it also fills her with something light. A feeling of security. Relief. A promise he’ll always be there. But she can’t let herself fall into the warmth of that promise. Not tonight. She’s been working sixty years to free herself from her pact with him, and tonight, she’s one step closer to her goal. He’s frustrated, he’s angry, because he knows she’s right: he has given her too much freedom. She can interact with anyone she wants, she can travel, she can leave the home he has gifted her and let it rot to dust as she moves to the other side of the world. The curse has, until now, barely shown itself under the form of an invisible force that traps her. Instead, it is Luc himself who always catches her and keeps her close. If she runs away, he is the one to hunt her down.
And she makes sure he does. She makes sure he grows tired. And she’s been enjoying it.
And the fact she’s found a few loopholes in the curse isn’t making it easier for him. In fact, the very reason Addie is in Ranon’s bedroom today is because of a loophole. Something that slipped between Luc’s fingers.
Addie promised to be Luc’s, so evidently, her heart can’t beat for someone else. If she approaches someone with the intention of falling for them, of replacing Luc in her heart, it doesn’t work. The curse intervenes. She can’t kiss anyone if there’s desire on her mind. However, if she trails her lips over a stranger's neck with the sole purpose of irritating Luc, she is still technically his. Anything she does for the sake of him, for the sake of increasing Luc’s longing, with only him on her mind, isn’t stopped by the curse. The curse seems to be more about intentions and feelings than physical constraints.
In other words, the curse seems to be about the heart, which Addie hadn’t expected in a million years.
She’s not sure why Luc chose this approach. Maybe he just didn’t care about the physical details because he was convinced she’d never go back to mortals with him by her side. Maybe he thought he wouldn’t care if she did try to touch a stranger, because he knew the pleasures he could provide were incomparable to the ones mortals can provide. Maybe he even thought he’d enjoy the little game sometimes; her touching a stranger in a desperate attempt to get back at him, but only being reminded of the grandness of him and the smallness of humans, because she can’t touch without obsessively thinking about him and loving him. He's never been one to shy away from their wicked push and pulls, after all.
Sometimes Addie even suspects that he knew she'd need some form of vengeance after what he'd done, and he believed a harmless and useless outlet would quickly solve the issue.
But that arrogance isn’t doing him any favors now, because currently, it drives him mad. So mad, in fact, that he finally breaks the stillness of the room and pushes off the wall. He takes a slow step forward. Then another. His eyes are wolfish, predatory, velvety dark.
“Aren’t you tired of playing these games, Adeline?”
“Not really,” she replies, smiling. “I’m having a good time. In fact, you’re coming at a rather inconvenient moment.” She looks over her shoulder, watching Ranon on the couch, his eyes completely blank. “I was looking forward to tonight. Could you maybe unfreeze him, and go? Maybe come another time?”
Luc’s eyes flash with irritation as he takes another menacing step forward. “Quit the act. I know he’s nothing to you. You’re doing this for me. You’re touching him,” his eyes flick to Ranon, “for me. I’m the only one you thought about when you felt him all around you.”
“Because you leave me no choice,” she says. “Besides, it doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.”
He stops before her, keeping a small but cold distance between them. His eyes are buzzing with intensity as he looks down at her. “I know you don’t enjoy this little war nearly as much as you like to pretend.”
Addie’s lips curl up into a little smile. “That’s where you’re wrong, my Luc.”
“Oh really?” he drawls, tilting his head. “Who are you trying to fool here? Me, or yourself? Because every time you hurt me, you’re also hurting yourself, my love.”
Addie lets nothing show on her face, but she knows he’s right. This war between them has been triumphant for her, it’s been thrilling, but even more so, it has been painful. His anger and frustration, she enjoys. She relishes it. The chase, she likes. But those flickers of hurt and agony, that sorrow that sometimes flashes through his eyes, hardening him like frost on a bitter cold night, is what has been hard to bear. She tries to take pleasure in it, and she succeeded at first, but she doesn’t know how to anymore.
Perhaps, somewhere, she’s starting to lose her own game. Perhaps this thing between them is true love after all. She doesn’t know how else to explain the ache in her heart when she sees the ache in his eyes.
But it won’t stop her. It can’t.
“I’m used to the hurt,” she says quietly, remembering all the years she’s suffered because of him, remembering how he got Henry into her life just to tear him out, which was both a blessing and a curse, like everything Luc provides. “But are you?”
He chuckles, a sound soft and velvety, but devoid of humor. Addie can’t help but stare at his pretty features basked in moonlight as he closes the space between them. He touches her cheek, thumb brushing soothing circles across her skin, and she can’t help it — she leans into the touch, into his warmth and familiarity, into something that feels so much like home that it aches.
“The past sixty years have been nothing but torment from you, my dear Adeline.” He pauses, his gaze turning distant, hazed by a memory, “Or rather—the past fifty-eight years. The first two years were still like a dream, weren’t they? It’s like we were back in the seventies, when I got you that key, and it was just you and me.”
Addie closes her eyes, a lifetime flashing behind her eyelids. She sees them dancing in 1952, engulfed in dim light and a smooth melody, his lips whispering against her neck until they found hers. Their first real kiss. His movements were first cautious, almost afraid of her bite, of getting hurt, until she kissed him back, and they both became hunger and heat and desperation, a result of decades of longing. Decades — if not centuries — of observing each other, of pulling and pushing, of waiting and hating, needing and craving. And that night, she learned for the first time that Luc could feel physical pleasure like she could, in the same way he can experience emotions like humans can.
Addie softens unwillingly against the brush of Luc’s thumb as she remembers their past in silence, the same events he’s probably thinking about too. What proceeded after that kiss was sixteen years of circling so closely around each other that it was inevitable they’d end up sharing an orbit. After all, sixteen years is a long time to spend tangled in bed over and over again, breathing each other's names and tasting each other’s skin. It’s a long time to spend thinking about each other every minute of the day. Dancing, dining, and exploring the world; kissing, touching, and telling tales under the stars; laughing, chasing, and remembering each other. Life had never tasted so sweet and promising, and at that moment, she couldn’t imagine an existence without him. So when Luc eventually said be mine, Addie knew she’d always say yes, even if there was a stern voice in her mind telling her over and over again: this isn’t love.
But time fades everything, even warning voices. How could she possibly have held onto that dark thought, that fear that it wasn’t love, that it wasn’t real, when they spent the next fourteen years living together? A home in New Orleans, a home in Luc’s arms. It’s a strange thing to attach home, a stack of brick walls, something so small and tangible and rooted, to something as vast as the god of darkness, and to someone as rootless as Addie. Yet, it made perfect sense. Everything made sense when they were together. Addie was happy, truly happy, and while she had always loved exploring the pretty corners of the world, it was so much more colorful now that she had a home, and someone to love, and someone she could tell stories to, and someone who remembered her, who knew her.
It simply felt right, being with him all those years during the 1970’s and the 1980’s. They were a perfect fit. And not just physically, and not just because they’re both inherently lonely creatures who need each other, but in many other ways, too. After all, just like Addie, Luc has a taste for art, human creativity, and earthly beauty. How could she not have fallen for Luc when she realized that he was the secret master behind almost everything she loved, everything that made life feel worth it? Her favorite novels, poems, musical pieces, paintings, sculptures, theatre pieces, and buildings; he was, and still is, the secret pull behind all those beautiful creations.
And yes, at the time, she really didn’t like that all this beauty was at the expense of humans lives. And yes, it took her a while to find peace with Luc’s soul-reaping actions. Nonetheless, she couldn’t help but start seeing infinite beauty in his darkness. In fact, already at the first opera Luc had taken her to in 1872, she secretly wondered if souls were even a fair price for such fine art. Which, in hindsight, was another sign her humanity was slowly slipping away from her.
The memories fill her with a type of bittersweetness that makes her chest ache, but she forces herself to hold Luc’s gaze.
“It was one of the most beautiful times of my life,” Addie admits quietly after a long stretch of silence, feeling that absentness in her voice, that same longing that dances in Luc’s eyes. “But then, you told me none of it was real, that it was all just a game to you.”
Luc’s jaw flexes, but his forest eyes don’t leave hers. “I lied. You know I lied, and not just because I’m always telling you so, but because you know me well enough to realize it. You know me like no one else ever has, Adeline.”
He’s right. She has long known he doesn’t want her soul anymore, that he’s afraid of the day she’ll want to surrender and disappear from the world. Yet, she desperately tries to hold on to the day he broke her with poisonous words. The day he made her believe she meant nothing to him, and that she was simply a means to an end. That day, the foggy glass veiling her sight shattered, revealing something she had forgotten. It’s not love, it isn’t real. And she’s currently trying so hard to hold onto those thoughts, to keep the shattered pieced apart, to protect herself from illusions, but sixty years of Luc’s ministrations is cracking her resolve once again.
Frankly, she isn’t sure those warning voices are speaking the truth anymore.
“Why did you lie back then?” Addie asks, almost in a whisper.
“Because you were so immediately convinced that everything we had was false, that nothing coming from me was real, that I knew the idea had never left you in the first place, even after decades of loving you. Coming from the one and only person who has ever known me, it was…” He falters, and Addie knows he’ll never finish his sentence because the words stuck in his throat are ones of open vulnerability, and she has spent too much of the past decades baring her teeth, prodding at soft skin with a knife, for him to be vulnerable.
Actually, that is a lie. He has often been vulnerable around her during the past decades, more than he ever has before.
He’s changing. She has noticed it. He’s morphing into something gentler, despite his boiling frustrations. It’s only further cracking her resolve.
Gods are fickle, Estele always said. And hell, if that doesn’t make them so painfully resemblant to humans, resemblant to her. She used to think gods were a steady thing, a constant, but it doesn’t seem to be true. Of course it isn’t true. Otherwise, Luc would never have started throwing the word ‘love’ at her, a word he had never associated with himself before they met.
Luc can be arrogant, smug, and cold, but over time, she has discovered so many new facets of vulnerability that it’s hard to hold onto her personal promise to get herself out of his shackles.
Addie bites her jaw and steels herself. No. This is no time to break her stance. This is Luc. A demon who feels many things, but not love. Who tricks people with wicked deals, and grants them unfavorable wishes. Who, despite being convinced this is love, only has room for possession. After all, a few decades ago, when Addie asked him in tears why he couldn’t just have freed her, he said: “because you’re mine.” It’s possession, it’s not real love, it’s need.
And yes, of course, she knows he longs for her and craves her presence. She knows his emotions are visceral, and that he tried to fight them back for decades, before eventually giving up because they were stronger than him. She knows he needs her, just like she needs him. She’s fully aware of the way his mood brightens whenever hers does, of how soft he can be around her despite the inherent fierceness of his nature, and of the ways his eyes haze with sorrow whenever she’s purposefully trying to slip away from him. But it’s not real it’s not real it’s not real. And he let her suffer for so long. And yes, maybe she’s free, and maybe she doesn’t regret her deal with him, and she wouldn’t trade her life for a bound, mortal one, but she’s still invisible, and she’s tired, and it’s all his fault. And what she felt with Henry was tender and light and warm. It may not have been passion and heat and push and pulls, but it was wonderful, and maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be, and maybe—
“You’re doing it again.”
Addie almost flinches. “Doing what?”
He brings both hands to her cheeks, cupping her face and gently tilting her head back until her eyes are completely locked with his. “Lying to yourself. Telling yourself that what I feel isn’t love. After all these decades, you’re still so stuck on your definition of human love, you can’t see that what we have is stronger. Can’t you see that we can’t love like humans because neither of us is human, and what we have surpasses what they have? Can’t you feel it, the way we’re tied together by something so much stronger than life itself? You’re a part of me now, and I’m a part of you. Every time you inhale, I exhale. Every time your heart flutters, something inside me shifts. When you run, I follow. When you laugh, I smile. When you’re gone, I ache. We’re bound to each other in ways that can’t be put into words. I have become more like you and you have become more like me. I’m not like I was a century ago, and even less like the century before that, and neither are you. We’ve molded around each other, and I—“ he pauses, something akin to helplessness swirling in his eyes. “—I don’t know what you’ve done to me, Adeline. I do not understand this any more than you do.”
Something inside Addie falters, cracks, shatters. Her lungs constrict. She feels so much, she longs for Luc so terribly, and the weight of his words is pulling her under.
He’s right. She is changing, shaping herself around him continuously.
In a flash of memory, she’s back on the roof in New York, on that fateful night sixty years ago.
“Henry Strauss bartered his own soul. Would you sell someone else’s to have it back?”
She pointed at a man before fully realizing what she was doing.
“My Adeline,” Luc said, kissing her hair. “You have changed more than you think.”
And she has found, over the decades, that the changes aren’t stopping. They’re slow but steady. And she’s not the only one, because as Luc said, he too has changed. From a determined “Love is hungry. Love is selfish,” sixty years ago, to an uncertain “Are you happy?” murmured against her skin a few months ago as she was dozing off to sleep.
Luc leans in, his lips ghosting over her temple. “What more do you want from me, Adeline?” His soft breath, somehow akin to a warm gentle breeze on a summer night near the woods, trickles from her temple down to her neck. “I know you’ve never felt anything like this before, and neither have I.” He presses a soft kiss beneath her ear. “Tell me, is what we have as finite and fleeting as human emotions? Is it extinguishable? Can you ever get enough of it?”
A heated shudder runs across Addie’s back as his hot breath feathers her skin. The answer, she knows, is no, but she doesn’t voice it.
A gentle kiss is pressed on her collarbone. “Why are you so desperately trying to push me away, Adeline? What else are you longing for? Is what you had with Henry comparable to us? Is it stronger?”
He has asked those questions many times before. There was a time she’d always say yes, but she did so to spite him, not because she truly believed it. What she had with Henry was different. It was lovely, warm, difficult, and fragile. And it was real, or so she wants to believe, because to this day, she still isn’t sure whether it was love. But what she knows is that it was worth every single moment.
But it wasn’t stronger than her and Luc. Their infinite magnetic pull, the passion, the longing, the heat, the desperation, the ecstasy, the happiness, the thrill, the need, the invisible thing tying them together to infinity. Nothing could be as visceral as all the things she’s experienced with him. Centuries of circling around each other, of falling in love with him over and over again, can hardly be surpassed. It can only be surpassed by themselves as time passes, which, in fact, is exactly what is happening. With every decade, she becomes a little less human, and he seemingly becomes a little more so, until they’ll eventually become one.
She closes her eyes, lacking the strength to answer. It seems to be one of those days she can’t will herself to lie. At her silence, Luc presses another gentle kiss across her collarbone. Her chest aches at his proximity. She misses him. She always does. How can she not? He’s everywhere; in the darkness between the stars, in the depth of the ocean, in age-old woods and landscapes, in darkened streets, in music and paintings and talented souls. She can’t escape him. She doesn’t want to escape him. Her treacherous eyes are always looking for him, seeking him out in the shadows, betraying her resolve to push him away.
Luc pulls back a little, just enough to observe her. The air is charged, filled only with his gravity. Storms, moss, and dark earth fill her lungs, pulling her into a hypnotic fog. Her heart flutters as she looks up at him. He looks so pretty in the moonlight, his lips so soft, his eyes filled with secrets of the night. She desperately wants to kiss him, to taste summer nights, dark galaxies, and the shifting of seasons. She wants nothing more than that familiar taste of home on his lips, and she can barely stop herself from closing the space between them. It’s been so long, it’s been weeks since she’s felt his lips on hers.
Which, of course, is a sign she’s winning.
Yet, right now, it feels like she’s losing. Because how is she supposed to bear a life without him?
No. No. she must not yield. She will win this war. She will make him hate her, prove to him he isn’t capable of love, and then she’ll be liberated. She’ll make him taste the flavor of losing a battle, and then she’ll bask in the freedom of his resentment. That’s what she wants. Surely, that’s what she wants.
… Right?
She tries to say, “I’m not yours. I don’t love you,” but the words are stuck in her throat. The curse is stopping her from breaking her own promise. Not that there would be much of a point in saying the words anyway, because she doesn’t mean them. They’d lack the bite.
Luc exhales a soft breath. “Aren’t you tired of this war, my love?” His voice comes out as a gentle murmur, but beneath the softness, there’s a hue of deep frustration. Of longing.
She touches his hand on her cheek, giving his fingers a gentle caress.“You’re only saying that because you’re the one hurting now, unlike previously. You’re losing, and you hate it. But I won’t be tired until you are, so there will eventually come a time you’ll have to free yourself, Luc. This isn’t worth the hassle.”
His jaw clenches. “You’re mad if you think I’ll lose this game if it means losing you.”
She shuts her eyes, unable to stare into his any longer. Sixty years. She thought he would hold out for maybe a decade or two. She was so certain that he couldn’t feel love, that he would always care more about himself than about anyone else, that surely, he’d cast her away once she’d become too inconvenient, right?
But she has been inconvenient. She’s been so damn inconvenient, especially the first few decades, when she still had some control over her own heart. She was damn insufferable. She did everything to break him. She angered him, which she enjoyed. She hurt him, which was agonizing, especially as her grudge faded and her attachment to him strengthened. She found all the ways to drive him mad, and she’s been yielding those weapons for sixty years now. It has led to fights and breaks and Luc disappearing for days or weeks before turning back. Yet, he’s still not done with her. He’s not nearly done. He always comes back, and she’s starting to believe he always will. And the worst part is that she’s always relieved when he does. She might be damn stubborn, but it’s difficult to keep pretending she cares more about winning than about him.
Two fingers brush her cheek. “I’m not losing you, Adeline. I don’t care what I have to do.”
Her voice turns soft, guarded. “Even if it would make me happy?”
He flinches, a wave of hurt washing through his eyes. His irises turn into something so grey and raw, that a painful tightness grips her lungs and throat.
His hands drop from her cheek and he takes a step back, leaving a gap of cold air between them.
“Would it?”
His voice is so fragile, so uncertain, so unlike what he was centuries ago, that it tears something inside Addie.
She’s frozen into place. She didn’t expect this. She didn’t expect this vulnerability. She didn’t think he’d… cave.
A painful silence lands between them.
She doesn’t trust herself to speak.
Would it?
Would it make her happy to not be his anymore?
There was a time the answer was yes. When she was angry. When she held a grudge because he had lured Henry into his games to prove a point. When she was certain their love was an illusion, and that Luc only needed her because he wanted to feel seen. When she thought that what they had must be the meaningless result of two lonely beings aching to be remembered.
But even if they were pulled together by loneliness, Addie can’t tell why that matters anymore. Even if his love is more selfish than pure human love, she can’t tell if she cares anymore, not when she finds so much peace in his arms. And she knows their dynamic is messed up; she’s a ghost to be forgotten because of him. But even Luc cannot break the laws of the universe and destroy a sealed curse, so what is done is done, and continuous blame is starting to feel foolish. She could be freed from her first curse, but she’s not willing to surrender yet, despite his promises to bring her back and create a new bargain, so all she can do now is continue to live, and taste beauty and loneliness every day.
Loneliness, when Luc isn’t around, at least.
So what exactly is the point of all this? Why is she trying to get away from him so badly? What would she gain from being cast off by him, except for the triumph of winning, and a little more freedom she doesn’t even need?
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t see the point anymore. She just knows there was a point sixty years ago, when she’d sworn herself to be patient and ruin what they have. Her determination to make Luc suffer and set herself free was razor sharp then, but it’s merely a memory now. Something she holds onto because she must, because she promised herself, because her dynamic with Luc has always been a battle of wills, because she’s stubborn and she wants him to lose, and because she loves to drive him crazy like he has driven her crazy in the past. He’s so used to being in control, to be right, and she wants to make him feel how it is to not have that power.
But the triumph of it tastes bitter now. It doesn’t feel good to see him like this, so genuinely sad, so afraid he’ll have to let her go because she’d be happier without him — something he wouldn’t even consider doing half a century ago. Where is the demon who once told her that love is selfish? She searches for him in his eyes, but she can’t find him anymore. Things have slowly evolved and it's scaring her.
Her head is swirling. Why is she doing this? She needs to think. She needs space.
She takes a step back. “I have to go.”
“Adeline,” he warns, jaw clenching.
She turns around without answering, reaching for the door in quick strides.
“You’re not going anywhere. You know what day it is.” His voice is darkened with anger.
“I’m sure you’ll find something to occupy yourself with,” Addie calls behind her shoulder before stalking out of the room and shutting the door. She half expects him to follow, to pull her into the void and transport her somewhere else. But he doesn’t.
Maybe her tricks are working, and he’s truly growing tired of her.
Which is a good thing. It’s a good thing it’s a good thing it’s a good thing. The goal is for him to hate her. That was always the goal. Focus on the goal.
She tries to swallow away the strange emptiness filling her body as she takes the elevator down.
The doors of Ranon’s apartment complex slide open as she walks into the night. The street is dark and empty, save for a few bypassers and silent cars. Addie tilts her head, letting the cold night air tickle her skin. She wishes she could see the moon like she could in Ranon’s apartment, which is on the seventy-fourth floor. But of course, it’s rare to see the night sky in cities like Brussels nowadays. The skyscrapers are too high.
It hasn’t always been like this, of course, but futuristic ideas that once were speculations — vertical cities, cyberpunk culture, androids, and mega corporations — are slowly starting to become reality. Floods and natural disasters have made large parts of the world inhabitable, forcing cities to break their old constructions and build high skyscrapers to create the highest population density possible. The world has turned into the way artists and scientists have predicted, which tends to always be the case to a certain extent. Addie has seen it an endless number of times, the way future predictions eventually come to life, and she finds it fascinating. Still, she sometimes misses old architecture and quiet streets, which left room for moonlight and stars. Not that she’s complaining, though. Such places haven’t disappeared from the world yet, and besides, she loves watching the world change.
But right now, she wishes to see the moon. She wants to see the darkness surrounding the stars, to be reminded that Luc is everywhere, even between the galaxies.
No. She shakes her head. She can’t long for him like this. Not now. Her resolve is weak again today, but maybe she simply needs to distract herself.
With a rush of determination, she marches through the city. She enters the busier areas, the parts that are a mesh of busy wet roads, neon lights, skyscrapers, bustling crowds, and holographic advertisements on concrete giants. She marches through the crowd until she arrives at one of her favorite clubs.
“The Last Resort”, is written in neon letters above the steel doors of the club. The faint sound of hard industrial music reaches her ears, and she can taste the desire, the drugs, the alcohol, the new experimental hallucinogens, the lust, the dancing bodies, the deafening beat of the music, the desperation of people trying to feel something in this dark world dominated by megacorporations.
It awakens something in her. Lust. Hunger for life. Hunger for him.
Of course Luc is still on her mind. It doesn't matter if she came here with the intention to momentarily forget about him, she simply can't. He is the night itself. She feels him everywhere, all the time, in every corner of darkness.
She craves him, despite her promises. Maybe she should give up for tonight. Sixty years is a long time to fight against one's heart and desires, after all. The lust and darkness that radiate from The Last Resort are irresistible, and it makes Addie want to seek Luc’s anger again. But she craves a different kind of anger than she should. She craves his frustrated lips on her, his hands ravaging her body, their limbs entangled in madness. She wants to forget that inner-voice telling her she needs to break away from him.
It’s their anniversary. He always claims her on their anniversary. She hates herself for thinking it, but she hopes he will claim her tonight too.
She doesn’t want him to let her go just yet.
Not… yet.
With that in mind, she enters the club, knowing Luc is watching. Deep down, she already knows how this night will end, and she can't even begin to pretend she isn't already aching for Luc’s touch desperately.