Lucian felt it. Even in his heat-hazed mind, he felt their bond shatter. Horror filled him, the pain deep, cutting and he worried that something truly horrifying had happened to Cass.
A low, guttural cry came from his lips, his body sluggish as he had just fully shed. He was trying to move as quickly as he could, but he could only do so much. He hadn’t shed in ages, hadn’t taken care of himself. If he’d been wiser, if he had known that someone like Cass would have come into his life, he wouldn’t have neglected himself like this.
Now he was paying the consequences in blood and he had no way to know that Cass was okay. That Cass was alive. The sorrow, the pain hit him, filling him with such a deep sadness he didn’t even want to continue with his shed.
What was the fucking point if the bond he’d had with Cass had shattered too soon? He knew that temporary bonds didn’t do this. Not when they faded.
This felt far too permanent. Too scary. Too real.
Lucian was ready to roar, cry, sob when something strange happened. A soft touch, a whisper of something floral, and words that felt like a breath.
"He lives." Two words, but they forced Lucian to pause. He’d never experienced anything like that before. Never in his hundreds of years of living had something like that happened to him. That could only be because of one person who was extraordinary enough to change his status quo.
Cass.
That was some kind of magic, some kind of trick by someone powerful enough to do something like that, and it was enough.
The mournful wail still left his lips, the feelings still filled him, but it shifted. Now he was just upset that he hadn’t been at his precious one’s side while they went through something difficult. He would have to snuggle him for the next 10 years to make up for it. As soon as the next damn phase of his shed was over.
He wondered if there was anything he could do, like Cass, that could reduce the time it took?
~
Gideon jerked, something powerful coming over him suddenly. He turned his gaze towards the sky, a whisper of wind rushing past him. He swore he could almost hear something in it as it passed, but then again, the area around him was full of the groans of men who had been put in their place.
It wasn’t just Gideon who had done it, Sam had also played a significant role in what had happened. Gideon, for his part, had used the flat side of the blade he had been given to deal not damage, but shame to those who had thought themselves more important, smarter, and that they still had a pull over him, a lesson.
Sam had simply helped Gideon with that task, while having the largest, most dangerous smile on his lips that Gideon had ever seen on the man. He looked positively thrilled he was beating up his family, and Gideon tried not to take it to heart.
If the man had some rage he had to get out, Gideon was grateful that it wasn’t directed towards him, at least.
The people who he had called family were mostly laid out on their backs, groaning, rolling around after Sam and Gideon had moved. They hadn’t made the first attack of course. Gideon was a changed man, not an idiot. He knew that Cass would scold him if that was the case because it would probably mean that they could do something to him. Gideon didn’t want there to be anything that Cass had to worry about.
So, maybe his lip was split. It wouldn’t last for long. He’d heal it, but only when he knew it wouldn’t harm Sam, the man who had been helping him all this time. Gideon spat on the ground, the cloak shifting in the wind as he stared at the bodies littering the ground. The carriage driver for his family had long since fled. It was a testament to the kind of people that Cass kept that theirs hadn’t.
He was owed a good ale after this.
"Sam, how are you doing over there?" Gideon called softly, the men not too far apart from each other, but there was enough distance so that they didn’t get in each other’s way. Sam was more like an untamed beast in his dealings, so it was up to Gideon to be aware and careful.
Sam sighed, brushing his hair out of his face with the back of his hand, his fingers elongated and terrifying. The rest of him remained the same, and with him in his uniform for the Blackburn family, it was a striking image. Gideon smirked. Cass would not be able to fight the allegations anymore if rumours of what happened spread.
"How could you?" It was a genuine question from the man’s lips that had told him, twice now, that he was disowned.
Gideon turned to face his father. He was the only one who had remained still, sending in his brothers to take Gideon and Sam down but it clearly hadn’t worked. He’d helped create his own personal army and it hadn’t been enough against one of his sons and a demon aide.
He probably was feeling rather...upset.
Gideon could tell by the way his face was twisted in the dim light. The flickering lanterns attached to the carriages cast them all in a dim glow, and Gideon let out a long sigh.
"How could I, what?" Gideon asked. He sounded short even to his own ears.
"How could you do this to your own family? Your own kin?" His father seemed genuinely confused. Like he had expected Gideon to continue to let them treat him the way that they had been. Sam scoffed, loudly.
"I may not have a family or siblings in the same sense, but you were no family." He said lowly. Gideon couldn’t help but agree.
"Sam is right. No proper family would treat me worse than demons would treat their young." Gideon pointed out and Sam nodded in agreement.
"I heard what you did to him. What you allowed the others to do to him. Beat him? Drug him? Embarrass him? What kind of sick freaks are you? Have you no loyalty? Even my creator would treat me better. I came from him, of course he would treat me with more kindness then he would treat his contractors." Sam argued. He was past hiding his connections because, why would he?
He was standing side by side with the saint. It was clear he was under contract, and whatever he was, truly, the gods hadn’t ordered his destruction. It seemed that Gideon’s father was coming to terms with that rather quickly, or had taken this whole time to process it while Gideon got his revenge on his brothers.
"Embarrass him? We were teaching him a lesson. One he clearly didn’t learn." His father said in between gritted teeth. Gideon could tell that he was holding onto his sword a little tighter. Sam wasn’t the one who laughed this time. Gideon had been spending a lot of time with Cass as of late, so the laughter that came out of him was loud, angry, and full of disbelief.
"Teaching me a lesson? Are you serious right now? I was a child, and I’ve always been your child. I’m pretty sure I know what the lesson you were trying to teach me, but why would I be fully loyal to a family that saw me as nothing? That looked at all of the effort I was putting into becoming a knight and rewarded those around me who didn’t care as much, weren’t as dedicated as I was, and turned their backs on the teachings? I almost ruined everything about my life for this family, and instead of taking me in and supporting me through some of the worst times of my life, you disowned me and threw me out onto the streets." Gideon scoffed. "That’s not loyalty. That’s not even basic care. I got treated better by the people I nearly killed than my family. That broke something in me. Any of the conditioning you had put me through faded in that moment." Gideon told him.
He could tell that his father didn’t like hearing it, but what else could he do? It wasn’t like Gideon was lying.
"You’ve lost all rights to protest anything that is happening to you and your family ever since you crossed my Lord." Sam told him plainly. "While my Lord and I are similar, he has a greater mission." Sam said. Even in this moment, Gideon watched as his father thought he’d gleaned the truth. Cass was working with a demon, therefore he was evil. Completely forgetting that the Vespertine family always had a demon in their bloodline and that was mandated by the gods themselves. Or he had gotten so comfortable with that fact he did not consider that others could be selected in the same way.
He was a fool, pure and simple.
"A greater mission?" He asked and Gideon rolled his eyes. He wasn’t going to take this anymore. The others had made the first move against him, but now he was going to take matters into his own hands. He didn’t alert Sam, or even his father. He just started moving towards him.
His father blinked, and then took a step back as he met Gideon’s serious gaze. It was a telling sign. His father was afraid of him. That told him all he needed to know. Had it always been like this? Who knew, but it explained this moment right now.
"Raise your sword." Gideon ordered. "Now. I want to beat you properly." Gideon didn’t hold himself back. He had no need to. He spat on the ground. "Now, father, or are you so much of a coward that you’ve let yourself go in your older age?" It was a provocation, plain and simple, and Gideon watched as eyes that mirrored his own lit up from within. The difference was that Gideon had changed, his father had not.
"Are you sure this is what you want?" His father asked. "There is no coming back from this." He was trying to scare him and Gideon let out a laugh.
"You thought there was a way to come back from this after you beat me in the dirt?" Gideon asked. "After you disowned me for the second time? All because I’m a homosexual?" Gideon said the words out loud and watched as his father flinched. There it was. Some of the truth. Gideon scoffed. "The gods have no issues with it, so why you would dare to let it bother you is beyond me." Gideon told him quietly. "Now, raise your damn sword. It’s my last warning before I beat you where you stand. I went easy on my brothers because they can’t form a thought between them, but you? You have no excuse."
The way that his father looked at him...it was telling. The man hated him. Gideon didn’t even know why, and he didn’t need to. He knew that how his father had treated him was unfair, he knew that everything that had happened to him, to Edgar and to Cass was unfair.
This man had helped contribute to it.
Gideon clenched his teeth. He had once wondered if his father had known what was going on with Cass? If he had seen the fear and pain in the young boy’s eyes when Gideon and Edgar couldn’t? Now, he had no question.
His father had known, and he had done nothing.
Gideon got into position.
"I’ll move first."