Chapter 96: Lucien’s Apology.

Kai opened the door and found Lucien standing there looking nervous and, impossibly, good as new. The injuries Kai had put on him were gone. The split lip, the swelling, the bruises, the battered wreck of a man who had held him in a blood-smeared corridor were nowhere in sight. Whatever healing Eldoria kept for its Crown Prince had done thorough work, and the fairness of that almost irritated Kai more than it relieved him.

"Hi," Lucien said.

Kai sighed.

"Hi."

They stood in awkward silence while the hallway air moved faintly between them and neither seemed able to find the next ordinary sentence. Lucien’s gaze flicked over Kai’s face, then lower, then back up again with a carefulness that only made the tension more obvious.

"You look tense. Are you okay?"

Kai felt a spike of internal panic land hard and fast. Was it that noticeable? Was the residual heat from Aster still sitting on his mouth and under his skin in a way other people could read? He forced his shoulders to settle and answered too quickly.

"Oh. Uhm. I am fine. I am fine."

"Great."

Another long silence followed and stretched until it started to feel like a third person in the doorway. Lucien shifted his weight, glanced past Kai into the room, and then gestured with one hand in a small and almost hesitant request.

"Can I...?"

Kai opened the door wider and stood aside without a word. The movement itself was permission, and Lucien accepted it by stepping inside. Kai closed the door after him, and suddenly the room felt narrower than it had any right to be with only two people in it. They were face to face again under the soft gloomy light left from the closed curtain, and for a moment neither of them moved.

Lucien stepped closer.

Kai instinctively stepped back.

The reaction landed on Lucien’s face like a clean hit. He raised one hand slightly, then stopped the movement halfway, clearly hurt by the retreat, and took his own step back before letting out a long breath that seemed to cost him something.

"I am sorry."

Kai waited.

"I am sorry for making you feel the way you felt." Lucien’s voice stayed low and controlled, but the control itself sounded fragile. "I am sorry for not taking account of your feelings. And I am sorry that I cannot do anything about the fact that those feelings were justified."

Kai watched him and felt no immediate softness rise to meet the apology. Part of him could recognize that Lucien looked incredibly hurt. Another harder part of him remained unmoved, still braced around the memory of being decided for in front of a table full of royalty and then kissed like consent could be assumed after enough intensity. He struggled against the instinct to leave the apology hanging unanswered, then forced himself through the careful consideration of what dragging this out would actually accomplish. Eventually he sighed and put on a smile that did not reach anywhere near his eyes.

"You are forgiven."

Lucien’s brows drew together.

"Am I?"

"Not entirely," Kai said. "But I cannot make you feel miserable forever, right? Besides, you did what you thought was right, so I cannot hold you endlessly for that."

The words were practical more than tender, and Lucien clearly heard the difference. His face tightened, and a single tear slipped free before he could stop it. He cleaned it away with the back of his hand, then tipped his head toward the ceiling and blinked hard as if the right angle might convince the rest not to follow.

Kai found the sight almost ridiculous. How had they arrived here so fast? One stiff apology and now the Crown Prince of Eldoria was fighting tears in a guest room like the conversation had opened a deeper wound than either of them were equipped to dress properly. Even so, Kai remained unmoved at the center. That was how finished he currently felt with the particular kind of pressure Lucien and Elias both represented. It was not that he had no remaining feelings for them. Those feelings still existed in complicated and inconvenient forms. He simply did not feel steady enough to want their proximity. In a colder mood he could have thrown Elias out of his life with fewer regrets than he wanted to admit, and the only thing that truly tied his hands was the larger architecture underneath everything. The thought that one of them might be a pillar still held him in place like a chain disguised as destiny.

That was how much he hated a marriage proposal.

Lucien lowered his gaze again and looked at him with a rawness that made the polished room feel too soft around them.

"I love you, Kai."

It came out of nowhere and landed in the quiet with no soft packaging around it. Kai did not know what to say. The silence that followed became long enough to change temperature.

Lucien did not rush to fill it with prettier language. He simply continued once he had the breath for it.

"It hurts so much to see these boys around you. I will not pretend otherwise. But I understand that you are your own person, so I have to live with the reality of sharing."

Kai held his eyes for a second and then gave the only answer that felt honest without opening another war.

"Okay."

That was all he had. Not a return of the confession. Not a rejection speech. Not comfort. Just acknowledgment that he had heard him.

Lucien stepped closer again, and Kai stepped back in turn without thinking. The hurt on Lucien’s face deepened, yet he did not push the distance this time. Instead he lifted one hand and, with a quiet shimmer of magic, materialized a bouquet of pale living flowers into his grip. The blooms looked like something grown under Eldoria’s light rather than cut from an ordinary garden, soft and luminous at the edges. He crossed to the desk, set them down carefully, and then moved toward the door with the posture of a man deliberately choosing retreat over another mistake.

"See you around."

"Yeah."

Lucien reached for the handle, and it was only when his shoulders had already angled toward exit that Kai remembered the one practical thing still sitting unresolved from the day before.

"Hey, Lucien."

Lucien turned immediately, almost too quickly, as if any address from Kai still had the power to pull him all the way back around.

"Yes?"

"How do I get to the Elder Tree?"

Lucien stared at him for a beat.

"Huh?"

"The Elder Tree," Kai repeated, and leaned one shoulder against the nearest bedpost because the room still felt like it required anchors. "I was told it is somewhere in the city. I need to know how to actually reach it."

Lucien’s expression shifted from heartbreak into confusion and then into a more focused kind of attention.

"Who told you about the Elder Tree?"

Kai almost said a half-fairy tour guide with no sense of personal space and then decided that particular explanation would open five new problems before it solved one.

"Someone in the city," he said instead. "Yesterday. He made it sound important."

Lucien studied him for a moment longer and then slowly closed the door again instead of leaving through it. He did not come closer this time. He stayed near the entrance like a man who had learned the radius of Kai’s tolerance the hard way.

"The Elder Tree stands at the far western rise of Eldoria," he said. "It is older than the palace and older than the current floating structure of the city. Most public paths do not lead there directly because the surrounding district is restricted to preservation routes."

Kai frowned.

"Restricted how?"

"Guarded in some places, sealed by old formation work in others. Citizens can view it from lower terraces, but entering the root platform requires either clearance or someone who already knows the unmarked walks." Lucien’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Why do you need to go?"

Kai shrugged one shoulder.

"Maybe I want a real tour. Maybe I am tired of seeing only the polished parts of this place."

Lucien looked unconvinced, and the hurt under his composure made the skepticism gentler than it might otherwise have been.

"If you are asking me for the route, I can take you."

"That is not what I asked."

"I know." Lucien’s mouth tightened. "I am offering anyway."

Kai held his gaze and felt the old friction rise again, not as explosive anger this time but as a firm need to keep the line where he had put it.

"I need directions, Lucien. Not an escort."

For a second Lucien looked like he might argue. Then he nodded once, slow and controlled, and accepted the smaller role being left to him.

"Leave through the west garden gate behind the guest wing. Follow the lower crystal canal until it splits. Take the narrower channel marked by silverleaf trees. After the second bridge, there is a descending stair hidden behind a shrine wall with no offering plate. That stair becomes an old maintenance path. Stay on it until the air starts to feel thicker. When the stone underfoot changes from pale to dark-veined, you are close."

Kai committed the sequence to memory and nodded.

"And if the path is sealed?"

"Then whoever told you to go there either has clearance or enjoys watching outsiders become frustrated," Lucien said. "The Elder Tree does not receive random visitors. If someone invited you, they likely intended to meet you there themselves."

That tracked too well with Milo’s grin and floating exit for Kai’s comfort.

Lucien remained by the door a moment longer, clearly searching for something else to do with the fact that he was still in the room and no longer welcome to close the distance. His eyes drifted once to the bouquet on the desk and then back to Kai’s face.

"I meant what I said," he murmured. "All of it. The apology. The love. The part about sharing. I know you are not ready to hold any of that the way I want you to."

Kai’s reply came quieter than before, but it stayed steady.

"Then stop asking me to hold it before I am ready."

Lucien nodded, and this time when he opened the door he actually completed the exit. The latch settled into place behind him with a soft final sound, and the room returned to Kai alone with a desk full of luminous flowers and a route to the Elder Tree now sitting clear in his mind.

He stood there for a while after and let the silence settle through all the leftover heat and hurt and unfinished things. Aster’s visit still lingered under his skin. Lucien’s apology still hung unfinished in the air.

He looked at the bouquet once more, then turned away from it and started getting dressed.