My Infinite System.

Lucian found Evelyn standing at the very edge of the rise, alone.

The others had taken up positions deeper within the second line of the ground, where Marc was making final adjustments to the watch lines and Lucy kept Althea company while Reia and Silas murmured over something only the children could hear. A tension stretched taut between the watchers, the kind that came with the knowledge that something far away was coming. It had been pressing against Lucian’s senses for hours, and Marc had felt it in his bones long before that. The two of them knew without being told.

Evelyn did not turn at Lucian’s approach.

”You’re going to try to find him,” she stated flatly.

Lucian halted a few feet from where she stood. ”Yes.”

”Of course you are.”

Lucian exhaled slowly. ”He’s still missing. It doesn’t exactly make things convenient.”

Evelyn gave a short, bitter laugh. ”Convenience is one word for it.”

”He is my father.”

”I am well aware of who he is.” Evelyn turned to face him now, her expression as sharp as a blade. ”I know what he did. I know what he enabled. And I know that every time that name is spoken, we act as though his sins were theoretical.”

Lucian met her gaze evenly. ”I don’t think they are.”

”No. You think you have the right to make him a family matter again.”

”He is family.”

Evelyn made a sound like a laugh, but there was no humor in it. ”Easy words from the man who gets to continue doing so.”

A gust of wind stirred the edge of the rise, brushing across Lucian’s skin. Somewhere in the distance behind them, a rock had shifted beneath someone’s feet and now settled back into place.

”He has done terrible, irredeemable things,” Lucian said quietly. ”And I do not pretend those things did not happen. But he has also aided us, despite everything. He has fought at our backs when he knew he should have disappeared into the dust of what he had caused. He is family, and we do not abandon our own.”

Evelyn stared at him. ”Our own.”

”Yes.”

”I lost my entire family.”

Her voice was low when she spoke again, but there was steel in it. ”Not scattered. Not lost. Not gone. Vyn lost her father, and Reia and Silas both can barely stomach the remnants of the families who raised them, and the entire histories of entire lines have been severed in the wake of what Alistair launched. Not to mention everything else he did to the old universe.”

”I know.”

”Do you?” Evelyn took a step closer. ”Because you speak of him being family as if it isn’t the rest of us who have paid for his sins in full with every argument we make about leaving him be.”

Lucian’s jaw clenched. ”I am not asking anyone to forgive him.”

”Then what are you asking?”

”To not leave him at the mercy of whoever took him while we stand by and watch, pretending it is justice.” Lucian’s voice was quiet, but there was a thread of something dangerously close to steel in it. He forced himself to calm, to keep his next words grounded. ”Justice would have required a functioning world. We do not have that. We have the remnants of it. He is one of the remnants. He is one of us.”

”He does not deserve the protection of that sentence.”

”Perhaps not.” Lucian’s voice was even, measured. ”But I am also not in the business of judging who deserves to be rescued based on how pure their intentions were in the wake of catastrophe. If I were, the rest of us would not be up on this rise.”

Evelyn looked away first, staring out over the broken land beyond their camp. Her shoulders were rigid. ”You always do this. You take the burden, and then you make the rest of us carry it in the way that seems most convenient.”

”I am not asking you to carry him.”

”No. You are asking me to watch you do it.” Evelyn turned her gaze back to him, meeting his eyes. ”Again.”

Lucian fell silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was in a measured tone. ”He is my father. It does not make him any less of a monster for it, and it does not change that part of me will always want to see him pushed through a wall for what he did to us.” He paused, taking a slow breath. ”It does not change that it is still my father.”

Evelyn turned sharply. ”Then why protect him?”

”Because if we only protect the righteous, we are going to find ourselves with very few people left.”

The silence that followed was thick.

From the main camp, Marc’s voice was barely audible as he took up his watch. Lucy murmured something reassuring to Althea. Small, fragile sounds.

Evelyn crossed her arms over her chest. ”You think retrieving him makes you somehow better than what he was.”

”I think that leaving him makes me something I am not willing to be.”

”And the rest of us?” Evelyn’s voice was quiet, but there was ice in it. ”The people whose dead relatives do not get to be retrieved because it would be ’too much’ for a ruined camp to handle? Are we supposed to just suffer through whatever Black family drama comes our way until it exacts its toll on someone else?”

Lucian met her gaze steadily. ”If it comes to it, and he becomes a threat to this group, I will stop him myself. But I will not hold it against him that he chose to stand with us when he knew what he was doing.”

Evelyn shook her head. ”You make loyalty sound like something pure.”

”I know it isn’t.” Lucian’s voice was quieter. ”No one has the luxury of pretending it is.”

”No,” Evelyn said softly. ”I know it hurts. That is not the same thing as knowing what it takes out of the rest of us.”

Lucian did not answer. The tension at the very edge of his awareness prickled at his skin again, slow and deliberate. Lirael’s doing, or the Outer Gods’, or both. Either way, the time was approaching, and neither he nor Marc would have to wait much longer.

”I am not going to risk throwing this group away on some misguided attempt at retrieving him.” Lucian’s voice was quiet. ”And I am certainly not going to hand him over to the Warden and let them decimate what remains just for the sake of some misguided familial code.” He glanced at Evelyn. ”But I am also not going to simply accept that Alistair Black is an expendable asset because it makes things easier for the rest of us.”

Evelyn’s mouth tighten. ”He does not make things easier. He is the reason half of what used to be this camp is memories.”

”And the rest of it,” Lucian said quietly, ”is right here. It is including you. It is including Lucy. It is including Althea and the children who would already be dead if we operated purely on sentiment. It is including me.” He met her gaze. ”If you want to hold onto that resentment, that’s fine. But I am not going to hand him off to the Warden just because it makes things simpler.”

Evelyn stared at him for a long moment. Some of the fire had gone out of her voice, but it was replaced with something far more punishing. ”I can’t support this.”

”I’m not asking you to.”

”You are.” She gestured vaguely at him. ”Every time you choose him, you are.”

Lucian inclined his head in acknowledgment. ”Then be angry at me. That is fair. But I am not going to allow someone else to take him off my hands just because it is convenient.”

Evelyn regarded him for a long moment. ”You’re going to get hurt doing this.”

”Probably.”

”And you’re going to hurt the rest of us with it.”

”I will try not to.”

”That’s not a promise you can keep.”

”No,” Lucian agreed. ”It isn’t.”

Evelyn turned her gaze back to the distant horizon. ”Do what you need to do. Just do not expect me to think you are being noble about it.”

She turned away from him and walked back toward the others. Lucian remained where he was for a long moment, feeling the heat of their argument dissipate with the wind. The pressure in the far distance was rising, slow and deliberate. Marc would feel it soon, as would anyone else who had the sense to be aware. Lucian took one last look at the horizon, where Alistair’s life might still be tangled up in someone else’s plans.

Father. Catastrophe. Ally. Burden.

All things at once. All true, in his own way.

Lucian turned back toward the main camp. They still had preparations to make, watches to keep, and a storm to survive, and he would face them all as he always did.

He walked back toward the others, toward his family.