Part Two
It had been just two and a half years since Lux and Talon had gone on their three night expedition together, and it remained little more than a memory for the mage. She had found Ezreal with relative ease just after she escaped Talon. With a quick message sent to his room by the hotel staff, he came down to fetch her, and proceeded to escort her safely back to Demacia.
If the Crownguards had had any doubt in Ezreal's character before that act of heroism, it had entirely vanished afterwards. While Garen still remained reasonably suspicious of the explorer, as all older brothers should, Lux's parents continuously invited him to dinner after dinner, ball after ball, and it was not long before her parents started talk of marriage.
But one thing had been made clear for Lux in her time in Noxus; Ezreal was a fine fellow, but he wasn't for her. All it took was one thought back to either of the kisses she had shared with the notorious Blade's Shadow and Lux knew Ezreal couldn't be the one for her. Talon had shown her more passion in just one night with just two kisses than Ezreal had ever presented to her. And she had lost her virginity to the explorer.
So the Crownguards pressed on, and Ezreal became hopeful, but Lux wasn't anything if not diplomatic, and she politely shut the explorer down and forcefully told her parents to shove it. That ended the drama on Lux's end, but it did not end the excitement, for shortly afterwards, the League of Legends came into existence, and the mage soon found herself wound up in battles at the Institute of War.
The League of Legends brought many things with it, the most beneficial of which was peace with Noxus. Lux found herself befriending champions from all across Runeterra, and she was not alone. In time, and with a shocking declaration by her own brother, Garen, the Crownguard family found themselves planning a wedding, not the one they had originally expected between Ezreal and Lux, but instead one that would unite them with the notorious Du Couteaus. Garen and Katarina seemed a curious couple to Lux, but she had seen them time enough in the Institute of War to know that they had feelings for each other.
Initially, Lux had feared that she would encounter Katarina's brother, whom she had mostly forgotten about in her time away from Noxus, but that proved to not be the case. Even though Garen's engagement to Katarina meant more connection with the Du Couteaus, the couple met mostly on neutral grounds, and Lux was not once forced to travel back to Noxus and face the man she last saw in a dark, rainy alleyway. He had not even joined the League of Legends, a fact that Lux took great solace in.
So Lux continued her life blissfully, still fending off advances from Ezreal, looking forward to her brother's wedding, and proving herself a worthy champion in the League of Legends.
"I wonder if Ezreal will be in the bottom lane." Tryndamere thought aloud as Lux's team readied for their next battle. "He's got quite the crush on you, Lux. Would help our chances of winning."
"Or maybe it'll be Ashe." Sarah Fortune offered with a devious smirk. "That will really screw you up, Tryndamere."
"Oh I'm sure he'll be able to handle himself." Lux said optimistically. "Until she gives him the cold shoulder and tells him he's sleeping on the couch for the rest of the month."
Sarah laughed at Lux's comment but the barbarian, easily angered as usual, fought back. "She wouldn't do that! We have an agreement about league matches."
"Oh I'm sure." Sarah goaded. "And when's the last time you had sex?"
"I could as you the same question." Tryndamere shot back. "But Pantheon already told me. Or should I say Mantheon?"
"Please." Sarah waved his comment off while Lux laughed at their squabble. "It was Jayce. I might be a loose woman but I do have good taste in men."
Laughing thoroughly, Lux was having difficulty pulling on her boots. After a couple breaths she was able to contribute to the conversation. "I doubt Ezreal would perform any worse if I were in the game. Just as Tryndamere would still do his best if Ashe was against us."
"It's a moot point, regardless." Leona became the voice of reason. "It's Lucian and Sona in the bottom lane. Didn't you guys watch the draft?"
"I watched some." Tryndamere replied earnestly. Lux listened to the conversation casually as she finished with her last boot. In all honesty, she had not payed attention to the draft herself. She rarely did anymore. She knew all of her matchups well, and all she needed to do was just check the scoreboard once they entered the rift and make sure she bought the correct items.
"There's that new guy in the midlane, right?" Tryndamere asked, piquing Lux's curiosity. She hadn't heard of any new champions joining the League. But then again, she hadn't had too much time to pay attention to these sorts of things.
"Talon, I think his name is." Leona informed.
"He looks handsome." Sarah added, with a particularly girly voice.
"You should be careful, Lux." Leona offered. "He seems like he can exploit all of your weak points."
But Lux was too stunned to reply. Her face paled to match the color of the white walls behind her, and her dry mouth opened in shock.
"Lux?" Leona asked in a concerned tone.
"Talon," Lux cleared her throat, willing her vocal chords into motion. "Talon Du Couteau? Do you mean Talon Du Couteau?"
"The one and only." Sarah replied. "His sister is marrying your brother, right? Wait, do you know him?"
"Um," Lux paused, barely able to think, much less answer the question in any sort of eloquent manner. "Yeah."
"Sounds complicated." Tryndamere said with a chuckle. "Get into a fight with him or something?"
"Stop pressing her." Leona ordered. "She clearly doesn't want to talk about it."
"Whatever." She heard Tryndamere shrug off the conversation as he walked towards the entrance door. "Game's about to start."
And so it was. Lux willed herself to stand and made her way to the door. Slowly, she stepped onto the proving ground, greeted by the familiar voice saying, "Welcome to Summoner's Rift."
Dazed, Lux approached the shop and stared blankly at the merchant until he prompted her.
"Miss?" He said curiously, hoping to wake her from her sleep-like state.
Lux shook herself into reality and began to debate on what item to buy. The normal route would suggest Doran's Ring, but something told Lux that wasn't the right item. Really, she thought Liandry's Torment would be appropriate, so she could hide and perhaps save herself some humiliation, but in the end she stuck with the ring and two pots.
Cautiously, she approached lane, hiding under her turret until the minions marched past. She walked with the caster minions to the center of the lane, still unprepared to meet the assassin.
When she arrived, she was surprised to see no sign of Talon. Lux, however, was smart enough to realize that didn't mean he wasn't around. She watched as the minions fought, coming closer to death each time, but the assassin didn't reveal himself and Lux resolved to get her gold. Minion after minion, the mage waited for Talon to appear, but he remained hidden. Unconsciously, Lux found herself killing the enemy minions before their time, and it wasn't long before the natural push towards his tower began.
The first and second waves perished and with the third, Lux was pushed all the way to his turret. It was four minutes into the game, and the assassin was still missing. The nerves in Lux's spine started to tingle, and immediately she began to worry about the jungler's location. For the life of her, she couldn't even remember who the jungler was. It wasn't until the Demacian standard was thrust into the ground before her that realization dawned on the mage.
Jarvan IV was on her before she could react. He wore his classic half-smile, half-smirk, something Lux had grown accustomed to in the time she had known the prince. As he shoved into her, knocking her back just barely into tower range, she heard his commanding voice ring out.
"You know I'm sorry to do this to you, Lux." He smiled almost evilly at her.
Lux realized that his gank was effective, but not life-threatening. On his own, this early in the game, he was not even enough threat to make her flash. Staggering out of the tower range while throwing a binding at the prince, Lux retorted. "No you aren't. Don't lie, Jarvan."
"That's rich." A familiar dark voice sounded from behind the mage. "Coming from you."
Having just barely enough time to turn her head to see the hooded face linked with the deep, rumbling voice, Lux stared intensely into Talon's eyes for the longest of seconds. But then that second ended, and the assassin's blade finally connected with her flesh.
"First blood."
It was twenty minutes into the game and safe to say things were not looking good for Lux's team. The laning phase had been nothing short of a nightmare for the mage. Jarvan had returned twice more, easily securing kills for Talon, and by the third time Lux shamefully returned to lane, Talon was able to assassinate her whenever he pleased.
He had been smart about it too. He pushed hard when she was dead, denying gold on her path back to lane, and never pushed when she returned, always baiting Lux out of turret range. When he had forced the minions to her tower, he would roam top or bottom to cause trouble for the other lanes, leaving her tower alive, forcing her further from safety when she did return. He had twelve kills on the board just as they hit the twenty minute mark.
"We need to get eyes on baron." Leona stated, hoping to resolve some of the issues their team was faced with.
The bottom lane, ganks by Talon aside, had done fairly well for themselves. What Amumu had not done for Lux he had done for Leona and Miss Fortune, allowing them to appropriately snowball their lane. Leona and Sarah rotated to the mid lane, allowing Leona greater access to place wards, and letting Lux have some time to catch up and collect gold in the bottom lane.
Lux enjoyed a full minute of reprieve until Leona called out to her.
"Talon is missing!" She hollered from the middle lane, alerting the team to roaming potential.
He was the only one though. Gangplank was still in the top lane trading with Tryndamere, and Lucian, Sona, and Jarvan were all accounted for in the middle lane. It was likely that Talon went back to base to buy, and Lux, feeling safe near the bottom lane tier two, continued to farm.
But therein lay her mistake. She thought he wouldn't be bloodthirsty enough to come after the poor, underleveled mage worth very little gold. She thought he had better things to do than dive towers for one kill. She thought wrong.
"Crownguard." She heard the familiar voice ring out as Talon stepped out of the brush. "Or do you prefer Lucy?"
"What do you want, Talon?" Lux glared at the man, refusing to let him goad her.
"A lot of things." He shrugged casually as he walked into lane, stepping behind his minions. "I'm a greedy man, you know."
"And so that's why you joined the League of Legends?" She raised an eyebrow. "Because the pay is good?"
A cool smirk played on his lips just before he vanished from her sight. Reappearing behind her, he whispered in her ear. "I never said I wanted money."
Quickly, she turned on the assassin, determined to face him squarely.
"Quit it with the games, Talon." The mage stated firmly, hoping to appear cold in her demeanor. However, she could feel the teasings of a blush crawling up her neck as the close proximity to the assassin brought back heated memories.
"I kissed you." He leaned in close, cool breath brushing past her cheeks. Lux could only watch as his eyes drifted down towards her lips and his face drew near. The assassin continued, teasing a third kiss that could rival the previous ones, but just as his lips were about the meet hers, the assassin spoke.
"Now I have to kill you."
Exhausted, frustrated, and generally moody, Lux lethargically made her way to Jarvan's study. It had been a long week for the mage. Talon had been everywhere on the rift, seeing extra time from his debut, especially against Lux, because he seemed so effective. And it was true. There was little Lux felt she could do to stop the assassin. She often lost, finding herself at a miserable 20% win-rate against the Noxian.
The only saving grace was that the assassin didn't say much. He'd offer the clever worded taunt from time to time, always drawing a blush from her cheeks, but beyond that, she was never forced into conversation with the man. He kept to himself outside of the matches, and within a couple of days, things had relatively gone back to normal for the mage.
Sighing, she pulled open the door to Jarvan's study, finding him perusing through documents behind his desk. She sat in an ornately decorated wooden chair, directly across from the future King of Demacia, ready to give him a piece of her mind if he didn't make the meeting short.
"Evening Lux." He said as he looked up from his papers, tucking them away in a drawer. "Hope you're not too tired after having your ass handed to you by a Noxian for the entire week."
"Shut up, Jarvan." She snapped at the grinning prince.
"Alright, I'll let it rest." He put his hands in the air as a display of his surrender. "Though I will say he seems to hold a special grudge for you in particular."
"It's probably because he can't beat up my brother without Katarina getting mad at him." Lux lied.
"Regardless, I need you to do me a favor." He reached in another desk and pulled out a slip of paper.
"A couple years ago, on your last mission in Noxus, you reported that Talon had stolen a book from the Jenkinses, is that correct?"
"Yes." Lux replied hard, not liking where this conversation was going.
"Is this this book?" Jarvan asked, pointing to a sketch of the book on a white piece of paper. The cover of the book bore a picture of a door carved in a stone wall, ivy and moss creeping up the sides.
"It is."
"Well, as it turns out, Garen saw Talon carrying this book around the Du Couteau residence a couple nights ago." The prince continued. "Naturally, we're a little curious what might have made Talon hold onto the text for so long, and why it hasn't been filed away in Swain's archives. This presents a particularly unique opportunity for us, as you might imagine."
"I don't like where this is headed." Lux said as she sunk back into the chair.
"Garen said that he could get Katarina to invite you over to her house for a sleepover. Something about being a bridesmaid?"
It was true. This had been settled sometime earlier in the year, when Garen and Katarina had just been talking about the essentials. The Crownguards, being the noble family that they were, had expected Katarina to offer a bridesmaid position to Lux, the sister of her fiancé. Katarina, being from a noble family, Noxian or not, had done just that. Just two days ago, Katarina had offered an invitation to a bridesmaid's sleepover party. She was still waiting on an answer.
"Look, Jarvan, can't you get someone else to go do this?" She tried to reason with the prince. "I'm not a thief. And it's not very proper to steal things. Aren't you worried you'll start another war?"
"Start a war?" Jarvan laughed. "For stealing something that's Demacian property anyways? I doubt it."
"How do you know it's Demacian property?' Lux raised an eyebrow.
But Jarvan ignored her question. "You'll be right there, in the house. And don't give me this 'I'm no thief' excuse. Maybe you're not used to stealing things, but you're the best sneak around."
Folding her arms in front of her chest, the mage spoke. "You tell me what that book is, and I'll get it for you."
"I'll do you one better." The prince said as he leaned in. "You steal it, and it's yours."