Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Cold. 

It was July in England and yet when Elain Archeron stepped out of the tour bus in her cute pink flats dotted with little daisies, she wished she’d brought a jacket. Beside her stood her best friend since she’d left Chicago for UCLA, Harper Harris. Goosebumps had erupted all over Elain’s bare shoulders, clad in a thick spaghetti strap sundress. It was meant for drinking on patios, with its cute white lace overlay and the soft yellow fabric just beneath that offered a pop of color to the otherwise understated dress. She’d purchased it in Rome for an insane number of euro, laughing to herself. When in Rome, right?

Not here, in cloudy England and certainly not as they tramped over the countryside to Hadrian’s wall. Harper, in much more sensible jeans and a quarter-sleeve blue shirt that offered a peek of stomach every time she moved her arms, was ready for the short hike to the wall. This was what Elain got, traveling Europe for the summer with a history major. 

All Elain wanted was to drink nice wine and eat good food and see fields and fields of flowers. Harper wanted to take one last victory lap on behalf of ancient Rome, dragging Elain to ruined site after ruined site and offering commentary that often annoyed their tour guides. The one at present, an older man that reminded her a little of her father, was already eyeing Harper with suspicion. Would he have to compete on his own tour to share information? 

Probably.

Elain sighed. They’d be in Scotland that night and she’d have a drink in her hand, if nothing else. She could indulge Harper on this, though sometimes she felt as if her wants were shoved to the side so Harper could let at yet another aqueduct or ruined building. Harper was so good at advocating for herself and getting what she needed, often at Elain’s expense. There were times that was a good thing. Elain never got cheated out of money and yet privately she couldn’t help but wonder if she hadn’t accidentally replicated the fraught relationship she’d always had with her sisters. 

“Last stop,” Harper said, looping her arm through Elain’s. “I promise we’ll go to that town with the bookstore. We’ll rent bikes and everything,” Harper added, bumping her arm with Elain’s. Elain smiled at her friend, tucking a piece of golden brown hair behind her ear. Harper, with her bleached pixie cut and her easy smile, was magnetic. Cute, in a very loud sort of way. Elain knew part of why Harper wanted to see ruins over the very instagrammable tulip fields, for example, was her long abiding insecurity of being photographed beside Elain. And Elain tried really hard not to let that bother her, to drown out the drunken words Harper had once slurred in their shared sorority room senior year. People only like you because you’re hot, Lainey. But I have to work for it…my friendships are genuine.

Harper didn’t remember saying it but Elain remembered it. She’d merely tucked it away and yet she wondered too often if Harper wasn’t sabotaging part of this trip for that specific reason. She smiled, bumping Harper back. “We don’t have to rent bikes so long as we can buy books.”
“Done,” Harper agreed. “Have you thought any more about what you’re going to do in the fall?”

Elain, stepping from the well paved road onto the concrete path, bit back a sigh of irritation. She was going back to Chicago—she already had a job lined up with the Art Institute as one of their fashion curators. It was a good job in a big city close to both of her sisters. Nesta worked as high powered attorney and had pulled more than a few strings to land Elain the interview that got her the museum job and Feyre was studying art at the University of Chicago. Elain was the only one of them who had left for school and though she enjoyed everything Los Angeles had to offer, she found herself longing for familiar sights, for home on Lake Michigan and brunch with Nesta and shots with Feyre. 

Harper was an only child. She didn’t understand the bond between Elain and her sisters and often alluded to it being weird and co-dependent. Harper wanted Elain to stay in Los Angeles, unaware of how many fashion majors currently existed looking for work. Elain was better off in Chicago, if only because her money went further. She’d already secured an apartment for half of what it cost to live on the outskirts of L.A.

“Yep,” Elain agreed, trying to keep the bite out of her voice. “You’ll have to visit me in Chicago. You’ll love it. It has everything L.A. does—”
“Except a beach and year round warm weather,” Harper interrupted. Elain only shrugged. Chicago had Lake Michigan which was, in her estimation, just as good as the Pacific Ocean in some ways but without all the influencers sucking up space to take a million curated photos when Elain wanted to lay out. 

Elain only shrugged. She wasn’t having this argument in the middle of the English countryside. The pair hiked up the relatively small hill at the very back of their tour group. Harper couldn’t help herself when the guide began speaking, pushing to the front to argue. Harper always needed to be the center of attention and for whatever reason, it embarrassed Elain more than usual. It wasn’t just the guide who was annoyed—everyone had paid good money to be there and Harper’s constant outbursts ruined the trip for more than just Elain. 

Stepping off the path, Elain peered out into the distance. Little houses dotted along the countryside, charming against the bright, cloudless sky. Wind whipped around her, making the hunter green grass sway wildly in all directions. She could hear the rustling of leaves a nearby woodland and the fading sounds of children screaming in the distance. They weren’t the only group scattered along the endless stretch of stone wall. It barely came to Elain’s shin, hardly a wall that kept out invaders. Elain could have stepped over it if she wanted and just strolled forward.

She shivered again, the hair on the back of her neck standing on edge. Elain reached a hand to touch the stone when Harper caught her, hand on Elain’s shoulder. It broke whatever spell had settled around Elain. 

“Take my picture?” Harper asked, thrusting her phone into Elain’s hand. “That tour guide is dick, by the way? Did you hear him? He practically told me to shut up.”

“You should let him do his job,” Elain said with a sigh, her heart pounding wildly in her chest. God, what was wrong with her? Elain opened Harper's phone, her guilt washing over her when she saw the cheesy photo of the two of them on Harper’s lockscreen. Elain, in her pink heart shaped sunglasses, tongue out while Harper looked skyward with a wide open grin. Best friends. “It’s not his fault he’s not as smart as you,” Elain added as Harper plunked down on the wall with a smile.

“Damn right,” she agreed. Elain snapped more than a few, zooming in to get some really nice shots. Harper thought it was beneath her and yet since she’d let Elain start editing her pictures, her presence on Instagram had picked up. Elain didn’t have to try so hard—she’d posted a picture of her in a bikini at the age of sixteen and all but gone viral. She could have made a living that way in L.A., but it was practically a cliche. Elain wanted a career she didn’t have to document so hard and a life that wasn’t required to unfold over the internet. She wanted…

“Have you heard from Gray?” Harper asked, leaning over Elain’s shoulder to look at the photos. Elain sighed.

“Yeah. He texted me this morning.”

He’d asked her to marry him and she’d asked to think about it. He’d want an answer when she returned and Elain still didn’t know. She had another month to figure it out and yet Elain was starting to suspect she’d never really know. Graysen wanted to move to Chicago with her, another lawyer in the family with a potential job from none other than Nesta herself. It was so perfect, so easy, so…wrong, though she wasn’t sure why. He was everything—smart, sexy, funny and utterly devoted. When she’d asked him to let her think about it, he’d acted as if that was the outcome he’d been hoping for. He’d still taken her to the nicest dinner she’d ever had, still made love to her later that night…was still waiting on her to make a decision.

“I know you’re thinking it over but…”

But Graysen was a catch and if Elain didn’t want him, someone else would. She knew it. On paper, Graysen was everything, he was the love of her life and yet in person…she couldn’t make some fundamental, unknown thing click. 

“You know, what if you had a fling?” Harper said not for the first time. Elain couldn’t pretend she wasn’t interested. Gray had all but given her permission when she left, telling her he didn’t need to know what she did while she was abroad. There had been the Italian in Rome she’d let take her out for drinks and the Frenchman who’d shown her the Lourve when Harper vanished with a stranger for three days. Elain hadn’t been able to go through with it, had done nothing but a little kissing that made her feel slimy. There was no way Gray was doing the same, not if his texts every day were any indication. 

“Maybe,” Elain agreed, turning back to the wall. Harper wasn’t paying attention, not when the tour guide had begun corralling the group with more information. Elain knew better than to ask for Harper to take a picture and yet all the talk of Graysen made her miss him, strangely. She went to the wall where Harper had sat and perched atop it. One photo for him, she decided, angling the camera so he’d have a nice view of cleavage. She needed to get over herself, she decided, sweeping loose curls from her windblown face. Tell him yes, stop waiting to see if the grass really was greener on the other side. Life wasn’t a fairytale, there was no prince charming coming to sweep her off her feet and tick every single box she possibly had. There was just reality, where you were lucky to get even half the things Gray offered—love, support, good sex…Elain sighed, bracing one hand against the rough, ancient stone. She smiled, finger on the red button. The camera shuttered just as a rough wind slammed into her chest, knocking her off kilter. Elain gasped, feet flying upwards. Her back slammed into the ground beneath her, sending her tumbling down the hill. The tour guide would murder her when he realized she’d been touching the wall—a no no by all accounts.

She dug her nails into the soft countryside, trying to stop her mad tumble downwards before her body hit something hard. She opened her eyes as the breath left her body, leaving her gasping on her hands and knees.

Treetops swayed overhead cheerfully, blocking out some of the buttery sunlight. Elain rubbed her spine, groaning as she stood. She was surrounded on all sides by tress, the thing that had stopped her from her mad tumble downwards. She frowned, spinning in a circle. There had been a little woodland in the distance, far from where she’d stood. Where were rolling hills and little houses? 

“Harper?” Elain called, looking behind her with alarm. There was no way she’d missed that. Elain’s phone had fallen out of her hand, making it impossible to verify with the picture she’d taken. “Harper?!”

There was nothing but the rustling of leaves and a strange, eerie silence. She’d retrace her steps, she decided. Easy enough. Maybe…maybe she hadn’t noticed, she told herself, walking forward. She hadn’t studied her surroundings and yet…and yet she thought she would have noticed a vast expanse of forest out in front of her. Did she hit her head? Was she laying at the bottom of a hill vividly hallucinating a forest that did not exist? 

Each new step made Elain more and more uneasy. She felt watched by the forest itself, tracked by some unknown entity she couldn’t see. She was struggling to convince herself everything was fine, that she’d somehow missed the trees and leaves and underbrush…or that she’d even fallen this far.

She didn’t find her phone. She’d left her bag on her seat on the bus, meaning Elain was, for all purposes, utterly alone. “Harper!” she yelled, her panic mounting. “Where the hell am I?”

A snapping branch stopped her in her tracks. Elain turned slowly, heart pounding in her ears. Please be Harper, or the tour guide or anyone but a murderer—

A being stepped from behind a tree and Elain was convinced, in that moment, she was having some kind of visual hallucination. It wasn’t human…whatever it was, utterly naked and covered in dark black scales. It looked like a snake given a human body, with viciously curved claws and jaundiced eyes. It was not alone, either. Three identical creatures came just behind, all watching her.

It was a nightmare, she decided. She was trapped in a nightmare. Wake up! she commanded her brain, for all the good it did.

“The dark Mother has given us a gift,” one of the snake creatures murmured, its voice dark like oil. Elain gagged at the sound, rooted in place. “A human in our fair woods.”

“She will make a fine meal,” another all but purred. Meal? Elain couldn’t move, her legs no longer moving. It was a classic nightmare scenario and yet it felt so real. The slithered forward and finally her legs seemed to work, turning her of their own accord. Elain took off, ignoring the way every loose rock seemed to lodge itself in her flats to slice against her skin. She could feel the beasts behind her, panting and laughing. She couldn’t die in her dreams and yet Elain couldn’t wake up either.

Something hot sliced over her arm—a talon from the snake with legs. She screamed, startling it for only a moment. All four heads whipped to the side, yellow eyes narrowing. Elain didn’t stop running, taking advantage of their lapse in attention to put some distance between her and the creatures. Where was she going? She couldn’t run like this forever. 

Wake up, wake up, wake up!
She came to screeching halt when a massive wolf emerged from the woods, snarling furiously, its gleaming teeth dripping with saliva.

“Oh my god,” she whispered as she crashed back to the ground, her ass hitting rocks and branches roughly. She threw her arms up over her head as the wolf lunged, waiting for ripping flesh. She heard more snarling and then screaming—so much terrible, oily screaming. She looked behind her, twisting as the wolf was joined by men—three, in total, sword in hand. They made easy work of the snake creatures, slicing and ripping until the forest floor was coated in slick, black blood. 

Elain was panting, mouth opened, her mind reeling. Scooting backwards, she drew the attention of one of the men. She was struggling to focus on any one specific thing but she noted the green and gold mask on his face. 

“Is that a human, Tam?” another asked, his face curiously hidden in an orange and gold fox mask. The blonde’s mask wasn’t shaped like anything but his companions wore animals—fox, bear…and some horned thing she didn’t recognize. At his side was that massive gray furred wolf, staring as if he understood everything being said. 

“Don’t…” Elain whispered as the blonde approached, lips drawn in a tight frown. “Don’t come any closer.”

He halted just at her feet, crouching so they were eye level.

“How did you get here, human?”

“Human?” she repeated, unable to catch her breath.

“Tam, she’s gonna pass out,” the bear warned. Elain looked widely around her, eyes unseeing. 

“Human?” she repeated. “I…”

The world teetered violently, blurring and just as the bear had warned, Elain couldn’t keep her eyes open any more. The last thing she saw was a pair of pine green eyes peering down at her, obscured by that strange mask.

Darkness dragged her gratefully into oblivion.

Elain woke with a gasp. Dream, she told herself, looking around at the cheerful bed she lay in, nestled in thick ivory sheets beneath a matching sage trimmed blanket. It had been a terrible dream. It was the stress of everything getting to her, she reasoned, touching her chest, still clad in her dress from before. How had Harper managed to get her to their hotel? And where was Harper? The room was elegant and massive, trimmed in the same ivory and sage as the bed. A little breakfast table sat cheerfully beside a curved window, the curtains pulled open to allow light to pool in. Double doors against the far wall opened to a balcony that seemed to overlook a beautiful garden. She seemed to remember that when she’d been booking rooms, though her and Harper were supposed to share. Perhaps Harper had sprung for two rooms after Elain’s mini break with reality?

Elain pushed back the blankets and rubbed her eyes violently against the heel of her palm. Her feet touched a plush rose rug. No woods, no leaves, no weird snakes. Reality. Her shoes were lined against an armoire and when she opened it, she didn’t find her luggage but an assortment of pretty dresses that were likely for decoration. Elain closed the doors and padded to the bathroom. No shower, though that was hardly unusual. Just a massive claw foot tub, a toilet, and a sink from which she gulped down water. Her face was a mess, streaked with mascara and the concealer she’d dotted beneath her eyes the day before. 

She dug out a lavender scented bar of soap and scrubbed, deciding her skin care routine would allow her this one transgression. Elain slipped her shoes back on her feet and pulled open the door. She frowned in the hall…was this a bed and breakfast, then? She didn’t remember that at all, had thought her and Harper had agreed only to hotels for the added security they offered. There was no keypad on the door, nothing but an ornate knob a key would fit into. Hardly unusual for Europe and yet it gave her pause. 

Black and white marble checkered floors gave way to white trimmed walls decorated with lush paintings and other ornaments. Elain paused to look at one, wishing she knew where her phone was so she could send it to Feyre. It was the sort of thing her sister would have loved. 

Curious, Elain opened a nearby door at the end of the hall before closing it quickly. No one was inside and yet it was very obviously inhabited. It had a similar set up to her own room though the color scheme skewed towards darker, warmer colors—rich burgundys, warm oranges, and dark golds evoked a feeling of Halloween and falling leaves. The little breakfast table she had was covered in knives of varying sizes…strange, she decided. And yet, Elain was an American. People liked weapons, she rationalized. 

She passed more oddities. An unoccupied study with a map of England and Ireland yet labeled Prythian. A library filled with leather bound books that stretched floor to ceiling. A strange sitting room and more bedrooms than any one place could need. Definitely a bed and breakfast, she decided.

Elain came to the top of a sweeping staircase where she heard the sound of voices. A lobby, she breathed with relief, all but running down the steps. She could ask the front desk where Harper was, could get her things and hopefully her phone alongside an explanation.

She came into a great hall that splintered in three directions. The sound of voices were coming behind her, all masculine, all quietly arguing. “Hello?” she called, feeling stupid. She just knew she was going to come upon a group of backpackers who thought she was nothing more than a dumb American looking to cause trouble.

The voices abruptly stopped and Elain sighed. Yep. Definitely backpackers. Footsteps echoed off the walls and Elain followed, cheerful for one last moment. She stepped into the hall and back into her nightmare at the sight of the golden haired man. He’d come from an open door where four other men were watching in the same masks she’d seen in her dream. Elain froze as the blonde, eyes studying her carefully behind the flowery green and gold of his own mask, held up his palms in surrender. He was dressed…he was dressed as if he were in a period film. A blue tunic strapped with a baldric of knives with a long-sleeved, white shirt just beneath covered his chest. Tight, buttoned up breeches and knee high boots evoked an almost medieval feeling. Harper would have known the time period, she thought wildly. 

“Human,” he began, his words filling her with dread. 

“Human?” she replied, eyes drifting to his ears. They were arched like an elfs, not overly large and yet noticeable all the same. “Oh, right. This is some sort of cosplay thing, isn’t it? You’re, what, an elf?”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Fairy.”

“My bad. Look, I’m trying to find my friend Harper,” she began. “And maybe the front desk. If you just…point me…I’ll be out of your hair.”
“Out of my…hair…” he repeated, his words a strange mixture of something her brain didn’t quite recognize. Scandinavian and…Irish, maybe? The man turned to his friends, all watching curiously from the door. They were dressed in varying colors, their hair just as long as their friends shoulder length, their ears all arched. “Did you find another human in the woods?”

“Just her,” the bear replied. There was a masked wolf now, a bear, and the horned beast that made Elain uncomfortable. “No one else.”

“We scoured all night,” one of the wolves added earnestly. 

The blonde turned back to her, eyes accusing. “The front desk?” Elain prompted. The other wolf stumbled forward, his dark hair falling in his eyes. 

“What is a front desk?” he asked her curiously, dragged back to the study behind him by the other masked men. 

“I don’t want any trouble,” Elain murmured, recognizing she was surrounded by five strange men, none of whom seemed to know Harper…and none of whom seemed to belong to a hotel. “I just want to go home.”
“Where is home, exactly?” the blonde asked her.

“America,” she said quickly, noting the lack of recognition on their faces. They spoke English well enough…surely they were familiar. “Los Angeles?”

His friends all shook their heads, as if they’d never heard of such a place. Elain sighed. “You know, Hollywood?”

“Never heard of it,” the blonde replied. “But I am unfamiliar with the human lands.”
“Oh come on!” she retorted, stamping her foot like a child. “Can’t you break character for one minute?” 

“How did you get here?” the fox asked her. She did a double take when she saw his face and the strange, mechanical eye that peered beside the unusual brown on the other side. The eye whirred, looking her up and down just as his flame-colored eye—and there was no other way to describe that color—and yet was like nothing Elain had ever seen. His face, like everyone else's, was covered from his forehead to the bridge of his nose in an animal shaped mask though it could hardly hide three long scars that cut against his otherwise chiseled cheek. She looked at him the longest, trying to make sense of his eye set against the golden brown of his skin. He merely stared back, his full lips set in a thin line as if he were used to this reaction. 

“I’m on vacation,” she finally told him. 

“Vacation,” the blonde repeated, drawing her attention back to him. He was very clearly the leader. 

“Yes. Surely even Europeans understand that concept?”

“What is a European?” the bear asked eagerly. Oh my God.

“I was at Hadrian’s wall,” she added, noting the flicker of recognition in his eyes. Finally, she thought with relief. They were getting somewhere. So much for the stereotype that American’s were stupid. What is a European? She couldn’t wait to tell Gray about that. 

“You crossed the wall?” 

“I didn’t cross it…I…fell over it,” Elain replied, well aware of how stupid she sounded. They were all stupid, she decided charitably. “It was an accident.”

“You..fell over…the wall?” the blonde repeated in that infuriating way of his. “What were you doing so close to it?”

“Taking a picture!”

“What’s a picture?” the wolf interrupted, eliciting a soft scream of frustration from Elain. 

“Just take me back,” Elain demanded, eyes fixated on the man in front of her. “And I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Tam,” the wolf murmured. “If she finds out…”
“I know!” the man called Tam snapped. “How do we know this isn’t a trick? How do we know she didn’t send you?”

“Who is she—you know what, don’t answer that. Take me back to the wall and I’ll hitch a ride back home.”

There was silence for a moment. Tam’s eyes shifted to his friends, as if he could somehow speak silently to them. All five went preternaturally still and then— “You aren’t leaving.”
“Excuse me?” Elain replied. 

“You heard me,” he replied. “You’ll stay here until I decide if you’re a threat to me and my lands or not.”

“You…you’re kidnapping me?!” she demanded, noting how his friends shifted uncomfortably. “You can’t do that!”

“I can do whatever I like,” he replied smoothly. “I’m still High Lord—”
“High Lord?!” she screeched. “Of what?! The elven forest?! Take me home!”

His friends smothered smiles behind their hands, as if the entire thing amused them. The blonde stalked forward. “I get the sense you, like many other humans, are poorly educated. You violated the treaty when you crossed the wall into our territory and are now subject to our laws. Until I decide you are not a threat, you will enjoy my hospitality.”
Elain shoved past him, streaking down the hall for anything that would prove this was some sort of joke. More rooms that belonged to no one and doors that led to a terrace overlooking that garden. She could see the forest and decided Tam, High Lord, could absolutely go fuck himself. She took off in a sprint, deciding she would find it herself. He couldn’t force her to stay. He wasn’t her boss.

She made it to the top of one rolling, grassy hill before his arms wrapped around her waist and hauled her back. Elain scratched and bit and fought, for all he seemed to notice. “You’re not leaving,” he retorted, dumping her back on the terrace inelegantly while his friends all watched with varying degrees of pity. 

“You can’t keep me here!” she screamed at him, scooting back when he crouched to look at her. She hit the fox’s boots, looking up into his curious eyes. 

“You’re wrong, little human. You’re in my territory now—”

“Stop calling me that! Stop calling me human, I have a name—”
“What is it, then?” he asked roughly. 

“Elain,” she replied. “Elain Archeron, and my family will be looking for me.”

“I’m sure they are,” he replied softly, his voice very much implying the opposite. “If I catch you trying to escape, I will punish you.”

“Tam,” the fox warned softly. “What if she’s telling the truth?”
“What if she’s not?” Tam replied, rising to his feet. “She’s to be watched every minute of every day.”

She looked up at the men, wishing they’d argue. Each head nodded in unison, unwilling to argue with their High Lord. Elain bit back the urge to cry. The wolf replaced Tam, offering her a fair hand. “My name is Bron,” he told her gently, helping Elain to her feet. He pointed to the wolf, “That’s Hart,” the horned monster, “Andras,” and the fox, “And Lucien. We don’t want to hurt you, Lady Elain.”

Lady Elain. “Let me go,” she whispered, noting how still they all went, even with Tam gone.

“Tamlin means well,” Hart murmured, his hair a near exact match for Bron’s brunette locks. Andras was blonde like Tamlin and Lucien the only ginger among them. “He has to think about his whole court. Just…keep your head down and prove you’re not a threat and he’ll take you back.”
“No one wants a human here,” Andras added earnestly. 

Elain rubbed her eyes. “Right. Because you’re elves—”
“Fae,” Lucien interrupted, more terse than the others. “Not elves.”

“Of course, my apologies,” she bit back, her sarcasm delighting Bron and Hart. She wondered if they were brothers, given how similar they looked.

“You can touch our ears, if you want to see?” Hart offered, stepping towards her and bowing his head. “Maybe that would help?”

Elain reached out her fingers, certain she’d find a prosthetic she could peel off and shove in their lying faces. She yanked, noting how Hart hissed, eyes closed, but didn’t move. She dragged her nails over his skin, looking for a seam or anything that would prove this was an elaborate ruse.

“Oh no,” Bron murmured when she swayed. The world was lurching again. “Catch her—!”

She thought she felt arms around her body but in truth, she could have cracked her skull on the ground for all Elain knew.

The darkness was rapidly becoming bliss.

~*~ 

LUCIEN

Lucien set Elain back in her bedroom just as he’d done the day before. Hart pulled off her shoes, neatly lining them against the wardrobe just in time for Alis to come swanning in.

“What have you idiots done this time?” she demanded from beneath her bird mask, clicking her tongue with disapproval.

“Humans are fragile,” Andras murmured. “She’s confused.”
“She doesn’t know what we are,” Bron added with confusion. “I thought humans were better educated.”
“Where is America?” Hart asked Alis, who seemed to know things she shouldn’t.

“Some city on the continent is my guess,” Alis replied, pressing the back of her brown hand to Elain’s forehead. “This is someone’s very important daughter. Look at how pretty she is. I don’t want to see one of you chasing after her skirts while she’s here.”

All four of them shuffled their feet, suddenly embarrassed. It was impossible not to notice how stunning she was. Lucien had always been told humans were strange, ugly creatures. He’d seen one fifty years before and that had been true. The girl was nothing like Elain, who was clean and well groomed. A fancy human lord's daughter, no doubt, which meant she probably would be missed.

“She says she came over the wall,” Andras told Alis, blue eyes searching the maids face for any explanation. “You don’t think she has something to do with it?”

The name they were forbidden from saying aloud hung in the air. Amarantha. Lucien could scarcely think it without wanting to throw up. They had a little over a year left to break the curse and yet Elain hardly fit the conditions. For one, she didn’t seem to hate faeries. She didn’t know what they were, if her suspicion over elves was any indication. It seemed too convenient that she showed up the day Andras had intended to cross the wall, baiting a human woman into killing him. Lucien felt only relief that, at least for the moment, none of them would be forced to make that trip. He didn’t want to see any of his friends die, not for Amarantha. 

“Dragged is more like it,” Alis finally said, really studying Elain. “I know Lord Tamlin means well but surely he can’t think this little slip is anything but a pawn.”

“Or a distraction,” Lucien replied. “Her mind could have been tampered with.”

They all peered back at Elain’s pretty, peaceful face. Rhysand was helping Amarantha, after all. It would be just like him to break into a human’s mind, wipe away anything useful, and send her to mess with Tamlin.

“Well,” Alis murmured, some of her fire extinguished. “Who knows what she suffered, then. I think a little kindness couldn’t hurt.”

“What if she is the one, though?” Bron finally asked, giving voice to what they all secretly hoped. “Maybe she should stay.”
“She’s off to a rocky start,” Hart replied. “Tam hardly did himself any favors.”
Alis brushed Elain’s cheek lovingly the way a mother might touch a child. Elain didn’t stirl, her petal pink lips drawn in a frown. “There’s time still,” she murmured. “Something strange is afoot. I can feel it stirring.”

So could Lucien. Something pulled at him, a strange, wild magic he hadn’t felt in centuries. He knew they all felt it, given the silence that settled over them.
“We should leave her,” Lucien finally offered. It was off, having four grown men standing over a sleeping woman. “I’ll talk to Tam.”
They nodded, leaving Alis to Elain as they scattered to the wind. Andras, Bron, and Hart had posts they rotated through. Amarantha’s filth still poured over their borders, pushed back only by Tamlin’s guards and sentries, the last remaining free forces in Prythian. And Elain…Elain might break the curse,  fully freeing them after half a century of torment. Lucien could practically feel the wind on his face again. Free to roam, to revel, to get back to the life he’d all but paused when Amarantha invaded. 

Tamlin sat in his study upstairs, head in his hands. “What are you thinking?” Lucien asked, dropping into a leather chair on the opposite side of his messy desk. 

Tamlin looked up at Lucien, his closest friend over the last hundred years. Tamlin ran a hand over his mouth, eyes wild. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If it’s Amarantha… fuck,” he swore. “If she’s wasting our time it’s all over but if she’s not…if she’s not, maybe this is the girl we’ve been looking for.”

“Tell me what you want us to do. You know we’ll follow you anywhere,” Lucien said earnestly, scooting to the edge of the chair. “Do you want us to continue going over the wall?”
“No,” Tamlin breathed. “No, not if she’s watching us. I…we’ll give Elain a couple months to feel her out.”

“And if this is Rhysand holding her mind?” Lucien prompted, needing his friend to hear that possibility. Claws poked beneath Tamlin’s knuckles, digging into the wood of his desk. 

“She wouldn’t even know,” Tamlin growled. “It feels wrong to leave her to Rhysand’s form of mercy…if she turns out to be a puppet, we’ll send her back over the wall.”

Lucien nodded. “He won’t be able to resist taunting you. We’ll know soon enough.”
“You’ll keep watch over her?” Tamlin asked. “Just for the first month while she gets acclimated? Become her friend.”

“Me? Friends with a human?” he scoffed. “Why not Bron or Hart? They like her well enough.”
“I don’t trust them the way I trust you,” Tamlin replied. “They won’t know how to talk to her without saying too much. I want to know everything about her and I want her to know nothing Rhysand couldn’t guess.”

“Alright,” Lucien agreed smoothly, though the thought bothered him. “And how will you court her, if you spend the first month keeping your distance?”

Tamlin sighed heavily. “I don’t know. That’s for me to worry about. For now, no more running away. Lets focus on keeping her contained to the estate before we starting thinking about romance.”

“Fair enough,” Lucien agreed with a heavy sigh. He stood, leaving Tamlin to the study to brood. Lucien closed the door just in time to hear the ravages of Tamlin’s rage. Splintering wood and groaning furniture splintered the quiet around them. Lucien winced, noting how several servants turned in the opposite direction lest they be caught in the path of the High Lord’s rage. Tamlin had always had a temper though it had gotten worse over the years since Amarantha. It was his helplessness, Lucien told himself. Tamlin was a warrior, was High Lord and now was prone to the whims of a foreign general bent on dominating them. 

Still, Lucien didn’t think Elain would find his outbursts charming. Tamlin would need to figure that out, along with everything else on his mind. Courting a woman was above, among other things, proving you were the sort of male who could protect her physically and emotionally. Lucien knew Tamlin was more than capable of guarding his female but attending to her feelings? He doubted Tamlin could attend to his own.

Lucien took his usual patrol, giving himself time to mull it over. It was a mistake. When he returned, Elain was awake again, still wearing her strange, short dress that showed off her slim calves and pretty thighs. Her arms were bare, her skin tanned gently, her hair tumbling down her back and pulled curiously from her face with a large, golden butterfly clip. She drummed pink painted nails over one of the rounded tables while Hart eagerly asked her questions.

“It’s hard to explain,” Elain was saying, unaware he was watching from the doorway. Stunning was really the wrong word for her. Beautiful, gorgeous, ethereal…if Amarantha had chosen her, she’d clearly picked her for her looks. Elain had wide, soft brown eyes framed with the darkest, thickest lashes he’d ever seem. She had a sweet, heart shaped face and pouty lips…enticing. That’s what she was. Any male would be tempted and Hart was certainly no exception.  

“I suppose it’s like a painting but you capture it in the moment and not with a brush.”

“Magic, I see. Why didn’t you say so?” he grinned, unsheathing claws from beneath his knuckles. Elain stared, face paling. 

“How…”

“Hart!” Lucien snapped. Hart rose from the iron chair quickly, eyes wide. Elain twisted to look at him, staring at his scarred face once again. He sighed, wishing it didn’t bother him so much. 

“Apologies,” Hart mumbled. “She’s just…she knows things I’ve never heard of.”

“Go on,” Lucien murmured, stepping to the side so Hart could pass him. “I’ll take it from here.”

She said nothing when he approached, replacing Hart in the exact same chair, his ankle crossed over his knee.

“Lucien, right?” she asked. He shuddered involuntarily at the sound his name on her lips. Had it really been so long since he’d spoken to a female that she could evoke such a response? Lucien frowned.

“Yes.”
“You’re the defacto leader, then?” she guessed shrewdly. “Right hand to the High Lord?”
Smart, he thought. “What makes you think that?”

“Hart jumped up fast enough when he saw you. They’re always looking between the two of you,” she added. “What is it that you do, exactly?”
“Are you asking for my title?”

She sighed. “Why not?”

“I’m Lucien Vanserra, seventh born son to the High Lord of Autumn and Emissary of Spring.”

“Emissary of Spring,” she repeated tonelessly. “Of course. This is Spring, then?”

“You truly don’t know?” he probed. “No one prepared you?”
“Look, I’m starting to think I fell through some kind of hole in the world and ended up here. I gather you have humans but do you know what a car is? Or a cell phone?” 

He stared blankly. Those words meant nothing to him. Elain laughed humorlessly. “Or I’m still dreaming,” she added. “I might be in a coma somewhere and this is just a very vivid, drug induced dream.”

“But you came from the wall,” Lucien prompted. “Which you shouldn’t have done.”

“Hadrians wall,” she emphasized. “It’s two thousand years old, it’s a relic and it separates nothing. I could have stepped over it. Where I’m from, we look at it with wonder—”
“Is it a border wall?” Lucien asked her, suddenly curious. Elain nodded.

“There are garrisons nearby…my friend is really interested in history. We must have looked at a hundred old Roman forts.”

Only some of those words made sense to Lucien and still he leaned forward, suddenly burning with curiosity. “And what about you? You don’t like history?”

“I studied fashion,” Elain replied, eyes flicking over his silver tunic as if she were trying to answer a question in her mind. “I have a job lined up back home in a museum—”
“I didn’t know humans allowed their females to work,” he interrupted. “When did that happen?”

Elain frowned. “The sixties?”

Lucien didn’t know what that meant though he nodded as if he did. “Ah. So…you have a life, I take it?”

“People will be looking for me,” she told him, her voice suddenly desperate. “Just let me go, I swear I won’t say anything.”

What could the humans do, he wondered? Did she imagine they might cross the wall and hunt them down? Humans were nervous things more likely to wet themselves than to fight the fae. The fact that Elain kept passing out was proof enough. She wrapped her arms around her body, pushing her breasts upwards and Lucien had to look away before she noticed he was all but ogling her. 

“I wish I could,” he offered. “When Tamlin gives the word, I’ll walk you over myself, but until then…”
Elain looked up at the dusky sky above them, heaving a rough, frustrated sigh. “If I don’t get home by August, I’ll lose that job. I’ll…there are things waiting on me.”

“A male?”

“A—what? A man? Yes, I…my boyfriend,” she began, though that word didn’t register to him, either. Lucien arched a brow and Elain emitted another sound of frustration. “A…I don’t know? What word do you use for someone you’re seeing before you decide to marry them?”
“Betrothed?” Lucien supplied. Elain rolled her eyes.

“He asked,” she admitted. “Why am I even telling you this?”

Lucien shrugged, still fascinated by her. “He asked and you said no, I take it?”

“I said I needed to think about it,” Elain replied. “If I don’t go home, he’ll…”

“Move on,” Lucien finished, unsure why that thought pleased him. “Although maybe he should anyway, if you don’t even know if you want to marry him.”

“Oh, what do you know?” Elain snapped, rising from her chair. “I’m not taking advice from men who kidnap women.”

“We aren’t men!” Lucien called after her retreating back. He meant to explain the fae were not human but something different, something other. More animal than anything, beasts parading about with human faces. Elain turned, her eyes wide with not fear, but a strange understanding. As if she saw what shimmered just beneath his skin.

“Monsters, then,” she murmured, daring him to deny it. Lucien grinned, letting her see sharp teeth. Elain blanched, the scent of her unease coating the air around them. Lucien let her go, deeply unsettled in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on. 

Monsters, indeed. 

~*~

Elain had hoped, when she woke again, she’d be in a hospital. It was a strange thing to wish for and yet it was better than the alternative. A light rain and soft, rumbling thunder chased her from sleep just in time for a small woman to breeze into the room and pull apart the curtains. “Good morning,” she chirped, her voice a match for the vibrant blue and green bird mask covering her face.

“Why do you wear those masks?” Elain asked, rubbing her eyes as she sat up.

“It’s a curse,” the servant replied breezily. “Ask the High Lord if you wish to know more.”

“I’d rather choose my own mask than talk to him. Do I get to choose my woodland creature? Or is it assigned to me?”

The servant clicked her tongue against her teeth before shooing Elain into the tub. “Can I take a shower, at least?” Elain asked the servant—Alis, she’d said—when the woman stepped back in with a large, fluffy towel.

“A bath is just fine,” Alis replied, unfurling the towel. Elain didn’t miss the way her eyes slid over her body with gleaming approval. “They feed you well.”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Elain murmured self-consciously.

“Most humans are starving, filthy things,” Alis explained, shoving Elain into a vanity chair so she could fuss over her appearance. “But you’re clean, you’re well-fed and lovely…well cared for by your lord back home?”

“Men don’t take care of us back home,” Elain replied, so exhausted by this unending assumption that women were owned by men. She was starting to wonder not where she was, but when she was. “We take care of ourselves.”
“Of course,” Alis replied, as if that were somehow both a given while placating her. “As all females do.”
Elain ground her teeth. “Women.”

“Not here,” was Alis replied as she gathered up Elain’s wet hair. Elain blinked without thinking, staring in the rounded mirror. One moment Alis held her mass of wet curls and the next they were dried and falling loosely around her face.
“How…”
“Magic,” was all Alis said, her impatience silencing Elain. Hart had said as much yesterday, hadn’t he? Like magic. 

Alis put Elain in a soft lilac dress with off shoulder sleeves. It fell to the floor and would have been more appropriate at an incredibly nice gala back home. It was par the course here, she supposed. She did look pretty, she thought, as she ran her hands over the tight bodice curved against her flat stomach. The skirt twirled in the wind, the neckline cut to show the barely hint of her breasts. She’d let Alis twist little strands of her hair off her face, pinning them back with flower shaped pins before weaving little flowers into the strands. If ever Elain felt like a woodland princess, it was in that moment.

She noted the delicate slippers Alis provided her. Hardly useful for running through the woods, though Elain had a different plan. There were no cars but perhaps, she hoped, horses. Elain had been a horse girl growing up, spending every summer before high school bouncing between horse camp and cheer practice. Only in high school had she given up her love of horses to focus on cheerleading. She needed a scholarship and cheerleading was more lucrative than horseback riding. Still, Elain was certain if she could get on a horse, she could make her way back to he wall before one of those men caught her.

She’d have to employ a little charm. That was easy enough at the breakfast table. Hart and Bron were lingering over a basket of muffins, talking about the border and a couple females they were interested in. Both fell silent when Elain walked in, eyes roaming her body. She pretended she didn’t notice as she took a seat.

“That’s my chair,” Lucien Vanserra informed her as he breezed in. She sighed, walking around the table to sit across from him. Hart and Bron slid from the room, forcing her to work a little magic on the emissary who very obviously didn’t trust her. 

“Did you sleep well?” he asked, watching her scoop fruit on her plate. 

“Well enough,” she replied pleasantly. “And you?”

“Always do,” he replied with that shit eating grin. Elain thought he was handsome beneath the mask, though she couldn’t pinpoint why she thought that. He reminded her of some of the fraternity brothers she’d known. They had a certain way they moved, a way of walking through the world when they were good looking that was just different. A swagger, she supposed. Lucien had it, too. He wasn’t hunching and brooding like the blonde High Lord—Tamlin, she reminded herself. Lucien oozed confidence. How fun, she decided, to get one over on him. 

“Am I allowed to spend time by myself today, or will you be accompanying me?”

“I think you know the answer to that,” Lucien replied easily. “Big plans?”

She speared a piece of melon angrily. “I want to go riding.”

“Humans can ride horses?”

She looked up at him, trying to smother her hatred. He propped his hand on his chin, eyes wide and waiting.

“We’re not as simple as you think. What’s the difference between us…besides those ears of yours?”

Lucien reclined in his chair, smirk dancing over his lips. “Well, for once, you’re what…nineteen?”
Elain choked. “Twenty two.”

“You look so young to me,” he replied, though he couldn’t have been more than twenty five. “Tam is over five hundred years old.”

Elain choked, spitting her fruit back on her plate. “What?” she gasped. “And you, too?”
“Nah,” Lucien replied easily. “Barely over two hundred.”
Elain forced herself to breathe. “So you’re immortal.”

“We die,” he argued. “It just takes a long time.”

“Okay. So you’re old and humans are not, is there anything else?”

Lucien raised a broad, strong hand, pressing his thumb and pointer finger together as if he might snap. Flame erupted over his skin, licking harmlessly. Elain was too fascinated by that. “Magic.”

“Yes, Elain. Magic.”

“Anything else?” she breathed, taking a bite of egg as he extinguished the fire. 

“I suppose we fae are more beast than the civilized creatures you hail from,” he replied in a bored tone. “Humans have suppressed the instincts that still govern us.”
Whatever that meant. Elain knew better than to ask, well aware she didn’t want to know what instincts he might be referring to. She’d heard enough men with podcasts to know what they thought of the biological urges of men and women. Perhaps Lucien was the magical equivalent of that and was about to inform her about her smaller brain and inability to make logical decisions…and why men ought to be allowed to fuck anything they liked while women should remain pure and chaste. 

“You never answered about going for a ride,” Elain reminded him, cutting through the lasping silence. 

“Fine,” he agreed. Elain rose from her chair, making a big show of smoothing out her skirt while he watched. If he subscribed to rigid gender roles, let him think her somehow lesser because of the dress she wore. That only served her. She just needed to get to the wall, she reminded herself. She didn’t know how to get back but assumed being near it might be enough. She could climb it, touch it, tumble over it, whatever was necessary to free her of this place.

The stables were far grander than anything Elain had ever seen, set against the palatial estate on the opposite side of the garden. Two horses were already saddles and Elain, who had only seen Alis, wondered if there were more hidden servants that did the bidding of the house or if Lucien’s magic extended to saddling and bridling horses, too.

He gestured towards a pretty gray mare, turning to his own white beast without sparing her a second look. Elain was quick, sliding her foot into the stirrup, swinging her leg into the saddle, and taking off with a quick squeeze of her heels.

“Cauldron boil me!” Lucien exploded from behind her, whatever that meant. She didn’t dare turn to look as they shot out of the polished wooden stables. A lilac scented wind whipped through her hair, sending cool drops of rain blasting like knives over her skin. Overhead, the sky rumbled dangerously, threatening to spill all over again. She didn’t care as she raced over the hills towards the tree line. Lucien was just behind her, his own horse gaining ground. Elain all but flattened herself against her horse in an attempt to make them lighter, faster than the beast carrying his muscular, heavy frame.

She made it just to the edge of the woods before his slammed roughly into her body, dragging her to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Elain kicked and hit and slapped, surprised by how truly solid he was. Lucien, winded and furious, pinned her wrists to the ground, thighs tight around her hips. 

“That was tricky,” he snarled furiously. 

“Let me go!” she screamed, bucking wildly against him, trying desperately to free herself. He didn’t budge, his grip bruisingly tight against her skin. 

“I could have been your friend,” he told her, looking around with that strange pair of eyes.

“Liar!” she replied, some of her desperation leaking into tears. “You’re my captor. Let me go, please, just let me go.”

“Get up,” he ordered, releasing her arms. Elain surged forward and slapped him as hard as she could right across the face. Lucien still straddled her lap, still had her lower body pinned beneath him. His eyes went wide, his skin reddening from her hand. Elain didn’t care if it made him mad. She went to hit him again and faster than her eyes could track, Lucien caught her wrist again, holding it inches from his jaw.

“Don’t do that again,” he warned her.
“I hate you,” she spat, trembling as she realized how close they were. She wrenched her wrist from his grasp, trying to escape his hold on the rest of her. Lucien merely hauled her up by her waist, draping her over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Elain screamed with rage, overwhelmed with how helpless she felt. He didn’t react to her beating fists against his spine as he walked her back, the horses trailing just behind. 

Tamlin was waiting on the front steps when Lucien brought her up. He dropped her at the High Lords feet, his face twisting in a grimace. 

“Go upstairs,” Tamlin ordered.

Elain opened her mouth to argue but Lucien’s eyes cut to her, widening ever so slightly in warning. The shake of his head was nearly imperceptible and yet the warning clear. Go. 

She did, slipping past Tamlin, tears streaming down her face. Just inside, Bron, Hart, and Andras all watched with sympathetic gazes.  

Elain slammed the door just in time to hear something shatter violently against a wall. She squeezed her eyes shut and slid against the wood, knees drawn to her chest.

Strangely sorry for the havoc she’d just caused.

~*~

“You’re supposed to be watching her!” Tamlin roared over the shattered chair in his study. Lucien didn’t dare flinch, didn’t dare betray an ounce of fear.
“I didn’t realize humans could ride horses like that,” he replied by way of explanation. Another chair just beside him exploded in a cloud of splintering wood and leather. A shard sliced against his bare forearm, drawing a line of blood. Tamlin paused when he realized he’d injured Lucien, collapsing behind his desk.

There was no apology—there never was. Merely is deflating rage when he realized he’d taken things too far. “She’s scared,” Lucien began, careful not to upset Tamlin again. It was a delicate balance of standing on eggshells, trying to make his High Lord and friend understand without sending him in a rage. “She wants to go home.”

“This is her home,” Tamlin replied furiously, his green eyes edged with violence. “You’re supposed to be making her understand that.”
“It’s been one day,” Lucien reminded Tamlin. “I thought a ride might assure her I wasn’t going to eat her…I didn’t expect her to take off. She barely left the grounds.”

“If she slips past you again…” Tamlin let the threat hang in the air. It was hardly empty. Lucien knew well enough what methods Tamlin might employ should Lucien fail again. “If you have to tie her to a chair during the day, do it. She is not to go any further than the garden. I want someone shadowing her day and night.”

“Should I sleep in her bed, too?” Lucien asked without thinking, his bitterness rising to the surface. Tamlin’s lip curled over his teeth, claws sliding from beneath his knuckles. “You’re supposed to be courting her—”
“Get. Out.” Tamlin ordered. Lucien strode from the room angrily. It wasn’t even noon and already Tamlin was holed up in his study, more furniture ruined and nothing decided or accomplished. They had a human woman among them, the very thing required to break their curse and yet Tamlin didn’t want to look at her. Lucien knew the longer Tamlin waited the less likely Elain was to trust him. 

He walked past her door for his own bedroom, halting when it cracked open and those brown eyes peered out. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes glancing at his arm. Elain opened the door a little further, eyes swollen from her tears, nose bright pink. She was an absurd sight and yet he didn’t move when she reached for his forearm. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’ll heal right up,” he replied, inclining his head so he could study her watch his skin knit itself back together. 

“More magic?”

“More magic,” he agreed. There was a beat of silence between them before she released him, arms dropping to her side.

“I’m sorry, too,” he added, noting how bruises had already begun to bloom over her delicate wrists. “I…”

“I still hate you,” she rushed to assure him, her words punctuated by a burst of thunder just outside. “I didn’t want you to get hurt…”

Lucien couldn’t help but boop her on the nose. “Don’t be silly.”

She nodded, inching back for her bedroom door. Someone had to make inroads with this woman. Lucien gritted his teeth and took a breath. “Elain?”

She halted, peeking through the crack again. “Yes?”
“Perhaps tomorrow you’ll indulge me in a walk around the garden? You can explain your world to me,” he asked. She’d need a friend, he decided. Bron and Hart were naturals when it came to charming people but perhaps if he, too, could get her to drop her guard, he could plant the seeds Tamlin would need to make something grow. Let her see Tamlin through their eyes…let her break this curse they were all trapped in. “I want to know what a car is.”

She almost smiled. “Okay.”

Lucien left her behind that door, grateful to escape her. He found Bron, Hart, and Andras waiting in the downstairs study with a glass of whiskey. Lucien swallowed it like a shot.

“I know Tam is mad—and he should be,” Hart began hastily, catching the murderous frustration on Lucien’s face, “But she was…something on that horse.”

Lucien didn’t want to picture it and yet the sight of her in that long dress, hair streaming behind her, had stirred something better left untouched in his gut. Pinning her to the ground had been both obscene and uncomfortable. Elain hated him and any arousal he’d felt was both a betrayal of Tamlin and Elain herself. He nodded, earning chuckles from his friends. 

“Keep her away from knives,” Andras joked. “Or she’ll gut us all in her sleep.”

“We need to keep her better occupied,” Lucien said, sinking into one of the leather chairs by the hearth. Hart remained in front of the fireplace while Andras and Bron took the others, all centered around a cozy blue and green rug. 

“What do we know about entertaining females?” Hart asked after a moment, his fair cheeks turning rosy. They all chuckled again before Lucien frowned.

“How hard could it be? Surely we can dig out some sewing needles and…books?”

“Yes,” Hart agreed. “My mother loved to sew.”

“And there is the garden,” Andras added helpfully, running a hand through his blonde hair. “Ladies love to sit and contemplate among the flowers.”

They all murmured their agreement. “And Lord Tamlin?” Bron dared to ask Lucien, so clearly hopeful. “How will he be entertaining Lady Elain?”

Lucien’s sigh was heavy, both externally but against his chest, too. “He will figure it out with time. We can soften her opinion of us while we wait.”
But Lucien knew they were all thinking the same. There was so little time to begin with and Elain was so determined to escape. Her little stunt on the horse had all but convinced him she wasn’t one of Rhysand’s little toys. Compliance and blind obedience would have made more sense. It made Lucien uneasy…what if she really didn’t belong? What would be the consequences of keeping her? 

Still, Lucien woke up the next morning with a knot in his stomach made all the worse but Elain and Bron on the terrace. He had to do a double-take when he saw her as she was in a pair of too-big breeches held up with suspenders and a white shirt she’d tied around her waist. Her hair was pulled up in a bun though little wisps framed her face. Elain was on all fours, legs outstretched as she moved fluidly through what seemed to be stretches. Bron was giving it a go with her though it was clear he did not find the same peace she had.

“It’s called downward facing dog,” Elain was explaining when Lucien strode out, accusation written all over his face. “We’ll move into—”
“What is going on?” he demanded. Bron immediately straightened, sheepish and perhaps embarrassed, if only a little.

“Lady Elain–”
“Just Elain is fine,” Elain interrupted, head tilted towards the sky.

“Was showing me her morning exercise.”

“Was she?” Lucien asked, immediately suspicious. Elain threw a dirty look in his direction before offering a saccharine smile.

“Would you like to join, Lord Vanserra?”

“I prefer a different sort of workout,” he grumbled, thinking of a sword in his hand. Elain merely turned back to the hedges she faced with a smug little smile. 

“Suit yourself.”

“Should I ah…” 

Lucien shrugged. What did it hurt to let Bron join in? At least someone was watching her, he rationalized as he walked off. It bought him time to do as he liked, which was menial tasks he was responsible for. Lucien answered correspondence and went into the village, where word of the human had spread.

“Is it true?” Tullenne asked him when he stopped by to pick up a wide assortment of clothing Alis had put a rush order on. He had his own things mingled among the dresses and night clothes for Elain that he wanted to see personally…as well as Tullenne herself. She’d taken the stop over from her mother a few years back despite being young and beautiful. Lucien could appreciate her fine, golden hair and the cerulean of her eyes, even if they were hidden behind a jeweled cat mask. “Lord Tamlin found a human?”

“Don’t be spreading those sorts of rumors,” Lucien chided with an easy smile, leaning casually in the door. Her eyes swept over his body with appreciation, hands resting on a long table between them that held all the garments in nice, cloth bags.

“But between us?” she questioned, stepping around the table to walk to him. “I miss seeing your face… touching your face,” she added, knuckles brushing over his cheek. Lucien leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering shut despite himself. He missed that feeling, too. He was tired of the endless scrape of fabric and metal against his face, of seeing it from the corner of his eye. 

Tullenne’s lips brushed his own and Lucien, suddenly frantic with need to be touched, grabbed her. It wasn’t polite or soft or sweet. He swept the clothes off the table behind her, hauling her against the furniture so he could bury his face between her thighs, frustrated and angry he couldn’t fully feel her, not with that fucking mask.

“Turn around,” he begged when the lack of stimulation became too much. Dress flipped over her head and cock pulled from his otherwise well-situated pants, Lucien drove into Tullenne’s body. He couldn’t see her face, couldn’t see her hair, just the swell of her ass and the way her cunt gripped his own. Lucien closed his eyes, head lolled between his shoulder blades. Good, it was good, it was—Lord Vanserra. 

Elain’s angry eyes floated through his mind, her writing body pinned between his own suddenly the only thing Lucien could think of. He could feel her wildly bucking hips, the strain of her wrists in his palms, the scent of her salty skin burning in his nostrils. 

Lucien didn’t mean to come to that fantasy—Elain, writhing beneath him in a different way, a more appreciative touch, her mouth sliding over his skin, her cunt gripping his cock. Lucien was only vaguely aware that Tullenne came at all when he slid himself out. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“That was good,” she whispered, propping herself up on the desk to kiss his mouth. Lucien stared at nothing at all as he considered the possibility that he was the monster Elain had accused him of being. She was nothing, just a warm body and a new face. They were all intrigued by her. It was a physical reaction, he told himself.

Nothing more. 

~*~

Elain sat on the wooden fence of the training ring, egging Bron and Hart on. She liked the two of them, who were not brothers despite their similar features, but merely very, very close friends. They’d spent the afternoon bragging of their time in a warband, teasing and jesting and rough housing until she asked for a demonstration. She was bored, restless even. She’d slept badly, body bruised by Lucien’s assault from the day before and anxious about remaining indefinitely in this place. It wasn’t a different time…Elain wasn’t even sure it was the same world. 

She couldn’t poke through the library, though, looking for answers as Tamlin or Lucien had decided she needed to be watched every moment of the day. Case and point—Bron and Hart were sparring with a graceful sort of violence as Lucien strode towards them in the distance, hands jammed in his pockets. No respite, she thought with a sigh, turning her back to the emissary. She much preferred Bron and Hart to Lucien.

“What are you doing?” he asked suspiciously when he reached her.

“Learning to sword fight via osmosis,” she replied, noting the way his mouth flattened into a hard line. 

“No sword fighting,” he said, as if Elain could ever become good enough to match the likes of Bron or Hart. Still, he’d pushed her off a horse the day before and though she felt a little badly that Tamlin had punished him over it, Elain wanted to needle at him. Her words were all she had.

“Worried I might beat you?”

Lucien stared for a moment, his expression hard to gauge beneath the mask.
“Aw, don’t send him in here,” Hart complained when Lucien, ignoring the swinging gate, swung his long, muscular body over the fence. 

“Male pride is something else,” she teased when Bron and Hart played rock paper scissors for the honor of fighting the emissary. Lucien didn’t acknowledge her as he removed his fine, silver tunic and pulled his long hair off his face. “Where I’m from, politicians are soft.”

Hart, who had lost the game, came to join Elain on the other side of the fence. He leaned his body against the wood, elbows almost touching her legs. “Lucien’s not a politician,” Hart told her as Bron and Lucien squared off. “He’s from Autumn Court.”
“I have no idea what that means.”

“You’ll see,” was all Hart said. 

And see Elain did. Lucien was vicious, a creature movies could never capture and books could only have dreamt of. He scared her enough that Hart hesitantly put his hand on her knee, saying, “He won’t kill Bron.”

That did little to settle the unease growing in her chest. He’d shown her literal fire the day before, had all but proven, with his little comment on their ages, that this was not the fifteenth century or some equally other brutal time period. It was other, something she didn’t know she could escape from. Even if she could, how would she ever get past the man swinging a sword like he’d been born to wield it? It wasn’t even his job. His title was emissary, which begged the question—were there others who were better? 

Elain was grateful when Lucien finished, the tip of his blade pressed to Bron’s unarmed throat. Sweat dripped from his face and pooled against the white fabric of his shirt, making it cling against his sculpted chest. He turned to look at her with blazing defiance, as if to say I tried to warn you. 

She couldn’t meet his gaze. Elain dropped her eyes to her hands, hopping off the fence with the help of Hart. “How old are you?” she asked. He winced.

“Why do you ask?”
“A hundred?”

His face didn’t change. She felt like she was trapped in a bad Twilight movie. “Two hundred?”
“Close,” he muttered. “It’s not important, Lady Elain. Why don’t we—”
“Inside,” Lucien interrupted, wiping the little bit of his face not covered in a mask with his shirt. She drank in the toned, bronze skin before shaking her head. “I need a drink and you two need to go to the border.”

“Is he okay?” Elain asked as Lucien strode off, expecting she would just follow after him. She hated that she did, hated how her eyes kept bouncing from his face to the sword slung over his shoulder.

“His ego is bruised but his body is fine,” Lucien dismissed. “Do you still think you could beat me?”
Elain froze in place. “I will get out of here. One way or another, even with you tailing me day and night. You’ll get complacent and I’ll slip right past you.”

Lucien smiled. “Oh, how I hope you try. Yesterday was the most fun I’ve had in ages.”

Elain swallowed the wave of anxiety that rose through her. It hadn’t been fun for her. None of this was fun. She was miserable, coming out of her skin and just barely keeping it together. No amount of yoga on the terrace or pestering Bron and Hart could fix that. She opened her mouth to beg him again but Lucien inclined his head, shaking slightly.
“I can’t,” he said dully. 

“So what? How long can you possibly keep me here for?” Elain asked desperately, turning in a circle to survey the grassy grounds around her. “I won’t live thousands of years, I’ll be lucky to get sixty more!”
Lucien scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “I don’t make the decisions—”
“But you enforce them!” Elain shrieked, grabbing his arm before he could pull away and shoving up his sleeve. No cut, no wound, nothing that proved he’d been injured at all. She stared for a moment, her mind desperately trying to make sense of it all. She took a wobbly step back and Lucien lunged, catching her before her legs collapsed beneath her.

“Don’t pass out,” he pleaded, carrying her in his arms with ease. Elain turned her head away from him, the heat of his body evoking a sense of nausea.
“I’m going to throw up,” she whispered, grateful when he set her on solid ground. Elain just laid, cheek against the cool grass, until the urge passed. Lucien joined her, sitting cross legged a good three feet away, just in case. 

“Tell me about your home,” he murmured after a moment. Elain couldn’t face him. “What do you miss the most?”

My family. My boyfriend. A stand-up shower. “Tequila,” she told him dully. It wasn’t true but it also wasn’t vulnerable, either. He might use whatever she said against her, might somehow weaponize her family to keep her from trying anything else.

“What is tequila?” he asked after a moment. Elain turned her head. He was too still, too expressionless though his voice was curious.

“Alcohol.”
“We have alcohol,” Lucien shared. “Do you want some?”

It was that question that found Elain alone in the study with Lucien as he offered her a selection of whiskey and other liquor she’d never heard of. He asked her to stay away from the wine, stating it was too potent for humans and Elain didn’t bother asking what, exactly made it so. She merely accepted a glass of whiskey in a nice, heavy glass, curled in a chair opposite her captor. 

“What does tequila taste like?” he asked, taking a sip of his matching drink.

“Honestly? It burns all the way down. I’ve never liked the taste.”

He frowned. “Then why drink it at all?”

“It feels good,” she told him. “Like oblivion, like you’re nothing at all.”

“Why would you ever want that?” he questioned, his voice edged. Elain took a drink, wrinkling her nose against the taste.

“You never have bad moments, Lucien?”

He considered that for a moment. “I do.”

“How very human of you,” she replied, unable to resist that little jab. Lucien smiled and Elain thought he was lovely that way—unguarded, at ease. Lucien exhaled a soft breath.

“I know what it's like not to be able to go home,” he finally told her, unable to meet her eyes. He swirled his drink in his hands, fingers pressed so tight to the glass she thought he might shatter it. “To want to and…”
“So I’m here forever?” she asked him, her desperation catching in her throat. Lucien took another drink.

“For now.”
Elain couldn’t help the bite of tears stinging against her eyes. Lucien saw it too when he looked at her, sympathy filling his expression. “I didn’t mean to come here,” she whispered. “I just want to go home.”

She would have preferred his mocking to whatever he was offering her now. His understanding told her he knew she wasn’t going home in the next few days. Maybe years. He knew things that Elain did not by virtue of living here and being employed by the High Lord. “Help me,” Elain entreated. 

“I am,” he replied, as if pulling her off a moving horse had been helpful at all. “You’re still roaming, are you not? I will do what I can, but…”
“Make a deal with me?” she asked. Lucien went ramrod straight. 

“You’d make a deal with me?”

“Should…should I not? I don’t know the rules.”
“Deals are bound by magic. They can’t be broken.”

Of course. A legally bound contract but worse. Elain thought Nesta would have a field day with that. 

“Tell me your terms,” Lucien coaxed, as if curious what she was thinking. Elain used her thumb to wipe her nose.
“Absolutely honesty,” she whispered, well aware honesty was subjective.

“And in exchange, I get…?”
“A month of cooperation,” she replied softly. Lucien considered this before offering her his hand.

“I’ll agree to that. One month of absolute honesty in exchange for our shared cooperation.”

Elain hesitated. “My honesty?”

“Keep your secrets,” Lucien murmured after a moment. “I trust you to want to tell me some day.”
Elain clasped his hand before she could think better of it or ruin their little truce. She needed the emissary to get out. He needed her compliance in order to avoid any further scrutiny from his HIgh Lord. She could help him and, perhaps, figure out why he wouldn’t just take her back to the wall.

A jolt stole her breath, snapping against her chest like a rubber band. She looked to Lucien who had gone deathly pale, eyes huge and panicked. “What was that?” she asked him.

“Magic,” he told her, smoothing out his features. It didn’t take away the wildness in his eyes. “The agreement settling between us, binding us for the time being. Nothing more.”

She nodded. Absolute honesty. 

And already Elain was certain he was more practiced of a liar than she’d imagined. It was the illusion of trust. 

It was more than she had.

Elain would take what she could get.

Chapter Text

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Elain asked, watching Lucien flip through yet another book. He was so busy, his own stack of books taking up an entire table. “What are you even looking for?”

“Nothing that would interest you,” he replied, careful with his words. Elain sighed, closing her own very boring book on the History of Prythian. Five hundred pages of killing humans and occasionally feeling bad was starting to wear on her. There was nothing about world traveling, besides. 

“What was the point of honesty if you were going to be so cagey?”

Lucien glanced up from the corner of the stable he was sitting on, clearly annoyed. “Has it ever occurred to you, in all your infinite wisdom, that there are things even I don’t know?”

“Everyday,” Elain replied sweetly. Lucien scowled, dropping his book loudly to the table.

“Want to go for a walk?”

“No.”

“Want to–”

“You know the answer is no,” she interrupted quickly, heading him off because he could rope her into more bread baking or soap making. He loved to dump her off on the servants for six hours, returning just in time to steal a steaming piece of sourdough or all the misshapen candles she’d made. He was a menace of epic proportions and her near constant companion, though not for a lack of trying. 

Bron and Hart and Andras were far more interesting company, if only for how much more open they were. Hart and Bron met Elain every morning at the crack of dawn to do yoga before Andras took over, leading her through a four mile run that she suspected he made difficult on purpose. Afterwards Elain bathed and dressed in the clothes Alis had brought for her two weeks earlier and meandered to the breakfast table where someone was always waiting with lavender tea and eggs. No coffee, no lattes—though she had managed to convince everyone to make a lemon loaf, and that had helped a little.

Then she was left to Lucien’s whims and his whims were always obnoxious and petty. Only on occasion, after lunch when Lucien was bored of dragging her around while he opined loudly on any number of topics, did she get a say in what they did. And for Elain, it was always the library. She’d been there for two weeks and as far as she could tell, nothing had changed. Tamlin very rarely came around and when he did, everyone but Lucien scattered. 

“What if you went downstairs and made me another lemon loaf?” Lucien suggested with a gleam in his one good eye. It was Elain’s turn to scowl.

“That was for my breakfast,” she reminded him, rising from her chair with a sigh. Lucien knew what she was up to—it was hardly a secret. Elain wanted to leave and hoped if she played along and did as they asked, Tamlin might give her leave to go or create a portal or whatever was needed to get back home unharmed.

“I was thinking—”
“Lucien,” Tamlin’s voice cut through the silence. Elain jerked backwards, slamming into Lucien’s unmoving chest. “Elain.”

The High Lord unnerved her. Something about the way he watched her made her think there was a game far more sinister than she suspected, all of his own design. He wasn’t looking at her, though. He looked to Lucien.

“I need you to take Andras to the border.”
“Of course.”

Just like that. Lucien stepped around her, careful not to touch her at all. He could be playful when it was just the two of them, poking and pinching as it suited him but the moment Tamlin showed up, Lucien was the picture of civility.

“What about me?” Elain asked as Lucien slipped from the room. He didn’t look back, leaving Tamlin to respond.
“I thought I might show you more of the grounds,” he offered. Elain wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t a request though he’d worded it to sound polite, to make it seem as if she could decline. She couldn’t. Elain needed Tamlin’s permission to go. He didn’t trust her.

“That would be nice,” Elain lied. She was tired of the rolling green hills and the tulips. Lucien had promised to take her to a field of wildflowers when she described the bluebells in Texas wistfully one day but that had yet to materialize. Perhaps Tamlin would make good on it. 

The problem with Tamlin, outside of his unyielding stare, was how unlikable he was. Bron and Hart joked through dinner. They tried to include him. Tamlin would smile on occasion, speaking to a handsome face beneath the mask, but he never quite managed their easy joviality. 

She tried not to hold it against him when he joined her for morning yoga or when he replaced Andras on the run. Unlike the other men, who kept a respectful distance and didn’t push, Tamlin removed his shirt halfway through and Elain wished he hadn’t. He was like every frat brother she’d ever met, hoping to get laid and making it way too obvious. 

“I’m gonna take a bath,” she told him, noting the way his nostrils flared. “I’ll meet you at the dining table?”
“Alright,” he agreed though in truth, Elain had expected haha without me? He seemed the type. Tamlin was waiting with a shirt when she returned to the dining room. An iced piece of lemon loaf and lavender tea waited for her, safe from Lucien’s greedy hands. “Did you sleep well?” Tamlin asked, leaning forward to watch her eat.

“I did,” Elain lied. She slept like shit most nights, plagued by nightmares of running through the woods. He didn’t need to know that. No one did. She’d work that out in therapy if she ever got out of this place. “Did you?”
Tamlin nodded. “Your hair looks clean,” he added, his way of paying her a compliment. Elain stared for a moment. 

“Oh. Thank you.”
“How are you enjoying Spring?” 

Elain knew what she would say if it were Lucien or Andras asking. Tamlin showed no hint of the man she’d heard that first day blowing up his study with whatever strange, volatile magic he commanded. She’d asked Lucien once but he hadn’t answered, choosing silence over honesty. He was a bastard that way. 

Elain knew better than to agitate some men. It was just a vibe, something she’d picked up from visiting Gray at the fraternity house. Most of his brothers were good, nice men but a few were angry, pent up and always trying to pick a fight with someone weaker than them. Tamlin evoked that same feeling. 

“It’s different,” she said carefully, nothing the edge in his eye. 

“Do you like it?”

“I still want to go home, if that’s an option—”
“It’s not.”
Elain’s mouth dropped, all her thoughts flying from her mind. “But Lucien said—”

“Lucien isn’t High Lord. I am.”

“Please,” Elain tried but Tamlin shook his head.

“You’ll stay.”
Elain rose from her chair. It was one thing to hear Lucien say it, to have him allude to being forced to stay but it was another for Tamlin to just outright say it in his cold, dark way. 

“Sit down,” he ordered. “I’m taking you for a walk.”
“No thank you,” Elain said. It didn’t matter. A force she couldn’t fight or control shoved her back in her chair like phantom hands on her shoulders. Tamlin barely reacted as he continued to  eat, though it was surely his doing. Elain swallowed the tears she wanted to let fall, picking at her plate without eating. How odd, to wish it was Lucien that sat across from her swiping at her food and making fun of whatever dress Alis had put her in that day. Tamlin said nothing at all, chewing furiously until his plate was empty.

“You don’t wish to eat more?”
“No.”
Tamlin frowned but released his hold on her. Like a sack of bricks dragged off her shoulders, Elain gasped softly, unaware of the pressure put on her spine. Tamlin didn’t notice or didn’t care, standing and offering her hand. There was no choice to take it, no choice but to let him walk her outdoors where Bron and Hart watched, eyes gleaming. No Lucien, no Andras, as if either could have stopped this. 

“Lady Elain,” both Bron and Hart said in unison when she descended the steps to the grounds, bowing slightly and God, why did they look as if they were attending a wedding? She felt as if were walking a death march. Doomed to eternal spring, to living with men who never aged, until she withered to ash. No mourners other than her strange friends. What would her sisters do? What were they doing? Were they looking for her? Scouring the area she’d last been seen, begging people desperately to help them find her?
And Gray— Elain choked back a sob, drawing Tamlin’s attention. He frowned. “Are you crying?”
Elain hated him for that. Hated him for deciding her entire life with so little care, for shoving her around with his magic, for treating her less than for whatever shortcomings he perceived. She knew he could catch her if he liked. She could hardly outrun any of them, they’d made that abundantly clear though at least Andras had the good sense not to rub in her face. She took off, grateful when Tamlin didn’t chase after her. Elain moved blindly through her tears, sobbing loud enough for anyone to track until she found a grassy hillside with long, staying willow trees that seemed to beckon her in the wind. She collapsed beneath one, knees drawn to her chest, weeping until her ribs ached and her head pounded. 

“I don’t want to die here,” she told the world, as if it could hear her. The drooping green branches lengthened and groaned, shielding her from the outside world until only the barest amount of light pierced through the rustling leaves.

She rested her head against the bark, her yellow dress spread over her legs. The wind sang a song that was vaguely familiar, a melody she could almost place. She didn’t budge, stretching out when the sun hit the highest point in the sky, its golden rays warming the world around her. She napped and cried and napped some more until darkness began to creep like shadows, slipping past the leafy defenses of her protective shelter.

“Lady Elain?” Hart’s voice called carefully, the rest of him utterly silent. “I think you want to be alone but night is coming—”
“Go away!” she called, wincing at the hoarse, broken sound of her voice. 

“I thought so. I brought you some things. Food and—”
“Blankets!” Bron added, his voice rich with sympathy. “It gets cold. Come out and let us help you set up.”
“We brought other things,” Hart coaxed gently. “Things our High Lord would not want you to have.”
Bron pushed the branch aside, bear mask so silly she almost smiled. He caught it, offering her a freckled hand. “I’ll show you how to build a campfire. We could roast sausages—”

“And marshmallows!” Hart called from behind him. 

“We do that back home,” she whispered, letting them see her hurt. Bron nodded. 

“Tell us about it.”

And she did, while Hart and Bron made their little jokes. She trailed after them, helping to gather wood as she told them about her dilemma about going back to Chicago and how her best friend wanted her to say. Bron and Hart lacked the fire Lucien possessed and instead shared what they all had was brute, animalistic strength and some limited ability to shift their appearance. It was a give and take—almost real friendship, she thought with longing when the fire was built and the fat sausages Bron had brought sizzled over a skillet. She twirled a long stick between her fingers, already wishing for a marshmallow, if only to taste a little of home. 

“It sounds like your friend Harper isn’t really your friend,” Bron told her after a moment. This hulking warrior, dissecting her relationship problems, would have been funny if she hadn’t been so desperate for connection. “She doesn’t consider your needs.”

Hart nodded in agreement. “She could visit, right? And you two will stay connected through your…phone letters?”

“Yeah,” Elain agreed, unwilling to argue semantics when at least they were trying.

“I don’t like her,” Bron announced.

“You don’t know her,” Elain replied, watching Hart rise to pull off his sausages and slide them into little bowls. Elain took one, noting how Hart had split the sausages evenly among them, though there was no way she could eat six. Elain stood and offered up two more to each man before plopping between them rather than as far as she’d been sitting. 

“She was pretty cruel during your vacation,” Hart reminded Elain, drawing her back to the conversation at hand. “She abandoned you for that man when you had plans to go to the museum—”
“And she’s encouraging you to sleep around,” Bron added. “When you said she knew it made you uncomfortable.”

“I think she has this idea of who you should be to her,” Hart continued thoughtfully. “Second in whatever scenario she’s imagined and you’re so nice, Elain, you let her.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Elain mumbled, her throat closing again. Both Bron and Hart bumped her with their shoulders.

“You can be first best among us, if you like,” Bron offered. Elain smiled because they were so genuinely good it was hard to dislike them.

“I wouldn’t dare fight Lucien over that spot,” she teased, earning a few chuckles. 

“He might not mind so long as you don’t scare away the females,” Hart replied after a moment, reclining back on his elbows to look up at the violet sky overhead. A feeling of…of what? It tugged at her, though she didn’t know what exactly it was. Not jealousy or anger or fear. Something else, something she didn’t recognize. 

“I could be a really good wing woman,” Elain replied, noting their confusion. “You know, help out. Keep the crazy people at bay, make the awesome women want to spend time with you?”

“That would be a sight,” Bron admitted as Hart stood.

“I would love to see any male ask a female for help,” he added. “With sex, I mean. Just…we males we tend to be ah…territorial.”

“They’d scent Lord Tamlin on her anyway,” Hart said, drawing a frigid chill up her spine. 

“What?”

“Because you live in his house. No one would dare touch the High Lord’s female,” Hart told her earnestly, unaware of how uncomfortable he’d made her. 

“No more talk of Lord Tamlin or wooing females,” Bron announced, drawing a leather pouch of homemade marshmallows. “I demand to see how Lady Elain roasts her marshmallows and then—”
“We brought you a knife,” Hart interrupted gleefully. “We’re going to teach you to throw them.”
“We have a wooden target board and everything.”

Elain grabbed Hart’s arm, squeezing tight, face buried into the soft fabric of his shirt.

“Thank you,” she whispered. 

“You need friends,” Hart murmured. “We want to be that.”

And in the wake of her aching, empty chest, Elain could not have asked for anything more.

~*~

Lucien returned to a silent, empty estate. Elain, he supposed, was asleep but Bron and Hart were nowhere to be found. Andras glanced at him, shrugging his sweaty shoulders before tramping through the house, leaving Lucien to track down Tamlin. Once again, Tamlin had torn apart his study. Lucien swallowed his irritation. It was difficult constantly replacing those items. It took time for the craftsmen in the nearby villages to create chairs and desks and bookcases.

“You alright? I’m gonna take a—”
“Elain is sleeping on the grounds tonight.”

Lucien blinked, his chest filling with unimaginable hate for only a moment before it winked out. “Alone?”

Tamlin shrugged. “She took off this morning when I told her she was not leaving—”
Lucien groaned from the doorway. “You couldn’t let her have that hope?”

“You were supposed to warn her—”
“I am already following her day and night,” Lucien interrupted. “I am a nuisance to her, barely a friend and the only good will I had was her hope if she behaved, I might one day convince you to let her go. You’ve slammed that door before she ever had a reason to stay.”

Tamlin was clearly pissed his day with Elain had not gone the way he hoped. “Why do you need to play the part of villain?” Lucien pressed. “You could assign that to me, could have told her anything you liked and she would have believed you.”

“I don’t know,” Tamlin finally admitted with a heavy sigh. “She’s so difficult.”
Lucien wanted to yell at Tamlin. Elain was a slip of a female, practically nothing at all. She asked for practically nothing at all. 

“She would jump through flaming hoops if you told her she could go home in, say….a year.”

Tamlin looked at Lucien. “That’s a lie.”
“A lot could happen in a year,” Lucien reminded him. “She might not want to leave if you gave her a reason to stay. Regardless, no one said you had to love her. She only has to love you. Court her, let her break this curse, and send her home.”
“Go get her,” Tamlin asked, voice ragged and exhausted. “You tell her I’ve changed my mind.”
“It should come from you,” Lucien chided even as his chest refilled with pleasure. He’d been thinking about her since he left, his mind replaying the same soft snap he’d felt ever since their bargain. That’s all it was, he told himself. He’d scoured books looking for any proof humans and fae could be mates and if it existed, no one had thought to write it down. Not mates, just bound by a shimmering agreement that would fade in two weeks. Not mates, that would be a betrayal of his friendship with Tamlin, of everything Tamlin had done for him, of his home of this land. 

Not mates.

And yet Lucien strolled into the darkness, following the sound of raucous laughter and the singing of the willows. Elain was certainly not alone. She gotten far, obviously trailed by Bron and Hart who had built a fire and laid out bedrolls so she didn’t have to return. Elain had tied her yellow dress around her legs to create strange, billowing pants and both Bron and Hart had shucked off their tunics for just the shirts underneath, sleeves rolled to the arm.

“Again!” Hart demanded, sweaty from either the nearby fire or exertion. Elain had a knife in hand as Bron adjusted her posture, holding her straight, his hand covering her wrist. Lucien had to swallow a furious snarl at the sight—it was fine. They weren’t hurting her and besides…

Not mates.

He’d built the possibility up in his head to the point of madness. She was no one’s female, least of all his. Tamlin would figure this out, would end this curse, kill Amarantha and Elain would go back home or, perhaps, even marry Tamlin if he fell too. Lucien didn’t see how his friend might given he was brooding inside while Elain threw her knife delightfully well. Bron and Hart whooped in support, earning the brightest smile Lucien had seen from her. 

“What are you three up to now?” he asked, well aware they were doing nothing wrong. From the looks of it, Bron and Hart had fed her and convinced her to have a little fun, which was more than anyone else had managed in the last couple days. Elain turned, golden brown hair stuck to her sweaty forehead, her smile sliding right off her face at the sight of him.

“It was all in good fun,” Hart began but Elain crossed her arms over her chest, pushing her breasts back up. Lucien ignored how every fucking orgasm he’d had since she arrived had centered on the potential sight of her naked body. He needed to do that again, he decided. Prove she was just a particularly pretty human and nothing more.

“We’re staying,” she said. “We’re camping tonight.”

“Fine,” Lucien replied with a shrug of his shoulders. “I only came to give you a message from the High Lord.”
She went utterly stiff. What had Tamlin said, he wondered? 

“He wants you to know he will release you in a year.”

“A year,” she breathed as both Bron and Hart put their hands on her shoulder. “No sooner?”

“Stop pushing him,” Lucien warned. “I said I’d do what I could. You should trust me.”

“A year is better than forever, Lady Elain,” Bron told her, drawing her attention away from Lucien. He was grateful for it. He left them to their fire and their knives, wishing she’d invited him to stay. He could have engorged the flame until it licked the heavens itself, could have shown her how to bury a blade in Hart’s back before he could even blink. 

You should trust me.

Not mates.

In town, Lucien found the first willing body he could, dragging her back to the estate knowing full well Elain, Bron, and Hart wouldn’t be back in the morning. She had blonde hair like before though her name eluded him. Had he even asked before he’d hauled her into his lap, kissing her until he was breathless and dizzy? Had she told him when she removed his pants to slide her pretty red lips over his aching cock? 

He certainly didn’t care when he put her on her hands and knees, ass in the air. It wasn’t his favorite position but it did make fantasizing easier. Lucien couldn’t pretend he didn’t want Elain, not as he drove into the pretty, nameless female trapped in a mask, same as him. He could vent into her, could project it was Elain’s soft moans, Elain’s willing cunt milking him until he came too loudly. This female’s fate was bound up with his—if he crossed a line, they were all doomed. 

Tamlin was waiting at the breakfast table wordlessly when Lucien sent the female out. Lucien dropped beside his friend, waiting for the inevitable.

“Good night?” Tamlin finally asked. Lucien made himself grin, to look cocky and casual.

“Not the worst night I’ve ever had.”

This, he thought desperately. This is what I miss. The time before Amarantha when they could joke and laugh and tease each other without worrying about Tamlin losing his temper. It hadn’t been perfect but it had been easier. Almost fun. Tamlin cracked a smile just in time for Elain, reeking of smoke, to trail into the room. Tamlin immediately stood while Lucien doled food out, ignoring the soft tug in his gut.

Not mates. Not mates. Not mates. 

“Lady Elain,” Tamlin began, unaware she only let Bron and Hart call her that. Lucien suspected it was because they said it with brotherly affection and not the stiff formality Tamlin was employing. 

“Just Elain was fine,” she said, eyeing him warily. “I need to bathe.”

“Of course, I…I still want to take you around the grounds, if you’ll let me? We got off to the wrong foot yesterday.”
Her eyes bounced to Lucien. 

“Six months,” she said softly, ignoring every piece of advice Lucien had given her. Tamlin went rigid.

“What?”

“Six months and then you send me home.”
Lucien sighed.

“A year,” Tamlin replied. It was all he could give her. That was when time stopped and Amarantha came to drag them beneath the mountain, prisoners in their most sacred spot. Six months was nothing, he told himself and yet Tamlin, if he failed, couldn’t be bound to a promise he was unable to keep. 

“Please,” Elain tried, her voice cracking. She’d clearly given this a lot of thought, had constructed an argument that Lucien was sure was reasonable and sound. “I have a life—”
“It’ll be waiting in a year,” Tamlin dismissed tensely. He’d hoped for a better start.

“Elain,” Lucien warned but she stepped closer to Tamlin. 

“You don’t understand,” she tried to explain. “My life, my boyfriend—”
The room exploded. Lucien was quick enough to shield her with his body, shoving her between himself and the wall to keep the table and all the pottery on top of  it from killing her. He took the brunt of the abuse, pressed so tight he thought he might have robbed her of air. Elain buried her face against his chest, eyes squeezed shut tight, hands fisted in his tunic. Boyfriend has set him off. They didn’t have that concept, not technically, though it translated well enough. She belonged to another male back home and Tamlin was jealous. 

“Lucien,” Tamlin breathed the way he always did. Tell her you’re sorry! “Lucien, I…”
“Go upstairs,” Lucien ordered. Elain nodded, gulping down air frantically. She didn’t need to be told twice, not when she stepped around him to see the destruction of the table and plates and bowls, strewn about with wild, careless abandon. Lucien’s body ached from the abuse though he said nothing as he faced off with an anguished Tamlin.

“Boyfriend?” he whispered.

“A courting male and nothing more!” Lucien snapped. “Fuck, Tam…you could have killed her.”
“I know, I know, I…” he swallowed hard. “I’m so fucking scared this is falling apart.”

“You’ve got to try harder,” was all Lucien could say. He wasn’t feeling particularly charitable, not in the light of his ruined breakfast and his aching back. Some not insignificant part of him wanted to shred Tamlin to pieces for what he’d done. “Take her to the pool of starlight and apologize or send her the fuck home.”

He didn’t stay to watch Tamlin wave the mess away, to pretend like none of it happened. He was stressed, he was losing his grip on his sanity, staring down the end of the tunnel in which Amarantha forced him into a marriage he didn’t want and made him the ruiner of their land. Lucien didn’t envy Tamlin’s choices and yet some part of him was beginning to think Tamlin had given up long before Elain ever came.

He went to her door, knocking softly. Elain pulled open the door and just like that, Lucien was standing in her bedroom. Lovely, soft, delicate…and so at odds with his own bedroom. She clipped lavender placed in a little white water jug on the windowsill, she had a sun hat hanging from one of her bedposts and a cozy knitted blanket draped over a chair.

“Are you okay?” she asked him, hands touching his back tentatively. “Let me see.”

And damn him if he didn’t yank off his tunic, wincing in pain when he raised his arms over his head. His shirt went next, eliciting a soft hiss of air from her lips. Lucien strode past her for the bathroom, looking over his shoulder at the ugly bruises rapidly healing beneath his skin.

“They’ll be gone by morning,” he lied. They’d take at least a day, if not more, to fully fade. Still, there was no need to worry her, not when she was so pale. The light in her eyes, the bright smile Bron and Hart had coaxed from her had vanished. Elain bit her lip as he pulled his shirt back over his head, well aware it wasn’t appropriate to be in her bedroom, let alone half naked.

“What’s really going on here? Tell me,” she ordered. The magic string pulled at his gut as the other, the one that Amarantha bound him to, wrapped itself around his throat. 

“I can’t,” he managed. 

“Why not?”

No words came though the magic between them tried to compel him. Elain watched him gape like a fish, arms crossed. “Magic?”
“Yes.”

“A deal you made with Tamlin?”

He shook his head no. “I can’t…Elain, if I could explain it I would. I can’t. Don’t ask me, the bond might shred me in two.”
Elain’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “Bond?”

“We made a deal,” he groaned softly, collapsing on top of her knitted blanket in the chair. “It creates a bond between us. A tether.”
She rubbed at her rib cage absently. “Okay. So something is happening but you can’t tell me…and it’s why I have to stay here for the next year. Is it why Tamlin…lost his temper?”

“No,” he admitted miserably. Elain stood over him but wisely didn’t ask him to elaborate. She was smart, she could figure this out. She’d help, he thought. She had that look about her, evoked that feeling of warmth…she reminded him of his mother, in a strange way.

Of Jesminda. 

“I’m going to figure it out,” she warned.

“I hope you do,” he replied, rising to his feet.  

“I’m going home, Lucien,” she called after his retreating back. Lucien sighed.

“I know you are.”

~*~

“Andras!” Elain called, jogging after her friend. “What happened to our run?”

“Duty calls,” he replied with an easy smile, sweeping a hand through his sandy blonde hair. “Who ran with you today?”

“Lucien,” she grumbled. “He doesn’t pretend to be as slow as me and it's annoying.”
“That sounds about right,” Andras agreed. “I’ll try not to leave you alone with him tomorrow. You did yoga though, right?”

It was strange to hear how comfortable they were getting with some of her terms. Strange and comforting. Some of them were trying. Even Tamlin was trying. He wanted to take her to a pool and Elain had finally relented, agreeing to go later that afternoon. She’d dressed in pretty pink, with braided pigtails keeping her hair off her face.

“Why do you wear masks?”

“It’s a curse,” Andras said with a wink. “We’re doomed to wear them for our hubris…or something like that, anyway.”

“By who?”

“Who indeed, Elain? Why all the questions? Did Lucien not wear you out? Because I’ve got time in an hour. We can run again.”

“No, I’m meeting Tamlin,” she replied, catching the flash of relief in Andra’s blue eyes. Tamlin, who destroyed the dining room when he learned she had a boyfriend and Tamlin who was always just around, talking in his stilted, awkward way. No Hart, no Bron, no fucking Lucien at the pool today. Just her and Tamlin.

Cursed.  

Was Elain in some sort of Snow White like story? Where the prince required a kiss to free himself? She wouldn’t do it. Elain knew how these stories ended. Happily ever after, here, a human trapped where she didn’t belong.

The thoughts plagued her all through her walk with Tamlin. To his credit, the longer the trekked over the sloping landscape. As if the estate was wearing him down, sucking the life from him. He seemed almost happy in the sunlight, telling her about his parents and the garden he so often caught her in. “My father built it for my mother,” Tamlin told her with a wistful look. “It was a mating present and—”
“Mating present? Is that like marriage?”

He chuckled and she begrudgingly could admit it was a good laugh. “No. We have marriage but mating bonds are something different altogether.” . 

“Bond?” she questioned.. Tamlin nodded, his masked face tilted towards the sun. “It’s…I don’t know what the concept is like, where you’re from. It’s a soul bond, it’s a perfect pairing between two people. They’re rare and if you’re blessed to find your other half, it supersedes a marriage. We honor mating bonds above all else.”

“Soulmates,” she murmured. “We call that soulmates.”
Tamlin smiled. “I like that. It feels right.”

“What does it feel like?” Elain asked, ignoring the soft pull in her stomach, the hook just beneath her ribs.

“I don’t know,” Tamlin admitted. “It’s a living thing, though. A cord, or so they say. Tethering two people together.”

Elain smiled softly. “It sounds terribly romantic.”
“It was for my parents,” he admitted wistfully. “I think for some, it’s bliss and for others its hell. My mother loved my father fiercely—too much, even. He loved her, too, in his way. She was, I think, the only thing he loved.”

“What happened to them?”

“A rival lord in another court killed them both,” he said softly, his sadness prompting her to reach for his hand. It startled him—hell, it startled Elain, too. She needed to touch someone and he was there, he was being kind instead of angry and weird and she thought maybe she could condition him to be like this more often as if he were her own version of Pavlov’s dog. 

“My mom died of cancer,” she told him, dropping his warm, calloused hand before he could get the wrong idea. “It’s an illness,” she added when he opened his mouth. What kind of world didn’t have cancer? Elain was suddenly struck by the unfairness of it all. “It eats you from the inside really slowly. Some people survived but hers was aggressive and not treatable. She died when I was eleven.”
“I’m sorry.”

“My dad fell apart after that. They weren’t madly in love, not like your parents but she was a stay at home mom and he ran a fortune five…a business. We went from this quiet, comfortable life to a two bedroom on the southside. I have two other sisters and sharing a room was hell.”

“You’re not a lord's daughter, then?” Tamlin asked. Elain almost laughed.
“Maybe once, in your world. But after my mom died we were living in poverty. I got a job waitressing tables and paid for my cheer stuff so I could get a scholarship to school…I know he was really proud all three of us went to college…university…whatever the equivalent here is.”

“Females don’t tend to study as long as males,” Tamlin admitted. Elain’s hackles went up and he immediately raised his palms in defense.

“I didn’t say I agreed. It’s just how things are done. It’s…it’s nice you were able to.”

Elain shrugged. “It’s just different. Women have work. You can’t count on men.”
“Not even the boyfriend?” he questioned, clearly probing. Elain wanted to take the bait, if only to talk to anyone besides herself about Gray. Bron and Hart were biased and strangely sex-positive, urging her to at least have sex with one fairy before she left, if only to see how the two compared. 

“It’s just better to rely on yourself,” Elain informed a smiling Tamlin. She didn’t recognize the man before her, bounding towards the shimmering, silvery pool of starlight with glee. A weight had been lifted, a curtain raised. Tamlin waded into the pool in his clothes, taunting and teasing until she dipped in her feet, only for him to yank her in after him. Elain was grateful he had, if only to know what liquid starlight felt. Softer than water, lighter than air. She practically floated home, wishing she could call Harper or Nesta or Gray and tell them what had just happened.

There was no one to tell when she returned, leaving Elain feeling hollow and empty. A year, in the scheme of things, was nothing at all and yet it was everything to her when she walked out into the cool night air, blanket wrapped around her cerulean dress. She tramped away from the estate, well aware she was being followed.

Elain spread the blanket out in the grass as Lucien emerged. “Stuck babysitting tonight?” she asked without malice. He nodded, waiting to see if she’d offer him a place on her blanket. Elain sighed, laying on her back before gesturing for him to join her. There were no trees in sight, the manor hidden behind a large, rolling hill. Only the sound of crickets punctuated the peaceful silence. 

“How was the starlight pool?” he asked, hands behind his head as he gazed up at a brilliant sky of stars.

“Perfect,” she admitted. “We have nothing like that at home.”

“Just your tall buildings and your…cars?” he prompted. Elain smiled. 

“Yes. Tall buildings and cars. And a sky so polluted by light you could never see anything half as beautiful as this.”
“Prythian is growing on you,” Lucien teased softly. “Before you know it, you’ll be begging to stay.”
“I know my sisters are worried,” she whispered, turning her head to look at him in the dark. Lucien turned, too, their faces a foot apart, if that. She could smell the salty, masculine scent of him, could see the sharp line of his jaw, the way his throat bobbed when he took a deep breath. 

“I’m sorry, Elain. I wish…”
She was grateful he didn’t finish that sentence. “Who would miss you, if you just vanished?”

His eyes snapped back to the sky overhead. “No one,” he replied with a gush of air. Elain reached between them, not daring to look as she took his hand.

“Well…if I’m around, and you go missing, I promise to come looking for you. I’ll bring out the cavalry and everything.”
He chuckled, squeezing her hand. “I believe that.”

“Tamlin was nice,” she told him after a moment of comfortable silence. “Happy, even. I didn’t think he knew how to smile.”
“Ah, well, Tam is always happy when he’s out of the house,” Lucien replied agreeably. “And you’re good company—”
“Complimenting me, are you? And it’s not even my birthday,” Elain joked. “Are you unwell? Have you been hit across the head. Quickly, Lucien, how many fingers am I holding up?”
He grabbed her hand, an amused smile dancing tugging at his lips. “Surely you’ve noticed how happy you’ve made Bron and Hart. If your male back home doesn’t work out, you’re all squared away here. They’d make you lady of their respected households.”
“And you?” she asked without thinking about it, still teasing. Lucien went still, swallowing so hard she could hear it. He released her hand as if she’d burned him. 

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly when he started to sit. “It was a joke. Lay back down. I don’t want to go inside yet…or marry Bron or Hart.”

Lucien nodded, reclining back to the grass. The magic between them tugged hard, telling her he had forced himself to say nothing rather than admit the truth. Telling her no would have been an easy response, would hardly have hurt her feelings…his silence betrayed him and Elain didn’t know how to handle that, if pressed, he would have said yes. 

“When is your birthday?” Lucien asked after another beat. “The first day of Spring?”

“You’d think. Supposedly, I was born on the longest day of the year which, at the time, coincided with the hottest day of the year. My mom said it was miserable. What about you?”

“On Samhain,” he offered quickly, gazing up at the stars. “All Autumn.”
“I’m sure someone there misses you,” Elain murmured, catching the wistful tone of his words. Lucien nodded.

“You’re probably right. Not enough to send out the cavalry, though.”

“I can be very persuasive. I’ll march right into Autumn Court and demand your father help.”
Lucien relaxed fully, chuckling again. “I would love to see it.”
“Andras said your father is a jerk.” It was more question than anything, a way to poke beneath the many masks Lucien seemed to wear as they suited him. “And you have six brothers?”
“Four, now.”

“I’m sorry.” Elain would have been wrecked to lose either of her sisters. It made her wonder, again, what Feyre and Nesta were doing. Would they give up eventually? Elain doubted it. She wouldn’t be surprised if they came crashing in any day now, ready to take down all of the Fae. 

“I’m not.”

Elain was pulled from her thoughts, forced to look at him again.

Touch him. The wind seemed to whisper the suggestion, grazing her fingers until they tingled with the urge. Elain’s hand shot out against her better judgment, grazing the skin just beneath his mask. Lucien tensed again, was likely to bolt and yet she didn’t stop as she traced the line of his face, avoiding his lips entirely until she was half hovering over him to brush over the scars. They looked like jagged fingers had dug into his face and yanked out the skin. 

“Did they do this to you?”
He only shook his head. “It’s a story for another night.”

“Okay,” Elain agreed, pulling her hand away despite her own urges begging her to continue her slow exploration. “How about tomorrow? You, me, the nicest bottle of whiskey Tamlin has, and a blanket of stars?”
“You really liked sleeping outside?” Asked as if he doubted it. Elain had always been outdoorsy, had always liked to camp and hike and bound about. It was the manicured nails and perfect hair that tricked people, as if she could only be one thing. Elain was a million things, was a raging river and a peaceful wind all at once. 

“Yes. I’ll show you how good I am at building a fire.”
Please? She wanted to add. She stopped herself. Elain had begged him enough to last a lifetime. Still, if her outing with Tamlin had been fun, she had to assume that Lucien, too, could let down his immaculate, half braided hair and be a little wild, too. 

“Alright,” he agreed. “But we’re going somewhere new.”

That peaked her interest. “Where?”

Lucien only smiled.

“You’ll see.”

~*~

Lucien laid in bed far longer than he usually did. He was sweaty, his body stuck to the sheets half draped over his naked body. He was achingly erect which was nothing new these days. The problem was how he wanted to deal with it. He could shove it into his pants, go into the village, and coax one of the lovely females to help him work out his frustration. He could bend her over and close his eyes and imagine Elain like he always did….or he could use his hand and pretend he never thought of her at all. 

Fucking a warm cunt did more than take the edge off—it made him feel normal for a while. The problem was the lingering feeling of a warm body and Lucien wasn’t sure he wanted to spend a night with Elain in a field of wildflowers with the memory of her phantom body fucking him.

Using his hand removed that from the equation and yet was just barely satisfying anymore. Either way, Lucien had fucked himself both literally and metaphorically. Letting himself imagine what it would be like to fuck the savior of Prythian while she all but begged him to spend a night alone with her was practically begging for trouble. Lucien gripped his cock with a sigh, pumping himself anyway. He didn’t want to fuck other females. It was becoming difficult to finish and he knew why. 

It was a betrayal of Tamlin to want her, made him a traitor to his people and his homeland to have one impure thought about her.

And it was wrong to be with anyone but his mate. And Lucien was certain she was after last night. He’d sent one soft plea down their shared bond, a test just to prove to himself it was a magical bargain and nothing more.

Touch me. 

Her hand had shot out like lightning, brushing his cheeks as if she couldn’t help herself. Lucien shuddered, pleasure coiling in his balls until they were tight against his body. He would have let her touch him anywhere in that moment, would have let her strip him to nothing. Lucien was touch starved and desperate though not for anyone—for her. 

He came faster than he meant to, well aware he was coming to the thought of her hands and nothing else. “Fuck,” he whispered, dragging himself out of bed to clean himself up. He could avoid her for the day and hope for the best at night. Elain went through her usual routine—yoga on the terrace, running with Andras, before bounding into the dining room for breakfast. She’d left her golden brown hair down with only a thin, beaded headband keeping loose curls from touching her perfect face. Her dress was ivory, laced at the bodice loosely so they could all see the hint of breast not just at the sloped neckline but through her torso as well. It looked like a nightgown more than anything, with it’s thick strapped sleeves and it’s softly cinched waist. He could have died right then and there, eyes fixated on the curve of her collarbone.

He wasn’t the only one. Tamlin’s scent shifted his interest apparent. They’d had a good day yesterday and perhaps Elain was dressing for Tamlin.

Her eyes found his face and she smiled and Lucien was dead all over again. Tamlin, unaware of what was happening, cleared his throat. “Bron, Hart, and I are going to the border this afternoon.”

“Is everything okay?” Elain asked, turning her attention back to the High Lord. She propped her elbows on the table, pushing her breasts upwards and the sight did not go unnoticed by Tamlin. Lucien swallowed his jealousy.

“Everything is fine,” Tamlin lied, as if a bogge hadn’t been spotted harassing the villages up north. It would take the three of them at least a day, if not more, to track it and kill it. “Will you be fine?”

Elain nodded. “I’ll have Lucien and Andras. I’m sure they can keep me contained.” There was a note of bitterness to her words, reminding them both that she may be complacent for the moment, but she wasn’t happy about it. Tamlin caught it too, drawing back a respectful distance. 

“Well. If you need anything…”

Elain went back to her food, her mood dampened by the reminder she was still a prisoner when she’d rather go home and Lucien, unable to stand her moodiness, reached over the table and pulled apart half the lemon loaf before she could stop him.

“Do you mind?” Elain demanded with exasperation as he shoved the bread into his mouth.

“Not at all,” he replied with a grin. “I’ll see you later. Tam,” he added pointedly, drawing Tamlin from the table. Tamlin left her to her food and her pert, pretty breasts begrudgingly. 

“Just a bogge?” he questioned once they were alone, swiping a full decanter of whiskey while Tamlin ran a hand through his golden hair.

“And more fucking naga. She’s messing with us like she always does but I don’t think she knows about our human.”

Lucien nodded. “I figured. Elain is too…” Too what?
“I know. That’s a problem, though. Rhysand is going to come sniffing around one of these days, the fucking dog. We need to think about how we can hide her.”

“The estate is large,” Lucien murmured. “And Rhys is unlikely to snoop. Worst case scenario, lock her in her bedroom with Andras and demand utter silence.”

“He’ll smell her.” Tamlin began but Lucien held up a hand, silencing Tamlin when the wood in the hall creaked softly.

“We’ll worry about this later,” Lucien murmured to his friend. “When you get back we can figure it out.”

Tamlin nodded, clapping Lucien on the shoulder. Elain was in the hall, eyes wide and sweet. Tamlin brushed past her, hands touching. “Stay out of trouble,” he murmured. She didn’t pull back or react with revulsion. Elain merely nodded, earning a rather cheeky smile from the High Lord. Her eyes slid back to Lucien, vibrating with jealousy when he knew he shouldn’t. They’d be alone no matter what, he told himself…though Andras could serve as a buffer.

“Perhaps we should wait for Tamlin to return. He might like to join us—”
“No,” Elain said breathlessly, taking a giant step towards him. She was in his personal space, her scent slamming into his chest. Honeyed jasmine, he thought in a daze. He wanted to taste it on her skin, wanted to lick the length of her body until he was drowning in it. “Don’t cancel. It’ll be fun.”
Fun wasn’t the word Lucien would have chosen, not when he was semi-erect just standing in front of her imagining how he might shred the dress she wore and take her up against the cream colored wall. “Of course,” he breathed. Elain’s lips pulled into a frown.

“Are you okay?”
No. “I have things I need to do before we go. Make yourself scarce,” he added when she continued to stare at him. Humans had dull senses—she couldn’t scent his arousal, his change in scent but any other male would and the last thing Lucien needed was for Andras or Bron to walk down the hall and catch him panting at Elain’s feet. 

Lucien felt like a monster, trapped in his bedroom. He was a caged animal, ignoring his responsibilities in favor of pacing while Elain taught Andras a game on the lawn that involved kicking a ball across a field into opposing goals. He could hear her shrieks of laughter and Andras’s whooping noises of encouragement and far from feeling pleasure that Elain was starting to make herself at home, he merely felt jealous and angry. She was so easy with the others.

She could be easy with you.

If he relaxed even a fraction of an inch and had a little fun. Wasn’t that what Tamlin had done? Dropped his guard, lowered his mask, so to speak? It prompted him to begin packing supplies, given the sky was moody and cloudy and the scent of rain was in the air. Lucien would turn her around if it began pouring before they arrived but if it happened after, well…that was what the tent was for.

As to if spending the night in a small, enclosed space with his mate was a good idea, Lucien chose not to thing about that. Not when Elain wandered into the stables later that afternoon, pink cheeked and smiling with little flowers in her hair.

“Only one horse?” she asked with a frown. Lucien booped her on the nose.

“You know why. Get in the saddle.”
“How far are we going?” Elain asked when he swung up beside her and oh, Lucien had miscalculated. Her hair was tucked beneath his chin, blowing against his face as they stepped into the world. Her body nestled between his thighs, her back against his chest…Lucien shifted in his saddle. He was polite, he reminded himself. He was proving she could trust him, that he could be a good mate to her.

That she  could stay, not that he was ready to tease that thought out to its logical conclusion. He was tied up in knots and Elain, blithely unaware, launched into a million questions he was forced to answer based on their magical bargain. He wished she’d go back to asking him about the curse.

What’s your favorite color? 

What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

How did you learn to fight like that?

What do emissaries even do, anyway? 

Has anyone ever told you how annoying you are?

How did you meet Tamlin?

Have you ever been in love? Why didn’t you get married—

Lucien opted for complete honesty. He was required to, regardless, though he was good at skirting those rules to avoid answering a question when he wanted to. Here, beneath a moody afternoon sky, Lucien told his mate everything. His favorite color was orange and the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened was getting caught with his pants down with the Winter Court priestess in front of both the High Lord, her father, and soon-to-be-betrothed. He was the son of a High Lord so of course he was better trained as a warrior and his elder brother just happened to be general of Autumn Court’s forces, besides. Yes, he knew he was annoying. Enjoyed it, even. 

As for the other questions, well…Lucien swallowed and told her about Jesminda. Meeting Tamlin, becoming emissary, falling in love and never getting married were all tied up in her story. Elain was quiet, her jokes falling to sympathy, head resting gently on his chest. 

“It was a long time ago,” Lucien finished with a sigh. He’d been so sure she was his mate, had told Beron as much. And his father, who’d always enjoyed his cruel games, had taken joy in ending that. No son of mine is mates with lesser fairies. 

And Lucien, irate, had only thought to say Then I am not your son!

Perhaps if he’d stayed silent, if he hadn’t provoked Beron had renounced not just his title and crown but his very parentage, Jes would still be alive. Alive and he would have married her, would have settled somewhere, blithely unaware the bond would never snap because his mate was a human woman trapped in another world. 

“Tamlin explained mates to me yesterday,” Elain told him as they approached the sea of wildflowers scattered in all directions as far as the eye could see. Elain straightened when her eyes snagged on the colorful blooms swaying in the cool wind. 

“Did he now?” Lucien asked, sliding out of the saddle and offering her his hand so she could hop back to the ground. Elain nodded, her attention slipping.

“We don’t have anything like he described…it must have been so painful—”
“We weren’t mates,” he said, clarifying that point. “Only deeply in love. I know now she wasn’t but at the time I believed she was.”
“Still,” Elain murmured. “I’m sorry all the same.”

“No more talk of sadness,” Lucien instructed, following her over the soft, sloping hill to the edge of the field. “Today is supposed to be fun.”

“For us both? Is bossy Lucien Vanserra going to let his hair down?” she joked. And he did, pulling from the braid at the crown of his head and raking his fingers through the locks. Elain smiled. “I wish I had my camera.”
“Would you paint me?” he asked, still baffled by the concept of a picture. 

“I would put you on the internet and watch the world collectively lose their mind,” she replied with a grin, wading into the flowers. “I’ll bet you're handsome beneath that mask.”
“I absolutely am,” Lucien replied with a grin. “Ask any of the females in town.”

“Oh? Are they all pining for you?”

Lucien skimmed the tops of the flowers with his palm. “Who could blame them?”
“You’re so modest,” she teased.

“Add it to my list of qualities you appreciate.”

Elain raised her hand, facing him beneath a cloudy gray sky, hair blowing in the wind. “Annoying, self-centered, bossy—”
“Handsome, charming, funny,” he added, ticking the qualities on his own fingers. “Your words, not mine.”
“I never called you charming or funny,” Elain reminded him. Lucien dared to come just a little closer, drinking her in. She was perfect, he thought, so alive and wonderful and sweet. She did not belong to him and yet in that moment, he could almost pretend she did. 

“You were thinking it.”

Elain only smiled and poked him in the stomach. “Shouldn’t you set up camp while I frolic without a care in the world.”
“What of your famed campfire?”
“When my handsome bodyguard can make flames shoot from his hands? How is that fair?”

Lucien could have listened to her call him handsome every day for the rest of his life. “Fine. Go, be free, Elain. I will do all the work like a common servant—”
“Sounds good!” she agreed cheerfully, taking off before he could catch her. Lucien could have chased after her but Elain looked so happy and he was content to leave her be. 

Lucien took a breath. 

He’d pleased his mate.

~*~

Elain peered into the small tent for only a moment. A rumble of thunder chased several cold, angry raindrops from the dark sky overhead, splattering against her face and neck. Lucien followed just behind, kicking off his boots before sealing up the entrance quickly. The space was tiny, big enough for the two of them and nothing else. He’d done his best to spread out their bedrolls but he knew he’d hoped they would sleep in the grass with space between them. Elain reached for a folded blanket and spread it over both of the squashy blue rolls before plopping down on her side. Lucien was wary as he joined her, sitting cross-legged.

“At least we got the day,” she said with forced cheer. He nodded, all of his humor gone. He laid against his pillow, body spanning the entire length of their little tent and God he was so large— stop it, she instructed herself. He was no different than Bron or Hart or Andras or even Tamlin. She wasn’t attracted to them and she wasn’t attracted to Lucien, either. Only, she was. She couldn’t pretend there wasn’t something utterly appealing about the naked vulnerability of their horse ride or the way he’d spent the day teasing her. His wit was sharp and Elain had always appreciated that in a man. 

Of them all, Lucien seemed the most likely to panic if she ever made a glimmer of that interest known. It was one thing to tease but when she’d touched him the night before, Lucien had been all but ready to leave her to the night. Elain swallowed. They’d ride out the thunderstorm and return in the morning.

She laid beside him, her hand mere inches from his own. “Thank you for bringing me today,” she murmured. Lucien turned his head to look at her. So much of his face was hidden behind that mask. 

Touch him, the wind all but howled, tugging hard in her gut. Elain couldn’t stop her reaction, propelled by want and her own desire for contact. Instead of touching him, she touched his mask, sliding her fingers beneath the soft, curved edges. Lucien didn’t move as she tugged, eyes closing when it didn’t budge.

“If I could cut it off, I would,” he told her. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“What kind of curse binds a mask to your face?” she asked.

“I suppose it amused her,” Lucien replied. Her. Not it, not some nameless prophecy. Her. Lucien didn’t realize his mistake and Elain didn’t call him on it. Someone had done this, had cursed them to live this way and had baked some sort of loophole within it that might free them. Elain wondered if perhaps it had been written down somewhere. Even some cryptic nonsense was better than no information at all. 

Elain drew away, laying back on her bedroll to contemplate. Lucien didn’t move other than to breathe, hands resting on his chest. Overhead, rain pattered heavily against their tent, broken by the occasional far away rumble of thunder. Elain wanted to stay awake, to ponder this mystery a little while longer. Maybe all Tamlin needed was a kiss? She could do that, she reasoned. One kiss, regardless of how long it needed to be, was preferable to a year of confinement. Deciding she’d ask when he returned, Elain drifted to sleep. 

She had a vague awareness, sometime in the night, that she was warmer than she ought to be. Half asleep, she felt in the dark as lightning cracked through the sky. Arms tightened around her body with a soft grunt of air. Lucien, she remembered. They were outdoors. She buried her face into his chest, still clad in a shit, and drifted back to sleep. Or maybe she didn’t. Elain didn’t know if she dreamt of his hand sliding over her lower back or hers reaching beneath his shirt. She couldn’t be sure if the groan he made was snoring or something else, or if her leg rubbing against the hardness between his legs was just her overactive imagination spinning compelling, arousing dreams.

“Elain,” his ragged voice half pulled her back to reality. “Elain, I can smell you. Please wake up.”
“Smell what?” she asked sleepily, arching her body against his own. Lucien groaned again and this time she knew it was real. Her eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the blackness around. It was raining harder than before, the world drowning in thunder and lightning. 

“You,” Lucien pulled her back to the moment. Their legs were tangled together, his thigh pressed against her core just as hers was. He was erect—she could feel him straining against her. Her hand was beneath his shirt, curled against his taut flesh, their faces mere inches from each other. She should have pulled away, should have apologized for her sleep addled state, turned her back, and gone to bed.

A flare of lust speared through her, her heart speeding in her chest. “You smell me?”
“Your arousal,” he choked, clarifying what he could smell. “It’s driving me…I can’t…”
“You can’t what?” she dared to ask, not afraid but excited. 

“I can’t stop myself,” he told her, grinding his leg against her body, stimulating her. Elain exhaled a breath.

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” she whispered. What could it hurt, she reasoned? They were here, together, both desperately seeking contact. Harper had been telling her to sleep with some, just to see…just to know when it came to Graysen. Why not Lucien? He was cupping her face, thumb brushing over her bottom lip, leg moving slowly, simulating the feel of his hips. Elain used her own to rub his erection through his pants, surprised by how strongly he reacted. She hadn’t realized he wanted her at all. The others in the estate joked constantly that he got around, that he was always off philandering. Why would she be any different.

“This is wrong,” he whispered, pushing her to his back as he settled over her, leg still pressed against her leg.

“Why?” she asked. Lucien didn’t answer, at least not in words. He kissed her, softly, tentatively. It was sweet, despite the length of him bruising against her hip bone. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d assaulted her with her mouth, for the flame he ignited in her chest. Elain grasped for him, trying to match his pace as some new beast writhed in her chest, screaming in a language that didn’t need words. Demanding, urging, driving—it was instinct like she’d never felt, a mad need to claim this man she barely knew.

Lucien groaned, tongue sweeping against her lips. She opened breathlessly, tugging at his hair, hands everywhere. He tasted salty, masculine, like the raging world outside given new life. She didn’t even know what she wanted, only that if she didn’t get it right that moment, she might come out of her skin in the most literal sense. 

It wasn’t magic. It was something else, something that had always been there, a kernel of heat and fire she’d tried to tap into with other men. Elain recognized the wildfire blazing through her now as the thing that she’d been trying so hard to ignite when Graysen got down on one knee. She’d always recognized the potential, even if she didn’t understand it. 

Lucien felt it too, if his reaction was any indication. He was so clearly trying to hold himself back, to leash himself when she wished he wouldn’t.

“Let go,” she moaned against his lips, frustrated by the constant scrape of his mask against her face. She wanted it off, wanted to look at him, touch him, to taste him.
“I can’t,” he said, driving his pelvis against her. Elain arched, hooking her legs around his waist. It was like being in high school again but worse because Elain could imagine how it might feel to strip him of his clothes, knew how good feeling him buried inside her would be. Every time she went for his shirt, Lucien would half snarl, more animal than man, and pin her arms over her head. And eventually he’d miss the feel of her hands on his body and release her only to start the whole cycle over again.

She could have died like that, kissing him with hungry passion, tongue stroking his own until she was soaked through her underthings and being driven to slow, unrelenting madness. He didn’t stop her when she all but shoved her hand into his pants, gripping the base of his rigid, thick cock before he could stop her.

“Elain,” he begged. She didn’t know what he was asking her for, though his hot, hungry mouth made her think he might lose his mind if she stopped. She felt the same, was overly pleased when he rolled off her, still kissing, to lay on his side. Elain scooted closer, head resting in the crook of his arm, one knee raised so her dress pooled at her thighs. Lucien couldn’t help himself, not when whatever he smelled filled the air…not when she began softly stroking his skin, her fingers just barely fitting around his shaft. 

What had Bron said? That she should sleep with one fairy, if only to see how they compared to men? No man could compare to Lucien. Certainly not Gray, who she’d liked sleeping with. His skin was burning and she wondered if that didn’t have something to do with the fire he commanded. 

She forgot entirely when his hand swept up her thigh, thumb rubbing softly, lazy circles against her sensitive skin. Fingers skimmed the wet fabric of her underwear, eliciting a loud moan that competed with the raging thunder just outside. It was her turn to beg. “Lucien,” she gasped, unable to ask him to touch her when he captured her mouth in another bruising kiss. He knew what she wanted besides, pushing aside the wet scrap of fabric to slick his fingers through her. Elain’s hips flew off the bedding beneath her, desperate for more contact.

“Cauldron boil me,” Lucien managed, pressing his forehead to hers for only a moment. She’d stopped her stroking, too focused on his own hands to remember her own. Elain could see those hands, the same that had gripped a sword two weeks before now sliding into her body. She arched her neck, breathing through parted, kiss swollen lips. She didn’t want hands and yet she’d take what she could get in the moment. Elain felt wild, frenzied even. All she knew was she couldn’t stop her rough pumping of his cock, reveling in how his hips bucked as if they knew her hand was all wrong. A bead of precome slicked over his ultra soft head and Elain longed to taste. She wanted all of him, every single inch. 

Climax seemed to rise through her without trying at all. More, more, more, it was as if she’d been born for this moment, for his specific touch. His fingers slid in and out, thumb circling her clit until Elain was all but riding his hand. They weren’t kissing so much as touching faces, mouths occasionally clashing in a furious marriage of tongues and teeth.

“What is happening?” she moaned as she sparked. Lucien’s cock pulsated in his hand, heart pounding in her palm.

“Mate,” he told her with a pained groan.. “You’re my mate.”

Elain came just as he said it, her body reacting to those words with a resounding yes, that’s what this is, mates— She couldn’t respond, lost in the fracturing, spiraling heat that spread over her. He came, too, his own release coating her hand. That wild thing in her body writhed with pleasure, urging her to taste him, to bathe herself in his scent, to flip him on his back and take him.

Reality warred with that urge, shoving back. Mates are bad, mates are permanent. Stop touch him, take a breath, you will never leave—

Elain gasped, her whole body still convulsing as she shoved herself out of his arms, dropping his still twitching cock to press herself against the wall of the tent. Lucien watched, illuminated by a bolt of lightning. She saw his misery for a brief flash, echoing her own fear. 

“What do you mean, mate?”

Chapter Text

The ride back to the estate was tense and quiet. Elain held herself utterly rigid and Lucien did his best not to touch her at all. Part of it was practical—anytime they touched at all the urge to have him nearly overwhelmed all her good sense. Lucien had said very little since their previous night, other than to give her a stilted explanation of mates. Tamlin had done a better job and Elain, panicked and angry he’d suspected since their bargain, had decided to treat him to silence.

Andras was waiting when they arrived. “Things…didn’t go well, I take it?”

Elain stomped past him. Let Lucien explain. Let him tell his friends he had some cosmic claim on a human—Elain almost broke down at the thought. Soulmates with a man who was trapped in this world, who would outlive her by centuries. 

“Elain,” Lucien called, ignoring Andras to jog after her. “Wait a moment.”
“It’s not fair,” Elain said when he’d all but shoved her back into her bedroom. “I want to go home, Lucien, I want…”

She wanted her sisters and her life and fuck, she even wanted Gray and his normalcy, in a weird way. It was an unfair ask, to choose between the sort of love Tamlin seemed to think mates could have and everything she’d ever known. 

“You don’t have to do anything,” Lucien began, speaking softly. “In fact, I ah…maybe you shouldn’t. Just…keep it a secret.”
“You’re ashamed of me.” 

Lucien paled, reaching for her when she turned her back. “No, I’m not ashamed—”
“You’re ashamed of a human mate and think you’ll sneak in at night and have me and then during the day go to the village with the other women—”
“Elain, stop it,” he ordered in his bossy, commanding way. “That is not what I’m saying. I don’t want another female. I…you don’t understand. It’s not safe for news of this to spread. I can’t protect you from—”
“From her?” she asked, watching him carefully. “The woman who cursed you?”

“Yes,” he admitted miserably. “If things were different I would get on my knees and beg you to marry me…I would take you far away and we would complete the frenzy—”
“The what?!” she hissed. Something pulsated in her chest, that writhing beast coming to life. Both her and Lucien took a step backwards. 

“I think it snapped between us last night,” he whispered. “When we were kissing, I think…I don’t know, I’ve never had a mate. You typically offer food and you sink into the frenzy—”
“I’ve been giving you food since I arrived,” Elain reminded him. “Just three days ago I shoved lemon loaf straight into your mouth and you didn’t think to warn me I might be…might…”
“I didn’t know for sure!” Lucien retorted hotly. “Did you see me tackle you to the ground and have my way? This is my first time, too, Elain.”

“You’ve been eating off my plate since I arrived,” she continued, her suspicion overwhelming her. “Maybe you did this on purpose. Maybe you tricked me—”
“Oh cauldron boil me,” he snapped. “I don’t know that the eating aspect even matters, Elain! Some part of you accepted last night whether you meant to or not.”
“You wanted me to.”

“Of course I did!” he softly seethed. “Mates are rare, who wants a rejection? To spend the rest of your life driven insane over a female you’ll never have?”
“Are those my options? Bound together forever or watching you go insane?”

“No,” he assured her with a measured breath. “Just…we’ll do nothing else. No touching, no time alone, nothing that would betray us.”

“Because of the curse?”

Lucien couldn’t answer, could feel the resounding plea tug in the hard, golden cord wrapped around her ribs.

“Do I need to kiss Tamlin? Is that it? Because I’ll do it,” she added. “To go home I would do a lot more—”
Lucien’s snarl sent her skittering backwards. He swallowed, leashing his jealousy. “No. You ah…you do not need to kiss him.”
“But I need to do something, right? That’s why I’m here? A human factors into this…oh, God, Lucien, is it a sacrifice? Do I need to die—”
“Will you stop it?” he asked, rubbing his eyes through his mask. “No, no one needs to kill you and there is no kissing involved.”

“Then what, Lucien?” she whispered, sinking into a chair. “Can’t you write it down or…I don’t know…draw it on a piece of paper?”

Lucien didn’t come any closer though she could sense through their connection it was a struggle. It was hell, she decided, wanting him this way. He was right there. “What happens when it’s time for me to go?” Elain asked. Lucien drew a miserable, ragged breath.

“I’ll walk you to the wall myself.”

Elain put her head in her hand. “And doom you to madness?”
“And live your life as you were supposed to,” he replied gently. “You and I will see each other again in another time, another place. This would never have worked and I’m glad for the chance to have seen you just once…to know you’re safe and happy…it’s enough, Elain.”
“Don’t say that.” It was her turn to be miserable at the easy, earnest way he wished for her own happiness at his expense. “Tell me what I have to do.”
“I can’t.”

“Then what good are you?” she asked, her words barbed. Lucien withdrew, icy and hurt. She could feel his every emotion pulsating down their shared thread just as he certainly could feel her frustration and despair. 

“Do not share this with anyone, Elain.” He snapped the door closed behind him, leaving her sitting helplessly in a room she didn’t belong wishing she’d chased after him. 

Tamlin returned that evening, bloodied and bruised and utterly surprised when Elain shoved past Bron and Hart and Lucien, rose up on her tiptoes, and kissed him anyway. Everyone went still, even Tamlin and absolutely nothing happened.

“I ah…missed you too,” he murmured, eyes edged. Elain could feel Lucien’s sick horror clawing in her chest, his silent words. I told you so! 

She felt stupid as she slipped back to the floor. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry,” she added, not to Tamlin but to Lucien, who hadn’t reacted at all. Bron and Hart were practically vibrating with excitement. She was close, God, so stupidly close and yet way off the mark. 

“Don’t apologize,” Tamlin told her quietly, catching her hand when she tried to get away. “Join me for dinner?”

Elain looked to Lucien, who merely turned with Bron and Hart, leaving the pair in the hall. 

“Just us,” Tamlin added. “You can tell me what you did while I was away. I’ll clean up and meet you there.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, she screamed softly. “Sure.”

It was all wrong. Her body rebelled against his encouraged smile, the way his thumb brushed over her wrist before letting her go. Lucien had warned her, hadn’t he? And she’d been so pissed she’d assumed this was another of his half-truths or inability to say anything at all. Only, he had said no, hadn’t he? Unequivocally, without hesitation or his maddening riddles or non-answers. 

It forced Elain to sit at a shortened dining table and make polite conversation with Tamlin, who watched her with a hunger she didn’t like. She caught the way his nostrils flared, likely smelling her betrayal, her falsehoods. 

“Did you spend time with Lucien while I was gone?” he asked too casually. So he couldn’t smell her desire, perhaps, muted as it was, but he could tell she’d spent part of the night wrapped in his arms.

“He very begrudgingly followed me about,” Elain replied carefully, resisting the urge to just tell Tamlin. It wasn’t just Lucien’s warning to keep it a secret that halted her. Elain had never forgotten how Tamlin had blown up the very room she sat in for uttering the word boyfriend. There was no Lucien here to shield her this time, no protection from whatever Tamlin might unleash. “We were caught in a rainstorm and forced to camp for the night.”

She didn’t dare let her think of what else they’d done in that tent. Tamlin was pacified, at least. Elain wasn’t. Elain just barely made it through dinner before she flew from the dining room. If Lucien couldn’t answer her questions, someone else could. Elain did not believe every single creature was bound to this curse. Someone could explain, if nothing else. She intended to demand it of Lucien, that he just point her in the right direction. Hell, he could accompany her if he liked. She would more than like, given her wild reaction to him the night before. Elain barged into his bedroom without knocking and for her trouble, was slammed against a wall.

Lucien kissed her like a punishment, like he wanted to hurt her and be hurt all at once. She didn’t fight him, not when her whole body sparked to life, writhing with need all over again. Unlike the slow exploration that became messy and overheated the night before, Lucien immediately put his tongue in her mouth, his muscular thigh parting her leg so her could rub against her. 

“I don’t want to see you kiss another male,” he growled against her throat. Jealousy was riding him hard, then. She barely cared, not when she jumped up in his arms, his hands braced against her ass, so they could move from the wall to his rumpled bed. He dropped her inelegantly with rough hands, forgetting everything he’d said to her mere hours before. 

No touching, no time alone, nothing that would betray us.

Did that include sinking to his knees on the groaning mattress as he pulled her underwear from her body? She could hardly blame his reaction, not when her own body was pulled just the same, begging her to touch him. She couldn’t—Lucien propped her legs up over his shoulders and without ceremony or prompting, immediately licked the full length of her. Had any other man done that—and so very few ever had to begin with—she would have writhed away, embarrassed and unaroused. Lucien didn’t need to ask if she was turned on or if she wanted to feel the flat, broad strokes of his tongue against her clit. Elain did, had wanted it last night, would likely want it when she came.

I’ll walk you to the wall myself, his voice echoed in her mind, punctuated by the soft lapping of his mouth and the wet kissing of his lips. She could feel his mask scraping over her, keeping her from truly feeling him, all of him. Elain didn’t doubt Lucien would take her home just as soon as he could just like she was sure she’d spend the rest of her life daydreaming about the way he was licking her. 

He slid two of his fingers into her and Elain had to bite back a scream, the stretching heat beneath her skin threatening to ravage her. How were they supposed to stay away when this was what it felt like to be together? It was more than just right, more than pleasure. She couldn’t explain it, barely understood it. All Elain knew was when she crested into climax, everything in the world seemed to vanish, seemed to still and stretch and flicker until it was only them. They were the two things that mattered, that belonged. 

“Get out,” Lucien gasped the moment she came back to the bed, lifting his head with those glistening lips. “Next time knock on my door before you come barging in.”
And his expression was so wild, so utterly feral that Elain yanked down her dress and scrambled off the bed and for the door before she could find out what might happen if she disobeyed. 

From behind the safety of her own door, Elain wished she’d stuck around to find out.

~*~

“I don’t know what you said to Elain,” Tamlin began, catching up with Lucien in the early morning sun. Their bargain was up as if that morning and Elain had been in the estate for an entire month. One month. Lucien could have sworn it had been a hundred years. “But she’s come around.”

“She’s making the best of things,” Lucien agreed. He hadn’t touched her since the night he’d gone down on her, coming too close to fucking her senseless for his liking. Lucien knew the minute he got inside her he wouldn’t be able to let her leave, would need to complete the frenzied coupling that was still hanging between them.The urge to fully claim her was riding him hard. 

Elain made things no easier, either. Just three days earlier she’d jammed a handful of ham into his mouth with blazing, defiant eyes. Liar, you’re a liar— her eyes seemed to scream it. The bond between them screamed other things and Lucien was mere days away from breaking down and begging Tamlin for a month-long assignment anywhere but the house. 

She was temptation and she was salvation. Not just his own, but Prythians. And he was a bastard for getting in the way of the world’s last shot of redemption. She needed to fall in love with Tamlin, not him. She needed to see the High Lord as her male, her protector, as someone worthy. Tamlin was certainly the kind of male Lucien could imagine for Elain. Elain with her flowers in her hair and her easy, forgiving smiles. She’d been born for such a place, to be Tamlin’s lady…and yet the bond had snapped between them, ancient and writhing and lovely. And when he caught her staring, sometimes he saw the same yearning he felt. Elain saw him, saw beneath the masks and somehow it didn’t repulse or disgust her. 

It was enough to keep him away. Elain did that with everyone. They’d been a broken, ugly court before she arrived. There was no laughter between Bron and Hart, no games with Andras. No smiles, no jokes, just tense, brooding silence. Elain had changed that. She the goodness in all of them and if Amarantha ever got her hands on her, Lucien knew they’d all be forced to watch Amarantha grind it from Elain before scattering her ashes to the wind.

“I saw the reports of naga,” Lucien began, ignoring the contemplation on Tamlin’s face. “I was thinking Andras and I might go to the Summer border and clean it up.”
“That could take weeks,” Tamlin told him with clear surprise. “Are you sure you want that kind of job?”

No. “Yes,” Lucien said firmly. “Elain is happier with Bron and Hart and you two are getting along…you don’t need to use me as a buffer. I’m restless—”
“You’re thinking of that Summer Court village,” Tamlin added slyly. Lucien blinked, his mind blanking for a moment. 

“With the nude beach,” he said, more for himself than his grinning friend. Tamlin’s good mood extended to other places. He’d forgotten about the months he and Tam had spent chasing after females—before Amarantha, of course. “Yeah, it crossed my mind.”

“You deserve a little fun. Take Andras. Hell, take Bron and Hart, if you want. Maybe some time between just Elain and I would be helpful.”

Lucien’s stomach roiled at the implications. “Andras is enough,” Lucien assured him. Tamlin nodded without a hint of suspicion. 

“When do you want to go?”

“Tomorrow.”

Lucien found only betrayal in Elain’s eyes at dinner when she realized he meant to leave. Andras talked of nothing else, excited to bury his sword in filth and his cock in flesh. Andras regaled the table with the story of one of Lucien’s many threesomes while Elain only stared and stared, tugging on the bond between them until he couldn’t ignore her. He didn’t want her to hear of his exploits, of how he’d tried to banish the memory of Jesminda in drinking and fucking and fighting. He’d be right back at it the moment she left, too, would be forever trying to find anything that made him feel half as good as she did.

Lucien stood abruptly. “I need to sleep,” he told the raucous table. Tamlin, Hart, Bron, and Andras would be at it for hours.
“Mind if I join?” Elain asked sweetly, those brown eyes lined with hurt. Lucien nodded, well aware Tamlin’s eyes trailed after Elain. She said nothing as they climbed the steps, heeding his prior warning to stay out of his bedroom. She lingered in the hall. 

“You’re leaving?” And he swore he heard her say You’re leaving me?

“For a time,” he agreed. “This is for the best.”

“How?”

Lucien only shook his head. “It’s too tempting to be around you. I need to clear my head. You need space.”

“Space,” she echoed. “Right. Well…enjoy your beach, I suppose.”

“Elain,” he protested but she turned on her heel, leaving him in the hall feeling foolish and stupid. He was tempted to go get her, to tell her that this was hell for him. She didn’t understand, was a creature of a world that didn’t have mates. She didn’t know the way her future departure ravaged his already ruined soul. He’d thought Jesminda was his mate and she’d died. He knew Elain was, and she’d leave somewhere he couldn’t follow.

Even if she should, she was human and humans live incredibly short lives. She was beautiful and lively now, but in fifty years, a mere blink to him, she’d be old, feeble. He’d have to watch her make the slow crawl towards death, well aware they would not go together.

She’d leave and he’d spend forever trying to find her again. Maybe he would. Maybe she’d reappear as Fae in two hundred years, with those same eyes, that same smile. He’d be free of this curse and could court her like he’d always meant to, like she deserved. 

He told himself it was for the best when he strode out in the morning. Her lack of presence wasn’t just noted—Lucien felt it in his bones. He was certain she watched from somewhere on the estate. He could feel her confusion laced sorrow and Lucien wished that he could tell her the truth of the matter. 

I am yours but you will never be mine.

~*~

One month stretched to two, and then three. Lucien sent no word to her, only Tamlin. Reports she was not privy to, that she had to all but pry out of Bron and Hart. 

He’s having too much fun to come home, Bron would say with a laugh.

There’s nothing here to do anyway, Hart always added. They left at times, too, patrolling and scouting, which left her to Tamlin. Elain had begun to dread those long days and even longer stretches of night. Too much heat simmered behind his mask, his intentions plain. What did he write to Lucien when reporting on the house? Elain had asked, once, if she might write to him and Tamlin had merely turned to her, puzzled, and asked why she would want to do such a thing. 

He was my friend, she’d mumbled before stalking off. Tamlin would have read it, curious as to what she might say which meant she could hardly say anything at all. 

What Elain had managed, was to worm information out of the too casual, too chatty Bron and Hart. She’d been right about one thing—there were creatures that could be compelled to tell her the truth if she could catch them. With Tamlin busy for large swaths of the day and no Lucien stomping after her, Elain had begun inching back in the forest looking for the elusive Surial. 

Elain was hardly a huntress and it showed. After a week of laying rudimentary snares, she was ready to call it quits. She sank to the leafy forest floor and closed her eyes with a loud sigh. 

“What is a human doing so far from the wall?” a mans voice crooned, drawing her from her angry thoughts. Elain snapped open her eyes, drinking in the tall, fae man peering down at her. He wasn’t Spring Court, that was for sure. His unmasked face, for one, betrayed him as an interloper though if it hadn’t, the soft, trailing shadows certainly would have. Dressed in a black jacket and pants, with his neatly combed onyx hair and blue violet eyes, she wondered where he was from. Not Summer, she decided. He didn’t exude an ounce of warmth. Perhaps Winter? 

“I’m trying to trap a Surial,” she told him because what could it hurt? The man jammed his hands in his pockets. Handsome, she decided after a moment of contemplation. Edged darkly, but handsome. 

He joined her on the forest floor, letting his shoulder touch her own. It ought to have felt terrifying but instead she found his presence comforting. “What question do you have only a Surial could answer?”

“There’s a curse on the land,” she explained. “I know I’m part of it but I don’t understand how. Or what I need to do to break it so I can go home.”
“So the High Lord of Spring snagged himself a human, did he? Fascinating.”
Elain looked to him. “I don’t suppose you could tell me?”

“I could,” he agreed, eyes twinkling. “For a price.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“No money. Keep your coins. I’ll tell you how to break Tamlin’s curse and in exchange, you’ll tell me something. That’s fair, don’t you think?”
Elain nodded, accepting his hand. The skin against her ankle prickled though she didn’t dare look. It was the man who lifted the hem of her dress, curious as to what was set against her skin. Little roses, inked in a chain like a tattoo around her ankle. Swirling and lovely. “We ink our bargains in the skin in my court.”
“Which court is that?” she asked. 

“Ah, ah,” he teased. “One question. How to break the Spring Court curse?”

“Yes,” she breathed. 

“Your little human heart has to love the High Lord,” he replied with a relish, as if her horror delighted him. Realization crashed over her. Lucien’s insistence he stay away, his aching, brutal words— This is wrong. We will do nothing. I’ll walk you back myself. Of Tamlins fury she might be claimed by another man, his hope when she’d so stupidly kissed him. The nights alone where he was so obviously courting her, trying to inch her into a place where she could fall in love with him and free them.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. The man beside her chuckled before dipping his head, nose pressed into her hair.

“You reek of a mating bond,” he told her. “I’m surprised they can’t scent it.”

Elain jerked away. “That’s none of your business.”
“Sure it is. It’s our bargain, right? The scent of you drew me…who is the fae male? Tell me and our deal is complete.”
She looked at her hands. “First and last name,” the dark haired stranger prompted. “Tick tock, little human. I have other tasks that need accomplishing today.”
“Lucien Vanserra,” she finally admitted. He tipped his head and roared with laughter, as if she’d told the funniest of jokes. 

“Oh, what fun. I wish you well, human, but if I were you. I would run home as fast as my legs could carry me and never look back.”

Elain heaved a sigh, head resting in her hands. “I can’t just leave,” she said to nothing at all. The man was gone, vanished into thin air as far as Elain could tell. Shafts of light filtered from the tree tops, warming the ground beneath her. 

Your little human heart has to love the High Lord. 

She could spend a thousand years in this place and Elain knew she never would. Tamlin was nice enough, was likely handsome and a catch among his kind and to Elain he evoked nothing at all. She’d always been particular when it came to men, a skill she’d been required to learn at the tender age of ten when she was more leg than anything and grown men began staring. She realized she was beautiful not long after. She could be choosy, had to be as a matter of survival. Too many men looked at her just like Tamlin did—an object, something to consume, to own. 

Plodding home was miserable. No Lucien, only Tamlin and his shortened dining table and his roaming gaze. Maybe Lucien was never returning. Was she stupid? Waiting here, four months of her life just gone, on the hope she could fix things? 

“How was you—”
“Take me home,” Elain interrupted softly. “Please,” she added as an afterthought. Tamlin withdrew the hand he’d been about to place over hers, looking as if she’d struck him. “I’ve been here for four months, surely…” Surely you must know this is never going to happen? She’d always been so bad at letting someone down. 

Elain tried the pleading that hadn’t worked before. “I had a life. A family. People who miss me, who probably think I’m dead. Please, Tamlin, I’m trying so hard to fit in here but I don’t.”

“No,” he whispered with no small amount of misery. “I can’t.”

“Yes you can,” she urged sofly, reaching for his hand and squeezing. He looked at her with that same soft misery. “I can’t help you.”

Elain stood while, still holding his hand. She reached for his face, hidden behind that green and gold mask. Was it cowardice to leave them like this? Maybe. Elain brushed a piece of hair from his face. “This is for the—”
He hauled her into his lap, crushing his mouth against her own. For one moment, Elain’s panic overwhelmed her, keeping her still, unmoving. His lips were warm, his hands almost soft against her back. His tongue brushed her lips and Elain flew back so hard she hit the wall behind her. He stood. 

“Elain—”
“Don’t,” she said, trembling at what had just happened. “Don’t come any closer.”
“You can’t leave,” Tamlin tried to explain, running a hand through his long hair. “I can’t explain this but—”
“There is someone else, Tamlin,” she whispered. He stilled, eyes watching her.

“The male from before?”

No. “Yes,” she whispered. “I want to see him again.”
Elain screamed when the room exploded in wood and glass and porcelain. There was no Lucien to help her this time, no body to shield her. She threw up her arms for all the good it did. Something heavy and hard slammed into her chest, robbing her of breath and Elain, who’d spend four months conscious and aware, was grateful for the slip into dark oblivion.

~*~

Tamlin was waiting when Lucien returned. Lucien hadn’t intended, when he left, to be gone as long as he was. There was still some life in Summer Court and Tarquin, the new High Lord, had news of Amarantha, of Rhysand, and Prythian in general. In between cleaning up the filth, Lucien had wasted his time in Tarquin’s new court, making himself a friend. It was good politics and perhaps a little cowardice. Lucien worried Elain had fallen in love with Tamlin and he did not wish to see it. 

“It’s good to see you,” Tamlin said the moment Lucien slid from his horse, boots crunching on the gravel. “You’ve been gone too long.”
“I made some friends,” Lucien said with a smile. “Summer Court has a new High Lord and he is looking for allies.”
“No more revolts,” Tamlin murmured, leading Lucien inside. It was hard not to notice Bron and Hart inside the foyer, their faces drawn—angry. Not at him, but Tamlin. Lucien filed that away. It was well past noon and warm and yet no Elain. Surely she couldn’t still be angry with him.

“Where is Elain?” Lucien asked. Bron exhaled a furious breath, turning on his heel for the snaking hall, Hart at his feet. “What has she done this time?”
“She has done nothing at all,” Tamlin replied carefully, leading Lucien to the study for a drink. “She’s resting.”
“Is she unwell?”

There was an uncomfortable pause. Lucien ripped at the mating bond in his chest, terrified it might have vanished in the six seconds he’d forgotten about it. There it was, shimmering and strong…and curiously dark on her end. “She’s had a long couple days. She asked to leave again—” Lucien groaned, accepting the drink from Tamlin’s hands. “And we exchanged heated words.”

Something about the way Tamlin said it, so carefully, so devoid of any emotion, sent chills skittering over his skin. Bron’s angry breath. Hart’s furious eyes. “So…she’s licking her wounds in her room?”
“Don’t worry about Elain,” Tamlin dismissed. “Tell me of Tarquin.”

Lucien did for two agonizing hours. Tamlin wanted to talk, wanted to hear news from other courts and how the failed revolt had gone. Tarquin’s whole family had been wiped from the face of the earth, leaving him to accept the mantle. He was young, barely sixty years old and now faced with an impossible task. Tarquin, too, had been curious how they fared in Spring and Lucien was more tightlipped than usual. He would not betray Elain. 

He wanted to see her, even if she was pissed. Wanted to smooth over whatever hurtful shit Tamlin had said. It was practically time for dinner by the time Lucien was freed. Swearing he needed to bathe and change his clothes, Lucien took the stairs two at a time, ignoring his own bedroom to knock softly on her door.

He tugged at the bond with no response. “Are you still mad at me?” he asked, reaching for the handle and turning it softly. “Can I at least say sorr…sorry.”
Elain’s room reeked of blood and salt and sickness. The curtains were drawn, bathing Elain’s body, hidden beneath the cream and sage, in darkness. His fingers trembled as he walked across the room, boots muddying her beautiful floors and that pristine carpet. 

Lucien swallowed, ripping the blanket from her body the way he might a bandage. Elain was sunny, sweet perfection. In his mind, and for three straight months, he’d imagined her as she’d been in the wildflowers—careless, hair streaming behind her, smiling when she had so little to be happy about.

That woman was gone and by the looks of it, it had been beaten out of her. Huge gashes over her delicate face struggled to heal, crusted and dark over her forehead and against her eye. Her hands, her arms, the span of legs and when he lifted her night dress he had to race for the bathroom before he heaved what little remained in his stomach onto the floor. Her delicate, fragile body…wrecked by Tamlin’s rage. She didn’t move, didn’t acknowledge his existence both before and after. Lucien sat on the edge of the bed, stroking matted, limp curls off her face. Where was the healer?  

He turned for the door, his fury a burning, bright star. Mate, my mate—

Tamlin sat at the head of the dining table with Bron and Hart on either side, both studying their plates with silent fury. “What did you do?” Lucien asked as he strode in. 

“It was an accident—”

“She is dying!” Lucien roared, unable to control his temper. “Call the healer.”
“No.”

“Call the healer.”

“If I call a healer, everyone will know she’s here—”
“I don’t care,” Lucien said, turning his back. It was treason to even think it, let alone disobey a direct order. Lucien didn’t care. He’d take her to Summer or Dawn or fucking Autumn before he let Tamlin bury her as a monument to his grief and rage. What could Elain possibly have done to earn such violence? She was a human, had refused all but the knives Bron and Hart coaxed her to throw and now…

“Lucien!” Tamlin warned. “It’s over. We tried and now it’s—”
Lucien slammed his fist into Tamlin’s face, furious with his friend. His friend, his best friend, his chosen brother. Tamlin staggered backwards, eyes huge behind his stupid mask, touching his bleeding nose. 

“I could kill you for that.”
“Could you? I’m not a defenseless female, after all,” Lucien retorted. Shame replaced Tamlin’s fury and still Lucien could not forgive him this time. Could not forgive that violent temper that got the better of him and the guilt that flooded in after. Maybe if he’d been there to prevent this from happening, if he’d been the shield like before. Elain had been alone and he’d been a coward. 

“Get the healer,” Tamlin told him. Lucien raced through the night, wondering if it would make any difference at all. What did the fae know about mortal bodies, besides? Still, Lucien dragged the wizened woman from bed, all but getting on his knees to beg, and brought her to the somber estate. Her eyes were sharp with accusation when she saw Elain.

“This is not what she had in mind,” the female told Tamlin hovering in the door. 

“You will say nothing of this,” was all Tamlin replied, the bite of magic slamming into the healer. Salves were pressed against festering wounds and elixirs poured down her throat. It wasn’t just Lucien who watched. Bron and Hart, who had been at the house the entire time, stepped in and out to help lift Elain this way or that, always averting their eyes when the healer tugged at her nightdress before slipping back into the hall. 

“Will she die?” Lucien couldn’t help but ask in the early morning hours, before dawn had even slipped over the hilly countryside.

“No. But you should take care, lord. Mortals have short memories but we fae do not. I will not forget this night…be sure she does not, either.”
Lucien nodded, chest aching. He understood her words well enough. Elain did not belong, would assimilate when she woke, would go back to her sweet smiles and her easy forgiveness. Elain needed to go home. She didn’t belong here. They were selfish to keep her, to hope this fragile thing would somehow save them all. They were their designers of their own doom and Elain could not rescue them, could not keep Amarantha from one day bearing down on their court with the other High Lords on the end of her leash. She’d kill Elain for daring in the first place and Lucien didn’t think Tamlin would stop her. 

He couldn’t. 

And so Elain would leave when she was healed, even if it pissed off Tamlin and even if it ruined their chances of ever breaking this wretched curse. They’d have to employ a new method, different tactics. He would not see his mate die.

Not again. 

~*~

Elain woke slowly, over time. She kept trying to rouse herself, would almost manage to lift her aching body only for a warm hand to brush against her cheek and pour something minty down her throat. Sleep overtook her, dragging her back to her real life. The dreams were bliss—Elain lived whole lives in her world, all swirled in her head. The only thing she knew wasn’t right was Lucien. It was Lucien who rented that Chicago apartment with her and Lucien who got on one knee and asked her to marry him. It was his children that raced the halls of their home and his lap she sat in after a long day.

Nothing else was different. Her sisters, her friends, her job…all of that was so real, so normal that when she was pulled from the dream she had to stifle a sob. Not real, her mind would scream before someone sent her right back. 

The last time Elain woke, it was a different sort of ache. The kind that told her she’d worked out too hard and maybe drank too much. She opened her eyes, surveying the familiar cream and green, the usual furniture, and Lucien sprawled on the rug on the floor, reading a book with a bored expression. 

“You’re back,” she croaked, voice hoarse from disuse. Lucien looked up, relief flooding over that one good eye. The golden one clicked softly, looking her up and down. 

“So are you,” he replied, closing his book with a snap before sitting all the way up. 

“How long?”
He winced. “Three weeks…you’ve been in and out.”
She remembered the minty elixir. “Did you drug me?”
“To help your healing.” He said the words casually as he scooted to the edge of the mattress, resting his arms against the fabric. Healing. Because Tamlin had destroyed the dining room when she said she wanted to see another, that there was another. Had Tamlin guessed she meant Lucien? Or had it been the thought of her and any male that enraged him? 

“Did Tamlin tell you what happened?” she asked. What had Tamlin said? Had Lucien been punished for it? 

“Nothing. I could guess, besides,” Lucien told her cooly. There were things missing, pieces he was leaving out. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I told him I wanted to go home,” she murmured, inching closer to his forearms, wanting to touch him. Lucien lifted his fox face, eyes filled with reproach.

“I know how this curse is lifted. A human in love with the High Lord, right?”

Lucien licked his chapped lips, eyes falling to the mattress. “Yes.”

He could lie to her now. Their bargain had long expired and still the word rang true. Lucien didn’t ask how she’d learned and didn’t notice when she lifted her foot, the one that had been inked, to find it gone. Their bargain had been fulfilled, she supposed, all traces scrubbed away. She should have asked his name. 

“I told him there was another man I was waiting on,” Elain whispered, noting how Lucien flinched. Not Gray. She’d found it depressingly easy to forget him. It was Lucien she’d stewed in misery over, that she’d conjured up on her darkest fantasies.  He was her soulmate, after all and, somehow, her friend, too. 

“And here you are,” Elain added when Lucien didn’t take the obvious hint. “Watching over me.”
“Not well enough,” Lucien replied, his pain evident. “It took me days to get home and you were so close to death…I’m…” he stopped whatever he was going to say, changing tacts. Some anxious part of her was grateful for it. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”
“Well, I’m sure the beach was enticing,” she said with as much primness as she could manage. Lucien bit his lip.

“You’re enticing,” he replied. “I was minutes away from doing something you would regret.”

“I would hardly regret anything you did to me,” Elain whispered, swallowing hard. “I thought you knew that.”

“You’re still hurt,” Lucien said, hauling his body off the floor. “And I’m not that much of a bastard. I’ll have Alis come up with food and Bron and Hart want to see you.”

Elain nodded. “After I have a bath.”

His eyes flared for a moment but Lucien only nodded agreeably. “After a bath.”
Lucien left and Alis swanned in. It could have been her first day, for how she fussed. Elain was drawn a hot bath and given privacy to look over her body. Fading, purple bruise seemed to cover every inch of her. Nothing was broken though the ache in her chest, against her ribs, made her wonder if Tamlin hadn’t snapped bones when he lost control. 

She soaked in the water until it was frigid and Alis all but hauled her out herself. Draped in spring green, her hair tied off her face which was, somehow, undamaged, Elain allowed both Bron and Hart to sidle into the room.

“Lady Elain,” Bron began, his misery clear from behind that bear shaped mask. “I’m so sorry.”

“We both are,” his wolfish friend agreed. “We should have—”
“It’s not your fault,” Elain murmured, taking the massive bouquet of lilacs and roses and daisy’s they’d collected for her. The lavender she’d picked just days before Tamlin had hurt her was dead, ugly and brown in the vase by the window.

“Forgive us?” Hart asked softly. Elain rose from the chair she sat at, careful not to let them see how much it hurt. 

“There is nothing to forgive,” Elain assured them, kissing each stubbled cheek in return. “No ham done, besides. Tamlin got the healer quick and—”
“Lucien did,” Bron interrupted softly. “Not Lord Tamlin… Lucien.”

Two sets of blue eyes bored into her skull, not daring to ask why Lucien had been willing to risk Tamlin’s ire over her.

“Was…he was going to let me die?” she asked, cold washing over her. Elain stepped back and Hart surged forward, catching her elbow as if he expected her to collapse to the floor.

“His guilt was riding him hard, lady,” Hart assured her, making excuses like they always did. “He needed to hear Lucien say it—”
“Needed that punch to the face,” Bron added. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. Perhaps we’ll walk through the garden tomorrow?”
“We’ll be back to yoga in no time,” Elain assured them both, sinking back into her chair. That pleased them and for a time, the pair entertained her as they’d always done, treating her like brothers might. They scattered when Lucien returned with food and more apologetic eyes. 

“I heard a rumor,” Elain began, gesturing for him to sit at the little table overlooking the garden. 

“Are the sentries gossiping again?” he grumbled, pushing the overwhelming amount of food in her direction. Elain threw a carrot at his face, delighted when he caught it in his mouth. “What did they say?”
“That you punched your High Lord,” she replied, taking a bite of the same vegetables she’d been tossing at him. “That it was you who got the healer.”

Lucien chewed thoughtfully. “That’s not a rumor. That’s a fact.”

“And does he know about…” she threw another carrot in Lucien’s mouth, punctuating the fact that they’d all but accepted the bond between them. Lucien shook his head. 

“No, because he knows he was being an ass and needed someone to remind him. It's why I’m emissary. No one else would dare. Bron and Hart are the sons of lords but Tamlin is the son of a High Lord…and so am I. We’re equal enough.”

Elain nodded. “So you can punch him…but you can’t admit that you like me?”

Lucien leveled a dark stare. “I don’t like you at all, little human.”
She tossed a little potato at him and Lucien, infuriatingly, caught that, too. She’d hoped it might bounce off his mask and splatter on the floor.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Elain replied. “But I’m not the one who hid away for three months.”

“Maybe that nude beach was—”
This time, when she launched the potato from her fork at his face, it hit him on the cheek. Lucien dragged his tongue along his teeth as he cleaned the oil and potato from his golden brown cheek. Only humor danced in his russet eye and just as she’d thought before, Elain was certain he was handsome beneath the fox mask. 

“Don’t be mean,” she murmured. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied. “If you’re done feeding me, I’ll leave you—”
“You don’t stay?”

Lucien stood. “You’re hurt and I don’t think I could keep from touching you if we were any closer than this. Go to sleep, Elain. Get better.”
“And when I am better, you’ll touch me?”
Lucien nodded. “However you like.”

~*~

It took another three weeks before Elain was back to her usual self, running with Andras and playing loud games on the lawn with Hart and Bron. 

Mortals have short memories. It sure seemed that way. Tamlin was keeping his distance and yet Elain still offered him polite smiles and spoke with him over meals. It was as close to peace as they’d get. If he’d been a better male, he would have taken her home days ago. Time was racing towards them, drawing ever closer to that deadline. If Elain asked to go home again, Tamlin would tell her she could. They all knew it. They were doomed and these last moments of freedom were taken with a relishing, vicious pleasure. 

“Can you watch her tonight? And tomorrow night?” Tamlin added after a moment. “Andras and I are going to the border.”
Bron and Hart were over by Autumn, cleaning up more naga and likely wouldn’t be back for a few days. Lucien shrugged. “Sure. You don’t want company?”
But they both knew why Tamlin asked Lucien to stay. Elain was all but glued to his side, pestering him with questions he gladly answered, trailing after him as a reminder she was well and please touch me? She trusted him above the rest of them. 

“When I return we’ll give her a proper goodbye.”
Two days. That was all he had left, hardly enough time to complete the frenzy and yet Lucien was determined he would make that time count. It was all he’d get. Lucien nodded. “Works for me.”

Tamlin hesitated on the edge of the study Lucien lounged in and for once, Lucien wished Tamlin would just say he was fucking sorry. Tamlin couldn’t do it, could only silently punish himself for every wrong-doing when his friends would have taken some of his burden from his shoulders. Tamlin could not let him suffer alongside them and so Lucien let his friend go, suffering silently, as he always did. 

Elain was drowsing in bed when he found her. “Get up,” he murmured when she turned to look at him. Elain did, rising from the blankets like a vision, her night dress hugged to every curve, the hem brushing the tops of her knees. He’d have her in his bed so he didn’t lose her scent. 

She slid her hand into his, letting him lead her down the hall. “Where are we going?”

Nowhere, he almost told her. It was a different sort of torture, this borrowed time. He would blink and it would be over. She didn’t know and Lucien couldn’t bring himself to tell her. She might try and rush it which would shatter his bruised heart—the very thing she’d begun to knit back together. 

Inside his room, in the dim, dark, Lucien made it seem as if he had all the time in the world. Time to push those thin straps over her tanned shoulders, to watch how the dress fell to the floor, utterly exposing her to him. He let her pull off his tunic and peel of his shirt while helping her with the buttons of his pants. He wasn’t completely hard, though it wasn’t from lack of want. It was his soft, simmering anguish he was trying to bury. She was so beautiful, curved and soft and perfect and Lucien already missed her. 

“We’re alone tonight and all day tomorrow,” he murmured, threading a hand through her thick hair to tilt her head. Lucien dragged his nose over the side of her neck, inhaling her scent, committing it to memory. “And I don’t see a mark on your pretty little body.”

“I’m all better,” she agreed, eyes fluttering shut. 

“Oh? Then maybe you don’t require so much of my attention,” he replied, cupping her bare breast in his hand. He had plans for how the night should go, how he’d lay her out and lick every single inch of her before driving himself inside her, over and over until she begged for his mercy. 

“I’m not the one in need of attention,” Elain replied, gripping his now rigid cock in her hands. “I see the way you watch me, Lord Vanserra. The lust you just barely conceal…the bulge in your pants. Do you take yourself when you’re alone in this room?” she taunted, eyes big and dark as she slowly sank to her knees. “Do you think about me?”

Elain licked him root to tip and Lucien could have died at the sight alone. “Yes.”
“What do you think about?” she continued with that sweet, mocking voice. Her tongue swirled over his sensitive head. “Tell me, Lucien.”

“I…” she sucked him into her mouth, emptying his head of all thoughts but this. “You,” he managed when she took him deeper, her hand making up the difference. Her cheeks hallowed, letting his cock slide over the wet velvet of her mouth, eliciting a loud, almost embarrassing moan from his lips. “I think about you.”
She hummed her approval, her free hand cupping his balls. The sound vibrated through him, settling hard in his abdomen. She knew what she was doing which, in some ways, surprised him. Elain, with her big, innocent eyes and her sweet face was the same Elain gently rubbing his balls while she choked against his cock, drawing him deeper into his throat. It was the sweetest torture made all the better when she inclined her head, letting him sweep her hair in his hands and hold her steady. The first thrust of his hips was perfection. She still used her hand on both his shaft and sac, gripping him tightly as if she knew exactly the way he liked to be sucked. 

Mates, he supposed, had some intrinsic knowledge of each other. Elain took as much as he offered and Lucien was careful not to hurt her even as his hips began thrusting harder. He’d come to take the edge off—was the lie he told himself, anyway. He couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to, was utterly at her mercy instead of the other way around. 

He was dizzy, legs trembling as climax began to build. Every swirling drag of her tongue and tug of her hands robbed him of his breath, ruining him for all other mouths. He grunted, body taut and heavy, his sac so tight against his body it ached. Lucien pushed one last time, delighting in the sound of her choking gasp as he came down her soft throat. 

Lucien growled, unwilling to let himself sag to the floor. She was unpleasured and tasted of him. His kiss was rough, primal. The frenzy was on him, urging him to claim her. He had waited too long, had denied instinct and would no longer. 

“Ride my face,” he ordered, pulling her to the bed. He needed to be covered in her, needed to feel her heat burning through the mask on his face. Elain did as she was told, gripping his hair in her hands when her cunt was over him to push him against her.

“Now who has been daydreaming of who?” he asked, letting his lips touch her soft lips as he spoke. Elain shuddered.

“I do nothing but think of you,” she admitted with a sigh at that first swipe of his tongue. He’d been dreaming of this too, ever since he’d all but ravished her with his mouth that first time. He’d been so close then, had nearly fucked her right then and there. Now he would. She would know what it was like to be with him. Lucien would brand it in her mind so even her mortal mind could not dull the memory. 

When he’d imagined partaking in the frenzy, Lucien had imagined himself wild and unleashed while Elain weathered him. He could not picture her as the thing that was wild, as a creature more fairy than human. When he’d told her to ride his face, Elain had taken it to heart. Her hips rolled over him, helping him to lick every inch of her until there was nothing wasted. Her taste was heady and perfect, sweeter than any wine. That honey jasmine mingled with a soft musk he could have bathed in. He’d be coated in it until he died, would never get her off his skin.

Elain came with a mewling cry, nails digging against his scalp. He was hard again, so achingly, bruisingly hard. She yelped when he all but tossed her to the bed, spreading her legs to look at the gleaming pink between her thighs, still convulsing from the orgasm he’d given her. Lucien’s chest clenched, the traitorous words all but spilling from his mouth. 

I love you.

It was the worst thing he could imagine saying to her and yet Elain’s eyes sparked, hands gripping either side of his face. “I can feel you,” she whispered, pulling him for a kiss. He swept his tongue into her mouth, sliding over her own so she could taste herself, could see what he loved so much. Lucien lined himself up with her dripping heat and when he slid in that first inch, Elain said, “I love you, too, Lucien.”
He groaned, pushing in all at once to grab her, to press her against his chest. He kept telling himself it was wrong but fuck it was right. “I love you,” he whispered because those were the only words he could say, that he had available to him. And this— this— moving together, bodies intertwined, was what made mates. Not the frenzied coupling or the way she lived in his very blood, but their shared soul and the language between them. It was a song only he could hear, whispering in his ears, lulling him closer and closer to release. She came mere moments before him, drawing every drop from his body until, for the moment, he was spent.

“Two nights of this?” she murmured with a sweet smile. “I could get used to it.”

Lucien kissed her rather than face the truth. Two nights was all she’d ever get. 

~*~

By the time Tamlin returned, Elain thought her and Lucien could use a break. She was more than a little raw from two straight days of nothing but sex. It was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. Everything made her want him. A brush of his hands or the sight of his bare ass walking towards the bathroom was enough to send them scrambling to the floor, panting and desperate. 

Elain had bathed in oils and soaps in an effort to hide what she knew could no longer stay hidden. Tamlin had to know. She could not be their salvation…and yet Elain wanted to help. She could stay, she reasoned. For the first time since she arrived, Elain wanted to stay. They could find a new human and Elain could help ease her into life, could talk up Tamlin. Manipulative…sure, and yet what was the harm if it meant the man she loved was free of the wretched, terrible curse he was under? 

It was with that in mind that Elain bounded into the dining room for lunch, draped in an off shoulder, blood-orange dress. All four men came in together, laughing and talking, sweaty and dirty and clearly hungry. Tamlin’s eyes swept over the room, taking in a casual Lucien drinking wine and Elain primly cutting up pieces of chicken for her salad. 

Tamlin’s nostrils flared and Elain braced herself for what was about to come. She looked at him with pure defiance but it was Lucien who rose to his feet, head facing the door.

“Get to the window,” Tamlin ordered Elain, his voice terrifying and rough. “Now.”
Every man in the room pulled a sword from their belt as Elain pressed herself against the glass. Heavy, metallic magic punched against her chest, lodging itself inside her nose. No one moved, seemed to breathe except her. What were they all looking at? Andras was closest to the door, eyes closing softly when the sound of light steps echoed from down the hall. Elain would look back on this moment, eyes pinned to Andras, and wonder if he knew the fate that awaited him. If he’d someone seen the end of his life and knew the moment that dark haired man stepped into the room, it was over. Elain did. She’d never know how she’d seen the death that walked just behind him, but Elain screamed just a moment before the man reached for Andras’s neck and snapped, as if Andras was nothing but a doll. He held Andras’s unseeing, masked head in hand, peering down with bored, blue-violet eyes. She knew this man, had told him a secret once. 

He was looking right at her. “Hello again,” he said casually, dropping Andras’s head to the side as if it were nothing more than a nuisance. Elain closed her eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Did you ever catch that Surial?”

Elain shook her head back and forth. “A shame.”

He swept his eyes over the room, at the sword and Tamlin, sitting at the head of the table like this bored him. “You don’t need to hide your human from me. We’ve met. I think she liked me, even.”

His eyes flicked back to her trembling body. “Not anymore. I’d say sorry, but…” he only shrugged. 

“Get out, Rhysand.”

Rhysand, in his dark black and silver tunic, brushed a piece of dust from his arm. “Come now. Where’s your hospitality? Your human was far kinder when I came upon her in the forest. We had the nicest little heart to heart. She wanted to help you. How did that go, by the way?”

He turned to Elain again, smile gleaming. Elain gasped, eyes locking on Lucien as her back arched as if gripped by some invisible hand. 

Don’t worry, Rhysand’s voice crooned in her mind. I won’t tell your High Lord what you told me if you do something for me.

“Let her go,” Lucien ordered, walking around the table to put his body between Elain and Rhysand. Rhysand merely rolled his eyes. 

“Always the hero, hm, little Lucien? How did that work out for you last time?”

You said you wouldn’t tell! Elain, unable to move or speak, screamed the words in her mind. Rhysand turned to look at her again with feline amusement. 

“Just your name,” he murmured, picking through her memories with interest. He’d find it, she reasoned, watching him flip through the last few days with Lucien. Rhysand flinched when he saw the scene in the dining room.

“Elain,” she told him, wishing he would leave. He was going back further, from before Prythian and Spring. His interest shifted at what he saw, of her world that was clearly other, of her sisters and her friends, of buildings and schools and cars and planes—

“That’s enough!” Lucien ordered, just in time to be swept away as if he were nothing. 

“Elain Archeron,” Rhysand murmured. “An interloper. How did you get here?”

“The wall,” she whispered as Lucien groaned, “Don’t tell him.”
A cloud of swirling shadow enveloped her, crushing against her ribs, robbing her of breath. Her feet crashed to the leaf-strewn forest floor, Rhysand just beside her. “This wall?” he asked, reaching to touch it. Elain drew back, feeling that strange, too cold wind blow against her face. Elain held her breath as Rhysand’s fingers skimmed the stone. Nothing happened. 

“Interesting,” he murmured, pressing his palm flat against the wall. “You feel its pull, though?”

“Take me back,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Your time here is done, whether you want it to be or not,” Rhysand told her, his eyes hardening for a moment. “This is no place for a human.”

“Because you’ll kill me?” she asked, not bothering to wipe the tears from her face. He shook his head.

“Because you are fragile and your High Lord has given up,” Rhysand replied. “Lucien Vanserra will not be able to protect you and he knows it.”

Elain shook her head. “You’re wrong. You’re a liar—”
“I’ve never lied to you,” he replied, eyebrows furrowing with irritation. “I’ll take you back to say your goodbyes but I don’t want to scent you when I return.”

“And if you do?”

“Then I’ll drag you to her, and she’ll carve your pretty face into ribbons to wear in her hair,” Rhysand whispered, his words dragging like nails up her spine. “Talk to your mate. Ask him to tell you what we both already know. It’s time to go back—”
“You killed Andras,” she interrupted angrily. “You’re helping her, you’re evil—”
Wind and shadow gobbled her up, dropping her rudely back to the estate. 

Heed my warning, Elain Archeron. 

He didn’t return, didn’t come back to tease and taunt. Lucien was the first in the room, sliding to his knees to look at her, Tamlin just at his heels. Recognition flared in his features, as if finally he saw what was happening. What they were. She braced herself for the rage, for the violence, pulling her face from Lucien’s hands.

“It’s time to go home,” Tamlin told Elain. “She’ll be coming.”
“There’s still time,” Hart protested from the archway, sheet white behind that wolf's mask. Tamlin shook his head. 

“He’ll tell her what we have and she’ll come early. Drag us all below…it’s over.”
It was a nightmare, rising to her feet, still crying as she hugged Bron and Hart goodbye. No Andras—he was gone before she could do anything more than scream. Tamlin offered her a sweeping bow and a kiss to the back of her hand, as close to an apology as she would ever get.

“I’m going to walk her back,” Lucien told his friend, his voice rich with emotion.

“Winnow in,” Tamlin murmured. Lucien nodded, drawing Elain to his chest. His magic wasn’t like the cold darkness of Rhysands but warm and soft, like a rolling breeze over the warm ocean. It was home and when it vanished, shimmering iridescent opal in the air around them, Elain nearly fell back to the dirt. Lucien held her up.

“The time we had,” he began, turning her so she couldn’t see the wall looming behind her. She could feel it, that cold wind, those whispering words. “It was enough, Elain.”

“It wasn’t,” she wept, burying her face against his chest. “It was nothing at all.”
“It was everything,” he disagreed, pressing his face into her hair to kiss her scalp. “I will never forget it—forget you.”

“Please don’t make me go,” she begged, noting the pain in his russet eye. “I’ll help, I’ll hide—”
“You’ll go back to your life,” Lucien whispered, guiding her towards the wall, his hand in hers. Elain balked until her back was against his chest. “You’ll forget me. You’ll marry that man, you’ll have his children and work in your museum.”

“I won’t,” she sobbed, body shaking against him. “I won’t, Lucien, I love you.”

Tears gathered in his eye, sliding into his mask, forever doomed to be trapped, just as he was. “In another life, I’ll find you and we’ll get it right,” he promised, holding her face in one hand, thumb brushing her cheek. “I’ll be looking for you.”

“I’ll try not to make it so hard on you next time.”

He kissed her gently, softly. “I’ll come around quicker. I’ll court you like you deserved.”

Lucien still held her hand in his, stretching to the wall. She knew he couldn’t come with her even if the wall would permit him. Knew Lucien would choose to stay, to finish this fight. “I can’t be selfish with you,” he whispered against her hair. “But I love you, Elain. Remember that, if you remember nothing else.”
He didn’t let her say another word. Lucien pressed her hand against the rock and Elain felt herself tumble again, slamming into the grass and snow. Cold seeped through her thin dress as winter wind whipped around her.

She opened her eyes and found herself in a familiar world that was strange. Foreign. Little houses with their steeped, snow capped roofs and a dead woodland far in the snowy distance. Just at the top of the hill was that crumbling monument to humanity. Elain reached in her chest for the bond, only to realize it had been shredded to nothing. Not fractured, not broken. Just gone, as if it had never existed to begin with. 

Elain began to scream.

Chapter Text

What happened next was a blur. She remembered hands on her body, pulling her upwards. Their concerned faces melted into each other until they were nothing. She didn’t know when she stopped screaming and became mute. Maybe when the ambulance arrived and the man who stepped out, unmasked, with his regular features, peered at her and said, “I recognize you.”
She was taken to a hospital and poked and prodded and fussed over. Dehydrated and traumatized, a doctor had announced, not to her but a police officer guarding her. They had questions. 

Who took you?

Where did you come from? 

Where were you?

Can you remember anything?

It went on for years—or maybe hours—before a harried, furious Nesta stormed into the room and shooed them all out. Feyre was just behind, still wearing her paint splattered overalls while Nesta looked as if she’d run from a courtroom. Perhaps she had. Feyre had curled up in the hospital bed with Elain, pleading for her to tell them where she’d been. 

Six months. 

We thought you were dead. 

Just tell us something—anything.

Elain said nothing. Every time she closed her eyes she saw it all like a blur. Andras, Bron, Hart. Tamlin and Lucien. Rhysand. Their magic, their bodies, their world. Mates. Elain let herself think the word only once, afraid she would break down in ugly, gasping sobs if she really let herself think about what happened to them. The fate awaiting them. 

Nesta took over, snapping and snarling at the police until they backed down. They all imagined her trapped in a basement somewhere, forced to do ugly, terrible things. Elain knew what they’d say if she ever told the truth, how they’d say she was crazy and lock her away. 

It was Feyre’s persistence that wore Elain down. Trapped in that little hospital flipping through the same six channels, Feyre murmured, “Harper said you disappeared from a village.”
Elain turned her heavy eyes to her sister. 

“But they found your phone by Hadrian’s wall,” Feyre continued, her voice soft and without accusation. “It was like you dropped it. There was an investigation afterwards. Nesta paid for a private investigator when we got nowhere with the police…the tour guide said you got on the bus but never got back on. By the time we figured that out and found your phone, you’d been gone months. Did…did Harper cover for you, Elain? Did you run off? No one would be angry.”
“No,” Elain finally managed. “I didn’t want to leave.”

That relieved Feyre. “Where were you, Lainey? Just… anything.”
“Kidnapped,” she whispered, tears flooding her eyes. “I loved him.”
Feyre hugged Elain but she didn’t understand. Stockholm Syndrome, they said. They looked for any place Elain could have been held and she knew they wouldn’t find it because it was gone. Lucien was gone. Their bond was an empty cavern in her chest, a gaping wound nothing would fix. Certainly not the anxiety medicine they’d pumped her with in order to get her on a plane. 

Chicago in winter was brutal. After six months of perpetual spring, the cold was a shock. Nesta and Feyre watched her carefully, bundling her against it. They shoved her in a cab and drove her to Nesta’s high rise downtown. 

She let them move around like a puppet, pushing her this way and that. Down frost covered sidewalks and into musty elevators before depositing her in a clean, neat bedroom that was all wrong. 

“Did you call him?” Feyre whispered, watching Elain stare at the Chicago skyline with unseeing eyes. A beat, and then, “She said she loved him.”

“He’s on his way.”
He turned out to be Graysen, who arrived the next morning with a drawn, pale face and terrified eyes. “Elain,” he whispered, crossing the room and sinking to his knees. “Baby. You’re alive.”

He buried his face in her lap and wept while Nesta and Feyre kept watch. 

“What happened?”

Elain just stared. All wrong. His handsome face, his light brown hair tousled from the frigid air blowing of Lake Michigan, those soft brown eyes…Elain missed vivid red, the russet and gold, the fox mask…

“Talk to me,” Graysen pleaded but there was nothing to say. Elain turned back towards the sunlight until Gray stood, padding to her sisters.

“Maybe she needs a doctor–”
“She needs quiet.”
“She needs sleep and some peace. She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”
“She looks so hollow.”
“You should know…she said she fell in love with her captor. I think…I think she might be mourning him.”
“What did they do to her?”

Gray came every morning with a sweet cream cold brew and a piece of lemon loaf. He didn’t dare ask her what happened again and instead caught her up on what she’d missed. Drama from college, couples who’d broken up or gotten together, the weddings she’d missed. He stayed for only an hour, sometimes showing her photos or amusing videos.

In the afternoon, Feyre came from class to talk about the art program she’d gotten into. Paris, Feyre said nervously. She’d spend the summer there, maybe longer if she loved it. Should I go? If I leave, will you be okay? 

At night it was Nesta shoving food in her hands and dragging her around the building she lived in. There was a gym— you love to run, remember— and a pool— get in the water, Elain— a grocery store— would you like to bake something —and a rooftop garden, dead for the winter. Everything was a memory. 

Andras jogging the well worn path over the grounds, upping the difficulty until she could keep up. Andras, his strange beast mask and his sandy blonde hair removed from his head. 

Tamlin, telling her the story of his parents in that pool of starlight and coaxing her in so she was forced to experience it. How he’d smiled, if only that once. Had been at peace.

Bron and Hart, following her about the garden, two burly warriors grinning ear to ear, happy to hold what she plucked from the garden. Listening as she explained the language of flowers so they might use them to woo women.

Lucien, in the kitchen, hovering over her as she guarded her lemon loaf. Shoving some in his mouth without meaning to, inadvertently cementing the now hollow bond between them. How she’d delighted in feeding him, jamming whatever she’d made against his lips until he opened, always amused, never angry. 

“What do you need, Elain?” Nesta begged during that first month. She had to be watched. Elain was too tempted to do something foolish, to take the elevator up fifty stories and step off that roof. To end it all and start over, to look for him in the next life. The only thing that stopped her was the hope she’d see him in this one. Somehow, some way. Elain would wait fifty years if she had to.

One month stretched to two, and then four, then six. Feyre was leaving and Elain had begun to unfurl herself from her grief. She had a routine again. She did her yoga in her room, eyes closed to listen to the quiet chatter of Hart and Bron asking if their form was improving. She took the elevator to the gym and ran, changing her course, her pace, her difficulty while imagining Andras’s pleasure. She’d leave for coffee after that before returning home. She’d begun watching television. It turned off her mind, let her lose herself in more acceptable way. She knew Nesta was relieved to see her doing something. 

Feyre came that last night with takeout and a demand. “I need to know what happened to you, Elain. You don’t have to tell me everything—”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Elain said quietly. Nesta, standing in the open kitchen behind the dining room, stilled.

“Try us,” Feyre murmured. “It can’t be worse than what the police are suggesting.”
“They say you left on your own accord. That you were panicking about your marriage and ran off with some man,” Nesta added, leaving the glasses of wine on her marble countertop. Elain had never truly appreciated how beautiful Nesta’s apartment was, with its solid wall of glass, it’s open concept and it’s pretty sand and cream interior. All tastefully done as if it were created for a magazine spread. Nesta curled on the L-shaped couch opposite Feyre, resting her head on the back. 

“Harper said you vanished from the village at night but the last time your phone was on was two days before,” Feyre continued, laying the facts out for Elain. “And the tour driver said you never returned on the bus.”
“If you ran off with someone, we won’t be angry—”
“I didn’t,” Elain protested softly, hands twisting in her lap. “It’s crazy, it—”
“Just tell us!” Feyre pleaded. “We spent months looking for your body and you turned up in a strange dress with pearls in your hair and you were screaming like your heart had been ripped from your body. No one saw you there. No coat, no injuries—”
“It’s the wall,” Elain whispered. “It…” God, it sounded so crazy. She swallowed. “It’s a portal or something. I wasn’t kidnapped I was just gone.”

Feyre’s silvery blue eyes slid to Nesta. “A portal?”
“I’m not crazy,” Elain whispered. Nesta rose from her spot on the couch and walked to her room, bare feet slapping against the hardwood. A moment later she returned with a garment bag—Elain’s dress and shoes. 

“When you got back, I had these shipped off for testing. I thought maybe there would be DNA or a manufacturer or anything that could explain where you’d been. They told me they’d never seen anything like it. No idea what it was made of. Couldn’t say where it came from. No time period, no known fiber…just you in a strange dress wandering the English countryside unharmed.”
“Because I was somewhere else,” Elain said again. 

“Tell me,” Feyre all but ordered. “Just tell me all of it. I don’t care how crazy it sounds. Tell me from the beginning, Elain. I need to know.”
And Elain did. She told them every moment she remembered, every escape attempt, the men she’d befriended, the curse she’d tried to help break. Of Lucien, her soulmate trapped in this other world, bound to a mask and how much she’d loved him in the end. How maybe she’d loved him the entire time. How he was probably dead, now. 

And at the end, Feyre and Nesta were curled beside her. Feyre said the only thing Elain had wanted to hear since she returned home.

“I believe you.”

~*~

Lucien had expected to feel pain. He had braced himself for the empty end of the bond, the darkness of Elain he’d always be looking for. Could have lived an eternity that way, always tugging against nothing. Maybe she might have felt it too. The hope would have sustained him.

He hadn’t been prepared for the shredding threads and the violent break or the agony that followed. There was nothing where life had once been and Lucien could not stand it. Trapped beneath the mountain, Lucien was tempted to claw at his skin to see what was left. Ash coated his tongue and lead filled his throat. Every waking moment was consumed by the memory of those six months. 

He could not forget them though he was desperately trying. Six more months beneath the mountain, bound to Amarantha’s sick whims. She was scouring for the human Rhysand had told her about, for Elain Archeron who did not exist because Lucien had freed her. And so instead, Amarantha had taken another girl, carving her to nothing.

Lucien drank more than he didn’t most night. He drank until he felt nothing at all and when he couldn’t chase away his crushing misery, he tried to fuck it out, or fight it out. That was how he’d dealt with Jesminda—fucking, fighting, drinking. Why should now be any different? Elain might as well be dead. For all he knew, she’d forgotten him already, had already moved on. Lucien would be grieving her until he died.

The year mark was particularly brutal. Something was happening in the outside world, something Amarantha had been planning a long time. Tamlin was still the last hold out, utterly silent in his throne beside her, still masked for his defiance. He would go to his grave in that mask, his tongue safely secured behind his teeth. 

It was another night of forced revelry and pretending like half the courts were planning another revolt. More dead High Lords was the only likely outcome, though Lucien admired their nerve. Spring, like Autumn and Night, was not participating. Unlike Autumn and Night, it was only because Tamlin was never not being watched by Amarantha. Lucien was well on his way to utter oblivion when commotion at the tunnel that led to Spring silenced everything but the music. 

Amarantha, who’d been toying with Tamlin, stood to look at what the Attor had brought her. Lucien, too, shoved to the front of the gathered crowd. A human woman in the strangest clothes—tight, stretchy black pants and an equally tight, stretchy long-sleeved top with odd, laced up shoes—lay in a heap. For one terrifying moment all Lucien saw was that golden brown hair, braided back off the woman’s hair. She lifted her head and Lucien recognized her features, even as relief washed over him.

Not Elain. But related to Elain, certainly. Freckled, blue eyed, her hair a shade or two darker than her sisters and still there was no mistaking that heart shaped face, those full, pink lips, the burning hatred blazing in the woman’s eyes. 

“Are you lost?” Amarantha asked with a grating laugh. The rest of them remained silent, utterly curious as to what she was doing here.

This Archeron stood, brushing dirt off her pants. “I’ve come to claim the one I love.”
Lucien looked at Tamlin, his gaze wholly fixed on the human. Did he recognize her, too? Amarantha was amused, demanding to know who, exactly, she loved. And Archeron pointed straight at Tamlin, a rookie mistake. Did her sister know she was here? Had Elain sent her? Lucien was dying to ask a million questions, questions he knew he’d never have a chance to. 

“You aren’t by any chance, sweet Elain Archeron, are you?”
The girl lifted her chin in defiance. Stupid. Brave, but stupid. 

Amarantha couldn’t resist a game. They were all bored. It was a way to mess with Tamlin, to create a little chaos and perhaps prove once and for all there was no escaping her authority. She offered the woman a riddle—laughably easy and disappointing when she didn’t get it—-and three tasks on the full moon of each new month. The girl agreed and for her trouble, was beaten to a bloody pulp. 

It was the first night he didn’t get drunk. He waited until no one recognized he’d gone, slipping into the cell of the human woman who did not belong. “You’re not Elain,” he told her by way of greeting. Her nose was bloodied and broken, eye swollen. She looked up at him, wincing through her injuries. Lucien went to her, crouching in the dark. The cell reeked of rot and misery, was damp and cold and dark. He didn’t envy this girl or the choice she made.

“Hold still,” he murmured. She winced, gasping when he pushed her nose back into place, using a little magic to help with the pain and the healing of her face. Not entirely—Lucien remembered how slowly humans healed. But enough that it wouldn’t pain her. 

Still crouching, he studied her face. “You’re not Elain.”
“I know I’m not,” she whispered. “We’re sisters.”

“Which one?”

Her eyes searched his for a moment. “Feyre.”

“Why are you here, Feyre?”

She frowned. “Elain told us where she was…what happened,” she added pointedly, eyes roaming the mask on his face. “I came to see if she was telling the truth.”

“And that led you to this?”

“Not exactly,” she admitted. “I couldn’t get back. It was a door for Elain but for me I think only one way. I’ve been here for weeks trying to figure it out. I found the estate she lived in and met some of the servants…I guess…maybe I’m supposed to be here? Maybe if I do this, I can get back home.”

Lucien wished he could say that sounded reasonable. He was starting to think the Archeron women were insane. “You’re going to die here, Feyre.”

“They said Tamlin was the person Elain was falling in love with before she left,” Feyre murmured as he stood. Lucien went still. “But he’s hardly Elain’s type.”

“And what is her type?” Lucien couldn’t help but ask.

“Someone who would help.”
Fuck. He whirled around. “I fixed your nose, didn’t I?”

“Pretty helpful,” Feyre agreed. Lucien hesitated. 

“I’ll help when I can. This is a dangerous game and you’re a human…” he swallowed hard. “How is she?”

“Miserable,” Feyre replied. “She didn’t speak for months.”

Poor Elain. “I’ll help you,” Lucien said again, his motives utterly self-serving. “And if you survive and go back…will you tell her she can come back? Only if she wants.”

“I will,” Feyre agreed. Lucien exhaled a breath, hope blooming in his chest again. 

“Let's get you out of here.”

~*~

“Have you heard from Feyre lately?” Nesta asked Elain as spring approached. A full year had come and gone and somehow Elain had survived it. Lucien was still in her dreams, still haunting her memory and yet she found it was easier to breathe again. Possible to smile, to laugh, to find some joy in the world, dimmed as it was. 

“No, actually,” Elain replied, frowning at the screen of her phone. She’d found a job, part-time at the same museum she’d once been meant to work in. It wasn’t full-time fashion work but it was close and Elain hoped if she worked hard she might rise through the ranks until she was curating collections on her own. Her and Nesta were still living together and though Nesta insisted on paying the majority of bills, Elain bought food and other things so she didn’t feel so much like a charity case. 

“I know Feyre is a free spirit but she usually checks in.”
“She’s probably fallen head over heels for some Frenchman,” Elain replied with a soft smile. Feyre was open like that. “Give her a little time.”
“Yeah,” Nesta murmured, flopping on the couch beside Elain. “She ghosted me for nine months her freshman year of college, so I guess this isn’t unusual. I just thought after everything that happened she’d be more mindful.”

“Let her have fun,” Elain replied, editing the video she’d taken of the train that morning. She was creating a video diary, just in case she ever saw Lucien again. It was all she had left and, perhaps, a poor way of coping. She wanted to show him her world and by documenting all the things he’d never seen, she felt almost connected to him, despite the missing, aching, bond in her chest. 

She was a traitor for moving on, for finding joy. For coping to get through her day. 

“Are you still going to the aquarium tomorrow?” Nesta continued, kicking off her heels with a grimace.

“Yep.”
The aquarium with Gray, to be exact. He’d never stopped coming to see her even when Elain thought it would have been easier for him to move on. Graysen had remained, earnest and steadfast. And Lucien…Lucien had told her to marry him. Have his children. Elain wasn’t sure about all that. Gray was…Gray. Nice, steady, reliable. There wasn’t the same passion but there never would be. There was just the crushing misery and the missing. 

Graysen met her in the lobby, casual in his buttoned up coat. “I have a car,” he told her, rubbing mittened hands together. It was snowing gently atop two day old, mushy, brown ice and though Chicago wasn’t particularly lovely, seeing the grime recovered in clean powder soothed a small ache in her stomach. 

When Graysen said he had a car, it wasn’t his car but sleek company car with a driver already waiting. He slid into the back with Elain, thigh pressed against her own, arm slung over the back of the seat. He exhaled when the cold biting air was sealed behind the warm door, kissing her temple absently. 

“You look nice,” he told her. He always said so, even when she’d been wasting away in that chair, unshowered and unkempt. Things were better now and perhaps she did look nice. Elain tried hard not to examine herself in the mirror. She wasn’t sure she’d recognize what she found.

Elain put her head on his shoulder as they navigated the stop-and-go traffic of the city. “You do too.”
It wasn’t hard to please him. Graysen beamed, looking down at her, his mouth close enough she could have kissed him. Once upon a time she would have. Elain could remember a version of herself that had reveled in the taste of his mouth, that had liked nothing more than the hours they wasted making out until she was breathless, her lips chapped. She didn’t dare now—not yet. 

Not until they wandered the dim halls of the aquarium, peering through thick glass at a water world so unlike their own. Amid the fish and the glimmering blue, Graysen pulled her against his sweater clad body. One hand cupping her face, he said, “I’d like to kiss you now.”
And Elain tilted her head with silent permission. Eyes closed, his mouth found hers and for a moment there was nothing at all. Just the sweet slide of his lips, warm and familiar, against her own. The memory of the night in the tent flooded through her, of Lucien’s slow exploration and Elain’s whole body ignited like before. It was dulled and yet she surged upwards on her tiptoes, hands reaching for Gray’s face. Pretend, this is pretend— and yet she didn’t care. She could pretend if it meant she felt anything but the constant, choking misery. It was Lucien’s unmasked face she touched, his hair she ran her fingers through. His tongue sliding into her mouth, his arms holding her against him.

And when it ended with a panting, “What was that?” The disappointment flooded back in. The wrong face, the wrong mouth, the wrong everything was looking back at her with open excitement. She needed to be touched, she reationalized, lowering herself back to her feet.

“I missed you,” she said though it wasn’t true. 

“Come home with me tonight,” Graysen whispered, his voice thick. “I’ll cook…”

“Yeah,” she nodded, her stomach curling and twisting at the thought. “I would like that.”

What she liked, when she reflected on it later, was how easy it was to pretend he was Lucien. The moment she closed her eyes Graysen was just a body that Elain could project all her fantasies onto. He walked her into the bedroom, pulling at her clothes while shedding his own. Light totally off, bathed in utter darkness. She could only feel his skin, his mouth, his hands. It wasn’t right—Graysen spent no time between her legs and Lucien never could help himself, and the slide between them was different and yet it was enough. She’d come, tears burning at the back of her eyes which Graysen assumed were joy. He was happy, too, peppering her with soft kisses and the reassurance that his feelings hadn’t changed. That he’d wait as long as she needed him to. Elain wanted to tell him she hardly deserved that sort of devotion, that no one should wait on her. 

Instead, she let him hold her until she fell asleep. Let him make love to her in the early morning light, eyes clamped shut tightly the entire time. She wondered if he noticed, what he made of it. Graysen took her home, kissing her again and again and again in the lobby. His relief poured from him in waves. 

“I’ll call you later.”

Elain nodded, trudging back upstairs where Nesta was waiting, clad in pajamas, eyes strange. “How was last night.”
Elain could only nod. She thought if she opened her mouth to say anything at all, she’d break down sobbing. Nesta sighed. 

“Come here.”

Elain curled on the couch, head on her sister's shoulder. 

Saying nothing at all. 

~*~

Lucien tapped his foot impatiently. Soft chatter cut through the cool autumn air. Lucien would never be used to that, to the seasons of Velaris. He didn’t belong here, was only allowed as Tamlin’s pretend emissary. Working on behalf of the male who’d killed his friend, who had given up Elain’s name to his greatest enemy. 

Greater good, was what Feyre had said. And fuck him, but Lucien and Feyre had become friends during the misery that punctuated her three months beneath the mountain. She’d gone back to Spring with him in the aftermath, had allowed Lucien to try and take care of her. It was a doomed proposition given Tamlin inability to control his temper and that scheming bitch of a priestess. Still, Lucien had tried, with Bron and Hart, just as they’d done for Elain.

And in the end, Feyre had left too. Not back to her world—she hadn’t been able to cross once the High Lords granted her. Feyre, for whatever reason, was meant for this place. Feyre hadn’t grieved the loss of her home, her family, her life the way Elain had. She’d grieved the loss of her humanity, the horror she’d witnessed, the blood on her hands….and it hadnt’ been Lucien to pull her from it but Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court. 

Mates.

What were the odds? Two human sisters with two fae mates? He assumed the other must have a mate lurking in Prythain too, not that either would ever know. He didn’t pity that male, not while he was walking around with the crushing emptiness still. Lucien turned, intending to leave. If Feyre couldn’t arrive on time, why should he wait on her? He was up to his eyes in shit, what with Tamlin’s stupid bargain with Hybern and the ressurected human Jurian prowling Spring with Dagdan and Brannagah and Ianthe swanning about, serene as poison, still haunting his steps, still reminding him of what they’d done on Calanmai—

Feyre appeared from mist and shadow, lovely as dawn with her glowing immortal face. “Sorry,” she said, her voice hardly sorry at all. Friends and yet…and yet Lucien suspected he ranked at the very bottom of this Archeron’s priorities. That she knew he offered his loyalty in part because he loved her sister—a sister Feyre very much wished he would forget. “How is Spring?”
“It’s only a matter of time before they take down the wall,” Lucien told her, not bothering with pleasantries at all. She reeked of her mating bond, of her new life in Night Court and if he spent too long talking, he’d find himself burning with anger and jealousy. “They’re back in the estate discussing how best to proceed but Tamlin took him to all the weakest places.”
If the wall fell, Elain would never return and Lucien, stupid as he was, was desperate to see her again. Beside that, the wall falling made it possible for Hybern’s massive army to sweep against the humans, to slaughter them without impunity and snatch their lands. 

Lucien knew, from the fire burning in Feyre’s silvery blue eyes, that she wanted to see Spring fall, too. Lucien was the only thing keeping that court on its feet. Perhaps Tamlin deserved a coup, deserved her fury and hatred given what he’d done to her, how he’d hurt her just as he’d once hurt her sister. Not now. Not when Spring’s forces were the only thing keeping Summer and Autumn from finding an invading army knocking on their door. Feyre wasn’t from their world, was too impulsive, too sure she was right, too indulged by her mate who wanted to see Tamlin suffer, even if it damned them all. 

“How long?” she asked. Lucien shrugged. Hybern claimed to have the Cauldron in tact and yet none of them had seen it when they’d gone to his palace. No proof, no trace. 

“If he has the Cauldron like he says? It could happen at any moment. If he doesn’t…the wall is old magic. It would take someone like Helion Spell-Cleaver months to unbind it. The same, I imagine, is true for Hybern.”
Rhysand, of all people, was trying to wrangle six other High Lords into fighting a war when they all vividly remembered how he’d treated them beneath the mountain. No one had escaped his cruelty unscathed. To hear Rhys and Feyre say it had been a mask, that he’d done it for personal reasons to keep the people he loved safe, well…Lucien wondered if Rhys or Feyre understood how much worse that made things? They’d all had people they loved, people they lost in their fight. Even Beron hadn’t aligned himself so closely or carefully as Rhys had done. 

“We’re looking for allies on the continent,” Feyre told him, interrupting his own bitter thoughts. “But I was hoping you might do something for me?”
“Name it.”

Feyre’s relief was palpable. “The Cauldron was made…and surely can be unmade, too. Will you talk to Helion Spell-Cleaver about it? He won’t let us in his library—”
For good reason.

“And I thought perhaps you had a contact or a friend…”
Lucien did. He nodded. “I’ll talk to her. There’s no one smarter in Prythian.”
Feyre’s eyebrows raised and not for the first time, Lucien wondered what her own world was like. Feyre was always so caught off guard when a female ranked highly. “Her?”

Lucien nodded. “Yes, Feyre. Her. She is my only contact in Helion’s court.” He didn’t bother to mention that he’d once asked her for help breaking the agreement Feyre forged under the mountain with Rhysand, the one that ordered her to spend one week for the rest of her life in his court. He doubted Ferye would appreciate knowing he’d done that, though in retrospect it had been done out of care and concern.

“You’ll let me know how things go in Spring?” Feyre hesitated. “Is she still there?”
Lucien tensed. “Yes.”
“I’m going to kill her someday,” Feyre murmured. Lucien shrugged his shoulders, hoping he hid his irritation well.

“Not if I do it first.”
Feyre didn’t know what Ianthe had done to him, only how she’d convinced Tamlin to align with Hybern. Foolish, power hungry bitch. And fucking Tamlin, so broken from fifty years of Amarantha, of his people trapped beneath the mountain while he continued to live like a High Lord…he just didn’t care. The mountain had wrecked whatever goodness remained in Tamlin, hollowing him out until he was merely a shell. It might take centuries before his friend was ever right again.

He’d all but handed control of his court to Ianthe, who ruled almost as High Lord. Lucien was her only resistance, leaning on the good-will he’d earned from Tamlin’s warriors and his people and the trust he’d built as emissary, to keep her from taking complete, unwavering control. She couldn’t fuck him into submission which seemed to put her off. Ianthe was disgusting, foul, and would have been whether he’d ever known his mate or not.

“I’ll let you know how Day goes,” Lucien murmured, drawing a breath of air. “And if all else fails…I’ll meet you on the battlefield.”

“Let's hope it doesn’t come to that,” Feyre murmured.

But they both knew it would. 

It was only a matter of time.

~*~

Nesta paced through her living room. Back and forth, back and forth. Spring had faded to Summer and Feyre hadn’t responded to any of their calls or texts. Elain had emailed the university only to learn Feyre hadn’t registered for classes in almost a year. She hadn’t done more than a week of her summer abroad before she stopped showing up. They’d dropped her from their roster and wanted someone to pay them what she owed.

Elain leaned against the kitchen counter, fully aware of what Nesta was thinking. First Elain. Now Feyre. 

“Maybe she eloped,” Nesta breathed, eyes wild. Elain looked down at her hands, at the manicured, rounded opalescent pink she’d had done only days before. It was coming on two years that winter. Feyre had been gone, somehow, eighteen of them and Elain suspected she knew exactly where her younger sister had gone. Elain drummed the tips against the marble, relishing the soft clacking. 

“I don’t think so.”

Nesta’s head snapped to Elain. “She wanted to know. It would be so like her to go looking…to see if it was true.”
“She didn’t come back,” Nesta whispered. The thought had crossed Nesta’s mind, then. That Elain’s story wasn’t just a traumatized mind trying desperately to make sense of horror but actual truth. If anyone was brave enough to ignore everything Elain had said, to walk over an enchanted wall to try and break that curse herself, it would be Feyre. 

“Maybe she found something worth staying for,” Elain replied. Of them all, Nesta was rooted strongest to their world though, had someone asked her that two years before, Elain would have said it was her. She was exactly where she’d started—she had her full time job at the museum now and Graysen was going to propose again, it was only a matter of time. She had friends, her old life, all the things that mattered to her. 

And if Nesta had asked her to go back, Elain would have in a heartbeat. Would have turned her back and stepped directly into danger, if only for the chance to see Lucien again. She was starting to think she’d dreamed him up, that he hadn’t been real. A perfect man in a mask? It was something from a fairytale. 

Nesta drew a breath. “I’m afraid to call the police again. They already think…” They thought Elain was crazy, that she’d made the whole thing up. Harper certainly helped that theory along with her stupid lie. For the life of Elain, she’d never understand why Harper waited so long to tell someone. Harper had been the only person not to reach out, going as far as blocking Elain entirely. She’d stayed in L.A., and Elain had heard from some of their shared friends that Harper, too, thought she was crazy. 

Maybe she was. 

“What if we went?” Elain asked, working to keep her voice measured. “Just to see?”
Nesta’s gaze sharpened. “So you can vanish, too? Leave me— no.”
Her sister drew a ragged breath. “Not until I try a few other things, at least.”
“Okay.” Elain was agreeable, even as hope began to claw in her stomach. “It was just a thought. Maybe she eloped.”
But they both knew Feyre hadn’t. She would have told them, if only to warn them of a new, European guest at Thanksgiving that year. And Nesta, so wrapped up in making sure Elain was okay, had missed all the signs that Feyre had disappeared. Elain knew Nesta would punish herself in her quiet, simmering way. Nesta, who had been forced to all but mother Elain and Feyre when their own mom died and their father withdrew. Nesta who had packed their lunches and forced them out of bed, who had cleaned and signed report cards and looked the other way when Ferye came home with a backpack filled with stolen food.

How Nesta had clawed her way through school, had earned perfect grades, perfect scores, for this perfect job. Nesta would never know hunger or cold or fear ever again. Elain wondered if the glass walls overlooking the city reminded Nesta of how far she’d come.

Of what she could lose, if she wasn’t immaculate. 

Elain left Nesta for work, pulling dresses from the seventeenth century from their boxes in the basement to photograph. She was digitizing their archive so though the dresses remained carefully kept in the museum's massive collection, people could see everything they had, along with Elain’s write-ups. Sometimes all she knew was the fabric and the time period but other things were donated by people whose ancestors had worn them, or wealthy and royal patrons that had been painted in the gown. 

The work quieted Elain’s mind, focusing her only on the task. There was nothing else—no missing Feyre, or Prythian, or curse—just her, just this. 

Graysen was waiting to pick her up, lovely in a navy suit. Sometimes when she looked at him, she almost forgot about life before. Her heart was an ugly, shattered thing and Gray was trying so hard to knit it back together.  Only Elain knew he couldn’t, that there were things missing he could never give her. And still, she’d promised Lucien to live her life. As she walked to him, rising on her heeled tiptoes to kiss his mouth, she wondered if he had survived. If Feyre had truly gone back, had broken that curse. She couldn’t imagine Tamlin and Feyre falling in love—ripping each other to shreds, though…that was a real possibility. 

“Good day?” he asked, leading her down the carved steps to the packed sidewalk where his car sat, technically double parked, not that Graysen cared. Elain smiled, letting herself slide against his chest, to revel in the heat of him. She liked being touched and Graysen was always willing to oblige her. 

“Good day,” she agreed, pushing down her worries about Feyre. Graysen wanted to wine and dine her and Elain wanted to pretend a little. She smiled and laughed and genuinely enjoyed his company. She wasn’t a monster. Gray was a good man, a good boyfriend and Elain had wanted him for a reason. Even haunted by a ghost, by a man who, for all she knew, had died months before, couldn’t chase those old feelings away. 

Just as Gray couldn’t compete. Not by a mile, not by a lifetime. Each new time, eyes shut, was a little worse than the last. Elain knew one day she’d find herself lying beneath him unable to pretend any longer. This distraction with Graysen had a time limit, was rapidly unspooling. She wondered if he felt it, too. Wondered if he recognized the soft, moving distance that had begun, two continents slowly drifting apart. If he did, he gave no indication. Only easy smiles and sweet kisses before he sent her on her way.

Back to Nesta, in workout clothes and a tight smile. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Elain replied, walking to the kitchen for her bottle of homemade lavender syrup, a holdover of her time in Prythian. She’d developed a taste for the tea…or occasionally, the syrup poured directly into her coffee. “Are you asking me to workout with you? Because you know I had squats.”

“No,” Nesta replied. “Okay, let’s go back to that wall.”

Elain nearly dropped her bottle. “What?”

“If you think Feyre is over there, I want to know. I want to see her with my own two eyes. All of it,” Nesta added, those silvery eyes gleaming. “Otherwise I’ll never sleep again.”

Elain had to swallow the excitement burning in her gut. “Nesta I…” she cleared her throat. If he was alive, she knew she’d stay. “When do you want to go?”
“Tomorrow,” Nesta said. “I already bought the tickets.”
Elain was breathless with hope.

“I’ll start packing.”

~*~

“When I agreed to help, this wasn’t what I meant,” Arina complained, dressed in Day Court white gold. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the female outside of dresses. Lucien could admit she looked good in the leather, her blonde hair tied high off her face. 

“Well, it wasn’t what I meant, either, in all fairness,” Lucien agreed, crouching in the forest. Something strange was afoot, some manner of creature he’d never seen stalked the once lovely Spring Court woods. The wall was gone, and with it, his hopes of ever seeing Elain again. Lucien hated the flicker of relief on Feyre’s face when he’d told her weeks before. He didn’t need her ability to read minds to know what she thought. Elain was safe.

Without him. 

He shook his head, clearing himself of Elain. They were in the thick of it now, battling for their very existence on every end. Morrigan had gone looking for the ancient warrior Drakon instead of him, who’d been left instead to help wrangle his fucking brothers into tracking the goddamn Cauldron. 

They knew Hybern had it, had used it to destroy the wall. He would use it again when the mood suited him. While Rhysand and the other High Lords—Tamlin included—advanced towards some inevitable end, more than a few of them were sneaking around the outskirts of the war, trying to hobble Hybern’s army before it could decimate them all. Lucien and Arina were just one of many pairs, tracking over vast tracts of land for anywhere Hybern might have hidden it and anyway to access it. 

Breaking the Cauldron would take world ruining power, far beyond anything he or Arina possessed. That wasn’t their job. Lucien’s job was merely hunting. Easy enough. Arina, who wasn’t a tracker, had come for another reason she was quietly avoiding.

His eldest brother was lurking in the woods, had been eyeing her ever since Lucien brought her to that High Lord’s meeting. Arina wanted to avoid him and as consequence, got stuck working with Lucien, a perpetual buffer for his brother's advances. 

His head turned at the soft sound of padding on the soft earth. Not fae or human—those steps would be heavier. An animal, then. Not Eris’s dogs, left safe in Autumn. It took Lucien a moment too long to realize they weren’t tracking anything at all. They were being hunted.

“Run!” he ordered seconds before snarling ripped through the dusky silence. Arina didn’t need to be told twice, sprinting in the opposite direction, her magical, Day Court gifted wind billowing around her. Lucien grabbed her wrist, winnowing a short distance so they could move quicker, leaping through the air to stay just ahead of Hybern’s massive, fleet footed beasts. 

He had no though as to where they were going, only that he could hardly lead them back to their camp, where they’d have to fight the snarling, snapping creatures with no warning at all. He might dislike his brothers, but even that was a step too far.

“Lucien!” Arina screamed when more winnowing darkness intercepted them. Lucien used a pulse of power to blow whoever had come—not the fire he meant to call but blinding, burning light.

“What was that?!” Arina cried, pulling him aside so they could continue fleeing. “That’s not Autumn.”
It was sunlight. Lucien didn’t have time to unpack what had just happened, couldn’t waste a moment thinking about it at all. He knew who had been in that icy winnow, had recognized the golden blonde hair and the silvery blue robes. Ianthe. 

Lucien would rather see his body shredded to bloodied ribbons than be caught by her. He knew what she wanted, what she’d do if she ever got her magical manacles around his wrists again. Lucien felt his sword heavy at his side. 

“Don’t leave me–”
“Call for Eris,” he ordered, acknowledging the thing Arina thought she’d kept hidden. Lucien recognized that look on his brothers face, the way Eris watched her move, trying to pretend she was nothing at all. “I’ll find you.”
“Lucien—!” But snarling beasts forced Arina to keep running, to leave him standing in that forest clearing somewhere between the mortal and fae lands. Sword drawn, chest heaving. He could hear her dress dragging over the few leaves, her steps hardly careful. She wasn’t special, her blood just barely magical, her skills just notably fairy. Her beauty poison, uglier than Amarantha. 

She appeared, hood flung backwards, nose bleeding from his pulse of magic. “You waited,” she purred, some small hope gleaming in those teal eyes. They drifted to his drawn sword, drawing her lips into a frown. “To kill me?”
“Surely you knew that,” Lucien replied. “Have I not made my feelings abundantly clear?”

He looked pointedly to the broken, ruined hands at her side, unhidden despite the flare of her sleeves. Destroyed by Feyre when she’d come to Spring hoping to reason with Tamlin and found him instead trapped against that tree. They’d killed Brannagh and Dagden instead before fleeing, leaving his home behind. Lucien, holed up in Day Court, working on behalf of Night Court…exiled from Autumn, complicit in the destruction of Spring…he pushed those thoughts aside. 

“I recall you enjoying Calanmai,” Ianthe replied casually, the frigid, stupid bitch. Lucien’s growl stilled her, reminded her that no amount of good breeding on her part would help her win this fight. He was a High Lord's heir, the son of Autumn and she had only what the Mother above willed. 

“You remember what you want,” Lucien replied. He’d been out of his mind, an animal without thought. Coming to and realizing what she’d done had been brutal and Lucien had not been kind. Ianthe wore his bruises around her neck for weeks, had been saved only by Tamlin himself. There was no Tamlin to save her now. 

“I didn’t come to argue,” she pouted, keeping a healthy distance between them. “I came to make you an offer.”
“I decline,” Lucien replied immediately. “I want nothing from you.”
She raised her eyebrows, a smile playing on her lips. “You’re so sure I could offer you nothing. I want to make a trade. One week, like Rhysand did, wasn’t it? One week of your life a month.”
Lucien stepped forward lightly. “I’d rather eat my own heart.”
“Don’t you want to know what I could offer?”

“You have nothing I want.”

Her smile was amused. “No? What about immortality?”

All he had to do was step through the world, winnow behind her, and drive his sword through her throat. He inclined his head. “I already have it.”

He went to make the jump, catching her by surprise when, in one smooth moment, he was standing behind her, the bite of his blade digging against her throat. “Not for you,” she choked, writhing even when blood began to drip onto her dress. “For Elain.”
Lucien nearly dropped Ianthe. “What did you say?”

“I have her,” Ianthe managed, trying and failing to shove against the arm that pinned her to him. Her heart pounded wildly, her terror sweet on the air. “I could make her immortal.”

“You lie,” he replied. It wasn’t possible. The wall was gone and so was Elain. She’d merely gathered that information from Dagden, was toying with him like she always did.

“Hybern has her and her sister,” Ianthe tried again and Lucien, furious and terrified all at once, removed her head from her body before she could say another word. Warm blood spilled over the scaled black armor he wore, her body falling like a puppet cut of its strings. He turned, intending to find Hybern, to see if Ianthe lied, when snarling and screaming drew his attention back to the task at hand. Lucien took off, leaving Ianthe’s body for the crows, praying Arina was okay. Eris would never let him live if she died. 

He didn’t need to worry at all. Arina lay flat on her back, blood droplets sprayed over her bronzed skin. And his brother… fuck. Eris’s skin was a match for the red of his hair, his fluttering cape. Flame licked the sides of his face, his hands, his body, shining from amber eyes, marking him as the High Lords heir, the future of Autumn. Scattered at his feet were the torn pieces of Hyberns beasts, flung about in chunks, as if they were little more than toys Eris had tired of. Lucien had seen those things take down five hundred year old warriors and yet Eris had merely ripped them to nothing with his bare hands. 

Eris turned, every inch a predator, stilling at the sight of Lucien’s approach. Arina was panting, her heartbeat wild and unsteady, green eyes wholly focused on his brother. “He…he killed them,” she whispered, her words cracking with some emotion Lucien couldn’t read. It seemed to snap Eris back to reality. All at once his posture shifted, his magic winking out with a breath. He walked to Arina and offered her a blood soaked hand and she took it, rising to her feet. 

“Did you finish her?” Arina asked, still clasping Eris’s hands, still looking at his brother as if it were the first time she’d ever really seen him. Perhaps it was.

“Ianthe is dead.” He didn’t dare tell them what she’d said about Elain, about Hybern having her. “I need to go back to camp.”

Eris nodded, pulling his hand from Arina’s. She’d go with Lucien and they all knew it. It wasn’t a question, not when Lucien winnowed them back to the sprawling tent city where thousands of warriors from every court waited atop that hillside. Marching, for the some of them, to death. Lucien deposited Arina with Helion’s camp, wondering if she’d tell the High Lord what came from his hands that day. It didn’t matter, he decided. Let Helion untangle that mess later. Lucien needed Feyre.

She was watching, arms crossed over her chest. Staring at nothing, at what they all knew was coming. Another day of marching, of waiting.

“Ianthe is dead,” he told her. 

“Can I?” Feyre asked. Lucien swallowed, inclining his head so Feyre could peer into his mind. Could see what Ianthe had said, could hear her. Feyre’s face paled, eyes looking into that rapidly darkening distance. 

“She’s a liar,” Feyre said. 

“And if she’s not?” Lucien could only swallow his fear, imagining Elain trapped in that camp, subjected to that Mad King’s whims.

“We’ll find her,” was all Feyre said. “And kill him for daring to touch them at all.”

~*~

Nesta and Elain marched quietly towards the wall, taking the same path Elain and Harper once had. No tour guides, no witnesses, only the first rays of dawn greeted them and their approach. Nesta’s steps slowed as they made that ascent upwards. Elain was hit with deja vu, dressed in quarter-sleeves and yellow. She’d been careful with her hair, pinning the sides back, had spent all night working on her face. Wanting to be lovely, for him to see her and recognize her.

Nesta was more practical in her athleticwear and nice tennis shoes. Elain had nothing but her fully charged phone in her pocket while Nesta had a bag slung over one shoulder, long hair pulled in twin french braids. “I don’t like this,” Nesta whispered. “It feels…”
Wrong. Elain could feel the pull again, the soft tugging urging her forward. Elain reached out her hand, ignoring how Lucien’s words urging her to live her life without him echoed around her. “Elain,” Nesta whispered, grasping her hand. Too late. Elain pressed her palm to the rough stone. Nesta came with her—Elain heard her eldest sister scream as they tumbled, the grass giving way to leaves and wood and rot. A familiar lilac breeze was tinged with something new, the air heavier, muskier. 

No naga greeted her, no masked warriors coming from the gleaming shadows. Still, Elain swore she knew the way as she righted herself, brushing leaves from her dress. That spring weather was almost a relief, the shimmering, golden light peeking through the leaves above warming her trembling body. 

“Oh my God,” Nesta breathed, standing quickly. Wisps of brown hair framed Nesta’s elegant face, eyes wide with stunned wonder. “I thought…”
Elain didn’t let herself feel bad. It was an insane proposition to begin with and yet Elain felt vindicated, in a strange way. She reached her hand for Nesta’s, smiling too bright. “Come on. Let me show you where I was.”
“We’re only here to find Feyre,” Nesta reminded her. Elain didn’t bother to argue. She wanted to see Feyre…and Lucien. God, how badly she wanted to see his face, to hear his voice, to refill the miserable, aching void she couldn’t shake inside her chest. She knew she’d beg and scream and plead to stay with him, even if it meant he remained lovely and young and beautiful while she aged and one day died. Time apart had given Elain clarity. Better to spend what little time they had together than waste it miserably apart. 

They didn’t get far before a fae male, casual in his appearance, stepped from the shadows. Coal black eyes glittered against shoulder length onyx hair and bone white skin. “Are you lost?”

“No,” Elain said quickly, well aware of the horror that could come from being too friendly with one of these men. 

He stepped a little closer, watching them with amusement. “On your way to Spring…you crossed the wall, I take it?”
“Yes,” Elain agreed. “We’ll just be on our way.”

“To see the High Lord? No need. I can take you.”

Nesta grabbed Elain’s wrist as dread pooled through them both. He peered at them as if he could sense the lie.

“Unless, of course, you’ve come to see someone else?”

“Feyre Archeron,” Nesta said too quickly. Elain sighed but the man’s whole body shifted.

“I thought you looked familiar.” He spoke directly to Nesta then. “I know the Cursebreaker well.”
Elain ignored the whispering voice telling her to run. “She broke the curse?”

His smile was practically feline. “She did. She’s fairy now. Would you like to see her?”

“Yes,” they said in unison. He extended a hand.

“Let me take you to her. Feyre and I know each other very well.”
“She’s…what’s your name?” Nesta asked, inching a little closer. He smiled. 

“No name,” he murmured. “Though, I suppose they call me Hybern.”
“Nes—” something metallic shoved itself violently against Elain’s face, suffocating her, dragging her towards darkness. Elain recalled that map in Tamlins study, the strangely familiar landscape of England and Scotland that denoted Prythian, and the neighboring island of Hybern. She didn’t know anything about their people, of this man named for the place itself. She only knew he did not belong.

And then she knew nothing more, at least for a time. Elain awoke alone, hands bound behind her body in an empty tent. She was secured to the middling support so tight she could barely adjust her shoulders. Elain was not alone. A woman watched with strange, teal eyes and pretty golden hair. She turned when Elain groaned, the full weight of her gaze settling on Elain’s chest. She had the phases of the moon stamped over her forehead, centered with a cerulean stone. Silver blue robes clung to a curved body, a hood thrown from her head of soft curls.

“Elain Archeron?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”
“Where am I?” Elain asked, not bothering to answer. The woman—priestess, if she had to guess—walked slowly, dress swishing about her legs. She crouched beside Elain, caressing her face.

“Safe,” she said. Elain pulled at her wrists but said nothing, waiting for some sort of explanation. “I don’t suppose you know me. You were here before my time. My name is Ianthe, I’m a priestess in Spring Court.”

“Tamlin?” she asked dumbly, trying to shake the last vestiges of magic from her senses. 

“Yes,” Ianthe agreed. “He is the High Lord who brought me to Prythian…it is his court I serve.”

“Can I see him?” Elain asked. 

Ianthe nodded. “In time. He has been inquiring after you, too. I’m surprised to see how… fevered he is given he sent you home.”
“And Nesta?” Elain asked, ignoring whatever this woman was trying to ask without just directly saying it. 

“Safe. With Jurian,” Ianthe added, as if that name meant anything to her. “We’re waiting on the human queens to arrive before we release you.”
“How long?”

“Hours, perhaps? If that, even. They’re quite eager to meet the Cursebreakers human family. We all are…though you’ve been here before but when I went looking for you, there was no traces. Curious.”

“I guess,” Elain winced, tugging at her hands. “Will you untie me?”

Ianthe didn’t budge. “Where did he hide you?”
Elain pulled again. “Nowhere. Ask Tamlin, he’ll—”
“Not Tamlin. Lucien. Where did he hide you? I have been looking for you since Feyre first claimed to be you.”
Their eyes met. Lucien. “You know Lucien?”
Her mouth curled into a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. “Very well. We are…intimately close.”

Elain was going to be sick. He’d taken a new lover, then. She could hardly be angry, not when she’d been with Graysen and yet…and yet Ianthe was so fairy, so lovely and fairy and immortal. Had it been a difficult choice, she wondered?
“Can I see him?”
“He doesn’t wish to see you,” she murmured. “But I could not resist seeing the human he hid from Amarantha. Just once, anyway. He wishes for me to forget you…just as he has.”
Oh God. Elain tried so hard to keep her face from betraying how badly that hurt her. 

“Where did he hide you?”

“He didn’t,” Elain managed, swallowing the urge to scream. “I just left.”
“You’re a liar,” she crooned softly. 

“Ask him, then,” Elain demanded. “You know him so well, he should have no problem verifying the truth.”
She brushed a knuckle over Elain’s cheek. “Would you like to know what he said, when I told him we had you? That you were going to die?”

Cold skittered over her skin. Elain could do nothing but listen, even as Ianthe stood, looking down at Elain with pitying eyes. “Nothing at all,” she finally said with a curling smile. “He said nothing at all.”
Elain inclined her head against the pole, closing her eyes. She tried to imagine it, Lucien, with his teasing eyes and his easy smiles with nothing to say. Lucien, who’d once punched his oldest friend in the face for leaving her to die, who had put himself between Rhysand to try and keep her safe…could so much have changed in just a year and a half that he wouldn’t care? 

No. 

Elain couldn’t feel that bond anymore, still missed the snap of him, the constant awareness of his feelings and yet Elain knew Lucien. If he knew she was here, he would remain silent only to keep her safe, to help. He wouldn’t leave her to die. 

Not that it mattered any, when several nervous servants stepped into the tent hours later, their legs manacled in iron. Human, just like Elain, pallid and trembling as they untied her. A fae man stood just at the door to guard, watching with hungry eyes as Elain was stripped bare and redressed in plunging crimson after washing her with cold, harsh rags. Heavy black clips were pushed against her hair, a devil's crown set atop her head as she marched through a well organized, sprawling war camp. War. Hybern was in Spring… and she was walking past rows upon rows of soldiers with that same bone white skin, those same beatle jewel eyes. 

Nesta was waiting in a crown of thorns and the same too exposed black, hands and feet bound and gagged. Hybern had created a stage of sorts, a twisted throne set atop a wooden dais. No priestess, Elain noted, though just a few feet away was a long, wooden rack holding a whimpering, naked human wood, her body stretched across all four corners. 

Too late, she knew, they never should have come back. Cursebreaker? Of what? 

A crowd of gathered women in heavy dresses not unlike the ones she’d spent days cataloging. Human Queens, watching at the foot of the dias as Elain was dragged forward. Not to Hybern, who relaxed casually in his suit of black, but towards a massive iron Cauldron filled to the brim with black, smoking water.

Nesta immediately began to thrash, causing several soldiers at the periphery to reach for her, restraining as they shoved a gag in her mouth. “More human women?” one of the older Queens asked, her tone dripping with disdain. “How many are you going to demand us watch die?”
Elain dug her satin slippers into the hard ground, searching the night for anything that might save her. Only violet stars winked back, the only beings left to witness this horror. Hot, massive torches lit her way forward, pushed and dragged with punishing fingers.

“These are no mere humans. The Cursebreaker has sisters. They’re strong, like her. They can withstand immortality. You will see. Put the prettier one in first.”
Nesta’s muffled screams shattered the silence. Elain looked around one last time as she was hauled off her feet, all but carried to that massive pot. A man with soft eyes and flat lips stood to the far side, regret glimmering in his gaze. No Tamlin, like Ianthe had said. No Lucien, no Feyre, just a crowd of curious, black armored soldiers and these hungry women hoping to see her die.

Elain’s feet hit the edge of the Cauldron as she writhed. “No,” she breathed when her feet splashed against the cold surface. Soft, phantom talons grazed at her feet, drawing her downward. Elain couldn’t beg for this to stop, could only suck down one last gulp of air.

Nesta’s terror was the last thing she ever saw. 

~*~

They marched at dawn. Cassian and Azriel had scouted ahead, had finally found Hybern’s place of choosing, his final stand. They would fight in the valley between the hills. No sign of Nesta or Elain or anything that might prove what Ianthe had said was true. It both gave him hope Elain was still safe in her strange world and disappointed him that he’d never see her again.

“Do you think they’ll attack today?” Feyre asked her mate, peering into the distance at that still slumbering army. Rhys merely shook his head.

“They’ll take their time. As should we.”
The day was wasted putting up tents and getting settled. Everyone was on edge. It was no small battle, no teasing or games. This was the fate of their lives, their world. Lucien, too, was thinking about it. He wondered if that was what drew Eris to him, face contemplative as he sat beside Lucien’s fire. Eris, ever the show off, stoked the flames with a mere flick of long fingers, eyes far away.

“I heard what you did in the woods. It is only time before father learns of it, too.”
“It was nothing.”
“It was sunlight,” Eris said carefully. “And that doesn’t belong to Autumn.”
Lucien heaved a sigh. “Well…I suppose you know, don’t you? Which courtier am I to threaten on pain of death, then?”

“A courtier no more,” Eris all but grumbled. “But High Lord.”
Cauldron boil him. “That complicates the threatening.”

Eris nodded. “Mother cannot leave and I trust you to be discreet regarding this. I have convinced Arina not to go to Helion. Not yet, anyway. Not until I can be sure father won’t harm mother.”

“Accidents happen in battle all the time,” Lucien said with a shrug.

“There would be a revolt if I slaughtered the High Lord with his back turned,” Eris replied. “Even I am not so clever.”

“I would do nothing to harm mother…and I hardly need a father,” Lucien said, contemplating just how, exactly, Helion and his mother had managed to be together often enough a child had come of it. “Another father, anyway.”
Eris stared into the fire until it danced for him, twisting and writhing, honored to be seen by him at all. Lucien watched with the same fascination he’d once felt as a boy. Eris’s magic was so strong, so potent. Lucien had only a drop of what his brother carried in his veins. Lucien supposed now he knew why. A High Lords son, but not the one he’d thought. One day he’d have to begrudgingly speak with Helion about it, before the moment, Lucien was content to stare at that dancing flame until Eris stood and it all but winked out, exhausted to ash. 

Feyre came to rejoin Lucien when dusk fell. No Rhysand, no Night Court circle of friends and dreamers. Just Feyre, tired, weary, ancient and exhausted despite her youth. “Ianthe would lie to trick us,” she began, elbows on her knees. 

“I know.”

“She would say anything to draw us out, to back us into a corner and kill us one by one.”

“I know.”
“I’m so afraid she wasn’t lying,” Feyre finally told him, resting her head in her hands. “That he’s doing something terrible, that–”
“Stop it,” Lucien interrupted, his chest painfully tight. “I don’t want to think about that.”

“I—” Feyre stilled, ear’s shifting in the wind. Lucien stood. He’d heard it too. Something was rumbling in the ground, something terrible…unnatural. Feyre joined him, walking through the camp with everyone else, sword in hand. Hybern was mobilizing, was going to attack against the cover of night. It was cowardice, a crime banned in their own rules of engagement. Not that Lucien expected Hybern to care. 

“Holy Gods,” Cassian whispered, all seven of his red siphons gleaming as the ground between camps ripped itself open and the dead began to rise. It was an army of bones, of mindless, rotting flesh clawing its way from the dirt, called by magic none of them could feel. It was, all at once, a mad scramble to organize, to ready themselves when the majority of the camp had been all but ready for bed. Lucien stayed beside Feyre, watching as a sea of bodies he would never have known lay in that valley righted themselves into regimented lines. Not all held weapons and some were little more than bones held together by invisible strings.

They were ready by the time the ground stopped moving and the soldiers—thousands of them—stood ready for orders. Lucien’s heart hammered and it would have been a lie if he said he wasn’t scared. He could see his brother in the distance, making up the flanking side, cape fluttering as he watched. On the far other end stood the father he’d only just learned of, gleaming helmet of feathered gold, waiting for what would come next. 

Screaming. Vengeful, hateful, female screaming ripped through the silence. It was as if the mother herself looked at what she created and found it horrifying beyond measure. Perhaps she did. The very sound chilled Lucien to the bone. Every dead soldier snapped their heads, turning to look to Hybern. Marching on Hybern. 

“What’s happening?” 

Lucien didn’t know who asked. Fire erupted at the heart of Hybern’s camp, bright and brilliant. It was as if Beron himself stood within its flames, commanding that flame to the Gods himself. The scene unfolding was pure, undiluted chaos. Something was happening within Hyberns ranks. Someone had turned on him. Lucien could only stand in wonder at the sound of terrified screaming as that undead army began to sweep through the night, punctuated with more exploding flame that seemed to be moving in a line, sweeping through the camp. As if someone ran with a torch, lighting whatever they found indiscriminately. It was hardly the actions of someone skilled and yet Lucien couldn’t help but admire their nerve.

“Should we do something?” Feyre asked but Rhysand shook his head with amusement. 

“Let them destroy each other…we’ll pick off what remains.”

That scream ripped through the world, raking its claws down their senses. It was a language all its own, one they understood too well. That fury touched something deep in Lucien’s soul and he wondered what anyone could have done to elicit such a sound. It took them all a breathless moment to recognize what was striding among the dead, parting them like the sea. Bathed in silver flame, a sword slung over her shoulder, was a female in smoky gray, her hair wild around her sightless face.
Feyre screamed then, hand pressed to her mouth. “Go get her!” she ordered. Cassian plunged into the fray before anyone else, wings tucked against his back as he pushed through that massive army of the dead trying so hard to surge into Hybern. 

Feyre was at the edge of the hilltop, eyes searching desperately. Lucien tore his eyes from that terrifying female form to follow Feyre’s gaze. It was the fire that drew her. “Oh Gods,” she whispered, trembling so hard Lucien wondered how she stood. It took only a moment before Lucien understood what Feyre already knew. 

Ianthe hadn’t lied. It was the eldest Archeron, made just as Feyre had once been that Cassian had gone to intercept and it was Elain, holding a burning torch in a sparkling white dress splattered with red. Tamlin was just beside her, his beastly form rising to her shoulders. Elain whipped her head to that army of dead, screaming lost words to the chaos of the night.

“Get her!” Feyre screamed again, to Azriel who plunged into the night. Elain cocked her head to the sky as Lucien bellowed her name, his terror clawing in his chest. She didn’t react as she slid her fingers over Tamlins fur.

And vanished into the night.

~*~

Elain would never forget how it felt to die. It was not peace, was not a soft and gentle rocking but burning and reforging. It was airless, lightless agony, stretching over an eternity. Elain did not beg for herself as she writhed, but for Nesta, whom she’d dragged into this mess. Spare her. Let it be easy.

And the darkness had begun to purr, a cat curling about her legs. Comforting her, easing her transition into immortality, not death. Elain would not die, not as Ianthe had promised. She pushed against that darkness and something sparked in her stomach. Some new magic that did not belong and yet as she swam towards that pinprick of light, Elain understood this was a gift. It was hers.

She tumbled from the Cauldron to general appreciative murmurs. “I suppose the Cauldron did not like you in red?” Were Hyberns' very first words. Elain pushed herself upwards on shaking arms, looking at the sparking cut of white now gleaming against her glowing skin. “What did I tell you? For the strong, it can be done.”

Elain met Nesta’s eyes.

“Put the hellcat in.”

Elain could only watch, helpless as Nesta was all but shoved in. Nesta, who had fought so hard for her normal life and her good job and her peace. Who had taken care of her when everything went wrong, had made no demands on Elain as she healed. It was Elain’s fault she was in, Elain’s fault when Nesta pointed that finger, as if she were marking Hybern for death. He chuckled, watching her with interest. With amusement and, perhaps, as Nesta finally vanished, lust. 

He’d looked at her, Elain realized, the way too many men had over their lives. Like Nesta was something to conquer, something to break. Something he might enjoy bringing to heel, proof of his masculinity. And Nesta, Elain knew, would kill him for trying. She hoped to watch. 

Nesta emerged as Elain had—spluttering and soaked, her dress a smokey shade of glittering gray. Nesta’s silver blue eyes seemed to burn with fire, her hatred evoking amusement from the king. “Perhaps I should put you in my tent.”
Nesta screamed softly, pushing him back against that twisted throne as she gripped Elain’s hand. Arched ears, that glow of immortality…and that fairy way of shifting from flesh to fur. She’d accused Lucien of being a monster, once. Nesta seemed to embody it, her fury speaking to something primal in the soldiers around them.’

“Take them away,” Hybern ordered softly as those foul, human Queens turned to look at him, hope blazing in their ugly faces. Elain hoped they burned in hell for this, that they never had a moment's peace. They were tied back to that post, the same Nesta burned through the very second they were alone. 

“Something happened,” she whispered but Elain wasn’t listening. The wind was chanting. Elain, Elain, Elain, it murmured against a vision of burning fire and howling wolves. Twin ravens swooping through the sky…or men, with wings, but that couldn’t be right? Coming for Nesta and her army of the undead, pulling her screaming into the sky.

Images continued to assault Elain throughout the day, shifting into nothing until she wasn’t sure what was real and what was the new magic writhing in her veins. From the vacancy in Nesta’s eyes, Elain knew she did the same. No one came to check, no one brought them anything to eat or drink or offered even a measured look of kindness. Afraid, she knew, though she wasn’t sure how. Elain just knew, the way she knew someone was walking towards them and the way she knew they would not spend another night in this camp. 

“Tamlin,” she murmured mere moments before the High Lord stepped in. Unmasked. He was lovely, stunning in the fading light of day. Elain had been unprepared to see him without the green and gold covering his face, drinking in the tanned, chiseled features of his face. “Elain,” he breathed, looking to Nesta who remained utterly still. “Bron and Hart are waiting for you.”
No Andras. That hurt was scabbed over. “Your sister too. Elain I…” he took a breath, offering her his hand. She took it without hesitation—she’d forgiven him long ago. “I’m sorry.”
“I know,” Elain agreed. Nesta had risen to her feet, eyes gleaming with that silvery fire. Tamlin took a halting step backwards but Nesta wasn’t coming for him.

“Get her out of here.”

“We’re going together,” Elain replied firmly. Nesta had been here all of two days. What did she know about this place, this life? Beneath them, the ground shook with rumbling violence and Nesta grinned. It was a thing of hunger, of that writhing need. What had the Cauldron found when Nesta had gone in? What had it given to her?

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Nesta murmured. “Can’t you hear, them, Elain? The dead they…they whisper to me.”

“Elain,” Tamlin murmured with alarm. It wasn’t the dead that whispered to Elain, but the world itself. Elain, Elain, Elain, the wind chanted softly. It was that same cold wind she’d felt the first time she ever went to the wall though she hadn’t possessed the ability to hear what they said. Now, though…now Elain knew. 

“This place is dangerous,” Elain whispered, blinking away the vision of Nesta commanding that terrible, rotting army. 

“So am I.” Nesta strolled from the tent and the ground shook again. Elain went for her sister only for Tamlin to catch her around the waist. 

“They’ll kill her,” Elain writhed. Tamlin’s eyes gleamed green with hate.

“Then we give them a distraction.”

Tamlin strode to one of the torches, igniting the tent she’d just come from. The blaze roared to the sky, drawing anyone who might have noticed Nesta walking towards the steep hillside. Tamlins body shifted into a terrible beast as tall as her, a creature of golden fur and the horns Andras had once worn. A tribute to his High Lord, she understood. 

Elain took the torch from Tamlin’s terrible paw, beginning a run of carnage and fire while the ground beneath them groaned and shrieked. She could hear that terrible army, clawing towards Hybern. Revenge for what he’d done to them, for turning their trip through Spring into a horrible nightmare. 

They burst from the side of the army just in time for that terrible winged beast to swoop over the sky. “Something is coming,” she murmured, inclining her head towards the massive creature. Tamlin growled. 

“Let’s go,” he grumbled. Hybern had no interest in chasing her down, not when they realized Elain holding that fiery torch was merely a distraction for Nesta’s horrific screams of vengeance and the army she’d set upon them. More beasts took to the air just as Tamlin winnowed her away in warm, lilac scented air. 

Elain slammed to the ground, knees nearly buckling at the sheer force. A hand caught her arm, drawing her up.

“Lady Elain,” Bron murmured, no hint of a smile on his face. And Elain, eyes bouncing from him and Hart, flung her arms around his neck. Unmasked and lovely and familiar Bron in his fighting leather. Her friend. 

Hart’s blue eyes widened. “What happened to you?” he asked, eyes taking in the unmistakable glow of immortality. 

She hadn’t meant to cry. Elain blinked and Hart’s face crumpled. “Lady Elain,” he murmured, brushing a hand over her hair. “Let me go get Lucien.”

“Please,” whispered.

Hart vanished, along with the rumbling and Elain buried her face in Bron’s shoulder.

And waited.

Chapter Text

Night wore on and the groaning dead was replaced with true battle…and now Lucien. Bron was antsy, setting Elain in front of a dying campfire. He wanted to join in the war, was a warrior first. It was unfair to keep him, to force him to babysit her. “Go,” she told him, her mind constantly assaulted by a barrage of images she wished she could not see. Elain, Elain, Elain. That voice was a terrible thing. 

“I can’t abandon you,” Bron hedged, already moving towards the fighting. Elain went to him, sliding her hand down his leg without him realizing—taking one of his blades without asking.  A new image, of Hybern’s severed head, of a blade she’d never seen puncturing the skin, of her made of mist and shadow, her skin dotted with blood, assaulted her senses. Elain forced herself to smile, to turn her wide eyes on his face, to let him see the human beneath the veneer of fae. 

“What trouble could I get into?”

That seemed to pacify Bron, who clearly had forgotten all the trouble they’d gotten into before. He vanished, leaving her alone in that massive camp, waiting on a man she knew she wouldn’t see until this ended. She wanted to see Lucien without the mask, wanted to touch his face—touch him. He would know what was going on with her, what terrible roiling mess now churned through her gut.

Elain stood, walking slowly in her ruined white dress given alongside her magic. This army she hid in had been unleashed in the valley below, fighting alongside Nesta’s army of the dead. Elain understood what needed to happen but not when. Only how. She knew how to wrap her magic about her body like a well-worn cloak, knew how to step through the world, conjuring soft, sunlit wind to envelope her body…to take her back to Hybern and that Cauldron that should never have existed.

To Feyre and other people she didn’t know, trying desperately to shatter that Cauldron. Elain watched, bathed in shadow. Watched that dark haired man approach, watched that winged creature throw his body over Nesta’s, shredding the thin membranes of his skin. How Nesta flung out the last ravages of her power desperately while Hybern mocked—laughed. All while the wind sang. Elain, Elain, Elain.

And she understood, reaching for her stolen blade, why the wall had beckoned her in the first place. Not for that love, that bond, but because someone had to be there for this moment. Someone had to set it all in motion. Elain, Elain, Elain. 

It was a cruel fate set upon all three of them, to be asked to fix this world. To break themselves apart for some sliver of good, some promise of happiness. Elain’s eyes snagged on the wounded warrior who had come to protect Nesta. Nesta didn’t look at him with kindness, with affection—like she knew him at all. Pointed, arched ears, the immortal glow…Nesta, the corporate lawyer and Nesta, wielder of death itself. What did that make her, she wondered? Did it even matter?”
No. All that mattered was Elain took that step from the shadows and did exactly as she was supposed to.
“Don’t you touch my sister,” she snarled, her voice a gunshot in the dark. Hybern, who had thought nothing of her the entire time he’d had her in his clutches, went utterly rigid. Nesta rose to her feet like a Queen, her rage palpable and dark. Elain darted back to Nesta could finish what Hybern had started long before any of them had ever been born, severing his head as if she’d been born a warrior—born to do this.

That winged fairy had to pry his hair from her hands, staring at her like he’d never seen the sun before. As if Nesta were the only thing in the world. Nesta didn’t notice, was looking at Feyre, bowed over the Cauldron. Over that dark haired man who Elain had forgotten about. Rhysand. Andras’s killer. And her sister clawing at his unmoving chest screaming in agony. Elain recognized that sound. She had one made the same as the mating bond in her chest shredded to nothing. Winked out like a candle, leaving her hollow and empty. 

“Please,” Feyre begged, while Nesta trembled at Elain’s side, bloodied and bruised and traumatized. They’d come to find her, to make sure she was safe. Elain had imagined a soft reunion, a return to Spring and the softness she’d found within those strange, cursed borders. It was all wrong no matter how the world writhed and danced around her, pleased that things had been set right. Some ancient prophecy fulfilled, a return of long forgotten princesses. 

Six High Lords came, offering a piece of themselves to resurrect Rhysand. Elain wasn’t sure that was wise though she didn’t dare say so, not in the wake of her sister's terrible suffering. Elain wouldn’t wish that on her worst enemy…who, she supposed, was lying on the ground, having sacrificed himself to wreck that Cauldron. No more women would go in, would have done to them what had been done to Nesta and Elain.

He came back with a soft gasp of air, reaching for Feyre as his first act. Nesta watched with Elain, threading her fingers through Elain’s, her face still smeared with blood. “We’re never going back, are we?”

Elain meant to answer. No, we’re not human, we can’t go back to highrises and nine to fives, but she felt the burning, curious eyes of him. Somewhere in that mass of soldiers, Lucien was watching, searching. Had found her. Elain scanned but didn’t see him. She wondered if he didn’t want her too. Doubt crept in, drawing Ianthe’s last words to her mind. Maybe, she thought with a small amount of fear, he didn’t care. 

“Come on,” Nesta tugged at Feyre's hand when people began to disperse, hunting down the remainder of Hyberns army and licking their wounds. There had been no proper greeting, no reunion the way Elain had hoped. She pushed past Rhysand, who ran a hand through that ink black hair, eyes widening with surprise.

“It’s you again.”

“I haven’t forgiven you,” Elain replied, noting how Feyre’s back stiffened, eyes sliding to this man with curiosity. Rhysand’s smile stretched over his pale, half-dead face. 

“I will endeavor to change that. I did help you once, you know. And I kept your secret long after you left.”

Elain swallowed when Rhysand offered her a tanned hand. “To new beginnings, little human.”
She took it hesitantly which only seemed to amuse him. “Immortality suits you, Elain.”

“Go away,” Elain shooed and Rhysand did, leaving them on that battlefield, surrounded by the pieces of the Cauldron that, just a night before, had stolen their lives.

“You couldn’t write?” were Nesta’s first trembling words. “We thought you were in Paris.”

“I was,” Feyre said sheepishly. “I took a boat over…just to see. Once I got here, I couldn’t go back. Trust me, I tried.”

“You broke their curse,” Elain added gently, reaching for Feyre’s freckled cheek. Feyre smiled. 

“Have you talked to him yet?”

“No,” Elain all but whispered. Feyre inclined her head to the side, gesturing to a body Elain was too scared to fully look at.

“You should. He’s been obnoxiously helpful ever since I got here.”
“High praise,” a rich, deep voice replied, the sound skittering up her spine. Of course. It’s you. 

She turned her head, every inch of her trembling with fear, with hope, with the worry he’d moved on or worse—that the bond between them was nothing more than a memory, that they’d lost it when she left and Lucien would be a mere stranger to her now.

He looked just as scared when their eyes met. For a moment there was nothing else, no one else. Only his face, just as she’d dreamed it would be. Perfect. Golden brown skin swept over every inch of his beautiful face. Strong nose, sharp cheekbones all highlighted the strength of his jaw and the curving sweep of his lips. Elain might have stared for the rest of her life had a violent, twanging snap drawn a soft “Oh,” from her lips. 

Lucien stumbled forward and Elain forgot they were being watched, perhaps too carefully as she flung herself into his waiting arms. 

And Elain was home.

~*~

In all Lucien’s life, he’d never know how he made it through that night. Hacking and slashing until he was coated in blood and gore. His first war—and, he hoped, his last. Her name was a prayer on the wind. His mate. Elain, Elain, Elain. He wanted to see her, to know if the bond would resnap. It propelled him forward, forced him to continue slicing through enemies, hoping he’d find her, that he could take her out of this place, squirrel her away somewhere safe.

Her sister, the one commanding the army of the undead, shimmered with an immortal glow. Her eyes shone silver, her ears pointed and arched. It filled Lucien with dread every time he caught sight of her, back to back with Cassian, whose curved blade hacked enemies for Nesta Archeron to resurrect and induct into her service. 

There was no sight of Elain until dawn broke over the horizon and Feyre’s piercing scream, along with a ceasefire, stilled them all. Lucien shoved to the front, noting the way Hybern’s army had begun to flee the way they’d come, chased by more than a few vengeful Illyrians. Rhysand—dead, at the edge of the fractured Cauldron while Feyre screamed at the bond he was sure had snapped in her chest. Nesta Archeron held the head of Hybern in her hands, grasping his dark hair with her broken, bloodied nails.

And Elain, her beautiful face splattered with blood, a blade clutched in her hand so tightly Lucien could see the whites of her knuckles. He wanted to pry it from her hands, wanted to get her out of this. Elain, with her sweet smiles and her games on the Spring Court lawn hardly belonged here, coated in blood. 

His eyes drifted to her own skin, shimmering and practically iridescent. Her ears arched and pointed just as Nesta and Feyre’s were. It was as if some inner light had been poured into her body, leaking from every pore to enhance the beauty that had always existed. Even in war, Elain was so heartbreakingly stunning.

He didn’t move, not when the other High Lord’s brought Rhysand back to life or when Feyre, Nesta, and Elain turned to each other. Cassian pried the head from Nesta’s hands and Lucien wondered if he didn’t have a connection to the eldest Archeron the way he and Rhysand had to Elain and Feyre. 

There was still no bond between them and Lucien was terrified there wouldn’t be. Not until Elain seemed to sense him watching, turning her head of golden brown curls to the spectators. Her eyes found his as Lucien begged for things to return as they were, staggering backwards when the snap reverberated painfully through his chest. She ripped against it, dragging him a stumbling, inelegant step forward as a sob escaped her throat. He caught her against him, ignoring the looks from her sisters, from Rhysand and Cassian, from Beron and Eris and everyone still lingering too close. Let them all wonder, he thought, sweeping her bloodied form off the ground and striding away.

“Hey–!” Feyre called but Lucien didn’t stop. Feyre would almost certainly try and interfere but not today. Not after nearly two years of being separated from his very heart. Lucien wove his way through the sea of tents, wondering where, after this day, he would take her. He very much doubted Feyre would be amenable to Spring and Lucien wasn’t willing to see Elain shut into Night. 

He’d worry about it tomorrow, he decided as he shoved the flaps of his nondescript tent to the side. In the dark, Lucien dropped to the cot he’d been sleeping on, holding her in his lap. Elain was trembling, eyes never leaving her face. “What happened?” he murmured, fingers tracing her face. “What did that bastard do to you?”
“I stabbed him,” she said, her first words since they’d said goodbye. 

“Tell me what happened.”

Elain sucked in a breath and then, arms twined around his neck, started from the very beginning. He’d expected a tale of Hybern, of whatever he’d done but Elain spoke of going back through the wall and the ordeal of the snapped bond. It was reassuring, in a strange way, to know it was not just him who’d suffered. He could have done without all the details of Graysen, who he knew she included so Lucien would be aware that Elain had at least tried to uphold his request, even if she failed. It was comforting in a way to hear she’d taken up with another male so she could feel close to him, even if he would have preferred no male ever touch his mate. 

Elain’s guilt wove through her tale—finding joy when she didn’t want to, in picking up her old life and moving on…and not recognizing Feyre had been gone as long as she had. He interrupted then, answering her own questions and piecing together their two sides of misery. Trapped beneath the mountain, saved by a strange human woman who had heard of Prythian from her near catatonic sister. A curse broken in hopes of helping Elain find joy, only to realize she could not return like Elain had—even as a human, Feyre could not go back. She’d been forced through to fulfill a destiny she didn’t know she had and unlike Elain, who had done perfectly well as a human among the fae, Feyre seemed to have been born for this life. Feyre, who had found her mate, who had helped end two different wars without having to be asked. They owed the Archeron’s so much. 

Lucien’s stomach clenched when he learned Elain and Nesta came through the ruined wall, unaware there would be no way back for them. He wondered how Nesta would fare, given she’d never meant to stay, had only wanted to ensure her sisters were safe before she returned. Intercepted by Hybern, who had been monitoring Spring. Lucien had known that, had been hunting his beasts down in that very same wood merely a day after. While Ianthe had been taunting him, Elain had been forced into the Cauldron to die alone, twisting and remade within its inky depths.

He held her tighter as she described it. Magic, she murmured, fluttered through her veins, whispering secrets she had no right to know. Elain explained the wind and how it chanted those words, teaching her to winnow, how to grip her blade and where exactly to strike. Not sinister—a Seer. She seemed to know even when he spoke the words aloud, as if she’d heard it whispered, too. What else had the world shared with her, he wondered? Wide, liquid eyes peered at him with too much understanding and Lucien suspected she might have been gifted that magic even if she’d never been dipped into the Cauldron at all. Elain had that way about her, just always seemed to guess right. 

“It’s over now,” Lucien whispered, slamming the walls of his mind shut when he felt Feyre’s clawed presence raking up his senses. What are you doing with my sister?

Whatever I like, was his sneering response before those walls closed on her. Elain cocked her head but didn’t move and Lucien, irritated by Feyre’s meddling, murmured, “Tell her to mind her own business.”

“She’s only concerned,” came Elain’s too understanding response. “And wants to know if we’d like to return to a place called Velaris.”

“Not yet,” Lucien murmured, his lips pressed against her temple. “Not until—”

A screaming interrupted his words. He scrambled upwards while Elain stood beside, her face unnervingly calm. Elain slid her hand into his. “Day Court?” she murmured, peering up at him owlishly. 

“We’re going to have to work on your delivery,” Lucien grumbled. “I only learned yesterday.”

“You look good in white,” she told him sweetly, her earnest words almost erasing their horrible setting and the horror that enveloped them. Lucien pushed through a gathered crowd, noting the overwhelming heat that radiated.

Elain gasped at the sight of Beron, a bolt of faebane shoved through his chest. He laid in the middle of Autumn’s camp, eyes staring towards the sky unseeing. It was hardly a mystery who had plunged that wood into the High Lord—Lucien’s mother stood defiant, her face bloodied and bruised while her eldest son, just behind her, was bathed in the all consuming magic that marked him heir. 

“Did you see that coming?” Lucien asked, wishing she could have warned him ahead of time. Elain merely shook her head, taking a step behind his body. 

“No,” she admitted. “But I sense it’s well-deserved.”

“A long time coming,” Lucien murmured, catching Helion’s Spell-Cleavers form in the distance, eyes pinned on his mothers back. “I don’t know if I’m ready for the fall out.”

“Is there nowhere we can go?” she asked softly, lacing her fingers through his own. “Even for the night?”

Lucien opened his mouth, turning his back to Beron’s body and the messy, overly complicated politics that were surely about to erupt for Autumn. Good fucking luck, he thought to his elder brother, ushering Elain away. “Spring is in tatters.”

“Night, then,” Elain replied softly. “I want to leave this place.”

Feyre all but appeared at Elain’s elbows, eyes bright with mischief. “I’ve been summoned.”

Lucien sighed with exasperation but Feyre wasn’t having it. “You can have a very private room,” Feyre added.

“For what price?” he asked, noting the curved, half-wicked smile on her lips.

“No prince yet, prince of Day.”

Lucien narrowed his eyes but Elain pressed her head against his arm, eyes drooping. When had she last slept? The mating bond overrode all of Lucien’s good senses, prompting him to agree with a too-loud sigh.

“One very small favor,” Lucien grumbled, well aware Feyre could wring far more from him than one favor by the time it was all said and done. He had her sister, after all. He would be duty bound to help Feyre and her mate as a gift to his soon-to-be-wife, and Feyre knew it.

“What’s going on with that preening bat and your sister?” Lucien asked, all but dragging a stumbling, sleeping Elain towards the Night Court encampment. 

“A different sort of war,” Feyre murmured knowingly.

“Mates?”

“Who am I to say?” Feyre replied, glancing towards Elain, her body all but sagging against Lucien. He hoisted her back into his arms, letting her head thump heavily against his chest. He was tired, too, was struggling to hold her when the ground seemed as an appealing place as any to rest. 

“Did the bond…”

“Yes,” he agreed quickly. “Stronger than before.”

Feyre glanced towards Elain. “Did she say what the Cauldron gifted her?”

Lucien held Elain a little closer to his chest, lips pressed in a tight line. “She can share that, if she likes.”

“ So protective,” Feyre grumbled. “I forgot how obnoxious mated males are.”

Lucien glanced to Rhysand, speaking with Kallias with a raised brow as though he’d heard her but couldn’t comment. Lucien, too, chose to keep his own thoughts to himself. Lucien merely adjusted Elain’s sleeping body in his arms and waited for Feyre to take him to Velaris with a rather pointed stare. She sighed.

“You’ll take care of her?”

Lucien decided not to take offense to Feyre’s words. “Of course.”

“She’s going to hate Night,” Feyre murmured. “Which is just as well given your father is Helion—”

“Am I the only one who did not know?” Lucien snapped, not daring to look for the male in question. 

“I suspect he doesn’t, either. That sort of obliviousness runs in the family,” Feyre said cheerfully. “But anyone with eyes can see it.”

She gripped Lucien’s forearm, taking him back to the city of starlight he had occasionally been granted access to. It was lovely, even bathed in daylight and blessedly untouched by the war that had ravaged through Spring and the human lands. Feyre had taken them just outside a townhouse in a nicer part of the city, its little lawn sprouting the first seedlings of grass.

“Nesta is in the House of Wind,” Feyre told him with a sigh, pushing open the door. “But I’m too tired to take you up there.”

“This is fine,” Lucien replied.

“She can stay as long as she likes,” Feyre added, granting him access to the High Lords' home. Lucien liked the sand and ivory color scheme, the tasteful decorations and well-designed furniture. The wood beneath his feet was far homier than marble and dotted about the walls were Feyre’s artwork, paintings he’d seen briefly when she’d lived among them in Spring, trying desperately to avoid the Night Court ruler and his terrible bargain.

Feyre took him up to a bedroom clearly built for someone with wings. Lucien was all too happy to put Elain down on the cream colored bedding, waiting for Feyre to leave so he could join her. He hadn’t missed her pointed words. She can stay as long as she likes. Not him, though. There was an expiration to his own visit and if Elain woke and decided she wanted to be with her sisters indefinitely, Lucien would eventually be forced to leave and ask permission to return. 

“Worry about that in the morning,” was Feyre’s response to his thoughts and too late, he’d forgotten about that fucking shield. 

“Good night, Feyre,” he replied, ignoring the way sunlight streamed cheerfully into the room. 

“Don’t forget a ward… Spell-cleaver,” she said, snapping the door shut without anger. A decent consideration, given how on top of each other they’d be and yet it almost felt presumptuous. Elain was passed out, practically curled in on herself. Lucien left her there for a bath before he finally joined her, carefully peeling her from her clothes without touching. 

It was bliss, he thought, face buried in her hair.

Home. 

~*~

For a moment, Elain thought she was back in Graysen’s apartment when she woke. It was cold and dark, just as his had always been, and she was pushed to one end of the bed while the body beside her was pressed against the other. No touching—Elain always broke down sobbing when Graysen cuddled her in her sleep. She believed him to be Lucien and couldn’t stand turning to look only to find Graysen’s dull eyes, his wrong face, his sleepy smile. Elain twisted, meaning to grab her phone and call a cab but her phone wasn’t on the nightstand…and the bed was far too large to belong to Graysen. The room was all wrong, too. Even in the dark, a sliver of moonlight slipped behind heavy curtains, pooling on hardwood floors. Chicago didn’t have a moon that bright.

She turned behind her, heart thumping in her chest at the red hair spilled over the pillow. Lucien lay on his back, the silken sheet draped over his naked hips, hand resting on his chest. Too late, Elain realized she was naked too, had likely been undressed by Lucien himself. She reached out a shaking hand to touch him, exhaling a soft, grateful sob when her hand met warm, solid flesh. It hadn’t been a dream. The shimmering bond pulling her towards him was still there. He was alive. 

Elain flung herself at him, pressing open mouthed kisses against his neck, his jaw, his ear. Lucien shifted, a soft moan slipping from his lips. “Go to sleep, Elain.”
“Kiss me,” she insisted, pulling his face towards her. Lucien didn’t resist, shifting to his side as his mouth covered her own. Elain could have screamed at the feel of his lips pressed against her own, of the hungry way he immediately began devouring her. Lucien slid a hand through her hair, pulling her closer as she opened her mouth, needing to taste, to remember what it had been about him she’d once found so addicting.

“You’ve been through an ordeal,” Lucien groaned even as his body slid over her own, his mouth nipping and sucking against her neck. “You need to rest.”

“I need you,” she argued, raking her nails up and down his back. “I don’t want to sleep, I want you, Lucien—”

He covered her mouth with his again, grinding against her. Elain knew there would be no soft touches between them, no slow exploration. Not this night, not after the time that had separated them. She’d never hoped to feel the hard press of his body on her own, to have his calloused hands sliding on her skin and now that he was here, Elain needed him right now. 

Legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging against his bare ass, Lucien slid himself inside her without preamble. The thrust was almost punishing, drawing a soft gasp of air from both their lips. Elain arched against him, still clawing, still furiously kissing. 

“Oh, Gods,” Lucien groaned into her mouth, rolling his hips. He’d remained celibate when she’d left but Elain had the memory of Graysen and how she’d used him to chase the feeling of Lucien. How absurd, given how the real thing moved within her, his cock a thing of ecstasy. Gray had been nothing but a pale imitation and Elain wished she hadn’t even tried. 

“Need you,” Lucien managed, pulling her over his body, resituating them so she straddled his hips and controlled the motion between them. His hands flew to her breasts, teasing and tugging until Elain was a panting, writhing mess against him. Instinct made her grind her body against the solid muscle of his pelvis, chasing release from both the swollen bundle of nerves between her legs and the silky smooth glide of his cock within her body. Elain buried her face against Lucien’s neck, amazed by the symphony of scents that wafted around her. He was salty and musky, the scent of sun-warmed apples mixed against a smoky bonfire and chill autumn air. She wasn’t the only one driven by smell—Lucien ran his nose up and down the skin behind her ear, one hand tangled in her hair to keep her from going too far. 

He licked, shuddering a groan at whatever he tasted. His hips canted off the bed, other hand holding her hip to keep her still while he slammed into her, over and over and over until she couldn’t take it anymore. It was more than pleasure, a feeling so absolute Elain didn’t have to think about it. Just him, slick with sweat, and the utter rightness of being with him. If she’d been religious, it would have been holy, an act of divine worship. 

She came loudly, moaning his name over and over with a plea not to stop, even when she felt his erratic movement drawing him deeper, forcing him to spill himself when she suspected he would have preferred to hold out longer, to keep going. There was time, she tried to say with her still rolling hips, pulling every inch of pleasure she could get from him.

Lucien snarled, flipping her back to the bed, his mouth covering hers again with that same wild, punishing heat. Touch him, smell him, taste him— the instinct to keep going, to have more ran rampant through her, overwhelming every other thought. It was the frenzy all over again, urging them to complete the ritual, to give in and have him. Lucien was feeling it too, his cock still buried inside her, still hard and twitching. She imagined he needed very little time to recover, could keep going for the rest of the night, which was exactly what she wanted.

The voices on the wind were gone, unable to get through whatever magic Lucien had thrown around the room. She raked her fingers through his hair, holding his face in her hands. “I missed you,” she told him. “I love you, Lucien, I—”
He silenced her with another scorching kiss, holding her so tight they could have melded into one person. Elain shifted and Lucien began thrusting again, wilder than before, the only sound between them the soft, wet slaps of skin meeting skin. And when his hands slid beneath her body, pushing her to her stomach, Elain whined at the loss of contact, of the connection between them breaking, if only for a second. Lucien hoisted her ass into the air, driving into her deeper, reaching for her neck until she was practically pressed against his chest.

“Kiss me,” he demanded, turning her head with one hand, the other spanning over her stomach as he drove into her, again and again until she was breathless with need. Clever fingers slid lower until he was rubbing her clit, wringing pleasure from her just as she had done before. Elain came more than once, held up only by the strong arm banded around her body until Lucien finally did, too, teeth biting into her neck to muffle the strangled sound of release. 

He collapsed to the bed, all but gasping for air. “I love you,” he panted, kissing the side of her face over and over and over. “Don’t ever leave me again.”
She grasped for him in the dark, holding him tightly and smoothing the hair from his brow. “Never,” she swore, moving her face so he had to kiss her again, had to slide his tongue into her mouth to satisfy whatever need he had. 

“My mate,” he whispered desperately, sliding his cock from her body only to push back. He was still hard, still wanting. So was she, her legs sticky from release and the mingled fluid of their bodies. Elain groaned. She knew what this was and still wouldn’t have been prepared even if she had a thousand years to ready herself. Their two day frenzy, back when she’d been a human, was nothing to how she felt now. Wild. Unsated no matter how well he fucked her. She needed more, needed all of him.

Lucien was slower that time, softer, sweeter. His mouth never left hers, their bodies lined up perfectly as he pinned her to the mattress. This wasn’t the primal lust from before—it was love spoken through his hands, his lips, his gently rolling hips. Elain poured it all back, holding him even when after they came, her thighs squeezed tight around him. It would never be enough. She would always need him exactly like this. 

Lucien gave her a moment to breathe before he was lifting her leg, his fingers swirling around her again. It should have been too much. 

“More,” she whispered into the crook of his arm. “Give me more.”

~*~

Lucien didn’t know when he and Elain fell asleep, only that he woke up sticky and burning. She made it all of four steps towards the bathroom before he was on her, pushing her against the wall like it was the first time he’d ever touched her. They did even worse in the tub, fucking agaisnt the floor, the vanity, and in the water itself. She’d had to banish him in order to scrub herself clean, forcing him to cover his eyes so he could wash, too. Lucien had never been so hard in his life.

Elain was careful as they dressed, the two barely daring to look at each other. “I thought an offering of food was required?” she asked, pulling her hair off her face with little twin combs. Lucien didn’t bother with a jacket as he laced up his pants. “I think this is the bonds way of pushing us to accept.”

She didn’t respond to that and Lucien was grateful for it. He might have crawled on the floor and buried his face beneath her skirt if she had. As it stood, he’d done very little tasting and perhaps a little too much fucking. He meant to rectify that after breakfast. 

Elain pulled open the door, stepping to the side so he could lead her down where Feyre and her mate waited. Feyre wrinkled her nose the moment they stepped into the room while Rhysand grinned wolfishly.

“Sleep well?” he asked from his place at the table. 

“Like a baby,” Lucien replied, shooting them both a warning look. Don’t blow this for me.

“How long do you plan to stay?” Rhys asked instead. Elain cocked her head to the side, curls spilling down her shoulder. 

“One more night, I think,” she murmured in that faraway voice of hers. “And then we’ll go to Day Court to see Lucien’s mother.”

Lucien blinked. “Exactly.” As if he knew. Feyre raised her brows and Lucien shrugged. Who was he to deny his lady? There was no argument, not when Nesta Archeron burst into the room wearing a rather modest black dress and the angriest scowl.

“You cannot leave me up there with him,” she seethed, jerking her head towards an openly grinning Cassian just at her back. “I’d rather sleep in the street.”

“Aw, was it really that bad?” he asked, following her through the neat living room to the breakfast table. “I slept on a whole different floor!”

“How come Elain got to sleep down here?” Nesta demanded while Cassian snorted with laughter. 

“Oh, I don’t think Elain was doing any sleeping—”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Lucien hissed when Elain’s eyes cleared, her cheeks blooming bright pink. Nesta swiveled her head to Lucien, eyes narrowed to slits.

“This is the man?” she demanded. “I would have thought him…” Lucien knew Nesta’s next words were going to be emotionally devastating. “More handsome.”

“That was uncalled for,” Elain said softly as Rhysand and Cassian roared with laughter. “I had nothing to say when you brought Tomas around.”

Cassian’s mouth immediately snapped shut. “Who is Tomas?”

“The ugliest man you’ve ever seen in your entire life,” Feyre replied with a smug smile. “I think Lucien is very handsome.”

“Oh, do you?” Rhysand all but purred as Lucien wished for a quick, merciful death.

“You never saw the men from Chicago,” Feyre told the table as Nesta scowled. 

“Tomas was nice—”

“He was no such thing!” Elain interrupted. “He was so rude.”

“And stupid,” Feyre added quickly, watching Nesta and Elain scoop eggs onto a plate. “Do you remember he thought chickens were related to cats?”

“Oh my God,” Elain began to laugh, wiping a tear from her eye. Even Nesta cracked a smile. 

“Because they both had feathers,” Nesta reminisced. “He’d never touched a cat before. I forgot about that.”

“I thought Elain was going to fly over the table and hit him,” Feyre laughed, her shoulders shaking.

“He was so rude about it,” Elain reminded them. “Like we were stupid for thinking otherwise. I had it on my phone and he was still arguing.”

It was nice seeing them like this, giggling over Nesta’s terrible partner and talking about a life Lucien had no awareness of. He’d forgotten the food on his plate as he watched and he certainly wasn’t the only one. Rhysand, his arm casual over Feyre’s chair, listened with starry-eyed adoration. Cassian, seated between Elain and Rhys, was trying to casually pretend he didn’t like the sight of Nesta’s animation, her bright laughter or her gesticulating hands. Their conversation slipped into other embarrassing moments—from Feyre’s first boyfriend named Isaac, a man who apparently was caught with his pants down by their father—to Gray proposing to Elain in front of a lot of people only to get rejected. The girls giggled all through breakfast and Lucien considered his exceptional good fortune to have Elain, to be part of her family in this small way. 

Elain reached for a little piece of melon on her plate, eyes sliding to Lucien. He grinned, ducking his head the moment she flung it at his face. Caught, easily, in his mouth, just as he always had. “Undefeated,” he reminded her while she smiled, turning her gaze back to her sisters. She spent the rest of the morning tossing food at him, a reminder of being human and offering him food so carelessly, casually even. Unaware of what they’d solidified, of what they were agreeing to. She knew now, had all but accepted it the night before.

Rhysand watched with bemused eyes and Lucien knew he’d be holding them to that leave date. Lucien didn’t blame him. He wouldn’t want a frenzied couple in his home, either. Lucien was mindful of his ward when he and Elain traipsed back upstairs. Nothing had changed other than the cord in their chest, which was only stronger, a steel cable instead of a silken strand. Unbroken. Permanent. 

Elain gave him no time to think on it, locking the door and accosting him with her mouth, pushing him back to the bed where they remained for the rest of the day and all of the night. He dreaded the early morning that forced them apart, sweaty and sticky and still desperate and needy. 

“I don’t want to do this,” Lucien whispered against her neck when he felt the shift in her body. “Tell me how it ends.”

“Do you really want to know?” she replied, stroking her fingers over his cheek.

“Yes.” NO. 

“It ends with us making love on a sandy beach…High Lord.”

Lucien shivered. “Today?”

Elain giggled. “Just the beach. The High Lord comes much, much later.”

“And Helion…”

“Some things even I don’t know,” Elain finally said, her face obscured in the early gloom. “We’ll face it together.”

Lucien sighed softly. “As long as there is sex afterwards.”

Elain kissed him. “There will always be sex afterwards.”

~*~

It would take decades to end the strange, stilted relationship between Lucien and Helion. That was obvious the moment Elain and Lucien had sauntered into Day Court dressed for winter despite the heat. Helion had awkwardly shook Lucien’s hand while Lucien looked anywhere but at the High Lord who might have raised him in a different world. Helion was curious about Lucien’s Day Court magic, having heard a particularly fascinating tale about Lucien’s utilization of daylight during the war. 

It probably helped very little that Lucien’s mother hovered about the study they sat in, flitting back and forth nervously, as if she expected some huge blow-up. Elain was the one who rose from the chair, trailing a hand over Lucien’s shoulder before she took the Lady of Autumn Court’s arm in her own and led her back into the spacious halls of Helion’s palace.

“They’ll be fine,” Elain murmured, slowing her steps to drink in the majesty that was Day Court. Of all the places she’d seen, Day was rapidly becoming her favorite. Everything was so open, so airy and warm and bright.

“Did he say…is he angry?” she asked, looking over her shoulder anxiously. 

“Surprised,” Elain murmured. “He loves you.”

Elain didn’t bother mentioning that Helion had been staring after Lucien’s mother with cartoon hearts in his eyes, unsure if they were anything more than two people who had accidentally made a child. The whispering wind assured her things would work out because they must, and Elain trusted the purring magic in her veins. That was true of all things. Her magic, their bond, this life…Nesta and Ferye and her, trapped in this place with immortality gilding their bones. It would work out because it had to, even if it took them a hundred years to figure it all out.

In some ways, she found that thought comforting long after she bade the Lady of Autumn–or Day—goodbye and turned towards the white sand beaches at the very edge of Helion’s palace. 

She waited, kicking off her shoes to slide her feet into the warm, crystal water, for Lucien to join her.

“This is not the place for boots,” he complained, yanking his own off before rolling his pants up to his knees. 

“How did it go?” she asked, turning her head to look up at him. Lucien offered her a shadowed smile.

“Just as you said,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her body to pull her against his chest. “He’s asked me to stay.”

Elain heard the question. We can go back if you want. Elain wanted to see her sisters, wanted to be there for Nesta as Nesta had been for her and yet it was no question at all to nod her head.

“Good. I’m already in love.”

Lucien relaxed against her. “In love, you say?”

“Desperately so,” she agreed, pleased with his wandering hand over her midsection. “I caught sight of Helion's son and could not tear my eyes off his handsome face.”

Lucien chuckled. “Helion’s son. That will take some getting used to.”

“There’s time,” Elain reminded him. “And if we tire of this place, we’ll go somewhere else. We can be nomads for the next couple centuries just figuring ourselves out.”

For Elain, who had always liked adventure and traveling, the idea was rather appealing. But for Lucien, who had always wanted a home, she thought the possibility that Day Court might provide that for him was too heady to pass up. 

He lowered his mouth to the skin behind her ear. “I believe I was promised fucking on a beach.”

“Oh you’re just the worst,” Elain complained, twisting in his arms to kiss him all the same. “Anyone could see us.”

“I hope so,” he agreed with a grin, pulling her towards the rolling waves. “I would hate to compete for your affections.”

“You’re becoming spoiled,” Elain complained, sinking into the water despite the dress she wore, so the crystal waves lapped around her neck.

“I could get used to it,” Lucien agreed, nipping at her neck. “I couldn’t do any of this without you.”

Elain twined her arms around his neck, legs tight against his waist. She was hovering over him ever so slightly this way, ignoring the way his hands had already skimmed beneath the dress floating around her to thumb against the band of her underwear. “Of course you could.”

He shook his head. “You don’t understand how joyless life felt before you. An eternity stretching into nothing. I was living because I had to and not because I wanted to. You changed that, you…you were the first sunrise I’d seen in over a century. I’d been living in endless night, Elain and even after you left, I still felt your warmth, your hope.”

“Stop it,” Elain whispered, kissing him to hide her urge to cry. 

“I love you beyond reason, to the exclusion of my sanity,” he breathed against her mouth. “I didn’t realize what was missing until you came along.”

“You would have found—”

“No,” he interrupted impatiently, his cock somehow freed from his pants despite his soft words. She’d forgotten where they were, floating in that endless sea beneath sun warmed water. “ No, I wouldn’t have. I’d still be bathed in darkness even if I found this place and Helion and a home. You are the only light, Elain.”

What could she say besides, “I love you, Lucien.”

He thrust into her, mouth covering hers, swallowing her contented sigh. 

“There was never anyone else,” she continued, pressing her fingers against his cheeks so he couldn’t move, their foreheads pressed together. Lucien groaned.

“And now there never will be,” he told her roughly. She’d accepted the bond, accepted him. It hadn’t even been a choice so much as a given. Loving him was the most natural thing in the world, felt like breathing for all the thought she’d given acceptance. 

She could hear his heart over everything, drowning the sound of the crashing waves, the squalling birds, even their own ragged, frantic breathing. They were everything and nothing all at once, ancient as the very sea they stood in. When she fractured apart, her voice swallowed by the wind that had become her ever-present companion, Elain swore that the Gods themselves bowed their heads in acknowledgement of what had been created. What they shared was more than simple love—it was fate itself bending time to bring them together.

Lucien was home, wrapped in her arms, panting against her shoulder.

And so was Elain.