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cowboylament · 6 months

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“Is this alright?” He asked.

I nodded.

He placed his hand down, nothing but warm hot skin. He slid only low enough to grab the blanket, dragging it back up over my arms and hovering there a moment like he wasn’t sure what to do now. When he pulled away I didn’t stop him. I forgot what it was like to be young, inexperienced. How much weight everything had, the touch of a hand, the place beside you in bed. I’d once spent hours thinking about it, how it would feel to get to sleep beside someone forever. To reach through the dark and grab the person beside you and curl into their body, to find such tender relief whenever you wanted. To be so hungry so long you didn’t even recognize it as need, as want. Not until that first reach where no matter what you imagined, how small you’d convinced yourself it was, you found your hands shaking.

Lucien has been lying Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Five, Bonus, Ao3

“I have news.”

Rhys had called both Lucien and me into his office. Where he’d managed to find my mate I didn’t know. It had been nearly two weeks since we’d slept on my bathroom floor. The only thing that had changed between now and then as far as I could tell was that the bond had reopened between us and unlike the time before our argument, his emotions surged through the tether throughout the day. Intense and complex emotions, not often recognizable to me until they diminished and I could see with greater clarity their edges, pull them apart, find the individual threads. There was such a weight to them I had seen only rarely. They knocked my knees out from under me, my breath. I don’t know what had changed, but suddenly his feelings were far bigger than they’d been before.

He could have fooled me, however, sitting to my left so stoic. Had I seen him in the past few days I like to think I’d have at least asked if we were okay, if he was. Maybe not at first, not when I really wanted to, but eventually. With such feeling, I didn’t want him to hold it all on his own but we’d somehow found ourselves back again in the things we did after our fight—doors closing late at night, things going unsaid, the memory of a body, the fear it’s leaving.

Rhys looked tired, but he laid the news outright.

“I’ve claimed you, officially.”

Before I could speak a swath of grief, like a cloud passing over the sun, twisted inside of me. Waves of it pushed away thoughts and breath, and between crests, regret, suspicion, something hesitating and withdrawing, only to surge forward like the leaving could be undone. My words were obliterated, the male was fluctuating and balancing a hundred new degrees of feeling every second and the only thing that had changed in his appearance was the slight opening of his mouth. Though he remained alert, his gaze forward.

“And my father is aware?” Lucien asked.

“Yes.”

Out in the hall, a door closed idly. For Beron to be aware of his son, to know his location during accusations of treason was a delicate game. Rhys must have played it very carefully these weeks. Such a burden sat on his face rather plainly, dragging it down, as if it were still there.

“It took dozens of negotiations, he’s informed the other courts you’re a traitor who can’t be trusted. But to be honest,” Rhys continued, breaking only now to rub at his eyes, “his word will mean very little to most of them as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“I am,” Lucien said. His voice steady, but within there was a stir. Regret, grief unending, but not new grief. It was old, so old, like it had been born with him. Beron the cruelest, the eldest of the High Lords. His youngest son still gentle despite. What had been endured and remains to be endured?

“Normally I’d wait to negotiate with your father but, your brother said that the longer he sits on that night the greedier he’d get.”

My attention shifted away from my mate. Greedier, negotiate, those were specific word choices. I took in a long breath, clearing away any lingering fog of foreign emotions and temporary blindness. This was something I myself had not considered, that Beron wouldn’t become greedy, he already was. The High Lord of Autumn was not rash, not rash enough to invade when he found out where his son was. What were the choices for Beron, truly? Wage a war, lose males, or gain leverage. A blind spot on my part, how foolish I’d been, to have labored under such illusions and fear for so long. War wasn’t imminent. Beron knew for some reason we wanted Lucien, and he’d work out something had to have happened for us to want to fight for him. He didn’t have to know what it was to have guessed it was dire, our need.

We’d given ourselves away.

What could he demand, what did he feel that he was allowed now that we’d given ourselves away? He was cunning, calculated. He’d always wanted power, specifically power over us. My stomach clenched. The least loved son, a perfect token in his game. Beron had nothing to lose.

The blessing he’d called for that night would mean little in this exchange. I’m sure the only thing it allowed for Rhysand to negotiate was against a war Beron didn’t want to fight anyway. You don’t come here and I won’t go there. It was the way it went, crimes against Prythian were greater than those against its females. There was no use in pretending otherwise, in languishing too long.

Lucien relaxed back in his chair, unaware of the sickness climbing through my bones, and asked, “What are the terms?”

“As you have known, you will lose your title and you cannot go back to Autumn court. If you do, Beron has sworn a blood duel.”

Lucien crossed his leg over the other, “I’ve no desire to ever see that place again.”

My own growing grief at once enveloped me, reaching further than my body, reaching out. The strength broke Lucien’s composure. He glanced over at me and I at him. There was no need for either of us to say what we were thinking, he knew what I wanted to give. The irreplaceable thing he’d had almost two months ago, taken in the middle of the night like nothing. I knew that he had always wanted to leave his home, that the loss was always meant to come for him eventually. But I knew something about loss too, about the things we cannot have back. The family you make will never be the family you had, that is their blessing and their curse. So I grieved for him, for what he’d lost and what he’d never had to begin with.

Rhysand remained wholly ignorant of the private feelings between us, but waited to speak until we turned away from one another.

“He also agreed not to declare war.”

Whatever Lucien anticipated, this was better. His relief came light but demolishing, easy like a gust, as it moved through my body. I forced in place his feelings like a veil over my own, hiding my wound. It soothed what was rotting within me momentarily, but could not clear entirely the lingering scent. Lucien would never see his home and I could scarcely know it even if I went without him. If I were to go, it would be by force.

I stilled. A panic ripped through me.

Life for life.

The veil was gone.

Those were Lucien’s terms, but what of mine? I had broken the one rule I knew with Beron I could never break.

A thin coat of sweat settled against my back. Beron had wanted one thing from me. He could still ask for it. The truly deplorable males, those weak worthless males he called sons, could be betrothed to me. I would not have Eris, I had lost any chance with Eris. I’d live in that house with him, the male who’d cut away at me, next to those woods blood had been shed in. And none of the terrible details would matter because I would go. They wouldn’t even have to ask twice, I would go. Not because of the bargain between some nameless God, but for my mate. He deserves it. He’d given his life, so I’d give mine. I’d hunger for an immortal lifetime.

I found at last the words I’d had before, “What are my conditions?”

Rhys was silent, Lucien too. The thing inside us both had gone still. Lucien wasn’t naive, but in a moment of such intensity, he’d made the mistake of thinking we were lucky. This world didn’t work that way. There was perhaps only one thing Beron hated more than his youngest son. Such despair, such blinding terror clawing its way up my legs, into my heart. I don’t know if I could see the world. I think the fear had reached my eyes by then.

“You are to go to Autumn as an emissary on all future endeavors. You will remain the point of contact and we are forbidden from sending anyone else with you.” Just hearing the first half of his sentence had turned my stomach to lead, made me flinch. I was waiting to hear the word bride, but then he said it, Emissary. I was the point of contact still. That meant I was still Night Court. I forced myself to be present, to listen to the whole of his words.

“We also cannot prosecute him for the blessing,” even sat down my legs felt weak. I suspected this. I knew this. No war. Rhys opened his mouth with finality, “If we speak of the events to anyone who does not already know, the bargain is void. Lucien will die.”

I gripped the chair. It was like being born again, my relief. Whatever lingering fear had found itself between my ribs and my joints, was washed clean away. I could have wept, such profound relief it rubbed my insides raw. The price was silence. The price was denial. A scar wrapping around my waist like an unwanted hand, the delicate body, the flimsy memory—our only proof it had happened. And even that would vanish eventually into the dust seen only when it passed through sunlight. But we were free and for such a price. Such blind spots, what greater prize to Beron was there than a silenced female.

“So he gets away with it?” Lucien barked. Rage flared between us to the point that it forced Lucien to his feet. I was not yet strong enough to manage, not yet in my body entirely.

“We both do,” I said. This was a gift of many meanings. I got to stay here with my family, keep what I’d won. The power to choose, I could marry or not marry, I could stay or go. My mate, he was granted the same. Happiness came wrapped in sorrow. My bargain had been finished. He was no longer in danger. The price had been paid. Lucien could go as he’d always meant to, somewhere he truly loved, and I wasn’t afraid of him leaving anymore. Prythian had opened for him, thanks to Rhysand. My brother did what I would never have had the power to do. Though I had gotten Lucien to safety Rhys would be his savior.

Lucien’s hand gestured out in front of him like the memory was before us plain to see, his exasperation in every word, “We acted in self-defense it’s hardly the same.”

I shook my head, “Not to Beron.”

Rhys nodded and gestured for my mate to sit. For the rest of the hour, he explained to us what had been happening these weeks of correspondence. How Beron was growing stricter, less malleable to any negotiation. He had asked for a life, but somehow he’d been persuaded to avoid more bloodshed. I did not push for details, it was a terrible business, having to delegate pain and suffering. I placed no blame on Rhys, what hands he had to play for this outcome. I could see it though, how Eris had been right. If we waited too long the price would only increase. Rhys was backed into a corner, he had to agree. No matter the justice he wanted for me he could see the alternative I had seen too, he could see what was so close to being asked. He did not have to say this, we looked at each other after all had been shared, all that could be shared, and we both were aware of what the other knew. Lucien opened his mouth, not doubt to argue our side, but I spoke first.

“If you have yet to agree, agree to the terms. That night is over and with good reason.”

I didn’t want to return to that court or its memory. Anyone who needed to know already did. We’d moved on from that place better than we had been before, no longer so hostile or cruel, needing always to have something over the other and trying to win. I was glad to move on, even if moving on meant losing Lucien. I didn’t want him to go, but I had already gotten so much of what I wanted. And regardless, some things were more important. There were fates I could stomach even less, like his being somewhere that made him unhappy. I would not cage him. He loved leaving and I loved staying. Now his life was safer than it had ever been, to do what he’d always wanted. That was something to live for.

Whatever lingering fear I’d been holding onto in all these weeks emptied out of me with such intensity I started to shake. A different kind of crumbling, happy but sad, grateful and grieving. Lucien, to his credit, swallowed his argument, even as a foreign anger clawed at my chest like it could feel the immense relief flooding through me and wanted to sink its teeth in.

My brother, I had no doubt, understood this would be my choice. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. He’d be arguing to Lucien’s point with a male who would never bend. He’d just wanted to be sure. The grave look on the High Lord’s face was the realization I’d already had many weeks ago. That night was always going to be my burden to bear.

“I’m sorry,” he offered.

I stood, turning from Lucien. He had my brother’s protection now. My presence would be redundant. I fought the enormity of my sorrow and my ambivalence to his departure. I had to get away, let it out, or I would start to drown in it, lose air, and composure. But I had one thing left to do, I had to put Rhys at ease. I had to be at ease for that to happen. That was always my work, I had to go first.

“There is no apology needed. That male will succumb to the life he lived.”

Rhys began to fumble with his desk. There was nothing he could do and he would suffer for it. I could not help him, could not pull him from his mind, the what if, the hand he hadn’t been dealt. That was his burden. So instead I slunk into his mind and said: thank you.

I hoped he could feel how much I meant it. I wish he knew that this was also a gift.

When he pulled out his ink, wordlessly I made to leave. Lucien trailed behind just as silently. With each step it became clear the level of erosion that had happened these weeks. I hadn’t even known how much worry there really had been inside me until it was gone. It had weakened me. I didn’t know if I could stand, could support the weight of the reality that took its place. I slipped into the library across and stumbled forward, clutching onto the couch, and waited for that door to close, the front door, waited for the tightness in the chest of someone far away and stretched thin, but there.

Someone entered the library and I righted.

“Y/N” Lucien said.

I pressed my hand to the heat of my face, covering my eyes. The one time he thought to say goodbye.

“Will I see you at dinner?” I asked, keeping my back to him. “Or are you going now.”

“I can stay.”

I nodded, “But you don’t have to. Not anymore.”

“I want—” his sentence ceased. Whatever it was he wanted, whatever fell at the end of those words either he didn’t know or didn’t want to say. There was a long pause, a probing gaze, before his hand ghosted my shoulder, but I pulled away. If he was even a little kind to me I’d break. I’d beg him not to go and that was worse than saying nothing. He’d stay just because I asked, because he was loyal to people even when they didn’t deserve it, and then I’d never know if I deserved it. Not when I caged him in a different way. So that was it, this was it. I took two long breaths, caught air, steeled myself as I had before, and turned to face him.

“I want you to go.”

I knew there was a chance saying that would lead him to lash out in his anger, as he had that night we’d fought. Where for some unknowable reason he’d felt unwanted by me when I was trying to convey the precise opposite. But I could feel something had changed between us now that he stood before me, its occurrence happening maybe over the last few days without our participation. We were no longer fighting each other. Not at least, how we’d always been fighting each other. He stared at me in thought, the sounds of a clock somewhere in the room ticking. Today he didn’t seem far away, he seemed so close.

“I can feel you,” he said simply. “And I have the sense if I go you’re going to fall apart.”

“I don’t wish to keep you.”

“Nothing is keeping me here besides my desire. Now, please, explain to me what’s going on.”

I shook my head, “If you don’t know then maybe that’s the Mother’s will.”

“No.” He was commanding in his tone, but still gentle. So gentle that I looked up to meet his eye even as I felt my own go glassy, even though to do so would give me away. He studied me before he continued, looked in his way that really looks to consider the image before him entirely. “In your brother’s office, there was a moment of panic for you like that in the woods, and I want to understand why.” He paused then added somberly, “I was there that night too. I felt what you felt. So help me understand.”

I stared at my hands. Thin skin, over flexed muscle and bone, wrinkled where it seemed a long time ago, longer than a life, lips used to go. I blinked away any lingering moisture and dropped my gaze. I could not have it both ways, could not say he should have what he wanted but deny him the explanation he asked for. “Beron was going to ask that I be married to one of your brothers.”

“Okay.” He said calmly, still so gentle and attentive, “What do you know, what am I missing?”

“It's what he said that night. You remember?”

“Yes, but why would he, after everything, ask that?”

When I found his face again he wasn’t angry. Not even for what I’d implied earlier, as if the idea I wanted him away washed clean off of him. I think we’d stopped being angry when it came to matters of the heart. Honestly, it didn’t even feel like anger when we’d fought that night in the foyer, the way a kind animal will bite when injured. I think all along we’d only been scared, wounded. But there was no room, no time anymore, for something so self-indulgent.

“Because there are rules that I have that you don’t, and I broke the one that with him I’m never allowed to break.”

“What?”

“I won,” I said plainly. “Not minorly or arbitrary, it was absolute. We got away and I had the last word.”

There was something briefly there, on his face. A kind of denial I’d had those nights ago, where you realize you were so unknowingly close to danger. And it makes you sick, just the possibility of what might have happened if you behaved differently. How the alternative sits stark on your chest and you want to deny it all, give yourself a little distance, maybe find some reprieve, and remember what had really happened.

I explained, “A life for a life. He’d get the last say in mine, and then any power I had was free for him to command. You know this, you know why he wanted me for Eris.”

“I’d never let him.”

“I’d have accepted.”

He was shielding from me again. I could tell. Nothing came through, not the thing that made him go pale or the force that seemed to send his body moving forward without the help of his legs. How he seemed to have been struck in the back. My shoulders slumped.

“Why?” He asked.

“Because you’re Lucien.”

He searched my face, but the answer wasn’t there. He was lost, the only thing that wasn’t adding up was why. Why any of it? In an attempt to hold myself upright, trying to seem sturdy and sure, I found everything caving inward. He could see that at least, my whole body his to understand, and he did. He stayed because he did, but right now he needed more.

“It’s all the same. Why do you think I said those terrible things that night in the woods, blaming you, about ‘not letting you make commands?’ Or the lie about the wards. They couldn’t keep you here, I know you knew that, you’re not stupid.” I said throwing my hands up in irritation or maybe still fear. A fear that he hadn’t figured out what everything meant together, and he never would. So I said it outright, “I needed you to choose me. Just until today. Because I don’t have any power, Rhys does.”

“That's not true,” he said, voice slicing through the air with renewed command.

“It’s true enough. Whatever power I have only works here. If Rhys didn’t like you, I knew my weight. I could persuade him to claim you. That is true nowhere else, I could protect you nowhere else if you left. How many High Lords could take on treason?”

Lucien, exasperated, stepped closer to me, “I had options.”

“I know,” I said, voice echoing. I could see the force with which my perspective met him. I watched each word strike like a fist. “I know that now. But you’re Lucien.”

“So?”

“So this was the only outcome that mattered to me, the one where you got out.”

“And what about you?”

“You’re not listening. I need you safe. I need you free. You’re my mate.”

Then a real fist, my own, struck his chest, as if to show him who I was talking about, like he didn’t know. He grabbed my wrists, tight but not hard, and leaned down to meet me at eye level. His words were clear and desperate enough to straighten my spine.

“I’ve been out.”

“Not to me!” I said, meaning to be strong and clear like him, but what came out was broken and ridiculous. Like a wail. Whatever feelings were beginning to rise obliterated my forced composure, and revealed to him entirely the crumbling form I’d taken. All these weeks, the doors closing, the dread of the final door closing. The thought of him slaughtered, the thought of Beron killing my mate. It had eaten away at me, eaten my form and my fire, and any displeasure that could have been found in having to marry. Until at last the only thing that was left was the one thing that had always been true, even before I knew it: I needed him.

Lucien’s face, finally, betrayed him. Pain, grief, soft eyes, sorrow carving out his fine beauty. Rough warm hands dropped mine to hold my face. He said, “Hey,” and it was so gentle, so sincere, that at last it broke me open. I cried. Cried for everything that had for weeks gone unsaid. For the pain of what could’ve been, for the relief that it wasn’t. I cried because he was safe and because for so long he wasn’t. We’d crossed a universe, I’d once thought.

And now he would go and I would stay and whatever sorrow was there connected me to the world and its beauty. The fact that good things do happen here, and what we want is often difficult to predict, stranger up close, and hard to hold, but it’s there in our hands. As he was now in mine, clutching to his shirt as he tucked my head into the crook of his neck and moved me into him so I could fall apart.

I don’t know how long he held me there, letting me cry into his fine shirt, but it felt like an age. I thought I’d cry until the new one came around, but suddenly I was empty of it all. I pulled away, and when I opened my eyes he was staring at me with such care if I had anything left I’d have cried more. The generosity he gave me. His hand moved the hair from my face like the night we’d come back, like the night in my room two weeks ago when he’d asked if I needed him and somehow I’d said yes.

Curiosity drove me to do it, what I did next. He watched me, holding his breath. Two options seemed to present themselves to me as clearly as if they were spoken aloud. It would take one look—just one, and the distance which we existed now would feel too large where before it seemed so close. Though if I didn’t, we’d return from this closeness and go about our life as we always did. And I didn’t doubt that the moment would present itself again, but I didn’t know when.

But I was curious, like I said. He’d chosen me when he walked through that library door and now finally, I got to choose him. So I let my eyes, in their peripheral, find his lips, and looked.

To be so understood—Lucien’s hand slipped through my hair and rested against the back of my neck. My fists balled in his collar, and suddenly no one was going first, instead we went together.

Our lips met somewhere between need and the patience of wanting to know something. Lucien kissed with an urgency to feel everything, how I tasted, how I moved. Each opening and closing of his mouth seemed to be met in sync with my own like we knew each other but accidentally. He was precise where he kept himself, lingering in the firstness of it. A desire, despite our age, to keep it here, in this moment, until he knew me on purpose.

And I knew with certainty unlike all the other softness, this was happening in our world and not the other I’d thought was close by. That it was never really another universe at all, but this one right here. The seam by which we slipped through had always been the old boundaries of us, where the tangibility of his kindness had been so potent it pushed me beyond myself and had made me brave. He made me want to be brave.

Our knowing completed, the urgency changed. Our breaths picking up. I had curved into him, chest to chest, and maybe it was the fact I was on my tip toes, or his height, but our balance went as our need grew and we stumbled backward. He sacrificed one hand and gripped the bookshelf behind us, supporting us fully, the books rattling. Yet his other hold was unwavering, falling down my back, tucking our hips together for relief. If we fell, we fell together. There would no longer be any separation.

His mouth didn’t trail away, didn’t meet my neck or press lingering kisses into my cheek. We moved like water: naturally and instinctual—anciently. So fluid, he was, his tongue slipping against my own. I almost didn’t notice, could’ve mistaken him for myself.

When he pulled away I half expected the frenzy, but I found that the moment was complete. I wanted more and yet, not now, this was good and whole on its own. I might not have even known I had wanted if it weren’t for his grip on my body, the shelves pressing into my spine. We were panting like we’d been running to each other since the night we arrived. Perhaps in a way we had been, running and running and running but now we could finally rest. There was a premonition of wanting but for now, the satisfaction filled me, doubling in the presence of Lucien’s.

I felt it then, the familiar moment his shield dropped. Our realization was mutual and simultaneous. He’s staying, and I need him. Our emotions intertwined seamlessly. Gratitude, longing, hope, happiness, grief, all of it tangled together—No. More woven than anything now. Both of our feelings, a seam down the middle like a choice, made like the space where one side of your body meets the other.

I understood something now too, the feeling I’d had before, that bone that had been broken then set again. It was our power. His and mine meeting, no more fear, now we were together. There was only one place for it to go.

“Where have you been?” I asked.

Lucien laughed and I understood how it sounded only after I said it. He didn’t immediately let go of me. His eyes just moved over my face, like it were the first time he was seeing it so close.

“I mean—I meant where do you go when you’re not here.”

The male stood up to his full height and I let go of him. He said simply, “You’ll know soon.”

Just then the house seemed to awaken around us and what had once seemed like a private moment between us became precariously full of others and their noise. I could feel the Cauldron and now the Mother, pulling me across Velaris. My answer inherently understood, just a little longer. The tension vanished, not without a final tug. They knew though, I was never so easily persuaded.

Lucien backed away and gestured for the door. As I walked past I brushed my hand against his own. I let it hang there between us. He grabbed it, just the very tips of our fingers held to one another and kept in place the intimacy. I led him back, his chest pressing to my spine as we stood before the exit. I hesitated, turned the knob as slowly as I could. Metal ground against metal, his every breath pressing into me, each click prompting me to grip him tighter, become more aware of how it felt for him to be just there, to remember what it felt like to have the option not to leave at all. I took a breath, dropped his hand, and the door opened.

We slipped out into the hall and stood our normal distance. No one was there and I turned to my mate. It probably looked like our usual business, a standoff of wills and stubbornness. It probably was, still, in some kind of way. I crossed my arms and felt the tired and sadness of my eyes, even if I had cried and been kissed and had someone close who did understand what I meant.

Lucien stood, his arms at his side, face stoic but otherwise at ease. We were silent. I think everything had been said that, for now, needed to be said. Lucien reached up and brushed a lock of hair behind my shoulder.

“I’m not going to visit Gawayn,” I admitted once the long beat of silence had passed.

“I know.”

The front door opened and I knew that whoever it was would see the redness of my eyes and know what had happened. I hoped though our scents had not mingled too much, or despite our separation, it could still be mistaken for living together.

When Cassian stepped through the door it took him a minute to notice us. Though when he did, his brows creased with distress and understanding. It was obvious what I had done, what I had been told. I don’t doubt he was aware, if only because his silence was needed too.

“I’ll see you tonight,” Lucien said. A new promise made with the understanding of the fear that had permeated the house in his absence. In any case, I appreciated the goodbye, even now knowing he’d no intention of leaving.

“Bye,” I said as he began to turn with more somberness than I meant.

The male upon hearing the tone looked back. Slowly he leaned down and pressed a kiss on my cheek. I was stunned. Cassian too, seemed to be frozen with the moment. My mate though having all the tenderness in the world pulled away and only upon seeing my face, did he begin to smirk. It was one of genuine joy not because he’d bothered me or because he won anything by doing it. He’d wanted only to soothe that sadness he’d heard, and he had. So even if I wanted to be angry I couldn’t have.

“Cassian,” Lucien said, and passed the male before ducking out.

The warrior and I remained locked into place, our mouths slightly agape as we stared. Heat reached my neck and face and I tried to find the answer, to say we’d never done that before or that it was all Lucien. Luckily, however, Cassian found the nerve.

“Given the day you’re both having, we’ll let it slide.”

***

Azriel sat in the library, his back to the door and a knife in his hand. We were meant to convene at the house of wind for dinner. The reason unknown, but I suspected the deal with Beron had something to do with it. With the finery of his clothes, the weapon seemed to be the only thing out of place. I’d heard Lucien return as I was dressing and let myself believe he’d come home early for me more than the obligation. I liked thinking I was allowed such speculation now. Azriel didn’t turn at my entrance or pay much mind. He seemed, as usual, deep in an inner world to which I wondered if anyone but him had access. Even Rhysand, I suspect, was sometimes at a loss.

“Something planned for the evening or should I grab my own blade?” I asked.

“We made a pact did we not? If you don’t marry and I don’t marry then we would marry each other.”

His words recalled our night two weeks ago after the wine had truly taken its hold on us. A moment of somberness, the feeling that my mate was far away. Azriel had seen no one of interest, no one I could even attempt to talk him up to at the bar, so I’d offered the pact. In 500 years it would go into effect.

I smiled, raising a brow, “So you need a blade?”

“I hear there’s some competition.”

Whistling from the hall could be heard, and I turned toward the male with a damning finger before he could show himself. Casual, cool, Cassian was unphased by the circumstances of his entrance to the room. His whistling didn’t falter and his gaze passed over me as if I were nothing more than a piece of furniture he’d seen a thousand times.

“You can’t keep a secret to save a life.”

Cassian shrugged, “I said I’d let it slide, not keep it secret. Azriel had a bet to collect and I’m a good friend.”

I crossed my arms, turning toward the shadow singer, “I thought you lost.”

But Cassian answered for him, “Just the one. We have to have a few going, otherwise, we’d have no cause to continue interfering.” He winked and made himself a drink, as unruffled as ever, and found a seat.

I opened my mouth but three voices spoke in unison, “You’re wretched.” The males already knew what I was going to say. Proof, perhaps, that their bets were not badly or so arbitrarily placed. I remained silent thereafter.

We waited for Lucien. Rhysand had gone ahead earlier in the day. Something to do with Mor and Amren, matters in the library. I didn’t pay attention once the word Library had been uttered, but I did expect his guilt had made him want to get away for a while. If that were the case then we’d hear no more about it, not for a good hundred years if at all. Cassian and Azriel exchanged idle chatter and I tried to listen for the sounds of my mate down the hall, but the house yielded nothing to me. Just as it had that lunch I’d found him, the lingering anger of his morning a ward between us. I quirked a brow.

“Go get him,” Azriel pleaded, interrupting my thoughts. His head fell against the back of the couch with boredom. He was more aware than anyone ever of when we were too close to being late to arrive anywhere.

“Why me?”

“You’re his mate,” Cassian said. “If he’s undressed we have no desire to see.”

“I’m dressed,” Lucien said, appearing before us in the doorway, fixing a button on his sleeve. He looked at no one else. His gaze was already there against my face, knowing where I’d be somehow before turning the corner. It might have been the kissing, what I knew now, about how his body felt against mine, or that he too had chosen me, but warmth fell around me like a halo. My skin rose against it, like his very presence, just the sight of him, was power enough to pull me clear across the room. Life called to me in a thousand tiny ways.

He looked happy. He felt happy, a surge of it constrained at my chest. It was so precise the feeling sunk itself into my being, marking it. An added layer of protection and memory, to recognize him in any life, once his happiness met mine.

Cassian and Azriel must have noticed our staring, because without word between them, the two stood and loudly boasted about their going outside, about how noisy the city was, about what they wouldn’t be able to hear. When they wanted to they could be my best allies. Their footsteps trailed away and all it took was the sound of the door to snap us from our stupor.

“I can help,” I said, nodding my head toward his hands, clumsily pulling at his sleeve.

“Please,” He raised his arm out, holding the pieces in place and I grabbed the weighty metal, hands shaking. I swallowed, Lucien’s smile in my peripheral, as I could see him watching my face, my neck. We shared a fondness it seemed for moments of gracelessness, the failure of all preternatural skill and reason. No longer a joy born of torment, but the revelation of each of our significance to the other. That we made each other nervous now, that we’d even reveal such a thing. How unwavering we’d once been. This a reminder that our lives were transforming, happening, and would continue to happen, with one another if we so chose.

“I’ll have to teach you to make the drop into the house of wind.”

He hummed, half paying attention. With a clearer voice he said once the words registered, “Mor taught me.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Two weeks ago, after Rhys found us in the bathroom.”

“It took me two months to learn it properly. I’m surprised you didn’t come back with shattered ankles.”

“I’d have received no sympathy from you.”

I laughed and secured the button at last. No, he wouldn’t have. His hands reached for the sleeve, adjusting it, while his attention remained fixed on me. Our satisfaction of the afternoon was short-lived. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to kiss him just as soon as I saw him again, but unlike before I could tell from the way he was smiling that it would take great effort to pull away. The moment would last longer than I could manage and there were still things to be done. But the more I looked at him the more difficult it became, to convince myself to deny any wanting. I cared less and less about giving myself away to anyone, now that with Lucien I already had. I thought about how his hands would pull my hair from its pins, what it would mean if he ripped the seams of my dress, and when I tried to find embarrassment over who’d know what we’d done, I couldn’t find any care at all.

“We can be quick,” He lied.

“We could.”

We leaned in slow, a poor mimic to the juvenile delivery of before where now hiding was something in us that was enduring. His mouth moved against mine, flat, and for a moment I almost believed our lie. When his lips parted against mine, however, I realized there would never be enough lifetimes to answer the need I found waiting in his mouth. Thus, despite all consequences, I wanted for him to know everything immediately.

My body opened for him. His thigh pressed between my legs parting them with little effort.

He ran the length of my exposed spine, fingers grazing, feeling rolling over bone and pressing into the spaces between them. He settled himself dipping only the knuckle below the low hemmed back but reached no further. We’d barely any control before, but whatever was there that morning had ceased. I closed my legs around him.

A hum of pleasure escaped him, rich but quiet. It vibrated in my throat and I knew unequivocally that it belonged to me. I held his pleasure in my mouth. His desperation didn’t waver any control he had in his movements. I let no noise escape, not as his thigh pressed further into me, or as my mouth fell open with the sudden relief. Stifling any proof of his effect on me only made Lucien more desperate to hear it. His lips trailed away to make space for my voice, his hands worked harder, moved to my breasts, and revealed his need. He wanted me to moan, but the advantage was mine, having had to be utterly silent so often in this house where ears lingered nearby. He, however, cared little for who heard. How precarious we’d become, how tightly we’d been wound.

A different tug, one from another direction, began to snag on me. Its own need was familiar. The tension between myself and the rest of the world with its obligations was the only reason I had not fallen entirely into him. This way, take him. We had to go, had to eat. He took my earlobe in his mouth. I grabbed his wrists, holding him in place.

He whispered, suddenly conscious of the volume with which we wanted each other, “Be good.”

“I can’t.”

He shifted his leg, pressing his thigh into me again harder. I gasped and closed my legs against him tighter. “I know,” He said.

My hold became flimsy, even the tiniest movement, the craning of his neck, the shift of his eyes, encased me and released me. As if the echo of my relief returned as, and reinforced, my desire. He watched, attentive as he learned just what he could do. He withdrew from my failing grip and grabbed my waist. Against his thigh, he guided me. His attention was acute and unbreakable, watching my mouth from which I revealed nothing.

He leaned in, placing a lazy kiss along my cheekbone, before he whispered, “You’re going to make me beg aren’t you.”

It was the only game I could play for now. He knew this and he knew what he was doing to me. The heat pooling under the skin, between my legs—he knew what I felt and needed no sound to tell him so. The answer was so obvious everywhere else. I tried, then, to press harder into him, to find more release, but he held firm, withdrawing with a raised brow.

In my desperation, where he was stern and commanding I was clumsier. My jaw slack, eyes half open, I knew though, he was desperate too. The need was too heavy to feign anything exceptionally well. We had to give it all away.

He dragged his eyes across my neck, landed on my pulse, and replaced his gaze with his mouth. He nudged my head upward for access, but I’d have given it to him anyway. He ran his tongue flat along the skin before he sucked harshly. One of his hands pressed me into him, moving me as he liked, moving me so he could have me as he wanted. It was an authority he wielded easily. The warmth of him, just the curve of his chest against mine relieved me of something I’d needed my whole life that even had I wanted him to stop, if I were afraid he’d leave a mark, I’d have said nothing. His every gesture answered a question I did not know I was asking.

It had never been like this. The ease of movement, the knowledge of a body you’d never seen, never quite touched before. He knew where I wanted him. So when he pressed a light kiss where he’d left a purpling bruise no amount of practice silence could keep the whimper that fell from my mouth.

His laugh, weighed with everything he desired, slid between us to the floor. His amusement heavy on my skin, “Pathetic.”

It was the only thing that could pull him from his control, an insult, a tease. This dominance he felt to be his was too sure and unchallenged. I shifted his hips against mine and he moaned. I was surprised he let me, the wretch. He grabbed my wrists and pulled them behind my back and leaning with the momentum he gently placed a kiss on my shoulder where his lips landed. Before I found him in my bed I’d have what it was I needed to win this kind of game. I’d know how to make him beg. But for now, I’d play this hand. I had no other choice. Or more likely, I didn’t have the will to find the other choices with the length of him press against me through his pants.

“How can we stop?” I said aware it would not be so simple. Unlike this morning the Illyrians were outside waiting. We only had so much time.

Lucien’s fingers tensed but released. Trust was not the reason for his withdrawal, but I kept them behind my back anyway. If he thought I could behave it could be to my advantage later. Such fun it had once been, the new irritation we might inspire in each other.

He turned his head, idly resting his cheek on my shoulder, thinking. I was not so easily fooled. With predatory slowness he crept forward, pulling me back toward his lips. There was a precision to the hold, I would not move unless he willed it.

“I have an idea,” He bit at my ear.

“What?”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

His voice was almost melodic like he was humming the words, taunting still. A ghost of a smile, twin to his own had just begun to move along my face when Lucien’s teeth sank into me. The thin skin below my ear gave way, easily, as if warped by the heat of him. Yet unlike the inclination of all other injury, my body relaxed into his hold—so aware of the safety, so sure he wouldn’t hurt me. My eyes closed, but by the time I smelled blood, felt his tongue lap at the skin, those instincts retreated in again. I pressed both hands at his chest and shoved.

He fell easily back and stumbled into the low table behind him. The furniture loudly slid away, scraping across the floor. The world stilled, waiting. He recovered with ease, wiping at his mouth. Something wicked settled on his face. Yes, I’d need to learn to play this game expertly. Such pleasure on those features, waiting for a challenge, waiting to dole out punishment. Like he’d been planning this for far too long. He ran his tongue along his lips and arched a brow. Don’t you play anymore? A dare. He needed only a glance to say it.

So I lunged for him.

In a moment of brute rage and lack of thought, my arms wrapped around his waist and my head hit his stomach. His breath hitched as we launched backward onto the table he’d just managed to right himself from. Tight, warm, and familiar arms, grabbed for me and I was pressed securely against him as we fell. The perfected silence was broken first by the splintering of wood, the shattering of glass, and then a laugh. The loudest most joyous laugh I’d ever heard from him. Pure and mine, unwavering, even as we landed. Even as I lifted from his hold, gripped his hair in my hand, yanked his head to the side, and bit back.

Cassian and Azriel barreled in just as I’d withdrawn, “You’re a miserable pig.”

I could taste his blood in my mouth. Lucien didn’t move just kept that genuine joy, boyish even in his amusement at the chaos. Not miserable at all. His eyes brightened as he looked at my mouth. I could see on his face what wasn’t said. Good girl. I gripped his hair harder and he hissed before I was lifted off my mate. The both of us righting ourselves, I pulled from Azriel’s grip once we were standing.

“I hope you keep your promises,” Lucien said coolly as if the two males weren’t even there.

“You never fail to be insufferable,” I snapped.

“I learned from my mate.”

All words failed Cassian and Azriel as they looked between the two of us, to the table now in ruins. They did not at once notice the claim, but I’m sure they smelled blood. Their sharp gazes continued to assess, trying to piece together our tension, looking for a wound, yet missing it all the same. The pair exchanged glances, their mouths open in unsaid questions, unsure of what to do, of who to speak to. The room was silent aside from the heaved breathing coming from Lucien and my chest which thus became almost an oppressive sound. And just as it seemed they were about to ask, I saw it. A sharp inhale, they stood up straighter in near sync. Their eyes drew to our necks, knowing.

The two blinked, wide-eyed.

Behind the smell of blood, the claims had caused our scents to mix.

Azriel sucked in his cheeks and turned his back to us. His shoulders shook. Bastards, all of them. It was Cassian’s drawl, however, that lazy amusement that fell out of him with such speed and ease that bothered me most. I clenched my fists before the words had even registered.

“Are you flying with me or does another male have claim over you?”

“Fuck off,” I said pushing through the group and moving to the door, Cassian’s wide smile no doubt unfaltering. “And get to the house of wind!”

Rhys was waiting for us when we arrived. The fight had made us late. I’d let everyone go first, hoping both to delay the inevitable and to arrive at the house to find Lucien had shattered his ankles. I could slap him. I was not, at that point, prepared to give him credit, but it was true that his idea made going to dinner far more plausible. All need or want for him vanished. But I remembered how it felt, the weight of his hands, where there’d been everything, where there was absence. I remembered all of it.

Cassian was waiting, and as I landed he walked toward me still as casual as ever. The three males displayed a united pride, endlessly and forever amused by their own worst behavior. Even Azriel, before he’d taken flight, had laughed loudly to the murmured gesture of Cassian. Lucien was waiting unruffled, not a scratch or tear in his clothes—he’d landed perfectly. Two weeks he’d said. I narrowed my eyes. Leaning against the railing he was separated from a long fall. I said nothing.

“What took you so long?” Rhys asked.

Cassian mused casually, “Oh the usual, these two at each other’s necks.”

“Pathetic, all of you males,” I hissed. The words bounced back at us, even the echo had power. I didn’t even acknowledge Rhys as I passed him. A sharp crease formed in his brow at my sudden hostility. He’d see it eventually. I had no doubt dinner would be a riot to them all into the centuries to come. It would rival even that of the winter in the cabin. No one, though, would find it as funny as Cassian did tonight.

Rhysand’s bewildered voice floated over to me just barely as I hit the stairs. “What did we do?”

Azriel laughed, “Oh, it’s not what we did, it's what Lucien did.”

***

At dawn the next morning I was awake. I probably didn’t need to be up that early, the village just a winnow away, but it was getting cold. I liked thinking that, for some, this morning would be warmer than the last. I rubbed at my eyes lying there, listening to see if Cassian had risen. Downstairs, the kitchen had movement, plates clinked, so he’d be leaving soon. He was probably already dressed, his own plans to attend. Despite last night, I was glad he was to accompany me, if only until the next morning. The company would be good. Then I’d have all that time to plan.

The morning light had softened the dark of my room into a nice blue. I stared at the ceiling, not quite ready to move, and ran my fingers absently over the mark on my neck that ached. Last night we’d said our goodbyes, briefly and in secret, with very few words. I’d winnowed into his room, all smugness having vanished, and managed a chaste kiss goodnight. He asked after my plans and I reiterated them and then I was gone. There was no need to linger. There were more answers now than questions.

I rubbed at my eyes, stretched my arms across the expanse of my bed, and rested my hand on something woolen. It startled me enough that I withdrew like I’d been burned. I sat up. No one else was here. I hadn’t woken, hadn’t heard the wraiths or Rhys or anyone come in to check I was ready and up. I peered into the bathroom but it held no life. The cold air bit at me through my clothes, the blankets falling away, but I reached for the folded wool again on the other side of my bed. I dragged it slowly into my lap, already beginning to understand what it was.

It was deep green like an endless grassy hill or the leaves when light passes through them on the last days of summer. A scarf, a knit one had been carefully laid along my bed, folded with gentle care in wait. I squeezed the yarn in circles between my fingers, feeling the weight, the thickness of it, and found a hole. I paused, an easy mistake, anyone might make it. I had a thousand times. One finger slipped through it, stark against the green. I wiggled it back and forth, feeling the looseness, feeling for the nothing. The hole was slight, but the stitches around it warped and adjusted to fit the mistake.

I held the thing up to look at all of it, to scan the rows. Beside me, a tag fell out against the blankets. Even through the dim, even not knowing it, I knew the script to whom the note had once belonged.

To cover the bite.

—Me

I picked the scarf up, pressed it into my face, and inhaled. It smelled just as it looked, like sunlight over an autumn grass. It smelled like Egrette’s. The night classes. I smiled into the yarn, foolish. I almost wished to wake him, to say now, I know where you’ve been. All my suffering, only for him to be in Velaris, at the classes I’d suggested, learning to make with his hands.

A thread pulled inside of me and I let it move me down the stairs. I didn’t knock, didn’t even check if he was awake. I pushed open the door and there he was, sitting as if he expected me. He was already smiling, at ease with the world. I didn’t let him ask, I knew he wouldn’t. I cut through the quiet morning with a demand.

“Change of plans.”

Rhysand’s smile grew.

***

The cold was bitter up here. The inhabitants too. The females who’d I’d been in correspondence over the years were at least warm and welcoming. They were motherly in the way I had once imagined my own mother would be once I’d gotten to adulthood. Time had passed and I could say the things at one time I hadn’t always been able to say. I could complain about males with blanket statements and we would all roll our eyes, only for them to, in jest, try and set me up with their sons. They let an hour go by before they teased me about my scarf indoors. Somehow knowing, as mothers always tend to.

After a cup of tea and some food, I bid them farewell, promising to come the next month with more to give. Outside the village was rather quiet compared to the last visit I’d had at the end of summer. I’d not seen Cassian all morning, he apparently going first to a camp not far from here. Some snow has fallen, light flakes, barely enough to cover the ground, but a few caught on my eyelashes, their size growing. I was rubbing them away when my name cut through the weathered stillness.

Gawayn appeared from behind, hands in his pockets, wings tucked in tight, fighting against the wind and cold. He was a handsome male to be sure, tall and leaner than the others. He didn’t pack on the same muscles as everyone else which had made me like him.

“Rumors were going ‘round saying you were injured,” He said once he was close. “You alright?”

I wondered for a brief moment if it would matter that an Illyrian knew. Who could he tell? For so long he’d been a kind of savior for this reason. There was mutual confidentiality, a desire to keep things between us that some people kept only because they were afraid of Rhysand. I’d come to him and tell him what I felt I could, show him maybe something I was afraid of in myself, and he’d take it without word or echo. There was an old way of moving, of thinking, that leaned toward him. But that was over now, at least in some ways.

“Terrible sword incident. Cut my side.” Beron wasn’t one to count Illyrians for anything, but a deal was a precarious deal and just the idea of risking anything made my heart strain, causing a panic to settle between my bones again. Even the shadows shuttered. I braved the cold air and moved my clothes to reveal the scar. He frowned then let out a low whistle.

“If it didn’t heal it had to be bad.”

“Bad enough.”

His face relaxed some despite the subject and he smiled slightly, all sweetness, “You should’ve come here I’d have taken good care of you.”

“I had good company.”

“How many times did they tell you the story of the 10,000 steps.”

“Less than a dozen but more than a handful.”

“I can venture to guess that it must have been an extraordinary wound rather than exceptional company that I didn’t see you.”

“I was bedridden, believe me, I’d have liked to get away. Not that you could do anything I hear you’re busy these days. Rhys sends his regards.”

He rolled his eyes, a slight break in the tension, “Your brother is having a riot I’m sure. I don’t suppose now would be the time to exercise your talent for persuasion.”

“And how might I persuade him for your bedding me and lying about it?” I said crossing my arms.

“Well for one thing we bedded each other and we’ve been doing so for years without getting caught.”

“This is the angle you’re going to take, that you’ve been fucking his sister for a century in secret?”

“Rhys should be impressed by my stealth and quick thinking and use it to his advantage.”

“I don’t think he’ll see it that way.”

“I can’t do your job for you.”

I waved a hand, “Let me mull it over and perhaps I can be of some use. I have no desire to be a bother to you if you can believe it.”

“I don’t believe it and you can always bother me.”

I smiled, “I know.”

That was it, what I’d once needed. This intimacy, the knowing, a weight that almost satisfied. There was a new need within me, but I wanted to appreciate what had once been enough. This friend of my own, this place to practice being. One more time I would feel it, our small intimacy, before anything had been said. How enormous it was in hindsight, what it made me able now to do.

“I’m guessing by your guilt you’re the reason we’ve been caught.”

I scrunched my nose and nodded, “They overheard me telling someone.”

“Figures, you’re a loud drunk,” He mused with a certain fondness. “Who’d you finally own up to, Mor?”

My shoulders straightened but my mouth pulled into a smile, a rare bashfulness that made me think I’d have to turn away if my feelings got any larger. I knew though regardless the behavior said everything that for now could not be said. The words I had at my disposal were too narrow, friend wasn’t right, but mate seemed despite its rarity even less the word I’d use. The one that remained had to first go to Lucien before it was said aloud to anyone else.

Gawayn noticed my silence and smiled slightly, arching a brow. His demeanor lifted with a little mischief. “So that’s where you’ve been.”

I nodded, “Partially, yes.”

“What’s his name?”

I blushed and had to turn away. He was everywhere, across the snowy peak, in the narrow between two trees. How he’d like it up here I think, among the leaves. Next fall I’d bring him. We could stay in the cabin and we wouldn’t have to see anyone else. It could be just us, as the nights went cold. We’d have to come early when it was still warm in Velaris. Yes, who knows what we’d become by then, but I should think I would be able to ask that of him.

I turned back to see Gawayn still waiting, watching me intently. My every gesture revealed our fate at last had arrived.

“Lucien.”

“Will I meet him?”

“This one? Definitely.”

His eyes brightened, “Is he nice.”

I smiled.

“Is he handsome?”

“Stop it.”

A gust blew from behind. The scarf at my neck fell from its place on my shoulder opening it. I knew within an instant, as the cold touched the indents along my skin, pushing the new scent out to the world, that I’d been caught. The Illyrian’s brows lifted into his hairline.

“Any chance this is the same male that put a claim on you.”

I rolled my eyes, “Yes.”

“Is he brave or stupid?”

I shrugged.

Gawayn shook his head again, now halfway amused, “I can’t imagine anyone brave enough.”

“My mate might be, but it remains to be seen.”

He didn’t at first seem to process the words I’d said. The confusion came delayed in the wrinkle of his forehead, the downturn of his mouth. He looked me up and down like he could find some distinction he’d not noticed as he’d arrived, one that would reveal to him the truth of my circumstance.

“You’re mated?”

I smiled coolly, “More or less.”

“When did this happen?”

“50 years ago.” The male's eyes bulged and I laughed, “Circumstances have only recently changed.”

A small relief to him. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

I waved a hand, “Neither of us was particularly thrilled about the match.”

“And suddenly…”

“Yes.”

Whatever he was holding back, if anything at all, at once peeled away. He let out a loud yell of joy, lunged for me, and launched us into the sky. I yelled over the roar of the wind but he didn’t hear, nor would he have cared. So I decided not to care either. I tucked my nose under the scarf, eyes watering from the force of the wind. He was screaming, cheering, for the Cauldron, and the Mother, for me. Below us, the inhabitants mulling about didn’t even flinch. The world got smaller as he arced upward and again something enormous revealed itself as we moved into that midday sun. This was my life. Good things had really happened. Someone was waiting for me to get home. For a small moment, I began to believe I’d earned it. So when Gawayn let out another howling cheer, I let out my own.

We landed after ten minutes breathless, laughing, stumbling in the snow. He placed me down but the energy within him of truly earnest happiness scattered out of his very being and spilled into the space between us. Such feeling not just for me, but for who I’d become. And there it was, I could see it but couldn’t say where. Something had gone, and left behind in its wake, was my friend.

“It’s well deserved,” He said, letting out a long sigh. “In case no one told you that. And I wasn’t just going to part with you for anyone you know.”

“You’ve been looking out all this time?” I said mockingly.

Gawayn got suddenly a bit serious, “Of course. We’re friends aren’t we?”

“I like to think so.”

Someone called the Illyrain’s name and he looked over his shoulder and he waved them off for a moment before he turned back to me with a shrug. He had to go.

“I’ll see you around. I’ve got stories you’d love to hear.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said.

“Don’t wait too long between visits next time, even if you’re injured,” He said walking away. “And don’t get me into any more trouble. Your brother is one thing but I’m too old and precious to be dealing with a mated male.”

“It keeps things interesting,” I yelled back and just before the wind was too loud for me to hear the laughter that came from his tilted head, he said,

“For you!”

I watched him until I could no longer see him. The sky held not a spec of red, nor the Illyrian it belonged. The cabin lay empty. I wrote a note to Cassian and walked outside. Snow was falling heavy now, enough to cover the grass. I did want to sit inside admittedly, curl up for the evening and watch the world go white, but something tugged. Things to do, as always. Just a winnow away, as always. I looked across the camp—no one in sight. Then I took one step through the crease in the universe and was gone.

***

Even tucked into my scarf, the lashes of wind off the river proved bitter cold. Winter was imminent. I could feel its sting at my cheeks as I walked up the steps of the townhouse the morning I got home. If anyone was around, my arrival was well enough announced by the frantic shutting of the door in attempt to keep the cold out. From Rhysand’s office, the murmured voices of Amren and Azriel flitted through. Too muffled to make anything out, too boring for me to care anyway, I didn’t stop to say hello or snoop.

The wraiths were clearing the dining table, all chairs but my own were pulled out, plates dirty. They looked at each other, a small smile snagging between them before it vanished as easily as they could, as if it hadn’t been there at all.

I understood then, what such knowing looked like. I tried to imagine how Lucien and I appeared to others, even before. Eyes narrowing, searching through a room and meeting, the pull of a mouth the nod of a head, so much said without a word. How no one guessed at the tether between us I will never know. Most people, I suppose, pay little attention. Up close, however, it becomes obvious the private moments constantly occurring between two people where only a silent look communicates an array of feelings. Even beyond the bond.

The bets placed by our court produced a sudden and secret fondness then. There was something nice about it, the way they saw such a thing as proof of something good and sincere between us. The quickness, even playfully those years ago, that deemed our knowledge of each other to be born of some endearment. Who can resist such understanding?

From this perspective, it would make you think such endings were inevitable. They knew what we’d do before we had, so they’d placed their bets. Let them win, I like knowing now that they were right. I watched the wraiths disappear. I liked also seeing such intimate knowledge on other people's faces, aware now we looked the same.

I retreated to my room and stripped. The cold had reached my bones and being inside was not enough to remedy its settling. I ran a bath, letting my hand fall under the stream. Everything felt warm by comparison. When the water seemed just on the edge of scalding I plugged the drain, dumping contents in it at random. Something to relax, something to revive, something to brighten, any remedy went in. I waited for it to fill, the aroma already of some comfort, while standing before the mirror. The punctured skin at my neck had begun to inflame, just barely closed and healing. Surely something to do with magic, something to do with mates, to heal faster than my side but slower for fae. I ran my fingers over the ridges, recalling his tongue against my skin. My fingers grazed my ear—I turned, bent, and looked at the imprint of my spine.

My three days away had yielded nothing of my desire. I didn’t expect it to, not even when I’d originally planned to let my mind wander in the empty cabin. I’d thought about torturing Lucien, letting my emotions run rampant down the bond, but perhaps another time. It had not been totally worthless to give those three days up, in the end.

Bargains are a precarious thing.

My eyes dropped to the skin at my side where a burning had been and nodded at it, knowing no one was watching.

I hissed as I sat down in the tub. The heat of the bath almost instantly subdued me. I’d be useless, if I were in danger I don’t think I’d have noticed. I draped my hair beyond the side and relinquished myself to the lethargy. There was so much to do, but there was time now to do it. Behind my eyelids, I could see it, that cold beneath my skin vanishing, running, as if chased away. The house settled and I listened to it, tried to find Lucien, stretched a hand down the bond, but didn’t tug.

A fern reached back, unfurling, wrapping around a table.

I saw the harvest.

“Where’d you go?”

Lucien had appeared from nothing. I might have thought he’d just winnowed if the water's heat hadn’t cooled so substantially between one memory and the next. His smile, though slight, contained the amusement of having caught someone doing something. He’d been watching me a while then. Yes, I’d fallen asleep and he’d found me.

“Hm?” I fought the heaviness of my body, pulled from sleep.

“You didn’t stay at the cabin.”

I shook my head.

“Where did you go?”

“Day court.”

“Why?” He asked.

I sighed, lifted my foot to turn the knob, and filled the end of the tub with a little more hot water, “To consult Helion’s library.”

“For Rhysand?”

“No, for myself.”

Lucien paused, surprised by my honesty. “Anything interesting?”

I shook my head again and rubbed the tired from my eyes. That had been a waste of time. I had not found what I wanted. The collection was too vast, I couldn’t narrow my search down well enough before I had to be back again. Even with the help of a few of the librarians there, we’d been fruitless. Helion was generous though, just for letting me in.

“Looking up Gods and folktales again?” My gaze snapped to his but he made no move. He let out a small huff of a laugh, “In the dining room you said your book wasn’t interesting.”

“It wasn’t.” I shut the water off.

Lucien lifted from the door frame, “You say this topic is of little interest to you but you’ve read two other books on similar themes. It’s an easy guess.” He began to roll up his sleeves, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Observant, I thought, but didn’t say. I didn’t have the chance. His languid steps, the casual manner of his being, eradicated all sensible thought. My admiration of his usual beauty falling away into the homely devices he’d begun to reveal did not go unnoticed. His face didn’t show, but it passed between our ribs like a well-known secret. A sincerity threaded through some amusement which said despite his desire from how he’d found me he really did wish to help if he could. The sensation filled the emptiness of my chest. Yes, we were now doing things together. After a weekend of shielding, it was a fine feeling.

“It worked itself out.”

“Oh?” He grabbed the chair near the mirror and set it behind me. I didn’t look, skimming my hands over the top of the water watching it ripple.

“At least until after solstice.”

“Why solstice?”

“We like to use that time to be together as a family. No distractions.”

“That's nice,” he said with a voice somewhat distant. I let our silence take the place of the grief between us. He pressed his warm fingers to my hairline and without a word instructed me to lean my head back. Warm water slipped through my hair and fell down my shoulders. I’d set some aside and I knew it was only still warm because Lucien willed it. I closed my eyes and focused on the feel of his hands, his fingers, running along my scalp. The hair beginning to weigh with its wetness, he grabbed a soap off the shelf nearby. When he stuck his hand in the bath to wet it I felt immediately the warmth increase as he took care of me, took care of everything. The soap lathered and the bath was so hot I thought I’d sleep again.

“You’re tired,” he said.

“What makes you say that?”

“You’re being so compliant.”

His words, closer than before, tucked themselves along my neck. I could feel the smile he had and would have felt it had he said nothing. The quality of air, the shift of a draft, I knew when he was smiling the way you know your own mouth is.

“I didn’t sleep well,” I said ignoring him.

“If you’re ever restless my door is open.”

“I might have accepted before.”

He laughed reminiscent of the teasing one he’d used before he’d made his claim. “Still mad are we? Think of the perks,” he took a sharp inhale, “you smell like me.”

“Like bastard?”

He tugged at the hair a little and my head angled back so I could see him fully, “Like me.”

“The scarf hid your stench. Somewhat counterproductive on your part.”

“Not in the slightest,” he cooed.

His words slid between us once more and I could no longer resist. I had enough slack from Lucien’s grip to turn my head slightly into him. Our noses nudged, his lips just barely apart from mine. One slight breath and I felt his exhale brush over my lips. Let's see, I thought. When he didn’t move to kiss me I leaned forward but the distance didn’t close. The ends of his mouth quirked up slightly when, on instinct, I leaned in further. His trick was revealed after our mouths didn’t meet again. He’d pulled away. He wasn’t going to let me kiss him, not unless I embarrassed myself first. I feigned a scowl and he sat back.

“Egrette told me to tell you to visit again.”

“I take it her nephews are suddenly working fewer hours.”

I’d yet to have the chance to ask about the alliance they’d procured behind my back. It took little thought to put together the pieces, after the fact, of her lying about their coming to the shop to get me away. Lucien, no doubt, was in the backroom hiding in the event I came around. I’d been so concerned with the game Rhys was playing I hadn’t thought to look at the other boards. So it seemed we all had pieces we were moving both out in the open and in the wings.

“She told me you didn’t like each other but who knew I had suitors to fight off. She spent half the weekend finally filling me in on that little history.”

I stilled momentarily, his fingers working through a tangle that had gathered at the base of my neck idly. “Is that what you did while I was away then? Spent your time with her laughing at my expense.”

A test.

“More or less.”

I smiled, the fool. “Well, if you’ve met them you can understand why I had no choice but to tell them you existed.”

“They seemed to think I was a real brute.”

“I’ve got stories.”

“Loudmouth.”

Lucien rinsed my hair again and wrung it in his fist. Water flooded his arms, dripping onto the floor, but he continued until it was damp before he let go. I flipped around and watched him, his sleeves clinging to him. I licked my lips and he noticed, content I suspected. No feeling revealed itself.

I met his stare, narrowed my eyes. “I lied to you,” I said.

A test.

He didn’t flinch, “When.”

“I said I wasn’t going to visit Gawayn but I had a message to deliver from Rhys.”

“And?”

In my chest something rolled through, small and miniscule. Lucien’s mouth slightly agape. “He wants to meet you.”

“Good. I’d like to meet him too,” He said with the utmost sincerity before leaning in to place a kiss against my forehead. “I’ve just come to check on you. I’ve got to run.”

“Where?”

“Solstice gifts.”

I peered up at him where he now stood. From his place above me, the soap wouldn’t truly hide my figure. The water wasn’t opaque enough and he watched my eyes smiling like he knew this. He didn’t look away. He didn’t dare.

“I’m glad you’re home,” he said.

“I’m glad you are too.”

After my bath, I found Mor in Rhysand’s office. My brother looked up only briefly.

“How was Helion?”

“Handsome, as usual. Mor,” I said turning to face my cousin. “When did you teach Lucien to do the drop into the house of wind?”

She thought a moment, “The morning after your fight.”

I tutted my tongue, kissed my teeth, “I’d have liked to see that.”

Yes, my mate was lying to me.

***

The night before solstice I snuck into Lucien’s room. I continuously over the days offered up tests, opportunities for him to tell the truth, but he never did. Down the bond filtered small waves of emotion, endearment, amusement, joy, less grief than before, but still some. He was gone most days but so was I. He’d find me though, wherever I was, and before he left he’d kiss my cheek, tell me he’d see me that night and he always did. Even when he came home late he’d find me in my room, sit on my bed for a while, and talk, before disappearing again downstairs.

Meanwhile, Rhysand watched me with certain suspicion to which I could find no origin. He knew my plans had changed, knew why I’d gone to Day Court, and I suspect it left a certain impression on him. I couldn’t leave the house without coming home to an urgent string of questions at his hand. Something about where I’d been, something about solstice gifts, something about when I’d give him Lucien’s.

“Here,” I’d finally said dropping the large parcel on his desk.

“What's this?”

“Gift for Lucien.”

He peered up at me and let out a long breath. I could hear the disappointment but its cause was not revealed. “This is it?”

“It? It’s a rather big gift already no?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“What you discovered in Day Court.”

I tapped my fingers, “Nothing.”

“Will you go back?” He asked leaning in his chair.

“I don’t need to.”

“Why?”

I didn’t reply. Those old folktales had offered only a shallow glance at the entities I was searching for, the answers I needed. Somewhere in the library I had no doubt that what I’d wanted would have been found, but everything visited and revealed itself with time, the right time. And the right time was not in Day Court. For Rhysand, there was a time for him to know what I’d learned too, but it wasn’t now.

I smiled as we sat through the silence, letting him come to this same realization. That he would know what he needed to know when it was called for. His body slackened, his eyes dimming. I could guess his motivations.

I raised a brow, “What did you expect I was getting him for Solstice, Rhys? A ring?”

He scowled, looking away, damning himself and his cause. He’d placed his bet those weeks ago and I had little doubt of the answer he’d given. He believed I was going to be mated to Lucien by Solstice. When I told him of my reasons to visit Helion he must have suspected the library would yield an answer, or lack of one, that would be cause to bind Lucien and I to one another for the rest of our lives. It wasn’t a bad assumption I could admit. Everything had been going his way, he thought he was winning, but now, time was running out.

“How much did you bet?”

If I would not answer, then he wouldn’t either. He stared at my neck and said with a grunt of disgust, “How long until that heals, you reek.”

So I left him in his office and climbed the stairs to my room slamming the door. It was good cover, I waited about half an hour until he retired for the evening before I winnowed to Lucien’s door. I was careful to move quietly, with Cassian sleeping across the way. I gave just one knock before I slipped in. I leaned against the wood, shutting the door silently behind me. Lucien sat on the bed, book in hand, his pants unbuttoned, his shirt discarded, The Forgotten Prythian read the spine. His face was laden with surprise.

“Didn’t expect I’d see you,” he said.

“I can leave.”

I opened the door, but he was there, within one blink, pressing his palm flat overhead and shutting it silently again. Half caged in he peered down at me, mouth pulling into what, at another time, would’ve been an imperceptible smile.

“Don’t,” he teased.

“I wouldn’t wish to impose.”

“Aren’t you precious.”

“You didn’t find me today so one is free to assume.”

He leaned forward, “Y/N, please.” His voice surprisingly desperate, as if he thought I really would leave. “I want you here.”

The thread between us was quiet. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. Liar. My mind repeated, even as I turned my head and let him nuzzle into my neck. I ran my hands through his hair, stroking idle pattern. His tired seeped out of him, the weight of his body growing as he used me for support. It is a long game, keeping up such antics. Did he know, like I knew, that we couldn’t continue this way? What he wouldn’t say I would surely find.

Over his shoulder, I took in his room. Had I come here earlier I might have been less inclined to believe he was on the verge of leaving Velaris. The closet was well-kept, clothes of all his best colors hung with care. Heavy sweaters in deep reds, light shirts made for summer. On the windowsill, the glass open ever so slightly, books were stacked somewhat haphazardly. They seemed to be borrowed, or else, he’d been recently flipping through them because a few others were set on his desk with greater care.

He hooked his fingers in a strap, dragging it up my shoulder where I hadn’t noticed it had fallen off. He kissed the thin material and pulled back, holding me by my hips at a distance.

“It’s not as I pictured it.”

“What?”

“The dress.”

I looked down, it was the one I’d bought with Mor that afternoon Lucien threatened to claim me. My neck burned with the memory. I wore it with the intention of distraction. I wanted to use his maleness to my advantage. It was too cold otherwise, but I knew his skin was warm. I’d learned that more than once.

“Mor told you?”

“I asked.”

“Why not ask me?”

“Because I wanted to know what became of your little outing after I begged Mor to get you out of this damned house.”

I dropped my hands from him. I’d believed it to be Rhysand, or Mor alone, that had interrupted us that afternoon. Her questions then made sense, if Lucien was so curious about the books I was reading then I’m sure he caught my lie once she’d told it back to him. Another ally revealed, moves from the wings, while I was distracted by my sorrow.

“You were brooding so terribly over our fight still and Egrette was occupied so I asked her to take you outside,” Lucien said. A smile began to form slightly, “I might have suggested too she buy you something that would tear away easily.”

“You’re vile.”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I didn’t care where she took you. As long as it wasn’t here.”

So he was capable of telling the truth still, at least when he wanted to.

I crossed my arms, “Doubtful.”

“I have no intention of bedding you in a house full of Illyrians.”

“But you do wish to bed me?”

He smiled, confirmation enough. He was right, not in a house of Illyrians and neither with the lies between us.

I pulled from his hands, the topic a good distraction, and walked toward the desk. He’d blushed when the moon had passed through my pajamas before. What, by this light, would my body do to him? I felt with acute precision his watching me, but still, he didn’t stop me. Not even as I got close enough to see the scattered papers on his desk, with the same script as a gift tag I found in my bed. My hand slid along the fine wood. Names, names I didn’t know, were scratched haphazardly.

I couldn’t look long enough. I didn’t want him to notice. He was smart, even distracted.

He surprised me, however, when I turned around. I expected something heavy and needy, but his mouth had formed such a careful curve, his features softened, as he leaned against the door admiring. I’d seen him happy, joyful, but never like this and it made the emotion difficult to place. The bond revealed nothing.

I would’ve teased him, but in the low light his skin looked golden and it occurred to me with greater clarity, beyond my ambition, how I’d found him. He was at ease with the world in a room that was his. His warm chest exposed, he was undressed. It was a different desire entirely, to notice him, to look. He was so beautiful, so mine. To think that I was in this bedroom, that I knew I’d lie in that bed beside him and sleep, it filled me with warmth, it made me soften back.

He yawned.

“You’re tired.”

He nodded.

“Let's sleep.”

“Just sleep?”

I smiled. I turned away. I needed more answers. If he wouldn’t tell the truth, then I would find it on my own. My eyes fell on a list of names, I didn’t have long enough to scan them all, just the first letters. I found E, the fourth name on the list began with E. I read. My stomach dropped, my heart picked up speed, but I turned still to face him again in the hopes the new voraciousness against my ribs would be mistaken for nervousness. He looked fondly. Had he always been so easy to fool?

I held my hand to him and said, “Yes.”

He approached without question.

It was easy with him there to find my composure. He kissed the top of my hand. We separated only to find our side of the bed. In unison, the sheets were pulled back, but he did not immediately join me. The last of the lights needed to be put out, and only then did I see the shadowed outline of him pull his pants off the rest away. If he’d had asked me to close my eyes I would’ve. If he’d asked me to watch I would’ve. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, as he climbed into bed I sensed again the need to keep things in something innocent and first. He did not move toward me, but he laid on his side and we faced each other, hands tucked under our heads.

“Happy solstice,” Lucien said with a faint whisper.

The gesture reminded me of childhood. The excitement for gifts, the not wanting to sleep.

“Happy solstice, Lucien.”

A breeze from the window filtered through and I tucked my shoulder away from its icy caress. Lucien’s eyes found the spot that had been struck and tentatively he reached across the bed. He hovered over the skin, the heat of his palm already kissing my shoulder without having to touch.

“Is this alright?” He asked.

I nodded.

“I went to the cabin.”

The words, though whispered, struck with strange weight. They pulled me from my thoughts abruptly. I asked, “When? Why?”

“Your weekend away. Mor brought me, but you weren’t there.”

From the darkness I expected that dreamlike look on his face, something far away, but again he surprised me. He was visibly here, with me, in that moment. In fact, his stare seemed hardened, anchored to what he’d begun to unfold. I shook my head, confirming what we both knew. I wasn’t there.

He didn’t elaborate. I pressed a steady hand across the divide and rested it against his face.

“Are you alright?”

He smiled, placed his palm against the back of my hand, and said, “Why did you sit so far away?”

“I was waiting for you.”

He opened his arms and moved forward. It was invitation enough, I shoved across the bed and he enveloped me. The night in the bathroom had been too quick, too sickly, too delirious. We entangled ourselves like there was a risk in the night some invisible hand would pull us away. Perhaps there was. We said nothing more. I took in a long breath and closed my eyes.

My mind drifted as I felt his hands splay across my back, a different kind of desperation. His heart beat slow beneath his skin. That name repeating with each pulse.

Erinyes

Dawn didn’t arrive quickly, but it came. I woke on my own. I stared at Lucien a long time, craning my neck to watch such peace sit on his face. I wanted to remember—just in case. I wanted to lean in, wanted to kiss him, but even softly I wasn’t sure if it would wake him. I couldn’t risk it. So I just stared for a long time, longer than I had time to do, and it was like a kiss but in a different way. Tonight, I’d ask my questions. We’d have our answers.

Slipping from bed involved feigning sleep. I moved the way a lover pulls away once they are through with you. It was easy, I’d seen it for myself a thousand times. He let go. Not so reluctantly either, convinced I’d be here when he woke up.

But I would not.

At his desk, I stared at the name once more to be sure I’d seen it right. He’d circled it. I’d missed that somehow. Did he know what I knew? I looked back at him, a streak of sunlight through the window cut the reigning night away. He would not like it when he woke, that I’d left without word. He would soon understand. Whatever this was, was over.

***

“You remembered!” Cassian yelled, holding up the sweater from his box. The one I’d made him years earlier snagged and left a gaping hole last winter. He’d felt so badly I tried to see if Egrette knew of any maneuver to save it but alas it had been ruined. “I’ll wear it tomorrow morning,” He smirked.

“What’s tomorrow?” Lucien asked. He’d not mentioned my slipping away. He seemed happy when he found me that morning in the library decorating with Mor. He’d even helped us hang garlands in the places we were too short to reach.

“Their childish snowball fight,” Amren said looking at a fine stone Rhysand and I had picked out for her. I knew better than to knit her anything.

“You’re welcome to join us, Lucien,” Cassian said casually, turning to face the male beside me on the couch. I didn’t expect he would, but the nature of these things was precarious. The unexpected thing, what you didn’t plan for and couldn’t know, always makes its appearance.

Lucien raised a brow at him in pure Autumn snobbery, “I’ll pass.”

“Well aren’t you precious,” Cassian drawled with a wide grin. I stilled at his words. Though I barely believed it, I hoped for a moment it was mere coincidence. That he had not heard us in Lucien’s room the night before, but when he sent me a wink it was clear he had.“Just as well, I suspect you’re tired after last night.”

“What was last night?” Mor asked with genuine innocence.

Cassian turned toward Lucien waiting, and my mate didn’t even pause, like it were a lie he had been thinking about all day, “I fell asleep in the library and Cassian found me.”

“Precious indeed,” Mor said.

Cassian’s attention waned from Lucien as he fixed on me, “You seem a bit tense.”

“Haven’t got much sleep these days.”

“So I hear,” Azriel muttered from the chair beside me. I shot him a glance, traitor. Rhysand was in conversation with Mor and Amren, his mind elsewhere but it would be foolish to pretend that he wasn’t at least half paying attention.

“It seems none of us are getting any proper sleep,” Lucien mused as casually as Cassian.

“Not me,” Cassian replied. “I’ve been sleeping perfectly well.”

“We know,” Lucien said turning toward him with a half smile. “You’ve no reason not to.”

Cassian’s jaw clenched but the thread of amusement was running through his face. The Illyrian sat back in his chair, “Next time I can’t sleep I’ll come find you.”

“I thought you didn’t wish to see?” I murmured into my drink and Cassian coughed as he took a sip of his, the contents splashing up into his face. It captured Rhysand’s attention well enough that he rolled his eyes and grabbed the last two gifts.

“These are for you two.”

I knew it was from Lucien. He was the only one left. I’d thought, maybe, the scarf had been a gift he’d given early. I’d brought it from my room and hung it carefully in the hall for when I needed to defend him, needed to reveal the kindness. But in my lap now, another gift. It was so finely wrapped I didn’t even wish to open it. I ran my fingers under the seam. Everyone’s eyes on us, and heat rose to my face. I’d never known opening a present to be so embarrassing, but tonight it felt like revealing something intimate that I wanted to be shared only between us.

The paper tore next to me. Lucien began to pull the box out, and so I too lifted the paper. We took the lids off in unison.

Mittens.

The same fine green.

Lucien held up the sweater. I’d gone back to the tailor and found out what colors suited him. It was a rich olive color, even just holding it up drew the attention of the room. His skin was warm, glowing against it. I’d had to hide the project when Lucien came home and stationed himself in my room if it were late. I’d been up most nights rushing to finish in time. I’d been half asleep most days, but it was worth it, to see his face. I thought maybe he’d find it superfluous. I’d already given him one, but I wanted to make it with clearer intention. I wanted to make it for him on purpose.

“So you’ve met Egrette,” Rhys said, and I realized how quiet we’d all gone. I huffed an awkward laugh as the room resumed its usual noise and splendor. The cover was just enough to give a reprieve, to offer a veil of privacy for which we could feel and speak freely. Lucien had the same soft smile he’d had the night before.

“I’m supposed to tell you, Egrette helped me with the cast-off.”

I laughed, “Did she help pick the color too? It’s my favorite yarn of hers.”

Lucien shook his head, “No. I saw it through the window that day you took me to get new clothes. It reminded me of the night we met.”

My brows furrowed, “In what way?”

He rested his head against the soft back of the couch, the memory just there for him. As easy to conjure as a smile. Pulled back into the past he spoke with an endearment I didn’t think he’d have reserved for that time, it contradicted everything, but I understood it nonetheless. To be at the beginning, to know how it ends, to hold those facts beside each other—it could wind you, such grief and gratitude together.

“When you arrived that night I was admiring the trees overhead. It was the Autumnal Equinox. I was sad to miss it for an eternal summer but just before you walked in I noticed the leaves were a deep green they tend to get just before they change and it made me think of home. When I looked away I saw you, talking with Mor.” His eyes looked around my face like a caress, half in memory. “That green was the color of the world the first time I saw you.”

I’d remembered wrong.

He had looked at me. I’d wanted for something that had already happened, something I’d missed. I was wrong. I doubt it would be the last time with him, but it was the first. We’d begun all wrong.

“I was afraid what my brother might do if he saw, if I looked too long.” He said absently like he knew what I’d been thinking. “So I looked at the leaves for a long time that night.”

If he saw me he’d said once of his father. Now too of his brother. Just to look at someone was a risk. The way you witnessed me, gave you power over me and for some reason you never used it, he’d said also. How brave he had to be in all those years just to let me be his witness. It’s any wonder what we might do with such bravery and power together, where we might go with it.

“There’s a note,” He said pointing to one of the mittens.

I reached for it and a finger poked through a hole. A big one at that. More than just a mistake.

“That one was on purpose.”

I laughed, “Why?”

“So I could still satisfy your hunger.”

I turned away, hiding the deep red of my cheeks at those words. It had felt like an age between that first kiss and this moment. Standing alone in the hall after dinner at the house of wind. My fingers latched to the note and withdrew it.

For what I can’t chase away.

—Me

I smiled and the joy erased all notions of private feeling. It was obvious that anyone who looked, even those who didn’t know me at all, would know the intensity of the joy I was feeling. I peered around the room. They were watching Mor as she leaned into the dramatics of a story—all but Rhysand, who was watching me. If it were another time, the time of before, I might have turned away and hid that joy from him. But Lucien, it was Lucien who had made me feel I could be brave. So when my brother’s surprise eased into deep joy and esteem, I was glad I hadn’t missed it.

***

I winnowed directly into his room this time. I landed directly next to his bed where I’d found him the night before. Midnight was closing in, the boys were headed for their rooms, their voices carrying down the hall. Mor and Amren remained in the library. It was time.

Lucien went to speak and I rushed my palm against his mouth. We were close, my knee on the bed beside him, our noses nearly touching. Rhysand and Azriel’s conversation carried far away until their doors closed. But it was Cassian who I was worried about. He walked toward his room whistling. I needed to know what he could hear. I’d anticipated he’d heard the knock on the door but not much else. When I saw him this morning he looked between Lucien and me and I knew I’d had that much correct.

The door across the hall shut and I shifted my attention back to Lucien, one eyebrow raised at me as if I were being ridiculous, as if Cassian hadn’t revealed he’d heard everything. A stroke of dumb luck that the male couldn’t keep a joke to himself. Last night was practice, tonight was the real thing. I slid into his mind.

Come to apologize for leaving me this morning?

No. It was deserved.

Really?

I narrowed my eyes at him. You’ve been lying to me Lucien.

His mouth opened against my hand and before any noise, any confirmation or denial, could be pressed into the skin of my palm I wrapped my other arm around his neck and fell backward through the universe.

It was a stumbling really, just as it had been through the wards, as it had all begun. A risk I knew, we could land flat on our faces, but after the table incident, I could better predict his instincts. So when we landed on the doorstep, Lucien’s hands shooting out to catch the brick, his other curved so tightly against my back, I smiled for having guessed correctly.

“By the Cauldron,” he swore getting his footing just barely to let me go. He glared at me before turning to see where we’d landed. I realized then he was wearing the sweater I’d made. The new one. I’d forgotten to tell him inside the collar I’d stitched the words less drab. If after all this was over I could tell him I would. He turned a few times as if he expected us to be somewhere else, the cabin maybe. I could’ve winnowed inside but I wanted him to know where we were, wanted really for him to see it. His eyes slid over the brick and looked to the right where Velaris lay in scattered excitement, the warm glow of Solstice settling behind the windows and seeping out into the world. His brows furrowed in confusion he looked toward the Sidra next to us, cutting through the lawn, curving out toward the sea. Not the cabin, not with the boys headed its way tomorrow.

So began an immediate shift, where turning back it wasn’t that he didn’t trust me, it was something else entirely. Like he needed always, to find the margins of a place to know the boundary of access, where he felt allowed to go. Starting on the outskirts where nothing was, he seemed to believe he had to earn his way in. I wish I’d seen him that first night walk into his room, to compare it now to the way he looked at me. So unsure, a bit uneasy that a door was about to slam shut and he’d no longer have access to what he’d been shown. He didn’t seem to want to get comfortable, didn’t want to let his other place in the world out of his sight lest he lose them both at the same time.

I nodded my head toward the door. The warmth, once I opened it, was immediate and I let out a sigh of relief. Things were going unnervingly to plan. Lucien and I crowded inside the small entry. Even the cold that night had been a little much for him to bear. Though I felt him close, I knew his attention was nowhere near me. He was taking in everything he could see. The ornate, albeit old, carpets trailing the short hall. Jackets hung in the open, the somehow free and yet cramped space where rooms dueled for attention across from and beside each other. As we walked further in Lucien turned to each.

“Is this a family home?” He asked running his hands up the exposed wood, the cottage itself a little more rugged. If the townhouse wasn’t High Lord-like, then this was an even further cry.

“No. It’s my home.”

Lucien’s eyes slid over to mine. I nodded ghosting a smile with his surprise. It was not extravagant, it wasn’t even big. It had a small sunroom next to the garden that looked along the Sidra and that was about as luxurious as it got. It didn’t even have a library, but there were books, plenty. Along shelves where they fit and in stacks where they didn’t. Decorated with paintings and art collected at the rainbow, candles along the windows, ticket stubs and scrap papers in frames of the court’s most extravagant mischief, a kitchen I’d cooked just once in before I went home. Lived and not lived in, proof of having been alive but not really there in those rooms.

“When my mother and father died I bought a home. I needed a project, somewhere to go, somewhere alone, and mine. No one aside from Rhys knows it exists. Took about two years to quietly move in but I don’t stay here that often.”

“Why?” Lucien said.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Once all the builders cleared out I remembered I was alone.”

We moved into the sitting room. Two couches sat opposite each other. Maybe he sensed it, that we should be apart for this, because he sat across from me even though we were alone. Or perhaps it was all manners, that's how he was. When I met his face again he had the look he always had from before Velaris, before all of it. A trace of softness still there, a touchstone to what we’d become—to what we might be. I didn’t know which way this would go, if he’d detest me, if I would detest him, but there were things to be said and we could no longer not say them.

“So,” he said, “you’ve brought me here to lay it all out then.”

I nodded, “It won’t entirely be unfair. I’ve been lying to you too. But nothing will make sense until you tell me yours first.”

He thought a moment. In the weeks leading up to this, the feeling of inevitability seemed real and present. Everything I did, every question, every moving piece had been effortless and unwavering. I’d imagined this conversation not to be simple but somewhat the same. Only as we arrived at it did I find there was a kind of impasse. We’d both need to reveal ourselves, to want the same thing. We’d need to do the things we’d only just recently learned to do. This was the very last test.

He took in a long breath, tutted his tongue like a kind of tic while he thought. He held something before him, a hypothetical, whatever he believed he’d lose by going first. He didn’t want to. Not until he turned to me. The reluctance lifted as he fixed himself upon me, his mate, sat across from him, like he was placing a bet on me too.

“Where should I begin?”

He saw the breath I let out. He didn’t join in the relief.

“The night we arrived when it was revealed that my emotions were running down the bond you said you’d lower your shields too. But you didn’t, not really. Why?”

I don’t know when I began to suspect it. I hadn’t wanted to believe it. But the moment his emotions were building in Rhysand’s office to which the only tell was the slight opening of his mouth I began to wonder. He’d given himself away in the bathroom. Gawayn’s name had struck deep in his chest the morning of our walk after I’d mentioned him. Only for him later, after our affections deepened, on the tale end of a lie, to hear his name and feel almost nothing. That primal thing seemingly vanished.

“Do you know what your emotions feel like?” He said blinking slow. “They’re like notes, like music. Your feelings hum really, and they build into chords. I can tell when you’ve made sense of something because I can feel the harmony in my ribs. My emotions, they’re not like that.”

“I didn’t know what my emotions were like. How could you know yours?”

“I’ve watched you. In Rhysand’s office, I saw them wipe your thoughts clean away, like a wave. Or that night in the foyer, you winced. Moments where I wasn’t or couldn’t withhold from you the intensity of my feeling. Your words, they’re very important to you. I would hate to be the cause of your silence, even accidentally,” he said plainly. “But you can correct me if I’m wrong.”

“You could’ve let me try,” I said, by way of confirmation. His emotions often built rapidly, striking with full force, indeed like a wave. “I’m not so weak you know, I would’ve figured it out.”

His eyes became swallowed with pain. “I know,” he said.

“I’d assumed you were unhappy, that this place was not agreeable to you. Or worse, at times I thought you felt nothing.”

“No. No, it was the opposite,” He said. “I didn’t mean to shield entirely. I only wished to diminish everything enough for you to think.”

That mutual vulnerability I believed us to have was a lie. Perhaps the most devastating realization, that it was all on the line for me, from the beginning. How much joy had I missed, intense complex and beautiful joy, for what he’d seen those first weeks? It was something I could never get back. My brows furrowed.

“But your end of the bond has been quiet since the beginning, before you saw what your emotions could do. I didn’t feel you fully until after our night in the bathroom.”

He huffed a laugh. It wasn’t malicious, in fact, I think he was almost impressed. A testing of our limitations, of my noticing continuity. There were things he didn’t want to say, things perhaps he wouldn’t offer up unless asked directly. I frowned.

“You seemed unsure of how things had changed between us that first night. After you asked me to hold your hand I hesitated because I was very sure of what had changed but I couldn’t tell if you desired it or not.”

“What was it then?”

“I wanted to stay,” he admitted, shoulders slumping. “I thought perhaps it was just Velaris, being rid of my father and brothers, but then Mor found me in your room, told me to leave, and I realized I actually just wanted to stay with you. But I didn’t know what was to come of me, Rhys didn’t want me there, you’d given no indication you were to have them claim me. I thought, eventually, I’d have to go. And for the first time, I had no desire to.” He said, breathless eyes focused, here with me. “But I couldn’t bear it if you knew my desire, so I diluted everything to you.”

“How?”

“It’s like setting a ward really.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want the bond to be laborious to you, for my emotions to weigh in your decision. If you decided to ask me to stay I needed to know it was what you wanted, not an obligation you felt bound to.”

“You believe me so easily persuaded?”

The corners of his mouth creased but if it were a smile or a frown I wasn’t at all sure. “You said once you acted as you did because I’m Lucien, well my reasoning is just the same. You’re you, you’re good and you want to do good. You are singularly motivated to ease suffering. You wanted to marry Eris to save my home, stepped between your brother to save me, even the hobbies you choose benefit other people. That Night Court business didn’t fool me. I’ve known for a while that though you are cunning, you are never cruel.”

“I’d let anyone stay if they wanted to, if they needed to.”

“Then you understand why I felt the need to hide from you,” He said. When I didn’t answer he shook his head, “You’re so good you don’t even notice it, not as I do. It’s simple, really, I wanted you to pick me. I needed you to do it not because you’re kind or for the same compulsion with which you act toward everyone, but because you wanted me there.”

“It isn’t for everyone.”

Lucien didn’t even reply, he just gave me a look and I conceded.

“So you made me tell you I wanted to see you, you asked me to ask after you.”

“Yes. For you to reveal yourself to me a desire, a feeling, anything about me really, it would have to be something you really wanted. I believed though you’d do it and once you told me that you held your own hand at night and I began to see the weight of my being here, the threads which pulled at your feelings, I was less afraid,” he said. His eyes which had settled on my two clasped hands lifted to look at me, unsure. “But…”

“But what.”

He sucked in a sharp breath, “The morning after we had dinner at the house of wind I had to test you, just one last time.”

“Why, was it something I said? Did I do something to make you feel I didn’t want you?”

“No.”

In a way I had hoped it had been me who misbehaved. I didn’t want the alternative to be true, a remaining loose end with which I had not inquired further when I should’ve. That I had not been there to do anything was worse than being the very reason he’d felt the need to test my feelings again at all. At least then it would be another misunderstanding. At least if it were me it was something I hadn’t even meant to do in the first place.

“What did my brother say to you that morning at dawn?”

“That he’d been in your mind,” He said curtly.

“Lucien.”

He sighed, “That he’d been in your mind and there was something old there, a pattern of thought he recognized from years ago that had made a return. You’d been distracted, talking to other people, thinking about the court, but there was an underlying sense of powerlessness. But that was not how I knew you, not as I had ever known you, I was sure that he was wrong. So I waited for you to come get me, for you to assert yourself after our conversation as you always have, but the longer I waited the more convinced I became that there was some truth to it. So in the foyer after breakfast I baited you.”

And you wouldn’t let yourself be so powerless, would you?

“When you told me to tell Rhysand that you could make your own decisions, what did you mean?”

Lucien sat back, waving a hand, “Rhys had tried to tell me things you liked, how I should go about talking to you, where in the city I should have you take me. He wanted me to act and do things in a specific way which, I’m sure, was well-meaning, but I knew how I wanted to court you.”

Court me

I sat up. My whole body heated, culminating in a sheen of sweat on my back. In the weeks that had passed had that been his motive? The walks, the going to Egrette’s, the lips pressed against the skin of my hand. How plainly he said it, that he wanted me, that he wanted me the way that he did. Even as it replayed in my mind it was hard to imagine him saying it, having really said it.

He smiled, his voice soft, “You’re surprised.”

“I just. I didn’t think—”

“Probably because I didn’t get to do what I had wanted, what I had planned after I left your room the night before. You’d know if I was romancing you I would hope.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” I murmured and he laughed.

“No, think better of me, of my efforts at least.”

I laughed then and the breaking of the tension relieved something in the room, added a little knowledge to what had seemed unknown to me before. Looking at Lucien I got the same sense that he got when he’d looked at me, it made me decide that, yes, I would tell him everything. It all seemed inevitable once more.

“What happened then, that you couldn’t do what you wished?”

Lucien grew serious again, “Rhys said the feeling was old, but that it had returned. He believed I was responsible for it. Whether it was my distance from you or something that happened in the woods, he didn’t know. By the time you’d found me I was so annoyed that he’d been right about the first thing, I had to collect myself when it occurred to me there may be some truth in the other too—that it was I who had caused it.”

“It isn’t so simple, the origin of that feeling.”

“I know,” Lucien said. “After you told me of Gawayn and your brother I suspected that it was, indeed a very old feeling.”

Curious really, the more I thought about it. I have a terrible feeling I’m to blame in part for whatever’s going on between you two. One had to wonder if Rhys had not heard Lucien sling his insults, call me powerless, and felt the guilt of a century renewed. To have, at last, overstepped so overtly, so foolishly, that he’d realized too late what had so constantly happened.

“Due to the nature of our relationship before, I never told you really, how impressive you actually are. The way you use your words, the attention you pay to things, the balance you manage in the private and public duties is something to admire. Even my father knew it and respected your ability in whatever way he is capable of.”

“My words are a shield more than a weapon. I’m not often brave enough to hold real power, to let anyone really know me.”

“You’ve always been braver than me.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s true enough,” Lucien said staring at me for a moment, thinking. His eyes narrowed, “The problem isn’t that you have no power, it's that we see what real power is very differently. Power to you has a ceiling that cannot be surpassed and as such fluctuates, moving in and out of hands but there will always be only the amount that you began with. Knowing the stakes, controlling them and what was revealed, seemed by your logic to nullify anything your opponent had,” He said sitting up, resting his elbows on his knees.

“And what do you believe?” I asked.

“Real power has no finite amount. That, actually, there is more to gain when we meet someone else's power with our own. Then whatever leverage there was becomes obsolete. You use your position this way all the time.”

My brows furrowed, “When?”

“The night we got here when you called me handsome, revealing your thoughts to me, it opened something new to us both where we no longer needed the upper hand. Or with Cassian, as Madja stitched you up, when you asked him to try you were revealing a fondness that created a door for the court to meet you where you were. It’s why at breakfast I became more agreeable. You looked at me. I’d have never looked at you. If it had been me reading and you wanting my attention, before coming to Velaris I’d have never given in. That was better though, for your power to call to my own. It showed me what life could be if we came at things, bad moods and feelings, together. So, yes, you’re very powerful because you invite people into your power. You know how to play your cards even when you keep them close.”

I attempted to swallow the dryness in my mouth to no remedy. I understood and perhaps had known this definition before tonight, since that moment after our kiss, where it seemed something between us had met and suddenly we were together in ways I could not ignore. A meeting of power, a touching where I had never once been touched. I understood him, yes.

“After we spoke in the den I realized your brother was right in a way. It was me. My coming here obliterated our dynamic. Suddenly there was more power in play than ever. There was no way you could know how it had been divided between us at any time. For you to find me at all and say what you said, I imagined it had been hard, terrifying even. So after we almost kissed, after the lights went out, I wanted you to see yourself as I did and that became the motivation of everything.”

A serene silence came about the room. The both of us slumped against the back of the couches, the Sidra quiet behind windows I knew were thin enough for it to be heard. As if everyone was listening, the world holding its breath, the walls standing taller, waiting—all of it waiting for the moment we didn’t wish to address. I licked my lips and swallowed again with nothing to swallow.

“So why then, did you use those words against me in the foyer?”

Lucien rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand, blinking a few times. I could almost imagine him as a child, could see him young and laughing, full of life. He seemed to recede just a moment to a boy in trouble and afraid of what would happen. It tore me in two. I wanted to tear the whole world in two.

“I waited on you to ask for me for another reason which I haven’t said.”

“Lucien—”

“I must say this, it explains everything,” he began. “My father married my mother when she was very young. She had little say in the arrangement, in what she could become. I lived within the consequences of what she was not given and it made me determined, at all costs, to avoid becoming anything like my father. I was content to remain alone if I had to. I was the seventh son there was no urgency or attention placed on my duty. But even the last son must produce strong heirs.”

That look of disgust when the bond snapped, it had never been for me. Mates, they are not always gifts. Yet sacred they are. I did not often like to think of it, how young my mother was when she was mated. All that life she hadn’t lived. What her life became.

“Our fates became intertwined that evening in Day Court.”

“So you proposed we tell no one,” I said.

“Then you got your freedom as you wanted and I would never be the male who trapped an unwilling female. It was a convenience that our motives aligned, but I never deluded myself into seeing my decision as a noble choice. I acted entirely in my own self-interest and I went about my life enjoying it in silent rejection of the bond. I smothered all feeling, all possibility of feeling, until two months ago when my father cut into you. The first thing I felt from that tether after 50 years was unimaginable despair.”

I’d already told him what had hurt so badly, that he was there and Eris, that these males I believed could be better had, for a moment, appeared precisely the same as everyone else. To reiterate for him the origin of the despair would change nothing. It was the first thing he felt that was mine from what between us he believed to be a wretched link, proof that he could not outrun his long-feared fate.

“That is how you saw me then. I stood for everything you resented,” I said quietly.

“You are not the bond,” He said with cool control.

“You cannot sever the two. They are interwoven, it exists because I exist, it feels what I feel.”

Lucien shook his head. I gripped the cushions of the couch tight in my fist, his eyes drawn to the small movement in the otherwise still world. When he looked back at me there was nothing but pain and pity in his eyes. It turned my stomach, it helped nothing.

I said, “I don’t understand.”

Lucien’s eyes softened, “I wish that it was different, that it was more romantic, but it isn’t. I liked the life we had together, which was a life apart but unlike the bond, I could not rid myself of you. That, to me, is the difference. After I shielded, things reverted back to what they had always been. You still had what you had always had which I remain inexplicably compelled and annoyed by. You were still witty and charming and smart and irritating and when I’d see you at court I was glad as I’d always been to have someone to play the game. What happened in Day Court was confirmation of something I’d always known to be true, that you and I were equals, intellectually and emotionally, but that was it.”

I squeezed my hands once more into the cushion. This time he didn’t look but I knew he was aware of it. He retreated ever so slightly, and for a moment I wanted to stand, cross the room, take him very carefully into my arms, and forgive him for everything. But it was not time for such things.

“I meant it on the terrace, I knew how I wanted things to be different,” he explained. “After dinner at the house of wind, I wanted to feel everything. You’d laughed for the first time, really laughed. Not the polite one you use at court and I felt it between my ribs. Those building notes of your joy…You misunderstood me, when you asked me how I wanted things to change. When I said ‘you’d laugh’ that wasn’t me worried that you’d laugh at me, I was asking you to.” He shifted uncomfortably, “That was what I wanted to be different, I wanted no more illusions. I began to understand something that I’d never understood, how precious it all was and I swore never again to waste it—to resent that inherent beauty and intimacy.”

I swallowed, “But I made you resent it again, in the foyer, didn’t I. When I shielded?”

Lucien’s jaw flexed. “You made me feel like I was my father.”

He could’ve said anything else—anything, and it would have been a more gentle demolition. It swept through me with a clean break. On one side a perfected before and on the other a new moment in which I had learned something I would forever have to know. That despite all intentions and lines drawn when we were two mates with no desire between us, I had done what I had sworn I would never do. No one in the whole of Prythian was unaware of the animosity between the High Lord of Autumn Court and his youngest son. It was not news to me that his motivations stemmed in part from his terrible father. His words tightened on my throat like a carefully pulled noose. I could not undo what I’d made him believe and what in consequence resulted after, all that suffering.

Speechless still, Lucien continued quietly, “Mor reminded me, of the world you inhabit. She referred to your ‘private definitions,’ but you must understand something, when you said burden it devastated me, it was everything I had been trying not to be.”

My cheeks heated and I pressed my palm against my forehead, rubbing at it. Lucien’s gaze burned into me with such intensity that my palms began to sweat.

“It wasn’t what I meant,” I said looking up at him. “Burden, I meant something else.”

Lucien huffed a laugh with great effort, “You couldn’t have picked a more loaded word.”

“The one I wanted was even worse, but I was scared.”

His throat bobbed, swallowing the question I knew he wanted to ask. I would tell him the other word, but he was not finished yet. So I asked mine, “She found you that night and she taught you how to make the drop.”

He nodded along in confirmation, “A few things happened before that, however.”

“What things?”

“She agreed to help me. I told her with much embarrassment what I’d originally planned to win you over and we conspired to get the court away from you so I might try again. I had already been going to Egrette’s classes and I had a small disadvantage in that I didn’t know anything of the city, so I used the time away from you to know it. Sometimes I spent all day with Egrette, listening to her talk about you, other times I went with Mor in search of places I thought you might like, tea shops I could take you, bookstores.”

“Sometimes you were with Cassian,” I said.

“I wanted to find an apartment. It was important to me that I have something to give you. I wanted to be ready, I wanted you to have as much privacy as possible and control over the pace of our relationship and if you ever desired to consummate it then we had somewhere to go.”

I raised a brow and turned my head to the side to reveal the very obvious bite at my neck which had still not entirely healed. Every conversation I’d begun since it happened started with eyes drawn to the curve of my neck. Even Rhys who dared mention nothing had finally acknowledged it that evening in his office.

“You really do believe I’m such a brute,” Lucien smiled a little, still smug about it, but he took on a more endearing quality. “Once we realized you were not, in fact, bluffing about going to the Illyrian village we met and made a plan. I asked Mor to take me to the cabin once Cassian left but we know how that worked out.” He shot me a glance, “This was also the night I made the plan for her to walk in on us fighting, under the guise of getting you out of the house and I asked too that she orchestrate Rhysand and Cassian so that we could be interrupted, so that all three of them would hear the threat I made against your neck. I didn’t want it to appear as anything more than a ploy to annoy you. Then if, with the time we had alone, something happened, our scents had already mixed. No one would know unless you told them.”

The clock in the hall began to chime. 12 bells rung out into the silent house before it even occurred to me that I might have something to say, that there was something to be said to the male who’d done everything, had thought of everything.

Lucien sighed, “I’m not so territorial over you, and I know that it hasn’t always been so obvious, but you have me and have had me so all that was left to give you was the moment. I wanted to give you what you were denied the first time, I wanted it all to belong to you entirely. That's why I went to the cabin it's why I bit you it's why I’ve been lying.”

I cleared my throat, and despite how badly I wanted to I did not look away from the intensity of his stare as he admitted his feelings. It was not a mercy to anyone, no. I was being cruel.

“There's one more thing you need to tell me.”

Whatever he thought I’d say or do, that was not it. His whole being deflated. But we could do this no other way, it had to go as planned, as it had been. I could spare nothing, not even his feelings.

“What's that?” He asked.

“Why did you have Mor teach you to make the drop?”

Lucien sat back, his voice flat and uncaring, “In the woods when you overpowered me despite your injuries it felt as if something were going on that I didn’t know about. I suspected that you were reading about Gods because you believed something happened too so I went to the library to see if I could find anything. After our night drinking, when you told us you’d made a bargain, I narrowed my search some and started going more frequently.”

My eyes fell to the small table. A fern was laid across it—green and full of life, of new beginnings. There was no water. It had sat there two weeks, still alive.

It was my turn now, to emerge from the wings.

I brought him to the kitchen and he waited by the counter. Dejected and yet curious all the same he stood before me with certain sternness. His even breaths were in contradiction to the waves of emotion that passed off him. He pushed his sleeves up, the kitchen warmer than the sitting room from use. I bent before the oven, its low fire just enough for the occasion, and from the dull heat, I pulled out braided bread.

“One other person has a key to my house,” I explained as the bread slid into the light of the counter. “Egrette. She lives next door. I knew you were lying when you said you spent the weekend with her because she’d spent the weekend here, with me, helping clean the house so I could bring you and teaching me to make this.”

They made it in the Autumn Court on the equinox. Vegetables inlaid swirling toward one another, an image of an Autumn harvest. I’d been betting on Lucien, that it would all go as it should. Believing the worst of him was a habit I no longer had. If he was lying to me then I believed he had good reason. I just didn’t know how good it was.

“I’ve been waiting, really, for everything to be done, for the circumstances to be right so that we could have time alone. That's why I left this morning so early, I had to prepare the bread. I asked Egrette to warm it in the oven for you.”

Lucien straightened at those last words. I could hear his heart, pounding furiously, as if in echo. For you for you for you for you.

“Yes I suspected that my bargain in the woods was legitimate but unlike my court’s magic, there was no marking on me. I’d been reading to try and figure out who was there with us but once you gave me the scarf I felt more urgency. My own, yes, but there was also a thread being pulled but from a different direction, toward the house, like the Mother wanted me to come here. But I didn’t want to mate you without knowing the precise terms so I went to Helion who offered me his resources. Though I found nothing, when I got back to Velaris that night, our…audience made an appearance.”

“Erinyes.”

I nodded, “Just one, not all three.”

“Which?”

“Tisiphone,” the avenger. “She and I spoke for a long time, about that night, about what I’d done. The Gods, they do not mark bargains the way we do. Ours once they are finished disappear. We are no longer bound by their terms and circumstances. The oath I made in the woods, to protect you, it is a different standard,” I swallowed, “I am bound forever to the promise I made. Not just in this life, but the ones that follow too.”

Lucien stared blankly. I’m sure when I learned I’d looked the same. The counter between us became a chasm. I don’t know what I thought he would reveal, but I wanted something from him, anything. I did not wish to be cruel with my silence, with the direction I took or didn’t take the conversation, but he had a freedom I did not have and I don’t know if he was aware he wasn’t using it. I wanted him to, before this. Before the hardest part of all. I wanted what could be our last words to be different. I steeled myself, I refused to reveal the pain of it, the fear. He must again choose me on his own.

“She met with me to tell me the terms, but specifically this last one. The nature of fae mating, it is a union of souls. If you eat, if you accept, it will result in you inheriting the same oath over me. You will protect me and I will protect you, we will forever be each other's keepers. We can never move fatally against each other. Our purpose will always be divided: The thing we were born that life to do, and then this, the oath I made.” I let out a breath, paused, and with conviction said it at last. “If you mate me I will always be your burden and you will always be mine.”

It was cruel really, as the Gods can be, that his fate was reduced eternally to be the thing he feared most. That he had to choose between having and not having. The weight with which we existed now would rest somewhere beyond this kitchen, in rooms I wouldn’t know as myself, where Lucien was not Lucien. He did not have to be bound because I was, however. I refused to cage him as he had not caged me.

“How can you be sure that this is true? That it was not a dream?”

I turned toward the living room, from the kitchen, the table could be seen. “She was holding that fern stem when I arrived. I watched her watch me sleep and she placed it on my chest. I woke to it, brought it downstairs, and it's been sitting there ever since.”

His eyes wandered from the living room over to the bread, then back to me, but he himself didn’t move. From the sunroom, a fine mist had gathered on the windows. Too early to be dew, but it seemed the outside world with which we’d been trying to hold back from us had at last ducked behind the curtain to give us privacy. No one was listening for his answer but me. His chest rose and fell with the breath that he took instead of giving me one.

“I know this changes things,” I said eventually, when the silence stretched too long. “I won’t hold you to what you said or felt before this was revealed. But the food, it’s there, and the offer will always be there if you should change your mind.”

“It’s not that.”

“What is it then?”

“My resentment toward the bond, I don’t understand how you feel.”

I clapped my hands together to brush away some crumbs. They fell at the counter and seemed loud by comparison to the silence that had come in and out between us.

“It's a nice idea, that the time before this was more agreeable to what we’ve come to realize, but it isn’t true and I don’t want that life anyway. I want this one where you are you and I am me. It’s been a long time since that dinner and I have no desire to let any more time pass us by. I want to end it, this thing we’re doing or not doing, for good. I need no romance and no convincing. I know you and have known you all this time.” I smiled, small, with all the hope I had left, “You said it once, knowledge like ours is a burden and that to know someone risks love, to me that night they became interchangeable. I didn’t mean burden. The word I was afraid to say was love.”

That careful rise on his chest ceased. I had been meaning to tell him.

I shrugged, “So, you didn’t like the bond, well luckily for me I never desired your good opinion.” The words struck a familiar tune and I allowed myself a bigger hope, a different smile—the kind that broke the tension just as his laugh had before. An invitation, something that couldn’t be misunderstood. He’d known such looks since we’d met. “Besides, I can’t break my oaths now. I think it’s only fair that I see through my prayer to the Cauldron. If we have children they should have a chance at being more intelligent than us and the libraries here are very fine.”

His eyes didn’t leave mine, mouth slightly agape, bond silent, still shielded. I could see our life together so clearly it made my mouth water. The sudden weight of a mate more palpable than ever, the food before him waiting. In the pause before the decision was made, I was given one last moment to feel what it would mean if he ate. And it would be okay if he decided against it, but it would be nice if he did too. I’d begun to believe in such things, that I could be happy, that life would give you what you wanted. And what I wanted was Lucien, entirely and wholly. So eat, I thought, and let’s be done with this. The time we took, it was good, but let’s be rid of what fear and secrets keep us here.

Lucien’s eyes which had remained fixed on the bread rose to my own. His breathing returned just before he gave his answer.

“You’re my burden.”

At last, he understood everything.

Then Lucien stepped forward, cut the bread, and placed a single bite in his mouth.

I saw it, the change. Familiar and unforgettable, the joy he’d had that night in the library after he bit me. The kind that had pulled laughter from his chest, truer and more pure than anything I’d ever heard, ever held. His mouth moving with a sensual slowness. Swallowing the present so it became forever. He stepped out from behind the counter between us, my body trailing his, turning like the shadow of a sundial.

I do not know who lunged first, but suddenly the distance between us was not so large, the heat of two bodies too real, and the taut string of need that had been pulling us closer for a lifetime snapped and he had me in his arms. Where once there had been absence, there was everything.

He walked aimlessly hands sliding the hem of my dress down my thighs. The bedroom upstairs, the world beyond his immediate body seemingly vanished. He did not ask and I did not tell him where to go. To do so would be too much space between us. Landing only as far as the sunroom he dropped to his knees. We were careless, yes, but with a sudden clarity of intention, he laid me against the ground with all the tenderness in the world. It was the only reason I could imagine the parting of our mouths.

He lowered his face, nudging along my waist, kissing me through the thin fabric, I wanted it to be easy, if he accepted, I wanted to feel him immediately even with clothes. His nose found my hips, the heat of his mouth pooled beneath the seam of the dress. His fingers found either side and pulled, tearing the stitching in two, exposing the skin beneath for his mouth to reach. He rose and met the place between my breasts with a moan, his voice deeper than I’d ever heard it, weighed and so needy it rattled between my ribs.

The firmness of his kiss contradicted the laze of his tongue as it swirled along the slope of my breast. I arched into him, the whole world warmer.

I couldn’t have had him any sooner, but I couldn’t fathom it, how long I’d been without. I’d become so hallow with need I no longer knew how to be just one person. My hands fumbled with the buttons of his clothes, and the clumsiness of our bodies, hip bones sliding along hip bones, the rough feel of his thigh, he turning and I following.

If we could get closer I’d do it.

If he could devour me then I’d devour him.

I could no longer wait. There had never been so little between us. The veil had been lifted, there was no margin, just a layer of want beyond measure.

His fingers splayed between my shoulder blades as his hips shifted. I felt him just there. His nose against mine, he paused and stared at me, questioning, like I could ever go back.

I nodded.

Our mouths open, pressed together, first pressure, then 200 years of relief.

#lucien vanserra #lucien x reader #acotar x reader #acotar fanfiction #acotar #lucien acotar #lucien fanfic #night court #high lord rhysand #rhysand!sister #25K later #okay its not going to be fade to black I swear just the moment seemed to me good as it was and I don't know how to write smut very well yet #I didn't wanna ruin it #a court of thorns and roses

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