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Lucien Vanserra is dead.
They say he stumbled north, drenched in his lover’s blood and mad with grief. They say it was suicide, technically: no one would approach the Night Court alone and unprotected like that if they didn’t want to die. They say his brothers’ murderous pursuit turned to a search for a corpse but they never found the body, that the beasts must have eaten him whole.
They do not say that Lucien collapsed, ragged and half-delirious ten miles from the border, a name, a summoning , in his mouth, and that the forest trembled with the beat of answering wings.
***
“You’re dead.”
Lucien slowly blinks awake. The motion hurts his eyes. His entire being feels like a scar torn open, ragged and raw and pulsing, and as he shifts he feels the pull of bandages.
“Congratulations.” Rhysand sits across from him in the sunlit room, stirring what looks to be tea, his feet propped up. “Or should I say, you’re welcome.”
“What?” It comes out as a croak, Lucien’s throat like sand.
“I had my spymaster encourage the rumors,” Rhys says with a shrug, conversing as though Lucien is not being crushed under the wreckage of his entire life. “I probably should have planted a lock of your hair at the mouth of some Wyvern’s cave to really eliminate any doubt, but I admit seeing you half-conscious and covered in old blood didn’t put me in a terribly strategic mindset.”
Lucien is comprehending roughly every other word, squinting helplessly at his surroundings. “Where…”
Rhys mercifully does not make him articulate a full sentence. “My house. Well, one of them. My court, like my personality, is not as dark and dreadful as I make it out to be.” Lucien can barely keep up, much less formulate a response to this. Rhys goes on. “You’ve been in and out for four days. The healer said you likely hadn’t eaten or rested for almost a week when you fainted at my feet; she did what she could for that and your other various injuries.”
Rhys brings his teacup to his mouth and sips. There are bags beneath his eyes. If Lucien’s been in bed for four days, how many of those days has Rhys been here, with him?
All at once Lucien’s mind is fully awake, memories slamming back to him with the force of a kick to the chest. He has a dozen things to say— thank you, what happened to my brothers, why are you doing this for me, does my mother know , but the only thing that comes out is the only one that matters.
“She’s dead.”
Even to Lucien’s ears, it sounds broken. Numb. He feels outside of his own body, not in control of his own speech. Rhys sets his teacup down on its saucer with a porcelain clack.
“Jes. She’s dead,” Lucien repeats.
Rhys’ brows draw together. “I know. I’m so sorry.”
Something in Lucien’s chest cracks, the force thunderous, like a mountain breaking apart, and a low, unearthly wail crawls from it. Tears blur Lucien’s vision and the sound fractures into a sob because she’s gone, she’s dead, he watched her die, he watched Beron kill her and didn’t stop it, wasn’t strong enough to stop it—
At some point he registers that Rhys is gone, leaving him to sink into his despair.
***
Lucien truly does not know how much time passes in that room, in a haze of pain and fitful sleep. Food is left for him by unseen servants; sometimes he can bring himself to eat, sometimes not. He tries not to see himself in the mirror, not wanting to meet the eyes of the haggard, greasy-haired spectre there. His mind is a whirlpool of hateful blame: for himself, for his family, for the culture that fostered their evil. Some hours he wants to die, thinks he should have let his brothers catch him, and some hours he wants to stay alive with a passionate fury, plots feverish retributions and revolutions, future plans grand and impossible and mad and always crumbling the moment Lucien remembers her blood spurting from her neck.
He hopes someone buried her.
***
Even for immortals, nothing lasts forever. Not even the endless swirling abyss of grief.
The day does come where Lucien hauls himself from the bed and into the oversized bathtub, mind having exhausted itself to the point, finally, of blankness. The bathwater is a little cold. He doesn’t care enough to heat it.
A knock sounds at the bathroom door. Lucien doesn’t respond but Rhys lets himself in anyway; maybe the invisible servants told him Lucien’s finally gotten out of bed.
If it’s weird for them to talk while Lucien is in the bath, neither of them make any effort to care. Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time—Lucien could hardly have picked someone with who he has less interpersonal boundaries to take shelter with. Rhys leans casually against the bathroom wall and for once in his life, does not speak.
A protracted silence grows between them. Lucien is the one to break it.
“Now what.”
Rhys shrugs. “Whatever you like. Dead men don’t have any obligations.”
Lucien still can’t muster any emotion, but he can lift his eyes to Rhys’ face. The Night Court may not be a pit of nightmares, its High Lord no sadistic dictator, but there must still be a catch. Lucien’s no fool. There is always a catch.
“That said.” Rhys puts his hands in his pockets. “I do have a job opening for someone with political experience, if you’re interested.”
Lucien leans back in the bathtub. “And what’s that?”
“I need an internal ambassador to communicate between the different Night Court city-states. They largely have my blessing to self-govern, which makes my job both very easy and very hard; the laws are becoming too fragmented, the governors consolidating too much power. I need someone who can balance charm and force to politely remind them that they still belong to a larger court.” Rhys inclines his head for emphasis. “ My court.”
Lucien drags a hand through the water, watching it lap against his skin. “That sounds like something you could do yourself.”
“I’m a High Lord now,” Rhys says arily. “I don’t do things, I make other people do things.”
A Lucien of mere weeks ago would have answered with something witty, but this Lucien doesn’t respond, just stares into the bathwater. He supposes he could hardly expect anything else— Rhys is not evil, but he is practical to the point of ruthlessness, making sure every asset at his disposal is working in his favor. And in throwing himself at Rhys’ mercy, Lucien has made himself an asset.
He wonders if it would be any different, if he’d gone to Tamlin, instead. Perhaps he should have. But Rhys had won his trust, all those years ago, however much he frustrated Lucien, and his was the name to come to Lucien when his only thought was sanctuary .
“I don’t know the court,” Lucien says.
“Of course not. I’ll teach you everything you need to know, make introductions to the right people.” Rhys’ gaze appraises him. “Cauldrons knows I won’t be sending you out any time soon, unless there’s someone I want cried on.”
Again, Lucien can’t summon a response.
Concern flickers across Rhys’ face, but it’s fleeting. He pushes himself upright from the wall, heads for the door. “Consider it. In the meantime, if you need anything, ask the servants.”
Lucien expects to hear the door close, but Rhys lingers.
“Something else?” Lucien asks.
Rhys’s hand rests on the brass handle. “I’d like you to meet my friends tomorrow night, if you’re feeling up for it.”
The way he says it is odd, heavy. Lucien does not know what it means, but clearly Rhys is offering him something important.
“I didn’t think you had friends.” He says finally.
A lopsided smile cracks Rhys’ face.
I missed you, you know , he says, and it takes Lucien a moment to realize Rhys spoke directly into his mind rather than aloud, the door closing behind him.
***
Rhys has exactly four friends, as it turns out, and they’re a strange group. Lucien does not know what to make of the way they tease and taunt each other, asking Lucien questions that avoid any reference to his family or… her, politely pretending Lucien is not conversationally near-comatose at the dinner table.
The blonde left early on account of some business or other, and the Illyrians followed shortly. Lucien got the impression Amren wasn’t terribly enthralled by his presence, and so excused himself thereafter.
But, embarrassingly, he can’t find his way back to his room.
Rhys had led them here originally, through the labyrinthine marble halls of this place, past eight hundred balconies overlooking the mountains, and so Lucien finds himself wandering aimlessly, marking progress by the spare potted plants he passes.
He freezes at a faint voice down the hall.
“Not…….. went well, I……”
It’s Rhys’ voice: Lucien has made it full circle. It’s almost a relief; at least now Lucien can ask Rhys to take him back to his room. He walks towards the dining room, opening his mouth to call out, but some instinct stops him. He peers into the cracked open door.
The sun is going down, throwing a long orange light and dark shadows across the table. Rhys’ back is to him, but he can just make out Amren in profile, swirling her glass.
“I don’t know whether to chide you for thinking with your dick, or for bringing another stray dog home. Somehow this is both.”
“More of a fox than a dog,” Rhys says quietly.
“That’s worse. You can’t tame a fox.” Amren sips her drink. Lucien doesn’t know what’s in the iron goblet; he has a sneaking suspicion it’s not wine but was too afraid to ask at dinner.
“He’s a talented politician,” Rhys insists, “Or at least he could be. He has a temper, but he’s smart and capable and—”
“You’re High Lord now, boy.” Amren cuts him off coldly. “Don’t justify yourself. If you want to take in refugees, you don’t need my approval to do it.”
“No, but I’d like it.”
There is a shade of vulnerability in it— Lucien can count on one hand the number of times he heard that from Rhys, in their years of secret meetings. It’s almost shocking to hear it now; to realize that for all Rhys’ bluster when they were princes together, he’s been High Lord of the Night court for less than a decade, and he’s still unsure.
“You like him ,” Amren corrects, and Lucien’s chest tightens.
Rhys heaves a long, labored sigh. “His fiancé was murdered a matter of weeks ago, his hellspawn family tried to kill him too, and he came to me for help. What do you want from me, Amren?”
She stands. “I want you to stop acting like a spoiled little prince and start acting like a High Lord.” Before Rhys makes to respond, she strides from the table, goblet abandoned. “In the future, if you want my advice, ask for my advice. Not my validation for a decision you’ve clearly already made.”
She leaves Lucien’s limited vision of the room, but he hears a door slam shut on the other side.
There’s the creak of Rhys leaning back in his chair, and Lucien waits half a minute before clearing his throat.
Rhys swivels to look at him.
“I, um, can’t find my room,” Lucien says lamely.
Rhys blinks at him for a moment, clearly troubled. “Oh, yes, of course.” He gestures, "Down that hall, turn right, third door on the left. You’ll see it.”
Lucien half wants to do the opposite, wants to go sit with Rhys and—he doesn’t know, brood together, perhaps, but he just nods. “Right. Thanks.”
“And— thank you for coming tonight,” Rhys adds softly.
Lucien does not care to decipher why it even matters. “Of course,” he just says instead, awkwardly, before backing away from the door.
But he doesn’t make it through all the instructions before being intercepted. The blonde woman— Morrigan, he reminds himself— is back, and loitering outside his room.
“Lucien,” she says, brightening when she sees him, her voice clear as a bell. It exhausts Lucien just to hear. “I was hoping to chat with you a little more. Do you have time for a walk?”
Lucien doesn’t particularly want to talk to her, but in the moment it would require more effort to be rude than to merely acquiesce. “Where to?”
“I thought I’d show you around the city a bit,” She slips her arm through his like an old friend and leads them, her stride confident. “If you don’t have a strong objection to stairs, that is.”
“Not at all.” It’s a rote response, no feeling behind it.
“Good.” Mor gives him a winning smile as they round a corner into the main foyer. “I’m sure you’ll love Velaris. Our relative separation from the rest of Prythian has allowed us to foster cultural liberties frowned upon elsewhere, in addition to our economy.” she pauses to flick her wrist, and the massive double front doors of the House open noiselessly. “Of course, I’ve only been in charge since Rhys took over, so we’re still solidifying our plans for the future. But we’re quite pleased with the progress so far.”
Beneath a sharp drop in the mountain lies a clear view of the city below, coming alive in the twilight, sloping roofs and winding stone streets bound together like a sparkling heart of the Night Court itself. Mor’s face glows with almost a hunger as they survey it.
His impression of Mor is of diamond-like charm, sparkling and lovely and deceptively hard. Nothing about her is not deliberate; he imagines this interaction is not either, but he can’t imagine why she would be trying to sell him on a city, however proud of it she is.
“Is there something specific you wanted to discuss?” He asks, as she releases him to start down the stairs, holding her long dress up delicately.
“Not particularly, no.” She stops and turns back to look up at him, smiling sweetly. “But my family tried to kill me for fucking the wrong person too, so I thought we’d have a lot to talk about.”
***
Lucien Vanserra is dead.
But a courtier calling himself Reynard, with long hair glamoured black and a smile as bleak as a late-autumn landscape makes his debut some months later in the Court of Nightmares, and never looks back.
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