Chapter Text
“A secret passage? How clever,” Lucien said, carefully stepping along behind Lyra, blinking in surprise when she expertly scrambled over a large rock blocking her way, in bare feet, no less. He was tempted to rip his own mud-covered shoes off, as they were more of a hindrance, making him nearly slip where Lyra was sure-footed. “And you say you haven’t done this before?”
The little girl turned around, giving him an impish grin, before grabbing a fistful of branches and leaves and swinging, then giggling when she let go and they whipped backwards, nearly whacking Lucien in the face. He caught them, grinning back at her. “That might work on your brothers, but fae have good reflexes.”
Lyra pouted a little, but quickly brightened again. “I still caught you, didn’t I.”
Lucien shrugged, trying to look suitably chagrined and probably failing. “Maybe I just have a weakness for flowers.”
The girl’s little hand tightened around his fingers, tugging him forward again. “Papa says faeries love beautiful things.” And Lucien could find nothing to dispute in that statement.
He scanned ahead on the trail, his gaze flicking upwards, to the wards arcing over the treetops, and then back to Lyra, who was hopping over a downed log, then beckoning impatiently for him to follow. Despite the girl’s prideful assertions, it seemed unlikely that she and her young brothers had created all this themselves. Who else had been sneaking around this village?
They turned left, skirting the edge of the settlement and approaching a rickety, run-down wooden structure, and he ducked as she ushered him inside. It was uncomfortably warm, and very damp, so that his sweaty tunic and trousers felt plastered to his skin.
“This is Papa’s old workshop,” Lyra announced, answering his unspoken question. “We use it as our clubhouse, me and Castor and Altair when he’s not being fussy, when we don't want the grownups to find us.” She pointed imperiously to a corner. “Stay there til I’m ready.”
She scampered around, gathering up simple toys of wood and cloth that had been strewn about the cabin, and rustling here and there with the gleeful industrious fervor only the young and happy could muster. Lucien obediently settled in on the floor in the meantime where she had indicated, ignoring the places where the floorboards had buckled and rotted, patches of new green shoots poking through. The cottage looked rather worse for wear, with loose boards affixed over gaping holes in the walls in several places, but Lyra treated it as her palace. He tried to see it through her eyes — it was hers, in a world where she had very little, and that was better than anything.
Lucien peered through the wooden slats, which were angled such to form a makeshift window, and tried to map out what he could see of the village. There was a loose semi-circle of what looked like houses, and a central clearing with larger structures that he guessed was used for communal gatherings. Sections of the green were plowed flat and worked into fields, with straggly crops in various states of ripeness — ingredients, he supposed, for the stews Lyra so hated, maybe even for the rough fabric she was wearing. Perhaps there was a sort of rustic wild charm about this place, if one squinted, but he imagined daily life would be grueling and repetitive, especially during rainier seasons.
Then he glanced around one last time, to be sure no humans’ eyes would see him, and that Lyra was suitably busy. Then he cast out cautiously with his magic.
Nothing.
Just as I suspected.
It made perfect sense. If the humanfolk were paranoid about faeries hurting them or interfering in their affairs, why wouldn’t they want to nullify magic within their borders? It was the only way to keep themselves truly hidden, to put themselves on more even footing with much more powerful neighbors. But who would they have trusted enough to cast such complete wards, all around the village?
Where have I felt magic like this before?
It was a mystery he couldn't solve, and a complication he would have to work around. He wouldn’t be able to use the spelled parchment, wouldn’t be able to update his friends back at the palace. And he couldn’t access pocket realms, or winnow, unless he cleaved the wards, which he would only do in a dire emergency.
Lucien ran his hands through his hair, which had come all undone from his exertions while slogging through the forest, and tried to undo the tangles as best as he could with one hand still bandaged. He needed a hot bath, and a cold drink, and a long vacation from all his troubles and heartaches, and it didn’t look like any of those were forthcoming. So he scanned the area for people, hoping to catch a glimpse of Elain or Briar, but found that the area looked mostly deserted. Perhaps the people were all in that larger structure, where the smoke of a large cooking fire was escaping out through a hole in the thatched roof. Perhaps he ought to go investigate.
He edged away from the window, mulling over his options. The idea of just staying put, depending on a young child’s whims, was not very appealing. But he couldn’t just stroll out into the village, or the humans would take him for an intruder, and shoot him on sight, or fly into a panic that could harm innocents.
On the other hand, they were apparently tolerating Elain, who at least looked faerie. Perhaps it was lesser faeries they feared? It was a common enough prejudice among humans that he’d encountered — they were much more skittish when faeries looked different, since their senses couldn’t perceive magic. It was perverse, since they had much more to fear from High Fae, but right now, it benefited him.
Then Lyra was beckoning to him. “Here. This is your bed.”
Lucien eyed the bundles of loose straw and tree leaves, and the raggedy scrap of cloth for a blanket, and bit his lip to keep from chuckling. If only old Beron could see him now, he’d be apoplectic with fury that any Vanserra would be housed in such a manner, no better than a farmyard creature. But Lucien knew that even the most luxurious accommodations could feel like a torment, a prison, no matter how opulent the dwelling or how sumptuous the fabric.
“Thank you,” he said, inclining his head ceremoniously to Lyra. “This will do just fine.” He stood up and strode to her, then knelt so that they were at eye level. “Now you’d better go, or you’ll miss your dinner.”
Lyra nodded, but suddenly looked a bit nervous. “How do I know you won’t run away?” How do I know you won’t disappear, like my father did, she might well have put it.
“A reasonable question,” Lucien said, considering how he might convince her. There was nowhere in Prythian or any other realm where he needed to be, more than here, but he didn’t expect her to understand the whole convoluted explanation. “I could swear an oath on the Cauldron.”
Lyra scrunched her little sunburnt nose. “What’s a cauldron?”
“A cauldron is a cooking pot for an open fire. This Cauldron is where the world was made,” Lucien explained.
“The world was cooked? Over a fire, like stew?” The little girl snickered. “Faeries think the craziest things!”
Lucien laughed along with her. “I know it sounds crazy. If I hadn’t seen the thing myself, witnessed its power, I wouldn’t believe it either.” He thought of that awful night at Hybern, but quickly dismissed those memories, of Elain shoved beneath its waters. “But the Cauldron is the most powerful thing there is in this world. If I swear an oath on it, I would have to keep it.”
Lyra considered this, then nodded. “Okay then, do it.”
“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “I, Lucien, swear on the Cauldron that I won’t sneak away.”
“And you’ll help me find my papa,” Lyra prompted.
“And I further vow to help investigate your papa’s disappearance, to the best of my ability,” Lucien went on, careful to avoid actually promising too much. If her father was dead, or couldn’t be found for some reason, he didn't want to be stuck in the village indefinitely.
“Good,” Lyra declared. “Now what happens? Is there going to be magic?”
“That’s it,” Lucien assured her. He was grateful to no longer be affiliated with the Night Court, so that he could avoid annoying tattoos on his skin. In any case, he had deliberately not made a bargain, refusing to burden a young child with such powerful magic. “I believe the human custom is to seal an agreement with a handshake?”
The little girl nodded, then stuck out her hand. Lucien took it, and she shook vigorously, then impulsively threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly. Lucien froze for a moment, not having expected it, but then patted her back carefully.
“Lyra? Lyra!” a voice shouted, and Lucien looked past her towards the doorway, where a young boy was rushing forward, barreling toward them. “Get away from her, you wretched faerie!”
Lyra whirled around, then yelped when the boy grabbed her up, nearly toppling both of them in the process. “Put me down, Castor!”
The boy did so, grunting with effort. It was the middle brother, only a few years older than Lyra herself, and nearly as skinny and sunburnt as his sister. “Do you have any idea how scared we’ve all been?” he cried, yanking her back towards the doorway. “The whole village thinks you’re missing!”
Lyra huffed, “I am not missing. I told you I was going to catch a faerie, and look!” She flung out an arm towards Lucien. “I did it!”
Castor shoved Lyra behind him, glaring at Lucien. “You wicked creature.” He stomped forward, and Lucien drew back, not that he had much room to maneuver, since the boy was blocking the cabin’s only exit. “Did you hurt my sister?”
Lyra was tugging on her brother ineffectually. “Stop it, Castor!”
Lucien raised his hands in surrender, fumbling for words. “Easy, friend, let’s talk it over —“
But the furious boy was already lunging for him, knocking him backwards with a hard shove. Then Castor was on top of him, raining down his fists on Lucien’s chest, landing a few blows on his jaw and cheeks. Distantly, he could hear that Lyra was shouting, that there was a commotion going on behind them, but he stayed down, keeping his own hands carefully pressed to the ground, and let the boy vent his anger.
“Castor! Castor, please,” another voice spoke from above them. Hands tugged at his shoulders, but Castor shrugged them off, too riled up to listen. He raised his fist, like he would slam it down on Lucien again, and then a pair of hands caught it, gently restraining him from striking. “Castor, your sister is here, and she’s all right. That’s what you need to focus on now. Please, sweetheart, listen.”
Lucien breathed, looking up at the faces surrounding him. There was Lyra, tears on her cheeks, and Castor’s face flushed bright red with exertion. And next to him, talking in a soothing, lilting tone —
Oh gods, not her.
Lucien felt like the ground had turned sideways, like he would lose his grip and slip down into some bottomless pit of shame and embarrassment. His hands dug into the earth, as though he could keep the world steady that way. His jaw ached with dull throbbing pain, his chest straining against the weight of the child still sprawled on top of him, but that all faded out into the faintest echo of sensation as Elain’s lovely voice filled his ears. She was holding tight to Castor’s hand, urging him to calm down, take breaths, and he was actually listening, trying to obey.
“Your sister is here. No harm has come to her,” Elain said soothingly, stroking a strand of the boy’s wild blond hair away from his eyes, as though helping to clear his vision. “She is well, Castor. She’s in no danger.”
“But he’s a faerie,” Castor exclaimed.
Lyra was standing in front of him, hands on her hips, like a governess administering a scolding to her charges. “He’s my faerie, I caught him,” she proclaimed.
“And you brought him here? How stupid are you?” Castor shot back.
Lyra made an indignant scoffing noise. “He’s going to help me find Papa. So who’s stupid now?”
The boy might have snapped back, but Elain laid a calming hand on his shoulder, her hair shimmering in the low light as she turned more fully towards him. “That was unkind, Castor. You wouldn’t want to hurt Lyra’s feelings, after you were just so worried about finding her.”
The boy’s face crumpled, the gentle reproach finding its mark, and Elain went on reassuringly, “Lucien wouldn’t do anything to hurt your sister. You can trust him.”
Lucien tensed — had he ever heard her say his name before?
Castor was looking at her, swiping tears from his cheeks. “Really?”
“Really.” Elain’s arm around him was so tender, so motherly, that Lucien couldn’t bear to look at them. He hadn’t heard that she had any of her own children, but was she like this with Feyre’s boy, soothing his hurts, guiding his behavior?
And did she mean it — that she trusted him? Surely she was just saying so for the boy’s benefit. They hadn’t exchanged so much as a word since that very last Solstice, a full decade ago, when she’d put aside his gift with a mumbled acknowledgement. It barely counted as a real conversation, those few paltry words, and they hadn’t really spoken for years before that. There had certainly never been a chance to have trust between them.
She said you can trust him, he thought sourly. She'd extended him the compliment that he wouldn’t hurt children. The implication was almost insulting.
He swallowed down all the bitter resentment and anguish that such recollections wrenched from him, and pushed himself up onto his elbows, certain he was covered in grass-stains and dirt, and deciding that he didn’t care. She had reviled him when he dressed in pristine suits of the finest fabric, so what did it matter now if he was disheveled?
Castor and Lyra were talking, and Elain was answering, but their words faded out into the vaguest impressions as Lucien struggled to rein in his reactions, maintain some shred of composure. Of course he’d known she would be here in the village, wasn’t that why he’d come in the first place? Why was being in the same room overwhelming? Why couldn’t he see her as just any female, as the complete stranger that she always had been?
That was the worst part of all — that he felt like he ought to know her. That he ought to feel something, deep down inside him. And if he did feel things, if her lovely features stirred longings within him, he had to extinguish that impulse immediately. He couldn’t afford to feel things for Elain, couldn’t allow himself one single moment to fall back into destructive old habits. She was utterly wrong for him, and off limits, and if the bond’s imprint echoed hollow in his chest, aching worse than any punch to the jaw, he had to resolutely ignore it.
“—should go find your mother,” Elain was saying, her soft brown eyes focused on Lyra. “Everyone has been very worried, since you went missing. They’ll be very eager to welcome you back.” She took both children’s hands, then brought them together, and both siblings hesitated before clasping hands with each other. “There, that’s better. You’re family, you ought to support each other.”
Was that how it was, with Elain and her sisters? Lucien hated the twinge of jealousy that rose up in him.
Castor tugged Lyra towards the door. “Let’s go,” he said gruffly, but Lucien could see that the boy was rattled. He looked guiltily in Lucien’s direction, then just as quickly looked away, focusing on Elain’s encouraging smile instead.
Lyra stuck out her tongue at her brother, but then obeyed, skipping along beside him, babbling excitedly about Lucien swearing an oath on the big pot that cooked the whole world. Castor’s incredulous reply was lost to the evening air as the two younglings left the cottage, the joyful cries of relief greeting them quickly drowning out anything else they might have said to each other.
Lucien sat up a little more, wincing when he pressed down a little too forcefully on his bandaged hand, and he drew up short when he saw that Elain was still beside him. She was wearing a simple human-style sundress, topped by a food-splattered apron she must have been borrowing, and he thought she had never looked lovelier. And she was looking at him forthrightly, intently, like she was trying to confirm that it was really him. “You’re here,” she said finally.
He nodded, struck speechless at being addressed so directly. She’d never spoken to him before, not without being specifically prompted. And not when she’d had any other option, such as a door that she could escape through.
But just when he thought he must have imagined it, that it was too preposterous for Elain to address him, she spoke to him a second time. “How did you get here — find your way through the forest? Wasn’t it dangerous?”
Lucien cleared his throat. He ought to be answering. That was how conversing worked, wasn’t it? One person talked, the other responded. “I’m used to forests,” he said stupidly, as though it was any kind of answer, so he tried to explain, “I had a little help, finding this place. And an invitation inside, though I think Lyra is the only one who will welcome my presence.”
Elain’s brows furrowed, giving her beautiful face a pensive expression. “Well, your arrival is unexpected. But that doesn’t mean they won’t accept you.”
She said it so confidently, so hopefully, that it made Lucien’s heart ache. That was almost never the way it worked — surely she knew that as well as he did. “These are your people, not mine,” he said quietly. “They’ll see me as an intruder. A threat.”
“Maybe at first, they’ll be suspicious,” she conceded. “But it doesn’t have to stay that way.” Her eyes flicked towards the door, then back to him. “I’m not really one of them, either.”
Lucien’s jaw clenched, his mechanical eye clicking softly. “Has anyone been inappropriate? Threatening?” He was content to hide out, lay low and not disrupt her mission, but if these folks had actually bothered her, that would be quite another matter.
“No, no. There are a few who aren’t thrilled that I’m here, but I can manage it,” Elain said resolutely. She was looking at his mechanical eye, as though puzzling out how it worked, before her gaze slipped back to his bandaged hand. “You’re hurt.”
Lucien resisted the urge to hide it behind his back. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it isn’t.” Elain’s hand began to reach toward him, and he almost panicked — if she actually touched him, he was going to lose it. She then seemed to realize what she’d almost done, and drew herself back, letting her hands drop to her lap. Of course she'd never touch you on purpose, you're a fool to even consider it. “You didn’t even defend yourself, when he attacked you.”
Lucien shrugged. He’d never been in any real danger. Even if Castor had been a full-grown man, and not a child, his human strength and stamina would still fall far short of Lucien’s. “If I’d raised a hand to him, even claiming self-defense, I would have destroyed any chance of goodwill between humans and faeries.”
Elain bit her plump bottom lip, and he quickly averted his eyes, why are you staring at her lips, you idiot. He instead surveyed the floorboards, the ramshackle walls, the gaping hole that served as a door, and wondered how much this reminded her of the hovel she’d once had to call home. The thought of her huddled in there with Leith and her sisters, shivering cold, looked down on and ignored by everyone but a few poorer neighbors — Lucien wanted to shudder at it.
“There isn’t that much goodwill to go round,” Elain admitted. “They’ve had problems with neighbors before.” Suddenly a thought seemed to occur to her. “Forta said there might be trouble, down by the marshes. I hope Bron went home by now. He insisted on waiting there, but I heard that it’s dangerous.”
Lucien grimaced. “Your guide was right to warn you. I saw Bron fighting off two attackers. Don’t worry, he’s fine,” he added quickly, when Elain gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. “But there’s more going on than we realized. That’s actually why I came here to find you. You and Briar. Why I came to the village.” Gods, stop babbling, he scolded himself.
“What’s going on? Is it dangerous?” Elain asked, her eyes wide.
He glanced around to be sure there was no one nearby, then went on, “There is a plot to overthrow Tarquin.”
“Oh!” Elain exclaimed, her skin going pale. “Why, that’s horrid. He always seems so kind and welcoming, and he really cares about his people, and making changes to help them.”
He nodded, finding that as good a description of Tarquin as any. “I haven’t got all the details yet. But at least some humans may be involved in it, if my source is to be believed.”
“Not these humans, they’d want nothing to do with faeries,” Elain said. “Besides me — us, I mean.”
Us. It was a mockery, to be part of us, a teasing reminder of what never could have been, but Lucien tried to shove that aside. “I was going to recommend going back to the palace, but now I’ve got to stay and help Lyra, and — well, maybe the answers are here, anyway. This village has been hidden by magic, and not anyone’s I recognize. I find that odd. Maybe even suspicious.”
Elain scrunched her forehead, looking thoughtful. “No one mentioned any magic. But I didn’t know to ask, either.”
“Maybe don’t ask yet. Feel things out,” he suggested. “See what they’re willing to reveal. Then we’ll see.”
She nodded. “And you?”
Me? Who the hell knows, he almost answered.
But just then, Lyra burst back into the room, followed this time by both of her brothers. “I’m supposed to tell you to come out for dinner,” she announced, then jumped onto the straw bed behind Lucien, squealing as she launched herself forward, landing on his back with a thud. He grunted, automatically reaching back to brace her with his arms, then barked out a startled laugh when she dug her knee into his side. “Come on, horsie!”
“Lyra,” the older brother scolded, but Castor was giggling, and Elain along with him. Cauldron boil me.
Well, it was better than being pummeled.
“I am not a horse,” Lucien said severely, then cracked a smile. “Maybe a dragon.”
Lyra’s thin arms snaked around his neck. “That’s much better. Ooh, do you breathe fire?”
“Only when someone steals all my treasure,” Lucien said, wondering whether he could manipulate the wards enough so that he could use his magic, without unraveling them entirely. If he’d been able to study Day Court magic, maybe he would have been able to manage it? “Well, I’m not sure I should come out. I don’t want to scare anyone,” he added.
“That’s not much like a dragon then, is it?” Castor asked shyly.
“They all know you're here, anyway,” the older brother said. “Father Mandray says you’re hiding ‘cause you're up to something.”
Mandray. Had Leith ever mentioned that name? Lucien couldn’t remember.
Elain was shaking her head, tsking softly, but now she spoke up. “Well, that simply isn’t true. We are not hiding.” She stood up, briskly moving towards the door, and after another moment of hesitation, Lucien hoisted Lyra up higher on his back, then scrambled to his feet to follow.
Well, here goes everything.