Work Text:
Lucien sat on the dew-covered ground just beyond the reach of Tamlin’s wards, watching the purple sky of dawn turn to the first light of day and wondering how his life had come to this.
Luckily, Rhysand didn’t leave him waiting very long.
“Good morrow to you, little Lucien,” Rhysand crooned as he stepped forth from the shadowy ether, watching Lucien stand slowly and brush the grass from his trousers. “Here to treat with me again regarding my bargain with Feyre darling?”
Lucien took a deep breath, willing the need to punch the smirk off Rhysand’s smug face out of his body.
“No. Well,” Lucien said thoughtfully. “Yes. I suppose. I want you to keep her. Don’t bring Feyre back at the end of the week. Keep her in the Night Court.”
Rhysand’s eyes slightly widened at the words, though to his credit it was his only tell. Then he smirked again, this time playful. “Poor little Lucien. You must be desperately jealous of Tamlin’s new plaything. Has sweet Feyre taken all your High Lord’s attention away from you?”
Lucien took another long, deep breath. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, Rhys’ smirk was gone.
“Feyre Archeron is my friend. I’m tired of watching her waste away. If something doesn’t change, I’ll wake one day soon to find Tamlin has accidentally killed her in a fit of temper, or that she’s killed herself.”
Lucien watched Rhysand’s throat bob as he swallowed thickly. “She was better after her week with you in the Night Court. Not good, not by any means, but it was the first time since Under the Mountain she’s made any significant improvement.
“I don’t like you,” Lucien added pointedly. “I certainly don’t trust you. But you made her better, if only for a short while. And you kept her alive Under the Mountain.” Lucien looked to the hills, to the bright sun rising into a vibrant new day. “Being here is killing her. He’s killing her, even if he doesn’t mean to. I don’t want to watch her die, not again.”
The stars were gone from Rhysand’s violet eyes when Lucien met his gaze once more. “I won’t make her stay. I won’t force Feyre to do anything she doesn’t wish,” Rhysand said firmly. Lucien rolled his eyes.
“Then give her a reason to stay,” Lucien hissed. Rhysand’s eyes narrowed. “If you don’t tell her about the mating bond, I will.”
“Lucien--,”
Lucien rolled his eyes again. “She deserves to know.”
“How do you know?”
Lucien shrugged, unwilling to explain the jolt he felt every time he watched Feyre holding her heart like something pained her, like something was missing. Unable to admit the golden string only he seemed able to see, tying Rhysand and Feyre together behind their ribs every time he saw them in the same place.
Lucien had always been good at spying spells and wards, gifts from the Mother both big and small. A gift of his own, the origins of which he was too terrified yet to confront.
“Tell her. She’ll stay with you.”
Rhysand was quiet for a long moment, studying Lucien’s face. “It will mean war. Tamlin won’t let her go quietly, even if we are mates.”
“How lucky you are then, to have someone ready on the inside.”
Rhysand continued studying Lucien’s face, his own impassive. Lucien tilted up his chin and met the High Lord’s eyes.
“Tamlin nearly killed Feyre last week,” Lucien admitted. “They had a fight. He got angry, exploded everything in his study with both of them in the room. The only reason she wasn’t hurt was the shield she managed to put around herself. Purely instinctive, she has no training. Tamlin and Ianthe refuse to let her be trained.”
Lucien looked to the hills, to the sun shining through the valleys. “My mother is very powerful. Or she was, when she was young. It’s why the match was made between my father and her. Every day with him dims the fire within her a bit more. Every beating, every night in his bed, every horrific act she’s forced to watch him commit, it kills another part of her. She won’t break. She refuses to break, because she knows how much it would devastate her children, but if not for us…” Lucien trailed off. “She would have escaped, one way or another, a long time ago.
“Get Feyre out,” Lucien demanded. “Before Tamlin puts a child in her and she’s trapped here forever.”
“You are not who I thought, Lucien Vanserra,” Rhysand finally said, his head bobbing once in an approximation of a bow.
“Lucien,” he corrected quietly, turning his back on the High Lord. Turning his back on the sun. “It’s just Lucien.”
***
Seven long days later found Lucien in the same spot on the grounds, sitting beneath a large oak tree as he watched Tamlin pace before him. Beyond the manor, the sun was nearly set, and the shadows of the night crept upon their vigil.
Tamlin looked up from his pacing at the nearly disappeared sun and snarled.
“Where the fuck are they?” Tamlin asked for the fiftieth time that day. Lucien had decided around the seventeenth time Tamlin had asked to take the question as rhetorical. “Where is she?”
Once the sun had fully set and darkness was well and truly upon them, Tamlin turned and stalked toward the manor.
“Rally the troops,” Tamlin called over his shoulder to Lucien, still settled listlessly beneath the tree. “We invade the Night Court at dawn.”
That certainly woke Lucien from his stupor. In his defense, it had been a rather awful week. He scrambled upright to face the High Lord. “Tam, you cannot be serious. The Night Court outnumbers us ten to one. We’re still rebuilding after Amarantha, we can’t just--,”
“Feyre is mine,” Tamlin growled. Lucien took a step back as Tamlin’s claws extended. “Rhysand can have her over my dead body.”
Lucien thought it best not to point out the pleasure the notion would most likely provide Rhysand. “At least send me first. Maybe something happened, maybe she’s sick--,”
“Then they should have brought her home.”
Lucien held up his hands in peace. “Send me first, Tamlin. Let me be your emissary, let me do my job. I’ll find out what’s going on, give them the proper warning, and bring her home if I can. There is no need to jump to war.”
Tamlin’s claws finally retracted. Lucien nearly jumped at the loud snick as they disappeared into Tamlin’s knuckles. “Go now,” Tamlin said curtly.
Lucien valiantly refrained from rolling his eyes. “Night is upon us, and I cannot winnow straight into the Night Court for a number of reasons, most important of which is I physically cannot. Wait until dawn at least--,”
“You will go now.”
Lucien’s teeth clacked together as he shut his mouth at the order. Tamlin’s green eyes glinted poisonously in the rising moonlight. “I will go now.”
***
The witching hour was upon him by the time Lucien arrived at the entrance to the Court of Nightmares.
Rhysand was there waiting for him, accompanied by none other than the Morrigan herself.
Morrigan scowled as he approached. “My cousin seems to trust you, for some odd reason, Vanserra. Let it be known that I do not. Feyre Archeron wishes to stay in the Night Court, and I will do everything in my power to see her wish granted.”
Lucien’s shoulders slumped in relief so profound it nearly brought him to his knees as well. It took him a moment to find his voice again.
Do it by the book, Lucien, Rhysand’s voice echoed gently through his head. Daemati, Lucien remembered suddenly. Rhysand was a Daemati.
He wondered idly if Feyre would inherit that power as well.
She has, Rhysand answered the thought. Lucien scowled.
Stop that, he thought back. Is she well? Did you tell her--
Yes, and yes, Rhysand said in his head. Then aloud, he declared, “Give us your message, emissary.”
A production, then. The wind and the trees and the mountains had ears in Prythian, after all.
“Good morrow, my lord. I stand before you on behalf of my High Lord, the great Tamlin of Spring, imploring you to return his dearest love, the Lady Feyre, to his care. The bargain between your lordship and the Lady Feyre, struck under duress, has been met in full, and my High Lord demands her presence in Spring restored.
“Should you fail to comply, which my High Lord does not recommend, my High Lord shall force you to reckon with the full might of Spring and its great and bountiful power. He shall fight until his lady love has been safely returned, or the Mother’s righteous hand brings him home.”
You are good at this, Rhysand told him with a grin. Lucien rolled his eyes.
You wanted by the book, Lucien reminded him. Rhysand nodded.
“Tell your lord,” Morrigan said with a sneer, “That Feyre Archeron has been released from the bargain between herself and High Lord Rhysand. She stays in the Night Court of her own free will. She chooses to be with her mate.”
“Who is her mate?” Lucien deadpanned as he turned to stare at Rhysand.
Rhysand’s eyes gleamed. “I am.”
***
Within a week, word reached all the High Lords that two priestesses (from the Dawn Court and the Winter Court respectively) and High Lord Helion of the Day Court had all confirmed the mating bond between Rhysand and Feyre. Spring’s invasion of the Night Court was over before it had begun. Not an ally could or would ever be found. No one was foolish enough to come between a mating bond, especially not the mating bond of the most powerful High Lord in Prythian’s history.
Feyre was a member of the Night Court now.
Tamlin’s fury was absolute.
Lucien didn’t much like to think about it, if he was perfectly honest. He spent the next months away from the manor as much as possible, assisting the villages, patrolling the border, and generally avoiding Tamlin and his rage at all costs.
During his short stops at the manor, to ensure the servants and sentries were well and unharmed, Lucien was inevitably greeted by disaster. Exploded windows, gouges through tiled floors, tables cracked in half, and the paintings…No painting in the manor survived Tamlin’s clawed wrath.
Lucien approached the study during one of his infrequent visits and overheard Tamlin and Ianthe conversing quietly.
“It could work, my lord, if you willed it so.”
“He would never agree, and the magic--,”
“He has enough power to settle the magic. And you are his High Lord, are you not? He must obey—Lucien!” Ianthe yelped in delight as she spied him outside the door. Lucien cursed his bright red hair once again and gingerly crossed the threshold.
The study was still a bit of a wreck from Tamlin’s original explosion at Feyre; now, compared to the rest of the manor it seemed a haven.
“Hello,” Lucien said slowly from the doorway, drawing out the word. Ianthe positively beamed at him. Tamlin even attempted a smile.
Fuck. He was fucked.
“Ianthe, would you give us a moment?” Tamlin asked civilly, and the priestess jumped to comply. She shut the door behind her with another beatific grin. Tamlin sat back behind what was left of his desk and studied Lucien.
“Calanmai is approaching,” Tamlin said evenly. Lucien closed his eyes.
Tamlin had not been much of a High Lord, as of late, leaving Lucien to pick up most of the administrative and day-to-day tasks of running the Spring Court. The villages were flourishing, the borders were safe, the servants were paid, and a fucking bridge was even being built over the river because Lucien saw to it. Lucien cared.
Tamlin spent his days holed up in the manor destroying his life, or out in the woods as a wolf pretending not to feel.
But this was it. This was the final straw. For this was a task Lucien was not suited, nor prepared, to handle.
“…I will not be unfaithful to Feyre. But Ianthe said if you were to participate, if you were to perform the rite with her….” Lucien’s blood turned immediately to ice.
“No.”
Tamlin finally stopped speaking.
“This is for the good of the Court--,”
“Your court,” Lucien interrupted. “It’s your court, Tamlin. You are the High Lord. This is your job. The magic demands it be you. Ianthe is speaking nonsense, she just wants me to fuck her--,”
“You dare speak this way of a priestess?” Tamlin growled. He stood up from his desk with a scowl.
Lucien scowled right back. “Yes, I dare! She’s a fool, Tamlin, you think I do not hear the whispers around here of treating with Hybern? Hybern, Tam? Every time I think you cannot stoop lower you do.”
“It is a suggestion, nothing more. Hybern is powerful, he may have a spell to break the bond--,”
“It’s a mating bond!” Lucien finally shouted. He turned to face the window; his hands flung up in the air in exasperation. “A mating bond. A gift from the Mother, the greatest a most blessed thing the Cauldron can produce, and your priestess wants you to break one? Tamlin for fuck’s sake, let her go! It’s over. It is over, Feyre has accepted the bond, she and Rhysand are happy, and if you ever truly loved her, you would let that be enough and find a way to move on. You are obsessed…” Lucien trailed off as he turned back to face Tamlin, who had approached silently during Lucien’s rant and now stood uncomfortably close.
“The Mother can be wrong,” Tamlin said quietly. His green eyes were slits. “The mating bonds, they can be wrong.”
“Get over yourself!” Lucien yelled. “Bonds can be rejected, but the people go mad, Tam, they go mad! Everyone knows that, surely that’s not a life you’d wish for...for…” Lucien trailed off. He felt suddenly, incredibly ill.
No. It couldn’t—he couldn’t have…No.
“The Mother can be wrong,” Tamlin repeated steadily. His claws were still extended, waiting at his side.
“Amarantha was your mate,” Lucien whispered, the horror leeching into his voice. “It wasn’t about Clythia, you—you were mates, and you rejected her and she…she…she went mad. Tamlin.” Lucien couldn’t hold in the gasp.
So much suffering. So many years of hardship, of terror.
So many lives lost.
All because Tamlin had rejected his mate.
Tamlin had killed his mate.
“The Mother was wrong!” Tamlin screamed, his voice booming through the shattered study. “The Mother was wrong!”
“You could have stopped it,” Lucien breathed. “The whole time. For forty-nine years you—you could have saved us all, and you—she took my fucking eye, Tam!” Lucien couldn’t speak around the lump in his throat; his remaining eye burned with tears. Another, even more sinister thought occurred to him. “That’s why you hate Rhysand so much. It’s not about Feyre, it’s not even about your family. He spent the last half-century fucking your mate--,”
It happened in a blink.
One moment, Lucien was on the ground, staring into Tamlin’s dangerous green eyes and trying not to weep as he finally discovered the depth of his High Lord’s transgressions.
His High Lord’s cowardice.
And the next he was a foot in the air, shoved up against the study wall. Tamlin was breathing down Lucien’s neck, his fist still punched painfully into Lucien’s gut, and there was no room to talk, let alone scream.
“Tam,” Lucien managed to gurgle out, and the male came back to himself somewhat. His eyes widened in true dread at the fist still buried in Lucien’s abdomen.
“Lucien,” Tamlin breathed. “Oh, Cauldron, Lucien…” Tamlin pulled his hand away quickly.
And pulled the claws out of the wall behind Lucien, through Lucien’s impaled torso, as they retracted back into his hand.
The blood came quickly and profusely, along with a terrifying agony, and the knowledge that Lucien was not long for this world. Lucien fell to the ground with a thud. The darkness was a mercy.
***
For better or for worse, Lucien had always been a survivor.
He’d survived a turbulent childhood within the Autumn Court, Beron’s cruelty, his own brothers’ attacks, and Amarantha’s brutal retribution. Not even Jesminda’s death had eradicated the fire inside Lucien, his strong and stubborn and, frankly sometimes rather stupid, will to live.
But this, Lucien thought, as he turned his head to stare longingly out the opened window of his bedroom, as he shivered with the wind and willed his useless legs to move, this could be the end of the line.
Alis was by the hearth, tending to the roaring fire. She used the flames to light some incense on the table by the sofa, then looked toward the bed to find Lucien staring at her.
“Good morrow, my lord,” Alis told him. She picked up a tray from the table and took it over to his bed. “How are you feeling today?”
It had been three weeks since the “tragic accident” in the study. Three weeks since Tamlin had nearly disemboweled Lucien in a fit of rage.
At least it hadn’t been Feyre. At least Feyre was safe.
The thought settled Lucien’s soul; it did little to ease the anguish that perpetually flooded his physical body.
Tamlin and Ianthe had managed to save Lucien’s life that day through some unholy combination of magic and brute force; Alis and the Spring Court healers Tamlin scrounged up had painstakingly kept Lucien alive in the weeks since. But Lucien knew. He could feel it in his blood and bones, in his useless legs and the magic and power that seemed to seep from his very pores. He could see it in Alis’ eyes and hear it in Tamlin’s bitter snarls that echoed down the hallway.
Lucien was not long for this world.
Most days, Lucien wished the Mother would have mercy on him and simply put an end to it all.
“The same, I suppose,” Lucien murmured to Alis, as the female propped a few pillows up behind his back and brought the tray over to his bed. “I’m not very hungry.”
Alis raised her dark eyebrow at Lucien as she bit her lip. “You must keep up your strength--,”
“For what, Alis?” Lucien asked softly. He stared resolutely out the window at the sun, filtering through the trees.
“The High Lord has requested to see you,” Alis relayed, as she took the tray away from Lucien’s lap. She left a plate on the side table, as she always did.
“Fine,” Lucien answered. Alis paused in her ministrations. The same request had been made to Lucien every day since he’d woken up in this bed, and every day Lucien had refused. Tamlin had uncharacteristically abided by his wishes.
Tamlin burst through the door as Lucien finished saying the word.
“Lucien, I--,”
“I want to see my mother.” Lucien didn’t look away from the window. A little sparrow landed on the sill. He felt as Alis scurried away, and Tamlin took a seat on the edge of his bed.
“Lucien, I cannot--,”
“I need to see my mother.”
Tamlin placed his hand on Lucien’s on the side of the bed. Lucien bit his lip and barely kept from screaming.
“The borders between the Courts have been sealed. And we are expecting…foreign guests very soon. We cannot risk bringing your mother here.”
Lucien was silent for a long, long time, simply staring out the window as Tamlin breathed beside him.
“Lucien…” Tamlin finally broke the silence. He had nothing else to add.
“I am so very glad I begged Rhysand not to bring Feyre back to this wretched place. I’m so grateful he told Feyre about the mating bond when he did, as I encouraged him. I wish them a long a happy life together, blessed with children who may grow to spit in your face and dance atop your ashes on my behalf.”
With a restraint that Lucien would have found admirable in any other situation, Tamlin finally rose from the bed and silently left the bedroom. The crashes and ominous roars from outside the closed door scared Lucien’s sparrow friend away from the sill.
***
Lucien woke that night to the sound of sobbing, mingled with terrifyingly recognizable screams.
Feyre’s screams.
“Let us out!” the familiar voice shrieked. “Let us out, you horrid, mangy beast! You fucking fiends, let us OUT!”
Two of them, then. Locked in the room across the hall. A sick sort of clarity descended upon Lucien in that moment. Because if Tamlin was still set on retrieving Feyre, he would need leverage. Hostages.
And Feyre Archeron had two very human sisters.
“RELEASE US!” The female voice continued to roar, and the resemblance to Feyre had the hairs on Lucien’s arms at end. The screams were punctuated by terrified weeping.
“Nesta,” a new voice begged. “Nesta, Nesta, please. Nesta!”
And if Nesta’s screams chilled Lucien’s soul, the other sister’s tears, the anguish ripping through her voice, made Lucien’s heart stop.
Elain, he remembered. Feyre’s sisters were Nesta and Elain.
Elain.
Elain.
Lucien would give his other eye, to take the pain and terror away from Elain’s voice in this moment.
With the last drops of power in his body, the final reserves of strength in his immortal spirit, Lucien reached his magic out, broke through the wards across the hall, and unlocked the door.
“Elain, wait!” Nesta cried from further down the hall. “Where are you…”
Lucien’s door opened. Through the shadowed light of the dying fire in the hearth, and the glowing orb he’d sent to entice her way, Lucien watched the most beautiful woman he had ever beheld, slowly approaching his bed.
Her hair was long, long and curled, tumbling down to her waist in brown waves. She was small, timid in only a pink nightdress; her bare feet slipped over the floor toward him with barely a whisper. She was sun-kissed and hopelessly lovely, her brown eyes bright, her nose dotted with freckles.
Elain. His heart beat with the name. Elain. Elain.
This was why the Mother had kept him alive. This was the reason he was still here. Elain.
His mate.
Elain followed the glowing orb into the room, watching with patient eyes at it reached his outstretched hand and disappeared. Without a word, Elain knelt beside the bed and gripped the same hand.
“Elain!” Nesta berated from the doorway; Lucien looked to the door and found her resemblance to Feyre did not end with her voice. A sharper, colder version of Feyre perhaps, but just as beautiful. “Elain, we have to…” Nesta trailed off and she looked at Lucien. She frowned.
“He unlocked the door,” Elain said to her softly. Her eyes hadn’t left his face. Her free hand reached up for Lucien’s cheek, her thumb dragging along the awful scar through his eye. “You let us out. You—who are you?”
Lucien swallowed around the lump in his throat as he tried and failed not to lean into Elain’s touch. “Lucien. My name is Lucien.”
“Who did this to you?” Nesta asked sharply. “Did Tamlin--?”
Lucien nearly lied. His first instinct was to lie, to explain, to absolve the High Lord he’d covered for so, so long.
“Yes,” Lucien said instead, and his remaining eye burned with tears. “You need to get out of here.”
“How?” Nesta asked.
“Come with us,” Elain said simultaneously.
Lucien squeezed Elain’s hand as tightly as he could and looked up to Nesta. “There are hills to the east of us, an hour’s hard walk. There are caves throughout the hills. The one third from the right will take you directly to the Day Court. Helion is the High Lord there, he will help you. Tell him you are Feyre Archeron’s sisters; he will get you to the Night Court, you can trust him.”
“Hills to the east. Third cave from the right. Helion in the Day Court,” Nesta repeated back to him immediately. Lucien nodded.
“It’s dangerous here at night. Be wary. Stay together, hold hands if you must but do not let yourselves be separated. Trust only each other until you reach Helion, do you understand?”
“Yes,” Nesta breathed. Lucien finally allowed himself to meet Elain’s eyes.
“Do you understand?” He rasped. Elain bit her lip. A tear fell down her cheek. Her hand was still on his face, her delicate fingers brushing along his jaw.
“Come with us,” she whispered again. “Lucien, come with us.”
Lucien closed his eyes. He had never expected the golden string snaking its way from behind his ribs and reaching for Elain’s beautiful heart to feel like such a heavy chain.
“Be well, Elain,” Lucien wished. He raised her hand still holding his own to his lips and brushed a kiss across her knuckles.
“Lucien, please,” Elain begged. “Please.” Her hand left his face to hold her heart, as though it pained her.
“I would slow you down,” he said gently. Lucien looked up at Nesta. “You need to go now. I’ll cover for you as long as I can.”
Nesta nodded once in thanks and reached for Elain’s shoulders. “Elain--,”
“I will find you again,” Elain said, suddenly fierce. She pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead and whispered into his hair. “I will find you, Lucien. I promise on all that I am, I will find you.”
“Be well, Elain,” Lucien repeated. “Be happy. That’s—it’s enough.”
“We will be happy together,” Elain promised. “I swear it.”
Then Nesta was tugging Elain’s arm, and with one last kiss to Lucien’s cheek and a squeeze of Lucien’s hand, both sisters disappeared.
***
Lucien was awake a few hours later, when Elain’s terror reached its agonizing crescendo at the other end of the new and fragile mating bond.
Then, the bond snapped in half. Elain’s end went dark dark dark.
And Lucien was gone.
***
***
***
Lucien had loved Jesminda with a desperation that frightened even himself. She’d been so good and kind, funny and lovely, a ray of sunshine who found one through the trees, even on the bleakest of days. Lucien loved her, and when she died, he had wished for death, too.
But his need for survival, his earnest will to live had not been broken. Bowed, certainly, but not shattered, even in the face of such despair.
Lucien had loved Jesminda. He still loved Jesminda. His feelings for her were honest and deep and true.
But if Jesminda had been a ray of sunshine, Elain Archeron was the sun. She was Lucien’s sun, and in one moment with her, Lucien had felt eternity.
Lucien had never been one for prayer. But he prayed now, desperate pleas to the Mother.
Let me go. Let me go. For fuck’s sake, let me go.
Let me see her again.
Because Elain was dead. The greatest and most wonderous thing to ever happen to him had entered and exited the room with the same breeze, and Lucien wanted nothing more than to find her again.
Instead, Lucien woke to the taste of blood in his mouth and Nesta Archeron’s eyes staring at him, flooded with tears in the picture of despair.
No, not Nesta, Lucien realized after a beat.
Feyre.
Feyre was here. In the Spring Court.
It seemed Lucien was destined to fail all three Archeron sisters, then.
“Lucien,” Feyre wept into his chest. Her wrist was bleeding sluggishly over the silk bed sheets. The knife he’d given her what felt like an age ago was held tightly in her right hand. “Oh, Lucien, what has he done to you?”
“Feyre,” Lucien whispered, his voice barely a breath. “Feyre, why are you—what are you doing here?”
Feyre broke down then, stuttering and stumbling through a story about Hybern and Tamlin and the Cauldron and her sisters.
“Where are they?” Lucien rasped. “Elain, where is—where is she? Feyre--,” Feyre began weeping too hard to speak at that, and Lucien had his answer.
Elain really was dead.
“Rhys is coming,” Feyre said suddenly. Her eyes were very far away. “Rhys will be here in a moment. We have to go. Come on, get up. Get up, Lucien.”
“Feyre,” Lucien protested. At first, at least. Because as Feyre assisted him in sitting up, Lucien realized for the first time in a very, very long while, the pain was gone. He sat up without the tearing ache that had filled his days since that horrible moment in the study. He flexed one foot, then the other, and tears filled his eyes and spilled over.
“How?” Lucien gasped. Feyre gripped his arm, and he leaned into her heavily as she finally stood him up.
“Dawn Court,” Feyre said with a shrug. Her arm around his waist tightened. Between one breath and the next, shadows filled the room.
“Feyre,” Rhysand breathed out as he stalked across the room. “Feyre.”
Though the pain was gone, Lucien’s muscles and endurance had waned considerably during his weeks of convalescence; as a result, Lucien found himself very awkwardly placed as the High Lord and his lady embraced.
“I’m so sorry,” Feyre whispered. “I’m sorry I called you so soon, but I couldn’t—Lucien was dying--,”
“You did the right thing,” Rhysand soothed her immediately. “It’s all right, darling. It will all be fine. But we need to go now.” Rhysand finally met Lucien’s gaze. He tilted his head in question, and Lucien nodded, prompting Rhysand to wrap his own arm around Lucien’s waist and hold him up in his mate’s stead.
He was being saved. And Elain was dead.
“Lucien,” Rhysand said quickly, frowning. “She’s--,”
A crash sounded just beyond the door; claws ripped through the thick, dark wood, and Lucien could not hold back his flinch.
Then the world was darkness, and everything was gone.
***
Lucien opened his eyes to a very unfamiliar palace, and the sound of unfortunately familiar screaming.
“Stop!” the voice shrieked. “Stop it! Let me go, let me go. I don’t care, I don’t care, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead—I cannot, I cannot live like this, I promised him, I promised I would find him—Nesta, please. Please! Let me go! No, no, nononononono. LET ME GO!”
“Elain,” Nesta wept. “Elain. Elain, please.”
Feyre sprinted from Lucien’s side so quickly he nearly fell. Rhysand, at least, helped Lucien to lie back on a chaise before sprinting after her.
Lucien stood slowly, hand on the chaise, and then the table, then the wall, and followed the golden string that had begun to grow again.
The dining room was chaos.
Nesta Archeron was openly weeping, which seemed a thing she didn’t do very often, if at all. Elain was across the room, a wickedly serrated knife in her hand. A ghostly-looking Azriel had Elain in a safehold, as the Morrigan tried and failed to retrieve the knife from Elain’s hand. Down the hall, the anguished cries of a deep, male voice reached them in echoing booms. Each scream was punctuated by another sob from Nesta.
Feyre and Rhysand watched on a in a slack-jawed shock, as though they’d no idea who to help first.
“Elain,” Lucien croaked from his place behind the pillar, interrupting her shrieks. “Elain.”
Elain froze and dropped the knife.
“Thank the Mother,” Morrigan muttered. In hesitant, careful motions, Azriel finally released Elain.
She sprinted across the room and nearly tackled Lucien into the wall. “Lucien,” she wept into his chest. “I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead. I came out of the Cauldron and it was gone, you were gone. I thought—I thought…”
Lucien dragged his fingers gently over Elain’s now pointed ears. She was fae. She was high fae.
And Lucien loathed himself implicitly for the joy it gave him. Elain was immortal now. No matter the suffering it took, Elain would not age. She would not grow old and die without him.
Elain was alive.
“I’m here,” Lucien whispered into her hair as he held her to him tightly. “I’m here, Elain. You found me.” He rested his cheek on top of her head and closed his eyes, leaning them both against the wall. “You found me. I’m here.”
“Why did it—what is this?” Elain asked into his chest. Her voice was a fragile thing. Lucien held her to him with a reverence he’d never felt holy enough to claim before. “I was supposed to be married. I thought—I thought, but you…Lucien, my heart beats to the sound of your name. I don’t think I can be rid of you. I don’t think I want to be, not ever.”
Tell her, he heard Rhysand whisper lightly in his mind. Lucien looked up to find the High Lord giving him a wry grin; his violet eyes were filled with tears as he held his own mate close to his heart. Tell her. She will stay with you.
“You are my mate,” Lucien said softly. “You are mine, and I am yours.”
Elain’s delicate hand reached up to his heart and began plucking around the golden string as though she could see it, too.
Another booming cry echoed down the hall; Elain jumped in his arms, and Lucien held her tighter still. Nesta let out a quiet sob and met Lucien’s gaze. She bit her lip, then turned and sprinted down the hallway.
Toward the shouts of pain.
There was silence in the dining room after that.
“The Mother must be very fond of the Archeron sisters,” Morrigan said idly. Azriel was leaning heavily into her shoulder. Lucien wondered if the male had lost consciousness. Nobody quite knew how to answer the Morrigan’s proclamation, so they did not. Elain looked up at him again. Lucien felt he could drown in her eyes and would be happier for it.
“You are here,” Elain repeated. The front of his nightshirt was growing wet with her tears. “Don’t leave me again. Never leave me. Please, Lucien. Please.”
“Never,” Lucien promised. “Where you go, I go, Elain.”
“Do you swear it?”
“I swear it.”
Lucien had utterly failed in his attempts to save the three Archeron sisters. But the three of them still found a way to save him.
And deserving or not, Lucien was grateful for it.
***