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The ever-summer evening was beautiful. Peaceful, despite the war that Lucien knew was brewing just over the horizon. Thousands of Illyrian warriors battling enemy fae. He didn’t want to know which ones. He didn’t want to know if it was the Autumn Court opposing them, the men he’d likely known as a boy being swept up and dropped from the sky with crushing brutality. He didn’t want to know if it was Spring Court faeries, those he’d spent centuries living among--though even after all that time it had never quite felt like home. He supposed he didn’t particularly care if it was the Dawn Court, though he’d been there many times and had seen both the light and dark parts of it. Still, the thought of war coming, war being here, even after all he thought he’d done to prevent it . . . he’d rather not think about it, no matter what part he’d be asked to play very soon.
She was the only thing that made it bearable. The only thing that made him want to fight at all, to care if the world breathed or choked, or burned away in cinders.
Elain. His mate.
She sat beside him on the patio after their evening walk, when she had stirred the grass to sway and the dusk-painted trees had groaned at her approach--groaned in eagerness, interest. She was, he thought, everything he’d always hoped the Spring Court could be. Life. Sweetness. Promise.
The past weeks had been spellbinding, a blessing that he knew he certainly didn’t deserve but couldn’t keep himself from enjoying. She was herself a gift--gentle, loving, strong. He knew that others overlooked her for her sweetness. Compared to Feyre and Nesta, she resisted attention--she had neither their fierceness nor their outspokenness. But that was perhaps what he appreciated most about her. It was not at all that she had nothing to say or no contributions to make, he’d realized--within moments of meeting her he’d realized this. It was only that she didn’t care to shout over the storm her sisters were always raising, and so her words were only for those who cared to listen.
So Lucien listened. Their first walk in the garden had been quiet. Lucien had found his usual ease of conversation stilted, his silver tongue tamed by her very presence. And then she’d seen a bed of flowers that she recognized from home, and she’d dropped to her knees to begin examining the soil, squinting to evaluate the lighting of the plot, learning what made them so full and lush. And he’d knelt beside her and asked about her gardening, and the floodgates had opened. With a beautiful pink smile, she had waxed poetic about the flowers that she had grown and the ones she had never gotten the chance to, and then she’d blushed and apologized for babbling.
And he’d taken her hand in hers and told her that he would listen to her babble any day.
Before either of them had known it, they’d begun seeking each other out. It wasn’t intentional--in fact, Lucien had resisted the pull at first, fearful that he would frighten her or overwhelm her. But even when he’d tried not to find her, they would bump into each other in the corridor, as though she had been looking for him, too.
After a few days they’d stopped resisting it. When Lucien had felt the murmuring of their bond leading him to a particular part of the house or grounds, he’d followed, knowing that if he was meant to see her then nothing could stop it short of the Mother. Thankfully, she always seemed just as eager to see him. The conversation flowed between them like sweet water, and Lucien found himself telling her things that he hadn’t expected to tell her--at least, not this soon. The story of his scar and the metal eye, the brutality of Amarantha and what Feyre had saved them from . . . the sort of brutality that he prayed she would never see with those pure brown eyes. But she had not blanched, had not rebuffed him, when he’d told the tale. She had simply listened, and in the end told him that the whole look was rather dashing, in her opinion.
Lucien hadn’t stopped replaying those words over and over in his head since.
It was some time before Lucien realized that he, in turn, was hearing things from her that no one had ever heard before--not Feyre, not even Nesta.
“The man you love back . . . back home,” he had asked once, wanting to cross the topic before it was too late, before she was latched so deeply in his heart that he would not be able to let go if she told him she wanted to go back--or would, if she had the chance.
“I don’t love him,” Elain had said bluntly, her brown eyes fixed on the ivy-covered arch in front of her. The vines that were ever-present around her fingers tangled in the ivy, and she frowned just slightly when they got snared and wouldn’t release her hand. She tugged, but that only made it worse.
Lucien had laughed lightly and took her hand, trying to help with the knot even as his heart had let out a long sigh. “You were going to marry him,” he had mentioned casually, though his eyes flicked to her finger. The iron ring was gone.
“I’m not sure exactly how things are here,” Elain had said, finally managing to tug her hand free but not removing it from Lucien’s fingers, “but there, we don’t usually marry for love. Maybe if you’re rich, but usually not even then. My parents were a rare exception.”
“Why, then?” Lucien had asked, his mismatched eyes taking in every soft curve of her face.
Elain had shrugged. “He promised to keep me safe, and that made Nesta happy more than anything. After what had happened with Feyre . . .” She had trailed off, then her eyes had flashed. “Neither of us wanted to take any chances. But we were fools. Nothing Riordan or his father did would have been enough to protect them from any of this.” She had waved her hand vaguely at the world around them. Lucien was going to interject, but Elain continued, “Protection is a foolish thing to hope after. There are always threats. My father couldn’t protect my mother from illness, and nothing can protect us from the fae. So it’s almost pointless to try. I always knew that. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t help Feyre all those years. I made them think I had hope, but I never did.”
The bitterness in her voice had almost stopped him cold. His hand had tightened around hers just slightly, and she had noticed, brown eyes flicking up at him. “I was the same way--I am still the same way, I think,” he said, and the words had burned as they had left his throat. “I let Tamlin convince me that there was worth in protecting--not acting, just protecting. I didn’t have anything worth protecting anyway. I loved the Spring Court, but . . .” He had trailed off, looking away from Elain’s face as he’d said, “Sometimes beautiful flowers can disguise nasty thorns.”
Then her hand, so pale and lovely, had been on his scarred cheek, turning it his face toward her. “I heard how Tamlin treated you,” she had said, “and I know I’ve only known you a week properly, but I can already tell you don’t deserve that, Lucien.”
He had closed his eyes and memorized the feeling of her fingers on his cheek, preparing himself for what he saw as inevitable--her eventually seeing the truth about him, what a coward he was and the cruel things he had said and done--and rejecting the mating bond, refusing to speak to him again. At least he could enjoy it while it lasted, he’d told himself.
But it had lasted. Day after day, talking, walking, sometimes just sitting quietly beside each other while Lucien read through Tarquin’s documents on his military strategy and his forces, knowing it would be important to understand when war finally came. Sometimes he sat and watched her experiment with her new magic, which she mastered more and more every day. He had been there one exciting afternoon when she had set her hand on a chair and declared with no uncertainty that it was made of beechwood, and had successfully made the chair grow a branch, complete with nuts. She’d smiled widely and Lucien had wanted to embrace her for the accomplishment--but he didn’t. Wouldn’t. Not yet.
In fact, those touches, few and far between, were so intoxicating that Lucien had to coach himself through them, warning himself not to overdo it, lest he seem possessive or invasive. So small touches it was--taking her hand for small moments, touching her shoulder, brushing her golden-brown hair away from her face. Unlike Feyre and Nesta, Elain’s hair had become more gold with her Making, and the way it caught the afternoon light took his breath away in a manner that he hadn’t experienced in centuries.
That was perhaps the other thing that had held him back. He had been with women in his life, since the love his family had murdered before his eyes--some of them he’d felt something for, others had been just for fun. None of them had stirred him as deeply as Elain, who managed it without the slightest effort. All she had to do was walk into the room and he was entirely hers, and it seemed she didn’t even realize it.
And he felt guilty about it.
These thoughts held him now as they sat together, days after Feyre, Nesta, and the rest had left for the Dawn Court. It took effort on his part not to hate Feyre for what she had done to Elain, the bargain she had made. He tasted bile in his throat every time he looked at Elain and saw Hybern’s mark on her skin, and it killed him thinking that if Feyre and Rhysand weren’t successful, if things didn’t go right . . . he could lose Elain, too. Perhaps it would be what he deserved, for his faithlessness. Not just to his first love, but to Tamlin, to the Spring Court . . . deep down, Lucien knew what he was. A faithless traitor who wore loyalty like a suit coat and stripped it when it suited him. Spat on his oaths. He wished every day he weren’t, but . . . the echoes of his broken promises played through his mind every night before he slept. If Elain knew . . . he was certain she wouldn’t want to be with someone like him.
Elain sensed his somber thoughts. They were sitting out on the patio at sunset drinking cold tea, watching a thunderstorm blow in from over the forest. “What was her name?” she had asked, quietly and gently.
Lucien shot upright, startled deep in his core. “Who?” he dared ask.
“The woman you loved before. Whom they killed.”
Lucien’s mouth went dry, his nostrils flared, and his breathing became erratic as the memories flashed through his mind. Her blood staining the cedar walls of the palace as Eris had run her through with a spear--after breaking her fingers, tearing her hair from her scalp . . .
He choked. He hadn’t spoken her name in centuries.
“I’m sorry,” Elain said, reaching across the table to touch his wrist. “You don’t have to tell me.”
“Elspeth,” he sputtered, tears springing to his good eye. He squeezed both eyes shut. The name still hurt him, even now. Sometimes in his nightmares it ran in endless loops in his mind. The name on his lips, on his father’s, then on his brothers as they’d taunted her . . . then his own screams, Elspeth, Elspeth, as they’d murdered her in front of him.
She hadn’t deserved it. It still wrecked him to this day. And every time he’d set foot in his childhood home afterward to treat for Tamlin, he’d smelled her blood, seen it staining the walls and the floor. Her screams and his echoed through the great hall at every moment, and Lucien would have to spend long hours drinking in Orielle before being able to return to the palace for anything resembling sleep.
He’d done it willingly for Tamlin. Gone back. Hoped that whatever would come from it would be good, that he could turn the bloodshed there, Elspeth’s memory, into something positive.
He’d failed. Just like always.
“She was your mate?” Elain asked, her voice soothing, her thumb stroking his wrist.
Lucien shook his head once. “I thought for sure she was. It wasn’t . . . it hadn’t actually hit us, yet, but I was sure it would. I loved her, but that bond . . .” He dared to look up at her, to meet those radiant brown eyes. “I didn’t know what a mate bond was supposed to feel like. Now . . . now I do.”
Elain swallowed. “Is it anything like what it was with her?” A loaded question, but not one meant to do any harm.
“No,” Lucien rasped. “This is . . . different. Deeper.” He looked up at Elain and saw the nervous set of her jaw, anticipated the words she was afraid he’d say. “I’m not going to say anything to you to make this . . . bad for you,” he said quietly but urgently. “I am not going to make you love me. I understand if you don’t. This . . . it doesn’t have to be that. We can just be friends, if that’s all you want. Bond or no.” He swallowed before continuing. “You haven’t had many choices recently. And I don’t want to take this one from you, too.”
Elain stared at him silently for a moment, but then she nodded once, and something like relief flooded through him, washing away the pain dragged up by the memory of Elspeth--not Elain’s fault, not a bit. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a slight ache in his chest when she removed her hand from his wrist and leaned back in her chair.
Lucien gave her a small smile and rose to his feet. “Don’t linger too long,” he said, straightening his tunic. “That storm will hit before you know it.”
She nodded, eyes fixed on the looming clouds over the horizon.
He turned to go back inside, taking a few quick strides, when she said, “Lucien.”
He looked back, and in the next moment Elain rose and crossed the patio to him. “What would you say if I were to choose this?” she asked, her voice quick and breathless. “If I told you that I’ve never been in love before, but that I would like to try it, and maybe I’d like to try it with you.”
Lucien’s mouth dropped open, but he was unable to form words, especially once she took both his hands in hers. All he could do was nod, and long last croak out, “I’d say I’d be honored.”
Her body was closer to his than it had ever been before, her small chest fluttering with anticipation, her delicate chin tipped up so she could look in his face. “Then let’s try. Together.”
Fireworks went off in Lucien’s blood at those words. Together. He’d been alone for so long--he’d denied it, but it had been true. And he’d tried to fill the emptiness with other pursuits, other duties and obligations and people and things--but nothing had come close to touching the Elspeth-shaped hole in his heart, and he’d stopped hoping that anything ever would. But Elain . . . with those simple words he had felt something patch in his chest. It was only the beginning, but . . . he felt a part of himself that he had thought dead centuries ago. “What would you say if I asked to kiss you?” he murmured, terror and adrenaline pumping through him just as swiftly as the quickly-building happiness.
Elain’s beautiful mouth turned up in a shy smile. “I would say I’d be honored.”
It was hard to think through the bells ringing in his mind, body, and soul, but he bent down and brushed his lips against hers, his bones practically melting at the contact. He slid one hand away from hers and brought it up to cup her pale, freckled face, making the kiss just a little bit deeper.
He pulled away, and his eyes scanned Elain’s face for any sense of disappointment, fear, or regret. Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted, but she breathed, “Is that all?”
A smile that some hadn’t seen in a lifetime of knowing Lucien spread across his face, and she smiled in return. He used his hand to guide her face closer to his, and he kissed her again, breathing her scent in deeply, relishing the softness of her lips, the taste of her.
She kissed him back, a gift that he hadn’t expected but cherished with every fiber of his being. So they stood on the patio, locked in an embrace, and kissed each other until the heavens opened above them and christened them with a downpour of rain, rinsing away the hurt and guilt and confusion that lingered between them. And they laughed, and kissed, and welcomed a new hope together--a new world that they would face and forge together.
As mates.