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The first warm morning of spring should not have been this complicated.

The sun peeked over the Sidra with an apologetic warmth, offering the city exactly three hours of golden glow before retreating behind clouds and mountain peaks again. But to Elain Archeron, those three hours were everything. They were the difference between enduring the Night Court and… tolerating it.

She had woken that morning determined—determined—to enjoy every drop of sunlight she could steal. Her nicest spring cloak, pale pink, embroidered with soft flowery motifs she’d stitched herself, fluttered around her as she stepped onto the lively street. Velaris’ market had thawed with the season: stalls overflowing with the first strawberries, herbs freshly coaxed back to life, pastries steaming with honey and cardamom.

Elain inhaled.  Warm bread, citrus peels, sun-warmed stone, the faint bready sweetness of sidra foam. See? she told herself. It’s not so bad. Winter is over. I can be grateful.

Velaris bustled around her—fae greeting each other, children hopping between chalk drawings on the cobblestones, musicians tuning their flutes and strings for the morning crowd. Even the river seemed brighter today, its surface scattering the morning light like broken diamonds. Elain drifted through the stalls, basket on her arm, brushing fingertips over bundles of rosemary and thyme.

She bought a handful of strawberries simply because the vendor winked at her in greeting.

“Oh, Lady Elain! You should hurry back home and try this recipe of strawberry preserves I told you about—my grandmother swore by it.”  The baker wiggled a handwritten slip of parchment at her, smudged with flour and enthusiasm.

Elain smiled politely, cheeks warm not from shyness but because—blessedly—the sun was actually touching her skin for the first time in weeks. “Maybe later. I’m trying to enjoy the light while it lasts.”

“Then enjoy while you can,” the vendor laughed, dusting powdered sugar off her hands. “In Velaris, it doesn’t last long.”

Don’t I know it, Elain thought as she stepped aside to let others pass.

She continued her ritual—flowers, teas, and a new set of seeds she probably didn’t have room to plant—and was genuinely, peacefully content. A group of children darted past her, whining for sweets; an artist arranged watercolor sketches on a makeshift easel; a musician plucked absentmindedly at a lute, warming the strings for the noon rush.

Elain’s basket grew heavier with produce she absolutely didn’t need but couldn’t resist. Each item brought a little brightness back into her chest. She closed her eyes briefly, lifting her face into the sliver of sun as if trying to drink it in, hoard it, stitch it beneath her skin.

A laugh cut through the market. Deep and Contagious, the kind of laugh that reached out and curled a finger, beckoning. Elain’s head snapped toward the sound before she even realized she’d moved. Her pulse lifted, startled by the sudden jolt of curiosity. Who laughed like that? Who sounded so bright?

She looked, scanning the crowd for the source.

And then she saw him.

Lucien Vanserra, leaning against a vendor’s stall, sunlight catching in his hair like a halo of fire. His head was tipped back, mouth open in genuine amusement, eyes crinkling in a way she had never—never—seen directed at her.

Her stomach dropped, her warm morning shattered and her soul attempted to exit her body through her boots.

Oh, she thought weakly. Oh no. Absolutely not. Not him.

Realizing it was Lucien felt like a betrayal of herself she wasn’t emotionally prepared to confront. She ducked behind the nearest stall so fast she nearly took down a rack of berry preserves.

A stall keeper glanced down at her, raising a brow. “Ah, yes. The handsome one. He’s quite something, isn’t he?”

Elain made a strangled noise that might have been a denial and still crouched, she risked a quick look toward him, just a peek. Lucien had moved on to the honey stall, one of her favorites.

He stood there like he had every right to sample honeycomb and make the vendor laugh. Like he’d been shopping here his whole life. His shoulders were loose, his smile easy, and he leaned over the counter with a casual confidence she had absolutely never seen directed at her.

Elain felt ten different emotions slam into her at once.

How dare he intrude on my morning. How dare he be warm and friendly in my space. How dare he—

Her thoughts skidded.

—look comfortable? Since when does he look comfortable like this?

It was unsettling. It was annoying. It was… confusing. She watched as he tasted a bit of honey from the vendor’s spoon, hummed his approval, made some joke she couldn’t hear—and the vendor actually blushed, tucking a curl behind her ear in a way that made Elain’s eye twitch.

Elain’s mouth fell open in outrage. Oh, absolutely not.

He thanked the vendor with a smile that should be illegal, tucked the honey jar under his arm, and began strolling down the market in her direction. Elain sucked in a breath and folded herself even smaller behind the stall, turning her face away, tucking her chin, basically shapeshifting into a scared field mouse. She pressed herself so close to a stack of crates she could smell the wooden fibers.

Please don’t look this way. Please don’t see me crouched like a deranged person behind a fruit display. Please let the Cauldron swallow me whole if he—

His footsteps approached. Elain closed her eyes.

He greeted the vendor beside her, asked after their mother. Complimented their early peaches. Bought two. Joked that they were bribing him to return every day, and the vendor laughed like he was the best thing to ever happen to them.

Elain felt her fury ignite from her toes to her scalp.

How dare he. How dare he be charming on her street. How dare he smile at her people and laugh with her vendors and act like Velaris welcomed him.

Elain had just a few hours of sunlight a day for a few months. A precious, tiny window of warmth and normalcy and pretending she didn’t live in a city that worshiped the stars more than the sun.

She would not—would not—have that ruined by Lucien Vanserra.

He was not allowed to steal the best part of her day. He was not allowed to steal her favorite market. He was not allowed to have fun and warm conversations with her favorite vendors and—

—and show a side of himself she’d never seen.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all that he was being… this. Her heart kicked strangely against her ribs. No, she told herself firmly, flattening against the crates like a spy with terrible instincts. Not here, not now.

But the market hummed around him like he was sunlight, and Elain could feel her precious morning shifting around him like a tide. The audacity of him. The sheer audacity.

When he finally turned the corner at the end of the street—pausing to greet another vendor like he paid rent here—Elain stayed frozen a beat longer, making sure he was gone gone. Then, slowly and with the grace of a baby deer on stilts, she pushed herself upright. She brushed off her dress, smoothed her cloak, performed a quick inspection of her hair, and attempted to pretend she had not just been hiding behind crates like a startled woodland creature.

Which was precisely how the honey vendor found her. Elain marched toward the stall with all the confidence of a person who had no idea what she was doing. Her feet moved on some wounded instinct. Her mind lagged behind, waving its little arms in alarm.

By the time she reached the counter, she realized—horribly—that she had not thought of a single normal question to ask.

The vendor smiled warmly. “Lady Elain! What a pleasure!”

Elain opened her mouth, no words came. The vendor blinked, Elain tried again, heat crawling up her neck. “I— I wanted to ask—” What are you asking, you absolute disaster? her brain hissed. But she had already committed. Her dignity threw up its hands and walked away.

“Um,” she said. “About… that fae male who was just here.”

“Oh, Lucien!” the vendor’s face lit with recognition. “Your friend?”

Elain choked so hard she nearly swallowed her own tongue. “No! He’s—he’s not—that is—absolutely not—”

The vendor laughed gently, the way one laughs at kittens falling over their own paws. “Well, he’s delightful. Very polite. He bought one of the sweeter jars and said it reminded him of Spring Court.”

She nodded stiffly. “Does he—does he come here often?”

The vendor raised a brow, amusement blooming on her face. “Sometimes. He’s been visiting more these last weeks.”

More? More?! So her market was not just randomly invaded today—he had been lurking here. Existing here. Interacting with her vendors behind her back like some sort of… charming… market menace.

“Oh,” she said faintly. “I see.”

The vendor leaned in with a conspiratorial smile. “If he’s a friend of yours, you should join him next time. He seems like a very good male.”

Elain’s entire soul revolted at the implication. Her voice came out strangled, high and improperly, “He’s…not.”

As she stepped back from the stall, clutching her basket to her chest like a shield, she realized one thing with startling clarity: She could not let that stand. And before she had even consciously made the decision, her feet were already turning in the direction he’d gone. She was following him.

She trailed him half a street behind, ducking behind stalls and lamp posts and, once, the back of a very confused goat. Every time he stopped, she stopped. Every time he turned, she threw herself into whatever cover was available, suddenly losing all confidence. 

Lucien paused at the corner where a pair of musicians had set up, dropping a few coins into their open case. He listened for a moment, then clapped along with the tune, smiling so broadly Elain felt personally offended by it.

A child tugged at his sleeve—one of the little ones who had drawn hopscotch squares on the ground earlier. Lucien crouched, said something that made the child giggle, and then—Elain watched in disbelief—he jumped the hopscotch path.

And laughed a full, bright laughter that echoed down the street like sunlight in sound.

She pressed herself behind a fruit cart, the wood digging into her spine. This was getting out of hand.

He walked on, and she crept after him, trying to keep her basket from rattling. Two steps later, Lucien slowed to greet someone outside a café—a pair who waved at him enthusiastically.

“Fox!” one of them called. Another, from a nearby table, echoed, “Morning, Fox!”

Lucien lifted a hand in greeting, grinning like they were all old friends.

Elain’s jaw dropped. Fox? They gave him a nickname? Her indignation flared so brightly she nearly stepped out into the street to confront him—only to duck behind a table umbrella at the last second when he glanced over his shoulder.

Every time he paused, she inched closer. Every time she inched closer, she realized she had absolutely no idea what she would say once she caught him. Get out of my market didn’t seem like a justified opening line, no matter how deeply she felt it.

Her brain scrambled for alternatives.

This is my sacred sun-time, go away?
How dare you enjoy yourself near me?
Stop being charming in my vicinity?

None of it sounded sane.

Lucien had hardly spent more time in Velaris than she had—truly, they had arrived in this court around the same miserable, confusing chapter of their lives. Except he disappeared constantly. He slipped away to human villages, to Day, to Summer, to wherever his diplomatic duties dragged him. Weeks, sometimes months at a time.

Not that she cared.

Meanwhile she had worked diligently to be seen as kind, polite, pleasant. A good sister to the High Lady, a gentle presence, someone Velaris could trust and welcome. She had smiled at the vendors, learned their names, remembered their children’s birthdays, bought more pastries than she could ever eat just to be thought of as warm.

Elain Archeron had played the long game of being universally liked. So how—how—in the Mother’s name was Lucien the one jumping hopscotch with children? How was Lucien the one earning nicknames from café regulars? How was Lucien the one who walked through this market like he belonged more than she ever did?

It offended her on a moral and possibly spiritual level. Elain felt something hot and bewildering twist in her chest. He doesn’t get to act natural and warm and so, so… so effortlessly himself.

Here, in her market, he seemed more real, more natural, than he ever allowed himself to be near the Inner Circle or in those tense, awkward moments when they found themselves alone. It bothered her, although she absolutely did not want to unpack that. Or the fact that a warm flush had started creeping up her neck, betraying her long before she was ready to admit anything at all.

Elain watched as he paused to pet a street dog. Watched as he teased the elderly bookseller who swatted at him with a rolled-up newspaper. Watched as he accepted a sample pastry from a baker and joked, “You’re trying to make me soft, aren’t you?”

Her eyes twitched.

The longer she hesitated, the more he moved through the streets and the harder it was to gather courage to talk. She just needed the right words, a strong opening line. Something dignified, mature and reasonable.

Instead, all she could think was: Stop being charming!

And unfortunately, that was not the kind of thing one could yell at a male in public.

Lucien stopped again—because of course he did—to help an elderly fae tie a bundle of parcels with twine. He knelt, made some quip that earned him a soft laugh, then stood and dusted off his hands with a grin that could make flowers bloom prematurely. Honestly Elain, what a ridiculous thought. 

Elain watched from the edge of the street, gripping her basket so tightly the handle squeaked. That’s enough, she told herself. This is your chance. Go talk to him and get him out of your sight. Say something that explains, clearly and calmly, that he has severely overstepped the boundaries of her morning.

She took a breath. One brave, heroic step forward—

Lucien turned. Slowly.

Right in her direction.

Elain panicked so hard she forgot how her limbs worked. She spun, tried to duck behind a lamppost—missed it entirely—and smacked her forehead directly into the metal.

The world gave a dramatic gong. Her basket slipped from her fingers and strawberries, herbs, flowers, a jar of sugar, and pastry exploded onto the cobblestones in a catastrophic burst of color.

She staggered back, the shock ringing through her skull, and then—because fate was cruel—her heel caught a loose stone.

She went down.

A flurry of skirts, a gasp. Followed by the gentle scattering of her dignity across the entire street. Children—the hopscotch gang—squealed in delight at the sudden mission to gather the fallen items. Tiny hands scooped berries and mint sprigs off the ground, placing them into her basket with solemn determination.

Elain squeezed her eyes shut. Please, please let the earth swallow me. Or the Sidra. Or a passing spirit. Anyone.

Footsteps stopped right in front of her. When she finally opened one eye, Lucien Vanserra was standing two steps away—close enough to touch, close enough that she could hear his heartbeat trying to escape through his ribs, despite the calm exterior.

He offered his hand and asked, “Are you hurt?” Voice soft, amused in that infuriatingly gentle way of his.

Elain blinked. Twice. She was not alright, she was several universes away from alright. But she placed her trembling hand in his anyway. His fingers curled around hers—large, warm, stable. And he helped her up with a smooth pull, the movement easy for him and humiliatingly effortless.

The children circled them, proudly dropping items back into her basket. One patted Lucien’s knee. “Fox, she fell hard!”

Lucien’s mouth twitched. “So I noticed.”

Basket now full again—though completely disordered, she straightened her cloak, avoided looking at him, avoided looking at the children, avoided looking at anything that acknowledged she was alive. Lucien cleared his throat gently. 

“So,” he said, his tone light, unbearably amused, “were you… following me?”

Her heart launched itself into her throat, her face heated so fast she feared it might catch fire. She straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and said with a level of confidence she absolutely did not possess:

“…No.”

Lucien hummed. A low, knowing sound that spoke of centuries of seeing through people’s nonsense.

“Because,” he continued, the faintest curl at the corner of his mouth, “it certainly looked like you were following me.”

“I wasn’t,” Elain insisted, clutching her mangled basket like it was proof of innocence and not evidence of her crimes.

“Mm.”  He folded his arms.  “Then why,” he asked, head tilting just slightly, “have I seen you duck behind four stalls, a lamppost, and a very alarmed goat?”

Elain considered dissolving into mist. Instead she lifted her chin higher. “Coincidence.”

Lucien’s brows rose. “Ah! Coincidence!”

“Yes,” she said, far too fast.

“A remarkable one,” he noted, his voice of polite interest. “You and I, taking the exact same route, at the exact same pace, stopping at the exact same places.”

“It’s a market,” she snapped. “People walk in markets.”

“They do,” he agreed, a smirk flourishing on his face. “Most of them, however, don’t throw themselves into structural beams to avoid being seen.”

“Don't laugh at me.”

“I’m not,” he said—too gently, too innocently, but with a glimmer in his eye that betrayed him entirely. “I’m simply trying to understand the… circumstances.”

Heat flared across her face, half from embarrassment, half from irritation, and half from the fact that he was standing too close, smelling like apples and cedar. She looked anywhere but at him, anywhere but his face, because every time her gaze even drifted toward his, something in her chest went warm and wobbly and utterly inconvenient.

“You,” she said while pointing, voice thin and quivering with indignation, “shouldn’t be at my market.”

Lucien blinked. Of all the things he expected her to say, that clearly wasn’t on the list. “Your market,” he repeated carefully.

“Yes,” she snapped, lifting her chin. “My market.”

He stared at her for a heartbeat—just long enough for her stomach to twist—and then one brow arched, slow and elegant.

“Elain,” he said, his voice a warm, dangerous hum, “I’m fairly certain it’s the people of Velaris who run this market.”

“It is,” she allowed stiffly. “But I come here. Regularly. Consistently.”

“As do many others.”

“Yes, but they—” She floundered, searching for logic and dignity and finding neither. “They don’t intrude.”

Lucien’s mouth twitched. “And I intrude?”

“Correct.”

“By… buying honey?”

“You were laughing,” she accused. “And—talking. And… being friendly.”

Lucien blinked again. Then—softly, incredulously: “I wasn’t aware that friendliness was outlawed in your presence.”

“It isn’t,” she said quickly. “Just—just not from you.”

His lips parted, and for a moment her own breath caught, traitorously eager to hear whatever he’d say back.

“Not from me,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

“No.”

“Elain.”

She could feel the heat of his gaze, warm as flame, teasing as a soft breeze. And Cauldron, she hated that warmth. She hated that she… didn’t hate it.

Finally, with all the stubborn courage of a rabbit that thinks it can fight a wolf, she blurted:

“Because you’re—” too warm, too easy, too handsome, too much—“because you’re ruining my sunlight.”

Lucien stared at her, stunned.

It was very possible she had broken him. For a heartbeat, his expression softened into something almost sad, a brief, unguarded flash of hurt before he pulled it back under control.

“My… presence,” he said slowly, “is ruining your sunlight.”

“Yes.”

“Elain,” he murmured, voice softening in a way that made her toes curl in her boots, “I’m standing in the same sunlight as you.”

She exhaled sharply, frustration rising like steam. “This is all I have, okay?”

A single blink answered her outburst.

Still, Elain refused to retreat.

“It’s barely ever warm in this court,” she continued, hands gesturing in tiny, furious arcs. “The few months we do get real sun, it lasts—what?—two, maybe three hours at best. Three hours in which I am finally, blessedly not freezing. Three hours I can be outside without turning into an icicle or not wearing a cloak thick enough to smother a grown man—male.”

A faint lift of his brows was the only sign he’d heard her, but it didn’t slow her torrent of indignation.

“And those three hours,” she continued, voice rising with a kind of desperate righteousness, “are when I want to be out. Alone and peaceful, in my market. Enjoying my warmth. Not—” she waved an accusatory hand at him, every finger trembling with outrage— “being bothered by you behaving very strangely.”

“Strangely,” he echoed. “Right. And what, exactly, is so strange about me, Elain?”

She gestured at him again with all the precision of a distressed bird. “That. All of that. The laughing. And the—joking. And people…” She grimaced like the words tasted sour. “People liking you.”

Lucien stared at her as if she had just announced he’d committed a crime by breathing. “…You do realize none of those are bad things.” 

“That’s not the point!” 

“It’s a little the point, they are not strange things.” 

“No, it isn’t—I mean, yes they are.” 

"Then enlighten me." 

She threw her hands up. “You’re never like this normally!” 

He blinked at her, shaking his head, honestly baffled. “I was just… in a good mood.” 

“So you’re never in a good mood around me?” The words tumbled out before she could strangle them back—dragged from some deep, unexamined corner of her mind she hadn’t even realized was whispering to her, the part that had watched him laugh with strangers and quietly wondered why he never seemed that way with her.

For one agonizing heartbeat, everything stilled. His amber eye widened just slightly—surprised, then softened with something careful, almost tender. “For starters,” he said quietly, “you barely ever let me be around you to begin with.”

Elain’s mouth snapped shut. Her spine went rigid, her basket lifted a little higher like she might use it as a shield. “I—I do let you,” she said, indignant and unconvincing. “Sometimes.”

“Right,” Lucien corrected gently. “Like last solstice dinner, when you nodded at me from across the table because Feyre elbowed you.”

A sharp breath escaped her—half disbelief, half something like a scoff. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, the movement stiff and defensive, as if trying to barricade her ribs from the way his words pried under them.

Across from her, Lucien exhaled slowly and dragged a hand through his hair. The gesture was unguarded, almost weary, and for a split second she glimpsed something raw beneath all that effortless charm.

“And all that,” he continued, voice quieter now, “doesn’t particularly leave me in a good mood.” His fingers fell from his hair, hand dropping to his side. “I get… tense. Afraid of fumbling it all up.”

“Fumbling what?” she asked, though her voice was thinner than she intended.

“Everything,” Lucien admitted. “Every word. Every look. Every time we’re in the same room, I’m thinking—don’t spook her, don’t rush her, don’t… ruin anything.”

Her arms tightened over her ribs.

“And,” he added, softer still, “I never wanted you to feel cornered, or pressured. Or like I was someone you had to tolerate. So yes, I’m tense around you. Careful.” A faint smile ghosted across his mouth. “A little hopeless sometimes, if I’m honest.”

Elain had no idea what to do with the weight of that confession. Her heart fluttered painfully—irritation and panic and something warm tangling into a knot she couldn’t decipher.

“That’s not my fault,” she said, even though part of her suspected it was at least very much her fault.

“No,” he agreed quietly. “It’s mine. I behave differently because I don’t want to scare you off.”

Elain’s gaze darted away so fast it was almost painful. The ground suddenly became the most fascinating thing in all of Velaris—cobblestones, hopscotch marks, a stray feather, anything that wasn’t Lucien’s face or the earnest warmth in his eye.

A silence stretched between them. She didn’t know what to say—not after he’d quietly placed his nerves, his caution, his ridiculous tenderness right at her feet.

It felt absurd—impossible—to follow that with the childish demand she had originally planned.

She shifted her weight, uncomfortable with how close he was, she could feel the warmth of him. The steady, too-fast thrum of his heart, a rhythm that made something inside her chest trip and scramble. Her throat tightened, her arms folded more tightly, as if that could shield her from the heat pulsing off him.

The silence swelled, awkward and fragile.

Finally, desperate to break it, desperate not to feel the things she was feeling, she blurted: “Look, I don’t… maybe you, hm, don’t need to stop frequenting my market.”

Lucien blinked, thrown off balance.  “Don’t I?”

“No!” she said—too fast, too sharp. “I mean yes. I mean—no, not exactly. Just not…When I’m….”

He tilted his head, trying to decipher the chaos of her words. “Elain, I’m beginning to suspect you don’t actually know what you’re upset about.”

Her lips pressed tight. “I do know.”

Stepping a fraction closer, he murmured, “you’re upset because today you saw a version of me you didn’t expect.”  A beat.  “And you didn’t know what to do with it.”

“And,” he added, voice dropping even softer, ““because you miss proper sunlight. Not these short morning scraps Velaris gives you.”

Elain stiffened—every instinct flaring at being so precisely read. Lucien held her gaze, not pushing, just… there.  Warm and patient and uncomfortably, devastatingly sincere.

Then—gently—“I don’t want to ruin anything for you, Elain. Least of all the sunlight you love.”

A painful squeeze tightened beneath her ribs, guilt blooming there before she could shove it down. Maybe… maybe she hadn’t been fair to him.

Lucien held her gaze as if giving her every opportunity to look away., she didn’t. The market hummed faintly in the background, vendors calling out their last sales before noon, sunlight slipping inch by inch down the street like sand through fingers.

A muscle ticked in his jaw, something thoughtful settling behind his eye. “I feel like…” he began slowly, like he was choosing each word with care, “I feel like I can solve all of this.”

Elain’s brows shot up. “All of what?”

“The… frustration.”
A soft smile. “The sunlight.”
A warmer one. “And maybe the part where you don’t actually know me.”

“That isn’t— I wasn’t—"

He lifted a hand gently—not silencing or commanding, just easing her frantic protest back into her chest.

“Let me finish,” he murmured.

And so she did.

Lucien inhaled, shoulders relaxing as though he were finally stepping out from behind the careful mask she’d mistaken for his whole self.

“There are courts,” he said softly, “where the sun barely sleeps.”

Elain blinked. “What?”

“Courts where it’s warm from dawn until dusk, where night lasts barely more than an hour or two. Courts where three hours of sunlight would be considered a tragic shortage.”  The corner of his mouth lifted. “Courts with farmers’ markets that go on for miles. Fresh fruit, honey stalls, spice merchants… even flower vendors who’d fight you for the best seeds.”

Something in her face shifted—softening, brightening—as if someone had parted a curtain inside her chest and let warm light spill through. Her eyes widened, open and shining, the way a child might look when hearing the beginning of a beloved bedtime story.

It was immediate. Instinctive. Unhidden.

Wonder flickered there, at the idea of sunlight that didn’t slip away like a frightened animal, at the thought of warmth that didn’t come in rationed, fragile hours.

But just as quickly, that wide-eyed amazement tangled with disbelief.

“You’re making that up,” she said softly, almost accusingly — as if accusing him might keep the hope from blooming too fast inside her.

Lucien’s smile deepened, warm and steady.
“Summer,” he said first. “Day. Even parts of Dawn.” His voice warmed at each name, as if remembering the feel of the light. “Just choose, and I can take you there.”

Elain stared at him—really stared—as if he were offering her something precious and impossible.

“I can’t just… go there,” she whispered.

“You could,” he countered gently.

“I barely know you.”

A soft hum. “That’s the other thing I can fix.”

Her heart lurched so violently she almost stepped back. Lucien didn’t move, just stood there with the kind of patience that made her feel seen and unsettled all at once.

“Maybe…” he began, slower now, each word careful, “if we spent a day somewhere warm, somewhere bright, somewhere full of good food and terrible bargaining and sunlight that refuses to leave…” His smile softened, edged with something tender. “…you might get to know more of me. And I of you.”

A small, sharp breath escaped, catching in the back of her throat.

“And maybe,” Lucien added, low and earnest, “you’d stop thinking I’m strange. Because you’d finally see me—all of me—instead of the quiet, careful version I’ve tried to be around you.”

The words lingered between them—warm, steady, and frightening in their gentleness. They felt like a hand held out across a fault line.

A flicker crossed her face, her lips pressing together in something between doubt and temptation. The instinct to be cautious about Lucien tugged one way; the tantalizing promise of endless sun tugged another. Even the disappearing light behind the mountains—a sight she usually watched with dread—felt suddenly irrelevant compared to the idea of a place where daylight didn’t flee from her.

“Where would you…” her voice thinned, then steadied, “would we… go?”

Lucien’s smile was soft, a touch surprised, but hopeful. “Why don’t I tell you a little about each place,” he said gently, “and we can decide together?”

He extended his arm then—an invitation as delicate as spun sugar, as bold as midsummer heat.

Elain stared at it.

Stared far too long, truthfully. At the way his sleeve stretched over the muscle of his forearm, at the quiet confidence of the gesture, at the impossible reality that she was truly considering this. 

For a moment, she didn’t move. Then—slowly, cautiously, as if stepping into a story she wasn’t sure she belonged in—her hand lifted, it hovered, trembled and finally, slid into the bend of his arm.

Lucien exhaled softly, a breath she was almost certain he hadn’t realized he was holding. They turned together, a small, almost hesitant pivot, and began to walk.

Velaris’ market hummed around them—Elain’s market—familiar cobblestones and colorful awnings transformed by the improbable sight of the two of them walking arm in arm.

Lucien spoke as they moved, voice low and warm beside her ear. He painted Summer Court first, all gold and sea salt and afternoons so bright the sky hurt to look at. Then Day, where sunlight pooled in marble plazas and scholars held open-air debates under amber skies. And Dawn—soft, rosy, blooming with wildflowers, the light lingering like a promise that never quite dimmed.

Elain listened, rapt, her steps growing slower, more trusting, as if she were trying to memorize every detail he offered. The sun’s last rays brushed their shoulders, slipping away without her noticing.

For the first time in a long while, she didn’t chase it with her gaze.

Warmth was right beside her.
And it didn’t feel like it was going anywhere.