AN: Not entirely sure where this is headed. Titles subject to change, but this story was inspired by the band Fleet Foxes and my obsessive adoration for Lucien and all things Autumn Court related. (Bitter Dancer by Fleet Foxes is obviously the song that inspired this first chapter/ prologue of sorts…so you might want to give it a listen! It's so dreamy.) That being said, I hope you guys enjoy! LMK what else you'd like to see from this fic. I'll try my best.
xXx
When first he saw her, she had been wreathed in black branches.
The harvest moons were upon them; one ablaze golden in the east, it's twin a glowing silver in the west. It was told beside roaring hearths and bedsides that the first royals of the Autumn Court had been two old crones―witches of a time long since forgotten. The storytellers would go on to croon about the cunning twins and how their hearts had been stolen by wayward hunters. In retribution for their lost independence upon the day they were wed, the sisters fed themselves to the sinews of this earth. They married their men, warmed beds and bore many gifted children, then took off five years later on the night of the first harvest with little to leave behind save for their blood kin. The following year, two moons arose on the anniversary of their disappearance.
It was said that the moons still watched over the ones they left behind.
It was also said that their bloodline still resonated within the halls of the Autumn castle, within the veins of the High Lord and all seven of his sons.
Yet when Lucien looked upon the girl with her limbs entwined in an apple orchard, delicately plucking grenadiers from their stems, he couldn't fathom how the strength of two celestial beings could possibly course through his blood.
Later, when one of his brothers found him seemingly watching the lesser Fae tend to their daily routines, Lucien muttered something darkly about peasants and waited for his sibling to snicker with malicious glee. While the two princes made to leave the village, Lucien glanced back towards the orchard.
His eyes widened slightly, his chest thrummed heavily, and his fists curled. Drawing in a sharp breath, Lucien forced his gaze to the dirt path that lay before him. Beside him, Fletcher whistled some foul limerick and picked at his nails, unbeknownst to the turmoil wracking his youngest sibling.
Peasants bowed to them as they strode towards the towers. Children dropped to wobbling curtsies and maidens roughly clung to their woolen dresses with shaking fingers and furious blushes. No doubt, the later was caused by Fletcher, who'd gladly left his shirt partially unbuttoned and adorned a mocking grin on his too sharp features.
Cauldron boil and fry him, the last thing Lucien would dream of was his brother noticing the way he had been looking at that girl hidden beneath orchard branches. The grotesque thought made his heart seize.
Here he was, surrounded by such mindless behavior where even one step out of line could catch the interest of the royal family like a pack of wolves on a scent, and yet Lucien couldn't make out the reason his breathing was still labored after watching that girl with hair like a burning willow tree and limbs like twisting vines.
Running a hand roughly through his hair, Lucien felt as though his chest might concave with the way his heart was still erratically beating against his ribs. The world around him seemed set in a frothing of grey mist, where the only point of brightness radiated from deep beyond an orchard where the forest met the Otherworld in a place no hunter worth his arrows would dare to trespass in fear of the unknown.
The thought jilted him. Was the girl even real? Perhaps, like most stories from the Eddies of the Cauldron that depicted creatures from realms unknown to Prythian, the girl had been a figment of his rampant imagination. A hallucination borne from the stress of court life.
But the possibility of her not being real cut him so deeply that he felt as though Fletcher had pierced his chest open with an ash dagger and ripped out his cavities as though they were strings of a fiddle. Lucien winced, rubbing at his throat. What was happening to him? Was he finally going mad?
More importantly, and the question that tormented him the most, why did the idea of that girl matter so much to him?
Before he could think upon it, a hand grabbed his wrist tightly. Lucien froze.
Fletcher raised a brow in questioning, his eyes inquisitive but certainly not concerned. "Are you ailing, little brother? With the way you're constantly scratching at yourself, mother would suggest you'd developed a sleeping sickness."
Insomnia, he was surely referring to. It was no stranger to Lucien, especially after certain events caused by the brother now holding his hand firmly to his chest. Rather than replying with his usual snark, Lucien shook his head somberly. "Just thinking."
Too late, he realized, how worse that reply had been than saying nothing at all.
Fletcher's eyes narrowed, but he dropped his brothers hand and continued on. Lucien breathed a shaky sigh of relief, but the tension remained coiled in his chest like the gnarled roots of an orchard tree. Like the limbs of a lover.
When next he saw her, she was covered in blood.
This time, he did not stay back.