When the Darkness Comes
My father laughed when Amarantha took my eye.
At least… I think it was his laugh, though I was a bit preoccupied as you can imagine.
Tamlin sent me to Amarantha's farce of a Court to be an emissary for Spring. My mission was merely to find a way to secure terms under which the people there might live without the nightmares of Hybern hunting them for sport.
We'll accept a curfew, a second tithe can be put in place just for her, a tribute of food or servants, give her our worst prisoners if she needs a sacrifice- just find a way for the rest to live. Find a way to end this insanity.
Tamlin gave me those orders from a hilltop overlooking the capitol… or where the capitol once stood. I'm not sure a single building remained after she destroyed it all.
Servants were combing through the rubble to find what clothing or goods could be recovered, but most of it was lost forever. His parents' hunting lodge would be the new capitol, a country estate with only a small village nearby and surrounded on three sides by a forest few dared enter.
I don't think he will ever rebuild the Evergreen Palace. Too many of our friends died in the attack. Too many skeletons wait in the rubble to be found. Even if he did, I'm not sure the people would follow their High Lord back to that graveyard.
If everything with Feyre and Hybern hadn't happened- if Tamlin had accepted that he and Feyre were not meant to be and just let her go and be happy with Rhysand- even then, I'm not sure I would have followed him back into that silent place.
It's no secret my life has consisted largely of living however I please and sleeping with any maiden who meets my gaze. That was just how things were in Spring… which only further cements my desire to be nowhere near if that palace is exhumed.
Tamlin was holding Court when the army attacked. All of our friends were inside.
Fifty years has passed, and yet I can still see their faces as if I held a painting of the scene. I can't go back to the Evergreen Palace because- because the crushed bones encased in a yellow satin gown was once Kaley. Blue with pearls will mark Eavan's resting place. Aine in green, Malina the pink of a morning sunrise, Orla in gold to show off her ochre skin, Nereene in ivory lace that glowed with its own pure light-
I don't want to see the ruined skeletons pulled at long last from the rubble. I don't want to know whose deaths were fast and who had time to scream, entombed alive and alone without any way to reach the world above.
Those losses weighed fresh on my soul when Tamlin sent me to Amarantha. When he told me to beg for peace. The wounds were still raw and open, tears I could not shed rested too close to the surface, and even Jesminda joined the parade of female faces that looked back at me as I closed my eyes.
We couldn't afford to wait until I felt better. There was no way to know when her whims would turn against the Spring Court and that army might be dispatched again.
So I put on an old fashioned Emissary uniform we found at the estate and went Under the Mountain on Tamlin's behalf.
I don't remember the conversation, but that doesn't have much to do with what concluded our discussion. I was still reeling, and honestly- all she had to do was name her price. We would agree to anything.
She laughed.
That much I remember. It made my blood boil in my veins- and I'm not entirely sure that's just a figure of speech. I've never been so angry in my life, and the next thing I knew I was just shouting at her. The vulgarities and pure rage made my poor mother hide her face in shame and even Rhysand seemed a bit nervous as to how Amarantha might respond-
-though, knowing what I know now, I'm sure he had good cause to monitor her moods.
She didn't leap at me in a fit of rage when I told her to return to whatever shithole she crawled out of (no matter what followed, I'm proud of those words). Amarantha wasn't like that. She struck fast and true when needed, but she was a general of Hybern. She could hold her composure to exact the worst punishments.
After all, what would be the satisfaction if I could say 'and the next thing I knew, she'd taken my eye'?
No, that wasn't how Amarantha worked at all.
She raised a finger and Rhysand seized my mind with his talons. He didn't try to control me or break my shields, he merely drove me to my knees and kept me there while the crowd pushed back, in case it got messy.
"Such foul language from a Court Emissary. Sweet Jurian, do you hear how the child speaks to his Queen?" She stroked the pinky bone dangling from its golden chain. "Little Lucien, do you understand what kind of position you've put me in?"
That was when the first tendril of fear crept into my heart.
"If I don't punish you for that little outburst, then what might others think? Would they believe it is permissible to address a monarch like that?" she tisked as she shook her head. "I have to punish you, which makes me sad. What will dear Tamlin think of me now? It isn't fair."
Amarantha stood, and even though Rhysand's talons dug in deeper, I could almost see the thoughts swirling: should he 'defend his mistress' honor' and break my mind before she had time to make an example of me?
Again, back then I didn't know who Rhys truly was. I thought he would kill me simply because I insulted the female he was fucking. In truth, I'm willing to bet he was trying to decide if killing me then would be merciful.
During her reign, 'mercy' wasn't always what you might consider 'good'.
"In Hybern, the King would cut out the tongue that dared insult him," Amarantha took her time, letting me stew in my own growing fear. "But don't worry Lucien, I would never do that to you. You are my love's emissary. What use are you if you cannot speak?" She reached the spot where I was kneeling and extended a sharp, long nail to trace my jawline from chin to ear. "Now, it wouldn't be hard to deafen you. Just a quick poke-" her nail was suddenly on the inside of my ear, pressed into the edge of my ear canal.
Despite Rhys' hold, I managed to flinch. If it weren't for him, I probably would have jumped out of my skin.
"No, that won't do either. What does an emissary need? They need to hear their messages and speak them to their masters. I can't do something obvious like take a limb. It isn't shocking or memorable enough to deter any other potty-mouths here. What use are you as an example if it isn't memorable?"
I don't blame Jurian, he was a finger and an eyeball. Amarantha heard his screams of agony in a special corner of her mind and interpreted them as she saw fit. So when she stroked that nail along my cheek and the eyeball whirled to stare into my own-
"Oh Jurian, what a clever idea," Amarantha crooned to the ring as she held it up. "A messenger must speak and hear, but sight isn't so crucial. He still loses something precious, and everyone still learns an important lesson. I'm sure Tamlin would even recognize the mercy in such a penalty. Good choice."
What happened next… will you forgive me if I don't go into too muchdetail? Part of me was completely lost to the horror and agony of what was happening. My right eye tried to see, but it couldn't believe.
The left- I don't want to remember how long she played… I said that only part of me was lost to the horror. The rest- it was like a piece of me stepped aside. I could hear myself screaming as she turned it this way and that, making me see different parts of the room.
As sick and twisted as it was, that sheltered sliver of my mind wondered if I was screaming too loudly. Did it sound as ridiculous to others as it did to my own ears? Cauldron, how long could I go before I needed another lungful of air?
Now don't go getting all moony over Rhysand. What was happening had nothing to do with him. It was within a week of Amarantha seizing the High Lord's power. He was worrying about Cassian, Mor, and Azriel sealed in Velaris. He was worrying about Amren finding a way out and unleashing herself upon the world with no way to recognize friend from foe… He was worrying about what piece of himself she would force him to surrender that night.
No, Rhys wasn't the one responsible for my mind recoiling from the horrors of what she was doing.
But don't worry, the beloved Black Knight of Prythian has a role to play yet.
That separate part of me heard my father laugh- but it wasn't the kind of laugh that had any mirth in it. It was forced, choked out to try and earn some sort of favor with Amarantha as she smiled and turned half of my vision to him. He did it to try and make up for my mother- on her knees and screaming as loudly as I.
Was that why it sounded like I had been screaming far longer than a single breath should allow? Was I hearing her?
Eris' face was impeccable. It was a mask of satisfaction and glee as he held my mother and tried to turn her from the sight of me. From that eye staring at them all. Amarantha didn't notice how badly he was shaking. Somehow- somehow I did.
My brothers and father all hated me, but not enough to watch something like that with genuine happiness. Even my father didn't dare chastise my mother for her undignified display as Eris held her still while she tried desperately to reach me.
That was the last thing my left eye ever saw. My mother half-mad with grief.
Know that my torment didn't stop there, it's just that what followed was relatively easy to stomach. She took my eye cleanly in that my skin itself was left unmarred. Amarantha then decided that wasn't a proper reminder. It lacked, as she said, her 'personal touch'. So she dug her nails in deep and wrecked my skin.
That useless, disconnected part of my brain was more worried about my eyelid than anything else. If she pierced it- which she happily did- how would I close my eye? How would I sleep if there was a hole and I could see the entire room?
It… it would take a long time for thoughts like that to go away. For me to accept that there was no longer an eye there to even see with.
I think Rhys must have had a hand in the new desperation within my screams. See, a body prioritizes pain based on how great it is. After what she did to my eye- honestly I felt a pressure from her nails slicing through my skin, but there was no pain. It was too close to the hideous agony of my lost eye to properly register. I'm sure it hurt- there was just something else that hurt far, far worse. Because of that, I'm willing to bet Rhys took over, if only to keep Amarantha from going much further.
Apparently after destroying half my face Amarantha gave my eye to one of her creatures as a treat, then dismissed me. No one moved towards me as I collapsed onto the floor of the throne room. I know my father very nearly did, if only for my mother's sake. He lost his nerve as Helion stormed behind him, grabbed Thesan- then only heir to Day- and pulled him into the tunnels.
That was when Beron helped Eris raise my mother to her feet and guide her back to the suites of the Autumn lords to mourn in peace. They wouldn't even let her approach me.
Amarnatha left me there for a full day, unable to move, to think, or even to process what had happened. Every beat of my heart was fresh agony in my ruined eye. I knew infection was setting in, I knew I'd soiled my clothes in the claiming and was soiling them again, but when you experience something so horrifying, you tend to lose control over basic functions.
Hands raised me off the floor in the middle of the night.
A male slung my arm around his shoulder and walked me slowly, carefully down through the halls to the Spring tunnels. His wraiths managed to slip into the palace of Spring and whisper into a sleeping High Lord's ear that he needed to go to the caves.
Tamlin still thinks it was instinct that drew him that night.
I claimed for decades that I didn't know how I got out of Under the Mountain. It must have been Amarantha's creatures, getting rid of me so I couldn't stink up the throne room any further…
But it was Rhysand.
It was mercy for a creature broken and afraid- enemies as we were in those days. I think that might have been when he started fighting back against her in that quiet way of his. After that he certainly had many "accidents" in which he shattered someone's mind before Amarantha could properly play with them.
Rhys set me down on the ground gently just barely within the confines of Under the Mountain- and the barrier he could not cross without Amarantha's permission. He spent the time until Tamlin arrived arranging the scene to look as though I'd been unceremoniously dumped. My ruined eye was hot with infection already and I think I vomited on him a few times during the trek, but he never said a word about it as he staged the scene.
Once all was properly arranged, he and his wraiths vanished leaving me alone in the cold dampness of the cave to await Tamlin and pray he thought to look far enough into the tunnels.
My welcome home to Spring was a mild chorus of retching as both he and the guards he brought along lost their dinners to the sight of my mutilated body.
Andras carried me to the estate and tried to clean me while Tamlin switched his form and ran as fast as he could for the village healer. He had a few of the other guards help strip my soiled clothes and even bribed a few maids to wash me. Andras was the son of a healer, and though he knew one wrong touch to the damage around my eye might prove catastrophic, he also knew that getting the filth,piss, and shit off of me was an imperative that could not wait another moment.
Don't get any weird ideas about Andras and I, alright? He was just trying to not lose another friend that week. He'd been courting a female named Emiline when the Evergreen Palace fell. Her corpse is marked in the ruins by a teal gown with a pink sapphire engagement ring somewhere in the vicinity of her finger.
The point is, Andras was one of my best friends. He shoved down any shyness when it came to cleaning me up and did what it took to help his friend survive. We were brothers, and my brother stayed by my side whenever Tamlin could not.
Speaking of the High Lord- he came back to the manor out of his mind with rage and fear. Amarantha's creatures got to the village long before him. The living were taken Under the Mountain (of them a handful alone survived) and the rest were piled in the village commons- the healer on top with his eyes both taken.
I wonder if they played with him too.
An infection Tamlin couldn't begin to fix, the physical damage to the surrounding eye- I was going to die without a healer. There was nothing we could do. It was beyond even my natural fae abilities at that point.
Most of what follows I learned from Andras later on.
Apparently a band of refugees from Dawn somehow miraculouslyfound their way to the Spring border. They were careful enough to cross the forests of Under the Mountain, the ice of Winter, and slip through rarely-traveled paths in Autumn without being seen by a single living soul, only to 'accidentally' bump straight into a patrol of Spring. The refugees were comprised of a male and two females, each with spouses and children in tow.
Oh-and all three of those core travelers were healers.
I don't know if Tamlin ever ran so far so quickly before or since as he did when he went to the border. He brought no horses to slow him down, and when he came bounding back he was actually carryingthe healers upon his back. Their families were granted refuge in Spring and would follow at an easier pace to the manor.
When they entered the room-
-Andras said it was as if they already knew what they were treating before they ever set out from Dawn. Their satchels were packed with herbs to treat any infection- even many that had to be picked the very morning they were to be used. These herbs were not something one casually picks by the side of the road.
They sedated me before pinning open my eye to expose the interior damage and within mere hours had the infection wrestled into submission, the torn ruins of nerve and muscle on its way to healing, and even managed to stitch Amarantha's marks so that the scarring wouldn't be prohibitive or painful.
What I'm saying is that I wasn't imagining it. Helion grabbed Thesan and dragged him out of the throne room… and somehow arranged my salvation.
I don't know why the High Lord of Day cared- maybe I'd said what everyone wished they could say, maybe he was being nice, or maybe my mother's screaming moved him somehow… But I know it was because of him more than Thesan that healers arrived in time to save me.
I also knew their story about walking across Prythian was complete bullshit- but even Tamlin guessed as much. It wasn't that they just happened to be healers or happened to pick the exact herbs they needed that morning… it was that they came at all, and within days of my mutilation.
While they worked, I slept.
In my dreams I was trapped in something thick and cloying. No matter how fast or how hard I ran, I moved mere inches at a time. I was being chased, and with the instinct of a dream I knew that all I had to do was take one step in the right direction to be free before the thing behind me began to rip and gouge at my flesh…
But everything was pitch black.
Was I running through my own blood? Some kind of bog? I couldn't see anything. The identity of whatever was chasing me and my route to freedom were both mysteries.
Hands reached out to me in the black- they were the only things I could see, and I knew them all so well. Those arms bore Inessa's silver jewelry, Ciara's green sleeves with gold lace, Onora's hand bedecked in filigree… Glynnis, Quinn, Alanna, Trina, Evelyn, Samena- I knew the names of every female from what scraps of dress or jewelry still clung to them. Their hands were skin stretched too thinly over bone, their nails too long, and when I saw Naya's beautiful acorn skin reduced to a chalky beige I knew my only escape from the beast behind me was to throw myself into their waiting arms.
The arms of dead lovers and friends, come to bring me to a better world.
I reached out to them, but another hand shot out from the darkness to take my own. This hand was small, the color of fresh cream, and it glowed so brightly that the others recoiled, as if that being held the power to chase away death itself.
Stay, Lucien Vanserra, a soft melody whispered into my ear. Live to see the world righted. Live to see your enemy struck down. Live to see an age of miracles born of this nightmare. I claim your life for myself, dear Lucien, that no other being in this world may take it from you before we meet. Live for me.
Her lips were so close to my ear that I could feel her breath upon my skin. I turned to see the woman those words belonged to, but there was no one there.
A soft giggle sounded from my other side- the ruined side that would always be dark now.
Live. One final whisper, and a kiss upon the cheek that pushed back the beast that stalked me and slowly filled my black world with a brilliant, radiant light-
I opened my eyes to buttery sunlight spilling in through open windows. Blankets covered my chest and legs, still cool from the drying line. I must have woken as the maids left.
There was a bone-deep ache in my head that ran behind my left eye up into my skull. I groaned and reached up to rub at the pain- my fingers brushed thick gauze instead.
"Tamlin," Andras' voice called out on my left as though he were shouting through the window, "he's awake."
The last thing I truly remembered was being left for dead on Amarantha's throne room floor. The other memories- Rhys carrying me out and that strange dream- those came back a few days later as the shock to my body faded and my mind processed what had happened. So when I woke- I was lost.
Andras came quickly around the bed to where I could see him. He was wiping his hands with a towel and I finally heard the soft clink of glass from my blind side. I turned my head until I saw a young female sorting and chopping herbs at a worktable in the corner.
"She's one of the healers who saved you," Andras said. "You've been unconscious for three days."
"You're in Spring," Tamlin's voice sounded from the door. I looked to my best friend, dazed and lost. "I know what happened, how it happened, and what you said to her." He wasn't going to make me explain. He wasn't going to make me relive it.
Thank the Cauldron.
"How do you feel?" Tamlin came to sit in a chair on my right side.
"My eye hurts… even though…" I didn't finish, I couldn't finish.
"It will take some time for the nerves to heal," the female said. Her voice was far deeper than the one in my dream. It would be weeks before I stopped trying to match every female in Spring with that voice. "You'll probably feel some phantom twinges now and then, but that will fade eventually as your body accepts the new normal."
I didn't know what to say to the healer. Whatever Andras had been helping her prepare smelled faintly of willow and honeysuckle mixed with oils I couldn't begin to guess at. Still- the way Andras looked at me with concern and apprehension was enough to shatter any hope that might have existed in my heart.
There was no way to recover my sight. No secret healing technique that might regrow or transplant an eye.
It was gone.
For days I just laid there in that bed, utterly ambivalent.
Was I angry? Depressed? Broken? Whole? It wasn't just the missing eye- it was the way it was taken. It was how she turned it to show me the room before severing nerves and muscle. It was knowing that part of me had seen through that eye long after it stopped being mineand became some abomination for her to play with. It was knowing that the last thing it saw was my mother sobbing, my eldest brother holding her with grim pity, and my father trying to laugh to mask how horrified he was. That male who hated me my whole life- in those moments he might have actually felt sorry for me.
After my words to the healer I didn't speak.
When food came I barely managed anything.
Andras sat with me for hours on end, trying to cheer me up. Tamlin half lived in that chair beside my bed in case I needed anything at all. I didn't acknowledge either of them.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Tamlin finally said one night.
I shook my head. I couldn't talk about it- I didn't know what I even wanted to say. I wasn't angry, or depressed for that matter. When I didn't eat it was simply because I felt no hunger. I was numb. Utterly numb.
Amarantha sent a hundred orchids as an apology for what she'd done- but no one had to tell Tamlin it was just a show. She didn't give two shits about me. If anything, she wanted me dead. If I wasn't Tamlin's best friend she would have happily killed me.
Tamlin accepted the orchids along with an invitation to a masquerade in "my" honor. The party would be in a month's time, to grant me a proper recovery and acclimation to this "new normal". A masquerade to hide my ruined eye so it wouldn't remind Tamlin just what kind of monster she was.
"You don't have to go," he said as soon as her messenger (who insisted on reading the invitation in my presence) left.
It wasn't anger. It wasn't depression.
It was… indignation.
That bitch made me entertainment for her false-Court. She made my father and brother- two people I hated with all my being- look at me as if I were some damaged creature to be pitied. She made my mother scream as I'd never heard her scream before.
Again, I was incredulous more than angry.
There is nothing wrong with my legs, so why haven't I left this bed? I shoved Tamlin aside and stood- albeit a bit too quickly. My head throbbed and black spots danced in front of my eyes- my eye- as blood rushed to my head.
Strictly speaking, losing one eye isn't that bad in terms of navigation. It shortened my field of vision only a little, and while I tended to think things were a few inches closer or further than they truly were, I adapted faster than I would have if both eyes or a limb were taken.
Tamlin just stood there, still as a statue, while I ran out of that room to the halls below filled with those damned orchids.
My first task was to carry them from the manor one by one and pile them in a massive heap on the lawn. It helped me figure out how to judge distance with only one eye.
My second task was to stand over that pile and burn it to ash. It wasn't an easy feat (in case you aren't aware, fresh flowers don't burn easily), but as the orchids were devoured beneath my power I felt rage sparking to life. It just wasn't a rage for myself-
Ivory, pink, yellow, red, orange, blue, green- Amarantha had sent a veritable rainbow of flowers. And in their colors I saw every last one of the females lost in the Evergreen Palace.
The rage that woke as those flowers burned was wholly and completely for the precious lives she'd taken from us all.
Amarantha expected a scarred, broken male to come sit in the place of honor at her masquerade. Instead, I vowed to show her someone like Helion- someone angry enough to push back, in whatever way they can.
"You wanna talk about it now?" Tamlin had come downstairs at some point during my rush to throw the orchids out. He stood by the door now, watching and letting me do whatever I needed.
"No. I want to make this work so when I walk back into that room everyone knows she failed to change a single damn thing about me or my personality."
… in retrospect he might have taken my own personal way of handling grief and tried to force the same treatment on a nineteen year old fae woman forty-nine years later.
That night though, Tamlin brought me my practice sword and we sparred until dawn. I needed to learn to move quickly while also reading the ground to judge distance. If I was just looking at the landscape, it didn't matter to me that a small piece was missing to one side, but in a fight it could prove deadly. I was burning all that energy I had stored, and Tamlin knew an exhausted body could soothe a troubled mind.
He also knew that the full horror of what happened wouldn't truly hit until I caught sight of myself in a mirror… But for that night- and the days that followed- he let me set the course of my own recovery.
Nearly three weeks were spent in a strange sort of denial. I didn't let myself fully process what had happened to me. I didn't let myself feel the depression or anger that could turn against me when I faced that crimson whore again. She'd insulted me, made me scream as no man should scream. She made a father I hate and a brother I despise pity me.
And she made my mother cry.
It was a fine line between indignation an anger, but I toed it and used it to fuel that fire. When I tired of even that I just thought about the females I'd once loved and worshiped in my bed crushed beneath the palace we called home. I hauled up that mental image of the throne room just before warning bells sounded and studied their faces one by one, reciting their names the whole time.
A week before the masquerade I was alone in the gardens, trying to practice some of the dances of Prythian courts with blocks to mark the estimated feet of my partners. I had to rely on muscle memory to tell me how far to step- and even then I was stumbling. I couldn't falter in front of Amarantha. I couldn't be clumsy- that would only earn more pity.
"Well, you're certainly a lot further along than I thought you'd be." A rich female voice sounded behind me. I turned sharply to stare at the intruder, my face reddening. Her skin was the golden tan of Dawn Court, and almond-shaped black eyes inspected both my movement and the simple linen patch covering the empty socket.
The female had her hair braided back, but I could tell from the sheen and matte it had been weeks since she had a proper wash. Her face was clean enough, but with travel-grime around the very edges where she hadn't quite washed it off. She was one of the most beautiful female's I had ever laid eyes on- Xian in recent ancestry for sure.
Her brown clothing was bulging as though she weighed far more than the exposed skin Lucien saw suggested. She was smuggling a lot beneath that mass of brown linen, and the pink of her cheeks proved it was no easy burden to bare.
"Who are you?" I stared her up and down. She was wearing gloves on a hot day, and every now and then she would flap her arms slightly, trying to coax cool air into her sleeves.
"Invite me inside first. Your High Lord will have the same questions and I'm only answering them once." She jerked her head towards the manor and walked away through garden hedges. Incredulous, I abandoned my practice to follow her.
"High Lord Tamlin," the female bowed the moment she saw him walking from the stables to the entryway. Whatever was beneath her clothing clanked together at the motion and she had a bit of difficulty straightening up again.
Tamlin looked to me for answers and, finding none, focused his gaze on the girl, "Who are you and why are you here?"
"To seek refuge in these dark and dangerous times. My name is Nuan and as you can tell-" she waved to her black hair and up-tilted eyes, "-I was a citizen of Dawn."
Of course- the High Lord's wife was a stunning Xian noblewoman. The empire officially sided with the Loyalists and Hybern in the War, but many refugees who disagreed with their emperor's position fled to Dawn, whose Lady negotiated citizenship for all.
"My home was destroyed and I figured it was a sign from the Cauldron telling me it's time to realize my dream and finally move south. I've always liked intolerable heat." She was speaking for any ears that might report back to Amarantha, but all she had to say was "Dawn" and Tamlin's interest was piqued.
"Come in," the High Lord sighed as if this were the most inconvenient thing in the world for him to be dealing with, "I will show you where the servants live. If you can convince my head housekeeper of your use you can stay. Otherwise you'll be given food and a bed for the night, then sent back where you came from."
"Or I stay a week and slip away when you all go to your party." Nuan muttered as she passed Tamlin.
I followed them both through the manor and into the servants stairs- only to change course and slip through an abandoned side passage to the shuttered wing of the estate. Tamlin pushed open a door to an old tutoring room and with a wave of his hand lit the candles there.
"Did the High Lord send you? And the healers?" Tamlin waved a hand and the dust vanished from the room. Nuan removed her brown covering to reveal- as I suspected- a mass of small boxes, drawstring bags of all sizes, and tools strapped in place.
"Sort of and no," Nuan began unclipping her supplies from whatever harness held the cargo to her body and arranged the containers with precision. "It was Prince Thesan, not the High Lord, who sent the healers. However, my presence here is a favor to Lord Helion."
Helion? So he hadn't just prompted Thesan into action.
Nuan fixed her attentions on me, "My brother and I were only children when the War took place. My parents left the Xian Empire when they declared in favor of human slavery. We made it to Prythian, but our ship was attacked offshore. I lost my hand to a canon blast and was blown overboard near the border of Day. Lord Helion's forces destroyed the Loyalists who attacked us and somehow among the corpses he found me floating unconscious and near death."
She finished removing all of her cargo- eighty four cases or pouches in all- and pulled her gloves off to reveal a golden right hand. The craftsmanship was utterly exquisite, and even as I watched she lengthened the fingers, making them narrow and bend backwards or sideways in contortions no hand of flesh and bone ever could. To any craftsman it would open a world of possibilities.
"I earned a spot in the best training programs Dawn has to offer- and Lord Helion checked on my progress from time to time. I believe it was his way of processing the horrors of the War- to remind himself of the child he saved that day."
Nuan began opening the cases, revealing gears and casings the likes of which I certainly had never seen before. From a few pouches she tipped tiny bolts and screws. Finally, Nuan laid out a series of measuring tools- and suddenly I knew what she was proposing.
"A new eye?" I'd convinced myself I wasn't phased by the loss of my own but- even the possibility of regaining my sight made my heart soar higher than I thought possible.
Oh, Amarantha would be enraged. I grinned all the wider.
"No and yes," she keept my hopes in check. "I cannot replicate proper sight, but you will have something." Nuan looked to her various containers, "It's somewhat customizable, if you are willing to give it a try."
Tamlin let me make the call, as if I needed any prodding.
"Yes. Cauldron yes." I sat down across from her immediately.
"Just a moment-" Tamlin held up a reluctant hand. "First- why do Helion and Thesan care about my emissary so much? Second- did you walk all the way here from Dawn?"
Nuan answered in order, "They both want to do what they can to undermine Amarantha. I left the same day a Peregryn troop flew the healers and their families to you, but my prosthetics work best if you have had time to heal and adapt on your own first, so I made my way by foot."
"I see… Well, it is up to Lucien if you are to be trusted or not," Tamlin knew I would probably turn on him if he tried to deny me this. "Nuan, stay in this wing as long as you would like. I will send my maidservant Alis to clean a room for you and fetch you any food or clothing you need. If anyone here whispers to Amarantha, they at least won't see what you're up to."
I knew I should offer to wait while Nuan bathed, ate, and rested. She certainly looked as if she were in need of all three- but if she could truly make me a new eye-
She carefully selected one of the measuring tools, "As soon as Amarantha came to our shores the High Lord ordered me to be ready to mass produce my prosthetics in case of a Hybern attack. The eye actually comes together the quickest of the replaceable limbs, it just takes longer to calibrate. I'm sorry Lucien, but you will have more than a few headaches while you adapt."
"Should I have Alis bring some food and drink for you?" Tamlin was picking up where my own manners failed. Usually he was rather brash and selfish, I think that day he was trying to be as nice as possible to the miracle worker who showed up on our porch.
"Your offer is most gracious, High Lord. However, I can last a while yet. I would like to give Lord Lucien as much time as possible to adapt to the new unit.
"You're a blessing from the Mother," I breathed. I didn't even flinch as she held her tools so close to my only remaining eye.
"Remember those words later when you're nauseous and I'm resting comfortably." Nuan pulled out a notebook to scribble measurements down on. She nodded to me and I pulled the patch from the ruins of my eye.
There was neither shock nor horror on her face. I suppose as someone who deals regularly with the maimed or mutilated, Nuan has bedside manner down to an art. Tamlin granted her a faelight as she inspected the insides and outside of my eye socket. She took more measurements, and when she slid her ruler into the hole where my eye once was Tamlin turned distinctly green.
Still, she was fast in her work, but agonizingly precise. Once she knew all the dimensions she motioned for Tamlin to sit beside me.
"Each of these cases marks a different part of the mechanical eye," Nuan tapped each. Indeed, every case appeared to hold the exact same part- just in different sizes and made from different metals. "First- gold, silver, or platinum?"
"Gold," I said immediately. I had always favored it above other metals.
Nuan nodded, "Now- as I said, the eye will not restore proper sight. However, I have a few options as far as what you will see." She began tapping different groupings of cases as she spoke, "Soundwaves, body heat, magic, and the inner workings of living things- heartrate and injuries mainly. Do you need time to think through the choice?"
My heart was still racing at having something akin to sight back in the left eye. My mind was a whirl of possibilities and options, I didn't even know where to begin considering my choice. Not only was the eye going to make a fool out of Amarantha, even if the pureblood of Prythian gaped at my scars it was still a badge of honor. To insult Amarantha, face a humiliating and horrific punishment, and rise again mere weeks later to spit on her once more-
In later years, as we became good friends during her secret visits to Spring, Nuan would tell me that my face was glowing bright with a near feral glee as I made my decision. It was almost frightening to her.
I narrowed it first to two choices: the ability to see magic, or the inner tells of a living body? To read the wards and spells around me (all but those put into place by a High Lord's magic), or the ability to discern if someone is telling the truth or a lie?
As for my choice-
-that is something I will never reveal.
—
—
"Bull. Shit." Cassian took a swipe at Lucien as Mor and even Elain made sounds of protest.
Feyre was curled up in Rhys' arms on one of the couches in the Townhouse listening to Lucien's winter tale. Even Nesta and Azriel seemed to be mildly grumpy that the main focus of the story was ultimately left out.
"That's not an answer!" Elain said.
"Come on- you gave us all the gory details about how it was taken, what's so secret about the eye itself?!" Mor threw a handful of popcorn at Lucien's head.
What was it like when you were given new sight? Elain had asked the questions that began Lucien's tale. How did you lose your eye, and how did you find this one? What can you see with it?
It was something she'd been too shy to ask until then, when everyone was giddy with the approaching solstice and more than a few bottles of wine had been downed. Lucien's story held no inspiration for her own slow adaptation to her Sight. Even so- she thought he'd at least provide an answer to their wager: what the eye really saw.
Lucien sighed, "You're all just too unpredictable and unpleasant for me to reveal that. Who knows when I will need to see if you are lying or if someone decided to ward my underwear drawer- again?"
"You. Are. An. Ass." Cassian punctuated his words with more popcorn (stolen from Mor's bowl so as not to affect his dwindling supply).
Amren even snickered at that.
"What about the woman's voice in your dream? Was it Elain's?" Mor nudged Lucien and grinned broadly. Lucien and Elain seemed to be getting closer lately, but the question remained: between him and Azriel, which male would she choose?
The group's bets were divided, but perhaps during the Solstice celebrations they would have their answer.
"Actually no. I still haven't figured that one out," Lucien frowned to himself. "When I recovered from the shock of the mating bond appearing- Nesta stop glaring at me I couldn't control it- I thought it might be her… but when Feyre let me meet her for the first time… the voice is different."
Rhys coughed.
"You little shit- what did you do?" Cassian hadn't even finished turning to face Rhys, he just knew from habit that a well-timed cough usually meant there was some blame to be had.
He shrugged as best he could with Feyre in his arms, "I felt bad about having to leave you like that, and you were in pretty bad shape, so…"
From her own seat in the corner beside Nuala, it was Cerridwen who raised her hand, "You were close enough to death that I could approach you without technically entering Spring and control my appearance within your vision. I- those early days Under the Mountain the only thing that helped me through it was the memory of a female I loved-"
Cassian let out a loud "Aww!" that made Cerridwen's cheeks flush. Mor smacked the back of his head.
The wraith continued, "Our last intel from Spring before her rise to power said you had no one female who caught your attention and that your type generally had paler skin, so I was vague. I am sorry for the deception."
Lucien threw his head back and laughed, instantly dismissing Cerridwen's fear that he would be angry. "Don't apologize, please. It's been nagging at me for years, I'm just happy to have an answer. Regardless of… if anything happens in the future," his cheeks reddened and he avoided eye contact with Elain, "it was confusing that it wasn't the voice of my mate at least- Nesta, stop glaring at me I'm not asserting any possession just stating a biological fact."
It was becoming second nature to predict and deflect Nesta's wrath whenever any mention of the mating bond came up.
"I understand," Elain nodded immediately. "I am the one the Cauldron bound to you- Nesta stop glaring at Lucien. If there was some predetermined fate- from before even my mother was born- then it make sense you would be confused that it wasn't my voice."
"Nesta, stop miming Lucien's decapitation," Cassian liked encouraging Nesta's wrath even when she was sitting peacefully. One day Feyre was pretty sure she was going to snap and just kill Cassian out of spite.
He'd probably love that.
"You really won't tell us which eye you chose?" Azriel asked. He was heavily invested in the bet.
Lucien shrugged, "I really don't remember. It was a crazy day." Sarcasm poured from every last word.
"I like you," Cassian smiled. "How did you survive in Spring? That kind of attitude belongs in Night where it is appreciated and used to torment everyone else."
Lucien laughed, but said nothing. He still wasn't entirely sure how he felt about Tamlin and Spring- in much the same way he wasn't sure back when he lost his eye how he felt. This time there was no numbness chasing away every emotion, no indignation… It was a mix of guilt and rage only time could sort.
Still- there was no denying that while Spring had once felt like home, the Inner Circle felt like family. Andras and Tamlin were his friends, and a few other fae he'd reconciled with in the war camps, but they'd never sat around the fireplace on Solstice to gorge on popcorn and swap stories. They didn't place silly wagers at every opportunity or really do anything that Tamlin felt was beneath his dignity as a High Lord.
But with Rhys' Inner Circle everyone was comfortable, life was as simple as they could make it, and they all just strove to be happy. For that moment at least, the shadows of the War and Amarantha were chased back to reveal what would always be standing on the other side of any adversity:
A family to welcome them home.
Later that night, after the group parted, Lucien wandered back to his room, lost in the memory of those first weeks without his eye.
Truth be told, he'd taken liberties in the story. Liberties only Rhys knew for sure.
He hadn't sprung into action in order to show Amarantha her mutilation of his face meant nothing. He hadn't handled his confusing and contrary emotions with bravado and an iron will.
He wasn't in the garden when Nuan came to give him his new eye.
When the orchids and the invitation arrived, Lucien meant to be the male from his story. It was a path he'd seen laid out before him so perfectly he could feel in his bones that he would endure and thrive-
-and then he passed a mirror in the hallway.
As if in a trance, he'd touched the bandage, then lifted it away to reveal flesh that was still red, swollen, and crusted with blood. He'd seen the sunken disfigurement that formed without anything even resembling an eye to hold out the skin surrounding it.
No, when Amarantha's masquerade came around Lucien wasn't some vision of recovery and control. The new eye still made him nauseous then, and so during that ill-fated gathering he was nothing short of an intoxicated, bitter mess.
But that was the other thing Lucien loved about the Inner Circle and Rhys' Court: if any of them ever found out he had embellished his tale, they wouldn't blink an eye or look at him any differently. Everyone had a horror story in their past, and everyone understood the desire to plaster over the most painful parts.
He washed his face in the en-suite bath and stared hard at his reflection, remembering the horror he'd felt as he saw his ravaged face. Minus the scars, it still looked much the same as it had before. Time and healing had fixed nearly everything that was wrong.
With practiced caution, Lucien quieted the mental link he shared with the golden eye and used his magic to slide it free. As he rinsed it with the special cleaning solution Nuan supplied him with, he made a point to stare up at what was missing. His eyelid was slightly lopsided now, but otherwise it didn't look too much different than before Amarantha's cruelty.
The Dawn Court healers (who returned to their Court after Amarantha's downfall) had offered to heal his scars. Mor also offered the services of Madja- who apparently was responsible for her miraculous (physical) recovery after Kier's torture.
Lucien turned his gaze on those scars, and on what thin memory he did have of the moment they were put there. Cleaning done, he decided against putting the golden eye back in tonight. He felt like going without.
Amarantha took his eye, humiliated him, and left him in his own filth. But now her legacy would live on only in the scars she'd left on others. She was dead, her master was dead, the people of Hybern were running with their tails between their legs and Prythian was rising to forge a new alliance with the humans, one stronger and more enduring than ever before.
He smiled to himself as he walked back into his room, turning the golden eye in his hand.
A small mother-of-pearl box sat upon his nightstand. Lucien's touch unlocked it and he carefully set his golden eye inside beside its twin.
Magic, or the inner tells of a living body?
That was the other white lie in his tale:
Lucien never chose between the two.