We settled into some kind of mute dance, Feyre and I, watching each other, feeling each other out, but never betraying anything, never letting the other know what we really knew and thought.
I felt her gaze follow me around, felt her eyes bore into me as I ate with my head bowed over my plate, straightened my shoulders when her piercing gaze caught a downcast moment, eased the anguish off my face every morning and put on a grin for show.
She smiled and laughed and simpered, lulling Tamlin into the false security of their travesty of a love. The pain it cost her became evident only in the tiniest of twitches, the speed with which her smile faded when he turned, the seconds I caught her alone in the garden watching the night sky.
Those were the moments that bespoke her true condition – reminded me that she and I both had left a mate behind in Hybern. If the silent pull that had my thoughts repeatedly spin in circles around the mental picture of Elain was any indication, her torments at the separation must be unfathomable. Unlike me, she knew and loved her mate, and – I was sure – had accepted the bond and cemented it.
Maybe this was why, while we hadn't exactly sought out each other's company, we had recently managed to exchange words that were not dripping poison. Maybe like me, she had lost the spark of energy it took to be at each other's throats all the time. The constant urge for vigilance was taking a toll on me, the tight jumpiness making me jerk from what little sleep got. My shield of humor and snark cost me more effort than centuries of practice should permit.
But Feyre never relented, never slacked. She never missed the blankness in my eyes when memories held me in thrall, my involuntary winces when Tamlin's magic threatened to flare up, my frozen stillness whenever her sister's name fell. She seemed to have a never-ending supply of energy in spite of her own sorrows.
And that, sometimes, made me wonder whether she was simply giving me a break for the sake of it.
Not once in the weeks she'd been back had I been able to catch her in the act of betrayal. Not one message sent to the enemy, not one foot out of place, not one word out of order.
More even than I avoided Feyre, I avoided private conversations with Tamlin by all means. His attention was on Feyre during meals, and keeping busy didn't prove difficult, considering the amount of work the last months had left us with. But there was no escaping him forever, and when he summoned me to his study, I went in resignation.
I entered the room to see Tamlin rolling up a few large pieces of parchment. A closer investigation revealed that they were maps. Spring Court maps.
"I'm going to need you to bring those over," he informed me without preamble.
I blinked.
"My end of the bargain includes granting Hybern free passage through Spring Court territory. Letting them know the way is part of that. I need you to convey them over to Hybern."
Dread zinged through me at the thought of entering these poisoned lands again. This deal and my involvement in it made me nauseous. I wanted no part in destroying our court.
But weariness had long since quelled my resistance.
"When do you want me to leave?"
"Three days' time. I want this thing over with."
Over with. Cauldron, I wanted things to be over with. I wanted everything to be over with. But that?
"Over with?" I repeated dully. "This is just going to start it."
"It was necessary," Tamlin growled, the familiar tang of uncontrolled, feral magic radiating from him. It would unload upon me if I wasn't careful. And yet I couldn't stay silent.
"What are we going to do about the villages?"
"The villages?"
My skin tingled in anticipation of receiving the blast. "An army is going to pass by them. We need to tell them to ready some defenses."
"Hybern will instruct his armies not to touch anything on Spring Court lands. There is no need to warn them. Warning them would make the appearance of war coming to our lands. This is not the case."
"The appearance of…" In truth, I wasn't even surprised by this attitude, not really. He had become increasingly adept at suppressing any notion that what he was doing might be very, very wrong. "Tamlin, Hybern's army is going to pass by mere miles from them, possibly even entering the villages for supplies. Are you telling me you trust Hybern soldiers not to seize an opportunity when one arises?"
His growl deepened. "What are you suggesting?"
"I'm suggesting that masses of monsters aren't exactly the most reliable when it comes to holding up to a contract their king and master made. They are going to pillage, Tamlin. They are going to steal and rape and murder. What's going to stop them? The villages need to be pre-"
A shock of magic hit me. It barreled into me like a wave crashing on the shores of a stormy sea. My skin started burning with it as my body tried to shield itself against more power than it could possibly absorb. I couldn't breathe… I felt blind and deaf, even though I could still see the study, could still hear Tamlin as he growled again at me.
"The King of Hybern and I have an agreement. I will see to keeping my end, and he will see to keeping his. There will be no threat to the villages."
With that, he stormed out of the room.
He hadn't meat to attack me, not really. Tamlin simply had too much raw power. It filled him to the brim, and sometimes, when his emotions ran high, he couldn't keep it inside himself. The magic exploded out of him, and he could neither stop nor channel it.
But these outbursts hurt. It felt like the magic had taken possession of every nerve in my body and set them aflame. I couldn't move, still couldn't breathe, until the worst of it started to dissipate.
Then the lock-down on my limbs lifted, and I collapsed on the chair in front of Tamlin's desk, gasping. There were tiny dots of light dancing in my vision. Through them, my gaze fell on the rolled up maps still lying ominously on the desk.
I'd have to bring them to Hybern. Hybern would know exactly where faeries gathered throughout the Spring Court, where we would be vulnerable.
"Tamlin?"
Feyre's voice.
I snapped up, trying to shake the lingering ache from my bones, and turned towards the desk in an effort to look occupied.
Feyre thought bad enough of me already. Having her witness my weakness would make it so much more embarrassing.
Again, her voice sounded, coming closer. "Tamlin?"
She pushed her head through the door.
"Oh… Hello." She sounded sheepish, already about to withdraw. I almost started to relax when I realized she had lingered.
"Tamlin just left," I said.
She still didn't leave. Instead, she tentatively approached me – me and the open maps that were still sprawled underneath the ones destined for Hybern. I did nothing to stop her from getting a good look.
But she wasn't interested in the table. She was looking at me.
"Are you all right?"
She must have smelled the magic in the air. My face had a traitorous habit of turning stark white at the merest provocation – she had figured out what had happened.
"That's none of your business," I said harshly.
I expected her to rush out with a cutting reply, but she did the opposite. After a moment's hesitation, she leaned against Tamlin's desk, mere inches from where my hand was braced against the edge.
"What did you argue about?" she asked softly.
"It's none of your business," I snapped again.
If I'd trusted my legs, I would just have left. I couldn't bear her seeing just how helpless I was in the wake of Tamlin's outburst. But it always took a moment for the surge of magic to completely relinquish its hold on my limbs.
"Those lands you're allowing Hybern to wage war on," she finally said, still quietly, but with a sharp edge. "They're Elain's homelands, too. Our father lives there still."
"Maybe you should have considered that before you were flaunting your new allegiance with the Night Court in Tamlin's face," I lashed out, stung by her truth.
"Are you saying this is my fault?"
"No. I'm saying you might have considered what your actions would mean for Tamlin."
"Don't you blame me for this." More than anger, there was danger in her voice. "Don't you dare pretend that I could have stopped this, when you were here all along, helping Tamlin. You're making this so easy for yourself, don't you, Lucien?"
Her eyes locked into mine. They were deep, deep, unfathomable wells. I reinforced my mental shields and looked away.
"You just shift it all off to Tamlin, right? Nothing is your fault. You just did what your High Lord told you. Well, Lucien, there's something you should know."
I dimly noticed that now would truly be a moment to be afraid of her, but it was just too much of an effort. I obstinately looked anywhere but at her.
"Just because there's someone higher up than you doesn't mean you're not responsible for your own actions. You can hide behind Tamlin all you want, but your decisions are yours. Don't forget that so easily."
She held me a prisoner of her furious force, and I just stared ahead. In a display of controlled power, she spun and strolled back to the door. Almost out of the room, she turned back once more.
"Elain is a sweet spirit. Be careful you don't end up making her ashamed of being mated with you."
Through the flash of cold at her words and the residue of pain in my bones, it occurred to me that she might have lingered just to keep me company through that pain. And I had gone and botched it.
...
Ashamed of being mated with me. My mate would be ashamed to me mated with me. She'd be ashamed to be mated with a weak soul like mine. My mate, ashamed of me.
Feyre's words had the same effect on me as Tamlin's blast of magic.
There'd been a time when I'd had the upper hand in our interactions; I was stronger, older, Fae. Now our roles had been reversed. I was the stronger one no more. The Night Court had changed her; Rhysand had changed her.
I had relocated to my own study, where I sat watching the pile of rolled-up maps like a nest of demon spawn. By handing those maps to the King of Hybern, I would give him the keys to our territories. Tamlin had made the bargain against my advice, against my dire warnings. Yet I had been there through every step of the way. Handing over the maps didn't make me any more a part of this war than I already was.
The mortal realm… countless humans would fall prey to the carnage. Before Feyre, I knew I wouldn't have cared much. Nameless, faceless mortals… weak, despicable humans…
But Feyre had never been weak. Her sister Nesta was certainly not weak, and as for Elain… She was surely not despicable.
I had long since determined that is was better for Elain to never acknowledge the bond. There was no reason for her to accept me as her mate, anyway.
Why, then, had Feyre made it sound as if it mattered what Elain felt for me? Why had she put it as if the chance of her accepting our bond was real?
I fought down that hope. Hope would be the end of me. One more shattered hope and I'd go to pieces along with it.
After a night even more sleepless than usual, I dragged myself down to the dining room feeling exhausted in both body and mind. Feyre and Tamlin were already seated, immersed in conversation. Feyre even seemed genuinely interested for once.
"And the lakes? I've met those water-wraiths, but do more faeries dwell there? How populated are they?"
"There aren't many inhabitants of the waters in Spring," Tamlin answered. "The wraiths are greedy. They annihilate whatever rivals there are for food."
Apparently, this was the first Feyre let me witness of her attempts to attain information about Spring Court matters.
"Couldn't you establish a system to help them manage? Maybe they'd help you in return. Imagine them in battle. They'd be a force to be reckoned with."
"Water-wraiths? I've never seen one use force except to eliminate a contender."
Feyre changed topics so quickly I suspected she, in contrast, had seen one fight. It almost made me curious about the adventures of her Night Court time.
"I would love to see more of the Spring Court," she announced. "I've only been as far away from the manor as a few hours' ride. There must be so much more to it."
I tensed.
It was a plea I'd heard too often. The same desperate appeal for freedom that almost-human, battered down Feyre had made, which I had never been able to grant, and which had almost ended up destroying her.
"Then we should take a tour," Tamlin replied calmly.
I willed my tense muscles to relax. This was not the past. Feyre's tone was much lighter, and Tamlin no longer building her cage.
Feyre smiled. "The two of us together?"
Tamlin reached for her hand; she had by now learned not to flinch away. "The two of us – just the two of us. No sentries."
No Lucien, hopefully.
Feyre turned to me, beaming. "Will you be okay here, all by yourself?"
"Will I be okay?" I smirked. "I'm already planning all the fun I'll have without you. You two are insufferable bores."
Her smile lost some of its splendor as her gaze hit my weariness-deadened eyes. "Don't be a bother for Alis and the servants," she continued in a strangely gentle voice.
I snorted. "How long are you planning to be off for, a few years?"
"Well, before that," Tamlin said, "you have your own trip to prepare for, remember?"
"Really? Where are you going?" Feyre asked.
Tamlin and I exchanged a glance. "Court business," he said curtly.
Feyre shrugged. "Well, I won't keep you from it. I'm going to paint today." A vigilant glint remained in her eyes, though.
"Good," Tamlin said gruffly. "Nice to see that painting room put to use again."
"I know. I couldn't find the joy in it for a while, but I'm back at it."
Relief flashed in Tamlin's eyes. "I'm glad about that. I really am." He shifted. "By the way. I once happened to stumble over one very interesting painting showing two pigs with a startling resemblance to Lucien and me…"
Feyre laughed, and they engaged in playful banter about the instance that had led to her painting us in such an unfavorable manner. I squirmed under Feyre's intermittent scrutiny, and hurried my breakfast.
Until a presence pressed against my mind.
A claw in my head. Rhysand, Amarantha, they were here – there had only been one time I felt someone trying to breach my mental shield, and that was Rhysand, he was trying to get into my mind…
I had jumped up and was standing at the table, chair knocked back, chest heaving, absolute terror in my heart. The memory of those claws in my mind… The memories I had thrown in Rhys' way, my most distracting memories, to shield Feyre's name…
Tamlin and Feyre were staring at me in shock, Tamlin in surprise, Feyre looking guilty.
Feyre. I had thought she might be able to do this.
Feyre had done it. Feyre had infiltrated my mind, only Feyre – not Rhysand – not Amarantha – neither Rhys nor Amarantha were here.
"Lucien?" The tone in Tamlin's voice said, 'What the hell are you doing there?'
Feyre kept looking at me wide-eyed.
My heart was beating a frantic rhythm, so fast it felt as if it was going to jump out of my throat.
"I… I need to go," I choked out. "To… the stables."
It was not a good excuse, but when had Tamlin last cared about what was bugging me when I irrationally ran away from places.
I fled from the room, not even bothering to pick up my fallen chair. I rushed out, thinking of nothing but moving without knowing where. I paused a moment on the manor's front steps, but it didn't really matter where I went, anyway.
"What bit you this time?"
I had paused a moment too long. Alis had spotted me – and where she was, her two boys suddenly broke out of the bushes with joyful howls.
"Lucien?"
I tried to take a steadying breath.
"Why don't you come over here for a moment?"
She was sitting in her usual spot, a bench in the manor's shade. My nerves felt frayed; I didn't trust my voice to speak yet. Rigidly, I crossed the few steps between us and took a seat beside her.
The boys were brandishing crude swords made from branches they had tied in a cross. Their laughter permeated the air in the same way the ubiquitous sent of roses did as they chased each other around and through the flower beds.
I grasped the bench's edges in a vicelike grip to stop my hands from trembling. It didn't stop Alis' attention from flitting over the dents I was making in the wood.
"You let Feyre rile you up much too easily," she said softly.
Breathe in. "And here I thought you were the one who encouraged her to pick on me."
She chuckled. "I told her not to cower. I'm telling you not to cower now."
"I'm not cowering from Feyre!" I said indignantly.
Alis merely snorted, but her mirth didn't last. "Feyre shouldn't be here."
"What? When did she stop being your precious darling?"
A sigh so large I wouldn't think fit into the small women escaped her. "She didn't. But she shouldn't be here."
Even in my current low, it wasn't often that I was struck speechless. Alis shook her head at me. "Come on, Lucien, you don't think I'm stupid, do you? Tamlin might be blind enough not to see it, but I'm not, and neither are you. The Night Court was good for her. She loved Tamlin once, but no more. Whatever her reasons for staying – she belongs somewhere else."
I should have known Alis would see right through the act.
She had been there to see Feyre's final breakdown – had allowed the Night Court woman to take her. She hadn't wanted to feign ignorance, had wanted to tell Tamlin that it was his own fault. In the end, it had been my shameless begging that she had persuaded her to lie, to say she hadn't seen anything. I had not been, and I would never be, ready to see Tamlin take it out on Alis.
"Feyre has many reasons to take revenge," Alis added sadly.
Would it hurt Alis to see Feyre burn the Spring Court to the ground?
Jamy, the smaller of the boys, burst through from between two bushes with a yowl, his brother hard on his heels. Brade, I recalled, was the elder boy's name.
"You hit me!" Jamy screamed.
"We're playing warrior, you ninny, of course I hit you!" his brother replied.
"You're only playing, boys, so don't hit each other for real," Alis intervened.
I hadn't seen much of the children during the last months. I had been away a lot, and when I was here – and Tamlin was here – Alis had been careful not to let them get in the way of Tamlin's wrath. So they had effectively been hidden from me as well.
"But I want to play properly! How do you want to play warrior if you're not going to hit anything?" Brade complained.
"Hit yourself, then," the smaller boy replied. "Don't hit me. Or hit him," the child said, pointing at me, "he'll hit you back."
I blinked in alarm. "I'm not going to hit your children," I hurried to inform to Alis.
Brade, however, was eyeing me curiously. "Have you ever killed anyone?"
"Ah…" I looked to Alis uncertainly. As far as I knew, she didn't think much about the High Fae way of confronting children with death and murder from a very early age. She took pity on me.
"I would be careful with this one," she said conspiratorially. "I have heard some tales of children mysteriously disappearing around him."
Both boys now gaped at me. I gaped at Alis. Then Brade tentatively said: "You're lying."
"Me, lying?" Alis cried in an exaggerated way.
"It's not true." Her light tone had emboldened the boy." You said not to cross the grumpy one, but the one-eyed one was okay."
"You said that if we could annoy him, we should," piped up the smaller boy, encouraged by his brother's daring.
"That's what you said?" I murmured wryly. Alis didn't even look slightly guilty.
"Where did your eye go?" Jamy screamed, bold enough to approach me now.
"Shut up, he won't tell us," Brade hushed, coming even closer so as not to appear any less brave than his little brother. "It was something terrible and we're not meant to know."
"But I want to know!" Jamy squealed, no longer taking leads from his brother. And, before I knew it, I had a little boy in my lap, who pawed at me with dusty hands and brought his face a hair's breadth to mine in an effort to examine my metal eye.
"What did you fight?" he asked me seriously. "A human?" He dropped his voice to a whisper. "A monster?"
"Um…" Jamy did not have any qualms at closeness, much in opposite to me. A weird strangled noise sounded next to me. "You could call it a monster," I said.
Maybe I wouldn't tell the boy that I hadn't, strictly speaking, fought it, but had merely been stupid enough to mouth up to it.
The child's eyes widened.
"He's lying, too," the elder boy cut in. "People die when they fight monsters!"
"I fought many monsters, and I killed many of them!" I defended myself, for real this time.
"Prove it," Brade challenged – and extended his little toy sword to me.
Another snort made me glance at Alis. She was shaking with barely contained laughter.
Oh, no. I would not be made a fool of by two little boys.
In a swift motion, I transferred Jamy from my lap to hers, plucked the toy sword from Brade's hand, picked the boy up from the ground and deposited him on one of the bush stags. He sank into the foliage, and the living tribute to the Spring Court's symbol animal would never look as spruce as before, which was a definite improvement.
As soon as one boy sat, slightly dazed at where he'd landed himself, the second one clung to my leg: "Me too, me too!"
We had enough stags, so the little one went up one, too. From his vantage point, he brandished his toy sword, and it kind of felt natural to hold up the one I was clutching for him to clang against. Then Brade wanted his sword back, so I grabbed a stick and charged them. They were squealing with infectious laughter, and had me so immersed in the game that I didn't even care when Feyre joined Alis on the spot I'd vacated on the bench.
The boys had almost screamed themselves tired when I noticed that Alis was now watching me in a very different way. The wrinkles had faded from the corners of her eyes, to be replaced by a softer look.
Pity was staring out at me now.
Feyre had told her about the mating bond.
What else but pity could she feel for me, who had once again managed to let luck turn to misery? How I must look to her, too cowardly even to speak of my mate.
The smile had slipped from my face like a slug.
I clung to my composure long enough to lift the children off the brush, and stalked inside, chased and haunted by their disappointed cries.
Hello to all new readers and thanks for reviews, follows and favorites! I hope you enjoyed the fluffy bit here - I definitely enjoyed writing it and was looking forward to posting this chapter! I don't really know how old the boys would appear, compared to human children, but I made them the equivalent of a five-year-old and an eight-year-old human. For the sake of cuteness :)
Leave me a review to let me know what you think about this! I'd love some more feedback!
