Feyre's exuberant bubbliness dimmed somewhat during our walk back to the manor, but enough remained to make her chatter incessantly throughout the way. It conveniently gave me some respite to work on getting a grip on the lingering flying-induced wooziness.

"I hadn't pegged Mor as the diplomatic type, to be honest, so I can't say I'm surprised she's not getting anywhere with Tarquin. She probably tried to scare the shit out of his whole family – but they've survived Under The Mountain, so I'll take it that the bullying tactic won't work so well. I keep wondering what would have happened if we'd been straight with them from the start. It was a risk we had not been willing to make, and I don't regret that decision, but in hindsight… Maybe I should go to the Summer Court myself," Feyre mused. "Maybe that's what Tarquin's waiting for."

"A blood ruby makes a fairly clear statement," I commented dryly. "Bit of a stretch to interpret as an invitation."

"We have to do more!" she cried, striding faster in agitation. "Hybern is advancing and we're a Cauldron-stirred mess of a court with no defense strategy whatsoever and not nearly ready to engage in open battle. There's got to be something we can do."

I stopped dead at the sound of a loud rustle coming from her.

"Venting your frustration?" I pointedly looked over her shoulders, where the dark mass of her wings had reappeared, spans of black velvet creating a halo of night around her.

She raised her chin in a show of dignified defiance. "It feels very liberating." The wings rose majestically, then folded back into her without a trace.

We resumed our walking.

"This would be a lot easier if I had been able to travel the courts after Under the Mountain, establish relationships with the new High Lords," I said. "Gaining trust takes time. Having ignored them for months and months has cost us more than we can afford." Had things gone back to normal after Amarantha, I would have started to visit the other courts one by one, as soon as the Spring Court was back on its feet, creating diplomatic ties with the new ruling class. Feyre's departure and our subsequent preoccupation in the search for her had put a stop to that.

Feyre peered at me sideways. I almost groaned at the wicked glint in her eyes. "You're still the Spring Court emissary, aren't you?" she said. "Maybe it's time you resumed your duties."

I snorted. "Are you saying there's a chance I'll succeed where your precious Night Court family didn't?"

"A slight chance," she said with a grin, "but yes. Tarquin's been looking for a likeminded friend since he was freed from Under the Mountain. Rhys and I disappointed him in that respect – and I'm afraid we didn't make it easier to get into his good books for all who follow – but as I see it, you're pretty much our last resort. If you manage to get him to listen, you can explain."

"Explain?" I repeated, choosing to ignore the dubious compliment of being a last resort. "As in, explain that you sneaked your way into his confidence, only to betray his tenuous trust with the theft of the most dangerous and valuable artifact in his whole court, so that you could thwart the King of Hybern's plans of using an even more dangerous and valuable artifact, an endeavor in which you failed magnificently due to the interference of Tamlin's and my exorbitantly idiotic and monumentally stupid selves?"

"Exactly like that. Though I think you should expound a little more on the exorbitant idiocy and monumental stupidity."

"Well. That's going to go down easy."

"I have complete faith in your sweet tongue."

"I'm going to need Tamlin in on it. This is a several-days mission, not feasible as a sneak-out-and-get-the-hell-back-before-he-notices. I need an official mandate to promote Spring Court interests."

I caught Feyre grinning at me mischievously, and realized she had already started plotting. I sighed in resignation.

...vvv...

It took Feyre about two minutes to concoct a plan, and an hour later, she was facing Tamlin across the dinner table, animatedly reciting her story with just the right measure of carelessness and outrage in her voice. I was about ready to applaud by the time she finished: "And I didn't even know what those gems meant, and then Rhys said it was basically a declaration of war, and I hadn't even really met this Tarquin guy, not when I was in my right mind, anyway."

Tamlin looked inclined to march over to the Night Court and punch Rhysand in the face for this atrocious treatment of his mate, disregarding the fact that last time he'd tried to land a punch on Rhys, it hadn't turned out so well.

"That was a fine political trap," he growled. "Tarquin could be an ally if Rhys hadn't set you up against him."

"Well, that ship has sailed," I remarked.

"Sadly so," Feyre agreed. "I wish I could go and set it right. I'm sure Tarquin would understand that I bear him no ill will once he knows I had been manipulated."

"I'm sure he wouldn't," Tamlin acquiesced.

"Careful," I said in mock earnestness. "Next thing she'll show up on Summer's door step with a gift basket and a bouquet of flowers."

"If I were as experienced a diplomat as you, Lucien," Feyre said pointedly, "Maybe I would come up with something of more interest to the Summer Court to put in that basket."

"What a shame you're a social oaf."

"The Summer Court would be a useful ally," Tamlin mused.

"Just because I don't have your skill level in skullduggery doesn't mean I'm socially inept," Feyre protested.

"Actually, Lucien," Tamlin interrupted our bickering. "Why don't the two us get to the study later and discuss a diplomatic mission to Summer?"

...vvv...

The sun burned hotter than my guilty conscience in the Summer Court city of Adriata.

Inside the palace, the flagstone floor had radiated cool, the airy room where I had sat opposite a stone-faced High Lord of Summer well sheltered from the boiling temperatures outside. It could as well have been the High Lord and his cousin's frozen features and icy silence that gave the place a chill.

Although I had Feyre's permission to disclose information about the Book of Breathings and the Cauldron, I had to get a feel for Tarquin and his courtiers first. While matters were getting increasingly desperate, it wouldn't to do swoop in on them like an Illyrian to a battle field. Feyre had recommended honesty, and I would heed her advice. Indeed, Tarquin seemed to be a notably open player in the field of politics, but that didn't mean he lacked the necessary cunning to see to the benefits of his court. He needed the opportunity to sound me out first, realize I was serious, have a little time to soften. He needed time to size me up, just as I was getting the measure of him. If I was going to tell him the whole story, I was going to maximize the impact.

I'd dine with him and his confidants tonight, hoping they'd had a little time to ponder our first meeting. It had ended rather abruptly when his next supplicants arrived, and I'd been led out into the sweltering streets of Adriata once more.

Summer was not a place for me, less so even than Spring. Despite family animosity, I loved my birth court fiercely. There was nothing that could set me at peace like a bout of Autumn rain, the rustling of leaves floating on a breeze. Autumn had warmth, and it had crispness, but nothing of this suffocating heat.

The view of the sea was spectacular though, and the glint of sunlight on the polished roofs of the city was breathtaking. The early morning light had washed the streets in freshness, and I'd watched the sun painting the city in glittering shades of white and yellow as it rose from the turquoise sea into the brilliant sky. The steady hum of the multitude of inhabitants was an invigorating change from the calm and emptiness permeating the Spring Court manor.

Tarquin's accommodations were grand to say the least. Everything about this city exuded a desire for beauty, but the palace surely was the epitome of it. With its elegant slender towers spiraling their way up into the sky, it looked fragile and daring, and the elaborate decorations stuck upon everything spoke of delicacy and wealth.

With the sun halfway to its zenith, half the opulent walls still lay in a cool darkness while the other half was bathed in light. I stood in the shade below those soaring towers, the sprawling city behind me bedecking the short distance between palace and shore. Everything was close to the shore in this anthill of sun and salt. Two feet in front of me, the sea lapped at the city, only the last vestiges of the stronger waves reaching high enough to greet the low wall that marked the high tide. In a few hours, the sand would be dry, only to be embraced by the water again later. It exuded a very tangible temptation to take off one's boots and clear that waist-high wall, and wait for the next wave to roll over bare feet.

There was a tickling in my chest, a tingling tug of excitement. Maybe I had missed travelling the courts more than I had thought. I felt vaguely reminded of the Hybern castle, though how that would connect to the joy of travelling I didn't know. It had a wistful edge to it.

Boisterous voices coming out of the palace had me snap back to myself. I turned from the view, almost reluctant – and froze.

Like an apparition, a figure stood before me in the scintillating midmorning light. The sun was in her back, plunging her face in shadows, but I didn't need to see her to know who she was. My mate – my mate! Elain returned my stare with parted lips, as if frozen in the act of drawing breath to speak. Her brown eyes were wide and unblinking. And then the voices groped their way back into my consciousness.

"The audacity to show up here. After all that happened in Spring, his position is a lot more precarious than is good for him."

"His timing irks me much more. We were making progress with Tarquin."

My heart iced over. Those were the voices that haunted me in my memories. My most insistent recollection of them was them laughing, laughing out loud while my love bled out on cold black stones.

My brothers.

"This time, when we meet him, he's fair game. I'm going to endure his impertinence no longer."

"I wouldn't be rash about it. We can't be sure his alliance with Tamlin is breaking. If the rumors are false, you'd get us into a spot of bother by drawing his blood. I have no interest in having an enraged Spring beast showing up for vengeance."

They were coming nearer. They were exiting the palace. They were passing along the narrow street that led from the palace square directly the shore. Elain and I were standing right where that street opened up to the sea.

Without thinking twice, I grabbed Elain around the waist and took the only way open: I hurled her and me over the low railing separating the shore from the city.

During low tide, there would be a long stretch of beach inviting walks in the warm sand. As it was, we took a drop of about four feet, and landed hard on a thin stretch of sand, shielded from view by the crumbling stone wall in our backs. If someone were to look down, my red hair would shine like a beacon.

Cold water drenched my side; the waves barely reached a few inches of height as their last tongues crawled over the expanse of sand.

"There's a war coming. Chances are he won't survive it anyway."

"I can't really be bothered. He's been quiet enough ever since he left Autumn, except from that short time Under the Mountain. If only after that, Tamlin hadn't been so much harder to deal with."

I could hear their footsteps. They were three, and my mind painted me their faces very vividly as I shrunk down into the sand, Elain half buried beneath me. She was looking remarkable composed, considering that a more or less stranger male had just made a dash for a precipice with her. Elain – my mate right here, in my presence, in my brothers' presence – my heart beat against her in a flurry, as pictures of what would happen unfolded in my mind – if they saw her, with me, noticed the mating bond… she'd be a pawn in their games. They would manipulate her, they would delight in hurting her. They would –

I squeezed my eyes shut as my imagination outdid itself in creating images of Elain as I'd seen Isa, bloody and torn, wings ripped from her back –

A hand pressed against my throbbing pulse. I snapped my eyes open to have them fall right into Elain's.

"It seems as though the human has become a spot of bother of her own, as well," my eldest brother, Adalon, said. "We could have done away with her before, but she presented too much of an amusement with Amarantha do act on it then."

Sweat beaded my body as Adalon's voice dredged memories out from the surface of my mind, so long ago yet so often remembered. I flattened into the wet sand, fully aware of how cowardly I was hiding, but I wouldn't risk a fight, not when Elain was present. They were three, and I was one, and Elain was not a fighter, and what they could do to her while I was engaged in a fight with two of them… Summer's sand and water turned to the blood-slick floor of an Autumn Court room around me.

"The human annoys me to no end. Tarquin kept coming back to her – she must have made an impression when she was here. I'm beginning to think that maybe she biased him against us – considering her company, she might be on the warpath were we're concerned, just like our baby brother."

There was the sudden but distinct sensation of a soft pair of lips touching my snarling ones.

My eyes flew open and I was back to this world and the presence. I just barely contained a gasp as I again met Elain's deep-brown eyes blinking back at me, unabashed.

She was kissing me.

My mind had been wiped utterly blank in a blink, unwelcome thoughts eradicated. My brothers kept talking, but I could no longer hear them. My heart was still beating wildly, but now it was for a different reason. Elain met my gaze, and I drowned in hers, and the whole war could have passed with the two of us lying here, none the wiser.

Elain smiled. I felt as if I'd taken an airborne journey from the Summer Court to Spring and back on Feyre's wings.

"They've gone now," she said softly.

I briefly felt my face turn hot and red before I leaped up faster than I had taken her down and all but threw her over the railing. Her dress was drenched and rendered heavy with salt and mud, and wet sand caked her elbow and clung to her hair.

"I'm – " My throat suddenly constricted so much I didn't get any words out. I reached out to steady her and almost brushed the sand from her skin, the motion turning into an ineffectual flapping as I stopped myself just in time.

"It's okay," Elain said, sounding a little breathless but serene, "it would have been rather unpleasant for us to meet these males, wouldn't it?" She smiled that smile again. "Thank you."

"We need to…" I tried to give myself a mental slap to escape the effect of that dazzling smile. "We need to get out of here," I croaked. I pulled her with me, the way my brothers had come, through the doorway towards the palace. They wouldn't dare try anything in Tarquin's home.

I still thought her strikingly composed, but she did look a little pale as I pushed her along, over the square and into the entrance hall. The inside of the palace was considerably colder than the sunbathed outside. She shivered. The first time I'd met her, she'd been shivering as well. Was it a coincidence or did I cause her to be cold and miserable in my presence?

I fumbled for something to say to her, but nothing would come to mind. Cauldron boil me, I had been sent here specifically for my talent with words, and here I was, failing spectacularly the moment something came up that could not be solved by cunning alone. We faced each other to no more sound but the dripping of our clothes on the cold marble floor.

Then a dry voice cut into the dripping: "There must be an interesting story behind that sight."

Both Elain and I swiveled around as if caught in the act of something forbidden.

Tarquin paused. He looked at me. Looked at her. Slowly raised one of his eyebrows – and voiced his dawning realization in a mildly interested, "Ah."

"We didn't know we would both be here," Elain started.

"We never intended to meet," I sputtered.

"It's been a coincidence."

"Badly timed…"

"Very ill conceived…"

"Really not on purpose…"

By now, I really didn't know whether I was apologizing to Tarquin or to Elain, but my mate was as flustered as I was.

Tarquin, completely unfazed High Lord that he was, majestically raised a hand in the air, and snapped his fingers with a theatric crack. He kept looking at us, and seemed faintly amused at meeting nothing but completely nonplussed stares. He nodded subtly down our bodies to indicate our now impeccable state of attire. Little puddles of water and heaps of sand surrounded us. Then he raised his eyebrow even higher – and turned and motioned for us to follow.

Elain and I shared a quick glance and simultaneously shrugged as soon as his back was turned. I felt like a naughty child.

"I have already heard Elain's story about the reasons behind her sister's and the High Lord of Night's actions," Tarquin called back without turning, striding purposefully down the hall. "Were you going to tell me the same?"

"Er…" He led us into the room in which he'd held council with me before, where he wasted no time on pleasantries and regally sat down behind his desk. I hurried to get some words out. "I was going to explain that Feyre needed the book so she could annihilate the Cauldron's powers so she could stop the King of Hybern from using it so he wouldn't break the wall." I realized I was the only one standing and quickly sat down in the only remaining chair, which happened to be very closely beside Elain's. "She, uh…" I tried to subtly shift my chair a little further away, "she is sorry. She's very sorry."

"Yes, that would be the same story," Elain said with the air of reminding me to water the flowers. She was studiously not looking my way.

"Ah. Right."

Distantly, it occurred to me that Tarquin was probably using our befuddled state of mind to extract the truth from us. But he pressed on so quickly that there was no resisting.

"Well then, since Feyre apparently has enough power spread over all of Prythian to send her allies from the Courts of Night and Spring simultaneously – why does she not face up to her deeds and visit me herself?"

"Feyre didn't send me," Elain hurried to say, at the same time as I said: "The Spring Court isn't really her ally." Then we stopped and looked at each other.

Tarquin nodded. He seemed to be studying his feet for some reason. "Then who sent you and whose ally is she?"

"We all decided I should come, it's probably because I seem the most harmless," Elain said.

"Well, things between Feyre and Tamlin aren't as they were before," I said over her.

"Things in the Night Court sometimes are decided very haphazardly, and Rhys doesn't always get what he wants…"

"So I think it's safe to say that Feyre is not only a staunch ally of the Night Court but belongs to the Night Court herself…"

"So ultimately it was my choice."

"And so far that's only the Night Court."

Tarquin didn't reply. He still seemed keenly interested in the floor.

My mind was a little delayed in comprehending what Elain had been saying, but, "Wait," I finally asked her, "that demon sister of yours was okay with you coming here all by yourself?"

"Don't call her my demon sister, and of course not, she's in the city, but she had to promise not to come face to face with anyone important."

"That was probably wise."

"And what do you mean, Feyre isn't allied with the Spring Court? I thought you were Spring Court!"

"I don't know, I'm not really anything anymore," I said, a little on the defensive.

"Don't call yourself not anything!"

"What? Why shouldn't I call myself anything?"

"You called yourself nothing!"

"But why should I call myself anything?"

"You shouldn't call yourself nothing!"

"What?"

A strangled snort reminded me that Tarquin was still present. Our heads swiveled around to catch his shoulders shaking slightly, but his face was straight.

"I just remembered, I have a … something… really important…" he spluttered, and with a hurry very unbecoming a High Lord in his own council room, made a dash for the door.

He left a dumbfounded silence in his wake, during which we both stared at the closed door, rather than looking at each other.

"I have an inkling we might have given away a little more than what we were authorized to say," Elain finally ventured.

"That is something of an understatement," I agreed.

"He is very clever, don't you think?"

"He is one cunning bastard."

"Lucien!"

"What?"

"He is a High Lord!"

"He is one cunning High Lord, then!"

"Yes, he is!" Her cheeks were tinged a very pretty pink.

"I'm sorry for startling you," I said.

"So am I."

"Um…" Somehow, the words Elain, why did you kiss me? seemed to express disapproval of the fact, which was one impression I did not intent to make until my dying day.

"You seemed so scared," she said, sheepishly. "I could think of nothing else to calm you down."

"Hu." I had no more eloquent reply either for the fact that she'd replied to a question I hadn't spoken out loud nor for the fact that I had truly been scared out of my wits.

She continued. "I've also been feeling things from your end ever since… this happened, and I wanted to… "

Uh-oh.

"Well, I thought you needed a good kiss." Her cheeks now turned a flamboyantly glowing red.

"A good… that…"

She looked up at me from underneath her lashes. I swear if she had the slightest idea how those big brown eyes looked when peeking out from those long silky lashes of hers, she would have one very potent weapon at her hands. My face followed suit in the flaming color scheme.

"If it wasn't good…"

"It was brilliant," I sputtered. "Brilliant. It was brilliant. It was…brilliant!"

The humiliation of that was soon to be topped by that of facing a forcedly straight-faced Tarquin, and even this, in my very near future, was going to be outmatched in recounting the whole incident to Feyre, who would be rolling on the grass with laughter.