To my lovely stranger,

No one has ever asked me for what I treasure, only for what I gained to lose? To be honest, I treasure my mother. Her lovely face is a distant memory in my mind. She would read me stories when I was young. My room was tucked away, far away from those of my brothers' and father.'s. It was such an innocent time, and she would tell me that she never wished me to be a prince in the Autumn Court. She wanted me to live a pure and noble life that would be full of happiness and love. Though, the love she described is a far cry from what I have.

When was the last time you felt so innocently happy?

Sincerely,

Lucian

Elain chewed at her lip as she again read the letter before the fireplace. Hydra had begun to follow her mistress inside the home if only to seek shelter from the cold at first. However, in time, moreover a few hours, Hydra has found comfort in Elain's lap.

Now the High Fae female was passing her hand in gentle strokes over the satin fur of the little vixen. She sat pondering the question.

When people thought of Elain, they would say she is beautiful and delicate. Nevermind the fact that she had driven a blade into the neck of the King of Hybern during the war. Elain's family had tried to protect the wide-eyed beauty and cultivate the innocence she once held.

It made her feel nauseous. She loved them dearly, but she was not a doll to be encased in a glass managery to be watched as she tended to her garden.

"I won't be a doll" Elain announced to the vixen in their couch of the new home. She had gone shopping for homes with Feyre and Mor earlier that week. They had settled on a cottage by the harbor of Valaris. It lay on two acres of land, the earth rich from the salt mist. Elain had taken in the rundown brick home with wild and unkempt weeds and grinned at the challenge.

"This is perfect" She had said then. For days on end, she would work diligently to tend the land and plant the seeds that Azriel had given her as a housewarming present.

The Shadow singer had become a trusted confidant to the female. A calming whisper against the sea. They had sat on the roof of her home that first night back to back and sipping on rich wine. Speaking little, safe for when they talked of the complications of past loves.

Azriel was training himself not to love Mor with every molecule in his body. Something that was a part of him for five hundred years, but Mor had found her lover in the winter court. It's emissary and raven-haired beauty, Deena.

"I suspected that she would be mated to someone else but never a female. All those years of my pining for her and yet I could not shake the feeling though it seemed we were perfect for one another, we didn't fit" Azriel had said in his deep rasping voice. Elain felt his strong wings flare slightly. "She must have been so uncomfortable under the weight of my gaze for so many years."

Elain thought of the golden-haired beauty that was her High Lord and Lady's third. Her throat bobbed as she felt the years of longing and sorrow lick at her mind. Azriel's shadows cocooned them in the night. She didn't fight the vicarious tears that slid down her face. Elain would absorb the pain from her friend, and she would endure it for him, for he had suffered too much. Azriel could smell the salt that trailed her cheeks and stiffened. He felt her shook her head.

"She is here. Your mate waits for you in this city." Elain chuckled while she choked on a sob. "You have not seen her because your shadows have covered our eyes, singing you to sleep with dreams of the one you can not hold."

Azriel decoded her words. Here. his mate was here. He tilted his head back, and it connected lightly with Elain's. He gave a breath. Why couldn't his mate have been Elain? It would have been so easy, like breathing with her. The Mother would not give in to what is easy, however, and besides, he could only feel a kinship with her. Nevermind she was a mated female, there was this familial feel them. Elain looked up to him like a little girl idolizes their elder brother. It was a similar friendship to that of Feyre and Lucian. Lucian.

"What of you and your mate?" Azriel asked as if sensing his name on her mind. Elain sank back into his warmth between his wings and hugged her legs to herself.

"We are strangers." She breathed, quoting from the poems Lucian had sent her. Elain looked down and the tile of the ceiling as if she could see through them to the side table by the fireplace. She had kept every single one of them.

"But there is a tug, and I feel him here in the city. In his home in the barracks and it's like a beacon. I always stop myself from going to him though." She admitted. The wind and shadows seemed to ask, Why?

"Because I am tired of living like a doll. I need to become strong before I become his" Elain explained.

…

Lucian limped to his home, panting as he eased inside. A warm bath had him nearly purring, and when he was done, he walked into the foyer of the house and letter that lay on the smokey colored hardwood. He recognized the sloping handwriting and more over the scent. Of dew and jasmine.

Lucian carefully opened the paper and eased into his favorite overstuffed chair by the fireplace.

To my kind stranger,

Innocense is a luxury that I was never truly blessed to hold. I knew the role I had to play when we were poor and starving. I had to be the light and the soft-spoken so to sooth the unease of my family. When we came to riches, my mind was clouded by Tamlin's spell, but I had to remain smiling for my father and Nesta how had grown so grave at Feyre's disappearance. When I thought my human lover saw me I was wrong. I knew it too. He saw a wife to tend to all matters and to make the world pretty for him in the time of war. I think the mask I wear is slowly cracking a disintegrating. Feyre once told me you wore a mask for forty-nine years. A fox mask, like Hydra. She is the most cunning little vixen and my light in the dark.

Do you still wear a mask, Lucian?

Elain