Chapter 3
Elain

My first trip through the gardens wasn't at all what I had expected. I knew that the gardeners had probably left, but for some reason I expected Fae (especially High Fae) to be more in touch with the soil than this.

There were more varieties of beautiful flowers than I could count or name, but many of them looked like they were drowning in their beds. Lucien was quick to point out healthy, albeit overgrown shrubs and I bit back a smile as I realized that in preparation of my visit, he had probably come out here and hacked at it himself.

"Do you have any gardening books?" I asked as I thumbed the withering leaf within a cluster of over-watered pansies.

"Dozens." Lucien nodded.

If I didn't accomplish anything else, I had at least found something to occupy my time with while I was here.

"Don't forget why we're here." Tamlin interjected as he rounded the hedge. Lucien sent him a disapproving glare that I didn't miss.

"I suppose it won't hurt the flowers." I mumbled as I pulled Grayson's ring from my pocket. Tears threatened to well up but I shook them away.

"Dig it a grave." Tamlin insisted, but Lucien moved for me.

"Keep it, Elain. If your heart truly isn't ready to see it go. "

I had no clue what my heart wanted. I was beginning to think that it was yet another part of me that had been lost to the cauldron forever.

I thought of Azriel, and that unsettled expression that his face held anytime he let his gaze shift to the band on my finger. I could leave it here. For him I could leave it.

"I don't want it in the garden." I said finally. I didn't want to think of it every time I was here. If I was truly to be rid of it, then it needed to be farther away. A place suited for its stature where I wouldn't be tempted to dig it up again.

"As you wish" Lucien promised.

I spent the rest of the day in the library, learning new plant species, and the next morning, Lucien and I set out alone on horseback to a spring buried in the forest mountains that sprang up around the edge of the manor's grounds.

Just inside the wood we passed a cleared space lined with cave mouths and trampled down grass. Torches were mounted against the stone face.

"Where are we?" I asked, and Lucien straightened.

"It's a ...bit of a um...gathering place. For the court." He coughed, clearly uneasy.

"For solstices?" I asked again, unable to keep my curiosity at bay. Any of the halls in the manor would be better suited for a party. The caves couldn't have housed more than a couple of people at a time.

"Various gatherings." Lucien coughed again.

"Will there be any while I'm here?"

"No." He said firmly, and his tone scared me too much to ask anything more.

The horses were delighted when we met with a stream that had trickled off from the spring. With my new Fae senses, I could hear it bubbling at the edge of the mountain.

All manners of life were wild here. I could feel them stretching and conversing in the green summer sun that beat through the heavy canopy.

Lucien helped me down from my horse and we walked hand-in-hand over a moss covered log that bridged the place where the spring flowed into a stream. I had to take his hand to keep from falling, but that bond between us went taught as I did so, and it was all I could manage not to shake him away.

"Is this place sacred for you?"

"It's almost as new to me as it is to you." He admitted. "I found it after our Spring celebration. I took off from that clearing you saw this morning and just kept riding until I'd found it."

"Must have been some celebration."

He released my hand and lowered himself down to sit on the log.

From this angle I could only see his firey red hair and the sweep of his dark eyelashes as he gazed down into the pool.

I sat down beside him, taking my time to adjust my skirts into something more ladylike. I wouldn't struggle with myself. I pressed Grayson's ring to my lips. The heavy iron was cool against my skin. I rested my arm against the log, the ring fisted in my hand that hung down over the water.

And then I let go.

The metal made a satisfying 'plop' as it met the surface of the stream, and the rushing water drowned out everything else.

A faint smile tugged at his features.

"I think you should let go of something while we're here, Lucien."

He lifted his head to meet my gaze.

"You mean you?"

"No." I said, perhaps a little too quickly. "Whatever happened to you, in the clearing."

He didn't say anything, but the way he looked down into the water after that made me wonder if he listened to my words at all. If he would let himself forget. He never told me what happened, but the visions that flooded my mind when we rode back through the clearing that night had my heart breaking for him, for what he had endured.

That night I flung my arms around him as we said good night. He watched me with a perplexed expression until my own door closed behind me.