"And when I felt like I was an old cardigan, under someone's bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite." - Taylor Swift
Elain waited a beat longer than she knew she should have before carefully pulling back from his chest.
Lucien dropped his hands immediately and stepped away, taking the soothing warmth that had bled across her skin with him.
It was the only explanation as to why her fingers suddenly felt so cold; so numb.
Wrapping her arms around her waist, the spot on her shoulder his touch had gently seared itself to now chill, she wordlessly gestured toward the sitting area tucked on the far side of her bedroom.
Two plush armchairs sat facing one another before a marble fireplace, barely a speck of ash within its walls or atop the fresh logs.
She barely lit it. Barely had the want or the need to. Her sisters rarely found the time to seek her out all the way up to her rooms, much less to stay and chat over a cup of tea. And there were certainly no other guests that ventured past her doorway for other purposes that may have wanted a bit of extra light.
Elain flung any thought of those particular activities out the window, and crossed the room to settle in one of the chairs. Her legs tucked themselves up to her side, and she leaned her back against the wide arm.
Lucien was quick to follow, and sank to the cushions opposite her.
Had they not had the conversation that they did hanging above them, dangling like a snared animal, she might have laughed. Her seating arrangements, unlike almost every other piece of furniture in the River House, weren't accommodated to the needs of wings; he practically engulfed the small chair with his height alone.
She might have laughed. Almost.
Lucien's eyes flicked towards the fireplace. He half-raised one of his hands, and twitched a finger.
A fire burst to life over the logs, and even that was saying too much. It was as if someone had simply dropped the flames over top of them, empty one moment, and crackling with orange embers and dancing with warmth licking over the sides the next.
He didn't take his eyes from the fireplace. Even when he leaned forward, elbows resting against his knees, and folded his hands together.
Elain was mildly grateful he didn't glance at her, if only to give her a single moment to simply look at him.
Alive.
That was the sole reason she assured herself.
Her eyes first tracked a strand of molten red hair as it slowly slipped over his shoulder and fell across his chest. That russet eye flickered with the same, soft flame cracking over the logs, each in perfect time to the silent click of his golden one. His scar did practically nothing against the sharp cut of his jaw and the near perfect carving of each of his features; something so unfairly bestowed from what looked like gods of Autumn itself in the glow of the fire. She knew someone or something had tried to steal that beauty, to mar it with ragged lines over his missing eye.
In the same way Elain knew she would have been nothing but a lousy fool if she tried to sit there and feed herself lies that the male before her wasn't beautiful. Ethereally so.
She tried to stop herself from lingering on the steady rise and fall of his chest. And the flawless expanse of golden skin. If he hadn't had that striking hair and eye she had only equally ever seen on his eldest brother, Elain dared to think it might not have been the gods of Autumn, but something closer to Day, that sculpted the muscles across his front.
Lean. Quick. Carved in a way that looked almost graceful.
So different from Cassian's powerful, hulking form, honed to the art of physical combat. Even Azriel bulked in comparison with centuries of Illyrian training behind him.
Just the name twisted something low in her gut.
Solstice was months behind them, but the sting - the burn of his rejection, her cheeks flooded with hot embarrassment, shame coiling through her stomach - lingered. Not nearly as strong or as harsh the week following her failed attempt at being able to choose a male she might have loved, but it had been nothing more than that.
An attempt. A fantasy.
A mistake, to be precise.
Elain shifted in her seat, and it was enough to snap Lucien's eyes back to her.
Only the crackling flames filled the silence.
"What did you dream of tonight?" he asked quietly.
Elain shifted her own gaze to the floor and breathed a heavy sigh.
As much as a piece of her wanted to stare right back into that sea of russet and gold, her eyes wandered back to the mess of her bed. The lingering evidence of how hard she must have thrashed, scrambled. Kicked. Screamed.
"It was the day Nesta and I were Made."
She didn't miss his slight wince out of the corner of her eye. The way his shoulders tightened, and he raised his head to look at her fully.
"It started the same as it always does," Elain swallowed. "I was tipped out of the Cauldron, lying across the floor. Hybern's guards were there again. Looking at me and…laughing."
She knew she didn't have to elaborate. He had been there that day; had seen the revolting lust lining their smirks. Had known what exactly it was that they saw and wanted to do that was so amusing to them.
Lucien remained completely still. Completely silent.
"That was all the same." Elain slowly shook her head. "But usually, they would grab me and throw me in again. And again. However many times it would take before I woke up. But this time, when I looked up, ready for them to take me back…"
Her hard swallow nearly echoed. "That's when I saw you."
Elain slowly breathed in through her nose, and silently exhaled it through her mouth. That tight feeling that had slowly fisted its way around her throat, only to be driven away by the beckoning warmth of his skin under her touch, crept back.
She couldn't look at him.
"The guards were laughing and cackling, but…but you were there. Lying on the floor right beside me. I couldn't see your face, but I just - just knew something was wrong when you didn't move. You didn't breathe."
Elain couldn't keep herself from honing her focus to that steady beat in his chest a few feet away. Just to check that it was still going. Still alive.
"And when I reached over to shake your arm, you - "
She ducked her head down, fingers coming up to press against her lips as they thinned into a line. "Sorry."
Her voice cracked again.
She couldn't look at him. Not even when the armchair opposite her creaked, and heavy footsteps drew closer.
Elain allowed herself a glimpse out of the corner of her eye as he sank to a kneel right beside her.
Lucien didn't say a word. Didn't reach for her. Didn't try to cut her short to reassure her that he was right in front of her, and all she had was a silly, little dream.
He was simply there. Alive.
"You were dead," she whispered. "And I think that's when I screamed."
Lucien carefully nodded, and it was all she could do to tear her eyes from the hands bunching into her nightgown up to his gaze.
The soft understanding and gentle assurance beneath nearly made her tremble. Nearly dug into the back of her eyes and pulled out the empty tears she had none left to cry.
Elain stared at the intricate, golden orb she had never once expected to see lying on the ground beside her, and each and every jagged line that traced from his brow to his jaw.
Her voice trembled. "Where that eye should have been, there was only a hole. Just - just a bloody, gaping hole. That's when I heard her. A woman - or a female, I should say. With red hair…and a cruel laugh."
His eyes widened, and he sucked in a quiet yet sharp breath.
Elain slowly shook her head again. "She walked toward me, and had almost - almost like claws at the end of her hands, her nails were so sharp. There was blood, just so much blood over her hands and her dress. But she just smiled. She laughed, and laughed, and laughed. She…she was holding your eye, like she had just ripped it out, and…"
Elain carefully trailed off, horror slowly taking hold and rolling through her stomach as he stiffened.
Beautifully tanned, golden skin, even in the light of his own fire, paled.
That same, hard brick of realization that had dropped over her head when the red-haired female had first gladly presented Lucien's eye to her hit Elain with enough understanding, all she could do was stare at the scars.
Lips parted. Eyes wide.
Shock and shame ripping at her heart that she hadn't pressed the pieces together sooner, not even daring to believe it had actually happened. To think that someone could be so wicked, so barbaric, so ruthlessly sadistic as to rip his eye from its socket.
She had never wanted to ask. Never needed to know. Offhandedly assumed it was nothing but a freak accident, or a run-in with the decidedly vile creatures she had been warned of since she was a child.
The dark shadows that danced across Lucien's face said otherwise.
"It was her, too," Elain breathed. "She was the one that took your eye. And the one that gave you those scars on your back."
Lucien lowered his eyes to the cushion, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. "Amarantha."
Her mouth dropped.
Amarantha.
She recognized the name. Elain knew the wretched letters by heart, and she hadn't even been the one to endure the female's rule.
That had been Feyre. And Lucien. And Rhys. And every other soul throughout Prythian that hadn't escaped the wicked claws of an even viler being. The day her youngest sister had returned to the manor, an entourage in tow, with every bit and piece of her story laid out before the three sisters, raw fear had clung to her heart and dug into her skin. She had been truly terrified for Feyre, and what evils - while not every myth was what she had been taught to believe - lurked on the upper side of the wall; Amarantha being one of them.
Vindictive. Ruthless. Wretched. Vicious.
Her eyes darting back to Lucien's scar, her heart jumped to join the lump in her throat at the overbearing and undeniable truth: she had listened during the tale of Feyre's trials, knew about Rhysand's subjugation to her pleasure, had tried to understand the depth in which Amarantha's power had shaken Prythian to its core. But she didn't even know the half of it.
"That was her?" Elain hissed.
Lucien nodded once.
Just as she shook her head again in utter horror. "What did she do to you?"
He didn't reply for a moment, instead failing to hide his grimace. Lucien sank back to the floor, one knee propped in front of him, arm resting atop; the other leg crossed under, scrunching his shoulders over.
His golden eye practically glowed in the reflection of the fire. Only when a loose strand of hair slipped from behind his pointed ear did it conceal any part of Amarantha's brand across his face.
When he didn't brush it aside, Elain fisted her hands deeper into her nightgown, the urge to brush it aside and trace her fingers along his marred cheek a bit too strong.
"She carved it out with her nails." Lucien finally glanced back at her, and swung up a lazy hand to gesture at his face. "My eye alone wasn't enough, and she made sure everyone was well aware of it, too."
"Why?" Elain whispered.
His head slumped into his hand, rubbing along the back of his neck, arm still propped on his knee. A quick breath escaped him, and she dared to think it was almost a chuckle.
"To tell you the truth? Because I couldn't keep my mouth shut."
She frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Lucien angled his head just so, and a single, dark brow twitched up. "It means that, at the time, I was emissary to the Spring Court, and Tamlin had sent me along to parlay to Amarantha - in a political sense - that he didn't want to bed her."
"Amarantha wanted to…?" Elain allowed her words to trail off when his brow only twitched higher.
He was meant to pass along Tamlin had no intention of fucking her.
A harsh warmth quickly crept to the tips of her ears. "Oh."
He nodded again, but lightly cleared his throat. The moment's worth of lilting tease that had entered his voice faded. "I really think that regardless of what he had sent me for that day, I would have lost it anyways. I was sick of the strings she was trying to pull and the power that wasn't hers to take. I was tired of hearing her refuse Tamlin's rejection again and again when there was nothing she could have offered him that would have changed his mind. I was done with her. She claimed that there would be absolutely no peace in Prythian until he changed his answer, and as a result I sort of…lost my temper a bit."
"What did you say to her?"
She caught her eyes flicking down to Lucien's lips when the corner twitched in the ghost of a smirk.
He only shrugged. "I told her to go back to the shit-hole she crawled out of."
Elain gasped, and a hand flew to her mouth.
"You didn't," she hissed, muffled beneath her fingers.
"I did."
Elain felt the sudden, overwhelming urge to laugh; the mere idea of Lucien lurching forward with a snarl baring his teeth to Amarantha before spitting such a sentence into her face contrasted so greatly with his mask of the polite and distant courtier, it was almost difficult to imagine him in such a way.
The thought sobered her in less than a moment.
Amarantha being the one to finally crack his collected exterior didn't seem like the reigning compliment his tone - bordering pride at having done it - hinted it to be.
"Is that why she gave you those scars on your back then?" she asked softly.
His smirk dropped, and he slowly shook his head. "No."
Elain curled her fingers into fists again when his gaze slid to the floor, and she lightly bit the inside of her cheek.
A curious flicker deep within her ribs longed to hear the words he worked beneath his jaw, flexing a muscle along his unscarred cheek. She buried her hands against her, refusing to let herself drown in the urge to reach for him. To trace her fingers down each of the horrid lines that should have branded him as the monster children would have been warned to fear and fight.
To reassure him again he didn't have to say a word if he didn't want to talk, or relive the bits and pieces of his past she couldn't even stand to face had been some sort of reality in her mind's-eye.
Elain almost opened her mouth to tell him.
But Lucien's throat bobbed as he swallowed.
"Feyre endured…a lot, Under the Mountain," he said, voice low again. "Amarantha thought it was especially entertaining to use her like a rag-doll."
Her chest tightened as Lucien physically winced, almost recoiling at the mere mention of it. He ran a hand through his hair, loosening the auburn strands, but finally looked at her again.
"There was a particularly brutal beating she gave your sister. I went down and healed what I could without it looking too suspicious."
That tight feeling hitched her breath. "She hurt you…for helping Feyre?"
"She gave the order." Lucien paused, opened and closed his mouth once, then swallowed again. "Tamlin was forced to do the lashes."
Elain stared at him, lips parting.
She counted three heartbeats before sliding over the arm of her chair.
She didn't let herself think, let herself second-guess, let herself linger on how every moment, every breath, every glance between them before he had slid into her room had been watched and monitored from the rest of her family, and kept them at that gaping chasm of cordiality.
She didn't care. Not as she circled around him and dropped to her knees only inches away.
Lucien turned over his shoulder, golden eye clicking as it followed her down to the moment she kneeled behind his back. His red hair slipped and fell over the other arm.
Baring his back to her.
Elain could only stare at the lighter flesh slashed in unmatched patterns. So many that her eyes roved over every single one of them. And every single time, she lost count.
The tears she thought she couldn't force any more burned the corner of her vision.
"How many?" she whispered.
Lucien slowly turned forward again, ducking his head, and a heavy sigh followed. Every muscle and scar shifted with it.
"Twenty."
"And she didn't let you heal it." Elain dug to remember the deep timber of his voice guiding her through each and every breath, and forced herself to exhale slowly. "Did she?"
Lucien didn't reply, and she understood he didn't need to.
She knew without an ounce's worth of doubt she wasn't Madja by any means. Even with decades worth of practice under her, the healer had one of the most incredible fae gifts Elain had ever been exposed to. Even prior to Nyx's birth, she had sought the female out on more than one occasion, with Rhys' most trusted healer more than happy to oblige her with any and every question and inquiry she had regarding the art of healing. In retrospect, she had no intention in following in Madja's footsteps, especially not on the level in which she knew the healer could mend shredded Illyrian wings or stitch a general's organs back into his stomach (shockingly, the two incidents had come forth at the expense of the same male), but it didn't hurt to know how to quickly brush away a cut when her finger scratched along the roses, or properly clean an open wound when her gardening tool slipped and sliced her palm. There was a hidden intricacy to healing, one that Madja had even mentioned to her any faerie, on some level, could utilize without the assistance of a proper healer.
Bruises fading faster. Cuts without scarring. Any level of injury she might have sustained as a human nearly doubled or even tripled in recovery time. And she was Made; she hadn't even been born high fae.
Meaning Amarantha had wanted him to hurt.
Amarantha had wanted him to remember every time he turned in the mirror, or rubbed a hand over his back. She had wanted him to wince, or scowl, or just stare at it with the memory of every single whip that had been given by Tamlin. His friend.
She had wanted Lucien to hurt.
The feeling twining around her ribs tightened, and she didn't try to stop the word that flashed through her chest.
She had wanted her mate to hurt.
It shouldn't have clenched the lump in her throat. Or let a single tear slide down her cheek.
Her fingers raised of their own accord, and Elain only managed to stop them an inch from his skin. Pure will reminded her that he hadn't given her permission, or granted her the right to touch him any further than what he already had when he took her hand and pressed it to his heart.
She was thankful he had turned away from her again as her hand slowly lowered back to her lap.
"I'm so sorry, Lucien."
He lightly shrugged, and only stirred that twine through her chest. "It's as I said before. It's nothing. Really."
Elain went stiff. Her eyes burned. Her throat was tight. Her hands were clenched into her nightgown.
But she could only stare at him.
"How can you say that?" she whispered in disbelief. "How can you say that so easily like you actually believe it?"
Lucien glanced over his shoulder, scar on full display against the flickering orange of the fire. "Because I do. Pain was something I had to adapt myself to growing up. It's something I've learned to deal with."
That seemed a whole different discussion that neither of them seemed ready to dig deep into. One life-rattling conversation a night was enough.
"You shouldn't have had to," Elain bit back.
A frown pulled his brows together, and his jaw ticked again. "The pain was gone after a while. By the end of the week, the tissue had started to stitch itself back together."
Lucien huffed a quick breath, bordering on a snort. "I think her punishment was dealt on a good day for her. I'd seen faeries and some of her creatures alike that had received far worse for far less."
Elain couldn't keep herself from glancing down at the scars littering his back. She traced as many as she could, losing herself in the lines as they viciously crossed one another, and jumped away from the golden skin surrounding them.
Something low curdled in her chest. Something that hadn't risen so close to the surface since the fight with Nesta all those months ago; the first time she had ever truly snapped back at her older sister.
Her eyes flashed back to Lucien's. "You're calling this gracious?"
"I would do it again." His tone shifted to something so blatantly serious, she nearly shivered. "If it meant finally getting everyone out of that hell-hole and keeping Feyre alive, I would have - "
"That's exactly the point," she snapped. That same something within her started in surprise at the firmness in which she said it, but she pushed on. "You shouldn't have had to endure that, and you're saying now that you would take all of it again."
"No one that had been forced into her court should have. If Tamlin had risked it, she would have slaughtered your sister. Slaughtered her. The other Courts either knew she was going to become a pass for their own entertainment and pleasure, or knew that her coming was her own death wish already sealed. No one else would have gone to her, even if I had begged him, and that - "
"Do you not hear yourself, Lucien?" Elain cried. "Do you not hear that you are proving my point exactly again and again? Not a single other creature or faerie in that gods-forsaken Mountain would have done anything for Feyre. Not a single one of them would have gone down to help her, and you did!"
That golden eye widened, quietly and rapidly clicking as he angled himself farther towards her. Their knees nearly touched, just a hair away from brushing one another, but Elain didn't stop. Couldn't stop.
Whatever had boiled in her chest practically burst.
"You did, Lucien. You went to my sister and you helped her. Not just then, too. She's told me before what you did for her during that first task, she told me about what Amarantha forced you into for her second. She…she never told me anything about this. About what that - that witch did to you for just having a heart. For looking out for your friend, even when the one that claimed to love her in the same way she had once loved him did nothing. He did nothing, and yet you still did. And I can tell you why, Lucien. I can tell you why, because you are a good male. You are a good male, with a good heart. And I know…I know that I haven't shown you that I know that. I know that I have been unfair to you when it comes to this…this bond. And I know there's nothing I can truly say now that can make up for it, and asking you to stay when all I've been able to do is just - just push you farther away. And I'm sorry, Lucien. I'm so sorry."
Elain sucked in a shaky breath, and held it as she squeezed her eyes shut. She bit back against the tight lump threatening to send her sobbing again, but she refused to let her voice waver.
Refused to allow him another moment thinking that he truly deserved every horrible thing that had happened to him.
She forced her eyes open, and all but hissed between trembling lips, "But that Cauldron will damn me if you think you should have been the one to take that. That you should have been on the other end of her punishment, because you are one of the last males that should have had that lashing. Yet you still did. You still did! By the hands of your own friend. Tamlin did not deserve my sister, he did not deserve you as a friend, and I know it. I know it, in the same way that I know that I don't deserve you!"
Elain gasped, and physically flinched back from him.
Lucien's eyes went wide, and a log in the fire cracked just as his breath hitched.
She could only stare at him, chest heaving, furiously trying to calm herself from the rant she hadn't even known was buried.
The fire flickered once more, shadows dancing in the short space between them. And it was only then she felt the tears pouring down her face.
Elain turned herself away, and wiped at her eyes and cheeks. Her hands came back damp, throat still raw, chest suddenly slack.
As if she had actually lifted a weight from over her lungs that had nearly crushed her.
She sniffed against the deafening silence.
And Elain knew, though. She knew that she wasn't wrong.
Everything she had practically screamed at him was true. Down to the undeniable fact that she did not deserve the male before her.
She had ignored him. And shunned him. And had pushed him away.
At one point, Elain had even dared to think she had a chance to choose for herself, and had turned him away in place of Azriel. Someone that had been her careful companion, to her friend, to something she thought had grown to so much more than that. Every quick glance, every bated breath, every hitch in her heart when he would gently smile at her hinted at the want in her very soul to simply have that opportunity to choose someone to love. And she had practically flung herself into the depths of the illusion that perhaps he wanted someone to love, too. Her, perhaps.
And it was a mistake. A mistake that had grown from the need of a distraction.
A distraction from the fact that, despite the shared reservation among the Inner Circle save for Feyre, Lucien was not the male he appeared to be.
It didn't matter how hard Elain had drilled herself to believe every misguided lie she fed herself when she secretly watched him from across a room - none of them were true. He was not a harshly disinterested or cruel male. He was not a possessive, or blatantly jealous, or overprotective person (even when she had dug in the rumors and had heard mated males to sometimes be). He was not a stake on her life. On her person.
Lucien was simply that: Lucien.
A male that was kind, and witty, and loyal to a fault. He was a bit of a flirt with a well-hidden, rugged and almost rakish nature according to her younger sister (though at the time she hadn't been sure as to why Feyre knowing that bit of information tightened her stomach). He was dedicated and calculating, and she knew there was a reason Cassian pressed his buttons on occasion and referred to him as "fox-boy". He was courteous and polite, always greeting her with a small bow and a genteel, if not sometimes strained, smile. A male that knew when to keep his distance.
A distance she had forced him to; a good male she had refused time and time again to even try to acknowledge on even a basic level of civility.
In truth, she didn't owe him anything. There wasn't a doubt in her mind about that, and she had a hunch if she mentioned it, he would have, too.
She didn't truly owe him anything. But she had been the cruel one. The harshly disinterested.
The one that had snuffed and turned her back on a male that was every bit the well-mannered courtier Feyre talked him up to be.
Elain had tried to bury that fact. Pushed it down with that glowing string she had tried to ignore since she had felt that first tug all those years ago.
And every lie she had tried to convince herself of had bubbled over until she laid it bare before him.
Fitting and ironic, it seemed, how the Mother and the Cauldron destined her life to the one it was reduced to. Her heart first ridiculed and shattered by a human man that had tossed her aside the moment she didn't fit into his mold; her heart scratched at the seams by what she had assumed had been a budding passion with another person she could choose to love; her heart sinking and clenching under the weight that she was destined for a male too good for her, to the point she had simply shoved him away.
She didn't deserve him.
And Elain knew it, too.
Hugging her arms around her waist, she ducked her face against her shoulder and stared into the fire; his fire.
"I'm sorry, Lucien," Elain said softly. "For everything. And if one day you can accept my apology - or don't, I…I will understand."
The silence that lingered nearly swallowed her whole.
Minutes passed with nothing but the crack of the fireplace to fill the time. She waited for him to say something. Anything. Whether it was scoffing and agreeing with every word she said, or screaming at her for finally realizing what he had probably known the entire time.
Elain didn't have the energy to scold herself for allowing her heart to squeeze at the thought. Or if it might have been worse if he simply got to his feet and walked out the door.
He had every right to; it wasn't as if she hadn't done the same to him -
"I do."
Elain snapped her eyes back to him.
Lucien leaned against the back of her armchair, having not even heard him shift to fully face her. One arm still dangled over his propped knee, the other hand slung over his side.
She would have considered the pose too suspiciously casual, had it not been for the burning intensity in his gaze that kept her eyes from drifting anywhere but from between russet and gold.
He wasn't joking.
Elain opened and closed her mouth one too many times. "W-What?"
"I forgive you, Elain." The fire within his very being dimmed, softening the amber of that russet eye. "And I…I'm sorry, too."
She couldn't keep her lips from parting when Lucien reached up a hand to rub at the back of his neck. His hair bunched around it, silky tresses slipping between his fingers. She didn't have the chance to ask what he needed to even apologize for.
"Neither of us asked for the bond," he continued. "I know that. I know that I've tried to adjust to it, and I can't even begin to imagine what that meant for you. What it still means to you, and having had to balance that with the idea of suddenly holding an immortal life in the palm of your hands. I'm not sure how much Feyre has told you exactly, but mating bonds are…they're extremely rare to come by. And - "
Elain had to blink to check she was seeing right when a dusty pink glowed along his golden cheeks.
"I'll be honest, I'm nearly as lost as you," he muttered.
"Really?"
His brow twitched. "Well, I've never had a mating bond with someone before, so even I can't say I'm an expert on them."
Elain shocked herself when she caught her lips pressing into a thin line, fighting back a smile.
"Well," she shrugged weakly, "I guess that kind of puts us somewhere on the same page."
A tiny smile, barely visible to one that hadn't allowed themselves to admit that they had silently observed him for months, pulled at the corners of Lucien's lips. It softened the sharp angles in his cheeks and eased the tense hold he always seemed to have in his jaw in the company of a large majority of the Inner Circle.
Elain tried and failed to ignore the hitch in her heart she could practically hear.
"Yeah," she murmured. "Yeah, I guess it does."
Lucien didn't give her the time to observe the few chances she got to see that secret smile. Didn't give her the chance to memorize every dip and shadow it formed in the light of the fire.
It slipped a moment later, right before Lucien released a long sigh.
"I accept your apology, Elain. I forgive it, too." He paused to swallow, and his hand flexed against the planes of his stomach. "In the same way I hope you can one day forgive me. For anything and everything I might have done that made the bond - that made you feel…less."
"I do." She barely even had to think on the answer. "I forgive you, Lucien."
He watched her for a beat, golden eye clicking as it swept across every inch of her face. Down her flushed cheeks still stained with tear trails. Through the curls in her hair likely flying in every direction. Darting between two brown eyes that looked at him just as carefully. Waiting for the moment he would laugh in her face and leave her to the suffering of her own doing.
But he wouldn't. Not the Lucien she had seen.
And he didn't.
Lucien slowly nodded, and the last of any doubt that it would have been impossible for him to accept her apology jumped from her bedroom window to the stars still dotting the sky above Velaris.
He turned his head away from her, and stared into the flames of his own making. Elain almost tempted herself to do the same, silence, for once - in the entire time the two might have been forced left alone together - comfortable.
But her eyes tracked the length of his scar again. The auburn strands of hair trailing over his shoulders. The ease in which his head lolled back against the cushion, exposing him to the most relaxed she had ever witnessed her perfectly-penned courtier before.
She half-expected the thought to hitch her heart again. Half-expected her eyes to fly towards the fire, cheeks flaring pink that she had even caught such a thing.
The feeling that had lingered in her chest throughout the night - loose, and tight, then pliant, and taut - instead curled deeper into what felt like her very skin.
Her very soul.
It gently twined itself through her rubs, and softly brushed against the edge of her heart. Slowly and carefully looping itself around and around. Like some invisible thread.
Elain held back her gasp, and kept her eyes from widening.
The bond, she quickly realized, almost seemed to glow. A beautiful, golden glow that traced along the inner planes of her chest. It danced along her ribs, and eased every darkened corner her doubt, and her fear, and her guilt, and her regret dared to spread its claws towards.
It softly held her firm, the warmth grounding her to the floor not so different from the one she had felt when her fingers pressed into tanned skin.
It was warm.
Not a blazing, fiery inferno that burned along her skin by the mere thought of the male across from her. She had overheard her two sisters when they were convinced she wasn't within ear-shot of the senseless passion that could ensue between them and their mates. She had blushed from behind corners of simply hearing of such a flaming desire coursing down to their very bones, and had brushed it off as nothing but a warm breeze when she'd walk by and they'd ask about her flushed state.
The bond was simply warm.
The kind she felt when settling next to a fire. Or wrapping herself in one of the sweaters she had bought in one of the city's shops, tucked beneath her bed for particularly cool nights. Even, now she could admit, sometimes veering for that soft green jacket laced with cinnamon and pine.
Slow, hesitant, comforting.
Warm.
Elain finally tore her eyes from Lucien, and stared into the orange embers licking red along the marble walls of the fireplace.
She silently slid back until she was flush against the opposite armchair he had first occupied. Tucking her legs to her chest, Elain leaned forward and rested her chin on her knees and watched, utterly mesmerized, as the flames danced with one another, sparking and cracking the logs beneath. The only thing to break the comfortable silence so heavy, it could have been a blanket over her shoulders.
Minutes might have passed. They could have been hours.
Elain didn't know at what point her eyes began to feel heavy, or when she leaned back until her head rested against the cushion, mimicking Lucien's position.
She wasn't sure at one point the steady drum in his chest began to drag her deeper, each and every event and discovery of the evening finally catching up to her in the race against her exhaustion.
Her heart slowed enough to match his, lolling her beyond the dreams that didn't pursue her again.
Elain jolted as soft fabric slipped over her front and shoulders.
A low voice, lilted in a tease, breathed a short sigh from beside her. "Shall we get the lady back to bed?"
She cracked her eyes open, tugging what seemed to be a blanket closer to her chin. Elain peered at Lucien through bleary eyes, kneeling beside her with his back towards the fire. Every shadow curved around his figure, and practically haloed him in an orange glow.
For a breathless moment, she half-considered whether or not a dream had taken hold of her again, and truly presented him to her as some sort of fallen, Autumn god.
But as she carefully blinked and shifted to push herself up on her hands, a sharp knot cut into the base of her neck. Elain winced, and bit back on a hiss.
And considered just how long he had allowed her to doze off.
Her body had quickly fallen out of the routine of the cold and rotting floors of their family cottage in favor of the plush mattress just on the other side of the room. Her muscle cramping itself to what felt like the very base of her spine seemed proof enough.
"I'm hoping this is the last time I'll ever have to sleep on a floor," Elain muttered. Her words nearly slurred, sleep keeping half of its hold on her.
Lucien chuckled, and she glanced at him languidly running a hand through his hair. "Whatever the lady wishes."
She held back a scoff (and albeit, a smile), and pushed herself up again. A baby fawn might have had more luck in the moment, without the blur in her vision and the tilt in the world. Elain barely had a moment to wonder again if Lucien had truly left her to one of the most curiously blissful sleeps she had had in a while.
And instead held down a gasp as solid arms steadied her.
Then swept her up entirely.
She sucked in a sharp breath, but didn't fight or scramble for balance against the hands that slid under her back and beneath her knees. In one swift motion, Lucien pushed himself to his feet, arms carefully cradling her against his chest.
Her own still curled around her waist beneath the safety of her blanket. Preventing his touch from directly pressing into the lace of her nightgown or the skin of her thighs.
Elain mustered as much of a glare as she could manage when she craned her neck to look him in the eye. The answering, low rumble she felt in his chest hinted she had failed almost spectacularly beneath heavy-lidded eyes.
"I said we needed to get the lady back to bed," he murmured.
That same, gentle tease lacing through his words shouldn't have made her head feel like a paperweight. Not as she barely hummed in mild agreement, and allowed herself even a moment to lean her cheek against the pure warmth practically radiating from his skin.
Like in the grass of a beautiful meadow, head angled towards the sky with brilliant sunlight beating down over her face.
Even the idea twitched the corner of her lip in a smile partially hidden in his shoulder.
She assured herself it was merely exhaustion that kept her from leaping from the arms tucking her against him as Lucien carefully started towards the bed.
It was merely the glow circling beneath her breast, twining through her ribs with such a soft contentment, it could have been that of silk.
It was merely the undeniable, irrefutable sense of peace that settled over her, and slipped her eyes shut again.
Knowing that he didn't hate or despise her. Knowing that he felt just as lost as she had when it came to the jumbled and knotted string threading their souls together.
Knowing that he forgave her. And she had forgiven him.
Elain knew. She knew.
And as she was lowered to the stray sheets and soft dip of her pillows, her eyes cracked open again as his hands carefully slipped from her body and nudged the blanket to cover the bottom of her legs. He straightened and tucked his hands behind his back the moment he noticed her stare locked on him.
She blinked against the fog threatening to consume her, and forced her eyes to focus on him.
"Thank you," Elain whispered, "for coming to check on me."
Lucien dipped his head in a short bow, but a tiny smile flickered across his lips. "Of course, my lady."
The embers of his fire that should have long since died continued to burn, casting the side of his body in that same orange glow she had glimpsed before. He didn't move, rooted to his spot and tracing the edges of her face with that deep russet and beautiful golden eye.
Quietly clicking.
Beautiful.
Elain barely refrained from whispering the word allowed.
Even when he dipped his head to her again and made a move towards the door.
Even when she slowly pushed herself up. And opened and closed her mouth before hesitating again.
Even when she swung her legs over the side of the bed and silently got to her feet.
"Can I…"
The rest of her words died on her tongue as Lucien stopped, and turned to face her again.
Beautiful.
Kind.
Loyal.
Lucien.
Elain knew it, too.
And she didn't give herself a moment to think twice about it when she darted forward.
Arms wrapping around his middle.
Holding him close.
Ear pressed into his heart as his arms flew out to either side.
That steady beat hitched with his breath, pounding against her head with such a soft shock she nearly pulled herself away, then furiously apologizing for crossing an unspoken line and crawling back to her bed to drown in every drop of her embarrassment.
Elain almost loosened her hold just as she felt firm and gentle arms, so like his voice, slowly snake around her shoulders.
And push her closer.
She breathed a heavy sigh, tucking her chin towards his chest and counting each and every beat that thumped like a harmony pressed against her skin. In every place his touch brushed over her, warmth sparked down and curled that golden thread around her heart, winding it in a loose pattern that it seemed only her soul could truly understand.
Her thumb darted out and hesitantly traced the rugged edge of one of Tamlin's lashes. Lucien's arms tightened around her. One callused hand ever-so-carefully moved from around her shoulders, trailing towards the back of her neck. Elain didn't stop him, didn't shove him away.
Only burrowed farther over his heart until he gently cradled her head against him.
His chin brushed the top of her hair. And her eyes slipped shut.
"I'm sorry." She heard every low murmur through his chest. "I'm sorry that you had to see it, Elain. That you had to see…her."
"I'm sorry, too," Elain whispered. "You may not believe it about yourself, but I do. You are a good male, Lucien."
He breathed what sounded suspiciously close to a chuckle. She blinked, and could see nothing but the golden skin wrapped around her and the burning flames still flickering with life in the fireplace, but she could practically feel that small grin softening his features.
"I'm hardly perfect, my lady."
"Oh I know." Elain lightly bit her lip, momentarily glad he couldn't see the smile spreading across her face either. "Feyre's said that you're a terrible flirt."
"Glad to hear she's been putting in a good word for me."
"She usually does."
"Oh?"
"Don't tell her I said that."
"Your secret's safe with me," he chuckled. "Though you Archerons seem to have quite a lot to gossip about."
Elain lightly shook her head, curls brushing against him. "Has anyone ever told you you're ridiculous?"
"Not exactly." The hand still wrapped around her shoulders tensed. "Only that I'm a ridiculously good male for some reason."
She paused for a moment, her smile slipping from her lips. "They're right, you know."
His heart stuttered its steady rhythm, just as her thumb swiped along the edge of one of his scars again.
The golden thread swirling around her heart nearly seemed to perk at the sound. Carefully peeking across to the other soul connected to hers.
It almost seemed to reach for it, slowly extending a glowing hand all the way through to the other side. Far enough to caress a brush of warmth down the edge of his heart and ribs, gentle comfort trailing along with it.
Lucien sucked in a sharp breath, nose nearly touching her hair.
And she knew he had felt it, too.
Elain carefully continued the slow pattern her fingers mindlessly drew over the jagged lines of his back. Listening and counting every thump she could feel down through the invisible string that pulled back into her chest, curling with such a peaceful contentment, she nearly tempted herself to tug against it - assuring her it was still even there.
The brush along her ribs, overwhelmingly flowing with a gentle solace and a fleeting spark of hope, reminded her otherwise.
It didn't come from her end of that golden thread.
The hand still cradling her head pressed her closer. Lucien's fingers twitched in silent question, and her answering sigh was all the reply he needed.
His fingers threaded themselves through her curls, tangling themselves in the knots she knew she would regret in the morning. His nose dipped to the crown of her head, releasing a breath that loosened every one of his muscles. He pulled her close until she all but melted into the warmth seeping from his skin.
And that thread sang with the silent promise that he was there.
Alive.
The arm holding her to his chest with something akin to desperation seemed to assure him that she was, too.
Elain didn't know how long the two stood in the middle of her bedroom, wrapped in each other's arms.
Elain didn't know how long it took before his heart hitched again, and his breathing turned shaky.
Elain didn't know how long or at what point the quiet drip that fell to her hair from a single russet eye matched the silent tears running down her cheeks.
She didn't care.
Not when she could feel the one person that would always be there to calm and warm the darkest corners of her mind, always be there to assure her what was and wasn't real, always come back to her, cradling her to his chest.
Standing. Breathing. Alive.
Elain knew it, too.
And thus, yet another finished Elucien fic, and yet another day of just fueling my obsession for this series - WOO!
I almost ended it before the whole hug scene (yes, yes, I KNOW I skimped out on another potential kiss scene...but read the note I left at the bottom, hehe), but then I told myself that they just needed a moment, and Elain and Lucien just kind of took it from me and ran with it.
So, with that being said, hope you guys enjoyed, let me know your thoughts, and as per usual now with these themed fics and Miss Taylor Swift, also let me know which of her albums or songs you think most represents our lovely little Elucien ship (that I am double-triple-quadruple crossing my fingers we get to see in canon now)!
And, as always, have a wonderful morning, afternoon, evening or night! :)
- Summerwinds
P.S. Be on the lookout for life being a willow and bending right to Elain's wind…seeing as she still needs to see a few of those internal scars, too...and it's basically a sequel with lots of feelings - yay!)