Girl just wanna have fun

He hadn't slept in a real bed for months. He hadn't spent more than a few hours in this form in months, either. But with Tilly’s return... he hadn't been able to bring himself to leave the manor after dinner. What would she have thought? He couldn't appear weak before his daughter, not any more than he already had. A father’s role was to protect his child, not the other way around. And if there was one thing he knew how to do, it was protect his daughter, his precious daughter.

Slowly, treatoriously, his thoughts drifted to Lucien. He'd been doing so well, all evening, not thinking about him. The silence of an empty room, it turned out, was no match for his stupid heart.

Tilly had still been a little girl when Lucien entered their lives. Jesminda’s death weighed heavily on him, but, just as with Tamlin,having a child in his life had helped Lucien hold on. Lucien had been hollowed out when he arrived, a male going through the motions of living rather than actually living, and Tamlin remembered thinking, more than once, that he recognized the look.

He'd worn it himself, after Lita. Tilia had quickly taken to the Autumn courtier, "Uncle Lu," as she had come to call him whenever she persuaded him (without much difficulty) to carry her on his shoulders for a tour of Greenwood. If he closed his eyes and concentrated, Tamlin could still hear their laughter.

The first time Lucien had laughed, it had been on one of those occasions. He had remained listless for months after his arrival; then one day, Tilly slipped away from her tutor and jumped onto Lucien’s bed. Tamlin and Mili had been mortified when they found out, but scolding the little girl had been impossible once they saw Lucien’s happiness. It was a small, ordinary miracle, watching grief lose its grip on someone one laugh at a time.

Later, much later, Tilia grew up. She no longer climbed onto Lucien’s shoulders, nor did she slip away from her tutors.

She enlisted in the army under an assumed name, much to Tamlin’s dismay, as he had wanted his daughter never to see blood and death up close. He'd found out three months after the fact, while she was supposed to be staying at Dawn Court for the season, from a report Kat had slid across his desk with the particular silence of someone who already knew how badly it would go over.

She rose through the ranks. He'd wanted to forbid it. He'd wanted to drag her home by the collar of her uniform. He hadn't done either, because some small, traitorous part of him had been proud. From a nameless private, she became a lieutenant, then a captain. Tamlin found himself alone at the manor; Mili had left to live with Kat around the same time Tilly departed. Alone, however, was a relative term for a man living in a royal palace surrounded by servants, courtiers, and the rest. He filled the silence with Court business, with wine, with anything that wasn't the particular quiet of a manor built for a family that no longer lived in it.

That was when he and Lucien finally took the leap. They admitted to one another that they were more than friends. Much more.

The last embers died out in the fireplace, and Tamlin sighed, once again. He sat up, leaving the warmth of the sheets. He knew he wasn't sleeping anyway. He pulled on some old clothes lying in the wardrobe: heavy canvas trousers, a dark green shirt, and leather boots, and headed toward the library.

Lucien was finishing his fourth bottle of wine. Or was it beer? He had lost count anyway. Everything tasted the same. He couldn't have said what was in the glass in front of him now, only that it was the same color as the last one, and that was good enough. Somewhere around the third bottle, the ache in his chest had stopped feeling like pain and started feeling like static, a constant, low hum he'd learned to live inside of. Bérangère, the barmaid who worked weeknights at Crippled Cat’s gave him a small, sad smile as she cleared away his glass, and he knew immediately what she was going to say. He wondered sometimes if she pitied him or simply found him good for business. He'd decided it didn't matter which.

"Already?" he asked the pretty blonde.

"Already. See you tomorrow, Lucien. Try to get some sleep, will you?"

He didn't answer. There was nothing to say. Sleep was a concept so foreign to him now. At best, he would pass out, drunk, in his makeshift room at a seedy inn. He stood up, unsteady on his feet. His head ached and his eyelids felt heavy, yet he couldn't silence the pain in his chest. It wasn't even about Elain anymore. It was everything. Everyone. He had lost it all. He couldn't help but wonder what had gone so wrong in his life for him to end up here. Elain had just been the last thing to go. The rest had been disappearing for decades, quietly, while he was too busy surviving to notice.

When Jes died, he had sought refuge in Greenwood. The first few months had been hell. He barely left his rooms, except to make a token appearance before the other courtiers, to keep up appearances and, above all, avoid being sent home by Tamlin.

He ate as little as possible and slept even less. Then one day, as he sat on his bed waiting for the day to pass so he could find oblivion in the night, there was a knock on the wooden door leading to the small sitting room adjoining his bedroom. He didn't open it. He just sat there, motionless.

Then came another knock. He shouted at the persistent intruder that he didn't need anything and would come down for dinner. And to his great surprise, it was the voice of the little Princess of Spring that had answered, asking timidly if she might come in. 

He had jumped to his feet, opened the door, and made his finest bow to the princess. One would have to be a fool not to show Tamlin’s daughter, the apple of his eye, all the respect in the world. Taken aback, she had looked at him, a certain astonishment in her green eyes. She'd had her father's eyes already, even then: too sharp, too searching for a child meant to be hiding from a math tutor. Then she had said in a small voice: "Am I disturbing you? I... I’m trying to hide, and I thought... well... Monsieur Bertin would never look for me here."

Lucien had been surprised. "Monsieur Bertin?"

"My math teacher... I... I hate it. The numbers run wild, get all jumbled up, it’s awful."

He had smiled, for the first time in a very long while, because he, too, had hated his math tutor back in the day. It was the first time in months he'd thought of anything other than the particular shade of red Jes's blood had been against the snow, so he had beckoned the little girl to come inside. She had looked all around with her childlike eyes and suddenly asked why he looked sad. He had replied that he had recently lost someone.

"I lost my mom," she had said quietly. "Well... I never knew her, so that doesn't count, does it?"

"Do you miss her, Your Highness?"

"Can you miss something you’ve never known?"

Lucien didn't have the answer. Instead, he simply grabbed a deck of cards from a drawer and asked the princess if she knew any games. It became a ritual, after that. Some days she'd knock, and he'd let her win at cards, and for an hour at a time, grief became something almost survivable.

"Lucien!" Bérangère interrupted his train of thought. "We're closing up."

He didn't remember standing. He simply found himself standing, the way most of his evenings ended these days. Without a word, he took his coat, which had clearly seen better days, and walked out of the old dive.

He stepped out into the street, which was almost as seedy as Crippled Cat's. Mud clung to his boots, even the sky looked filthy and ruined. But he didn't care in the slightest. The cold should have sobered him. It didn't.

Nothing did, lately. He shuffled along between the wooden houses and the prostitutes soliciting him. He finally turned into the alley leading to his inn when he heard footsteps behind him. Ordinarily, that is, before, he would have been instantly on his guard, tracking the newcomers by their sounds and scents. He used to be able to hear a heartbeat from fifty paces, name a male by the particular cadence of his footsteps. Now the world arrived in fragments, late and muffled, like he was experiencing it through someone else's senses.

But Lucien didn't give a damn. Even if the King of Hybern himself had risen from the dead and stood behind him, he wouldn't have cared. Hell, it would have given him a perfect excuse to finally find rest in the abyss of death.

"Those are nice boots... looks like leather, doesn't it?" said a voice, dark and menacing.

Lucien stopped walking. Humans weren't usually this brave. He turned around slowly, as quickly as his drunken state allowed without him throwing up, and faced the four men who had clearly been following him. "Must be worth a fortune..." another remarked.

"And that purse looks full."

Lucien tilted his head to the side. Had he really sunk so low that he was about to be robbed by humans? He was clearly in no condition to fight.

He could flee, run toward the river. But in his state, he would collapse after just three steps. The first man who had spoken stepped closer. He was holding a knife that looked viciously sharp. Four men. A knife. A purse not even worth the trouble.

He almost laughed, would have, if laughing hadn't felt like something that belonged to a different life. Once, the idea of dying in a filthy alley over a pair of boots would have been almost funny. Tonight, it mostly just sounded restful.

The first man lunged, and instinct took over before thought could catch up. Centuries of training didn't simply vanish because his body was drunk and starving : Lucien's arm came up, deflecting the blade, and he drove his elbow into the man's throat hard enough to send him stumbling back into the mud. It almost felt good. For one suspended second, something in him that had been dormant for months flared back to life : the soldier, the survivor, the male who had crawled out of worse than this.

The second man hit him from behind and Lucien went down hard, the breath knocked clean out of him, and the world tilted sideways in a way that had nothing to do with the wine. He tried to rise. A boot caught him in the ribs, and something cracked, white and sharp, stealing whatever air he'd managed to recover.

"Feisty for a drunk," one of them laughed, and Lucien would have laughed too, if he could have found the breath for it. He'd been feisty for a male who used to be so much more than this. It didn't matter anymore.

He stood and fought anyway. Some stubborn, animal part of him kept swinging, clipping a jaw here, tearing free of a grip there, until four against one and weeks of not eating did what they were always going to do.

A fist connected with his temple, and the street tilted entirely sideways, and he found himself on his back, staring up at a sky the color of old bruises. Hands were on him then, tugging his boots free, ripping the purse from his belt, rough and efficient and utterly indifferent to whether he lived or died.

"Useless cloak too," someone muttered, and then there were footsteps retreating, unhurried, already forgetting him.

Lucien lay in the mud and let the cold seep into him, distant and almost gentle now that the adrenaline had burned through. He thought, vaguely, that he should get up.

He thought, more vaguely still, that he didn't want to.

Lucien closed his eyes, hoping this would be the end. He couldn't go on anymore, anyway. He lost consciousness on the cold, muddy ground and did not feel the arms that caught him. He did not hear Tamlin's voice calling out to him. He simply plunged deeper into the abyss.

Sunlight streamed into the room, filtering through the silk curtains and making dust motes dance before the large mirror. Lucien struggled to open his eyelids. He was in pain. His head felt like it was in a vice, his mouth tasted pasty, and a sharp, throbbing ache shot through one of his ribs. He scanned the room, taking a long moment to realize where he was : after all, he had been accustomed to waking up here for nearly two centuries.

Greenwood. He was in his room at Greenwood. For one disoriented moment, he thought he might still be dreaming, the particular cruelty of his mind conjuring the one place he'd told himself he'd never let himself miss.

He sprang up, though the kicks he had sustained made themselves felt, forcing him to wince. The room hadn't changed. The navy-blue silk curtains, the armchair by the fireplace, the shelves filled with trinkets he had collected over time, everything was as it had been.

There was even the stack of books he had left at the foot of his bed when he’d departed, a bookmark waiting for the reader's return. The sheets smelled like lavender and home, and some traitorous part of him wanted to sink back into them and stay exactly where he was. It was as if the room had been waiting for him, patient and untouched. He wondered, distantly, if that was Tamlin's doing. Two centuries of his life sat gathering dust in this room, and he hadn't let himself think about any of it in the last years.

He looked down at his bare chest and noticed his ribs were bandaged. Slowly, he unwound the cloth strip, revealing nothing more than a faint bruise.

Someone had used a healing spell on him. Someone had been gentle with him. That, somehow, was almost worse than the pain itself. He climbed out of bed, careful to avoid any sudden movements, and saw that, thank God, he was still wearing his canvas trousers, though they were much cleaner now.

Another spell, he surmised. He ran a hand through his hair, spotting a folded shirt on the dresser next to a pair of new boots and a doublet.

What the hell am I doing here?"

The sun was high in the sky, it had to be noon, or close to it, judging by its position, and Lucien couldn't help but let out a low growl. He remembered the night before, the dark alley, the bandits... and above all, the sense of absolute calm that had washed over him when he believed his pain was finally about to end.

Lucien quickly realized where he was, and just as quickly understood who had brought him there. Tamlin. It could only be him, who else?, and the thought left the taste of ash in his mouth. He didn't know what unsettled him more, that Tamlin had found him in that alley, or that Tamlin had bothered to heal him afterward instead of simply leaving him to the consequences of his own ruin.

Tamlin had abandoned him first, hadn't he? True, Lucien had left with Feyre and Elain, but it was Tamlin who had walked away from him. 

Who had said "we're done" when Lucien had barely recovered from losing his eye. In the span of a few months, he had gone from having two eyes to one, and from being in a relationship to being single. 

Of course, he knew why Tamlin had done it. To protect him. To protect himself. To protect them both.

In fifty years, he’d had time to forgive him. They’d had time to forgive each other, and themselves. But their rifts over Feyre and Hybern had fanned the flames once more. And his headlong pursuit of Elain had sealed the end, a definitive, resounding break. He'd told himself, at the time, that going with Feyre was its own kind of loyalty, to her, to what she'd done for all of them. He'd never quite managed to explain that to Tamlin in a way that didn't sound like a betrayal, mostly because some days, even to himself, it still did

Lucien gritted his teeth, determined to find his former lover and make it clear to him that kidnapping people and taking advantage of their weakness was no way to behave, and who did he think he was, anyway? Tamlin didn't get to disappear from his heart for years and then reappear, uninvited. 

She kept walking, forcing him to either follow or be left standing in the middle of the path. "Apparently he walked in on something he wasn't supposed to walk in on. Said some words. Felt the bond snap. Resigned as emissary on the spot and vanished before anyone could stop him."

Tamlin said nothing for a long moment, his mind struggling to catch up with what she'd just told him.

"That's not-" He shook his head. "That's not something you just do, Tilly. That bond nearly killed him to feel in the first place. Breaking it-"

"I know what breaking it does, Dad. I read the reports on that too." Her voice was carefully even. "Kat says no one's heard from him since. Not Rhysand, not Feyre, not anyone. He just disappeared."

Tamlin felt something cold settle in his chest, replacing the warmth that had been there only minutes ago.

He was angry with Lucien, certainly. But the pain of a broken bond, he wouldn't wish that on anyone. When he'd lost Lita, it had nearly broken him. He'd only gotten back on his feet out of necessity, for Tilly. And if Lucien had lost his mate with no one to force him upright...He shook his head. Lucien had made his bed and slept in it. And that bed had been in Velaris. And no matter where it was now, it wasn't Tamlin's bed.

Tilly, sensing the shift in him, the way his jaw had set, the way his arm had gone rigid beneath her hand, stopped walking again. "No," Tilly said, before he'd even finished the thought out loud, as if she could hear it forming. "No, don't you dare."

"Tilly, love, it's not my problem. Lucien has left. Why don't you write to your dear uncle Rhysand and ask him to take care of it? Hmm?" Tamlin's voice dripped with the sarcasm he always used to protect himself from his own feelings.

Tilly's eyes narrowed, and for a moment she looked so much like a General assessing a battlefield that Tamlin almost took a step back.

"Because Rhysand doesn't love him, Dad. Not the way you do. Not the way I do." She let that sit a moment before continuing, her voice hardening. "Rhysand will send a polite letter and call it concern. He'll mourn the pawn he lost and move on by next lunar cycle. That's not what Lucien needs right now."

"And what does he need?" Tamlin snapped, more sharply than he meant to. "And what did I need when I needed him ? Hmm ? He left. He left me, he left this Court, he left you by proxy. I love you, Tilly, but you have no idea what happened here.

"You had a fallout. That's all. You are the one who taught me that sometimes, friends mess up but they are friends so we forgive them."

Tamlin shook his head. "It wasn't a petty squabble, Tilly. It’s not something you can just come back from. We went our separate ways. That’s all."

"You let a woman come between you. A human, no less! Dad, you have to go get him! Bring him back here, home, where he belongs."

"No" groaned Tamlin.

"No?" Tilly's voice cracked like a whip, the General fully surfacing now. "That's it? That's your answer?"

"Tilia-" He pronounced every syllable of her name, just as he always did when he wanted to be right. He pronounced 'Tilia' with the accent of the old language, the one in which it meant 'ray of sunlight', as if to emphasize that he was the one who had given her that name, because he was her father.

"Don't you dare 'Tilia' me." She let go of his arm, stepping back to face him fully, her eyes, his own eyes, staring back at him, blazing. "The male you spend so many decades loving, with whom you shared your life, is somewhere out there right now with a broken bond and no one checking if he's even still breathing. And you're telling me no?"

"It's not that simple-"

"It is exactly that simple!" She threw her hands up. "You love him. He loves you, whatever's left of that after everything. And you would rather sit in this meadow being right than go be happy. That's pathetic, Dad. That's actually pathetic. Just because you're used to being miserable doesn't mean you have to keep choosing it."

Tamlin flinched.

"You weren't there," he said, quietly now. "When Lu left. Do you think he'd warn me ? Hm ? He had doubts about Feyre this whole time and didn't say shit ! He let her get in every one's head, depicting me as the bad guy. I'm not angry because he left, I'm angry because he let me find out I'd lost everyone the same day I lost everyone. He could have told me. He chose not to. He picked her. Quietly. And then he had the nerve to walk out with one eye and let me be the villain in his story. So excuse me if I don't rush to his help right fucking now !"

"So you're punishing him for not warning you fast enough," Tilly said flatly. "That's the thing you're hanging onto ?"

"I am not punishing him. We're done, that's all."

"You're not done," Tilly said. "Done would mean you stopped caring. You haven't stopped caring, Dad, you've just decided caring and helping are two different things, and they're not. Not for people we love."

"Don't lecture me on love, young lady."

"Then don't make me." Her voice cracked again, that whip-snap of command, but underneath it now was something pleading, almost.

Tamlin said nothing. "He made a mistake," she pressed on. "Maybe several. I don't know, I wasn't there. But you don't get to decide he doesn't deserve to be found because he hurt your pride. People are allowed to be wrong and still be loved, Dad. You taught me that. Or did you forget that lesson the second it became inconvenient? Hm ? Because you are sure as hell not always right either."

"That's not fair."

"No," she agreed. "It's not. None of this is fair. Nothing about any of this has been fair, and I am still asking you to do it anyway, because that's what you do for people you love. You show up. Even when it's inconvenient. Even when you're angry. Especially when you're angry, because the alternative is doing nothing, and you've already tried that. How's it working out?"

Tamlin looked at his daughter, at Lita's face, at his own eyes staring back at him, furious and pleading in equal measure, and felt the anger in his chest crack, just slightly, just enough.

"Fine" he sighed, understanding that was not the hill he was willing to die on. He hadn't expected it to feel like relief. He'd expected it to feel like losing.

Tilly studied him for a moment, as if checking the surrender was real and not just another tactic, and something in her shoulders finally loosened too. She reached out, brushing a bit of dried grass from his shoulder, an absent, unconscious gesture, the kind a daughter makes without thinking, the kind he hadn't felt in fifty-five years.

"Fine" she confirmed "but first, you take a bath. And you shave, I hate this beard. And who's been cooking lately ? I'd kill for a sachertorte." And just as quickly as the General had appeared, she was gone again, replaced by the girl who used to demand sweets before dinner, taking advantage of the fact that her father loved her far too much to have the courage to say no.

Tilly lingered on the manor’s front steps for a few moments after her father left.

She had convinced him to take a damn bath, and he had agreed, however reluctantly. The manor of her childhood stretched out before her, and a part of her dreaded going inside. Jojo had said that things had likely changed, and she was inclined to believe him.

It looked the same, at least from the outside. The pale stone, weathered by centuries of spring rains. The climbing roses her grand-mother had once trained along the east wall, still blooming, still tended by someone, Mili , probably, or one of the few staff who'd stayed. The fountain in the courtyard still trickled its quiet, endless song.

From where she stood, the stained-glass windows on the first floor appeared to have been recently restored, and she would have sworn that the ivy creeping into the old cracks in the walls hadn't been there before. Yet, albeit all that, it was home. Her home.

She remembered it bigger, somehow : vaster, grander. Now it just looked old. Old and tired, the way she felt, the way her father looked. Fifty-five years was long enough for stone to weather and gardens to grow wild and still, somehow, not long enough for any of it to stop feeling exactly like hers.

The afternoon light caught the windows at an angle she remembered without ever having tried to and somewhere inside, a door creaked, faint and familiar, and for one disorienting moment she was nine years old again, hiding from her tutors in the east wing. The air smelled like home in a way she hadn't let herself admit she'd missed : rain on stone, petrichor, her father had taught her, roses, something baking somewhere deep in the kitchens. She let her hand rest against the worn stone of the door frame, the same spot she used to touch for luck  before missions and anything else that mattered.

She'd almost convinced herself to knock, absurdly, on the door of the home she'd grown up in.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps on the stairs and the door bursting open with a crash. She barely had time to step back before Mili threw herself into her arms. The female who had raised her like a daughter was like a lioness: proud, and fiercely protective of her whelp.

She had known Tilly when the girl was barely hours old; she had nursed her and watched her grow into adulthood. She was a lesser fae, tall and ethereally beautiful, with dark skin and long hair braided in intricate patterns that cascaded down to her waist. Small horns swept back from her forehead, adorned with the gold paint traditional to her people. She smelled like she always had: cedar and crushed mint, the smell of every nightmare chased away, every scraped knee kissed better.

"My darling," she whispered, hugging her as tightly as she could. "My girl, my precious milk daughter." She stepped back, tears welling in her eyes. "Look at you, how beautiful you are." She caressed Tilly’s cheek with infinite tenderness. "I couldn't believe it when your father said you’d come home, but it’s really true."

Mili pulled her in again, this time pressing a kiss to her temple the way she had every night before bed, decades ago, a habit neither of them seemed to have outgrown.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

"Mili, at least let her come inside!" Kat called out, her tone drawling and sarcastic. She gave Tilly a sharp nod.

"General."

"Spy Mistress."

It was, Tilly thought, the closest thing to affection Kat was capable of showing in public.

"It’s good to have you back, my dear. I sent Jojo off to take a bath. I found him a room that was still standing..."

"Thanks, Kat."

The Spy Mistress nodded again, her short, pale-blonde hair catching the fading light of day. Kat was the polar opposite of Mili, both physically and in personality: she had pale skin, light hair, and eyes of an almost translucent blue, and she was as cold as her partner was warm. Yet, like Mili, she cared deeply for Tilly, the Spring Court, and Tamlin.

"Your room hasn't changed. I suspect your father placed a stasis spell on it so you’d find everything exactly as it was when you left. Even the dust. Come inside; a good dinner will do you good."

The princess smiled, readily accepting the hand Mili held out to her, a broad smile on her lips. Kat's hand found the small of Mili's back, briefly, almost absently, before she stepped past her into the doorway.

Dinner took place in the manor’s dining room. Not the grand dining room with its stained-glass windows and marble colonnades, the setting for banquets and other lavish events, but the small room: the one where the table seated no more than ten people, where large windows opened onto the gardens and the rose garden, and where the carpet bore the stain of a stubborn wine spill from centuries past. It had always been Tilly's favorite room growing up, this one, too small for ceremony, too lived in for pretense, the one place in the manor where she'd ever felt like a daughter instead of a princess.

The wine stain on the carpet had a story behind it that no one quite agreed on anymore; every member of the household had their own version, embellished a little more with each passing decade.

Jojo had taken a bath and quickly joined Kat, Mili, and Tilly, who had eagerly set about sharing everything that the ceaseless letters sent back and forth across the ocean hadn't been able to convey. Jojo, three glasses of wine deep, was halfway through a story about a tavern brawl in some coastal town whose name he'd already forgotten, and Tilly was laughing in a way she hadn't in longer than she could remember, and Tamlin arrived, sitting at the table beside his daughter, freshly shaved and washed, a major first in weeks, judging by Kat’s icy remarks. He smelled like cedar soap instead of grief, and Tilly decided that this alone counted as a victory.

"I'd forgotten you had a jawline" commented the spy mistress "the staff will need time to adjust to a High Lord who doesn't smell like a wet dog. Nice of you to join us, by the way. When did I last see you ? 4 months ?"

Tamlin shot her a withering look that had absolutely no effect on her whatsoever. "I missed you too, Kat."

"I'm sure you did." She refilled her glass without looking at him. "I've kept very detailed notes on your decline, for posterity. We have placed bets on how long the clean-shaven look lasts. I have money on three days."

"Four," Mili corrected, not looking up from the bread she was tearing. "He's vain. He'll hold out at least until the Summer Solstice ball."

"There's a ball?" Tilly asked.

"There's always a ball," Jojo grumbled into his wine. "Some noble or another always finds an excuse."

Tamlin reached for the wine bottle, pouring himself a generous glass, and Tilly watched him do it. Shaved. Washed. Drinking wine instead of brooding into it. Sitting at a table surrounded by people instead of lying in a meadow talking to a grave.

"You're staring," he said, without looking at her.

"I'm admiring my handiwork."

"You threatened me into a bath, Tilia. That's not handiwork, that's extortion."

"Same thing, different word." She reached over and stole a piece of bread off his plate before he could stop her. "Eat something warm. You look like you haven't in weeks."

"I haven't," he admitted, and the table went quiet for half a beat too long before Jojo, mercifully, launched back into his story.

Finally, at the end of the third week, they came within sight of Greenwood, its green fields stretching as far as the eye could see, its vast forest, and its manor, which extended below. Tilly stopped her horse, allowing herself a moment's rest, enjoying the view. The wind carried the smell of cut grass and woodsmoke up the hill toward them, the smell of a home she hadn't realized she'd missed this specifically. Beside her, Jojo halted, took the skin containing water, and offered it to his protégée. After 55 years of traveling together, they knew each other well. Tilly had learned to read Jojo's silences and grunts; he had finally understood when she chattered to hide her sorrow. But now, she wasn't speaking. Not at all. Which was worse, and he knew it.

"What's bothering you, Pup?" he asked softly, in the voice he used when he knew he needed to soothe her.

She didn't answer for a moment, drinking the water he offered her, taking in the landscape. Below, smoke curled lazily from the manor's chimneys, ordinary and domestic, as if nothing had ever gone wrong there. Then she finally spoke.

"We should have tried, I should never have left, I should have-"

"I should have been there." She shook her head. "Damn it, I should have been there! I am, I was, an army general, I should have been on the front lines. I should have destroyed Amarantha before she-"

"No one could destroy Amarantha, and you know it. And your father knew it too."

"I would have dragged you aboard that ship gagged if I had to. Your father was right, the further away you were, the better."

She shook her head again, as if to banish the dark thoughts that plagued her. Her horse shifted beneath her, impatient, and she stroked its neck absently, grounding herself in something simple

"If I had been there, I would have stopped him from doing this, from falling in love with that fucking human, with-"

"Tilly, you can't control your feelings. Not even a High Lord can control his feelings." 

"Well, he should have! Or I should have been there. I would have seen what she was up to, I would have seen through her game, through my uncle's game."

She handed the water skin back to Jojo, who drank greedily.

"You didn't want to go back. You couldn't have known."

"I was selfish. I could have gone back."

"You loved Andras, Pup. No one can take that away from you. You couldn't have foreseen it."

Jojo didn't reply. They could have gone back. Tamlin's word was law, but as soon as Amarantha was dead, his orders to protect Tilly and keep her away from her were null and void. Nothing would have stopped Jojo and Tilly from boarding a ship and sailing to Prynthian. But Andras's death had been so painful for Tilly that the mere thought of her father marrying the woman who had killed him made her ill. 

So she had chosen to stay away. She had time, she had thought, and Tamlin had no choice but to agree.

She nodded. She had loved Andras, that was true. More than a brother, if she was honest with herself, though she'd never had the courage to say so out loud. When she was younger, she'd hoped time would turn that into something real. Something more than just some nights more and more often, and stolen kisses in the stables./ And through every year of her exile, she'd held onto the thought of returning to him.

Would he have waited for her? She would never know; he was dead. And with him, all the dreams she had for them. She had spent fifty-five years rehearsing the conversation they would have when she returned. She had never once rehearsed the one where he wasn't there to have it. Grief, she had learned, didn't fade with distance. It simply waited, patient as the tide, for the moment she stopped running from it

A single tear trickled down her cheek. She could still hear his laugh, sometimes, in the space between sleep and waking. She hated how much she still listened for it. Jojo had buried better men than himself and never once let her see him grieve. She wondered, sometimes, who he cried for when no one was watching.

"And Hybern? Hmm? What's my excuse?"

Hybern. The word sat in her chest like a stone she'd been carrying the entire crossing, waiting for the moment she'd have to set it down. She didn't have an excuse for Hybern. She wasn't sure she ever would.

Jojo said nothing; he simply patted her on the shoulder. "Let's go home, child, we can't change the past, but the future belongs to you."

He said it the way he said most hard truths: flatly, without softness, because softness had never once helped her.

Lucien was in a sorry state. Nearly two months after severing his bound with Elain, he'd landed in a dingy tavern on the far side of Prythian, in the deepest southern reaches of the human lands. As far away as possible from Elain, from Velaris, from all the nonsense of Rhysand and Feyre.

She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, quick and almost angry, as if grief were something to be ashamed of, and nudged her horse forward before she could change her mind, before the manor below could become one more thing she ran from.

Admittedly, he'd spent so much on beer hoping to experience a little of the gentle euphoria that alcohol brought on that the old landlady probably had enough money to buy a castle. He'd lost count of how many tankards it took before the shaking in his hands stopped, and then lost count again of how many more it took before he realized it never really had.

Drunk enough to stumble, never drunk enough to forget.

That seemed to be the precise, cruel calibration his body had settled on. Fucking human alcohol.

He kept drinking anyway, chasing a numbness that always seemed to sit one more pint away, just out of reach

Admittedly, his last bath had been at least two weeks prior, and the few spells he'd used hadn't been enough to erase the feeling of filth and constriction from his skin. His reflection in the cracked mirror behind the bar looked like a stranger, gaunter, grayer, a male he didn't recognize and didn't care to. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed. He wasn't sure he remembered how.

Admittedly, the bed he slept on was a bed in name only, so hard, filthy, and battered was it. But Lucien didn't care. He was far away. He was alone. He was at peace.

Some nights, in the haze of his fourth or fifth drink, he thought he could still feel the ghost of Tam's hand against his jaw, and he hated himself a little more for it. He missed him still, after everything, after the years, the silence, Amarantha that had splintered whatever they'd once been to each other.

He hadn't expected that to be true. He hated that it was. He wondered if Tam ever thought of him at all, or if Lucien had simply become another name he no longer let himself say. He thought, too, of Tilly : wherever she was now, however much she'd grown. Fifty-five years was a long time to miss someone he'd once carried on his shoulders.

A grave without a body. A stone placed on the ground. A name engraved on it.

He was far away. He was alone. He told himself, again, that he was at peace, and drank a little more, just in case the lie needed convincing.

Lita's grave had always been his place. For two hundred years, Tamlin had never stopped coming here, whenever he needed peace. Whenever he needed to be alone.

Two hundred years, and he still came here to talk to a stone that held nothing but his own guilt. The spell he had placed on the stone two centuries ago ensured that flowers would bloom all year round. The petals never wilted, never browned, never fell, a small, cruel mercy that mocked the permanence of everything else he'd lost.

But the body of the female he had loved so much was not there. It had never been there. Lita had been cremated at Night Court, with her mother. This grave was nothing but a joke. An eternal reminder that he had failed.

He didn't want to move. The sun warmed his fur, a meager consolation in the face of the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen his life.

Tamlin lay on the ground, in his beastly form, his lupine muzzle resting on his powerful paws, his ears pinned back. In this form, at least, he didn't have to be a High Lord. He didn't have to be anything at all. He'd spent decades learning to control the shift, to keep the beast leashed beneath the male. Some days, like today, he let it win. It was easier to be an animal than to be a father who'd failed, a lover who'd left, a partner who'd watched and done nothing.

He had lost everything.

And perhaps it was his fault. Perhaps Rhysand was right, perhaps he deserved it all.

He had lost Lita, and when he finally thought he could rebuild something solid, with Lucien, with Tilia, he lost them both.

He had exiled Tilia out of fear of what Amarantha would do to her if she got her hands on her. He had ended his relationship with Lucien when he returned with only one eye. He couldn't take that risk. So he didn't. He had told himself, at the time, that it was the right choice. The only choice. He still believed that, most days. It didn't make the silence in the manor any easier to live in.

His heart of stone had been a blessing.

And now he was alone. Lost in a sea of despair. He wondered, sometimes, if Tilly hated him for it. He wondered if she even remembered his face.

Of course, "alone" was a broad term. He had Kat, who was surprisingly good at keeping the Court in one piece, keeping the nobles in line, rebuilding. He'd have to think about increasing his Spy Mistress's salary if he ever set foot in his manor again. There was also Mili, Tilly's wet nurse/governess/mother figure/best friend, who had become a minister out of necessity, who had been living a passionate idyll with Kat for a century and a half, and who was doing her best to manage the situation with the other Courts. Alone wasn't the right word, Kat and Mili had made sure of that. But none of them were his. None of them had chosen him the way Lucien once had, before fear and fate had made that choice for both of them.

But Lucien was gone, and that was what he missed most. He had loved Feyre, of course. But he and Lucien had shared almost 200 years of their lives. They had raised Tilly together. They had seen everything, experienced everything. There was a time when he would have liked to experience that with Feyre, but that was all in the past. Only the memory of Lucien remained.

"Well," a voice mocked, dryly, "if that isn't the most dramatic homecoming a daughter could dream of. My old dad, in the throes of an existential crisis, sprawled in the grass. I doubt Mom needs a flea-ridden, dust-covered rug on her grave, you know?"

The sound of hooves on dry earth. Dead leaves crunching underfoot. He heard it before he could even truly understand what he was hearing. Before he could even mourn the loss of his peace, so unjustly disturbed by a reckless stranger. Hadn't anyone ever been taught to be wary of the Spring Beast?

Tamlin's ears perked up, picking up the approaching sound.

Tamlin's head jerked up suddenly. He would have recognized that voice anywhere. Anytime. In any form. He shifted back into his fae form before he even really thought about it, landing on his feet before he even had time to register it.

"Oh no, don't stop on my account, I refuse to interrupt no matter what this sulking moment is-"

She didn't have time to finish her sentence before her father threw himself at her, hugging her as tightly as he could.

He breathed her in, earth, horse, leather, and beneath it, faintly, something that still smelled like the daughter he'd sent away fifty-five years ago. Like his baby girl. She stiffened for half a beat before melting into it, her arms coming up around him just as fiercely.

"My darling daughter," he murmured, "my ray of sunshine."

"Careful, old beast, or people will believe you missed me." 

"I did miss you" he anwsered, without letting her go "so, so, so fucking much"

"Good, I'd hate to have crossed an ocean for nothing"

He gently released her, softly stroking the smooth cheek of his beloved daughter. She had always been the spitting image of her mother, but this had become even more true in recent decades. He'd forgotten, somehow, in fifty-five years of memory and grief, how much it would hurt to see Lita's face smiling at him again.

Tilly's long, raven-black hair was held back in a chaotic bun that must have needed magic to stay in place. Her delicate, heart-shaped face had aristocratic features, accentuated by her straight nose and high cheekbones. The only thing that didn't scream 'Lita' were her eyes. Her large, emerald-green eyes, which, it was said, bore a striking resemblance to Tamlin's.

"You look awful, Dad. Seriously, when was the last time you washed? When did you last shave?"

"It's been a complicated few months," he said, which felt, even as the words left his mouth, like the understatement of the century "besides, I had priorities."

"'Priorities,' she repeated, raising an eyebrow in an habit that was so unmistakably his own it was almost unfair. "Right. Wallowing on Mom's grave. Very High Lordly of you…"

She took a cloth handkerchief out of her pocket and threw it at him. 

"Get a grip, old man, the neighbors are judging you, it's embarrassing."

"The neighbors? For heaven's sake, what neighbors?"

She turned around, grabbing her mare's reins.

"The squirrels, Dad. The squirrels are judging you, and it's embarrassing."

"It's good to have you back, you know," he said, after a moment, his voice quieter. "The manor's been insufferably dull without you bossing the staff around."

She started walking towards the manor, and he had no choice but to follow her.

"The staff loved my bossing." She glanced sideways at him. "How's the army, by the way? Still standing? Still mine when I want it back?"

"Mostly standing. Kat's kept things in order...better than I deserve, honestly." He hesitated. "She might need a raise, if I'm being truthful with myself."

"Give her one. Gods know she's earned it, keeping you upright all these years." Tilly kicked a loose stone off the path, watching it skitter into the grass.

"Where's Jojo, anyway? He was supposed to keep an eye on you."

"Probably having tea with Kat. Or pretending not to enjoy it, more likely. He might deserve a raise too, for keeping up with me for all these years."

She snorted, a sound so reminiscent of Lita that it ached a little, and Tamlin found himself smiling despite everything.

They walked in silence for a few paces, the manor growing larger ahead of them, its windows catching the afternoon light. Tilly seemed to be turning something over, her brow furrowed the way it always had when she was building up to a question she didn't quite want to ask.

Then she stopped.

"Dad?" she asked. "Where's Lucien?"

"You know where he is, I know Kat sent you descriptive reports of what is-"

"It was a rhetorical question. Asking you politely 'what the fuck happended ?'"

"It's complicated," he started, and Tilly let out a short, sharp laugh that had nothing to do with humor.

The teasing left her face entirely. Just like that, she was a General again, not his daughter, eyes narrowed, waiting, the way she must have waited for a hundred reports she didn't want to hear.

Tamlin's jaw tightened. He'd known this conversation was coming. He hadn't expected it to come within the first ten minutes.

"No shit ! But humor me… I'd like one uncomplicated answer, just once, before I die of old age waiting for it." 

"Can we at least get inside before you interrogate me?" he tried, and she didn't move an inch. "Fine" he sighed. 

He took a step back, as if he needed air to breathe. Then he told her everything. All at once. Almost in one sentence, without pausing. Tilly was his whole life. His daughter, his heir, the General of his armies. If anyone needed to know everything, if there was anyone he needed to tell everything to, it was her. So he spoke.

He couldn't look at her while he spoke. He fixed his eyes instead on the manor behind her and let the words come.

"Lucien has a mate. He doesn't need me anymore. He never will again"

He recounted 55 years of sorrow, and pain, and grief. He said Amarantha's name and felt Tilly's whole body go rigid beside him, though she didn't interrupt. How she had attacked Lucien, his decision to stop what they had to protect them both. He carefully avoided mentioning Andras; he knew Tilly didn't need that. He got to Feyre, to Under the Mountain, to how she had saved them, how she had saved him. He had fallen in love. His voice cracked once, but he carried out. He had gone blind. And then Rhysand. His mention made Tilly cringe, but she said nothing. She only crossed her arms tighter. Finally, he arrived at Elain, concluding somberly.

His hands found nothing to do with themselves. He'd forgotten, in all his solitude, what it felt like to have someone actually listen

Tilly said nothing for a long moment. Then, in a voice that was far too calm to be reassuring: 

200 years ago - Greenwood Manor  (Spring Court)

The sounds of breaking glass, raised voices, shouts. A body being dragged across the parquet floor. An inconsolable newborn. A wail, a plea. Tamlin ran, traversing the rooms of the manor, he only had to follow the sounds. The smell of blood.

Every door he passed was shut tight, the staff gone to ground like animals before a storm.

The double doors were closed, locked by a magical seal, but it took him only seconds to open them. He drove his shoulder and all his strength against the door, shattering both the spell and the wood. His father stood there, in the middle of the room. In the middle of his room. Of their room. Lita was on the floor. 

Her white nightgown, still stained with the blood from childbirth, was torn. She was crying. She was pleading. And the Spring Lord was there, a knife to her throat, his eyes darkened with rage.

The room smelled of blood and candle wax and ink, and something sweeter beneath it all, milk, newborn skin, which made it worse.

"Let her go!" Tamlin ordered, with a conviction he didn't know he possessed. "Now!" He advanced with a determined step, the knife he kept tucked into his boot 'just in case' in his hand, threatening his Lord Father so he would release the young mother.

A sneer came from behind him.

"Looks like your balls have grown, little brother. A bit late, though."

Tamlin whirled around, facing his oldest brother, baring his fangs menacingly.

"She doesn't know anything," he told him, then, to his father, "Let her go. Let Lita go."

His father grinned, a cruel grimace etched on his features, as he pressed the blade slightly against Lita's frail throat. He held her wings with one hand, preventing her from moving, pinning her to the ground. His hands were steady. That was the worst of it, but the steadiness, the absence of any trembling in the hand that held the knife, as if he didn't care about Lita at all.

"I don't know where my brother is, High Lord, please," she whispered.

But he didn't believe her. Or perhaps he enjoyed toying with her? A thin trickle of blood ran down her collarbone, beneath the neckline of her white gown, and Tamlin lunged forward. He poured all his magic, all his strength, and rushed at his father, shouting.

However, the Spring Lord was fast. And so were his two eldest sons. Three against one, Tamlin would never gain the upper hand, but if only Lita had time to grab their daughter and escape, she could get to safety. They could get to safety, and that was all mattered to Tamlin.

A flash of green and gold illuminated the room for a moment, a flash of blood, of pain, and Tamlin landed on the floor, kneeling before Lita, a dagger embedded between his ribs. He raised his hand to her, caressing her cheek in a silent promise, and shook his head as his eldest brother plunged another knife into his thigh. 

"I'll tell you," he whispered to his father, "I'll tell you where Rhysand is. But you must promise to let Lita leave the court. Please."

The patriarch's grip tightened on the Illyrian's wings, but he nodded, a wicked smile playing on his lips. "Very well, son. We have a deal."

Tamlin swallowed, pleading for Lita's forgiveness with his eyes, and spoke. He said all he knew; if there was any chance of saving the female he loved and their newborn daughter, it was this. His father would leave nothing to chance. He knew, even as he opened his mouth, that she would hate him for this, if she lived, she would hate him, and he was choosing that over the alternative, because living without her was not a possibility. 

"Well, there you have it," the Spring Lord said, "it wasn't so difficult, was it?"

And Lita's scream ripped through the air. A pool of blood formed around them, and the father tossed the young mother's wings to his eldest son with a satisfied chuckle. "They'll look just fine in the library, don't you think?"

Tamlin didn't have time to react, to recover from his shock, before his father plunged his knife back into Lita's throat. Tamlin screamed, but it was too late. Life left the purple eyes of the female he loved, her beautiful mouth frozen in an expression of terror. He lunged forward, but the pain prevented him from reaching his father. Instead, another blow froze him, pinning him down, a soldier unable to fight.

"You should have told me everything from the start, Son. You're nothing but a disappointment. An Illyrian bastard as the mother of my only grandchild? I might have let it go if she'd been more...cooperative, for the sake of our family. Well, in the end, she'll leave this Court just fine. I just didn't specify 'alive' did I ? I'm sure Rhysand will love the sight of his beloved sister's head down the stream of the river."

Tamlin didn't answer. He could barely hear. He was in a fog without beginning or end, in a bottomless, black sea. Lita's blood ran down his fingers, his wrists, soaking the carpet.

He tried to rise and couldn't, and that was when he understood what the rest of his life would look like.

And their daughter, their beloved daughter, cried in her crib, as if she knew what had just happened in her parents' room, as if she understood that her mother would never hold her again. The baby's cries didn't stop. Tamlin's world had ended and she was still crying because she was hungry, because she didn't know, because she was three hours old, and she would never know her mother.

Now - Velaris (Night Court)

Lucien's eyes snapped open. He sat bolt upright in bed, his legs becoming entangled in the sheets. He was in his room in Velaris. The light of the Night sky filtered through the shutters, illuminating the armchair where his belongings lay. In a single bound, he grabbed the shirt he'd left behind when he went to bed, pulling it on with a speed and dexterity driven only by the pain in his chest.

Elain.

Elain was aching; he could feel it. He could feel her heart pounding, with panic, with pain; he could feel her apprehension, her anxiety.

With a heartbeat, he rushed into the corridor, the dagger he'd placed on his bedroom dresser in his hand. He tried not to think that this dagger had been given to him by Tamlin, many decades before, when everything was still simple. He crossed the corridors, reaching the door of Elain's room, the carpets absorbing the sound of his bare feet striking the floor at an inhuman speed.

He opened the door with a swift flick of his fingers, his magic gleaming in the darkness of the room, and rushed inside, ready to save his mate.

Elain.

Lucien stopped dead, his eyes widening. His fingers fluttered in surprise, in astonishment, his dagger falling to the floor with a thud.

"Elain?"

She was there, she was really there, but Lucien had been mistaken. She wasn't afraid. She wasn't panicked. She wasn't in pain. Quite the opposite.

Elain sat on the bed, the sheet pulled up to her bare chest, concealing little but enough. Beside her, and having already drawn his sword, stood Azriel, half-naked, who, after the initial menacing glance he'd managed to throw at the intruder, now seemed rather genuinely sorry.

Lucien swallowed. Painfully. His heart was still hammering with a desire that wasn't his own, the bond singing a wrongness through his ribs even now.

Elain tilted her head to the side before spitting out, in a tone more venomous than he'd ever heard from her: "What do you want, Lucien?"

The emissary shook his head, closing his eyes, as if to erase from his memory what he had just seen. "I... I thought something had happened to you, I... the bound was just... I..." he stammered, searching for his words, as he almost never did. He had only lost his words twice: when Jes had died and when Tamlin had-He didn't let himself finish that thought. He never did. Not when it came to Tamlin.

"Yes, well, I'm fine! So you can leave now," she ordered abruptly. 

The room smelled of sweat, candle wax, and worse, love. It wasn't lust that existed between them, and Lucien saw it, smelled it, felt it. He knew that scent. It was feelings. Feelings Elain would never have for him. He felt, for one absurd moment, like a child caught somewhere he shouldn't be, though he was the one who'd been bleeding through a bond no one else could feel.

Azriel moved closer to her, caressing her hand with his fingertips. "Elain, he's your mate, he-"

"I don't care, I didn't choose him," she turned her gaze to Lucien. "I didn't choose you, Lucien. I don't want you." He thought of all the nights he'd lain awake feeling her sadness as his own, and wondered, distantly, if she'd ever once felt the inverse.

He didn't answer for a moment before murmuring, "I didn't choose you either, Elain. I didn't ask to-"

"Go!"

Suddenly, as if he'd regained his senses, he raised his head, running a hand through his red hair. He picked up his dagger and turned on his heel, walking purposefully. In the corridor, he passed Feyre, Rhysand at her heels, who had been drawn by the shouts.

"What-"

"I resign," Lucien declared, his tone calm, far too calm. Cold, far too cold. The corridor was cold against his bare feet, the Night Court silent in that deep hour when even Velaris seemed to be holding its breath.

"What, but-"

"Feyre, I said 'I resign.' Find yourself another emissary."

Lucien entered his room. He grabbed his leather bag, in which he carried the few belongings he truly cared about, and placed it on his bed. Inside, he put the book that had been on the bedside table, an old copy Tilly had lent him before leaving, and which he had jealously guarded. He also placed the bottle of perfume that smelled of tarragon and morning dew, which he had worn ever since he discovered it in a small shop in Greenwood while looking for a birthday present for Tam. His razor, and the few clothes in the wardrobe. Somewhere below, the city's lights still glittered through the window at the end of the hall, indifferent to what was happening inside it.

When he turned around, Rhysand was leaning against the doorframe. His expression was almost unreadable, but Lucien didn't need to know what he was thinking to understand that he was unhappy with the situation.

"Lucien, whatever happened with Elain, I'm sure it can be discussed."

Lucien ignored him and left the room. In the corridor, Feyre held Nyx in her arms, the little boy having clearly been awakened by the commotion. Beside her, Elain, an indescribable expression on her face, held Azriel's hand tightly, as if afraid he would be taken from her. The master spy, for his part, stared at the floor, as if ashamed of having been caught red-handed.

"Where are you going?" Feyre asked, her tone almost too gentle to be honest.

"I'm leaving, I told you, I'm resigning."

"But you can't! We're your friends, your family, Elain is your-"

Lucien raised his hand, interrupting her. "Elain?" he asked to get her attention. "You want me to leave?"

The young fae's eyes fell upon him, and for a heart-wrenching moment, Lucien thought she hesitated. But there was no hesitation in her tone when she answered in the affirmative.

He set his bag down, mechanically adjusting his jacket sleeve before apologizing. "This is going to hurt."

She looked at him, lost in incomprehension, as he placed his hand on his heart.

"I, Lucien Vanserra," he began, "renounce the bond of blood, magic, and love that ties me to Elain Archeron. I reject all attachments to her, whatever their nature, and I renounce, before the Cauldron, the Mother, and the Gods, any further relationship with her."

He had barely spoken when a pain shot through his heart. He gritted his teeth, and, looking up at Elain, he understood that she felt the same. The pain of a bond breaking, tearing, shattering. He exhaled deeply, the pain coursing through him temporarily blinding him, making white stars dance before him. He felt as if his agony would make him lose consciousness, but his will was stronger, and, as Elain wept in pain, clinging to Azriel, he descended the marble stairs.

Rhysand ran after him as he pushed open the door, but no sooner had Lucien crossed the threshold than he winnowed far away, as far as possible from the source of all his pain, to a place where he could forget he was hurting.

A few weeks later - Somewhere off the coast (Spring Court)

It was a goddess day. All the important things in her life happened on a goddess day. She was born on a goddess day, and subsequently, her mother died on a goddess day.

On a goddess day, a week later, her grandfather killed her other grandfather and her father became High Lord, and subsequently, she became Princess.

On a goddess day, she was woken in the middle of the night by her father and shipped off to the continent, practically by force. And on a goddess day, fifty-five years later, she was returning. 

Land was in sight. Home was in sight. Her home. 

Fifty-five years was long enough to learn a new language, bury a continent's worth of grief, and still wake some mornings reaching for a home that wasn't there. She had stopped counting the goddess days somewhere around year twenty. It hadn't helped.

She breathed deeply, the sea spray that had seeped inside filling her lungs, the unmistakable magic of her Court vibrating beneath her fingernails, in the hollows of her palms. In the canvas satchel on the bed, she had packed all her belongings that she had managed to scatter. A week-long crossing was a long time, and the captain had been kind enough to let her keep her cabin, so she had made it her refuge, at least for a while.

The wood of the ship groaned beneath her boots, the same way it had groaned every morning for seven days, a sound she'd already grown tired of.

The small bag, worn by time, contained everything she had taken with her when she left Greenwood decades before: the dagger her uncle Lucien had given her when her father had named her General of the Spring Court Armies, her late mother's engraved silver comb, her favorite book, a silly adventure novel she knew by heart, and a toiletry kit that had needed replacing over the years.

She closed the flap and put on her canvas uniform jacket, which she too had taken with her the night she fled. Magic had protected the fabric, making it look brand new, freshly sewn by a tailor. The rank insignia on her military jacket was still visible, gold on the dark green lapel, but she no longer wore it as she used to. She had grown accustomed to simply wearing it open, a far cry from the military rigor she had once imposed upon herself.

She was a General without an army, after all. A princess without a land. An exile without a home.

Without giving it much thought, she sheathed the sword she had sharpened the previous evening and left the cabin, the weight of the weapon she had carried for so long settling her thoughts.

The smell of salt and sea grew stronger on the deck, and the sun shone with an almost blinding light. Gulls wheeled overhead, their cries sharper than she remembered Spring's gulls sounding, or maybe she'd simply forgotten.

She approached the railing, against which Jojo was leaning. Old Jojo. If he had been human, he would have looked to be around sixty. But he wasn't, which implied that his age must be measured in tens of centuries. Long enough to have been the protector of the Spring family for three generations. He had protected her grandfather, then his sons, especially the youngest, and now he was protecting her. For 200 years. Jojo had a way of saying nothing that somehow said everything; this silence, she knew, meant he agreed with her more than he wanted to admit. He'd taught her to hold a sword before she could properly walk, and some nights she still heard his voice correcting her stance.

She leaned against the railing. The horizon had been empty for so long that the dark smudge of land felt almost unreal, like something she might blink and lose.

"Happy to be home, old man?"

He grimaced. "Well? What's the plan? We dock and you winnow to Greenwood, pup?"

"Why, are you in a hurry to get home?"

"Aren't you?"

"I was thinking we could take some horses and ride to Greenwood instead."

Jojo sighed, making it clear that he wasn't thrilled about the idea.

"It'll take at least a week."

She shrugged. More than that, probably. She wanted to stop everywhere. Talk to everyone. She'd missed home. She'd missed Spring. She wanted to see, to understand what she'd missed, what was missing from the reports Kat, her father's spy-mistress, had been sending her to keep her informed of the situation since her father had stopped doing so himself. 

"Two weeks, maybe," she finally said, before adding, faced with Jojo's dark glare, "We won't be sleeping under the stars, I promise. I'm sure we can get invited by all the nobles along the way. Or to any inn." Two hours. Two weeks. Fifty-five years. Time had stopped meaning a thing to her a long time ago.

He bit his lip, staring at the horizon.

"Spring may not be what we remember, pup. Your father may not be what we remember. So much has happened; it changes a male. It changes people."

She didn't answer, watching the approaching land, pondering Jojo's words. She unconsciously gritted her teeth. She knew everything. She had read the reports: about Amarantha, about the war, about Feyre Cursebreaker, about her uncle Lucien. She had read her father's letters, which had been infrequent under Amarantha, then frequent when he was happy to be about to get married, and when he stopped writing altogether. She had read Kat's missives, the acerbic comments she had added in red ink to the spy reports she sent her, the sarcastic remarks. 

Kat had never been one to mince words, but it had gotten worse since her father had withdrawn into himself.

"Princess Tilia? Your Highness, we should be docking in less than two hours," a sailor told her, bowing to her. She nodded, thanking him with a gesture, then smiled at Jojo.

"Time to get back on track, soldier."

It was surprising that such a dull subject as the law could soothe her, but Eris's voice had that effect. It made her want to doze off and dream of travel and blue skies. He paused, and she opened her eyes, turning to face him. He was sprawled about a meter away from her, a distance that seemed to be the minimum he allowed himself when they were alone, despite his constant flirting.

He respected the bond between Cassian and Nesta, and even if it annoyed the female, she understood. Not once, despite the countless compliments he showered her with, had he tried to slip under her sheets or into her underwear. But that hadn't stopped them from seeing each other again and again, right there, in the middle. In the middle. Where no one else came, where they were alone and undisturbed, with only a blanket and a picnic for company.

"I thought you were asleep," he said, as if to justify stopping reading.

And it wouldn't have been surprising: how many times had she succumbed to sleep, lying next to him, only to wake up a few hours later to find Eris still reading beside her.

"Not today," she replied, sitting up on her heels.

She reached for the food basket, grabbed an apple, and took a bite. Eris grinned broadly, which made Nesta feel suspicious.

"What?" she asked warily.

"Nothing, you just look so happy eating that apple…"

"I love apples. There aren't any left in Velaris. The trade agreements have put us in a bad position, and there are many shortages."

"I figured… I'll bring you more next time, if you like. Or even make you some applesauce. With cinnamon? Do you like cinnamon?"

"You'd make applesauce?"

"Hmm, no… but my cook could!"

Nesta burst out laughing and gave him a tender smile as she finished her apple.

"I think," she continued, "I'd prefer a pie."

"Excellent choice, Nessie, I love the idea."

Nessie. That nickname always made her smile. It was sweet, cute. Everything Nesta wasn't. Everything Nesta didn't feel she was, but that Eris seemed to see in her.

"How about we play a game?" she suggested.

"What kind of game?" Eris asked, raising a curious eyebrow.

"A question for a question?"

He narrowed his eyes, hesitating.

"You're already an open book to me, Nessie, what could I possibly ask you?"

"You'll figure it out... then?"

"Very well," he sighed. "But I'll start... Hmmm... let's see... If you could choose where in the world to live. Anywhere. No limitations, where would it be?"

Nesta's pretty nose wrinkled, and she thought for a few moments. "It's difficult, I haven't seen much of the world. I grew up in one place, then I left for Velaris."

"So nowhere?"

"So nowhere. Travel. Then somewhere. Preferably a place with apple pies."

Eris nodded, the sun's rays illuminating his fiery hair.

"My turn... tell me about Amarantha."

He froze and stared at her. She'd planned this. Of course. She'd disguised it as an innocent game, but it wasn't. And now he was caught in her web.

"She ruled Prynthian, she was killed by Tamlin, she's dead. End of story," he said coldly.

"I know that."

"That's my answer."

"I want a real answer. No one ever talks about Amarantha."

"And for good reason, no one wants to talk about her."

"But we're going to talk about it at the Getegys. So I'd like to be prepared. Please."

Eris closed his eyes and lay back down on the blanket, his forearm covering his face to shield him from the sun.

"Very well, if you'd like… Amarantha has arrived, and Tamlin warned us. He said she was bad news, but no one listened. Well, almost no one. My father did listen, but Rhysand didn't believe him, and he convinced the other High Lords that Tamlin was just desperate for a good old-fashioned war and wanted to fight for no reason. When she seized power, everyone was surprised, except for Tamlin, who was more prepared than we were. That's why he was able to fight back, at least a little, and why he didn't end up Under the Mountain like the rest of us."

"And what was it like there? Under the Mountain?"

"I thought we were playing a game of one question for the sake of one question?"

Nesta sighed, but Eris answered anyway.

"At first, I thought it was awful. Then I thought it was worse. Amarantha had a very personal concept of violence. She wanted to be loved, admired. But she quickly realized that wouldn't happen without some incentives… these incentives took various forms. Each more painful and twisted than the last."

"And Rhysand?"

"Rhysand saw through her act very quickly, so he gave her what she wanted. Love and admiration. He took the role she would have wanted Tamlin to take, and he played it perfectly. Amarantha wanted Tamlin, and I think that, somewhere deep down, Rhysand couldn't stand that. That a powerful female like Amarantha didn't want him was vexing, I suppose. Even if she was crazy."

"Do you think he helped her? That he did what he's accused of?"

"I think we do a lot of things to survive. But for Rhysand to boast that everything he did was for his people… That's false. If he had done it for his people, he wouldn't have amassed a small fortune during those years, the bank statements of which you found. He would have done many things differently. But I can't judge him; I wasn't in his shoes. I would have done many things to save my own life too."

"But you don't claim to be a saint."

Eris chuckled softly. "Rhysand is lying to himself if he thinks he's a saint. He's a real bastard, but that's what it takes to be a High Lord."

"It's true, you are a real bastard."

"Of course, that's why you adore me."

Nesta smiled, her eyes lighting up with a silent laugh.

Her smile faded quickly, though.

"I should go home."

"I know."

"Cassian will be looking for me."

"I know."

Eris smiled sadly at her before getting up and putting away the food basket. "My respects to the General."

Nesta didn't reply. They both knew that Cassian didn't know she was there. That she was with him. No one knew, and it was better that way. For now, at least. Eris folded the blanket, trying not to listen to his heart, which was screaming at him to take Nesta in his arms and kiss her. It was a bad idea, and he knew it. But it was the sweetest bad idea he'd had in ages.

Lucien and Elain had returned to Highgarden on the last day of the Regional Emissaries' Meeting. Elain had been right; those few days in Velaris had passed with terrifying speed, and Haditha and Tamlin, though happy to see them again, had barely had time to notice their absence. The dinner held at the manor that day was magnificent. 'The most splendid feast given since Amarantha's reign', Martha had declared. And she had gone to great lengths to impress the guests, serving course after course, delicate dishes representing all the provinces of the Court.

Tamlin presided, dressed, unusually, in a dark green ceremonial robe embroidered with gold thread, his stag antlers serving as a crown protruding from his golden hair, tied back in a ponytail. To his right, Haditha wore similar colors, and a gold headband encircled her forehead, accentuating her golden eyes. Elain and Lucien stood on either side of the sovereigns: Lucien beside his sister, and Elain beside Tamlin.

After four long days of speeches and meetings, everyone was enjoying the music and drinks, and laughter flowed freely, just like the wine. Tamlin and Elain had been engaged in a lively conversation for several courses now about how to propagate hellebores, which, incidentally, didn't grow at Spring Court.

Meanwhile, Lucien and Haditha were amused by placing bets on the future of Lara and Pancras's relationship, seated a few seats away. "I guarantee you," Lucien was saying, "Pancras will propose to her soon."

"Are you joking? He'll wait at least 40 years. And she'll wait at least 40 years to say yes."

Lucien burst out laughing, giving his sister a knowing nudge, who smiled back at him with her brightest smile.

Their lively conversation was interrupted by Emerie, who slipped discreetly into the room, reaching behind Pancras, still under the watchful eyes of Lucien and Haditha. She leaned forward and whispered something in the General's ear, who nodded, suddenly becoming serious. He said something to Lara and stood up silently, giving Lucien a discreet nod.

"Stay here," he told Haditha. "You can't leave the table now; it would be inappropriate."

Tamlin, who had seen Emerie and Pancras, looked at Lucien with concern, who wrinkled his nose in response.

With a light, feline gait, Lucien made his way to the large wooden doors, opened by the guards to allow the two officers ahead of him to pass. He found Emerie and Pancras in the kitchen, the unofficial meeting place for Tamlin's inner circle. Martha, busy preparing desserts with two maids, didn't even glance at them as they sat down at the large table of old, waxed wood, darkened by centuries.

Emerie, out of habit, picked up the coffee pot and three cups, placing them before them. She wore her uniform with her usual precision: the stiff, castleton green jacket was buttoned to the collar, her sword was at her belt, and her sharp knives hung across her chest from a bandolier. Lucien brushed his hair away from his face, staring at a stray lock behind his pointed ear.

"Well? What's going on?"

Emerie took a letter out of her pocket and handed it to Lucien, who scanned it with his eyes.

"By the Cauldron," he murmured, "when did this happen?"

"A few minutes ago. It's from Nesta."

Pancras leaned forward, reading the letter over Lucien's shoulder.

"A rebellion among the Illyrians?"

"My home is ablaze," Emerie murmured sadly. "Nesta wasn't in Velaris, and when she returned, Cassian had left for Windhaven. She went there immediately with Azriel. The males could no longer tolerate the demands of the females; one of the females was executed by an army major. Then, an uprising of her sisters ensued. A true massacre."

"How many dead?"

"Nesta didn't know, but without Rhysand to keep them in check, it seemed the males thought they could get away with anything."

"By the Mother," Lucien murmured, "Emerie, I'm sorry."

She blinked, as if to stifle a tear that threatened to fall. "It's not your fault at all, Lucien."

Lucien sighed and patted Emerie affectionately on the shoulder as he stood up. He buttoned his shirt, which he had took off upon leaving the dining room, and downed his cup of coffee in one gulp. Leaving the two soldiers in the kitchen, he retraced his steps to the banquet's head table and resumed his seat next to Haditha. She was speaking in hushed tones with Tamlin, and they both turned toward him as he sat down.

"There was a conflict among the Illyrians at Night. The death toll is uncertain. The stability of the Court is uncertain."

Elain, who had overheard these last words, stared wide-eyed.

"And my sisters?" she asked in a whisper, so low that Lucien had to strain to hear.

"They're fine, don't worry."

She nodded, her gaze somber, as Haditha raised her chin, offering a gracious smile to the assembly, as if to mask the gravity of the discussion taking place between the sovereigns.

"The situation could escalate," remarked the Spring Lady, her smile never wavering, as she lightly took a sip of her wine.

"That's not our problem," her husband replied. "It's Feyre and Rhysand's."

"They are my sisters!" Elain protested sharply.

Tamlin shook his head gently, a strand of his blond hair falling.

"Elain, I'm sorry, but I don't know what more we can do."

Lucien leaned forward, squinting, deep in thought. He rested his chin on his hand, frantically tapping the scar on his cheek with his index finger.

"Let's write to Nesta. Let's tell her we're here if she needs us, we can help, within reason. And Emerie will probably want to go."

Tamlin nodded gently, giving Elain a rueful smile, which she returned.

A few hours later, the euphoria that had filled the manor during the festive evening had subsided, and once Haditha and Elain had gone up to bed, Lucien and Tamlin found themselves by the dying fire in Tamlin's study. The High Lord grabbed a bottle of amber liquid and, without bothering to pour glasses, took a swig straight from the neck before passing it to Lucien.

"You should write to Feyre, Lu. She might listen to you. She has to stop this madness with the Illyrians."

"She'll listen to me? Do you really think so?"

Tamlin shrugged, unconvinced. A small bell tinkled in the corridor, and with a flick of his index finger, Tamlin opened the door a crack to let Tipi in, who barked before jumping into his lap.

"Since when does that dog have a bell?" Lucien was surprised.

"Hadi thinks the manor is too big, and since he's always going back and forth between us, she doesn't know where he is and she worries. With the bell, she can spot him from afar… Isn't that right, Tip? Mommy's worried for you, hm ?"

"And not sleeping at night," the redhead chuckled, with a mocking smile.

Tamlin didn't reply, taking another sip of alcohol. Lucien watched the fire die down. He could have rekindled it with a touch of magic, but he didn't feel the need.

It wasn't as if they were going to spend the night talking and drinking, like in the good old days. Now, they both had someone waiting for them in their rooms, who would probably complain about waking up alone at 5 a.m. in an empty, cold bed. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to get up and go find Elain. He wanted to enjoy the quiet of the study a little longer, the armchair in which he had spent so much time.

"Tam...?" he began.

"Hm?"

"I have to tell you something."

"Hm? What is it? You cheated on me with Elain?"

Lucien grimaced, not bothering to laugh at the bad joke. "Helion is my father."

Tamlin didn't react. He was scratching the little dog's ears, and he didn't stop. A few seconds passed before he replied.

"I know, Lu. I think a lot of people know."

"How long have you known?"

"I always had my suspicions... which you've just confirmed."

"So you didn't know! How arrogant you are!"

The Spring Lord sneered, but didn't reply. "He wrote to me when we were on Velaris. He wants me to go to his court. To officially become his heir."

Tamlin finally looked up at Lucien, a spark of worry and curiosity shining in his emerald-green pupils. "When are you leaving?" he asked finally, reluctantly.

"Never!" Lucien protested. "That fool abandoned me for 300 years, and now he thinks I'm going to do what? Submit to his whims? Be the nice heir he needs? Where was he when Beron was beating me? When he killed Jes? When I was forced to flee here? He didn't lift a finger."

The blond man tilted his head to the side, his expression suddenly serious. He was about to open his mouth when he was interrupted.

"Don't tell me to go, that it's my duty, or whatever. I won't go. Period."

"I wasn't going to tell you to go," Tamlin replied softly, handing the bottle to Lucien. "On the contrary. I wanted to tell you that you have, and always will have, a place here. Here in this manor, here in this court, it doesn't matter what 'here' means, as long as I have power there, you'll be at home. And Elain too, needless to say."

Lucien nodded gently, hiding his emotion behind a sip of alcohol.

“By the way,” Tamlin continued, “did you have a chance to speak with Pachasa’s emissary? I hear the orchard at your villa has never produced so much fruit. You should take Elain there; she might be happy to see the sea and a quieter place.”

Lucien couldn’t help but look surprised. “What?”

“Nothing, it’s just that… you’re the second person to mention Vence to me in a week. What are the odds? I haven’t been there in decades.”

Haditha let herself fall back onto the bed, her auburn hair forming a crown around her head on the pillow "I've already told you, I'm not powerful enough."

"All good then, that’s why Tam’s coming with us."

"He is ?" asked the female in disbelief "He really is ?"

"Yep, he's waiting for us downstairs. Get dressed, I'm gonna find you a sword, just in case" said Bron softly.

Hart and Bron had saddled the horses by the time she came down. The young mare she’d seen on the first day was waiting, and the large saddlebag she’d found for Tipi was slung over it.

Just as Hart had predicted, dawn was breaking, and he handed her a flask of coffee "for the road". Tamlin was still in his beast form, of course, and Tipi approached him cautiously, before yapping and licking the tip of his snout. Tamlin growled at the little dog’s blatant lack of respect, and the dog quickly took refuge between his mistress’s legs.

Bron handed her a sword that looked as it had been freshly sharpened, along with a sword belt, which she fastened.

"You know how to use it, rigth ?" that was the first thing Tamlin said since she had joined them outside.

Haditha lift an eyebrow. "Who do you think I am exactly ?"

"A female who does not own a sword"

"Fair point" smiled Haditha, scraching the spot behind Tamlin ears "yes I will manage, should I need to fight"

"Good" mumbled Tamlin.

Haditha grabbed Tipi and put him in the saddlebag, climbing onto the saddle in one fluid motion.

"Where should we start ?" asked Bron, his face turned toward Tamlin.

"We winnow as close as possible to Southbay, then we ride up west, toward the Edelweiss mound. This is one of the six cardinal points of protective spells. We restore the magic there, and travel around the Court in a clockwise direction, making sure we have reached all the points before the sun is at its zenith"

"And then ?" asked Haditha.

"Then we come back, take a hot bath and take a nap" answered Hart.

"That's all ?"

"Time is of the essence" said Bron, "you'll see, that's a race against time."

"But we always made it"

"And if we don't ?"

"Then we'll try again tomorrow", shrugged Tamlin. "But we'll make it".

At these words, Hart called out cheerfully to his companions, "The last one to the mound is a coward," before winnowing off.

Bron swore and followed, whilst Haditha called out into the void, "Wait, I don’t even know where-"

She didn’t have time to finish her sentence or realise what had happened to her before her mare’s hooves touched the green grass of a meadow by the sea. Tamlin, who had winnowed her with him, dashed off, shouting, “Hurry up, princess!”.

Haditha had to give the boys some credits : they had been remarkably quick and efficient.

They had winnowed accross the Court, Tamlin reciting spells, Hart singing some salacious songs, and Bron smiled when he thought no one was watching him, staying close to Haditha in a charmingly protective way.

By the time they arrived at the manor, Haditha was exhausted and was fervently hoping that the bath Hart had promised would actually happen. She would have given anything for some hot water to soothe her aching muscles; she wasn’t used to riding for such long stretches anymore.

No sooner had she set foot on the ground than Lara came running out, panicked.

"You Grace" she said to Tamlin, bowing her head in a quick nod "A man came, looking for you. He said you might be expecting him. I suggested he wait for you inside, but he said he knew well the place. He is in the gardens."

Tamlin eyes filled with something Haditha could not quite catch. Hope, maybe ?

"What did he look like ? Redhead ? A gold-coloured metal eye?"

Lara looked reluctant to correct him, and she shook her head.

"No, Your Grace, he was-"

"Brown-haired with violet eyes," Haditha cut her off grimly.

As if on cue, Bron and Hart placed their hands on the pommels of their swords, and without thinking, Haditha took a step back, her hands trembling slightly, Tipi curling at her feet.

"Rhysand" Hart hissed.

Under normal circumstances, that is, 'before', Tamlin wouldn’t have done a thing. He would have left Rhysand to fend for himself in the gardens and gone back to sleep and despair. But he could sense Haditha’s fear, Hart and Bron’s anger, and Lara’s anxiety. The words his friends had spoken the night before came back to him. He had to protect his people, even if it was the last thing he did.

"Lara, please prepare a hot bath for Miss Haditha, she needs it." he ordered in a tone that brooked no contradiction.

"No !" Haditha protested vigourously.

"Haditha, you have done a lot for the Court and I thank you for that but I can face Rhysand."

"Besides" said Hart "he will not be alone."

Putting his words into action, he drew his sword from its sheath, and Bron followed the example.

Haditha took a deep breath, trying to calm down. She was not Under the mountain. She had her powers. And Rhysand was on the side of the heroes now, or so Eris had said. Still, knowing someone who played against them for so long was so close...she shivered.

"Hart’s coming with me. Bron, you stay with Hadi."

"Does he have to follow her right into the bath?" Hart asked mischievously.

Bron shot him a dirty look before remarking, "And that’s exactly why you’re not the one left to protect the ladies."

"I don’t need protecting," argued Haditha, though even she could tell her voice sounded false.

"You don't need protecting, but I'd rather Bron stayed with you, Hadi. Please." Tamlin begged softly.

Suddenly, Hadi’s wariness and Lara’s suspicion had reawakened his protective instincts. And the fact that Rhysand was the cause of his people’s insecurity was unbearable to him. He had done enough harm here.

"On the other side of the door", Bron felt compelled to specify, his cheeks surprisingly flushed.

Haditha nodded softly. She shouldn’t have felt that relieved to flee the battle, but she wasn’t a soldier. She never had been.

Slowly, Bron took her arm and pulled her inside, with Lara and Tipi close behind.

Rhysand was in the rose garden when Tamlin and Hart found him. With a flick of his muzzle, Tamlin signalled to his friend to stay back, whilst he strode forward, with a feline grace, towards the High Lord of the Night Court.

"Tamlin" Rhysand snapped in a mocking tone "Glad to see you still have you paws and your antlers. Not ready yet to change back hmm ? Is the world too scary for you ?"

Tamlin growled, baring its sharp fangs , before replying

"What are you doing here, Rhysand ? Don't you have a newborn baby? Are you already planning on being an absent father?"

"I sense your wards are back"

"Indeed, it looks like you crossed the border just in time. What a shame."

"What a shame indeed, I -"

"What do you want, Rhysand ?"

Rhysand let out a laugh that sounded forced.

"Tamlin, my dearest friend...Can't a man want to stop by and see an old chap?"

"You and I are not friends, Rhys. Stop pretending otherwise. What. Do. You. Want ?"

Rhysand turned away, running his fingertips over a white rose.

"I've heard Spring Court is getting ready to sign trade agreements and-"

"And I suppose you want a slice of the pie. I hear the harvests are poor up north...What a shame."

"We produce high-quality fabrics, and our mines extract magnificent gemstones that I could-"

"You destroyed my court. And now you want our harvests ?"

"It was...an ill advised decision. I should have...refrain from encouraging Feyre to do something so reckless. But you know how she is. She can be...persuasive."

Tamlin took a few steps back, circling Rhysand.

"I know why you did it."

"Really ?"

"Yeah...you wanted to see me on my knees. You wanted to see me break, because breaking people is the only thing you enjoy."

"You are wrong. I am not-"

"An asshole ? No, that's true. I don't think you are an asshole. I think you are ferously loyal to the people you love. And I think I am not among them. So let me ask you this, Rhys. If the roles were reversed, what would you do? Would you help me?"

"Feyre would never-"

"Lets not consider Feyre. Would you help me ?"

Rhysand hesitated. He looked at Hart, who was holding his sword, and weighed up his options.

"We both know I would not." he said, finally.

Tamlin stifled a hollow laugh.

"That's true. Lucky for your people I am not you then. I'll trade with you, Rhys. For peace sake at least. And because I didn’t bring you back to life just so you could die in an uprising led by your own people. Try to remember that, will you?"

At those words, Tamlin clicked his tongue, and Rhysand was winnowed to the border, beyond the wards they had put in place that very morning.

The beast took a look at Hart, and said "I don’t want to hear a word about how soft I’ve gone."

"Actually, I was gonna clap. It was very noble of you."

Haditha Vanserra had always been a patient woman. Extremely patient. She was over three centuries old, with seven brothers whose qualities she often doubted, a mother as gentle as a blue summer sky, and a father as violent as a storm. She had survived it all. Better yet, she had grown because of it. She had become a strong woman, a powerful woman. A warrior in silk trousers and high heels.

'Lady Hadi', as her brothers often called her to mock her, adjusted her bangs in front of her bedroom mirror, smoothing the auburn strands absentmindedly. Outside, the rain fell, as if to remind the inhabitants of the Autumn Court that they would never escape the sweet melancholy of that eternal season. Luminous orbs lit the room around Haditha, casting golden rays onto the walls and tapestries, warming the atmosphere imperceptibly. Tipi, the Autumn Princess’s faithful dog, slept peacefully by the fire, snoring softly. He had been her most loyal companion for so long that Haditha had no idea what she would do without him. 'Probably not much', she mused, smiling as she recalled the joy she had felt the day her father had given him to her. He had infused a bit of his power to bind him to Haditha forever, and the little girl she once was had wept with joy at the gift of an eternal friend. She had been too young, then, to understand what kind of man Beron was. Too young and too protected. First by her mother, as any mother protects her children, but also by her brothers, who treated their only sister with a certain deference, and finally by her father. With Haditha, it was as if the cruel High Lord of the Autumn Court sometimes forgot who he was, becoming nothing more than a loving father to an only daughter. "Sometimes" was the key word, Haditha corrected herself bitterly. 'Sometimes', she repeated in her mind, tracing the burn mark that scarred her wrist with her fingertips.

Haditha was interrupted from her reverie by the crash of her bedroom door swinging open. She startled and found herself facing Eris, who didn’t look the least bit embarrassed about flouting every social convention regarding announcing one's entry. Her eldest brother said nothing, crossing the room before flopping onto the bed, where he was joined by Tipi, ever-greedy for scratches behind the ears.

"So, is it true?" he finally asked. "The old man managed to convince you to get married?"

Eris considered her wrist in silence but said nothing for a moment. What was there to say, anyway? They both knew their father. There was nothing he could do about it. For now, at least.

Haditha slowly raised her wrist to show the skin that was beginning to heal, and a smile that didn't reach her eyes stretched across her lips.

"The negotiations were... rough."

"Have you heard from Tamlin?" Haditha asked, picking up some kohl from the vanity and setting to work applying it to her eyes.

"Why? Are you interested?"

"I might be."

"Why?"

The female considered the black lines she had drawn on her eyelids with some satisfaction before turning back to Eris.

"I have to go to Highgarden."

The prospect of this marriage didn't enchant him in the least, for the simple reason that he knew the groom, the match his father had seen fit to choose for his only daughter. A male who would make Beron look like a saint if given the chance. But Eris wouldn't give him that chance. He intended to make sure that Porti, the infamous fiancé, knew he would face agonizing suffering if Haditha were ever to hurt.

In one leap, her brother sat upright.

"What are you talking about? Have you gone mad? The war with Hybern ended three years ago and Tamlin is a shadow of his former self. The Spring Court is a shadow of itself. Highgarden is a shadow of itself."

"That’s why I have to go."

"Shouldn't you be... preparing for your wedding?" Eris grimaced.

"My wedding is set for the Autumn Equinox. In five months. I have time... and besides... we both know I won't see Highgarden again for a very long time once the marriage is finalized. I have things to do there. Important things."

"What kind of things? Please tell me it doesn't involve Tamlin. You were engaged to him a long time ago and you dumped him. You missed your chance, little sister."

Haditha laughed before lying down beside her brother on the bed.

"I was engaged to his eldest brother, and he 'inherited' me when he died. I wasn't engaged to Tamlin and I didn't dump him; we mutually decided it was better for our friendship if we didn't marry."

"Which makes total sense," Eris drawled sarcastically.

"Marriages make people miserable, Eris."

"Why do you think I'm single?"

Haditha shot him a dark look before continuing.

"Do you remember when Lucien went to Highgarden?"

"By 'went,' do you mean 'fled for his life'?"

"I made a deal with Tamlin. In exchange for taking Lucien in, I would offer him my help when he needed it most. That 'when' is now, Eris. I must honor my part of the bargain."

"Did Tamlin ask you to?"

"No."

"Then you don't have to do it."

"Eris, Tamlin protected Lucien when we were unable to. He granted him exile, he gave him his trust, he made him a member of his court, and more than that—a friend. We owe him that much. I owe him that much."

Beron was not a male who liked to negotiate. He liked to decide. Brutally. Bluntly. Violently. But negotiating, he hated it. And even more, negotiating with his children repulsed him. They were flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood; they should have been at his feet, nodding at his every request in gratitude for his having sired them. But these ungrateful whelps always found a way to grate on his nerves.

Eris stared at the ceiling, stunned for a few moments.

"Fine. I suppose you need help convincing the old man?"

"I'm three hundred years old; I can handle our father on my own."

"I highly doubt that," Eris retorted, gently stroking the scar on Haditha’s wrist. "No one can handle him alone," he added, softly bringing his little sister's wrist to his lips.

"Father," Haditha pleaded in a calm, steady voice. That same soft voice he had taught her to use to charm his ministers, which she now had the gall to turn against him. "The situation at the borders of the Spring Court is precarious. Tamlin must reinforce the magical wards that protect us from the human world. But he cannot do it alone. Let me help him for a few months."

"It's an excellent idea, Father," Eris added. "Hadi and Tamlin are old friends; she'll know how to talk sense into him."

Beron rose from his throne and began to slowly circle Haditha, sweeping his icy gaze over her.

"And the wedding?" he asked, his voice cracking through the air like a whip.

"The wedding is in five months, Father," his daughter replied.

"Will you return?"

Haditha looked outraged. 'Falsely outraged', Beron thought.

"Of course, I gave my word..."

"I don't think you did, no."

"Really? I must have forgotten..."

Haditha considered the offer in silence, wondering if she truly had a choice. It wasn't as if she could avoid this marriage anyway. She stared for a few moments at her father's outstretched hand, feeling the magic shimmering around them. A binding bargain like this was impossible to break. It carried too much weight, and Beron knew it as well as she did.

Beron shot an assassin glance at his daughter, while a sadistic grin pursed his lips.

"Very well, my dear. Let's make a deal. You go to the Spring Court to ensure Tamlin regains his senses, and you will marry on the day of the Autumn Equinox. Do we have an agreement?"

Tamlin tossed Pauly's silky chemise away, baring her upper body. He did not gave her time to shiver to the exposure of her naked breasts to the cold temperature, that his hands found her hips, grabing her with possessivity. His mouth let go of her collarbone, where his teeth had already left his mark, to find her lips. He kissed her ferally, and she kissed him back with the same vigour, in a panting mess of tongue and teeth.

Pauly's hands found Tamlin's shirt, that her newly acquired claws ripped appart, but suddely, she drew her face away from him, a mortified expression flushing on her face. Tamlin lowered his eyes with misunderstanding, to see the blood that was dripping from Pauly's claws. On his chest, a bloody scratch, a mark left by her clutches, was already beginning to heal.

His left hand tightened its grip on her hip, squeezing it so hard that he would probably leave a mark to admire the next day. His right hand caught Pauly's hand. He bowed his head with a certain reverence, kissing first her palm, then her knuckles, and finally her famous claws, licking away the last traces of his blood. She let go of a soft moan at the contact of his tongue, and that noise alone made Tamlin's last restraints shatter.

"I am so sorry", began Pauly, tears begining to fill her eyes, "I didn't -"

"Stop. Apologizing." grumbled Tamlin, "I think I can take a few scratches from my beautiful, beautiful wife."

He wrapped his arms around her waist, lifting her effortlessly off the desk and pressing her against the wall nearby. His hands found the small claps holding her skirt, and he ripped them unceremoniously, letting the blue silky skirt fall at their feet like a pool of light.

He took a second to admire her, panting. Her hair, usually so neatly styled, fell in loose strands around her face. Her lips reddened and swollen by his kisses. Her collar bones marked by his teeth. Her breasts were heavy with desire, her nipples hardened, as if they were wainting for him to bite them, and he could smell, without even touching her, how wet and aroused she was. He was not sure of what he wanted to do with her. To her. The only thing he was sure how was that he wanted to hear her scream his name.

Pauly was under the impression that her whole body was burning. The way Tamlin was looking at her made her what to do anything to please him. Anything to make him continue to stare at her body like that for the rest of the night. She let her eyes linger, unbashfuly, on the solid muscles of his torso. Watching, biting her lip, as his pectoral muscles bulged beneath the fine layer of blond hair that dotted his chest, her gaze drifting lower, to his muscular stomach and the V-shaped muscles running down to the waistband of his trousers. She was so wet, so excited, that she thought her heart might actually explode if she didn't do something.

With a graceful movement, she slipped out of his grip around her waist and let herself slide down the wall, landing on her knees in front of him. Carefuly, making sure her claws were under control, she freed his cock from his breeches.

He was already so hard for her, that she felt her mouth watter with lust. She looked up to him, and met his gaze. His pupils were so dilated that she could barely see the green of his eyes, and his eyes closed when he felt her breath on him, so close to his tip. It was not how he would have think of having her, but having his wife on her knees was always a pleasant scenery.

Pauly began slowly licking the tip of his cock, his shaft, savouring the salty taste of him, lick after lick.

Tamlin grabbed her hair with one hand, not make her do anything but because he needed to touch her. To feel her. He moaned as she began to take him in her mouth. He lowered his gaze on her, her red lips, usually so quick to argue with him, were around him, and she took him in her mouth, centimeters by centimeters, flattening her tongue until he hit the back of her throat.

Every back and forth, every flick of her tongue made Pauly tremble with desire. She enjoyed it so much. She enjoyed him so much, the taste of salt of his precum, the weight of his cock on her tongue, his lenght in her throat. Cauldron, she wanted more. Way more. She needed more.

"Cauldron", whispered Tammlin, breathlessly "such a pretty, aristocratic mouth doing such dirty things, it's-".

He stopped, mid sentence, as Pauly began to move. With a touch of defiance in her eyes, she began to suck him, going back and forth with an agonisingly slow pace. Tamlin couldn't help but moaning, as she was fucking him with her mouth, and claws wandering on his thighs, leaving superficial scratch that aroused him way more than he would have thought.

As if he’d read her mind, he tightened his grip on her hair and pulled gently, forcing her to lift her head towards him.

"Honey, I could fuck this pretty mouth of yours the whole night, but I doubt this would satisfy you as much as what I have in mind."

She wiped her lips with the back of her hand, before replying.

"And what do you have in mind ?"

He lowered his head towards one of her nipples, taking it between his teeth, nibbling at it, licking it, while one of his hand cupped her other tit, caressing it gently. His other hand wrapped around her, clutching her waist, and in a whirlwind of raw power, he winnowed them in their bedroom.

He sank to his knees in front of her, cupping her head in his hands.

"Wouldn't you like to know that, milady." He kissed her, tasting himself on her mouth, savouring the warmth of her sweet sweet lips that were all his to kiss. All his to fuck.

"Please", she panted, without knowing excatly what she was begging for.

Pauly felt her back landing on the fur blanket of their bed, Tamlin on top of her. She couldn't help but tease him.

"Is my High Lord above fucking in his office ?"

"I am not above fucking you anywhere, Honey, I've told you that already. But I thought you might prefer a more intimate setting to scream my name. Unless the prospect of someone walking on me licking your lovely cunt arouses you. In this case…" He bit the inside of her thigh "I could feast on you in the dining room" Another bite "Or fuck you bent over the piano" Another bite, closer to her cunt than ever "Or I could have you in the garden, in the middle of the day."

Pauly let out a small moan, her cheeks taking a deep shade of red. She had always liked when he talked dirty to her. To her biggest shame.

Without another word, Tamlin brought his lips to her, tickling her clit with the tip of his tongue.

"What a beautiful little wife you are, already so soaking wet"

He began circling her clit with his tongue, alternating between slow passages and a frenetic pace that were soon to make her pant.

"You taste so good, honey, I think I could survive with your pussy as only food"

"Please Tam" she muttered, "I need…I want…more", she begged.

Tamlin let go of a groan, which resonated right down to her pussy, making her shiver. She was close, he could feel it, he knew her and her body enough to know. He angled his fingers inside her a bit more, and it was just enough to make her dive into her pleasure, trembling against his mouth, screaming his name.

Without another word, gladly obeing his wife command, Tamlin lowered back his head between her legs, setting a rough pace of tongue. He used one hand to pull her closer to him, resting her thighs on his shoulders, spreading her legs wider for him. He began nibbling her clit, just as he knew she liked, and slipped one finger inside her. She moaned, encouraging him to give her more. He used another finger, feeling her tight walls widening at his touch. He began slowly to fuck her with his hand, contrasting with the relentless pace of his tongue, before curving his fingers to touch that spot that made her scream.

"Cauldron, Tam, Don't…please Don't stop."

Pauly returned to her, trembling all over, her blood seeming to burn in her veins. Tamlin went up, licking his fingers, as to make sure to not miss a bit of her slick. He cupped her cheek with one hand, kissing her jaw gently.

"Satisfied, honey ?" he asked teasingly.

"Not quite" she answered, wrapping her legs around his waist, pulling him closer.

"You are insatiable"

Tamlin took a sharp breath. He was used to talking dirty to her, but not used to her doing the same. And he had to admit, it was really hot. Letting go of any restraint he had left, he burried himself inside her. She was so wet, so warm, so tight, that he had to use all of his self control not to loose his mind and come right away.

Pauly brought her lips to his ear, whispering in his ear

"I shall be content when you filled me with cum"

Pauly ran her hands down his back, leaving scratch marks on his golden skin, letting out cries of pleasure as he was filling her a little more with every hip thrust.

Tamlin lowered his head toward her neck, which he bit possessively, making her whimper.

"You are an animal, I will have to wear a turtle neck for a week"

"Or you could were something low-cut, to show everyone that you are mine."

"Or I could go around naked, what do you think ? That way every one could see-"

Tamlin cut her off mid-sentence, easily turning her over so that she was lying face down, her hips raised against his.

"Don't you dare think about it" he whispered in her ear with a menacing growl "some things are for me and me alone". He pushed inside her, setting up a relentless pace, clinging to her round ass.

Pauly had to bit her lips not to scream in pleasure after the sudden change of position. This way, he was filling her even more, hitting spots that could never have been touched otherwise, making her vision go blurry.

"Tam…" she managed to articulate.

Pauly let herself fall back onto the bed, and he onto her, while still inside her, letting his hands roam over her body, caressing her hips, the side of her breast, tugging a stroke of hair behind her ear.

Tamlin let go of her ass, one of his hand reaching for her hair that he pulled gently but firmly, giving him more access to her neck. With his other hand, he began strocking her clit, at the same rentless pace that he was fucking her.

"Come, Pauly. Come for me. Please." he begged against her ear, before feeling her walls closing in on his cock, making him come hard inside her at the same time as her.

"Tam" she said after a moment "we have to do something about my claws."

"Really ? I'm quite found of them"

"Tam !" Pauly complained "I can't go around having claws."

"Well…I think I'd like that"

She didn't anwser but she smiled at him suggestively, and he brought her hands to his mouth, kissing them once again, and making her claws to back to her thin and long fingers.

She let out an exasperated groan, to which Tamlin responded with a soft laugh.

Since the world was world and the time was time, the marriage of a High Lord had always been more than a mere union between two beings. It was way more than an alliance. It was about sharing the burden of the crown and the power of the land.

The day Pauly had married Tamlin, and the Mother and the Cauldron had witnesseel their vows, she had felt it. The land. The small glimpse of power that she had inherited from her mighty husband.

It had not been a rush of power flooding through her veins. It had been like a warm feeling, like earing the very beating of Spring 's heart itself.

With a patience that she would not have expected, Tamlin had began to teach her her way around those new powers. He would spend hours in the gardens, explaining to her how to make buds blossom and how to understand the song of birds.

But there was que power she was yet to master, to her greatest sadness. Shapeshifting. Truth being told, if there was one and only thing used to describe the High Lord of Spring's power, it was his ability to change his features. And Pauly seemed to be unable to do so, no matter how hard she tried. Until one night.

Tamlin and Pauly were arguing an evening of october. The weather seemed to be mirroring their mood, rain was pourring on the other side of the office's windows.

Tamlin was sitting behind his desk, and Pauly was facing him, seemingly unbothered by the assassin glance her husband was shooting her.

"I am telling you, Tamlin, that our Court needs these trade agreements. We are not nearly as wealthy has we used to be and -"

"I am not agreeing to anything with Rhysand", yelled Tamlin, standing up from his chair, "Not today and not ever."

"You are being foolish is you think we can do anything without such agreement!"

"And you are being foolish if you actually believe that Rhysand and Feyre will live up to their word!"

Pauly was mad. So mad. She wanted to yell to her husband from the top of her lungs, to make him understand that he was miskaken and she was right. She was opening her mouth to voice her arguments, when she felt an odd feeling in her hands. It was as if her skin was being torned by her knuckles.

It was painless really, but odd.

She shot a glance at her hands, and noticed, with surprise, that she had claws. Long claws that had scratched the dark wood of Tamlin's desk as easily as if it had been made of butter.

She felt a rush of panic, and she muttered, her gaze still fixated on her hands.

"I'm so sorry Tamlin, I didn't want to-"

She paused, mid-sentence, feeling Tamlin's gaze on her. She looked up, ready to see him pissed that anger had taken the better of her. But she saw no reproach in his eyes. His pupilled were so dilated his eyes were almost black, and he was clenching his jow.

Silently, with the grace of a predator observing his prey, he walked around the desk, to stop beside Pauly. He was so close to her that she could feel the heat of his strong body, the smell of his arousal filling the room.

"Well, well, little wife", he muttered, bending so his lips were almost touching her ear, "how foolish I am indeed, teaching you how to make flowers bloom while the doe had claws."

"I'm so sorry for your desk, I'm-"

"Beautiful, powerful and untamed?", suggested Tamlin.

She turned to face him, her nose brushing his, in a tenderness they usually allowed only in bed.

"I'm not sure I can... put them back in", confessed Paully, with a soft blush reddening her cheeks.

Tanfin smiled. Not his usual gentle smile,

His predatory smile.

"Good", he said, before pushing her gently toward the desk.

The back of Pauly's thighs hit the wood and she sat, enable to take her eyes off Tamlin, who was already using his own claws to tear her clothes appart. He bend his head to kiss and bite her collar bone, letting red marks that made her shiver and moan softy.

'Family is all we have in the end', the previous Lady of Spring used to say to her youngest son.

For centuries, Tamlin had believed this sentence to be a warning against sadness and solitude. To him, family had been a nightmare, a succession of fights brothers who were too proud and a father whose only tenderness was as occasionnal as only dedicated to his mate. But Pauly had arrived, sweeping away the ghosts of the past, and she had offered him what he would never have dared to ask for: a real family.

When Astryd was born, the High Lord of Spring suddenly felt as if his heart was made of glass. While Pauly drifted into a well deserved sleep after hours of labor, Tamlin found himself alone with this tiny “thing” in his arms. The awaited heir for the political survival of the Court was nothing more than a small six pound bundle with tiny rosy cheeks. This was his first shock of fatherhood: he discovered he was capable of remaining strictly motionless for six hours straight, for fear of waking his  darling daughter resting against him.

His first stumbles were memorable. There was that moment of absolute panic when, attempting to change a diaper, he ended up calling Lucien for backup, convinced he was going to “break an arm” if he pulled too hard on the baby’s onesie. Or the time he spent an hour whispering orders to the birds to stop singing so loudly near the nursery window. Seeing Pauly wake up and laugh softly at the sight of him, helpless before a cooing baby, had become his favorite moment of the day.

After Astryd came Olga, then little Rita. Three daughters. His father would undoubtedly have screamed of dishonor, a man who swore only by warriors and male lineages. But for Tamlin, these three little flowers were a blessing he savored every day. The Spring Manor no longer belonged to sorrows; it belonged to rag dolls and bursts of laughter echoing through corridors.

However, each new arrival had been a battle against his anxiety. “Pauly, I can't,” he had whispered while she was pregnant with Olga. “The first time, I thought my heart would stop to seeing you suffer so much. If ever… if ever the land decided to take you back in exchange for the child, I couldn't bear it.”

Pauly then took his face in her hands. She was his strength, the one who backed down from nothing.

“I am here. And I fully intend to stay to see you fail at tying Astryd’s ribbons for eternity, or so.”

Despite his terrors, Tamlin had become an expert at convincing his wife that the family was “not quite” complete.

“Do you realize, Pauly? ”he would say while Olga and Astryd played in the grass. “There are only two of them. If they argue, there is no one to act as a referee.”

-“Tamlin, do not give me the political stability argument to justify a third child,” Pauly would reply without looking up from her book.

-“It’s not politics, it’s balance! Imagine a third little one… One who might have your eyes, perhaps?”

And when Rita finally arrived, he found himself one evening, as silence finally returned to the manor, watching his sleeping wife, one hand resting on the youngest’s cradle. He approached softly and sat at the foot of the bed. He didn't tell her often enough how grateful he was. For her. For their daughters.Words seemed too small to express the immensity of his debt. He was so grateful to her for not being afraid of his shadows. For allowing him to be a different father than the one he had. 

Looking at Pauly, he understood that his mother wasn't speaking of family as a burden. He leaned over and placed a light kiss on his wife's forehead.

“One more?” she whispered in a half sleep, a mischievous smile stretching her lips without even opening her eyes.

-“Sleep, Pauly,” he laughed softly. “We'll talk about it at breakfast.” He knew he would lose the battle, but with such a family, losing was probably the most beautiful of victories.

Time, at the Spring Manor, seemed to have developed the annoying habit of galloping fast, so fast. For Tamlin, it was a silent tragedy: every inch gained by his daughters was another step toward a world he wasn't quite ready to open to them.

The manor had become an obstacle course.

Astryd, the eldest, was no longer the little featherweight he feared breaking. She had inherited her father's stature and her mother's stubbornness. She didn't walk; she conquered.

“Dad, the sentries say I'm too young for sword training,” she announced one morning. “I told them you didn't agree. Tell them you don't agree.”

Tamlin looked up from his reports, a brow twitching.

-“Actually, Astryd, I am the one who gave that order.”

-“Traitor,” she declared with a dramatic shrug that was cruelly reminiscent of Pauly when she lost an argument.

Olga, the middle child, was a real danger. Silent and observant, she had developed a terrifying talent for diplomacy. She was the one who had managed to convince Tamlin to hand over his family heirlooms for “an artistic experiment” or to get a second slice of cake when Pauly had formally forbidden it.

“Tamlin, where has your official seal gone?” Pauly asked one afternoon, hands on her hips.

-“I think Olga borrowed it to stamp the grapevine leaves in the garden,” he replied, looking sheepish. “She told me it was for a census of the local wildlife.”

-“She’s a little girl, Tam! She has you wrapped around her finger.”

-“She has a very convincing gaze,” he defended himself in vain, shrugging his shoulders.

And then there was Rita. The youngest, the sweetest. Rita didn't walk either: she climbed. She was often found perched on crystal chandeliers or on the shoulders of a stoic sentry.

The hardest part for Tamlin wasn't the noise, or the ink stains on strategic maps. It was watching childhood slip away from them.

One evening, when the three sisters were finally in bed (after a pillow fight that had nearly cost a pre Hybern era vase), Tamlin and Pauly found themselves by the fireside of their bedroom. The High Lord seemed to have aged ten years in a single day.

“Astryd asked today when she could visit the Night Court,” Tamlin sighed, rubbing his face. “She wants to see if 'the stars are really bigger there'.”

-“And what did you say?” Pauly asked, smiling.

- “That I was going to fortify the borders and double the guard.”

-“Tam...”

-“I'm joking. Mostly. Pauly, they're growing up too fast. They'll want to... fly on their own.” Pauly settled against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

-“That’s the goal, isn't it? To make them strong women.”

-“Yes, but...the manor is going to feel empty one day.”

There was a long silence and Tamlin tightened his hold, feeling the warmth of his wife.

“You know,” Pauly murmured in a trailing voice, “Rita said she felt lonely, being the youngest. She says a little brother to get into mischief with would be practical.”

Tamlin froze. He looked at Pauly. She was smiling, that little smile that always announced her “never again giving birth” resolutions were starting to waver before the love of chaos.

-“A boy?” Tamlin repeated, a glimmer of hope and terror mixed in his gaze. “A little warrior to protect his sisters?”

-“Or to be martyred by them, more likely.”

Tamlin had kept his mother’s favorite ring for a special occasion. For a special person. He had kept it for nearly 250 years, without ever finding a female to offer it to. Then had come Feyre. She was going to marry him, she was going to be his wife and… he was going to give her the ring.

But he hadn't done it.

He had told himself he would wait for their first anniversary.

But there had never been a first anniversary, and today, he congratulated himself for not having given the ring to Feyre. Because today, he was giving it to his soulmate, to his Lady of Spring, to the one who deserved it.

He had kept the ring for a special person. And he had found her. The piece of jewelry had remained locked in a box for nearly two hundred and fifty years, a secret of gold and stone waiting for its moment in the shadows of the manor. For centuries, no female had seemed capable of bearing the weight of this lineage, nor the delicacy of this symbol.

Today, the box was open.

The afternoon sun brigthened the white stone terrace, making the colors of the climbing roses that coiled around the columns vibrate. Before him stood Pauly. She was the embodiement of Spring and grace. That was why he had chosen her, for her wise counsel, her insightful words, for the political alliance that marrying her had represented. Her brown hair fell in silky curls over her shoulders, held back by fine pins. But it was her eyes that captivated Tamlin: a clear gray, a gaze both calm and filled with sharp intelligence.

Pauly did not ask to be saved, nor to be hidden. She stood straight, her silhouette elegant in her ssilk dress, belonging to this landscape as much as the roots of the century-old trees surrounding them.

Tamlin took Pauly’s hand. Her skin was soft, but her grip was firm, assured. He slipped the ring onto her finger, and the sight was an immediate certainty. The metal seemed to light up upon contact with Pauly, as if it finally recognized the warmth of a true Lady of Spring. The emerald flattered the gray of her eyes.

 Seeing the ring shine on his wife’s finger, Tamlin felt a peace he thought lost forever. It was like a part of his soul he was entrusting to the one who truly deserved it.

He congratulated himself, in silence, for the restraint he had shown in the past. Each year of solitude, each decade of waiting found its meaning in this morning: Pauly, bathed in light, wearing his mother’s heritage with absolute grace. 

The emerald sparkled on Pauly’s finger, catching every ray of sun to transform it into a flash of life. Tamlin did not let go of her hand, his fingers warm against his wife’s cool skin. For the first time in his long existence, the High Lord no longer felt the need to command or control: he was content to admire the evidence of this bond that had just anchored itself in his soul.

Tamlin believed that the marriage to Pauly, all those months ago, was the final act of his redemption after the war, an alliance of reason and respect between two nobles of the Spring Court. But he had to face the facts: she was more than his wife. She was his breath. His mate.

"I thought I had given you everything on our wedding day," Tamlin muttered, his voice nothing more than a whisper. "But this jewel… it was waiting for me to understand that you are much more than a companion of duty. You are the one my blood has claimed for two centuries."

Pauly remained silent for a moment, her gray eyes observing the ring with infinite tenderness. She did not seem surprised by the revelation of the bond; as if she had always known and was simply waiting for him to open his eyes.

She then lifted her gaze toward him, a mysterious and radiant smile stretching her lips. She took Tamlin’s hand and guided it gently toward the still-invisible curve of her belly.

"It is a magnificent gift, Tamlin," she began softly. "And it arrives at the moment when Spring decides to truly bloom again."

She pressed the High Lord’s palm against her. The shock of the announcement made Tamlin stagger. For a heartbeat, time stopped. 

There was no more room for the mistakes of the past. In Pauly’s gray eyers, Tamlin finally saw his future. He knelt before her, like a man before his destiny, pressing his forehead against her belly while the emerald on his wife’s finger cast soft reflection of silver upon his golden hair.

Perhaps they had been stupid, Tamlin often thought when he looked back on the years preceding Amarantha’s curse.

They had been reckless, that much was certain. Too reckless? Perhaps. Could one ever be too reckless? Certainly.

Then, She had come. Amarantha.

Perhaps they had been too bold, they had believed they could defeat her, they had thought themselves invincible.

Lucien’s eye confirmed that they were mistaken.

During the first decade, they had kept hope. Andras and Hart continued to sing at the top of their lungs starting from breakfast, drinking too much alcohol, sometimes both at the same time.

Lucien continued to seduce every female who passed within thirty meters of him, under the admiring gaze of Tamlin, who continued to recite limericks.

During the second decade, they were combative. Tamlin transformed his estate into an outdoor barracks. If he could not break the spell by cunning, he would do so by steel. He spent entire days exhausting himself against training dummies, his face tight behind that gold mask which already began to feel more real than his own flesh. Every sword stroke he delivered was intended for Amarantha, but it was his own people he was hurting. He watched them, his sentinels, his friends, wearing themselves out by his side. He saw Lucien, whose metal eye never stopped shining with a light of reproach that he imagined he alone perceived. It is my fault, he repeated to himself like a litany. If he had not been so proud, if he had not fanned the desire of this nightmare queen, they would not be beasts trapped in an eternal masquerade ball.

The third decade was the one of sacrifices. The hope they had so carefully maintained ended up mutating into something darker: the necessity of sacrifice. Tamlin no longer recited limericks. The words had become stones as hard as his heart in his mouth. He began to look at his soldiers no longer as brothers in arms, but as bargaining chips, and he disgusted himself for it. The curse was clear, relentless, and it demanded a price that no warrior should have had to pay.

He remembered the first time they had to designate one of their own to cross the Wall. The first time one of his friends had volunteered to become a martyr. To die. The atmosphere in the manor had become sticky, heavy with a silent horror. It was not about sending a spy, but about sending a lamb to the slaughterhouse. They had to die. They had to be murdered by those humans who despised them so much, in the mad and unconscious hope that one of them would be the catalyst for their liberation.

During the fourth decade, the departures toward the south became funerals ahead of time. Tamlin stood on the hill, his massive silhouette standing out against the twilight sky, watching his sentinels, his friends, his brothers in arms move away in wolf form.

There was an unspeakable cruelty in being a High Lord and having to order his subjects to die in hatred. Every sentinel who crossed the Wall took with them a piece of Tamlin’s soul. He imagined their last moments: the fear in the forest, the cold of human steel, and that unbearable wait for a hatred that could save them. But the years passed, and no one returned. The sentinels fell one after the other, and the curse remained, as solid as the mountains of Prythian.

Spring was nothing more than a facade. Beneath the vibrant flowers, Tamlin smelled the scent of rot. He wandered the corridors of his manor like a ghost, avoiding Lucien’s gaze, avoiding the forced laughter that died out as soon as he entered a room.

He felt like a jailer whose cell was his own skin. The mask no longer just covered his features; it seemed to merge with his face, welded by the salt of his tears that he never let flow in public.

"I am their protector," he sometimes said to himself in front of his mirror, but the image that answered him was that of a golden monster sending his friends to their deaths to redeem a mistake he alone had committed. He wanted to scream, to tear down the walls of this prison of roses, but he could only stay there, waiting for the next sentinel he would have to condemn.

In the final year, Andras volunteered. Andras, the last link to that lost recklessness, the one who still sang sometimes, with a voice that was a bit broken. The one who had been his first friend, his brother of heart if not of blood.

Tamlin had wanted to refuse. He had wanted to beg him to stay. But the High Lord had smothered the man. With a trembling hand hidden beneath his cloak, he blessed him and watched him leave toward the human lands.