Goosey Jossip

He’d just made up his mind to get up and return another day, when he heard the door of the next compartment open. Finally.

He clasped his hands, and waited silently for the ritual to begin.

“This… is a confession box, isn’t it, Father?”

Lucien stilled. That voice…

“A place where I can admit things that I’ve done wrong, and be forgiven for them?”

The sound of it, the tone – it was a fresh breeze that parted the grey clouds of his mind. A voice that he heard so rarely, outside of his dreams.

“Father?” came Elain’s voice again, the tone pleading.

Oh gods, his mate had gone into the wrong side of the confessional. What was he meant to do?

Enormous thanks to @themadmorrigan, @frostystarlight and @chaol-apologist for reading this through for me!

And to @zenkindoflove who inadvertently started this whole thing off with a wheel-picker game back in February!

There were millions of tiny hammers raining down on Lucien’s temple. He could feel the pounding down to the base of his spine, and he wanted to groan, but the cottonmouth made it nearly impossible. He slowly opened his eyes, hands reaching blindly towards what he assumed was a nightstand.

Water. Fuck, I need water. What the hell did I drink last night?

His fingertips met a bottle of water (so the gods were merciful after all), and he wrestled the cap off to drink when his stomach roiled painfully.

Okay, as far as hangovers went, this was nearing a five-alarm fire. Sips it was.

The first taste of water was heavenly, and this time Lucien did groan, low and loud, when a small snore and the mattress shifting cut him off. He froze. The slow turn of his head was somewhere between horror and comedy as he looked down at the intruder in his bed.

Sleeping to his left, looking like an absolute dream (even with her mascara smudged and curls creating a tiny rat’s nest between her cheek and the pillow), was Elain fucking Archeron.

Jurian waited until Elain vanished down a rough hewn hall, quickly dug to hide them from the heat seeking drones of the Imperium. This base had lasted them far longer than any others, which was saying something. Lucien doubted his older brother had gotten sloppy. 

If only they could replicate it in other places. 

Lucien followed Jurian down the hall, nodding at those wedging past in the narrow passages. Tiny rooms that held two, sometimes three and at their most desperate, four, were carved out every couple feet. There were other places, too—an armory, a makeshift kitchen, places to gather, a rather pathetic war room for plotting and planning, and anything else they might need. Lucien was rather pressed with their work.

Jurian took him to the war room, yanking a sheet across the opening for as much privacy as they could muster. Doors were simply too complicated to put together in an underground bunker that occasionally collapsed in on itself. 

Besides, when materials were scarce, why waste what little you had on privacy? Of course Lucien wished he could take a shit in total peace, but he believed in a future where that was possible for him again. 

Jurian braced his palms against the oak table in the center of the room.

“From fucking space,” he breathed, hair covering his expression.

Lucien pushed messy wisps off his own sweaty forehead. “She could be lying.”

“Did they look like liars?” Jurian snarled. Lucien held up a hand in warning.  Don’t fucking talk to me like that.

“No,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t mean they’re being honest, either. They could be confused, or…or…”

“Or they fell out of the sky in a tin can and now…fuck!”

Lucien rubbed his eyes. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“It changes everything. How long have we been living in space? What the fuck are we doing up there? Do they have weapons we don’t know about? Some kind of Death Star—”

“This isn’t Star Wars,” Lucien said, turning toward the off-white sheet as he took a deep breath. “And we can ask her when Vassa brings her back.”

“We need to find her friend,” Jurian said urgently, finally looking up at Lucien. He looked wild, angrier than Lucien had ever seen him, and Lucien had seen him angry before. 

“Eris has her by now,” Lucien breathed. “He’ll know everything we know exactly as we know it.”

Jurian swore under his breath for the hundredth time. “Okay, new plan.”

Lucien stood there, arms crossed, as he waited for Jurian to elaborate. His friend never did. Jurian merely began to pace, eyes bouncing around the room as he tried to figure out what to do next. Not that Lucien had better ideas. He, too, was reeling from the knowledge that humanity was in space, and Elain’s confusion that anyone might be living on Earth.

He didn’t have to wait long for answers. As he and Jurian murmured different possibilities, none of them realistic given Jurian suggested assembling a nuclear bomb, Vassa pushed open the sheet and gently pushed Elain inside. Her hair was neatly braided down her back, creating a wet spot on her green tunic from the water. Her face was clean and a little bandage had been placed across the bridge of her nose.

She was beautiful. Lucien was immediately ashamed all over again for thinking so—he’d thought the same thing the first time she’d stood before him, facing him fully. Elain was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. It seemed a betrayal of Jesminda, his would-be fiance had she not been killed in a strike by the Imperium. 

Lucien had sworn he was done after that. It had been him who’d dragged Jes into the rebellion, and it had been that decision that killed her. She’d never been much of a fighter, and he’d known it. A better man would have taken himself to a therapist’s office and swallowed his anger, but he’d been young and hot-blooded. 

Elain turned her pair of soft, round, brown eyes on him. “Have you found Arina?”

Jurian looked close to exploding. “Who?”

“Her friend,” Lucien reminded Jurian, walking around the smooth, oblong table to offer Elain a chair. “And no, we haven’t.”

“How long—”

“How long?! Your friend is dead!” Jurian exploded, slamming his fist on the table. Elain, who’d just sat, jumped back. Lucien fisted his hands at his side to keep himself from fighting with Jurian.

“Why don’t you let me handle this?” Lucien suggested, hoping his look was pointed. Jurian was in his blind spot, a blurry explosion of colors that set his teeth on edge. Losing vision in one of his eyes, to his own father, was a sore spot for Lucien. 

Not that Beron had deigned to do it himself—no, he’d sent one of his generals to teach his wayward son a lesson, as if killing Lucien’s soon-to-be-wife hadn’t been punishment enough.

“Fine,” Jurian grumbled, storming out of the room. 

Elain wiped the corner of her eye on her sleeve. “Is she—”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Lucien rushed to assure Elain, though in truth he agreed with Jurian. He believed Eris would report what had happened, and he believed that Eris wouldn’t be the one to kill her…but Lucien also believed someone else would. “But I need you to tell me everything.”

A calculated gleam shone in her gaze. “I have questions of my own.”

Lucien made a show of sitting across from her, resting his elbows on the table. Candles illuminated the space, creating more heat than Lucien preferred. Shadows danced across her expression, half obscuring her. That was for the best—if he had to look fully at her, he thought he might start stuttering from nerves.

“Okay. Let’s hear them.”

“How are you here?”

“Elaborate.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Everyone knows Earth isn’t habitable—it’s classified as a level four planet—”

“A level four planet?” he asked, suddenly concerned. “What does that mean?”

Her fingers drummed against the wood, head cocked as she considered. “Every planet has a designation. Level four planets are unable to support life in any form and are often considered toxic even to mine minerals on.”

A dry, bitter laugh escaped from his throat. “Guess no one bothered to tell us. When did you all leave?”

Elain rattled off a date that made the bile in Lucien’s stomach rise into his throat. “Five hundred years,” he breathed, leaning back in his chair. “Meanwhile, our politicians make a show of cutting our space programs.”

“I don’t understand,” Elain admitted, looking at him as if he could give her an answer that would explain everything.

“Neither do I,” Lucien admitted. To what end did this need to be a secret when they could simply make space travel so wildly unaffordable nothing would change at all. That was what Lucien couldn’t understand—why the lies? Why so much secrecy?

“Are you military?” 

Elain shook her head, a pretty smile ghosting her face. “Horticulturlist.”

He was losing his mind. “What, you grow tomatoes?”

“Bananas,” she admitted, looking down at her hands spread across the table. 

“Banana’s,” he repeated. “You’re growing something that gets shipped to every city in the Imperium, and costs less than a nickel.”

“No one has tasted a banana since we were forced to flee—”

“You weren’t forced to flee,” he spat, his frustration getting the best of him, “your ancestors left us all here and told the rest of you a lie. Why?”

She blinked again, looking close to tears. “I don’t know?”

“Neither do I,” he replied, resting his forehead against the palm of his hand. “We never left. There was no catastrophe, no world war or major virus. Just…another day.”

“Then we have to find out why,” Elain said, taking Lucien by surprise. He’d expected…well, he didn’t expect anything, to be fair. He hadn’t thought of her at all as he’d begun to grapple with this new information. It was a problem for him and Jurian, sure, and eventually the rest of the tangled, occasionally fractured network of rebellion cells. He’d get word through the channels before the night ended, just in case Elain turned out to be unreliable or they were all killed for taking her in. At least, then, someone else could pick up where he left off.

“We?” he asked with some amusement. “You want to stay?”

“Well, my best friend is…somewhere,” she began, her tone entirely reasonable, “and I’m here, too. I want to know why, too.”

“It’ll be dangerous,” he warned, curious to see what she might say. “This isn’t like a space movie—people die.”

She shot him a look that he rather liked. She had spunk, he decided. Despite looking like someone's cherished, spoiled daughter, Elain had a little fire to her. Good. She’d need it. Lucien didn’t think she knew what she was up against. "Good. It would be boring if it wasn't. Besides...I took down a Teryx,” she added, as if he was supposed to know what that was. His expression must have betrayed him.

“They’re…they’re like men, but with huge wings and shadowy magic.”

“Wings…and shadowy magic,” he repeated blankly.

“Or tech.”

“Right, of course. Or tech, because magic…isn’t real…” Lucien said, his whole worldview upended in the span of an hour. “How many different kinds of aliens are there, exactly?”

“More than I know of, for sure. The donjon keeps an official record, but it’s always in dispute because of how they determine if a species is intelligent or not—”

“Are you telling me they have space phrenology? Is no place safe?” he grumbled, annoyed that the glorious future he’d been promised didn’t seem any more enlightened than his current home.

“Well…there is a race called the plejarens. They have really large, pointed ears, and they were censured three years ago, I think, because everyone found out that they measure ears for length and shape, and if someones ear is misshapen, they’re considered stupid and given menial tasks in their society? Like, it’s all based on the way ears look—it was a huge scandal, they lost their membership to the council.”

Lucien understood half the words she was saying, though one stuck. “Council? You have a council?”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But membership is mostly highly advanced races, technologically speaking.”

“Does humanity have a seat?”

She nodded, averting her gaze. “We got ours about fifty years ago…it expanded our ability to colonize other planets.”

Lucien wanted to cry. He was so overwhelmed and exhausted that there was no guarantee he wouldn’t. Five hundred years living in space, walking amongst aliens, creating whole political structures…and no one had any idea.

“The colonization is for a home,” Elain told him softly, “but we haven’t found one.”

“Because humanity already has one,” he whispered, feeling more broken than angry. “Why not Earth?”

She only shrugged. 

The pair sat there in silence until one of the candles on the table guttered, a mess of melted wax and string.

“Lucien?” Elain finally asked, sliding her hands into her lap, “am I a prisoner?”

“No—maybe,” he amended. “Not technically, but…”

“But?” she pressed.

“Look, Elain, you’ve told me more than I’ve ever imagined, and I have no way of proving it. For all I know, you’re a really convincing actress and tomorrow, the Imperium will have us all lined up for execution.”

To her credit, Elain seemed horrified at the notion. “I wouldn’t.” The conviction in those words nearly convinced him. 

“There are good people here, Elain,” he said softly, “and I hope you can understand that my duty is to all of them. Not you.”

She nodded. “Do what you need to do, and find me when you’re ready to begin,” she replied, rising from her chair. “I think I’m done, though.”

He was, too—at least for the moment. Lucien called for Vassa, asking if she’d set Elain up in a bunk somewhere and get her a few things to help keep her comfortable. They didn’t have much, and luckily Elain’s shoes seemed to be in good shape. Some clothes, a few hair ties, and toiletries were about all they could spare.

Lucien made his way to his own room—one of the lucky few that didn’t have to share—and began writing missives of what he’d learned, to be sent out across the North and South American continent—all under the Imperiums control.

It would take all of them united if they stood even a chance against the machine that was the Imperial States of the Americas.

But Lucien was strangely convinced Elain was an omen of fortune, assuming she was being honest. Hadn’t he wished for help? 

Well, here she was. 

Eris 

“Now,” Eris ground out, immensely frustrated with the woman seated across from him, “tell me about your friend.”

She blinked dark lashes at him, her vivid green eyes disconcerting. “What friend?”

He was going to strangle her.

“Arina,” he tried again, trading his scowl for a smile that didn’t meet his eyes, “I’ve answered every question you had, even when it turned into an interrogation. Surely you can answer one question for me?”

“I came here alone,” she replied, drumming long, slender fingers along the metal table. “Did you hit your head?”

Eris had to bite back the urge to throw himself across the table and throttle her. 

“All I want is to send you back,” Eris reminded her truthfully. He wanted nothing more than to rid himself of the woman named Arina Novak—he had a whole dossier on her sitting at his home that he hadn’t had a chance to look through because she was currently holding him hostage in a windowless interrogation room. “I can’t do that if you won’t tell me where your friend is.”

“I don’t have a friend,” she replied. “I came alone.”

Eris rose from his seat. “I need a drink,” he said, turning for the door.

“Get me water!” she yelled at his retreating back. Eris let the heavy door swing shut behind him. Looking upward at the fluorescent lights, he recalled what Beron had said to him over the phone.

Don’t let her out of your sight, and find the woman she came with. Keep them somewhere until I can make contact and determine what they want us to do.

Eris suspected his father would do what he always did when a problem arose—kill it. He wanted both women in the same place so it was easier to execute them both at the same time, tie up all the loose ends, and bury them in a ditch. Ordinarily, that wasn’t Eris’ problem, but it didn’t sit right with him.

Arina was…irritating. Easily the most difficult woman he’d ever met in his entire life, and probably the first one who didn’t seem impressed by him. That was how Eris knew she wasn’t lying about where she’d come from or what she believed—if she was from here, she’d be looking for any way out of her miserable, bleak existence.

And he was one of the few ways out. 

His original plan was to leave her in a cell—that was why he’d brought her to Cook County’s Jail to begin with. Eris genuinely believed if he’d flashed her a few smiles, let her see how handsome and charming he could be, and answered all her questions, she’d be melted butter in his palm.

He hadn’t expected her to see right through him. 

She wasn’t hiding her contempt of him, either—it was written all over her face. Well, she could get in line with everyone else who wanted to see his head on a pike, he supposed. Eris looked through the two way mirror to find her looking right back.

“She can’t see you,” he whispered, but even he didn’t believe it. 

Don’t be a coward.

He had one card left to play, and decided he might as well play it. Turning back for the door, Eris stepped back inside. She was handcuffed to the table, at least, which meant she couldn’t hit him. His cock still ached from her knee—he’d tried to take a piss earlier and nearly wept like a baby from the pain.

“Arina,” he began after exhaling a short breath, “let me explain how this is going to go—”

“No need,” she interrupted. “This is the part where you start threatening me, right?”

Eris said nothing, folding his arms behind his back while staring at her unblinkingly. 

She leaned forward, handcuffs rattling on the desk. He hadn’t allowed her a chance to change, and she didn’t seem to care that he could see nearly all of her tits. 

“A day ago, a creature twice as tall as you and with wings the size of both your arms stretched one after another held me down by my throat,” she began, her gaze pinning him in place. “He’s dead.”

Heat slithered up his spine as he imagined how she must have gotten the upper hand. What she’d done to get away. There was no blood smeared over her, so whatever it had been had been relatively quick, which impressed him even more. Though, perhaps the alien creature she spoke of didn’t have blood—Eris knew very little about what went on outside of his small domain in the Upper Plains of the Imperium. 

Undaunted, she continued, “So you can make any threats you like, but in the end, you’ll be sprawled on the floor dead, just like he was, and I’ll be walking away without thinking about you ever again.” Eris raised his brows. “You don’t even know where you are.”

“Some kind of jail.”

“Some kind of jail,” he repeated slowly. “Handcuffed to the tay…ble…”

She raised both wrists, revealing she’d somehow escaped them. Arina cocked her head to the side, blonde hair spilling over slim, bare shoulders. Eris wanted to punish her, wanted to throw her in the general population and see how cocky she was then.

“I’m not going anywhere unless it’s on a ship off this shithole planet,” she hissed, nose wrinkled with hatred. 

“Shithole planet?” he scoffed. “You’ve barely seen any of it.”

“I saw how many people were sleeping in that park,” she replied with open disgust. 

“You don’t have poverty in space?” 

“Why do you have poverty here?” she shot back. “You seem to have enough money.”

“I earned it,” he retorted.

“Oh yeah? Doing what? Tell me all about the hard work you’ve done to keep yourself off the streets.”

Eris should have known she’d call his bluff, just like he knew he couldn’t answer her honestly. Everything he had, he’d inherited from his father, who’d inherited from his, and from his, and on and on all the way back to the gilded age when his family had the sense to invest in steel and rail. But she hadn’t been able to say space had eradicated the ills of humanity, either. Eris was willing to bet that it was worse. 

“You first, princess,” he snarled, done with the back and forth. “Let me tell you, now, how this is going to go. Since you won’t tell me the things I need to know so I can get you home, you’ll be living with me, in my home, until someone from your station can vouch for you.”

That seemed to alarm her. “And if they can’t?”

He almost asked why she thought they wouldn’t, but bit his tongue. He had her on the ropes, and that was all that mattered. 

“Then you’ll be having a very different conversation with someone far less charming and handsome than I am.”

“That could be anyone,” she grumbled. “Put me in a jail cell.

“Well, now that I know you want it…no, I don’t think I will. Get up,” he added, having had enough of being trapped in that tiny room with her, breathing the exact same air. At least at home there were doors with locks he could hide behind. Hell, he could lock her in the basement and still keep his promise to his father. 

She hesitated before standing, following him out the door quickly. Eris didn’t think she wanted to be in a cell at all—he was starting to suspect she merely just said so because so few people ever dared to call her on her bluff. Him, included. 

Beron would have been furious if he’d left her there, especially knowing she was adept at getting herself out of handcuffs. God help him, she’d escape from there, too, and he’d have an international incident on his hands.

She said nothing until they were back out in the muggy evening air. His car hadn’t pulled up quite yet, so the two waited on the platform, watching vehicles zip past in the sky lanes. Far, far below, cars with wheels still ran on gasoline, though how anyone could afford to pay a hundred and twelve dollars for a gallon of gas was beyond him. Wages were capped at twelve dollars an hour by the federal government, and still people somehow managed it.

There was no underground public transportation system anymore. Only the sky rail, which required a biometric scan of a person's face along with a scan of their phone, which tracked them from location to location.

As Eris mused on the poor, Arina had spotted The Church of Chicago illuminated in the distance. It was their largest building after all—no wonder she’d seen it. “What is that monstrosity?” she asked.

Eris panicked, catching her by the arm and spinning her away from a nearby watching camera. “Watch your mouth,” he whispered, making it obvious what he was looking at. “That is our Church.”

She seemed bewildered. Did they not have religion in space? Or was space less controlled than their lives here on the surface? Eris had assumed her life was an extension of his—tightly controlled and surveilled. Speaking against the state religion? Well, that was enough to get someone disappeared at best. 

Arina’s eyes had found the camera, darting from one to the other. Was she realizing how many there were, pointed in every direction. She didn’t know that those cameras could see into a person's vehicle, documenting their face, speed, location, and a million other things. Eris knew that those cameras were used to track the whereabouts of everyone, while capturing every conversation in between.

The Imperium was forever worried about dissenters and traitors. Eris supposed they had good reason for it, given his own brother was leading the Upper Plains chapter of the Rebellion like it was some kind of fraternity. At the rate he was going, he’d be dead before he turned fifty.

His car arrived just in time to spare him from another miserable conversation.

“Just…try to keep your mouth closed in the car,” he hissed, dragging her into the sleek vehicle without any further prompting. To her credit, Arina plopped down in the seat beside him, leaving space between them. She was squished against the door, nose practically pressed to the glass. 

“Home,” he murmured to the driver, turning to look out his own window.

Was it wrong that he wanted to leave? 

Eris hadn’t known there were people living in space—he’d gotten a crash course in the last five centuries of space exploration and conquest over the phone from his father. It changed everything. Now, in between his frustrations with Arina, all he could do was imagine what lay beyond the stars. 

What was it like? How did they travel from planet to planet? He wanted to see all of it. Some part of him felt like an eight year old little boy again, squished on a couch with the rest of his brothers as his mother turned on A New Hope for the first time. Wasn’t that every little kids dream? To wield a lightsaber or fly a Tie Fighter?

“Do you have lightsabers?” he asked, needing to know. If she said yes, Eris thought he might die from the unfairness of it all.

“How old are you, twelve?” she replied, not looking away from the window. Bright lights from billboards advertising products and services, buildings, and passing cars blurred past them as they too zipped through the lanes. Was she comparing it to all the places she’d seen? Did she find it wanting?

It was impossible to tell. 

The car pulled up outside his home. The top three floors belonged to him, complete with a parking spot for his car, not that he ever did. It obscured his view of the skyline. Besides, that was why he paid all that money for a parking spot, right?

“Welcome home,” he told her. “The entire first floor is yours.”

Arina walked toward the railing on the roof, ignoring the pool and the bar, both empty of people, to look out at the city, too. 

“I didn’t know any of this existed,” she told him.

“What do you think about it?” he asked, curious if she might decide she wanted to stay on Earth. Eris couldn’t imagine anyone making that choice when they could leave for space. He’d leave it all behind, except, perhaps, his money. He’d buy a ship, ditch the expensive clothes for a slouchy belt at his hip, and vanish entirely. Start over where no one had ever heard of the Vanserra’s. Be his own man, for once. 

Make his own decisions.

She turned to look at him, face half illuminated by the warm glow of artificial lights from the city and oh. He hadn’t noticed before right then because she’d been pissing him off, but she was beautiful. 

“There is a planet off the Obsidian Rift—Ash Meridian—that has buildings like this. I thought it was the best place I’d ever seen…and I was right.”

He should have known.

“You don’t like Earth?”

“I don’t like this,” she disagreed, gesturing around him. “Why are you being watched?”

“Everyone is being watched,” he replied without passion, “for the safety of all citizens.”

“How does that keep you safe?”

“Dissidents vanish, and the state perseveres," he let himself say, knowing that should she be asked, she’d likely tell everything to punish him. 

“That sounds like tyranny,” she said.

Past, present, and future were sometimes indistinguishable from each other. Layered, and occurring simultaneously. While her physical body was mired to the present, her senses were wayward and drifted wherever they deemed most necessary. It had taken a long time for Elain to recognize when she grew disconnected from the present, longer to master how to tether herself back.

On the day she woke to thousands of names clinging to her like cobwebs, she wondered if the present was something she wanted to be tied to at all. What she wouldn't give to return to the simple days of sneaking off to the forest, when war was so far on the horizon that the only futures she saw where flashes of giggling on Graysen's arm.

How could she walk down the hall and smile at the servants as if she hadn't seen the temple razed to the ground? She could go to the High Priestess, explain to her that she saw the temple's wall collapse. That there only a handful of sunrises before the temple was captured by force, after which Beron Vanserra's army would systemically pillage each of their rooms. He would demand they turn over the seer, and the temple would face his wrath if the High Priestess refused.

Every conversation Elain had tried to broker with the High Priestess had fallen on deaf ears. Even with the severity of what Elain had seen, she knew another conversation would end no differently. The High Priestess would insist their army was thriving, that these were only bad dreams, not prophecies.

But what was the point in all this effort to protect Elain if she was to burn alongside the temple anyway?

Elain knew she was standing on a precipice. There were many paths forward, even ones she had not yet Seen. But the path she chose was one of comfort. Familiarity. It involved feigning sickness for the day and climbing out her bedroom window.

This was a path she walked a thousand times before. And for that reason, she would never walk it alone. There were a thousand other versions of Elain walking beside her, some of them young, some of them older. All of them were greeting the forest with a smile and an open heart. Their presence steadied her, reassured her that this was the right path.

The forest had never steered her wrong before.

Even if… even if she was a little nervous to see him again. Assuming he decided to follow her trail, assuming he even saw it, this would be their third time meeting in the forest. But on this occasion, there was no injury forcing his hand. He would need to come to her simply because he was curious enough to do so.

She was unarmed. The thought occurred to her on her third hour of waiting, perched comfortably on a branch near the bluebell carpet where they first met. There was nothing stopping him from assembling a team of men to follow the path she laid, to try to attack her while her guard was down.

Elain indulged the thought for all of a double-heartbeat before she giggled to herself at the absurdity. The future was always a bit murky when she thought of Lucien Vanserra, like a churning sea protecting the secrets within its depths. Even so, she knew there wasn't a single outcome in which Lucien betrayed her location.

He was a Vanserra. He was involved in this conflict to a degree of which she did not yet know. But his heart beat in her chest, and the rot of Autumn had not penetrated it. Its sound was pure. Its presence was warm. There was kindness in him. Softness that perhaps was unsafe to let his court see.

In the forest, it would thrive.

Did he feel the call, too? When the mist parted way, did it feel like coming home at last? Elain didn't know if anyone else could feel as settled as she did in a place so mercurial, but she wanted to ask him. She held on to that question, not wanting to forget it, but by the fifth hour of waiting, she was beginning to lose hope.

Until a branch cracked on the threshold of the treeline. Her heart stilled, but the other kept beating.

He's here, the forest said. He's coming.

His footsteps were quiet, but she heard each one, a steady tap beneath her ribs. Closer and closer. Red hair dipped as he swung beneath a low hanging branch. Uninjured, he was no longer a fox in coloring alone. He moved like one, swift and graceful. Primrose flowers brimmed from his close fist. Those clever eyes swept the forest in search of the next, and she kept to her hiding spot as she watched him pluck another from the trail.

Lucien paused when he reached the base of the tree. Seeing that there were no more flowers, he cast his ensnaring eyes upward, pinning her to the spot with a devilish smile.

"I didn't know these trees fruited such divine flowers," he said in greeting.

For having done nothing but lounge for hours, she was alarmingly breathless.

"Primrose doesn't grow from trees," she couldn't help but correct.

His smile broadened. "I wasn't speaking of the primrose."

"You're very charming for a man who's preparing to raze my home."

Lucien's smile fell, and he turned away before she could mourn its loss. "So you know. My father's lost his patience. He's given the High Priestess time to turn over the seer, but now he feels he must take matters into his own hands. Even if that means taking your temple apart in search of her."

"Can you do anything to stop him?"

"I've tried, in what ways I can. All my brothers have. We didn't want to wage this battle against the temple, but my father, he is…" He trailed off, and Elain wondered if his mind was drifting to another time as hers so often did. Whatever memory he saw, he shook it away and continued, "He will not stop until he finds her, Elain."

"What makes him think we have a seer?"

Lucien turned back to her. She'd thought this might be her opportunity to at last admire his handsome face without seeing it pinched in agony, but it was still there. And this time, there were no poultices to pack in his wound. This conflict was being inflicted on her people, but one would not think so from the grief in his expression.

"I told him," he confessed. "When I was just a boy. He wanted to know how I found my way back from the forest, and I admitted a girl laid a path for me. I didn't understand the implications, but my father explained to me that only a seer can navigate these woods. He's been obsessed with finding you ever since."

Elain's eyes burned. She knew it was the truth because she could still feel their bargain cording around her ribs. He could not lie to her, even if he wanted to.

"Why haven't you told your father who I am?"

"Because I fear what will happen to you." He reached upward for her hand, and she let him take it, breath held as his satin touch swept across her knuckles. "Twice now, you've saved my life. I am honor-bound to repay the favor."

Warm. His touch was so very warm. Like laying in a spot of sun on a bright summer day. Elain stared at their hands, the way her much smaller one was completely enveloped in his, and wondered what it would be like to fall into that heat. Would her mind still be split in three directions, or would she finally be anchored to the present?

"And what will you do when he breeches the temple's walls?" She asked.

Lucien's gaze was caught on their hands, too. But his expression did not convey the same honey-drenched thoughts Elain had been occupying. His brow was drawn, as though troubled. She supposed they were discussing a troubling subject, after all, and it was rather girlish of her to be diverting attention to something as trivial as holding hands with a boy.

A forest away, men were stabbing each other with swords. Ash of the dead was being scattered on the breeze.

It didn't seem such a trivial thing, in the face of it all, to reach for something soft. To hold it as long as she could.

"I'll meet you in these woods," he proposed. "While my father searches for you in the temple, I can help you sneak into the Autumn Court. You can establish a life in a nearby village, live under his nose. I'll make sure you're kept safe."

As he spoke, the timbre of his voice strummed upon the bargain's thread, an indolent musician plucking a string simply for the desire of being heard. Truth, it sang. Then another pluck, more agitated. Hear me.

"And my sisters?" She pressed. "The temple?"

Lucien winced. "If my father doesn't find the seer, he'll destroy the temple. But you can get your sisters out before that happens. Hide them in these woods."

"My sisters won't abandon the other priestesses. Archerons are not known to flee from a fight, even in the face of slaughter."

"Then trick them," Lucien suggested. "Make them leave."

Elain would have snapped her hand away no faster than if he'd scalded her. Make them leave? Her lips parted to chide him, but a stuttered beat against her ribs gave her pause. Could she really scold a man for being heartless when it was her own chest that it occupied?

Look, the forest said, and she peered down her lashes at the male still cradling his hand around the space hers had been. His fingers closed around the empty air, as if he might still capture the essence of her. Hold on to it as long as he could.

He is scared. For you.

She did not know if the revelation was the forest's or her own, but it struck her that Lucien would be willing to make any suggestion that spared her from his father. He did not feel he owed anything to her sisters, but he felt he owed a life debt to her.

There was a much simpler solution. One he was refusing to acknowledge—perhaps she had been, too. Elain was not as brave as her sisters, but that was something she could overcome in her love of them.

"If your father is given his seer, will the bloodshed end?"

Lucien's posture grew taut. "Elain, don't even think about it."

"If your father is given his seer," she repeated, "will the bloodshed end?"

He was fighting the answer. A vein strained in his throat. The muscles in his jaw flexed. But the vow he'd made to her in this forest was bound by the might of the earth, and the wind would force the words from his lungs if that was what it required.

"Yes," he gasped, sweat beading on his brow. "If you surrender yourself, our army will retreat."

-

"This is a bad idea, Elain."

It was sure to be if even Feyre—the purveyor of bad ideas—thought so.

Elain darted her eyes between both of her sisters. They wore twin expressions of disapproval, which was another ill-omen. A situation ought to be dire, indeed, to find Feyre and Nesta in agreement with each other.

"Help me convince her," she pleaded. "It's the only thing that will save us."

"Are you out of your mind?" Nesta flung her arm towards the tower window, where they had a perfect vantage of the smoke pluming from the lit funeral pyres below. "The Autumn Court will tear you apart. And the High Priestess would sooner burn this temple herself than give you freely to them."

"It's a temporary solution," Elain stressed. "I'll satisfy Beron's demands long enough for you to safely evacuate the temple. Once you light the signal, I'll escape into the woods and meet you there."

Nesta crossed her arms. "And if they keep you in chains? How will you escape then?"

"Lucien will help me. I know he will."

Both of her sisters scoffed. They would never understand. They didn't see how haunted he looked to admit he'd set this conflict in motion. That his father would never know a seer lived in this kingdom if she hadn't shown him kindness.

"No Vanserra can be trusted," Feyre said gravely. "You have a soft heart, Elain. He's trying to use it against you to fulfill his father's goal."

"If that's the case, then why didn't he just capture me in the woods?"

Her sisters shared a glance. Then Feyre said, with grating gentleness, "You're the only one who can navigate those woods, Elain. He can't take you from them unwillingly."

For the slightest moment, Elain's view of the forest took the altered shape that it did in everyone else's eyes. A place that was eerie, unsafe, dangerous. She pictured a red-haired man in those woods, but his clever eyes held the sinister edge of a blade. His smile was just as wicked, but the thrill it wracked through her was one of terror, not pleasure.

Was her naivety covering the truth with a softer lense? Or was it their cynicism churning the image, diluting its water with murky sediment?

Elain's heart knew the truth. Hers and Lucien's beat as one. She'd helped him twice without question or hesitation. He would be driven to do the same. That was the only truth she could make peace with.

Regarding her sisters, so they both could read the depth of her sincerity, Elain told them, "There are two paths forward. You can either help me convince the High Priestess of this plan, or I'll sneak away to surrender myself to Beron's army. I know which choice gives the temple the strongest advantage. Do you?"

She waited patiently as her sisters digested the ultimatum. They studied her, they studied each other. Nesta's eyes even drifted back to the funeral pyres she'd gestured to earlier. There was very little change in her expression, but she did set her lips into a thin line.

"Okay," Nesta said. "I'll help you."

Feyre looked far more stricken, but she nodded. "I will, too."

"Thank you," Elain whispered. She mustered a smile that conveyed far more courage than she felt. "Then, let's go convince the High Priestess to offer my hand to Lucien Vanserra."

 Present Day

The boat swayed with the rise and fall of the sea.

Through the stern window in the captain's quarters, Elain could feel the rhythmic swish of water as it swept against the hull. Again and again, like the sea was trailing its knuckles against the wood, just to remind the crew she was still there. Warning, you are alive because I allow you to be. I can change my mind at any moment.

"You used to say my name sounded like the sea," Lucien mused. He leaned forward on the chair he'd pulled to her bedside, a bowl of seared fish and grain cupped in his palm. "Having heard her song, do you still agree?"

Elain's glare hadn't left her face since the moment she'd woken up in that ox-wagon. Now, she speared it towards the spoon he held toward her lips. It didn't matter that the smell made the back of her mouth water, or that her stomach grumbled loud enough for the both of them to hear. She kept her mouth shut.

With a sigh, Lucien set the spoon back in the bowl. "I won't let you starve yourself, Elain."

"Of course not," she sniped. "Your father won't lift your banishment if you return with an emaciated corpse."

"That's not why I care," he said evenly.

"Isn't it?"

Lucien reached for a waterskin with his other hand. "It isn't." The cork popped with an easy pry of his thumb, and then the opening was pressed to her lips. "At least drink something."

Having no desire to be bound to a bed of soaked sheets, Elain parted her lips. To his credit, Lucien held the waterskin at a steady angle as she drank, ensuring too much water didn't pour at once. A small amount dribbled at the corner of her mouth when he pulled away, but that was fixed with a swipe of his thumb that lingered at the plump of her bottom lip for a beat too long.

Lucien cleared his throat. "I noticed you didn't answer my question."

"About the sea?" He nodded, and Elain decided to answer if only because it would offer a distraction from the heat still tingling through her lip. "Maybe I said that because I was really hearing this moment. Maybe it was a warning me that our fates would be bound, and you would be my captor."

"Captor?" His echo held a sadness that called to her weaker sense, but she refused to give him her pity. Not when she was tied to a bed, trapped in a prison of his making in the middle of the ocean. "I preferred when you called me husband."

"Those words are no different to me. What will I be when you turn me over to your father, wife or captive? You know I'll try to flee at the first opportunity, so what will you do? Keep me chained to our marital bed?"

Lucien narrowed his eyes. "You're the seer between us. You tell me."

Futures couldn't be summoned on a whim, not in the way he was suggesting. She was brought visions as the Cauldron willed it, and though she could often pick up vague senses of where a person's immediate path was heading, with Lucien it was always blank. As if his preferred mask of indifference was rooted down to his soul.

She'd never met a person as guarded as him. There were one or two souls she'd come across on her travels who faced the world through a shield of ice, but Elain could still peer through them on occasion. Perhaps because they were not so layered as Lucien's. Where most people maintained a single barrier between themself and the world, Elain suspected Lucien had built several. Wall after wall after wall—so enclosed that perhaps he no longer knew where the surface was.

And yet, through all those layers of stone, she could still hear the slow, steady beating that begged her to listen. I'm still here, it said. Find me.

Elain returned his glare. "I know that right now, you are keeping me restrained. That makes you my captor."

Yanking on the bindings caused the rope to scrape against her raw flesh, but Elain felt the pain was worth if for the remorse that flashed across Lucien's face. She didn't expect him to set the food aside to inspect her wrists. He swore when he saw the angry blisters on her skin.

"Why didn't you tell me?" He asked, hands flying to the knots around the headboard. Elain didn't say anything, too stunned by the way he untied the rope and took both her hands into his own to further examine the wounds. "Elain."

"I didn't think you cared."

Lucien made a strangled sound in the back of his throat, one that fell somewhere between anguish and frustration. She replayed the sound in her mind, trying to puzzle where it landed closer to. Meanwhile, Lucien retrieved his pack from the far side of the cabin and began rifling through it.

It occurred to her that she could have tried to escape during that short moment his back was turned. But they were in the middle of the sea, and if he'd paid off the crew well enough to take residence in the captain's chambers, she could imagine they wouldn't be scrambling to aid her.

"Here," Lucien said, returning to his seat with a tin in hand. "This salve should help."

Elain held out her hand, expecting to take it from him to administer it herself. He surprised her by taking her hand in his, heartbreakingly gentle. With his other hand, he dipped two of his fingers into the salve. Elain hissed when it met her skin. Despite his gentleness, despite knowing it was coming, the pain still prickled through her.

Knowing when pain was coming did not always alleviate it, she found.

"I'm sorry," Lucien said. His voice was solemn. "You're the last person I ever wanted to hurt."

"Then you should have let me go. You should have never come looking for me."

There it was again, that sadness flicking over his face that preyed on her heart. His voice was strained as he said, "I tried. I told myself I could let you go. But I couldn't. It—you haunted me. I had to set things right again."

As he spoke, something plucked at her. An old string in her chest. If she tugged on it, she had the sinking sensation it would lead to his own. Truth, she thought it said. Elain frowned. Lucien switched to rubbing salve on her other hand. His movements still gentle, the unintended sting still cruel.

"This is your way of making things right?"

"This is a means to an end," he corrected. Then he shook his head. "I would like you to explain it to me, though. Why do you think I no longer care for you? Only one of us was abandoned in those woods, and it wasn't you."

Elain tried very hard to keep her mind anchored to the present. She focused on the pain throbbing through her wrist. The warmth of his hand, cradling hers. His steady heartbeat pleading, listen. Listen. Anything to keep from reliving the moment she last saw him in the forest.

"It was a means to end," she whispered, because it was the only answer she could give him. "I couldn't risk you taking me back to Autumn."

His flattened lip said she was only telling him things he'd already worked out for himself.

"But why do you assume I no longer care for you?"

Because I don't know if you ever did.

"I betrayed you," she answered. "I left you."

"It hurt, but I understood your reasons. How could I not?"

It burned her, that he had the audacity to play ignorant. Like a branch bearing too much weight, the anger in her snapped. If she was capable of deeper anger, her hands would have flown to his cheek. Something in her craved violence, but the most she could bare to strike was the tin of salve in his hands. It clattered to the floor, splattering its contents as it went. Flecks of it decorated Lucien's leg, but that was not nearly so satisfying as the shock on his face.

Shock that morphed into something hot. Anger, and something else. Something that writhed and tangled in her stomach, made her clench her thighs.

Maybe it was because of that heat, because of the fear that rose to meet it, that she snapped, "Don't take me for a fool, Lucien. I am not the same naive girl I used to be."

"No?" Lucien lifted from his chair, surging so fast and so close that Elain instinctively fell back on the bed. He followed, arms braced on either side of her head, lowering himself until she could feel the heat of his body skimming every inch of hers. "I think you're right," he breathed. "The girl I met was no coward, and certainly no oath breaker."

"I broke no oath!"

"You broke the one you made to me!" He snarled. "You left me."

Elain stilled, searching those heated eyes. For just one traitorous second, her gaze dropped to his mouth. She told herself it was because his teeth were bared. A survival instinct, to make sure he wouldn't bite her.

A memory flickered at the cusp of her grasp. If she reached for it, she knew she would feel those teeth sinking into her skin in another time. One framed by the rosy flush of passion. Even without reaching for it, her body recognized its remnants. Her bones sighed in relief, saying, we've been here before. Why fight it?

"You said you understood my reasons." Elain was unable to help the mocking sing-song in her voice. Lucien's eyes flashed, and some inane instinct had Elain craning her neck in response.

He tracked the movement, just as he tracked everything she did.

"That doesn't mean they didn't wound me," he murmured, dipping his head to speak the words against her neck. "Especially when I would have gone with you."

"Liar," she gasped.

Sharp teeth dragged along the column of her throat. She couldn't resist her full-body shudder.

"I've never lied to you, Elain." A nip at her pulse. "You made me swear it."

The hand she slid into his hair was entirely involuntary. She told herself she was only tangling her fingers with the intention to pull him away. But she was his wife, once, in every sense of the word. Memories of it were trailing back to her, slow and syrupy as treacle.

They were telling her things. Secrets buried the bedsheets of Autumn. Like what would happen when she pulled on his hair.

And Elain pulled hard.

Lucien groaned, and the next thing she knew, his teeth were clamped down on her neck. No more teasing. No more gentleness.

She squirmed beneath him, hips bucking until he indulged her silent request by pressing his body in. Pinning her to the bed with a strong thigh wedged between her parted legs, pressing solidly against the place she ached. She was left with no choice but to stay. To feel. To keep herself anchored to this moment of anger and passion and… and something she couldn't bear to name, or it risked shattering her past repair.

Her husband released her when she finally cried out. Not from pain or anguish, but from the sharp, quivering needs she hadn't dared acknowledge since the moment they parted ways.

Lucien's breathing was ragged. "Tell me why you're so angry at me. Tell me why you think I don't care for you anymore."

"You've chased me down to bring me back to him!" She exclaimed, blinking back tears. "Why do you need more explanation than that?"

The bed sighed as Lucien peeled his body away, leaving Elain deprived of his weight. Empty.

"If you think that's why I've been chasing you all these years, then perhaps you truly don't know me at all."

The letter had remained unfinished for three days.

Elain had decided this was deeply inconvenient.

She knew exactly what she wished to say, it was the writing of her words that proved impossible.

The parchment lay upon the writing desk beside the window, weighted at the corner by a small porcelain dish containing a single sprig of jasmine. The flower had long since dried, its petals delicate and pale, but Elain had not yet brought herself to discard it.

She was not entirely certain why.

There were many things she had once believed herself capable of explaining that time had quietly stolen the certainty from.

The Forest House had a habit of exposing such truths.

A year ago she had crossed its threshold as a guest, politely welcomed, watched, and accommodated. Somewhere between the last Equinox celebrations and the approaching ones, she had ceased being any of those things.

Nobles greeted her and servants knew her name. The kitchens brewed her preferred tea before she thought to ask. Eris no longer inquired whether he should prepare a room for her, she simply stayed to the suite connected to her mate’s new chambers.

She had never noticed when the change occurred. Perhaps that was the peculiar thing about belonging, she thought. 

A garden grew while she was looking elsewhere. A friendship formed while she was distracted. A person became important before she realized she had begun to depend upon their presence.

She had spent years believing that if she did not look directly at something, it could not alter her life.

Experience, unfortunately, had proved otherwise.

She reached for the quill once more.

Lucien.

His name flowed easily from her hand.

Once, writing it had felt almost treasonous. Now it was everything that followed which seemed impossible.

She dipped the nib into the ink.

Lucien,

I have rewritten this letter several times, though I suspect you would find this unsurprising.

The corner of her mouth moved faintly. She could already hear his voice, the way he might say, “You do have a tendency to make simple matters unnecessarily complicated, Elain.”

The irritating thing was that he would have been kind about it. That, she supposed, had been the problem from the beginning.

She continued.

I do not know precisely when this happened.

The sentence sat upon the page with an honesty that made her hesitate.

I do not know precisely when you stopped being someone I was trying to understand and became someone I simply wished to know.

Her grip tightened upon the quill.

The heart of the Autumn court seemed determined to display every shade of the season at once, Elain thought as she glanced out the window. Scarlet leaves clung stubbornly to the ancient trees while golden ones scattered across the lawns below, each carried away by the breeze only to gather again in new arrangements.

The gardeners would restore everything before dusk, and the wind would undo it all before morning.

She had once found that maddening, now she found herself admiring its beauty.

Her gaze drifted back to the letter.

For years she had imagined the bond to be the most frightening part of whatever existed between herself and Lucien.

It was everything beyond it that was infinitely more terrifying. 

The simple, ordinary things that had nothing to do with magic.

Elain wanted…

She yearned for more.

The words waiting in her chest were much less graceful than the ones upon the page.

I don’t want to pretend.

With a faint sound of frustration, she reached up to tug absent-mindedly at the short curls at the nape of her neck. 

She had spent years mastering the art of saying precisely what was required and nothing more. It had served her well in the human lands and in Prythian’s courts. 

Lucien, unfortunately, had become alarmingly adept at hearing the things she left unsaid. She thought of the expression that always settled over him whenever she grew quiet. The way his russet eye lingered upon her face with patient attention instead of pressing for answers.

It was entirely unfair.

She drew a fresh line on her letter beneath the previous attempt.

Lucien,

I think perhaps I have spent too long believing that I should not want the things that I so desperately do. 

Her breath caught. She stared at the sentence, quill hovering. She should strike it through. Instead, she continued.

I believe our arrangement no longer serves its purpose.

The words looked impossibly bold on the page. The ink had barely dried when she set the quill aside.

She considered tearing the letter into tiny pieces and casting them into the gardens below, where they might drift amongst the fallen leaves until no one could distinguish one from the other.

A knock interrupted the thought.

More quickly than was necessary, she turned over the parchment and slipped it beneath another sheet. "Come in."

The door opened before the words had fully left her lips. Eris leaned one shoulder against the frame rather than entering immediately.

His appearance was just untidy enough to suggest he had dressed in haste rather than carelessness. Elain wondered if a certain silver-haired, noble lady was responsible for his irregular state of disarray. He wore only his shirtsleeves, the cuffs hanging open at his wrists, and one of the leather ties usually securing his hair had vanished somewhere, leaving several auburn strands fallen loose around his face.

Elain looked up at him. "You've lost a battle with your wardrobe."

His mouth curved. "Some of us are responsible for an entire court."

She hummed, and only then did Eris step fully into the room. He glanced once toward the writing desk. His amber eyes landed on her long enough to notice the ink staining her fingers, the tension lingering in her shoulders.

His expression softened by a fraction. "There was a message from Lucien."

Her fingers, still resting atop the hidden letter, became very still. "There was?"

"He expects to arrive before dinner." He delivered the news with infuriating calm.

She waited. Eris waited longer, tilting his head so that the golden hoops along his ear reflected the sun at her.

"...That is all?"

"For the message? Yes." One brow lifted. "For you?" A grin spread across his face, bright and entirely too knowing. "I might have additional observations."

"I do not care to hear them."

"No?" He folded his arms. "A pity. I had thought to congratulate you on spending the better part of a week pretending you are not counting the hours until my brother is back from Summer."

Heat climbed her neck. "I have done no such thing."

"No?" He asked. 

"No." Elain clipped. 

"Hm." 

Elain narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you have a court to rule.” She reached for the nearest object, her dried sprig of jasmine, and tossed it at him.

Without looking, he caught it neatly between two fingers. “I suppose I still have a bit of time to check on you.” 

The words were light. 

So effortlessly affectionate that something inside her loosened despite herself.

She huffed, though she could no longer suppress her smile. "You may leave now."

"I suspected as much." He set the jasmine carefully back upon the desk. As he reached the door he paused. “I’ll see you at dinner.” 

Then he disappeared into the corridor before she could decide whether to thank him or throw something considerably heavier.

Silence settled over the room once more.

Elain looked down at the unfinished letter resting beneath her hand, then toward the closed door.

It was absurd, she told herself. She had known Lucien was coming for nearly a week, but at the mere thought of him her pulse had quickened.

After a long moment, she folded the letter with deliberate care and tucked it into the drawer of the writing desk.

Elain was not avoiding it, she told herself, she was simply waiting.

* * * 

Aspasia arrived precisely seven minutes later than she had promised.

It was not a clumsy oversight. Elain had come to understand that to a noblewoman of the Autumn Court, arriving precisely when expected was viewed as a vulgar surrender of power. 

A lady of quality dictated the clock, she never obeyed it. 

Elain could have repeated the philosophy verbatim, so frequently had she heard it over the past few weeks.

When her companion finally crossed the threshold, the silence of the near-empty room surrendered to the deliberate, rhythmic rasp of silk. Aspasia peeled away her dark gloves, finger by finger, allowing her rings to catch the afternoon light. Her sharp gaze swept the room like a scholar inspecting a volatile, private experiment, rather than a guest preparing for a low-stakes game of chance.

"You are hiding something," Aspasia stated, omitting any pretense of greeting. It was an observation that brooked no defense. She tilted her head, her dark eyes narrowing as she no doubt catalogued some imperceptible shift in Elain's countenance.

Elain did not falter. "Good morning to you as well." She kept her chin parallel to the floor, her spine aligned perfectly against the cushions as she lifted her teacup with practiced grace. "I see the crisp air has done you a world of good, Aspa. You seem remarkably sunny today."

Aspasia crossed the room with the absolute, unbothered confidence of a woman who was centuries old and knew precisely how much space she was entitled to occupy. Her emerald gown was cut with the sharp, uncompromising angles she favoured, entirely lacking the softer, draping popular among the younger ladies of the Forest House.

It was one of the reasons Elain secretively preferred her company. Aspasia refused to soften her edges, and it was refreshing.

"Good morning," Aspasia smoothly countered, settling into the wingback armchair opposite her with a fluid, sweeping tuck of her skirts. She leaned back, crossing one elegant leg over the other, her gaze fixed entirely on Elain's face. "Now. What is it? And do not attempt to blame the weather. You employ that particular tone of voice only when you try to keep something from me."

"I have no idea what you mean." Elain took a slow, measured sip, keeping her expression a mask of placid calm. She lowered the cup, her fingers remaining loosely wrapped around the warm porcelain. She knew Aspa could be as vicious as a hound with a bone once she scented a secret.

"Of course you don't." Aspasia reached for the silver teapot, adding a single spoonful of honey to her cup with the meticulous precision of an apothecary. She did not spill a drop. "I have known Eris for several centuries, Elain. Which means I possess a highly developed sense for deliberate evasion."

"That sounds like an exhausting skill to acquire," Elain murmured, setting her cup down upon its saucer. She offered a small, sweet smile, the very picture of a well-bred lady. "Though I suppose growing up in the Autumn Court requires one to find entertainment wherever they can, even if it means inventing conspiracies."

"On the contrary. It has saved me from agreeing to many things I should have deeply regretted."

"Such as?" Elain asked, tilting her head.

Aspasia looked over the rim of her cup, her ruby eyes gleaming with a wicked, courtly amusement. "Marrying him, for one."

Elain’s hand jerked. A splash of tea threatened to spill over the rim before she caught herself, her fingers tightening instinctively to steady the porcelain. Her composure had fractured just enough for Aspasia’s mouth to curve into a thoroughly satisfied smirk.

"Fortunately, I was referring to other matters," Aspasia added, taking a graceful sip, entirely pleased with herself.

Carefully lowering her cup without making a sound, Elain rose from her seat. Her skirts dragged softly against the carpet as she smoothed down the front of her dark orange gown. "One day, I should like to know whether you ever say anything simply, or if everything requires a theatrical delivery."

"Simplicity is rather boring, don’t you think?"

The utter immediacy of the response surprised a soft, breathless laugh out of Elain. She gestured toward the small mahogany gaming table near the window, where a deck of cards already sat perfectly stacked, the edges squared precisely against the dark, polished wood.

Aspasia blinked, her elegant composure slipping for a fraction of a second. "Cards? Now?"

"Naturally." Elain smoothly took her seat at the table, her fingers lightly brushing the top of the deck. She leaned forward, resting her forearms lightly on the wood, her posture suddenly projecting an entirely different kind of confidence. "I thought you wished to know what I was hiding. People reveal themselves more honestly when they are distracted by a game, don't they? Or are you afraid I might actually win this time?"

Aspasia paused, a flicker of genuine appreciation crossing her face before she took the opposite chair, her heavy rings clicking sharply against the wood. "Is that something Eris taught you?"

"No," Elain said softly. She shifted the deck with practiced ease, the cards cascading through her fingers in a flawless, mesmerizing waterfall as she began to deal. "That is something I assumed you taught him."

Aspasia looked over her shoulder toward the window, where the lovely stubborn autumn roses clung desperately to the stone walls, before looking back at Elain, her lips twitching with a reluctant smile. "You flatter me."

Elain dealt the first two cards face down, her movements fluid, deliberate, and entirely unhurried. "What game?"

"Twenty-one embers."

Elain raised a single brow, her gaze locking onto her companion's. "Challenging me in my own rooms?"

"I love how competitive you are," Aspasia offered, leaning forward and resting her chin on the back of her laced fingers.

Elain knew that she was looking for a twitch of a muscle, a shift in breathing, the slightest flutter of an eyelash. "I am not competitive." She dealt the next pair with a delicate, dismissive sniff. "I simply prefer the predictable rules of a game to the unpredictable nature of your interrogations."

Aspasia stared, and after a long moment of silence, she finally looked down at her hand, a small sigh escaping her lips. "Remarkable."

"What?" Elain said, her brow furrowing slightly.

"You lied without a single blink. Your pulse didn't even skip a beat." Aspasia shook her head, tapping the edge of her cards against the table.

Elain flashed her a small grin she hoped mirrored the court’s bite, a rare flash of teeth. "I believe you’re confusing honesty with your personal opinions, Aspa. They’re rarely the same thing."

"They aren’t?"

"Perhaps in Autumn only," Elain replied smoothly, sliding a final card across the table.

"I’ll draw first," Aspasia declared, her voice dropping to a softer, knowing cadence that bypassed the usual courtly barbs. She slid a gilded card from the deck, turning it face up with a swift flick of her wrist. The King of Hearts sneered up at them from the parchment.

Elain slid a low card into the pile, her movement entirely unbothered. "You are a terrible friend."

"Yet you continue inviting me to tea, so clearly you appreciate the lack of dullness." Aspasia tapped a single, pointed fingernail rhythmically against the mahogany table. "Your move. Risk a spark, or stay cold?"

"I am currently re-evaluating that choice," Elain mumbled. She studied her hand, her eyes scanning them, but not quite paying attention. Her gaze flicked toward the door for a mere fraction of a second before snapping right back to Aspasia. She drew blindly from the deck. She pulled a safe but vulnerable seven.

Aspasia let out a long, dramatic sigh.

"I was thinking," Elain defended quickly, placing the card down to cover her brief slip of focus, her fingers smoothing the edge.

"About?"

"Nothing new, really."

Aspasia’s sharp expression softened by a fraction. She reached for another card, her tone shifting from playful to devastatingly perceptive. "If I allow you to keep thinking about Lucien, you will eventually convince yourself that wanting him is a moral failing."

Elain's fingers tightened against the gilded edge of her card until the paper slightly bowed under the pressure. She froze, the air growing thick and still between them, the playful banter evaporating in an instant. The card in her hand felt suddenly heavy, like a real coal burning her fingertips, the heat travelling up her arm.

Aspasia didn't look up from her own hand, keeping her voice casual despite the immense weight of her words. "You are very fortunate that your mate is a patient male. Most in this court would not be so accommodating."

Elain's posture stiffened, her shoulders squaring as she forced her hands to relax, deliberately letting go of the card before she ruined it. "That sounds dangerously close to criticism."

"It is."

"Of me?"

"Of both of you." Aspasia’s ruby-hued gaze finally lifted, pinning Elain in place. She set her cards down entirely, leaning over the table. "You are both so determined to be perfectly considerate, so terrified of overstepping boundaries, that I suspect you would rather suffer quietly for eternity than risk inconveniencing the other by speaking your minds. You play your lives like this game, holding back your best cards because you’re afraid of the fire."

Elain opened her mouth to argue, searching for a clever deflection, a witty retort, or a courtly shield to throw between them. She found no words to defend against the raw, unvarnished truth of it. Her mouth closed, her gaze dropping to the table as her fingers curled into her palms.

Aspasia delivered a triumphant smile, flipping her final card face up with a definitive snap. "Twenty-one. Exactly. You see? Sometimes you play the card, and things don’t go all up in flames."

Before Elain could attempt to steer the conversation away, acknowledge the loss, or offer a counter-argument, the air in the morning room suddenly altered.

Deep within her chest, a quiet thread snapped taut.

A sudden, radiant warmth bloomed behind her ribs, a distinct, fiery presence flooding the bond with a mixture of anticipation and quiet yearning.

Lucien.

Elain’s chest tightened, and her breath hitched audibly. Her gaze instantly snapped toward the heavy entrance doors, her entire body leaning toward them, her fingers gripping the edge of the table before she could stop herself. The recognition was instantaneous, a visceral, magnetic pull she could not mask. She could feel as a sudden, brilliant colour flushed her cheeks and spilled down the column of her neck.

Aspasia caught the shift immediately. The sharp, triumphant smile of a card-game victory softened into something surprisingly gentle.

"Ah," Aspasia murmured, gracefully gathering her cards into a neat, surrendered pile in the center of the table, the gilded edges catching the last rays of the autumn sunlight. "I suppose Lucien has arrived, and I shall have to find someone else to play with."

* * * 

The gravel of the drive crunching underfoot was the only warning she received before the heavy oak doors of the Forest House were thrown wide.

Elain did not think. She did not gather her skirts with the effortless grace she had spent a lifetime perfecting. She simply ran.

The crisp autumn air bit at her cheeks as she descended the front steps, her slippers skittering against the stone. All around them, the ancient apple trees of the estate hung heavy with fruit, the scent of sweet, turning earth and bruised skins thick in the air.

Lucien looked as though the journey from the Summer Court had been a long one. His riding leathers were dusted with travel, his immaculate hair falling loose from its tie in wind-whipped coppery strands. It was his face that anchored her, the slight hollows beneath his cheekbones, the faint tension in his jaw, and that familiar, striking contrast between his warm russet eye and the whirring gold of his mechanical one.

He had barely stopped moving when she reached him.

Elain threw herself forward, her momentum carrying her right against his chest. Her arms flung around his neck, her fingers tangling blindly into the thick, loose hair at the nape of his neck.

A sharp, ragged breath left Lucien’s lungs as his hands instantly found her waist, gripping her with a sudden, fierce desperation that spoke of every step between them. He lifted her slightly off her feet, pulling her so flush against him that she could feel the hard, rapid thudding of his heart against her own ribs.

"Elain," he breathed against her skin, his voice gravelly and thick with a yearning he obviously had not had the time to hide.

She didn't let him speak further. Tilting her head back, she pressed her lips to his.

The kiss was entirely devoid of patience, born of three days staring at an unfinished letter and three years of quiet, building devotion. Lucien groaned softly, his grip tightening until his fingers dug firmly into the fabric of her gown, anchoring her to him as he kissed her back with a fierce, burning hunger. He tasted of sea salt and spiced apples, his mouth warm and completely consuming.

When she finally pulled back just a fraction, her breath hitching, she didn’t let him go. She loved the weight of his arms around her.

Slowly, Elain leaned in again, tracing the line of his jaw until she kissed the very corner of his mouth. Her lips brushed the small, pale line of the scar that pulled slightly at the skin there. She felt a tremor ripple through his shoulders at the touch.

Lucien leaned his forehead against hers, his eyes closed, his breathing ragged. His large hands moved up her back, his thumbs smoothing over her shoulder blades in a slow, reassuring rhythm.

"Are you alright?" he murmured, his voice low.

His russet eye opened to search her face with that agonizingly patient attention she knew so well. Beneath the warmth of his gaze, Elain felt a sudden, sharp pang of guilt. Her gaze flickered away for a fraction of a second, her jaw tightened imperceptibly.

Beneath her palm, resting against his chest, his heartbeat was loud and steady, a beautiful familiar rhythm. 

She thought of the letter sitting in the drawer upstairs, and her conversation with Aspasia. She thought of the bold, terrifying honesty of the words she had written.

I believe our arrangement no longer serves its purpose.

Lucien noticed instantly. The whirring of his mechanical eye clicked to a sudden, quiet stop. His brow furrowed, his thumbs halting their soothing pass against her spine as his posture stiffened. He tilted his head slightly, his gaze dropping to the line of her mouth, silently reading the unspoken anxiety written in the rigid line of her shoulders.

Looking into his face, feeling the warmth of his skin and the fierce possessiveness of his embrace, the urge to complicate whatever currently existed between them vanished. She was happy exactly as they were, she told herself. 

Why risk breaking the fragile, beautiful thing they had built or ask for more when the present was fine as it was, Elain thought confidently. 

Forcing the tension from her posture, Elain drew a soft breath and looked back up at him, intentionally softening her gaze to ease the sudden worry in his expression.

"I am perfectly alright," Elain whispered, offering him a soft smile that she hoped she might be able to hide behind. "Now that you're here."

Lucien’s mechanical eye gave a single click as it resumed its whirring. He didn't drop his gaze immediately. Instead, his russet eye searched hers, before tracing the slight curve of her lips. 

A slow, familiar amusement began to tug at his brows, softening the harsh lines of exhaustion etched into his face. He leaned back just enough to look down the length of the grand drive, then glanced back toward the heavy, open oak doors of the Forest House. 

"Well," Lucien murmured, his voice retaining that low rasp, though a distinct, roguish spark now danced in his eyes. "It seems I’ve been missed." He tilted his head, a faint, teasing smirk lifting the small scar at his lip. "Though, if I had known a three-day delay would earn me an arrival that entirely bypasses courtly etiquette, I might have taken the long route through the Winter Court just to see what kind of welcome that would receive."

The teasing note in his voice was a lifeline, and Elain took it gratefully. A genuine laugh, small and breathless, escaped her lips, breaking the lingering tension in her shoulders.

"Don't flatter yourself, Lucien," she countered softly, her fingers smoothing over the leather of his lapels, though she didn't step out of his space. "You try staying in this unnavigable maze of a house with only Eris and Aspasia for company."

"Of course," Lucien replied smoothly, his tone dry but entirely fond. "I know better than most how tedious they can be."

His large hands remained anchored at her waist, his thumbs continuing to trace slow circles against the fabric of her gown, anchoring her against the cool breeze. The fierce desperation of their initial collision had settled into something grounded, but no less possessive. He shifted his weight, his boots crunching slightly on the gravel as he tucked her more securely against his side. 

He looked down at her slippers, and only then did Elain note the dark dampness filtering through the delicate fabric from the dew-heavy grass. His brow arched. "Impatient enough to ruin a perfectly good pair of silk shoes, it seems. If your sisters see the state of these, they’ll accuse me of corrupting your fine tastes."

"Let them," Elain said, the defiance in her voice small but clear as she rested her chin against his chest, looking up at him.

Lucien’s expression softened completely then, the wit fading into a quiet, profound sincerity. He raised one hand, his fingers cool against her warm cheek as he gently tucked a stray, wind-whipped strand of hair behind her ear. His thumb lingered on her cheekbone, his touch incredibly light for a male so large.