#amlain

I sigh. “Why me?”

“She’s terrified of anyone who looks High Fae. She hasn’t stopped speaking for days, and she doesn’t sleep. Nesta’s barely conscious, and she wouldn’t know what to do anyway.” He clears his throat. “We think the Cauldron made her a seer.”

“A seer?”

“Whatever she’s saying, seeing—it’s beyond me, beyond Mor, even if she weren’t frightened of us.” He sets the cup of blood on my table near the book. I can smell that it’s goat, and I’m immediately hungry. “You’re my Second, Amren. Do this for me. And for your High Lady.”

I groan and take a swig of the blood. “You WOULD play on my sense of duty.” I close the book, feeling both relieved and anxious to be disconnected from it. “Fine, bring the girl to me. Wait until I finish my lunch, though. Don’t want to offend her delicate mortal sensibilities.”

Rhys smiles. “She’s not mor—“

“I know she’s not mortal anymore, you halfwit. But her mind and heart might as well be.” I close my eyes, recalling my very brief encounter with Feyre’s ridiculously delicate sister, who’d looked to me as if she might blow away in a too-strong breeze. The other one is different—weaknesses beneath the surface, of course, but an outer shell like iron. Elain—Mother, even if she IS High Fae, I worry that a single harsh word from me will make her crumple.

I finish the rest of the blood and focus on the jewelry I’ll demand in exchange for this favor.

He’s right. She never shuts up.

I wave my hand to silence her for a moment so that I can simply take her in—her mouth keeps moving, but I don’t hear the words. I imagine as a mortal she was pretty in that dull, predictable way that mortal men prefer, with her small face and smooth skin and dark hair. As High Fae, though, she’s taller and more robust, though at the moment she looks as frail as a child.

She’s wearing simple Night Court clothing, loose-fitting blue trousers and a tunic that accentuates the paleness of her skin. Rhys tells me she won’t go outside—when they try to take her she screams and thrashes. She needs sunlight, though, and fresh air, anyone can see that.

Right. He didn’t tell me to nurture her, others can do that. First things first.

I wave my hand again and those words are pouring out of her mouth, a mix of languages that I doubt she understands. I only understand half of them, which is something. I grip her chin and turn her face toward mine. Her eyes don’t seem to see me.

“So it looks like you’re a seer now, girl. At this rate you’re going to talk yourself to death, and I really can’t think of a worse way to go.”

“…fire and water and air that stretched across oceans and planets, then pain and shrinking and the room is too small, too small, can’t get out…”

I grit my teeth. She’s seeing my past. “First rule of seer-ing: nobody wants to know all the very private things that you can see. Think them all you want, but keep them to yourself.”

She keeps talking and her body curls inward. The visions are overwhelming her. “Look at that chair,” I say, pointing to a small wooden chair in the corner of the room. “Look at it,” I say again.

She ignores me, or doesn’t hear me. “…the walls are stone and they crawl with a thousand years of words…vaes nil haargraaj, vaes, vaes…”

“Look at the chair, Elain.” I darken the room so that the only thing she can see is my eyes. “Look at the chair.”

She keeps spouting that endless stream of words, but I see her eyes flicker toward the chair, then back to me. “That’s it,” I say. “Eyes on the chair.”

When she’s managed to hold her gaze on the chair for more than a few seconds, I say “Trace it. Turn your eyes into a pencil and trace every line, every shadow. And when you finish, do it again until you could draw it from memory.”

She’s still talking, and I can feel sweat under my hand as she exerts herself, but after a few minutes her speech slows, and then it stops altogether. Her gaze moves slowly from the chair to me, and she looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time.

She staggers backward. I probably should have glamoured my eyes.

“Where am…who are…” Her eyes dart around the room, and then she looks down at her clothes, her hands running over the unfamiliar fabric. She’s terrified, but more than anything I can see she’s exhausted.

I see her about to topple and catch her before she hits the ground.

I carry her to her rooms, but she sleeps only a few hours before she’s awake and chattering again. Rhys asks if I can keep her in my room for a while. I stew—my solitude is everything—but agree. It’s not as if I really sleep.

When her own endless words wake her I pull her up into a sitting position and take her through the now-grounding again—focus on the chair, focus on the curtain, focus on my face, trace it, connect yourself to it, be in the here and now and let the rest be shadows, still there but less permanent. She gets better at it, and finally there is a point where she does it by herself.

At some point she walks over to the table where I’m glued to the Book and reaches out a hand to touch it. I slam it shut and push it across the desk away from her.

“I won’t ask if you’re mad, girl, because you are, a bit, but Mother’s tits, NEVER touch that book. Do you understand me?”

She nods slowly. “It was…calling to me.”

I snort. “Yeah, it does that.”

Her eyes are focused on me, and I can tell that for the moment, at least, the visions are not overwhelming her. Her voice is a croak. “Where is Nesta?”

“Resting and healing. Or raging, which seems like it might be healing for that one.”

“Feyre?”

I sigh. “Not here. You remember why. She’ll be back soon, though.”

“Who are you?”

I’m itching to get back to the Book and am not in the mood for small talk, not that I ever am. But the girl needs answers. “Amren,” I say.

“Are you…like them?”

“Like you, you mean? High Fae?”

She shudders and runs her fingers roughly over her arms and torso as if she could scrape the new flesh off of her body. It’s a sensation I remember, and it momentarily touches that small part of me that feels things.

“No,” I say. “I’m not High Fae. I’m…it’s a very long story.”

She nods, and then her eyes shift and she staggers slightly. “They’re…they’re coming back,” she whispers.”

“They’ll always come back,” I say. “But you can keep them under control, like I showed you.”

Her gaze drifts to the curtains, and a few seconds later her eyes seem clear again. “It’s so tiring,” she says.

“It will be, for a while. But then it’ll become like breathing.”

“Is it like breathing for you?”

I shrug. “I’m not a seer. But I see things similar to the way you do—lots of pieces floating all over the place, hard to tell what’s now and what’s then and what’s ahead, and what’s just possible. It’s the only way I’ve ever seen.”

She nods and her stomach rumbles. I send for food and shuttle her off to the bath before it arrives. As she sits down to eat she looks somewhat more alive, or at least less lost.

The food is simple and should be familiar to her—roast lamb, tubers, greens. She hesitates.

“Something wrong with the food, girl?”

She wrings her hands, clearly starving but also uneasy. “I was…they always told us not to eat faerie food.”

“Ah, of course. I’m guessing they also told you iron was a good shield against faerie magic?”

She blushes and glances down at the ring on her finger, which I’m fairly sure is made of iron. “Yes,” she says.

“Well then. If that ring hasn’t melted off of your finger then logic seems to indicate that those turnips aren’t going to enchant you.” I give the plate a gentle push in her direction.

She notices that I don’t have a plate. “Why aren’t you eating?” she says.

“I don’t eat food.”

“What do you eat?”

Rhys would probably want me to hide certain things from her. As would her steely-eyed sister. But somehow, looking at her all freshly washed (and shockingly pretty, it must be said) across from me, wide-eyed, I decide she’ll respond better to the truth.

“I drink blood. Of various kinds.”

She goes momentarily pale. “Are you going to—“

“No, by the Mother, calm down.” I can’t help laughing at the horror on her face. “I prefer it from a cup. Besides, who knows what sort of odd things a seer’s blood might do to me. Could transport me back to some previous life as a carrot.”

Her mouth falls open and she’s about to speak, but then she closes it and, amazingly, laughs. Just a small one, but it’s enough. It lights up her face.

She’s very, very pretty.

She picks up her knife and fork and closes her eyes, and it’s as if a final illusion is being swept away, perhaps the illusion that she will ever go home again. She cuts a piece of meat and chews it.

And devours everything else on the plate in a matter of minutes.

The next day I tell her she needs to go outside.

She shakes her head. “It’s too much,” she says. “Everything is surrounded by moving pictures of itself. The last time I almost threw up.”

“Yeah, but you know how to deal with that now. It’s just like what you do inside, only on a larger scale.”

“I don’t want…” She looks at her hands. “I don’t want to fall apart in front of them.”

“Them? Your mean Rhys and the rest of them?” I laugh. “Girl, they’ve embarrassed themselves in ways you can barely imagine. Remind me to tell you the story about the time they all got drunk and baked exploding pastries in the kitchen.”

She gives me a small smile, but she seems unconvinced. I’m shocked at myself when I reach across the table and squeeze her hand—it’s an alien gesture for me, but I can tell it’s what she needs. She doesn’t flinch.

“I’ll tell them to bugger off for a while. Cassian and Az aren’t moving around much yet, anyway.”

It takes a bit more coaxing, but at long last I get her down the stairs and out the front door. Mor is nowhere to be seen, though I catch a glimpse of Rhys in one of the windows. I wonder if he thinks I’m going to toss the girl off a cliff for fun—indeed, there might have been a time long ago when I would have.

I’m different now. Mostly.

She holds my hand as I walk with her to the edge of the city, and as we get closer to buildings and smells and the sound of other people she grips my hand tighter and tighter, until finally she doubles over and makes a little whimpering sound. I pull her back up and point to a particularly colorful storefront with tapestries waving in the wind.

“The colors,” I say. “Focus on the colors, the shapes.” I walk her very slowly toward the store. The shopkeeper nods to me the way they almost always do—warily, but with the respect that comes from being close to Rhys. I take the girl’s hand and stretch it toward one of the tapestries. “Feel the texture.” I run the fabric against her cheek.

Her breathing gradually slows, and she releases my hand, gazing at the colorful tapestry. “Is there…anything else that makes it quiet? Besides this?”

“Drinking,” I say quickly. “And fucking. Good fucking, I should say. The bland sort won’t help much.”

The shock on her face reminds me that she’s probably never even heard the word. I glance at that ring on her finger and remember Feyre telling me that she was engaged to a mortal man, but I also remember that mortals (and more than a few fae, it must be said), have bizarre ideas about chastity. And then there’s the mating bond with that Spring Court doormat.

You could say the poor girl has a lot to deal with at the moment.

She smooths out nonexistent wrinkles in her tunic and trousers. “Everyone was always careful with their words around me, before,” she says. She looks at me, and when she holds my gaze for much longer than usual I can see a new fierceness behind her eyes. “You’re not careful.”

I shrug. “No.”

She folds her arms and glances back up toward the townhouse. “I think I’d like to drink.”

It takes a while—she’s High Fae now, and a few glasses of wine won’t have much effect. I send for stronger stuff that won’t be unpleasant to her tastebuds, and after a few sips there’s a pleasant flush in her cheeks.

“I’m surprised,” she says, her words slurring just a little, “that you haven’t eaten me yet.”

I laugh and take another swig of the dark liquor—it takes even longer for me to feel the effects, but I’m getting there. “Why the hell would I eat you?”

“That’s what they told us faeries did, what happened to anyone who went beyond the wall.”

“For the last time, I am NOT fae. And even if I were, I’d never eat you. You’re too thin.”

She points a finger. “That’s why everyone keeps trying to get me to eat, they’re fattening me up.”

“Well, yes. But not for eating. Just, you know, to keep you alive.” I smirk. “Anyway, I imagine more than a few males in the vicinity wouldn’t be averse to a certain kind of ea—“

I stop when I see that her expression is pained and she’s fingering that iron ring. Of course—just because she’s High Fae doesn’t mean her mortal heart isn’t still attached to that man, even if he’s unlikely to want her now. A shame. A bit of a frolic would probably be good for her.

I send for food, just so that she won’t be feeling the effects of all this liquor too strongly in the morning. She eats heartily and asks more questions—about Rhys, Mor, Az, the city. I make certain to tell her something deeply embarrassing about all of them, and at some point Rhys pokes his head through the door, his eyebrows raising a bit at the site of the empty bottles on the table.

I roll my eyes at him and take another swig. “Don’t look at me like that. It was her idea.”

He smiles and gives Elain a brief bow. “Lady Elain. I trust you’re feeling better.”

She averts her eyes. I’ve gotten her to look at me without fear, but it may be a while before she can look at the rest of them.

When she speaks, though, her voice is assured. “I was drowning,” she says. “I’m thankful to Amren for saving me.”

I blink. The words “thankful to Amren” aren’t ones that I hear often.

Rhys notices it as well. He glances between us, taking in the way that Elain looks at me.

“Amren is truly a creature of many talents,” he says, with only a hint of a smirk.

“Get out of here, you prick. Haven’t you got some moony mind-messages to send to your mate?”

He flinches a bit, and I wonder if I went too far—we all miss her, and worry over her, but of course it’s hardest for him.

“Feyre asked after you,” he says to Elain. “She said to tell you that she’s well, and she’ll be here soon.”

Elain nods. “Tell her I’m…better,” she says, taking another sip from her glass.

Before he leaves she calls out to him. “Is it true you once invited Amren into your bed?”

My mouth falls open in the same moment that Rhys’s does. Elain’s eyes are focused on her lap, but I can see the corner of her mouth twitching.

“I did a lot of foolish things in my youth,” he replies, giving me a look. “Luckily none of them got me killed.”

I laugh. “I wouldn’t have killed you, you idiot. Unless death by fucking was what got you off back then.”

Elain looks at me, and maybe the wine has finally taken effect, but she bursts out laughing, wild, uncontrolled peals of it, and at some point I join her. Rhys laughs too, eventually shaking his head and leaving.

When she recovers she looks a bit shocked. “Did I really just say that?”

“Yes. And don’t go thinking too much on it, Rhys has been teased a hundred times worse in his very long life.”

She smiles and runs her finger around the rim of her glass, her eyes drifting for a moment. When she speaks her voice sounds far away.

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

I don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say, really, though I imagine Mor or Rhys might have words to comfort her.

She keeps talking. “But maybe that means…that I can be whatever I like.”

That fierceness is back in her face, and in spite of myself (and maybe because of the wine) I’m intrigued. “What would you like to be, then?”

She lays her hand on the table, quite near to mine. “I always followed, before,” she whispers. “Maybe now I want to lead.”

That hand is a millimeter from my own, and I’m amazed to discover that my heart is racing, and that I’m suddenly drawn to the flush in her cheeks and on her neck, the way her eyes lock onto mine…

And then the door flings open and we both jump, turning to see Nesta and Mor in the doorway.

Chapter 2

Nesta looks as bad as her sister had a few days before, only angrier.

She’s out of breath, and Mor is a bit as well—it looks like Nesta ran all the way here with Mor following her. Like Rhys did, she stares at Elain, the empty bottles and glasses on the table, and then levels her dagger-gaze at me.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Maybe it’s the fact that the fierceness seems to have vanished from Elain’s eyes, or just that I’ve never had much patience with Nesta’s brand of bluster. I smile at her.

“Fattening her up, of course. I eat other fae, hadn’t you heard?”

Mor gives Nesta some competition in the glaring department and then rolls her eyes at me. I shrug and pour myself more liquor.

Nesta heads quickly for Elain’s chair and pulls her sister to her feet, half-pulling and half-carrying Elain out of the room and muttering something that sounds like “monsters” before she makes it through the door.

Mor folds her arms and leans against the door. I don’t shrink under her gaze, as if daring her to challenge me.

“Good riddance,” I mutter.

Mor’s eyebrows raise at the tone in my voice. I’m prepared for some sort of soft-voiced questioning, or maybe a lecture about how emotions are healthy, but no, she just sighs, sits across the table from me, pours herself a very large glass of liquor, and downs it in one swig. Then she passes the bottle back to me.

Sometimes Mor is my favorite.

I go back to the Book.

Cassian and Az heal, Mor drinks, Rhys broods. I see little of Elain or her sister.

I tell myself that it’s better without her presence in my room, but even I don’t believe it. My mind wanders again and again back to that hand that was so close to mine, that momentary fierceness that awakened in her.

At some point I’m shaken from my book-trance by the sound of shouting down the hall. Elain and her sister are fighting, though I can’t make out the exact words. Eventually I hear the sound of a door slamming and quick-moving feet.

Some time after sunset there’s a knock at my door.

I’m expecting Mor—or maybe Rhys, he checks in occasionally about the book—but no, it’s Elain. Holding a cup of blood.

I close the Book and make my voice as nonchalant as possible. “Where’d you get that?”

She sets the blood on the table. “Rita’s.”

I raise an eyebrow. “You went all the way to Rita’s by yourself?”

“Yes. The roast duck with plum sauce was delicious.” It warms me to see a little of that fierceness return, but then she blushes and lowers her face. “It’s what Nesta and I were fighting about.”

“Oh?” I gesture for her to sit, and she does.

“She didn’t want to go with me, and she didn’t want me to leave the house. She wants us to go back home, to pretend like this never happened. I told her that was foolish.” Elain smiles, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. “I don’t think she was expecting me to talk to her like that.”

I take a sip of the blood as we both sit in silence for a moment. Elain looks mildly sun-kissed, and it suits her. Her hair is hanging loose, and she’s wearing another set of loose trousers and a tunic, this time a darker shade of blue.

I notice that she’s not wearing that ring anymore.

I’m about to ask her why she’s here, because I want to hear her say it, and I think she might need to say it out loud, but just as I open my mouth she crosses the small space between our chairs and kisses me.

My immediate thought is that my mouth will still taste of blood and she’ll pull away in disgust, but if that’s so she doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. She clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing—her body is rigid, her lips barely move against mine, and her breath is quick and shallow with terror. But she doesn’t pull away, doesn’t mumble an apology, and after the initial shock I slip my hand around the back of her very slender neck and kiss her back. I feel her soften in that moment, her breath slowing, hand reaching out to tentatively touch my cheek.

I pull back after a moment, my own body warm and eager to be closer to hers, but also wary. “Not that I’m complaining, girl, but why choose me?”

She runs her hand over my face and shoulder, looking to me for permission, and when I don’t resist she slides it down over my bare arm, down to my hand, tracing the tips of my fingers, then back up to the small bit of my waist that my own trousers and short top reveal. She keeps her eyes on me, and her voice doesn’t falter when she speaks.

“I was small, and I was made into something larger. My body was destroyed and reshaped, and the feel of my own skin is a reminder of that, every moment of every day. That…and the visions…it made me want to die, at first.”

She takes both of my hands in hers. “You were large…something beyond my understanding. And you were made small. I think maybe you were angry for a long time as well. Maybe you also wanted to die.”

She takes my hand and places it against her throat, running it over the front of her tunic and underneath it. “You’re like a mirror,” she says. “There are so many things I still don’t understand, but maybe…this is something we can both understand.”

She kisses me again, and it’s a fierce kiss this time, raw with wanting, and I respond with my own want and need and feel her moan softly against me.

My past lovers wanted me out of lust, out of rage, out of jealousy, out of a desire for pleasure mixed with danger. Maybe even sometimes out of love.

No one’s ever wanted me because they saw me as a mirror.

Still, I’m wary. “You’re not well,” I say to her. “I want this, but I need to know that you’re in your right mind—“

She shoves me back with shocking force, and I hit the table hard enough to rattle the book. “I have been coddled and protected for long enough,” she says, her voice deathly quiet. “I assure you, I am in my right mind.”

It’s enough, even though a little voice in the back of my mind says that it’s not going to be enough for Rhys or Feyre, and certainly not for Nesta.

She’s right, though. It’s not up to them.

Later I wake up to find her lying on her side and running her fingers over her stomach, tracing one hand over her arm and along each finger and fingernail. Looking at and taking in all of herself for the first time.

She sees that I’m awake and her eyes linger over me as well, but then look down, which makes me laugh out loud, given where her hands and mouth were not long before. Some of her mortal habits will take time to break.

I take one of her hands and trace it over my shoulder and arms, like she’s doing to herself. “I hated being weaker, at first,” I said. Memories flicker at the edge of my mind, ones that I usually keep tucked away. “But in time I got used to it. And it was a relief, in a way, to not be able to destroy things so easily.”

She lies on her stomach and clutches part of the bedsheet between her hands, tearing it with just a slight tug. “I don’t like being stronger,” she says quietly. “I’m not used to taking up so much space.”

“You should take up every inch of fucking space that you want.”

She blushes and smiles. I can tell that she wants to reach for me but doesn’t, that new, fierce part of her gone momentarily quiet.

I’d been gentle with her at first, but she hadn’t wanted me to be, and her fumbling uncertainty hadn’t lasted long. It seemed to scare her at first, how strong she was (and how hungry), but when she’d seen that I wouldn’t laugh at her or shame her for it, she’d let go.

I pull her into me now, ignoring the slight twinge from a few new scrapes and bruises that she gave me. I feel her go soft, and when my hand moves between her legs to find her still warm and wanting she makes a little sound that makes me grip her harder, and then she’s rolling over and under me again, the taste of her sun-kissed skin filling me, her mouth against my neck and her fingers moving lower as I guide them to just the right place and rhythm, and then I’m gasping and shuddering much quicker than I thought I would, and she’s smiling down at me, clearly pleased with herself, and I’m glad that it’s a gift for both of us.

At some point she starts rocking back and forth and I can tell that the visions are overwhelming her again, but she focuses on something and her breathing slows. She looks tired, but not exhausted.

“You were right,” she says. “This…” she gestures between us “does make it quiet for a while.”

I smile. “Probably better for your health than getting drunk all the time, too. You should do it more. With whoever you want.”

She’s silent for a while. “I’ve seen myself with him,” she says quietly. “The one…he said I was his mate. It’s not certain…none of what I see is, I don’t think, but it seems likely.”

I grit my teeth. “You don’t have to accept a mating bond, you know.”

“I don’t?”

“No. Especially not with someone like him.”

She shakes her head and stands up, pulling on her trousers. “So many things I wish I couldn’t see.”

I watch her get dressed and idly wonder if I’ll ever see her like this again. I certainly wouldn’t mind—more than wouldn’t mind, might as well not delude myself—but maybe she’s gotten what she needed from me.

“Did you see this?” I ask her, unable to stop myself.

She holds my gaze as she puts on her tunic. “No,” she says. “Maybe that’s why I wanted it.”

She turns her back to me. I can tell that she wants to leave, but I imagine the mortal part of her needs for all of this to mean something, and she’s wondering what to say. I try to make it easier for her.

“You can go, girl, I won’t be hurt if—“

She comes back to the bed and kisses me slowly, then wraps her arms around me and holds me tight against her, murmuring something that sounds like “thank you” in my ear.