#these two

* * *

The fox laid down at the entrance of the cave. If you will not eat, then neither shall I, the fox said. We can die together, and no one will miss us.

* * *

Late afternoon sunlight streamed through the tall crystal windows and spilled onto the long mahogany dining table. It shone like fire on Tamlin’s golden hair as he sat at the head, hands folded, and head bowed. If Lucien didn’t know better, he would think that the High Lord was praying over his untouched meal… but he did know better.

Lucien took a deep breath and gripped the pommel of his sword. “Alis said I’d find you here,” he declared as he strode into the otherwise empty dining hall.

Tamlin lifted his head as Lucien approached. “Here I am,” he said, not quite meeting Lucien’s gaze.

The emeralds in his gold oak leaf mask winked like dewdrops in a sunrise. The last sunrise Lucien would ever see…

He tore his gaze away to glance at the uneaten food, the undrunk wine. “Not hungry for your last meal?” he said wryly.

Tamlin half-smiled, then bowed his head once more.

Lucien sat in his usual place, at Tamlin’s right hand. He wanted to say something, but for once, words failed him.

It was Tamlin who broke the silence. “She’ll be here soon,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about Feyre.

No, Feyre had been sent home three days earlier, at Tamlin’s behest.

Lucien rubbed at his scarred cheek and sighed as his fingers hit the edge of his bronze fox mask. “I wish…” he began, but there were so many things he wished for, he couldn’t name them all.

“I’m sorry,” Tamlin said suddenly.

“For what?”

“For insulting Amarantha,” Tamlin said. “For sending you to clean up my mess. If it hadn’t been for me—”

“Don’t talk like that,” Lucien chided, and Tamlin’s lips pursed. “Amarantha deserved what she got, and I went Under the Mountain willingly. You didn’t force me.”

“She took your eye,” Tamlin said tightly, without looking at him.

“And you gave me a new one,” Lucien argued. “I’ll always be grateful to you for that,” he added more gently, and laid his hand over Tamlin’s folded ones, and squeezed.

Tamlin looked up and met his gaze at last. “You don’t hate me, then?”

Lucien smiled, but it was a sad smile. “No,” he said softly. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Tamlin’s mouth softened into what could have been a smile, but it didn’t last.

“I wish…” Lucien said again, then swallowed. “I wish it could have been me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wish I was the one who could break your spell,” Lucien said, rubbing his thumb across Tamlin’s knuckles. “It certainly wouldn’t have taken seven times seven years. More like seven times seven seconds.”

Tamlin chuckled at that.

“I always wondered why she chose that number,” Lucien mused. “I think it’s because she wanted to taunt me. Me, the seventh son, and all that.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Tamlin said quietly.

After all, Amarantha’s curse specified that it could only be broken by a human female who hated faeries. Lucien, a High Fae male who already loved the High Lord and shared his bed, could do nothing but stand back and wait for a human to show up and say what he’d felt all along.

Lucien started to take his hand back, but Tamlin turned his hand over and gripped Lucien’s fingers. His heart fluttered like an autumn leaf on a warm breeze to be touched this way. It was the closest Tamlin had come to acknowledging their partnership since Feyre came… and went.

“Do you think I was a fool to send her back?” Tamlin asked him.

“It’s a bit late to be asking that, isn’t it?” Lucien tried to joke.

“I mean it. Do you think I was wrong to send her away?”

Lucien took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said honestly.

“Do you know why I did?”

“Yes,” Lucien said again.

“Why, then?”

Lucien blinked. “Because you were afraid she wouldn’t say it in time. I love you.”

With his free hand, Tamlin touched the edge of his mask. It remained firmly in place. Even though he knew it would, Lucien’s heart sunk to see it.

“That’s not why,” Tamlin said, sliding his plate of food aside. He took both of Lucien’s hands in his, which made Lucien’s breath catch, just a little.

Tamlin looked at him with eyes as green as the Spring Court itself; greener, even.

“Because I couldn’t protect her,” he said quietly. “Because I couldn’t protect you.”

“Tam,” Lucien said softly.

The sun began to set, staining the skies a bloody red.

Tamlin lowered his gaze and ran his thumbs over the backs of Lucien’s hands. “I wish it could have been you, too,” he whispered.

Lucien swallowed hard. “I know it won’t make a difference now, but… I just wanted you to know: I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

Tamlin met his gaze. “Even now?”

“Especially now,” Lucien said, shifting closer. “If I could, I’d break the spell right before Amarantha arrives and happily send her back to that shit-hole she crawled out of.”

The windows shattered inward, showering them in shards of blood-tinted glass.

“Fuck,” Lucien snarled, leaping to his feet.

He drew his sword and faced the dining hall door, determined to guard his High Lord to the last breath.

Tamlin touched his arm and made him lower his sword.

“Don’t,” Tamlin warned. “It’s what She wants.”

So Lucien was forced to watch as Amarantha’s horde of goblins swarmed the manor, smashing vases of Tamlin’s flowers, tearing down paintings, and shredding the curtains.

It wasn’t until the Attor came that Lucien’s sword tip left the floor.

Tamlin gripped his arm. “Don’t give them the satisfaction,” he muttered.

The Attor bent down to leer at them with its nightmare face and needle teeth. “Well well well. If it isn’t the fox and the wolf,” the bat faerie sneered.

Lucien’s lip curled. “It’s the Wolf and the Fox,” he countered. “Show my High Lord some respect, you overgrown pest.”

The Attor’s gray teeth snapped a hands-breadth from Lucien’s masked nose, but Tamlin kept his hand on Lucien’s arm, steadying him.

“Now, now,” a female crooned from behind them. “Is that any way to treat our new guests?”

The Attor stepped back to spread its leathery wings and gave a low bow. “No, my queen,” it said humbly.

Although Amarantha would never be queen in Lucien’s eyes, she certainly dressed like one. Her blood-red hair was plaited around a spiked, golden crown. A heavily embroidered drop-shoulder gown exposed her white throat and pale shoulders. The fingerbone fastened to the fine gold chain around her neck plunged into her exposed cleavage. She wore no other jewelry but the ring on her finger, but Lucien avoided looking at that, because it would have looked right back.

Amarantha’s eyes were beetle-black and unblinking as she turned her attention to Tamlin. They could not have been more opposite to one another; not only in their manner, but in their dress. His gentle green tunic was a stark contrast to her own crimson gown, a shade so deep it was nearly black. Her full skirts rustled over tinkling glass as she stepped closer.

Lucien hoped she got a sliver between her toes.

With the Attor at her back, she paused and held out her hand, tipped with glittering black talons.

“Come, my love. It’s time to take you home,” she purred.

Lucien’s grip tightened on his sword. “He is home,” he said sternly.

The Attor hissed, but the so-called queen merely smiled.

“Not anymore,” she said lightly. “Or have you already forgotten our little agreement?”

“His curse, you mean,” Lucien spat.

“Shh,” Tamlin warned as the Attor cracked its knuckles.

Amarantha tilted her head. “Perhaps I should have taken your tongue instead of your eye,” she mused. “I still can, you know.”

Lucien’s jaw tightened, and his scar prickled.

“You will not touch him,” Tamlin growled.

“No,” she said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. “Not unless he forces my hand.”

She turned her left hand over to examine the ring on her first finger. The ring with a human eye inside. Jurian’s eye. She hadn’t bothered to keep Lucien’s.

“I have shown mercy,” she said to the ring. “I have been patient.” Her sharp eyes flicked to Tamlin. “But my patience has reached its end.”

She gripped her skirts and started circling them. “Sunset, I said,” she told them coldly. Glass crunched beneath her heels. “Seven times seven years, I said. And you agreed.”

“I did,” Tamlin said flatly.

Amarantha stopped and gestured to the purple sky beyond the shattered windows. “Where, then, is the one who would profess to love you?”

Tamlin’s grip tightened on Lucien’s arm, silencing him.

“She doesn’t exist,” Tamlin said flatly.

Amarantha’s ruby lips curved into a knowing smirk. “Really?” she purred, keeping her eyes locked on Tamlin’s masked face. “Oh, Rhysand,” she called out.

Lucien’s heart sunk like the sun as Rhysand, High Lord of Night, casually strode forward with his hands in his pockets.

Tamlin growled in his throat, deep and low.

“Yes, my flower?” Rhysand said, coming to stand beside her. Her.

For he was no longer Tamlin’s former lover, but Amarantha’s Whore Under the Mountain.

Without blinking, Amarantha said, “You said there was a girl here. Where is she?”

Rhysand’s violet eyes flicked to Tamlin. “Knowing Tam,” he began, mocking him with his pet name, “he sent her away for safekeeping. She won’t be a threat.”

“That’s not what I asked,” Amarantha said coolly. “I said: Where. Is. She?”

“Across the Wall,” Tamlin said before Rhysand could speak again. “You’ll never find her.”

“I thought she didn’t exist,” Amarantha taunted.

“She doesn’t,” Lucien interjected. “What Rhysand failed to mention is that she was my betrothed. Tam did me a favor by sending her away.”

“Then we must reunite the two of you as soon as possible,” Amarantha said brightly, and clapped her hands. “Attor,” she told the beast, “bring me Lucien’s lover. We can’t have her miss the wedding.”

“What wedding?” Lucien asked as the Attor bowed low.

“My wedding,” she said, grinning sharply.

“But not mine,” Tamlin said, which made her smile vanish.

“What did you say?” she demanded, and stalked closer.

Tamlin’s throat bobbed. “I agreed to come Under the Mountain with you. I never agreed to marry you.”

Amarantha stopped and stared at him, speechless, as she remembered the terms of her own curse.

Lucien wanted to laugh, but he didn’t dare. Tamlin was right, though.

She may have turned his heart to stone, but that didn’t mean his heart was hers. It never was, and it never would be.

“You will submit to me,” she began, but Tamlin shook his head.

“No. You have Rhysand for that,” he said, which made Rhysand scowl. “Besides, that was not part of our bargain. I will go Under the Mountain with you, but no further. You cannot force me into your bed.”

She smiled again and stepped forward. “I will break you,” she said sweetly. “I will make you beg.”

Lucien lifted his sword, blocking her from his High Lord. “You can try,” he growled.

The Attor snarled, but Amarantha held up her hand. Her glittering eyes flicked from the blade to his face. “I see now that you’re only going to be a hindrance.”

Suddenly her taloned hand was wrapped around his fox mask, blinding him, squeezing him.

He gasped as her nails—no, the bronze edges—began cutting into his flesh.

“Amarantha, don’t!” Tamlin said, panicked.

She ignored him. “I could rip this mask from your face right now, and half your skin with it,” she mused. “Or I could fold it in two with you inside. I wonder how long you’d last.”

Sweat trickled down the back of Lucien’s neck as he tried to control his breathing.

“Or,” she paused. “I could give you the least that you deserve. A single drop of magic. I think my love would like that better. I can be merciful, you know,” she said, and shoved him back.

Light blinded him as he fell… and fell… and fell.

Lucien woke to find himself, not Under the Mountain as he expected, but in a warm, sunlit room. He squinted against the bright light, against the ache in his good eye, and the phantom pain in his false one. It always pained him after such dreams, for it was indeed a dream.

“You’re finally awake,” said a distant voice.

Lucien scrubbed at his face and groaned. As his fingers slid over smooth and scarred skin, the memory of the bronze mask melted away. “Where am I?” he mumbled.

“You mean you don’t remember?”

Though his head throbbed, Lucien managed to prop himself up on one elbow to look around. Flowering vines sprouted through the floorboards and climbed up the walls. He could hear birdsong through the open window, and tasted hyacinths on the breeze. The rumpled sheets beneath him were made of silk, though faded and worn. Animal hair coated the curtains of the broad four-poster bed, and the covers on the other half of the mattress were coiled into some kind of nest.

The animal who made it, however, was not the animal he found. It wasn’t an animal at all. Not anymore.

Tamlin sat sprawled on a ripped velvet couch in a patch of sunshine, dressed in a loose, once-white shirt and torn trousers. His feet were bare, and his long, lank hair needed to be washed, badly. But he was himself again, even with the antlers still sprouting from his head.

“You,” Lucien said numbly.

“Me,” Tamlin replied evenly.

“You’re here,” Lucien said, still staring at his face. His unmasked, High Fae face…

Tamlin smiled a thin smile. “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked. “This is my house, and these are my chambers,” he said with a nod.

Lucien looked around. If he ignored the vines, he could just make out the rosy wallpaper underneath, and the velvet bed curtains were a familiar green underneath all that golden fur…

“I thought you might be more comfortable here than on the floor,” Tamlin continued.

As the sour memories of the night before threatened to resurface, Lucien shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Oh, Cauldron boil me,” he moaned.

Tamlin snorted. “You’re welcome,” he said dryly, and lifted a bottle of whiskey to his lips. Night Court whiskey.

Lucien tried to swallow as he watched him take a large swig. From the sound of its sloshing, the bottle was nearly gone. “How long was I out?” he managed.

“A few hours,” Tamlin rasped, and wiped the corner of his mouth with a clawed thumb. “You missed breakfast.”

Lucien grimaced at the thought of what Tamlin considered breakfast nowadays, since it usually involved blood and entrails… He lowered himself back onto the bed. “I’m not hungry,” he muttered.

Tamlin huffed a laugh as he swirled the bottle. “How’s your head?” he asked in a rather glib tone.

“Like I’ve got horns sprouting out of it,” Lucien complained, rubbing at his temples. “I don’t know you stand it.”

Tamlin snorted again. “They’re antlers, actually,” he said wryly. “But you get used to it, I suppose.”

“So you didn’t choose to look like that?”

“Like what?” Tamlin asked, suddenly annoyed.

“Like you belong to the forest instead of the manor.”

When Tamlin didn’t answer, Lucien tried to meet his gaze, but he looked away. “I don’t know where I belong,” he muttered, then lifted the bottle for another swig.

You belong with me, Lucien wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Not after everything that had happened.

Besides, he didn’t know where he belonged, either. His heart was torn in four places: The Night Court, the Autumn Court, the Spring Court, and the Mortal Lands. If he could change shape, he’d probably have horns, too, and a tail.

“Well, it’s good to see you,” Lucien said instead. “Even with the horns. Antlers.”

Tamlin sighed and rested the bottle on his bent knee. “Well, I couldn’t exactly drink this with two paws, now, could I?” he said wryly.

Lucien barked a laugh, then clutched at his aching head. “Ow.”

He could hear the smile in Tamlin’s voice when he asked, “Can I get you a saucer?”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Tamlin chuckled as he watched Lucien writhe in pain. “You know, you never did finish your story,” he remarked.

“My story,” Lucien repeated flatly, cursing whiskey makers and glass blowers alike.

“About Clever Fox,” Tamlin prompted.

Lucien scrubbed at his face, remembering. “Oh, yes,” he sighed. “Clever Fox, and his friend, Grumpy Wolf.”

“Grumpy?” Tamlin growled.

Lucien smiled to himself. “Yes, Grumpy,” he insisted. “You have to admit that you’re not the most charming host.”

“Not like Rhys,” Tamlin said dryly.

Lucien’s wry smile faded as he remembered his conversation with Rhysand the night before, at what he’d overheard. His stomach turned at the memory of Elain’s tears, how she’d closed her bedroom door the same way she’d closed the earring box, and how she smiled at Azriel when she thought Lucien wasn’t looking.

Nothing happened.

Lucien groaned aloud. “I’ll never understand what you saw in him,” he complained.

Tamlin let out a heavy sigh. “It’s complicated,” he began, but Lucien cut him off.

“Please. Don’t try. I’m tired of that self-righteous bat.”

Tamlin snorted. “And yet you brought back his whiskey,” he said, tilting the bottle.

“It was a gift,” Lucien said bitterly. “The only one they ever thought to give me. After everything I’ve done.”

Tamlin huffed a sardonic laugh and lifted the bottle for another drink. “It seems that Clever Fox is not so clever after all,” he remarked.

“But Wolf’s teeth are as sharp as ever,” Lucien snapped.

Tamlin paused with the bottle against his lips, and Lucien quickly apologized.

“I didn’t mean that,” he said, sitting up. “You’re right. I betrayed you and I got exactly what I deserved: Nothing.”

Tamlin slowly licked his lips without drinking and lowered the whiskey to the couch. “I wouldn’t call this nothing,” he said quietly, looking only at the bottle.

“It’s worse than nothing,” Lucien said bitterly. “It’s not even very good whiskey.”

Tamlin’s mouth twitched. “Are you saying that the Spring Court’s is better?”

“Please. The Autumn Court makes the best and you know it.”

Tamlin grinned. Though there was a hint of fang, it was still a true smile, and Lucien realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen it.

“I am sorry,” Lucien said again, quietly.

Tamlin’s smile faded. “You should be,” he said, then nodded at him. “You’re not even wearing boots.”

Lucien’s head jerked back in surprise, then he looked down at his bare feet. With a groan, he remembered drunkenly pulling them off at the bottom of the stairs. At least he hadn’t kicked them off in the Sidra. “You’re one to talk,” he pointed out. “Where are your boots, High Lord?”

“Wolves don’t wear boots,” Tamlin countered. “Especially grumpy ones.”

Lucien snorted, then rubbed at his pounding forehead. “Oh, gods. We are a sorry lot, aren’t we?” he said tiredly, and ran a hand over his hair.

“I’ve known that for a long time,” Tamlin replied.

Lucien considered this as he rubbed at his stiff neck, then shook his head and chuckled.

“What?” Tamlin asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Lucien said, sighing. “Just that the only thing that could make you change back was a bottle of bad whiskey, that’s all.”

Tamlin’s eyes narrowed.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Lucien added hurriedly. “I’m glad you’re back, but you have to admit that it’s kind of funny.”

“Funny,” Tamlin repeated.

“Yes, funny,” Lucien said, smirking as Tamlin stood. “Think about it. They’ll be writing songs about this day for centuries to come. ‘No gold, no jewels could tempt the High Beastie. The only thing he wanted was a bottle of bad whisk—ey.’”

Lucien jerked as Tamlin upended the rest of the bottle over his head. There wasn’t much, but it was enough to shut him up. With whiskey dripping from his nose and down his shirt, Lucien squeezed his good eye shut as his metallic eye whirred up at the High Lord.

Tamlin smiled as he tossed the now-empty bottle onto the bed. “You’re right. It is funny.”

Lucien blew the whiskey from his lips in answer, then wiped the rest from his face.

Tamlin chuckled, then jerked his head at the next room. “Come on. I’ll draw you a bath,” he said, walking away.

Lucien stared after him in amazement. “You’re giving me a bath?”

Tamlin paused in the bathing room doorway. “I’m filling up the tub,” he said emphatically. “What happens after that is entirely up to you.”

Lucien wiped his wet hands on his jacket. “You don’t have to do that.”

Tamlin gave him a look. “Have you smelled yourself?”

Lucien lifted his collar to his nose and sniffed, then grimaced.

Tamlin snorted. “Exactly.”

As he turned to go, Lucien called out, “Tam, wait.” When he paused, expectantly, Lucien grinned. “Does this mean you liked my poem?”

Tamlin rolled his eyes, but Lucien thought he smiled as he disappeared into the bathing room.

Lucien chuckled, then mused aloud, “There once a High Lord of Spring…”

If Tamlin answered—swearing, probably—the squeak of faucets and rush of bathwater drowned it out.

Lucien smiled to himself, then swung his feet over the side of the bed and followed.

* * *

The wolf was silent for a long while. I would miss you, he said at last.

So would I, said the fox.