JJ

“You know we don’t have to do this.”

“I know that,” Elain snapped back, even as she cast another apprehensive glance below. She added stubbornly, “I want to.”

Lucien suppressed a smile as he watched Elain mutter under her breath to hype herself up. The sun beat down on them from above, its harsh heat radiated in the air in visible squiggly lines.

“Ok ok, we should do this before the ground barbecues our feet alive.” Elain told him, bouncing on the balls of her feet but not moving closer to the cliff edge.

That was the third time she made the declaration. Lucien decided that it should be the final one and stepped just behind her. One hand skirted around her waist and left feather-like caresses on her skin, his mouth a hair’s breadth away from the shell of her ear. He whispered, “Should I make it easier for you?”

Her heartbeat which had already been elevated, picked up further. “I’m serious about this, Lucien.” She complained half-heartedly.

He replied primly, “So am I.” His hand continued its searing administrations. “And I think you just need a little distraction. You know, just to keep your thoughts at bay.”

Slowly but surely, he felt Elain giving in and melting into his touch. “Oh yeah?”

Lucien smiled against her ear. He breathed, teeth scrapping against the skin, “yeah.” He nudged her forward. “Ready?”

“Not really.” She admitted, her voice still breathy.

He simply chuckled. “Too bad.” The hand on her waist moved swiftly to grab her hand. “Just keep your legs straight on the way down.” And with that, he flung the both of them off the edge and careening towards the sea paved by a wave of screams.

SPLASH!

The impact of the cold water on his skin was a stark relief but there was no chance to relish in it. Not when a sharp spike of fear traversed the bond. Like the bond that tethered them, Lucien tugged on their joined hands and pulled Elain into his chest, arm moving to wrap around her waist securely.

“It’s ok, Elain. You’re safe, you’re safe.” He murmured assurances once he kicked them back to the surface. His powerful legs treading the water strongly enough to keep the two of them afloat.

A second pair of legs had soon joined his in treading the water. A sense of immense relief replaced the presence of fear in their bond. Next to him, Elain released a shuddering laugh.

“I did it!”

Lucien laughed and planted a wet kiss at her temple. “You did it.”

With the snorkeling goggles Lucien pulled from the aether, the two mates explored the surrounding waters, admiring the expansive coral reefs and swimming fishes.

“That was beautiful.” Gushed Elain as they made their way back to the nearby beach. With streams of teal reflected on her, messy wet hair and rivulets running down a bathing suit that was simply too enticing, An incomparable view, he thought.

“Beautiful,” he agreed anyway. His arms found its natural place — snaked around Elain’s waist. “Absolutely,” he pulled her onto his lap, “beautiful,” and licked the sea water off her neck.

“Lucien!” She giggled as she lazily pushed him away. He held her firmly in his arms, reminiscent of a promise to never let go.

Sitting here on the pristine beaches of Bharat, the first leg of their honeymoon around the continent, Lucien’s chest felt all too tight. As if it could burst from all the happiness contained within.

“What?” Elain asked with a lazy smile.

He shook his head. There was no need to when she could feel his emotions announcing themselves loudly down the bond anyway.

“Just thank you.”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you,” he repeated, the words felt solely inadequate to express all that he felt. “Thank you for surviving all those years ago.”

“Lucien…” Elain trailed off as silver lined her eyes. She leaned in, close enough for Lucien to count each individual eye lash. “I love you.”

Their lips slotted together, the action as natural as breathing by now. Lucien tightened his arms around her as her arms circled his neck, deepening the kiss. Tongue slid against tongue, lips against lips, exploratory hands ran wild.

When the kiss broke, Lucien drank in his mate before him; swollen lips, flushed cheeks and fully blown pupils. He might have to update his record of the most beautiful view he was blessed with.

“I love you, Elain. Now and forevermore.” He captured her lips in a chaste kiss. “Now,” he breathed, “shall we head back to our room?”

“Yes, let’s.” She agreed, her face split in a white smile.

How lucky was he that he got to protect this smile for the rest of his life?

Elain wakes as from a fever-dream - mouth dry, skin burning. She blinks the heavy haze of sleep away from her eyes to a world of frozen white.

Where am I?

First she feels the sharp jolt of frozen air pulled into her chest. A sensation that burns. The cold is like a tight string around her lungs. Next she feels the aching freeze of her toes. Her soft yellow silk slippers are dark with snowmelt and mud. Mindlessly, she marches.

Around her, everything is draped in glistening, pristine white. A low, muted sun barely pierces the veil of the hazy winter morning. She’s in a line - girls in layered cotton-white dresses just like hers trudging a path through soft, newly fallen snow. It has melted against their long skirts, the hems weighed down and stiff with frost.

How long have I been sleeping?

Elain stumbles forward, her mind racing in search of a memory - any memory. When had she last seen her sisters? When did she leave the safety of her room in the River House?

Is she being marched to her death? Panic starts churning heavy in her stomach.

There are no guards, no weapons. They are not needed. The eyes of the other women are glassy and empty. They trudge uphill, a treeline in black charcoal slashed up against the horizon.

The frozen ice over snow crunches beneath her feet, gives way, and she falls. Ice-cold needles stab her palms. Elain is jolted into a memory.

White light flashes in her skull. Another forest - a soft winter sun, setting early. She’s running. Running til she’s out of breath. Gravity grabbing hold, the cold wet of the forest floor seeping through her dress onto her knees. Her palms scraping on stone and sharp twigs, sinking into frozen mud.

A voice, so familiar. Anguished. Crying out, getting farther and farther away. Elain! Please don’t do this.

Elain!

A voice she knows - one that calls to her always, and she runs from all the same.

Elain blinks. Her hands burn. The procession of women, drunk on their enchantment, trudge past her, unseeing.

The cold is a terrifying thing. It brings back bad memories - frozen wind that found every crack in their cabin walls, running out of wood for the fire, her sister’s cold feet on the bed. Hungry stomachs and the howling of wolves throughout the long nights.

Elain breathes.

The line of women is ending. She gets up and trudges to the end, willing her frozen limbs just a little farther up the hill.

When they crest it, Elain gasps.

She is on the edge of the world.

It’s flat, frozen, and endless. A lake - a frozen lake as wide as the ocean. Frozen since the dawn of time. Nothing lives here, where winter never thaws and magic has woven its hold into the very rock and ore and bark of the trees. The ice is strong as magic, holding the entire landscape in its grip.

A name tugs at the back of her mind, like an itch. She cannot quite make out the letters.

But there is something against the endless white - there - red, bright fiery red, just a little ways across the snow, seated upon a throne.

A woman sits there, warm skin, a mane of lionesque hair, her shoulders draped in thick white furs.

A Queen. A friend. Her name -

Just out of reach.

And beside her throne, another one, dark as fresh coal.

Koschei.

The name is a whisper of malice in her mind. An echo of a vision of long ago.

Elain’s hot breath fogs in front of her as she pants. The sound of axes on wood echoes across the empty expanse. Flames burst high in front of her eyes and she startles. The smell of pine and smoke burning sap fill her nose as a tree is thrown onto a bonfire as tall as the townhouse.

It dances with magic - the flames too bright to look directly at, the heart burning black as night.

There is a threshold, a dome of heat from the burning Queen that radiates off her body. When Elain passes through it she takes a deep breath for the first time, the heat almost painful against her numb, frozen skin.

Although the circle round the thrones simmers like a warm summer day, the snow under her feet does not melt. The Queen’s face is blank and hard. She does not look at Elain.

The impotent frustration of flame that cannot melt a drop of snow, her magic held in the tight fist of the one sitting beside her.

Elain worries about being caught, but no one seems to pay much attention to the women in white, now thawing in the circle of magic flame. She takes the opportunity to look around. It is a strange, macabre party.

There is only silence, but some of the women begin dancing, a mindless, tuneless swaying. Tables are spread with food, but no one eats. A delicate coat of frost covers plump pheasant breasts, delicately iced cakes, bowls of fresh berries. It is a performance, like a sad memory.

Koschei is a god of death and he looks it, scowling and dead-still on his throne of ice. The skin on his face looks paper-thin and ice-burnt. His fingers are long and pointed, the tips blackened.

Her memory is still thick, as clear as rolling fog, but Elain thinks on a shudder that she remembers the feel of his frozen hands.

Think - she has to think.

Her mind scrambles back to whatever seems familiar. Her garden in the River House - everything drooping and browning in the late heat of summer. Dark stars overhead. Her eyes always looking for red in the crowds of Velaris. Finding nothing.

A cold bath with the moon watching from her window. Waking from a vision, shivering and weak. The bite of autumn’s chill creeping through the crack in her window. Dark wings, a request whispered in carpeted hallways.

The opening of a door - and eyes, one golden and one green, staring back at her.

The soundless swaying stops with a wave of Koschei’s grizzled hand. The milling entourage, witnesses in name only, have lined themselves up into an approximation of a crowd. Elain slips to the end of a line. She wonders the price of her freedom were she to be caught.

The Queen finally moves - turning her head as the death god stands.

She is all beauty and flame, but tempered, under lock and key. Like Koschei’s cold fist fixes around her neck. Her robes are snow white. She will not look at Elain. But even without her eyes, Elain feels the name bubble up from within, rising with the warming fires.

Vassa.

A vibrant laugh echoes in her memories, pinging against the walls of her skull.

Vassa - Vassa Vassa.

“You’re all right, little dove.” The voice is clear and warm, rising from her memories.

I remember you!

The visions are fast and bright behind her eyes.

Vassa coaxing her through one of her visions, her warm hand holding her tight like an anchor, Vassa laughing on the pink couch with Jurian - Jurian! - Vassa in the cold woods behind the manor, screaming in pain as she transforms -

But there’s someone else in that memory, laughter and joy in the sitting room, the fires always blazing bright, the pink couch, the old green carpet, the strangely lived-in squalor of a manor that made her feel warm, home -

Something tears in her chest - not the searing freeze of the air nor the iron-tang of magic but hot, insistent, burning.

Elain stops. Her head clears. She looks at Koschei, staring out into the lake, and follows his gaze -

Her lungs are pulled tight again. Red hair flashes, wisps in the frozen wind. A scar, deep purple against too-pale skin. Green and brown, the colors of autumn.

Lucien.

He shakes in the cold. The fabric of his fine shirt is ripped. Blood stains it, drying dark. He is bound, a mighty tree melted into the lake, his hands tied tightly behind it, his chest pulled tight against his open wound.

No.

Elain chokes on a sob. Her hands begin to shake. She takes one step out of line. Two.

A chill wind blows between them. It kicks up the fresh snow, revealing dark ice. It is eons old, older than the beginning of the earth, ice that will never melt.

And inside the glassy depths, there are faces, bodies, skulls - frozen crystal clear.

Koschei’s prisoners. His lake of souls.

The death god points a shaking hand.

Lucien lifts his head. His good eye is swollen, a lip split.

Bronze flashes in the pale sun as his gaze darts across the landscape - tripping over Vassa, the death god, the rows of enchanted servants knee-deep in snow.

Then his eye meets hers across the ice.

Something inside of Elain’s chest rips.

Hot and sure, her pulse beats hard, something powerful burning through the fog of her enchantment, memories rushing back like visions projected on her skull.

At the sight of her, Lucien’s face crumples.

Only one thing beats through her rapid pulse.

“Has Lucien left already?” Elain asked, her eyes focused on the body painting in her reflection rather than noticing the oh so slightly possessive expression she was making on her stupid face. The two faeries exchanged knowing looks between each other. Then Rue answered as she continued her painting up Elain’s ribcage,

“Yes. He is acting Highlord.” There was a brief pause before she continued. “He will take his role as the hunter.” Sya paused her weaving when Elain angled her head towards Rue.

“The hunter?” Her voice was laced with confusion. Lucien hadn’t mentioned anything about that. Rue didn’t look up from where she was painting, keeping focus on the delicate intricacies of this particular vine.

“Yes my lady, it is the highest honor. He will hunt the stag for the great rite, and then he will hunt and pursue his maiden.” Elain stopped moving entirely, her body so still that Rue looked concerned at the lack of seeing any sign of breathing. Something cold and dreadful coursed through her body, sinking down into the pit of her stomach. She felt a chill climb up her spine, tendrils of icy rage at the thought of him seeking out another. Not directed at him, but at some vague feminine figure that dare touch what belonged to her. She could hear her pulse, louder than any of the drums outside— and the chant. Over and over again.