We all love a good Vampire AU (I know I do) and I thought it would be a fitting twist on the "heartbeat" prompt this week! Stay tuned for more art from me this week and make sure you check out @elucienweekofficial for tons more art, moodboards, playlists, fanfiction, etc!!
“When I sleep,” she murmured, “I can hear your heart beating through the stone.” She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer. “Can you hear mine?”
Day One - Heartbeat for @elucienweekofficial
Commissioned from somethingclairee for me
Please don’t use for AI or hate content. Please respect the artist.
Huge shout out to the organizers of @elucienweekofficial. I haven't participated much in the preamble but it was fun to follow along. The sheer effort and care put into this was staggering. You guys rock.
On the eve of battle Lucien wakes up to find himself tied up and taken prisoner by Elain. He begrudgingly follows her on a wild goose chase through the Middle. He doesn't know why he's there, or what she wants from him, considering she has spent the last six months ignoring him completely, he assumes the worst. Can Elain convince Lucien to have faith in her when...they can't speak or make a sound the entire journey?
Chapter One - Heartbeat
Preview:
A savage part of him mused that perhaps some of the gossip that the middle Archeron was a bit of a ditz could be true. He could not reconcile why she would be flower picking in the most lawless, dangerous land in all of Prythian.
The self made, independent, Elain Archeron is happy with her life.
She has a newly acquired house, a stable job, and a boyfriend. She is happy in her “living alone era”. At least that is what she tells herself as she holds tight to the strange warmth that greets her whenever she feels most alone… which is most nights.
The last thing she expects is a ghost with hair like a living flame and alluring russet eyes trapped within its walls. So, what is she to do when he appears, as cunning as a fox, to upturn her life?
Thank you @zenkindoflove , @gooseyjossip , and @chaol-apologist for all your help on this fic! You are all so wonderful :)
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Elain Archeron/Lucien Vanserra
Characters: Elain Archeron, Lucien Vanserra
Additional Tags: Day One: Heartbeat, Mating Bond, POV Elain Archeron
Summary:
Lucien finally decides to confront Elain about their mating bond – only to discover she doesn’t even believe that it’s real!
What will it take to convince her otherwise?
Read here on AO3
@elucienweekofficial
Snippet below the cut...
“Elain, it’s been nearly three years,” he said finally. “Don’t you think it’s time you made a decision?”
“A decision about what?”
He sighed defeatedly. “About whether you’re going to reject the mating bond.”
She gave a laugh that sounded like tinkling bells, but he recognized it for what it was. A show. A courtier’s laugh.
“I really don’t see what’s so funny about –”
“You’re all obsessed with ‘mating bonds’,” Elain interrupted. “With whether I’ll accept or reject, whether I’m free to live my life or be forever tethered to a stranger. I can’t exist without judgement if I choose to flirt, or charm, or take a lover who doesn’t claim to be my mate.”
Take a lover? Claim? He felt a growl rumble deep in his chest at the suggestion, and hoped to the Mother she hadn’t heard it. He’d had a… sense, at Solstice, that there had been something – a flicker of desire for someone other than him. He’d tortured himself about it, never once imagining she might be acting out, some form of rebellion against her perceived entrapment.
“But I’m not about to play along with all this faerie nonsense, like my sisters do,” she continued, tilting her chin in the air. “I don’t have to reject something that isn’t real!”
He blinked, wondering for a moment if he’d misheard her.
“Not… real?”
“Not real,” she repeated, turning from him. “From my observations, I’ve deduced that mating bonds are a myth, perpetuated by the High Fae to lure poor unsuspecting wom– females into relationships with,” she flicked her eyes over him, “unscrupulous strangers.”
Strangers? Unscrupulous? A myth? An incredulous laugh spilled from him, but she remained stone-faced. She wasn’t joking.
Lucien shook his head in disbelief. Of course. Of course. Trust the Cauldron to give him a mate who wasn’t just reluctant to make a decision about the bond, but was in complete denial about its existence! Did she not face the same daily tortures as him? The same dull ache of longing when they weren’t near each other? The same ravenous urges when they were in close proximity like this?
Huge thanks to my betas, @chaol-apologist and @crazy-ache
how's one to know?
i'd meet you where the spirit meets the bones
~ ivy, taylor swift
Elain shivered, and despite herself, despite every reason why she had shied away from the male sprawled before her, she gingerly placed two fingers to his throat, where his pulse beat – a junction between life and death.
Elain seems perfectly content to ignore Lucien, the mating bond and the way the Inner Circle quietly but unmistakably sets her aside. But when Lucien falls suddenly, grievously ill on the Winter Solstice, hiding may no longer be an option. And when a visit to the Dawn Court - famed for its healing - seems imminent, can Elain find it in her to leave the Night Court for a foreign land and abandon all she has ever known for her mate's sake?
chapter 1: how's one to know
A mating bond was a privilege Lucien had never thought he would have. The Mother hadn’t exactly showered him with good fortune in four centuries, so why would she now?
For days, months, years after he’d lost Jesminda, the female who had upturned his life entirely without even a thought, he had looked to the heavens and asked why. Begged for the reason why she had been ripped from him. None had come and Lucien had ascertained that it was his misfortune. Anyone he had touched had suffered: perhaps it was punishment for daring to have loved a lesser Faerie, for daring to find a better place in a court of spring meadows, for daring to think that his life could be something more. For daring to hope.
Alongside many other things, he had convinced himself that a mate was something he would never have. But that impossible realisation – that he had a mate – had dawned upon him in that earth-shattering moment as she had looked over her shoulder at him, brown eyes wide, brimming with tears that reflected the expanse of her sorrow and shock. As if she too had felt the shifting in the axis of the world. Shifting to her.
Every inch of her was drenched. She shivered in the eerie light that was cast over her. She drew a breath in, gaze flicking away from him, fear lighting in her beautiful eyes at the sight of him. He wouldn’t have blamed her. The scar she would have beheld when she looked into his face, rippling down one side of his face and his eye, was gruesome enough to scare anyone away.
Why would she not be scared of him? This male that had brought nothing but pain to those he had loved. Even to those he had only brushed past, he had sentenced them to a horrible plight.
His hands slackened at his sides as Lucien realised what he would undoubtedly condemn this female to as well. His throat tightened with unspeakable emotion as he whispered, “You’re my mate.”
His mate though she was, she had shown no true interest in him. Elain – for that was her name – had drawn away from him whenever Lucien had dared to move closer: the light in her eyes dimmed when she saw him. He turned away whenever he saw that little bit of happiness in her flicker, like a candle left guttering near an open window.
He supposed it was an appropriate reaction to him, this male who had been there during the darkest moments of her life and had not lifted a finger to stop it until the ordeal was over. Lucien cursed himself for it. Blamed himself every day for not having stopped it by throwing himself in the way of his mate and the Cauldron.
Perhaps it would have been better that way, he mused, running a hand through his tangled hair, as he exited his small room at the townhouse to find a chamberpot. There had not been one in his own chamber – a foresight on Feyre and Rhysand’s part. They know too, of Elain’s disinterest in me. They do not truly want me here, where I could disturb her or shatter the happiness she has regained.
He looked down at his calloused hands.
It was selfish, he knew, to wish to be a part of her happiness. And Lucien was incredibly, unbearably selfish.
Soft echoes of a future, conjured by his sleep-addled mind, came to him, stroking gentle fingers over his mind. He dreamed each night, of cradling her against his chest, of threading his fingers through hers and showing her the world. He dreamt of loving her outwardly, beyond the one-sided glances that she was sure to look away from. He dreamt of that and being loved back too, completely and wholly. He dreamt of lying together in a meadow of autumn and not being able to breathe when he beheld her doe-like eyes latched onto his.
In short, he dreamt of things that could never come real. His own skin felt suffocating today, the bond tied to his rib stretched taut. Breathing out of his nose, he willed his power not to heat his skin, as it always did in the moments after sleep, when he was not conscious enough to control it.
And still the bond was stretched tight, that golden thread tugging him forward. Elain was not doing this, he knew, not just because of the feeling of the bond – different to the time he had tugged it before – but because she had not even the slightest sliver of interest in him. Regardless, Lucien followed the pull. As he always would do, until she told him to cease. And even then, he would look on her from far away, memorising and folding that smile she showed to all but him into his memory, like a trinket or memento for what could have been.
The bond led him to a standstill near a veranda where he could look into the chamber below him. When he first saw her, he thought he was still dreaming, but with that sweet, impossible dream swapped out for heinous nightmare. One just as impossible as–
Lucien’s breath caught like it always did in her presence. His mate, his lovely, yet fierce mate. But next to her… the shadowsinger conversed in some silent language with her with his eyes.
Elain’s lips were slightly parted, as if she too could hardly believe what was happening. Azriel drew the chain around her neck, and Lucien did not miss the brush of his fingers against the nape of her neck. He did not miss Elain’s shiver either.
He should go inside. If only to be spared from the consequences of what would inevitably happen next. Yet some force, or his own torturing will, he did not know, kept him rooted to the spot, waiting.
Elain tilted her head up to shadowsinger’s, golden curls falling down with her and nestling against her shoulder. The shadowsinger paused, still as the spy that he was for a moment, until he drew closer to her, placing a scarred hand on her chin. To tilt it up, to claim her as his…
Lucien wanted to vomit down the veranda. Just as Elain's eyes fluttered closed, Lucien turned away.
Lucien Vanserra turned his back on his mate and the shadowsinger she was in love with.
He could bear it, could he not? If it meant warranting her happiness, Lucien would go to the ends of the earth itself.
It was that thought that trailed him to his bedroom, made him slam the door closed, as violently as the beast he had seen Tamlin be. Lucien could still feel the bond, a shimmering thread inside of him that connected him to his mate, tying their very souls together.
What was the purpose of it now? It would only hinder her, now that she had a lover – one that was not him – to dote upon. Vaguely, Lucien recalled the skipping ropes he had played with in childhood, in the Forest House.
Lucien gave a bitter laugh and ran his hand over his face, feeling the scar that ran across one side of it. The bond was no more than a child’s skipping rope now.
What was the purpose of it? Of it all? he asked silently, but no answer came. It never did.
He squeezed his eyes shut, so tight that he saw splatters of colour, like those he had seen as Amarantha had plucked out one eye and held it to the other, his lifeblood trickling down her elbow. It had glared scarlet against the paleness of her bare arm. A myriad of colours had flickered across his vision, like his mind could not begin to process that absence of space and colour, or the dark hollow that it had left behind.
Much like the empty heart within him now. The bond's glimmer, that he could always glimpse from the corner of his eye, had dulled into a half-hearted opacity. It knew; it knew a lost cause when it saw one. It might not have been rejected outright, but it was as good as, frayed and shredded down its centre. A tapestry that life had unseamed.
Lucien couldn't bear to see that worn thread, or to be the single stitch that clung on to fruitless hopes and dreams.
Why?
An overwhelming sadness rose to meet him, a cresting wave.
Why give this and snatch it away?
Its waves lapped at his feet, tugging him down to the ocean bed. And Lucien let it drag him down into the murky darkness.
An illusory bond, just a dream – that was all it was.
Lucien laid his head on the unforgiving surface, watching the walls of the room as though he were underwater, and gazing upward at what little light managed to penetrate the surface. He did not want to see it anymore, a flickering image of what could have been – and was not. So Lucien closed his eyes and let the waters that rushed and bubbled past him coax him into slumber.
This was when he was most useful to the world.
When he was nothing at all.
-
Elain tried to ignore the heartbeat that overlapped with hers, the steady rhythm that she had come to know so intimately: like ropes braided inextricably together. It fluttered irregularly in the bird's cage of her chest as she took the stairs up to her bedroom, two at a time. She trod on her pink dress, the hem not yet stained by the dirt of her garden, and bit her mouth to suppress the curse that threatened to spill out.
Unladylike, the voice of her grandmamma whispered, the enunciated words the very embodiment of decorum. And Elain usually let it infiltrate her mind: she usually allowed it to fill any crevice that bond might instead overtake. So she let the gaps and doubts there bloom with meadowsweet flowers, their small, white petals clustered close together, as if unwilling to relinquish the comfort of their kin. Weed-like, the flowers crept along her mind to blot out the black with sickeningly perfect white.
Pure and untainted: those were the descriptors for meadowsweet that Elain had had drilled into her. But more harrowing was the final meaning.
That of uselessness.
The flowers might as well have been weeds, for how quickly they multiplied and how little they returned. Its petals could not be ingested, or crushed into a poultice, or made to look pretty enough to capture the attention of any admirer. Anyone running their eyes along meadowsweet would acknowledge its beauty, surely enough, but it was the sort of fleeting, conventional beauty that did not imprint itself on the mind. Insignificant, like a sprout crushed beneath unforgiving boots. Forgettable.
(Elain knew quite well what meadowsweet would look like were it human. Or Fae.)
A mistake.
Elain's fingers curled around the handrail, her fingernails unwittingly catching in the hard wood and splintering them.
She had been adept enough at forgetting it all – until late. In her Cauldron-given mate's presence, the delicate scent of meadowsweet faded away, exposing those gaping holes that she wished she could be rid of.
A mistake.
When he was here, his presence constricting the pressure around her ribs, the wrongness of it all felt clearer. Like there was a golden thread, imbued with the light of the sun, tugging her away from that dimly lit, shadow-covered place; tugging her gently toward him. It was perhaps what had made her lean into Azriel's scarred hand: if she could cloak herself within shadows, like the shadowsinger so often did, maybe that would negate the golden string knotted in her chest. But it had stayed there, glimmering even brighter in the dull faelight, and so Elain's eyes had fluttered shut. Would that blessed darkness grant her some reprieve from the bond's incessant pulsations, or the way it flickered in and out of her vision, like a voyager's mirage? But, no, it had not; she had never been able to evade it, even in sleep, so it had burned, like a lantern in the night, behind her eyelids.
It lingered still, an unwanted visitor taking residence in her, as she entered her room and promptly found a place in the very corner of the room, on the floor. The furthest point in her room from her mate, where the bond's whetted edge dulled, ever so slightly.
Elain drew her knees up to her chest. Her heartbeat beat an erratic rhythm, even through her thick dress, made for the cold winters of the Night Court. One beat – and then a pause of two.
It was still jarring, sometimes, to feel the sluggish rhythm of it in her chest: her human heart had pounded twice as fast. When she was human, she had had a brief, momentary lifespan ahead of it, one that would have burned bright as a star before it was promptly extinguished by the sands of time. But, now… she beheld aeons ahead of her, aeons of not living her life to the fullest, but constructing a night-black screen between her and anything that could truly make her feel. All for fear that it might consume her whole.
One beat. A pause of two.
She listened to it for a while, a sense of melancholy and dread overtaking her limbs as she huddled closer to the wall. Her cheek rested against her bare knee, seeping chill into her flesh.
Lovely, Grandmamma had called her, but Elain did not feel one bit of it now, nothing but a darkly familiar sense of loneliness that permeated her bones like an ancient fog. Had her grandmother realised it, the similarity between the words – lovely and lonely? The words were identical, save for the sharp, regal edges of the 'v' that had been twisted into the hollowed archway of the 'n'. A stone archway beneath which Elain had lain, her hopes quenched and humanity stripped, since she had emerged from the Cauldron. When she gazed up at the unforgiving, solid rock above, no sparse light gleamed through the cracked stone. The sounds of the upper world rushed past her, murmurs torn away by the howling wind. That was, except for the warm vitality of his heartbeat, beating through the stone. For a while, it had been only during slumber that she could hear it, but when he had left, it had extended to her waking moments too.
Elain straightened.
There was no longer any accompanying heartbeat to hers.
Her own heart stilled in her chest, leaving behind unending silence.
Lucien.
Every sense she possessed turned acute, driven by some primal instinct – a traitor to her own thoughts and self.
Lucien. Find him, help him, save him.
Elain rose, already halfway to the door, bare feet be damned. They were quiet against the plush carpet of her room as she twisted the doorknob open and slipped out. Only when she was halfway across the tiled corridors, chandelier swaying above her and casting shifting shadows over the hallway, did she realise that she was running. Like she had not done in a long, long time.
He could be dead.
There was no divide between her and him, his silence and her panic. Elain lost her balance, nearly cracking her nose on the wall. She flung an arm against the stone wall. In the absence of sound, or her feet scraping over tile, the frantic hammering of her heart was stark. But solitary and utterly alone, without his steady, constant heartbeat overlaying it.
She swallowed down the agony that branded her throat like a searing flame. Squaring her shoulders, she pushed back from the cool bricks of the wall and continued.
Elain, hair dishevelled, found herself in front of an ornate door, tucked in the corner of the town house. She allowed herself only a single moment of hesitation before she shoved the door open into Lucien's room. It gave in with a crack.
The room was cold: the night's breeze rushed in from the opened windows, freezing against her exposed skin. It rose goosebumps on her arms, but Elain did not notice. Her eyes sought only one thing – a certain lord of fire, whose very stillness made her bone chill. Her tension eased a little when she caught sight of that ever-so-familiar red hair.
But he was not awake. Lucien was slumped in the corner of his room, opposite to her preferred haunt, as if he, too, had been distancing himself from her. His head lay on the ground, red hair splayed on the wooden floors. Elain, quivering from head to toe, approached and kneeled down beside him, strangling a newborn fear at the sight of his lolled head.
"Lucien?" The word trembled in the space between them. Sacred. Powerful. But with no one to witness them, but her own wretched self. She had never once said it out loud to him. "Lucien?"
His eyelashes rested gently on his cheeks, casting inky shadows over them, like they were painted. Elain shivered, and despite herself, despite every reason why she had shied away from the male sprawled before her, she gingerly placed two fingers to his throat, where his pulse beat – a junction between life and death. Underneath the sheen of sweat on his neck, his skin was warm, like the gentle caress of summer sunshine. Against her own volition, the tightness in her spine slipped away.
His heartbeat was there, but faint, as though she were hearing it from underwater, with the seawater muffling the sound. Elain ignored the utter relief that the return of his weak heartbeat caused in her.
She had to find help – Feyre, perhaps, or the healer Madja.
Lucien was nothing to Elain: she had set that boundary, had she not? Then, why did she find herself tracing the scar, like ripples through pond-water in a meadow, down his cheek? Why was she putting the back of her hand on his forehead to feel the feverish skin underneath? Heat flared with her touch, sparks igniting at her fingertips, and Elain jumped away. Lucien, though still unconscious, shifted on the floor, Elain's fingers hovering over his scar.
Elain didn't know what to do. She never did. So she would make herself useful.
She got to her feet, and went to find her younger sister.
-
An hour later, Madja withdrew her hands from Lucien's chest, where they effused a soft, white glow. Elain watched, entranced, as it illuminated the room. She blinked a little at the sudden brightness, and as her eyes adjusted, it came into view. The disarray of his crumpled bedsheets; the drawn curtains that forbade light; the wallpaper that peeled to reveal a smattering of mould. Feyre and Rhys certainly hadn't given Lucien Velaris' best, that much was clear. Elain's spirits dipped a little at the thought.
The healer straightened from where she had crouched over Lucien, and turned her stare onto Elain. "How did you find him?"
"I felt it." How would she explain the sensation, like the carving of her soul from her mutilated chest? Elain put a hand to her heart, that still felt a little hollow without its accompanying beat. "Here."
Feyre's countenance softened with something like pity as she silently watched her. Elain felt her gaze on her like the night owl's intent focus on its prey.
Madja's eyebrows were furrowed, a crease forming between them. "I have never seen anything like this before." The words were a bucket of cold water emptied onto Elain. She shuddered. "He is not in any immediate danger… but I do not know what has trapped him here."
Madja's piercing eyes turned to her. "If anyone can sense if something is amiss, it’s a mate." Elain's stomach twisted. The very echo to the words she had said to Lucien so long ago, when Elain had been even further encased in that arch of stone than she was now. Her disapproving eyes lingered on Elain for a tad longer than they should have, and Elain hated her own self for baring that small, cowardly part of her who still preferred to shy away and hide herself, like anthers tucked inside rose petals.
"But he is alright?" Elain asked, loathing the tremor in her voice.
"Yes. But Cauldron knows what will happen if he stays there too long. " Madja's voice lowered to a whisper. "It is as if he is surviving, but not awake. Listening, but not responsive. In a deep, dreamless sleep. A trance."
Summary: As far as Elain knew, in all of her ten years of collected knowledge, she was the only person who frequented these woods. She'd never seen footprints before. Not ones this recent, not ones that the forest guided her to.
That curious sensation in her chest grew stronger. A stumbling beat. A beckoning.
Go, the rustling leaves called to her. Go see.
She had never seen him before, but Elain knew at once who he was. What he was.
A Vanserra.
Or: That time an eerie meet cute in the forest changed their lives
A contribution to @elucienweekofficial Day 1: Heartbeat.
Read on AO3 ・Series Masterlist
-
15 years earlier
The forest called to her again.
In her dreams, windows blew open in a gust of protest. Trees clawed at the glass, possessed with the intention of crawling inside to drag her from bed. Their murmurings pitched from a gentle whisper into a chant.
Elain. Come to us. Elain.
It usually wasn't this insistent.
She stirred from sleep, hair a tangled wreath upon her head as she peered into the dim room. From her bed, she could see a bright blob of moonlight waxing nearly to its peak. It passed behind a midnight cloud before blinking back into the sky, as though winking at her. By its silver light, she could see that the brass latch of her window was still firmly secured.
Wind howled on the other side of the glass, but the room was otherwise undisturbed.
Her heart, however, was not.
In her chest, there was the usual steady rhythm. One she didn't take much notice of on a regular day. But on that early morning, under the light of the knowing moon, it was joined by a restless pounding. The hail of a war drum. She pressed a hand to her chest, marveling at the peculiar sensation, the way it pulsed through every vein, hooking them as if to manipulate her body by its strings, to draw her from the bed.
Elain obeyed. She always did, when the forest called.
No one would be walking the halls of the temple at this hour, but Elain crept silently out her window even so. She enjoyed the thrill of jumping from the ledge to the wide tree branch, feeling the swoop in her stomach as it swayed beneath her weight. She knew she wouldn't fall. The same way she knew that if she angled her head to the right, she would catch the silhouette of a grey owl with its wings spread across the swelling moon. Its cry pierced the air, masking the sound of the leaves crunching under her feet as she dropped from the tree.
The forest told her these things. It had since the moment she was young enough to understand them. Before then, too.
Her tutors still spoke with a shudder at her habit of crawling towards the forest edge the second their backs were turned. They feared they would lose her to the mist, that she would disappear into the hazy underbrush and never return. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened.
Those woods are cursed, she'd been explained when she was older. Too curious for her own good, they said. The trees disorient wanderers to feed on their souls.
At present, Elain tipped her head back to inhale a deep breath of the damp, loamy air. It felt clean in her lungs. Fuller than the breaths she could take in the temple. Her mind felt cleaner, too, all the details of the world so much richer. The chirping insects, the writhing soil, the dancing wind, all of it pulsing, bursting with life.
How could anyone get lost here? She often wondered, following the signposts the forest left for her. A stack of rocks, a croaking frog, a pointing branch. All of it as clear as if she were guiding her fingers across an atlas in Nesta's personal library. Turn right. Go straight. Turn left.
Then, the signposts became unusual. A set of footprints in the soil.
Elain paused at these.
As far as she knew, in all of her ten years of collected knowledge, she was the only person that frequented these woods. She'd never seen footprints before, not ones this recent. Not ones that the forest guided her to. That curious sensation in her chest grew stronger. A stumbling beat. A beckoning.
Go, the rustling leaves called to her. Go see.
At the bottom of a mossy knoll, slipping past a trickling creek, Elain saw what the forest was leading her towards.
A boy.
She had never seen him before, but Elain knew at once who he was. What he was.
A Vanserra.
There was no one in the temple with hair that color. It was braided in a loose tail down his back, though pieces of it escaped haphazardly, sticking to his clammy skin. He didn't stick out in the forest like she thought another person might. With his fox-like hair and his guarded posture, he looked like any cornered animal she might have found crouched in the sea of bluebells.
"Hello?" She called, keeping her volume hushed. The nesting birds didn't like when she raised her voice, and it was still too early for them to wake.
He lifted his head, and she saw that his russet eyes were red-rimmed, shining with tears. Snot ran down his nose, but he quickly wiped it away on his arm. His tears kept flowing, despite his efforts to mask them behind a glower.
"Who are you?" He bit out.
Thorns were never efficient deterrents to Elain. She didn't mind occasionally pricking her finger to admire a flower in bloom. Enduring the bite of stone on her skin if it meant feeling the earth beneath her feet. Tensions often ran high among the priestesses, and she'd developed a habit of meeting sharp teeth with an open palm.
It's why she didn't falter in her approach, even as the boy drew back his lips. The scent of copper stung her nostrils as she grew closer.
Elain stiffened. "You're hurt?"
"Go away," the boy sniffled, dropping his head into the knees he held bunched to his chest.
She waited, but the boy seemed intent on ignoring her. Elain recognized her youngest sister, Feyre, in the proud set of his jaw. She was too stubborn to admit when she was hurt, too.
"I'll go get help," she suggested, taking a step back towards the temple.
His head snapped up. "No!"
"No?" Elain tilted her head. "Why not?"
"They won't help me. Not my people, or yours."
She needed a moment to digest this answer, thinking through what she knew of the Vanserra family. They did not get along well with the temple. The High Priestess made no secret of her dislike, and Elain tried to recall the reasons why. How they were cruel. Scum of the earth. That they should rot at the bottom of the Mother's Cauldron. Though she had never been told why those things were said about the Vanserras, she thought the boy might be right. The High Priestess would insist on sending him back to his home on the other side of the dense forest that separated the seat of Autumn from its sovereign temple.
If they weren't willing to help, then Elain would just need to do it herself.
Check his back, the wind whispered, affirming her decision.
Elain crept along the dense carpet to find that his tunic was ripped, stripped away to reveal raw, angry flesh that had been torn into criss-crossing ribbons. Her breath hitched.
"Who did this to you?"
The boy didn't answer, his stare a sullen anchor in the undergrowth.
"What's your name?" She tried asking instead.
He glared at her. "Why should I answer? You never told me yours."
"Elain," she said, pulling a practiced smile across her lips. The scholars at the temple said pretty smiles helped alleviate tense conversations, and she would ascribe this one as such. "My name is Elain Archeron."
"Archeron," he repeated, practically spitting the word. "Go back to your temple, Elain."
"But you're hurt. Why would I leave you here?"
The boy looked at her as if the answer should be obvious. "Because I'm a Vanserra."
"Okay," she said, not letting her smile fall. "Which Vanserra?"
Not that it made any difference to her. She didn't know one Vanserra from the other, and regardless she would help him. She just thought it would be nice to know his name. He maintained his tense silence for a heartbeat. Then another. And then, Elain sensed a change, like a breeze rattling the leaves. Like a cracking branch.
The boy's expression faltered.
"Lucien," he said, voice dropping into a whisper. Like this was a secret he intended to keep from the forest itself.
"Lucien," Elain repeated, testing the new word with the same eagerness she approached most novel things. "I like that name. It sounds like…" She thought for a moment, replaying the sound in her head. "Rushing water. Or a crashing wave. Don't you think?"
Lucien looked bewildered. "What?" He dismissed the question with a shake of his head, replacing that momentary curiosity with yet another dark cloud. "Do the priestesses even know you're here, Elain?"
She had dealt with her sisters' sour moods frequently enough to recognize when someone was being intentionally difficult. It was a good thing she'd become accustomed to it.
"No," she said, coming closer to inspect his wounds. "But I gather your father doesn't know you're here, either."
"No, but I'm doing what he asked."
"And what is that?"
"Getting out of his sight," Lucien grumbled, ducking his head. "These woods seemed like the safest place to be."
Given what was said about the woods, and how gravely adults heeded those warnings, Elain took that to mean Lucien's other options of places to be must have been abysmal indeed. It had to be, if his wounds were inflicted on him there.
"I don't know much about healing yet," Elain admitted. "But I can run back to the temple and take supplies from the infirmary."
"Why?"
Elain was confused again. "Because you're hurt?"
"You don't know me," Lucien said, and he sounded a bit distressed. "You don't owe me anything."
"I know your name is Lucien. Like the sea."
His lips flattened. She didn't think he liked being compared to the sea. And she could understand why it could be an odd comparison. With his red hair and firey demeanor, water should be his opposite. But when she held her breath and listened, she knew that second beating in her chest was the sound of the waves crashing to shore. A proud, unstoppable force.
A lighthouse, guiding her here, to this moment.
She smiled at him, trying to shine that brightness back. "And I think that we owe each other kindness."
Lucien only huffed, bowed over his knees once again. Resigned to Elain's plan, or just whatever fate the forest had in store. Usually those things were one and the same.
"Wait here, Lucien. I'll be back soon."
"No one ever makes it out of these woods alive!" He called back to her.
Elain only laughed. She would prove him wrong soon enough.
-
"You came back?"
Elain beamed, which only seemed to sharpen Lucien's frown. "I told you I would."
He eyed the basket swinging from her elbow, russet eyes narrowing. In the time it took her to sneak into the palace and gather her supplies, a flush had swept across his cheekbones, gleaming under the soft moonlight.
"I'll have to be quick," she said. "You're starting to become feverish."
Lucien scoffed. "How do you know the first thing about treating wounds?"
"I don't." But the forest does.
Stalks of bluebell tickled her exposed knees as she knelt beside him. Nesta would scold her for wearing a nightgown in the unattended company of a boy, but Nesta wasn't there and Lucien was hardly paying attention. He looked like he was barely keeping himself upright.
"Drink this," Elain said, offering him a leather flask.
His fingers were shaking, but he had enough strength to snatch the flask from her hands and give it a distrustful sniff. "How do I know it isn't poisoned?"
"Because it would have been easier to leave you in the woods."
Lucien's nose wrinkled as he took another whiff. "What is it?"
"Willow bark tea."
She leaned closer to him, expecting he would retreat. His eyes only flicked to hers over the flask, monitoring each motion, each breath. The forest used to watch her like this too, when she first entered its mist as a curious intruder. Now she knew to keep her eyes on his, letting him read her intention as she slid her fingers into his hair.
Soft, she thought, absently spreading her touch to admire the thick tangle of silk. Like dipping her fingers into sun-warmed water.
"Drink." She tapped her other hand to his wrist, helping to guide the flask to his bloodied lips. "This will ease the pain of what comes next."
They held each other's gaze. Red and brown. Colors of the earth, clashing to determine whether it was easier to be soft or rigid. To fight the pain or yield. She understood why he resisted as staunchly as he did, because the moment he stopped, she watched the fear set in.
"It will be okay," she soothed, watching his throat bob around each determined swallow.
Lucien blinked at her in the aftermath. His scarlet brows drew a crease in the middle. "What… else was in the tea?"
"Shh." Elain hummed as she took the flask from him, setting it aside. She pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the strong heartbeat that she could hear in the back of her mind. It was slowing now. "All will be well, Lucien."
The look he cast her was stark with betrayal. His weight was beginning to slump against her.
"What did… you give me?"
"Sleep drought," she said, hushed. Like the voice her mother once used for singing lullabies. She stroked her fingers through his hair. "Just enough to knock you out, I promise."
His hand covered hers. She was sure the grip would have been crushing, if he had the strength for it. But all he could manage was a squeeze, a soft raking of his nails that was overall pleasant. She'd never minded thorns.
"I won't forget this," he swore.
"That's right." Elain began rocking him, imagining they were a ship lost in a sea of bluebells. "You will live to remember this, Lucien. And perhaps one day, you will thank me."
Elain waited until his body went limp and his heart became a slow timekeeper in her chest. Then she laid him down on his stomach, opened her basket of supplies, and began tending to his wounds under the instruction of the wind.
-
When Lucien finally woke, the afternoon sun was at its peak. Its dappling light filtered through the trees, shining over his body in warm clusters. Elain watched him stir from her hiding place in the trees.
He groaned as pushed himself up, and she winced to imagine how doing so would pull on those terrible lacerations at his back. She'd spent the early hours of the morning cleaning and packing his wounds, and though they were now dressed, they would still be tender.
Half of her was tempted to drop down from her hiding place and insist he put aside his pride so she could continue treating him. The other half knew that he would never agree after she had tricked him into drinking a sedative.
Surely, someone from his home would help him? If he could make it home, that was.
Elain held her breath as Lucien craned his neck to assess her work. He sent a searching hand over his shoulder, feeling at the bandages and the sticky poultice just underneath. A disgusted sound rose in the back of his throat, and he withdrew his hand to sniff at his fingers.
Would he smell the honey and yarrow? She wondered.
With a grimace, Lucien wiped the residue on his sleeve. She ducked behind the tree when his gaze pivoted, searching the clearing for any sign of his fraud healer. Only once she heard him shuffling through the remains of the basket did she allow herself to peek again.
Lucien quickly discovered the food and water she had left for him, but—as she suspected—his trust had vanished. With a huff, he cast her offerings aside.
"You want to help me, priestess?" He sneered. "Show me a way out of this Cauldron-forsaken forest."
I already have, she thought, removing the primrose tucked behind her ear. With an open palm held to her lips, she blew a gentle breath and watched it float into the air. Her timing was precise; it took only seconds before the flower was swept into the wind, coasting back-and-forth before it landed atop his crown.
Lucien immediately grabbed at the foreign object, crushing it in his first before he saw that it was not a bug. His tension relaxed, but rather than dismiss the crumpled flower, he continued to study it. Did he see that it was unlike any flower in the woods—all except the one Elain had tucked in the hollow of a nearby tree?
He tipped his eyes up, trying to track the flower's origin, as if it may have fallen from the trees overhead.
Keep looking, she urged him. Keep hold of that curiosity; it will be your salvation.
At last, he saw it.
Another primrose, its bright petals catching light from the dark cavity that had become its pedestal. Lucien went to it, plucking it from its intentional hiding spot with a scrutiny that she could tell was just bordering on a revelation.
With a frown, Lucien returned to the basket. He flipped it open, discovering the handful of other flowers just like it.
Well done, she wanted to say. You've discovered the source. But do you understand what I'm telling you?
Lucien's eyes were narrowed on the basket, then on the flower in his hand. He grumbled something under his breath, too low for even her sharp hearing to decipher. The forest must have heard, but it did not see fit to carry his words to her.
She almost laughed. Curse me all you want. I am the reason you will walk out of these woods.
His sharp eyes swiveled to her, and Elain quickly ducked out of sight.
"I'm choosing to trust you, Elain Archeron," Lucien announced. She bit her lip and gathered the courage to sneak another glance.
A smile was creeping at the corner of his lips. He was looking directly at her, and though she knew she was caught, he did not demand she come out of hiding.
He raised the primrose between two fingers, pointing it at the next flower she had laid for him. Just three trees away from the last one he had found, balanced on a branch. Then another, tucked under a rock. And another, all leading east.
A path of primrose, laid to guide him home.
"I won't appreciate being made twice a fool," he warned.
"Refusing my help will make you one," Elain called back. "If you're twice a fool, then that's twice I'll have had no hand in it."
She was surprised to find this made him laugh. Doubly so, when he finished chuckling to himself and smiled at her. A full, genuine smile that was so unlike the ornery glares she'd come to expect from him that it stunned her to silence.
"I hope we meet again, Elain."
Lucien turned, his gait stiff with pain as he followed her path from one primrose to the next. He didn't glance back at her, despite the uproar of birdsong and the chattering leaves. The sounds had no meaning to someone like him, but to Elain, they were an echo of the promise she could already feel pounding in her chest.
We will.
We will.
We will.
Present Day
Elain swallowed down the cold night air, raw against her throat as her lungs struggled to take in more, to expel it faster as she pumped her arms in tandem. She wasn’t wearing the right shoes for racing down a cobblestone alleyway—her ankles threatened to twist as she took a turn too sharply. She couldn’t afford to stumble now. She had to escape, had to—
“Clare?”
Elain whipped her head in the direction of the washroom door. A barmaid stood in the frame, one hand braced on the handle while the sound of music and raucous laughter flooded behind her.
Water dripped from Elain’s face. An odd sight, she was certain. She released the pooled liquid still cupped in her hands, listening to the water splash against the porcelain. It was how she grounded herself back in the moment. The caress of air against her wet face, the cool porcelain against her fingers.
Real. This was real. The alleyway, the chasing, the sore throat… she placed a wet hand against her neck, swallowing to ensure there was no pain.
All she could feel was her hammering pulse.
And the second, steadier heartbeat echoing underneath.
"I thought I saw you run in here." The barmaid clicked her tongue in a sound of pity, tossing a washrag over her shoulder as she rushed to Elain's side. "Did one of those drunken swines say something to you?"
As Elain began to shake her head, the barmaid caught her face between both sets of plump hands. She cooed and tutted under her breath, squishing Elain's cheeks together while she conducted her inspection.
"You're too pretty for a place like this," she said on a sigh. "It was bound to bring trouble eventually."
Elain maneuvered out of the barmaid's grip as gently as she could. "There's no trouble to be had. I was just taking a moment of respite."
There was something about a lie that could never sit comfortably on her tongue. They were like flightless birds stumbling from her lips, always a graceless plummet that drew everyone's attention.
"Mhm." The barmaid's eyes narrowed. She took a step back to re-examine Elain, paying close attention to her flushed cheeks. The damp around her face. She pursed her lips. "You're not pregnant, are ye? If you are, I can help."
"No." Elain waved away the suggestion with perhaps too much conviction. "Absolutely not. I've not—I'm not… There is no person like that in my life."
The barmaid snickered. "Well don't go around sharing that, duck. What good is a matchmaker who can't find herself a match? I'd tell people my husband died at sea." She grabbed the washrag off her shoulder and tossed it to Elain. "Now, clean yourself up. Innkeeper was asking for ye. Something about unpaid coin."
-
It was a busy night at the tavern. A group of traveling minstrels had just docked at the large port town, and that always drew crowds to the local drinking holes. Elain had been drawn, too, unable to resist her curiosity when she'd seen the fliers.
The Primrose Players were on stage, enrapturing the crowd with their story told through ballads, lutes, and fiddles. They were detailing a prince's journey across a treacherous sea, but she'd stopped listening when she felt that unmistakable sensation in her chest.
A second heartbeat. A battle drum.
A warning.
I'm coming for you.
It wasn't the first time she'd felt that pull over the years, but it was the first time it had been strong enough to send alarm bells peeling through her skull. She'd rushed to the bathroom when she'd felt the vision encroaching, and now she didn't know what to do with herself.
She'd been running in the vision, and she knew exactly who she was running from. But if she ran now, would she be careening herself straight into that destiny, or avoiding it?
"Clare!"
Elain turned to see the Innkeeper waving her down from behind the bar. With a sigh, Elain wedged her way through the crowd of people until she stood at the other side of the bar. Before the Innkeeper could open his mouth, she placed a stack of coins on the counter.
"Payment for yesterday, today, and tomorrow."
The Innkeeper fanned out the coins on the bar, counted the total in his head, then grunted his acceptance.
"I should be charging more, ye know." The coins scraped the wooden counter as he swept them into his apron pocket. "Do ye see how busy it is?"
"And how many are paying you in advance?"
His silence was the closest to agreement she would get. But seeing as how she'd be staying at his inn for another two nights, she decided to sweeten the deal by offering, "How about I add a free fortune telling?"
There was a staggering slap as the Innkeeper dropped his wet washrag on the counter. "I don't need yer quack fortunes," he said through a snort, focused on his task of rubbing the rag in wide circles. She wondered if he wasn't cleaning so much as dispersing the sticky residue across a wider area. "Just don't go scaring off my customers with bad news, witch."
Because Elain believed in the importance of regulating one's temper, she managed to excuse herself from the conversation with a deep breath and a tight smile. It also helped to imagine taking one of those tankers of watered-down ale and dumping it on his head.
Patience, she reminded herself. Causing a scene over a petty remark was not in her best interest.
On the other side of the tavern, The Primrose Players continued their story of the exiled prince, traveling the world in search of a way to reinstate his place by his father’s side. His ship finally made port, and it was there he would encounter the object of his desires. A quick glance around the crowd showed the most tavern-goers were transfixed in the story.
Having no interest in competing with the players for coin, Elain settled herself in a quiet corner and signaled at the barmaid to bring her the meal included with her stay. After dinner last night, she knew the Inn's stew was as cheap and watered down as the ale, but it was food.
She was halfway through her meal when a woman approached, her eyes wide and hopeful.
"You're the matchmaker?"
Elain forced herself to swallow the tough cut of meat she'd been grinding between her teeth.
"Yes," she said, wishing she had a napkin to wipe off the grease on her hands. "That's me."
"Please, will you tell me if I'll find a husband?"
The woman thrust her hand forward, not the least bit bothered by the mess. Elain still took the time to wipe her fingers off on her dress before she took the woman's hand.
Doing this always reminded Elain of the forest she'd walked through so long ago, as if by touching the woman's hand, she was transported through its mist. At once, the tavern faded. The music of The Primrose Players reduced into a distant hum. There was nothing here but the raw presence of nature.
Elain shut her eyes, listening as birds flitted overhead, darting from tree to tree. They sang to her as they passed, telling of the present, the future, the past. The wind swept her forward, taking her by the hand.
What do you want to know?
…Does this woman find a husband?
The birdsong tapered. Elain opened her eyes and saw a magpie perched before her, its head tilted to the side as it watched. She took a cautious step forward. The magpie shot into the air, letting out a call that was answered by another, further down the path. Elain followed as it darted through the trees, returning to the large nest where its mate waited.
The flight was short. This would be coming to pass in the near future.
"You will," Elain said, though her voice sounded so very far away. "Keep your heart open, and you will find him soon."
The woman dropped her hand, but not before Elain saw a primrose sitting in the hollow of the tree where the magpies nested. When her eyes rested on it, she heard a voice, bubbling up from a distant, forgotten memory.
I hope we meet again, Elain.
Her breath caught.
"What is it?" The woman asked, sounding stricken. "Did you see something bad?"
Elain was still staring vacantly at the spot the primrose had been, though the forest had vanished. There was only the crowded tavern and the minstrels still telling their story on stage. Her gaze had fixed on one of them, a player in a bronze mask whose only job seemed to be clapping and dancing along to the others.
"Not at all," Elain said, still waiting for the mist to clear from her vision. "I saw a future of mirth."
The woman followed Elain's gaze and made a knowing sound in her throat. "I see now. You're caught up in matchmaking of your own."
"Huh?" Elain frowned. "What do you mean?"
"That charmer in the fox mask." The woman shot her a conspirational grin. "Have you two been eyeing each other all night? Explains why he asked me to give this to you."
A primrose, as bright and delicate as she'd always known them to be, was cupped in the woman's palm. She extended it to Elain with a smile, and Elain shrank back as if she'd been met with a pointed blade.
The women's smile fell, but Elain no longer cared for keeping a pleasant image. There was no time for an explanation, let alone a goodbye. Her chair made a horrible screech as she scrambled to her feet, and she knew she was turning heads as she raced for the door, but it was already too late.
He would follow.
No matter where she went, he would follow.
Her only hope was getting a head start. With two heartbeats racing in her chest, Elain raced down the cobblestone streets of the small town, listening to her ill-suited shoes slap on the stone as she searched somewhere to run, somewhere to hide. Night had fallen, and most shops had already closed their doors, but there had to be somewhere to go. A horse, a ship, an unlocked cellar?
Elain turned down a dimly lit alley, feeling each of her great, gasping breaths saw down her throat. She wasn't used to running. It had been years since she last needed to.
Another break-neck turn at the end of the alley brought her to a dead-end. Elain swore under her breath. She'd go the other way, then. Whipping around the corner without looking, she crashed—hard—into the warm, tall body of the fox-masked player.
His arms stretched out to catch her from stumbling. The fox-mask was gone, leaving nothing to hide the smile already stretching his full lips. His scarlet hair was braided back from his face, the same way he'd worn it the last time she'd seen him.
In many ways, he was the same. Only older. Sharper. Wiser.
The scar across the left side of his face was new—new to her, at least. As if an animal had clawed his skin from brow to jaw. The russet eye she knew from memory had been replaced with a mechanical one that clicked and whirred as it focused on her.
She wanted to touch it. She wanted to scream at him. To weep in pity, to claw a matching scar on the other side of his face.
But most of all. Most of all. She wanted to pull this second heart out of her chest and give it back to him. It was too much of a burden to bear them both.
"People at the tavern tell me you're a fortune-teller." He smirked. "I've been looking for someone who fits that description."
Elain tried to shake away his touch, but his grip was iron-clad. "You shouldn't look for people who don't want to be found."
"But how can a fortune-teller be caught if she doesn't want to be?" Lucien leaned forward, exactly as warm and imposing as she remembered. His voice was a caress on her neck as he whispered, "Does that mean you missed me too, wife?"
Summary: Lucien’s heart stopped the day his wife’s heart did.
Or at least he wished it did.
Because Lucien’s heart still remained beating while Jesminda’s heart continued to beat in another person’s chest. Dr Lin’s Jane Doe, they called her.
Gods, he hated her.
Why did she get to live when Jesminda did not?
Rating: M, some smut
Read on AO3
A/N: *peeking from behind the door* yes, I’m coming out of my very long writing hiatus for @elucienweekofficial I just felt like I couldn’t not! Especially with how perfect this fic premise fit the Day 1 prompt: Heartbeat. Literally😅
This will be a two-parter, with part 2 being posted for the day 6 Scars prompt.
Disclaimer: I am personally very pro-organ donation but if you’re not, that’s fine too. This is just a silly fic. Please don’t take it too seriously.
Now that’s out of the way, I hope you enjoy!
Lucien’s heart stopped the day his wife’s heart did.
It stopped when the container truck slammed into their car on the highway and ripped her away from him. He remembered the exact millisecond her heart stopped. Even through the hospital walls, his all too keen fae hearing could track the fading beats and with it, his heart stopped beating with hers.
Or at least he wished it did.
Because Lucien’s heart still remained beating, and he was cursed (or blessed as some naive fool would call it) to walk about this world alone to keep pieces of their lives together alive.
All while Jesminda’s heart beat in another person’s chest. Dr Lin’s Jane Doe, they called her. A name Lucien could never forget.
Gods, he hated her.
Why did she get to live when Jesminda did not?
***
Lucien tilted his head up to the ceiling. Eyes closed, his long breath shuddered every step in and out of his body.
He hated Tithe Day. It was an antiquated custom that should have been left behind when society entered the industrial revolution, or maybe just when wheels were invented. He never understood why Tamlin never abolished it. Even if it had been greatly streamlined, meetings with the High Lord were only required if the people failed to make the tithe after three consecutive years, the kneeling and pleas for another chance were demeaning and humiliating, excessively so.
They were such a pain to watch and Lucien was only on the fifth family for the day. His eyes met Andra’s across the room, who gave him a small shrug. The male didn’t necessarily agree with the practice but neither did he find an impetus to transit to a differently flawed tax system. A necessary evil, he would end up saying, as Tamlin nodded in agreement at the back.
Lucien swallowed back a scoff and turned back down to his tablet, mindlessly scrolling down the list of her families they had to get through today. Mother’s tits, there were so many-
Like a yarn still attached to the spool, his gaze was helplessly pulled towards the doorway, towards the Archeron sisters shuffling somewhat begrudgingly into the room.
Feyre, Lucien’s brain supplied automatically in recognition of his friend. It would mean that the ones next to her were Nesta and Elain; the latter of which had his thoughts gradually seeping away from his mind.
Ba-dum, ba-dum-
A honey blonde mop, a shade lighter than both her sisters’, whose tight curls perfectly frame an oval face. Though her lips never stopped muttering to her sisters, her face tilted a degree towards his direction, chocolate brown eyes widened to orbs. Chocolate brown locked with russet.
-Ba-dum.
Time unwound between heartbeats. In the span of a blink, the world righted itself and Elain’s face relaxed back into neutrality. The moment passed as if it never happened.
Lucien turned his attention back to the tablet as the trio bowed to the High Lord. His eyes narrowing at the description next to their names. The Archerons fell behind the requisite payment by just a hairline three years ago and got caught in a web of compounding interest, culminating in their appearance before the High Lord today. The initial amount was so marginal it was unfortunate, really.
Nesta, as the oldest, spine rigid and dignified, made their plea case. A worked installment plan to catch up on their late payments within the year. It should have been a simple case primed for dismissal. Except for the fact that Feyre snubbed Tamlin’s attention at an event once, a flat rejection that played jump ropes on the line of propriety and humiliation.
Tamlin’s lips curled unpleasantly, a curt rejection poised at his lips.
“You’re blessed with the earth elemental gift, aren’t you?” Lucien’s voice rang across the hall, cutting in before Tamlin could say his piece. He would pay the price for undermining the High Lord’s authority later but for now, the courtier could mediate. “Quite the green thumb.”
Elain blinked twice, caught off guard at the question. Next to her, Nesta narrowed her eyes while Feyre frowned.
“Yes,” the middle sister nodded briskly, her mind made up in an instant. She lifted her chin and focused her gaze at Tamlin, a perfectly calculated mix of deference and reverence designed to play to the egos of powerful men. “Would the High Lord be in need of such services?”
They did, in fact. Their garden, a sentimental keepsake from Tamlin’s long passed parents, had fallen into disarray in neglect over the past few months after their previous landscapist unceremoniously quit.
At a cock of Tamlin’s head, Lucien replied affirmatively and they quickly came to an arrangement. A month to restore the garden and whatever additional time required to lay the necessary spellwork to maintain its upkeep. A debt to be repaid all while protecting delicate prides.
It was only after they left that Lucien realised he had met his match. That was a battle of words and wit won by charm and smiles.
***
If one (mostly Andras, that teasing prick) asked him if he was snooping, Lucien would deny it to his grave. He just so happened to be walking through the corridors where its long stretch of windows overlooked the gardens. The exact same gardens which prim and upright Alis seemed to be berating Elain.
“As skilled as you may be, punctuality should be the most basic courtesy you show the court. To be late on your second day! Heavens above!” She exclaimed.
Elain stood by dutifully as the estate’s facility manager continued to lecture her. Never giving excuses nor defending herself. At the end of it, she sincerely apologised and promised never to let it happen again. That, at least, softened Alis’s anger, who at last left with a final ‘Just don’t do it again’.
Lucien made his way over after Alis left, stopping just behind their new landscapist, kneeling by a bed of dying roses. He asked with an amused smile, “Tough luck with Alis already on your second day?”
Elain flinched at the intrusion, just barely and quickly subdued, but a flinch nonetheless. She replied with a practiced smile, “Unfortunately, it seems. Although I do hope to get back into her good graces soon.” She gave a pointed look at the green glow bathing the sad looking plants and the steadily receding marks of soil rot.
Lucien didn’t buy the act. He held back a frown, his nostrils flaring at the burst of fear that Elain had momentarily emitted. Russet eyes tracked the stilted movement of delicate arms and narrowed at the wrapped bandage around the exposed slit of her wrist. He caught it mid air, long fingers gently circled the back of her hand and brought it closer to him.
He asked sharply. “What happened?”
Their linked hands trembled. Lucien didn’t know who was the one who did — her in pain or fear or him in barely controlled anger?
Elain’s other hand joined theirs, albeit momentarily, to extricate her hand from his and protectively held her injured wrist to her chest.
She shrugged in a suitably convincing manner of dismissal. “I was mugged on the way home last night.”
“Mugged?” He echoed, barely hearing himself over the blood rushing in his ears, “for what? What did they take?”
Her jaw clenched, relaxed and clenched again, fingers sweeping featherlike caress along the back of her wrist. She replied, “My father’s watch.”
Lucien dragged his gaze across her wrist, still cradled against her chest, up to her eyes, where shadows seemed to haunt deeper within its recesses. A hurt so complex Lucien couldn’t unpack. It chased away the edges of red crowding his sigh and left sympathy in its place. In that moment, he did the only thing he could: as gently as he could muster, he took that injured hand into his own and engulfed it with a healing warmth.
“Thank you.” Elain said, smiling gratefully after he released her hand. It was the first time he had seen the female smile with zero reservation.
It stole his breath away.
Lucien straightened his back, clearing his throat. Elain, too, turned her attention back to the sad looking flowers and bathed it with a green glow.
“If it’s alright with you, I can walk you back from now on.”
Elain blinked, surprised by the offer. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.” He shrugged as he slipped his hands into his pockets, “I want to.” The notion of letting Elain walk back alone in the dark after what happened wrangled something within him. Unacceptable, it hissed at him.
“Let me know when you get off. I’ll drop you a text later so you have my number.” He said when she didn’t object.
She cocked a brow and asked with humour, “and how would you get my number?”
Lucien found himself unwittingly smiling. He returned smoothly, “Nothing wrong with using official records for personal reasons.”
A giggle escaped her, a melodic chime ringing in the air. She stood up, wiping the dirt off her hands on her apron. Nodding in satisfaction at the bed of roses that now looked much less sickly than it did before. She lifted her phone from her pocket and handed it to him. “Or you could just give yourself a missed call right now. You know, just to avoid any abuse of authority.”
He bent over slightly to drop the phone back into her hand after following her suggestion. His lips drew close to the pointed tip of her ear. “There, no more abuse of authority. Purely,” he paused, delighting in the tiny goosebumps raised, “personal.”
The tip of her ears stained pink. Elain twisted her body back to her plants, muttering in a voice so unclear it might have been undecipherable if not for his fae hearing, “I’ll see you later then.”
A lightness settled in his chest. It felt hard to keep the smile off his face.
“See you later, Elain.”
***
Twilight is a time of beauty. A mix of pink, orange and blue splashed across the sky. As temporary as it was, the view served as a reminder to look up, to forget worldly concerns in that fleeting moment, and take in the gift nature offered.
Lucien had spent just a little too long looking at the twilight sky today. Occasionally, he sneaked glances at the partner of his walk, someone whose beauty rivaled even the best of nature’s offering. It wasn’t an awkward silence per say. In fact, it felt too comfortable. One where words weren’t needed to fill the gap.
Their shoes clattered on cobblestone, their shoulders occasionally rubbed against each other’s. A little girl ran up to them then and thrusted a basket of stalks of daffodils with red ribbons tied to them.
“Flower for your date, sir?”
Lucien and Elain exchanged glances. A light danced in those chocolate brown eyes in a silent message agreeing to play along. Lucien passed some bills to the flower girl and ran his fingers along the bunch.
“This one!” The girl piped up, her grin wide enough to split her face, and picked up a particularly fresh looking stalk, “perfect for the pretty lady.”
“Excellent choice,” Lucien agreed with a pointed look, “very pretty indeed.”
Someone who looked like Elain must be no stranger to such compliments but still, in the orange glow of twilight, Lucien spotted the rose dusting over her cheeks.
“Do you like receiving flowers, Elain?” He murmured after the flower girl had proceeded to hunt for her next sale. He raised his hand to brush a stray strand away from his face.
“It could be considered contrived to give flowers to a landscapist.” She remarked, even as the look in her eyes was warm.
Lucien considered her words. “What about giving flowers to Elain? Not Elain the landscapist or the earth elementalist. Just Elain.”
A smile plays on her lips and she admitted, “Then, Elain does like flowers. They’re pretty.”
A pure and honest answer. There was no pretense in seeking a deeper or more philosophical reason to her love for flowers. Just an appreciation for the simple beauty in a world where it was so easy to get caught up in its ugliness.
Elain bumped into his shoulders as Lucien came to a halt. He turned around to face her. With a flick of his wrist, he sliced the long stalk, halving its length. He tucked the flower behind Elain’s ear, pushing back the same stray lock he brushed away earlier.
His eyes drank in the sight before him and inadvertently took a step back in appreciation.
Elain reached her hand out and froze him in motion. Hands delicately gathered his long auburn tresses, and rested them on one shoulder.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” She asked, her question stained by a quiet caution. With that red ribbon that had now unwound and somehow floated its way to her hand, she deftly tied the red ribbon around it.
Lucien hummed. “Do I need a reason to?”
There is a reason for everything. Her pointed gaze said and she was right. Wanting to be a good, decent person was a reason. As was simply wanting to get into her pants. Equally real and valid.
The trouble was Lucien himself didn’t quite understand the reason behind his own behaviour.
***
With a few phone calls and a cup of tea with a law enforcement captain later, Elain’s mugger was put behind bars, and her father’s watch back on her wrist three days later.
“Will I still be seeing you later?” She asked tentatively after Lucien had broken the news and returned the watch to her.
There was no longer a reason to keep walking her back and he should say no to keep things clean and uncomplicated. The proverbial “not shitting where you eat” and all that.
Only, “of course, we have our running tab of ice creams that you owe me,” was what came out of his mind. Logic taking a backseat.
If only the small grin Elain gave in return did not make his heart skitter.
The walk from the High Lord’s estate grounds to her home quickly became the highlight of his days. It was too often derailed by little adventures — detours with strolls by the river, dinners talking about anything and everything, a trip to the freaking planetarium. The clock shifted right for when their walks came to an end each day.
Spending time with Elain was effortless, something more than just acquaintances, almost fringing on a lifelong friendship.
Unfortunately, today was a day he would not get to walk Elain home. His diplomatic role in external relations had him playing courtier at the annual Seven Courts meeting and the networking dinner reception thereafter. Lucien usually relished at such events; flitting around the crowd and solidifying the much needed intercourt ties, or simply forming much more personal ties; ones that end with clothes lying askew on the ground and bodies pressed together.
Tonight was not turning out to be one of those nights. His mind played tricks on him: of a phantom achingly familiar melodic chime of laughter followed him around, chestnuts in the canapés reminiscent of tight locks of honey brown, floral arrangements of an assortment of flowers that somehow all smelt of jasmine and honey.
Lucien stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the estate garden and released a long breath. He rested his elbow on the railing and scrubbed his face with his hand. He should really at least make sure he fulfilled his official diplomatic duties for the evening.
A small movement in the painstakingly restored gardens drew his attention like a moth to a flame-
“Why are you still here?” Lucien half demanded, the air around him still shocked from the disappearing embers of his winnow.
A green glow extinguished into the night. Elain blinked up at him, not expecting the sudden intrusion. The space between her brows creased, “I’m fine tuning the maintenance array. Why aren’t you at the meeting?”
“The meeting?” Lucien asked, amused. “That ended hours ago. What time do you think it is now?”
Elain looked up at the now darkened sky. She flicked her wrist to read the time on her watch. Rosebud lips formed an ‘o’ before curving upwards into a sheepish smile.
“Oops?”
Surrounded in the dark lush green of her garden, with dirt smudged on her temple, and the moonlight which glided off her cheeks and chased the beaded sweat down her jawline, Elain Archeron was the most beautiful fae Lucien had ever seen.
“C’mon,” he said gravelly. He paused to clear his throat, “if you’re ready, let me walk you back.”
“Alright,” she nodded, unaffected as she spooned sheets of paper into her hands, “let me just grab my stuff from the office and we can head off.”
“Did something happen at the event?” She piped up after they entered her small office.
“Hmm?”
She tilted her head, eyes narrowing in concern, “You look bothered by something.”
You. You are what’s bothering me. Lucien nearly blurted out. You, with your stupidly beautiful eyes and annoyingly luscious hair and freaking dirt smudged face.
Elain continued to eye him silently. She wound her arms to the back to undo the apron and slide it over her head, a sliver of smooth, alabaster skin peeking out as she lifted her arms.
She froze her hands above her head, nostrils flaring at the change of scent he had unwittingly emitted. “Lucien?”
With a speed that would astound even his toughest Vanserra instructor, Lucien crowded Elain into the wall behind, a hard thigh wedged between her legs. His hand caught her twin open palms and pinned them in place, his other hand a light caress against her cheeks, thumb wiping away the dirt that had been taunting him.
“You had some dirt there.” He panted raggedly.
Elain advanced an inch, her legs now flushed against his thigh. The slightest movement surged lightning down to the one part of his body commanding the most blood flow right now.
“Where?” She challenged, leg snaking around his thigh.
His hand caught her thigh mid movement and tightened his grip, settling her leg around his waist. “Do you really want to know,” His voice dropped an octave, “Elain?”
Pupils blown wide, the sweetest scent permeated through the narrow space between them.
“Yes.” She breathed.
Their lips crashed together. An explosion of movement, everywhere. His tongue against hers, her fingers entangled in his hand, his hand snaking beneath and up her shirt, leaving its trail of goosebumps.
His teeth scraped across her upper lip. “Elain,” he pleaded. A desperate bid.
“Yes.”
Buttons scattered to the ground as Lucien littered kisses down her neck and chest. Experienced fingers unhooked the bra in one smooth motion and the garment joined the buttons. He closed his mouth around a nipple, relishing in the whimper emanating from the writhing female.
Lithe fingers eagerly undid his belt and shoved downwards to grab-
He hissed, “Elain.”
“Yes, Lucien.” Her hands sandwiched his face to force his gaze to hers. Sobriety rang clear even within the haze of lust in her eyes. “Yes.”
Pants and panties yanked downwards as Lucien plunged deep within Elain in a single thrust. She gasped sharply, leg squeezing tightly around his waist.
Yes, she trusted him. Yes, she wanted this, she wanted him.
Lucien trembled in inaction as he let her adjust to him. Russet eyes were equally beseeching. Yes, he wanted this. Yes, he wanted her more than he could imagine in his wildest dreams.
Twin heartbeats hammered to the skies as they moved against the other. Light blinds with every thrust, pleasure building closer and closer to the precipice, until he follows her over the edge, world shattering, stars bursting.
Yes, yes, yes.
***
They laid, sweaty and sated, on the ground. The aftermath of their joining left them limp and entangled but just ridiculously happy. Lucien could hardly keep a lazy grin off his face as he idly drew circles with his fingers on her stomach.
“Stop it!” Elain giggled at the ticklish sensations, swatting his hand away.
He playfully obliged and directed his attention upwards towards her chest. He twisted his upper body to hover over her, head lowering to give her breasts the tender loving care he had decided they wholly deserved.
He pressed his lips to a scar at the centre of Elain’s chest. “Where did this come from? Looks serious.” He murmured.
“It was. A heart transplant, from a multiple vehicle accident on the bridge linkway between Winter and Spring that sent me veering off a cliff four years ago.” She covered her hand over his, finger tracing over the scar slightly. She sounded faraway, her mind falling into the depths of a trauma sequestered deep in her mind. “They said it was a miracle I survived.”
Bella rang faintly in Lucien’s head. He should’ve been so terribly grateful that she survived, especially when one car accident had already taken so much from him. If only his darn mind could stop racing.
A multiple vehicle pileup on the bridge linking Summer and Winter four years ago. There weren’t that many accidents with such a description. Identical to the one he and Jesminda were in.
He choked. “W-which hospital were you in?”
Elain frowned, not expecting his response. “Winter General. Why do you ask?”
Lucien withdrew his hand, his entire body extricated itself. The instant loss of heat was stark but Lucien barely felt it over the sound of his heart beating thunderously in his ears. Elain felt miles away.
“What was your doctor’s name?”
Somewhere still so far away. A deep continuous frown. A distant reply. “Dr Rebecca Lin. What’s going on, Lucien?”
Dr Rebecca Lin. Dr Lin. Winter General. Four years ago. Multiple vehicle pile-up. Dr Lin.
It all came crashing down.
He whispered, more to himself. “Dr Lin’s Jane Doe. You’re Dr Lin’s Jane Doe.”
Concern merged with frustration and wariness. “What are you talking about?”
Lucien wanted to burst into a hysterical laughter. Of course it had to turn out this way. The gods were not done fucking with him yet apparently. He exclaimed, “It’s you! You’re Dr Lin’s Jane Doe. Winter General, October, four years ago. On the worst day of my life.”
Finally, their eyes meet across the room. Wild russet against stricken chocolate brown.
Her voice was a dangerous calm as she asked, “what are you saying?”
“Jesminda’s heart beats in your chest. You live when she died.”
He couldn’t be here. Not now and definitely not with her.
Lucien gave one last look at Elain. Her mused hair, swollen lips and undeniably devastated eyes. A picture of vulnerability.
A part of him rammed at him, screaming at him to hold her in his arms and never let go. He squashed it mercilessly. How could he when Jesminda died while she lived? How could he ever face her in the afterlife if he did so?
Lucien did the only thing he could. He winnowed away.
A/N: ignore the cliffhanger. Did you spot the Bridgerton S4 reference?😌
Summary: Everyone knows Earth is lost to humanity, a wasted rock destroyed by nuclear war five hundred years before they fled to the stars.
Or, that's what Elain Archeron believed right until she crash landed on Earth's surface.
Notes: Massive, important, MAJOR thanks to @chelseamorninggirl and @limeandorange for letting me bounce this fic off of them, and for reading whole chapters of it and giving me their thoughts. It wouldn't exist without your encouragement- thank you.
for @elucienweekofficial | Read on AO3
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The station sirens blared to life, rousing Elain Archeron from another restless sleep.
It was the third time that week, unusual by the standards of the Station. Pulling a pillow over her face, Elain tried to slip back into the dream she’d been having, but the noise was only muffled.
Wah. Wah. Wah. Wah.
Rhythmic and unyielding, a warning to remain in her cabin for the time being. Elain sighed, tossing the pillow to the cold, metal floor. She blinked against the offensive red lighting up the otherwise peaceful dark of her space until she didn’t have to blink against the light. What was going on?
It was tempting to ask her sister Feyre, who seemed to know all the gossip albeit unwillingly. Feyre lurked in the maintenance halls, hiding from her responsibilities and so she could focus on the one thing that gave her real purpose and joy—art.
There was no room for art on The Station.
Elain sat up, legs dangling off the raised platform her bed rested on. Reaching toward the metal plated wall, she pressed a button to lift the shade from the porthole just above her window. It was the only one she had, a view into the vastness of space. Below, Elain could see the ruined husk of the planet Earth, abandoned centuries earlier for space travel—at least at first.
No one knew if it was space travel or simple biological evolution that brought about the beginning of the end for humanity. Had someone contracted a disease on some far-flung planet? Or had a planet, filled to the bursting with a population that seemed like it couldn’t die, finally brought about its own destruction? Everyone seemed to agree it was technology taken too far, but the disease had spread too quickly and had killed so effectively that by the time anyone realized they had a full-blown pandemic on their hands, all that was truly left was evacuation.
Elain peered closer against the tempered glass. To her, Earth was something mythological. A pristine blue and green sphere, the mother of her species—home. As a girl, she and her sisters had run about The Station pretending they were living in those lush jungles and swimming in the salted oceans they so often read about.
Humans weren’t meant to live in space, of that she was certain. Some had certainly adapted. Nesta, for example, seemed to have been built for the cold, dark expanse of space. Most people agreed. Nesta was powerful, overseeing secretive missions deep into space as humanity pushed ever forward, looking for another planet they could call home. They were, after all, the only species in the known universe that did not have a planet to call their own.
Humans were everywhere, living in the most populous cities and the most remote outposts. It was said humans could adapt to anything, often with a sneer of disgust. The other races loathes humanity for the way they’d kicked open the galactic door at gun point, demanding equal trade access, the right to settle colonies and worlds, and the right to defend themselves with force. It took other races centuries to accomplish what humanity managed in fifty years.
The galaxy was afraid of humanity. That’s what Nesta said, anyway. Better to let them be, Nesta would add, brow arched and arms crossed, as she reflected on their status in the universe. Nesta was so close to a council position—the first ever for humanity—though Elain secretly hoped she didn’t get it.
That was more selfish than anything. Nesta wielding one of the most powerful position in the galaxy was a major coup, and it would mean she and Elain would never have another meaningful conversation again. Nesta didn’t know how to switch between gears—she was either Nesta, the woman only Elain truly knew, or she was Ambassador Nesta, a woman even the most feared races in the galaxy didn’t dare cross. While other ambassadors were often lambasted on the net, everyone tiptoed around their critiques of Nesta.
She was ruthless, and her hands were stained with blood. Everyone knew it.
Elain turned from her window and her musings as the blaring ceased and darkness flooded through the room again. Her ears rang with the echoing wah’s even when she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep. The clock on the nearby stand read four twenty two am—local donjon time. The whole galaxy was centralized around the founding galactic civilization and their stronghold—donjon. Their language was the standard, common language, their year was the standard year, their time the standard time.
Humanity called their city The Donjon based on its appearance—it seemed to look like the protective keep of a medieval fortress, nevermind that it sounded nearly identical when spoken in their native tongue. The name had stuck over the years since, and now most colloquially referred to the city as Donjon, much to the irritation of the people living there previously. Humanity is so disrespectful! Net pundits would scream, eyes purpling around the sockets. But all these centuries later, the name was still around and so was humanity.
Deciding it was better to just start her day early, Elain let her bare feet the cold metal sheeting of the floor. Having been cleaned the day before, she could see her distorted reflection peering back up her, just as she could everywhere else she went. There was no privacy aboard The Station—not even from herself.
There was also very little water. Water had to be imported, and not every world needed water or relied on it the same way humanity did. Often, a world would have drinkable water for them, but absolutely polluted to humans. In the early days, Elain knew it had been a major source for concern—how did you establish colonies both on planets and in space without access to a constant source of water?
The answer had been synthetic, like so many other things. H2More, they called it. It was like water. Good enough to satisfy the human body, and easy to replicate in factories to be bottled and sold all over the galaxy at reasonable costs. People who’d tasted real water reported H2More tasted wrong, though they could never quite articulate how. No one could even describe the taste of water to begin with, so how could something reportedly made of the same compounds—along with several extras to compensate for living in space—taste wrong?
Elain had never had actual water, so she couldn’t say one way or the other. Most of her life had been spent on The Station—known as Tuscon, the former city on Earth—or on Donjon on occasion. Elain didn’t care for space travel, which often left her feeling sick to her stomach due to the high rate of speed they had to move to get from one planet to the next.
It was good enough to brush her teeth and wash her hair with, and she didn’t have to ration it like she’d heard they’d done back in those yearly years, and that was good enough for her. Life was small on The Station, but it was simple and navigable. The larger galaxy was chaotic, loud, and confusing, which worked for someone who could establish order, like Nesta. But for Elain, her little life felt like enough.
She parted her hair into two waist length plaits, slid a little chapstick over her lips to help with how dry the air was, and slid into the white belted jumpsuit everyone wore on The Station. Her name was embroidered just above her heart: Elain Archeron, Astrobotanist, and she wore it with pride. Her vegetables, fruits, and herbs might be grown with synthetic sunlight and synthetic water, but what came through was real.
It was more science than anything. Elain wasn’t expected to feed The Station, which imported the majority of its goods from other worlds, but to find the right conditions in which once extinct produce could return to the wider galaxy. She’d been working on bananas for the better part of a year. No one in living memory had eaten a real banana, though every human had tasted banana flavoring.
Whether that was the truth of a banana or merely someone's memory, no one truly knew. Elain wanted to be the first to find out, though growing bananas in a lab in space was proving to be quite more difficult than she’d first imagined when she’d applied for the research grant. She’d had good luck growing tropic fruits—she’d managed little mangoes, one teeny papaya, and one half-sized pineapple that had been so acidic, the fruit had ripped apart Elain’s mouth as she’d eaten it.
Though, that hardly stopped her. Elain would have eaten it even if it made her mouth bleed. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet, so…so…alive. She could recreate the humid conditions, the heat, the volume of light, and yet…her trees resisted. It was as if they knew she was attempting to trick them into giving up something they otherwise wouldn’t.
As if this continued pursuit to see what she could grow regardless of if she should, was offensive to the plants themselves. Bananas, a fruit so ubiquitous on earth that they were mentioned in passing in so many written documents, almost as an afterthought, seemed determined to thwart her.
Not for you, stargirl.
How did Elain explain that she had roots in her fingers tethering her to the planet below her? That if there were a chance to return, Elain would have taken it without a backward glance at the stars above? She wanted to feel the sun warming her skin the way humans were meant to—her sun, on her soil, on her planet. No red suns, twin suns, blue suns, or any other type of suns that existed and provided light and warmth to other species. Her sun.
Shaking her head, Elain laced up her boots, grabbed her keycard so she could access the other parts of the ship, and left her gun behind. Technically, all personnel aboard the ship were required to carry a standard issue firearm everywhere they went but Elain rarely did. Soldiers patrolled the corridors and that was enough for her.
She wasn’t the only one up. A light murmuring down the bright, sanitized halls betrayed the cafeteria, which was busier than usual despite the early hour. There weren’t lines yet which was lucky, but if she’d waited Elain knew they’d have cleared out all the tofubacon before she got a chance to get any. Elain added toast with a packet of jam, a scoop of eggs, some sour ro fruit along with a packet of salt to cut through the tartness, and a little carbonated water. She scanned the crowd, found a familiar head of golden blonde hair, and plunked her tray at the same rounded table.
“Alarms got you up, too?” Arina grumbled, pushing the same neon yellow eggs around her tray without enthusiasm.
Arina Novak, Archivist.
“I was dreaming about forests again,” Elain admitted, resting her elbows on the metal surface as she ripped apart her bacon absently.
Arina ran both hands over her bare face. Like Elain, she’d pulled her hair back, though she used a series of small ponytails to create two large bubble braids that hung down either side of her back. It was a popular style on the net, and it looked rather pretty on Arina. Arina, in Elain’s opinion, reminded her of the sun, or what the sun ought to be. Maybe that had been why Elain had been so drawn to her as a little girl.
It wasn’t just her gold hair that caught even under the harshest, most artificial light. It was her grassy green eyes and her brown skin, the same as the soft soil Elain often sifted through her fingertips. Arina seemed the living embodiment of a planet Elain was homesick from, as though she’d been crafted from the missing parts.
Though, Elain looked for Earth in everyone she met. The iron blue of Nesta’s eyes were a stormy sea, the freckles that dotted Feyre’s nose little pebbles for skipping across a lake. Earth was everywhere as a reminder, and never so clearly than it was in the beautiful Arina.
Arina, who spent her days preserving what she could of humanity. The work of her colleagues was to digitize what they could, while others preserved what existed in the here and now. But Arina took the oldest records and carefully preserved them, either by copying them exactly onto new paper, or restoring the documents so they could live on. The majority of these artifacts, once restored, sat in museums on planets that did not belong to humanity and could only be seen if a person had the resources to travel to wherever they were.
Where else would they be housed? Humanity had no home, which meant no place to keep their cultural heritage. Arina often complained about this to Elain, who privately wondered what the benefit was, overall. Did it make other cultures appreciate them more? Make their case for a new planet to colonize greater? Elain could have asked Nesta these questions if she’d wanted to, but never did.
“I wish I was dreaming about forests,” Arina grumbled, finally forking some food into her mouth. “Everytime I close my eyes, I see fire.”
Elain sighed, chewing thoughtfully. “Afraid of losing your work?”
Arina didn’t answer. “What if we got out of here for a while? Took a break, saw a…I don’t know, a beach? Someplace new? What if we spent six months in Noctus Prime—”
“Why?” Elain interrupted, brow wrinkling. “You want to leave?”
Arina turned toward the large, open windows at the far end of the cafeteria. All Elain saw was the emptiness of dark space, peppered with the occasional star here and there.
“We’re rotting out here, Elain,” Arina said with an urgency she hadn’t heard from her friend in the two decades they’d been friends. “Nothing changes on this station and nothing ever will. Don’t you want more than all this?”
Elain looked down at her half-eaten tray. Not really. Once, maybe, she’d dreamed of seeing more of the universe back when she’d been a little girl, but now…
“Doesn’t it suck seeing Gray every day?”
Elain recoiled as though Arina had struck her.
“Why would you say that?” Elain asked, willing her bottom lip not to tremble. “I barely see him at all.”
That was true enough. After Graysen had ended their engagement, he spent more time off The Station than on, traveling between worlds as a diplomat, same as his father. That had been eight months ago, and Elain was doing better. She didn’t cry herself to sleep at night, though if she were honest, she did spend a lot of time trying to keep herself busy so she wouldn’t obsess over the what-might-have-been.
“You used to want more than banana’s, Elain,” Arina tried, her tone just a little too sharp. Elain scowled, eyes narrowing.
“If you want to travel off world, you don’t need me for that,” she snapped, petulantly.
Arina’s hand shot across the table, fingers encircling her wrists. “I want you to come with me. There’s whole worlds out there to grow bananas on. Worlds that Gray wouldn’t dare step foot on.”
That was, partly, what Elain was afraid of. Neither of them needed to vocalize that outloud, given they were both well aware of Elain’s unspoken fears. Even if Gray came back crawling, could she ever trust him again? It had been nothing personal, he’d said, as if their engagement was merely a business transaction that had run its course. He simply needed to put his career first. Maybe someday, blah blah blah, Elain had stopped listening by that point. Empty platitudes meant to make him feel like he wasn’t the bad guy for letting things get this far.
Pretty lies to obscure the fact he’d broken her heart.
“What about a weekend on Noctus Prime? On the Gold Coast?” Arina cajoled, betraying her hand. Elain’s eyes narrowed again.
“You’ve already purchased a flight, haven’t you?”
“Two days from now,” Arina admitted without an ounce of shame. “We can extend it, if we want, but come for a couple days and relax. Get away.”
“Fine,” Elain conceded, ignoring the soft fissure of pleasure she felt at Arina’s obvious joy. It was nice to have a friend who loved her like Arina did.
Arina beamed and Elain basked in the warmth, a moth drawn to the soft glow of her smile.
They parted ways not long after, shifting topics to The Station and all the gossip Arina had. Unlike Feyre, who happened to know things because she was often in the room where things happened, Arina had a trustworthy face. People just told her things because they trusted her, and Arina often immediately told those things to Elain, knowing Elain would never betray her secrets.
The lights in the halls began to warm, mimicking a sunrise on a faraway planet. As Elain walked down the halls, boots smacking softly against metal, she wondered what time it was on Earth. Was the sun rising somewhere below, too?
It was a question she wondered every morning as she walked the halls to her own station—a massive space divided into multiple smaller rooms that were supposed to mimic the biome they wanted to grow in. Elain took one last breath of dry, filtered air, before scanning her key and stepping into her own little lab.
The warmth was a kick to the stomach, the humidity physically weighing on her as though it were its own form of gravity. Elain would never be used to it, though some part of her relished it. This was what the world might have felt like, at least somewhere.
She spent the morning doing her checks, working from a tablet to input data like she did each day. The amount of water needed to be measured, along with soil density, depth, and acidity. Each day Elain measured the length and width of her trees and each banana leaf coming from each branch. She charted the different colors as she observed them, any little spots, any trimming she did, and everything in between.
It took her all morning to complete. Elain wanted to be through so her research could be replicated someday, once she succeeded. The whole galaxy could eat bananas for all Elain cared—that would make them easier to obtain.
She was about to start mixing her feed for the soil to encourage a little more growth when the station seemed to shudder. Elain paused, looking toward the door, but nothing happened. No sirens began wailing, no lights flickered. It was as if something merely knocked into The Station and kept going.
Elain shrugged and continued about her lab, supposing it was likely a piece of floating rock, or junk, merely bonking into them as it continued onward in its neverending journey through space. Elain barely looked up when the station rocked again, though the lurch caused her to dump some of her fertilizer onto her shoes.
“What is going on—”
Another crash, this time violent enough to send Elain careening against the far wall as though she’d been thrown by an invisible hand. Groaning, Elain attempted to rise to her feet, but another lurch kept her pinned to the floor.
The lights overhead shut off with a loud, whining click. A moment later, the sirens began blaring. Wah. Wah. Wah. Wah—
Louder than they’d been that morning, a full-blown warning that something was wrong. Outside the lab, Elain could hear loud voices. Someone was shouting as Elain made her way to the door of her lab.
Someone was firing plasma shots, too, she realized. “What’s happening?” she demanded, as if someone was going to materialize and tell her.
“Get back inside!” A soldier from the hall barked, hitting the red button on the wall to manually shut the doors to the lab from the inside. Elain didn’t move from the little window, feet rooted in place. It seemed unreal. Smoke curled down the hall, obscuring her view. The soldiers in the hall were pushed back as bright red bolts of molten plasma screamed toward them. Some fell, and Elain watched that, too.
This wasn’t a meteor or debris. This was an invasion.
Why?
Who?
The second part of that question was answered almost immediately. Emerging from the fog was a sight Elain had only ever seen on the net—a male Teryx, tall and imposing, his brown skin glistening even in the otherwise dark and adorned with blue, whorling inked tattoos over his shoulders and biceps. They were said to be marks of conquest, given their race was prized warriors above all else.
He paused in the middle of the hall, rolling his shoulders to reveal two massive, leathery wings on either side of his body. Elain ducked, but not quick enough—those vivid yellow green eyes saw her.
The locked door crunched beneath the male's power, his long, strong fingers prying the two sides open with ease. Elain remained where she was, taking note that he seemed almost human with that shock of dark hair, his square jaw and strong, curving nose. The Teryx came from somewhere within The Cosmic Web, their homeworld unknown and uncharted. How they managed space travel was its own mystery, theorized endlessly by pundits on the net.
The Teryx didn’t join politics, they had no interest in being part of any Galactic Alliance, and if they were concerned about their image, they never attempted to correct it. It had been a good century since anyone had seen one of them in the wider space, though on occasion someone might find a Teryx male in some far-flung outpost, taking work as a bounty hunter or otherwise doing something that concerned only them.
Elain had never seen a Teryx female, though she knew the rumors—that the males kept them enslaved in caves, forced them to breed, and cut the wings of every young girl so she couldn’t escape. Though, until that moment, she’d never seen a Teryx male either.
He was terrifying. Pointing his weapon directly at her—a strange mixture of a gun and a knife—he said, “Out. Now.”
Elain shook her head back and forth. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” she whispered.
The male’s eyes narrowed, lips pressed in a firm line. He held the gun a little firmer in his hand. “Now,” he said again, his soft voice a lethal threat.
Elain had a split second to make a decision. Who knew what would happen if she went with him. There was a booming black market trade for slaves in which humans were valued rather highly—nevermind females. For all she knew, he intended to round them all up and sell them for as much as he could manage.
And that was the kindest future she could imagine. Every other alternative was far, far worse. There was a stack of ceramic pots on the table just behind her. With speed Elain didn’t know she possessed, she reached for one and smashed it against the male's face before darting around him.
The roar of anger he emitted scared Elain to the bone, urging her legs on faster. Delving into the smoke and chaos, Elain relied on her emergency training.
Everyone living on The Station went through it four times a standard year. Given how long she’d been there, Elain had gone through it a bazillion times—enough to know the path blindfolded in the dark. That was lucky, given the lack of light, save for the flashing red overhead, was the only illumination in the smoky dark. The floors lit up the path to the shuttles was all but useless given Elain couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.
She choked, coughing against the smoke, as she made her way through the twisting turns. The closer she got, the louder the screaming, the shouting, and the sounds of gunfire. Were they firing bullets or plasma rounds, she wondered? And would they strike her?
As it turned out, no. Soldiers wearing masks yanked her through a chokepoint, not bothering to see where she fell as she came through. It didn’t matter—Elain could hear Nesta’s voice cutting through the hysteria.
“Elain? Where is Elain?”
Elain scrambled to her feet and flung herself at Nesta, colliding into her chest with relief. “We need to get out of here—”
“We need to take them out while they’re distracted,” Nesta interrupted, eyes steely.
“Nes—”
“One of them has Feyre,” Nesta said again, teeth clenched. “They took Feyre, and we have to get her back.”
Elain looked over her shoulder, catching sight of vivid gold in a sea of gray. She reached out for Arina, yanking her hard to keep them together.
“You’re sure?” Elain asked as Arina gasped for air, hands braced on her knees. They were lined up for evacuation but it was going slowly. People were panicked, screaming for children, for lovers, for friends and the orderliness had broken down. If they didn’t hurry, not everyone would make it out before they were breached and more prisoners taken.
“There were two Teryx,” Nesta said, pulling Elain deeper into the hall and further from where the evacuation ships were. “They were…are…huge. One of them lunged for me and she appeared out of nowhere with a knife. Stabbed the bigger one right in the stomach, which should have sent them running.”
“What happened?” Elain whispered, so easily able to imagine what had happened.
“The other one,” Nesta’s eyes clouded over with burning hatred, “he laughed. Said, ‘There you are, darling. I’ve been looking for you,’ like it was a joke, and then…”
Nesta shook her head, the crown of braids atop coming slightly loose. “He swallowed her up in a cloud of smoke. Like magic.”
Elain’s steps stuttered for a minute. “Magic?”
“Some kind of tech, probably,” Arina interjected, having finally caught her breath. “There’s no such thing as magic. And if you blow up their ship, you’re going to blow your sister up, too.”
Nesta didn’t seem to be listening, two pistols in either hand as she made her way toward a fleet of fighters. Most were gone, encircling the terrifying, onyx ship in the distance. Had a bevy of lasers not been firing from its canons, the ship might have looked like a dark void. It seemed to absorb all the light around it like some kind of terribly devourer from legend.
“Are you listening?” Arina pressed, her own gun strapped to her thigh. “If you blow them up–”
“I just need to board,” Nesta interrupted, turning to face Arina down. Elain didn’t know how Arina withstood that look, and after a moment it seemed Arina couldn’t either. She backed down, palms held upward in surrender.
Another body boarded the small fighter. She was a familiar figure to Elain and Arina, though for different reasons. Another archivist, and Nesta’s only friend Gwyn stepped aboard, pushing a gun into Elain’s chest without a word.
“You pilot,” Gwyn said, plopping into the co-pilot’s seat. “You two—buckle in.”
Arina moaned softly, eyes closed as she took a jump seat across from Elain. The two snapped in the harnesses as Nesta jerked away from The Station. She shouldn’t have watched—Nesta took off like a bat out of hell, yanking Elain forward by her navel before pressing her back against her seat.
“I’m going to be sick,” Elain whispered.
“There!” Nesta shouted, tilting the aircraft sickeningly on its side. The cannons from Gwyn’s guns recoiled, causing their own little fighter to lurch from the energy. Not that it stopped Nesta, laser focused on her prey. They whipped around enemy fighters flying ships that melded with the space around them, appearing just in time to send another fighter ship crashing into the void.
That was going to be them if Nesta wasn’t careful.
Elain wondered who’d taught Nesta to fly like she did. She was a natural, maneuvering through the sky and debris like she had some sixth sense—like she’d been born for it. Nesta had always been good at everything she tried, and even better when she put effort behind it.
And that wasn’t enough to stop what was coming for them, all the same. The dark ship at the center of the invasion seemed to have its own wings, unfurling like a terrible dragon. Nesta attempted to move further afield, but gravity was dragging them toward that gaping maw.
Alarms inside the fighter began to ring.
“What now?!” Elain demanded as Nesta and Gwyn flipped switches and pushed flashing buttons to no avail.
“I’m not letting them take Feyre!” Nesta swore. “We’ll never see her again.”
“This is a suicide mission!” Arina argued, unstrapping herself as they yanked forward. “We need to bail—now.”
Gwyn looked at Nesta. “You’re right,” she said before Nesta could argue. “Nes, it’s over. C’mon.”
Nesta only had seconds to decide. Looking up at Gwyn, she finally nodded. “To the pods. Now.”
There were two pods, big enough to sustain life for seventy hours for two individuals. Arina went in first, Elain second. As Elain sat, knee to knee with her friend, Nesta looked into the pod.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Nes—” Elain scrambled, but Nesta slammed the hissing door shut and began the countdown launch for the pod.
“Sit down, Elain!” Arina tried, but Elain was banging on the small window.
“Nesta!” She screamed, palm aching from the force. “Nesta, they’ll kill you! Nes—”
The pod launched into space and once again, Elain was slammed against a hard, unyielding surface. Arina groaned, too, having taken an elbow, or perhaps a knee, to the gut.
“Elain, you—”
Something smashed into the side of the pod, sending it careening wildly out of control. Elain smacked her head against the unyielding metal wall once, twice.
And then one final time before the stars all winked out.
–
“Another day in paradise,” Jurian commented as Lucien rolled his eyes. That’s not what he would call their current circumstances. He’d come to the resistance a good five years earlier with a friend, and while many others had abandoned the cause, Lucien had remained.
Even in the sticky, muggy weather in the ruined suburbs of Chicago. He supposed he ought to be grateful the ground wasn’t radioactive like so many other cities that had once existed. It had merely been torn apart and left to rot until nature took it over.
And now he lived there, even in the dead of summer, the middle of winter. The weather was decent for about four months out of the year, and he lived for those times. Looking upward at the towering oak trees swaying beneath the moonlight, he wondered what life might be like among the heavens. It was the dream of little boys, not men. There was nothing in their universe besides Earth—how long had they searched, only to find nothing? There were rumors, of course, of aliens appearing in this place or that. Someone claimed a whole group had crashed in Ft. Lauterdale. What a horrible place to be introduced to humanity.
No, this was all their was. Lucien sighed, thinking of his father, the governor of the entire territory. It was a huge swath of land that had once been different states within a United States—a place Lucien only read about in textbooks. Now it was simply The Middle, and had become the most prosperous region in the massive empire that now was The Imperium of the Americas.
Lucien sighed, pulling his shirt from his sticky skin and tossing it over his shoulder. Beron might have declared the resistance dead, but it seemed lively enough to Lucien. People were working, as they always did, in the camp Jurian had taken over from a previous group. It wouldn’t be hard to find them, even as they dug far below the ground to create shelters that could protect them from radiation, and the vast array of new weaponry that seemed to come from the stars every other month.
He glanced upward again just in time to see a shooting star streak across the sky. He wasn’t the only one watching. Everyone, it seemed, had craned their neck to take a look. He heard a child announce they ought to make a wish, and for some reason, Lucien decided to do it.
Send us something that can help, he breathed, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. Anything. Anyone.
The star should have arced along the curve of the planet, not…continued plummeting. “Meteor?” Lucien heard himself say, ignoring everything Jurian had just told him.
Jurian shook his head no. “Could be junk.”
They’d found a lot of debris that had fallen from their gravitational orbit, leftovers of a space age that was long gone. Unfunded by a government more concerned with immediate profit and stripping the remaining minerals from the planet than they did about learning anything new. Lucien often wondered what would happen once there was nothing left to take. When the earth had given up all her secret spoils and humanity was left wretched and abandoned.
Why?
“Could be good for salvage,” Lucien offered, well aware he wouldn’t be getting sleep that night.
“We need to move fast,” Jurian replied, wiping sweat from beneath a mop of brown curls.
“Let’s go now.”
–
Eris was interrupted by his father.
“The Tuscon was attacked.”
“The research station?” Eris questioned, setting his tablet down on the side table. “For what purpose?”
“It’s unclear. They had a lot of projects, and the station is rubble.”
“Who?”
“Teryx,” Beron replied. “Debris is raining down just outside the city. Go out there, clean it up, and ensure no one else finds anything.”
Of course Beron had come to deliver instructions. Beron cared as little for space as Eris did. Their home was on Earth and had been since the dawn of time. Eris had little interest in traveling off world like his father so often did. He’d heard there were grand civilizations out there and he simply did not think anything could be better than what humanity had already constructed.
Even if humanity was a fractured species at the moment. What did the aliens make of that, he wondered?
Eris nodded his head curtly. It was a direct order, and Eris always obeyed. He’d cleaned debris up before. No one was to know the full scope of what was happening in the galaxy, mostly to keep the interests of the wealthy, well…wealthy. Humanity still needed food, still needed weapons, and those things were best found on Earth.
Beron turned and left Eris’ townhouse, leaving Eris to send a flurry of messages as quickly as his fingers could type. This was a problem for the morning. Eris was tracking his youngest brother, who was back somewhere nearby, living like a filthy caveman if he knew Lucien. And he did. Lucien would be scrounging, and Eris didn’t want to have to drag him back home.
Again.
It had simply become an embarrassment for them all. Lucien, brother by his mothers blood only, had always been difficult and unafraid of Beron. He’d left for the resistance as a teenager and only returned when Eris found him, often knocking him unconscious and dragging him home.
Only for Lucien to vanish just as soon as someone took their eyes off him.
Eris sighed, crossing his legs. A ruined space station, the Teryx coming out of deep space, and now debris was raining from the heavens.
Eris had warned his father this secret wouldn’t last, and when the populace on Earth realized they’d been lied to and essentially enslaved, there would be no need for Lucien’s rebellion. The people would revolt all on their own.
He doubted they’d care much about Eris’ own forced participation when they were lining him up for the guillotine. It was simply too much work to try and control everyone’s perception. Beron still cared.
Hello everyone!!! And Happy Day 1 of Elucien week!!! The Prompt for today is Heartbeat so I created a sweet little fic for you all of Elain and Lucien finding out that they're expecting their first child together. I hope you all enjoy it! And I can't wait to celebrate this week with all of you!
Sunlight streamed through the open windows of the nursery, her hand pressing firmly against the swell of her stomach as she felt her daughter's kicks pressing against her palm, quietly laughing taking a seat in the rocking chair beside the sunniest of the windows, letting the sunlight was over them, the sunflowers in the nursery turning towards the light soaking up its rays as Elain closed her eyes, letting herself feel everything about this moment.
"Isn't that the most beautiful sight." A voice mused, a smile pulling at her lips as she popped one eye open, Lucien entering the room, sunlight dancing around him as he knelt down, his hand going to her swollen abdomen as their daughter nudged towards his hand, sending him a swift kick in greeting as a grin split between his lips.
"Why, hello to you too, my littlest sunflower. I hope you didn't give your mother too much trouble today."
She glanced at him a smile playing over her own lips as his hand roamed over the confides of her stomach, their daughter following the path of his hand. She had always been more active when they were all together.
"She's restless today. I swear she takes after you that way." She teased him as Lucien gave a soft chuckle, pressing a kiss to her abdomen.
"She's probably running out of room in there and is eager to see the outside world, she only has three weeks left after all." Lucien countered.
"Trust me. She reminds me the closer we get to her due date."
Elain winced slightly as their daughter sent a swift kick to her ribs in protest as Lucien tsked,
"Be kinder to your mother, sunflower. She's eager to meet you too. We all are."
"Especially your grandfather." She mused, a knowing smile playing over Lucien's lips,
"i think he's just eager to have a grandchild to spoil, Mother knows the pegasi are eager for her to make her arrival as well."
She smiled at that as their hands interlocked together, her head cocking to the side as she asked,
"Do you remember the day we found out we were having her?"
The day started off as any other, Elain rose with the dawn, energized by the first rays of light, as she made her way to the cozy kitchen her and Lucien had designed together, ready to start her day.
It had been a decade. A decade since she had found out that her and Lucien were mates. Seven years since they had set off to the continent together, since those walls they had built up around their bond came crashing down, and their love slowly started to bloom. And then they had argued, about the bond, their feelings for one another. And when she had told him she had always wanted a husband, not a mate. He had simply answered with “the. Be my wife instead.”
She had blinked at him, taken aback by his response as he had cradled her hand within his own. Saying that it had taken him a while to figure out why he had went through what he went through. But when he looked at her, he knew. And if loving her meant being her husband instead of her mate, then he would gladly take the honor of that being his title instead.
She had kissed him then. That love blossoming between them as they had consummated their love in those woods that night. And had married in the tulip fields of the continent three days later. She had never remembered feeling happier.
And then five years ago, when all the dust settled, when everything was finally over, he had been offered a place here in the Day Court. His father, his true one, wanting nothing more than to know him if that was what Lucien had wanted.
They had talked about it, about what accepting the offer might lead to. The responsibility that would be placed on both of them now that she was his wife. That one day she might inherit the title of High Lady. Similar to how Feyre was High Lady.
He told her he wouldn’t subject her to that if that was not what she wished. But when she considered it. Considered him and the life they could have together. She had realized that there was no where else she would rather be than at his side.
And when they had made their farewells, her giving a tear filled goodbye to her sisters promising that no matter where the world took them that they would always be each other’s sisters. They had promised that they would always have a place in each other’s worlds. And perhaps that was enough.
Then three years ago, after various nights at the Day Court. After they both had grown into their roles here and had found a place not too far from where Helion resided, Lucien claiming that they needed their own space. She had asked him to make a meal with her.
They had grown accustom to this. Making their own food together so that there was no accidental accepting of their mating bond. She had turned to him then, mixing bowl in her hands as she asked him if they could make it together.
He had swallowed then, asking her if she was sure as she nodded, tears prickling the corner of her eyes as he had pressed a kiss to her lips, and then for behind her to help mix the batter.
Their hands working in tandem as they always had done and would continue to do, as she lifted the whisk between them, the batter dripping from it as he leaned forward, his tongue flickering out to taste the batter as a fire consumed his gaze. Using that same talented tongue to taste her as their frenzy began on that kitchen counter.
A soft blush painted her cheeks remembering that day as she pulled out the contents of what she wanted to make for breakfast before she set down the eggs, bread, and sausages that she wanted to prepare for that morning, wanting to surprise her mate with breakfast that morning when the nausea rolled in, making her stomach roil as she threw open the windows to catch some semblance of fresh air.
The nausea had started a week ago, hitting Elain at strange times during the day as she fought the urge to vomit the contents of her breakfast, and sometimes her lunch or dinner depending when it swept in. It had always subsided before Elain truly started to worry about it, but now-now it felt as if the kitchen was surrounded by ungodly amounts of heat, and every smell assaulted her fae senses.
She fanned her face, pulling out a chair, her stomach still swept in nausea as she placed her head between her knees, fighting off the boasts of nausea that consumed her.
Soft footfalls sounded in the kitchen, alerting her to his presence.
"Elain." The gentle voice said, his scent surrounded her sweet apples and warm cinnamon engulfing her as she met her mate's gaze.
She pressed a hand to her mouth, that sickness still sweeping over her as tears prickled at the ducts of her eyes, feeling faint. The heat-it was damn near sweltering, and it wasn't even noun.
"I feel sick." She admitted to him, trying to breath through her nose, Lucien's reflexes kicking in as he swept a bin towards her and she hurled into it, emptying her stomach as his eyes swept over her in concern.
"I'll go fetch the healer." Lucien assured her, helping her out of her seat and leaning her against him so she could stand. A pilar of strength as he was in most things.
"But, the food-" She protested not sure why she did so as Lucien assisted her in standing, the world wobbling slightly on its axis as he kept her upright, sweeping her up into his arms, careful not to jostle her too much in case the nausea came back.
"I care more about you. Come now, we'll get you back into bed and I'll call on the healer to come examine you."
She nodded, letting Lucien guide her to their room, leaving the breakfast untouched as she swore she felt the sun on her back as they went.
"And how long have you been experiencing these bouts of nausea?" The healer inquired, her hands pressing to Elain's abdomen as she winced slightly at the touch, the healer taking note as she continued her ministrations.
"On and off for the past week." Elain answered, Lucien sitting on the chair by their bedside, clutching onto her hand as he watched the healer's hands work. marking where they touched. Seeming more protective of her than usual.
The healer hummed, pressing against a tender spot as Elain hissed, Lucien tensing at the sound.
"Is that sensitive?"
She nodded as the healer cocked her head,
"Do smells usually trigger these boasts of nausea?"
She nodded, the healer considering, as she continued,
"And your courses?"
Elain straightened, considering the question, she pondered this, counting back the weeks since she had last- she blanched, her hand pressed firmly against her abdomen. Lucien's eyes flickering to that hand, his metal eye whirling as he marked the gesture.
"Are you saying-"Lucien started, realization hitting him the same time as it hit Elain,
"I'm saying that there's a good chance that your mate isn't sick after all. If my suspicions are correct," The healer's eyes met Elain's own. "If my suspicions are correct, I think you might be pregnant."
Elain's breath caught in her throat, the words clinging through her, her hand pressing further into her abdomen, still flat as far as the eye could see, but if she focused, concentrated on her scent, she could tell the tattle tale signs of a new scent emerging.
Lucien, as if noting the change of her scent too, grasped one of her hands, squeezing it within his own in reassurance. His face one of wonder and awe and-
Joy. Pure utter joy that she had only seen in very rare moments with him, illuminating his face, swearing that she could see tears forming in his eyes, as his hand joined hers on her abdomen.
"I'd like to do a thorough examination to prove my suspicions."
Elain nodded, silent words passing between the two...
A child. She was with child, Her and Lucien's child. The future of this court growing within her as she felt the tell of the healer's magic working, an image projecting in a silhouette of golden light-
At first it was nothing, a blurred image that Elain had to focus on, before the image caught her eyes, her own breath catching as she focused on that image, focused on, and then there it was-her ears pounding with the force of it, Lucien's own gaze tearing from her own as his gaze flickered to that image, to that sound-
A heartbeat. Not one that belonged to Lucien or to her, but to the life they had created together. Their child. Wild and strong and full of light as they glanced at the image with awe.
"There they are, If my measurements are correct, i would say you're 7 to 8 weeks along. And everything with the babe looks good. Congratulations my lord and lady." She smiled, her gaze flickering towards them as they thanked her before she left the two alone, leaving the image projecting so they could look at it for a moment or two longer.
Tear prickled in her eyes, her laughter damn near infectious as she saw Lucien's own form. He pulled her in, pressing a kiss to her lips as their hands clutched together on her abdomen, settling on the life they had formed there as the light filtered through the room, the sound of their child's heartbeat in their ears as they listened to the steadiness of it's beating, their hands clutching together as their world expanded before them, like the sun breaking on the horizon.
Their hands clutched together now, lost in that moment at the joy of it as a shot of pain coursed through her, stealing her breath away as she squeezed Lucien's hand so tightly she was surprised that she hadn't hurt him, as she gasped out, the pain so sharp that it was damn near unbearable.
"Elain," He breathed, his spine straightening, his eyes scanning over every inch of her as her hand went to her abdomen, trying to inhale a few deep, calming breaths as another wave of pain hit her, as she bent over bracing herself against him for support, as she felt the tattle tell gushing between her thighs.
"I think-" She breathed through the pain, "I think our daughter is more eager to meet us than we originally thought-"
Her eyes widened, his gaze wild and panicked as Elain breathed,
"I think-I think my water just broke." She laughed through the pain, another contraction hitting her fast and hard as Lucien breathed,
"Okay, Okay. I'll call the healer." '
"Okay. " She breathed as he helped her out of the rocking chair, his eyes resting on hers as he squeezed her hand in reassurance.
"Let's go meet our daughter, Mate."
She nodded, leaning on him for support and they walked through their next journey of life together, eager to bring their daughter into this world as the sun embraced them as they walked towards that journey together.
Summary : Elain can no longer ignore the bond, so she comes up with a flawless plan and hopes Lucien doesn’t object. Of course, spending more time together leads to a hopeless romance <3
Note : Happy Elucien Week and thank you to the amazing volunteers that organise @elucienweekofficial I have been so so excited for this event!!! This is a short multi-chapter fic that was heavily inspired by the various Regency and Victorian romance novels I’ve read over the last few months :)
The first letter Elain Archeron ever wrote to her mate occupied scarcely half a page. She regarded it long enough for the tea at her elbow to grow cold.
The words did not improve beneath inspection, she thought with a sigh. If anything, they seemed to grow more unbearable with every passing moment, as though the ink itself had committed some grave offense simply by existing upon the paper.
Her fingers moved toward the silver paper knife resting beside the cup. She turned it once between her fingers, watching the afternoon light catch along its edge, before slipping the blade beneath the fold.
For a moment, she regarded the letter with a faint lift of her brow.
It looked absurdly innocent.
A few lines of ink. A handful of words. It was not the type of letter a woman sent to a man after half a decade of immaculate silence.
Simply sitting down and thinking about what she was about to propose required more courage than any battle she had ever survived. Which was, Elain thought with some irritation, a deeply unreasonable thing for a letter to demand.
She folded the parchment.
Each crease was sharp enough to satisfy something within her.
Only when the page had become a square no larger than her palm did she throw it to the fire. The parchment curled, the edges the first to go.
Elain’s mouth tightened. Destroying a letter, she reflected, demanded considerably less courage than sending one.
The thought had scarcely settled before she felt her mate’s heartbeat once again.
It brushed against her awareness with the same maddening patience it had cultivated over the past several months, so faint she could almost dismiss it, and yet so constant she no longer could.
Once, Elain had been able to ignore it. She had told herself it was merely magic. An inconvenience. A strange circumstance created by forces older and far less sensible than herself.
As more time had passed, Elain felt that the bond insisted upon existing, a quiet pulse beneath her own. It seemed to her, as though somewhere, impossibly far away, another heart continued its measured rhythm with no regard for whether she wished to hear it.
Her fingers curled against the desk, she refused to count the beats.
She refused.
She did not wish to wonder whether he was sitting or standing, smiling or scowling, whether the pulse quickened because he laughed or slowed because he slept.
The refusal itself had become exhausting. With a sigh that carried rather more frustration than the moment deserved, Elain reached for another sheet of parchment.
This time, she didn’t allow herself the luxury of hesitation.
Lucien,
There are matters concerning the bond I believe we ought to discuss.
She stared at the sentence. It possessed all the warmth of a diplomatic summons, she decided. One expected ambassadors and emissaries to receive such letters. Not the man who fate, in one astonishing display of poor judgment, had tethered to her soul.
She laid the quill aside before she could strike through the words, she’d already ripped enough pages.
Outside, the gardens of the townhouse stretched beneath the amber wash of late afternoon. The roses she had planted climbed the pale stone balustrades, heavy with cream blossoms and blush petals that stirred in the breeze. Their fragrance drifted through the open windows, sweet enough to suffocate.
Elain thought she heard Nuala speak. The fountain splashed with cheerful indifference.
The world persisted in believing itself uncomplicated.
How enviable, Elain thought, blowing at an errant curl that fell over her eyes.
The heartbeat continued, steady and infuriating.
Some days, the bond gave her nothing but the proof of another existence brushing against hers. Other days, it betrayed little pieces of him.
A bone-deep weariness that disappeared before supper, a phantom ache behind her right eye, a sudden warmth filled her chest while arranging flowers.
Ignoring the bond had once required discipline, which Elain was proud to admit she possessed in spades. Now, it required a daily amount of energy she resented giving.
With a measured breath, she drew another page toward her. This time she did not pause to consider her words any longer.
She wrote.
Lucien,
If you are in Velaris for the Equinox Ball, I ask that you meet me after the first dance.
There is a private drawing room beyond the western ballroom.
I shall be there.
The quill hovered, a single heartbeat answered her own.
She had not offered him an explanation, and she was not going to apologize for her request.
If Lucien came, she wanted it to be because she had asked, not because some ancient magic tugged at his ribs, and not because everyone else expected him to continue displaying a patience she had neither earned nor requested.
The distinction mattered, perhaps only to her.
She added one final line.
I believe it is time we spoke honestly.
She read the words once. Then folded the letter with meticulous care, smoothing each edge with the side of her thumb until the parchment lay perfectly even beneath her hand.
When the wax softened beneath the candle flame, she lifted the Night Court seal.
The crest pressed into the warm wax, and she felt as her brows drew together.
With a quiet sound of annoyance, Elain slid her thumbnail beneath the cooling seal and removed it.
Instead, she reached up and pulled the small sprig of jasmine woven into her hair and tucked it inside the fold, all the while wondering if she was making a terrible mistake.
* * *
The drawing room stood empty, as Elain had hoped it would.
It was smaller than the grand salons that opened onto the ballroom, meant less for entertaining than for escaping it. A pair of tall windows overlooked the river, their panes thrown open to admit the cool breath of the autumn evening. Candlelight gathered softly against dark walls, and somewhere beyond the closed door came the muted swell of music and laughter, as though another world existed only a corridor away.
A chessboard occupied the center table.
Elain crossed to it without thinking, her gloved fingertips lingering over the carved pieces. Someone had abandoned the game halfway through. She regarded the arrangement for a moment before quietly resetting the board, one piece after another returning to its proper place.
The small, orderly task steadied her. She had nearly finished arranging the pawns when she felt unhurried footsteps approaching.
Her heartbeat betrayed her before the knock came, three courteous taps.
"Yes." She said and cringed at how dreadfully loud her voice sounded.
The handle turned and Lucien entered with the same composed ease he seemed to carry into every room, closing the door gently behind him before looking up.
For one fleeting, impossible instant, neither of them spoke.
He had dressed for the ball in deep green, the velvet of his coat catching warm gold wherever the candles found it. Brown gloves disappeared beneath neatly fastened cuffs, and a cream cravat sat perfectly tied at his throat.
Elain had to remind herself that staring was unbecoming.
He looked well, she told herself, there was no need to be so captivated.
Then his russet eye found hers. It was astonishing how such a lovely face could seem to hold so many different questions at once.
His gaze lingered only briefly before lowering. "Lady Elain."
The title, spoken with perfect civility, should not have disappointed her.
She inclined her head. "Hello."
Another silence settled. He remained near the door, leaving half the room between them.
Her eyes caught, quite without permission, on the familiar line of the scar crossing the side of his face.
Before she could stop herself, she wondered, not for the first time, what the raised skin might feel like if she pressed her lips to it.
As though sensing the direction of her gaze, Lucien shifted. Merely enough that the scar disappeared from view, leaving only the clean profile she remembered from countless stolen glances across crowded rooms.
The movement was practiced. Something inside her tightened and she looked away first. "I hope I did not keep you from enjoying the ball." She frowned, remembering that it was being thrown to celebrate Autumn’s newest High Lord.
His mouth curved. "I have attended enough court functions to know that being summoned to a private drawing room is generally the more interesting prospect." He paused. "Though I confess I had not anticipated finding a chessboard." His gaze settled upon it.
"I thought..." She removed one glove finger by finger, buying herself a moment. "I thought we might play."
Lucien's brows lifted almost imperceptibly. "Does the game bear some strategic significance?"
"No." She folded the glove carefully beside the board. "I simply think better when my hands are occupied."
For a heartbeat he regarded her. "I generally think worse."
It was delivered so gravely that she almost failed to recognize the joke.
Almost.
The corner of her mouth betrayed her.
Lucien smiled outright.
Elain busied herself with removing the second glove.
The leather was finer than anything she ordinarily wore, dyed to match the dark garnet silk of her gown so precisely that they seemed cut from the same bolt of cloth. She smoothed each finger after drawing it free before placing the pair together beside the board.
An absurd thing to care about, whether he noticed the pretty gloves or the lovely gown.
Whether he noticed anything at all.
His gaze flickered toward her then, lingering not upon the dress but higher. On her hair, she knew.
It had taken her entirely by surprise, how liberating it had felt to cut it. Enough that the curls no longer brushed the middle of her back but sprang lightly against her shoulders whenever she moved.
Lucien said nothing about it, she could hardly expect him to remark upon her appearance while standing alone with her behind a closed door.
He crossed the room then, not directly toward her but to the opposite chair.
"I should warn you," he said, beginning to arrange the black pieces before him, "I play terribly."
"I don't believe you."
One shoulder lifted carelessly. "I was always better at cards."
For reasons she could not have explained, Elain suddenly found the first move infinitely more daunting than writing the letter had ever been. She reached for the king's pawn, advancing it two squares.
Lucien regarded the move with exaggerated solemnity. "A bold beginning."
"I thought it rather conventional." Elain offered.
His fingers, long and deft, covered by his gloves, settled upon one of his own pawns. There was something unexpectedly elegant in his movements. The piece came to rest opposite hers with a quiet click against the board.
"I confess," he said, "I have spent the better part of this evening attempting to guess why you wished to see me."
"And?"
"I have reached no satisfactory conclusion." His tone remained light, but she noticed the way he did not look at her as he spoke. His attention rested upon the board with suspicious diligence.
Another piece moved.
She studied him across the chessboard. "You don't seem to be very troubled by that."
"I am." His answer came easily. "I simply find worrying over such things an unattractive quality."
Elain held back a truly unladylike snort. She moved her knight. "So."
Lucien mirrored the motion on his side of the board. "So."
"I asked you here because..." The sentence dissolved, the words honey on her tongue.
How ridiculous.
"You needn't hurry," Lucien said at last.
Elain noticed that her discarded gloves lay beside her elbow, perfectly aligned, one atop the other. Without thinking, she straightened them. "I've been reading," she started.
One copper brow lifted. "Should I be alarmed?"
She fought the urge to scowl. "I fail to see why my reading habits would concern you."
"They generally wouldn't." His priestess glided forward. "But one rarely summons a male to announce them."
Despite herself Elain breathed a small laugh.
Lucien looked absurdly pleased with himself in response.
The music changed. The orchestra had begun a waltz, the strings drifting faintly through the walls like distant birdsong.
Lucien turned his attention back to the board, shifting his body forward. The movement revealed the familiar scar, pale beneath the candlelight, running from brow to jaw. His mechanical eye caught the flame for the briefest instant, throwing back a glimmer of molten gold.
"I've been reading," she repeated more quietly, "about mating bonds."
Something imperceptible changed in his expression. He leaned back almost lazily, one arm resting against the chair, but his russet eye remained fixed upon her with a concentration that made her pulse flutter. "I see."
"I found remarkably little." Elain admitted.
"I'm not surprised." His golden eye whirred softly, filling the silence. "What did the books say?"
Elain looked down at the board. She reached for her queen, then stopped before touching it.
"When the bond..." she began, shaking her head. "When the bond snapped between us... I thought refusing to acknowledge it would eventually weaken it."
"It was a reasonable guess." Lucien responded with a frown.
"I don't believe it has." Elain said softly.
"No."
"You feel it as well." It wasn't quite a question.
Lucien was silent for several moments. When he answered, his voice was very calm. "I do."
She lifted her eyes. "To what extent?"
He considered that. "It varies." His thumb absently traced the smooth edge of one of his captured pawns.
"Can you feel it tonight?"
Lucien hesitated. His mismatched gaze held hers. "Tonight," he said softly, "I know you're terrified."
Elain felt her breath catch.
She had hidden it from everyone else so successfully that she'd almost managed to hide it from herself.
For several moments, only the crackle of the candles disturbed the quiet. Elain looked down at the board, though she could not have said what position the pieces occupied.
Terrified.
The word ought to have embarrassed her.
Curiously, it did not. Only because he'd said it without satisfaction at having guessed correctly, she thought. Simply as though he had observed clouds gathering over the Sidra and remarked that she might wish to bring an umbrella on her walk.
"You don’t need to look quite so alarmed," Lucien said after a moment, rescuing his knight from what she belatedly realized had been an excellent trap. "I assure you, I won’t make a habit of announcing your emotions."
Elain traced the edge of one of her priestesses with the tip of her finger. The ivory was warm. "I've often wondered," she admitted, "whether I imagined it."
"The bond?"
She nodded. "The heartbeat. The... impressions." She tucked a curl behind her pointed ear. "I told myself they were coincidences."
Lucien smiled faintly. "I did much the same."
"You did?"
"Oh, yes." He nodded. "For nearly a year I convinced myself I was inexplicably developing a fondness for gardening."
She blinked. The ghost of a smile tugged at her mouth.
"So when I spent three consecutive afternoons wondering whether daffodils preferred morning sun..."
"You knew." Elain concluded.
"I suspected." His eye met hers. "It seemed considerably more likely that someone else cared about daffodils than that I had developed a passionate interest overnight."
She laughed before she could stop herself. It escaped her in a bright, surprised sound.
Lucien's expression changed, the tight lines around his mouth smoothened. His shoulders, always so carefully held, loosened by a fraction.
Elain advanced her queen.
Lucien regarded the move.
"What?" Elain muttered.
"I fear you're attempting to distract me."
"I assure you, I possess no such strategy."
"I've just lost a rook."
"I fail to see how that concerns me."
"It confirms my suspicion." He said lightly.
"Which is?"
"Behind your lovely disposition, there's a ruthless streak."
She tilted her head. "You've only just discovered it?"
The music beyond the walls swelled, then faded again beneath the low murmur of voices in the ballroom. Somewhere in the corridor, footsteps passed without pausing.
The drawing room remained undisturbed.
Elain became aware that her index finger began to catch along the skin of her thumbnail beneath the table. A nervous habit from her human life.
She stilled it immediately.
Lucien studied the board with remarkable concentration, ignoring her remark entirely.
She found herself unexpectedly grateful. "I have another question."
"You may ask as many as you like."
She hesitated. "Has it..." Her voice faltered. She tried again. "Has the bond become stronger?"
Lucien did not answer at once. His fingers rested lightly against his knee, though he made no move. "I don't know."
"You don't?" Elain asked, hearing a bit of desperation in her tone.
"I know that I have become more accustomed to hearing it." He chose his words carefully. "Eris once compared it to the way one might notice the ticking of a clock until it suddenly stops."
Elain frowned. "That sounds dreadful."
"It isn't." He looked at her then, with that infuriating steadiness that always made her feel as though he saw one thought further than she intended to reveal. "It's simply..." He searched briefly, "...part of the architecture now."
Elain turned the phrase over silently.
Part of the architecture.
She wondered whether that was healthier than her own method of pretending that the bond did not exist. Perhaps that explained why she was so exhausted.
"You said you've been reading." His voice was quiet, almost indifferent as he continued. "You never told me what you were looking for."
Elain looked down at the board. Lucien had her in check, she hadn't even seen it happen.
"I was looking," she said slowly, "for an ending."
His hand, halfway toward his king, became still. His careful expression did not change, but she felt the way his heart skipped a beat.
Elain finally lifted her gaze to meet his. "There was one thing," she said, "upon which every account agreed."
Neither of them reached for the board. The game remained exactly as it was, the pieces suspended in quiet expectation.
Elain found herself looking instead at Lucien's hands. His gloves still concealed them. She had not noticed until now.
"You've kept your gloves on." The observation escaped before she could consider her words.
He glanced down, as though surprised to find them there. "So I have," he murmured.
He tugged first at one finger, then another, drawing the leather free with unhurried precision. His hands emerged broad and lightly tanned, the backs crossed by faint white lines.
He laid the gloves neatly beside the board, parallel to her own. She noticed the orderliness of it, the small, unconscious symmetry.
It reminded her, absurdly, of arranging seedlings in the gardens before they ever flowered.
"You've been observing me all evening."
Elain looked up too quickly. "Me?"
Lucien’s tone remained perfectly pleasant. "So either I'm considerably more interesting than I believed," he raised his shoulders elegantly, "or you're delaying."
She felt as heat climbed delicately into her cheeks. "I am not delaying."
Lucien inclined his head. "I stand corrected."
He did not sound remotely corrected.
She resisted the impulse to frown. "You are very provoking."
"I've been accused."
"I can well imagine."
"I doubt it." The answer came so softly that she almost missed it.
She looked at him, her eyes squinting in accusation. "What do you mean?"
His gaze wandered briefly toward the open window. Beyond it, orange lanterns floated upon the Sidra, each reflection breaking and reforming upon the current. "I don't think you've imagined me at all." The words were spoken without resentment. "I think you've spent five years," he continued quietly, "being exceedingly careful not to."
She opened her mouth. Closed it again.
She had known facts, had carefully collected them whenever she heard his name being mentioned. She could admit that she had never allowed herself to wonder what occupied his thoughts, never allowed herself to imagine what he might be doing.
Lucien simply existed, and she only acknowledged his presence when he addressed her directly. The realization was suddenly uncomfortable. "I was trying to be kind." It sounded feeble even to her own ears.
Lucien drew a sharp breath. "I know."
"I thought..."
"I know what you thought." His fingers brushed lightly against the edge of the chessboard. "You thought distance would be easier."
She nodded once.
"For you as much as for me."
"Mm."
“Elain,” hearing her name fall from his full lips sent the most extraordinary flutter through her chest. Lucien leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms against his knees. "You said the books agreed upon one thing."
Elain looked down at the board. Her king remained in check. "It appears," she murmured, "that mating bonds are rather... inelegant."
His brow lifted. "I wasn't aware anyone had ever accused them of being elegant."
"They're surprisingly practical."
"I see."
"They describe..." She searched for a word that sounded less shocking than the truth, "...a completion."
Lucien did not move. She wondered whether he had stopped breathing.
"The bond is said to..." She exhaled softly, "...become quieter." His gaze never left her face. "After intimacy."
The word itself seemed almost disappointingly ordinary.
Lucien's hand closed slowly around one of the captured pieces. He rolled it once between his fingers. "You've chosen an interesting place to have this conversation."
"The ballroom seemed inappropriate." Elain mumbled, certain that her face and chest had turned the same shade as her dress. She folded her hands together in her lap to stop herself from twisting the ring she wore. "I have a proposal."
"I had begun to suspect." Lucien said, an amused tilt to his head.
"It is not..." She paused. Suddenly she cared very much how he heard her words. "It is not born of affection." The moment the statement left her mouth, she wished to gather it back. Lucien did not flinch, his golden eye clicked. "It is born," she continued carefully, "of curiosity and practicality."
A flicker of emotion crossed his face.
She pressed on before courage deserted her entirely. "I am tired, Lucien." She met his eye. "I am tired of wondering whether this bond governs more of my life than I permit myself to admit."
"I understand,” Lucien answered simply.
"I would like to know." She drew a careful breath. "If it asks only this."
The silence that followed was so complete she could hear the river beyond the open window. Lucien looked at her for what felt like an eternity.
"I don't think," he said, "that it would be right of me to share my thoughts before you ask the one question you truly brought me here to ask."
Elain realized, with equal parts horror and exasperation, that he was going to make her say it aloud. For one extraordinary moment, she considered leaving. She did not imagine flinging open the door or inventing some transparent excuse about the lateness of the hour.
She simply imagined standing, walking quietly from the room, and pretending none of it had happened. It was a temptation she recognized with uncomfortable familiarity, that retreat had always come naturally to her.
Lucien, infuriatingly, appeared to recognize it as well.
"You needn't look so pleased." Elain huffed. She looked down at her hands. Without realizing it, she had gathered the fingers of one glove into her palm, the soft kid leather creased beneath her grip.
She smoothed it carefully.
"I invited you here," she said, more to the glove than to him, "because I wished to propose..." The word caught and Lucien said nothing, "...an arrangement."
He inclined his head once. "What sort of arrangement?"
She looked up sharply. "You know perfectly well."
"I have a suspicion."
"A suspicion?" She repeated, somewhat exasperated.
"My suspicions have been wrong before." His tone was mild. "I'd rather not presume."
She narrowed her eyes. "I believe you're doing this on purpose."
"I absolutely am." He said it so candidly that she almost laughed.
Instead, she found herself staring. "You are remarkably irritating."
"I've heard others say the same thing on countless occasions."
"You seem rather proud of it." Elain bit back.
His smile broadened. "It does amuse me."
The warmth of it caught her off guard. She had seen Lucien smile countless times across crowded rooms. At Feyre, and Cassian, and Eris. At little Nyx, who seemed convinced Lucien existed solely for the purpose of being climbed upon.
Never, she realized with a start, like the one he flashed her just a moment before.
The thought made her strangely breathless.
She straightened unconsciously. Her curls slipped forward, brushing the line of her jaw before bouncing back against her shoulders.
Lucien's gaze followed the movement, only for an instant, then it returned politely to her face.
She wondered, ridiculously, whether he preferred it longer.
"I like it." Lucien said.
She blinked. "What?"
"Your hair."
She had not realized if she'd spoken aloud, or if the thought had made its way along their shared bond. Colour rose into her cheeks with alarming speed. "I wasn't—"
He spared her the embarrassment of finishing. "It suits you." His voice remained wonderfully matter-of-fact.
She stared. One morning she'd looked in the mirror and felt suddenly, overwhelmingly tired of carrying the weight of her curls. "Thank you," she murmured.
Lucien inclined his head. "Well," he said softly. She met his eye. "I believe you were proposing something."
Elain folded her hands together. Then unfolded them again.
"I should like..." she began. Her voice disappeared, she closed her eyes for the briefest moment. When she opened them, Lucien was watching her with such steady attention that there was nowhere left to hide. "I should like us," she said slowly, "to become lovers."
Not mates, not husband and wife, not anything so grand and permanent.
Lovers.
The word lingered between them.
Lucien did not react, at least, not outwardly. She felt the quick beat of his heart in perfect time with her own. The ivory pawn he'd been holding ceased its lazy rotation between his fingers. "I see."
"I thought..." She forced herself onward. "If the bond settles after physical intimacy..."
"Yes."
She stared at his throat, watched him as he swallowed, "...then perhaps we might..." She searched helplessly, "...determine whether that is true."
He was silent.
"I am aware," she continued, "that this proposal is unconventional."
He raised his brows. "I confess, that aspect has not escaped me."
She smiled, only briefly. "I am serious, Lucien, I do not mean to make light of it."
"I believe you." He laid the pawn gently upon the table. The tiny click sounded terribly loud. Then he leaned back, studying her with an expression she could not decipher. "When you wrote that we ought to speak honestly..." His voice was almost thoughtful. "Elain," he said softly, "do you truly imagine the difficult part of this conversation is persuading me to say yes?"
"I thought you might require some persuading." Elain scowled.
"The difficult part is making certain you understand what you're asking of me."
And suddenly the chess game felt very far away indeed.
Elain held his gaze. "I understand perfectly well."
"I don't believe you do."
"I assure you—"
"I know what you believe you're asking." His voice remained gentle enough that it only sharpened her irritation. "I should like to know," he said, "whether you've imagined this conversation ending differently."
She frowned. "I don’t understand?"
"Did you expect me to bargain?"
"No." She stammered.
"Negotiate terms?"
"No." She said more confidently.
"Attempt to seduce you?"
Her cheeks warmed. "Perhaps a little."
A flicker of amusement touched his expression. "I was fairly certain that would have sent you directly back to the ballroom."
"It probably would have." She looked at him for a long moment. "Then what is it you imagine I have misunderstood?"
Lucien was quiet. The silence stretched long enough that she wondered whether he meant to answer at all. When he did, it was with remarkable care. "I think you've spent a very long time convincing yourself that because I have never asked anything of you..." His thumb brushed once across his opposite knuckle. "I never wanted anything."
The words seemed to settle over the room like dust disturbed from an old bookshelf.
Elain blinked. "I never thought that."
"You've never wondered why I've gone away when staying would have pleased me more?" His tone was conversational.
She had wondered. "I assumed you were being considerate."
"I was."
"And patient."
Lucien smiled, though there was something undeniably tired about it. Her eyes dropped briefly to the board. The game remained abandoned.
Black had her king in check. Neither of them seemed inclined to finish it.
"I don't want to hurt you." The words escaped so quietly that she scarcely recognized her own voice.
Lucien looked at her. Something softened in his face. "I know."
"I can separate affection from desire." She said it because she believed it.
Lucien regarded her steadily, his russet eye suddenly dark. "I can as well."
The answer surprised her. She had expected some sort of disagreement.
His gaze drifted to her hands. She realized she had begun smoothing invisible creases from her skirt.
Lucien reached toward the chessboard at last, for a moment she hoped he was going to reach for her hand. He grabbed her ivory queen, turning it once between his fingers. "You've proposed an arrangement."
"One you’ve not agreed to," Elain replied.
"I intend to." Her pulse quickened. "But before I do,” he set the queen back exactly where he'd found it, "I need to ask you something."
She nodded.
"If, after one night, nothing changes,” his eye lifted to hers, the golden one clicking into place as well. "If the bond remains exactly as it is and you discover you dislike me just as thoroughly the following morning..." His mouth twitched, taking some of the sting from the words, "...what then?"
Elain opened her mouth. No answer came. She had thought about the bond, about the books, about practicality and her own curiosity.
She had not once imagined the morning after.
Lucien seemed to notice as the realization dawned on her.
Elain looked at the chessboard. The white queen stood exactly where Lucien had returned it, not one square altered.
It struck her how careful he was with things that did not belong to him. She wondered if he knew he did such a thing.
She licked her lower lip, and caught the way Lucien’s eye tracked the movement. "I have spent five years imagining every possible consequence of ignoring the bond." She met his gaze. "I should like, for once, to concern myself with the consequences of acknowledging it."
Something flickered across his face. She could not tell whether it was positive or negative.
"I dislike uncertainty." His expression softened almost imperceptibly, but Elain continued to speak. "I do not like that there are parts of my own life I cannot explain." She gave a quiet huff of breath. “My visions, this bond, the magic in Prythian.” She shook her head. "I seem to have accumulated rather a great many inexplicable things."
"I like that you're less afraid of saying exactly what you think." Lucien offered simply in response.
Elain considered his observation. Perhaps he was right, or perhaps she'd finally grown tired of swallowing every inconvenient thought. “It makes me feel rather unintelligent, being uncertain.”
“I don’t think your intelligence should be in question.”
She looked down. His king was exposed. Her fingertips brushed the carved ivory queen. "You've been letting me win."
Lucien had the decency to look sheepish. "I wouldn't say letting."
"I would." Elain nearly snarled the words. She folded her arms. "You've sacrificed two pieces unnecessarily."
"They were perfectly respectable sacrifices." Lucien winced.
"They were dreadful."
"They served their purpose."
"And what purpose was that?"
He regarded her for a heartbeat. "Keeping you here." The room became very still. A faint flush climbed the line of his neck. "You asked for honesty, Elain."
She could not seem to look away. "You wanted the conversation to last."
"I usually want conversations with pretty ladies to last.”
Elain lowered her gaze because it had suddenly become difficult to breathe.
She could feel his desire down the bond, the unspoken words behind his comment, that he wished to speak with her despite the years of silence. She had assumed that all his patience had been effortless. That giving her space had cost him very little because it was simply the sort of man he was. She had never considered that restraint itself might require considerable effort.
The bond hummed quietly beneath her ribs. It occurred to Elain that this was the longest they had ever spoken alone.
"So," Lucien said at last. "You've told me what you hope this arrangement will achieve."
"I believe I have." Elain nodded absently. "I trust you, I suppose."
Lucien's entire expression changed. His eye searched hers with an intensity that made the room seem to narrow around them.
She realized, a heartbeat too late, that trust for a man who had been betrayed by nearly everyone he'd ever loved, was perhaps the most intimate word she could have chosen.
He didn't speak immediately. When he finally did, his voice was lower than before. "Elain, if I agree, there will be one condition."
She felt her heart give a single, hard beat. "What condition?"
He looked at her for a very long time. "You may end this arrangement whenever you wish." He held her gaze steadily, “I only ask we stop pretending amongst ourselves.”
"Lucien,” the bond pulsed, a quiet reminder. "You really would agree?" The question came softer than she intended.
His answer came without hesitation. "Yes."
Her breath caught. "Why?"
He leaned closer. "Because you asked."
She stared at him, mirroring him so that their hands were nearly touching. "That is all?"
"For now."
"You make it sound very simple."
"It is simple." He breathed. The words were so quiet she almost wondered if she had imagined them.
Her heartbeat stumbled. "I like your condition." He went very still as she searched for the right words. "I don’t want us to continue behaving as though we are strangers afterward."
Something almost like surprise crossed his face. His gaze dropped briefly to her mouth before returning to her eyes.
The music beyond the door continued, the chessboard remained between them, their game unfinished.
Elain looked down at the pieces. "I should return to the celebrations before anyone begins wondering." She rose and the movement made Lucien straighten immediately.
A faint amusement crossed his face. "I imagine several people already are."
She sighed rather dramatically. "That is likely true."
Lucien stood as well. For a moment they were separated only by the chessboard and the space propriety demanded.
It was strange. She had just suggested something that would have scandalized every lady who had ever instructed her in manners, yet the smallest distance between them felt infinitely more significant.
Lucien reached for his gloves, and Elain found herself wishing he’d leave them off.
He stepped around the chess table. When he reached her, he stopped, close enough that she could feel the warmth of him.
"May I?" The question was so quiet.
She looked at him. Then, slowly, offered her hand. Lucien’s fingers closed around hers. He lowered his head and his perfect mouth brushed the back of her ungloved knuckles.
A gentleman's kiss, an old-fashioned gesture she’d seen on the other side of the wall. Elain felt the absurd flutter of it all the way to her ribs.
When he straightened, his expression remained composed. "Tomorrow evening?"
She considered him for another moment. "Not tomorrow."
His expression shifted. “As you wish, Elain.”
"I will send word,” she nodded, more to herself than to him.
"Of course."
"And Lucien?" She held his gaze. "I expect you to come to me."
Lucien seemed for the moment to be caught completely off guard. A flicker of surprise crossed his face. He inclined his head, the shadow of a bow. “Of course.” He stepped back, and Elain felt the absence of his warmth. "I shall await your message, then."
Elain nodded. "Good."
He reached the door, and she found herself staring at his broad back. He paused, looking over his shoulder.
She wondered if he would say something clever. Instead, he simply said, "Goodnight, Elain."
"Goodnight, Lucien." The door closed softly behind him.
For Elucien Week 2026, I'm sharing a drabble a day to match each prompt. Historically, drabbles are 100-word stories, meant to challenge writers at brief, succinct story telling. Feel free to join me and share your elucien drabbles too!
Day 1: Heartbeat
Thump, thump, thump.
Lucien set down his quill, ink smeared on his thumb. He uncurled his back and turned around, seeking out the sound. He placed a hand upon his sternum, trying to decipher if it was his own heart.
Thump, thump, thump.
He stood, walking around his Velaris apartment to test where the sound was loudest. He ended up at his front door, the heartbeat pounded from behind the wood, like an insistent knock.
Thump, thump, thump.
He turned the knob, the hinges creaking as he revealed her, soaking wet and with a request glimmering in her brown eyes.
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