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Chaos // Revelry - Chapter 1

Elucien | Ch. 1 | Ao3

After a series of heated dreams and strange visions send Elain to The Human Lands, the bond she's been pointedly ignoring for years suddenly becomes too overwhelming to push aside. The close proximity and the mission at hand bring her and Lucien closer, even with new enemies and danger behind every corner. Despite Elain's stubborn will, fate seems to keep finding ways to turn her best laid plans to chaos.

This was a mistake.

The echoing of his words reared up her throat like acid– burning, clashing, choking her alive. The moonlight ebbed in through the frosted windows of her room as she fought to take in a breath, the loss of control tightening in her chest.

This was a mistake.

He’d walked away, leaving her stunned in the foyer, her eyes still half closed, lips parted, her heart still beating like drums of war.

The necklace stung as she ripped it off, the delicate chain sure to leave a mark on her skin, a physical reminder of the dismissal she’d suffered tonight. The door made no sounds as she opened and closed it behind her, shuffling back down the stairs, engulfed still with the shame that seemed to linger in the dark. The fire in the vast sitting room was nearly out now, no noises echoing through the stately home that held her family inside. It felt like it had been hours since, but perhaps it had only been minutes.

For the first time in recent memory, Elain had done something spur of the moment, entirely for herself. Something beyond expectations, beyond propriety. She hadn’t anticipated it, the sound of his laughter and approval waking something inside her that had been sleeping before. But when he’d touched her skin, she’d thrown caution to the wind. He could have been anyone, the dulcet, low laugh and hot fingers brushing her skin. Everything since she’d come here had been so unsteady, so unsure, but in that moment, she hadn’t cared about anything except the feeling of connection, the touch of skin on skin, the wanting .

When he shut her down, that cold rejection threatened to swallow her whole again. The memory of the last drowning her in shame.

“But my heart belongs to you.”

“I don’t want it.”

It had just barely stopped haunting her, that very public conversation with her former betrothed.

“Not you. Never you.”

This was a mistake.

Was there something so horrible and wretched about her that she was to remain alone all her days? Face rejection any time she believed she allowed herself to feel joy? Feel pleasure?

She threw the necklace onto the pile of Azriel’s gifts that he’d left behind in his hurry to be gone. To be away from her .

She’d all but thrown herself at him, and still. Still.

The walls of the room blurred as she turned to go back to her room, but her eyes caught on a movement outside in the falling snow. A twitch of wings in the courtyard. Azriel, catching his death on a wrought-iron patio chair, rather than spend another moment alone with her.

The anger rose in her like a tidal wave, taking out from shore anything that had been keeping her even remotely rational about this. He’d been the one to encourage this. The stolen glances, the too-long stares. He’d made her think that he wanted her, that she might mean something to him.

She hadn’t even really cared if it was him, but the attention felt so good, so soothing after so long of feeling wrong in her own skin. All for it to fall apart the moment she gave in.

Just as she debated going to lock the doors so that he could freeze in the cold, he spread his wings and took off, a draft pulling him as he soared above the rooftop. In her anger, Elain flipped her middle finger to some abstract place in the skies.

She was so angry , so bitter. She could feel it in her body, a living thing in her veins. Why wasn’t she good enough? Why wasn’t she thriving here?

Always, she’d been the adaptable one, the one who could mold herself to fit what was necessary. And what had that gotten her? She was tired of waiting, tired of baking and quietly growing pretty things and pretending .

Coming here, she’d thought for the longest time that she could keep up with the way she’d been. Sweet, demure Elain, bred for a life of loyalty and love. She’d tried to still be everything Graysen had wanted, had hoped he’d still want her, especially considering she’d given him her body before she’d been Made. More than anything, Elain had wanted normalcy, the known, to hang on to. Even when he’d rejected her, she’d held on to how she was before, hoping a life of the familiar would soothe the horrid ache that had begun to pulse inside her. Acting this way was all she’d had, all she’d been told would bring her love and a husband and a life worthy of living.

All it had brought her was rage. Deep, boiling rage that had been held back so long it started to demand to be heard.

The flickering in her chest pulsed wildly as she stormed into the sitting room. She was fuming, her always-rigid composure slipping by the moment as she swept back and forth through the room, the door shutting quietly behind her despite her insatiable urge to slam it with all the immortal strength now contained within her body. The heels of her palms pressed firmly into her eyes as she heaved.

This was a mistake .

One of many.

A mistake.

She swore her rage could have torn the entire house down, the feelings swirling within her like a maelstrom, wild and untamed and out of control. The low fire gave small flares as she turned on her heel, pacing and running a path into the rug.

That’s twice now, Elain.

Surely, she couldn’t be the problem? She’d done everything right, everything that was expected of her.

Mistake.

Just as she turned again, the anger in her chest working her into a frenzy, her foot caught and she was falling. The air whipped around her strangely, time seeming to slow and warp as she fell to the carpet. But when her hands reached out to catch her, the fabric had changed.

Where she expected to see the ornate weaving she knew so well from the rug at the River House, now sat a worn and soft carpet. The fibers were cozy beneath her fingers, cushioning the blow as she’d fallen to her knees.

She wasn’t in the sitting room anymore. She wasn’t in her house at all.

A dark living room sprawled tidily around her, full windows allowing in the light of the moon. Beneath it, the glow from the fae lamps lining the street outside cast a soft light across the room’s brick-walled interior. The room was small, cozy, though the hearth was left barren and cold. Untouched. Her eyes adjusted as she took it in– empty counters, the untended fireplace, a half drunk glass of water on the table, the green couch with a neatly folded yellow blanket that looked soft as a duckling draped across the back.

It was the smell that tipped her off. Leather and apples and pine needles soaked in sunlight. She knew the smell because she dreamed of it. She knew the smell because she’d clocked it the very first time he’d been in the same room as her, and she’d never forgotten. She knew the smell because she worried about it fading from the jacket she kept folded and hidden in a box at the back of her closet. She knew the smell as though it were entwined in her very soul itself, because it was.

This was Lucien’s apartment.

Without thinking, she inhaled greedily, filling her lungs with it. That bubbling rage evaporated like water on a hot pan. The sweet release of something she couldn’t have, the taste of embracing what she’d so long denied herself.

Graysen had been an obligation.

Azriel had been a distraction.

But Lucien was…Lucien was…

A mistake.

She bit her tongue at the thought, so sharply she tasted the metallic tang of blood immediately coating her mouth.

Beneath the overwhelming scent of him, she could detect something else with her heightened senses. A smoky, searing, sweet smell of some type of liquor lingered in the air, strong enough that Elain could almost taste it on her tongue.

A sound to her right left her frozen in place, every fiber of her rigid as she strained to hear. It came again, steadily this time. The sound of his breath sawing steadily in and out in the next room. Lucien was here, sleeping.

Elain finally put the pieces together. In her anger, she’d winnowed to her mate. Her very first winnow.

His breathing caught then evened out again as Elain got quietly to her feet. Her chest hummed at the proximity, the gentle buzzing of the unfulfilled bond in her chest a solid and constant reminder of who he was to her. Who she was to him.

She should leave. She still could.

But standing in his space, amongst his things, she hesitated.

Before she could think better of it, her feet were following the cord in her chest. She crept on the pads of her stocking feet, whatever preternatural stillness that she’d inherited from the Cauldron allowing her to move in complete silence. The bedroom door was open, that same glow from the night sky spreading a swath of light across the bed. Across him.

Breath caught in her throat at the sight of him, sheet tucked around his naked waist as he slumbered on his stomach. A broad expanse of dark skin visible from the dips at the base of his spine all the way to his arms, one tucked beneath the pillow and another thrown haphazardly out across the bed. She didn’t miss the textured skin, the lines raised across his shoulders and down his back, a road map of the horrors he’d suffered at the hands of many.

In her dreams, she’d run her fingers across the ridges, allowed her mouth to touch the one that wrapped over his right shoulder and just barely touched his neck. She ached to do it now. His scent was concentrated here, the potency of it as high as she’d ever allowed it, as close as she’d ever come.

She drew closer still, knowing it was a bad idea, but much too far along to stop herself now. As she rounded the bed, his face came into view, so relaxed in sleep. Peaceful. The urge to lay with him was so physical and profound that she almost gave in.

Would he startle, horrified at her presence? Or would he simply extend an arm, the bond that connected them lying content in his chest. In both their chests.

Her fingers reached out, near translucent in the moonlight as they extended towards him. Just barely, she let them graze across his skin. Just barely, did she allow the heat of him to seep into the muscle and bone of her body that otherwise hadn’t felt true warmth since she’d been submerged into those waters so long ago.

She longed to press her lips against his, taste the whiskey that she could smell on his peaceful, steady breaths. The thrumming of their bond synced with the pounding of her heart, an echo of his.

Would he call her a mistake?

The memory of the vision reared its ugly head, as it did every so often to remind her that this was not in the cards for her– no matter how she might want it. Her, curled into the fetal position on a bed, sobbing. His jacket around her shoulders, his scent nearly gone from it. The overwhelming pain in her chest, the loneliness, the heartbreak, the absence of a bond.

Even the memory of the vision hurt so badly she could hardly stand it.

She would give her heart to him, and he would break it, too. The others stung, the rejection painful. But if Lucien left her, her mate who smelled like the forest and joy, she would never recover. She would never be whole again.

She’d wanted him from the moment their eyes met across a soaked stone floor in a castle far away from here. She’d been soaked to the bone, terrified and cold, but all she’d seen was him. Her sisters forgotten, Grayson a faraway memory, but then, that vision had flashed, her very first. The pain of it felt so real, the gasp dying in her chest as he’d draped that jacket, the jacket over her shoulders.

A mistake.

She pulled back her hand, taking a single second more to follow the steady movement of his chest as he breathed.

No matter how much she wanted this, wanted him, Elain wouldn’t allow herself to open to that sort of pain. She’d never survive it.

She inhaled a final time as though she could keep that lovely scent encapsulated in her lungs forever. As though she could pull it out when the feelings became too much, when she couldn't stand it anymore, the way she did with his embroidered jacket. A thing of secret, lovely beauty.

Then, Elain turned and left, quietly opening and shutting the front door behind her as she slipped out into the cold night and back to the River House.

#to read later

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