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cowboylament · 2 months ago

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Lucien paused, “I’m worried about you. No matter what I do you still seem to disappear.”

In a mirror hanging on the wall, I dared myself to look. Hollowed out, that was what I looked like. As if in reply to my place in the world my body reflected someone half here. And I’d been aware of it, yes, but seeing it now, it was different. With sleep, it couldn’t be ignored. Nor could the embarrassment that Lucien was looking at me and I was seeing now what he saw.

“I don’t…” I began and contemplated telling him the truth. That I felt like I was becoming something bad. That I didn’t want to disappear but had no other choice.

“Don’t what?”

His eyes closed still, the very early morning, the dreamlike whiteness of it, hazy, falling on the lids, on his cheekbone. All goodness, all light, choosing the floor and the cold because he knew. He understood a lot of things.

“I don't think I’ll sleep if I stay.”

“That's alright. Just don’t go.”

Y/N needs help and Lucien is very gentle.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four (AO3)

I knew darkness very well. I had been inside it before. This time it was different.

I stirred, testing, searching for a border, a wall, an end. But there was not one, instead, tentatively, something stirred back. Something that had no words. I stopped moving. I knew better than to reach for something I couldn’t name. With no light, the shape remained a mystery, but the way an echo tells a story, I could sense the depth bouncing back to me. Endless was not the word, but this was somehow more incomprehensible. I leaned toward it, to look, like meaning over the edge of a lake and it leaned too. A reflection bounced back. Yes, it was my shape, but also not, the way a shadow is not a whole person either, just an imitation of it. It was a poor one at that, how it warped, grew sharp, contorted, into a perversion no earth-bound creature could take. The hair on my neck stood, the darkness then, raspy with its breathing. The endless eeriness, something about it not right, but I could not say what.

I sat back and turned for the end, the other end. Still nothing. I could see no way out.

And I knew that I wanted out. I knew only there was no way out.

Before panic, before this knowledge could stir, despite its size, like a star of a kind, a very dim small light poked through. As if the shroud of this place had been pierced by a needle.

The light was not enough to reveal anything more than I already knew, but there, I thought, was the way through. Far. So far, but I tried anyway to reach for it. The darkness rushed. Panicked, then, I withdrew the hand, turned away, a warmth on the back of my eyelids going cold. That unknowable thing was waiting still on the other side, it’s maw opening, opened as if to swallow me. Leaning, somehow able to reach now, somehow able to cross whatever boundary had kept it away. And this, truly, was endless. An endless place, sinkable, coming now, to grab me, to move me from reach. Stumbling from my place, I tried to get away. Only, there was only forward. I was lurching forward—banished, sent gasping from sleep into the world.

The world, I realized, that had moved from night into morning.

Early, yes, but morning still.

To know it was a dream, something escapable, and that I was now somewhere else—I took long breaths. In this somewhere else I was looking at many things, many things in the light. And I understood what they were, I could name them. Like the pillows at my back and the blanket around my waist and that this feeling on my skin was warmth.

But my eyes when rubbed raw from sleep righted nothing of what had been revealed. In fact, waking life became more askew. Furniture, the couch I was on, it was not my bed, nor did the room belong to me at all despite it being known to me. And it was morning, yes, morning I realized truly. The dregs of memory sifting, clearing now in the light. The night before descended immediately upon my memory.

I do not find your suffering particularly moving.

I recoiled, as if I could avoid it, could escape the world of memory too like it seemed one could. But it was all still there, even as I pressed my hands to my face, wanting something, some comfort, a physical remedy of which there was none.

What I’d said. What I hadn’t said.

For all that hadn’t hurt the night before, all that tired that had delayed feeling, the pain of recalling it now was no less severe than if it had just happened. No, it was almost worse I thought, to experience the intensity in the same instant with also the regret of hindsight and rest—of clear thinking. Like being torn in two, the bones and chest straining under the pressure of wanting to turn oneself inside out because it seemed even less vulnerable than what I’d done the night before. Or more precisely, what I hadn’t done.

Lucien now held a false memory of my life before, a life that didn’t really exist. Where the people in it had been flat, ugly, uncaring things. People who’d let what happened to me happen. But that was unfair, and untrue. It had been different. It was good. It was even beautiful and abundant, the life we had. But he didn’t know that, didn’t know what I knew. I had failed, again, to make that which needed to be understood, understood.

The tip of my nose warmed against my hands.

People died, they’d suffered to keep my secret so I could get away, in the hopes that I would do what I promised, that all that work wouldn’t be for nothing. And I had gone to sleep.

I’d lied. And then I went to sleep.

So it did not surprise me then, looking at the room, having pressed again some new clarity into my eyes, that the weighty darkness, that terrible thing from sleep, had bled a little into Lucien’s apartment. The beauty, all the colors, dull, diminished now.

What nightmare I might’ve escaped before, clamped a hand around my throat, pressed against my chest to make such labored breaths. I shouldn’t be here, I thought plainly. I’ll stain everything. Lucien deserved beauty. His kindness, it shouldn’t be met by my despair. Leaving the dream had worked in a way, so it must be the same here. Going, then, pulling my darkness somewhere else. I was what it wanted, in the end. It would follow as it always did. What had gone from this world had not yet been swallowed into the boundary of the irretrievable. I pushed away the weighty duvet, feathers flying. It revealed not just my body, but another.

Beside the couch, on the floor, Lucien was sleeping.

I swallowed, took a breath, found a little space. How little resistance to living there was when he was near. His head was resting against the carpet, arms crossed tight across his chest to keep warmth. The fire had gone out probably hours ago. At his neck, just behind his ear, the skin had risen. He who was always so warm, had given only me the blanket.

Briefly, I imagined the scene, the choices he saw for himself and ultimately made. Maybe it took him a little while to notice I’d fallen asleep. We hadn’t been talking a lot that night. Or maybe he noticed right away, because that is how he is. Yes probably. And then he’d risen, pulled my legs onto the couch gently so I wouldn’t wake. It wasn’t in his nature to think to send me away—to send me downstairs. Only then, when he was sure I hadn’t stirred, he’d have gone to his bedroom and gotten the blanket and pillows, lifting my head just as, if not more, carefully than before and slipping them beneath. How close his hands must’ve been, and where he’d have put them. Under my cheek maybe, or at the crown. How slow he’d have been about it all, holding me a long time, until he was sure, he wouldn’t stop until he was sure I’d been undisturbed.

Before the blanket.

And once I was comfortable and warm he would look toward his room, with its probably fine bed and many beautiful things, and decide that he would stay. Stay there with me. I didn’t have a reason for why he would want that kind of thing, I possessed only the knowledge that he had.

Even after what I’d said.

The imagining was broken again, spoiled by memory. It didn’t seem right to me, that someone could fail as I had so badly at everything, even though the only thing I really wanted was not to. I wanted to do what I was told to do, what I’d said I’d do. I wanted to use the right words. I wanted things to be remembered, known, including myself, and I wanted to put a beast back in a library. I wanted to be good and stay good, to not become a beast who guarded libraries. I wanted those doors to stop shutting, to feel I could make it out of this room I’d ended up in, this world, to someplace else where I wouldn’t be so very alone and in between.

I pulled the duvet into my hands. Despite his choice, there was enough for the both of us even with the distance, so I relinquished some, letting it fall over the edge like water, and it pooled over his body completely while still resting at the bottom of my own. A tension in his face relaxed, imperceptible, as easy to overlook as a blink. And it, too, relaxed something for me. Only slightly, but enough, that even if he did not see it, was not awake for it, I had cared for him in return. If he’d slept cold all night at least now it was different.

Some light fell into the room—rectifying, beautiful, light, and everything looked brighter, even the colors.

So I rose.

I’d spent a long time having to be quiet, having to fade, that it came in handy now. The soundless rising, the moving of the blankets so no one would feel or hear. Recalling the muffle of Lucien’s voice, I found the closet where that afternoon he’d grabbed the kindling and logs. It wasn’t hard and it didn’t surprise me that he didn’t wake. I’d done what I had always been very good at, being not there. The match hissed, it was the only sound, before the crack and pop of a flame that took.

I watched the fire until my eyes were dry. Slowly the apartment returned to the state I had found it before I’d arrived. Some of the final leaves outside held firm to their branches, but soon they’d be entirely gone. The last time I’d slept through the night the leaves had seemed only just to have returned. Before even the night got too hot and I would toss and turn, waiting for the break. In the wake of clear-minded guilt, I longed for the exhaustion that dulled the intensity of my misery just enough. In my tired, things did not feel so all-consuming. It did not feel as though there was only despair. Well rested, I was more aware of my life, and it somehow made everything feel worse because I could see the sum in a more perfect clarity.

I tried, then, to remember when things had gotten so bad. Then I tried to remember if they’d ever been good, or if goodness was just something I had thought would come to me because other people seemed sure first. The idea sticking, the imagining like having. I knew where the good things would go when they came, in anticipation I had made space for them. Yet the more I felt around my life the more I realized nothing was really there. There were only the places where good things could go, which was a nice way of saying nothing.

I stood, feeling stupid.

To still believe in such a thing, that those spaces would be taken up eventually. Because as much as it would hurt less not to think this, I could not help it. Not when I remembered the cottage, remembered that despite everything, I had retained for a long time, that place and everything in it. I remembered the way it smelled, how the light fell in the windows when it turned to fall. I remembered my bedroom with the nightstand that had the drawer that only opened halfway, the quilt old and moth-eaten, but smelling like my mother’s soap. The squeak on the third step, the crack in the window from that first unyieldingly frigid decade, the small loose floorboard where I’d kept books, the water stain that looked like an old shoe on the ceiling. Or that spring afternoon when he’d shown up, when suddenly the quiet world had voice again. How it felt to talk to someone. How it still felt, to talk to that someone and for them to understand.

The cottage was gone, I thought, turning to Lucien, but somethings were still here.

For all the titles Bryaxis held, beast, creature of the library, thing of nightmares, maybe what really made it what it was, was that it was also none of these things. That words did not work. How ineffiable the creature was to define. This erasure born from the inability to take earthly shape as something understood by those who dwelled here. Inside me, the void seemed to pulse in answer, even recognition. I’d believed Bryaxis came into being because it was forgotten, because it was a person gone sour, some all-consuming despair, but this seemed just as crucial an element as the rest—that no one seemed to understand what it was or what it meant.

The endless void inside me and its likeness strained as if at any moment my chest would split open and reveal an identical beast. One who haunted the basement of a different library somewhere else, somewhere that no longer was in this world.

But I didn’t want to be the beast. I wanted to be me. Me who still thought goodness was waiting, who felt that life up ahead with its promise. Despair had happened, I could feel it all around me, but that was not all there was. There was place for good things. There was that light. That meant something. And if I left now, the apartment would be okay, having returned to something beautiful and good. Lucien was warm and cared for. I could not become a wretched thing. The pieces were not in place yet. There would be time to tell Lucien the right things. I knew he would understand. This would fix what I had done. I wouldn’t fail.

But I had to go, now. I had to let this place be, a mercy Bryaxis had not shown the caves. I wasn’t the beast. I would not be like the bea—

“Go back to sleep.”

My head snapped toward the soft tired voice. Lucien was laying with his eyes still closed, the blanket draped over him. A hallucination, I thought, one night of sleep wasn’t enough to catch up, but he opened one eye, peering over the blanket before dropping his head again with a soft thud into the carpet. I said nothing. Just stared at him. The raspy tired weakness of it, his voice, came again.

“I had a feeling you’d try and slip away,” he said. “Where were you going?”

“Downstairs.”

There was a sigh, a tired sigh.

“Hm,” he said. “I hope it wasn’t on my account.”

“I thought…”

“I know what you thought.”

The thing inside me that wanted out was a well-kept secret. But I knew he did know what I was thinking. I knew he understood I was ashamed of what I’d shared. His words tightened my throat. How childish, to be caught sneaking out.

My voice, straining against the tightness, came just barely, “And?”

“And I don’t think you should go. I think you should stay.”

“Why?”

“You’ve been alone long enough and I don’t think it’s working. Are you hungry?”

I shook my head, realized this was not the time for silence though it was as prevalent around us, as it had been the night before, “No.”

There was another sigh but it was not lethargy, in fact, it was like his breath held real weight and the more Lucien put it into the room the heavier it became. The particular heaviness was not unfamiliar to me. We sat a moment in it, still and unmoving, feeling the presence of the other.

“Can I tell you something?” Lucien said quietly.

And I, also quietly, replied, “You can tell me anything.”

He paused, “I’m worried about you. No matter what I do you still seem to disappear.”

“I don’t…” I began and contemplated telling him the truth. That I felt like I was becoming something bad. That I didn’t want to disappear but had no other choice.

“Don’t what?”

“I don't think I’ll sleep if I stay.”

“That's alright. Just don’t go.”

The softness of it was so sincere, even desperate, that I almost couldn’t stand it, was afraid that I’d ruin it somehow, and so my hand flinched toward the door. But I did not go, because I could be careful and because going was certain to ruin the goodness. So staying was my best shot. I would not fail.

He didn’t open his eyes, but he lifted the blanket for me when I got close. It was still warm where I’d been laying. Slowly, mindful not to pull too much, knowing he would allow it, that he’d let me take everything if I wasn’t careful, I laid the blankets back in place. Once settled, as if now he could believe it, could face it, he looked at me. Around him, his unbound hair fell against the floor. He looked as though he wasn’t breathing, the tension from earlier returning settled again at his neck.

Unsatisfactory, I thought. The only time looking at Lucien it had been the word to use. I lifted my own head, grabbed a pillow of which there were many. He did not close his eyes, even when I slipped my hand under the side of his head, lifting it. He adjusted to the leverage, rested the weight of himself in my hold with total trust while I slid the pillow under him. He jostled a little, shifting, getting comfortable again, before another sigh.

“Thank you.”

***

It almost worked. Hearing him sleep almost helped me, but in the hazy in-between of dream and reality, both feet remained in Lucien’s apartment. But the dream took shape—the one I’d told Nesta about. A few birds and myself and time, I imagined a cat nestled on the couch with me toward the end. And briefly, I wrapped my arms around myself, pretending they were different arms, arms that didn’t belong to me. I tried to find the margin of touch, to focus on the weight at my waist and to forget the firm realness of holding. It almost worked. I almost lost track of myself. My eyes closed for a short while and though it wasn’t sleep, it was peaceful.

When he woke it was different. This time Lucien stretched and moved with an alertness that was absent before. I was a little envious of his mood, though I felt more awake than I had since I’d left the cottage. And those glimpses into his life, the way he looked when he woke up tired vs truly awake, would be something I’d want to take with me, to remember.

Once he’d settled, stretched, he sighed and asked, “Did you sleep?”

I shook my head.

“Mmm,” he said, with mild displeasure before putting a hand under his head and closing his eyes again. I knew he could feel my staring probably, the way his gaze held real weight, but I didn’t care. He, in his beauty, sitting in a patch of sun, his voice a little more gentle as he asked, “What did you do?”

“I watched the window.”

“And?”

My mouth twitched, “The breads gone. A crow came.”

He hummed, finishing my almost smile with his real one, “They have good memories. It might come back.”

I looked toward the sill, half expecting the bird to be there again, tapping at the window as it had earlier, "I hope so," I said, the thought unraveling itself, spreading, opening its wings. That something that would have no reason to remember me might, and it would be for what I had wanted to be remembered for. For love, for those caring acts, the polite feeding, being there in the world, and giving even if nothing could be given in return. When I turned back Lucien was watching me as I had watched him.

"Are you hungry?"

I thought about it, about saying no, but this was one of those rare opportunities to change what had been done. I’d disappointed him before and I did not wish to again. Few consequences made themselves apparent, a little lie, a good kind of lie, those were things I knew about. And then, regardless of what happened later, he’d have a memory of me. A memory where I was not a disappointment, where I was good.

"Yes."

"Alright, good," He nodded, a composure overcoming him, a serenity. "Good. Because I wanted to show you somewhere."

“Alright.”

Lucien did not linger once I’d answered. He put out the fire, threw the comforter in his room, splashed his face and I did as I had imagined myself doing all those mornings downstairs—stayed out of his way. But he moved fast. He was still afraid, I think, that I would disappear. He must've become aware of how many ways one could do such a thing. That it was something that could happen as simply as the changing of the mind, of finding no hunger, no want, that he could satisfy. So he talked, would not stop talking, asking me things he probably knew the answer to like if I had ever heard of the place he wanted to take me. I had not. So I was not forgotten, though I did my best to press myself into the wall. The cold window managing through the sweater seemed enough an indicator of how it must feel outside where the fire wouldn't reach.

Underneath the smoothness of his voice was the sound of his dressing. He kept the door to his room open. I knew what I might do, might go and wander that way, and that I'd find skin. I did not want to, but knowing I could was a strange sensation. And knowing that it was not a matter of forgetting that I was there, that he was talking to me and trusted me to stay where I was, to leave him to himself, evoked sensations I found difficult to name. But before I could consider it further he reappeared, a jacket being pulled over his shirt.

"Do you have anything warm?" Lucien asked. "We could get it before we go."

"Just your jacket," I said. If Lucien noticed the quickness of my words he didn’t show it.

“I can give you more,” he said. Standing across the room from me. “If that’s what you want. I have more to give.”

I clutched to the sweater, thought of the jacket. Thought of the little city that was far away that I desired no more to go back to, and the clothing here that was not right. But this feeling, on my body, of his things seemed to be perfect—seemed real and good, warm, and needed.

“I don’t want to take too much.”

“You’re not.”

I couldn’t quite look at him then. I rubbed at my eyes, looking for a more complete disappearing, even though Lucien had asked me not to. Even though I wanted to make him happy, but for as much as he had said, this habitually felt like the only way. If I went away, if I hid then there was a better chance. And the thing, the darkness in me seemed to rise before falling again, flinching. The tide of it pressed back and when his warm hand was against my shoulder I too flinched then relaxed. Turning to find him closer than I expected, he had soundlessly drifted toward me.

“Despite what you might think,” he said. “I’m not that noble. I won’t do what I don’t wish to.”

I huffed a laugh, unexpected, like that which had happened with Nesta, though not the same. A little weaker even given the past hours, the good food, and good sleep, but it changed Lucien a little to hear it. Which made it seem good, taking what he had offered, even though I had yet to give him anything back. I nodded, and a phantom of his hand rested between my shoulder blades in wait. The gesture supportive, did not take the lead, but said here. I am close. Even though close had not felt like something I could be. Even as my life seemed still too far. But when I moved, it followed along, in flitering grazes, with me, toward his bedroom.

It was simpler than I expected.

Only the things you would need were in it, nothing extra. A bed and on either side a nightstand, and I wondered which side was his. If he had a side, or if the nightstands were proof he would choose either on any given night so he had multiple just in case he felt like sleeping somewhere else. The comforter was airy, full of warmth I could bet, how it sat with the light of the window on it. Some dust moved in the sunbeam, settling still from when Lucien had made the bed before. And the pillows too, soft and plush, a bed you could sink into entirely.

Lucien’s hand left my back and began to go for the few pieces of furniture, a dresser, an armoire. He considered each drawer, each item, recalling at times the location of something in particular and going for it immediately where he knew it was waiting. And indeed his dresser was full in places, near bursting, perhaps needing to be cleared a little. But I couldn’t help but feel the emptiness of this room. The books, the trinkets, the papers, all outside the threshold.

I ran my hands along the bed frame, my fingers finding scratches, nicks, divots, and grooves. Running them over and over again while I waited. The duvet now looking closer I saw had ink stains from hands that had accidentally stowed away the darkness in their print. The nightstands too, a little scratched and lived in. Everything having a trace of being owned, of history.

“Any of this you’re welcome to.”

On the bed, en mass, was a pile of clothes. Not simply sweaters and shirts, but fine socks, trousers, shirts, jackets. All of which looked too fine to wear, and yet were worn. The elbows patched in places, threads knocked loose, a few buttons lazily hanging on, a small hole in the hem from use. Lucien stood, waiting by the bed fidgeting a little before he steadied himself with a hand on the dresser.

“Will you have anything to wear?”

He nodded, “I don’t wear these anymore.”

“What made you keep them?”

Lucien shrugged, “I don’t know. Never felt I could get rid of them until now.”

I blinked a few times, his body wavering a moment. Ridiculous to me still, that it was he who was nervous, rather than the other way around. That he didn’t seem to know whatever he’d asked I’d tell him, whatever he wanted, I would do if I could. Despite my disappearing, that was the one thing I was trying very hard not to do.

“If you don’t like any of it I won’t be offended.”

His words broke my thoughts, and I took a shirt, billowy and silky, in between my fingers.

“I think I’m at risk of loving it all very much, despite how it might appear.”

Lucien’s mouth flinched with a smile, but then returned to its more serious considering, “The pants, they’ll be long, large too, but I’ll tie them. And if you wear a sweater you won’t be able to tell they don’t fit. We could cuff the bottoms or tuck them into your boots until we get them tailored.”

“Tailored?”

Lucien nodded, “I can show you where. We can go together.”

Pleasure swept across the room with his words the way a gust finds a flat plain. The shape and direction of it was entirely known. He was glad to be of service, to know what to do. Funny the way kindness is, that something so gentle can make you weep. That sometimes it feels like, on the opposite side of the spectrum, that harshness and callousness cause tears because of the pain itself. But there is a threshold for all emotions. That the abundance of any of them might make you cry, and kindness was one, softness too. Generosity.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

“These will probably work best,” Lucien said pulling a pair of pants out from a pile and coming to stand beside me, holding them up for me to feel. “They’re older. From when I was young, smaller, and then the rest I’ll—we’ll go.”

I nodded, gratefully, and reached for a large heavy sweater. For a shirt to wear beneath, “You’re very sure? I don’t…”

“I’m sure,” Lucien said, turning to me, our shoulders touching now, beside each other so close that if one wavered the other could hold them up. My hand ran over the thick material of the pants, following the fabric down until I accidentally nudged Lucien’s hand which still held it. When I turned to apologize he was staring so intently, I realized he hadn’t even noticed what I’d done. To him, nothing was out of place. Our two smallest fingers in caress. Neither of us pulled back, finding no reason to pull back.

Blinking after a few seconds of staring, he said, “I’ll leave you,” and bowed out of the room, shutting the door behind him. In the wake of his loss, a coolness came to the air like when a thick cloud covers the sun on an early summer day. Which is to say I didn’t linger in the moment. I picked my clothes quickly, wanting him to return. I found a shirt I liked, the pants, a sweater, and pulled the socks over my cold feet. I looked a little ridiculous the shirt down to my thighs, the sweater following, and the sleeves that seemed to go on forever. Everything proprtunately right, but for a body that was not my own. The heaviness of it all, a profound relief—like when you sleep beside someone and they roll over, when they in their unconsciousness put an arm around you.

The legs of the pants bunched at the ground, but the waist was not as big as it would’ve been if the pants weren’t so old. I tried to imagine a different Lucien than the one I knew and it was surprisingly easy. He’d lost the large boots he’d filled in my imagination and was real and thus malleable to the truth. These were once his pants so he once must’ve fit in them. That was a fact. He was no longer the fae from the woods. The mythological quality was lost which made him more magnificent because he did more than one could imagine.

In my urgency, I hadn’t even checked the mirror. I went straight for the door. But as I approached there came a tapping. I pressed my ear to the wood. It was quick, not rapid, but often enough. It sounded like a leaking tap, like dripping water. Opened the door just a little, I peered out. Lucien was standing just outside in the short hall. He rubbed at his face, his shirt sleeve pushed up to his elbow. The skin smooth flowing down from his elbow to wrist which eventually came to rest at his hips. His pants just a little taller than that, reaching his waist. The fabric fell beautifully against him. Or he may be making it so beautiful. Either way—beauty. He wiped his hands against his thighs, my gaze prudish sweeping quickly downward, to his foot with a relentless tick against the wood. A creak of the wood drew his attention and I righted my gaze so I met his look when his head turned.

If I’d been caught looking it wouldn’t matter, because he took just as long, just as detailed an examination of me. The line of his gaze so clear that I felt a little like a sculpture or a painting being made. Each stroke of his eyes was easy to trace. The sweep of my cheek, the long fall from shoulder to wrist which disappeared below the sweater sleeve. Lucky I was that my legs were covered, otherwise I’d have had to look away with how he lingered on the pooling material.

“You said you’d tie them?”

His eyes snapped up, and it took him a moment, a blink, “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did.”

My brows furrowed, “There’s no…”

“It’s a trick I learned,” he said approaching, pushing the door open more so he could move past me. “When I first…”

He trailed off a little and gestured in front of him, the light of the window falling in sheaths. I stepped into it and let him fall behind me. The sound of his skin against skin, familiar, of two hands rubbing together to warm them, doubtful he needed it.

“Can you lift your sweater?” He said.

In reply, I hooked my fingers into the hem and began to drag the heavy material up. Despite having already seen me nude, and the many weeks I’d committed to my slips, the reveal of my spine to the cool apartment and Lucien’s unwavering concentration was the most exposed I felt I’d ever been. Firm hands became unrecognizable nimble. A pinky at the small of my back steadied him.

“When I left home I learned this trick.”

“Really?”

“Mhm,” He said pulling the pants a little, feeling the give. I turned over my shoulder to see, to try and figure out what he was doing, and a ribbon caught the light. I turned back.

“Autumn court?”

“Yes.”

I shifted, his hands startling me a little when they brushed my skin. He mumbled an apology, and I settled into a different more intentional closeness. Not like that of the night before, where we found ourselves paying the tab, but I couldn’t quite decide what was so different.

“I don’t know much about it. Besides what you said, in Day Court, about swimming. And that the power is flame.”

“Not much information is allowed to get out.”

I hummed, “Do you miss it?”

Lucien was faint in his answer, like he couldn’t quite commit to it, no matter if it were true, “All the time.”

“Do you go back often?”

The ribbon pulled against the fabric of my belt loops, and the pants drew inward a little, obscenely noticeable in the moments after my question.

Lucien pinched the waist again, “Is this too tight?”

“No.”

He released his hold, and pulled both ends of the ribbon, “No, I don’t go back.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

I shifted a little, the tension rising in the ribbon, the two ends pulled tight and tied off, but his hands remained. A brief pause, the two of us, stuck almost. The single finger at my spine.

“My father is very cruel. And it is no longer my home to return to.”

I did not dare ask. If there would be a time to ask then maybe, but now was not it. Of this, I was very sure. I turned a little, found him in my peripheral.

“I know it’s not the same,” I said the words surprisingly even and clear to me. “But I don’t have a home to go back to either. At least, it doesn’t feel that way anymore even if I can go.”

Lucien hummed a little, “That actually is of some comfort to me.”

I swallowed, inside me something calmed. The void retreated some. His finger grazed against my spine again, the pants pulled tight before ceasing in movement.

“Is this alright?” Lucien asked in a tone of reluctance.

The pants didn’t move, sat snug against me in warmth, “Yes. It’s perfect.”

“Just wanted to check. You’re uh…you—”

I turned to look over my shoulder again as Lucien withdrew his hands and I saw a faint glow at his face. Light licking and fluttering that hadn’t come from the window. It was coming from me. I thrust the sweater down.

“Sorry,” I said, and it took just a moment for the power under my skin to diminish, to shrink until it had disappeared. But I felt it again, felt it how I had not felt it since I’d arrived.

“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” he said, and his hands withdrew. The pants sitting snug. I dropped the gathered knit and turned around.

“I haven’t…I haven’t had much excess power. I forgot. What could happen. When I don’t use it, what you have to do.”

He nodded, “Glad to see it. Your voice back. Now your light. Must be a good thing.”

“Yes,” I said. “Must be.”

He cleared his throat and pointed to the mirror. When I approached it was a little better. Better than it had been to see me before, but I couldn’t quite say why. The clothes were large, engulfing, like a wave. To swim in them and to smell him on them, to feel the closeness of another person, it made me feel in the world. Very in the world in a way I don’t know if I’d been since being found by Bryaxis.

“Sorry they’re so big,” Lucien offered.

“I like it,” I said. “It makes me feel close to you. Like I’m safe.”

Lucien caught my eye in the mirror and I blushed again. He too seemed to turn from this and we both shifted a little.

“Shall we?”

I nodded. We shall.

If it had rained I wouldn’t know. The sleep had promised this. I looked anyway, tried to see if one might know just from experience of seeing streets dry by morning. Unlike the night before the walk wasn’t silent, though Lucien still used his body to move me in some directions, our shoulders steering with a bump two or three times, with the nod of a head in the middle of a thought.

“I wanted to ask you about the cottage, what it was like.”

I shoved my hands into my pocket, a stiff wind at the top of the street and sweeping down it, “There weren’t many trees around, it was at the center of this field so there was light all the time. Even in winter. In summer, or just when it was warm you could open all the windows and get the wind from all directions. I liked the sound, how the tall grass would bow against everything, and the smell. You could smell the fog and bluegrass, the fescue.”

“Did you go there often before?”

I smiled a little, nodded, “Solstices. And in the summer. We’d winnow back to Aurora.”

“So you can winnow a good distance then.”

“Yeah. I haven’t in a long time though. Too…” I thought weak, depleted, diminished. I hadn’t had much power to spare. Not since I got to the cottage, not since before. “Tired. But I liked the cottage best. Nature seemed always to be getting in. We’d wake up to birds in the kitchen sometimes. I think it was why I made that my area of study. I grew up very close to those things. And my parents too, they nurture my interest.”

He hummed, “My mother’s side of the manor in autumn faced the sun, it always seemed full of light and plants. Windows left open. I liked it there best.”

“You’re close with her?”

“We were, yes.”

I blinked a few times, reminded myself to be better with my words, to choose more thoughtfully. With what he’d said of his father, it seemed too close, too easy to nick the wrong place when discussing his own home, of where he was from.

“I heard once that apples in Autumn are perfectly ripe all year round. Is that true?”

Lucien gave a bark of a laugh and I turned toward him as he attempted to muffle it with his arm, “Just a rumor. One my brother started.”

“Really?”

There was a moment, sweet and small, where looking down at his feet he smiled like he couldn’t help it, like it were despite himself. Then he said, “We were at some lord’s house that was terribly old and boring and my brother, who’d been charged to watch me, liked to throw in little lies about the court to keep things interesting and because it undermined our father’s control just enough. He told that to a group from summer court.” He turned toward me, a happiness, longing, mingled with many other feelings on his face, but happiness too was still there. “I forgot he did that.”

A broken perfection, like rings in a lake, perfectly formed stretching bigger and thinner until vanishing. How delicate his mood seemed then, one not to disturb or break, onward now carefully. More careful than I thought I had to be, when even something simple like that, led to his family, “Have you been back to the human lands?”

He shook his head, “No, but I hear from them often.”

“And?”

“Time for them…it’s so short. I’m trying to figure it out, how we use what little there is. How we can make amends.”

I hummed, and laughter bloomed as if from the group, skittering down the street. Lucien and I turned where two children ran open armed to one another. Rolling, laughing, carefree, and unburdened they seemed, by anything at all.

“I think…” I began, aware that my knowledge was limited, that Lucien knew better, but sometimes knowing less is a virtue. To see a different side. “Their short lifetime often grants them a different kind of wisdom. A different threshold for forgiveness. At least, the stories suggest this.”

Lucien peered over at me, what he thought he didn’t reveal, “Still reading mortal tales then?”

I nodded, “Does your friend ever tell you any?”

“If they don’t involve him then he doesn’t tell them.”

I huffed a laugh, “He seems like quite the character.”

“He is.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I know him. From the stories you share. I envy you in that. I’ve never...never know how to use words that way.”

“I find you perfectly capable with words. When you talk about your view of the world, it's very precise. Persuasive too.”

“I don’t know that I’m trying to persuade anyone,” I said.

“I know. Maybe thats why it works. People don’t like being told what to think. You don’t tell anyone what to think you just offer it as a possibility,” Lucien said thoughtfully, taking in a long breath of the fresh air before adding, “You’d be a good emissary.”

It was such a shock to hear that my face did not conceal the skepticism and genuine surprise. Lucien threw his head back and laughed again. His joy fell out as those children’s had, clumsy and carefree. It warmed me, to be able to do this. To say that I had done this. And it made me want to do it more, made me want to be the cause of such a thing all the time.

“You don’t think so then?”

“No,” I said. A cart shuttering past with vegetables. “You’re biased probably. Or maybe if everyone was as kind as you and gave me a fair few minutes to reply in conversation.”

“You’d be surprised at who will give you a fair chance.”

That made me smile a little more. That, of the world I didn’t know, it could be better than I expected or hoped for. It was a nice thought, and what I recalled having liked, those surprises that life throws you of what people will do.

“I’m sorry I fell asleep last night.”

Lucien shrugged, “I’m glad you got the rest. Seemed like you need it.”

I nodded.

“Was it a good sleep?” He asked.

“It seems so. I slept through the night. I only do that in Dawn.”

Lucien turned, watching me as we walked and I didn’t so much avoid him as I was interested in other things and didn’t mind his staring.

“Do you not sleep in Velaris?”

“I do,” I said because it wasn’t a lie. “It’s just different. Deeper there.”

He remained focused on me but when I didn’t turn, did not meet his stare because I knew he’d know what I meant and for now that wasn’t what I wanted him to know. He knew enough, I hadn’t lied.

“When do you go back?”

There came from memory the two doors shutting. First Rhysand, then Azriel, how they went away. Their faces, their silent conversations, all the things I had caused but was not part of. The cold around us grew firmer, impenetrable, enough to suggest it would be there forever. Looking around, avoiding answering, the day became duller, gloomier, like everything was already over.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure Rhysand is going to let me.”

“Why?”

I licked my lips, “Just a feeling.”

Lucien bumped me twice and I turned left with him. Right beside us was a shop. He opened the door and I passed under his arm, the light and warmth of the store so welcoming it almost couldn’t be avoided. If I’d been walking by as someone was coming out I’m sure the undertow of it would drag me inside regardless of what I was out to do or where I had planned to go.

Lucien nodded at the male at the front, turning quickly to close out the cold world. Unlike the other shops around, this one did not have seating out front, so there was no spell for keeping warm. The urgency to finally make it inside then was ever present, as the bell overhead jerked and revealed us and it’s note. One other person was inside, and had barely looked in our direction before returning to peruse a moment later, studying various bags on the shelves. It smelled of spice, of fullness, hearty but soft.

"You like tea yes?" Lucien said appearing beside me.

I nodded, tucking my hands in my pocket, the jacket pulling against my shoulders, making Lucien feel closer than he was.

“What do you like?”

“At home, we used to have just a simple blend, a breakfast tea. It’s my favorite.”

Lucien hummed, “You and your parents?”

The opportunity there, to right what I had done the night before seemed enticing, opening like another door, and I was tentative in my approach of it, to try and thread the connection between this life and the one behind, the one so far away. Hoping that by doing so I could pull the slack and link the two together in some way, without wrinkles or holes.

“Me and Deryn.”

Lucien’s brows cinched like pleats. My heart pressed right up against my ribs so totally I wasn’t even sure it was beating. Wanting that desire, my words, to take that heat like an iron.

“That’s your husband?”

I nodded, slowly.

His face relaxed some, not totally, but enough that the pressure rising in my chest, pushing to get out, lessened, “Was it a darker tea”

“Yes. Strong. I only ever needed one cup. A second maybe later if it was winter.”

“Did you put anything in it?”

My nose scrunched, recalling those instances we’d been out of milk and I’d suffered through a bitter cup, “Yes. Milk and some honey.”

He nodded, not overly warm, but unmoved all the same. I explained some of the notes and he stepped toward the counter, saying, “Then we’ll have that. Or, something like it.”

While he was there I perused the labels, labels with flavors I had forgotten or had entirely not known or heard of. Lucien’s voice, knowledgable, clear, tumbled toward me as I moved back along the wall. I couldn’t blame him. For what he felt toward Deryn, it wasn’t his fault, it was mine. He couldn’t know what hadn’t been said, could not make a male from a single memory. What came was only the apparition, the shadow of that thought, cast against the ground, but nothing more, not the real thing. So much missing, things I couldn’t say not because the words weren’t there, but because it wasn’t what one said. Like that first night alone in our house, how attentive, how gentle and patient he had been, wanting me safe, wanting to show me. Or how he looked at me, how natural, inherent his belief was, in my goodness, in my having goodness. That I was going to do something with my life. That he was going to watch. And his knowing seemed certain the way one knows the sun will rise the following morning, and you’re simply in the moment waiting for it to happen. You’re so certain that you don’t think to even remember there is another possibility of it being untrue, of something else happening.

“They’re making it now,” Lucien said, appearing behind me.

Humming in acknowledgment I didn’t turn back, my eyes settling on the neat orange packaging. It looked like an end-of-day sun, just before it burns deep, that saturated orange before the brightness gets even bigger than you thought possible, than the mind can really conjure.

“I think you’re right, you know,” I said, gathering my hands in my own to stop their shaking. “That he failed, as my husband, I think that’s true.”

The world got very quiet and the words, the particular words I was going to use didn’t seem at first clear the way they could, but I knew they were there and waiting. Maybe, I thought, maybe I needed not to know what they were for this part. Maybe only then it would work and I could avoid my fate and failure.

I continued, “But I don’t know how to be angry with him. That he didn’t live up to a role he was never meant to have, who is really at fault?”

“Him.”

“Why?”

“Whether or not he was meant to be your husband, he was. Kindness, care, those things don’t stop because you’re in the wrong place, because you ended up somewhere you had no intention to go.”

And I suppose he was right in that, in the perfect world where one always knows what one is doing. Where hindsight happens in the moment rather than years later. This fantastical living where we were our best selves at all times and never wavered. But I was not there, nor was he. I was in this place. I lived here, in something more precious to me. That, yes, bad things happened, and people caused them, but that many things could be true at once. That people, despite everything, were capable and worthy of redemption and saving. I would not abandon my friend. I had already done that.

“Sometimes you speak about yourself as if you have lived a terrible life before we met, a life you seem to regret, that you’re ashamed of. But you’re kind. You’re gentle. Is it impossible to imagine that he is just as multifaceted as you?”

Lucien was silent but it didn’t seem I had misstepped. I looked down at my hands, the left clenching the right with sturdy memory. Replaying the past, replaying a few memories over the top of each other. That night in the study when he’d thrown me out. The silence of the house after I’d publicly called for the female’s return to fhe library. The night of my last birthday before she’d come, when I arrived to the house all decorated, with my parents waiting. How he’d held my face so gingerly in his hands the last I’d seen him, and the I love yous that passed sincerely, more sincerely than what we’d said on the alter or after, because he’d ceased to be my husband then, and became again, just my friend.

“He wasn’t always like that.”

“What was he like?”

“Rhysand and Helion, how they are with one another, thats how we were. He’s like Rhysand a little I think.”

“Really?”

I nodded, “Always teasing me endlessly about something. We were partners, too, in all card games and we were vicious, we worked well in tandem. Mischievous. Loved adventure and he didn’t love any adventure half as much if I wasn’t there, so it was lucky that my parents adored him or he’d have gotten me in a lot of trouble.”

Lucien huffed a laugh. I laughed a little wisp of one, like the tail end of an echo that had just made it here on a gust from years before.

“He used to open my bedroom window and sneak me out. If I winnowed us to the little city then he’d get me in the tavern and we’d drink and dance. He could make anyone believe anything. He loved to embarrass me on those nights, told the worst stories then, half true, but we’d draw a crowd and tell them together. Sometimes though we’d get there and my parents would be there too.”

“What happened then?”

“We’d all dance. It’s not as if they wanted to leave to discipline me.”

“You lived happily together.”

“Yeah we were,” I nodded. The memories coming back lazily now, and welcome. How easy they were to handle with care, to hold them in my hands. From the corner of my eye I looked at Lucien, “He threw the first male that broke my heart off a cliff into a lake.”

“Really? Why?”

I shrugged, “He thought it would make me laugh. He made me laugh all the time. It was the only thing we ever did I think. But he was also generous. Too generous for his own good. If I even hinted that I liked one of his sweaters I’d get home and find it stashed in my bag. I had to stop complimenting him when he showed up to the library one winter with nothing but a thin bathrobe for a jacket. Really, he just wanted me to have everything. He didn’t like places and ideas that didn’t also have me. Whatever he learned, he made sure I knew it too. He’s pretty much the reason I know how to set snares and even survive in the woods. Each year on his birthday he’d have us go camping for a week. He loved the outdoors.”

Lucien hummed, “He sounds like someone I’d like.”

“I bet you would. Sometimes you remind me of him. You both seem to…”

“What?”

I shook my head.

“Tell me.”

“Sometimes…it’s like you both believe something of me, something in me, that’s bigger than feels right. Like you know something I don’t or…or like you’ve already seen my life happen. I don’t know it makes me think, it’s made me think it isn’t for nothing. What’s happened, that it’s not for nothing.”

I turned back toward Lucien now, and whatever he thought of Deryn was perfectly shielded from me, my other words having slipped between us and now whatever impression he had, had vanished from his being. If another, better, impression had been there at all, that was.

“It’s this one,” I said finally, tapping the orange package, “We drank this one.”

Lucien looked at the label where my eyes had seemed to snag, as if tied to a thread that went back home, to Dawn. If I could still call it that even just accidentally, even just out of habit.

“You described it well. This is the one that he made us.”

“Mm. Have you paid?”

“I have yeah.”

My mouth downturned before I could think to hide it.

“What?” Lucien asked.

“You paid for dinner too.”

“It wouldn’t have been very polite to invite you to eat and then make you pay.”

We were standing so close together suddenly that when I turned toward him again, his hand from its place slid against my back accidentally. A lingering sensation, like a shadow, a wisp of him, was left behind.

“I just…I told myself last night that I would pay the next time. I don’t like not doing what I’d said I’d do.”

“Alright,” Lucien said crossing his arms, a small smile pulling at his lips, like it were funny. But it wasn’t meant to be. Whatever words I’d used, whatever I’d said, they weren’t working. The urgency took sudden and sharp shape as the void in me rose to meet the place of my inadequacy. “The next time we go somewhere you can—”

“You’re better at showing you care for me,” I interrupted, “but I care for you too.”

He smiled softly, “I know. You show it differently, but I know.”

“I just—I don’t feel you get anything in return from me. You’re so nice and it’s for nothing.”

Lucien went ridged. His brows more cinched than they’d been when I mentioned Deryn, “How could it be for nothing if it helps you?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No,” he said, his eyes hardening, “No I don’t.”

Everything, every right word, if it had been close, was swallowed, moving out of my reach. I should not have stayed. My failure was inevitable. Inside, the splitting that had began that morning resumed, the darkness rising as far as my waterline, stirred like in the dream, rushing.

“I have to go,” I said, backing away.

Lucien’s hard face broke immediately,“What? Why?”

I shut my eyes. How alike we were, Bryaxis and I. The pain of our closeness, I recalled it. Felt it, on Lucien’s face how it was for him, and wanted to spare him. This pain, this would be less than what would happen if I did not go. My chest ached under the pressure. That thing in me that wanted to come out. I don’t want to be a beast.

This is precisely why you are, what makes it so you will be. You think you can avoid it, but it is already there.

The despair. Deep, echoing, empty. And I so heavy as to sink.

“Y/N,” Lucien said.

I go only where I feel at home.

Like the dream, I thought, there was only forward. Banished. I did not want to fail.

No, I was not like Bryaxis. Bryaxis was like me . And I had never been stupid.

Lucien’s hand touched my shoulder, but I withdrew, ignored the pain on his face as I said, “I need to speak to Rhysand.”

“Why?”

“Bryaxis, I’m—I’m sorry. I’ll…” But I didn’t know what I would do. I didn’t know what would happen. I just knew that he could not be there with me when it did. His hand caught my wrist and I looked toward the door, the door that was so close, that would not get away. I knew how. Only I knew how.

“If you want…I could take you,” Lucien said, squeezing slightly, his voice softer now. And when our eyes met he grew suddenly sheepish, looking briefly toward the floor. “I could help.”

I shook my head, “I’m sorry. You can’t.”

His mouth opened, but I was already gone, slipping out of his grasp, palms pressed to the door, and found it, bells ringing, warmth waning, mercifully, opening.

***

Rhysand was not at home, Feyre told me as we made to sit in the study. Before I could be dissapointed it occurred to me that it was better this way. After what had happened yesterday, maybe this was the better chance, maybe they didn’t know how it had been left, how I had been. Cassian and her were at the river house and I avoided all manners if I’d ever really known what they were.

“You spoke with Bryaxis.”

My father would’ve laughed, my mother she’d have given a stern look. I could see it, and the memory of them, the feeling of their closeness only bolstered my bad behavior. If I was not good then fine. Even as this seemed a bit too much to me, the shame was for later.

Feyre’s eyes had been looking at my pants, the hem of which had come unrolled, before snapping up at the question, “Yes. I encountered it in our library.”

“And Cassian too?” I said flipping the pants back up haphazardly so that one leg was now shorter than the other. Lucien had taken better care. Had knelt before me and creased them so nicely, so that they wouldn’t drag. So they looked made that way. They’d held well enough, but he had not expected I’m sure the running I had done to get here.

The Illyrian nodded from his place near the door.

“Do you remember anything?”

Cassian spoke first, “It was unbearable and I vowed never to go back.”

“Just the bargain,” Feyre said. “And the darkness.”

“What was its end of the bargain?”

“Two fae from opposites sides of the war had breached the city and were down there with hunting me. So Bryaxis killed them first.”

“Did it…say anything?”

“It told me to close my eyes.”

I hummed, nodding. I hadn’t really thought about the bargain beyond logically. That the caves didn’t have a window so why would it go there? But it was interesting, that it had inclinations beyond killing and survival, that some desires were for the pleasure of having. Why hadn’t we talked about this already? Briefly there was a pang of annoyance, but I wondered if perhaps we had, indeed, spoken about it. Perhaps I was somewhere else, too tired to do anything at all, even listen. I pushed my hands under my thighs, a cup of tea beside me, steaming, that Feyre had poured.

A beast that could be bargained with. A beast that wanted. Yes.

“Would you mind…showing me.”

I’d peered over the edge when I’d gone, saw that final floor where Bryaxis had once dwelled. The darkness, even in midafternoon, was too thick to pass through. Briefly it parted, but I could make out not details, I could see no end. Just sensed some knowing that I had no name for. What it had left behind there I’m not sure one could be rid of it. Feyre’s brows rose and the pair looked at each other.

“I think it might be helpful if I saw—if I understood what Azriel and Rhysand said about it wanting to go places similar to where it has been.”

It felt like a lie, but it wasn’t one. I did want to know where it lived before and I did think it would help, but there were other reasons, reasons I had not shared. The pair looked reluctant. Cassian more so. Maybe they did know, what had happened yesterday. Maybe they knew without knowing. I took a quick, steadying breath. I even smiled, recalling the ease with which I’d once acted in front of my parents after having been out all night. When I was still drunk by morning. But the silence remained. All confidence depleting so fast it was hard not to crumble to the ground right there. If it had been for nothing, the sadness in Lucien’s voice, the disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” I said rising from my place, “I’m being rude.”

Cassian's shoulders dropped in relief, but Feyre spoke quickly, “No, not at all I’m just surprised. It’s not exactly the most pleasant place.”

“Can’t be worse than the beast itself.”

“You’d think that,” Cassian said flatly and Feyre laughed.

“Don’t be a baby.” She turned to me, and she held enough composure, enough sureness, that the crumpling ceased. “I’ll go change now.”

Outside the river house I stared up at the mountain, at the house carved into it. We were going up. The city and the court of course were made for night, however, the house of wind was one of the only places I truly noticed it’s beauty depleted in sunlight. The windows, dark now, but on late evening walks to my apartment I’d glimpsed the flickering lights, the warmth of Nesta and Cassian living in it. It was nothing in comparison now. Nor to the beauty I knew waiting within. I crossed my arms. Despite having gotten what I wanted, a thread of dissatisfaction pulled through me. A heavy burden on the other end of it sent everything sinking. Even thoughts seemed to turn downward, falling, until disappearing all together.

“Ready?”

Cassian had appeared. I wanted to winnow but, there was no chance. Feyre had revealed her wings so I wasn’t going to ask, and Cassian despite his reluctance had seemed happy that I had come to them at all given everything. Now as I nodded, as the silence settled, he shifted.

“I won’t go too fast or drop too sharply. But it might be a little…startling. Flying with me.”

After everything he still thought it was him, him that bothered me. Why wouldn’t he? I realized. What words had I said to contradict it? Who had I made known in any way that was true or mattered? No one. Not even myself. Before that morning I’d have thought that was untrue, but Lucien’s word echoed hollowly between my ribs.

“I’ve flown before,” I said, but it only conveyed the opposite sentiment I had meant. His shoulders dropped again, another disappointment, and it didn’t seem worth it to try again, given what I had already done, the ease of how I did damage. But Lucien’s words seemed, though a terrible pain, to also knock loose other memories of the morning, memories more easily forgotten. Rising through the din, just enough to hear a second time, You’d be surprised at who will give you a fair chance.

To say something. To say something not to persuade. To say only your view. What power that was, enough that Lucien had said what he had that morning. And he seemed to think I was already doing it, already capable, like this were a fate I had also fulfilled. And why couldn’t it be? Why couldn’t it all be true? The failures and the triumphs. Did everything have to make sense, or could some things simply be simultaneous?

Cassian, he was still here. He had not left. He had given me my moment, my chance. So it seemed only right, to give him one back. A chance to understand. Just one more try.

“It’s not you, you know.” Words formulated in my head. Easy now that the first ones had come. The initial truth and contradiction. “I’m not put off by you. I like you, actually. Flying, it makes me think of my father, is all.”

“Did he have wings?” The male asked after a moment, looking toward my own back like he might’ve missed them.

I shook my head, “No. But I’m sure he wishes he did.”

“It’s one of the better qualities I think. Better than being a High Lord for sure.”

I laughed a little, and at last I looked him in the eye. He had a bit of a grin himself. The joy there, having seen his despair, I immediately understood having witnessed it, what a good chance it was to take. What Lucien had meant. The answer to something I think I had forgotten, the answer to what I had, so long ago, thought was waiting here—was worth leaving home for. To try. And now, this success, briefly, seemed to push all his and my previous failures to speak honestly away, so that they no longer mattered. So that, perhaps forever, they would never matter in the way they once did.

“He always wanted me to marry someone from the legion. I think the joy of grandchildren with wings would’ve killed him.”

Cassian, though still smiling, didn’t laugh, “So it wouldn’t bother him then, seeing you in the air in the arms of an Illyrian?”

I shook my head, “He’d be thrilled, loved anything that could fly. Was envious. He’d probably consider it a safer living, my being in the air with an Illyrian. And if he didn’t ask you to marry me at the very least he’d want me to tell him everything about it, about what it was like.”

“He must’ve wanted you wed badly if he’d trust you with me.”

I shook my head, “He wasn’t like that. For as much as he liked the sky, there was nothing he loved so much as being a dad. Being a grandfather, I think that idea excited him. To do it again, in a different way. That’s why…” I paused again looking for the right words. “It’s not about you. It’s just that I don’t like that there are experiences of mine that he will never know. Especially this. Last time, I was trying to avoid it. That was all.”

The Illyrian hummed, turned to that big house, thought for a moment, “On cold nights like this, when I get home, I always think of my mother. How it might be for her to live in our home, warm, happily. At dinner I see Nes, and,” he paused. Added, so simply, conveyed so much, “I wish she could meet Nesta.”

If Azriel and I had our own register, then I knew now Cassian and I did too, of loss. Of this loss and it’s wanting. For a moment, breifly, I thought that perhaps I had done something substantial, that all these years I’d learned a thousand languages. All of them different and meant for different people, voices we slipped into instinctively when we saw one another. But the void in me rose to meet Cassian’s words before I could give it any real thought and I swallowed it back. I had made myself understood, that was enough.

Feyre approached, lighthearted, smiling, “Ready?”

The whole ride up the weight of living grew heavier. I couldn’t tell if it was the sharp winds or the big emoitons that made tears leak from my eyes, but when we landed Cassian looked at me, really looked for a moment. He didn’t politely pretend not to notice it, the flaring nostrils, the tightness in my voice, my posture, those clenched fists and the desire in me to pull away, turn away, so that when the final tear fell before I swallowed the bigness of my despair, no one saw. No, he simply bowed his head, and it was so kind, such a relief, it nearly hurt.

As we passed through the library, Clotho, as if having seen, gave a bow of her head by way of acknowledgment. Only I kenw it was a different sort. One for a High Lady and a member of her court. The female was poised in her usual spot. The priestesses worked in the familiar din, the thud of books, the scraping of chairs. We’d made it one floor down before we saw Nesta, standing with a long-haired female. Cassian, though behind us, beamed in such a way you could feel it at your back as you walked.

“Nes,” he said coolly. “Gwyn.”

The redhead replied kindly, “Hello Cassian.”

“What are you doing here?” Nesta asked, looking between us three.

“We’re going to look at the bottom floor,” Feyre said.

“Research?”

All three of us hummed a yes in reply. It felt about as much as I could offer, the cloak of normalcy having been ripped away as soon as we’d taken flight. Maybe even, as soon as they’d agreed to take me. No longer needing to convince them of something, the sense that they were too polite to go back on their word now.

The priestess Gwyn, Cassian, and Feyre talked idle, the words passing before me unregistered, while Nesta remained ever present, close to me, even if not by distance. After a while of my withdrawing, she spoke, her voice soft but not enough not to be heard. “I came looking for you last night.”

The rest of them turned toward us.

“Really?” I asked.

“I was going to take you to a tavern I like. They have music and dancing, a little like the dancing they did in Dawn. You taught me a dance so I was going to teach you.”

“That’s kind,” I said but it didn’t quite reach my voice. “Did you go?”

She shook her head, “Not as much fun going alone.”

“Mm,” I agreed. “Sorry. Lucien invited me to dinner.”

Sunlight from overhead bathed the library, our attentions briefly faltering. The two mates however looked toward each other, a brief private smile passing between them in the warmth of the Autumn sun.

“I came by a bit past dinner time,” Nesta continued. “Did you do anything else?”

“Slept. We were watching for birds in his apartment and I fell asleep.”

“Night birds?” Asked Cassian.

“How was that?” Nesta asked.

“Fine,” I said flatly which deflated a buoyancy between us I had not felt developing. Her face wrinkled in thought, her attention acute and impenetrable. Even when Gwyn spoke and seemingly transformed the moment again, away from what I made it, back in part to what had been.

“Are you the archivist that rescued me?”

I had never seen her before. Did not know her face, had just learned her name. I’d been to the library just the once and the archivist I’d seen was clearly from Dawn. This female, she was hard to place. Hair red like Lucien’s, which could’ve meant anything, anywhere.

“She is,” Cassian said.

“Our archivist was impressed with the work. Had wanted to say thank you or something but you were gone.”

“When did this happen?” Feyre asked.

Gwyn replied, “Over a week ago now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said with as much politeness as I could muster. “Who are you?”

Nesta’s trance broke on the words, “Gwyn works with Meryll.”

I could recall the faint inkling of that name, of that horrible dinner, of the conversations that came after I had done what I had done. The loss of memory and what replaced it.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard of you. That you’re brave.”

“I’ve heard the same of you. Talented too apparently.”

I turned to Nesta, who under my gaze, made a gesture that seemed to exist in two worlds, the intimate one of her friends and the outter one of our own, where I was. A shrug of the shoulders that made it all seem casual and easy, but hid a certain discomfort, a feeling of having been caught doing something you regretted or had not wished to be caught in.

“I may just owe you my life,” Gwyn continued. “You did a number on that manuscript.”

“I can never get water logging out.”

“We could manage that. Really though, I’d have had to spend hours fetching replacement texts had you not helped.”

Gwyn was so…light, happy, that to insist anything to the contrary I was sure would ruin something pure she’d managed to keep this long and I didn’t want to be the harbinger of such a thing. I didn’t want to be its ruination.

“If you ever need anything,” I said instead, “Let me know. Despite the other night, I usually am at my apartment.”

Gwyn smiled brightly. If she noticed it, the weight around me, all the terrible things within, she gave no indication.

“We will!”

I was sure that she meant it. It was a nice feeling despite everything, to think of a more reliable way to be of use. That if the terrible thing in me could be kept at bay, I might be able to do one more thing, to help one more time, truly, even in some small unimportant way. We said our goodbyes, promises were made to be seen later, and then we moved on, down toward the next landing, to descend into the library.

Feyre moving in step with me pulled lightly at the sleeve of my sweater, “I thought I recognized this.”

She did not have to say what she’d realized. Of whose clothes I wore, "I didn't have a jacket."

"Not even from Dawn?"

I shook my head, "We...we had to go." When I made to look at her she gave no indication of knowing what I meant, of what Rhysand would've told her about me and my history.

"Lucien is good that way. He gave me a blade after we met."

"Yeah," I said, pinching the fabric between my fingers absently, recalling the warmth of him, of his closeness, "He's kind."

Feyre stared at me a moment longer than polite, before she looked ahead toward the many stairs. The three of us took in the sight of the it, the deep library and what waited at the bottom before we began to climb down. Still I could not see in totality what lay waiting. Had no idea what i’d truly asked if Cassian wouldn’t even go there. But when Feyre stepped forward, I followed, and her voice returned with a different quality, something calm and even, but unnaturally so.

"You both seem to get on well."

"I think so, yeah."

Cassian stiffened behind me. I hadn't spoken curtly, hadn't done anything strange, I thought. Something then with Feyre perhaps, something I couldn't yet know from our time together.

She smiled, lifting a brow, "I feel you're always together!”

“Not always,” I said. “I think like the rest of you, he just wants to help.”

“Yes, you both seem to have a keen understanding of each other.” Feyre nodded her voice sounding farther away now, one half of her I realized was somewhere else. It returned only when she added, “And when you're not there he talks about you often."

"I've gathered that too,” I said. A longing in me, young in its way, wanted to ask, wanted to know what he’d said. To take it with me this afternoon after what had happened. But it seemed more painful, to have that knowledge, than to go without. Knowing now, what I had done, what couldn’t be undone. “But I think we will be seeing less of each other now.”

"Really?”

I hummed, “I don’t know if I’ve been very good.”

“I see. I was wondering why you didn't have him take you up here."

I shut my eyes, understanding washing over me, a pain in my chest, familiar, terrible. How it looked. The clothes, the help, Lucien gone. Embarrassing, how it must’ve all looked.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Feyre recoiled, "Whatever for?"

"You bought me those nice clothes, you helped me and I haven't...I don't want to seem ungrateful or I’m here because Lucien and I fought."

"Oh please," Feyre said, her face relaxing, "I wasn’t thinking any of that. You couldn’t seem ungrateful if you tried. No, I'm being a bit of a busy body.”

“The clothes you bought me—“

She waved a hand, “Not everything that worked for me will work for others, dresses included. The clothes don't matter to me. These ones suit you much better anyway."

"Really?"

She smiled, kindly, gently, like a leader and I understood many things about what I’d seen all this time, about how people were with her, "Really."

We rounded a landing and continued our descent. Cassian behind us having lost the tension of before. Whatever had set him off I didn't know.

“You say you got in a fight?” Feyre said surprised.

“Poor choice of words. Fight, is wrong. I tried to make him understand things but…I don’t know. I don’t think I said what I should've, I said something else. And then…then I just left.”

“What things?”

The past rushed forward and where speaking had become easier, it had again returned to the place that took great effort and planning. I balled my hands, eyes veering toward the darkness at the bottom of the library with which Cassian had recoiled from, had not wished to return to.

I wiped at my brow, “I suppose…Rhysand told you… told you about my past.”

“A little,” She said, her fingers trailing lightly on the railing, the library seeming further away than ever even just a couple of floors down. “But if you mean things you asked him to keep private, he hasn’t said. He wouldn’t tell anyone details of that nature, not even me.”

“Oh,” I said. “I just assumed as High Lady…”

Rhysand had kept my secrets from Azriel, from the rest of the court, but it seemed to me that Feyre was different. A mate, a leader, that anything might be separate from that, that they would have things between them the other didn’t know. I searched her face for any hint of anger, but she seemed not surprised, she seemed even, more full of love for knowing that there were things she didn’t know, things that he had decided to keep from her because I’d asked. The goodness of him, the kindness, to grant such a thing, it seemed to brighten her, to change her.

Feyre shook her head, “I think the daemati gifts have made him particularly cautious of other people's stories.”

In Day court Rhysand had stood with me on the hill and had called Dawn Court beautiful, had assumed that there had been beauty, despite the circumstances, despite what he had known even if it was very little. It had been then that I had decided where I would go, how much I would tell. I’d lost that memory, but it came back now the way you lose sight of a iridescent fish swimming below the murk of a pond. It had risen again, to the light, shimmered beautifully. And it was painful that I forgot, that forgetting made me assume one thing, which had felt so obviously out of place in his character now. How he had been all this time, the careful harborer of my secrets. How no one else had known.

“I was married,” I said all at once, without hesitation, without thinking too hard. “The night you calmed me down, we’d come back because I’d seen my husband.”

The poise with which Feyre had wielded so well, fell, but only a little. Her brows rising high on her forehead, Cassian behind us stumbled a little in his step in my peripheral.

“I’d assumed from how you spoke of the library you were unmarried.”

“Yes, well,” I said. “I had hoped that would be how it seemed admittedly.”

Feyre smiled a little, huffed a laugh before her face strained under the seriousness she exhibited, “Did you wish to reunite with him? If you’re settled here we could—he could.”

I shook my head, “No. it’s not like that.”

The story then, which had once sat in me feeling long and laborious, came very easy. The words were uncharacteristically right, the past spreading out without issue, without feeling or need to go anywhere else. All of it stranger than not knowing now, I wasn’t sure what to do with it, with the ease and understanding that came between us then, the feeling of having said precisely what was right, what made Deryn real. And finishing sooner than I thought, we rounded just two sets of stairs before everything had been said.

“That’s what you meant when you said he left you there,” Feyre said.

I bowed my head in confirmation.

Her brows creased, “What precisely did Lucien struggle to understand?”

“He doesn’t like him, Deryn. Thinks he failed.”

I’d have collapsed if the sleep had not happened, if there weren’t some extra force within me, more abundant than it had been, that allowed me to go on even without my participation or desire to. Such a demolishing thought, that this was so large a failure to him when I had been worse. What would he think if he knew the promises I had not kept, if he knew the thing I had found I couldn’t do?

“And what do you think?”

I swallowed, clutching my side, feeling the words there to say, “He’s not a villain.”

Feyre straightened her shoulders, a different quality to her listening that I could not name.

“He’s a person who couldn't do what he thought he could. Sure I have my resentments but who doesn’t?”

“How do you know?” Feyre asked. “How do you know that he couldn't?”

“Because he’s my friend,” I said taking a breath. “You know, things like this, they happen all the time. People, good people, get dealt bad hands and they do their best. It's just that there are other factors, other players involved so sometimes they do the wrong thing, they make an educated guess, and end up losing anyway. In the end, their best just didn’t work. And at a glance sure maybe there were other ways of going but also I think it’s not fair. To judge from here, with the knowledge now. Of course things will look simple, what he promised doesn’t seem so hard. But there were things he didn’t know then, that he couldn’t know until they came. Does that mean he’s a bad person? That I’m just supposed to forget everything else he did to help because he couldn’t be what I needed? I don’t want to do that.”

There was a silence between us that could not be named. When nothing came a thread of regret, embarrassment, pulled at my mind, at my heart.

“Sorry,” I said, rubbing at my eyes, “I’m reading too many tales of knights. Giving long-winded speeches. I just—I think he deserves to live happily. I remember what happened, what we both thought, and I think he deserves to be forgiven and I do, I forgive him.”

“Well I’ve heard my fair share of speeches,” Feyre said in jest. I tried to laugh, but it did not come. Just the memory of last night, of the way Lucien had sounded, envious, that Nesta had been witness to my happiness. The sadness that he had not. The feeling now that he might never, as the dread and despair seemed to rise in confirmation from my body.

“The first time I came to Night Court,” Feyre said voice distant, “was my wedding day. Rhys had stopped me from going through with it.”

The darkness seemed to vanish, skittering to the outskirts, pooling down the stairs just as fast as it had come.

“Someone else?” My throat was dry, which strangely comforted me. This feeling of not imagining it, of something really being there in me. And that I had prevented somehow it’s coming out.

Feyre nodded, her mouth in a bit upturned in amusement, “The High Lord of Spring.”

Tamlin. As I recalled, Tamlin. Letters from Aurora in inquiry surfaced in my memory, my friend, and the soil.

“It was hard for Rhys, for everyone once I’d come here. I asked them to leave him alone.”

“Do they?”

Feyre shrugged, “For the most part yes. Though I suspect words are exchanged that I have not been informed of.”

Behind us, Cassian coughed and though I looked to Feyre for a smile, for any amusement at all, there was neither. The opposite actually, a sternness, some hard look instead.

“But,” she continued, “he understands more all the time. And what he doesn’t, what he can’t understand, he respects.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

At the final landing, we stopped, stared down into the immense darkness that did not waver even as we got close to it. A small space left between us in the end and the whole bottom floor looked like a pool of dark water, of night sky. The steps disappeared into it about halfway down. We’d be in over our heads. No one would likely know we were there. Feyre placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Lucien isn’t Rhysand—and I mean that as a compliment. I wouldn’t worry too much. The best thing about Lucien, what offsets his loyalty so nicely, is his willingness to change his mind.”

I turned toward the darkness, which seemed to tug at me, wanting me closer, calling to it. Like calls to like.

“I hope so,” I said, thinking first, most selfishly, of me. That whatever disdain he might have now, for what I was doing, for leaving so often, would not be permanent. That once this was over, he could learn everything, and he might change his mind.

“And whatever you did probably isn’t half as bad as he treated me when we met,” Feyre finally added jokingly, pulling me back to her and the landing and the library. “He deserves to sweat it out a little I think.”

I smiled half heartedly, “Was he as bad as he says then?”

“Probably worse.”

Which made me laugh.

She smiled more sincerely, “I was a real retch too, and he still trekked across Prythian to find me. It's any wonder what he’d do for you.”

It seemed obvious now, the converging context, pressing against my past, revealing something so casually. Yet the truth still surprised me, settled over my consciousness with some discomfort. Not a bad discomfort just, a sense of being turned around. It’s almost how when winnowing you turn up somewhere and getting your bearings takes a moment, you make a good deal of assumptions, try and make sense of things. In those brief minutes things really do seem to line up with what you know. But you find a touchpoint and you realize the epicenter of your view is a little off. Even as things move rightly into place, the understanding of where you are takes a little time to get used to, to forget the sureness of the original misalignment. I don’t know who I thought he was after. But it hadn’t been Feyre.

“That was you?”

“Me?”

I grabbed the railing, leaned against it, “He passed through Dawn looking for you. It’s how we met. He’d seen me in the woods, told me his friend was taken, and wanted to know if I’d seen anyone.”

Feyre narrowed her eyes, “He never said.”

“Maybe he was embarrassed,” I said clearing my throat. “I was…I was naked.”

Whatever Feyre thought I was to say it was not that. Cassian, who had been so quiet all that time made his presence much clearer, breaking the tension enough to relieve some of the heaviness of the library. His laughter booming.

“Well doesn’t that clear up a few things. The next time I see him I certainly will be asking about it,” Cassian said with a mischievous smirk to Feyre before he turned to me. “That is if you don’t mind.”

I shrugged, “It doesn’t matter to me. He was the one watching.”

The male’s brows rose in delight, and Cassian turned to Feyre, “Next time you come up here for dinner make sure to bring her with you. I’m interested to hear what else she has to say.”

“Yes,” Feyre said rather coolly, “because for her dinner with you has been so pleasant in the past.”

All amusement drained from the Illyrain’s face, “That’s not funny.”

We were going to go together.

That was what we’d said. Standing there on the landing, this seemed simple. Cassian having forgone his reluctance, having had now a task, a mission. It was to be Feyre, who’d known it most intimately, then myself closely followed, and Cassian behind.

Nothing was down there. The logic of fear, however, rarely makes much sense. The body is afraid of ghosts. So when Feyre went first, I hesitated.

It surprised me.

In fact, I reared back from it, offended. I’d gone head first into the woods, had agreed, had wanted, to hunt the beast that used to live there. This, I thought, should be nothing. Like taking medicine, or how Deryn described the cliff jumping. The inner silence, slit second moment, when you go before you can think not to.

But still, I did not move.

Feyre turned looking up at me. Her ankles disappeared below the tide. It didn’t swirl, didn’t dance, it just sat still and vacant there like stagnant water. I wondered, now close to it, if I had spared Lucien’s apartment the same fate as the library. To host such a monster, not even the monster itself, but the remains of it, the stain it had been there. That darkness I had seen, if I’d let it overcome me, if I had let it rip me open or hadn’t woken in time, would it have filled that beautiful apartment, so full of light?

“You can’t feel it,” Feyre said. But me, I thought, I would. I knew it would have a feeling, it was too familiar not to. Not precisely like going under a wave, like water, but feeling nonetheless. And it would be easy to sink into it, to never come out, to go to that place. This I was sure. I could feel the ease of it all the time inside, and the difficulty it was becoming, not to let it out or up, to remember to pull away.

I looked at her, gripping the railing. My body not moving, not going, maybe knowing what I thought, what I suspected. But go I would.

“If you want out,” Cassian said from behind, “I can grab you. We’ll be upstairs before you can blink.”

This was a comfort.

I swallowed and nodded. Yes. They could be gone in an instant. That silence reared. I took a step.

Feyre and I were both right. You couldn’t feel it, but there was a hum, a harmony. Like notes on a piano that make a chord. Something resonating with itself, with the things around it. The deeper I went, the calmer I got.

Cassian's sure steps behind me and Feyre’s sure steps ahead. We, the three of us, moved together down and down as we had all along. I had thought perhaps it would feel worse and worse the closer I got but that badness never quite came. I was calm, so calm, I had the distant thought this should frighten me. But it didn’t, I could’t even find it in me to pretend.

When we reached the bottom there was only sound. The sound, faintly, of workings above. You couldn’t see. If a priestess looked over I wouldn’t know. My head craned back, there was no telling how much of the thin darkness lay overhead. Feyre’s steps which had been ahead of me became somewhat jumbled in their position as I moved away, further. I expected eventually to hit something, proceeding tentatively, my hands behind me, but found open space. Which made sense. Under the spiral of the wide stairs, there were no shelves, no books, nothing at all. Morbidly I thought, not even bones. At least, none that I found.

“Will you do the honors Y/N?” Feyre said.

I swallowed. My hands sweating, I wiped them on my pants. They did not wait for a reply—wanting and expecting light, that was all.

I did not need to, but I closed my eyes. Opening my body in every other way, I allowed for what needed to come out, to come out. My palms opened, my hands outstretched, even my legs, wide in stance. Something bigger than myself. I thought of Deryn and Lucien. Thought of the other library, thought of the cottage, as if to coax through the cracks in my living, the gaps, power like weeds through pavement. The persistence of nature, to get in, to reach for sun, to rise from their places. And it seemed to be working. My chest, which had seemed close to breaking open had seemingly relaxed again, in the harmony. An emptiness, or, like emptiness but not at all empty, seemed to overcome my body. It felt like those days of accidentally sleeping in the sun, that total and profound calm, where the depth of your chest to your spine becomes intimately known. I will not fail, I thought.

And then.

Light.

It warmed the back of my lids, and in sharp, quiet, inhale, I opened my eyes.

The power was still there. The power from that morning when Lucien had tied my pants back. Needing, wanting, to be used. A sort of hum now, as I focused on it, I could feel in my bones. Different from how it had been with the other light, but I couldn’t quite explain how I knew this or why. And though it was only a little more than my usual well, I could feel a sort of harmony that it had come back even that much, like it was glad to see me again.

“You remember me,” I murmured. In answer, it grew a little brighter. We reached for each other. From my palm raw, malleable, it began to take a round starlike shape. Like the sun, I thought, and the light pulsed again. There wasn't enough to be more than a dim glow, like a candle in a cave. My hands dropped as the thing lifted into the air between all three of us. Shoulders slumping, feeling at once a little tired of it all. I turned toward Feyre.

“Thank you,” she bowed.

I gave a bow of my head back. I did not wish, just then, to talk.

The Illyrian turned around, took in the bottom floor he had once been but never seen. Feyre too, blinked, eyes adjusting. I wondered briefly if it were enough, if the people above would see the faint glow and know we were here. But as the outskirts of the space remained hidden, I concluded probably not.

“You said you wanted to look around?” Feyre asked.

I nodded.

She turned toward Cassian, “You can stay here while we look?”

He was still turning about the room when she asked, yet despite his curiosity he seemed fine enough to wait here for us.

“I’ll leave this with you,” I said, before the light split in two, a second sun, moving his way. It hovered just over his head, and he stared up at it, bringing a hand curiously. It moved with the tide of his hand willingly. Warped by that which was around it, light always seemed to be willing to bend in whichever direction it was needed.

“Thank you,” He said.

I looked at Feyre and we set off, disappearing into the first row of shelves.

The bottom level of the library was not unlike all levels of the library. Bookcases were set and texts were neatly placed within them. The only difference, really, was the darkness, which made me reluctant to peer at the contents inside what was kept here. A sense that they’d been guarded all this time for a reason, hidden below. If this were Aurora I imagined how difficult it would be, how much you’d have to do, just to be allowed to know such a room existed. Here, it was an open secret.

Feyre flicked her gaze up at the light.

“You don’t often use your court power.”

I shrugged, “I don’t often find reason to. Recently, too, there's been less of it to use.”

She hummed, “I used it once. The power that Thesan gave, I used it. But admittedly I don’t know much of what it can do.”

“My father used to do something with it. Something, maybe, you’d like.”

She turned up at the ball of light, and we stopped. The memory, the ease of returning back to these things that had lived in me all along seemed to right a few things, the way rubbing at my eyes had revealed what was wrong this morning. It was a strange form of forgetting, not so much that I didn’t know that I could, but forgetting even to try, to do the things not just to survive, but because they were simply nice to do.

Slowly the ball dissolved. It took longer than it used to, but Feyre didn’t seem to notice. She watched as the large star began to form a handful of smaller ones. As, overhead, what had been one solar system, became many, became a night sky. She smiled, ran her hands overhead through them like you would beautiful hair.

“How?” She asked, but from what I heard I suspected if she thought more on it she’d know.

“He was an astronomer. I think of a constellation and then it comes.”

“Which is this?”

“The Maiden.”

She turned about, seemingly familiar, and pointed out the major stars. I nodded, appreciated it, this moment of mutual understanding. It stirred something different than before, different than the darkness in me. Feyre seeming closer than she was before despite her feet remaining planted on the ground.

“I’ll have to try it.”

We walked again, and moved into a row of books that seemingly had all been strewn about. Piles of them remained on the floor. Despite any normal circumstance, I had no desire to pick them up, to return them to their home. Convinced that if I touched them I would find a curse of a kind or gain something I could not give back.

“Lucien said you made wolves once.”

Feyre’s brows rose, “I did.”

“How?”

I had never tried animating anything. But for all that I loved about the light, had not been very creative with it. Others in the library had focused on their own skills, what the cauldron had blessed them. The magic, the tangibility of nature, and what existed there, had always been of more interest to me. Things that, without magic, live and live and live, return each year, to live. Which was, to me, magic in and of itself. To return to anything where something has died, to regrow like a phoenix, that was what I liked. I liked that magic seemed born of these things, seemed reflected, seemed like two sides of the same coin. As such, the muscle of creativity, of explorative thought, seemed relatively weak and unflexed.

Feyre bit her lip, thinking, “It’s like,” she began searching visibly for the words under the handmade night sky. “Like forming a word in your mouth.”

“But to animate it?”

“There is life already in magic isn’t there.”

I considered.

While the levels above sported the drafty open enchantments that made it difficult to forget where you were, the bottom floor had I not known, I’d have suspected was underground. There was no wind, and strangely, no dust. In fact, debris didn’t seem to exist here at all. Not the accidental clumsiness of a priestess, not the papers of an old book.

“Does anyone come down here?’

“I doubt it, but you’d have to ask Nesta.”

“It’s very…”

“Clean.”

“I was going to say barren.”

“Did you expect something different?”

I thought about it as we reached the following turn, “I don’t know what I expected. It's been here centuries. I guess I thought we’d know somehow.”

“Yes well, Bryaxis isn’t much for decoration it seems.”

I nodded, “Which says something in and of itself.”

Feyre did not reply. I turned toward the shelves, at last finding the curiosity in me to consider their contents. Their spines littered in that old language that, despite its usefulness, I had never learned. My mind drifted back again, back to the apartment briefly.

“Why did you wish to come up here?”

I stepped over some fallen books, “Azriel and Rhysand think—“

“I know but why else?” I turned to Feyre her eyes, amusingly, narrowed, “While you’re clever you’re not very good at lying. Or…you’re not very good at hiding your motives.”

“I have never been a skilled liar, preferred the truth regardless.”

“A good thing for me.”

We both huffed a laugh. The end of our search loomed. The final wall, though I couldn’t see it, could be felt. There would be nothing left to discover.

"Bryaxis said something to me. Something I keep coming back to, but cannot understand."

"What?"

"That it goes where it feels at home."

Feyre hummed in thought. A few books had fallen on the floor and I dared to pick them up, placing them back on the shelf arbitrarily. I found no curse, no consequence to the care.

"Why go places like home, when we've been trying to bring it back? That's what I don’t understand. If it were me,” I paused, swallowing, careful with my words. “If I could go back home. I’d go.”

Feyre hummed, mulling over the sentiments, “Perhaps this is not the home it means.”

“I’ve considered the same. But there is still something not right. Because if it made a bargain with you, for whatever reason, it had once planned on coming back. Maybe even it wanted to.”

“Something changed.”

I nodded, “Indeed. I came here to see. To see if maybe there was something, something I could understand, what made it plausible once to return, given everything. The part of home it found here, so that I might have any idea of the places it was going, of the home it was looking for.”

“I don’t think this is a beast to be understood. And it doesn’t appear to be sentimental.”

I wrung my hands, hiding them in the sleeves of my sweater, the wall, now, visible by my light. We stopped at it. The smooth stone unblemished, unreadable. Reforming the stars so they were the singular light, I moved the ball up until it reached ceiling. Nothing.

I turned to Feyre, “Rhysand said that going somewhere, knowing that it is someone's home, changes the way you see it. I think that's true.”

Having come down here, having thought of the confines, having stepped into such a beast's worldview this long I did not say that part of me was beginning to think I could understand. The chasing of the ribbon of home running through the world. If there was something to return to, I wanted to know what it was. What, even not having a window, had been worth coming back for. I sighed, my head lolling back so the base touched my spine. The scratching of pens, the shuffling of papers, even some hushed voices trickled down. Despite the darkness veiling this place, perhaps a ward in and of itself, everything was in sight from here. It struck me as a very lonely place to be. if it wanted a window, stories, I suppose it was simple in the end. Bryaxis missed the world.

And I could see that wanting almost. Looking around at the dark place I did not see the caves. I saw the cottage. It didn’t tell me quite where Bryaxis was, but it told me something. Something about loss. Feyre and I looked at each other after another moment, sighed, then decided to turn back. Once at the center of the floor where Cassian was waiting with his ball of light, we conceeded to go back.

Despite there being no words to properly convey what the trip had illuminated, I felt a great sense of accomplishment anyway. That for once, none of what had been done, was for nothing. My mind trailed, trying to connect the feelings with words, with the past and what had been said. I knew the thread was there, but finding it, parsing it out, was another business. But there’d be time. As we passed toward the stairs, something from a small alcove caught the light, snagging at my attention, dragging me up to the surface of my thoughts.

I stopped.

At a distance, it reminded me almost of the grooves in Lucien’s bedframe but thicker. Intentional.

I swallowed, “Wait.”

Feyre’s steps paused, her conversation with Cassian halting. They didn’t ask, approaching with sure steps.

“Did you find something?”

But I didn’t know yet if I had, stepping closer toward the indentations in the wall. Everything else had been smooth. The whole place stoney smooth.

Sometimes at the library when receiving books back, I’d find a mark or smudge against the page. People, who in an attempt to understand better, would grasp for some sense of control, physically to it, because the mind was unreachable. Hold a book to their nose, say, or rip the pages from holding so tight. The feeling, now, understandable to me, the desire to get close to something in the hopes of seeing it more clearly. The markings turn to a square, to many squares, to then…beauty.

“It wanted a window,” I said plainly.

The beast had carved, with its claws, into the building, its own window. There was a tree and a bench, a person. Childish in its appearance, but, understood all the same. The barest bones of it, conveying centuries of wanting.

Familiar, I thought first. Then how…normal it seemed. Painfully normal, to want the sun. To want to turn your face up into its warmth, to wish to see the sky, and other people. My heart, despite all it had endured at the hands of that beast, strained. 56 years alone knowing others existed just out of my reach. And Bryaxis who had listened to them overhead, it was hard, torturous to imagine. I was, very briefly, glad. Selfishly glad that my expectations had not been met, that my theory this morning, had been wrong.

It had seemed only logical, with good rest, given everything. I’d said I didn’t want to be the beast, so I knew I would become one.

I went to the library at last to become it.

That was also what I had not told Feyre. The recognition seemed too strong, that draw. No, I hadn’t come here simply to see this home. I’d come here to come home. As I’d said, it was what I would do. It was the first thing I’d do if I could. And I realized maybe I could. I thought that the stirring darkness which had seemed so recognizable would coax this beast out from my body. I said I would put a beast back in the library. I decided to be the beast. Then, I hoped, no one would have to get hurt. Feyre and Cassian, they’d survived this place, this thing, already. They could fly. And maybe briefly, before the forgetting, before all the goodness in me was gone, I’d recall their kindness. I’d let them go.

But that had not happened.

While maybe in another circumstance this would be, paradoxically, a success, I did not find it so. It only seemed apt, this unwavering ability to evade success. To fail even at failing. Despite how the world seemed to have given up on me, I found myself still just as incapable of giving up the world.

But the other outcome I welcomed too and, though less sure, I was aware of it. That to come here would reveal something to me about what we were looking for, of who we were looking for. And while there was nothing here, that was something I could understand. That itself was a clue. There was something to come back to, but I did not yet know what.

When I looked back, the sentiments were not shared. Feyre and Cassian appeared unsettled. I was glad. Glad for all I had not said. About home.

“It reminds me of Lucien’s apartment.”

Feyre’s face skewed into blank unknowable expression. A clean sheet of paper, I could’ve imagined anything.

“The view from that window in his kitchen,” I clarified.“The courtyard with the scholar tree.”

“I don’t know it.”

“You can see it from the living room.”

More sheepishly, a twinge of something in her manner, “I mean, I don’t know Lucien’s apartment. I’ve never been.”

“Oh,” I said surprised. “Sorry, he just—he has all the seating. I assumed it was to entertain friends.”

Feyre and Cassian remained silent.

“Bad habit. I’ve done too much assuming,” I admitted, trying to make space for the reality, for understanding. “Given everything why would you have gone? Your house is so beautiful, I’d prefer to go there too.”

Knowing what I was doing, Feyre gave a courteous bow, and I sensed that I had not at all put her at ease, had not cleared the embarrassment from her admission. Cassian however, seemed to have better luck with clearing the air of things.

“Shall we find Clotho and get you set up?”

***

I was offered an assistant but I didn’t take it. Couldn’t imagine it, me telling someone to find a book. The years I had researched, where I was only to rely on myself, my desire for knowledge, I had not forgotten the skill that took. And it was not in my nature anyway, asking someone to do what I could do. And if anyone spent enough time in this library saw what was so eerily similar to that which exists on the bottom floor then I didn’t want them to figure it out. I didn’t want to risk anyone seeing me too closely. So while it did take energy, moving up and down the stairs as I grabbed for books, feeling the priestesses look on not knowing who I was, I enjoyed it. Enjoyed the feeling of returning to myself in this way, the thought that, at long last, I had something to offer Rhysand and Azriel when I saw them next.

The first night it had been easy, staying there. I was not bothered, managed on, growing tired, but not in the ways I had been before. Those brief periods of sleep, actually restorative, waking, each time I found a new sense of ability, clear eyes.

After the second night, things slowed down. Even during the day, I’d find, suddenly, myself jerking awake, unaware I had closed my eyes and unsure how much time had passed. I just knew it was not enough, could feel it as my eyes scanned a page more than once, grasping to understand. The thread that had been in the library thinning more and more each day, and I pushing harder so as not to lose it.

On the third day, I found Cassian and asked him to take me to my apartment, briefly. I had strong tea there, and some food I should eat before it spoiled. Until then I had, a few times a day, gone up to Nesta’s house and tested the boundaries of what could be done. Asking, first, for some bread, then bread and jam. The biggest jump I made was to ask for stew, which I ravenously ate and regretted from the lethargy it seemed to push my body and mind into. I liked the idea, then, to make something for myself, which was its own specific satisfaction.

Climbing the stairs, finding a hint of relief, I approached my door and stopped.

A pile of clothes, folded nicely, in perfect squares, teetered alone at the threshold of my door. And I knew them, remembered their fine material, their loose buttons. Lucien. He’d said we’d go to the tailor. And now…

I approached, looking, maybe even hoping for a note, some way to speak without being close, but there wasn’t one. Which I deserved. My ribs in familiar strain began to ache. He was good, I thought picking up the clothes, and when I was gone, when time had passed, he would remember me as I was. That was his way. This was, again, one of those nice things about living. Real living. That while anger, pain, might last a long time, forgiveness when meant lasted longer, was continuous. And most people did want to forgive you. As Feyre put it, Lucien would change his mind. The pain would be a very small and distant memory. Which was, itself, the happiest thought.

Outside again, in the cold, I turned my head up in the wind, let it kiss my face. Though my darkness had risen to my waterline, it did not yet accost my eyes. I smiled a little, before recalling that bottom layer of library, where there wasn’t even wind.

“New clothes?”

Cassian was standing across the street. I turned about, looked both ways before crossing, wondering, but no one else showed up.

“Lucien gave them to me,” I said.

“I remember.”

I didn’t say much else, let him lift me and then take to the skies where we returned to our separate business. The days blurred and bent like light at the corner of a room. Some longer, others shorter, and yet, despite the demarcation of the rising noise around me, it all seemed the same to me. Rising, at times, to find Cassian to bring me back, and seeing it was dark, so deciding against it. The social manners of when one ought to leave a place became irrelevant as I didn’t really know how long I’d been there at all. I guessed, five days.

One evening Nesta appeared at my side, “Do you need help?”

She’d come before and asked the same thing. Only now her voice rose differently, one might even say gently, unlike her normal firmness which had been a comfort, which made me feel even just a little normal. I could not bring myself to worry how it appeared to others, what I was doing. The mercy had again returned, my life at its edges blurred, I couldn’t quite find the energy to worry about too many things, or, hardly anything, at all.

I shook my head.

At least a day had passed—she was in different clothes. Fine clothes, and I wondered if they were having a dinner upstairs. If perhaps there were things I was missing, things I was no longer told about. It would be fair, given the last I’d seen of the High Lord, of his spymaster.

She nodded, silently. At some point the softness she’d approached me with feel, and it was a relief, the normalcy, to sit under her considering glare, as I had all that time before, silently at those parties and dinners.

“He was handsome.”

I stopped writing, placed the pen down.

“Cassian told me.”

I pressed the nib into my finger, avoided turning toward her, facing the feelings of what had become known. I supposed, in the end, it mattered little. My daily life was unchanged. But it meant something too. Something about a life I used to have, the person I used to be.

“I know it doesn’t feel good, knowing we’ve spoken about you when you weren’t there,” She said.

I shrugged, “That is not particularly on a list of things I care about.”

She huffed a laugh, “No of course. I’m sure it would take something world-ending to get a rise out of you.

Then I laughed a little, yawning, “Yeah probably.” I tried to think, now, of anger, of something that would bother me. Her being too easy on me, that would bother me, if she did it again it would bother me, and maybe I’d have the nerve and energy to say something. But even then it didn’t feel quite so large as it used to. I turned, remembering my manners, to her, “You should’ve met me before. I was petty.”

“Really?”

I nodded, “And fun.”

“You’re still fun.”

I gave her an eye but she didn’t relent.

“I don’t take Feyre to the tavern.”

“He’s the one who taught me that dance you know,” I said.

“He was a good lead.”

“Always has been. Even when we were young. For a moment…” I began, shifting. But Nesta didn’t seem to be Lucien. She seemed on our side. “I was really happy, watching you both that happy. It's been a long time since he looked like that.”

“Was he like that when you were married?”

I swallowed, “No.”

“How long were you together?” She asked, leaning against the shelf, resting, like she planned to be here for a while even if I let her.

“About six years. Engaged for two I think.”

“Long time.”

Lucien had spoken of human years, of their sense of time, and I saw a part of that still in Nesta, in her origins, smiling some, at the beauty of perspective, “Perhaps in mortal years. But it was nothing. The friendship, that is I think the most important part.”

She shrugged, “I don’t know. Doesn’t it all matter?”

I thought for a moment, feeling…unlike myself, feeling as though I’d missed something important almost. But Nesta, she had placed it in my grasp again.

“Yeah,” I said. “I suppose it does.”

Nesta hummed, the two of us watching each other, the words settling between us. She looked pleased, she didn’t look at me like I was strange or wrong or very close to falling away over the horizon into the past, to the world of unreachable obscurity. And if I thought about it, I supposed she looked at me as they all had come to look at me, despite everything, like I was real. I remembered then, choosing to come to Velaris, remembered why. How Rhysand had been in Day Court, how he’d made me feel as though my life was my own.

She pushed off the shelf again. Not staying then, I thought, and before I could refrain, found I was disappointed.

“I’m about to have dinner,” She said. “Cassian has business, so it will just be me.”

“I actually just ate,” I said, which was true.

She nodded, and without another word, turned around and left. It occurred to me that, even if I wanted to go back to my apartment, I had no way of getting there. I got comfortable, and, again, set to work.

***

“You don’t sleep at all do you?”

It must’ve been the same night. This, at the very least, was obvious. Not enough time, no rise in noise from other workers, had hinted at a new day. His voice pulled me from my book, placed a silence in my mind. He was leaning against a bookshelf. Not as Nesta had, but with more of something I didn’t wish to say or acknowledge. The faint glow of the library set him in a hazy, almost dreamy quality. And I might have been dreaming too I thought, blinking. He remained there, however, and smiled too slightly which made the whole thing feel less certain.

Lucien pointed at my books, “You’ve got a real collection now.” The happiness did not seem feigned, the kind one puts on after an argument, when they are trying to decide not to talk about what has happened. For however small it was, this happiness at seeing me, it was very real. When I didn’t answer again, he added, more quietly, “Would you prefer not speaking tonight also?”

I did not know what to say. Yes I supposed, but I knew silence was not a deterrent, wouldn’t make him run. But words, words were another thing. And scarcely had those worked in the past either. His eyes fixed on my expression, looking for something, eventually dropped.

“You got the clothes,” he said.

I nodded.

“And they seem to fit. I did my best guess.”

I’d thought only too briefly about it when I’d changed, how the pants had been cut right at my ankle. That intimate knowledge that required, that he had managed to know me in that way, to remember me so fully. I did not think that kind of thing was still available to me. He was so nice, so nice it actually hurt. When he said nothing still I realized we were doing the same dance we’d begun with. Me thinking I had said something aloud and him waiting.

“I’m a little busy,” I admitted.

“With?”

“Research.”

“For?”

My fingers curled, grabbing for the pant leg, “Prythian before the war.”

He nodded slowly, lifting off the bookshelf and walking toward me. I know he had the manners for it, for asking if a seat was taken, but he did not use them. Instead, he silently slid the chair beside me out, the library quiet and undisturbed by him, and set himself in it.

“Nesta is having dinner,” I said.

Lucien’s mouth pursed, a thread of pleasure, I thought, amusement, moving along his eyes, “Thank you for letting me know.”

Warmth crept under the skin even as the drafty library howled. To be this close, I thought. It had seemed better, easier, up here, to be away from him. The choice even feeling noble, but the longing now seemed to deteriorate everything. The logic of things before blurring, obscured, unknowable. When I found it in me to look at him again the pleasure on his face imperceptibly had vanished.

“How long has it been since you’ve left this place?

I said nothing. My whole body suddenly weighed too much, as if being pulled to that bottom floor.

“You don’t know do you.”

He nodded when I, again, chose silence.

“Since I saw you last it’s been a week. I’ve been asked to bring you to your apartment for rest,” He admitted.

“That's why you came?”

He bowed slightly in confirmation. His demeanor took on that which he had first truly come to me, in Day Court. The exchanging of quiet nods, the reach for understanding, and there was relief to me, that I did not need to push too hard. That he was at a distance, that he was here for a task and not, as he had been before that morning, seeking me out.

“I told them that I didn’t think I would be persuasive.”

My throat tightened, but I said, “No. No I should go.”

My books scattered I knew would sit here until I returned. No one would take them from me. But where to stop, seemed the question. I ran my fingers over the pages, over my notes, internally noted what was left to do, what seemed to be a more natural end. Thoughts fraying, ideas less certain, but I pushed on until I found it, a good place to come back to. I turned to tell him so, to ask if I could finish quickly, and saw that same face as earlier. He was searching still for something. Something I had on my person I suppose, resting on my face, that in my tired I didn’t have in me to control or hide. And I knew what that searching was for, yes, but could not then put words to it, or place it. It was familiar to me, I didn’t know how. If it was part of him I recognized, or part of me. I had to turn away from the familiarity, chose instead to stare at the page before me, unmoving. I was sure he knew I was not reading.

“I just want to finish this,” I said. “And then we can go.”

“Did something happen,” He asked carefully instead. “In the tea shop?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Which was true. I didn’t because I knew I wouldn’t have the energy to do what I needed to. I’d be selfish. And for as much as he had pushed, for as much as I knew he could tell I’d prefer distance, he did not move any closer, did not ask any more about it. Instead, he said alright, turned his head, crossed his arms, and settled in his chair. A part of me wanted then to cry. I know he wanted to understand, wanted to know why I could not have simply let him be there. The thing inside had stilled and sunk, since we’d gotten here, as if dripping down to that bottom floor. Even now as my throat tightened, it seemed almost not to notice it, did not come rising to meet me.

But I did not cry. Because if I cried, he would want to know why. And I was sure that then I would tell him. So I turned to my books and began, at last, to wrap up for the evening. My pen scratching, Lucien stoic beside me. A half-hour passed and he yawned, the first movement since we’d stopped talking.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Past midnight.”

I hummed, “I’m almost done.”

“Take your time,” He said.

I dared a glance at him, the warm skin of his face aglow in the dim light. A shadow caressing above his lip, the indent under his nose, like a worry stone. How my mother had given me one, a perfect one, she’d found. I’d kept it on the windowsill in the cottage. His lids unflinching, his tired total, he didn’t notice my staring. He wanted, I bet, to sleep.

“Would you…” I began, “Want to help.”

Lucien’s eyes opened a bit wider than normal, face boyish because of it. He waited, almost like he didn’t believe I’d said the words and he wanted to be sure before he said anything.

“Yeah,” he said. “I would.”

I set him on a task, searching through an index, and then turned back to my own page. With Deryn when we’d worked side by side there was something rhythmic and inviting about it. It made me want to work as well, but at the moment, I did not find it so easy. Found that the silence which had been so present before, had given way to words.

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “For not saying thank you for the clothes.”

Lucien’s didn’t even turn, was not at all surprised, “You’ve been busy.”

“Not too busy for that kind of thing.”

He smiled, briefly to me, before he again turned to his work, the pen scratched against the paper.

“I don’t know if it matters,” I said, my hands curling into the side of my pants before I laid them flat on the table, open. “But I’m trying. Not to go away, I don’t want to, I’m trying not to.”

He did not betray himself, but I could tell that it settled him. His body relaxed in some minute way. A degree, just enough, how big those small reliefs can be. Which made me feel good, and I wondered if perhaps this didn’t have to be as painful as I’d thought. If there were a way to do it right so that no one got hurt.

“Of course it matters.”

I nodded the whole conversation exhausting. The kind that makes you want to cry. What had come over me, I thought. I was a child without a nap. Always on the verge of breaking down, of having too much to carry in my tired frame. All emotions seemed bigger then, bigger than they needed to be. I pushed the heel of my palm into my face, as if this were something I could wipe away, but my eyes seemed to take a strong root in lidded half-hearted openness. It did not right things as it had before.

Lucien stared, “You haven’t been back since yesterday?”

I shook my head.

“What about food? Rest?”

“I’ve gotten some.”

“You promise?”

I nodded, and he seemed to believe me.

“Once you finish we can go,” I said, and the two of us again turned to our pages in silence, he writing a little faster than before. Another quarter of an hour passed, but slow and languid, like honey would in winter at home. The thickness of the night unignorable. Paragraphs I was reading seemed to make less and less sense as my eyes passed over them, and I had to go back three, four, and five times to reread them until they did. And even then I wasn’t sure if I knew what was happening or if I had convinced myself that I had. The words did not even seem to be words and then letters lost shape. My life had not only blurred, but my eyes. Rubbing at them did nothing.

I’d sleep, five minutes probably, I thought. In my peripheral Lucien’s pen moved fast. He was leaning over the book, so I knew he wouldn’t notice. And when he’d finished his job he’d say so, and then I’d wake to his voice, and we’d go. Maybe he’d laugh, ask me if I was asleep, and maybe I’d say something that was true in that way that I can. Or maybe I’d wake sooner even and he wouldn’t know.

I was too tired not to bet on it. I didn’t want to close my eyes. But it seemed inevitable as all sleep now suddenly drifted from the realm of impossibility into inevitability. My eyes fell shut and I knew I’d wake soon. The darkness wrapped warm around me.

And I did. I woke with a jolt of my hands outward. Only instead of finding pages, I hit a wall. The table I’d been working at, perhaps smaller than I remembered. But Lucien, he wasn’t saying anything, I couldn’t even feel his gaze. He’d have heard the thud. He’d want to know I was alright. My fingers drifted up, trying to find a way out, the edge of what was before me now. But it was wooden, tall, and when I finally looked I realized it was, indeed, a wall. A literal wall.

My wall.

I sat up, the whole world righting. I’d been lying down. I turned right. My apartment. I was in my apartment. Lucien, he must’ve carried me after I slept. The warmth. Shame roiled, and ripened into pain behind my eyes. My hand sunk into the mat on the floor and, there, beside it, my stack of books. Besides that, the clothes I had gotten from him folded so neatly still, so carefully as I’d pulled them not to ruin the care. And the jacket which had wrapped itself in my blanket lay over my legs as it had each night since he’d let me borrow it.

But that was all.

I’d gotten rid of everything else. All the furniture. Vacant. The room barren. Nothing even to cast a shadow.

Everything I had. Which was nothing at all.

And Lucien. He’d seen.

***

I sorta supposed it was the end.

As the night ended and drew into morning the brief life I lived in Velaris passed through my memory. It embarrassed me. The emptiness, all the things I hadn’t done, all the wretched things I did do, the lacking any good reason to save it. It would make sense, I thought, if they wanted me to go. It would make sense if Lucien didn’t come back. Aside from fixing the book, I couldn't name a single thing. Instead, I’d almost gotten Azriel killed. I’d upset Rhysand, I’d sold, rejected, or returned almost everything I was given.

The answers I’d believed I’d find by coming. The answers I’d thought I could provide. There was nothing. It would’ve been better for them, I thought, had I not come here at all. And they were all very smart, they’d all have probably worked as much out.

***

Even before he entered, I knew he was there. It had been only a day. A single day since. He’d left the apartment in the morning and came back once it was dark. Overhead he moved through the living room and then into his bedroom where he stayed a little while before he passed through, leaving again. It was quiet. I started to wonder as he rounded the stairs if anyone else even lived here. Or if this, too, was one of the homes belonging to the Night Court. But that stopped mattering once he paused at the second landing, when he did not go down. I knew it was my door he was coming to then.

Once the lethargic heavy memory of my time in Velaris passed I’d spent the rest of the afternoon with the books Nesta had given me reading. I didn’t go back to the library. I had no way to. I hoped Clotho wouldn’t be upset, or the priestesses, who would have to clean up my mess.

He didn’t knock. No reason to. The muffled cadence of his step louder, clearer, echoing in the long hall from my front door to me. I didn’t turn as he rounded the corner and stopped.

“I packed you a bag.”

I nodded.

In the hall, a door closed. Other people did live here, I just didn’t hear them that often. Or, if I did, I forgot.

“Rhysand needs us to check on something in Dawn.”

I nodded again.

“Would you like to change?”

He was very straightforward, but whatever gentleness and patience he had once had seemed to have, at last, run out. There was no inflection, no pause, no grammar to any of it. He sounded depleted. I had depleted him. Lucien and Deryn were now in some unlikely cohort. Two people who I’d lost. People who for reasons known or unknown, would not come back.

I rose and grabbed, from the neat pile, the Illyrian leathers. I kept my distance, eyes down, didn’t want to see his face, this face I imagined of goodbye. Dressing in silence in the bathroom, I clutched to the single solace. That, in fact, I had done one thing. The male from the woods who remembered, Lucien, he was no longer a myth. He was real. He was kind. And I what his gestures all meant. Which was why I couldn’t look. At long last, I’d found something I had no desire to know.

I took my bag and walked ahead of him wordlessly. Outside the apartment I grabbed his elbow he’d held to me and we winnowed to Dawn. I took no notice, couldn’t care as to where. As soon as I could I let go, gave him space. Just dropped my bag and without thinking did as I normally did, set up snares. When I came back Lucien had set up both tents but was not there. Getting wood I supposed. It was already getting dark, already very cold. The leaves had gone. There was no cover. No concealing.

In my tent my bag had fallen over, my belongings toppled out. Books, I realized. The ones Nesta had given me to borrow. My ribs ached, that darkness stirred. I hoped, very much to be able to give them back. I wanted to say thank you. I wanted to say how much it meant to me, how it had helped. But just to give them back, really, would be enough. They weren’t mine. I had learned these things before.

When Lucien returned I couldn’t bear to come out.

I stayed in my tent. He didn’t come find me.

At dawn, I pretended to be asleep when his steps approached.

“You’ll wanna check those snares,” Lucien said. He was tired. “We’re heading out soon.”

I rose, stiffly, stretching and clinging to the warmth from my blanket. Frost had covered what little foliage was left, the branches were outlines in fine crystals, so delicate a laugh would melt them. So as such, they were safe in our presence.

“Nothing?” Lucien asked, when I returned empty-handed.

I shook my head, opened my mouth to say something back, to confirm, but inside I found only wind.

And so it went on like that, the pair of us. We hiked that first day and saw not another living thing. Sometimes he’d ask me if something was edible, or if I knew where we were. Yes and no questions, questions that didn’t require much answer. When he’d turn my way I’d avert my eyes to the plants or the sky overhead. Only looking back again when I was sure he’d started up again walking. The second night I did half the watch. We switched just after midnight. In my tent, I did not sleep. In Lucien’s tent, I didn’t know what he did.

Then we were up again moving.

Why we were there didn’t really occur to me and I didn’t ask any questions. The haze of tired made it hard to care and the despair had risen, at last, over my eyes, so the whole world seemed to be dyed its color. Knowing what was to come wouldn’t change anything, I thought. It seemed almost better this way, to not have to talk, to not have to hear him say it. To get used to the idea of no one being there to say it. And in a few centuries after when I was alone I might be able to forgive him. To think perhaps, because he hadn’t said so aloud, he really didn’t want me to go.

On the third night, we ate some fish he’d caught in a nearby stream. Sitting around the fire, the pair of us ate in silence. Like a caress, something to lean into, Lucien I realized had begun to watch me.

“Rhys said you’re a good cook out here.”

I hummed, nodding. I suppose I was.

“I was hoping your snares might catch something.”

I licked my lips. The fish was alright. We were lucky to have had some food with us, but in winter it was hard to be picky. Strangely I always thought that the cold leeched flavor from things, even if that made no sense. It just seemed everything was harsher in winter, and while I liked the snow, had loved the quiet, after going to the cottage it was hard to hold to that joy. To not wish away the season, which came otherwise so beautifully.

“Just that time of year,” I said quietly. And what warmth there was in his stare began to burn. I had become adept at not looking, it wasn’t so hard anymore. Instead, I brushed my hand and opened my book to where I’d left off. That was the one solace, I thought, that somehow they’d gotten packed. I almost hated the fae hearing, for as often as it had saved my life, I knew Lucien would know I hadn’t slept because he’d hear the pages turning from my tent.

“I’ll do the second watch,” He said standing.

I nodded, and only lifted my gaze once I heard him settle in his bed.

He did not return after midnight, but I didn’t mind. I wasn’t going to sleep anyway. He needed it more than me. I did my best to keep the fire going, though I was not quite so skilled as he was, didn’t have that natural aptitude, and when the wind diminished it past the point of real return I decided to let it go out from the shelter of my tent, threw on some extra layers.

A strong gust battered across the wood and I tucked my chin into my sweater, pushed the book against my breast. My heart beat against its pages furiously. It was noticeable enough even in the daze, that I looked around to be sure I hadn’t missed something. Alone at night was not a new phenomenon to me, especially not in these woods. But sometimes your body knows before you do what it's close.

I clipped my belt into place. The knives Azriel had given me, had taught me to sharpen, glinted under the moon. The metal hurt to touch, even through the gloves, colder than anything I’d felt in a while. Which was almost a comfort, if anything was there, that the wound would be enhanced by the icy blades.

Even without leaves the brush yielded nothing. Instincts, if ever there were something honed in these woods, it would be instincts. But there was no peak, no hair rising, not a sense of dread to be found that I didn't know to be my own. Just a cold dark night. And though I heard a few animals creaking and cracking about in escape, all footfall were falling away from us instead of towards. So when nothing made itself known, I tucked back into the tent and kept my attention half on the world, like a sleeping bird.

Ley lines and Energies.

The chapter itself was no more than three-quarters of its page.

Originally noted in a manuscript found at the decimated temple, Ley Lines were introduced just after the great war. The term refers to channels of power that reside under the soil of the earth, that were once used to bolster one’s magic. Though no one knows where they were for certain, many empty chambers have been located under the rubble of once powerful historical sights, though what had made them and what was there is unknown. Sacred sights, such as original priestess temples, High Lord mansions, and ritualistic caves are found in places where these ley line historical scholars had theorized The migrational paths of many animals are still believed by some to be affected by these original wells of power.

Some theoretical historians have suggested that, the chambers full of magic and power, were released into the soil itself, which explains why such rites as Calanmai are celebrated across different lands and in various cultures.

My brows pushed in, and my heart had, again, begun to beat wildly. It knew something that I did not. A twig snapped.

I threw myself up and out of the tent, hand on the belt. There was a faint…a faint... From my left. I turned and there through the trees danced a dull shimmer. The branches illuminated faintly, as if whatever was there, was fading, or getting further away. I moved slowly to the edge of the clearing where we’d settled, turned my ear toward the light, and listened.

Listened.

There was…

I whipped my head back, saw the flicker of light again, before it vanished without a sound. And just as fast, I was running. The brush and briar clawed at me, catching my hands, my palms, sliding easily away from the leather. My cheeks, my brow, my neck stung. My throat hurt, my chest ached, the vapor of breath spilled hastily out and up into the world. Eyes set forward, I did not want to look away, I did not want to lose it.

Whoever was up ahead was humming.

Yet no matter what ground I covered, the hum remained the same faint distance. Each note fluttered toward me, like memory, as if I were singing it myself. But I wasn’t. It was not me, it was not a memory. So I ran faster, cutting down branches with my blade, not attempting winnowing in case I got too close, too far, spooked them away. The brush opened into a river. The song ceased its place ahead of me and was at my right.

Yes, I thought. Had the world ever made so much sense?

My feet splashed and I ran along the bank. The rush gurgling, splattering, but the music clear. And I knew, suddenly, where we were. Knew it with such certainty and memory that it felt as though, just as there came a clearing up ahead, my life was opening too.

I paused. The lake out ahead. It almost surprised me that we’d found our way here.

Almost.

The pit in my stomach began to open up, a rising tension in the air made it hard to move. The humming, for as much as I wanted to close in on it, remained where it was, and I turned my head slowly toward the continuing expanse of woods in the direction we had come. Narrowing my eyes, I couldn’t be sure, truly, if it were darker there than the rest of the world or if I was making it up. If I was seeing only what would make this make sense, that it was some trick, some lure. The axis of all existence having been totally abandoned, left behind, at the campsite or maybe even before.

Another twig snapped, and I turned behind me but there was only a regular dark. The tension melted, the world so shockingly normal. If that were the word. If that were ever the word. The rippling waters now illuminated in a moonly glow, my mouth parted. No words came, not yet, just laborious breath. My foot lifted on its own accord, pushing through the final dense of brush, before sinking into cool sand. Proof, I thought, of realness, that I held weight in this world. And there, knee deep, the water rippling as her fingers cut the surface, she stood.

“Mom?”

Her shoulders tensed, she turned back at the sound, caught by surprise of course, brows lifted creasing her forehead, but she relaxed. Gave a breath of relief.

“Goodness Y/N, you startled me.”

Every thought, every dream, every hope, every beat of my heart, every rush of blood was silenced. The water lapping at the shore for a moment the only sound. But even that I couldn’t hear, the space between both my ears filled with air.

“What are you—Why?”

She smiled, sighed like it were a warm summer’s day, “I always liked it here. It's my favorite place to swim you know.”

I didn’t know. Or, I did, but I had forgotten.

I stepped forward, “How—how did he fix it? And Dad? And when—“

But in between one blink and the next, she’d turned her back to me again, and dove.

“No!”

The lake, it was too cold and her clothes too scant and thin. She surfaced with a smile anyway, joyous, carefree as she always was, and began to paddle further out. Rather than the lake swallowing her, she devoured it. Light rose to her skin's surface, first only dully as it had been before, then with new intensity. As if she were the full moon, reflecting on the rippled waters.

My belt thudded in the sand. I was already moving toward the water, she already feeling too far from reach. But I was fast. I had caught up with her once already. The stretch of sand already behind me.

There was an instinct to withdraw from the icy lake, but I raged against it. She used to do this all the time, swim further than any of us. But the more I went in the more dire I realized it was. How easy it suddenly felt—to die. As easy as picking the wrong clothes, as thin as the distance of one breaststroke to the next. But the deeper I went the worse it got, the harder it was to move, and the slower I became. My bones ached, clawing at the muscle and skin to get out hoping for some relief, to find its own relief. Even in such fine clothes. We never had such fine clothes as this.

Up over my head and the water got so choppy half the waves found their way into my mouth. I was so close all she had to do was reach back for me.

“Mom,” I said through clenched teeth. “ Please. ”

My hand across the expanse, she turned and I saw her eyes glance down at the palm, brows rising in surprise. But I was older now, older than she must remember. I could catch up. And I could never leave her again. No. I wouldn’t. Not ever.

Despite the strong current she bobbed up and down, her arms moving fluidly as she waded, like she was born there. She let her head fall back, wetting her hair down to the root at her scalp. My whole body below the surface seized up, fighting still, and losing. When she returned to my gaze, she smiled, ignoring my hand, and dove.

So I dove.

It required no thought, I had no resistance. Before it was even an idea I was under.

Against the back of my eyelids the world was black. I forced them open, looked for her light. She was far again, something fading, something getting further and further away. I swam down. An ache in my head splintered, caressing the spine. The intensity too great that I had to retreat, to breach with a gasp, a yell.

“Don’t leave me!”

But around me, the light was gone. And when I went back under I went deeper. But instead of clarity, everything only grew darker. Down and down I went but still only a thicker blackness than before. I’d lost her.

Then everything hurt very particularly. Like dying, but the dying was happening in the mind faster than the body could bring mercy. My limbs which had been cramping under the cold depths, suddenly released themselves from their bind. Limp, sinking, I did not have any way to make it back again. Even if I wanted to move my arms, my legs, I knew they never would. At last, it had come—death. The cycle always completing, eventually. I was never going to outrun it. But I had seen its face before. Maybe only at a small distance, but I knew, at last, someone would come back. That they knew my face. It was calming, truly, and if it weren’t so cold, so painful, I might’ve even welcomed it.

Sinking further, further from anyone over that horizon line. Swallowed, at long last, into the darkness. I knew it would be easy.

No one was going to come back for me. I was already too far gone.

I closed my eyes. The world looked no different. It all hurt. It hurt so badly.

And then, unexpectedly, warmth.

I clung to it.

Let it lift me, fast, through the cold dark waters. On instinct, so without air, I inhaled, water entering my lungs. But still, with every second there was more relief. The pressure easing, the darkness retreating, the water warm by comparison. A thinning margin came between me and the world, until there wasn’t anything above me, but sky.

Hard ragged gasps skittered along the water, over the waves. I coughed the water I’d swallowed up immediately. Breathing hurt. Living hurt.

“Y/N!”

Lucien. The pair of us fought along the surface of the lake. I don’t know if I did it, or if he did, or if it were both of us together, but the beach began to get closer. It was a desperate graceless swim. I fell beneath the surface at times, and he following, pulled me up again. When he could touch, he pulled me up swiftly into his arms.

“Here. Come here.”

I said nothing, his body regaining that heat as if there was true real flame beneath his skin. But I supposed there was. Then it became too hard to think about much else. I let him move us up the beach, panting. He didn’t stagger, didn’t falter, but even this stability did not veil his frantic movements once we were out of the water. How he swiped for my belt on the ground where I’d dropped it, head whipping around, scanning the woods, before he turned back toward the lake, just in case. His attention lingering briefly where she had been. We waited. Long enough that even then I noticed the pause, but nothing. Not a sound. Not a song. A warm gust snared us and in a breath, we were back at camp.

He set me in his tent and left. I settled my focus on a distant point and stayed there. Outside twigs snapped, bags were opened, things rattled. Then there was a crackling—fire. It had been low when I’d left. It came to life easily in his hands I’m sure. That's what he was good at, making sure all coldness vanished. The space immediately improved, especially when he returned.

Wordlessly I was pulled up and turned around. Leathers and layers stripped from me a violent shivering had set in place. He was moving as if on some instinct, some need for survival, but the survival was mine. As if what I had lost, my desire not to die, he had gained instead. He worked with clinical habitual speed. I was naked in front of him for all of a few seconds before my head was through the hole of a shirt, sweater, pants at my hips, wool socks on my feet. Then I was sitting, one blanket after the other tossed over me. Wrapped so totally in his things, in the clothes he had given me, in the blankets from his own bed.

Still, he said nothing, moving through the faint light, toward dry clothes. The warm flame orange and aglow licking at his skin he undressed with the same speed. The carved muscle of his arms shifted, tensed, lifting the wet shirt over his head to reveal his back. His back that was carved into. Not by muscle, but long brutal scars. My hand flinched for him but his shirt was on, his pants, everything and he was gone again.

All that time I hadn’t looked at him. Now he would not look at me.

I’d had people angry with me before. I knew the way it changed the air, the way it sounded. This was not that. How it was between us, the silence, the rush, none of it was that. There was no anger in his moves, no impatience, no malice. It made little sense to me. I could’ve killed us. But he had followed me under the water as I had followed my mother. This male from the woods all those years ago, who had understood me first, who had found me, who had remembered me.

And my mother, she remembered me. She’d smiled at me the way a mother smiles at a child. She said my name. The happiness of the memory, if memory was the word, overwhelmed me. The dull glow of her, the fluidity of her movements, the distance that neither she would close nor I could reach. My mother was gone again. But Lucien, he was here. I could hear him, could touch him. He had grabbed me. He had shivered, the weight of his hands, his warm breath rising in the night sky.

I was tired.

No, I thought, my mother wasn’t there. She’d never been there. And her smiling at me, no matter how sure, was a mirage. It was nothing. Even if the happiness it evoked was more real a gift than anything. All I wanted was there on that lake and I would never get it. It would always be out of reach, over the horizon, a dream. And if I blinked, if I looked away, I’d lose it as easily as a rock in water. I pressed for the happiness in my person and it was there, touchable, but it wasn’t mine. It belonged to a person I no longer was. It belonged to someone with a mother.

The tent opened and he stepped through, finally, unmoving. In the light, his chest rose. His face stoic, only now I saw it. I understood. The silence these days, the words when he’d come to get me, why the gentleness was gone. If I had looked, I’d have seen it—concern, real genuine fear. The kind so big it smothers flame like a douter. The look he’d been giving me all this time. Not angry at all, just terribly frightened.

And there, in his hand, a bowl.

After everything, he’d still made me food. I took it in shaking hands. To hold something like this, the product of true care. To feel it in his presence, to feel it even when he was not beside me. That was real. My mother, I had not felt it. Her presence. I had only seen it, heard it. But I couldn’t feel it. Like a veil over the eyes, the whole world filled with something despairing, dark, heavy. If there was anything good in me, anything left at all, the beast, finally, devoured it. The surging void broke through, climbed up my throat, and split open my chest.

I began to cry.

Violent pained crying.

Tearing the skin, rising from my throat between long haggard breaths. The tide always returned. Goodness went out, left behind despair. Life, an ever-swinging pendulum. To have good marked only the promise of pain. The bowl, ungratefully, fell from my lap into the dirt. I couldn’t look at it. And I couldn’t look at he who’d made it, as I became that which I had fought so hard not to be. Failure. I couldn’t fix anything, couldn’t do what I was supposed to. So I turned, burying myself like a memory, my face in the pillow, my cries quieted so if he really wanted, I didn’t have to be there at all.

The bed dipped. The blankets pulled, first a little chill, then warmth. Lucien. He so gently, like a river, enveloped me. I fought it first, his presence. I couldn’t bear it. I moved to the very edge, not far, but further. He followed. I shuddered, arching my back away. My hands clasped tight to the mat, but with the utmost patience, he loosened all ten fingers wordlessly. There were no words. There would never be words. He knew this. I didn’t know how he knew this. And in his gentleness, despite all things, I knew in a moment of brief clarity as he unhooked my last finger that I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone.

My hands free he leveraged me, slipping under the space where I had soaked the pillows, and rested me against his chest. He held me into himself and I knew the totality of it, the way he pulled the blankets up to my ears, the overlap of our legs, the splayed fingers on my head, my back, was meant in desperation. He wanted to protect me from the world. But the world had already come.

And strange as it was, though I didn’t notice it, not quite then, the void in me, that very deep thing that had seemed endless, became something tangible again. It had a name, but just then was not the time to say it. No, because a light, a very small light, one that seemed far away, had begun to get just a little bigger. The darkness, the heaviness, receding. Slow, yes, like a leak in a bathtub, but draining all the same. All those nooks and crannies I’d left empty for the life I had hoped would begin to appear again, like something knew, even if I did not, that I would put what belonged there eventually. It would take a little time, sure, but I was right—it was the end. The end of such emptiness. The life I hoped for was still promised.

I closed my eyes. I don’t know when I slept, but I did. And I did not become a beast.

***

The list of things I knew was very small.

I knew that it was late morning from how the light was full and weighty. None of the hazy weightlessness of dawn. I knew that my body was very sore, that it hurt to shift, to blink. My eyes swollen still, from crying, made me feel tired more than I was. And I knew that Lucien was not in bed, but he was close by. He hadn’t left. It wasn’t in his nature. So it did not surprise me, as my head fell to the side, that I found him beside the bed.

His eyes were glazed, his body a little limp with tired. He sat, fingers interlocked, elbows on his knees staring at me. I could feel everything he wanted to know and as I had always suspected he would, I knew he’d waited all morning for my answers. The fire cracked outside, alive, and the cold of the evening before seemed to have relinquished itself a little. Nature doing that, softening, what life was already harsh enough to be living.

We started at each other for a while. I took in his face, his presence, the fact that he was there. And I suspect he did the same, but in reverse. His eyes moved back and forth over my face, memorizing.

“How’re you feeling?” Lucien asked and it seemed strange to begin the conversation this way, but when I thought about it, nothing seemed like the right place to start, like the right thing to say.

I shrugged.

He nodded, “Do you need anything?”

I shook my head and after he let out a hum of acknowledgment, his whole body looking near ready to collapse, we sat in silence again. I wanted to reach for him, to call him back to his bed, but to not leave it. To return the care he had given me. I could hold him too, could let that concern fall away until he was better rested. Until the world did not feel so heavy.

“Did you sleep?” I asked.

“No.”

But I knew that. Knew also that he wouldn’t sleep now because there were other things in the way. Things I couldn’t stop or brush aside with my hands. Sitting up felt like coming back into the world, like taking on the responsibilities and consequences that I had left behind when I’d moved into that brush, when I’d left Lucien sleeping and alone. The slow climbing, the sore abdomen, and thighs, aching as I sat upright. Was there any way of coming into life, whether the first or any time after, that did not involve pain? I wasn’t sure. Was not sure too that this was a bad thing.

When I met Lucien’s stare again I knew that there was now, ahead of us, was the start of something, and for as much as I knew what that was there was an equal vagueness. How life obscures, how it gives you the idea of something, just so you know that something is coming. That everything isn’t for nothing. I would make the most of it then.

“I’m…” I began, but even that was hard to say.

“I know,” Lucien said. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t know. That you were that exhausted. I would have done things differently if I knew.”

“I know,” I said, swallowing.

The gloss over his eyes cleared some and his demeanor sharpened. It was a hard gaze that he had, but even now, with all that time to grow bitter, to write a story in his head, to draw conclusions, I could feel his care like it were the blankets on my back, or a palm caressing the cheek.

“I woke up when you must’ve put your belt back on. And then a few minutes later you ran into the woods. So I followed.”

I rubbed at my eyes. Lucien’s gaze was unrelenting.

“I heard you call out to your mother.”

For the first time ever, I wanted very badly to lie to him. But even if it weren’t him you could hear it in my voice, the slight untruth, the quaver and tightening, “I was tired.”

“You’re veiling your words,” Lucien said his eyes softening, his voice calm. I said nothing, adopting the old way of being, of saying what could not be said, by being quiet until the conversation changed. Unsurprisingly he waited for my real answer. Over his shoulder light danced on the tent. I hadn’t been outside but it seemed the day was already beautiful.

“It’s true,” I said eventually, wiping again at my dry eyes. “Since I saw Deryn I haven’t been able to sleep. Maybe I get ten minutes here or there but it isn’t deep.”

“You said you slept in Dawn. It’s why I brought you here. You were exhausted.”

I shook my head, “I used to…I don’t…I don’t know why I can’t anymore.”

So it had not been a plan to leave me then. Nor had it been Rhysand who wanted anything done. He brought me here. After I fell asleep in the library, he’d brought me the only place he thought for certain I could truly rest.

“And Velaris?”

I shook my head, knowing he wanted straight answers rather than the evasive ones he’d once been given, “Before I got more.”

“Before Deryn?”

I nodded, “30 minutes sometimes. And it was deeper. It had been like that since I got here. And then nothing.”

“Why didn’t you say?”

I shrugged, “Why would I? Who would I tell?”

“Me.”

“I knew you’d try and help.”

“Is this better?” He asked. He wanted a real answer, if was a real question. I couldn’t believe it, even still. How patient he was. How kind, not someone trying to be right, no arguing, wanting only sincerity, wanting just to understand.

“Nothing is better than anything else.”

He hummed, “And when you slept on my couch, that wasn’t better?”

I shook my head.

“Why?”

The darkness of his apartment flashed across my eyes, the library, the similarities. I felt into myself, into that pit, reaching reluctantly. It was still there. The despair, but I could hold it in my hand. “I thought…Bryaxis, when it talks to me,” I shook my head. “I thought I was becoming something bad. And in your apartment, I thought…I thought I was ruining it, and that I was going to do something bad to you.”

“Like what?” He asked.

I shook my head, licked my lips, “Hurt you.”

He nodded, thinking, but it seemed that was enough. I would tell him everything eventually, I thought, but this, I wasn’t ready to say. Even if I was not a beast.

He took long breaths in, his chest rising, even, deep.

“You speak about your parents in the present tense.”

He said it so simply. Admitted it so plainly, the attention he was paying, how close it was. That anyone could see me like that, after so long of being unseen. I don’t know if I had underestimated him so much as I forgot what people do. They notice you. They notice the things that you do. And one of those things was choosing the right words. And I had. For so many things, I really had. But no one can remember everything, least of all me.

“A few times I’ve caught it. You say your parents are or they do. I might say it was habit if you weren’t so careful with your words.”

There was no question spoken aloud, but I knew enough that one was there. I didn’t have to go searching for it. The opening of the tent fluttered, the flapping material, I thought briefly, reminded me of wings. And on it the wind cold circled the space cooling it again, whispering. There was a story to be told. There was a story, and I was going to tell it.

Lucien leaned back.

“A lot of things were apparent. Things that made the only choice we had clear very quickly. The library, it has…a registry. All the scholars put their names down in it. Because I hadn’t had my defense I wasn’t there. There was no record of me at all. No name attached to the Archivist role. I didn’t exist. And I could winnow. Far. Besides me and my father, few others could, and not the same distance, not beyond the walls of the library. But, most importantly to the rector, I had a good memory. I knew where almost every book was,” I said looking down at my hands, how I’d begun to wring them, squeezing my fingers to feel for the other hand, to make sure it was still there. To make sure I wouldn’t curl away, would not disappear. “The rector, when he realized this, grabbed me. He gave me a list of books, the most important texts, and told me to grab them. He knew I knew where they were.”

When I looked at Lucien his eyes had turned kinder. He, who had always been noticeably gentle, had dipped into a degree I had never seen. It was perhaps the softest thing I’d ever been given, like the way sunlight falls on a spring field or how the wind passes through the reeds of a marsh. It was the gentleness of nature, of the natural world, things incorruptible by despair or cruelty that he had somehow salvaged inside himself all this time.

“I didn’t understand at first what he wanted from me. I didn’t want to go.”

“You wanted to stay.”

I nodded, “But he told me that I had to do what he said. That it was up to me.”

“To save the books?”

“Yes,” I said shifting, “And to help the world remember.”

Lucien’s brows furrowed, remember what, I thought. A question that need not be said aloud.

“I told you, the library was…it was closed off to us. The knowledge, no one person had seen it all. But the rector, he suspected I read the texts I worked with. I knew a lot. But he cared too, for other things. The knowledge needed to be preserved yes, but the lives too, the people who made it what it was. What they’d worked for. He banned the library to unmarried females because he wanted glory. He ordered me to take the books, to bring them somewhere worthy, and then he told me to do everything I had never been allowed. He told me to share my knowledge, to talk of what and who had been there. If I did that, if I told the story, and did what I was supposed to, then it wouldn’t matter what they burned because everything would still be alive but in a different way. So I had to go. I had to leave and do this for them all, this final act of preservation. The most important of my career as an archivist. And I couldn’t fail. He told me that it would be dangerous, with her around once I left, once I started to share what I knew, but I had to do it anyway. The world would survive my death, but not failure.”

I reddened as I looked up at him, but he didn’t notice. He was rubbing at his eyes. A thinly veiled rage he held in his shaking hands. The heel of his palm dug into the skin of his eyelids.

“He thought I was leaving there to do something, but with the curse, there wasn’t anything I could do. Every village was empty. I had to wait, to hope that they’d get out.”

This was the part I had not wanted to say. To make a memory of Aurora like this, the cruel and painful one which existed in singularity. While it may have been that place to me, that's not what it was. It happened, yes, but it was a lot of things. And the issue is we find it much more difficult to forgive people for the things that didn’t happen to us. For the things that happened to the people we care about, because it’s hard to see the many shades of meaning, of what a person was. And it had been my job to reveal that nuance. And I hadn’t. I hadn’t even gotten close. I wasn’t Lucien. I didn’t know how.

My hand flinched for his, but unlike the time before, I did not stop myself from closing the distance, from taking his hand in my own. He let me. He didn’t tense or recoil, he put up no fight. I squeezed my fingers around his and he squeezed lightly back. And as we pulled away he brought his other hand around the back of my own, so that for as much as I had started the gesture, it was I that became engulfed.

“I don’t have to continue.”

Lucien shook his head, his voice set in gravel, “Keep going.”

I licked my lips, nodded, “There had been rumors that her troops had soldiers possessing the skill of Daemati. Deryn, my parents, we knew the safest place I could go was the cottage. It was warded heavily. But the wards would be useless if anyone’s mind had been penetrated, if their mental shields weren’t strong. I said that my husband was impressive, that he won the stipend, that wasn’t for nothing. His area of study, it was on the mind. He has the gift of daemati too.”

Lucien’s brows rose.

“He spent his time at Aurora perfecting the power, his precision. He could sift through a mind with stunning accuracy. Things that people forgot, he could find it, pull it up. It was like…” I said, pausing, thinking of Deryn, of what had made him so right for his work, what had made his life ahead that stretched endlessly so obvious, so sure in those days. “As if a fishing line was cast into a quarry to find a wedding ring. He could find the ring.”

“I’ve never heard of the power used this way.”

“It was new. The only research was Deryn’s. In Aurora.”

“Aurora that burned.”

I nodded, solemn, “After the defense he began to work with people who’d suffered trauma to restore memories and to rework the mind as part of their recovery. Little splices he’d make, where the claws would go. Painless nearly, like getting a stitch. My parents when they realized if someone went into their minds, they’d be able to find me, they asked him to combine his research. They asked him to hide the memory of the cottage.”

Lucien, for all his beauty and brightness, paled in the autumn daylight.

“He wasn’t successful,” Lucien said.

I smiled a little, “He was.”

Lucien let out a long breath, removed one hand to push it through his hair before he settled it back, “So what happened?”

“I don’t know,” I said absently, stepping back from this life for a moment, so I could say what had to be said. “They’re the same in every way. But they have no idea who I am.”

Despite feeling far away the world seemed to settle itself on the point of a needle, facing me. I was distantly aware of his gaze, of how it had suddenly sharpened itself on me.

“What?”

“When he made them forget the cottage, somehow, he also made them forget me. They don’t know I’m their daughter, they don’t even know they had one. There’s just a gap in their memory where I used to be. And I guess their mind has somehow filled it in. I don’t know. I saw it happen, I saw them forget.”

Lucien’s throat bobbed and I cleared my own, came back, pushing through the pain now the way I had when I’d sat up, taking the weight of living back onto my shoulders.

“It’s easier to say they died. To me they kinda did. And when I saw you, figured out you were high fae so that the curse must’ve been broken, and what I thought that meant then that Deryn hadn’t come, that he’d died under the mountain, it felt a little like I had died too. There wasn’t anyone alive who really knew who I was. I no longer existed. So I went back to the cottage and then six years later Bryaxis found me.”

I’d told this story just one other time. In Day Court, once Lucien had left. Rhysand and I had walked, the two of us, back to the hill we’d sat on that first day. I’d told Rhysand everything, everything about the burning and how I’d become the Archivist. He’d listened, quietly, and when I was done he did not hesitate to offer me Velaris. He said it wouldn’t be the same, that he knew it wouldn’t be the same, but that it was mine if I wanted it. And I did. I still did.

“Coming here—I thought it would be different,” I said, my voice hoarser like it remembered the water I’d swallowed the night before and the weight of it in my throat. “I thought that I’d be able to do what I was supposed to. That I’d tell everyone about the people I used to know, the life I used to have, and it would be like having it again. The way good stories do, they feel so real, so here. Then you all would know Aurora like I did and we could share that joy and knowledge together. And that way, if I forgot something, it would still have happened, because someone else knew that it had. But it’s not like that, it’s not the same. I can’t…I can’t make people know what I know I can’t find the right words. Even the people I loved, Deryn, my parents, it’s too hard. There's too much to say. And I’m forgetting things. I forget things all the time.”

“Like the cards,” Lucien said and I nodded.

“Their laughs,” I said, thinking. My cheeks, my eyes, the lids, they grew hot and I felt Lucien’s stare on me. I withdrew my hand, pressed them to my face, wiped away the growing wetness. “The face my dad made when he bluffed. The recipes my mother had for anything. Most of our adventures, the places we went, the things they taught me and knew.”

I swallowed, “My apartment—I had a home and it was lived in. There were holes in the blankets and dents on the bedpost. Dresses my mother had stained, socks I stole from my father that were too big. And it felt how I liked and I remembered everything, how it got that way. The furniture in my apartment. It was all new. There’s nothing to remember. And I hated it. I hate that the more I live here, the less space there is to remember before.”

“So the clothes and the furniture…”

I bowed my head, “I got rid of it. I just…I miss remembering. I miss being remembered. I miss how that felt, to have history. To exist. My childhood, the things they knew that I never asked... And now our life is gone and I can never get it back.”

Lucien was silent. And then, with the same simplicity as all else, I realized it. The answers I thought I would get. I remembered why I’d gone to Velaris at all.

“I thought that I was going to get it back.”

Lucien knelt on the ground between my legs and although I opened them to make space I didn’t look at him. His hand slid against my cheek. I didn’t expect him to say anything because there still wasn’t anything to say. He still knew this. I still didn’t know how he knew this. The impossibility of the situation had never eluded me. When I’d told Rhysand he had not heard, not known such things could be done, not at least so specifically. But why would he? The library had burned, and with it any knowledge of how to fix what had been done. If there was going to be a cure, if there could be a cure, only Deryn knew and Deryn was under the mountain. For 50 years he was stuck, away from his work, from sunlight, from fresh air.

“Memory is strange,” He said suddenly, after we sat for an indiscernible stretch of time. “It's living. Which I think is why when we try to apply it to something unliving, something solid and unchanged, the transformation of time and hindsight don’t seem to align with what we thought we knew. With the version we’ve had all along.”

He stood then, grabbed his chair, and brought it closer so we could sit again at eye level with each other. Our knees pressed together, before like gears in a cog they slid into place, weaving together.

“You know what I like?”

“What?”

“Sometimes I think about—especially recently, when I think about the past, about those long stretches of despair and sadness I had, I end up thinking about you, about how we met.”

I squeezed my hands, pressed them into the blanket, but Lucien, he grabbed them again, stared at them, began to take each finger in his hands as he had the night before, and with the same sort of gesture, loosened them, pulling, until the space between the bones popped. He began to crack my knuckles.

“And it helps, somehow, knowing that you exist. Knowing that you existed even before I knew you did. That there’s a portion of my life where we overlap, where I know that even on those very bad days, you and I were alive at the same time. And although it was far, and the pain felt enormous, eventually they’d meet. The female, the one who was in dance halls and libraries in Dawn, and my cold brooding self. And in doing so the beauty of this perspective would be something she’d give him. That's what I like,” He said, his thumb passing over my palms. “I like knowing that this is true, that my not knowing doesn't stop the world from being what it is. In Spring court it will rain so the flowers can bloom even if I don’t see it. You carry the mannerisms of your family even if I can’t say what they are. And even if I don’t know how, the wards on things work, so that you and my friends are safe.”

He took my other hand and began the same thankless work, easing the air out, relaxing parts of me that if I knew could be at ease, I had forgotten.

“They asked something of you that should never be asked, and it imposed a false idea of memory onto you. Made your life seem unimportant, but it’s not true.”

“The rector was complicated.”

“So is everyone. So are you. But you’re kind. You’re good.”

I looked at him, swallowing, “I just…I don’t want you to think—I don’t want to make it seem simple. Nothing then was simple.”

“I know. I’m sure there are stories Feyre could tell you about me that would make you feel the same way. But I’ve grown, changed. My understanding of Deryn, that changed. You did that. I know also the rector, he doesn’t have the benefit of time. All of these things I’m aware of. But, still, what happened then was wrong. And when you tell me something else, something different about him, something good, it won’t change that he was wrong.”

“He died,” I said. “He died so I could get away. People, they died. And I haven’t even tried to remember them. I haven’t told you or anyone anything about them. I just—I live and I go out and I laugh and I say nothing. Which is worse than anything they did because I know how it feels to be forgotten.”

Lucien studied me a moment, releasing the final knuckle, but not the hand.

“You’re not eating,” he said, voice even. “Or sleeping. If you’ve laughed, really laughed, or smiled, then I don’t know about it. Aside from maybe your afternoon with Nesta. You stay inside, and every time we’re together there’s less and less of you than before. And I’m trying to bring you back, but the only way you let me help you is if I frame it as a favor to me first. I don’t think that’s living. I think you are barely surviving.”

“It wasn’t always like this.”

“What was it like?”

“I was…I didn’t feel good, it was hard coming here, but it wasn’t so bad. Then Bryaxis, it got in my head and after that dinner, things just got worse. It was like every time something good happened I’d be punished. Which maybe—”

“No,” Lucien said. Knowing the feeling, the words I was to say. I looked at him, really looked at him then, and his mouth twitched with a kind of smile, a joy that seemed to brighten across his face to the smallest degree. It reminded me of…of sunlight when you are far from it, when you’re watching a shadow of an expansive plain move from beyond a cloud. “And it’s a good thing, actually.”

“What?”

“That joy will happen even when you think you don’t deserve it.”

My face rose and rippled in question, invitation, not asking, meeting in the middle to see if he would join me. If he were willing to join me in saying. How do you know? How do you know of that beauty?

“My mate died.” He said. Simultaneously as the wind knocked from me, the breeze outside ceased altogether. All movement and air from the space around us vanished and the forces at will were released. Suddenly there were no rules. The world was so undoubtedly knocked off, not right. And with it a greater hollow unfathomable feeling revealed itself. A dead mate. To survive that.

There were things I wanted to say, but to say them, no. I shook my head, blinked, “I—” I began.

He continued as if the world was fine and none of this were true, “My father killed her. My brothers held me back. I couldn’t save her. For a long time I couldn’t talk about her. And it felt wrong, terrible, going on. But it made it harder to remember too. Harder to fix what I could fix.”

“What did you need to fix?”

Lucien took a long breath, “Myself.”

That he did not go back to Autumn, yes, that made all the sense in the world. No home at all, ceasing, lost, as he had lost. Lacking everything, yes, how the same we were.

“Does it ever feel—” I began trying to think of words. Words that would not draw out that sorrow and pain. I rubbed at my temple. “I failed. Things I could do before, I used to be able to talk, I was fun, nice. People liked being around me.”

“I like being around you,” He said. “Rhys, Feyre, they ask after you. Nesta and I, half of our conversations we end up asking the other how you are. Depending on who saw you last.”

“But I want to do what I said I would do. I’m so ashamed. I promised all these things and I can’t even manage one.”

Lucien gave me a hard look, and I understood that the answer was obvious, that in looking one way I had missed it altogether.

“I think…” He began trailing off with a sigh. “Bad things happened to you.—it’s okay to say that. You’ve had no chance to manage what that means. You’re stretched thin, you’re tired, and what you want to do isn’t easy to begin with. I don’t think it is difficult to imagine, and I don’t think anyone expects you to have figured it all out.”

“But I can.”

“I know,” He said, and I believed him. “But not like this.”

It’s not working. Lucien had said. I had not understood it really, not until then what he meant. Not simply the going someplace else, the leaving, but all of it. I blinked a few times, considering. There was a life ahead, and it wasn’t so hard. It was happening, but in ways I didn’t expect. And perhaps the order didn’t matter. I was not a beast. Which meant there was time. Time to do what I said I would do.

“What was she like?”

I could see it, in his face, the same internal struggle to convey something in totality which had slipped into another realm. To, as Lucien said, try to take something inflexible and sure as death and meet it with the lithe edges of memory. But he managed something, catching a thread and smiling with joy that was pure and genuine.

“Practically wild. I’m surprised she even managed to enjoy having a house. She did not let up on me and made hours of sarcastic and snide remarks the first time we met, in a tavern in Autumn one evening, which was why I liked her. Very loyal. She was loud and boisterous, full of life. She liked nature like you, but she also enjoyed her comforts. She was the last person I ever imagined could die. I was young still I thought our immortality meant forever.”

I smiled, “She sounds lovely.”

“She was.”

“Do you miss her?”

Lucien, who had sat back, had let his eyes drift off into the past, into memory, met my own again back in the present where the question was prefaced. And the question was stupid, but I asked anyway because sometimes it feels good, to say these things aloud. To make them more real than the strain it puts on the chest.

“All the time.”

I swallowed, “If you…ever want to remember her, I would like to hear it.”

He smiled again, less pure than before, “I would like to hear too. From you. You’re right, that it’s not the same, talking about them rather than having them, it’s good in its own way. It's like…somehow, even though you cannot make a life together, you get to make a world. But you should take care first, do you understand?”

And I did. The way hands rubbing the eyes could right the world, put it in place, I knew something crucial had been set back in its ways. And perhaps it would not demolish the thoughts that were there, at least now I knew they were untrue, at least now there were answers. This was memory. The cumulative transformative memory, and it is sad, that it was lost, but it's true all the same. It happened. I am here. So it happened.

I nodded.

“I’m sorry,” He said plainly. “For what they asked.”

“It's not really about that.”

“It is.”

I said nothing.

“I look forward to it,” he said, standing. “Seeing you live. I know you said that you felt like I already knew what you’d do, and maybe I have my suspicions, but that you surprise me always, is perhaps my favorite part.”

“Part of what?”

“Living.”

And I thought that I had many favorite things about the world, plainly obvious, things I thought often of, but none were so real and total, as Lucien. He put out a hand for me and though neither of us said anything else, we both began to pack up our things. Our time here was done.

From the woods around us, I grabbed what had been tossed and left. My tent lifeless, empty, and the books inside. A curious thought began to form, as if a string had been pulled toward the dog-eared page from last night. To go back, I thought, yes. First rest, more rest, and then back. An idea taking real shape, solidifying, I felt the strength of it.

It wasn’t until everything had been put back that I realized where we were, that I realized where we‘d been going. I took a sharp inhale and Lucien turned back over his shoulder, brow raised.

“I was wondering when you’d notice.”

He’d taken us to the stream. The stream where we’d first met. We stood a moment quietly, the memory moving through me like the current itself. The water trickled through the brush and out of sight. What I had splashed in last night, had run along, it had been the place he’d found me in. We were where the new world, new life, had begun.

Lucien put an arm out and I stepped into it, leaning, perhaps a little harder than I normally would’ve but I thought he’d let me now. Just this once. He closed around me but we did not go right away.

“I’d like it,” He said, pausing. “If you’re comfortable, and we can figure out the arrangement if you’re agreeable to it, but I’d like it if you stayed with me until we got your apartment sorted. Or Nesta. But I’d prefer it if you chose me.”

I did not say anything, thought of the possibility, of the answers I had wanted, what Lucien had said. Before I could say anything, however, Lucien spoke again.

“Think about it.”

And then we were gone.

#acotar fanfiction #lucien x reader #lucien vanserra #lucien fanfic #lucien acotar #acotar #dawn!court reader #took forever but I am excited :0)#I wrote the whole series just for this one ch

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