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'Lord Lucien.' The midwife turned to him with the babe, and he reached before he could let his fears and anxieties stop him. The child was such a little weight in hands that had never felt clumsier, his fingers trembling as they cradled the tiny delicate head in one palm, the small chubby body to his chest. 'You have a perfect male child, my Lord,' the midwife told him proudly.

He marvelled at every detail. Ianthe's pale skin, the Vanserra red hair-- a fuzz all over the skull, soft and wispy as the skin of a peach, cresting in a little tuft over the forehead, eyebrows and lashes even softer. Hands as small as his thumb were curled into fists up beside his head, and Lucien drew one away to trace the tiny pointed ear. The baby loosed a little whinge and wriggled in his arms, and he froze, but a moment later his son-- his son!-- fell asleep, plump lips parted and eyes squeezed tightly shut as if too worn out by his ordeal to manage.

'Ianthe, he's beautiful,' he said, and knelt gingerly at her side, afraid to so much as rock the baby, angling himself instead so Ianthe could see. She smiled tremulously.

'He looks just like you, my dear,' his mother told Ianthe, applying a washing cloth to Ianthe's sweat-soaked neck and cheek. 'A very handsome boy.'

'Have you a name?' the midwife began, but the door came crashing open, then, and the servants scrambled to bow low as Beron showed himself in.

'Well?' Beron demanded impatiently. 'All that unseemly hollering has ceased, at least-- ah!' He swooped down on Lucien before Lucien could do more than perch on the side of Ianthe's bed, and then Lucien's arms were empty, his son lifted up into the light of the candles.

'A fine strong male,' his mother said, coolly meeting her husband's eyes. 'High Lord, all is well. More than well.'

'Hm.' Beron examined the baby thoroughly, and Lucien found himself gripping Ianthe's hand tightly again as they waited nervously. Beron looked at each hand and soft wrinkled foot, counting fingers and toes, Lucien thought sourly, peeled back the blanket to look at the baby front and back and then front again. 'Yes, good,' he proclaimed, evidently satisfied. 'Excellent.' He propped the baby to his shoulder, patting gently, though Lucien cringed and couldn't stop himself from gripping Ianthe's hand hard enough to hurt them both. She inhaled, the only sign she even felt it; she was staring hard at Beron, too, tense as a board.

'Well done, my daughter,' Beron said then, smiling at her-- smiling. Ianthe relaxed all in a rush, and blushed prettily, modestly clinging the bedclothes to her breast. 'And you, Lucien,' Beron added then, his face falling into far more familiar stern lines. 'Very well done, my son.'

That produced the oddest feeling in him. He nodded cautiously, and Beron reached to grip him on the shoulder.

'Come, come,' Beron said then, turning for the door. 'Rest, my lady,' he called back, as Ianthe made some little noise of distress, already being parted from her infant. 'Lucien, follow.'

'It's all right,' Lucien assured Ianthe, rising. He squeezed her hand again before he let her go. 'Please take good care of her,' he asked his mother, who nodded graciously. 'I'll be back as soon as... soon as I can.'

'Bring him back to feed,' Ianthe implored urgently.

'Nonsense,' Beron scoffed at the door. 'That's a job for a wet nurse, not a female of high breeding.'

Ianthe's face fell. She mustered a reasonably calm facade, when Lucien shook his head slightly, willing her not to fight. 'Perhaps I might be permitted to watch, at least, to be sure he's healthy?' she dared.

Beron waved one beringed hand. 'As you will, though such indulgences spoil a child, as you well know. But I suppose one night will mean little difference in the end. Lucien, come.'

'I'll be back,' he said again, and tried not to notice how Ianthe clung to him, too, for just a moment longer. But abruptly she released him, and so he followed Beron out.

He knew their destination immediately, though as the youngest of his brothers he'd never seen it done before. But Beron's purposeful stride was headed in a very familiar direction, out of the family wing and through to what could only be the throne room. Servants, alert to their movement, ran ahead, scurrying through the corridors, and the herald was ready when Beron descended the stairs. The double doors swung wide, and Beron marched through to the reveille of twin bugles. 'The High Lord!' the herald announced, and Beron marched through to an outburst of rapturous applause from the court gathered within.

'A male!' Beron held Lucien's son high. To Lucien's surprise, hands from all sides came to shake with him, pat him proudly on the back, applaud him. He could hardly keep pace with Beron, slowed by a hundred congratulations. Courtiers who had never paid him attention before were suddenly grinning wide, nobles who had sneered at his antics Under the Mountain and bet on his death in the Second Trial simpered and pulled at his sleeves, his coat, his hair even, all surrounding him with fawning admiration. When at last Lucien managed to free himself and step onto the edge of the dais, Beron had already sat on his throne, Lucien's son in his lap, and Lucien bowed out of habit, waiting to be acknowledged. If he'd been surprised by his reception before, what happened next near bowled him over. 'Come, come,' Beron gestured him. 'Take your place beside me, my son.'

His brothers had separated out of the crowd. Darach was still in his nightdress, sleepy-eyed and grumbling, but Patrice was clever enough to know something was off its regular kilter, and he whispered to Alasdare with eyes narrowed up at Lucien. Eris-- Eris stood in immaculate maroon satin doublet and hose, alert and groomed despite the early hour, his hands clasped before him and his face bare of anything remotely resembling expression.

'I name this male child of my bloodline Baden,' Beron said into sudden silence, and Lucien whipped his head down to look. 'After my grandfather, the greatest warrior of generations and the founder of this dynasty.' He grinned down at his finger, clutched in one of the baby's little fists, and laughed. 'A proper warrior already, isn't he!'

Another burst of rapturous clapping, voices raised in a clatter of acclaim and celebration. Their mother silently joined his brothers, moving to stand by Eris. She smiled for Lucien, small and reserved, and he managed a jagged attempt in return.

'Hold.' Beron looked up, then, to Lucien, brown eyes assessing. He put out a hand, and Lucien stared at it, unsure what was wanted. Beron crooked a finger, and Lucien at last supplied his own hand, cringing at the contact of their flesh. Beron took him by the wrist, instead, and raised Lucien's hand high. 'A dynasty of flame and blood,' Beron boomed to the crowd that fell into an anticipatory hush. 'My grandfather Baden Vanserra, my father Lachlainn Vanserra, my own reign these many years, and, in due time, the reign of my heir and his heirs.'

Euphoric shouts of joy, at that. Males were bowing, females dipping low into graceful courtsies, all rising to an ovation of hurrahs. Confused, Lucien looked stupidly to Eris, only to find Eris staring back at him, cheeks paler than normal, but for two spots of red flushing dark as his chest heaved. Their mother had a hand on his arm, grip tight enough to crinkle his sleeve, and though she never looked away from Beron, her lips were moving slightly as if she were talking very fast and very forcefully. That wasn't enough of a clue for Lucien. It wasn't until he saw his brothers' hanging jaws and Darach's poorly hidden rage that he began to realise.

Heir. Not Eris. Not any more. Heir.

Fuck.

**

Six months earlier, Lucien had spun a plot from desperation. Unlike many of his plots, this one had been wildly successful. Living with that required even more fortitude than he'd imagined, and he had a very good imagination.

Feyre Cursebreaker had returned from death Under The Mountain a changed woman. As her love affair with Tamlin faded, another had taken its place; Rhysand, the High Lord of Night, and fifty years of plotting for a resurgence after Amarantha's defeat had sprung into action mere months after Feyre had sacrificed herself to free the fae she'd fallen for despite everything. Lucien had watched Feyre wreak insidious destruction on Spring, sowing discontent, coaxing Tamlin's people to doubt their Lord, and betraying him herself when she'd at last tired of the deception. And Lucien had followed her back to Night, there to discover just how deep Feyre's subterfuge had run. High Lady of Night. Not a captive forced to bargain with Night's cunning and wicked ruler, but a willing accomplice. A woman in love. A woman who had never loved but that she threw all her soul behind it. And, now, her considerable power.

And that woman held the mother of Lucien's child.

It didn't matter that he personally loathed Ianthe, and it didn't matter the circumstances in which Ianthe had come to be pregnant. Younglings were precious to the fae, who could wait centuries in vain hope and rarely had more than one. And though Lucien had long accepted that he was unlikely to ever be a father, some smothered part of himself had wished for it anyway. He'd made the decision impulsively, but without a single doubt of its necessity. He couldn't let Ianthe and his baby languish in Rhysand's control. Even if it meant delivering them into the hands of a male who'd repeatedly proven exactly how dangerous he was.

And so he came to be stepping across the border into Autumn, escorted by Rhysand's Illyrian shadowspeaker and by Rhysand himself. The High Lord hadn't so much as looked at Lucien since he'd summoned Lucien to his war room in Velaris and informed him that Beron had agreed to ally with the other High Lords of Prythian against the King of Hybern in exchange for custody of his estranged son and the female bearing his grandchild.

'This was a mistake, Lucien,' Rhysand had said, purple eyes inscrutable.

'What else is new,' Lucien had replied, defiant and grim.

Feyre winnowed to the border with Ianthe a moment after their arrival. Lucien stiffened, scanning the priestess for any sign of injury or distress, relieved that she seemed unharmed, if pale and listless. Her wrists were manacled in faebane cuffs, and her robes of office hung tattered and dirtied, unchanged from their frantic flight out of Spring weeks earlier. Her blue eyes skipped over the Night Court fae and Autumn Court soldiers who greeted them, unseeing and dazed, until she came to Lucien. Her bitten lips parted, and, for just a moment, naked relief took over her face. Lucien nodded carefully to her, and she swallowed hard. Then she recovered herself, shoulders straight, expression aloof and unrevealing.

Beron kept them waiting, of course, but Lucien's brothers all stood behind the wall of Autumn soldiers. Rhysand made a little show of impatience, sighing heavily and muttering something to Feyre that made her laugh, smirking at the Autumn retinue. Lucien stood tensely beside Azriel, long training helping him refrain from fidgeting though his fingers tingled with impatience. The shadowsinger was blatantly watching him and only him, and Lucien's mechanical eye watched him right back, tracking the strange ooze of his shadows attempting to sneak through the dappled forest floor towards their enemies.

At long last, Beron appeared, Lucien's mother on his arm. The pair were resplendent in Autumn red, fur-trimmed and adorned with gold circlets, velvet capes, and customarily haughty disdain. Beron left his wife with her sons, and marched to stand before Rhysand and Feyre. The face-off was cold enough that Lucien had to bite his tongue-- Beron was too touchy to be given any opportunity to nurse a grudge or, Cauldron forbid, call off the alliance.

'Lucien,' Rhysand said then, breaking the strained silence. He beckoned, and Lucien left Azriel's side to stand at Rhysand's right hand. 'Consider this the termination of your employment,' the High Lord said in his indolent drawl. 'Such as it was.'

Lucien bowed with exacting courtesy, hand over his heart. 'Thank you, High Lord. High Lady.'

Feyre's mouth was tight. She inclined her head towards him. 'You'll always have a friend if you need it, Lucien.'

'And you, in me.' If either of them believed it, that was. Lucien ached for the days when he would never have questioned it.

'Come, boy,' Beron summoned him, and, heart pounding, Lucien turned and bowed next to the male who'd raised him, tried very hard to crush him, and now offered him the slimmest hope of controlling his own destiny.

Slim to none, quite probably.

Beron's hand on his shoulder seemed to weigh a tonne. Its iron grip was familiar, though it had been three hundred years since he'd felt those strong fingers digging into his collarbone. Beron led him back into the circle of Autumn soldiers, which split to frame his family awaiting him.

'Greet your mother,' Beron instructed him, pushing on his shoulder til, wavering, Lucien went to his knees. 'And beg her forgiveness for taking the lives of your dear brothers Eadgar and Finnén, dead these many years because of your disobedience.'

That was owed. That, he had longed so many, many times to do. Not for the sake of his brothers, who after all had only chased him to the Spring border after gleefully participating in Jesminda's torment and murder, before they drew their weapons on Lucien himself. He'd felt no guilt, if also no righteous vengeance, on seeing them dead at his feet. But they had been his mother's sons, and he had never had a chance to see her after he had killed them. Head bowed, he heard the whisper of her skirts and scented her sweet perfume first. Her slipper, then, presented itself before him, gold thread winking under the hem of her long vermillion kirtle. Her hand, small and delicate, pale as milk but for a few faint freckles exactly where he remembered, extended down to him. Her wedding ring, a heart-shaped ruby surrounded by diamonds, gleamed in the chill autumn sun.

'Mother,' he whispered, overcome. He took her cold fingers in his and pressed them to his forehead, choking on his own emotion. 'Mother, though I have no right to it, your forgiveness would relieve me of my torment. Not a night has passed that I have not prayed for you to know succor from your grief.'

Her other hand cupped his cheek. His scarred cheek. Her thumb stroked along the ridges of ruined flesh, once, twice. 'My son,' Una murmured, and she raised him by the chin. 'I welcome you home with open arms. But I can never forgive you.'

Tears escaped his control. He stared up into her eyes, the gold-flecked chestnut they shared, or had, before Lucien had lost an eye to Amarantha's wroth. He would far rather have suffered to lose the other than to see this truth in his mother's sad, steady gaze.

'You may go,' Beron said, deliberately offhanded, to the Night Court at their backs.

'Your army?' questioned Rhysand, in matching tones, indifferently interested in that most crucial response.

'You've kept your end. I'll keep mine. Now, if you don't mind, we've a family reunion to celebrate.' Beron tapped his shoulder, and Lucien stumbled upright, wiping hastily at his wet cheek. 'Come,' Beron said again, and winnowed him away.

Forest House was exactly as he recalled. Not a single brick had shifted. The only difference was the trees, but those were ever-changing; in the time he'd been gone, saplings had grown to stout old oaks, and the ancient branches he'd climbed as a child were now only stumps, replaced as they had replaced the ones before them. It was the way of life in Prythian, but it pulled poignantly at his heartstrings all the same. Beron led him through the tall doors into the Hall, empty this time of day but for the Council, lounging at their table with a collection of wine bottles well on their way to empty. They hadn't changed, either, Lucien noted, the same faces from his youth, old males grown fat on royal retainer. One or two younger males he only half-recognised had joined their number, probably heirs in training or, who knew, heirs who'd found themselves elevated to their fathers' positions thanks to Amarantha's indiscriminate destruction through the Courts. All went silent as Lucien appeared.

'My son,' Beron introduced him, snagging a bottle and glass and pouring for himself, though a servant hovered anxiously nearby. 'I'm sure you all recall.'

Eris was the bravest of his brothers, circling the table to accept a cup of his own from the pageboy. He sipped, sharp eyes observing all, and said, 'I think we had ought to attend to business first, Father.'

'Always looking after my interests, Eris. Proceed.'

The rest of his brothers had arrived as well, and the captain of the Harvest Guard who led Ianthe. She had been shed of her manacles, at least, and despite her bedraggled appearance she held herself every inch a lady. Patrice brought the manacles to their father, giving Lucien a tight smile that promised they'd have their fun later, out of sight of so many watchful gazes. Their mother had taken her spot at the hearth opposite, two of her ladies at her side, and an afghan hound, her favourite breed, with silky white fur sprawling over her feet. She picked up a basket of sewing, white silk shirts that would go to her husband and children, and resumed embroidering the collars and cuffs, just as she had for centuries. Lucien felt an odd disorientation. Everything was different, and everything was the same as it had always been.

'Hands,' Beron ordered him, and Lucien fell back into the habit of childhood, holding them out palms up ready to be switched. Beron seemed to recognise it, and smiled grimly. He took Lucien's left hand, and snapped the manacle in place around the wrist. Instantly Lucien felt his magic recede, muffled by the faebane. It left his mouth dry and blood pressure dropping, just a slight dizziness that balanced out when he breathed deep.

'Insurance,' Beron murmured, and pocketed the key. 'Your best behaviour, Lucien. Or there will be consequences.'

'I know all about consequences here,' Lucien replied coolly. 'Father.'

'Son,' Beron echoed pointedly, or so Lucien thought; he wondered if he imagined the reason for that extra edge. Beron clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to buckle his knees slightly. 'Introduce me to your female.'

Lucien rubbed at the manacle, then tried his best to ignore it as he joined his father at Ianthe's side. 'The High Priestess of Spring,' Lucien said, as Beron reached for Ianthe's hand, brushing a kiss over her knuckles. 'Ianthe, may I present High Lord Beron Vanserra of Autumn.'

'An honour, Priestess.'

'The honour is all mine, High Lord.' Ianthe smiled as she dipped into a courtsey, exactly as low as a female of rank should bend to the oldest and longest ruling High Lord of Prythian. 'And may I extend my eternal gratitude for your sanctuary here.'

'A very great pleasure, my dear. Come, you must be weary. Sit, sit.' Beron snapped his fingers, and a servant hurried to bring chairs. They did not sit at the table with the council, nor by the hearth with the other females, but in the exact middle of the room, symbolism not lost on Lucien and surely not on Ianthe, either. She sat not like a lady, sweeping her skirts out and perching straight-backed, hands demurely folded in her lap, but not quite like a male, either, as Beron did, sprawling back in the seat with his knees spread. Ianthe laid her hands upon the carved arms of the chair, her gaze frank as ever and openly assessing Autumn's lord. Beron gazed back likewise, as Lucien, conspicuously not offered a chair, stood at Ianthe's side with his hands clasped behind him, alert but unobtrusive as he'd ever played it as Tamlin's emissary.

'Were you mistreated, Priestess?' Beron asked eventually. 'Tales of the cruelty of the Court of Nightmares have more than a grain of truth, I'm told.'

'The Mother protected me from such suffering,' Ianthe answered in a calm, clear voice that carried far enough for heads to turn. 'I was interrogated several times and threatened most heinously, but neither hand nor blade touched me during my captivity.'

'A blessing. To mar such lovely flesh would compound the crime of sacrilege.'

Ianthe's eyes flickered modestly away. 'You flatter me, High Lord.'

'Merely the truth. Surely not all High Priestesses are given so many gifts of the Mother. Cauldron knows our Polyxene's a withered old crone. No hope to quicken that dusty old womb no matter which lusty lad dares to stick his wick in her withered twat.' Colour flushed Ianthe's cheeks, her hands clenching on the arms of the chair, but she said nothing, apparently realising Beron only tried to provoke her. 'Shall I send my Lucien, eh,' Beron added, and low snickering laughter passed around the councilmen. 'And a Calanmai child, I understand! You've Autumn fire in your veins after all, boy.'

'Fire indeed,' Ianthe said, and the councilors guffawed. 'Not even High Lord Tamlin has performed so well in the ritual. It must be the infamous Vanserra fertility. Seven sons, and now your line continues.' She curled a hand to her belly. 'Your prowess is the marvel of Prythian, my Lord.'

The laughter died when Beron casually leant forward to slap Ianthe. It wasn't the hardest hit of which Beron was capable, but it snapped Ianthe's head to the side and left a red mark on her cheek. Lucien leapt between them, shoving her chair back and reaching for the knife in his belt, only to remember he had given up his weapon back in Night. He hadn't even the magic to summon more than a few sparks, thanks to the faebane. Beron was so unthreatened he didn't even rise from his seat, slouching back to sip his wine.

'Keep a leash on your female and her wagging tongue, Lucien,' the High Lord murmured. 'Such uncouth language from a female of breeding is unbecoming.'

Una rose, coming to courtsey to Beron. 'I will take the Priestess to her rooms, by your leave, my husband. I'm sure she would appreciate a hot bath after her travails.'

'You will join us for dinner,' Beron informed Ianthe, who stared back at him, pale and silent. 'Perhaps you will conduct our evening prayer for our bounty.'

Ianthe had to swallow before she answered. 'My honour and my duty, High Lord.'

'Excellent.' Beron flicked his fingers at Una. 'Dismissed.' When Lucien made to follow, however, Beron pointed his goblet. 'Not you, boy. Sit.'

Slowly, Lucien sank into Ianthe's vacated chair, watching her proudly straight-backed exit as the females all left, the hound trotting at their heels. Lucien's brothers took up the warmest spots by the hearth, Alasdare propping an arm on the mantel, Patrice lounging on the stone wall beside it with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes never wavering from Lucien. Darach, who was far more armed than a hair-triggered moron should be, fingered his knives with a hungry look. Only Eris didn't stare, seemingly occupied with his thoughts as he turned his back to the tableau of their father interrogating a long-lost son.

'So,' Beron opened. 'Hybern. You parlayed with him on Tamlin's behalf, I presume.'

Lucien nodded tightly. 'Yes, sir.'

'Am I to believe this concoction that Tamlin only approached Hybern to investigate rumours of a coming invasion and faked an alliance to more successfully spy out his resources?' Beron finished his wine, and held his cup out to the side until a servant raced to fill it. He sipped again, and sat turning the goblet in his thick fingers, unblinking eyes on Lucien across from him. 'The same Tamlin who sent you to Amarantha, Hybern's most fearsome general, to tell her to-- am I recalling the quote correctly? "Go back to the shithole you came from"?-- provoking her to curse the whole bloody land because he couldn't just bed the bitch and have done with it?'

Lucien had always known that was going to be a hard sell. The best that could have happened is that the other High Lords would accept it to Tamlin's face and save their doubts for privacy. 'The way he came by the intelligence matters less than the value of that intelligence, surely.'

'And all to win back Feyre Cursebreaker, who found herself a male even more gullible than the bumbling beast of Spring. Rhysand certainly has a type, hasn't he? Whoring himself to yet another oversexed female robbing foolish males of their rightful power.' Beron spat, crossing himself with the sign against the evil eye, then settled back into his drinking, no doubt dark thoughts passing unremarked. 'Did you have her too?' he asked Lucien suddenly. 'A friend if you need one, eh.'

Lucien swallowed down the hot retort that sprang to his lips. He had to have more control here. 'Merely a human turn of phrase, I'm sure.'

Beron snorted, and dismissed that line of interrogation with an imperious wave. 'Let us discuss terms, my son. You will put your supposed talents as Emissary to my use, now. You will approach Hybern again, on my behalf. You will negotiate an alliance with my court. I'll hold off the armies of the southern courts in exchange for... well, let's not be greedy. I'll take Summer and Spring, and the human land below the Wall. Hybern can do as he likes with the peoples of those places. I recall he quite likes the notion of slaves, and that should replenish his stocks nicely.'

Lucien felt the blood drain from his face. 'What... you already agreed to support the High Lords against Hybern.'

'Let Hybern make me a better offer.' Beron rose, saluting Lucien with his wine. 'Be persuasive, Lucien. Ensure this court is a safe place to raise your youngling.' He took a final swallow, and toasted Lucien with the empty cup. 'Welcome home, boy.'

**

His old rooms were still waiting for him. The valet who guided him through the family wing, and the guards who marched behind them not at all subtly, hardly needed to show him the way. Lucien remembered every step.

Which slate flagstones had started to wobble under centuries of passing feet. Still there.

Which of the tall windows of vibrant jewel-toned stained glass had a few broken panes, repair long forgotten, tendrils of grape vines creeping inside. Still there.

Which of the ancient stones carved to look like trees that propped up the arched halls had begun to suffer lichen and mossing, diligently scrubbed by the servants in an ever-losing battle against nature trying to swallow back up this stubborn creation. Still there. Of course.

And his door. He'd been thrilled to move in, ten years old and puffed up at finally leaving the nursery behind. He was so much younger than his brothers he had never spent much time with them, and to be moved into the family wing felt a proper rite of passage. Little had he realised then it changed very little of his circumstances. The suite had once belonged to one of his father's brothers, an uncle he had never met because Beron had killed him on his way to the throne. The bloodstain had never come out of the wooden floors. It was at the far end of the wing, ground floor and positioned next to one of the servant staircases, which meant he heard passerby stomping late into the night and before sunrise every morning, not to mention the constant flooding whenever it rained hard enough. He got very little sunlight, his view blocked by the family chapel-- and the back end of that, not even the more decorative frontispiece-- and his water closet, which angled alarmingly low over the bath so that he couldn't even sit upright in it by the time he was fifteen, leaked constantly, forever smelling of mould that no amount of magic seemed to nip. But it had been his. And he'd come to treasure any space to call his own, the more he'd hated this house and everyone in it.

'Key?' he asked the valet, who let him in with a bow.

'Er...' The valet was too well trained to shuffle his feet, looking just slightly to Lucien's left as all the staff did. That was the same, too. Only the High Lord's immediate family were worthy to look directly at each other. The valet clutched at the key, not turning it over. 'I'm not permitted to give it to you, Lord Lucien,' he said evenly enough, but he was braced for a blow.

'Ah.' Lucien rubbed the manacle on his wrist. 'I... understand. Am I to be locked in?'

'Yes, my lord.'

'Right.' That was the same, too. They'd always tried to contain him, the wilder he got. 'I'll, er. I've no other needs. You can go about your business.'

'I'll return to--' The valet hesitated on an appropriate word. 'Escort you for dinner.'

'Yeah. Thank you.' Lucien forced himself to smile. He went in, and tried not to listen to the key turning in the lock behind him.

The fire was already lit, glowing behind a bronze screen depicting the stylised oak that was the Vanserra family crest. Lucien kicked his boots into a corner and threw himself onto the bed. It creaked and wheezed. He turned his head, looking up the curtains for the old scorch mark from a youthful accident. Still there.

'Oh. Lucien.'

He lifted his head from the bolster. Ianthe stood at the door of the water closet, wrapped in a thick furred robe, her wet hair spread over a towel on her shoulders. She looked pale. And small. Frightened.

Those seemed like fitting emotions, given the situation.

Then it hit him, why she stood in his room at all. It was their room now. Fuck.

He swung his legs off the bed, and stood. 'Come sit. Are you well?'

She smiled wanly, and settled into the spot he'd occupied. He fetched a quilt and spread it over her bare feet, then dithered what to do next. So he stood uselessly staring at her, and she stared back.

'They really didn't hurt you, in Night?'

Ianthe shook her head minutely. 'Nothing since the woods by the Wall. I... presume I owe that to you.'

Cauldron knew he'd been trying. He'd done everything but bargain with Rhysand, and only because he had nothing Rhysand actually wanted. If Feyre had been the one to hold back on his behalf, that was more than he could have hoped for. 'Good. I'm glad.'

'And you? Did they...'

He shook his head. 'Nothing worth mentioning.' He looked over his shoulder at the locked door. 'You should rest. They'll come for us for dinner, it's not quite the same as Spring. They'll seat you at the head table. It's about a hundred and fifty people, the extended court. It'll last a few hours at best, unless there's entertainment.'

'Music, dare I hope?'

'If we're lucky.' Not rarely enough, the kind of entertainment the Hybern royals Brannagh and Dagdan would have considered worthy. 'I'll take the couch,' he said then. 'You should rest.'

'Lucien?'

He threw a pillow onto the couch and lay back. It wasn't a particularly big couch, and his legs hung off the end. And it was out of the direct range of the fire, and he forgot, for just a single precious second, that he wore a faebane manacle and couldn't warm himself. 'Yes, Ianthe.'

She slid low, curling on her side, pulling the quilt up to her shoulder. She looked cold, still. There was the slightest smudge on her cheek, where Beron had struck her.

She didn't ask him what would happen to them now. She didn't ask him why he'd done this to them-- she maybe didn't know that he had. He should tell her. But she went on looking at him, not asking any questions at all.

'Don't be intimidated,' he said, out of the sense he should offer something, anything. 'By Beron. By anything here. They don't respect fear. Weakness. But you have to learn where the line is. You push too far, and they'll push back.'

'How do I know where the line is?'

If you were Lucien Vanserra, you learnt where it was by sprinting headfirst across it. 'Take your cues from my mother and her ladies. And you need to lay off the provocative language. That worked in Spring, but in Autumn females are to be seen and not heard. If you want to have any influence here, you're not going to gain it through males. You need to win over the females.'

Her lips pressed together tightly for a moment. Then she sighed. 'Females don't tend to... don't tend to like me.'

'Probably because you're constantly competing with them.'

'It's not just Autumn where females are meant to be seen but not heard. I've had to fight for every privilege that males are born with. You came to Spring with nothing and Tamlin elevated you to his right hand immediately. And then he brought a human child to his court and...' She brushed her drying hair behind her ear, then fell to twisting a tassel on the pillow between two fingers. 'Am I ever going to leave here, Lucien?'

He didn't have an answer for that. 'You should rest.'

'I heard you call Feyre's sister your mate.' Ianthe rolled to face the other way. 'How long until dinner?'

His throat was too dry to swallow. 'Maybe three hours. Try to sleep. I'll wake you in time to dress.'

She didn't speak again. Lucien propped an arm over his eyes to stop himself staring at the ceiling. The inside of his head wasn't much better.

Chapter Text

Present Day

'Eris!' Lucien waved off the sentries who hesitantly offered to chase his older brother down, only realising afterward why they'd offered. Heir. Beron's announcement was barely minutes old and already Forest House was warping to accept his new reality. Lucien's mouth tasted sour and metallic, flooded with uneasy adrenaline unsure whether it was there to fuel fight or flight.

The sight of his brother's retreating back decided him. Fight it was. 'Eris-- Eris! Please.' He sprinted to close the distance, and grabbed for his brother's arm, not surprised that Eris jerked away. Rough handling in the Autumn Court was the norm, and Eris taking a white-knuckled grip on his belt knife only to unclench with a shaking inhale had less to do with Lucien himself-- he hoped-- than with centuries of ingrained paranoia.

Nonetheless, Lucien kept his hands out at his sides where Eris could see them. 'You know I didn't ask for that,' he said, pleaded. 'You know I don't want it.'

Eris's throat bobbed in a swallow. 'I know.'

Said without particular conviction. Lucien struggled to swallow himself. 'He's just trying to pit us against each other. As he always did and always will.'

'I know.' That was one of the singular truths of their lives. It only underlined that Eris believed the first part of his avowal less. But then Eris sighed, leaning his weight into the wall with his chin to his chest, and that display of vulnerability was more reassurance than Lucien could have asked. Silently he joined his brother there, though he thunked his head back into the wood panelling and stared at the fae-thick beams high overhead.

'I'd never want it anyway,' Lucien said then. 'And he doesn't even really want me to have it. And, anyway, the magic chooses, in the end, not Beron.'

'That doesn't mean a High Lord's will is insignificant to the determination.'

'Then I'd abdicate! Eris, I don't want to rule here.'

'You can't abdicate, you bloody fool.'

'It's been done--'

'You'd have to surrender all your magical inheritance. Including Day.'

Eris at least said it in a whisper that carried no further than Lucien's ears, and barely that. There were almost certainly spies watching them, as there always had been. Still, Lucien tensed, paranoid himself. He didn't look about, with some effort, keeping his gaze trained on a whorl in the beam just above him, trying to ignore the fire rumbling in him wanting to escape and take something out with it.

'I don't want to rule anywhere,' he murmured through clenched teeth. 'I would do that for you. In a heartbeat. Beron was only able to threaten this because you helped bring me back here. It's owed. I'd do it even if it wasn't, you have to know that.'

Under the cover of their bodies, Eris's hand brushed against his. Small finger curling about small finger. A promise. An oath.

'It wasn't aimed at you,' Eris breathed. 'He'll want your son. A goodly long time from now, when both of us are dust and he can raise that baby without any of the "mistakes" he made with us.'

The bottom fell out of his stomach. Of course. Lucien cursed his own stupidity. He'd been so focussed on Beron's act of declaration that he'd ignored the words. Beron had never spoken Lucien's name. Heir. Of course.

'What do we do?' he managed tightly.

Eris breathed in once, twice. Three times, deep shaking inhales, expelled slowly, each one more calm, more controlled, more collected into the portrait of a male serene in his power, whatever that power was and was going to be.

'What we were always going to do,' he said, and Lucien squeezed his hand tight. A promise. An oath.

**

Six Months Past

In barely a week, it felt as if Lucien had never left Forest House, as if living the majority of his life in Spring were a fever dream, already slipping away as he resumed a life he'd hoped to never know again.

He'd brought nothing but the clothes upon his back, and even those had disappeared while he bathed, to be replaced by an entirely new wardrobe. No more Spring greens, verdant with new life, the fine long-skirted doublets with dozens of buttons that Tamlin had always had to be coaxed into but that Lucien had loved, every inch the fop Tamlin fondly derided him to be. Now servants brought him an array of snug leather jerkins that barely brushed the hipbones of tight trousers, all meant to facilitate the rapid drawing of weapons, not celebrate the male form . And he could no longer dress himself, it seemed, as a valet appeared the first morning of his new life-- old life revived, as was-- to stuff him into the half-remembered costume of a Vanserra nobleman. The stiff black coat with brocade sleeves gored in red and silver was handsome enough, certainly, flattering his flat belly and strong thighs, but he took no pleasure from his appearance. Not least because the valet, unasked, attacked his wet hair with a bristle brush that left it more wild and frizzed than before such harsh administration.

'Leave it,' he advised the valet, wrestling the brush out of the his hand and throwing it onto the couch. It was all he could do not to wipe his hand on his trousers after touching it. Beron had liked to beat him with a similar brush every time he whinged about his hair. 'Find me a hair tie.'

Ianthe was being dressed just as forcibly by a maid, a stern-looking matron who wore her gossamer wings bound in one of the cruel leather wing harnesses Lucien well remembered. The pain probably accounted for her snappish manner, though Ianthe wasn't helping anything by resisting. 'I am High Priestess,' Ianthe repeated frequently in rising tones. 'The blue robes of my office are all I require--'

'The High Lord chose these, my lady,' the matron replied, every time, snatching back Ianthe's arm to finish lacing her sleeve to her bodice.

'Allow me,' Lucien intervened, and the matron gave way to him with a stiff courtsey. Ianthe simmered in barely contained fury, glowering into the mirror as Lucien took over the lacing. 'They'll be reporting on you,' he whispered, as he fed the ribbon through grommets and tied it off in a bow. He shifted to her back and began the process of tightening her stays. 'Save your strength for more important battles.' He gave a firm tug on the laces, and Ianthe grunted, rocking on her heels.

'My sacred duty is an important battle,' she hissed back. 'They won't tell me where they've taken my Mother-stone.'

He hadn't yet noticed it missing. He looked, now, but could only press his lips together. 'Don't ask for it. It's likely Beron ordered it taken. And you should cover up your tattoo.'

'I am the High Priestess of Spring--'

'Not the High Priestess of Autumn.' He tied off her laces and stepped back. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That's my fault.'

Ianthe's eyes fell away from his, in the mirror. The skirts of raspberry red flattered her cool colouring, though its vibrancy overpowered her pale skin and hair a bit. Lucien discarded the hair band the matron offered, and selected a bonnet of gold. He arranged a sheer veil over Ianthe's hair to hang low enough to cover the moon phase tattoo on her forehead, and secured it in place with the bonnet. The effect was a little bridal, but that couldn't be helped. It was appropriate to a high-born female's modesty, and Ianthe would need all the help she could get in that arena. Unwed pregnancies weren't a damning proposition, but there would be plenty who'd keep that insult in their arsenal.

Cauldron, he hoped Beron didn't plan to force a wedding on them.

'Smile,' he told Ianthe, laying his hands on her shoulders in a passable pretence of a male who wouldn't rather stick his hand into boiling oil. 'You can hate them with every fibre of your being, but never show it.'

To her credit, Ianthe summoned an expression of serenity, the one that had always set Lucien's teeth on edge, her full lips turned up in modest piety. 'You speak as though every female isn't taught that lesson from birth, my dear,' she answered him, and removed herself from his touch.

'This way, my lady,' the matron gestured her. 'The Lady of the Court invites you to break your fast with her.'

'How kind,' Ianthe smiled. 'Of course.'

The valet brought Lucien a leather tie for his hair, and Lucien scraped it back into a tight tail. 'The High Lord instructs you to brief with the Council,' the valet relayed.

'Thank you.' Lucien adjusted the faebane manacle on his wrist. He had not, he noted, been offered a belt or a weapon to hang from it. His hip felt naked without it. 'Er, your name?'

The valet didn't blink. 'Seppo, my lord.'

'Seppo. Thank you. I don't think we knew each other, before.'

'No, my lord.' No embellishment to that, no information offered that might allow further conversation. Seppo was very well trained. Which meant Lucien wouldn't find an in there. No doubt exactly as planned.

'Let's not keep the Council waiting,' Lucien said, instead, and Seppo bowed, gesturing Lucien to precede him out. Seppo locked the door behind them. And followed him up the hall. Lucien set his jaws and said nothing about it.

The War Room was no misnomer. Though Lucien had been born into a time of peace between the courts, there had always been a need to maintain and deploy an active armed force. Discontented villagers raising the occasional rebellion. Border skirmishes, or an ally's border skirmishes, as the courts jockeyed for inches of a finite space. The occasional outright war, like the one Night and Spring had waged on each other, ending in the near eradication of their ruling lines, leaving behind only a half-breed and the weakest of the litter to fumble their way into power. That neither Rhysand nor Tamlin had chosen to continue the war was a credit to them both; that they hadn't really had the resources or the loyalty of their armies was closer to the truth. And there had always been the threat of Hybern. Discontented, malicious, always seeking a way back into power, a way off their small island to the richer lands of Prythian and the continent. Amarantha had got as far as she had by playing at treaties and friendship. Everyone had known who she was and what she'd done hundreds of years earlier, General to the mightiest army in a thousand years and brutal as could be, but the fae were tired of war. She had spoken pretty words, played the reformed, the spiritually awakened, and court after court had fallen to her deception. Every court now bore the scars of her rule. Populations decimated by the sword or by the famine that had followed. Cities levelled, towns razed, fields sewn with salt and blood. In a very real way Amarantha had been the blight they'd been cursed to call her.

Lucien spent hours bent over maps with the Council, describing every detail he could recall of the island of Hybern, the seaside fortress of its ancient King, and the dread weapons that King possessed. Beron's councilors were warriors to a male-- Beron had no use for scholars, even those whose study of history might have been useful in filling out the picture Lucien painted. Discussion devolved nonetheless, males whose latest experience of anything beyond Autumn being locked Under the Mountain by Amarantha for half a century challenging Lucien's observations as if he couldn't be trusted to relay what he'd seen with his own eyes. Lucien had plenty of practise as an Emissary holding his tongue as old males squabbled over his veracity versus their stubbornly held perspectives, but there was diplomacy and there was war and he held his ground on anything so stupid it would lose lives. When servants filed in with platters of bread, cold meats, and cheese for luncheon, Lucien found a corner to stand in where he could sip an ale in silence and nurse a headache. He stared at the enormous tapestry that occupied the entire wall, a tableau of some ancient battle in dazzlingly intricate detail. Individual expressions of fae no larger than a finger could be discerned by the naked eye-- most of them looked scared, Lucien observed. Lettering in archaic Middle Prythian read May the lightning of your glory be seen and the thunders of your onset heard from east and west. Be ye the avengers of noble blood.

'Of course, none of this actually matters, as we're not invading Hybern.'

Lucien swam up from his woolgathering. 'Your pardon?'

It was one of the younger males. His crooked nose had been broken who knew when and never set, who knew why; it gave him an arresting look, piercing pale eyes over that odd injury. 'Ambroise,' the fae introduced himself, extending his hand to grasp Lucien's forearm in an overly familiar greeting. Then he pulled a flask from his jerkin and, winking, refilled their tankards. 'My daily medicine,' he said. 'Without which I could not possibly survive this endlessly dull loop of repetition we call life.'

'You seem familiar to me,' Lucien said, choosing not to engage with that. 'I'm sorry, I'm afraid I cannot recall where we've met before.'

'We have not. But I believe you would have known my father. Gwynfor of the Malcolm Clan.'

Northern Autumn, that, the last habitable bit of the mountains before the Winter border. Lucien inclined his head. 'Yes, now I remember. Has your father...'

'Still alive, though no longer well enough to serve his duties. A sad thing, to see a once fierce fae descend into the madness of old age.'

'My condolences. He was a very great warrior, once.'

'He was.' Ambroise toasted in some vague direction and drank. 'When the dementia first came upon him, he lost all restraint. I locked him away when he tried to rape a scullery maid. Or, at least, that's the one I caught him attempting. There was the stable boy before that, the daughter of the blacksmith, and the young priestess who caught his eye in the chapel. Who knows how many others he managed to hide while he had the mind to do so. I have found that monsters are rarely only monstrous once, after all.'

Lucien scrupulously did not look at Beron's empty chair at the head of the table. 'I have found that, as well.'

'I thought we might have some common ground, yes.' Ambroise nodded at Lucien's cup. 'It's not poisoned. You did see me drink it.'

'I intended no offence. I'm not much of a drinker.' Lucien put the tankard to his lips and mimed a sip. Ambroise let out a little snort of a laugh, and didn't challenge him again.

'The rumourmongers are going mad over you,' he said then. 'The halls teem with wild speculation. We were all but forbidden to even speak the name of the exiled seventh son, and suddenly here you are in the flesh. All forgiven and forgotten.'

'Neither, I'm sure.' Lucien smiled Ianthe's pious smile. 'I will endeavour to earn my father's great generosity.'

'Cheers to earning a father's approval.' Ambroise knocked their cups together and drank the rest of his 'medicine' in steady swallows, wiping his mouth carelessly on his sleeve after. 'Now, one rumour I did quite enjoy is that you were with the Hybern royals when they met a grisly end. Naga, I believe?'

Lucien shook his head, eyes back on the tapestry to spare himself meeting that curious gaze. 'I'm afraid I've no information to share. I heard of their demise after, but I wasn't there when it happened.'

'No? I'd heard you were High Lord Tamlin's second, his veritable lieutenant, not just his Emissary. But, then, I suppose that was right about the time you... left Spring Court.'

Lucien smiled. And provided nothing further.

After a long, tense minute, Ambroise laughed his snorting laugh again. 'Your brothers would have fallen for that. Idiots, and proud ones.'

One last test, to see if he'd carry tales about his own family. Lucien had never been an idiot, proud or otherwise. 'You want the rest of this?' he offered instead, waggling the tankard. 'We'll be a few more hours at this, and I want a clear head.'

'Waste not.' Ambroise traded him. 'Yes, whatever "this" is. Between you and me, or between myself and myself, as I'm sure you'll withhold the satisfaction of confirming or denying it, Beron's planning to play both sides, and to play them against each other.'

'The High Lord prefers to plan for all outcomes.'

'Spoken like a true Vanserra.'

There was no reason at all for Ambroise to know just which button he was pushing with that sally. It was most probable that he didn't know, and was just trying for a reaction, any reaction, and it wasn't a hard guess that Lucien, having spent three centuries elsewhere scorning his family name, might not be wholly enthusiastic about returning now. And if he gave any reaction at all, he was only inviting further investigation. That would be very, very bad for everyone.

Fortune smiled on him, for once, in the ring of the gong. 'Let us return to our deliberations,' called old Pelias, Beron's currently favoured General. Pelias found Lucien's corner and beckoned him sharply. 'Come, boy, come. Let us continue.'

'Your pardon,' Lucien excused himself politely to Ambroise, and obeyed his summons.

He was exhausted by the time the Council finally disbanded for the afternoon, having heard every detail Lucien could possibly dredge. Lucien was spared the danger of being drawn off for private conversation by the sight of Seppo awaiting him. Some kind of water sprite, Lucien guessed, or perhaps descended from one-- Seppo's skin was near translucent in daylight, colour refracting the angles of his cheeks and chin in a muddled rainbow. Seppo bowed at his approach, and handed him a folded note.

It was his mother's handwriting. He hadn't seen it for centuries. It made his throat, already sore from talking all day, seize tight and painful. He brushed the swooping cursive 'L' that formed the first word-- his name. It had been so very long since she'd called him by his name.

Lucien, come rescue your forlorn lady. I fear she has had enough of us for one day.

That was all. No hidden messages in that, none that he could interpret anyway. Una had always been scrupulously apolitical. It was her greatest strength in a court that plotted for idle fun and deadly purpose as easily as it breathed.

'When was this sent?' he asked Seppo.

'An hour ago, my lord.'

Lucien bent his neck to crack it, and rolled back stiff shoulders. 'Thank you for waiting. I'm sure you had other work.'

'I always complete all my tasks, my lord.'

Excellent start. He'd offended the male. Servants schemed just as readily as high fae, and had more access to harmful secrets. Lucien bowed, hand over heart. 'Forgive my slip of the tongue, please. I only meant that I am grateful you took the time to see this delivered.'

Seppo looked slightly appalled. 'Please do not bow, Lord Lucien. It was only duty. I would never seek to ingratiate myself--'

Lucien put up a hand. 'I'm out of practise,' he interrupted. 'Just-- thanks, is all I meant.'

Seppo stared slightly left of Lucien's face with brows drawn together, clearly uncertain whether to drop it and just as clearly having no idea what to do to smooth it over. 'You're very welcome, my lord.'

'I'll have someone find you when I need to go back to my room.'

'Yes, my lord.'

All those 'my lords' were going to get very old, very fast. Lucien smiled. Seppo bowed. Seppo, at least, got to flee. Lucien blew out a deep breath, and headed for the family wing.

He heard a footstep a second before an arm landed across his shoulders. 'Why, hello, brother,' Patrice greeted him, grinning widely.

'Brother.' Lucien slowed, only to be pulled along by Patrice. The second eldest of their brood had Beron's colouring and good looks, all square jaw and dimpled chin and bulging biceps. He'd enjoyed looming over Lucien when Lucien had been a child, and it didn't appear to have changed much in the intervening centuries. 'To what do I owe the pleasure?' Lucien asked warily.

'Haven't hardly had a chance to catch up. You look proper again,' Patrice complimented him, giving him a once-over. 'Those Spring frocks made you look a right nancy.'

'That about catches us up, I think,' Lucien muttered. 'I'm on my way to--'

'Spare me a moment, at least. I only wanted to apologise.' Patrice dipped a long look at him. 'Wouldn't have been my choice to chase you and that human harlot down in Winter, of all fucking places. Bygones, eh? What's done is done.'

He shrugged at Patrice's heavy arm, and didn't manage to dislodge him. 'The High Lady of Night isn't human any more, nor was she ever a harlot.'

Patrice chortled. 'So you are in love with her.'

'I'm hardly.' Lucien stopped himself from getting dragged into a battle of insults, surely Patrice's only purpose. 'I'm on my way to Mother's suite. To escort the High Priestess of Spring back to her room. And I'm already late, so if you'll excuse me--'

'Do you accept my apology?'

'Of course.'

'See, I don't think you've really forgiven me.' They passed the sentries guarding the wing, and the doors swung shut behind them. 'It didn't have to come to blades between us, that day. That was you as much as us. I'm sorry. Are you?'

'All's forgiven,' Lucien said shortly. 'Bygones, eh.'

'That's all I wanted!' Patrice bent to whisper against his ear. 'Now, Jesminda... I'm not at all sorry that whore is dead.'

Lucien shoved Patrice, but it only took a second for Patrice to turn his loose hold into a headlock, and he dragged Lucien sharply left into a bedroom. Lucien fought, trying to put up resistance as he stumbled along half-blinded with his face smooshed into Patrice's doublet, but pain exploded in his kidney as he took a hard blow there. Alasdare, grinning in the dark as Patrice sent him sprawling onto the rug and kicked him in the stomach. Lucien writhed, the breath knocked out of him and his back pulsating with mind-numbing hurt. Someone grabbed him from behind, another body-lock, forcing his arms up and akimbo, a fist in his hair wrenching his head back. Darach, yellowed teeth bared as he hauled Lucien up onto his knees, panting and exposed.

'Gag,' Patrice ordered, and Alasdare shoved a rolled stocking between Lucien's teeth. Patrice crouched before him. He held a cricket bat, now, twirling it between his big fingers. 'You know the rules. We all pay the tithe. Except you're in arrears, Lulu. Now the lads, we've had ourselves a little chat about it, and we've decided we can forgive and forget-- once you pay up.' He smirked. 'Don't worry-- nothing permanent.'

'Fuck you,' Lucien snarled, or tried, garbled on the gag, but his brothers all laughed, knowing very well what sentiment he expressed.

'Three each,' Patrice said, and took a heavy swing for Lucien's vulnerable stomach.

When his mother's lady in waiting received him, twenty minutes later, allowing him into sitting room, he found Ianthe seated beside Una, a ball of yarn in her lap, knitting needles in hand, and a large snarled mess resulting. Ianthe, at least, greeted his arrival with something like relief. His mother barely looked up from her craftwork, her hands patient and skilled as she wove and looped.

'A blanket to start, but then we'll move on to clothes,' she said, as if continuing a conversation. 'We'll need to work swiftly to have enough pieces finished for the baby's arrival. I recommend enough sizes to last through the first six months at least-- you'll have little enough time with a newborn on your hands, if my own experience is anything to go by.' She looked up, then, directly at Lucien, and let her needles settle in her lap. 'You may kiss me,' she told him.

Lucien took care, edging to her chair through the close press of her ladies. He bent to brush her cool cheek with his lips, burying a wince as he straightened. 'Mother,' he greeted her quietly. She still smelled like cinnamon, though he knew she'd never been allowed in the kitchens.

Una's eyes were closed, for just a moment longer than a blink. Her lips pressed together, then eased. 'Tidy your hair, son.'

He tucked a loose lock behind his ear. 'Perhaps I might borrow some supplies from your ladies. Do any of you perhaps have lanolin cream or oil?'

The female to Ianthe's other side looked a bit surprised. 'I have, Lord Lucien,' she volunteered. 'Would that not be terribly heavy for hair?'

It wasn't his first choice, but he doubted Autumn had much of a market for Summer products like shea or coconut. 'If used sparingly, it can be helpful. I'm afraid I wasn't... wasn't able to bring any of my preferred. I will, of course, reimburse you.' Somehow. He hadn't been able to bring any money, either.

'Not at all, my lord. I can bring it--' The female glanced at Una. Whatever his mother thought of their exchange, it didn't show on her face. Una only resumed her knitting. 'I'll have it delivered to you tonight.'

'Thank you, my lady...?'

'Livia, my lord.'

'I'm very grateful, Lady Livia.' He backed out of their circle as he bowed, pressing his hand to his ribs and breathing carefully. 'Priestess, I wondered if I might interest you in a walk about the House? You have yet to see the gardens, I believe. They're not quite so formal as Spring, but I prefer a bit of wildness. My mother has overseen their design and care for hundreds of years now.'

Ianthe didn't quite leap to her feet, but she did stuff her knitting back into the chair without so much as a backward glance. 'Thank you for your instruction today, ladies,' she said, inclining her head. 'You were most welcoming.'

Una held out a hand, palm down. It was quite possibly the first time in Ianthe's service as High Priestess that she'd been forced to observe etiquette-- Cauldron knew Tamlin had never stood on ceremony with her, even when it would have helped. Do it, Lucien urged her silently. Fortunately, Ianthe didn't choose that moment to dispute rank. She took Una's fingers in hers and bent her knees, just a very little, as she bowed her head over them. 'High Lady,' she said quietly.

'Dismissed, dear,' Una said, and resumed her knitting again.

'This may be the most time you've ever spent in my company,' Ianthe observed later, as they roamed the orchards beyond the garden.

The truth was that Lucien had needed to stretch his legs, and be as far from the Forest House as he could. Ianthe had been a handy excuse. That, and he didn't really trust her not to get them into trouble, the longer he left her unsupervised. 'I can think of a night that was longer,' he muttered, reaching above his head to pick a ripe red pear, only to twinge his ribs. He held in a grunt, he was sure, but it stole his wind for a moment. He completed the movement, and took a bite. It was perfect-- just past firm, juicy, a hint of vanilla. He offered it to Ianthe. She took it carefully, ensuring their fingers didn't touch, and she ate from the opposite side of the fruit than where his lips had been.

'How did you fare today?'

He resumed his amble, just following the fence line with no real destination. He'd always liked the orchards, and his feet remembered where he was going. The pear trees were old and gnarled, three or even four times his size. Winged fae flitted about the tops of the canopy with their baskets, collecting the fruit. Beyond the pear, there were apples, chestnuts, beech nut, walnut, persimmon, plum and pomegranate, and closer to the House fig bushes nearly as large as trees dropped hundreds of soft purple fruits, and grape vines yielded late-season muscadine and sultana and autumn royal grapes. The faint buzz of bees and wasps created a comforting low hum, and the cool of early evening descending could almost convince him he was far away from his troubles. Almost.

'Debriefing with the High Lord's councilors,' he replied at length, when he heard Ianthe draw an impatient breath. 'They want as much intelligence as I can give them on Hybern. Probably to compare what I say to what Tamlin gave them already.' Rhysand would have been better off asking those questions in that basement. Or maybe he had. Lucien still didn't know what had occurred during the gap in his memory of that day.

'Will they ask me next?' Ianthe wanted to know.

'No,' he said.

'Why not?' She caught up to him, and handed back the pear. 'I had private conversations with the King, as well as with the Prince and Princess.'

'Are you that desperate to see yourself in their clutches?' He didn't know what questions Rhysand and his interrogator Azriel had asked Ianthe, for that matter, who'd been in some dark room in their custody weeks longer than Lucien. 'Keep that to yourself,' he warned her. 'They'll get enough of what they want from me.'

'My observations have value. I could lead them straight to the King's bedroom.'

Why was he not at all surprised to hear that. 'They don't need to know where his bedroom is.'

'I can map the castle--'

'They're not invading or laying siege. They're not attacking Hybern at all.'

Ianthe slowed abruptly, staring at him. Lucien ducked her gaze, wishing he had pockets in which to stuff his fists like Rhysand always did. He finished the pear in a few large bites and tossed the core off into the trees.

'I was told the High Lords had all agreed,' Ianthe probed cautiously.

'So they did. Beron is un-agreeing. Or will. I'm to go to Hybern seeking terms, when they're done plumbing me for information they can use.'

He was stupid to say it aloud where anyone could overhear. Well, there was no-one about, not visibly at least. He didn't look too closely at the shadows, though even Azriel would have to be uncommonly skilled and lucky besides to penetrate the wards around Forest House. Or Rhysand would already be King of Prythian, if he could pluck all the juicy secrets of his rivals and friends alike so easily as that. But it was more likely that Beron had put eyes on him, and ears went with eyes. Just because he couldn't spot them didn't mean they weren't there. Still, he was tired, and bitter, and inclined to be reckless. That had always been his greatest fault.

And here he was, endangering another female for the sake of indulging his bruised ego.

'The cleverest thing is just to lay low and wait to be told what they want us to do,' he said, for his own sake as much as for hers.

'They're separating us. If they're sending you to Hybern.'

He nodded. He dragged his fingers along the pockmarked bark of a pear tree. None of these trees would have been here when he lived in Autumn before. These must have been planted just before Amarantha, probably. Strange, that such a momentous thing-- wasn't, in the grand scheme. Even by the scale of a life as young as his own.

Feyre was barely, what, twenty? He didn't know how old Elain was.

He drew in a breath so fast his bruised ribs ached. He bit his lip until it passed.

'Are you unwell?'

'I'm fine.'

'They're separating us. You're letting them.'

'You're safe here. Safer than Night.' He smiled jaggedly. 'Safer than any other court, probably. No-one in Autumn believes a female can-- well, anything. Don't go trying to prove them wrong.'

Ianthe stood gripping her elbows tightly, staring blindly into the trees. 'So I'm left here to rot whilst you get to leave. To change things. Do things.'

'They aren't letting me leave.' Lucien put his back to the tree trunk and slid down til he sat on the cool dirt beneath it. 'They're never going to let me leave, ever again.'

'I thought she would ask about you,' Ianthe said then. 'Your mother. She didn't ask anything at all.'

He didn't know how he was meant to feel about that. Didn't know how he did feel. Maybe the feeling was too big, like trying to understand the trees when all you could see was the forest. 'You used to be a better shot,' he rasped.

Ianthe's chest heaved. 'I'm going back inside.'

'You shouldn't go about unescorted.' Lucien stood, and flagged down one of the guards who'd trailed them out. 'Please see the Priestess back to her-- our-- room.'

'High Priestess,' Ianthe said through gritted teeth.

He didn't bother to correct himself. She'd figure it out eventually.

He settled back under the tree as Ianthe stomped off, and the remaining guard faded back, giving him a reasonable amount of privacy. He dug a finger under the faebane manacle, trying to ease an itch. The itching was probably imaginary. It wasn't as bad as it had been, fleeing across Prythian with Feyre and faebane in his system-- but in a way it was worse, to feel his magic under his skin, building up, yearning to be expressed. And he was not even two full days into wearing it.

He'd probably be wearing it the rest of his life. That didn't bear thinking about. It was impossible not to think.

'If you are listening,' he breathed to the shadows, 'whatever you're going to do to stop this happening, you need to do it soon. They're sending me tomorrow. You have however long it takes Hybern to decide.' He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. 'Please.'

The breeze blew a lock of loose hair across his cheek, but the shadows didn't answer. Lucien closed his eyes, and breathed.

Chapter Text

Present Day

Lucien shifted with great care, easing an ache in his elbow from holding his son too long at one angle. He lifted Baden upright onto his shoulder, though it meant he could no longer see the baby's perfect face; it was almost an even exchange, however, to press his nose to Baden's soft wispy hair and inhale the precious scent of a newborn, yeasty and warm and uniquely fae. He resumed rocking the chair gently, one foot giving a small push every few moments, leaving kisses to Baden's small scrunched forehead, tiny curled fists, perfect pointed ears whenever the need arose, which was frequently indeed. His heart felt immense in his chest, almost unbearably full.

A soft scratch at the door was followed by a click of the latch. Candlelight-- no, a small ball of fire held above a cupped palm. His mother. Una let herself in, but stayed beside the door, her back to the wall. They looked at each other across the distance, neither speaking. Perhaps, like Lucien, she didn't know quite what to say, how to cross the gulf between them. Her eyes veered away in only moments, taking in the rest of the darkened nursery.

'Leave us, please,' she said to the nurse. The girl courtsied and departed quickly, squeezing past Una with downcast eyes of her own. Lucien stilled the chair, watching, waiting.

'It's been so long since I've been here,' Una murmured at last.

'Hasn't changed,' Lucien replied. 'Seems like... like very little has.'

Her gaze returned to meet his. She didn't acknowledge that-- complaint, or lament. Or fact. That hadn't changed, either.

Nor the guilt in his gut. Clogging up his throat. 'Would you like to hold him?' he offered, rising from the chair. Something finally lit in her face, a flicker of surprise and eagerness. She came to him, now, and they performed a transfer, Lucien still gingerly trying to figure out the best place for his awkward arms and overlarge hands, his mother waiting for some sign he was comfortable and ready before she took the rocker, sinking back with Baden wrapped close. Lucien settled his bulk in one of the wee chairs at the child-sized table, loosely caging his knees with his empty arms. Una looked up to see him like that, and a smile, small but real, spasmed across her pale lips.

'You never sat so still when you were a child,' she commented, tracing one of Baden's chubby cheeks with a finger. 'Your tutors had to tie you to that chair to finish your lessons.'

They had. Real rope, when he'd innocently cleaved their spells. Eris had been furious when he'd seen it; furious with Lucien, not the tutor. It was one of the first times Eris had really truly blown up at him, and that had cowed Lucien far more than the disapproval of his teachers. He wouldn't understand til much later why Eris had been so adamant he could never, ever, ever do that again.

It occurred to him then that he had probably ought to get the good news to Helion, somehow. Then again, if Helion had wanted this, it had been within his power to try and take it. He never had.

That line of thinking must have put a sour look on his face, for his mother made a little noise of enquiry. Lucien shrugged it off, instead rising to light the candles in the old-fashioned way. The soft glow, warm and golden, lit the crèche enough to pick out features he remembered all too well. No toys, here. Tools to train young princes. Books, maps. Wooden swords. The chess board, to teach strategy; the tiny troops carved of wood with which Lucien and his brothers had learnt to recreate ancient battles and plan new ones. There, still in stacks on a shelf, yellowed and curling with age, the final letters each of them had written, formally requesting permission from their father to leave the crèche and join his court as young men, young soldiers, ready to fight for their birthright, for Autumn. They'd all been rejected at least once, forced to prove themselves. Darach had gone nine times rejected for his atrocious spelling and barely legible handwriting and general daft ignorance, let out only when it began to embarrass Beron to have a son so long in breeches. Lucien had had to write three times. He still wasn't sure why, exactly, Beron had been so lenient. Only that one day Eris had come grinning to fetch him, taking him straight to the stables and to his first proper horse. After that, Lucien had rarely spent more than the night hours in the bounds of Forest House. That horse had been freedom, and he'd seized every bit of it he could. Til he broke one too many rules, so cocksure he could keep on getting away with it. Jesminda had died proving him wrong.

'You've become so serious,' his mother said to his back.

He didn't turn. Perhaps neither of them would be comfortable speaking face to face. 'Awful lot of serious things happened, once I left this room.'

'You were capable enough to survive.' The chair creaked ever so softly. 'I prayed you would be.'

He inhaled deeply and held it, though his lungs trembled. 'We don't have to speak on it, Mother.'

'If it would ease your mind to do so...'

'Ease my mind, to holler and curse and break things?' There was something to that, no doubt, but all he could muster at the thought of it was exhaustion. 'Sooner shout into the wind.'

'It is the way of most males to enjoy a little shouting, is it not.'

That, he cast a burning glare over his shoulder for. 'I've never striven to be like most males.'

'Something most males would flatter themselves to think.'

He scratched at the inflamed skin under the faebane bracelet. 'Perhaps you'd like to speak your mind, Mother.'

It was not an invitation she had very often received from the males in her life. It took her a minute to work up to it. 'You have a mate, they tell me.'

He didn't think that had gone widely about. Eris knew, which meant Beron knew; whoever Beron might have told, it would not have included his wife. But it must have been spoken somewhere, and in Lucien's experience ladies in waiting were the best spies of all, always alert to court gossip that might be of use in their games jockeying for scraps of power. Lucien did not doubt that, whatever Beron thought, Una was probably the most informed fae in all Autumn.

'I have,' he confirmed.

'At the Night Court.'

'Yes.' He searched for some detail small enough to risk sharing. 'She... seems a fragile thing. She is very young.'

'Ah. Then your relationship with the Priestess must have predated your awareness of the bond.'

Ah. His mother didn't ask to satisfy her own curiosity. She was laying groundwork with that leading question. He'd probably hear that statement repeated exactly all over court within days. Whether his mother or Beron was behind it, they were preparing to move Ianthe off the scene. A few scattered, condescending little comments, and in a month or two Ianthe would be sent on a retreat somewhere to 'rest', and there'd be a payoff, and in a decade no-one would quite remember her name. He'd seen it done in every court. He didn't know quite how to feel about it happening on his behalf.

Who was he kidding. It was for the family honour, not his, already so besmirched. The heir must have a wife of proper standing, and Ianthe had offended a little too much, shown her true colours a little too often, would not be content to stand in the shadows waiting to be noticed. Ianthe might even be glad enough to go, now that she'd seen her investment in Lucien sour.

How long before Beron made a play for Elain?

'There are mates the world over who never meet, surely,' he said, perhaps too sharply, for his mother met his eyes with the slightest frown. 'And mates who never wed.'

'You would not prefer your mate?'

'She would not prefer me. And I prefer not to see her forced.'

Something moved behind those blank eyes. But that had always been his mother's gift. What she thought, no male could know. She went back to rocking the baby, who sleepily suckled now on a finger, legs kicking as he loosed a little whine. Una patted him gently til he settled. Lucien played with a little wooden soldier, pressing the tip of a toothpick-sized spear into his thumb til it hurt.

'I know about him,' he said suddenly.

Una rose to lay Baden in the cot, tucking a lace-edged blanket about him. 'Who?'

'My father.'

'What about the High Lord?'

'My father,' he stressed. That was as close as he could come, safely and personally, to verbalising it, here where the walls had ears and every word must be completely circumspect. Una's back was ramrod stiff, and her scent was off, metallic, suddenly. Or maybe that was his own, risking this. 'I know the truth.'

'You must be weary,' Una tried to divert him. 'I can stay up with the babe if you would like to go to your rest--'

'Mother. Just--' Just what? Why had he even bothered to bring it up? There was no good to come of it. No point in revisiting an old wound. But, unstoppered for the first time in a century, the words came bubbling out of him, and he couldn't halt the flow. 'Why him?'

She didn't put him off again, at least. Maybe it had weighed on her, too, the truth unspoken for so long. 'Why... why do you ask?'

Why indeed. Not curiosity. Curiosity was not a thing he much indulged-- Beron hadn't encourage an active mind, and the world outside Autumn was only interesting to the High Lord insofar as it could feed his ambitions. Lucien had defied him, and found Jesminda, and for that sin he'd survived her, too. Tamlin had other faults, but curiosity wasn't one of them; in his way Tamlin would have been a better son to Beron than Lucien had been, but Tamlin had been raised by a monster, too. It was something they never spoke of sober. Then, of course, they'd been busy dealing with Amarantha. She hadn't left much room for curiosity. He'd spent thirty years streaking headlong into the worst curiosity could do, and the next three hundred doing everything he could to avoid the next disaster.

'There's so much I don't know,' he said. 'Things you might want to know, from me. I suppose I never thought there'd be opportunity. I'll show mine if you show yours.'

'Had you become so accustomed to bargains in Night Court, the short time you were there?'

Night Court bargains made a silly show of one of the most fundamental truths of Lucien's entire life. No-one gave you something for nothing. 'Well?'

Una adjusted the faelight over the cot, tapping it to glow and then shading it away from the baby's face. It seemed to cost her, but, after a tense silence, she nodded. He heard her draw a breath, and hesitate; exhale, and hold it. Her shoulders kept pulling tighter and tighter.

'I can go first, shall I?' he said, brash, his heart thumping hard against his sternum. 'Did you know I thought Eris was my father for years? Not with you, I mean, I-- I-- only he was kind, and Beron never came anywhere near me. You didn't come near me. I hardly knew who either of you were. The Lord and Lady, high folk, important folk doing important things, but nothing to do with me. This crèche was all I knew, and the only one who ever visited me here was Eris. So how's that for confusing.' He trailed off, waiting for her to interject, object, something, but there was no change at all in her defencive stance, back to him giving nothing away. It made him a little crueler, wanting to lash out, say something, anything to pierce her ever-present armour of silence. 'But I always knew I was something different from the rest of you. I felt different. You all made me feel different.'

And then the crescendo of his own ever-present armour overtook him. Guilt. He thought sometimes his entire life all he'd ever truly known was guilt, and the wait for the guilt to finally crush him. He couldn't look at her, now, any more than she could look at him, didn't know how that accusation, condemnation, was being received. 'I'm not saying it for blame. If anything, I... I'm saying thanks. Because those were the best years. When I thought the secret was a good one.'

Her knuckles stood out stark white on the edge of the cot, clenched there so hard. 'When...'

Just that word, choked as it was. Lucien swallowed against the lump in his throat. 'I'd been in Spring about six months. Word had got out. He wrote me a letter. My father. Told me everything. Offered to, that is, I didn't take him up on it. I was too worried, if the wrong ears ever heard, even outside Autumn. I'd just seen what Beron was willing to do to anyone who disappointed him.'

'Why would you have cared about that, if what you say is true? By your own admission, you hardly knew me.'

'You're my mother,' he said. 'It mattered. It matters.' She didn't speak, still, and he filled the uncomfortable silence. 'I told myself stories about you. That Beron wouldn't let you near me, because of the shame. But he'd have to know, for that to be true, and I don't think he does, not with total certainty. I told myself maybe my father... maybe he hurt you, forced you, I... I must remind you of him, I told myself, I must pain you, and I would never want you to be hurt because of me, so I could forgive that, too. Then I thought that you must be ashamed of me. You're an honourable female who's been true to your marriage, to your lord, to your court, and any stain on that must be a horrible reminder. I could even forgive that.'

'But?'

The warm flickering candlelight chased the cool shadows of the pale blue faelight through her rivers of curls. He traced one from root to tip with his gaze. 'But then I saw you Under the Mountain. When I went to give Tamlin's refusal of Amarantha's proposal, the first time I'd seen you in hundreds of years, and I saw how you looked at me. What an-- insufficient-- unsatisfactory male I'd become--'

'No,' she said fiercely, but still she would not turn, and he longed to see her face as much as he feared to see what it held. 'Your insult did not warrant such an extreme punishment.'

'We can debate what I deserved. But that wasn't how you looked at me after she gouged out my eye. It was how you looked at me before.'

'Lucien.'

It was the first time she'd spoken his name in centuries. It lanced him, agony from head to toe.

She didn't tell him he was wrong. She didn't explain her reasons. She didn't say anything else, just his name, just the once. He breathed, because he had to, but he wished he didn't. He wished for nothing so much as cold and dark and silence, where he wouldn't have to feel any of this.

'I'll tell the nurse to come in,' he managed, almost steadily. 'And I'll check on Ianthe. I'm sure she...' He had no idea what she needed, what she wanted. Any port in a storm. 'Good night,' he finished stiffly, and strode for the door. He was out in the safety of the hallway a moment later, fingernails slicing into his palms from the pressure of his fists. If she had asked him to stay, he wouldn't have been able to hear it over the hammering of his heart. But he knew she hadn't.

**

Six Months Earlier

'Where's Eris?'

'Minding his own tasks,' Beron said, pleasantly poisonous. 'As you ought to be.'

Lucien smiled a courtier's smile, the same one he'd worn telling Amarantha to burn in hell. He'd lost an eye for the privilege, and didn't regret it. 'I merely enquired, sire, that I might better serve your aims.'

Beron's eyes flickered at that dig. Sire. He stepped closer to Lucien, beringed fingers falling to Lucien's wrist, free of the faebane bracelet so that he might serve those aims today. Lucien was already braced when Beron yanked sharply, dragging Lucien's body into his, trapping him close as Beron's grip heated, the smell of burning skin sudden and sharp.

'Fine morning for it,' a cheerful voice announced, and Beron let him go abruptly. Lucien stepped back, breathing deeply through his nose even as he forced a calm expression to his face, no hint of anything amiss.

'Ambroise,' he greeted the approaching male, accepting the forearm clasp extended towards him, burying a wince as unknowing fingers brushed the burn on his wrist. Beron accepted the genteel bow Ambroise performed next, secondary though it was. Not a wise showing on Ambroise's part, Lucien thought, and from a male who had seemed a cleverer sort than that, but perhaps it had only been to give Beron a moment to reclaim his own composure. Beron stood tapping his riding crop on his thigh, surveying the gathering company in the courtyard with his usual frown, ever ready to find fault.

'Ready to begin our quest?' Ambroise asked Lucien. 'Fine weather for it.'

It was already drizzling and promised to storm later. Wet gleamed on the fallen leaves and accumulated in puddles of mud. The hounds were roaming everywhere, whining and wound up. Grooms stood by with the horses. Within minutes, Forest House would be empty of any male of rank. Lucien had never particularly liked hunting for sport-- the baying dogs, the reckless plunge of fat lazy lords on panting horses through the royal woods where the true prey was all too often some poor fae caught poaching. Beron had left more than one starving villager strung up a tree for the 'theft' of a pheasant or badger or pockets full of wild apples. The hunting of actual animals sprang from the same cruel impulse. Forest House was littered with the stuffed heads of millennia of slaughtered stags with impressive antlers or boars with wicked tusks, but the reality of the slaughter, misfired arrows causing great pain and panic in the poor creatures before the hounds could chase them down and tear them to pieces or the company of fae stab their overpowering blades again and again into defenceless hides-- it had long ago turned Lucien off the supposed thrill and even the taste of the meat. It had been yet another reason for Beron to sneer at him, refusing first to participate and then to even eat the proceeds of a hunt. He'd fetched more than one beating for requesting fish. And then it had gone beyond beatings, both of them too stubborn to break first. Lucien blinked out of a memory of being shoved face-first into a plate of bloody entrails while Una begged helplessly for them to stop.

'The rain is moving south,' he said, somewhat hoarse, and coughed to clear his throat. 'It should be clear over Hybern.'

Ambroise took a gander at the sky, squinting. 'I daresay you're right. Excellent. Fine weather puts one in the mood for diplomacy, I wager.'

'No wager on the outcome,' Beron said, clapping a hand too hard on Lucien's shoulder. 'Return home with an offer, my son.'

'Or don't return at all?' Ambroise finished, laughing as if oblivious. 'I do hope we don't come home to find the doors barred if the terms are not to your liking, my lord.'

The doors wouldn't be barred. Not til Lucien was sealed behind them in the dungeon, anyway. Beron smiled tightly, squeezing Lucien's shoulder til it cracked. And then he strode off, to mount his steed and call the hunting company to order. One of the groomsmen blew the summoning bugle, and the chaos pitched to a new level of eager anticipation.

'You're a little wan this morning, Lord Lucien.'

'Just Lucien, please.' He summoned his courtier's smile again with the ease of practise, leaden though it felt. 'I didn't know you'd be accompanying our retinue, Lord Ambroise.'

'Just Ambroise, please.' Ambroise waggled a finger at him. 'Let's declare common cause, Just Lucien, for today at least. Ease your suspicious mind on the matter of my intentions. You'll need all that renowned brain power for the chase, if you mean to catch your Hybern bargain after all.'

'The chase?'

'How do you imagine it, then? A courtship, perhaps?'

Despite his mood, Lucien laughed. 'Cauldron, I hope not. I've no wish to woo a king.' He shrugged his shoulders til the feeling of Beron's hand finally bled away. 'A game of chess, more like. We'll each send a few pawns across the board, try to out-manoeuvre each other. The goal is to win without sacrificing too many pieces first, and to leave your opponent irrevocably in check.'

'We'll have to play, sometime. There's a dearth of worthy opponents in Forest House.'

'My brother Eris is a master of the game. Have you never played him?'

Ambroise smiled. 'Oh, your brother is a worthy opponent indeed. But so often called away for other duties. I look forward to observing your game.'

Beron threw one last livid glare in Lucien's direction before he departed the courtyard at a brisk canter, the hunting party behind him. An almost unnatural silence settled in their wake, a vacuum filled by the faint patter of the rain on the slate roof tiles. Lucien drew a deep breath of chill air scented with horse and damp loam, the ever-blowing wind.

Ambroise called, and their sentries and servants gathered near. 'Just about time. Shall we on?'

'Closer,' Lucien beckoned them all. 'We'll make five jumps: from here to the Spring border, two jumps in Spring itself, a jump to the atolls off Spring's waters, and then to the coast of Hybern outside the King's keep. Keep a hand on me at all times, and on the male nearest you as well. We'll pause for rest after the third jump.'

It was only a matter of hours, then, and he had little time to gnaw his fingernails before they appeared on Hybern's shores. It was overcast and the wind sharp, on the cliffs above the waves, and Lucien shivered, tugging his cloak close about him. The wind whipped his hair loose from the tie, and he scraped it back, turning in place trying to find the ribbon. He spotted it just in time to watch it sail off the cliff. 'Bugger.'

Ambroise looked about narrow-eyed interest as their retinue formed up. 'Well, Just Lucien? Which way?'

The path was perfectly clear, a long march uphill, precarious steps much eroded by time and the elements, to the outer gate. The barbican and curtain wall were pockmarked with ancient damage from some long-ago siege. The lower bailey had probably once housed fae, villagers and workers supporting the castle, even a small chapel, but it had stood empty when Lucien had visited before. The main bailey was just as barren, and so far as Lucien could tell only the keep was maintained at all, the great hall and womens' apartments unlit and cold. A single torch was all that beckoned them on, flickering from the gatehouse.

A shadow, at the gate. A figure emerged, hood drawn and long cape fluttering in the wind, watching still as stone as they trudged up the many steps. Lucien pulled ahead, or more accurately the rest of his company fell back, and Lucien crossed the last stretch of scraggly grass and dirt alone. At arms length, he halted, and bowed.

'High Lord Beron of Autumn sends me with his greetings and his great desire to parley with the King of Hybern,' he said to his shoes, and raised his head cautiously.

A hand covered in black scales no larger than the head of a pin raised to push back the hood. Lucien inhaled the acrid and all-too-familiar scent-- naga. But every naga he'd ever fought had been male, and this was every inch a female. Her long talons scraped with the slightest hiss along her hairless head and long arched neck. Her eyes, large and lashless, the colour and translucent quality of amber, stared into his as he rose to his full height, at least a foot shorter than her. The keyhole black of her vertical pupils threatened to draw him into some secret world, if he only chose to lose himself in her. Snared, he swayed towards her, and her lipless mouth fell open, silver forked tongue flickering in welcome--

He caught himself, and fell back, hand fumbling at his hip for a weapon he was no longer allowed to carry.

'Come,' she hissed, and turned back inside.

'Friend of yours?' Ambroise murmured to him, when Lucien gestured his men to follow.

He'd thought at first glimpse it might be the Attor, just based on the height. He was glad enough to be wrong he hardly answered that tease.

They were kept waiting, though their arrival had clearly been anticipated. The three sentries, used to drills and standing guard long hours, kept themselves at attention unwavering; the two valets were not so disciplined, and fell to whispering to each other, staring about into the dark corners of the strangely featureless room in which they now stood. There was no furniture, no wall hangings, no windows, only the one door; it put a paranoid itch between Lucien's shoulderblades, but then again far worse had befallen them in the throne room before, and he was just as glad there was no Cauldron to worry about. He kept himself to himself, gazing into the middle distance and pretending to be absorbed in his thoughts, though in truth those thoughts scattered like so many starlings bursting into flight, hundreds winging away into a shapeless murmuration. The female naga stood beside the door, her large eyes seeming to dance in the dim light of iron chandelier hanging over their heads.

Ambroise, surprisingly, seemed most impatient of all. He paced, he muttered, he withdrew a flask from his jerkin and sipped more than once as the minutes ticked by. 'So what gambit is this?' he demanded of Lucien, when near a half hour had passed in silence. 'Drive your opponent to capitulate to any demands for sheer want of a view?'

'Hush,' Lucien said.

'Hush?' Ambroise scoffed. He swigged, and shook the flask. Empty. 'Fuck.'

The naga moved suddenly. Everyone jumped, even Lucien, who had been awaiting just such a signal. 'The King comes,' she lisped, and stood aside from the door just as it opened.

'Your Majesty,' Lucien bowed, aware of the rustle of the rest of the Autumn contingent mimicking his obeisance.

'Rise,' Cían bade him impatiently. Lucien looked up to find dark eyes narrowed upon him. 'You wear new colours, Vanserra,' he said. 'Or shall I say, rather, true colours? I've never met a Vanserra yet who put loyalty above profit. As constant as the northern star, eh.'

He could make no defence against that, though it burnt dully in his chest. 'I come on behalf of my father, the High Lord of Autumn,' he said, bowing again. He slipped a buckle on his jerkin to remove a trifold of paper wrapped in fine red leather. 'My diplomatic seal, your Majesty, should you wish to examine my credentials.'

Cían ignored his outstretched hand. 'How's that mate of yours? The pretty one with the delectable ankles?'

Lucien froze.

Ambroise came to his rescue. 'I've never stood in the presence of a king,' the male drawled just one side of insolently. 'I thought perhaps the air might be more rarefied here. Rivers of gold and the like.'

Hybern's black eyes turned slowly. 'Your companion, Vanserra?'

'Ambroise of the Malcolms,' Ambroise introduced himself, and he did not bow. His fist was wrapped about the hilt of his sword, and there was something fierce and ugly glittering in his eyes. 'You would know the Malcolms, of course. You cut two of them down yourself in the War. My brothers, in fact, Errol and Laith.'

Cían shrugged broad shoulders. 'Am I to recall the face and name of every fae who spills their unworthy blood on my boots?'

Lucien swallowed hard, and did what he had come to do. 'Your Majesty,' he interjected, and Hybern's gaze returned to him. 'High Lord Beron of Autumn wishes to negotiate terms of alliance. If you will hear me out, I will present our case.'

'And who will you bring me next? Spring, now Autumn. You're my best recruiter, Vanserra.' Hybern snapped his fingers at the naga, and she stepped out, closing them in with the king. 'I'm sure Beron has higher hopes than the rescue of a social climber seeking herself a higher throne and bigger cock. Let's talk terms, then, and see what we might do for each other.'

'Brothers?' Lucien asked idly.

Ambroise cut a reed with his dagger and began to strip its brittle outer layers. 'They were twats, but family, eh.'

'I've yet to meet a brother who isn't.' Lucien scratched at the back of his head. 'Is that why you came? Did I interrupt a declaration of blood feud or some sneak attack of vengeance?'

'Is that why you threw yourself in between us? Worried what I'd do to disrupt your chess game?'

'Worried he'd run you through and leave me to carry home a corpse, more like.' Ambroise split the reed and packed two slivers into the split, then raised it to this lips and blew. A crude whistle, atonal and buzzing with the vibration of the green wood. After a moment, Ambroise tossed it away. His sigh was laden with disgust. 'Why did you come?' Lucien pressed him.

Their company lounged now beside a river. It was picturesque, as was everything in Spring. If Tamlin knew of their trespass, it would not be such a peaceful visit, though with all the courts pretending to be allies they could have passed it off with some excuse. Lucien had planned several, just in case. But he'd planned his jumps even more carefully, ensuring they'd winnow to remote and unpopulated areas far from the wards. And as everyone was depending on him to winnow them back to Autumn, he chose a resting spot that gave him a true moment's respite. It eased something in him, to be back here. Spring had been his home far longer than Autumn. The daylight was different here, not the deep jewel tones of his birthplace but a brighter, softer peridot. The birdsong was different too, orange-breasted robins with their melodic songs, vibrant and vocal warblers, the black-capped goldfinch and its delicate high pitch that had tracked many a morning beyond Lucien's window. Hummingbirds flocked to flowering bushes in unusual number, the fluttering of their tiny wings like the hum of Ambroise's whistle. Lucien tilted his head back as a cloud passed over the sun, chasing the warmth as he could.

But they were only here for the supposed purpose of recovering Lucien's strength so he could complete their jumps back to Forest House, and that was something of the point. He rubbed his wrist, healed already, but he could feel the fingers clamping it still. 'Faebane or ash?' Lucien asked him. 'To subdue me when I try to run.'

Ambroise sank back on his elbows, scowling at the trickling stream. 'Both,' he admitted. 'But in truth I don't take you for the sort to do a runner. You're a romantic. You run towards, not away.'

'You think you know me well, for a male I only met days ago.'

Ambroise laughed a little at that. 'One: you deeply underestimate the rumour mill in Forest House. There's not a male, female, or youngling who does not have a full portrait of you already painted in the mind. I believe the words "dashing", "quick-witted", and "charismatic" have been tossed about, and those just from me. Of course I've also heard "contrary" and "aloof" and "troublesome", and I find those to be true as well. After watching you ply your trade with Hybern, I'd add "pragmatic", and "sly", and quite possibly "untrusthworthy". But you didn't go so far as "treacherous", so I can return you to the High Lord unbound, and thank you for that, as I did not fancy hoofing it across two courts if you declined to winnow us.'

Lucien tugged at his shirt beneath his loosened doublet, beginning to stick to his back in the humidity. 'That was item one. Are there further lists?'

'No reaction? I'll have to try harder.'

Lucien abandoned subtlety and asked outright. 'What do you want from me? Or, should I say, what is it you think I can do for you, so that I can disabuse you of the notion? I have no influence in my father's court, no money, no power, no connections--'

'That's item two. I thought you modest, or falsely modest, because only an idiot or a liar downplays any advantage, and you've more than the usual. But I think you're actually just an idiot.' Ambroise flung a handful of shredded reed at him. 'You've been a member of three courts now, and after today Hybern would love nothing more than to snatch you up to drive so hard a bargain on his behalf. You're a young male with a bonny lass and a wee one on the way. And though he did arm me with faebane and ash, your father sent you, alone, to secure an extremely generous alliance. Which makes it altogether too bad you're such an idiot, because you'll soon be a dead idiot if you don't take seriously the threat you pose to your twat brothers.'

Lucien picked fibres out of his hair, grimacing. 'I don't take seriously this supposed threat. I am the opposite of threatening. If anything--'

Ambroise waited him out impatiently. 'If anything what?'

If anything, any attention Lucien drew from his brothers might enable them to finally get on with their own lives. It didn't escape him that they seemed to have all been living in a state of suspended growth, all of them unmarried, childless, holding the same positions in Beron's court as they had since before Lucien had even been born. His brother Finnén had been engaged to a female from Day, but they had never even met when Tamlin crushed his skull in. Beron had stifled all his brood. Perhaps his age and the inevitability of his replacement with one of those many sons had come to haunt him. The more astonishing thing was that none had ever thought to turn the threat on Beron instead of competing with each other for every scrap. A High Lord had unmatched power-- when one on one.

But no-one had ever said Vanserras were brave. Treacherous, however, oh, yes.

'We should be getting on,' Lucien said, standing and brushing his trousers of dirt. 'I'll gather the men.'

'No.' Ambroise put out a hand, and Lucien levered him upright. 'I might as well put some effort in. Back in a mo.'

Ambroise sauntered off, calling for the rest of their company. Lucien drew a bottle from within his doublet, and whispered a charm. Then he tossed it into the stream, where it sank with a plop. This particular stream ran to a river that flowed southeast, eventually spilling out to the sea, but not before passing the seat of Tamlin's court, only a few miles from the manor. With the Mother's blessing, a clearly enchanted object would not go unnoticed, and it would make its way to Tamlin. The tightly wrapped message secreted inside the bottle would smell awfully of lanolin oil, but the information would-- could-- had to help. It had to.

It had to. That was the only thought that let him take hold of his sentries and servants and whatever Ambroise was trying to be, and voluntarily take them all back to a place he hated with all his soul.

It had to.

Chapter Text

Present Day

Lucien knocked, and opened the door to poke in his head. 'Ianthe?' he called softly. 'Are you awake? I've brought some food.'

He heard her stir, and she answered groggily. 'Lucien? Is that you?'

'It's me.' He let himself in, pushing the door wide with his foot and letting it fall closed behind him. He set the heavy tray on the edge of the bed. 'Did I wake you? I'm sorry-- I can leave this...'

'It's all right.' Ianthe pushed herself upright with apparent difficulty. She was pale, and sweat beaded on her forehead. Concerned, Lucien reached out to press the back of his hand to her cheek. She arched away from him, flushing. 'I should... should fix my hair at least,' she protested feebly.

'You're warm. I'll have the healer come.'

'It's just warm in here. Those fires running all hours of the day.'

Lucien strode to the fireplace, using the poker to break apart the stacked logs and dousing one half with the ash bucket. He arranged the screen in front of the flames, and diverted to the window to crack it. 'Don't want to cool down too much. Here, some water.' He poured a glass from the carafe, and brought it to her.

Ianthe took the glass and sipped, but her eyes were on the tray Lucien had delivered. 'You brought me flowers,' she said slowly.

Three sunflowers, trimmed and arranged in a small but elegant vase he'd wheedled out of Seppo. Seppo had argued for roses or orchids, but Lucien couldn't bring himself to suggest even through floral symbolism anything stronger than respect, and he'd laughed aloud at the notion of lilies for purity and innocence. Seppo no doubt thought the worse of Lucien for that reaction. Then again, there was a reason Beron had never given his wife flowers. No Vanserra would ever have a reputation for romance. Sunflowers offered admiration, and happiness in an occasion of note, the most Lucien was willing to concede. To hope for.

'When you're feeling up to it, I'll take you to the nursery,' he offered.

Ianthe set the water aside, picking up a breadroll instead. She didn't eat it, only turned it over and over in her hands. 'Is that allowed?' she murmured coolly.

'Better to ask forgiveness than permission.' He lifted the lid from the soup tureen. 'Get something more substantial in you, you'll recover faster.'

'I'm tired of soup. Wet foods for the abundance of humours. These mediaeval prescriptions from your so-called healers-- did you know he had the audacity to tell me that females who eat too much salt bear children without fingernails?'

'Autumn is a... very traditional place.'

'A very ignorant place,' she said bitterly. She tore a bit from the breadroll and chewed it slowly. 'I thought Spring was conservative.'

'It was, before Tamlin.' Lucien invited himself to sit on the chair nearby, since Ianthe was in no rush to grant him permission, and it was his prerogative as an Autumn male to sit where he wished. 'What would you like besides soup?'

'Why?'

'I'll fetch it for you, that's why.'

She stared at him. 'Why,' she repeated hollowly.

Lucien sighed. The chairback wasn't quite tall enough to catch his head as he let it rest back, and he gazed up at the unfeeling ceiling, wondering if that was a shadow or a stain above him. 'How many times do you want to have this conversation before you actually listen to what I'm saying?'

'As many times as it takes to believe you, I suppose.' She curled up against her pillows, hands tucked beneath her cheek. 'I thought chivalry and honour died back with the mediaeval bards, too.'

'It's not honour. It's selfishness. I want what's mine.' Probably a stain. He didn't remember whose rooms were above his, what might be leaking. 'I'm no different than the rest of my charming family.'

'Did you say that expecting a flattering denial?' Ianthe muttered tartly.

Lucien smiled despite himself. 'Fair enough. So. I thought I smelled a roast. There's always venison in one form or another. I could probably convince Cook to send you stew instead of soup.'

'Is it true? The High Lord has named you heir.'

'He... said words to that effect.'

'I thought I would greet that news with greater joy,' Ianthe whispered. 'I thought I would feel great triumph. Victory.'

'Not what you imagined, eh.' Lucien dug a fingernail beneath the faebane manacle, digging a new bloody scratch into the inflamed flesh of his wrist. 'You played the game and lost. You can cede this round and let them drive you out. Or you can rally for another round. I never took you for a quitter, whatever else you are. If you don't care enough to try, let them buy you off and send you away. You'll be free. You can go back to Spring or to the continent even, they'll pay you enough to have a comfortable life somewhere, and who knows. One day Baden might have you back, if he cares to know his mother.'

'Another round?' she echoed, frowning at him.

'You weren't here for Amarantha. These people were. She massacred whole families at a time, and she always began with the fertile females. You've a power that's precious. Make it known you're open to negotiation, and--'

'You don't have to spell it out, I'm not a neophyte.' Her blue eyes were narrowed, bewildered. 'Would the High Lord allow it?'

'Even Beron has allies and enemies to placate. Play it right, and he'll make the politic choice.'

'And you'd see me wedded to another,' she said. 'Bedding another.'

He met her gaze. 'I'll always honour you as the mother of our son. But I won't forget how it happened. Don't look to me for more than that.'

They stared each other down for a long silence. Then, abruptly, Ianthe rolled to face away from him, pulling the eiderdown duvet close about her shoulders.

'Venison stew would be adequate,' she said softly, toneless.

'I'll be back shortly.' He rose, and closed the window on his way past. 'I'll send in your maid to draw a bath, too. She should already have been here attending you.'

'Thank you.' He nodded, not that she was looking. But she stopped him, then, his hand upon the door. 'His name. Baden. Did you choose it?'

'Hardly.' He rubbed his tired eye, his aching head. 'It's a family name. Vanserra name.'

'My father's name was Gareth. I was... I'd been thinking...'

'Gareth.' He swallowed a strange lump in his throat. 'It's a good name. Strong. Just... just between us. To tell him, some... some day.'

She didn't speak again. He didn't, either. He left her her alone in the silence.

**

Five Months Past

'Where's Eris?' Lucien asked Patrice. 'I haven't seen him in days.' Some twelve days, actually, and tumultuous days at that. Beron had proved an enthusiastic partner in Hybern's terms for alliance.

'Mind your own business,' was the unhelpful reply. Patrice slapped aside the youth buckling him into his armour, preening before the mirror. 'That'll do,' he decided, snapping his fingers for the final touch, a red ribbon tied about the upper arm. 'What do you think, Lulu?'

'I think if you call me Lulu again I'll help you find the gaps with the business end of my dagger,' Lucien answered pleasantly, poking a finger at the laces between the back plate and chain mail at the side. Patrice growled at him, and Lucien smiled tightly. 'You'll pass,' he judged. 'That was the whole point.'

Pass as a Summer soldier. The armour was unmistakably Autumn in design, but surcoats with Summer's sigil had been far easier to fake. Hastily dyed and stenciled with slapdash paint instead of woven whole, it would still fool the casual glance, especially in the chaos of battle. The red armband would serve to distinguish Autumn's forces from Summer's, and no doubt Summer would figure that out swift enough when their own seemingly turned on them, but Lucien was sure it would prove an effective tactic for a first assault especially, and when the carnage spilled into the streets, civilians in particular would be hard pressed to tell the difference. Casualties would be high. Casualties would be on Lucien's head, since he was the one who'd ferried the plans between Autumn's council and Hybern's adivsors. Anywhere he could, he'd tried to introduce errors, questions, insinuations, but he didn't fool himself it would make enough difference in the end. A lot of people were going to start dying in a few hours, and it would be no consolation at all to them that Lucien was sorry for it.

'My lord?' the youth asked Lucien, heaving another mail suit down from its pegs on the armoury wall. 'I can assist you if you have no squire.'

'No armour for him,' Patrice interrupted, with a malicious sneer. Then again, that was the usual expression on his face, and Lucien ignored it, sticking out his arms so the youth could lower the shirt over his head. Patrice gave the boy a shove, and the mail clattered to the floor as the boy stumbled to his knee. 'You obey me, peasant, not him. I said no armour for him.'

'Take it up with Father,' Lucien interrupted coolly, bending to help the poor fae back upright, but the youth shied away from his offered hand, and Lucien didn't press the issue. 'It's by his order that I'm with you today.'

'And it's by his order that you'll have naught but the clothes on your back.' Patrice grabbed a surcoat from the pile and threw it at Lucien. 'You weren't so stupid to believe you'd be back in good graces that easy, were you? I never took you for stupid, Lulu.'

'Easy?' Lucien clenched his fists in the rough fabric of the surcoat, warring his rising temper. 'Poor luck for Father that with seven sons only two of us seem fit to run his errands. How many treaties have you signed this week, eh?'

Patrice grabbed him by the collar, baring his teeth in Lucien's face. 'I'll show you poor luck--'

'My sons.'

Una. Their mother stood in the door, her expression scrupulously blank as always, her small hands folded before her over a posey of fresh-cut peonies. They fell silent at her approach, Patrice sullenly pretending to adjust his swordbelt and gauntlets as she crossed to them, her heavy skirts dragging in the dirt tracked across the floor and causing the squire to squawk a shaking apology for the state of the place, in and out all morning with rough males arming for battle. Una ignored that, going to Patrice first and turning her cheek up to him. He kissed her perfunctorily, and she slipped the peony under his surcoat and armour to nestle over his heart.

'Go with my blessing,' she said. 'And return home to me when day is done.'

'I will, Mother.' Patrice cast one final glare at Lucien, but evidently decided he'd got in all the shots he could, and he departed, the squire skipping at his heels.

'Will you wear my favour?' Una asked Lucien then, when they stood alone.

Lucien donned the surcoat. It was little more than a sheet with a hole for the head, and he buckled a belt over it, selecting the aptly named bastard sword from the rack to strap at his hip. The hand-and-a-half would be best for the waterfront assault, but he'd want something shorter, more manoeuvrable for the melee sure to ensue in the city. He strung the scabbard for an épée de cour opposite the bastard, light, one-handed, designed for thrusting, and paired it with a baselard dagger. An abundance of weaponry wouldn't make up for lack of armour, but he had a chance, at least, this way. Kind of Beron to leave him the option.

'I will always accept your favour, if you choose to give it,' he answered, facing Una at last. 'But you needn't, if you would prefer not to.'

'I would not offer if I preferred not to.' Una's feathery brows contracted as she looked him over. 'Surely you should wear--'

'It's fine. I'm not much used to it, anyway. Slow me down.'

'And this won't suffice to do that already?' she demanded, a hint of some emotion colouring that sharp tone as she reached, not quite touching, for the faebane manacle on his wrist.

'It's fine,' he said again.

Her lips pressed together, white from pressure, then relaxed as she looked away from him, the portrait of perfect femininity, saddened by the necessity of war, proud of her warrior sons. She was so beautiful in profile, he thought, not for the first time. Like a painting, and as inscrutable as art.

'You never used to say that,' she said softly. 'When it might have been the safer response.'

He forced his lips to curve. 'I grew up.'

Her breath caught, a quick little inhale that sounded pained. If it hurt, it didn't show on her face. 'Will you wear my favour?' she asked again, tonelessly formal.

He inclined his head. 'With pride, my Lady.'

The brush of her fingers was light and graceful, as she tucked the blossom beneath his shirt, over his heart. 'Go with my blessing,' she began, faltering when he covered her hand with his. 'Return... return home to me when the day is done.'

'Thank you, Mother.' She gave him her cheek. He kissed her gently, and prepared for her to withdraw, but instead she reached up to cup his cheek. Her thumb brushed over his scar, and he flushed, face heating all in a rush. 'I'm in no hurry to get a matching set,' he assured her. 'I'll be fine.'

'Watch your brothers' backs,' she said, and let him go then. 'They're not so experienced as you.'

He refrained from scoffing, only just. Then again, it wasn't untrue. She'd never lost a son in combat. Only at Lucien's hands. She might well suppose he meant to send another one to the Mother's bosom, when the heat of battle might disguise the author of the deed. His brothers would probably have planned exactly that. May well have planned it, and Beron was all but abandoning him to the possibility, sending him out there without a stitch of armour. Or challenging him to prove worthy. How many times had Beron pitted his sons against each other? And Lucien the only one who'd ever truly shown his willingness to kill.

It was his breath that shook, now. 'I will,' he promised her.

'Thank you.'

'No, just... I'll do my duty by you. To the best of my ability.'

Una stood hesitating, then, lips parted as if she might say something more, but a sound behind them, the door opening again, stopped her. She abruptly turned on her heel and left at a brisk pace, brushing past Ianthe, who wisely got out of her path.

'I didn't expect to see you,' Lucien said cautiously, hesitating himself, now. He dug for a matching pair of leather arm bracers in the bin. They were mostly used for practise, worn and who knew how old, but they'd offer some paltry protection. He slid them over his sleeves and began to tighten the buckles. Ianthe took over, her slim hands cool and competent as she laced them tightly. She took up next the red ribbon that would mark his as Autumn, knotting it about his biceps.

'I thought it was only fair to inform you,' she murmured, glancing up at him through her lashes. 'If you... don't return--'

'I'm not planning to run.'

'Die,' she retorted, and Lucien snorted a breath through his nose. Yes, she would consider that option the more pressing one. 'I won't stay here.'

Yes. She would have considered that option the most pressing of all. And he couldn't blame her.

'Don't try to enlist any of the servants to help you,' he murmured, and she met his eyes fully now, her fingers encircling his arm. 'They'll sooner turn you in, and then you won't have any freedom of movement. Do you know what woodcarving markings are?' She shook her head ever so slightly. 'The sign of the artisans who built Forest House. They're usually tucked into the design, the size of a fingernail at most, but if you know where to look you'll always find them. Follow the marker McD from the throne room to the tunnels, and from the tunnels you can make your way out. It's a false marker, planted by some ancestor who had the same need for a hidden route. It'll lead you out into the orchards. Can you tell south from north or east from west?' Her lips pressed thin together, and she shook her head reluctantly. 'In the morning, put the sun to your left, and that'll lead you south. After high noon, switch it to your right.'

'And what if I can't see the sun? The forest growth was so thick when we were crossing Autumn before.'

'The sun travels in an arc, and it favours the southern skies. The shadows cast by the trees will bend north.'

'But what if--'

'If you're that unsure, wait wherever you are until you can know. And don't go into the villages. They won't shelter you if Beron comes looking.'

Her chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths. But she calmed herself admirably quick. 'Try not to die. That would be surest of all.'

'I'll endeavour,' he said dryly. He pulled a leather helm with a somewhat crooked nasal guard from the bin and donned it. It wouldn't do much against a crushing blow, but it hid his distinctive hair. He tucked his long braid into the neck of his surcoat. 'I... don't suppose you'd offer me a blessing, High Priestess.'

Her eyes widened. 'You really are worried.'

He wouldn't meet his maker with a soul cleansed of all sins, with or without a blessing. But their weight was heavy on him, all the same. 'If you don't want to--'

She laid a hand upon his shoulder, and closed her eyes. After a moment, Lucien mimicked her, bowing his head. 'Cauldron keep you,' she prayed. 'Mother watch over you. The Forces That Be lend their strength to your sword, their swiftness to your feet, and their love to your shield. Giver of Gifts, Light of the World, Blessed Comforter of the soul, grant your servants, who put their trust in you, the salvation of your righteousness.'

He didn't feel anything. He didn't know if he'd expected to. He didn't know if it meant they'd turned their back to him, the Mother, the Cauldron, the Forces That Be. He felt nothing except a gnawing emptiness in his chest.

'Thank you,' he managed dully. 'Cauldron keep you, Ianthe.' He bowed, and left her standing there alone in the armoury.

Lucien hadn't visited Adriata since Amarantha had began her assault on Prythian. Nostrus had been decent High Lord, if a traditionalist. He'd sought peace with Amarantha, til it had been clear her ambitions would never be satisfied with trade agreements or even land of her own. Then Summer had rebelled, Day and Winter joining them and thinking themselves more than adequate to the task. But Amarantha hadn't cared about things like casualties and costs. She'd thrown so large a force onto Prythian's shores that she'd all but mowed down whole populations, leaving nothing but charnel and wreckage in her wake. And she'd taken out the ruling families of the rebel courts. Tarquin had been a second cousin, a prince by marriage only, but suddenly he was the only survivor of a massacre. A High Lord with half a kingdom.

And now Beron was here with Hybern's troops once again, ready to destroy the other half.

Tarquin's armada was all smoke and flames in the bay, naphtha projectiles and gusts of magic carrying death from Hybern's ships, all outnumbering Tarquin's navy. Hybern's siege engines had turned on the city, too, boulders and burning pitch cracking relentlessly against the red tiled roofs and pearlescent walls. And, from where Lucien stood on the mountainside looking down at Adriata spread below, he could tell that Tarquin was doing what any coastal commander would do. He was massing his troops along the city wall, preparing to defend the castle at what he rationally expected to follow a sea-based assault.

The city itself was practically undefended from land.

Patrice turned to address the Autumn troops. He wore a crested helmet, preening like a peacock as he strutted back and forth before their company. Darach was near to the front, looking all too eager to get going; Lucien couldn't see Alasdare anywhere, til he turned his head and found his brother only a few steps from him, and watching him, not Patrice. 'No prisoners, and no looting,' Patrice was instructing them. He grinned, sharp teeth glinting. 'Within reason, obviously.' Rough laughter passed through the troop. 'We're here to do damage. Drive the civilians towards the shore. And when you hear the signal, go to your designated winnow point. If you're not there when we evacuate, we're leaving you behind. Got it?'

'Yes, sir!'

Patrice drew his sword, and raised it high. 'Attack!' he boomed, and turned to lead the chase down the hill into Adriata.

Alasdare caught Lucien's arm. 'Not a foot out of line,' he warned Lucien.

'Mind yourself,' Lucien retorted, but his promise to his mother lingered uneasily in his gut. 'We could stick together,' he offered reluctantly. For better or worse, however, Alasdare only scoffed at that, and joined a knot of soldiers ahead of them. The fae in front of them began to shuffle forwards, then break into a trot. Lucien pushed forward into a run, and by the time he joined the crowd building up at the gate, his brothers were nowhere to be seen. He lingered, and was one of the last through. He almost didn't make it any further, swaying to a stop over the trampled bodies of the Summer fae who'd been manning the gates. They lay in pools of blood and dirt, their throats slashed. Their teal surcoats were covered in dusty bootprints.

A scream jolted him back. He jogged down the cobbled street, aimless, taking turns on instinct alone; even when he'd come to the city to represent Tamlin for court diplomacy, he'd never been to the outer neighbourhoods. Damage that predated Autumn's attack was obvious, here; scorch marks, buildings hollowed out and long empty, walls tumbled and even some lanes still blocked by rubble. But he could hear fighting, and soon enough he encountered the tail end of Autumn's invaders. He was in time to watch a soldier come out of a house shaking blood off his blade, and he turned away, sickened.

The sound of the battle in the bay was only occasional-- the boom of catapulted boulders smashing the walls, mostly, a rattle of windowpanes in the shock waves. Bilious black smoke told more of tale, rising high enough to dim the sunlight, blown back into the city by the relentless wind. It wasn't long before Lucien could taste cinders in his throat, the ashes of Summer's fleet and its unlucky sailors. The fine grains irritated his eyes, real and mechanical alike, and he stopped at a rain barrel to splash his face. He pounded on every door he passed, shouting himself hoarse as he called for Adriata's terrified residents to flee up into the hills, leave their belongings, speed was the only important thing. He reasoned he could claim he was only encouraging them to exit their barred doors straight onto his sword, if any Autumn soldier questioned him, but for what seemed like hours he saw no other teal surcoats, just the confused and panicking fae beginning to clog the streets.

All too soon, the crush of people confined by tight avenues and too much terror was rapidly growing dangerous-- Lucien grabbed a small winged fae who nearly went down under a neighbour's shove and lifted her to grab at an overhanging balcony, but he was ripped away before he could help the next. He tried to project his voice over the babbling wail of the crowd, shouting for calm, but only those nearest heard him and could no more stop what was happening than he could. Panting against his own dread and the increasing constriction that pinned him to the bodies nearest, he fought to raise his arms to his chest, to push back against the squeeze of mob, and shot up a hand for a trellis beside someone's door. Wood splintered in his hands as he was dragged away, but he wouldn't release his desperate hold, fighting to get solidly in front of it. He jammed a foot into one of the diamond-shaped cross slats and climbed, wrenching himself higher til he was suddenly free of the crowd--

A new tone of alarm in the screaming, and it seemed the whole population of Adriata was wailing, the crowd falling like wheat before a scythe as dark shadows plummeted from the sky. No-- zoomed over them. Lucien wiped sweat from his eyes with his sleeve, blinking as he stared up. Not boulders flung by the siege engines at the bay, as he first assumed. Bodies, with great flapping wings. Illyrians. Clad in their dark leather armour, bearing wickedly sharp spears and swords and chanting a death dirge as they swooped downhill towards the sea.

Illyrians. Night Court. They'd come.

Lucien's heart began to beat again with a sudden painful lurch, pounding against this ribs. They'd come. They'd got his message.

He found his voice again, and this time in the awed silence the Adriatans heard him. 'Everyone hold!' Lucien bellowed. 'Everyone still! You there by the well-- you back up first. Five at a time! I said everyone hold! Wait for your turn or you'll be crushed to death. Five more, now.' A little space opened up as the pressure eased, and he jumped back to the ground. 'Females and younglings first. Everyone look around you, get the children out, pass them back--' He grabbed at a sobbing boy and passed him into the arms of a burly fae in a butcher's apron, and took an infant next, a tiny babe in a woven blanket. 'That's right, come on. Calm. Stay calm. Now let the females through. Get to the mountain gates and climb. Get to--'

A female was struggling through the crowd, desperate fists in the collars of two youths with bark-like brown skin. Lucien cleared a path for her, holding back a knot of squirming males, and she slid past him, chancing to look up into his eyes, and stopped dead.

'Alis,' Lucien breathed.

Alis's dark eyes widened. And then veered sharply to up, just as Lucien registered something big and deadly plunging into the crowd. Hands wrapped around his chest and shoulders and grabbed him up, wrenched him off his feet and into the air. Lucien kicked madly, but the Illyrian had him and none too gently. He whipped Lucien into the side of a building and then dragged him across a roof, terracotta tiles ripping through his leggings to shred skin before he threw Lucien into an alley from some nine metres in the air. Lucien hit an external staircase and ricocheted, his wild grab wrenching his shoulder and only barely slowing his fall. And then he hit the ground, agony shooting up from ankle and knee and then sending him sprawling face down on the cobblestones.

Over the roar of blood in his head he heard the Illyrian land nearby. Booted steps ventured near, and then the heavy toe of one nudged Lucien in the ribs. Lucien curled in on the hurt before he stop himself, but he did manage to keep still as he took inventory of his pains. Nothing deadly, but he was injured, and he was already limited against the strength and reach of an Illyrian who could fucking fly. He wormed a hand down to grip the hilt of his dagger. He might get one lucky strike in--

'Lucien?' the Illyrian said.

He opened his eyes. Vision was bleary. But he could see his helm, laying on the stones by the Illyrian's feet. His own red curls, escaped from the braid, gleaming dully in the ashy dirt. He fumbled to get his arm under him-- fuck. Other arm. Left shoulder was maybe dislocated. He began the process of pushing himself upright, easing back onto his rump and finding a wall to put his back to. 'Azriel,' he rasped.

Azriel's flat expression didn't change, but his lips tightened minutely. He tapped on the knife strapped on his thigh. 'Shit,' he muttered, heaving a breath. 'Get up.'

'I'd love to, but I think my leg is broken.' He flinched as Azriel reached for him, just couldn't contain it, and warily watched the hands that hovered in the air, hesitating. Then deciding. Azriel seized him by the surcoat, got a hand wedged into his armpit, and then his face was pressed to Azriel's leatherclad chest as Azriel tried to haul him bodily upright. He actually stood there leaning on the Night Court's spymaster for a full minute, his head swimming, pulse pounding in his ears. A thick arm was wrapped about his back, supporting him as he-- as he eventually gathered himself. At some point. Rather nice of Azriel to wait him out. Although potentially Azriel thought he was dying, after a fall like that.

Not a fall. Azriel had given him a toss, after all.

Lucien eased upright. Flattened his back to the wall behind him. Azriel watched him beneath frowning brows, one hand still hovering, anticipating his imminent demise, probably.

'You need to find Eris,' he croaked.

Azriel's cut-glass chin rose. 'Find Eris?'

'He's been away from Autumn. No-one'll admit where. And Beron's been gone more. They've been leaving me practically unsupervised. Wherever they are, it's not with Hybern. So where else?'

'Any clues where to start?'

'I don't think it's Prythian. I could be wrong, but...' He didn't want to put Night's spies too far off course, but it was the only information he had that was at all logical. 'The Hybern royals, Brannagh and Dagdan, they claimed they had upwards of a hundred thousand troops. There's not a hundred thousand fae on that island, so they must have been counting allies on the continent. It's what they did before, in the War. If I were Hybern, and I was down two Emissaries, that's how I'd use Eris. He's articulate and schooled in administering a marching army and that would keep him hostage against Beron turning coat.'

'Turning traitor again,' Azriel pointed out, quite unnecessarily. 'Would he do that?'

'Beron would sell each and every one of his sons and his wife to the highest bidder,' Lucien said bitterly. 'So I suggest you tell Rhysand to come up with a suitable bid to win him back.'

The shadows gathered about Azriel's shoulders flickered. Lucien's mechanical eye tracked them slithering. 'Do you want me to set that shoulder?' the warrior asked finally.

That was as close to an apology as Lucien would ever have out of the Night Court, that was sure. 'Tell me there's more than just the Illyrians come to fight today.'

Azriel's enormous hand brought his arm up perpendicular to his chest. 'Deep breath.' He braced Lucien for something less than a second, then jammed the dislocated shoulder joint back into place. Lucien bit the inside of his own cheek hard enough to taste blood, unable to suppress a groan at the sharp flare of pain, even if it did ease quickly to a swollen throb.

The shadows susurrated, the only warning they had. Lucien jerked his head up, instinctively pushing Azriel away, or trying to, given Azriel was the weight and implacability of a brick wall. Azriel shoved at him too, and Lucien was the one who cratered sideways, stumbling onto a knee as Azriel drew his blade and turned to face the fae rushing them with a sword. Lucien saw a teal surcoat as the two joined battle. Lucien clawed his way back to his feet, swaying on the broken leg, fumbling to draw a sword of his own. Lucky for Lucien, Azriel didn't wait for him to engage and risk revealing his allegiances in front of an Autumn soldier. The Illyrian spread his wings as wide as the narrow alley allowed and winnowed in a cloud of wisping shadow. He reappeared above their heads, wings flapping ash on them below, and then he was gone, flying off towards the bay.

The Autumn soldier shucked his helmet, revealing a sweat-streaked and familiar face. Ambroise. He came to Lucien immediately, checking him for wounds. 'You do find yourself in the most interesting of predicaments, my friend,' he told Lucien, and drew Lucien's arm about his shoulders to take his weight off the leg. 'Come on. We need to get to our winnow station.'

'I didn't hear the signal.' Lucien limped with Ambroise's help for the mouth of the alley. He looked sidelong at the other fae as they hurried as best they could, wondering how much Ambroise had seen. And who Ambroise would undoubtedly report it to. Friend. He couldn't trust it. Couldn't believe it.

'The signal is the fucking Illyrian army arriving,' Ambroise said. He spared a glance in either direction up the street, then chose a direction with seeming confidence, though Lucien was now so turned about he had no real idea where they were. 'And who knows what other reinforcements are on their way. Time to scat.'

'If we abandon Hybern--'

'Live to fight another day.' Ambroise gave him a searing glare. 'I know you know how to do that. So do it.'

A scream echoed above the pounding of the siege engines and the clash of swords throughout the city. Lucien craned his head up, to see two winged forms brawling through the air. He recognised the Attor, his gut seizing tight. The Attor grappled with another winged fae Lucien took for an Illyrian til he realised it was a female. A familiar female at that. Feyre, with her Illyrian wings. Even at a distance he could see her knife slashing, finding purchase in the Attor's thick hide, again and again. They plummeted through the smoke, vanishing behind the red roofs of Adriata's burning castle.

Lucien bit his tongue to stop himself replying. Anything he said would be incriminating. Anything he said would confirm whatever Ambroise already thought. So he said nothing at all, and let Ambroise drag him through the streets of dead and dying fae to escape the destruction he'd helped wreak.

Chapter Text

Four Months Past

'Autumn troops took heavy casualties as well, your Majesty,' Lucien said. 'Those in the vanguard met resistance from organised citizen homeguards--'

'Which we anticipated and discussed at length, and which you assured me would be a mere irritant,' Cían rumbled.

'The arrival of the Illyrians from overland also complicated Autumn's progress through the city,' Lucien persisted, neutrally and hating every word as he spoke it. 'We didn't expect reinforcements, particularly from Night Court. As you're aware, High Lord Tarquin issued blood rubies to both Rhysand and Feyre--'

'Is this an apology?' Cían finished his chicken and tossed down the stripped wing bones, licking his fingers. 'If it isn't, you can shut up. I'm tired of hearing you drone on.'

Lucien squared his jaw. 'Yes, your Majesty.'

A message had been awaiting Lucien at breakfast, ordering him to return to Hybern to 'continue negotiations' with their disgruntled ally. Of Beron himself, there had been no sign, and Lucien had been left to the attentions of the same retinue as before, Ambroise and a few soldiers to guard them-- or watch Lucien, more like. None had been happy when Hybern's naga had separated them at the gate, stranding the rest of the Autumn court contingent in the courtyard to wait while Lucien alone was allowed, or rather ordered, inside to account for Autumn's sins. It was going as well as it could do, in Lucien's estimation. If Beron had wanted him better prepared or even able to offer anything in compensation, he might have been able to persuade the king to overlook his ire, but that had never been Beron's way. Beron was transactional from start to finish, only concerned with what he could have and how much of it, and Hybern was learning that the hard way now.

Cían drained his ale and belched. The female naga stepped up to the table, lifting the pitcher, awkward with her long talons, and filled the tankard back to the rim. 'Sit,' Hybern ordered him then. 'Amusing as it would be to watch you pitch over, I can do without the mess. What happened to you?'

Lucien ordinarily wouldn't have taken him up on it, but his leg was aching fiercely, and he couldn't pass the relief. 'Thank you,' he said stiffly, and eased himself into a chair. The naga brought him a tankard, too, though he shook his head at that. She poured anyway, her strange fierce eyes on his, and he had to force himself to look away.

'Wounded in battle,' he answered finally. 'As I said, Autumn took casualties on the ground.'

'Days ago. Why haven't you healed it?'

'I thank your Majesty for your concern, but please, my injury is of no moment. If we could return to the topic at hand--'

'That topic being how your devious father double-crossed me and left my troops for dead.' Hybern toasted him. 'I wonder, in sending you here today, did he ponder that I might inflict my displeasure on your conveniently close corpse?'

'I've received a thousand such threats in my centuries as Emissary,' Lucien replied undaunted. 'I believe the last time someone carried through my father found it quite amusing. He even suggested a fitting punishment. "There was a human saying, when they worked our lands," my father told your general Amarantha. "An eye for an eye."'

Cían grinned, pointed canines viciously bared. 'My sweet Amarantha did that to your face, eh? She was a piece of work. Went quite mad after that mortal general killed her sister. I was told she counted, in the beginning, how many tiny pieces she carved from his body, but the number grew too great to be tallied.' He swirled his tankard, and drank a deep swallow. 'I heard she fed him some of those pieces, too. Starting with his cock.'

Lucien's stomach lurched. He had mastery enough of his expression not to show it, but knew his scent, gone sour, would give him away, and he'd never mastered feeling nothing. 'Poor man,' he said, slightly hoarse, trying not to think of the resurrected madman currently riding free in Prythian doing Mother knew what and at whose behest. Five hundred years as an eyeball must have been a welcome rest, after a death like that.

'What did it feel like?'

'Unending agony, I'm sure.'

'Not the mortal,' Cían dismissed that. 'You. The face, I mean.'

Lucien's stomach was most decidedly unhappy now. He pushed the ale away. 'Like a fucking son of a bitch, your Majesty.'

Hybern guffawed, pounding the table with his fist. 'I like you, Vanserra,' he toasted Lucien, and drained the rest of it before slamming it down. 'You should have talked for Spring, not that scheming witch Ianthe. Or that faithless fae you unfortunately must call Father. Come work for me instead. I've never had an Emissary. I like the idea of you informing all those mealworms calling themselves High Lords of their immanent demise with those fancy words of yours.'

'Thank you for the generous offer. I'm afraid my father will likely decline to release me.'

'Perhaps that won't be a lasting problem.'

Lucien whetted his lips, and decided very deliberately not to ask if that was prediction or promise. 'Speaking of the future. Autumn stands humbly by to assist in your next stratagem. Only tell me where and how many you will need, and--'

'And Beron will find some way to "assist" for five minutes and leave my forces to do the dying.' Cían stared him down for a long silence, then, thick fingers tapping on the table, small finger to thumb, over and over. 'As a matter of fact, I do require something of Beron. Something a High Lord with such an ample stock of sons will no doubt be able to fulfill with ease. You will recall the mortal queens from the continent-- you were there, after all, when one of them partook of the Cauldron's power.'

'Yes,' Lucien attested flatly, unable not to think of Elain, her crumpled form, sodden and sobbing, so small and light in his arms as he cradled her to his chest. 'I recall.'

'Females,' Cían confided, with a cold sneer. 'These queens have proved particularly easy to distract and divide. Humans were never meant to have dominion over themselves; they're silly creatures, their desires so small and petty. Turning them into faeries wouldn't have solved that, and I'm glad overall-- diluting the stock with unworthy blood is always a bad idea. But I desire to keep them close a while longer, so long as I have need of their armies and navies. A handful of handsome princes should keep them in pocket. What happens to them after the vows, well. That's your business.'

Lucien smoothed his hands along the arms of his chair, grounding himself. 'You want the sons of Autumn to marry the human queens?'

'I don't care how you do it. They might be happy enough to bed, not wed-- your father makes mileage on that saying, too. "Autumn males have fire in the blood."'

'What do you mean, my father...'

But the answer came to him before he even completed the sentence. Eris. His strange absence, his vague business away from Autumn. Beron's involvement. Inevitably. Beron would do whatever he had to, whatever he wanted to, just as he always had.

Cían shoved back his chair, and stood. 'You'll deliver the message, I trust. A pleasure as always, Vanserra. Til next time.'

Lucien rose to bow, instinct unthinking as Hybern strode for the door, slamming through. The naga female followed in his wake, but only so far as the door. She turned, her dark draping cloak parting for one of those claws to crook at him. Summoning him to follow. She didn't make room for him, and he had to squeeze past her through the door. Her scent was strange, pungent-- a layer of spice and heat, like pepper, and something rotting beneath it, dank and repulsive. Her nostrils flared for him, too, forked tongue flicking just past her lips. She made no other move towards him, but her hunger almost throbbed between them, as palpable as the beads of sweat at Lucien's hairline that she surely smelled.

Lucien forced himself to look away, and walk on quickly.

'Let's go,' he gathered his travel companions, as he exited the keep into a chill rain. He touched his hood, but decided to leave it down. The cold pelting downpour eased the heat in his head, his chest, as good as a plunge into icy water. He needed his wits about him, now more than even in there with the king.

'You didn't have enough time between jumps to recover,' Ambroise objected, reaching to pull him under the slight shelter of a rotting wooden eave, but Lucien shook him off. After a tense moment, Ambroise's hand still hovering outstretched, the male joined him in the rain instead, though he kept his hood raised. 'Care to share?'

'Not here.' Lucien beckoned the soldiers near, and they obeyed him this time, huddling close as Lucien placed a hand each on the two nearest, the others hurriedly grabbing hold of each other to close the link. Ambroise was last, wrapping a hand around Lucien's wrist, where the faebane manacle usually clasped. Lucien didn't wait for further questions. He winnowed them all to the first atoll halfway between Hybern and Spring, and then without a pause for more than a deep breath he jumped them again, arriving in Spring with a lurch. Black spots fuzzed over his vision, and he swayed, kept upright by one of the soldiers quickly bracing him. Ambroise gave him a downward shove, and he sat abruptly in the grass.

'Water,' Ambroise snapped, and a flask was passed, which Ambroise held to Lucien's lips, tilting forcibly til it was swallow or drown. 'What the hell did that prove,' Ambroise groused at him. 'Put your head between your knees. Back up, all of you, give him room to breathe.'

'I'm fine,' Lucien gasped.

'I'd like to arrive back home with all my pieces, thanks. You can sit there til you've proper strength to do it right.' Ambroise eased onto his own rump, waiting for Lucien to recover from the dizzy spell and settle. Waited for Lucien to grow embarrassed over his weakness, a flush burning his cheeks. But Lucien didn't offer an apology, and after a minute Ambroise snorted. 'Vanserra,' was all the male said.

'No,' Lucien mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. His cloak was quite sodden for his foolish stunt in the rain, his hair dripping down his collar, and he was abruptly and entirely miserable. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against his knees. 'Where's my brother?' he whispered into them. 'Do you know?'

Ambroise slowly corked the flask, and laid it flat between them. 'You can't do anything about it. You can't do shit, Lucien, that was the entire problem with you coming back here, and the fact it took you this long to realise--'

'I knew.' But there was knowing, and there was knowing. He hated helplessness. He hated his very long and very thorough familiarity with it. He licked dry lips with a dry tongue and raised his head, fighting back the woozy rush til he could open his eyes again without wanting to sick up. 'Can you do anything about it?'

Ambroise snorted again, a half smile, incredulous shake of his head all answer enough. 'Exactly what do you think you've got to offer me if I could?'

'Whatever you want.'

'Cauldron, how did you survive this long saying shit like that.' 

'Not particularly well, as happens.' His eyes drifted shut of their own accord, and he laid his cheek on his knee. 'Please.'

The sound of the flask again-- no, a different, smaller flask. The faint whiff of whisky. Ambroise swallowed three times in a row, and didn't offer to share. 'And who are we expending all this energy for today? Night Court? Tamlin? Beron, Hybern, Eris? No wonder you're dizzy, spinning out between all those impossible loyalties.'

'I'm not...'

'Not very convincing? Not hiding it hardly at all? Not going to die when any one of those finds out you're not on their side anymore?'

Lucien ground his teeth together, and said the stupidest thing he'd ever uttered in his life. 'There don't have to be sides.'

'You're a fool,' Ambroise said with cutting contempt. He slugged from his flask. 'You could be something in Autumn, you know,' the male said coldly, voice drifting no farther between them than that smell, sharp and numbing at once. 'I know you don't want to hear that, you've made that clear. I was there, Under the Mountain, when you taunted Amarantha into taking your eye, when you pushed her into punishing you for interfering with the human girl's trials-- I have watched you make ridiculously bad mistakes out of misplaced loyalty to unworthy men, and you are doing it again. You could stand on your own power here, or at least learn to use the power you already have-- a name, a reputation. You could make a difference here.'

Those mistakes had killed an innocent female. Jes had warned him, even, nervous, wondered aloud if they should try to leave Autumn, and Lucien hadn't wanted her to have to give up her home, leave her parents. He'd thought he could make it work. And here he was trying to make this work, too, some bargain that would save Eris from whatever scheme Beron was at and keep Hybern happy and keep Ianthe and the baby safe and keep a bad war from being a worse war and keep himself... keep himself floating just enough not to drown.

'If you've some notion of using me for whatever ambitions you're nurturing--' he began weakly.

'Don't worry, I discarded that notion the day I met you.' Ambroise climbed to his feet, and kicked the water flask at Lucien. 'Get yourself together. I want to be back in Autumn by afternoon.'

'Look lively,' Alasdare warned him, pinching him wickedly in the side as he passed. He was out of range before Lucien could retaliate, snickering as he joined Darach by the tea service.

Lucien rubbed the ache as he straightened from his slump on the wall. It was the third day in a row Beron had mustered his sons before dawn's first rays. Lucien was ordinarily an early riser, always eager to greet the sun, but he'd slept little and fitfully since the assault on Adriata began to play on repeat every time he closed his eyes. Some nights he watched Feyre and the Attor tumble from the sky to smash on the streets below; sometimes it was Alis, her eyes wide and fearful and accusing. This morning, it had been Jes, until he'd run to her broken body, lifting her into his arms, and Elain's face, tear-swollen and shattered, had looked up into his.

A month of sleeping on the couch, or rather tossing and turning through the wee hours, was starting to wear on him. With the faebane manacle restraining his natural healing, he was left to suffer the slow mending of his broken leg little better than a mortal, and that was not the only pain that never seemed to quite go away. The rash from the manacle had blistered and spread up his arm. His head throbbed continuously, a rumble of nausea in his gut that never settled. Darach had tripped him on the stairs before dinner last night, and he'd found two great blotchy bruises on his knees in the bath this morning. It joined several others lingering in shades of purple and green mottling his skin. When he'd brushed his teeth, he'd spat red into the basin.

He kept it from Ianthe, not that she asked him any questions. Her discomforts were growing with the baby, and the bump in her belly led her to arch her back slightly all day as her accustomed centre of gravity shifted awkwardly. She complained of sharp pains from her hip to ankle, swollen and aching feet, hot flushes, fatigue. Spider veins appearing in her once pristine legs, that seemed to particularly distress her, and stretch marks that had left her weeping one day, and throwing a vase at Lucien for trying to dismiss her emotionality as another symptom. He'd given her her space after that, deservedly. At least Lucien had an excuse to escape during the day-- he didn't envy Ianthe's matron, subject to ever-sharper complaints. Lucien's mother and ladies still tolerated Ianthe in their sewing circle, but they'd begun to indulge in activities Ianthe was barred from as a pregnant female-- riding in the woods, even lawn games as tame as croquet-- leaving Ianthe to stew alone in the shade of a tent as the court healers took turns forcing vile 'health tonics' on her. Lucien had even tried one, to convince Ianthe they were neither poisoned nor so disgusting they were intolerable, although he'd had to choke it down and struggle to maintain a bland expression. Ianthe had not been appeased.

The door opened again, and Lucien did look lively then, expecting Beron to make his appearance at last. But it wasn't their father who came sauntering into the family dining hall as if he hadn't been Cauldron knew where for weeks. It was Eris.

Lucien practically sprinted, beating Patrice to their brother's side by a hair and warning Patrice off with a scowl. 'Where have you been?' he demanded in a whispered hiss.

Up close, Eris looked exhausted. Puffy and purple bags under his eyes spoke of his own sleepless nights, and there was a pinch to his mouth eloquent of too many thoughts held rigidly in silence. A faint gleam of sweat on his neck disappeared as he untied his cloak and handed it off to a servant, hardly slowing on his path to the breakfast buffet. Eris poured tea with a hand that shook, and Lucien fetched the cream and sugar without prompting, doctoring the tea when Eris made to sip it black.

'You look as though you need it,' Lucien told him quietly, and handed him back the cup now several shades lighter and four solid spoonfuls sweeter.

Eris grimaced a bit at the taste, but drank it down in steady swallows. As he did, Lucien made up a plate for him, dishing a gammon steak and several rashers of bacon, fat and blackened sausages, haggis, a few slices of tattie scones with a spoonful of mince, three fried eggs still steaming from the griddle, and he slathered butter and blackberry jam on two slices of toast. Eris grumbled as Lucien then took him by the elbow and guided him to the table, but suffered himself to be bullied into a chair, napkin draped over his lap, cutlery stuffed into each hand, and a new cup of tea prepared. Lucien sat at his side and pointedly watched him eat til Eris got into a good rhythm, and only then relaxing himself. He stole a rasher and sat back with it, peeling small bites at a time as Eris wolfed his food as if it were the first he'd had in a goodly while. Their brothers, meanwhile, served themselves as well, and sat at the other end of the table, glowering at Lucien. They talked quietly amongst themselves, and broke into rude laughter, quietening only when Eris roused himself to an imperious glare.

'You'd do well to reconcile that,' Eris advised, swimming up from his gorging for air. He dabbed grease from his lips with his napkin, and bit into the toast with relish. 'At least pretend not to find them quite so loathsome.'

'I'm no good at that kind of pretending.'

'I well recall,' Eris said, tapping his knife against his own cheek, but that gesture was a pointed reminder of just how Lucien had gone about losing an eye, when it might have been more politic to hold his tongue. Lucien flipped his brother a two-fingered salute and slouched back in his chair, unamused. Well. Reluctantly amused.

'Where have you been?' Lucien pressed then.

'If you were meant to know, you'd know.'

Lucien stole a tattie and tore it in half, returning one piece to the plate. 'Who and why they might prefer me ignorant is not the question.'

'The continent.' Eris drowned his softly spoken words in the teacup. 'Hybern's--'

'The mortal queens,' Lucien finished. Eris looked at him sharpish. 'I do know,' Lucien said. 'I'm sorry.'

Eris paled. 'Father,' he began stiltedly, but whatever he'd been about to say he cut off, abruptly standing. Lucien turned his head, and saw Beron come striding through the door in his customary swagger. Lucien and his brothers rose, as well, though Beron ignored their bows, bypassing them for the buffet at the far end of the room. They all hovered there on their feet, forced to wait for acknowledgment, which Beron withheld for long minutes as he browsed the waiting spread, taking his time selecting. When he finally returned to the table to take his place at its head, they were allowed to resume their seats, everyone silent as Beron settled in.

'Eat,' Beron waved dismissively, as if he were not the reason they'd all had to stop doing. Eris aimed a kick at Lucien's ankle, and Lucien pulled his face into more neutral lines. 'Lucien, I'm sure our humble Autumn repast is not the extravagant gourmand's feast you'd find in Spring, but surely you're not too good to break your fast with us?'

'Of course not, Father.'

'Then get a plate.'

Lucien stood, and bowed, in the Autumn fashion, hand over his heart. Then spun on the foot Eris kicked again to go to the buffet. When he returned a minute later with a conservative serving of an egg, toast, and a fresh apple, Beron's eyes bored into his, but no further commentary ensued. Instead they ate in silence, exactly like every other meal Lucien had ever had in this court.

'I'll need you lads in the saddle this week,' Beron informed them some twenty minutes of quiet chewing later. 'There's been reports from the southern border about Spring fae and even humans trying to cross from Spring.'

'Refugees?' Lucien asked, and this time Eris went so far as to put a hand on his thigh and squeeze hard. Lucien shut his mouth.

'With the Wall down we need to guard against parasites seeking our resources.' Beron drank his tea. 'Round up any you find. We'll offer them to our ally first, of course. If Hybern takes a pass, we can keep them as a bargaining chip with the other Courts. You find any soldiers or males with weapons amongst them, kill them on sight. Keep any armour. Waste not.'

Eris's hand must have been cramping, he was holding Lucien so hard. Lucien dug his own fist into the other leg, fingernails digging into soft flesh.

'And another thing,' Beron said, dabbing his mouth with his napkin and flinging it down over his plate. 'I need two of you to join Eris on the continent for a spell. You can draw lots. Not you, Lucien-- you're already engaged, so to speak.'

Lucien bit the inside of his cheek. He hadn't doubted Beron would do it, but to hear him dispense of his sons with no greater care than looted armour hit hard. He covered Eris's hand, and Eris took an aborted, shallow breath beside him.

'Eris can fill you in,' Beron finished, and shoved his chair back to rise. He didn't look back as he departed.

'Well?' Patrice asked curiously. 'Off to fight on the continent now?'

'Later,' Eris said only. 'You heard Father. Pack for the border, we'll be sleeping rough a few nights at least.'

'We can quarter with the villages,' Alasdare protested.

'If you fancy lice from a pig farmer's unwashed sheets.' Eris cut off a whine with a slashing gesture. 'Do what you're told, or you can walk to the border. Don't think I won't.'

'All right, all right,' Alasdare muttered, slinking off sullenly with Darach. Patrice was slower to go, frowning as he contrived to linger, but Eris chased him off with a curt jerk of the chin. Only when he and Lucien were alone did he finally relax, tilting his head back to rest on the chair behind him.

'Don't fuck up on the border watch,' Eris warned him half-heartedly. 'Try not to fuck up.'

'I won't kill anyone fleeing a war we started--'

'That's well enough, but it's not a rescue mission either.'

'No, it's a slave catching!'

'Think with your brain and not your heart,' Eris said harshly, snapping to his feet to plant his fists on the table, chin tucked to his chest now. 'It wouldn't have to be anything if word got to Spring to warn their own people,' he added, so low Lucien almost didn't hear it.

'I... I don't know if I have a way to do that,' he breathed. 'Anyone who would do that for me.'

'Then what have you been doing with your time here?' Eris pushed himself upright as if it took all his strength. 'I need a bath. I'll meet you all in an hour.'

'Eris.' Lucien grabbed his arm, gentling his grip immediately when Eris stiffened and strained away. He didn't let go, though he knew that was what Eris wanted-- knew, too, that what Eris really wanted, needed, was touch that wasn't poisonous, care that wasn't greedy and demanding. Eris stood there, all but vibrating with nerves, his face turned away. Lucien didn't force anything more on him, just his thumb stroking slowly along Eris's sleeve.

In some ways, Eris looked as much or more like the brother born out of wedlock. A changeling substituted for the firstborn prince, with his long narrow face and hair a pale orange more than their mother's flame red or Beron's deep auburn. The light eyes that matched neither parent, those amber eyes that unsettled and repelled all attempts to know the mind behind them. Lucien didn't always trust Eris, didn't always approve his actions or even understand his motives, but he knew better than anyone that his brother clung so hard to the illusion of control because there was so very little he could truly change. It was a miracle Eris was still standing after five centuries in this place, a miracle the weight of this place hadn't snuffed out what small spark still lived in him.

Maybe Ambroise was right. If Lucien was going to accomplish anything here, he had to pick. And there was only one right choice.

'I'll take care of it,' Lucien said. 'Leave it with me.'

Eris's throat bobbed in a hard swallow. He finally moved, wiping at fresh sweat on his neck, his forehead. He squeezed Lucien's hand, and walked away, headed for the door.

'I'm sorry,' Lucien said to his retreating back. 'I'm sorry you had to find out what it's like.'

Eris paused with his hand on the latch. 'I'm sorry you did, too.' He let himself out, the door whuffing closed with barely a sound.

Lucien stood, checking his jerkin, his cuffs, his hair. He walked to the door, too, and opened it to find his valet Seppo, prompt as ever, awaiting him. 'I need to pack for several days' ride, all weather, and speak to the quartermaster about a tent and provisions,' he ordered. 'In an hour, please.'

'Yes, my lord.' Seppo bowed and turned smartly, but Lucien drew him back. 'Sir?'

'I need to speak with Lord Ambroise first. Could you get him a message to meet me?'

'Would you prefer to meet in your quarters or to use one of the official rooms?'

'What would you recommend? For a private conversation. Out of the way, so I don't bother anyone.'

Seppo didn't so much as blink at that. 'Might I suggest the belfry, my lord? Though a bit of a trek, it would certainly satisfy those requirements.'

'It certainly would. Thank you. I'll be back to say good-bye to the High Priestess before I leave.'

Seppo bowed again, and they parted ways. Lucien went back into the dining hall, and searched the buffet table for a knife with a sharp enough edge. He didn't have any jewellery or signets or badges that could authenticate a message, but he did have one thing Tamlin would be sure to recognise. He set the knife to a lock of his hair, and sawed until it cut through. He stashed the ginger curl inside his jerkin. He'd have to ask Ianthe to speak a prayer for him-- only the Mother knew if he could really trust Ambroise to do this, and only the Mother knew if Tamlin would receive it, believe it, and be able to do anything in time to help.

Time to start making room for miracles to happen.

**

Present Day

'Lucien,' Beron beckoned. 'Come. I want you to see this.'

Lucien politely but firmly moved Lord Wakeham out of his way. The council shifted, shuffling left or right to make room as the heir took his place at Beron's side. Eris, opposite him, was scrupulously expressionless as Beron put a hand on Lucien's shoulder, drawing him close as the High Lord pointed to the map spread before them.

The War Room was all map, actually, the entire table taken up with a leather mat the size of a bedsheet and then some. Two sheets-- Prythian in all its familiar configuration, the seven courts inked in meticulous detail, but on the other, newer, a map of the Continental courts, now annotated with many recent observations. Relations with their continental cousins had largely faded beneath local concerns over the centuries since the War, though Ianthe was not the only Prythian faerie to flee Amarantha's takeover to distant shores. Amarantha had allowed trade to falter, reneged on treaties, and sent a few Emissaries back in pieces, stopping just short of spreading her battlefield to another front. How that would have squared with Hybern's alliances on the continent, Lucien could only speculate. That would have been a clever piece of work, trying to sow discord between the King of Hybern and the former general rising above her station, daring to call herself Queen. A pity Amarantha had so readily cut them off at every turn.

'Well?' Beron asked him.

Lucien looked up, clasping his hands behind him in a mirror of Eris's favourite 'never mind me, no threat here' pose. 'Sir?' he replied deferentially. He might have laid it on a bit thick, judging by the soft snort someone nearby allowed to be heard.

Beron gestured to the map. 'Your analysis, boy.'

Analysis? Analysis of what? Lucien cut the nerves to his face, allowing no expression but unruffled calm as he tried to quickly assess any information that could help him pass this sudden test. The small figurines of clay with flags of coloured paper were troops, obviously, though not every court had them... unknown risks or discounted for whatever reason? He counted rapidly, multiplying the flags by the number they represented and comparing the totals. 'We don't outnumber our opponents, even with our human allies. And with humans able to freely march the continent now the Wall is destroyed, I don't see Hybern's allies in Rask especially turning a blind eye to that. They'll keep troops back to defend their border, to say nothing of invading the mortal lands if the opportunity arises. That puts our numbers even further in doubt. And that's assuming a one-to-one equity between our soldiers and theirs-- I'd not count a human the same as an Illyrian warrior.'

Beron's head tilted, considering that. His hand on Lucien's shoulder was heavy, squeezing, as if he could hardly conceive of touching his heir any other way. 'True enough, that,' he said. 'How would you even the field, then?'

There was no way this hadn't already been discussed to death by the council. They had an answer, and this little show Beron was putting on of soliciting Lucien's opinion was just that, a show. That didn't make it any less important to guess correctly. Lucien's throat was dry, eyes roving the map for any clues. 'Hybern already has the Cauldron,' he said. 'Rhysand has the Book of Breathings. I'd say that effectively neutralises both as weapons. There are other items of power-- other beings of power, like Amren. She's with the Night Court as well. The Weaver is in the Middle, but we couldn't trust her to turn only on our enemies... we could try to free the Bone Carver from the Prison, same problem...' His eyes lingered on the map of the continent, and he gnawed his lip, mind spinning. He reached out a finger, to touch the edge of a lake drawn in black, a grinning skull in its centre. 'There was a third Death God. Koschei.'

'And?'

'The other two were bound to specific places. It's said that he was, too. But he may still have power to lend.' Beron had always held back from such extremes before, anything that could threaten or eclipse his own power. 'No doubt the price would be steep.'

'No doubt. And yet, needs must.' Beron released Lucien abruptly, and Lucien sighed in relief, on the inside at least. 'Well reasoned, my son.'

'Sir,' Lucien murmured. Eris's face was like stone, but his jaw seemed tightly clenched. 

'We're done here,' Beron told his councilors, and none lingered, filing for the door talking in low voices amongst themselves. Beron didn't move, and Eris didn't move, at least til Beron jerked his chin, and then Eris slowly stepped back from the table, apparently reluctant. His eyes caught Lucien's, and stayed on him til he had to turn to exit. The door clicked shut behind him.

'Drink with me,' Beron said.

Lucien had never in all his life been invited to do so. He nodded, bereft of any other ideas, and turned towards the sideboard where the wine waited, but Beron was already moving, and poured two goblets. He thrust one in Lucien's hand, and beckoned Lucien to follow him out onto the balcony. The cool evening air was a relief, after the heat of the War Room, packed tight with old males who liked a roaring fire to warm their aching joints. Lucien stood awkwardly cradling his goblet, trying to decide how to act-- grateful for the opportunity, confident in deserving it? Beron leant over the stone railing on his elbows, staring moodily out over the forest, paying no apparent mind to Lucien's dithering.

It was an excellent view, high on a hill that gave a vantage point over the great valley below, a view Lucien recalled as a spread of dappled colour that glistened like jewels as far as the eye could see. The tall trees swayed in the wind, creating endless waves of movement, as if Autumn were itself a living whole. That wasn't too fanciful, really; it was in Spring where Lucien had truly come to understand just how much the land, its people, and its magic were interwoven, interdependent. Calanmai was just an unusually direct means of bringing the three together in an act of ritualised interpolation, but the creation and diffusion of magical power was as necessary as the spring rains or the summer sun, bringing life in its success and threatening blight in its absence. The High Lord was the critical link between those three elements, a protector, a fulcrum on which it all depended-- and when the High Lord failed in that duty, the magic strangled, the land lay fallow or even barren, and the people suffered.

That Autumn beauty Lucien recalled with such painful clarity was crumbling, now. There were bare patches all across the valley, trees withered and shed of their bounty. The raging rivers he'd canoed in his youth had shrunk to a trickle through arid dried beds. He'd have been able to scent huge herds of deer, flocks of birds hundreds of thousands strong, three centuries ago. Now he could sense only a few lone animals picking their way through in a vain search for food, shelter. And yet Beron did nothing but play his games of alliances and bribes and bargains, seeking more for himself, always more, and sharing none of it back.

'Do you remember telling me the tale of the Fisher King?'

Beron glanced sidelong at him. 'The Fisher King?'

'Me, and Eadgar and Alasdare. That time you took us all hunting. We were near a week in those woods out there, just the four of us.' And the battalion of servants and sentries and the hawksman and the groomsmen, but he had a very distinct memory of sitting with just his brothers and Father, a male he revered and feared in equal measure at that young age, how keen he'd been to impress, how awed at the High Lord's commanding aura. It wasn't a good memory, precisely, but it had been one of the few times Beron deigned to spend any time with him. One of the last times.

'Hm,' Beron mused. The breeze ruffled their hair, and Lucien tucked a curl back into his bun. Beron tracked the movement with his eyes, the hazel hints in the brown irises glinting in the wan sunlight. 'I reckon I recall it. You would have been, oh, fifteen, maybe?'

'Thereabouts.'

'The Fisher King.' Beron returned his attention to the view, sipping his wine. Lucien mimicked him, finding it well spiced, warm but not hot, perfect but for a slightly bitter aftertaste that tingled back in his jaw. 'Aye, I recall. You always did like those fanciful tales. Brenin Pysgotwir, in the Old Tongue. The King was wounded, and it renders him and his kingdom impotent until the Chosen One arrives to heal the wasteland and the maimed king.'

'You said it was a parable. About leadership and duty.'

'Did I. I wonder that you recall it so clearly, when "duty" seems to mean so little to you.'

Lucien bristled, acting affronted even though such an obvious insult was clearly a prelude to something worse than just getting a rise out of a temperamental Vanserra, something that happened easy as breathing and about as often. What more was coming? 'I have always taken my duty very seriously,' he said. 'But I don't believe duty is the same as slavish obedience to whomever speaks loudest.'

'That you dare speak of obedience,' Beron warned him, blowing a dismissive little breath through his nose. 'You were the one who flaunted your disobedience before the entire Court. You were the one who ran. The one who slew your own kin. Exile was more mercy than you deserved.'

The old rage was there, instantly, ugly and hot, very real this time. He clenched his hand on the railing, seeking to ground himself, to contain himself. 'I have apologised,' he said, almost evenly. 'I apologise again, Father. I have hoped, I had thought, that we had put the past behind us.'

'I was well within my rights,' Beron went on, not letting it go. 'As your father and as High Lord.'

Lucien swallowed a mouthful of wine, trying to give himself time to think, but even clenching his jaw didn't stop it bursting out of him. 'And what about Jesminda's rights?' he demanded, unable to stop the words erupting. 'She'd broken no law!'

'My word is law,' Beron said, and now he stood to his full height, facing Lucien down. 'But you never did seem to grasp that simple fact. I forbade you to see her, and you disobeyed. Her death is on your head, boy. And had you only taken your punishment as you deserved, you'd not have been in exile three hundred years, only to wind up right back where you started--'

'And why am I here?' Lucien demanded, going toe to toe with the male who had shaped him and warped him and believed himself in the right solely because the thought came from his own head. 'What game are you playing at, playing the High Lords off Hybern and the king of Hybern off who next, Koschei? For what? You don't plan to stop at annexing Spring and Summer or buying your way into the human lands, do you?'

Beron smiled. It was arrogant, and savage, and infinitely assured as only a male who'd never been checked could be. 'King,' he said. 'Does have a nice ring to it, doesn't it.'

Lucien shook his head, feeling faint as the realisation fully sank in. 'You're mad,' he breathed.

'It would only be madness if I had no means of achieving it. Fortunately, I've come into some expendable resources. What's the term? An heir and a spare? Have a drink, son.'

Lucien dropped his eyes to the goblet clenched in his fist. Paranoia swept him. The mild but sudden numbness of his tongue and throat. The turn of his stomach. 'What's in the wine?'

'No matter. I think I prefer it this way, after all.' Beron's hand clapped his shoulder, thumb pressing painfully into Lucien's neck. Lucien reared back in a belated attempt to avoid it, the wine sloshing them both, but he got no further than the extension of Beron's arm when the magic took him, and then he was no longer there.

The disorientation of winnowing was intense. The body maintained its integrity, but the air around it did not. It felt like the moment after jumping out of a tree where gravity had yet to grab hold, unbound and weightless. And then crashing back into a new reality, squeezed into a space where nothing had been a moment before, forcibly expanding around the body with unholy pressure until everything stabilised. And all in the split of a second, the physical laws of earth and matter distorted and repaired by the sheer strength of magic.

Beron's magic, two times older and greater than Lucien's, masterfully controlled and mercilessly cruel.

Lucien had barely enough time to even realise he'd been winnowed, and then he was reeling from an explosive blow to the face. He tumbled, nerves cut and shocked, hanging from Beron's iron grip on him as he slipped in-- snow? Then Beron hit him again, fist like a cannonball breaking the fragile bone of his nose and eye socket. Blinded, bloodied, breathless, he could no more protect himself from the next blow or the next, and when Beron finally let him fall, he was barely conscious.

'A fitting end for a disgrace I allowed to linger far too long,' Beron said, or so Lucien would think later, because at the moment he could hear nothing but the throb of his heartbeat, the wet gulp of airways drowning in his own blood. 'I'll tell your whore mother you didn't even fight.' And then the male who'd raised him vanished with nothing further, leaving him sprawled and defenceless in the red-spattered slush.

Cold. It was very cold, the wind cutting through his inadequate clothes, numbing him before he could even shiver. What little he could see beyond the blur and swimming darkness was white, all white, white everywhere. Had Beron brought him to Winter? Snow and the wind and no shelter, he needed shelter. He needed to move. It hurt to move, fuck, it hurt to move, but he made himself while he still could, he rolled onto his stomach and lay there smothering, shaking, trying to spit out the bitter fluid choking him. He wasn't dying. He wouldn't die, not of a beating. But the wine-- there had been something in the wine. He hadn't had much of it, but Beron wouldn't have taken a chance he wouldn't drink the whole cup, it would be potent, it would be bad. He had to find shelter before he could lose consciousness. Already the numbness was leeching his strength, his sense. Get up. He had to get up. 

He had to get up. It took forever, it took forever to force his limbs to obey him. He gathered his knees under him, pushed up on his elbows. Raised his pounding head. White. White everywhere. Who knew how many miles away from the nearest tree, rock, anything to break this relentless awful wind. He couldn't stay here, exposed and vulnerable; he'd lost any sense of time, had no idea how long he'd been here, barely enough concentration to think. He needed to think. That was how you survived, you kept your head and you made a plan and you did the things you needed to do-- he knew what to do, he just had to be calm enough to do it. He forced himself to draw slow breaths, holding them until his heartbeat stuttered out of its frantic pace. He wiped a sleeve over his face, cringing at the pain, but clearing his real eye enough to see better. He spat the blood pooling in his mouth, and took stock of himself. Nose broken, surely, and he didn't want to assess what was wrong with his mechanical eye, glitching and sticking in the rapid swelling of his battered face. But he could breathe well enough if he didn't swallow the blood leaking down his throat, and he hadn't lost consciousness.

He was still wearing the fucking faebane bracelet. That would be what killed him, now. He needed magic. He'd need magic enough to winnow out, and he didn't have it. He didn't have it.

He was panicking again. He made himself breathe, straining for calm. He had to think. He had to--

He had to deal with the bracelet. That was the only hope he had of living long enough to... of living at all, and he'd get to the rest if he could. But he had to do this first.

The bracelet was silver. Silver melted if it got hot enough.

It was so hard. He had to reach so far inside for it. And it was just a flicker, locked away. As it it were a flame, he coaxed it, stoked it. His chest began to warm. His arms, his legs. A bead of sweat dripped down his temple. The snow began to steam beneath his palms again. Sparks dripped from his hair.

He brought it to bear on the bracelet. He directed all his heat at the bracelet. He was so desperate for it he wasn't sure it was real, at first, when he began to feel burning about his wrist. But the silver was glowing, now, flaring bright against the white snow. Sweat poured down his face now as he panted through pain, fearing to so much as blink as he concentrated all his might on the slender curve of the manacle. He grabbed it, skin scorching as he screamed into the howling wind. The bracelet stretched, metal warping, not quite enough yet-- and then, like melting candle wax, liquefied silver spurted between his fingers, and the circle broke. His magic, freed, roared out of him, a billowing conflagration that left him kneeling in a puddle before he could corral it back into his shaking control. He dragged in a final boiling breath, and he threw himself into the molecules between space, dissolving and resolving again--

Only to return to exactly where he'd been with hardly a flicker, knees still dug into the same divets, but the wind, the wind was dying, leaving him in a vacuum, a complete absence of sound, but for the crunch of a footstep.

Lucien looked up, and beheld a god.

'Leaving so soon?' Koschei murmured. 'But we've hardly got to know one another.' Cool fingers curved under his chin, a thumb brushing gently along his bloody lip. 'I've been eager to meet you, fireling. Welcome.'

Chapter Text

'You are an elegant dancer, my lord.'

'A long lifetime of balls at which to practise, your Majesty.' Lucien sent the fire-haired beauty into a twirl, her cloth of gold skirts billowing out before swishing back against his legs. Her waist was small but firm under his hands, the stiff boning of her corset almost preventing him from feeling the human heat of her, the determined pumping of her blood, the scent of-- very queenly-- perspiration from hours of trading partners. He had yet to see her take a break, and it had been hard work to judge exactly the right moment to steal past the queue of eager suitors and get her for himself. But worth it. From afar, she was a great beauty, young and vital, her skin a burnished bronze kissed by the sun, her long neck and slender bare arms the pinnacle of feminine beauty. Up close, she was blessed with the most perfect of imperfections, even more dazzling for the freckles that shaded her cheeks, the slight gap in her front teeth that only showed when she lowered her guard enough to smile-- and how he worked to make her smile. Their song was ending, and he was loathe to give her up to the next impatient man. 'Have you seen the full moon tonight, your Majesty?' he enquired, inspired in his desperation to keep her at his side a minute longer. 'A blood moon, they call it. A total lunar eclipse.'

'An inauspicious omen for a party, I would have thought,' she said, quirking a feathery brow. 'But my astrologers insisted it must be tonight. The alignment of the stars will benefit of my court, apparently.'

'It may well be so. There is an ancient tale in my court, about the star-crossed lady who cast a wish upon the moon, and was granted a miracle.' Couples all about them separated as the music ceased, males bowing as females courtsied. Lucien bent low, but he refused to give up her hand, bringing it to his lips instead to brush her knuckles with a bold kiss. 'But you must look upon it in order to be granted your desires.'

'Must I?' The queen was amused, her rosy mouth curling in a smile that saw right through him, and was willing to string him along. Or give him the rope to hang himself by, more like, for his daring. But, oh, he would dare.

'I could escort you,' he suggested slyly, looking up from his bow to show her his own tooth-baring grin, the sharp faerie teeth that repelled humans-- or intrigued them. And he knew she was already intrigued. 'It would be my duty and my blessing both.'

The queen hummed, debating, or pretending to. Oh, he did not doubt she evaluated him, every move he made and the motives behind them. She saw him, saw through him, and it thrilled him. 'I see why they sent you,' was all she said, and he laughed, delighted.

'Is that a yes, Ma'am?'

'A qualified yes,' she warned him, but her eyes were dancing every bit as much as the couples around them. When he extended his arm, she tucked her gloved hand into his elbow, and together they walked out of the grand hall towards the balcony.

It was cooler air outside, which afforded him the opportunity to shed his coat and offer it. It swallowed her small shoulders, the tails hanging to her no doubt shapely calves, just barely hinted at through the many layers of sheer tulle. All unstudied, she leant her elbows right on the stone rail, turning her lovely heart-shaped face up to the moon hanging heavy and low in the sky, a deep pinkish tint that was ominous, yes, but as purely natural as the young woman gazing up at it. Lucien admired her, free to do so unobserved now the crowd was forcibly held back by the doors, legions of glowering human males thwarted from their hunt. Lucien knew he'd only separated her from the pack by her consent, but nonetheless he felt a surge of vicious pride, knowing every man in there hated him right now. At least they no longer hated him solely because he was a faerie fearless to set foot in their lands, he mused. Although no doubt that figured heavily in their reaction to seeing him standing beside her, his hand audaciously resting at the small of her back, just in case she should happen to need the support, of course.

The faint song of the orchestra starting up again pricked his ear. Hers, too, judging by the slight tilt of her head, the drape of her pearl-strung curls over the shoulder of his coat. The dark green jacquard drew out the gold threads of her hair, making his fingers twitch with longing to feel those curls against his skin.

'Perhaps I could beg you for another dance, my Queen,' he murmured, and her eyes darted from the moon, sidelong, to his face.

'I have danced enough for a year. My poor feet are weary.'

'Then tread them upon mine, Majesty.' Boldly he turned her towards him, arm braced behind her, lifting her slight human frame into his chest, just a second longer than it took to lower her small heels onto the toes of his boots. When she was balanced again, clutching at his biceps, and oh, he enjoyed that, her nails pressing tight into his flesh, he began to sway to the music. A box step to the waltz, with her delicious warmth aligned to his. He could feel the quickened beat of her heart, rabbiting against his, til she relaxed enough to let him have his way. She laughed softly as he guided them in a slow circle about the balcony.

'I could have you arrested for this,' she warned him, angling her eyes up to him, her dimpled chin resting on his breastbone. 'Are all fae males so reckless?'

'Only the bravest,' he boasted, and she laughed again. It was the musical sound he'd ever heard, sweeter than the finest fiddle or reed. 'And I would gladly suffer any sentence, if it was your hand condemning me.'

'My Queen,' she prompted him, eyes biting.

He capitulated willingly. 'My Queen,' he agreed, voice dropping into a rumble deep in his chest.

'Do you not have queens of your own, in your fae court?'

'No High Lord could enchant me as you have done, my Queen.'

'Are all fae males such inveterate flirts, I wonder.'

He chuckled. 'Only this fool, but I would be your fool for the taking, if only you would have me.'

She freed a hand from his shoulder to brush her fingertips down his cheek, his unblemished fae skin that--

A headache pinched suddenly, throbbing behind his eyes. He shook it off with an effort, blinking to find her looking up at him with concern.

'Are you well, my lord?'

'Very well, your Majesty, for I am here with you.' His dancing slowed, though, and for an awkward moment they only stood together, staring at each other. The clicking of his eye was quite loud, suddenly, embarrassing him. 'I can't remember your name,' he confessed.

'No names,' she whispered, and drew his head down to meet hers. Their lips brushed, and he grinned against her mouth, triumphant, and--

Lightning in his eye, that flash of pain. He stumbled, and she slipped off his feet, only just catching herself. She reached-- he-- he gripped the stone railing in his fists, cold on his palms, it hurt to curl his fists like this, the pain grounding him--

Grounding him--

Lucien woke with a gasp. Or, not woke, precisely; he hadn't been asleep. Or not his body, anyway. He stood swaying at the shore of the vast lake. A human girl faced him, only an arm's length away, her face blank, lips moving in silent words. Still lost to that dream-- that alternate reality where they had been-- what? Chill sweeping over him, Lucien stumbled back a step, his boot splashing in the water that swirled about his ankles. They stood in the shallows, the brilliantly blue water lapping gently at their feet. Pillowy clouds surrounded them, or what looked like clouds until he felt the crunch of it beneath his sole. Tiny crystals that had gathered into round ball-like formations mirroring the fluffy vapours overhead. Salt.

Again.

'Stop it!' he shouted furiously at the lake, and the human jumped, her trance shattered. 'Leave us the fuck alone!' he screamed, voice echoing out into nothing, swallowed up by the dead, still air.

'It's no use,' the girl said, at a more normal volume, calm, numb, maybe. 'He does what he wants.'

'Then he can fuck off to his heart's content!' He kicked at one of the salt formations, cracking it so that an uneven half of the sphere plopped into the water. The girl was picking her way to the shore, taking off her sodden slippers to dry and ducking into their crude shelter of a cliff-side cave. It offered little relief from the battering frosty wind, but she had little patience, that was clear, for Lucien's raging. She sat huddled in her ragged cloak when he at last trudged back up the shore to join her. He slumped exhausted against the chilled stone. Awake, aware, the fierce aches of his wounds gnawed at him. Broken brow and nose, pulsating with the beat of his heart in nauseating rhythm. Worse, the open sores of his hands where the melting of the faebane bracelet had left them crusted with re-hardened silver. He propped his elbows on his knees to let his hands rest in his lap, palm up, the better to view the damage with his one working eye. He had no idea how long he'd been prisoner at Koschei's lake, but it hadn't been long enough for anything to heal. Maybe it couldn't, if the faebane had infected his blood. He had a fever, he was fairly sure, his head hot and swimmy, perspiration never drying at his temples and on his upper lip despite the cold. Ordinarily, his magic would have burnt out the incipient sickness. But there was nothing ordinary here.

'I'm sorry,' he breathed.

The human girl gave him an empty smile when he rolled his head towards her. 'It's not you. I know.'

'What does he want from us? Why these-- these-- these mad illusions?' A ball. Lacking a little creativity, compared to the other scenarios Koschei had put them through. The carriage rescue, Lucien appearing on a steed to jump to the driver's seat and grab the dangling reins of two runaway horses, the queen emerging from the carriage terrified and in need of comforting, that had been the first. Kidnapped by a dragon, the second one, Lucien struggling through a thicket of magically outsized thorn hedges in full armour, sword strapped to his back determined to steal away the fair maid and kill the beast that dared imprison her. The skiing accident in some winter wonderland, the girl twisting her ankle and Lucien on hand to whisk her into some hunter's hut, start a good crackling fire and romance her with spiced wine and a bed of soft furs. The apple orchard-- that one had been the shortest, calling too much on Lucien's real memories of the orchards at home in Autumn, he'd barely got farther than rescuing the kitten from the high limbs of the old apple tree to the girl's teary-eyed gratitude. It was mad, all of it, and like madness there was no telling when it would come over them. Lucien wasn't even entirely sure they were having the same delusions, he and the girl.

Not a girl. A queen. Queen Vassa of Scythia. They had never met, before Koschei, but he knew of her, or of her queendom, at least. She had probably arrived dressed like a queen, like the woman in the illusions, her fiery curls elaborately styled, her gown rich and her jewels marvellous, her fingernails manicured and her cheeks rouged and lips painted. However long she had been here, it had been long enough for her hair to lay limp and in need of washing loose down her back. Her skirts were rags, now, hems torn away as she'd used bits for her needs, including to wrap Lucien's burnt hands and bleeding face. Her crown and pearl necklace and ruby ring lay discarded in the dirt. Her cheeks were reddened now by sun and windburn.

Vassa was spared answering him, or not answering, as it might be, by the arrival of their supper. Or breakfast, or luncheon. Lucien had no idea what time it was. There was no sun in the sky, no moon, no stars, and the light never changed. Just the wind, and, every so often, food. Of a sort. They reached for the bowls that appeared magically between them. Porridge, of a sort, greyish sludge, and never any cutlery. Vassa broke the crusted surface of her serving with two fingers, scooping a mouthful to her lips with the ease of practise. She was not embarrassed by the crudity, and after a dozen such meals neither was Lucien. He mimicked her, awkward with the small and ring finger of his non-dominant hand, the two spared burns from his stunt with the bracelet. He winced as he inadvertently re-opened the split on his lower lip. At least the blood gave flavour to the gritty porridge.

'I never thought I would miss gachas,' Vassa said, as they finished their meal. She licked the inside of the bowl, unashamed, and discarded it with an indifferent toss afterward. 'My nurse would make me eat it in punishment when I misbehaved. I told her I wouldn't even feed the pigs such slop. Now I crave it. Cayenne, garlic. Chorizo. Spice of any kind.'

'Oats,' Lucien murmured. 'With cinnamon and stewed apples.' He had never turned his nose up at oats. Too often, in his lonely youth, that had been the only food allowed him at all. Beron had always found his children easier to control when they were starving. He ate the sludge, because it filled his stomach, even if it wasn't quite food, in the way that it was not quite a lake, out there, and 'out there' was not quite there. Not quite anywhere.

'Are you all right?'

He had stood. He limped back to the lake's edge, bowl in hand, and went to one knee beside one of the odd salt clouds. The salt crumbled when he probed at it, a chunk breaking off in his hand, stinging in his wounds. He got at least a bit of it in the bowl, however, and stirred it in. Then he lurched back upright, and carried it back to the shelter. His bow was a little wobbly, making his head spin, but Vassa let out an abrupt laugh, and took his offering. She ate the last few bites with relish as he settled again beside her.

'I don't know why I never thought of that,' she said, sharing back the final scoop for him. 'Salt water. Though how it evaporates without heat I do not know. In my country we have a similar phenomenon, but it is our arid climate makes it possible.'

'I recall,' Lucien said, and he'd finally done something interesting, for Vassa looked up at him with a spark of life in her vividly blue eyes. 'The salt from your shores still sells at a premium. My mother loves the pink one. My father... her husband always gifts her a cone of it for her naming day.'

'And who is your father, that he can purchase such handsome gifts even in fae lands?'

Lucien swallowed the mouthful of the not-quite-porridge on a dry throat. The salt hadn't improved it much. 'The High Lord of Autumn,' he rasped. 'Beron... Beron usually gets what he wants.'

'Ah. Autumn. Your people fought for mine, once upon a time.' Vassa's tatty frock of stained silk and taffeta stirred in a harsh gust of the constant wind, raising gooseflesh on her bare arms, but what ought to have been punishingly frigid, even dangerous freezing weather didn't quite touch them. Not like the trek through Winter's glacial borderlands, he and Feyre and Ianthe, not quite a year ago. The cold here was an alien thing, present yet somehow held at arms' length, felt but not heeded. Not quite there. Lucien wasn't altogether sure he and Vassa were quite there, really; it all had the quality of a dream. A nightmare. 'Did you fight in the War, Prince of Autumn?' Vassa asked.

'I was not yet born.' And was no prince of Autumn, whatever Beron had told the death god to make his bargain. Beron was likely snug before the fire in the great hall congratulating himself on the success of his scheme. He'd rid himself of a problem and solved several more of his own making, all for the price of a child he'd never wanted. Did anyone even know Lucien was still alive? Would Beron tell them anything or pretend ignorance? And his son. Would Lucien's son be safe there? Safe so long as Beron saw use in him. Exactly as the rest of them had always been.

'Does anyone know you're here? Your people must be looking for you.' Lucien asked Vassa. He didn't remember if he'd asked her before. He'd been in and out of consciousness, the first day-- for all he knew it was still the first day, except for the porridge, and the inconvenience of having to relieve himself with barely functioning hands. He had refused Vassa's aid, honour and ego too offended by helplessness that extreme. The mind shied away from the horrid indignity of it. But at least he'd had someone to come back to afterward. How awful it must have been for Vassa, alone here until he'd arrived, who knew how long. The only thing worse than this place would have been being alone in it.

'Oh, they know where I am,' Vassa murmured, looking out across the bleak landscape that was their prison. Lucien had tried again to winnow away, of course, as soon as he'd been awake and aware enough to try. It had been futile. They could not walk away from it either, Vassa had warned him. She had tried more than once, and Koschei had laughed at first when he retrieved her with a clap of his hands. When she had tried too many times to escape him, the death god had punished her. She had not elaborated, and Lucien had not asked.

'My fellow queens brought me here,' Vassa continued, as Lucien blinked blearily in the wind. 'We had all been approached by the Night Court, seeking our half of the Book of Breathings. I preferred to give it to them, and threatened to do so whether they agreed or not. For my folly, I was sold to Koschei. I wonder which of those bitches dared to take my throne. I hope it was Briallyn. I'd like a good reason to take her head.'

'The mortal queens sold you?' Lucien was appalled. 'For what purpose? Surely not just to protect the book-- if the Night Court wanted it, they'd find a way to take it.'

'They would have to locate it first, and faerie magic is not the only protection that would hinder them. It was far quicker to bargain with us. For the Night Court and Hybern both.'

'Hybern?'

'So long ignored, we mortals, and now suddenly so in demand.' Vassa quirked a grim smile. 'You fae never fight your own wars. You much prefer we humans do the dying for you.'

He shook his head before he recalled it was a bad idea, wishing it would clear of this pounding headache. He disliked feeling stupid, and he felt stupid indeed, barely able to concentrate on what she said, but it was all so extraordinary, so inexplicable, and that was before they reckoned with anything truly important. What did it matter if a death god occupied some strange space not quite earthly nor entirely magical? Far more worrisome why he did it. What more he meant to do with it. With them. If Lucien could only think, he could do something.

Or perhaps he deluded himself as much as Koschei inflicted it. Vassa might be mortal, but she was not incapable. If there were anything to do, she would have done it, he was sure.

'But why Koschei?' he asked then. He blinked, and Vassa had moved, laid flat on her side, her hands curled beneath her head. From the way she looked at him, it might have been a long time since he'd spoken. It ought to worry him, losing time like that. Concussed, highly likely, and not healing. Faebane in the blood. It was hard to do that kind of damage to a faerie, Beron had beat him before and he'd walked away from it with his brains in tact.

'Lucien?'

He blinked, and Vassa had moved again. She knelt at his side, her hand on his cheek, checking beneath the bandage she'd wrapped about his battered eye. He could feel it pulling at the split skin.

'They sold us to Koschei,' he whispered, and Vassa nodded grimly. 'But why did he want to buy us?'

'You know why.' Vassa sat back on her heels, her lovely face still because she would not show him her despair, even now. 'He finally has a breeding pair.'

'I won't,' he rasped.

The faintest sheen of wet in her eyes vanished by the time she looked back at him. 'I don't think you can honestly say that, Lucien, but I won't blame you when you finally fail.'

'I won't. I would die first.' Jes, crying out for him, then crying wordlessly, too ashamed to say his name as he clawed at the bars between their cells, his brothers laughing as they laced their trousers and left her there in the dirt. Ianthe's hand on his face, her nail scritching on the delicate skin beneath his eye, her palm curving down his groin. Amarantha gloating over Tamlin, parading her defeated foe before the assembled courts of Prythian, possessive hand in his lap, claiming him crudely and cruelly. Too many had suffered. He wouldn't inflict it. He wouldn't.

'Maybe... if we just give him what he wants...' He could hear Vassa struggle to swallow. 'It would be our choice, that way.'

'Don't give up.' He reached for her, instinctively, hesitating when he saw the bloody rags wrapping his fingers. He hugged them back to his chest. Even if he were whole, she wouldn't want his touch.

'I would have married some stranger with a title and money,' she shrugged. 'Some foreign prince from a place I've never heard of, to get me with child, to get me an heir. I would have pretended that was my choice, too, selecting one of a handful of candidates with impeccable bloodlines and empty brains. This isn't so different. At least I know you care.' As if putting her flesh into a fire, she reached for him this time, steeled against cringeing when she laid her hand on his knee. Slid it up his thigh.

'No,' he said, jerking away, his eye clicking madly.

'Lucien. It's all right.' She drew a deep breath that trembled only slightly, and turned her back to him. Stretched behind her for the laces of her corset, undoing the knot and tugging them loose. She slid the strap from her freckled shoulder, pulled at her gown til it slipped low, revealing the upper curves of her full breasts. She looked back at him, blue eyes limpid, her chapped lips parted. 'It's all right.'

'I said no!' He was on his feet, stumbling over her legs, tripping out into the whirling wind and landing hard, knees scraping on the sand, palms skidding. It hurt, sudden and grating, the pain grounding him--

Grounding him--

Lucien woke with a gasp. Or, not woke, precisely; he hadn't been asleep. Or not his body, anyway. He stood swaying at the shore of the vast lake. A human girl faced him, only an arm's length away, her face blank, lips moving in silent words. Still lost to that dream-- that alternate reality where they had been-- what? Chill sweeping over him, Lucien stumbled back a step, his boot splashing in the water that swirled about his ankles. They stood in the shallows, the brilliantly blue water lapping gently at their feet. Pillowy clouds surrounded them, or what looked like clouds until he felt the crunch of it beneath his sole. Tiny crystals that had gathered into round ball-like formations mirroring the fluffy vapours overhead. Salt.

Again.

'Stop it!' he shouted furiously at the lake, and the human jumped, her trance shattered. 'Leave us the fuck alone!' he screamed, voice echoing out into nothing, swallowed up by the dead, still air.

'It's no use,' the girl said, calm, numb. 'He does what he wants.'

**

Two Months Past

'They're going to confine me,' Ianthe bit out.

'Bed rest is not exactly a prison sentence,' Lucien retorted, dumping one boot to the rug and struggling to unlace the other. Seppo moved to kneel, and Lucien waved him off, clawing at the leather knots until they gave and he could shuck the shoe somewhere out of sight. Seppo went after it, retrieving it from the corner with no rebuke but a censorious silence. Lucien unbuckled his jerkin and shucked that too.

'You're drunk,' Ianthe complained, disgusted.

'I certainly tried.' He already had a wine headache and a queasy stomach. His head was uncomfortably hot. All of him was uncomfortably hot, but he'd been so cold for so long. He'd thought something like that, at least, around the third cup at dinner.

Ianthe was trying to navigate her girth as she shed her own evening wear, her round belly impeding her attempt to unlace her shoes. 'I'm too tired to deal with the gown,' she snapped at her matron. 'Come back later. And bring him two cracked eggs mixed with a teaspoon each of fish sauce and pepper sauce.'

'Sounds disgusting,' Lucien said, muffled by his shirt as he stumbled into the bath. He managed to get it off after clunking his head on the low ceiling, and left it crumpled on the tile floor as he began on his trousers.

'You'll thank me later,' Ianthe called after him.

He dragged his trousers down and climbed loose-limbed into the bath, sighing as he sank down into the tepid water awaiting him. Seppo followed him in to gather up the laundry, and brought down a phial of lavender oil to drip into the tub at Lucien's feet. He placed the plasters and balm on the sink, pointedly, and left. Lucien grumbled at his back, and dunked his head, staying under til his lungs threatened to burst. He came up wheezing, and wiped at his face, pushing back his soaking hair. His mechanical eye didn't like the wet, and he cursed to himself as he reached for a flannel, dabbing it dry. Stupid to still be forgetting, fifty years into possession of the eye, but there it was. He'd be lucky if it didn't rust inside his skull.

The bedroom was quiet when he finally emerged, pruned and apathetic. Seppo and Ianthe's maid had gone, but they'd left the fire stoked to a merry crackle, candles brightening the corners. It was a little too chilly for the open window, and he deviated from his path to close it, stretching out an arm for the cold glass pane. It left gooseflesh on his bare skin, and he shivered at the sudden chill of his damp hair.

'Lucien?'

He turned to face Ianthe. She looked, though she would not have liked to know he thought it, a bit like the beached seals he'd seen once in Winter, lolling on their backs with their big bellies in the air. Her wan face was a bit puffy, and her ankles were definitely swollen, propped on a pillow. She looked utterly miserable.

'Want me to rub your back?' he volunteered.

A faint spark lit in her eyes. Followed swiftly by wariness. 'Why?'

'Because you've been grunting and groaning for a week and I saw how you were squirming on your chair at dinner.'

'They'll lock me away for two months but Mother forbid they give me a cushion to sit on.'

'You can't be surprised by now,' he pointed out. 'Be glad you're not a male. Father used to switch us to bleeding and make us sit on those hard wooden seats all night to learn to keep still and silent during Court session, and that wasn't even a punishment.'

Her pale lips thinned. 'As if I needed further proof of the sadism of your family.'

He was relaxed enough from the bath and the wine to laugh aloud. 'It took you all these months to gather that evidence? I could have told you from the start.'

'You're the one who sold us into bondage here!'

'You think the Night Court would have been any better?' he snarled back, temper flaring at last to match hers. 'You think Feyre Cursebreaker would have given you even this much freedom? You'd have been the last six months in a fucking dungeon if I hadn't got us out there, and who knows what they'd have done with our child. You're damn right I used whatever means I had.'

'I knew she was rotten,' Ianthe said sourly, and his rage withered to bitterness, ineffectual and lonely as it was to remember the Feyre he'd once called friend. 'Tamlin thought her a poor broken child. I thought you saw through her, but you were too deferential to Tamlin, let him make mistakes because you thought you were being loyal. I suppose at least here you're not so credulous. Small blessings.' Iantha engaged in an ungainly and lengthy struggle to roll onto her side, wiping surreptitiously at her eyes as she kicked and flopped til finally she could settle. Lucien closed his eyes, reminding himself to breathe.

The bed dipped under their combined weight as he climbed in behind her.  He rubbed his thumbs into the strained muscles of the small of her back. She arched, making a soft pained noise as he worked, and sighing when his massage finally began to bring her some relief. The maid had left wrapped bricks to heat the foot of the bed, and a real Autumn lord would have been able to generate heat of his own, but the faebane manacle he'd worn for months had finally kicked even the habit of trying. All he could do was tuck close to her back, to share what natural body heat he had. Ianthe sniffled, just a little, as he worked an arm under her spine, taking on the weight of her gravid belly. When he wrapped his other arm about her, the noise she made was different. Her scent changed, keener, and he knew though she tried to stifle it. He had accidentally brushed her breast, and they were sore, too, it seemed, and sensitive. As he tried to shift away, she shuddered all over.

'I'm not,' he began.

'I know,' she sniped. 'You've been extremely clear.'

'I've been clear from the beginning, and it didn't stop you before.'

'I know what I've done,' she whispered, choked. She lay painfully still, but for the strangled rise and fall of her breaths. Lucien raised himself on his elbow to see her face. Her eyes were closed, her lower lip caught by her teeth. There was damp leaking from tightly closed eyes.

'Are you... don't cry,' he said, uselessly, for that matter, because his saying that caused a tear to slip down her round cheek. He searched about him for something to blot away her upset, and settled for an edge of the pillowcase. 'I'm sorry. Ignore me. Just lashing out, and you're the only one I can do that to.'

'Why are you being kind?' she demanded, curling away from him. 'You hate me.'

He couldn't answer that truthfully without being unkind. 'I hate a lot of the things you did,' he said finally. 'But your being here is something I did to you. And I'm sorry for it.'

'I'm.' Her breath hitched. She reached down for his hand, and clutched it hard. 'I'm grateful,' she managed to choke out, more tears escaping her control. 'You could have left me in Night. You should have, by any measure. This was my scheme, and all you did was try to save me from it. I'm... grateful, Lucien.'

'Then-- you're welcome, I suppose.'

A fractured laugh broke the tension. 'You were always so mannerly. It always made me want to get under your skin even more.' She seemed to realise the hold she had on him, then, and let him go with a spasm. 'And now I see you in this place, and... and I'm more like them than you are. And I don't like it. I'm sorry I treated you like something to conquer and squash.'

'You weren't the first.' He sighed, and dropped his head to rest wearily against her shoulder. 'I'm afraid it'll work this time, though.'

It should have been Jes. They had talked about children. He had talked, anyway, and she had indulged him, teasing him for his unrealistic, as she called it, daydreams of a brood of seven just like his brothers. How would we even feed seven children? she'd challenged him. When you run away from Court we shall have nothing at all to our names. We'll live on the land, he'd countered, full of the arrogance of a male who'd never so much as pulled a carrot. She'd laughed as he buried his face between her thighs, 'inspecting' his children's future home, he'd said, and within moments had her panting on his tongue. They'd never talked about it again. She had died screaming nineteen days later.

Three hundred years later, he was no wiser. He'd brought another female into Beron's sights, and a baby. His baby.

'If anything ever happens to me,' he began, and couldn't decide whether to go on. There was such a thing as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

'The woodcutter's marks on the walls, I remember.'

'There's a male on my father's council. Ambroise of the Malcolms. He's made overtures, dropped hints, he helped me last month with the refugees in Spring. I think, if anything should happen, you could go to him.'

'I'd wondered if you realised.'

'Realised what?'

Ianthe craned her head back to look at him. 'You haven't, have you? Oh, Lucien. I don't know what it is about that this place that makes you blind yourself, when you see so clearly everywhere else.'

The surety that he'd meet the bad end he'd been outrunning for three centuries, mostly. 'What am I missing?'

It took effort, but Ianthe sat up, Lucien fumbling to assist. When she leant back against the headboard, rubbing her belly, Lucien rested his aching head to the wall. He had to fight sleep dragging at his eyes. Ianthe's nails digging into his wrist served quite well to jolt him awake.

'Ambroise,' she said intently. 'There's a reason he's been inveigling his way to your side. Your mother's ladies all know, and they can talk quite freely, when there's no males about, when the males ignore them anyway. Ambroise is a bastard. His mother had an affair, here at court.'

Lucien had no stones to throw at a fellow bastard. 'Rather his business, isn't it.'

Her fingers curled about his wrist. 'It's whose bastard that's most important. The High Lord and Lady's marriage has not always... not always been faithful.'

She'd hinted before. He'd suspected that she knew, or guessed, or guessed enough. He'd always assumed it was the reason she found Lucien to be such a prospect, ever scheming as she was to increase her power and her reach. 'Whatever you think you know,' he said carefully, 'you would be wise not to speak of it here and now.'

'Not that,' Ianthe dismissed him. 'I mean the High Lord. Ambroise is the High Lord's son by his counsellor's wife. Ambroise is ambitious, but that's nothing special here. It's what he's ambitious for that's of interest. He could make a claim on the court.'

Fuck. Lucien rubbed at his mechanical eye, feeling a migraine coming on. Illegitimacy wasn't disqualifying; the magic chose the strongest. But the strongest could only clear the field of competitors if they knew who the competitors were. Did Eris know? If Lucien told him, was that condemning Ambroise to death? Sooner or later, quite probably it was. He didn't know if Ambroise was truly a good male or a devious one playing a very long game, but he did know he was tired of being an unwilling participant. He didn't have much power in Autumn, but he didn't have none, either. Whichever side he picked, whichever brother he supported-- even if he died making that choice, it was a choice others would be watching him make. If what he wanted was to throw his weight in a succession battle.

'His claim would be even stronger,' he said, and coughed to clear his throat. 'Would be even stronger with a Vanserra child in his household. Incentive for him to keep you safe.'

Ianthe let him go at last, and he rubbed his wrist. It was likely just his imagination, but her touch seemed to burn like the faebane manacle, blisters boiling on his skin down to his knuckles and up past the cuff of his shirtsleeve. Poison leeching through his skin to his blood. His corrupted, cursed blood.

'Do you know,' she said softly, 'I used to have a fantasy of us joined in intrigue and politicking. How we'd cut a swathe across Prythian with secrets and plots. You'd be High Lord one day, maybe even High King, and I'd be the High Mother of the Church, and we'd rule together.'

'No offence meant, but that sounds like hell on earth, Ianthe.'

She barked out a humourless little laugh. 'Believe me, Lucien, our disappointment in each other is very much mutual.'

**

'It won't work,' Vassa said again.

Lucien fumbled to tie back his hair, his burnt fingers too sore to manage a knot. It came apart as soon as he lowered his arms. Fine, then. He left it loose, grimy as it was becoming so many days-- weeks? he didn't know. That was the point. If he didn't at least try, he'd go mad.

Madder. He didn't know how long it had been, but he knew he was cracking. The last illusion had been so ridiculous he'd known it for what it was immediately, he and Vassa sacrifices to be tossed together into a volcano, til he'd fallen in love with the beautiful human and sneaked away with her on a boat. The one before that, though, had nearly worked. An arranged marriage, he prepared for a vapid inbred girl and she fearful of an abusive faerie who still remembered what it was to own humans as slaves, til a stilted conversation had revealed working minds and hearts longing for true love. He'd awakened gasping from the dream state just as he'd begun to unlace her corset, their bodies pressed hot and heavy in a nook away from their chaperones, her hand curving down his trousers.

Vassa was probably right. Eventually, something would work, and Koschei would have what he wanted. A breeding pair. A half-human, half-fae child strong enough to survive whatever revolting catastrophe a death god could need a baby for. Vassa didn't know, she claimed. The other girls who had been here before hadn't survived long enough to tell her, nor the foetus within them. The mind shuddered back from imagining. The mind couldn't stop imagining. Whatever it was Koschei wanted, all Lucien knew for sure was that it could never be, not if he could prevent it. So he had to try.

Gingerly Lucien removed the bandage wound about his head. No fresh blood, at least. Tender and still swollen, but survivable. The gears of his mechanical eye seemed to struggle, focus going in and out, strange vibrant sparks flickering like cinders from a fire. It reminded him almost of how his eye had reacted to Azriel's shadows, back in Night Court, recognising something alien, something that didn't belong in their world. The entire lake was lit up like that, oozing and alive, and malevolent.

But he had to try.

He stood, shaking out his tight muscles, flexing his hands. 'If it works, I'll come back for you,' he promised. Vassa, head bowed over her bowl of tasteless porridge, didn't bother to acknowledge that. 'Vassa. I will.'

She let out a trembling breath. 'If you get out, run as far as you can, Lucien.'

'I'll come back for you. I'll come back with a fucking army.'

She managed a tiny lift of her lips. 'Thank you for the thought.'

There was no convincing her. He might have bargained, but he needed every ounce of magic for this. So he only put his hand over his heart, and bowed to her. She nodded. It would have to be enough.

He stepped out of their shelter and into the wind. It whipped up his hair immediately, stinging in his real eye, so he closed them and gathered his power from every pore. His reserves were higher now, however long he'd been here, though still frustratingly short of what he knew should have been his whole-- Koschei or the faebane, he didn't know. He called it, clawed it out, gathered it into clenched fists, and then he did something he'd only once had to do before, and then in a panic without the time to quite know what or how he'd done it. Just as he had that long-ago day fleeing Autumn, he pushed his power out through his hands, and he punched it forward like a battering ram, shattering the border wards that sought to keep him imprisoned. And he winnowed his body through the hole he'd created, dissolving in an instant and reconstituting--

Reconstituting in exactly the same place, just as he had before.

Again. Gathered up his power. Gathered up his fury, his fear, his stubborn pigheaded belief he could do a thing if he just tried hard enough, and he winnowed again.

Exactly the same place, his boots even settling into their own prints in the sand.

Again. Still that fucking cold, the lake stretching as far as he could see. He did nothing more than suck in air, and winnowed again. And again, and again--

--something different, this time, a yank on his body as it slid through space seeking-- dark laughter. Koschei.

He reappeared not on land, this time, but mid-air, and he plunged with a yell into icy water, sinking into a world of deep blue. His clothes, his boots, his own body weight dragged him down. Enormous hulks of glacier ice pressed him in from all sides, impervious to the clawing of his fingernails, the pounding of his fists. Thin beams of sunlight scattered in the frantic bubbles of his breath escaping him, water flooding his lungs, choking him, and he thrashed helplessly as he slipped further into the dark. Dark, crowding in on him, drowning him, drowning... Hadn't he wished, more than once, for the cold and the dark and the silence to take him? Would it be so bad to...

A sharp pain in his ribs. Thrumming through him. Waking him from his suffocating daze. He inhaled, reflex, and choked on the frigid water, but he was awake, he was aware, he knew what he had to do. He had just enough spark to gather his magic again, and he tried, he tried--

He sprawled flat on sand, solid land at last, heaving up what felt like gallons of water. He couldn't so much as raise his head to look about him, shaking and weak. The dark had followed him here, creeping in on the edges of his vision, threatening to drag him back under. He was fading, he was exhausted, he was empty of so much as a candle flame of magic, he was...

He lay curled upon himself, torpid and nearly insensate, unable to fight any more. Tell your mother you didn't even fight, Beron had said. He had, though. He'd tried. Just like Jesminda, who'd fought possessed, fought righteously, fought for love. Sometimes you died anyway.

The tug at his rib was a passing thing, and he barely noticed it at first. Just a pulse, thin and tenuous like his heartbeat, sliding into the deep dark. The tug. What was it? He wished it would go away, leave him alone, let him die alone untroubled.

The tug, sharp, insistent, stabbing. He gasped, waking just a bit from his stupor. The tug. The mating bond, gone these many months since the faebane had muffled it. The bond.

Poor Elain. Who was he kidding. She'd be just as glad. Should have been Jes. Wished it had been Jes...

Still that fucking cold. And the lake, as far as the eye could see.

Koschei crouched over him, poking at him like a boy pulling the legs off a grasshopper, just to see what would happen. 'What a curious creature you are,' the death god mused. 'So determined to be contrary. Vassa, dearest, come,' he called, raising his voice just a little, and suddenly she was there, helping Lucien as Lucien dragged himself upright, joints popping and muscles shaking weakly. 'Everyone is always in such a clamour to leave,' Koschei clucked in put-upon disappointment. 'I might have to take it personally.'

'Let us go,' Lucien croaked.

'"Us"? So gallant. Do I hear wedding bells?'

'Fuck you!'

'Now, now. There's no need for such language. And if you're going to fuck anyone, I've been very clear it ought to be the young lady.'

'We're not playing your sick game,' Lucien snarled, though Vassa's hand clenched on his shoulder warned him, and braced him for the punishment sure to follow.

'Anything but a game, my dear.' Koschei's voice fell flat. His eyes, black voids stark in a vague outline of a not-quite face that blurred and faded from memory even as Lucien stared at it, his eyes burnt cold as space. Lucien was already shaking with the cold and could pretend fear had no part in it, but those eyes chilled him to the marrow, seized his heart in his chest, and he knew he looked upon his end. Very possibly the end of all things. Koschei could do it. Would do it, for a whim. If ever he got free of this place where the wise and terrified ancestors had chained him.

Lucien almost quailed. Almost. A mere second longer, and his will might have broken, those eyes swallowing him up.

'Perhaps you'll be a little more amenable when you return to me,' murmured the god.

Just like that, Lucien could breathe again. He heard Vassa's trembling inhale, at his shoulder, her small hand holding him still. 'Return?' she asked, neutrally. 'Is he leaving?'

'You both are, my doves. I would not have you parted so soon.' Koschei waved a hand with lazy elegance, and two more figures appeared, on the cliffs overlooking the lake. 'A bargain has been struck. You can ask your buyers for the terms; I was very generous, in my love for you. You are my most favoured, after all.' His palms cupped their cheeks, and though Lucien had just seen the inside of one of the coldest lakes in the world Koschei's not-quite flesh was colder, and he shuddered, his breath puffing out white. Koschei's face drew nearer, and Lucien cringed, only holding still because Vassa, brave and silent, did not flee, and he would not be less, but the horror of it nearly felled him when Koschei's lips brushed tenderly over his battered face. A kiss, to his closed eyes, one after the other, and then to Lucien's mouth, sucking the air from his lungs, sucking the lifeforce from his bleeding lips--

The death god wavered in his sight, blurred. An image overlaid, as if through a veil, a veil upon a veil. And then it all went fractured and strange, as Lucien looked from two angles more than a metre apart. Koschei held his golden eye. He gave it a little toss, and Lucien did fall, now, clutching his head as the disorientation roiled him. Standing over him undisturbed, Koschei chuckled.

'A pretty little trinket, this,' he observed, and tossed it again. 'I think I'll keep it.' Lucien retched helplessly, and Koschei only patted his head. This time when it flew into the air, the eye vanished into the strange greyish void that hovered about the god. 'A memento of our time together, beloved. When you want it back, you know where to find me.'

'Never!' Lucien hissed, even as Vassa deliberately trod on his hand. The flash of agony sapped the last of his strength, and he hung his head, panting.

'Thank you,' Vassa said, her queenly tone even and polite, as if she spoke to an equal in her throne room, not the wicked otherworldly creature that had tormented them for Mother knew how long. 'We are grateful.'

'My beautiful Vassa.' Koschei's fingertips travelled the long curve of her arm, before he lifted her hand to his lips to kiss. Lucien saw her other hand clenched to a fist, but she only smiled, serene. 'Don't be gone too long, my sweet.'

And then he was gone, and they were alone together, Lucien and Vassa, on the beach of Koschei's lake. Lucien's clothes were dry, the ice in his veins thawed, even his hair tamed, braided back as he hadn't been able to manage since arriving. Vassa's gown hung full and bright from her waist, the lace collar starched stiff and her crown nestled in upswept curls. The two figures from the cliffs were making their way down a path that hadn't been there before, two males on horseback, he thought. Her earrings tinkled like little bells, as she turned her head to follow their descent. 'Do you think they're real?' Vassa asked.

'I don't even know if you are,' Lucien whispered, broken.

Her face turned towards him first, though her eyes tracked the newcomers a moment longer. Then she put out a hand, and wrapped it gently about his.

'Real or not, I would rather not be alone in it,' she said simply, and not. 'Don't try to leave me alone again, Lucien.'

Lucien passed a flinching finger over his empty eye socket. He had an unfortunately strong memory of the odd feel of it, the weeks between Amarantha assaulting him and Nuan presenting him with the first prototype. The world seemed duller without it, the inside of his head quieter without its mechanical clicks and whirs. Empty.

But not alone, at least. Even if it was only illusion, Koschei's making, at least Vassa was there. How well the god had come to understand people, if only to use them better.

He surrendered. 'I won't,' he vowed, squeezing her hand back. Her cheeks were wet, and his were too. 'I'm sorry.'

'Together,' she said, and he nodded.

'Together,' he echoed, and they turned as one to face the men who had come to buy them from the death god.

Humans. They dismounted on the shore, one shorter, stiff with age, removing his cap from silvered hair as he bowed to them. The other hopping lithe and agile from the saddle was tall, well built, a warrior with a sword harnessed on his back, leather armour. And when he thrust back his hood, he had a familiar face. For a moment, Lucien wavered, sure it was another illusion, but Koschei had never used a real memory before, and Lucien knew him.

'Jurian?' he called hesitantly.

'How's tricks, Red?' The human general sprayed sand as he approached, near enough to give Lucien's shoulder a hearty clap. 'Fancy meeting you here. You look like shit warmed over.'

'What... what are you doing here?'

'Your Majesty,' the old man greeted them, bowing once again as he halted, clutching his cap to his chest. 'My name is Elwin Archeron, your Majesty, and I've-- we've-- been searching for you. The King of Hybern has destroyed the Wall, and brought war to the human lands. If we are to survive it, my Lady, we need armies.'

The tension in Vassa's shoulders fled. Or firmed, really, into something harder, more determined. She truly was a queen, Lucien thought, looking at her sidelong, ready to let her go so she could answer as she must. But instead, she looked down at their clasped hands, and then up to his face, waiting on him to agree.

He swallowed down all the things he wanted, needed to say. There was only one answer, after all.

'Then let's go,' Vassa decreed, and looked on curiously as Jurian guffawed, slapping his thigh.

'Finally,' the general declared, all vicious satisfaction. 'Let's go kill some fuckin' fae. Present company excluded, I'm sure.'

'Thanks,' Lucien muttered, and followed the humans back to their horses, just like that. He helped Vassa climb into the saddle of Jurian's horse, not without some misgiving leaving her to Jurian's questionable sanity and worse manners, but it made no sense to put the two heaviest males on the same horse. He would mount with-- 'What did you say your name was, sir?'

'Elwin Archeron,' the man repeated, bowing again, and Lucien automatically returned it, looking up only when the name penetrated his mental fog at last.

'Archeron,' he said flatly.

'Have you heard the name, then?' the old man asked eagerly. 'I believe my daughter has become a bit important in Prythian, so far as I understand it.'

He had to laugh. It scratched his throat, coming out, a muscle too long unused, an emotion he didn't know how to feel. Mad. He'd waited too long to escape, after all. Mad as a hatter. Mad as Jurian. No wonder Jurian liked it. It felt good, that was what it felt, to stop even hoping for the absurdity to end.

'Now I know I'm in reality,' he groaned, and mounted up.