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This entire place had been decorated with thought and elegance, with a penchant for comfort over stuffiness.
He didn’t want to admit he liked it. Didn’t want to admit that he found the city beautiful.
That the circle of people who now claimed to be Feyre’s new family … It was what, long ago, he’d once thought life at Tamlin’s court would be.
An ache like a blow to the chest went through him, but he crossed the rug. Forced his hands to be steady while he poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair opposite Nesta’s vacated one.
“There’s a plate of biscuits. Would you like one?”
He didn’t expect her to answer, and he gave himself all of one more minute before he’d rise from this chair and leave, hopefully avoiding Nesta’s return.
But sunlight on gold caught his eye—and Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window.
He had not seen her entire face since that day in Hybern.
Then, it had been drawn and terrified, then utterly blank and numb, her hair plastered to her head, her lips blue with cold and shock.
Looking at her now …
She was pale, yes. The vacancy still glazing her features.
But he couldn’t breathe as she faced him fully.
She was the most beautiful female he’d ever seen.
Betrayal, queasy and oily, slid through his veins. He’d said the same to Jesminda once.
But even as shame washed through him, the words, the sense chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours. Mate.
Her eyes were the brown of a fawn’s coat. And he could have sworn something sparked in them as she met his gaze.
“Who are you?”
He knew without demanding clarification that she was aware of what he was to her.
“I am Lucien. Seventh son of the High Lord of the Autumn Court.”
And a whole lot of nothing. He’d told the shadowsinger all he knew—of his surviving brothers, of his father. His mother … he’d kept some details, irrelevant and utterly personal, to himself. Everything else—his father’s closest allies, the most conniving courtiers and lords … He’d handed it over. Granted, it was dated by a few centuries, but in his time as emissary, from the information he’d gathered, not much had changed. They’d all acted the same Under the Mountain, anyway. And after what had happened with his brothers a few days ago … There was no tinge of guilt when he told Azriel what he knew. None of what he felt when he looked toward the south—toward both of the courts he’d called home.
For a long moment, Elain’s face did not shift, but those eyes seemed to focus a bit more. “Lucien,” she said at last, and he clenched his teacup to keep from shuddering at the sound of his name on her mouth. “From my sister’s stories. Her friend.”
But Elain blinked slowly. “You were in Hybern.”
“Yes.” It was all he could say.
“You betrayed us.”
He wished she’d shoved him out the window behind her. “It—it was a mistake.”
Her eyes went frank and cold. “I was to be married in a few days.”
He fought against the bristling rage, the irrational urge to find the male who’d claimed her and shred him apart. The words were a rasp as he instead said, “I know. I’m sorry.”
She did not love him, want him, need him. Another male’s bride.
A mortal man’s wife. Or she would have been.
She looked away—toward the windows. “I can hear your heart,” she said quietly.
He wasn’t sure how to respond, so he said nothing, and drained his tea, even as it burned his mouth.
“When I sleep,” she murmured, “I can hear your heart beating through the stone.” She angled her head, as if the city view held some answer. “Can you hear mine?”
He wasn’t sure if she truly meant to address him, but he said, “No, lady. I cannot.”
Her too-thin shoulders seemed to curve inward. “No one ever does. No one ever looked—not really.” A bramble of words. Her voice strained to a whisper. “He did. He saw me. He will not now.”
Her thumb brushed the iron ring on her finger.
Another male’s ring, another marker that she was claimed—
It was enough. I had listened enough, learned enough. I pulled out of Lucien’s mind.
Nesta was gaping at me, even as her face had leeched of color at every word uttered between them. “Have you ever gone into my—”
“No,” I rasped.
How she knew what I had done, I didn’t want to ask. Not as I dropped the shield around us and headed for the sitting area.
Lucien, no doubt having heard our steps, was flushed as he glanced between me and Nesta. No inkling whatsoever that I’d slid into his mind. Rifled through it like a bandit in the night. I shoved down the mild nausea.
My eldest sister merely said to him, “Get out.”
I flashed Nesta a glare, but Lucien rose. “I came for a book.”
“Well, find one and leave.”
Elain only stared out the window, unaware—or uncaring.
Lucien didn’t head for the stacks. He just went to the open doors. He paused right between them and said to me, to Nesta, “She needs fresh air.”
“We’ll judge what she needs.”
I could have sworn his ruby hair gleamed like molten metal as his temper rose. But it faded, his russet eye fixing on me. “Take her to the sea. Take her to some garden. But get her out of this house for an hour or two.”
Then he walked away.
I looked at my two sisters. Cloistered up here, high above the world.
“You’re moving into the town house right now,” I said to them. To Lucien, who paused in the dim hallway outside.
Nesta, to my shock, did not object.
Neither did Rhys when I sent my order down the bond, asking him, Cassian, and Azriel to help move them. No, my mate just promised to assign two bedrooms to my sisters down the hall, on the other side of the stairs. And a third for Lucien—on our side of the hall. Well away from Elain’s.
Thirty minutes later, Azriel carried Elain down, my sister silent and unresponsive in his arms.
Nesta had looked ready to walk off the balcony rather than let Cassian, already dressed and armed for guarding the town house tonight, hold her, so I nudged her toward Rhys, pushed Lucien toward Cassian, and flew myself back.