Destined and Dreamt

PART ONE  PART TWO  PART THREE  PART FOUR  PART FIVE  PART SIX  PART SEVEN

Nesta Archeron wasn’t sleeping.   Wrapped in a quilted silk robe, she paced the length of her bedroom, once, twice, before giving into the urge to throw back the curtains from her windows. It was the darkest part of the night. Thick clouds had long shrouded the stars, the only light the reflection back from the fire burning in the grate across the room.

But still, it felt a little easier to breathe.

Her life had felt like cage for a long, long time. Like any other creature of clipped wings, when Nesta slept, she dreamt of the sky.

There were so many places she hadn’t seen and longed for: the impossible high mountain gardens in the Sky kingdom, the sharp gold eyed fairies of Hesperia;, that Blooming Country, under their lavender sky. The horrible beauty over the Wall, wilder and more dangerous than the fae of the continent she worked with. Fifteen thousand year old trade routes that crossed between the sacred spaces of the Great Desert, books written by the hands of gods in the Weeping City.

The mountain peaks in her dreams, so vast their summits turned the very wind to song.

Tonight, however, it was the nightmares that kept her awake.

Some were nearly as old as she was: Feyre devoured by magic, Elain with cold metallic eyes, Nesta alone- Nesta a monster, without her sisters.

Newer, were what was haunting her now: humans turning on them. Elain in chains, Nesta made ready for a pyre, the horror Lucien would unleash trying to get to Elain before the sheer number of mortals brought him down.

It should have been a comfort- if everything went to hell, they were going to burn too.

But hell was coming for them in worse, different ways. It wouldn’t be their neighbors condemning them- if Feyre got her wish, took that gamble on all their lives, it might be the Queens to whom their tiny human world was personal property who ordered all their deaths for consorting with faeries.

Or Hybern, bringing their brutality to bleed all of Prythian dry.

In the very back of her mind, Nesta heard again, soft and fathoms deep, the voice that had responded to Elain’s charm. We’re called Illyrians, born hearing the song of the wind.

Behind her eyes, the mountains sang the icy air to shape. Not words, but feelings that bubbled up beneath her breastbone and completed a longing so desperate tears ached in Nesta’s throat.

She had nightmares, and then nightmares.

Nesta had bargained and cheated, lied and bought her freedom. She might not have been able to save her baby sister- a failure she could never, ever take back- but Nesta would be damned if she failed their vassals too. Failed Elain or Lucien, besides.

The cold wind in her mind was a wilder thing than the chill of this snowy night, she could almost feel it if she tried. Ice and power and freedom, the air twisting around her like an embrace.

There had to be a way to keep them safe.

Beauty would not distract her. It was the oldest human story, wasn’t it? The innocent maiden and the wicked faery. The lost kingdom and it’s chosen heir, a quest, a sacrifice.  Destiny. The trick at the end- the pure of heart is worthy, but faeries always lie.

This wasn’t a tale and Nesta couldn’t freefall through the very sky into the arms of her true love.

She’d find those mountains someday, climb them until Nesta touched the clouds herself. Cross the dangerous, fathomless enchantment of an ocean to follow the path of her families old compacts in blood. Her mothers homeland, the faery smith who’d bound gold on steel for the first Archeron Lord, maybe even Lucien’s lost and savage Autumn.

She would live, and she would see it all.

Nesta just had to find a safe route through a war first, and nothing- no one- was going to stop her. 

— Lucien was a liar. It was possible it was in his blood- learned over the cradle, crooned by his mother the deceptions that would keep him safe.   He’d let himself believe the lie he could survive Beron intact in youthful fury. Shed his colors and lied through centuries of brittle, false Spring Court charm. He would lie now- lie and burn and bleed if it meant he could protect the Acheron sisters from what was coming.   Sleep had never arrived.

When Elain finally gave into the overwhelming exhaustion of magic and conflict a few hours before dawn, he’s stayed still. Felt the soft sigh against his shoulder as her eyes tipped shut, halfway through the litany of what he knew of the Day Court, the exchange for a cheekily retold explanation of the ties between the Archerons and the north’s fell High Lord.   “We’re not his subjects,” Elain had all but growled, face pressed to his arm. That several hours into that tangled space between them, curled together on her floor, she’d cajoled him out of his coat and most of the asinine human layers Lucien wore these days, was not something Lucien would let himself dwell on.   How infinitely pale she was in comparison, the smooth curve of a freckled cheek pillowed on his bicep.   “The original oath ensures it,” Elain went on, “Prythian’s courts don’t allow humans to belong to them in legal truth, but for us it’s a protection. Not under Rhysand’s rule, but we can enter the protected city- carry things from it on our ships to countries who don’t know it exists.”   Adamant to his gold, but that wasn’t right either- aspen, ash to his birch bark maple, the trees that cut paths through Autumns heart.   “Velaris,” Lucien crooned back at her glee, the syllables smoke in his throat.   “The City of Starlight,” Elain’s laugh had no sound, the amusement a twist in her voice as it swept over his bare skin.   In an urge he’d been turning over and ignoring for the better part of an hour, Lucien risked reaching out to brush the curls from her face where they’d fallen into bright, half-lidded eyes.   “Wherever a High Lord is,” Lucien found himself saying, as the silence stretched a beat too long, as he looked into those dark, dark eyes, “is their court. Rhysand has more power than any of them- wherever he is, Night lives.”   His hand was still in her hair when sleep took Elain.   The trust of it- asleep against him, like Lucien wasn’t High Fae, magical and monstrous as they came- froze him in place.   It was a longer while than he’d ever admit before he carried Elain the scant step to her bed, left her wrapped in warm down- the temptation to stay so huge- and insane- that Lucien started walking and hadn’t stopped until he was here; deep in the snowy woods.   Dawn was only now cresting through the clouds, the light silvered pink and slow to reach him.   It was too damned much.   His mother- not just alive, or miraculously unhurt as he only hoped and dreamt of- but apparently seizing her own fate with a surety Lucien hadn’t known existed in his entire lifetime. His mother’s freedom.  They’d both be safe, at least as much as was possible, from Beron and Lucien’s brother’s wrath. For the first time in his life.  How had she broken a bond of blood? Stolen a High Lords crown?And why, after untold centuries of it’s wildness trapped in Beron’s hands, would it accept being wielded by one human girl? And what- he was truly afraid of the answer- what waited in the Day Court for them?   Lucien had only one guess, and it made it hard to breathe.   While he was already damned and ceding oxygen, Lucien let himself think of Elain. A Court’s crown should have had an effect- magic, in it’s truest, oldest aspect, shone on the skin of mortals- but Elain remained herself.   An utterly human, utterly feminine beauty. Bottomless clever eyes and a vicious, brilliant mind only countered by that kind unforgetting heart- everything in the world Lucien wished to hold.   It wasn’t fair, but he blamed Feyre.   He’d had it locked away. Bound in so much red ribbon behind his ribs to call enchantment down- and then Feyre in her pointed frustration had spent an entire day making asides about how ridiculous it was, how unnecessary it was, for Lucien to marry her sister.   While he’d been braced for the condemnation, for Nesta to brush away Feyre’s fears in that cool way of hers, that wasn’t his first impulse. Like a madness- like the High fae that he was- Lucien wanted to get in a fight.   This was where he belonged. In pace with Nesta, forever at Elain’s side.   He wanted to tear apart anyone who’d try to take that away. His home, his family, his-   Love was not a word Lucien allowed himself to think. It hadn’t lived in his vocabulary for enough centuries it had been easy to bury. Passing fondness of course existed, friendship- though his last lover had in fact been killed by Feyre’s hand, in these very snowy woods.   Andras hadn’t even been allowed to die wearing his own face.   There was nothing Lucien wouldn’t do to keep the eldest Archeron sisters alive.   He’d forgiven Feyre- been as close to her as he had anyone in decades, a friend- but Feyre had protectors too powerful and numerous to name now.   Before the sunlight reached the forest shadows Lucien’s body had melted through the snowdrift, burned so hot he was settled in summer warm soil instead of mud. A few red plumes of leaves had tried to unfurled out of their time on the oak behind him, scattered down at his displeasure between racing thoughts.   He’d never burned Elain. Lucien wasn’t actually sure it was physically possible for him- and that thought, at least, was a balm.   Lucien needed to bury it all.   Needed the lying diplomats face he’d perfected, the utter and complete act he, Elain, and Nesta pulled off in concert- Lucien needed the lie. Not to escape what he was feeling- it wasn’t possible, and he didn’t want to lose all the insane hope and fear he carried- but to face this day as the clever fox he’d been and find a path through.

  If Rhysand planned on endangering them, he had another thing coming, Nightmare Lord or no. — Elain woke up alone.   It shouldn’t have been a surprise- much less an imposition that filled her with the sort of blinding frustration a less keen observer associated only with her elder sister- Elain was the maiden daughter of Lord.   Not just a Lord, so far as the gentry were concerned, but Flatha, scion of a distant crown across the ocean, given their noble lands in totality from the personal property of the Council of Queens, their dangerous wayward relations contained within their own tiny kingdoms. Six centuries ago, Elain would have been gormflaith;  a princess named for the blue of her blood, just for being born Archeron.   For her purity.   The reality was, of course, that her father was an absent, worthless wastrel at best and Elain very clearly remembered falling asleep in Lucien’s arms.   Brown skin warm on her face, the air around them sparking- with Lucien’s laugh it ignited, a hundred little shining flecks to mix with the deep sound.   In the darkest part of the night, it had seemed like a whole other world. Effortless magic everywhere, that she looked on with such enormous fondness it was impossible to hide, a wreath of flower and bone- where exactly in the Autumn Court had the bone of a dragon come from?- tucked in her hair and humming with a power that lit along Elain’s muscles like adrenaline, easy as breathing.   Tumbling into Lucien’s embrace to bask in the predator-intent, faery savage way he watched her face.   His hand in her hair. Gentle, so impossibly gentle as curls rasped over knife callouses, the gesture completely separate from the wickedness in his molten eyes.   Waking up alone, under no less than three layers.   Elain bit the inside of her cheek and rolled over, kicking off suffocating blankets two and three as she went. The one left tucked around her with the precision of rolled pastry was rabbit fur- warm, soft, and usually housed across the room on a divan near exclusively used by Nesta.   The perfect repose of a noble heiress- but most women of Elain’s outsize standing were not hiding a house full of dangerous faeries. Did not turn every bit of glittering charm and very real companionship on their fake- but not quite- fiancé to get them out of their eminently fashionable great coat, all the way down to a silken tunic that left perfect, near obscenely sculpted arms bare, only for fire to paint the air with happiness. The average daughter of Flatha weren't able to summon the crown of Court of Prythian out of thin air, or possess a High Fae sister, and a triplicate strand of pearls that lived on her wrist to hide a scar whose sensitivity felt like- felt like-   Elain rolled back over and groaned.   There were a thousand things to do. Nesta needed to know that Sorcha had passed them off impossible power, offered refuge that could reshape their plans. Lucien needed to sign off their shipping manifests, go to port and glamour smuggled faerie cargo.   Their farms needed the roads cleared, the staff accounted for in the blizzard, extra supplies taken to the orphanage to begin the winter holiday celebrations. A ball to finish planning, ash wood to burn and hide, Feyre’s arrival to stage so that she could move freely at home.   Elain was busy. But instead of moving she was staring out the diamond paned window that showed her pink sky and blinding white snow; thinking about Lucien’s hands. She wanted to hold those hands and let their matching rings clank together. Let him feel the pulse in her wrist and see how pleasure arced over her skin from that silvered mark.   She wanted Lucien at her side for everything. — Back in fighting form, at least on the surface, Lucien was more intrigued than alarmed when halfway back home he ran into Feyre, coming out of the woods.   It was that old friendship- Feyre the huntress, Feyre the human unafraid of magic tempered spring green groves, Feyre newly changed and desperate to be outside- that kept him from the immediate warning sign.   She was alone, for one thing.   Smiled that cocky, antagonistic smile he hadn’t seen since she was a human. “Vanserra,” She called, and Lucien heard cauldron damned Rhysand in the syllables.   It was not like when Nesta called him by his surname.   Because being pricks to each other was the friendly foundation for them, Lucien squashed his shoulder into hers in reply, the snow liberally sprinkled in her hair sliding over his still bare arms. “Where’s your crown, little Fey? Thought Night Court fashion had rubbed off on you.”   With a half smiling snarl, Feyre used both hands to send him careening, before hiding them away in the deep pockets of a gigantic leather coat he could smell Illyrian blood on. Hair in a simple braid, she was leagues closer to the woman he’d known.   “Rhys is dramatic,” She said, unbearably fondly.   Rhysand was setting her up as an equal, and the ruler of the most populous court in Prythian, but Lucien was not going to be the person to tell her that.   “Dramatic,” Lucien repeated with a grimace, melting the snow in his path. He didn’t miss that Feyre watched impossibly fast motion- ice to slush to water, soaking deep into the soil at his behest- with rapt attention. “What are you doing out here?”   He was going to make a joke about her hunting pheasant with unfair fey advantage, perhaps extol the virtues of the terrifying, wonderful woman Nesta had employed as a cook and really grind in the fact of his life here, when Feyre blinked. 

And then again.   High Fae tells were dangerous, subtle things. Control was a mark of age, and power, with the rush of instincts that ran thick in their blood with adulthood. High Lords were volatile, courtiers deadly.   Feyre, for all her obvious immortal grace and power, still feigned like the nineteen year old mortal she was in many ways.   And lied like one.   “Practicing,” Feyre recited, face normal and eyelashes fluttering. Untruth changed the entire tone of her voice. For someone who looked so damn much like Nesta, sounded so much like Elain, the lack of ease felt bizarre. “Rhys is training me, but I can’t control all the courts power yet.”   The woods led to both the main road out to the farms and the local village, in the other direction, apple orchards and the shattered Spring Court border. Lucien decided to play along.   “No more accidental fires?” He teased.   Feyre laughed, almost genuine. “Autumn is easy,” She insisted, which told Lucien enough to know that whatever drop of Beron she possessed, its depths had not been reached. “Darkness is obvious, but I’m still finding out what came from who.”   Before he could reply, Feyre twisted, fluid as a Dawn Court assassin, to pose before Lucien. “Spar with me?”   He’d fought her as a human. Fought Tamlin for the chance for her to learn to master her new body, retrain in old skills. Even if Feyre had been fighting with Illyrian’s every day for the last year, Lucien had three centuries and an impossibly savage upbringing on his side- there was no danger.   But still, his pulse said look closer.   “You should know,” Lucien teased, mirroring her wide stance, “I did already fight the ceremonial duel with Nesta for Elain’s hand.”   Feyre stopped mid motion darting forward lightening fast to laugh. “Nesta held a sword?”   Something utterly indignant, blood red and fey, twisted in Lucien’s chest. He caught the hand that had been about to slap into him and sent Feyre flying back, her knees hitting the snow bank his melted path had created. “Hand to hand? No weapons or magic?”   Feyre grinned, shoulders aligning. “Just one round, fight me for real.”   Lucien didn’t immediately realize what a mistake it was. — Elain’s first sign something was off was Nesta’s pale face, crashing through her bedroom door.   It was early enough- the house empty enough- that much like much like Elain pulling Lucien into her bedroom the night before, Nesta looked like herself. Ink already visible on both hands, her wine colored dress without the sleeves laced on, carrying both books and letters balanced under one arm, the Archeron seal clutched golden in the other- this was the real Nesta.   Who tossed herself down on a chaise, catlike, to glare at Elain.   Not at Elain- not really, no true malice could live between the eldest Archerons- at the world. “Feyre didn’t sleep in her room last night.”   The fur blanket tucked around Elain’s shoulders slid to the floor as she turned, taking the comforting smell of Lucien’s hair with it. “Did she stay with Rhysand?”   She’d thought, not yet. Feyre might speak to him like a lover, invade the High Lords space in that half casual way Elain assumed faeries would take very seriously, but they didn’t seem there yet. There was a restraint, hunger in those ancient purple eyes.   Starvation.   Nesta sighed, began to shuffle the books she’d set down into a perfectly straight pile. “No, she took one of the guest rooms. It wasn’t even made up.” It wasn’t even- Feyre had come home, crossed the continent back to the land of their childhoods, and pointedly slept in a room without fresh linen? Or candles, or water brought in?   Elain joined Nesta on the chaise, silk magic warm beneath her.   Feyre’s rooms were exactly where they had been when they were children. The eastern wing, where she could see the sunrise over the gardens from her bedroom. Before the house had been plundered straight to the ground to pay debt- the very beams and rooftiles sold- the room next to it had been a tiny childrens library, just for her.

They’d rebuild it three times the size with more windows than walls. Elain had spent an obscene amount on fine glass, Nesta filled it with supplies from four countries- a studio, for their sister who’d always wanted to make beautiful things.   Elain swallowed the hurt, shared a look with Nesta that said all that needed to be said.   With it went the thoughts she kept thinking seeing Feyre’s face, both utterly young and preternaturally frozen, beautiful. Mortal freckles but no smile lines left. That same unrestrained laugh, but their mother’s blue eyes looked at Rhysand for answers. She was back, she was alive, she was- “Why do you think she came home?”   Nesta handed her the largest envelope.   It contained not one letter, or map, but more than a half dozen missives on blue paper, written by equally many hands. Elain dumped them on the cushions between them and began to read.   Humans in business with faeries had unique tactics to stay ahead. For one thing, compacts bound to bloodline meant most of the immortals didn’t care to know their business partners, after all, by their standard, they’d be dead soon.   But mortals stuck together. Many of their ancestors had been the same once, royal blooded and wild with nothing to loose. Explorers, who’d gone looking for whole new lands to gift their children, bereft of a crowns direct privilege.   Their descendants learned care in the cradle, and the power of passing knowledge.   Blue paper for the secret city’s Court, incendiary powder ink for High Fae information, moon silk ribbons, for Sangravah, the weaving capital of the world.   Elain compared the words, reiterating the same thing again and again, before meeting Nesta’s blazing eyes. “The Night Court has been invaded?”   Of course it had come from a dozen people; merchants made money in conflict. Human worlds changed, when those conflicts were fae. The danger was near suicidal for mortals in magical wars- but those rare survivors ended up rich beyond promise.   “No one knows who it was.” Nesta said lowly, frustrated, “They infilitrated the civilian population, took something, and burnt half the city to the ground once it was found.”   A valuable something, if they needed that much chaos to dissuade pursuit. What did Sangravah have? The best rugs and tapestries in the world. The only port where Dawn Court silk could be bought. Libraries and temples, pink light and poetry.   “Isn’t Sangravah a stone city?”   Nesta’s pale bitten lips said yes without the words. Elain swore.   For something to do with her hands she tipped the book pile closer and read down the spines: Alchemic Fire: A Compendium, Mother’s Moon: The Priestess Orders, and White Stone, Silver Blood, The Complete History of Northern Conquest. That Nesta hadn’t slept wasn’t a question Elain needed to ask, anymore than she knew that she’d find colored coded annotations if she started reading along. Completely illegal tomes, of course, Nesta’s favourite import.   She tried not to picture centuries old stone made molten, leveled to the ground. The heat, the chaos- the magic it would take for that kind of destruction.   “Hybern?” Elain asked, her own doubt clear.   The shake of Nesta’s head knocked loose her hasty updo, wooden pins catching in the freed waves of her dark hair. Recognizing the sheen and sharp points, Elain tried and failed to sympathize with the storm Rhysand had coming.   Nesta was walking around with ash wood in her hair.   “Hybern,” Nesta repeated with equal dubiousness, “Or Night Court rebels, or another Court or the Queen’s Council. Rhysand has more enemies than the thrice damned Plague Lord.” A High Lord who had specialized in bloodline curses- a single faery who’d brought the continent to it’s knees, a thousand years before. Elain wondered if they were of any relation. The male Feyre called Rhys and laughed with seemed to have an equal notoriety with his own people.   And possibly worse power running in his veins.   “Prythian,” Elain began carefully, “Might be even less stable than we know.”   Whispering despite the warding, echoed adrenaline making her awake, awake, awake, Elain managed in a steady voice to tell Nesta about Sorcha. Crowns and the Autumn Lords crimes, asylum waiting in the most foreign of places. — Feyre cheated immediately.   Lucien, who’d once had nightmares about that exact look of mischief on a human face, like a Suriel waiting in the dark, knew it was coming.   So when the youngest Archeron sister rolled out of the snowbank he’d neatly tossed her into with a laugh, Lucien was able to smartly dodge the ice that came railing toward him. Not sharp, but a barrage like giant hail that cracked against tree trunks, sent snow flying.   Feyre had never actually seen how fast Lucien could move.   And he wasn’t trying terribly hard now. If she’d been training with Illyrians all along, she’d be used to superior ungodly strength, but not the speed of High Fae. Even if she hadn’t been given the opportunity, Lucien thought Feyre would have sought it- Nesta’s infuriated face that those were Illyrians, childhood legends made real was evidence enough.   Rather than reengage, half a kind thought to the looming oak behind Feyre had the tree shaking every bit of wet snow off its drooping branches.   The weight of the snow knocked her back down with a groan. “You talk to trees now?”   Lucien straightened from the trunk he’d been leaning against and tried not to sound full of the vague insult he felt, “I always talked to trees.”   Feyre didn’t bother to get back up, shaking the slush from the hugely oversized shoulders of her coat. Narrow eyed, she tilted her head in question. It was still bizarre to see Feyre so- the mix of her human mannerisms and the instincts of a faery body muddled, indistinct. It was even more confusing now that he knew her sisters. When Nesta had the same posture, with her utterly similar and painfully different face, it was all fae- aggression, focus, the shape of a hunt.   Feyre looked baffled. And angry? “How’d you learn that from Spring?”   He waited a beat too long for the quicksilver teasing smile, for the punchline. It was long enough for the temperature to drop several degrees, for her brow to furrow completely. Lucien swore. “You’re joking.”   Incised, Feyre tossed an impressively articulate fireball at him, straight autumnal gold. “Of course I’m not joking. Spring controls plants.” Spring controlled plants. Gods and immortal honey.   “What,” Lucien growled, pausing to dodge Feyre’s barrage of fire, “In the Crones darkest mercies is Rhysand teaching you?”   It was an obvious mistake to snarl Rhysand’s name like that in her hearing. Like he hated the bastard- which in some ways he did. The High Lord, even if it had been Feyre’s idea as Lucien feared, had brought death and danger to the Archeron’s doorstep.   Was, after a sole year of what was clearly painfully basic training, touting her as the greatest magical force in Prythian.   Feyre’s eyes visibly flashed and Lucien braced himself.   But what he was met with was a wall of fire. Not warding, not bloodmagic, not sunfire, but only Autumn’s burning grace.   He could have parted it like a curtain. Eaten it up with hotter flames, pulled back until it belonged to him. It was exactly the sort of magical pageantry Beron insisted upon- no one raised in the Forest House wanted to be the weaker end of that pull.   Disallowed, Lucien’s thoughts still managed to flicker to the crown that fit his head. Day’s gold and Autumn bone, a missing piece, a-   Lucien stepped into the fire.   He could tell she was angry just from its depth, roil. Like stepping into the titanic baths of a Winter chalet, like the Summer court sea; Lucien had forgotten how good it felt. Living heat coiled up his arms, caressed his face.   Swore he could taste just a hint of bonfire on the back of his tongue. The ritual kind that burned and burned under a full moon, hawthorne and rowan, violets and rose. It was, he thought, painfully near the scent of Elain’s rage, protection that littered the air like embers.   Lucien was only aware he’d closed his eyes when it all went away. The world was blinding white, and Feyre was talking so fast her words bled together.   -“why the hell would you do that,” She was saying, “Do you think I actually want to hurt you? Shit, shit shit.” Lucien tried not to smirk, but the action was ruined by his recoil when Feyre grabbed his bare arm with both hands. Not that it stopped her- she kept swearing right up to the moment she actually managed to trace up his arm, staring at his unblemished skin with giant eyes.   Friendly, afraid, and awed; but still Feyre’s touch crawled over his skin with wrongness.   It had a name, a very specific reason, but Lucien wasn’t about to use the word, even in the privacy of his own mind.   Finally he snarled, discomfiture actually real enough for Feyre to drop his arm in sheepish apology. Clearly, some fae things she had learned.   “I don’t understand,” She said, “What just happened? Are you okay?”   It had been easy, Under the Mountain, to forget the savior of Prythian was a teenage girl. “Of course I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me, Feyre.”   Forcefully, Lucien made himself remember that he’d once wanted to be her teacher. Trapped under Tamlin’s rule, less than a shadow of himself, he’d wanted to make sure the world leveling power in her veins didn’t destroy her. Now, he wondered what in Cauldron’s name Feyre had been doing for the last year.   And wished, wished, he’d thought to take a real shirt with him leaving Elain’s rooms.   Feyre was still staring at him in that half hollowed out way that spoke of something like human shock. Lucien made himself smile through the grimace. 

“Fey, you know who I am now? My history?”   Feyre nodded, pulse visible in her throat. “Heir to the Autumn Court.”   He didn’t let himself blink, but it was a near thing. The North still called him heir? How that must burn in Beron’s gut, infuriate Eris.   It wasn’t the right time to explain his banishment, the price on his head. Much less grin over it. “Could you drown Rhysand in darkness?”   Caught between the human impossibility of Lucien’s utter lack of injury and what she had been taught was a fearsome faery weapon, it was a long moment in the frozen morning before Feyre smiled again.   “He’d like to see me try,” She drawled, giving much more information that Lucien really wanted but- “You’re flame retardant? “   Lucien laughed, but the warning bells hadn’t stopped. There was no one in their history who’d ever had the power Feyre did. Some things were universal to High Fae; instinct and strength, winnowing and healing, longevity and vengeance. But even a faery child born whose parents had mixed two court bloodlines, or grandparents, or great grandparents- it could happen for generations down, still the result would be the same. A favoring of one, maybe two Court’s vital skills.   There were theories about how it worked. That the solar courts had more malleable, airy skill, but the elementals blood was more physically shaping.   Lucien himself was not a good example.   He’d taken the name Vanserra the second he could for a reason- he’d favored completely Sorcha’s skills from the cradle. There had always been talk along with it- Lucien who burned a little too bright, whose very name was light like his mothers.   Remarks about his deeper skin, the shape of his mouth, and the height he grew into- so unlike his siblings.   The last Vanserra heir. It was the savagery that saved him long enough to grow; had the Lady of Autumn’s whole family not been slaughtered? The male heirs had disappeared centuries before, the loss of all the rest to Hybern was a tragedy that bore the mark of Beron’s fingerprints.   Of course Lucien would be unloved- hated. So different than Beron, than his brothers- yet still the most powerful son of all. A walking reminder of crimes and bloodshed, it made a very Autumn sort of sense.   Lucien was a very Autumn-blessed faery.   But that didn’t mean he didn’t receive a basic education on other courts before his banishment. He was not fire retardant- like calls to like. Too much an Autumn blaze to ever feel anything but it’s embrace; but sunfire would burn him. A ward twinged with Summer’s roaring heat could wound.   He wasn’t the child of every Court like her- but he knew the difference.   Lucien kept right on smiling, despite the peaked horror. How could she be ready for war?   “Not inflammable,” He drawled right back, laid on an eye-roll whose familiarity brightened her smile, “Just Autumn born.”   Liquid fast, Feyre reached out to tug on a long red tied braid in his hair, “I would have never guessed.”   Could she smell Elain on the ribbon?   Not letting the thought show, Lucien swatted at her playfully. He loved her- not like he loved Nesta, but affection all the same. Her youth scared him. “So fires so easy,” He asked, “Are you getting all the elements now?”   Feyre started walking again, meandering toward the house as she talked. Fire and water, darkness and wind. Was it actually possible a drop of each court wasn’t enough to obtain their more esoteric skills?   Or had she simply not learnt to access them?   “-the hardened wind shielding is dead useful, not sure if it’s Day or Summer. The same with the light show, but I don’t know what it does”-   “Light show?” Lucien interrupted.   Feyre raised her eyebrows. “Sometimes when fire won’t come I get light instead, this kind of glow?”   Summer Court light was weapon, she’d have known if she conjured it accidentally. But if it went along with flame-   Lucien summoned a ball of flame. He didn’t need to hold it over his hand like a showman, but it would be better for his point. “Is all your fire red?”   Feyre only made a face in response.   He started slow, relying on the old adage that instinct would catch up once possibilities were realized. Red to orange, orange to gold, gold to peach and pink. Pink to the burning, seething white he carried around in his chest, the natural color of Lucien’s flames.   Delight and determination shaped Feyre’s face, before she mimicked it perfectly.   The white of the snowing, pristine world before had nothing, nothing, on the gleam and glow. It was identical. But, but- Lucien realized, flames gutting out, it wasn’t fire.   Pure magic, the rise of the sun that fed the world. Feyre couldn’t tell what the light did, because she hadn’t let it loose on darkness. It was cleansing, hungry as his own flames. Daylight.   Enchantment had always been Lucien’s specialty.   Now that he let himself think it, the prospect that he’d never questioned was insane. His mother was a creature of blood and the Bone Forest- her spells were binding, clever. Had he ever seen her break one?   Had her flames ever eaten magic, destruction tempering in a whole new shape?   The fire of High Fae is not always, simply, fire.

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