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Silence fell, and neither of us felt inclined to break it. What more was there to say?

A new entity dwelled in my body in the wake of the day’s events, something that had carved out a vast chunk of my soul and now roosted within it. Every now and then, it would open its maw and roar—and the sounds that came out were Nyx’s screams of pain. Over and over, they echoed, and the thing inside me dug itself deeper.

And as the fire slowly devoured the logs, as I let the wood collapse down to embers and didn’t bother to add more, I wondered if Clotho had been right, and not all was as it seemed.

Hybern’s involvement or no, Bryaxis’s attack today was perhaps a gift to me. A gift I had not known how badly I needed.

Because I knew now what I had to do. And I did not fear it at all.

CHAPTER

19

Lucien

Lucien hated everything about Rhysand and Feyre’s house.

Mostly because he loved everything about it.

If he could have designed a place for himself, it would have been this. The blend of sweeping yet cozy, the grandeur melding effortlessly with the intimacy. The Spring Court manor had been all hard marble and gilded finery. And while the river house was no less opulent . . . it was a home.

The Mother knew he hadn’t had one of those in a long, long while.

As he lay in the bed in the lovely room overlooking the Sidra River beyond the lawn, the scent of his mate floated like a ribbon of spring in the air, reaching him all the way in the guest wing.

He’d smelled Elain the moment he’d set foot in the temple earlier.

He hadn’t seen her since Winter Solstice, more than nine months ago. She’d frowned at his gift like he’d offered her poison, and left it discarded on the table beside her chair.

He didn’t expect anything from her. He knew damn well he didn’t deserve her. Why the Mother had made them mates, he had no idea. Elain clearly had no interest in him, and though he’d tried to get to know her . . . it hadn’t gone well.

It didn’t stop his mouth from watering whenever he was near her, his every predatory instinct rising to the fore, his blood roaring to find her, woo her, claim her.

He considered himself a reasonable, civilized male. What pumped through him at the thought of Elain, at her floral scent, was anything but. His straining cock was anything but.

Lucien flipped onto his side, gritting his teeth. Would it be a violation of her if he took care of himself? He’d never let himself do so when thinking of her, but this had been the longest stretch in his existence without sex—without any sort of physical contact. And seeing Elain today, even with the terror of Bryaxis still heavy upon them all, even though she hadn’t spoken to him at dinner, hadn’t even looked at him . . . Gods, he ached.

Lucien glanced at the fine molding around the ceiling, and the gold of his enchanted mechanical eye clicked. Handmade beauty, it informed him. No hint of enchantment.

The eye was a gift and a curse. It allowed him to see as he would have before Amarantha carved his eye out of his skull with her fingernail, but it could also see magic in its own strange way. Auras, usually.

Feyre’s was a rainbow of colors—all the magics of the High Lords that had been handed over to her, and something silvery and radiant that was Feyre herself. It was different from Nesta’s burning silver. Or Elain’s sparkly gold and rose—like the dawn itself. No, Feyre’s was something wholly unique.

Gone was that starved, sullen girl he’d first met. A High Lady, a mother, had been with him today, seen him to this room after dinner, wholly confident in her place here. Even her scent projected it—along with a newness.

The first layer of scent was small and soft—a baby scent—wrapped around what he could only assume was the sweet smell of her milk. Then Rhys’s scent, and Mother knew that scent warned him and any other male to stay the fuck away from his mate.

Lucien thrashed onto his other side, kicking at the sheets. Did Feyre know?

He snorted. Of course she knew—at least, that mates had scents that deeply marked each other once the bond was accepted, but Rhys’s was terrifying. Did she ever forget who she’d mated with? Who had fathered her child? What sort of monster lurked beneath that smooth surface?

Yes, they’d all become allies of a sort. Yes, he himself had witnessed Rhys’s goodness, but he’d also seen what Rhys was capable of. His cruelty and scheming and utter lack of mercy. There was a reason people still shuddered to hear Rhysand’s name, even after the Hybern War.

And finally, beneath all that, Feyre’s own scent shimmered, her own innermost self. That silvery brightness, the smell that he’d first detected at their initial meeting at the Spring Court, which had only been amplified and clarified in becoming High Fae. High Lady. Her aura seemed to grow with joy at the family around her. The friends she’d made.

It pained him to remember that he had once been counted as one of them.

You gave up on me, she’d hissed at him all those years ago. I begged you so many times to help me.