Chapter Text
Elain Archeron couldn’t remember the last time she received a letter.
It was an odd thing to realize. She supposed there was little need to correspond with someone as unimportant as the quiet, simple sister of the High Lady of Night.
Her sister received reams of letters every day, her desk stacked with sealed envelopes of all colors and sizes. The piles never seemed to get smaller, only growing each day despite Feyre’s attempts to lessen the load.
Elain noticed the way her sister massaged the base of her palms with her thumb. When she asked about the habit, Feyre shrugged it off.
“Let me help,” Elain insisted.
Years of gardening had strengthened her long, nimble fingers. No matter how she ripped and tore at the thorny bushes or let the troublesome wasps sting the tender flesh, Elain’s hands remained remarkably flawless.
“It’s dull work,” Feyre said. “Better suited for an assistant.”
“I don’t mind dull,” said Elain.
Nothing could be duller than her life in the Night Court. She felt proud of the work she’d done to overhaul the River House’s overgrown lawns and rotting gardens, but there was only so many times she could weed the same patch of earth before it became tedious.
She had almost become desperate enough to stop drinking the bitter draught Helion Spell-Cleaver brewed for her. A mix of herbs and faerie magic that blocked her visions in near-totality.
A necessity, Feyre and Rhysand explained. A preventative measure to protect her mind from the onslaught of disturbing images that haunted her dreams, and blurred the lines between waking and sleeping, leaving her in a fugue state for days on end. Elain supposed it was one thing to have a useless sister, another to have her wandering the halls like a ghost and scaring their toddling progeny to the point of tears every time he saw her. So, she kept drinking the draught and ignored the constant ache in her head.
“Just sort the letters by manner of importance,” Feyre instructed her. “I’ll answer the most urgent ones myself. Anything about trade will go to Amren, and any from our allies in Winter, Dawn, or Day should be handled by Mor.”
“And which ones would you like me to answer?” Elain asked.
The space between Feyre’s brows wrinkled at the suggestion. “There’s no need for that,” she said. “Just focus on sorting them for now.”
Her once-fierce sister had gotten quite good at that—the diplomat’s dismissal. Elain found herself missing the days when the huntress would bark at her and Nesta, all grit and fire, the world bending to her iron will. Now, her younger sister just looked at her with pity, her voice never rising above a soft hum.
How quickly their lives had changed since those days in the cottage. How strange it was to yearn for the hunger, the filth, their too-small bed, crammed together with her sisters’ bony elbows poking her ribs.
There were days Elain spoke to no one. Days she found herself muttering to the night-blooming jasmine and the evening primrose as if they could respond. To think she once dreamed of a life like this, trapped behind the high stone walls of the Graysen estate.
Perhaps it had been a gift, in the end—Graysen’s rejection. She’d tucked away the iron and pearl ring in a small velvet box and hadn’t looked at it since. Still, she knew it was there, hidden away in the depths of her armoire, nagging at her.
Still, she couldn’t find the strength to part with it.
A matter for another time, she resigned. For now, she had a task to do.
Staring at the precarious stack of letters on Feyre’s desk, Elain had a split second of regret. How she’d manage to get through them all she didn’t know. And each morning, more arrived.
It’s no different than creeping vines or onion grass, she told herself. All she had to do was start somewhere. Small efforts cascaded into significant progress, and once the stacks were manageable, it would become much easier to maintain.
A few weeks of diligent work and she had made a modest dent. Feyre had given her feedback, which made it easier to determine what was actually important and what could be ignored.
“Just because someone says it’s urgent does not make it so,” Feyre explained. “And just because they write in big, angry letters does not mean their anger is justified.”
“Right,” Elain said. “And what do we do with the unimportant letters?”
“Burn them,” said her sister. “If they send a second or third correspondence, then we’ll reconsider their claims of importance.”
Cruel, but pragmatic. Elain supposed Feyre had to be if anything was to get done. It was a trait Feyre shared with her mate, though Elain wondered if Feyre had learned it from Rhysand, or if it was something that had always been within her. A side of her fearless sister that he brought out in her.
Elain preferred not to think about such things—about the faerie goddess who saw fit to meddle with affairs of the heart. She wondered if the Mother, in all her infinite wisdom and all-knowingness, realized she was a blasphemer.
Maybe she would be punished one day for her obstinance. Or, maybe her time in Night was a punishment, of sorts. An eternal purgatory, where every day dripped on the same as the last. Forever unchanged, just like her fae body.
And no matter how many times she tore out the weeds that grew wild and untamed in her soul, there they remained—their roots strong, unyielding.
It was on one of those unending, unchanging days that Elain found the lilac envelope. She’d almost missed it entirely due to its size. It had gotten stuck to another letter, the wax seal partially melted from heat.
She turned the curious envelope over in her hands, noting its scent. Sweet, earthy, and a little smoky. She held it up to her sensitive fae nose and breathed it in. Baked apples, rain-soaked earth, and charred birch bark. Something else too—a scent she couldn’t put her finger on.
But it was the name the envelope was addressed to that caught her attention the most.
Lady Elain Archeron
Someone had written her a letter. It must have gotten missed in the piles and piles for her sister. An easy thing to do, given the envelope was so small.
She stared at the handsome script, her name never looking so elegant as it did on the thick parchment. The E curling like sweet grass, the n trailing as though its writer did not wish to lift the quill off the page. Elain ran her fingers over the letters and tried to feel the care put into them.
Goodness, how lonely she must be, getting moony-eyed over her name on an envelope.
Without another moment of hesitation, Elain ran her finger across the seal and tore open the envelope—
Elain,
Perhaps I am a fool for expecting a letter from you.
Perhaps I am a fool to write you, still, after all these months.
Perhaps I do not care if you never read a single one.
In truth, I write these only when I drink too much faerie wine and have lost all my common sense. How many more I’ve written and crumpled into a wad of parchment, I am too ashamed to admit. Not even the Shadowsinger could wring that information from me.
This should be my last letter. I say should, because I cannot promise I will not be driven to foolishness and want for you again. So foolish, and so full of want, that it makes me do regrettable things.
Forgive me. I only hope that the dahlias do well in the Night Court’s gardens.
Yours,
Lucien
Panic bloomed in Elain’s chest, her heart thundering as she stared and stared at the name on the bottom of the page. Heat spread across her face, a strange sort of embarrassment warming her whole body, thrumming in her blood.
Gripping the parchment in her curled fist, she raced to the fireplace, ready to hurl the letter in the flames as her sister had instructed.
It was then, as she stood in front of the crackling fire, that she noticed the piece of wrapped wax paper that had fallen at her feet, and another small piece of parchment folded into a tight square.
She bent down and picked them up. Carefully, she unwrapped the wax paper. Tucked away in its folds were brown, bottle shaped seeds and chaff.
Dahlia seeds.
Elain swallowed the ragged breath caught in her throat. Delicately, she re-folded the wax paper and set it aside, focusing her attention on the square of folded parchment. It had been bent and creased several times over. When she opened it, she found an impressively accurate rendering of a dahlia flower from three separate angles and a few scrawled notes on where the bloom had been found, the type of soil it was growing in, and the quality of the light it needed to flourish.
Her eyes flicked to the fireplace once again. It was technically an unimportant letter. Fit for burning and ignoring.
If they send a second or third correspondence, then we’ll reconsider their claims of importance, Feyre had told her.
Elain glanced at the piles of letters, her eyes scanning the stacks. Several more lilac envelopes were tucked between big, white ones. Dozens, maybe.
All letters to Elain. All from Lucien.
Her mind went quiet as she looked at the letter again. Even the constant throb in her temples ceased as she reread it once, twice, her eyes catching on the word want each time.
Elain folded the letter and tucked it back in the envelope, along with the seeds and the diagram. She decided she’d read and sorted enough letters for the day. Feyre never checked on her progress, anyway. It was impossible to tell come morning, when a fresh stack would be awaiting her.
She returned to her room, strategically dodging the house staff and her brother-in-law, whose booming voice could be heard from down the hall as he and the others discussed some business they saw fit to exclude her from.
Silently, she closed the door behind her and locked it. She headed straight for the armoire, tucking the envelope in the deepest, darkest corner—right next to the velvet ring box.
And as she lay in her cold, empty bed that night, she did her best to ignore the feeling blossoming in her low belly as Lucien’s words ran through her mind like a river polishing a stone.