Chapter Text
Feyre had just rounded the corner into the kitchen, spurred into movement by Cassian’s growling belly to go check on dinner, when Rhys’s voice rang out from the wide entry of the townhouse. “We’ll be back soon, Feyre darling!”
And, there. Elain’s head popped up from behind the long counter in the center of the kitchen.
“Where are they going?”
“Anyone who isn’t too buzzed to winnow is going to pick up the rest of the family. Mor’s already left to get Amren,” Feyre told her, rounding the counter. She held out a hand to Elain, who was on her knees in front of the oven, looking frazzled. “Is everything coming together down there?”
“Oh, yes. I was just—” Elain took Feyre’s hand, pulling herself up off the floor, and waved the other toward the oven. She smiled self-consciously. “Fretting.”
Feyre bent at the waist, peering in through the small window at the crusty loaf inside. “It looks good to me.”
Perfect, actually, as all of Elain’s baking had been for the past several months, with a golden crust embellished with little holly leaves and a decorative wreath made out of flour.
“Maybe. It needs a few minutes.” Elain said. She picked up a corner of her apron to dust some flour from her hands, twisting it nervously between her fingers, and Feyre shot a curious look at her. “I just want everything to be perfect… Who else is coming to dinner?”
“Amren and,” Elain’s hands froze, and Feyre grimaced, “Nesta.”
But Elain merely hummed, her eyes flitting away, no doubt reliving her horrible visit to Nesta earlier in the week. She had been the first to track their sister down and invite her to the full week of Solstice celebrations, and Feyre knew that Nesta’s response had been less than gracious.
“Is that all?”
“Lucien, too.”
That had been Feyre’s first last-minute invitation to the dinner, sent early in the afternoon when Rhys returned with word about the state of the Spring Court—and of Tamlin's temper. Pity, friendship, and the foggy memory of Spring’s dreadfully boring Solstice rituals moved her to pen the note inviting Lucien to come a few nights early for the holiday. She had forgotten to consider the awkwardness he and Elain hadn’t yet resolved between themselves until the millisecond after the enchanted notecard disappeared from her desk.
When word from Lucien hadn’t arrived back by dusk, Rhys insisted on sending a similar note to Nesta letting her know to expect Azriel at the same time Rhys planned to spirit Lucien away from the Spring Court, hoping that the two difficult situations might somehow cancel one another out.
“Or blackmail everyone into behaving so they don’t become the target of everyone’s pointing and laughing,” Rhys had said when Feyre rolled her eyes and called him a prick, spreading his arms wide. “It’s a holiday dinner with the entire family, darling. That’s how these things work.”
Feyre watched for Elain’s response, to see if she felt anything at all about her mate coming to dinner, but her sister swanned away to the other side of the kitchen, picking up a sprig of fresh rosemary and plucking the leaves from the stem. Her eyes were distant as she counted each one in her palm.
Feyre didn’t cook, but she was fairly certain that was an unnecessary step.
Elain only looked up and revealed the perturbed look on her face when she finally said, “Nesta’s coming?”
“I… Yes. If Azriel can find her.”
Elain nodded, her spine stiff, and sprinkled the rosemary over the top of a piping hot dish of potatoes. “He will.”
“Did you see that?” Feyre asked, curious. No one had known what to do about Elain’s visions after the war, whether it was something they could train without waking the Cauldron again, so they decided to let Elain take the lead on developing her gifts.
And, thus far, Elain taking the lead on developing her gifts looked more like Elain ignoring them entirely and spouting vague, cryptic warnings only when she couldn’t avoid them any longer.
Elain threw her a glance and pointed at the oven. “That’s the bread.”
Feyre leaned over the counter to silence the silver, wind-up timer rang out, shrill and piercing, just a second too late. She cast a wary look at Elain and snatched up a thick dishcloth, bending to open the oven and waving away the steam that billowed out. Carefully, she lifted the heavy cast-iron pot full of bread from the oven.
“There are only so many places Nesta can be,” Elain told her as she did so. “Now tip the loaf out, turn it over, and knock on the bottom. If it sounds hollow, it’s finished.”
Feyre followed her instructions—the loaf was perfect—and, as if on cue, heard the door to the vestibule in the entryway opening again. The merry tinkling of the festive bells hung from it couldn’t drown out Nesta’s snapping voice in response to Azriel’s quiet offer to take her cloak.
Elain speared her with a look that said, I told you so.
Feyre set aside the knife she had picked up to cut the bread with a sigh and resigned herself to a stress-induced headache. “I’ll go make sure everyone’s sitting down.”
“You ought to make sure they’re all unarmed,” Elain murmured as she left.
Elain took a breath, smoothed back her hair, and picked up the potatoes.
She had nearly vibrated out of her skin at Feyre’s reminder that Azriel would be in attendance. He had been present at fewer and fewer dinners since the weather turned and she closed down her garden for the season, and without Azriel passing the afternoons with her in companionable silence in the sunshine, she no longer had an opportunity to wheedle him into staying.
So the moment her sister left the kitchen, she had whipped off her apron and wiped the flour from her face, swatting a patch from the hem of her dress when Nuala appeared from the shadows to point it out with a small smile curling up her dark lips.
Rhys and Lucien had entered through the back door then. Lucien’s eyes had widened when he saw her primping and studying her reflection in the glass front of the china cabinet, and Rhys had paused over the green beans, pretending to be deeply involved in sneaking a taste until Nuala scolded him.
Elain used every ounce of her self-control not to cringe away from Lucien, the thread-turned-razor-wire attached to her rib tugging painfully, and breathed a sigh of relief when Cerridwen was the next to appear and hustle him out of the kitchen.
And, well, it was taking a lot of inner strength not to turn around and throw the heavy casserole dish beside her at Rhys’s head.
“Go sit, High Lord, and you can eat at the dinner table like a civilized male,” Nuala was busy telling Rhys anyway, lifting the green beans up and away and disappearing back into her shadows.
Rhys winked into the china cabinet, brushing a bit of snow from his jacket as he turned on a heel. “See you up there, Elain.”
So Elain had no choice but to steel herself and follow with the final dish.
Between Lucien and Nesta, she just knew the dining room would be a warzone, and she was tempted to leave the potatoes on the small console table in the hallway and retreat to her room. She could hear everyone inside the dining room, chattering amongst themselves, and her feet froze when Lucien’s laugh filled the hall.
It seemed Cassian was just as nervous as she, because Feyre ushered him into the hallway from the front parlor at the same moment Elain paused in front of the doors to the dining room. He gave her a tight, empathetic smile and kissed her cheek as he passed, whispering, “Smells good, Lainey. Don’t wait too long,” at her.
Elain was still gathering her courage—and the potatoes were beginning to burn her fingers through the cloth she was using to carry them—when a dear, midnight-cool voice inside the dining room said, “Wait.”
Cassian’s incredulous response echoed down the hall. “For what, gravy?”
“Wait until everyone is seated before eating,” Azriel said, and Elain’s heart tripped even as her nerves calmed.
And when she took another breath and finally entered the dining room, he was all she could see.
She blinked at the sight of him.
His fine jacket, so different from the brutal, serviceable leathers she was used to, was sharp on his broad shoulders and made of velvet so black he seemed to blend into shadow, even though his own ripples of darkness had disappeared. His short dark hair was freshly cut, the waves neatly combed over his forehead. His brown skin glowed where the golden faelight didn’t shy away from it, as it was prone to doing with the shadowsinger.
Even the talons at the tip of his wings seemed to shine brighter than they had the last time she saw him.
Azriel’s scarred hand was locked around Cassian’s wrist, keeping him from ruining the delicate garnish of sugar whorls and candied orange peels atop her cranberry sauce.
But his entire body shifted toward her as she stepped into the dining room, and he let go of Cassian to stand slightly in acknowledgement of her, offering a polite nod as she approached the table. “Hello, Elain.”
The scrape of a chair broke the silence as Rhys helped Feyre into her seat.
“Hello,” was all she said to him, feeling foolish and on display as she approached the table and set the hot dish she was carrying with a ginger wince in the only empty spot remaining.
So many things she could say, prodding little jokes she wanted to make, but she couldn’t with everyone’s hungry attention on her. With Lucien’s russet and gold eyes staring intently at her hands, the thread around her rib tugging so hard she thought the bone might snap.
Instead, she folded the cloth and waved at the dish, lifting one shoulder that hopefully conveyed all she wanted to say to Azriel.
“Enjoy.”
“Thank you.” Azriel’s lips turned up at the corners in a small, secretive smile only for her, as if he knew just what she wished to say instead.
Her heart fluttered again when he waited until she seated herself in the last empty chair at the head of the table—as far from Lucien as possible, thank the Mother for small blessings, though Nesta and her lethal scowl were situated directly to her right—before returning to his own seat.
“Please don’t wait on my account,” she told the table, spooning some greens onto her plate.
Still, it didn’t escape her notice that everyone still waited, small warning shadows stretching across the luxurious white tablecloth, until she finished serving herself to spring back into motion.
Conversation, teasing and tentative, started up again, but with Amren and Nesta on either side of her, Elain resigned herself to a quiet meal.
“Having trouble, Amren?” Mor asked, a sly grin on her red lips.
“Doing this three times a day is excessive,” Amren huffed, pushing the food on her plate around with her fork—all selected in strange quantities and combinations, Elain noticed.
And at the other end of the table, she heard Rhys.
“...you think the humans can be ready for another summit by spring?”
“Rhys, no business at the dinner table,” Feyre complained, cutting him a look before returning her gaze to Lucien. “Tell me about Vassa. How is she?”
Elain frowned at her meal. She wasn’t sure how Feyre figured that Queen Vassa and Lucien’s business in the human realm were separate, but the mention of her made her rib tug again. She kept one hand over her side as she began eating, trying to relieve some pressure before it could destroy her appetite entirely. She massaged the bone, trying to draw out the sharp ache, and then…
Then it was gone.
Nesta’s icy eyes flickered over to her.
“Elain?”
Across the dining room, Lucien went stiff.
Elain gasped. “Oh, it’s… It’s…”
But she couldn’t catch her breath long enough to explain. Her hand shifted, from her rib to her sternum, where pleasurable warmth blossomed in the absence of that pain, so sweet and so heart-achingly tender that she feared for a moment she might melt into it…
That feeling began solidify, and a cascade of images flooded her mind as if a dam had burst somewhere deep within her soul. Glimpses of the future gushed past on the current: a sunny spring morning curled up and sipping tea against a tattooed chest, two figures creeping through shadow together in a dark forest, a baby’s yawn as tiny wings stretched wide on the embroidered coverlet atop Elain’s bed upstairs…
Wings.
“Azriel,” she breathed, daring a glance across the table to examine his carefully blank face—and across time, to a warm summer day in the garden, where a male smiled down at her so widely that his lovely hazel eyes crinkled at the corners, scarred hands adjusting the wide brim of her sunhat so the shadows fell just so around her shoulders...
At the Solstice dinner in the present, Azriel’s eyes slid shut. His fork dropped to his plate with a quiet clatter.
Elain sat, entranced, as she watched his lips stop moving, his throat working as he swallowed whatever he was eating. Her stomach was tight and heavy all at once, and she was suddenly grateful that she was already seated as her legs trembled, a heated pulse of arousal gathering between them…
An explosive blast of fire lit up the end of the table, and Rhys swore violently as he dove toward Feyre.
For a moment, everyone else was frozen, wide-eyed… and Nesta, of all people, was the first to react.
She launched herself from her chair, shoving into the space directly in front of Lucien, her own icy flames rising to suffocate his. He rose, and she bashed and pushed at his chest with unpracticed fists, using the element of sheer surprise to force him several steps backward as he tried to get to Elain.
Cassian, Siphons flaring, joined the fray with a furious growl when Lucien captured Nesta’s wrists in his flaming hands.
Azriel sat, still as a statue, at the center of the table until a mass of shadows rose up and consumed him. A gentle, curious feeling pulled at Elain’s heart as he stepped through that darkness and then materialized again on his knees beside her, his eyes soft and disbelieving.
“Elain,” he rasped, his voice awed, reverent, praying her name like a benediction. His hands reached up, as if to touch her, but they hovered uncertainly over her shoulders, her cheeks. “Elain.”
But as much as Elain anticipated that touch, so did Rhys, even as he spirited Feyre away from Lucien and Nesta with a short burst of night-dark magic. The High Lord and Lady of Night reappeared on either side of Elain, Feyre’s arms locking around her waist and pulling her from her chair as Rhys bound Azriel in chains formed of nightmares and dragged him back around the table.
Elain snarled, a sound so unfamiliar and strange she barely recognized her own voice. It hurt her throat.
In a blinding rush of movement across the room, Cassian had Lucien off of Nesta, his arms secured behind his back and a red haze of magic from his Siphons coating every inch of him. Beneath it, light and fire blazed on, even as Cassian hauled him toward the door.
“Calm down! Calm down!” He roared as Lucien thrashed, kicking and snarling.
Mor, wide-eyed and still clutching her forgotten glass of wine, placed a hand on the small of Nesta’s back as they stared after Cassian, Nesta still breathing hard. A brief look passed between them, and both females followed them from the room.
“Azriel!” Rhys’s voice was hard as a whip, reverberating off the windows and shaking the glass hard enough to crack a few panes. Shadows crawled up Rhys's legs, threatening to drag him somewhere, and he pushed Azriel back even as the chains melted away with a single burst of blue light shot through with shadow. “Fucking stop!”
Azriel’s face was blank, his jaw clenched and wings flaring wide as he stood in one smooth movement, his shadows writhing, dark enough to match the waves of night rippling off of Rhys. At his side, one scarred hand twitched over Truth-Teller’s hilt.
Elain and Feyre froze, staring between both males. The silent, enraged stand-off dragged, precious seconds ticking by, and Azriel growled in response to whatever orders Rhys spoke into his mind.
Elain’s overheated pulse stuttered as that sound swept through her, starting at the tender spot surrounding her heart and drawing forth another hot pull of desire between her legs, amplifying the knee-weakening arousal she felt…
Rhys’s violet eyes stared back at her, and the High Lord ignored another warning snarl from his brother.
Elain started.
Fear.
That was fear in Rhys’s eyes, pure and undiluted. Fear for her.
“Azriel—” Rhys raised his hands, palms spread cautiously, but he was still crouched, joints loose and ready for another bout, as his eyes returned to his opponent.
“She’s my mate.”
A sense of rightness Elain hadn’t felt the first time she heard those words washed over her.
Azriel lifted one hand to his chest, pressing hard against the spot where his third Siphon would be if he were in his leathers. He turned to her, his shadows tracking Rhys’s every breath, and said with heart-wrenching tenderness, “You’re my mate, Elain.”
Rhys made a doubtful noise low in his throat. “We don’t know what happened. Lucien is still—”
“I know what happened.”
Azriel’s eyes turned icy again as they looked away from her, glazed with fury that Rhys dared to interrupt—or dared to say Lucien’s name. Elain didn’t know despite the feelings that weren’t entirely hers flowing between them. They softened again when they returned to her. All she could do was watch as he disregarded Rhys and then bent at the waist over the table, Feyre’s arm still tight around her own and holding her back, until his hands were flat on the tablecloth, as close as he could get to her without rounding the massive piece of furniture. The fine linen cloth pulled beneath his clenching fingers.
Rhys bared his teeth, and he slashed a hand through the air between them. “Even so, she’s under duress, she cannot make a de—”
“She can tell me herself.”
Azriel’s voice was vicious, his wings and shadows flaring again, and he shot a disdainful glare at Rhys.
“Azriel, please,” Elain heard herself say, and Azriel’s attention, sharp and focused and so, so tender, locked on her once more.
“Elain. Do you want…” He cleared his throat, his wings shifting again, stretching. “Do you want this?”
Elain’s legs finally gave out, and she nearly dragged Feyre to the ground with her before a shadow whisked a chair beneath her, catching her.
“I don’t even know what this is,” she said eventually. Azriel’s eyes slid shut for the briefest second, a flash of agony etched onto his face before it was hidden away. Elain felt it anyway, searing across the bond and shredding through her entire body.
It was nothing like the singular sharp sensation of the bond with Lucien against her rib.
Feyre rounded the table to stand beside Rhys, who angled himself between his mate and Azriel. Her knuckles turned white where she dug her hand into the crook of Rhys’s elbow, pulling him toward the door. Her eyes were wide, glancing between Azriel, Elain, and her own mate. “Rhys, go.”
Elain felt the phantom fingers of Feyre’s consciousness against her own, that funny, unnerving feeling, and in an instant she received a flash of an image: Cassian, battered, after Feyre’s own bond was accepted and Rhys beat him bloody. She covered her mouth with both hands.
“No!” Rhys’s violet eyes flashed, and Azriel tensed. “Elain, you don’t have to decide right now. We can—”
“Go!” One tattooed hand pointed at the door, the other shoving at Rhys. Feyre’s voice was firm, furious. A High Lady’s voice, laden with power. “Out, or I will throw you out!”
“Go, Rhysand,” Amren’s cool voice spoke up, unphased. She was still seated, watching them all with narrowed eyes. “I will make sure they handle this properly.”
“Please,” Elain said when he hesitated again. Every move from him sent another wave of discomfited, guilty rage coursing through her from Azriel's direction.
Rhys stared at her, his eyes dark, intent, and in the next instant, he was gone, winnowing away as if he couldn’t bear to linger.
And then it was Feyre taking his place between her and Azriel. Feyre on her knees before Elain, clasping both of her sister’s hands between her own. Azriel clenched his eyes shut; a vibration in Elain’s throat told her he was swallowing back another growl.
They call it the mating frenzy, Feyre’s frantic voice spoke into her mind. Nothing will happen if you refuse him. Neither of you will be harmed. From what I understand, the mating bond was cemented between you when he ate what you served him—the potatoes, most likely—but now that he’s eaten them, there is a biological impulse to…
Her little sister paused, pulling back from Elain’s mind with hesitation clear on her face, and Elain reached for those phantom fingers at the edges of her thoughts.
You don’t need to mince your words with me, Feyre. I’m not a wilting daisy.
Even as she said it, she was steeling her spine, preparing herself. She was no maiden, but she had far less experience in such matters than Feyre; just overhearing her sister and her brother-in-law flirting was enough to make her blush like mad sometimes. If this bond was what she thought, though, what she'd read about in the few romance novels she'd found in the townhouses' bookshelves, she would need to get over herself quickly.
Feyre nodded decisively, though it was jerky, awkward.
—Consummate, then. Azriel, and you, to some extent, will be driven to consummate the bond physically, but the urge effects the males more strongly. It can last up to a week, Elain. Tell me here, now, if you don’t want that, and I will winnow us away until he calms down.
It doesn’t feel like it did with Lucien, was all Elain said in return. She thought of the flimsy, biting tug of a razor-wire tied around one rib, sending the feeling to Feyre, who flinched away from it. Then she did the same for the solid, golden connection cradling her heart, where the blackness of Azriel’s pain still threatened to drown her.
But awe lit up Feyre’s face like the dawn despite the pain, but Elain could tell her sister was trying not to smile, not to influence her decision, as her mental voice breathlessly said, Yes. Yes, that’s the mating bond.
Elain glanced at Azriel. At the fists clenced atop the table and the hard set of his jaw as he held himself back from her. He could have touched her earlier, could have spirited her away to ravish her in some dark, hidden safehouse that even his brothers didn’t know of, but he hadn’t.
I don’t think he’d force me.
Never, Feyre’s mental voice was firm, confident.
Then… Then I don’t want to go, Elain said, pulling up her memories of the past and future. Her curious affection for the quiet faerie male Feyre brought home, his solid presence in the House of Wind, taking her to the garden, the rescue from Hybern’s encampment, Truth-Teller, the tea, the sunhat, the baby. Feyre inhaled sharply, and Elain told her, I want this.
As if he felt her make the decision—and he probably did, she realized, testing that golden bond with a stroke and watching him shudder—Azriel’s breath left him in a ragged gasp. His elbows trembled where they held him upright over the table, his head bowing.
Her little sister lifted their joint hands to her cheek, her eyes shining as tears welled up in them to match the relieved stinging making itself known in the corners of Elain's eyes.
Okay.
With that, Feyre stood, sending an elated grin behind herself at Azriel before glancing over her shoulder at Amren and jerking her head at the door.
“Joyous mating.” Amren tipped her glass at both of them as she left the room.
Feyre followed, sliding the dining room door shut behind herself, and then Elain heard her giggle and call out behind herself as the bells on the front door tinkled, delighted.
“Happy Solstice, you two.”
And then it was the two of them, alone, separated only by the long dining table with the scattered remains of their holiday dinner.