Chapter Text
Technically, Elide has always been a lady. It was true when she was chained up in that tower, covered in grime and in grit, and it’s true when she finally gets free, battered and bruised she may be. But though she’s always known she is a lady, she’s never gotten to be one before. And it’s this fact that keeps her up at night, in the days before she returns to Perranth. How she can know she is something but still not exactly be .
Because despite Elide’s heritage, despite her anxiousness and desire to be home, she’s never fully pictured what it might be like to rule. When her uncle had first come into power, she would sometimes entertain the idea of tricking him out of his crown. With Finnula’s help, maybe she could lock him out of the castle. Or maybe, if she was lucky, he would simply fall into a ditch one day on his way home.
But these were always just childish fantasies. And by the time Elide was grown, she thought only of being free. What kind of lady would she be, anyway, after missing out on so much? She couldn’t read, couldn’t write. Could barely even walk across her own room. Even if she did manage to escape, she didn’t have the skills that were necessary to lead. Someone else would have to challenge her uncle for her. Someone who hadn’t been robbed so terribly of their own identity.
But now, not only is Elide still technically a lady, but she’s also being asked to be one. In the days after Aelin’s coronation, Elide becomes a part of the Queen’s council, making decisions along with all the rest. She organizes lodgings for the injured, gives her thoughts on the castle’s staff. She even helps Aelin draft letters to Perranth, cementing her authority with every sweep of the Queen’s hand.
Elide relishes all of it. It’s a lot of work, and it’s tiring, and she sometimes wishes only to be still. But after so many years of having little to no say, it would be silly to complain. Each decision she’s asked to make is a blessing she feels lucky to be given, and she falls into bed each night at the helm of her own destiny, exhausted but exceedingly content.
And yet, it’s hard to ignore, while Elide goes about her chores, the dissonance between the lady she is now and the one she was always supposed to become. She never received any official courtly training. And it’s obvious, watching Aelin, how much this lack of education shows. After years of being an assassin, Aelin still has the presence and swagger of a queen. She dresses like a queen. She walks like a queen. She even eats like a queen. Elide, at least from her own point of view, does all of these things like a pauper.
Lorcan seems to sense it, the way Elide sometimes feels that she fails to measure up. He never says anything to her directly. Elide doesn’t know how she would react if he did. But it’s there in the reverent way that he touches her. In each kiss he presses gently into her skin.
“Elide,” he murmurs in the evenings, his lips finding the furrowed crease of her brow. They lie as they do every night, Elide’s head tucked into the crook of Lorcan’s neck. She wonders at his ability to spot her disquiet, even when her scowls are hidden from his line of sight.
Tonight, he sounds halfway asleep, and Elide figures she should be too. They had both had long days. Lorcan especially, who’s been helping to rebuild the castle’s walls. But Elide’s mind is a whirlwind after helping Aelin draft another letter to Perranth, and she doesn’t rest easy. Even if her body begs only for sweet dreams.
When she doesn’t respond to Lorcan’s prodding, his hand skims the edge of her cheek.
“What is it?” he says softly.
It ? There are too many it s. Elide could never pick just one. But as Lorcan’s fingers trail along the ridges of her spine, it all comes tumbling out of her.
“Maybe we should wait,” she murmurs. “To go back to Perranth.”
Lorcan’s body goes still, and Elide listens as he breathes, feeling the steady beat of his heart in his chest.
“I thought you were excited to return,” he says carefully.
“I am," she sights. "But there’s so much to do here. And there’s no rush for us to go back. Maybe…maybe it would be better if we stayed. For a few more weeks, at least. Just until everything is more settled.”
For a moment, Lorcan doesn’t respond, and Elide wants suddenly to take it all back. She knows how much it means to him, that she’s asked him to follow her home. And though he’s done a good job biting his tongue around Aelin, Elide knows that he’s longing for the two of them to finally have their own space. He’d taken the blood oath, after all. But only for Elide. And right now, he was constantly reminded of it.
Eventually, he pulls back from Elide’s embrace, tugging her chin up to meet his gaze. The softness in his eyes is too much for Elide to bear, and before she knows it, she’s groaning in frustration, pressing her forehead back to his chest.
“It’s just that…I don’t know how to write,” she grumbles into his shirt.
Lorcan’s hand comes to cup the back of her head.
“Now seems a strange moment to get up and write a letter.”
“Not now,” Elide sighs. “When we go back to Perranth. Aelin writes all my letters for me. She won’t be there when we go home.”
Home . Lorcan sags at the word, his entire body softening with content. Though Elide’s childhood had certainly been tragic, she had always had a place to call her own. It makes her heart ache, each time she realizes that Lorcan has never had one. And she thinks what it must be costing him, to sit here entertaining the thought of delaying the creation of their own.
“I can write the letters for you,” he says gently.
“I know.” But Elide doesn’t want him to have to take care of her. At least, not in that way. She wants to stand on her own. For her people to see her do so. She wants to do all the things she’s spent her whole life feeling like she can’t.
As if he can hear her thoughts, Lorcan presses another kiss to her brow.
“You’ll learn,” he murmurs.
“I can’t read, either.”
“You’ll learn that too.”
“And my foot…” Elide begins. But Lorcan tenses, his hands tightening on her waist.
“Pains you,” he finishes. “And that’s the only problem with that.”
Elide sighs. She glances down at her ankle, nestled gently against Lorcan’s thigh. No matter how tired she is, no matter how entwined the two of them can be, her foot never seems to get jostled. It’s as if Lorcan is somehow always aware of the most cushioned place for it to rest.
Elide wiggles the injured foot, wincing at the ache that’s always present there.
“What do you think?” she says quietly. “About what Yrene said? About trying to heal it?”
Lorcan’s eyes follow the direction of her stare.
“It isn’t up to me,” he replies.
“But if I wanted your advice?”
“I think you should do whatever causes you the least pain.”
Elide frowns.
“Both options sound painful.”
“As do most things in life.”
Elide presses her palm into the center of Lorcan’s chest. When she looks up, he is staring down at her hand, the ghost of a smile flitting over his features.
“Except for this?” Elide says softly.
Lorcan picks up her palm. Places a kiss right at its center. Then sets it gently against his own cheek.
“It is not un painful, necessarily,” he smiles, eyes sparkling with mischief. Elide smacks him lightly in the chest with her other hand, and he laughs, kissing her softly on the nose.
“But it is painful in the best of ways.”
Elide can’t believe she gets to hear these things. That Lorcan’s roughness, his hard exterior, vanishes so easily when the two of them are alone. It makes her feel more powerful than she’s felt doing anything else in the past couple of weeks. To bring joy to the seemingly joyless. Now that was one special gift.
She leans forward to press her lips to his, and the heat that is always banked between them flares suddenly to life. Elide shifts herself closer in a silent request for more. But though Lorcan’s hands trail lower down her spine, they stray no further than her waist. Elide lets out a frustrated huff as he pulls his mouth from hers.
“Do you truly wish to stay here?” His words are so quiet that Elide almost doesn’t hear them.
“We can,” he continues, as Elide pulls back to look at him in surprise. “If that’s really what you want.”
She can’t believe that he’s offering her this. That he offers her any of these things at all. And as she takes in the earnestness in his features, her anxieties suddenly vanish.
“No,” she says softly, bringing her forehead to rest against his. “I want to go home. With you.”
Lorcan nods, just once. Then he sighs as he wraps his arm more tightly around her waist. Elide shifts herself upward, tugging his head down to rest against the softness of her chest. And when they’re settled like that, Elide’s eyes finally drifting closed, Lorcan stirs, one more time.
“You can do it all, you know,” he hums. “All the things you feel that you can’t.”
Elide runs a hand through the dark locks of his hair.
“But not yet,” she says.
“Someday,” Lorcan replies.
“Someday.”
And it’s a luxury to say that. For there to even be a ‘someday’ at all. Because Elide knows she can do it. And she knows she won’t be doing it alone. But that doesn’t change the fact that what she’d imagined back in that tower, and what is now suddenly within her grasp, is something she never truly believed she would obtain.
Outside of her conversations with Lorcan, she tries to ignore these thoughts. But as the days creep by, their return to Perranth inching closer with every hour, Elide has a harder and harder time keeping her anxieties to herself. She worries over it at breakfast the next morning, as she helps Lysandra take an inventory of the castle's pantries. She worries about it the next afternoon when they interview cooks for the castle’s new kitchen staff. She even mulls it over by herself, in the bath every night, while she soaks away the aches of another very long day.
Elide is still thinking about it a week later, as they all eat their dinner in the grand hall. Evening meals at the castle are always quiet and loud at the same time. As if everyone present is exhausted, but relieved, to be able to share a meal together, even after working themselves to the bone.
Elide fiddles with the half-eaten fish on her plate, glancing toward the doors at the end of the hall. Lorcan and Aedion are yet to join them at the table, still occupied by a bridge rebuilding project near the city’s outer bounds. It’s just Aelin and Lysandra who eat with her now, along with Rowan and Evangeline, who is nestled close to Lysandra’s side. Rowan, for his part, is too busy reading some pile of official looking documents to be doing much eating himself. As nonchalant as Aelin could be about ruling, Rowan seemed always to be hard at work.
Elide turns her attention to the queen sitting across from her. Aelin’s dress is dark green tonight, her blonde hair gathered loosely at the back of her head. Even in her state of obvious exhaustion, she seems regal, somehow. Like she was born to wear the crown on her head.
“Do you think I seem like a lady?” Elide says suddenly, surprising even herself. Her comment is directed at Aelin, but Lysandra perks up instead.
“You are a lady,” she says. If there’s a defensive note to her response, Elide pretends she doesn’t notice. Lysandra has only recently been given any sort of title, and she doesn’t have the lineage that Elide has to stand on. She knows it makes Lysandra anxious, the flimsiness of her claim to power. But Aelin assures her that she shouldn’t worry. That she’ll bring an army to Lysandra’s door should anyone choose to challenge her.
“I know I am,” Elide says, smiling at Lysandra apologetically. “But do I seem like one?”
“Does Aelin seem like a queen?” Lysandra laughs. She’s seated diagonally from Elide, helping Evangeline cut up her fish. Aelin sticks out her tongue at her.
“Of course she does,” Elide replies.
“Your future husband would beg to differ,” Aelin smirks, and Elide’s cheeks redden at the mention of Lorcan’s name.
Lysandra just smiles at her. “What are you getting at, Elide?”
“It’s been so long since I was in Perranth,” Elide murmurs, her eyes straying again to the door. She doesn’t want Lorcan to hear this. She’s already bothered him about it enough. “I missed out on so much. I might not know what to do when I get there.”
Aelin and Lysandra look at one another.
“No one knows what to do,” Aelin says, her gaze softening.
“You always seem to.”
Rowan, sitting beside Aelin, snorts.
“That’s just part of my charm,” Aelin grins. “None of us knows how to do any of this. Aside from the winter king, over here. He’s too good for all of us.”
She turns to look at her husband, still frowning down at the documents before him.
“Perhaps you could give us some lessons on ruling,” she croons.
“No,” Rowan says.
Aelin flutters her lashes, trailing a finger down his arm.
“Not even for your wife?”
“You aren’t a good student,” he says simply. Aelin clutches at her chest in mock offense, while Elide and Lysandra try to stifle their laughs.
“And Elide,” Rowan says. Elide sits up a little bit straighter under his gaze. “You just took down the King of the Valg. You don’t need lessons from me.”
“He does have a point there,” Aelin says.
“That’s different,” Elide sputters. “I was just thinking on my feet.”
“That’s a good skill to have,” Lysandra chimes in. She takes a dainty sip of her wine. “When has anything we’ve done ever gone according to plan? You need to be able to adapt and think on your feet. Something you’re already very good at.”
It’s true. It was what had impressed Lorcan so much, when the two of them had met in the forest. Her cunning, sneaky little brain. Or at least, that’s what he said. And Elide has always prided herself on her mind. It’s the only weapon she’s ever had, after all, when her body had taken so many brutal hits.
Elide is still considering Lysandra’s comment when Lorcan slides onto the bench beside her. She hadn’t heard him come in, and she jumps when Aedion drops his knife onto the table with a clatter.
“Bridge is done,” he says. “And thank the gods for that. I don’t think I could spend another day looking at a group of sweaty men.”
Elide watches as he pours himself a large goblet of wine, gulping it down in one go. Lorcan, too, is already shoveling food into his mouth beside her. His left hand had found Elide's when she had startled. He squeezes it once beneath the table. An exhausted but contented hello .
“I thought that’s what all of you fae warriors spent all of your time doing anyway,” Lysandra croons as she watches Aedion begin to fill his own plate. “Hanging out with sweaty men.”
Aedion grins, leaning across the table to chuck Evangeline beneath the chin.
“Maybe I only care now that I spend more time with so many beautiful ladies.”
Evangeline laughs and swats him away. Lysandra just shakes her head happily.
“Well, now that you’re back,” Aelin says, clapping her hands. “We can finally get around to discussing Lorcan and Elide’s wedding.”
Elide freezes, her eyes going wide. Even Lorcan, who had already finished half of his food, pauses at this comment.
“Wedding?” Elide gapes.
“You haven’t brought it up once,” Aelin says gently. “Since the two of you agreed to get hitched. You’re leaving for Perranth in two weeks. Were you trying to leave us all out of the celebration?”
She nudges her chin in Lorcan’s direction.
“Don’t let this one deny you a party.”
Lorcan grumbles, but Elide stills him with a palm to his knee.
“No, I-” Elide stammers. “We’ve just been so busy. It isn’t as important as everything else we’ve needed to do.”
Lorcan tenses beside her. Elide wonders, for a moment, whether she’d hurt him with this comment.
“You’re a lady,” Aelin smiles, and Elide’s cheeks redden at the callback to their previous conversation. “And ladies have big, lavish weddings. You deserve that much.”
Elide thinks of the lack of ceremony Aelin had for her own marriage, and the way she and Rowan had been torn so brutally apart. They’d all been robbed of so many things, in the past couple of years. And though a wedding truly hadn’t been at the top of Elide’s mind, she could see the good it would do for her family. To have yet another thing to celebrate.
“Alright,” Elide says. “As long as it isn’t too much work for everyone.”
Aelin waves a hand through the air.
“I give the orders around here. And I’m happy to shift people’s duties around.” She sets down her fork, pushing her plate away from her. “Lysandra will get started on the menu. I’ll start working on the clothes. And Aedion can get some of the Bane to start cleaning out the courtyard.”
Her eyes drift toward the western window of the hall, where a large oak tree can be seen, heavy with the first blooms of spring.
“It’s always seemed like a beautiful place for a wedding,” she sighs wistfully, watching as the wind throws the blossoms around. Then she turns back to Elide.
“We’ll need to decide if there will be dancing,” she says kindly. “We can find musicians, if you want.”
Elide swallows. To anyone else, it would seem a strange question to ask. But Elide knows what Aelin is getting at. Elide has a foot that doesn’t always cooperate, and Aelin doesn’t want her to be left out of her own celebration.
She gives Elide a second to respond, turning to Lorcan instead.
“What about you?” she says, eyebrows raising. “Do you dance?
Lorcan doesn’t look up from his food. The length of his thigh is warm against Elide’s own, and she can smell the sweat on him from a long day of work.
“I can,” he says.
“And will you?” Aelin prompts.
Lorcan’s hand brushes Elide’s beneath the table.
“If Elide wants.”
Elide’s face goes red. If she wants . Whatever she wants . It’s a luxury she’d never imagined having.
But she can’t dance. Not really. She’d tried to, after Aelin’s coronation. And while she’d sort of managed it, especially with the wine she had drunk, her ankle had hurt for days after, even with Yrene’s salve that she rubbed each night into her skin. But it would be worth it, of course, to dance at her wedding, even if it meant pain in the end. And perhaps that was all that really mattered.
“It would be nice to have dancing,” Elide says, when Aelin turns back toward her. “If other people would like to as well.”
Aelin smiles.
“Then dancing there shall be.”
And so, over the next few days, Elide is further distracted from her anxieties by the whirlwind of planning a wedding. She’s shuffled into dress after dress while Aelin searches for the perfect pair of shoes, and Lysandra spends at least two hours one afternoon planning out how best to do up Elide’s hair. Shouts of Lord Lorcan Lochan follow her husband-to-be down the castle’s halls, and Elide worries, for the first time, whether this moniker might bother him.
“Do you hate it?” she asks him one night, lying bare and breathless in their bed. New as she may be to the wonders of their evening activities, they have quickly become her favorite way to unwind.
Lorcan looks up from where his cheek is pressed to her hip.
“I have never hated anything less.”
And Elide decides immediately that she will simply take his word for it.
It’s all just distracting enough to keep Elide’s thoughts from straying to the journey to Perranth they’ll be making in one short, simple week. And it’s a nice distraction too, she has to admit. To be working on something with no other purpose than to bring them all just a little bit of joy.
But a few days before the wedding, when so many of the details have finally been ironed out, a missive from Perranth arrives, and Elide’s misgivings all come rushing back.
It’s Aelin who delivers the message. She arrives outside their door bright and early on a Sunday morning, when Elide and Lorcan are still fast asleep in their bed.
“Knock, knock,” she sings from the hallway outside. Lorcan’s body tenses, and Elide opens her eyes to find him staring hard at the door. She doesn’t blame him for being antsy - they haven’t always been able to sleep in such peace. Every night they’d shared in that swamp, he had always slept lightly. Even now, he usually did.
“Who is it?” Elide yawns, her voice scratchy with sleep.
“Your Queen. In case that bodyguard of yours forgot.”
Lorcan lets out a soft groan and drops back down onto the bed, but Elide rushes out from under the covers, grabbing Lorcan’s shirt up off the floor and pulling it over her shoulders.
“Coming!” she yells, as she fumbles with the shirt’s buttons. She flinches as her ankle hits the cold, stone floor, but Lorcan’s magic comes to brace it only half a second later, though he still hasn’t moved from the bed.
When Elide finally opens the door, Aelin is smirking at her disheveled appearance. Elide knows her hair is probably a mess. After all, Lorcan had destroyed it quite thoroughly the night before. And the shirt she is wearing is obviously not hers, seeing as it falls halfway to her knees. Despite herself, despite what everyone knows that she and Lorcan share, Elide blushes.
“Have a good night’s sleep?” Aelin grins.
“Very good,” Elide says sheepishly.
Aelin smiles. She’s wearing a gauzy green gown today, her hair falling in loose waves down her back. Though her expression is bright, there are circles beneath her eyes. Elide knows that she doesn’t sleep soundly. She’d overheard Rowan saying as much to Lorcan only a few days ago. And though Aelin never admits to her exhaustion, Elide knows that her body will never be truly free of the terror it had been put through.
“This came for you, this morning.” Aelin holds out a folded piece of parchment in her hand. “From Perranth.”
“Perranth?” Elide’s breath stops short. She gingerly takes the paper from Aelin’s hand.
“They responded to our missive.” Aelin watches as Elide unrolls the parchment, squinting down at the words that are written there. As usual, they’re nothing but oddly-shaped blobs to Elide’s eyes, and she looks back up at Aelin instead.
“Sounds like they’re ready to welcome you home,” Aelin smiles.
“Really?” Elide breathes.
Aelin shrugs.
“That’s the gist of it, at least. There’s other details there that are important too, of course. Rowan thought I should mention them. But I wanted to deliver the fun part first. We can worry about the rest of it later.”
Worry? About the rest of it? Elide frowns. What was Aelin leaving out?
But Aelin just laughs.
“Don’t worry. It’s just a lot of boring political talk.”
“Of course,” Elide says, looking back down at the letter. Political talk it may be, but Elide is meant to be the leader of a political territory. Politics are always going to be a part of it.
“We’ll go over it later. Together,” Aelin smiles, laying a hand on Elide’s arm. “We’re meeting in the council chamber at three.”
Then she grins, glancing into the darkness at Elide’s back.
“That goes for all my cadre as well,” she yells.
A groan echoes from behind the door, and Elide winces apologetically.
“We’ll be ready by then,” she says. Aelin nods, then glides back down the hallway, the rustle of her skirts echoing off the corridor walls.
When Elide finally retreats back into the room, the letter is still clutched tightly in her hands. She glances over at Lorcan, propped up on his forearms on the bed. She holds up the letter for him to see.
“From Perranth,” she says.
Lorcan nods.
Elide just stands there for a moment, frowning down at the parchment.
“I still can’t read,” she sighs. She shakes her head at the letter in frustration, tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. But before her emotions can get away from her, she hears the rustling of sheets and the creak of the floor, and then Lorcan is standing behind her, his torso warm against her back.
“What does it say?” Elide breathes, rubbing roughly at her eyes.
“It says that they’re looking forward to welcoming you back.”
“And?” Elide turns around to look at him, thrusting the parchment further into his hands.
“There’s a list of items. Of things that need to be taken care of.”
“Like what?”
“Repairs to the castle walls. Payments that need to be made. A request for additional healers.”
“Oh,” Elide frowns. “Quite the list, then.”
Lorcan searches her face, and Elide wishes, for a moment, that she wasn’t always so visible to him. If only he weren’t so good at reading her, then she could hide the fact that she was feeling overwhelmed. That she could hear all the skills she is lacking laughing right in her face. And if she didn't do something soon, something drastic, she was going to completely fall apart.
“Elide,” Lorcan says, but Elide is too consumed by her thoughts to hear him. When she doesn’t reply, he picks her up by the waist and sets her gently back down on the bed.
“Breathe,” he says again, kneeling before her. Elide does. She takes a big, heaving breath and stares down at her hands. It helps, just a bit, to bring her body back into rhythm. Even as her thoughts continue to run wild.
“I’ve never wanted anything more than to go back to Perranth,” she whispers sadly. “But I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t even read this note.”
“I told you,” Lorcan says. “You can learn. And you will.”
“I know.”
Lorcan’s arms wrap around her, and she rests her head against his shoulder.
“What if I can’t dance next week?” she says softly. “At our wedding?”
Lorcan seems momentarily thrown off by the change of subject, but he recovers quickly.
“Then we won’t,” he says simply.
“A lady should be able to dance.”
“Not all ladies like to dance.”
“Aelin likes to dance.”
Lorcan groans. He grumbles something about fire-breathing bitch queens, and Elide grins into the fabric of his shirt.
“I don’t want you to be Aelin,” he says, pressing his face into her neck.
Elide laughs.
“I know. But what if I want to dance?”
Lorcan looks at her, brows furrowed. Then, before Elide really has a chance to fully realize what is happening, her body is being lifted up off the bed. One of Lorcan’s arms wraps securely around her waist as he draws her to his chest, and soon they are standing there in the moonlight, Elide’s feet floating halfway off the floor.
She laughs when she realizes what he is doing.
“It doesn't count as dancing," she says, as he takes on of her hands in his own. If you just carry me around the floor."
“Does it not?”
“No,” she says. “It isn't proper.”
“Neither are many of the things you and I do.”
Elide blushes, and Lorcan traces the heat of it with his nose. His mouth trails a line to the spot just below Elide's ear, and she shivers.
“Do you want me to put you down?” Lorcan murmurs against her skin.
“No,” she sighs. Lorcan's palms grip the bottom of her thighs, bringing her legs to wrap more fully around his waist. Elide rests her chin upon his shoulder, feeling the roughness of his stubble rub against her cheek. They sway like that, for a while, just soaking each other in. And soon enough, Elide finds that her eyes are getting heavy, lulled by the slowness of their movement.
“I never truly thought I would go back,” she yawns sleepily, breaking the contented silence filling the room.
“I know.” Lorcan sounds pained. Drawing back to look at her, he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Your people will love you, Elide.”
Elide smiles sadly.
“You can’t know that.”
“I will make sure of it.”
Elide laughs.
“You’ll do no such thing.”
But Lorcan only smiles.
“We’ll see.”
Elide traces the lines of that smile, marveling at the way that it so fully transforms his face.
“I hope you’ll smile more, in Perranth,” she says.
“So the lady says,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to her brow. “And so indeed it shall be.”