Chapter Text
Strings of tiny Fae lights swung in the breeze, illuminating the smiling faces in the crowd. Laughter rang out above the din of conversation. A hundred different scents and sounds assaulted her at once.
Elain Archeron stood in the midst of it all, watching but unseeing. Smiling but unfeeling.
Friends, family and strangers spoke to her, smiled at her, danced with her. But none of them saw her. Nobody ever saw her. They only saw what she wanted them to see.
Sweet, innocent Elain.
Sweet, innocent Elain who gardened and baked while her sisters became warriors and faced unspeakable horrors.
Sweet, innocent Elain who cried prettily and then helped others get over her trauma.
Elain was over it. She was over being overlooked, coddled, and treated like a piece of china surrounded by raging bulls. How she wished she could throw a tantrum like Nesta had, raging and kicking and screaming and letting the world see that she was more than a pretty piece of porcelain to fight over and be put on display.
But this was the character her sisters expected her to be; the character they needed her to be, in their perfect new narrative as High Fae, with their powers and their mates . Who were brothers , nonetheless.
Would she be this broken, she wondered, if Azriel had been her mate, and not him ?
Would she be standing here, smiling an empty smile, her heart a cold and empty shell?
Or would she be as Nesta was now, radiant with joy, dancing clumsily, her hands tied to her love, her mate .
She shook the thought from her head. She didn’t want a mate. She didn’t want a male . And besides, whatever had happened with Azriel ( almost happened, she chided herself) had been a mistake. That’s all she was. A mistake to be discarded once people saw past her pretty, smiling outer shell.
Her head turned of its own accord, as if a moth drawn to a flame. A literal flame, in this case, she supposed.
Him . Her mate . Her unwanted, absurdly handsome mate whose face haunted her dreams despite her resentment, despite him being practically a stranger.
Elain had defied the odds, had chosen Graysen out of love instead of getting sold to the highest bidder like her mother had wished, and yet she had ended up shackled to a Fae mate.
The injustice of it burned like acid in her veins.
Lucien was dancing with Feyre, his movements graceful and elegant, an easy smile lighting up his face. She felt an absurd pang of jealousy at the sight. He never smiled that easily around her. He barely even spoke to her, his words and body language always forced and dripping with discomfort.
Because he doesn’t want you, either. He doesn’t know you, and if he did, he would want you even less.
Fine. That was fine by her.
Oh, but how she longed for somebody to see her.
Nobody ever would.
Lucien watched her out of the corner of his eye as he twirled Feyre around the dancefloor, his friend laughing at his antics.
His mate . His beautiful, shy mate that the cauldron had somehow deemed his equal. He couldn’t make sense of it and yet his longing for her was like a river pulsing through him just as strongly as his flame.
He was so desperate to know her that it superseded his embarrassment at her rejection of him, his despair at her fear of him. What would have happened, he wondered, if he hadn’t blurted out that she was his mate the moment she was dumped from the cauldron?
Would she have gotten over Graysen and warmed to him, clueless to what he was to her, as Feyre had done with Rhysand? Or, more likely, would she have been just as repulsed by him as she was now? He supposed that humiliation would have been ever greater.
The fact that seducing females had once been as easy for him as breathing was an irony that was not lost on him. Prythian’s biggest rake, reduced to salivating over a female who couldn't stand to be in the same room as him. Granted, he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as her either, but for a much different reason.
Everyone thought her to be so sweet and innocent. She looked sweet and innocent now, standing on the edge of the dancefloor, smiling at her friends and family.
But the cauldron had thought her an appropriate match for him, and he refused to believe it was simply based on breeding potential. She was his equal, like Feyre to Rhysand and Nesta to Cassian, and Mother Above he would die trying to prove it.
He would peel back her defenses, layer by layer, until he saw the truth of who she was.
Who are you? Show me who you are. Let me see you.
My mate, my mate my mate my mate.