A Court of Golden Shadow || Elain x Azriel

Chapter 13 - Tell Me About the Sapling

Elain was listening to Lucien describe his time with Nuan, a talented tinkeress of the Dawn Court, as the river boat floated through Patras. The city had settled into evening festivities, the locals apparently as celebration-minded as their High Lord. Elain was glued to the view, watching the fae joining in riotous laughter, clinking their glasses over enormous tables of exotic food on terraced restaurants along the river. Lucien was telling the story of how Nuan had helped him construct his eye, but Elain found her mind drifting.

Lucien's eye. Amarantha. Tamlin. Feyre. This connection to Vassa and Elain's father. The Cauldron. Hybern. The Mating Bond.

It was all so strange.

Elain and Lucien had an enormous amount of baggage between them, weighing heavy and crackling between them. But at the same time, they had almost no history together. She still felt that he was a stranger to her at times. There were no rejected kisses, passionate arguments, time spent in companionable silence... not even a lusty rendezvous in a dark palatial corner. She rubbed the tattoo on her pinky, letting out a sigh.

Elain often mused that the concept of the mating bond felt similar to what it must be like to discover a long-lost sibling.

Here was this person, whom for all intents and purposes you were biologically connected to, but at the same time, they were a stranger to you. It was intensely intimate while also extremely impersonal and foreign. And although Lucien had known how to access the bond, Elain had yet to feel any such connection, nor any desire to reach for it.

She considered her sisters' mating bonds.

Glancing over toward her family lounging on the lower deck, Elain noted Nesta and Feyre cuddled into their mates, smiling and laughing with the rest of the group. She felt a twinge of jealousy course through her veins. She highly doubted that Nesta ever felt that Cassian reminded her of an unpleasant surprise long-lost sibling who wanted to reconnect at an inconvenient time. Those two had been drooling over each other even when Nesta was still human. And Feyre? Elain knew that Feyre had thought Rhys was unappealing at one point, but what had changed? And would that shift ever happen for her and Lucien?

The mating bond was just so... unpleasant.

But at the same time, was it not similar to what it would feel like to be forced into marriage with a stranger? And truthfully, hadn't other kingdoms in the human realms, maybe the continental provinces her father had told stories of, hadn't they performed arranged marriages? Wasn't it a common custom amongst many human cultures to marry off a daughter or a princess to a powerful man?

"What are you thinking about?" Lucien's voice pulled Elain from her reverie, causing her to start, her eyes rushing to his face.

"Arranged marriage," Elain replied, surprising herself with her answer.

A flicker of emotion crossed Lucien's eye. Her honesty had startled him. He looked away, his gaze scanning the guests on the deck below. The torchlight cast a strange light upon his hair, causing it to almost look like it was on fire.

"Sometimes I wonder," he said, his voice becoming rough. "If I would be a more appealing mate if I did not have this mechanical eye. Or this scar." She felt surprise take root on her face, turning toward him fully. "If I had not been exiled from my court, perhaps I would be more desirable. If I was not a seventh son, if I had no connection to Tamlin." He paused, and Elain dropped her eyes to her hands. "If I had wings." She heard him whisper the last sentence quietly. His voice catching.

His vulnerability doused her in thick emotion. Instinctually, she wanted to help him; to fix his hurt, or to offer a nurturing caress. Was this the mating bond? Did her sympathy for his raw pain mean that she felt the connection? Extending a mental touch, Elain grasped at any strands of connection, trying and failing to reach him through her soul before deciding to go a more conventional route.