#i hope you have cherishedi t

[separatist-apologist]

Exile

We Always Walked A Very Thin Line

Chapter 23: I Got A Feeling Inside That I Can't Domesticate

Read: Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19| Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | AO3

Somewhere in the ruined rubble of the Day Courts capitol city lay Lucien. He was unharmed—Elain knew that with certainty. Where he was or what he did, she could not say. She didn’t tug on the bond glowing softly in her chest, didn’t try and pull him towards her. Not as she stood atop the intact steps of Helion’s palace beside Feyre and Nesta. They were coated in drying blood, their clothing ruined, hair knotted. One piece of the cauldron lay at their feet, the other already buried among the olive trees in Helion’s grove. They’d decided they would leave the fate of the Cauldron hidden from everyone, even their own mates. It was a secret they’d vowed to take to their graves. 

There would be no more wars over life ending power. Feyre glanced to Elain and then Nesta, standing between them. “Ready?” she asked. Nesta hefted the heavy iron into her arms mere moments before Feyre winnowed them out of Day. 

It seemed only fitting and fair the humans have a stake in the future of their world, even if they didn’t know it. It was only a second of crushing wind and darkness, of the metallic tang of magic that had once terrified the three of them so, to bring them home. Home. How foreign the village looked to Elain now. It lay destroyed, just as Day Court was, the inhabitants long gone. Elain wondered what became of them. Were they languishing in a Fae court, waiting to see if there would be yet another internal war in Prythian for the freedom of the humans? Or were they already free and safe somewhere else? 

“Did it always look like this?” Nesta asked, echoing Elain’s own thoughts. She’d never thought it beautiful but in her memory, it had been…softer, somehow. Safer. Standing in the cold mud, Elain only saw misery amplified. How had any of them survived this place? 

Feyre trudged forward and for a moment there was only the soft whispering of the wind and Feyres near silent steps.

“Yes,” she finally said, stopping among the ruined debris of their former home. “It was always ugly here.” “Was the adjustment easy for you?” Elain couldn’t help her question, sifting through the wreckage for any memento that might prove Feyre wrong. It seemed only ash remained, blanketing the waiting earth.

“No,” Feyre and Nesta said in unison, unsure who Elain spoke to. “Was it for you?”

Elain could scarcely remember those early days. Had Eris truly told her to remain silent? Had Lucien ever been cruel? She couldn’t help her smile. “No.”

“When did it change, I wonder,” Nesta murmured as Feyre used the wind she commanded to push aside the little remaining thatch and wood. Elain didn’t answer though she already knew. It changed when they fell in love. Everything was made brighter, lovelier, easier, in the soft glow of love. 

Perhaps it was why the cottage was so rosy in her memory, too. They had suffered, to be sure, but they had each other. Elain had always known she was safe so long as her sisters were with her. 

It was Nesta’s power that raised the fragile bones of their ancestors, dragging them from their silent slumber with silver glowing eyes. “You will guard this,” Nesta murmured, her breath hanging thick in the heavy afternoon fog. No emotion shone through. Elain watched the bones nod with slavish obedience, unable to deny its mistress this request. Nesta, satisfied, took a step back and watched the corpse take the piece of cauldron before sinking deep into the earth.

“Is it enough?” Feyre asked, looking to Elain. She peered through that fog, glimpsing a future in which they returned for the cauldron, would need it for some new threat that plagued them. A far off being, housed across the sea, would require a more elegant solution. Only pieces flashed—the sound of swords clashing, a woman screaming, a flock of swans swimming across a placid lake.

“For now,” Elain murmured. “The future is a fickle thing.” 

She had no way of knowing when this future might happen or if she’d be alive to see it. “We should leave a record somewhere safe,” Elain added, catching the shared look between Feyre and Nesta. “Hide the pieces in our respective courts.”

“A different court,” Nesta disagreed. “Two halves of one piece, just like the cauldron. Give one to the humans, the other to a court we trust to keep the humans safe.” “Summer,” Elain whispered, remembering that fateful day in Autumn. “Send the other piece of Summer.”

There was nothing left to stay for. Elain took one last look at the demolished building. Feyre might have found it ugly, but Elain could not help but see as it had been. Cruel, to be sure, but beautiful, too. They had been made in this place, forged in the mud and rot that would come to define them in the Fae lands. Could they have withstood their new homes had they lived somewhere else?

She didn’t believe so. Elain was the last to leave, standing so long her shoes sank into the mud. Her sisters eventually reached for her, tugging her backwards and winnowing her to Day. The change was stark, terrifying in a different way. While the human lands were a smoking husk ripe for rebuilding, Day was bloodied destruction, smeared in the sacrifice of hiding the cauldron.

For the first time since Elain said goodbye to Lucien, she felt genuine fear. Bodies were being piled at the base of the palace, lain out in long lines for family members to collect. Nesta and Feyre stilled at the sight, eyes doing the same thing Elain was—checking to see if it was their mate stacked among the dead.

Elain felt the violent tug in her chest, betraying Lucien before she ever saw him. She spun, finding him at the top of the cracked marble steps. He had a deep gouge cut down his jaw, stark against the healing scars of his eye. His red hair was shorter, hacked brutally at his shoulders and uneven in more than one place. His armor was ripped at the sleeve, his faced fingerpainted with blood.

“Alive,” she breathed, turning to run up the stairs. Elain launched herself into his body, arms wrapped around his neck. “You’re alive.” “I didn’t dare face your wrath if I died,” he chuckled, his body tensing beneath the heaviness of her touch.

“You’re hurt,” she accused, holding his face in her hands. Lucien nodded, wincing. “And your hair…” “It’ll grow back,” he promised. “I heard you stabbed the King of Hybern.” She’d forgotten about that. “I never want to see another war for as long as I live,” she told him, turning at the sound of Nesta’s sobbing shriek. Cassian was limping towards her, the bone in his knee protruding through his heavy leather. His winds were ripped and torn, his hair nearly the same color as Luciens and still he found her. Cassian sank to his knees before Nesta in what Elain first thought was pain, but realized a moment later it was deference–an acolyte bowing before his Queen. Rhysand joined, muddied and bruised but the least harmed of the three. She supposed that was the benefit of being High Lord. He was far more powerful and far harder to kill. 

“C’mon,” Lucien murmured, pulling her attention back to him. Rebuilding would take months, maybe the whole year and yet Elain thought it could wait. There would be time for grief, to take it all in. She was so intensely grateful they’d both survived that she let him tug her through the castle, ignoring the way their shoes left little prints of blood anyone could follow. 

She didn’t need the gift of sight to know no one would. 

Elain only ever meant to put Lucien in the bath and then to bed. He looked like he needed a hot meal, though it could wait for morning if it meant cleaning him. Lucien very obviously had other ideas.

“Now,” he growled, pinning her against the door before she could say a word. Perhaps he’d guessed her intentions or could otherwise read her mind. Elain would never know. She didn’t fight him—she knew better by then. She merely kissed him back, letting his tongue invade her mouth so she could taste the blood and desperation on him. 

He ground against her, somehow already hard. Elain could scarcely catch her breath, her mind reeling. It was all so reminiscent of their first time together, of the control he’d wielded while she’d merely hung on and hoped for the best.

“Thought you were going to die,” he groaned against her lips, his fingers curling in the locks of her hair. Lucien tugged roughly, tilting her head to bite at her neck, hands ripping at her dress. Elain’s brain caught up with her mind.

“No,” she breathed, shoving him backwards. Lucien staggered a step, golden skin pale, eyes wide.

“No?” he asked, swallowing as though she’d just said she hated him. “Elain, I–” “Take off your clothes,” she demanded, catching how his eyes flared with heat. Lucien was quick, reaching for the buckles and straps and undoing them with a deft grace. She shivered, watching his bruised body revealed inch by glorious inch. He waited, his cock thick between his legs, standing at attention. She hadn’t thought this far ahead and she knew he sensed it.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, his fingers twitching at his side.

“Lay on the bed,” she whispered, cringing a little when he did, staining the blanket with his sweat. It didn’t matter, she lied to herself as she removed her own clothing. The fabric pooled at her feet, her body barred to him. She’d fared far better, unbruised as she was. Lucien held his breath as she walked to the end of the bed, crawling slowly. She knew he thought her some kind of seductress but Elain was still trying to work out what, exactly, she meant to do with him.

Lucien’s patience snapped when she reached his cock. She’d thought to take him in her mouth with he caught her by the waist and dragged her up his chest.

“Hey!” she protested. “This is my game,” he snarled against her cunt, breathing deeply. “You’re still far too sweet to scare me.” His tongue darted between her thighs, tasting her tentatively for only a moment. “Was that what you were trying to do? Scare me?” she demanded, lifting one of her legs to turn herself, his cock now in her face. 

“Yes,” he admitted. “Your fear smells so pretty mingled with your arousal.”

“I’m starting to think you’re a bad male, Lucien,” she breathed, momentarily forgetting her plan to take him in her mouth as he began licking. “You’re right about that,” he moaned against her body. “I am not a nice male.”

She might have argued the point, but Elain was feeling feverish, overwhelmed by how furious Lucien was now devouring her pussy as if he were some sort of wild animal. There would clearly be no more talking, no whispered words of affection. 

“Surely you remember how to suck,” Lucien demanded when she pressed the head of his cock against her lips. “In your mouth, Elain.”

Vowing she’d murder him later, Elain did exactly as Lucien ordered. She was rewarded by the loudest groan of pleasure, reminding her that despite how little experience she had, Lucien had never been terribly difficult to please. He seemed to enjoy her enthusiasm and effort more than anything else, proven when her teeth scraped against the silky smooth skin of his cock. He merely gasped a little before pulling her hips harder against his face.

Sucking Lucien gave Elain a reprieve from the building pleasure in her body. She thought she might have come already, her body coiled tighter than a spring. His penis was a distraction and every glide of her tongue kept her hovering on a razors edge, determined to drag him over with her.

“Fuck, Elain,” he whispered, his hips rising to push himself further into her throat. Elain gripped his thigh.

“Tap if you need to breathe,” he told her roughly. “Cauldron boil me your fucking mouth…” Lucien seemed to remember he, too, was supposed to be doing something besides face fucking her. He redoubled his efforts, the broad side of his tongue lapping over and over in continued strokes while his hips took over her bobbing head, fucking her with both his tongue and his cock until Elain was a slobbering, burning mess. She made no noise at all as she came—his cock was buried against the back of her throat. 

He didn’t stop, riding her through, licking every bit of her orgasm. He gave her a moment to take a breath before plunging back into her throat. It took three brutal strokes before he came, pouring himself into the back of her throat without word or warning. She had no choice but swallow all of it, certain he’d designed that.

“Come here, come here,” he whispered as if her pussy wasn’t still pressed against his face. Elain slid off him, falling beside his body on the mattress. Lucien slung an arm around her body, twisting to bury his face against her exposed breasts. “You’re safe,” he whispered, his palm flat against her stomach. “Safe and alive and…my mate.” “Unbreakably so,” she reminded him with a sleepy, post-orgasm smile. “No one can take that away from us.”

“I’ll kill them if they try,” he warned. 

Elain knew Lucien meant it, would commit atrocities in her name with a smile on her face. It was strange to think how his attention had once terrified her. She’d been so certain he’d consume her. In a way she’d been right, though as she watched his eyes flutter, lashes resting gently against his still blood stained cheeks, she wondered if it wasn’t her that had consumed him. If she hadn’t been the thing that should have been feared all along. After all, Lucien had been a creature of Autumn, a thing of wood and rot, of bone and death and here he was, willing to get on his knees before her.

They’d have to deal with life in the morning. With rebuilding and his parentage and where would be home. She wanted to be close to her sisters in some capacity, even if she knew they’d never live in the same territories. 

All of it could wait.

Elain stroked the tangled knots of Lucien’s hair.

They were free.

#elucien #this is an elucien only chapter #elain x lucien #elucien fic #oh my god i am one chapter away from being done #I SAID ID FINISH IT THIS WEEK AND BY GOD #all you had to do was bully me #anyway next chapter completes all three of their stories #there is no chapter 25 #i had to free myself of that burden and im sorry #exile has been so fun but im ready to move on #i hope you have cherishedi t #this fic has been too fun and cathartic and i will miss it #but not miss it #idk if ill ever write anything this long ever again #it is WORK