u/Faestar8

Just a little scene I wrote with elements I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Can you spot them all? Enjoy!

☀️🌷☀️🌷☀️🌷☀️🌷☀️

The first thing Elain had noticed about Lucien was that he never rushed her. Not once.

Not when he approached her or when he spoke to her. Not when he offered his hand and waited for her to decide whether she would take it. She hadn’t yet. She had been avoiding the possibility….the unknown.

She hadn’t even as the bond between them hummed quietly beneath her skin….that strange invisible thread she had never asked for and yet could never ignore.

It felt tied to her ribs. Her chest. Her heart.

It wasn’t a voice. Not exactly.

It was more like a pull. An ever so quiet certainty that somewhere, somehow, a piece of her was always turned toward him. Always would be. Like a flower turning toward sunlight after being kept in the dark for far too long.

She hated that she felt it.

How could something feel so familiar when she barely knew him? How could someone feel like home when she had never even touched his skin?

That was the part that unsettled her the most.

Not the bond itself or the whispers of fate…but the impossible contradiction of it all. It was so…strange to her.

For over a year, she had carried the weight of being drawn to a male whose hand had never even held hers.

Well…until today.

The morning sun spilled gold across the training field as Lucien stood beside a chestnut mare, a gift from him for her birthday last year. One hand resting gently against the reins. He was whispering something to the mare, but it wasn’t the common tongue at all. It made Elain wonder what it meant. Even from this far away she could hear it. She could hear everything.

She took a second across the field, steadied herself. Focused on the thumping coming from the male in her sights. Felt the peace again.

She began walking. Elain had always loved this time of day…the quiet moments just after sunrise, when the flowers slowly stretched toward the light and the world felt brand new again.

She understood that feeling. She had always been drawn toward the light too. It was natural for her. It was what she craved.

Finally she was standing before him.

“Are you certain you want to do this?” Lucien asked as she approached. He was so handsome. She hated that too.

There was a teasing note beneath his concern, just a hint, the kind he used when he was trying to hide just how much he truly cared.

Elain glanced at him and nearly huffed. “You have asked me that three times since I mentioned it days ago.”

“And you have not answered me once.” The hint of a smile tugged at his mouth.

She hated how easily that small expression made her pulse quicken. She wanted to bite her lip.…but refrained. Instead, she schooled her face, though a smile found its way there anyway.

“Perhaps you already know the answer, then.”

His amber eye softened, his other eye whirring in what appeared to be, quiet amusement.

That was the most dangerous thing about him. Not his fire or his charm….the charm she swore she did not miss on the days he was away. Certainly not.

Not even the centuries of pain hidden beneath those careful smiles of his.

It was that he saw her anyway.

He never looked at her as something broken or something to fix. Never as something owed to him. Never as something he had a right to claim simply because of a bond neither of them had chosen.

Lucien simply saw her. Actually saw her.

Not the version everyone else expected or the version they wanted.

Not some fragile thing they thought needed protecting. Or the sister who had been broken and remade. The seer who had frightened even those who loved her.

Just Elain.

What she wanted. What she feared. What she was capable of. Even from his respectable distance.

Somehow, that frightened her more than anything else. Because no one else had ever looked at her that way. Not truly. Not even Graysen….who she thought had really loved her. Until she realized he maybe never had. Not for who she was anyway.

He stepped closer and then stopped.

Leaving enough space between them for her to decide and for her to choose.

“May I?” The words were barely above a whisper.

Elain looked down at his outstretched hand after meeting his eyes.

The hand she had imagined too often without meaning to. The hand she had wondered how it felt in hers despite herself. The hand that had always been offered to her, yet had never touched her. Not once.

She took a breath, and placed her fingers in his.

His fingers closed around hers, warm and steady, and for a moment the world narrowed to that single point of contact.

The world went still. There was no flash of light or thunder. Not some grand declaration from the heavens.

Only his skin against hers. The simplest touch. But so warm…so…

No. She wouldn’t say it. Think it. She blinked it away.

After a year of hearing his voice, seeing his face, feeling the pull of the bond between them, she finally knew what it was like to feel him.

And it was nothing like she had expected and maybe even feared. It was not overwhelming. It was not some command. It was not a force taking something from her. It was nothing like that.

Elain forgot how to breathe.

The bond did not feel like a chain at all. The bond quietly glowing, thrumming as it always had.

To her surprise, it felt like something inside her had been waiting for this one small moment all along. She nearly laughed. At the ridiculousness of what she had feared and shrunk away from.

Lucien’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly, but his breath caught, because he felt it too.

For one heartbeat, she saw the truth of him. The longing he kept carefully hidden everytime she was in his presence. The same restraint he had shown her from the very beginning.

She felt it too, that longing sometimes, even when she couldn’t explain it. Especially on nights when she had nightmares. When she’d just listen to his heartbeat until she finally could sleep again.

Then he steadied himself, because Lucien Vanserra had always been careful with her. Always gentle. He was always waiting for her first.

His fingers remained around hers only as long as they needed to. Never longer.

And somehow, that made it worse. He guided her toward the horse.

“Careful,” he murmured, almost melodically.

“I am being careful.” She nearly narrowed her brown eyes at him.

“You are attempting to climb onto a creature thrice your size while refusing to admit you are nervous.” He teased.

“I am not nervous.” She declared. Her eyes nearly burning.

His mouth tilted. “Of course not.”

She did narrow her eyes then. “You don’t believe me.”

“I believe whatever you tell me.” His words were light. Were they…bantering now? Is that what this was? She hated that she liked it.

She replayed those words again, because something in them wasn’t light at all. She realized that had always been the truth of him. Lucien believed her.

Even when others decided they thought they knew what she needed. Even when they spoke over her. Made decisions for her. Said she couldn’t do something. That she wasn’t ready even when she knew she was. He had believed her. He had been the first one to do so. Even when others thought her mad. Before she knew what she was.

When she spoke of visions she barely understood, he did not dismiss them or her. When she saw things others could not, he did not tell her she was wrong. He just listened and trusted.

When she told him about Vassa, the human queen trapped in a curse, about the things she had seen but could not explain, Lucien did not ask her to prove herself before he just….acted.

He believed her enough to follow those visions. He crossed borders. He searched for answers. He found Vassa and even her own father. He helped bring the ships that helped turn the tide against Hybern.

All because Elain Archeron had told him what she saw.

That was what made him different.

Lucien did not just hear her words. He trusted them enough to change everything. Even the future. Because if he hadn’t? What would have happened?

No. He saw her. He was even the only one to acknowledge her hand in defeating the king himself. As if he trusted all of her own decisions too without question.

It felt like a breath of fresh air. To finally realize it was her mate who truly saw her for who she was. Not what she represented. Ironic in a way, when she had been quietly screaming for someone to see her, the seer who was never really seen by anyone.

She stepped into the stirrup, and his other hand moved to her waist to steady her. Only for a moment. And she was grateful despite herself, because she needed him to.

Somehow, he seemed to know she was a novice with horses despite her attempts to hide it.

For one impossible heartbeat, she was suspended between the earth and the saddle. Between the life she had been handed and the one she secretly wondered about. The one she hadn’t fully embraced yet.

His heartbeat was close. Closer than it had ever been before….and when she looked down, she found him staring at her.

As if he was fighting the same battle she was that she consistently had ignored, a slight flush in his face.

When she was safely seated, he released her immediately. Too quickly. As though touching her was something he wanted, but would deny himself forever if she asked him to. That thought pierced her.

She looked down at him and ignored the strong sense of peace that had settled over her the moment his hands had found her.

His hand rested at his side.

So still.

Then, almost unconsciously, he flexed his fingers once.

The smallest movement. A meaningless gesture. Except it wasn’t. Not at all.

Because now she knew what those hands felt like….and that made everything infinitely more dangerous than it had ever been before.

“You know,” she said softly, “You do not have to leave so quickly.”

Lucien went still. For a moment, hope flickered across his face. Then it vanished behind the restraint she had come to recognize.

“As you wish.” He said. The words were simple. Ordinary.

Elain paused.

There was something about the way he said them that felt like….more. Like a secret hidden inside.

Lucien had always done this.

Given her what she asked for. Given her what she needed even when she hadn’t asked at all. Even when she didn’t realize she needed it herself.

If she needed distance, he gave it. If she needed time, he waited. If she reached for him, he would be there.

And suddenly, she wondered if those three words didn’t mean what she thought they meant.

As you wish.

Before she could ask, Lucien stepped back. Then he bowed. A small, graceful gesture. A true gentleman’s farewell.

“My lady,” he whispered.

She nearly shivered at the reverence in his tone.

Elain watched him walk away, sunlight dancing on his hair, catching the red and gold like a warm fire or the sun as the sun sets….her fingers and waist still remembering the warmth of his touch. Like a brand. She closed her eyes for a moment, swallowing against the feeling.

The strangest part was that she had spent so long fearing the bond would be a command for her to obey. A force that would take her choices away. That already had somehow. But it hadn’t.

And…Lucien had always done the opposite since the beginning.

He had spent every moment giving those choices back to her. Giving her all the power.

And perhaps that was why the first touch had felt so terrifying….because she had expected the bond to suddenly feel like a trap.

She had never expected it to feel like sunlight. Like peace. Like finally coming home.

And she didn’t hate that at all.