Daylight

Chapter 2

Elain fidgeted while Nuala and Cerridwen helped her dress. Once they were finished, she thanked them and slid her feet into a pair of blush pink slippers that matched her dress. She cleared her throat twice and continued to fidget with a loose thread, wondering if Lucien knew she'd been in his room last night. Feyre had stopped by her room early this morning to tell her of his return before she went downstairs for breakfast. Elain had feigned ignorance and expressed mild interest at the news while her insides twisted and turned.

"Is everything okay, Miss Elain?" Nuala asked as she ran a comb through Elain's thick wavy hair.

"I'm fine," she breathed, far too high pitched and quickly to be a casual response.

Nuala smiled at Cerridwen but said nothing. Elain had often suspected that the shadow twins had their own way of silently communicating and was willing to bet they were wordlessly calling her bluff.

Elain left the safe confines of her room for the staircase. Ever since the defeat of Hybern, she had been trying to be more engaging with the others. She'd worked on accepting that she would never be mortal or live in the human world again and had even come to terms with her strange new abilities as a Seer. Though thankfully, aside from the odd dream, she hadn't had any more prophetic visions.

After Greysen's rejection, life as a High Fae had come easier than she'd expected. In the months following Hybern's defeat, she had challenged herself to participate in more family dinners and truly get to know these people that Feyre considered family. Once she had done that, Velaris became a much more pleasant place to live.

She spent most mornings in the garden she had been nurturing outside the townhouse. She would spend her afternoons either with her sisters or the wraith twins. Nuala and Cerridwen had been so kind to her when she had first arrived and had grown to be so much more than handmaidens. Though they were quiet and reserved, she had come to see them as friends. Occasionally, Azriel would join her in the garden. He didn't talk much either, but the silence was comfortable and somehow, still welcoming.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, her mouth was already watering at the smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls wafting from the kitchen. She thought back to her initial days as Fae when she refused all food.

I must have been crazy to turn away food as good as this.

"Good morning," she said cheerfully as she reached the last stair and drifted into the sitting room. One thing she both loved and still had to get used to was the informality of Rhysand's Inner Circle. Rhysand never sat at the head of the table, when they bothered to sit at one at all. No one was sitting at a table eating breakfast with utensils and place settings; rather, everybody was lounging in whatever seat they'd chosen. The cinnamon rolls Elain had smelled were piled high on a platter, which sat on a low-lying table in the center of the room.

Lucien's head jerked, as if he'd been about to whip around to face her and then thought better of it. Feyre smirked at him. Rhysand smirked at her. Everyone around here smirked.

Mor rose from the chair she'd been halfway reclined on, plucked a cinnamon roll off the top of the heap, and took a generous bite. "Good morning, Elain," she said with a mouth full of food. "Since apparently everyone else in this house either has gone mute or has lost their manners."

Feyre narrowed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at Mor, who retaliated by wiping a smear of sticky cinnamon roll icing onto Feyre's arm.

Elain laughed as Feyre shrieked. She had never seen her sister with a true friend. The world had been unkind to Elain and her sisters but that had been no excuse for the way she and Nesta had treated Feyre. Even in poverty, they should have been better friends to their baby sister.