Daylight

Chapter 11

A clap of thunder woke Elain with a start. She automatically looked to the clock on the wall only to find no clock where one should be. She eyed the pillowcase beneath her head. Hunter green. She had dreamed of the autumn forest again. The scent of sunlight, oranges, and sandalwood filled the room.

She wasn't even surprised that she woke in Lucien's room for the third day in a row. She didn't immediately rush to scramble out of the bed like she had the previous two mornings, however. He never woke up before and she suspected he wouldn't wake up now.

She took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the dimly lit room. It was still dark out and the sound of thunder explained the lack of moonlight. In fact, the only light came from the smoldering embers in the fireplace. She finally located a clock on the mantle and saw that it was nearly five in the morning. A magnificent thunderstorm was raging outside the window.

This was the kind of weather that made Elain want to burrow deep beneath the covers and go back to sleep. But she didn't dare. It was one thing to take a few minutes to peer around his room. It was entirely something else to go back to sleep and risk him waking before she did.

As she slowly got out of the bed, she tried to hold on to the tendrils of the dream, but it was useless. The longer she was conscious, the more details slipped through her fingers like smoke. She had been so close to catching just a glimpse of whatever it was she was pursuing. She whispered a curse at the clap of thunder that had woken her just before she'd seen what she was chasing.

She wandered over to Lucien's window, where she could see most of her little garden, practically drowning under the tempest that raged outside. She hoped she could use magic to perk her babies back up once the storm passed. A normal, mortal garden would have been wrecked from a storm like this, but Rhys had told her that a little bit of magic protected it from harsh weather such as this.

She decided she'd lingered long enough and turned away from the window to go back to her own room. She stopped as she was passing by the bed. Or more accurately, something made her stop. Her feet wouldn't have kept moving no matter what she'd willed them to do.

She studied his sleeping form. He was lying on his back, bare from the waist up. His tunic was draped over the back of a chair in the corner. The sheet was bunched up by his ankles, as if he'd slept restlessly and kicked at it for most of the night. That struck her as odd since she'd slept peacefully, despite being woken from her dream abruptly. For the first time since she'd started waking up in this room, she wondered how long she spent here each night before waking up.

Lucien, mercifully, appeared not to sleep nude as Feyre claimed Rhys did. Elain had shrieked and stuck her fingers in her ears when Feyre had shared that little tidbit of gossip, insisting that was too much information about her sister's mate. Though he was clothed from the waist down, the top button of Lucien's trousers was undone, causing them to rest almost obscenely low on his hips. Elain might have let her eyes linger on the wide, flat plane of his stomach and the sensual way his hip bones formed the shape of a V...

She jerked her head back up toward his face, even as hers burned crimson. Bless the Mother than he hadn't been awake to see her staring at him like that. Yet, her traitorous mind wondered if he'd be mortified or aroused at the thought of it. Or perhaps a little of both? She was genuinely shocked by her own daring. This was so far beyond propriety that she hardly believed it was happening. And yet... the Cauldron or the Mother or some other power had declared that out of all the males who had and ever would walk this earth, he was the one to be her match.

She turned her attention to his face. Even though the sheets bore evidence to a restless night, his expression betrayed no such signs of distress. He looked peaceful. His long red hair, which he always either tied behind his neck or occasionally wore in a thick braid, was loose and splayed wildly around his pillow.

Just as it had been the previous morning, a section of his hair was across half of his face. Elain glanced down at the balled-up sheets once more. Those, combined with his untamed hair, almost certainly confirmed her suspicion that at some point in the night, he'd thrashed wildly and restlessly. She wondered what terrors haunted his dreams.

She knew what haunted hers. A rough, burlap sack over her head and a gag in her mouth. The bruising grip of those brutal hired guards as they'd manhandled her into that wretched cauldron. And the Cauldron itself... though rare, those dreams still returned to her every once in a while.

As she watched him sleep, she remembered how gentle he'd been after she was poured out of the Cauldron like stale bathwater. She'd been freezing and shivering, positively indecent in her thin nightgown. He had shed his own jacket and wrapped it around her after breaking whatever curse held him and Tamlin tethered to the floor by magic. He'd picked her up and held her tightly as she'd shivered against him. She had been too traumatized by shock to fully understand and appreciate what he'd done for her in the moments after she'd been Made.

A memory pulled at her. Something she'd forgotten—or more likely suppressed—until just now. It was before the guards had forced her into the Cauldron. As Feyre's former fiancé had stood by and watched idly, it had been Lucien who'd stepped forward and at least tried to stop it.

That's enough. She recalled the command he'd uttered in a low, guttural growl.

And now here he was, sleeping mere feet from her. Close enough to touch. Her mate.

Mate.

It was as if that one, solitary word propelled her fingers forward, giving in to the desire to do what she'd wanted to do the first morning she'd awoken in this room. Fingers as light as feathers, she swept the hair away from his face, revealing the jagged scar beneath. As he slept, one would have no inkling that one of his eyes was a mechanical stand-in, after that monster Amarantha had clawed it out. Feyre hadn't told her much, insisting that it would be better if Elain got to know him on her own, but she had told her that story at least. Elain felt something inside her boil and rage as she recalled the details her sister had shared with her.

For the first time in quite a while, she thought of her alleged human friends back in the village. How shallow and vain they'd all been. And Elain had been guilty of it as well. They'd make comments and observations about the boys and bachelors of their little town. About their perfect features. Their sleek hair, breathtaking eyes, perfect noses. Elain grimaced with disgust at the person she used to be.

No doubt her "friends" would have said atrocious things if a man in town had borne a scar like this. They would have sneered and never given him a second glance. But as her eyes remained locked on the brutal scar, Elain realized just how blind she had once been. That scar was evidence of the courage and bravery he'd shown when he had challenged that loathsome female's rule. When he'd demonstrated that he and his people weren't afraid of her.

Even if he didn't think so, she couldn't help but think the scar made him even more devastatingly handsome than he already was.

Wishing she had Nuala and Cerridwen's powers to turn to smoke and wisps, she risked one final touch. She ran her finger, so lightly, across the scar that ran from his forehead to his chin. Lucien shifted in his sleep and the softest sigh escaped his lips. Elain jerked her hand back and held her breath, but he merely settled back in and remained—to her relief—asleep.

She retreated back to her room and for the first time, wished Feyre hadn't deliberately given Lucien the room farthest from hers.