A Court of Blood & Mercy || Elriel Dual POV

Chapter 7 - Marked Territory

Elain rolled over in her bed, unable to sleep.

Lucien was home for a change.

And they had gone through the charade of retreating to the same bedchamber. If for nothing other than to give their daughter peace of mind.

She listened to his breath rise and fall beside her as she sat up, hugging her knees to her chest.

His trip to Osenya had been shortened, the princeling returning quickly in time to prepare for Beron's birthday celebrations.

Her eyes traveled across his sharp features gilded beneath his dark skin. His high cheekbones were glinting in the moonlight slightly, framed by his red hair, still long, if not longer than usual. It had been so long since she had really looked at her mate, she almost felt as if she was viewing a stranger as she stared, her eyes raking across his bobbing throat, his muscled chest naked under the sheets as his shoulder twitched, causing a length of hair to fall to the pillow beside her.

She felt a twinge of recognition peak in her throat as her eyes scanned his hair, catching upon a small braided coil beneath his ear, the red strands woven into beads and shells of different shades of blue and turquoise.

She wondered if it was the same female as last time... perhaps one from the coast of a small city in Summer, if the shell was any indication.

Elain imagined her mate sitting cross-legged in one of those tentlike structures the outlanders and shepherds used, magic smoke filling the corners of the canvas as a seductive voice whispered and sung into his pointed ear. She was probably massaging his tense shoulders as the elixir overcame his lungs before she wove the braid into his hair, sending him home with a small reminder of her— marked territory for his bridled mate to witness.

Elain sighed.

She had long since stopped asking about her mate's extra visits to Vallahan and the siren caves in Summer. Not once had she questioned the excursions to the southern Dawn tribal regions or the Calanmai celebrations on the outerbanks of Osenya.

It did not matter to her.

And that very fact is probably what drove him to do it— to reach and grasp for any type of female affection.

Because Lucien was rejected in his own home by his own Cauldron-born mate.

She knew he despised the very fact that she all-but welcomed his philandering. As if it just further proved how little he meant to her—that she was neither jealous nor protective of her mate's affections, ready and willing to foist him off onto another willing party.

Sometimes she even wondered if Penelope had a sibling somewhere off in the outer banks of Osenya. If that was why she had been all but forbidden to ever see her mate's work there.

Her eyes drew back to the shells and beads hidden on the underlayer of Lucien's hair, the glow of the moon glinting off the veined gems as she almost chuckled to herself. The female must have only wanted it to be seen by a lover who had gotten too close to her prize.

But Lucien and Elain could not be described as lovers, yet here she was, observing the back of his neck in the moonlight on a bed with silk sheets.

All the pretenses of lovers without any of the reality.

It had been so long— since Elain had felt like a "woman" in the way humans tended to discuss the matter. So long since she had been touched... so long since she had even craved touch, from herself or another.

It was as if the horror of birth and the pain that followed had stripped her of her womanhood until all she had left was motherhood.

A soft padding noise startled her as she flashed her eyes up toward her cat Dunya traveling the length of her legs on top of the sheets, purring and winding her way toward Elain's hands, stretching her gray and white body beneath her master's hand. Elain scratched her long fingernails through Dunya's fur as she purred.