A Court of Blood & Mercy || Elriel Dual POV

Chapter 13 - Quite Beautiful

Elain squeezed her thighs to her chest, feeling her curls swing down to cover her arms as she rested her chin on the pink plaid gingham covering her knees. Her eyes scanned across the moonlit backyard of the river mansion, the simple gardens bristling in the cooling Autumn Velaris air.

She was back in her old room in Velaris and it almost felt as if the past two decades had never happened at all: like she was freshly made-fae, the war just over, her heart reinjured, simply waiting and grieving and pondering out this very window.

So much had changed, yet so much was the same.

She still felt like she was waiting... grieving... and pondering.

Remembering so much that she had forced herself to forget— forced herself to leave behind in this starlit city when she left for Autumn.

She was curled on the tufted silk window seat, the cushions covered in pink florals matching the walls papered over in curling botanical designs, sprouting up from the thick padded ivory carpet all the way to the vaulted ceilings. A glowing fae light in the shape of a peony burned nearby on a side table next to her tufted reading chair.

Just as she left it all those years ago, though this time, at least she was not alone.

Penelope was buried under the silk and cotton quilts piled on the four-poster pink canopy bed in the center of the room. Her daughter had insisted on sharing "mama's old room," and Elain was desperately grateful for the company.

Because it was almost eerie to be back in the girlish room, the space frozen immemorial as a time capsule in her absence, as if her sister had always expected her to return someday.

It even smelled the same.

Like roses.

And mist.

Elain turned her face back to the backyard, her eyes moving across the gardens she had once called home. Her wisteria and lilacs were pristine, rustling against the roses and pansies, their condition blossoming, even in the unnaturally cold air.

Charmed by Feyre perhaps.

She half-smiled. Her sister must miss her to be bothering with flowers. A jolt of guilt shot through her heart, at the idea of her younger sister futilely spending her magic on enchanting Elain's old flowers and gardens for a sister who never visited.

The truth was that being around her sisters had become almost too painful.

To see Cassian tug Nesta close to his side, her frigid sister melting only for him, or the way Feyre and Rhys seemed to move in passionate synchronism, never far from each other for more than a day.

It made her feel bitter.

Sour.

As if she was being sprinkled and baptized in acid every time their mating bonds came close enough to scratch her, their obvious truth displaying how different a mating bond could be. It was as if she was living in a completely different dimension to Nesta's action-packed adventures and Feyre's powerful political position. Their raucous mated-sex-lives... both sisters still madly in love: probably grateful to the Mother and the Cauldron and whoever else was responsible for delivering them from pathetic humanity into delectable love and good fortune.

Like becoming fae was the best thing that ever could have happened.

Which could possibly be true. Because neither Feyre nor Nesta had much prospect in the human world. It was as if there was no man their match— like the spells of Cassian and Rhys had reached and tethered all the way into the human lands, preventing any possible match between her sisters and the men in town.