#fuck beron he can rot in hell

[florencemtrash]

Brown Eyed Beauty — Lucien x Reader

Fond, childhood memories are few and far between for Lucien. But he's reminded of every good thing when he looks at you.

Author's note: DAMNIT! Brown eyes deserve to be treated with the same tender reverence as any other color. This one is for all the brown eyed beauties (and Lucien lovers) out there.

There was a hidden stream Eris had taken him fishing once, back when he was a stringy child with two eyes and soft hands.

“You’ll need to build up your strength and the calluses on your palms, then the fish won’t be able to slip out of your grasp so easily.” Eris told him, standing up to his knees in the gentle current, pant legs rolled up with the ends dripping. His body was slim as a reed, but strong, and on the cusp of adulthood. Pale bruises were scattered across a pale, freckled chest, purple, green, and yellow.

Lucien watched with bated breath as Eris tracked a shiny, silver-pink body darting between the rocks, his eyes untricked by the bending of sunlight as it dove into the water. 

There. 

Eris leaned down and dipped his hands into the stream with lightning swiftness. “Gotcha.” 

His hands broke the water. The salmon writhed, fighting with every gasping breath and splashing water onto Eris’s already soaking trousers.

“Here.” Eris stretched his arms out to where Lucien stood in the shallows. The salmon was giving up, the rhythm of its whipping body slowing. “It’s tired. Try holding it now.” 

Lucien held on for five seconds before the tail slapped him across the face, startling him so much he dropped the fish and its scaly, sleek body began to race downstream.

“No!” Lucien dove for it, red hair slipping under clear waters. The current was stronger than he expected, or maybe it was just that he was weaker than his brother. He felt something pulling downward, keeping him submerged.

His first response was to panic, to flail his arms and legs out uselessly. But then he stopped. It was peaceful down here, the water so clear that he could catch every grain of sand splashed over brick-brown rocks like stars. Tiny fishes, silky smooth with beady eyes, darted in and out of crevices. Light behaved differently underwater, fragmenting and casting lovely golden shapes on stones the color of fresh-pressed coffee. 

Here it was calm. Here was a place where Beron’s power couldn’t touch him. Here he was safe. 

A strong hand grasped the back of his shirt, hauling him up soaking and sputtering with a brackish taste sliding down his throat. 

The bruises on Eris’s cheekbones stood out on his pale skin, the fright in his eyes turning to anger. 

“What the hell were you thinking?!” Eris yelled and all but tossed his sopping body onto a yellowing patch of grass. 

“I’m sorry,” Lucien mumbled. He sat, shivering in the Autumn chill until Eris caught another salmon and assembled sticks in a neat circle of sand, lighting it with a snap of his slender fingers. 

“Tomorrow we’ll come back,” Eris promised as Lucien sank his teeth into the juicy, pink flesh. The skin was perfectly crisp and grease dribbled down his chin hot and slick. Eris wiped it away with a soft swatch of moss. “I’ll teach you to swim properly.” 

He didn’t seem to mind the descending cold, and for that Lucien was grateful. It meant he would get to keep Eris’s shirt until his was finished drying on the cracked log. 

But unbeknownst to them, Beron had come home earlier than anticipated with their other brothers. Eris was whipped ten times for leaving the Forest House unattended and Lucien was locked in his room for three days. They never went back to that stream — at least not together — and Lucien learned to swim on his own in less forgiving waters. 

Lucien still clung onto the memories of that day. Good memories from his childhood were far and few between. 

“You’re staring again.” You sighed contentedly and shifted in the little cradle of earth you’d claimed for youself. Yellowing, waist-high grasses swayed above you, occasionally bowing down with slender fingers to tickle your cheeks. A hundred yards away the Sidra tumbled over stones, rolled onto gray-sand beaches. The air tasted of salt and seaweed. Crisp, tangy, clear. 

“How did you know?” Lucien asked, and you could hear the gentle caress of his smile in the words.

You cracked open your eyes against the sun’s assault high in the midafternoon sky. Sure enough, Lucien was staring at you, golden eye whirring. You ran a languid finger down the bond, light and airy as a kiss. He braced his arms by your head, sinking down until his body was pressed flush against yours. 

You smiled. “I can feel it. It’s my special talent.”

“Oh?” Lucien chuckled.

“I’ve cultivated it over the years. A product of having a brute like you chase after me like a hound goes after a fox.” Not that you’d ever gone far. 

Scarlet strands of hair slipped out of the braid you’d arranged hours ago. They hung around his elegant, scarred face like liquid fire, casting a warm glow onto his already tanned skin. You tucked them back behind his sharp ears. Traced the curve of his bones until he was leaning into your touch.

“You wound me,” he murmured, kissing your palms. 

You blushed, feeling the brush of his full lips against your sensitive skin. “I didn’t mean it.” 

He smiled — a crooked, boyish smile. “I know.” 

He looked into your coffee eyes. The light bent differently when they touched your irises, curving around the bends like honey, cutting amber crescents at the edges of their rich color. You closed and opened them slowly, letting the light pour in like cream into coffee, swirling and setting them aflame. 

Lucien was back in that stream. The world was still. There was nothing that could hurt him. Just clarity, peace, and the riverbed glittering beneath him. 

“I love you, Y/n.”

#lucien vanserra #lucien x reader #lucien acotar #eris vanserra #you know I couldn't help but include a scene between the only two good Autumn Court boys #Eris Vanserra has untapped potential to become the next Rhysand and no I will not change my mind #this man is a goldmine and has done everything to protect himself and his family from beron #fuck beron he can rot in hell

[clockwork-ashes]

All You Have Is Your Fire - Part I

Summary: 'I can hear your heart beating through the stone.' For the briefest of moments, Lucien wondered if his mate would know exactly when his heart’s steady rhythm came to a sudden stop.

Note: A huge, huge thank you to the lovely @bettdraws who literally deserves all the credit and whose post inspired me to start writing this. I could not stop thinking about this head canon, and it was so kind of you to let me try and make a story from it :)

Part II >>

Lucien tugged at the iron chains around his wrists, the unforgiving metal biting into his skin. He knew there was no chance of escaping, that his fate now rested in the hands of others, but Lucien had hoped one of the links would break and he could take some of the pressure off his shoulders. 

“Fuck,” Lucien mumbled, blood still wet on his lips. He ran his tongue over his teeth to check if they were all there. “Fucking hells.” 

With one last useless pull on his restraints, Lucien gave up on breaking free from his shackles. He decided to take a better look around the small cell he had been thrown into, but even with his golden eye, he had to squint into the darkness. 

Stone walls spelled against magic of any type closed Lucien off from the rest of the world. He could feel damp, cool air against his skin, the type that came from being deep within the earth. He was quite sure his nose had been broken, but he took a shuddering breath. Mingled with the copper scent of his own blood, Lucien could smell dying leaves. 

Home. 

The thought came to him unbidden, thunderous in the silence. Others in Prythian thought that Autumn was rotting, cruel in its beauty, always just on the verge of death. Lucien had always found comfort in the constant state of the court he had been raised in. He had not considered Autumn his home for centuries, and Lucien rushed to shake the idea from his mind. 

He stumbled to the cell’s door, leaning onto the aged wood with all his weight. There was a small circle carved into it, a sorry excuse for a window, Lucien thought. When he pressed his forehead against the opening, and angled his head just right, Lucien could make out an endless hallway. He could see no guards, could hear nothing but the steady beat of his own heart. 

Lucien had been hopeful before, but the chance of him making it out of Autumn alive was starting to look more and more unlikely with each passing moment. Golden eye whirring, he searched for a crack in the wards. 

Lucien felt dread, ice cold, crawling up his spine. No one would come for him, he thought, the panic gripping him like a vice. He would be left entirely at his father’s mercy, alone and forgotten. 

Voice low, Lucien cursed Beron Vanserra for being terrible, and he cursed his brothers for being even worse. He added Rhysand’s name as well, angry for having sent him to handle the issue at Spring’s border. Lucien hissed one last bitter curse before he kicked the door in frustration. 

The action sent a jolt of pain up his entire leg, but being able to release some of that pent up rage managed to make Lucien feel just a bit better. He kicked the door once again with added force, wholly out of character for one of Prythian’s best emissaries. 

When the door shuddered, the ancient hinges screeching as if in protest, Lucien wondered if he had perhaps shattered the ward. As the door slowly opened, though, dim firelight falling through the widening space, Lucien moved faerie-quick to press his back against the rough stone behind him.  

It was a lesson the youngest of children were taught in Autumn, how easy it was for jewelled daggers to meet their mark. It was easier to fight, and to protect yourself, if you only had to worry about what was in front of you. It was a lesson so well ingrained in Lucien’s mind that it had become instinct. 

As the door opened entirely, and a tall figure stepped into the stone arch of the cell, Lucien remembered who had been the one to teach him that lesson in the first place. 

Eris Vanserra, Beron’s most trusted son and the heir to his throne. No one could deny Eris looked like a prince, all Autumn, even without a golden crown set on his blood-red hair. 

Lucien looked from his brother’s leather boots, to his brown pants, to the white shirt laced to Eris’s throat. He couldn’t see a weapon, no dagger hilt warning others that Eris was armed. 

Amber eyes fell on Lucien, lip curling in disgust. He looked disappointed, Lucien thought, before he realised that Eris was within the walls of the cell. 

Mind racing, Lucien glanced past his brother and into the hallway. Perhaps—

“Don’t even think about it,” Eris snapped, the words like a whip’s lash. 

“Fuck off,” Lucien snarled, angry that so much time had passed and yet Eris could still read him like an open book. Lucien looked more closely at Autumn’s heir, but he couldn’t guess just from the expression on his brother's face whether he had come to help, or to do their father’s bidding. 

“Were you always so crude with your words,” Eris raised an eyebrow in question, “or is this the Night Court’s influence?” 

Lucien bowed slightly at the waist, the gesture awkward with his hands still shackled behind him, mocking. “You have my sincerest apologies.” Lucien wanted to strangle Eris, and he hoped the tone of his voice conveyed the feeling well. 

When Eris tilted his head, looking more wolf than faerie, the small golden hoops going up the arch of his ear glimmered in the light from the torches. “Father is not very pleased with you.” 

Lucien made a point to look around the small space he was in. “Thank you for telling me, he hadn’t made his displeasure obvious.” His golden eye clicked into place as he faced Eris. “Is that all?” 

“He wants you dead,” Eris said, voice clipped, but certain. Lucien could see no mercy in that flaming gaze, no care. 

Lucien nodded, unseeing. He had known, from the moment he had been brought to Autumn, that his death would be the likeliest outcome. He was too busy thinking, mind preoccupied with the image of brown eyes, the rich colour of a fawn’s coat. 

I can hear your heart beating through the stone. 

For the briefest of moments, Lucien wondered if his mate would know exactly when his heart’s steady rhythm came to a sudden stop. 

The thought troubled him enough that he turned his attention back to Eris, glaring. “Come to gloat?” 

Eris shrugged, the movement elegant in a way only the best of courtier’s were capable of. “Only partially.” His lips turned down at the corners, the smallest of frowns, before he continued. “If it were up to me, I’d leave you here to rot with the rest of the prisoners. Truly, I could care less about what father decides to do to you.” 

“How kind,” Lucien mumbled, not entirely believing his brother’s words, but not exactly sure where the Autumn heir actually stood on the matter. Once, Lucien had believed Eris cared, but that seemed like a lifetime ago. 

Eris ignored Lucien’s remark all together. “Mother, though,” he continued, “she’s worried about your well being.” 

“Then tell her everything is fine.” Lucien knew the Lady of Autumn had enough to worry about. 

“That would be a lie,” Eris snapped. “Father is one bad mood away from ripping you apart and sending your severed head to Rhysand as a gift.” The words were a hiss, barely a whisper. 

Lucien breathed in sharply. “Eris–” He hadn’t known what he was going to say, but Eris raised a beringed hand, demanding silence. 

“You’re very lucky, Lucien, that I have some spare time in my very busy schedule to do as our mother has asked and find a way to return you to the Night Court.” 

Lucien could imagine his mother, tears in her russett eyes so similar to his own, as she fell to her knees at Eris’s feet, begging for help. He wondered if Eris had spoken to her kindly. 

“All out of the goodness of your heart?” Lucien questioned. He had meant for it to be angry, but instead he sounded exhausted. 

“What heart?” 

Lucien very nearly rolled his eyes. Only in the Autumn Court could people be so dramatic. “You’ll come back for me, then?” He would try to keep his expectations of Eris low. Lucien had learned from the last time he had found himself in a similar situation that hoping for help from his eldest brother was pointless. Then, he had considered it a betrayal, now he knew better, it was simply in Eris’s nature to do things that only ever benefited him. 

Eris smiled, the expression making it seem like he was baring his teeth. The dim firelight was casting long shadows on Eris’s face, the slash of his cheekbones looked glass sharp. “Give me a day or two, little brother.” Lucien flinched at the last two words, more cruel than anything else Eris had said to him since his arrival. If Eris noticed, he chose not to acknowledge it. “If your heart is still beating, I’ll find a way to return you to your High Lady.” 

Eris had a rare gift in his ability to make anything sound like an insult, Lucien thought. Still leaning against the rough wall for support, Lucien nodded in agreement. He knew better than to trust his brother’s word, but for the first time since he’d been tossed into the dungeons, he felt a small spark of hope. 

Eris took a step back, away from the arch in the stone, and Lucien was plunged once more into darkness. He winnowed without a word, the torches going out as he disappeared, and leaving nothing but a few dying embers in his wake. 

The heavy oak door slammed shut, locks falling into place, and Lucien was once again alone.

#acotar #a court of thorns and roses #lucien vanserra #eris vanserra #autumn court #elucien #elain archeron x lucien vanserra #elain is not in this part but she will be in the next one #ashes writes sometimes #all you have is your fire