By day, Elain was everything they believed her to be — sweet, soft-spoken, always smiling faintly as she trimmed the hedge-roses in Feyre’s garden. A vision of peace. Of recovery. Of moving on.

But by night?

She winnowed.

Quiet as breath, wrapped in shadow and starlight, Elain disappeared from Velaris when the moon hung low and silver.

She arrived beneath the canopies of the Spring Court, where the wildflowers grew tangled and the fountains ran dry. No sentries stopped her. No magic rose to bar her way. It was as if the court itself remembered her — and allowed her to return.

She did not go to the manor. Not anymore.

She went deeper. Into the woods where the beast slept.

Tamlin did not speak when she arrived.

Not in words.

He watched her with those ancient, golden-green eyes. Half-man, half-wolf, half-something else. He never shifted. Never stood. He only lifted his head from the bed of moss and breathed her name once like it hurt him to say.

“Elain.”

And she knelt beside him without flinching.

She never asked why he stayed like this — trapped in beast form, refusing the call of courts or kings. Perhaps she understood. Perhaps she stayed a beast, too, in her own quiet way.

She would sing to him. Softly. Wordlessly. Just hums, like lullabies she once remembered from her human life. And as she sang, the weeds pulled back. Vines curled into blossoms. Dead hedges stirred and reached for the sun.

Elain did not wield power the way others did. She whispered to it. She asked nicely.

And in the Spring Court, the land obeyed.

She never told anyone about these visits. Not Feyre. Not Nesta. Not Lucien. Especially not Lucien.

Because the bond that pulled her to one male had never quite undone the ache she felt for another — not love, not really. But pity. Loneliness. A shared ruin.

Tamlin would never ask her to stay. And Elain would never offer.

But as long as the flowers bloomed behind her footsteps… she would return.