By high noon, Lucien had changed out of his traveling clothes, which were torn at the knees and stained with blood and dirt. 
Not planning on a long visit, he had packed two tunics, one of fine, black cotton that was inlaid with gold and silver thread, (a gift from Feyre) and one of wool, just as fine as the last, dyed a rich cobalt blue with silver trim.
He might have preferred a jacket, or a fitted vest that he had grown accustomed to wearing in Night and Spring, but Feyre and Rhysand has insisted that Lucien wear the fashion of Autumn Court.
Even if he took smug pleasure in refusing to wear their colors.
His father's funeral wasn't until tomorrow, so Lucien had chosen to wear his blue tunic.
With a grim sort of humor, he realized that it nearly matched the apple sized bruise on his jaw that still ached.
A thick leather belt cinched it low on his waist.
But now, though he was dressed for Autumn court, it would appear that his dear brother did not deem him fit to be seen in public. 
The doors to his rooms were not locked, per se, but two guards barred his way when he had tried to leave. 
All six times.
Now, Lucien paced up and down his chambers. 
The beauty and comfort of the room was lost on him.
Now that the imminent horror of seeing his sadistic brothers had faded, older and more constant plagues on his mind arose once more. 
The distance between himself and Elain had certainly helped. 
At least he wasn't coming into his fist every half hour.
But the bond still made it difficult to concentrate on the problem at hand.
Lucien would be trying to think of a solution, or plan out a strategy, and then he would feel a twinge down the bond.
Something Elain had done, or thought, or felt, that just randomly struck him in the gut.
He had never longed for the distracting anxiety of dealing with his brothers more than he did now.
He found himself hoping that Eris would send for him, for the noon meal, but his hopes were dashed when a nervous, and yet disdainful servant was pushed through the doors and ordered to leave a plate of roast chicken on his bed.
Lucien had not been given the chance or the time to pull the servant aside and ask for a message to be relayed.
Stopping his endless track across the floor, Lucien gritted his teeth and gripped the foot of the oak bed frame.
It creaked and groaned, and his knuckles turned white, his shoulders and back right with the force he was outputting.
The wood continued to protest, and Lucien finally released his hold when smoke began to rise.
In the place of his hands were two spot stained prints, a quarter inch deep in the solid oak .
He growled and spun away.
It would be a long day.
...
The moon had risen and the stars shining before a harsh knock roused Lucien from his frustrated half slumber.
He sat up, pulse quickened, but before he could arise and make himself decent (his tunic and undershirt had been cast aside in favor of sleeping topless) his chamber doors were opened.
The knock, clearly, had been ceremonial at best.
Half sitting, Lucien's eye whirred with disdain as he watched Eris stride in, the doors shutting behind him.
His older brother seemed to pay him no mind, storming to the desk beside the hearth. 
He grasped the neck of a clay decanter filled with honey mead and poured it into the mug that had been supplied to Lucien along with the food and drink for supper. 
Lucien watched, frozen, tense, and confused as Eris poured long and drank deep, draining the contents.
He seemed hesitant to set the mug down, eyeing the half full decanter, but he sighed and sat heavily in the chair at the desk. 
His eyes were closed and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers rubbing his temples.
The only sound for a few endless minutes was the cracking and snapping of the fire, the light casting long flickering shadows and illuminating Eris' red hair and the deep shadows beneath his eyes. 
Lucien's shock began to fade into a dull rage that consumed him anytime his eldest brother was near.
Sitting up fully and swinging his legs out from under the furs, over the side of the bed, Lucien finally broke the silence.
"Most people wait for permission to enter a room before they intrude."
Eris didn't move, or open his eyes, but his fingers stopped working his temples.
"I knocked," he replied, voice low.
Lucien barked a cold, harsh laugh, but bit his tongue.
The snapping of the fire was getting unbearable in this new stretch of tense silence. 
"Why are you here, Eris."
It was Eris' turn to let out an ugly, humorless laugh, and at last he opened his eyes.
Lucien was startled by how bloodshot and exhausted they were.
"I am high lord, am I not, little brother?  Is this not my home?"
Lucien stared at him. 
Even if he had wanted to respond, he did not know how. 
Eris looked... old. 
There were dark circles beneath his bloodshot eyes, his face gaunt and sharp. 
How had he not seen it before? 
And why was he seeing it now?
Eris sighed, and dragged a hand down his face before standing and turning to pour himself a second drink. 
Lucien stood as well, but stayed anchored to his spot by the bed. 
This was all so... intimate.  Strange.  Wrong. 
Eris, the eldest and most brutal son of Autumn, turning his back to a traitor? 
Lucien's eye whirred and shifted, as if trying to see something that couldn't be explained. 
Eris cradled the mug of mead and turned back to Lucien.
"Can't you shut that thing up?"
The eye clicked, and Lucien's brow furrowed.
"The eye.  It's always clicking and whistling, the damn thing.  Distracting."
The anger and irritation that had faded from Lucien's confusion came back in a hot spear. 
"I suppose you and our brothers would be happier if I were simply blind?" He replied, teeth gritted, jaw aching from the punishment he had suffered that morning. 
Eris only snorted and took another swig of his drink. 
"It's been a long time, little brother."
Lucien snarled.
"Not long enough."
Eris' eyes were unfocused, staring into nothing, but his lips were drawn down and tight, his brow knit.
Lucien eyed him more closely.
His pale cheeks were flushed and ruddy.
He must have been drinking in the hours before this.
No wonder he wasn't the stiff, cold, brutal man that he always was.
Eris was drunk.
He took another deep drink.
"Perhaps not.  But welcome home, nevertheless," he muttered.
Lucien nearly choked.
"Welcome home?" He swore indignantly.
"Welcome home, Eris?  Mother above, you've lost your mind," he spat.
He strode forward, no longer frozen, and stopped an inch from Eris' flushed face, smelling the liquor on his breath, oozing from his pale skin.
Lucien gripped the mead and yanked it from Eris' hand, spilling half of it before slamming it back down on the desk. 
Eris let him. 
Lucien glowered, eyes aflame and heat radiating off of him, rage tearing him apart from the inside.
He flung out a hand, rigidly pointing to the door.
"Out," he growled. 
Eris smirked, but it was empty.
"I am the master of this place.  Of autumn.  You do not tell me where to go, little brother."
Lucien roared and before Eris could react, he gripped the front of his tunic, hands flaming, and wrenched his older brother off of his feet, sprawling out to the stone floor.
Tendrils of smoke trailed up from Eris as he scrambled to his feet, unsteady, a wild and frenzied look in his eyes.
The chest of his tunic was charred and black, and the suffocating scent of smoke invaded the room.
Eris grinned, and spread his hands, flames springing to life in his palms.
"I don't think you want to play with fire. I've always been stronger than you."
Lucien sneered at him, but Eris only laughed and the flames rose higher, dancing and spinning.
Lucien's own flames rose, smaller but no less bright.
But his rage overtook him, and again, keeping his flames alive, he charged Eris and struck him across the face, urging his flames to sear his too perfect skin.
A wall of heatless flame stopped Lucien's burning fury, and though Eris took the blow to his jaw, eerily similar to the bruise on Lucien's own face, the fire had done nothing.
Eris laughed again, but it was strained as he used Lucien's momentum to wrap an arm around his neck, pulling him into a chokehold of iron.
Lucien hissed and gnashed his teeth, pressing his blazing palms against Eris' forearm.
Eris didn't budge, and suddenly there was cold steel pressing into Lucien's side.
He froze, webs of lightning spreading out from the knife point up his skin.
Letting the fire die, he felt Eris loosen his grip and pull the knife away.
In an instant, Lucien was half a room away, snarling and glaring.
He wanted to kill him.
He wanted to feel the life flee from Eris as he crushed his throat, as his flames consumed his skin layer by layer.
Lucien hadn't felt this fury in a long time, and now that it was back, he had no qualms about releasing it.
His only regret was that he had been overpowered by Eris twice in one day. That his life has been spared, only because of Eris.
Eris stood, watching Lucien warily, the smirk gone and replaced by tired frustration.
The dagger in his hand lay flat on his outstretched palm.
"I don't want to fight, little brother."
Lucien snapped at him
"Don't call me that, you bastard!"
Eris sneered, and looked away.
"Fine. I didn't come here to fight you, Lucien," he said icily.
"Then why the hell did you come here," Lucien bit out.
A shadow passed over Eris' face, and he grimaced, casting the blade in his hand across the room.
"Damn it all, I don't know!"
The dagger spun and skittered to a stop, the edge slicing into the bed post.
He took heaving breaths and frantically ran his hands through his short, copper hair.
Lucien watched silently as Eris paced the floor, following the same path Lucien had, and his eyes followed his older brother when he finally braved himself against the far wall, near the window, and sagged to the floor.
Watching Eris like this was like watching the ocean.
To think you know something so well, and then have fear strike you down as it defies everything you have learned about it.
The eye of a hurricane, a summer storm.
Eris, the eldest son of Beron, had never looked so dejected... so lost.
Like a child and a crippled old human at once.
Lucien would have preferred it if he had been cruel and savage, if he had thrown Lucien into the dungeons with the rats and filthy things.
He knew how to take that behaviour, that treatment, from his brothers.
But now...
Lucien couldn't choose between disgust, rage, confusion, or... pity.
He swallowed hard, still watching Eris, who stared blankly ahead.
Yes, he felt it.
A small spark of pity, for his brother who had tortured him, hunted him, loathed him, destroyed his happiness and his life.
Lucien burned that feeling away.
When Eris spoke again, his voice was hoarse.
"Perhaps... maybe I simply wanted to speak to my little brother."
Whatever conflicted emotions had been in Lucien's chest disappeared in a pit of boiling rage as his temper swelled once again.
"What right do you think you have to call me brother, Eris?!" he hissed.
Eris pushes himself to his feet in an instant.
"The only right!" He roared.
"Out of all our brothers," he swept his hand in a wide arc, "I have the only right to call you brother!"
He was wild, jabbing furiously at his chest, voice echoing around the room and piercing Lucien's ears.
Lucien scoffed and curled his lip, but it was half hearted and confused once more.
"What does that even mean."
Eris shook his head and stalked back to the desk, past Lucien, and took hold of the mead pitcher, pouring more into the forgotten mug.
"Mother is gone."
If Eris has wanted to change the subject, he had surely succeeded.
Lucien's heart stopped.
"What do you mean she's gone?"
His voice was just as hoarse as Eris' now.
Eris took a long drink before answering.
"She's not dead, Lucien. She left."
He waved a hand and downed another mouthful.
Lucien scowled and snatched the drink from his brother once more.
"Will you stop inebriating yourself like a common drunkard and explain yourself," he said coldly.
Eris glared at him, and proceeded to reach behind him to grab the pitcher, taking a long swig directly from it. 
"No."
Lucien gritted his teeth, but said nothing. 
His mother was gone?  Where?  Too many people hated Lord Beron's family.  How could she be safe?
Eris sat once more in the chair at the desk, cradling the pitcher.
"I don't know where she went, only that she did.  The day after father died."
Lucien raised a brow. 
"After you killed him, you mean."
Eris glances up at him, and one side of his mouth quirked you in a grim smirk. 
"Semantics."
Despite the fluctuating tension of the night, between trying to beat each other to bloody pulps and screaming and accusing, Lucien found himself smiling in a small, dark manner. 
He sighed, suddenly drained, and perched on the edge of the desk, elbows resting on his knees. 
"I suppose..."
He huffed a humorless laugh.
"I suppose I should thank you."
Eris glanced at him, took another drink, and said solemnly,
"I suppose you should."