#faebstrd

there is no ignoring the flooding taste of metallic gore that fills her mouth , nor the ache spreading across her jaw. looking upwards at the white haired warrior standing over her , there is no understanding in the glare she shoots back. how any of this equated to her gaining an audience with her own aunt still made no sense to the assassin. the constant need to shift , to show her powers — 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒂𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒏. even the mental mention of that name rakes down her spine , near causing bile to meet blood behind snarling teeth.

“   great fae warrior my ass.   ” celaena mutters more so to herself even if it is loud enough for him to hear. spit tinged red shoots towards his foot as it takes all her remaining strength to rise to her feet. “   and what exactly is in this for you ? maeve have your manhood in her claws ?   ”

she didn't speak. did not walk with swagger. known for flame , yet her movements were cold. the trek to their lodgings within the extravagant home were silent. even as the heavy door closed them off to the rest of the cadre , not a word fell from straightened lips. all she had done , all she had endured . . . memories caused unseen scars to crawl against her back. had all they'd done , all the sacrifice given , had it even been worth it if they were right back to where they had been all those years prior. if not worse ?

standing unmoving , eyes cast over the bedroom donned in the finest furnatings and cloths , and yet none of it registered. no beauty of these lands could penetrate the roar that consumed her mind. even the words finally uttered proved hollow towards her husband. “   it was all for nothing.   ”

faebstrd asked: rowan says hmph, but i say thank you so much for loving manon so well. she deserves you.

it was a scream that shook even the furthest peaks of the staghorns.      a shrill cry into the void by which even the banished gods themselves quaked from.      beholding the empty bed , the ways in which the shadows of falling rain danced over the tattered sheets , it was the sole sound aelin could make in that moment.      for it was as if she had been thrown back to that horrific night over a decade prior.      only she was now marion lochan   . . .   beholding witness to a sight no soul dared to see.      rather than the gore of blood shrouding two bodies , it was the vacant child’s bed. 

❛   stop fussing.   ❜      commanding tones only blanketed the small bit of joyus tinge within aelin’s voice as she struck the delicate needle once more with the mallet.      ink of the darkest night contrasting against his tanned skin began to take shape on her mate's back.      a webbing of her own design melded in with the images he had asked her to finish.      sharing a bed , seeing each other nude   ——   it was nothing to compare to the intimacy of this.      as if their own ways of marking visually for all the world to know she was his and he was hers.      two souls bonded by the deepest tether.      ( not that they needed a physical marking on their bodies to proclaim as such. )

they pepper her wrists, splotching the skin in shades of scarlet and plum : bruises, like flower petals, blossoming. under direction of his voice, she glances at the outstretched arm, intent on a plump persimmon dangling from the terrace's tree. a frown threatens at her lips when she plucks, the fruit's release announced by the thwish of leaves. “ there was a man at the spice market. ” a hush takes her while she recounts him, his shaking figure, how he'd thrown himself to his knees, weeping of freedom, of life. when he tried to kiss her sandaled feet, she'd stopped him, offering her own hands to bid him rise, to help him stand. “ he was . . . most overcome. ” he'd taken hold not of her hands, but her wrists, seizing them ( seizing her ) in a hope-wrought vise ; he'd looked into her eyes, then, his own bloodshot and silver-lined, ablaze with such fervor, murmuring his blessings unto her, his mhysa, his mhysa, his mhysa.

lost in memory, a tentative hand rubs at the result, tender-to-touch. it hurt, that grip, and yet, she had stopped rakharo, whose deadly approach behind the man had been more silent than a snake's, had murmured to ser barristan to be gentle when pulling the man from her . . . for she refused to see her people, her children, as a threat and would not condemn them to be treated as such.