#for weeks

Everything was muffled. Be it the mirrors and windows covered or the veils that adorned her and his family, everything had a haze to it that she couldn’t bring herself to bring into focus.

She still could feel the moment it happened. That fateful moment of the tie around her rib of golden chained silk unfurling from her as He took his last breath. Felt the way she had lost her rhythm for just that moment, feeling the scales tip to a new unknown.

And then, she took another breath. One without his boisterous laugh. His rumbling baritone as he verbally spared with her. His groan of satisfaction when she completed a new fighting form. All gone with her next exhale.

Then came the buzzing. The insistent buzz of Rhysand and her sister about oaths and bargains of past being made. And she couldn’t seem to place the pieces together that it was about her. Couldn’t find the will to fight back for her own space to grieve. Not when grief had taken to her like snow to winter. She had become her very own winter in the height of summer. The warm sun unable to warm her hands the way he had.

~

It had been a solemn affair the day of her wedding to the heir apparent of Autumn. She had been stuffed into a deep ruby red dress that had grey embroidered flames and leaves along the sleeves, bodice and hem of the skirts. And though she stood before an entire court and half of people all she could think of was the familiar wings not in the crowd. That would’ve rejected the very spectacle. But if He were here then there’d be no spectacle to reject.

So there she now stood in chambers she had to call her own, in a dress she’d sooner burn then dream of looking at again, looking at the uncovered mirror and seeing the lost girl she used to be looking back.

~

The heir noticed the scent change first. He had looked at her quizzically, knowing that he hadn’t touched her in such a way, then with a realization had trying fruitlessly to talk with just his eyes.

She still had Him. Just not how she’d have liked to have had him. But still there now lived a part of him that grew with a part of her. That was when the tears finally ran.

She could’ve made a new river system with all that she cried. A hand to her still flat stomach as sobs wrecked through her. And that too was when warmth finally reached her cold shoulders. A stilted attempt at comfort that caused another braying of screeching sobs.