#hybern

“Well that obviously didn’t work,” Feyre finally said, “So how are we going to rescue him?”

Rhysand smiled at the fierce resolve in her voice, but there were deep shadows under his eyes and a rare heaviness to the set of his shoulders. She hadn’t seen her mate look this tired since Nyx was born a few months ago.

“Nuala and Cerridwen?” Cassian offered, though he didn’t sound hopeful. “They can be undetectable.”

Rhysand considered for a moment before again shaking his head. “Azriel himself trained the wraith twins. If he could be captured, no doubt they can too. And I suspect this lord would no longer be content with a simple monetary ransom if we were to send yet more spies.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Should we tell… her?”

Feyre had no idea who ‘her’ was, but she blinked in disbelief as her mate visibly paled at Cassian’s words.

“She might already know,” he breathed, rubbing his sternum.

Feyre looked between the two males, feeling as though she was missing a very important piece of context. They couldn’t mean Elain or Mor, for neither elicited quite such trepidation, as though they were both afraid to even utter her name. Even Amren and Nesta didn’t fit. While both would likely become a force to be reckoned with when they heard of Azriel’s capture, they would not cause the dread she now saw creeping across Cassian’s face. Or the barely concealed panic evident in Rhys’ curling fingers.

Who are you talking about? She asked Rhys mentally.

His eyes flicked to hers and she read the clear apology there. I cannot tell you, Feyre darling.

She was a warrior, a High Lady, who had proven herself countless times—why was she being treated like a child now? 

Feyre frowned, and was about to demand a proper answer when Rhys suddenly tensed. His eyes glazed over in the way she recognised from when he used his daemati power over great distances, and he flinched almost imperceptibly, as though whoever it was was yelling into his mind.

“She knows,” Rhysand finally whispered as he blinked and focused back on the room, running a hand through his hair distractedly.

Cassian swore loudly. “Let me know when they get here,” he said, striding towards the door. “So I can get the fuck out of the way.” 

And then he was gone, leaving an extremely confused Feyre and an uncharacteristically shaken Rhysand.

“Who is he talking about? What about Az?” she demanded.

Rhys just sighed. “Az will be fine, someone else is on their way to rescue him. It’s us you should be worrying about,” he muttered.

*****

Azriel pulled again at the shackles around his wrists, testing their strength. 

They didn’t budge, and neither did the large chains that secured them to the ceiling above. Thankfully he had been left enough length to remain standing on the cold stone floor, but his shoulders ached from being tied above his head for so long.

How long had it been? Hours? Days?

The faebane made it hard to tell. Without his magic, he didn’t have his shadows to keep watch. And without the power from his nullified Siphons, he couldn’t hope to heal his torn wings enough to rip free of his manacles. They drooped behind him, scraping the dusty floor uselessly.

The cavernous room was wide and echoing, with water dripping from cracks in the high ceiling above. It had the unmistakable feel of something ancient, long-forgotten. Mold slicked the walls in some places, while others were carved with symbols he didn’t recognise, half-swallowed by lichen.

And they were watching.

Lining the far edges of the chamber, stationed like statues, were more than thirty soldiers clad in dark armor. Still as death. Silent and unblinking. Azriel had tried to speak to them. Tried to taunt and provoke, anything to learn about where he was or what they wanted. But they hadn’t responded. Just stood there, swords at their hips, helms shadowing their faces.

They were all male and High Fae, but that was all he would tell from their scents. His senses were too dulled to discern anything else.

The silence pressed in as much as the dark. He could hear nothing beyond this room. No wind. No footsteps. No distant clatter of a gate or muffled conversation. Nothing that might help him understand where he was being held.

He ground his jaw, resisting the urge to yank again at the manacles. He would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.

But he was angry, furious, at himself.

He should have seen it coming. Should have known the tip was too convenient, too timely. But he’d followed it anyway, arrogant enough to think he could ghost into a heavily fortified territory without being seen. And now…he was a liability.

Had his captors made contact with the Night Court? Rhys would be scrambling. Cassian pacing like a caged animal. Feyre and Nesta and even Elain would know something was wrong. And gods, if they sent someone after him—

No.

He forced himself to breathe slowly, steadily. 

They couldn’t come for him. They must not come for him.

Whoever had orchestrated this was baiting them. Trying to draw them in. And Azriel knew well enough how that story ended, with more blood, more pain, more loss.

He couldn’t allow it. He would get himself out.

A guard would be by soon to force-feed him. When they did, he just needed to keep them talking. Keep them distracted long enough to delay his next dose of faebane.

An hour later, the door groaned open.

Another guard stepped through with the same eerie, silent precision they all shared. His boots echoed off the stone floor as he approached, carrying a plain tin tray bearing a hunk of stale-looking bread and a dented metal cup sloshing with water.

Even before the scent hit him, Azriel knew it was laced. The copper tang beneath the damp, the unnatural weight of the magic-stifling air. Faebane.

He lifted his chin as the guard approached, forcing steel into his posture despite the burning in his arms and the screaming ache in his wings.

“No poison today?” Azriel rasped, voice hoarse from disuse. “How generous.”

The guard didn’t respond, stopping just out of reach, face still hidden beneath the heavy black helm. Methodically, he broke off a piece of the bread and held it out, barely an inch from Azriel’s bared teeth.

“You know, if I die, you don’t get paid. Might want to ease up on the faebane if you want to keep your head.”

Silence. The guard stepped closer.

Azriel shifted, trying to look half-conscious, swaying slightly. “Come on. Talk to me. Give me something. A name. A reason. A fucking hobby—”

The guard grabbed his neck with one gloved hand and used the other to shove the bread into his mouth with brutal efficiency.

He choked slightly but managed to spit the dry scrap back out. Retribution was swift— a backhanded slap hard enough to snap his head to the side. But Azriel didn’t react. He kept his eyes fixed on the cup now being raised.

“Wait,” he rasped. “You forgot to ask nicely.”

Still nothing.

The rim of the cup rose toward his mouth, and he was unable to move as the guard forced his lips to open with a grip like iron. It tipped slowly, the first drop readying to fall—

CRASH

A deafening noise from the corridor outside. Metal against stone. A gate slamming open, or off its hinges entirely.

The guard froze.

For the first time since Azriel had been dragged into this chamber, one of the silent sentries moved. Another. Then another. A ripple of unease passed through the ranks of dark-armored males as they subtly shifted, their hands twitching toward weapons, heads tilting toward the sound.

The guard with the cup stepped back quickly, tossing the water to the floor with a dull splash.

Azriel tensed, his heart thudding. Hope and anxiety knotted tight in his gut.

Because whoever had just broken through that door…judging by the sudden motion of thirty trained soldiers… they weren’t supposed to be here.

For a moment, no one moved. The crash echoed through the chamber like a war drum.

Then a scream pierced the silence. Cut off too suddenly.

A second later, another scream joined it. Then shouting. Metal shrieking against metal. The clash of blades rang out in the corridor beyond like a wild symphony, brutal and unrelenting. Footsteps thundered beyond the thick stone walls, the sound of bodies colliding and tumbling, of steel slicing through flesh.

The thirty silent sentries who had stood like statues only moments before suddenly burst into motion. In perfect synchrony, they formed a wall between Azriel and the door, shoulder to shoulder, a unified line of black armor and gleaming blades.

Each one drew their sword in unison. Identical weapons. Same length, same steel, same wicked edge. The scraping hiss of them leaving their sheaths was almost ceremonial.

Azriel’s heart pounded. Whoever was outside wasn’t just attacking, they were winning.

He could hear it in the rhythm of the battle: the stagger of feet, the sharp panicked yells replaced by silence, the lack of orders being shouted from the other side. Whoever had come… they were alone. Or nearly alone. And they were tearing through the guards like paper.

Azriel twisted in his chains, ignoring the fire in his shoulders, straining to catch any voice, any identifying sound. But there was only chaos.

Until something inside him shifted.

A pulse. Faint, golden and familiar.

It thrummed through his chest like a second heartbeat, brushing against his ribs, then his lungs, then the frayed edges of his mind.

Azriel’s breath caught.

He knew that feeling. That presence. That golden thread tying itself around his soul, whispering through his bones like sunlight in a storm.

His mate.

She had come for him.

And she was unleashing hell.

He couldn’t help the dark laugh that spilled from his lips, low and cold. 

“You don’t even know what you have done,” he said to the guards spread evenly before him. “She will show you no mercy.”

No one responded, but he could smell their fear as it blanketed the room.

BOOM

The heavy stone door blew inward on a shockwave of raw force, slamming against the wall with a thunderous crack. Dust and debris billowed into the chamber, curling around the unmoving line of soldiers like smoke before a fire.

And there she was.

Framed in the doorway, silhouetted against the carnage she’d left behind.

She stood tall and unflinching, breathing steady, blades dripping crimson in both hands. Her leathers were dark and slick with blood, though none of it was her own, Azriel realized, as she moved with lethal grace, every inch of her uninjured body coiled and ready.

Her face was unreadable. Calm. Almost serene. But her eyes burned cold as starlight.

They locked onto him first, where he hung suspended, bruised and bleeding, shadows absent and Siphons dark. And though she didn’t speak, he felt her gaze drag over every cut on his skin, every welt, every torn muscle and trembling inch of his wings.

The bond between them thrummed again, tighter now. Sharper. Like a blade drawn against stone.

She looked at him as if nothing else in the world mattered.

And then she blinked. The tiniest shift. Her focus snapped to the guards now standing between them, and a shiver raced down Azriel’s spine at the frozen rage in her eyes.

The first soldier raised his sword. A deadly mistake.

She crossed the distance between the door and the wall of soldiers in a heartbeat, her blades singing through the air. Steel met steel, then screamed apart as she shattered the line with terrifying efficiency.

She moved like smoke, as graceful and lethal as his own shadows. 

Metal gleamed through the darkness as she descended on the guards, never faltering, never missing. 

She slashed with swords and daggers. Spun and sliced and kicked. A deadly storm given flesh.

Enemies fell beneath her blades, before they even realised they were dying. One after the other. Dozens.

Within moments, she was in front of him.

Her chest rose and fell rapidly, every inch of skin splattered with blood. But she just grinned up at him. A thing of wicked beauty. 

“Hello, my love. Missed me?”

*****

Feyre had been pacing in front of the fire for what felt like hours.

Frustration rolled off her in thick, churning waves, so palpable she could feel it crackling along the bond she shared with Rhys. He had barely said a word since Cassian left the study, only watched the flames, shadows flickering across his sharp features, jaw tight.

She’d begged him for information.

Who is this ‘her’ you were talking about?What did Cassian mean?Why won’t you tell me anything?

But Rhys had only met her gaze with those loving violet eyes, regret softening his voice even as he murmured, “I am sorry, my darling. You have to wait.”

Wait. As if she weren’t High Lady. As if she hadn’t fought and bled and died for this court. As if she hadn’t bared everything to him only to discover he apparently hadn’t done the same. 

The secrets coiled around him like mist, and she could feel his guilt about it. But also his unshakable resolve. He wouldn’t budge.

She turned again on her heel, fists clenched at her sides, but before she could again demand answers, the front door slammed open.

Rhys tensed. Slowly straightened behind the desk, eyes distant, as though reaching out with his power.

Two sets of footsteps echoed down the corridor, measured and unhurried. A clicking cadence of boots on polished floorboards, confident and unmistakably calm.

A female stepped in first, Azriel half a step behind her.

Feyre blinked.

The woman was covered in blood. It soaked her dark leathers, crusted along her collar, streaked across her cheek and jaw. And yet she moved as if it was nothing more than water. Like the blood now dripping steadily onto the plush, expensive rug that Mor had gifted them wasn’t even worth noticing.

And beneath the gore… She was stunning. Breathtaking, even.

Dark hair was pulled back from a sharp, striking face, her tanned skin marked here and there with smears of battle, but still glowing. Above a sensuous mouth and high cheekbones, her eyes were a startling green, like sunlight filtering through leaves, and sharp as shattered glass. They cut across the room in a single glance, fixing like a blade on Rhys.

She walked with the kind of fluid, feline grace that only came from years of training. Or dancing. And there were so many weapons strapped to her body. Knives and twin swords, hidden hilts glinting beneath her sleeves and across her thighs. It was a wonder she could move at all.

And Azriel…

He was watching her like the sun had finally risen after a long, dark night.

He looked tired, scraped and worn, his wings and face bearing healing cuts and fading bruises. His leathers were torn at one shoulder, and there was dried blood on his hands, but there was a lightness to him. Like some weight had finally been shed.

And he was smiling. A small, quiet smile that made her chest ache, because she had never seen Azriel smile like that. Soft. Peaceful. Adoring.

He hadn’t even looked at them. Not at his High Lady. Not at his High Lord and dear brother.

Only at the woman in front of him.

Feyre's heart thudded loudly. Rhys stood, but didn’t speak.

Because the female was still watching him. Assessing. Deciding. Like she was debating which of her many weapons to bury in his chest.

Her power, ancient and razor-sharp, seemed to saturate the air, charging it like the moment before a lightning strike.

“You sent him in alone.” Her voice was low, smooth as silk stretched tight over a blade.

Rhys inclined his head, solemn. “I did.”

“I told you,” she went on, a quiet fury simmering beneath each clipped word, “that Hybern’s western provinces were still too volatile. I told you that anyone who rose in the King’s absence would be twice as vicious and half as predictable. And still you sent him.”

Azriel said nothing behind her. Feyre looked to him instinctively, expecting a frown, a grimace, some quiet protest against the female's fury on his behalf. She knew he hated being underestimated and protected.

But he only watched her, that soft smile still lingering. Like she was the only thing in the room worth noticing.

The female didn’t take her eyes off Rhys. “If he had died, I would have razed Hybern.”

“You nearly did,” Rhys murmured. It wasn’t a retort. It was… weary acknowledgment.

“You’re a spy,” Feyre blurted into the tense silence, her spinning thoughts finally catching up to the present, “like Azriel.”

Her eyes glittered as she shot Azriel a sideways glance. “Please,” she said, tossing Feyre a wink. “Who do you think taught him?”

And then the female’s expression softened slightly, as if only just remembering where she was, who else stood in the room. She turned to face Feyre properly, and when those piercing green eyes landed on her, Feyre braced herself.

But all that came was a graceful bow.

“High Lady,” she said, voice dipped in respect. “It is an honor.”

Feyre blinked. “Likewise… though I have a great many questions.”

The female straightened with a faint, tired smile. “I expect you do. My name is Seraphina. I am a spy and warrior of the Night Court. I serve under Rhysand, as I have since we were children.”

Feyre’s brows rose.

“She is the daughter of my father’s right hand,” Rhys added quietly. “We were raised side by side. And when I became High Lord, she swore herself to me. She’s been on the Continent these past few years, working in secret.”

“Why didn’t I know about her?” Feyre asked, before she could stop herself.

Seraphina didn’t seem offended. “Because you weren’t allowed to.”

And then, pulling back the neck of her leathers, she revealed a small black mark beneath her collarbone. 

Rhys moved silently to mirror her. He unbuttoned the top of his tunic and shifted his shoulder to reveal the same symbol, woven elegantly into the Illyrian ink across his chest. Feyre had never noticed it before, hidden among the dark warriors' mark.

Azriel followed suit and Feyre’s mouth parted in understanding. She guessed Cassian and perhaps Mor bore the same small tattoo.

“Oath magic,” Seraphina said softly. “No one could speak of me. Not my name. Not my mission. Not to friends, family, lovers. Only to the others who knew of my existence.”

“To protect your identity?” Feyre guessed.

“To protect the Night Court,” Seraphina replied. “What I was doing… it required distance and limited communication. Rhys had to be able to deny I existed. To deny the Courts’ involvement at all.”

“What were you doing?” Feyre asked, voice softer now.

Seraphina’s jaw clenched. “Taking down a horrific fae syndicate on the Continent. One that traded in girls. Children. Powerless and scared. The sort that no one misses when they disappear.”

A heavy silence fell.

“I’ve been working city by city,” she continued, “dismantling it from the inside out, one web at a time. It’s why I haven’t been home.” Her voice dropped further. “It’s why Azriel and I…”

She glanced behind her then, and the tension in her shoulders eased at the sight of him.

“I had to stay away,” she said. “But we kept the bond between us open. Always. It was the only way we could bear it.”

Azriel’s voice, low and husky, slipped into the space between them. “When the faebane smothered it, she felt it instantly.”

Seraphina nodded. “And I knew something was wrong. Knew he’d been hurt. So I came.”

“You’re his—” Feyre began, then stopped. Her eyes darted between them.

Seraphina’s lips curved into something far more dangerous than a smile.

“My mate,” she said, finally voicing the word aloud. Her voice vibrated with something primal, elemental. “Azriel is my mate.”

Feyre gasped. Her eyes flew to Azriel again.

He didn’t deny it. Didn’t flinch.

He just looked at Seraphina like he wanted her to say it again.

A slow grin tugged at Seraphina’s bloodstained lips as she turned back to Feyre. “I would be delighted to talk further, my High Lady,” she said, clearly reading the thousands of questions still echoing through her, “but first, I must… reacquaint myself with my mate.”

Feyre opened her mouth to reply, but Seraphina was already turning, already reaching.

Azriel didn’t wait. He met her halfway, as if drawn by a force he could no longer resist. One hand cupped her face, reverent and aching, the other curling tightly around her waist as if to anchor himself to her very presence. She melted into his touch without hesitation, her blood-slicked arms wrapping around his middle as if she needed to feel that he was real.

Feyre looked away from the intimacy of it. Not out of discomfort, but because it felt like something sacred.

But even as she turned, she caught the press of Azriel’s forehead to Seraphina’s, the whisper of his wings folding carefully around them. The sound he made, a soft, almost disbelieving laugh, was so raw with wonder that it tugged at something deep in her chest.

And then they were gone. Swept away by Azriel’s shadows, their soft murmurs lingering in the space they left behind.

“Well,” Feyre said, blinking after them. “That’s new.”

Rhys let out a breath beside her, the first sound he’d made in minutes. “Actually, it’s very very old.” He reached out to her, his large hand grasping hers and pulling her closer. “Thank the Mother for you,” he whispered.

“For me?” She echoed, raising a brow.

“Usually her punishment for putting Azriel in danger is long and painful.” Rhys huffed a laugh and pressed a chaste kiss to her palm. “But I think you being here distracted her long enough to forget retribution for the time being.”

Feyre thought of the tension that had coiled in her mate when Seraphina had stalked into the room like a predator. Of Cassian’s swift exit and parting words of staying out of ‘their way’. 

“You are truly scared of her? Of what she could do to you for sending Az out on a mission?”

Rhys nodded, no trace of bluster or embarrassment in his expression. “If I can give you one piece of advice, Feyre darling,” he purred, “it is to never put Azriel or Seraphina’s life in any more danger than necessary. Each of them would burn down the world for the other.”

My chest aches. How much is one male supposed to endure? How can the world be so cruel that something as simple as bathing leaves such an impact? My Mother was never affectionate. Not when I was a babe or a toddler with skinned knees; she was always rigid, always composed, nothing got to her, but I at least, back then, had Anise to soothe me in my worst moments. 

“You don’t have any family?” The question sticks in my throat, afraid I’m pushing too far, that whatever is happening between us will suddenly dissipate into nothingness.

He tilts back as far as he can when I lather up the soap on another damp cloth and start scrubbing the grime off his shoulders, trying to carefully get some of it beneath the collar, where his skin is an angry shade of red. He hisses slightly at the sting.

“They died a long time ago,” he says. 

I had known that ours was a grief shared, based on his actions when my own mother was brought up, but to hear him say it now has my breath catching in my chest. I don’t want to ask. But I need to know. “My Father…?”

 “I was taken at seven for the Agoge. Most Ilyrian males are. We’re bred to be soldiers, it’s in our blood. Becoming a Spartan is almost mandatory in our territory. It’s where I met Cass and Az. We were in the same unit, and we were damn good at what we did. We’d made a name for ourselves before we were even twenty.”

I let him talk as I scrub the contours of his broad shoulders, cleaning grime from every groove and curvature of his muscles. His swirling tattoos glisten under the sudsy shine of the soap.

“We were sent farther and farther out of the Territories, claiming city after city for the Empire. We were a little overzealous at times, I’ll admit, but we were heroes.” He pauses, sadness sketching his features in shadow. “That parade for Amarantha… we saw our fair for years, until we came across this little province near the coast.”

My hands drift lower, down his chest, tracing his tattoos. I can feel the uneven beat of his heart against my palm. 

“They had nothing of value, just fishermen and their wives and some little stalls where their elders would sell hand-woven seaweed baskets. There couldn’t have been more than a hundred people in that town, and yet, it was the brightest place I’d ever seen. People would sing in the streets, the song echoing out to the fishing boats off the coast. You could hear those songs from any part of the town.”

I feel the sharp intake of breath he takes as he says, quieter now, like he’s ashamed to admit it, “But it was in the way of a new port the Emperor wanted. There was plenty of open land down the coast. Plenty of better land to make a port town and harbor, but he hadn’t wanted those places. He wanted this one, simply because he had the power to take it. He offered no deal with the town officials, just ordered us to go in and clear it. Like it was just empty land and they were cattle grazing in the wrong spot.”

The chain around his neck rattles as he swallows hard. “It was like someone had pulled a veil off my eyes. For the first time I could see clearly what we had done in the name of this Empire. We hadn’t been victors, we'd been destroyers. We’d ravaged everything in our path and I couldn’t bear to do it again. Not to those people. They were good and kind. They only had one inn and they’d still tried to house and feed all of us when we’d arrived.”

Gods! I can taste the pure anguish down the bound as he continues, “I refused. I sent missives back offering to scout further down the coast, to find men to employ to start clearing any uninhabited land we found… A few days later, Amarantha delivered me three heads in boxes.”

My stomach churns, bile rising in my throat. I can see my Mother… I blink away the memory as I reach out to grab his callused hands. 

“My Father’s. My Mother’s. My… little sister’s.” He chokes out the words like they’d been buried so deep within him that he doesn’t know how to say them now. “She said that there would be no shortage of heads, if we didn’t follow through, that Hybern would slaughter all of Illyria and send me their heads one by one if we didn’t complete our mission.”

His thumb strokes over the back of my hand as our fingers intertwine. I don’t know what to say, what to do. How can I take this pain from him? It’s so intense down the bond that my insides hurt. Everything in me wants to claw and fight and burn through those who have hurt him.

“I was going to throw myself into the sea,” he whispers. “I couldn’t bear the pain of what I had done, what I had lost. It was Cass that pulled me off the edge.”

I’d almost lost him. Long before our paths had crossed, I could have never had this. It’s purely instinct that has me leaning in to press my forehead against his, to offer some sort of comfort. 

He nuzzles against my skin like it’s a lifeline. 

“It was Cass who convinced me to fight back. The three of us, somehow, by luck or the Mother, I don’t know, the three of us pushed the rest of our unit, and the men Amarantha had brought with her out of that little sea town. And when we were sure they were gone, we ran back to Illyria to try and save it too. If nothing, at least I could keep my Mother’s birthplace safe. I could honor her in that way. We haven’t stopped fighting since.”

“Your Mother would be proud of you,” I say softly.

He hums sadly, eyes falling shut as we stay, resting against each other. “I hope so.”

I make a silent vow to the Mother that I will do anything to make sure he has the chance to burn this Empire to ash. I vow to leave nothing left of it standing. Even if I have to go down with it. 

-----

Forks scrape angrily against plates, the harsh sound the only noise in the triclinium. Every bite feels taken with the same hesitance it used to take to tip-toe out of my room in the middle of the night. I can feel Anise’s emerald eyes boring holes into my skull, that ancient magic that birthed her stirring in the leaves of her hair. Some of the trees outside groan against the influx of power. 

My own darkness seems to chuckle in meeting it. She’s never been so upfront with her magic, and yet, beside my own it’s the drop of a water in an ocean. Months ago, I might have been the girl that cowered at its arrival, had sunk in on myself, sensing her unease. These days, it simply tells me I’m moving in the right direction. 

I’ve made sure I’ve made myself present in the house, taking meals at the right time, giving the staff cleaning instructions, having a tailor and armorer and healer go back and forth between the House and Rhys’s room. I’ve gotten very good at sneaking into his space in the house. Curling up with him in the shadows of the night, his arms around me, it is the closest thing to bliss I’ve ever felt. 

Of course, there’s that nagging voice in the back of mind reminding me of my Father’s orders, and I have to meet with him in the morning for another Council Session. Tonight will have a lot more strategy than cuddling I suppose. 

“You’re quiet tonight,” I speak first. This is the first time we’ve said anything to each other since that conversation after the Arena.

She stabs a piece of lamb so hard the table rattles, the viney strands of her hair shaking. “You’re the one who hasn’t been speaking to me.”

I cut through a chunk of vegetable slowly, methodically, trying to debate where I want this conversation to go. It’s clear the staff is once again listening behind the closed door. 

It must take me a while, because her eyes narrow as I bring a bite to my lips and take a slow taste. “You look like your father right now,” she hisses. 

The ground threatens to open up and swallow me, the inky darkness of that ceaseless void that had held me for months and months after I’d lost my mother beckoning like a siren. For the first time in years there had been no dark shadow over my head, and yet, with that one sentence, I can feel it creeping back over me. 

 “You’d prefer I stayed a sad, pathetic little girl, cowering in her bed?” I counter, my grip so tight on the fork I think I might be bending it. 

Her eyes flash, “At least that girl knew how to stay out of trouble!”

I set the cutlery down so I don’t do any more damage, food forgotten. Something hot and vicious bubbles up my throat, “Stop acting like you’re protecting me!”

“All I’ve ever done,” she screams as she stands, pushing so hard out of her chair that it tips and smashes against the wall. “Is protect you!”

“And what?” I hiss. “I don’t need you for that anymore and that’s my fault?” The words are out before I can stop them. 

Anise freezes, stunned, tears welling up in the weathered corners of her eyes.

Regret turns my meal sour in my stomach and I stand too. “You drugged me! You left me with the Guard! They could have killed or taken advantage of me. You let them take me to my Father without any way of protecting myself.”

All the tears I’d kept at bay since that night come out in a rush. “But I’m the one acting like my Father?” The sob that comes out is inadvertent. I can’t get my feet to move, to stop letting her see me be so weak. “You really took a page right out of his book, huh?”

She recoils. 

“You know that’s what he does to his slaves. What he does to keep people in line. What’s next, will you collar me too?”

“I would never!” She snarls. “You know I would never do that to you.”

“Do I?” I retort, using my shirt sleeve to wipe the tears streaming down my cheeks. “Because I look at you and I don’t see the woman who cleaned my skinned knees and sang me songs while she brushed the knots from my hair. I don’t see the woman who gave me safe places to cry when my Father beat me or my mother berated me for hours on end about being weak and emotional. All I see is them.”

She moves to touch my face, gnarled hand reaching out as if she could still wipe my tears away, to rebuff my argument, and then the world goes up in flames.

-----

My skin is burning when I come to, legs crushed beneath a support beam that has fallen from the ceiling. 

Half the room is gone, the night sky shining through the ash remains of the roof slats. Everything tastes like smoke and blood. The door to the kitchens is gone, I can see the bloody remains of someone’s leg beneath still smoldering debris.

I try to call out for help, but can’t even hear the sound of my own voice above the harsh ringing in my ears. I try to crawl, but I’m stuck beneath the support beam, left leg crushed at such an odd angle it feels like the muscle is tearing away from my hip. My hands are bloody and blistered, my arms a shade of pink I’ve never seen before. Gods what hit us?

Us…

I try to crane my head around, whole body screaming as I look for Anise. There’s debris and flames everywhere, the smoke a heavy layer above the ruined table and chairs. I can’t see much of anything clearly. 

“Anise!” Gods, if the last thing I said to her was that she was just like my Father, I’ll never forgive myself. “Anise where are you?!”

The only reply is the heavy fall of boots against the rubble. Where the hell is the Guard? 

Despite the wrenching pain, I dig my fingernails into the floor and try to crawl my way out. The skin along my shoulders feels like its trying to peel away from my bones. 

“Lively little thing, aren’t you?” The back of a heavy boot presses down against my shoulder blades and the pain radiating down my spine is so intense I nearly black out. 

“What’s wrong, Princess?” The voice coos. “Not used to feeling pain?”

The beam crushing my legs is suddenly pushed away with ease, but my relief is short lived as the male grabs me by the hair and yanks me onto my knees. “Because that’s all we’ve felt for months.”

My eyes instinctively go to the wings at his back, the delicate membrane shredded beyond repair. He’s a tall male, probably rather large once, but starvation has turned him to skin and bone now, his eyes sinking into his skull, cheeks hollow, lips gray. I can smell his rotting teeth from here.

“You don’t understand…” I start, but he hurls me away like a rag doll, my blistered body slamming into every loose bit of rock and rubble along the way until I hit something cushioned. The touch of vines along my cheek tears my attention away from the Illyrian male stalking towards me, to the body laying beside me. 

Anise lays on her back, eyes frozen and unblinking on the sky, her body charred like kindling, still smoking through the branches of her hair. 

“Anise?” The words feel like I have to drag them through flames to come out. “Anise?!”

Her hand is still outstretched, still reaching for me, forever frozen and every bit of feeling I have in my body leaves in one giant rush as the ground opens up to swallow me. 

“No! No! No! Anise please wake up, please!” 

The male’s scarred hands drag me up my the hair again, tearing a patch of it away from my scalp, as I flail and fumble to take Anise’s hand. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I’m sorry!”

The male pulls me to face him again. “Where’s Rhysand?”

There are no thoughts in my head. Only pain. Only darkness. It fills me from scalp to heel, endless nothingness.

“Where are you keeping him?!”

It’s my turn to erupt. The darkness pours out of me like a tidal wave, my gut-wrenching scream tearing through the nothingness in my skull as I let everything I’ve ever felt escape in waves of unrelenting darkness. More debris rains down on my head, each blow tearing open my tender skin, yet it doesn’t stop me. Wave after wave of power flows until there is only silence and darkness within the manor. 

Only when I drag the first, heaving breath of ashy air into my lungs does it stop.

If there was anything left of the manor before, it’s rubble now. The Illyrian male lays cut in two several yards away from where he had been standing, some of my hair still clutched in his fist, the wound cauterized instantly with the searing heat of the blast I had thrown. 

The flowerbeds and garden all along the rear wall of the house are gone. Not burnt or broken along the floor. Gone. Like they never existed. Like there was never anything good and bright in this house at all.

The destruction goes all the way to the rear gate, the golden arches swinging wildly on broken hinges. Between them, stands Brannagh, her thin lips pulled back in a wicked grin. She taps a manicured finger against her temple and then disappears into the dark. 

Everything in my body is heavy and broken and wrong. My head tries to piece together what just happened, what I just saw, but it can’t. There is only Anise. 

I can’t stand. I crawl to her instead, my damaged knees leaving blood stains across the rubble. I don’t care. It is all I can do to get to her. To take her ruined hand in mine, clutching it to my cheek. “Please don’t leave me.”

I can, distantly, hear shuffling somewhere in the debris, but I cannot find it in me to care. If there is another attacker here, then let them come. Let them find me like this--as small and broken as that little girl Anise used to care so much for, back when there was none of this between us. 

“Y/N?!” My name a frantic sound on their lips.

I can’t bring myself to get up, to see who it is. 

Footsteps crunch in the gravel, growing closer and closer. Still I can’t look away as I brush a vine out of Anise’s face, so that I can close her eyes. Did she get to see the stars one last time before she went? Was it quick, painless, a blink and then relief? 

“Y/N!” A body hits the ground beside me, strong and warm and surrounded with that citrus and jasmine scent that has held me the last couple of nights. 

Rhys takes my face in his hands and I have no resistance left in my body to fight him. He’s bleeding from a gash across his temple, but there are no worse wounds. He must have gotten into the tunnel after the explosion, they were deep enough under ground that he wouldn’t have been hit by the blast I’d made. 

“What happened?!” 

I blink at him past the tears and ash in my eyes. “Anise.” It’s the only thing I can get out, her name repeated like a mantra over and over and over again. Maybe if I say it enough, it’ll bring her back, it’ll make this a terrible, terrible nightmare. 

He doesn’t tear his eyes away from my face, doesn’t dare draw my attention away from him lest a fall completely apart.

“She…” the words wrench out of my like hiccups, choking me. My mouth won’t form the words right. I reach out to grab his shirt in my blistered and bloody hands, trying to hold on to something as the world continues to crumble beneath me. “She…”

“I know,” he says softly, gently, like I’m made of porcelain and will crumble in his hands. “I know.”

After my mother, everyone would tell me that it was ok, that things will be all right. He makes no such promises because he knows they’re not. 

“I’ve got you.” His callused hands grip me by the elbows, the sting against my open wounds a reminder that I’m alive. I welcome the pain, relish it more than the comfort he’s offering. Cassian had been right all those years ago, when he’d talked Rhys off the edge; the pain was good, it meant I still had breath. Meant I could still fight. 

I cling to Rhys’s shirt as I try to pull myself back together, piece by broken piece. If I fall a part here, my father wins. The Empire wins. I won’t let them. I made that vow to the Mother days ago. Maybe that vow got Anise killed. Maybe it’s an omen of my own fate. I don’t care. For Anise. For my mate’s. I’ll make this place pay. 

There’s no one in the Empire left to keep me here. 

I won’t let this be in vain.

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