The Night Court assumes Eris Vanserra’s mate is nothing more than decoration at his side.
They learn very quickly that some females do not need to raise their voice to remind a room exactly where power sits.
Requested by @alexof90s — I hope this is close to what you were picturing! (Once again I didn't proof read this at all so feel free to let me know if there are any spelling errors!)
The first mistake the Night Court made was assuming you were decoration.
Not intentionally or obviously.
They were too polite for that.
But you saw it in the way their eyes moved over you when they entered the meeting room.
Briefly, if not dismissively.
A female beside Eris Vanserra.
Something ornamental, perhaps.
Something placed at his side to soften the image of Autumn’s new High Lord.
You did not correct them.
Eris noticed.
Of course he did.
The corner of his mouth shifted just barely.
You didn’t look at him.
“Try not to look so pleased,” you murmured.
“I am not pleased.”
“You are nearly smiling.”
“That would be unbecoming.”
“Then by all means,” you said softly, folding your hands in your lap, “continue suffering.”
Across the table, Cassian’s brows rose.
Azriel’s shadows shifted once behind his shoulders.
Rhysand, to his credit, noticed the exchange for what it was.
A warning.
Mor noticed something else entirely.
Her gaze lingered on Eris with the same familiar disdain it always held.
Cold and sharp. Nothing if not practiced.
“You’ve redecorated,” she said, glancing around the council room. “How charming. I almost forgot where we were.”
Eris did not respond.
He only looked down at the treaty papers in front of him.
You watched the movement.
The restraint it took him not to bite at her.
Rhysand cleared his throat.
“We’re here to discuss the border villages.”
“Then let us discuss them,” Eris said.
His voice was smooth.
It always was in rooms like this.
The meeting began as most meetings did.
With maps and numbers. Along with men pretending history had not shaped every inch of land they were negotiating over.
Rhysand spoke well.
You would give him that.
Azriel said very little, but missed nothing.
Cassian shifted in his chair like diplomacy physically pained him.
And Mor…
Mor watched Eris like she was waiting for a monster to show its teeth.
You let it continue for twenty-three minutes.
Twenty-three minutes of clipped words. Quiet tension. Little glances that held nothing but daggers. Along with subtle jabs dressed up as moral certainty.
The last straw was when Mor finally said, “Forgive me if I find Autumn’s sudden interest in protecting vulnerable people difficult to believe.”
Eris’s fingers stilled on the paper.
Only for a moment.
You gently set down your tea.
The cup barely made a sound against the saucer.
But somehow, the room noticed.
Mor’s eyes flicked to you.
You smiled.
Not warmly. Not cruelly. Politely.
The sort of smile court ladies were taught to wear even if swallowing poison.
“Difficult to believe,” you repeated.
Mor lifted her chin.
“Yes.”
“How interesting.”
Cassian leaned back slightly.
Azriel’s shadows went still.
Eris did not move beside you.
He knew better.
Mor’s gaze narrowed. “Do you have something to say?”
You tilted your head.
“I was deciding whether it would be rude.”
“And?”
“Oh, it’s terribly rude I’m afraid.”
Rhysand’s attention sharpened.
You turned your cup once, slow and deliberate, before looking back at Mor.
“But since we are clearly past the point of pretending this room is governed by courtesy, I suppose I might as well.”
Eris exhaled once through his nose.
Almost amused.
You continued.
“You speak of Autumn’s cruelty as though anyone at this table intends to dispute it. We do not. Autumn has teeth. It has always had teeth.” Your gaze swept briefly toward Eris. “Some of us have spent years removing them one by one.”
Mor’s mouth tightened.
“But what fascinates me,” you went on, voice still calm, “is the Night Court’s remarkable talent for selective outrage.”
Cassian straightened.
Rhysand’s face went very still.
There it was.
The shift.
The moment they realized you were not decoration.
You smiled again.
Softer this time.
“You condemn Autumn for what it allowed to happen beneath Beron’s rule. Fair. You should. But I do find it curious how rarely that same scrutiny turns inward.”
Mor’s eyes flashed.
“Careful.”
You looked at her then.
Truly looked.
“I would advise caution, Morrigan,” you said softly. “Not because I fear what you might say, but because I know what you have chosen not to.”
The room went still.
You leaned back slightly in your chair.
“Careless would be asking why the Court of Dreams feels entitled to sneer at every cruel tradition in Prythian while still ruling over the Hewn City.”
Cassian’s jaw flexed.
Azriel said nothing.
Rhysand did not look away from you.
Good.
At least one of them understood where this was going.
Mor’s voice was low. “You know nothing about the Hewn City.”
“No,” you agreed. “I know what survived the retelling.”
You tilted your head slightly before continuing
“Interesting that you speak so confidently for someone whose version of events requires several omissions to survive.”
Mor stood slowly.
“You have no right to speak to me about what I survived.”
There it was.
The part you had been waiting for.
Your smile faded.
Not because you were afraid.
Because some things deserved seriousness.
“No,” you said. “I do not.”
The room stilled.
Even Eris glanced at you then.
You met Mor’s gaze without flinching.
“What was done to you was monstrous. No one in this room should deny that. I certainly will not.” Your voice lowered. “But your pain does not make every omission holy.”
Mor went utterly still.
“You have allowed them to believe one version of the story because it is easier than dragging the whole thing into the light,” you said. “And perhaps you had reason. Perhaps silence was all you had. I will not fault a girl for surviving the only way she could.”
A breath.
Then another.
“But I will fault a court for building policy around half a truth and calling it justice.”
Rhysand’s eyes flicked, briefly, toward Eris.
Eris remained expressionless.
But his hand had shifted closer to yours on the table.
Not to stop you.
Not to guide you.
Just there.
Mor’s voice was colder now.
“And what truth do you think you know?”
You folded your hands again.
“The kind men leave out when the facts are inconvenient.”
A sad smile played on your lips.
“The kind women bury because being believed costs too much.”
For the first time, Mor had no immediate response.
Good.
You had not wanted to hurt her.
Not really.
But you were very tired of watching Eris bleed quietly under everyone else’s certainty.
“You may hate my mate,” you said, and only then did your tone sharpen. “That is your right. Hate him forever, if it comforts you.”
Eris’s gaze moved to you.
You did not look at him.
“But do not sit in his court, at his table, beneath laws he bled to change, and pretend your hatred is the same thing as truth.”
Silence pressed against the walls.
Cassian looked between you and Mor, unusually quiet.
Azriel’s shadows curled close to his shoulders.
Rhysand leaned back slowly, expression unreadable.
You picked up your tea again.
It had gone cold.
Mor did not sit.
Not immediately.
Her face was pale with anger, but beneath it there was something else.
Something older. Something less certain.
Eris finally spoke. Calm and measured.
“My mate raises a wonderful point.”
Rhysand looked at him.
Eris’s eyes did not leave Mor.
“Do you intend to discuss the border villages,” he said, “or continue mistaking personal history for governance?”
Your mouth twitched.
Only slightly.
Mor saw it.
Cassian definitely saw it.
Rhysand looked as though he was reevaluating several decisions at once.
Good.
That meant they were listening.
You took one careful sip of cold tea and set it back down.
“Now,” you said pleasantly, as though you hadn’t just gutted the room and asked for the next topic. “Shall we return to the villages, or would anyone else like to confuse emotion with policy first?”
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In Autumn, rain turned the forest floor slick with mud and rot. It drowned kindling, ruined roads, and made the hounds restless. It crept beneath collars and cuffs, cold and persistent, until even the finest velvet felt like a second skin made of discomfort.
Rain in Autumn was not beautiful.
It was inconvenient.
It was another thing to endure.
So when the skies over Adriata darkened halfway through negotiations, Eris felt the first thread of annoyance coil behind his ribs.
Not enough to show, of course.
He sat perfectly still at Tarquin’s left, one ankle crossed neatly over the other, spine straight, expression carved into the sort of mild interest that had made older, crueler males underestimate him for centuries.
Across the table, Tarquin spoke of trade routes and border protections with the easy grace of a High Lord who had never needed to raise his voice to be heard.
That, more than anything, irritated Eris.
Summer was too bright.
Too open.
Too warm even with storm clouds gathering over the sea.
The palace smelled of salt and citrus and rain-soaked stone. The windows had been left open to catch the breeze, sheer curtains lifting and falling like slow breaths along the walls.
In Autumn, windows were closed before storms.
Doors were barred.
Fires were fed.
Here, no one seemed concerned that the sky had begun to split itself open.
A low roll of thunder passed over the city.
One of Tarquin’s advisors glanced toward the balcony and smiled.
Smiled.
As if rain were a guest.
Eris looked back down at the parchment in front of him and reminded himself, again, why he was there.
Beron wanted information and he wanted weaknesses.
Beron wanted to know whether Summer’s young High Lord had grown comfortable enough on his throne to become careless.
Eris had been sent to watch and listen.
To smile when necessary and remember everything.
He had not been sent to think about the way the people in the courtyard below laughed when the first heavy drops began to fall.
He had not been sent to notice how no one ran for shelter.
He certainly had not been sent to wonder what it must be like, to live somewhere a storm did not make everyone flinch.
“Lord Vanserra?”
Eris lifted his gaze.
Tarquin was watching him from the head of the table, mouth curved in something that was almost polite. Almost amused.
“Do you find the proposal disagreeable?”
Eris let his own smile answer first.
A careful thing.
Court-trained.
Empty where it needed to be.
“Not at all,” he said smoothly. “I was merely considering whether your merchants would honor the same protections on Autumn roads.”
“They would,” Tarquin said.
“So confidently?”
“My people do not break agreements made under my name.”
A simple statement.
No threat tucked beneath it.
No sharp edge.
Eris inclined his head. “How fortunate for them.”
Tarquin’s smile did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened.
There was the High Lord beneath all that summer charm after all .
The meeting continued.
Rain tapped against the balcony tiles. Then it fell harder. Then harder still, until the open windows filled the room with the sound of it, steady and endless.
Eris could hear the city beyond the palace.
The distant call of vendors covering their stalls. The delighted shriek of children somewhere below. Music, faint at first, then rising in uneven bursts as if someone had taken shelter under an awning and decided the storm was reason enough to play.
He ignored it.
He was very good at ignoring beautiful things.
Beauty was often a distraction.
A polished blade. A painted trap. A pretty smile hiding a clever mouth.
Another laugh rose from below.
Bright and young.
Several voices this time.
Tarquin paused.
Not long enough for anyone else to notice, perhaps.
But Eris did.
The High Lord’s attention shifted, just briefly, toward the balcony. His expression softened in a way Eris had no name for.
Then one of the advisors near the door chuckled.
“She must have made it back from the lower district.”
Another answered, “Of course she did. The children would have dragged her by the skirts if she tried to stay away.”
Tarquin shook his head, but there was no reprimand in it.
Only fondness.
Open and unashamed.
Eris looked from one face to the next, filing the reaction away.
There it was.
A weakness, perhaps.
Or at least something worth knowing.
“She?” he asked lightly.
The conversation stilled by half a breath.
Not with fear. With surprise.
As if the idea of him not knowing was stranger than the question itself.
Tarquin leaned back in his chair.
“My sister,” he said.
Eris kept his expression pleasant.
“I was not aware Summer had another royal figure so involved in trade negotiations.”
“She is not involved in trade negotiations.”
“No?”
“No,” Tarquin said, that sharpness returning beneath the warmth. “She is a healer.”
A healer.
Eris almost lost interest.
Then the music below grew louder, joined by clapping. Children’s voices rang through the rain, chanting a name.
Her name, he realized.
Again and again.
Not milady.
Not Lady.
Not some polished title set carefully behind rank and distance.
Her name.
Spoken like a blessing.
Spoken like a favorite song.
Something in Eris went very still.
Tarquin noticed.
Of course he did.
“My sister is well loved here,” the High Lord said.
It sounded casual.
Eris smiled faintly. “So I hear.”
A child shrieked with laughter below, so loudly that even the eldest advisor at the table looked toward the balcony.
Tarquin sighed, but the sound had no irritation in it.
Only resignation and what Eris could only assume to be affection.
Then he stood, the room shifting with him.
“I believe we have earned a pause,” Tarquin said, gathering the signed parchments with one hand. “The rain will make the eastern docks difficult to inspect until it passes.”
Eris rose with the others.
“How unfortunate,” he said.
Tarquin glanced at him before gesturing to an arch way that seemed to lead to the square in the town below.
Eris followed the High Lord of Summer, curiosity about this ‘she’ getting the best of him.
“Do you dislike rain, Lord Vanserra?”
“I dislike most things that make a mess.”
That earned a quiet laugh from one of the advisors.
Tarquin only smiled.
“Then Summer may prove challenging for you.”
The next few minutes passed in silence.
Or what would have been silence, if not for the rain and the music in the square before them.
Eris looked toward the square.
Beyond the rain-slick stone, Adriata gleamed beneath the storm. White buildings curved toward the sea, their golden rooftops dulled beneath silver rain. The bay beyond them was restless and shining, waves folding over themselves beneath the dark sky.
People had gathered.
Not fled, like they would in Autumn, but gathered.
Children splashed through puddles. Women lifted their skirts and laughed beneath awnings. An old man played a fiddle with a pipe clenched between his teeth while two younger males clapped beside him.
And at the center of it all was her.
Eris knew before anyone said it.
She stood barefoot in the rain, skirts soaked around her ankles, darkened by water and movement. Her sleeves were rolled to her elbows, healer’s satchel still hanging crookedly from one shoulder. Flowers had been tucked into her hair by small, clumsy hands, and more were scattered in the puddles around her feet.
A little boy stood in front of her, one knee freshly bandaged, tears still drying on his cheeks.
She bowed to him with all the solemn grace of a court lady greeting a king.
The child giggled.
Then she offered him her hand.
The boy took it, and she spun him once, carefully, mindful of his injured knee. He laughed so hard he nearly tripped, and she caught him before he could fall, laughing with him like the rain had washed every bit of rank from her shoulders.
Another child ran forward.
Then another.
Someone threw more flowers.
They landed in her hair, against her shoulders, in the puddles, bright petals scattered over rainwater like pieces of sunlight the storm had failed to drown.
Eris did not move.
He should have looked away.
There were too many eyes.
Too many witnesses.
Too much softness in the scene, and softness was dangerous when seen by anyone who knew how to use it against you.
But he could not look away.
She danced as if the whole city knew the steps and she had merely remembered them first.
A baker took her hand, spinning her beneath his arm.
An old woman swatted him aside and stole the next turn, laughing when the healer kissed her wrinkled cheek.
A guard in Summer blue bowed deeply, one hand pressed over his heart, and she rolled her eyes before letting him lead her through three dramatic steps that made the children howl with delight.
Then Tarquin appeared at the edge of the square.
Eris had not realized the High Lord had moved.
She saw him immediately.
Her face lighting up.
Not with duty. Not with practiced respect.
With the kind of joy Eris had only ever seen children give freely before someone taught them better.
She crossed the square in three quick steps, seized her brother’s hand, and dragged him into the rain.
Tarquin protested.
Badly.
No one stopped her.
Not the children chanting louder. Not the advisors watching from the edge of the square with Eris. Not the guards pretending not to smile.
Certainly not Eris.
Tarquin allowed himself to be pulled into the dance for one full turn before catching his sister by the waist and spinning her away from him. She laughed, head tipped back, rain clinging to her lashes and flowers slipping loose from her hair.
And Eris forgot, for one terrible second, where he was.
No wonder, he thought.
The words came unbidden.
Unwelcome even.
No wonder they love her.
She was not beautiful in the way Autumn preferred beauty.
Not arranged or contained, not polished into something cold enough to admire from a distance, not quiet and unseen like his mother.
She was rain-warm skin and bare feet on stone. A healer’s hands and a royal spine. A laugh that made children brave enough to reach for her. A face turned toward the storm like she trusted the sky not to strike her down for daring to be happy beneath it.
In Autumn, joy like that would have been punished.
In Autumn, someone would have told her to lower her voice.
To fix her hair.
To remember who was watching.
Here, they only loved her louder.
Eris felt something ancient and foolish twist behind his ribs.
A memory, perhaps.
Or the ghost of one.
There once had been a boy who looked like him.
A boy with a wandering mind and a heart too large for the house that raised him.
A boy who had looked out rain-streaked windows and imagined roads beyond the forest. A boy who dreamed of seas he had never touched. Cities where no one knew his father’s name.
That boy had been corrected.
Sharpened and buried.
And yet, watching Tarquin’s sister dance barefoot in the rain with flowers in her hair, Eris felt the earth shift over the grave.
As if something underneath had heard the music.
As if something dead had remembered it had once wanted to live.
Then she looked up.
Straight at him.
The dance continued around her, but her steps slowed.
Only for a breath.
Only long enough for their eyes to meet through the silver fall of rain.
Eris held her gaze.
He did not smile. He did not bow. He did not let a single piece of himself reach for the strange, impossible warmth blooming in his chest.
But she smiled.
Not politely.
Not because he was a lord from another court and she had been trained to offer pleasant expressions to dangerous males.
She smiled like she had caught him standing too far from the music.
Like she knew. Like she could see, somehow, that he had forgotten how to step into the rain.
Then a child tugged on her hand, and she turned away, laughing as she was pulled back into the spinning heart of the square.
Eris remained where he was.
Dry beneath the awning above. Perfectly composed.
Untouched by the rain.
Yet somehow utterly ruined by it.
He had lost sight of her.
For one brief, foolish moment, Eris hated that he noticed.
The square had shifted again, bodies turning with the music, children cutting through the spaces between adults like bright little fish through water. Flowers floated in the puddles and collected along the edges of the stone streets, petals bruised beneath dancing feet.
Tarquin made his way back to Eris with rain dripping from his curls and a grin he did not bother hiding.
It looked strange on a High Lord.
Joy being worn so openly. Being given so carelessly it would have been a death sentence anywhere else.
“You survived,” Eris said.
Tarquin glanced down at his soaked sleeves, then back at him. “Barely.”
“You may want better guards.”
“My sister is more dangerous than most of them.”
Eris looked toward the square before he could stop himself.
Tarquin noticed. Of course he noticed.
But whatever he might have said was stolen by a burst of laughter from the crowd.
The music changed. Faster now. Brighter. Hands clapping in rhythm beneath the rain. Someone called out a count, and the children answered too loudly, their voices tripping over each other in their excitement.
Then the crowd parted. Not dramatically, or out of fear.
Simply because people made room for her the way flowers turned toward the sun.
She stepped out from between a laughing pair of fishermen, cheeks flushed from the dance, hair damp and curling around the flowers tangled there. Her healer’s satchel had been abandoned somewhere. One sleeve had slipped loose from where she had rolled it, and a child’s ribbon was tied messily around her wrist.
She looked less like a milady than she did a story the city had agreed to keep telling.
Eris went still.
She came toward them. Not toward Tarquin, but toward him.
Each step splashed lightly through the rain-slick stone. Close enough now that Eris could see the droplets clinging to her lashes. Close enough to see the small scar near the base of her thumb, pale against wet skin. A healer’s scar, perhaps. Or a child’s accident. Or something sharper.
She stopped just beyond the awning.
Just far enough into the rain that reaching for her would require him to leave the shelter.
Clever, he thought.
Then hated that he thought it.
Her eyes flicked over him, not rudely, not with the cold assessment most courts favored, but with something warmer. Curiosity, perhaps.
As if he were a puzzle someone had left unfinished.
“Lord Vanserra,” she said.
Her voice was softer than he expected.
Eris inclined his head. "Milady."
Her nose wrinkled.
Tarquin huffed a laugh beside him.
“No one calls me that here,” she said.
“I gathered.”
“Then why did you?”
“Habit.”
“Well, we all have our bad habits.”
Eris’s mouth almost curved.
“That is a bold accusation from a female standing barefoot in a storm.”
She looked down at her feet, as if only just remembering the rain existed, then back at him with a smile that made something in his chest tighten in warning.
“It is only water.”
“In Autumn, water usually becomes mud.”
“In Summer, it becomes music.”
As if to prove her point, the crowd behind her clapped louder, the rhythm rolling over the square like a second heartbeat. Children shouted her name again, begging her to return.
She did not look back, instead she held out her hand.
Rain slipped over her knuckles and down the lines of her palm.
Eris stared at it.
The offer was simple, and that was what made the whole ordeal so unbearable.
There was no courtly trap. No demand hidden beneath sweet words. No watching nobles waiting to see whether he would make a mistake they could sharpen later.
Just her hand.
Open, an invitation being presented patiently. As if she had all the time in the world.
“Dance with us,” she said.
Tarquin went rigid beside him..
The square seemed to breathe around them.
Eris could feel every possible answer arrange itself behind his teeth.
A flirtation. A refusal. A clever remark. A cruelty. Anything to put distance between him and the feeling in his chest.
He had always known how to make distance.
It was one of the first things Autumn had taught him. How to keep space between himself and anything soft enough to bruise. How to turn longing into disdain before anyone else could see it. How to look at an open door and convince himself it was a cage.
Her hand remained between them.
Wet from the rain.
Flower petals stuck to the hem of her dress.
He did not take it.
“I do not dance in the rain,” Eris said.
The words came out smooth.
A lie dressed well enough to pass inspection.
Her smile did not falter.
That was the worst of it.
She did not seem embarrassed. She did not withdraw as if rejected. She did not look at him like he had disappointed her.
She only lowered her hand slowly, fingers curling back toward her palm.
“That’s all right,” she said.
Eris waited for the pity. The teasing. The little cut that would make this easier.
It never came.
Her gaze softened instead, and somehow that was far more devastating.
“Not everyone knows how to dance in the rain.”
The sentence struck with no edge at all.
Still, Eris felt it land.
Beneath the mask he had so carefully put on that morning. Beneath the cruel words and glares he gave others.
In some forgotten place he had stopped guarding because he had assumed it dead.
Tarquin looked away.
A kindness, perhaps.
Eris held her gaze and gave her nothing. Not even the truth.
If he had been younger, perhaps he would have taken her hand.
If Autumn had not already carved him into something they deemed useful.
But he was not younger.
He was a Vanserra.
The next in line to be High Lord of Autumn.
“Then I will leave the talent to Summer,” he said.
She nodded once, as if accepting that too.
Then she turned, stepping back further into the rain as if returning to something that had never once questioned whether she belonged.
A little girl darted toward her immediately, clutching a fistful of yellow flowers. She bent to listen, serious as any general receiving orders before battle.
Whatever the child said made her laugh.
The sound slipped under the awning.
Eris hated how easily it found him.
The girl thrust the flowers up, and Tarquin’s sister accepted them with a bow before pressing one behind the child’s ear. Then she kept one for herself, twirling the stem between her fingers while the music rose again.
She did not return to the center immediately.
Instead, she stood with the others at the edge of the circle and clapped along.
A young mother leaned close to say something in her ear. She listened, brow knitting with concern, then touched the woman’s arm gently. Whatever answer she gave made the woman exhale as if she had been holding worry in both hands.
A boy tugged at her skirt.
An elderly male kissed her knuckles.
A guard bent his head so she could scold him about the bandage wrapped beneath his sleeve.
Loved, Eris thought again.
Not admired. Not obeyed out of fear.
Loved.
And she wore it like rain.
As if it had never occurred to her to be afraid of what people might do with that much of her heart exposed.
“You are staring,” Tarquin said quietly.
Eris did not look at him. “I am observing.”
“Is that what Autumn calls it?”
“Among other things.”
Tarquin’s gaze remained on his sister. His face had softened again, but the High Lord beneath it was still there. Watching. Weighing. Deciding how close a male like Eris Vanserra was allowed to stand to something so clearly cherished.
“She asks everyone, you know,” Tarquin said.
“To dance?”
“To join in.”
Eris finally looked at him.
Tarquin’s expression was unreadable now.
“She believes most people want to,” he continued. “Even when they pretend otherwise.”
Rain dripped steadily from the awning between them.
Tarquin watched his sister clap with the crowd, flowers in her hand, head tilted toward another child who had begun speaking animatedly at her side.
“She claims it’s freeing. I suppose that would be worse in Autumn than it is here.”
Eris said nothing.
There was no useful answer to that.
The music softened eventually. Not ended, not truly. It only loosened its grip on the square, becoming background noise again as vendors returned to their stalls and children were gathered by damp, laughing parents.
Tarquin gestured back toward the palace.
“We should finish the agreements before the docks flood.”
“How practical of you.”
“I do try.”
Eris followed him back beneath the archways, away from the rain, away from the music, away from her.
He did not look back.
Not once.
That, at least, was something he could control.
The rest of the meeting passed as meetings did.
Ink dried. Terms were adjusted. Tarquin argued with irritating fairness.
Eris smiled when expected, countered when necessary, and tucked away every detail Beron would demand from him upon his return.
Trade routes. Dock schedules. Guard rotations. Names.
Weaknesses.
He should have counted Tarquin’s sister among them.
The beloved healer.
The lady who walked barefoot through storms and made an entire city soften around her.
She was an obvious vulnerability.
A thread that, pulled correctly, could unravel a High Lord.
Eris wrote nothing of her.
When he returned to Autumn, the rain followed three days later.
It came in the evening, cold and gray, tapping against the windows of his private rooms like impatient fingers.
Eris stood before the glass and watched the forest darken beneath it.
Mud gathering between roots.
Mist curling through the trees.
The hounds shifting restlessly in the kennels below.
Rain in Autumn was not beautiful.
It was inconvenient.
It was another thing to endure.
Still, when thunder rolled over the estate, Eris thought of golden rooftops dulled beneath silver light.
Of flowers in puddles and a hand held out just beyond shelter.
Not everyone knows how to dance in the rain.
His fingers curled at his side.
For one strange, impossible moment, he wondered what would have happened if he had stepped forward.
Then he turned from the window.
In Summer, when the rain returned to Adriata and the city gathered again near the bay, Tarquin’s sister paused at the edge of the dancing crowd.
Tarquin’s sister paused at the edge of the dancing crowd.
Across the square, beneath the awning, there was a flash of red and gold.
There for a breath.
Then gone.
She smiled anyway.
And when the children called her name, she stepped into the rain.
Andromeda was tired of pretending, she had agreed to date Frank so he wouldn’t have to deal with his mother pestering about finding a proper wife and he did the same for her and her parents. However pretending wasn’t exactly ideal and she just needed a pick me up.
She went to the kitchens and ordered the biggest brownie with ice cream and whipped cream she could and was about to indulge in the decadent treat, when someone entered the kitchens and she saw a familiar Gryffindor walk in.
