1nksta1neddesk

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Readers and Dreamers

Chapter 26: Paper Cuts

No letter came in the morning, no wisps of shadow from Nuala or Cerridwen as I rotted in bed till noon and laid out another of those 2 piece sets, a deep crimson this time. A bath of lavender and citrus suds pruned my skin as I avoided leaving the little bubble of familiarity I had formed in the short day. I was forces to leave my little shelter as my stomach growled and roiled with such ferocity I could no longer ignore it with cups of water. I slipped on the pair of matching slippers as I slid down the hallways, hugging close to the walls as they turned. I got lost more than once, finding the kitchens after an hour, stocked with fresh fruits, vegetables, cheese, and fresh bread that I ate from as I contemplated calling out for one of the twins to guide me to wherever the Library seems to be hidden in this palace. 

I had eaten so many small cubes of pineapple that my tongue started tingling when I heard the echoing of voices coming from above me, leaching down the servant stairs that ran up next to the kitchen.  The words were distorted from where they ricochet from the walls but I knew the tone of Rhys, and a feminine one that spurred me into movement as I snuck around the corner and up the spiraling stairs till the words cleared. I was at the same landing as the dining room I had eaten in with Rhys, and I used my minimal confidence around the space to creep from the stairwell and nearer to the heavy doors that held themselves ajar. 

“-remain compliant forever. You have been given chance and chance again but you refuse to- No. No! Rhysand, I am not here to see you sulk, talk to them. If you are confused over this, imagine how they feel, they haven’t even met this girl. I am not going to stay around if you insist on ignoring me.” The words had cleared enough for me to distinguish as I heard a flurry of fabric and Mor was walking out of the room. She was undeniably Rhysand’s cousin as her eyes fell to me with an acuity that had the blood that pounded in my ears still. It was only a moment of those sharp eyes, eyes of a mountain cat sizing up its prey, before her face softened and a young woman was coming towards me.

“Oh, Hello!” She said with so much chipperness that I was reeling from the tone shift between what I had heard before.Rhysand came up behind her, leaning on the door frame as he picked lint from his tunic, watching as his cousin took my hand in hers. Mor’s hands were warm, or maybe mine were cold, and she squeezed them ever so slightly as I looked to Rhys for any guidance. I only just saw his eyes shine and the creases of his eyes form before Mor moved and broke my eye contact with him. 

“My dear cousin has told me so much about you! I am just so glad to have some actual company around, you would not believe how dreadfully boring things get.” She said as she unclasped my hands and tucked a piece of golden hair behind her ear before she whispered too loudly for it not to be intentional, “Especially when certain people seem to never appreciate good company.”

I  just saw the movement of his hair as he shook his head and moved toward us, speaking as he did so, “Feyre, this is my cousin Morrigan, who was just on her way out.” He strained his voice just slightly on the last part and I saw them exchange a look, each challenging the other before Mor spoke yet again.

“I was, but now that I can see that our dear Feyre is here I think we have some matters to discuss concerning her stay with us.” She was still holding his gaze as I backed up just slightly from the tension forming.

“No, that can wait for another day. I am sure she is still exhausted.” Rhysand said back before looking to me, but I want to move, I need to quell the itching that was working its way back under my skin.

“I’m fine!” I say it just a bit too loudly before I soften my voice to try again “I’m fine, really, I would like to get my feet on the ground for once, know that I get to choose.” 

The two of them exchanged another look before Mor’s grin grew wider and her hands clasped mine again and ushered me back towards the room they had just come out of. The coffee table me and Rhysand had eaten at yesterday has been replaced by a proper dining table. I sat in the chair closest to the door while the cousins found places across from me, allowing me to look at Mor closer for a moment. Her eyes that had seemed predatory had formed soft brown pools as she smiled, and radiance seemed to emanate from her pores along with a soft scent of cinnamon undercutting the citrus smell the family seemed to share. She moved with such grace it was undeniable that she was Rhysand’s relative, the dawn to his midnight with her hair such a bright honey color.

“I had been having a conversation with Mor here about starting training some control into that magic of yours, as she had some similar issues with control when she first came of age.” He isn't looking at me as he speaks, instead inspecting the wood carving of his arm rest before Mor kicks him under the table and he is shooting a glare at her. Tea appears in front of us with a soft clatter and I let the cup steam in front of me as Mor picks up her cup.

“I-” She punctuates with a flourishing hand to her chest, “ am more familiar with touchy magic, the type that doesn’t have a distinct form. Comes with the territory of having such an abstract power and all.” She smiles sweetly at me over the rim as she drinks her tea with a soft sip. “It will be fun, my dear, see what power you can hold. It all comes in waves, and right now you wiped out-”

“ That is enough Mor,” Rhys interrupts, “I do have other matters to discuss with our darling Feyre, so I trust you will return to your duties.” He gave a poignant stare and she raised a hand in surrender as she set down her tea. I looked at him like a deer in the headlights as she stood and brushed crumbs that could not have possibly accumulated on her dress.

“It seems my stay seems to be running short, but if you need anything, and I mean anything at all dear, just call for me and I’ll be here. No matter what the old grump here thinks.” She finished with a wink before walking out of the room, going to descend some staircase that must lead to the city below us, the court of Nightmares.

It left the room tense as we heard her heels clack down the marble, and the dregs appetite that had driven me from my room died as I looked to Rhys. His hand massaged his temples as he exhaled heavily, leaning his weight onto the arm of his chair. He took the moment to himself before his eyes reopened to the world and steadily slid across the room till they found mine. The shadows at his back dissipated for a moment before condensing into the collar of his tunic. I looked under the table as I felt a cold slither around my ankle, a thin tendril of shadow resting there before I returned to look at Rhysand. 

“Apologies, Feyre darling. I only wanted to discuss more private matters, something I do not belive you would want to share with more ears.” I felt my skin crawl, mind whirring with what I could have done before I felt dread weigh down my shoulders and drag them inwards. Iron settled in my stomach as my face heated and I took the cup of tea to hide behind its billowing steam. Still he continued with a snap of his fingers, the sound reverberating through the air before it drew back in on its self and formed a neat stack of familiar papers.

The pages didn’t seem so substantial when they had been in the drawer of the dresser, but in front of me it looked like a novella. A novella describing each and every way I was royally fucked. The tea rattled in my hand and spilled over the edge of the cup, the burn a distraction as I set the cup down with a clatter, swearing as I tried to wipe the heat from my hands. A soft wave of darkness came from across the table and took with it the spilt tea before the room brightened ever so slightly again. The coil of shadow from my ankle had slithered to my hand and was soothing over the red skin as I looked back to Rhysand with wide eyes.

The violet in his eyes no longer held warmth, but were evaluating each muscle pulled taught as I tried to come up with an explanation. The truth? Could I just tell him the truth? And sound like a loon. I wondered if Prythian had asylums for the briefest moment. This, this is what would finally kill me and I could hide away from my mistakes.

“Now, if you could explain how details of my court ended up in a mortal woman’s dressing drawer.” His voice was a harsh sneer and pushed the weight in my stomach further down. “And explain to me how these pages contain details of a war, unless you possessed divinity I need to understand where this information came from.” 

I wanted to flee, a doe in a snowy clearing, but more shadows had come to join the one cooling the burn that had already disappeared and locked me to the heavy wooden chair. My wrists were locked, my ankles tethered to the legs of the chair, and a black rope pulled my neck back against the carvings.

I swallowed thickly as I looked at him, the questions not rhetorical as he arched a brow at me. “I had dreams-” the shadows at my wrist tightened to border pain and my mind whited with panic as I grabbed the quickest words, “I did! Dreams, visions, whatever you want to call it. It just felt right to write it down.” I gasped as the shadows against my neck tightened and breathing became much more of an effort. I felt night tipped claws tracing along my mental shield, jolting back when it felt hard surface. I shivered as I thanked the years for keeping the shield up, that it had not fallen with my complacency.  

“Then why tell me to look for them?” A rasp entered his voice and I looked to see his eyes again. Anger, pain, fear, all looked back at me in eddies of stars, the vision of it clogging my heart in my throat.

“I don’t know- I-” Tears pricked at my eyes, an easy call of pressure and heat behind eyelids, “I wanted to help, it felt right to tell you and I just-” My words were starting to fall short, quick witted lies scraping the bottom of the barrel as I tried to breath. Think, think, act. “ I wanted to be remembered, I wanted someone to read what I had to say.”

My eyes burned with the forced tears as I looked at him, hoping the heat in my face looked enough like remorse and the tears held just right to glitter in innocence. I reminded myself that this was a man protecting his family, who had just come from 49 years of servitude, who was afraid of war lurking at the gates of his lands. I was a threat to him, to his tentative peace, and though m

There was silence, ear shattering and hearth retching silence, for a long while. Enough for the binds at my neck and wrist to dissolve with little acknowledgment beside me rubbing at the light bruising that had started to form. Still my ankles were secured to the chair and would not budge. 

“There are a dozen women who owe their lives to you.” He said it lowly while pulling a sheet from the pile and sliding it across to rest straight in front of me. “And no doubt countless more if the rest of what you say is true.” The edges of the paper were curling up, obviously having been read over multiple times and a small spattering of water stains at the top of the page. My words swam on the page as I read them over again, and again. The temples along the coast, looted and slaughtered. It had been in pursuit of the Cauldron’s feet, but surely it hadn’t started this early in the story? There had been weeks, an additional month at least, before the vaguest mention I could remember.

I looked back up to him, the wings he kept hidden peaking over the back of his shoulders. He straightened in his chair and leaned forward until he was looking down at my writing. 

“I am thankful-beyond thankful that you gave me this information.” He paused to take a rattling breath that whisked his wings back to whatever void they came from. “But I hope you can understand my apprehension that a mortal could possess these plans, and to know that such detail about my court was simply left in a bedroom of a rotting cottage.”

My ankles fell from the chair legs as the shadows dissipated, though some stayed and soothed the skin as I rubbed a satin slipped shoe against it. There was still the panic running through my blood, pushing against my ear drums as I look toward him. The weight in my stomach took a different nature as I saw the weight of his lands pressing down on those proud shoulders. I had never seen them slouch, but now he seemed to wilt in on himself, fingers tracing along the edge of the pile of papers.

A spark of indignation burned on my tongue at his insult of my home but I kept my mouth shut. My heart was still slamming against my sternum, the power to restrain me not soon to be forgotten. It had scared me, scared me beyond anything to be reminded of the power Rhysand kept. I was stupid, a faith that I was to remain in that warm blanket of death or to wake in my world had come to bite me in the ass. I couldn’t speak, could even raise the words to yell or apologize, mouth filled with cotton. My blood turned rancid in my veins and I wanted to shed the skin, shed it all and be free and I couldn’t stay in this room.

The chair screeched against the floor as I stood, bones feeling like they were splintering under the weight of my thoughts as I walked out of the room. He said no words to me as I left, not as I slammed the doors to the dining room shut with a wayward arm. I walked the stairs, each step a time for me to exhale and inhale. I was not built for this, I had been resilient enough and now-- now I was lost and screwed and afraid. The word bubbled up on my tongue with a ratcheting breath that shook me. 

I was so close to my room, the door only down the hall, and I refused to break in this hallway, to shatter along the stone floors. I swallowed thickly and clenched my teeth against the cries that wanted to escape. No, no, I was going to make it, I had my hand on the door and I was pushing and it was opening. I was stepping inside, I was closing the door and- my legs collapsed under me as my lungs heaved a gasp and I was a vase shattering against the soft rug.

I was exhausted, deeper than bone exhaustion and the sobs washed away the cold that sat with me, warmed and boiled my rotting flesh from a body that wasn’t mine and that I should have left to join back into the soil under that mountain. I wanted to turn to a wind, disappear on the beats of song bird wings but I was trapped and I was heavy and I could not raise my head enough to look at those silver-blue skies that peered in from the windows. But my body moved of its own accord, a frightened mouse crawling to the corner of a room, pulling a chair in front of them like a child playing hide and seek. I sobbed there, sobbed as I was afraid and devastated and too much, it was too much and I wanted to collapse forever, to be broken and never fixed.

My voice tingled in my head, a tone telling me that this solves nothing and that I need to wrap it up, wrap up the sharp pieces of myself that broke and I don’t know how to fix. To see that Rhysand would never really hurt me, to know he knew I wasn’t a threat, but he had hurt me and I was pulled into memories of cold cells and cold slop when I couldn’t move, when those shadows that had danced in corners of wet stone tied me down to chair limbs, when I was waiting for my neck to be snapped again. My sobs paused, mind pausing its torrent unnaturally as I held my breath and my limbs shook. I had been waiting to die again, to die and be swept away from my troubles because who wouldn’t kill a mortal woman with immortal knowledge. The sobs returned a moment later as I tried to rationalize, to see any reason I was always allowed to live, why I couldn’t have been a soul to be trailed along on either and instead thrown here and forced to keep living here.

I don’t know how long I cried, the room growing dark as the sun ran to the next horizon and my energy trickled off, trickled until my stream ran dry and I fell to unconsciousness with my knees drawn to my chest and back pressed against the wall.

#acotar #fanfic #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #acotar rewrite #inkywrites #reader insert #rhysand #rhys acotar #feyre archeron

[1nksta1neddesk]

ITS FEYRES BIRTHDAY YALL

HAPPY SOLSTICE

#winter solstice #acotar #feyre archeron

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Readers and Dreamers

Chapter 25: Splintering

 I don’t remember moving, don’t know where the glittering blade came from until I was crushing her into the desk and the door shook as it slammed into place. I was going to destroy her, I was going to kill her now and I was going to make it hurt.

Her hands were pinned to the wood , fingers splayed over the edge, and the silver bangles and ring on her bent and crushed ever so slightly as I took the blade and stabbed into the wood just before her fingers. Her face was pale as I finally looked into those turquoise eyes. I should have done this much sooner, before her claws had a chance to hurt and before she could poison Tamlin’s mind with promises from the king. It was time to declaw the cat.

“Please- Please, What are you doing? Feyre this isn’t you!” She's pleading and I boil over.

“This is me.” The voice is a distant growl in my ears as I feel her pulse under my finger tips. It's frantic like a cornered animal and I am glad, glad she is afraid and glad to use the hours I had spent in the woods with a knife under hand. I knew the joints, knew where blood would flow as I lowered the knife, silent weeks in the kitchen training the rocking of my wrist as I led the honed edge of the knife through the milky skin. Red blooms under the black of the blade that had come from nowhere, the liquid catching and sliding down the edge to pool at the tip still in the wood. 

This was me because I was the murderer who put an arrow through a sentinel's eye, I was the one who had driven two daggers into a fae queens thorax, I was the one who had been happy when my neck snapped under her fingers, I was the one who killed Feyre before she had drawn her first arrow. This was me and this was the time to use the caustic black of disgust in my heart into something useful.

She was screaming and there was a banging that conflicted with the beating of my heart in my ears. Maybe the air had deigned to align with my pulse as I felt it push against my skin, pulling the iron scent of Ianthe’s blood to my nose like pollen, sweeter than any rose in the gardens. The blade hit something solid, cartilage of the pinky finger as the flood of blood had started running between her ring and pointer fingers. I pressed harder, willing the blade through the pinky with a crunch, and its reverberation up the tang of the blade and into the palm of my hand was familiar, like disarticulating a small fowl I had caught one autumn.

The digit fell limp from the table, its muscles twitching as Ianthe screamed even louder. Tears were running down her face, flushed and red with protruding veins along her temple as she trashed against the table. Her legs had collapsed at some point and the invisible shackles that kept her hands to the edge of the table were the only thing keeping her from collapsing fully to the floor. It sent a pulse of hot indignation, sent blood into my limbs as my arms shot out and grabbed the back of those sky blue robes. 

The door was gone behind us and there were figures there, their screams not reaching me as I pulled her up, her feet kicking out as she tried to find the ground. Her cries became louder, blubbering as she looked at the red pool on the table and the shortened finger. Her hands tightened further on the table as she tried pulling away but I kept her there, forcing her red rimmed turquoise eyes to look into mine. I do not know what she saw there, do not know what reflected across steel gray and if the fire inside me had made them molten as I felt.

“You-” I start with a punctuated slide of the blade along the back of her knuckles, “are going to pay for every touch- “ I let the metal dig into the raw flesh of the missing pinky, “every look,” Her eyes were afraid and I wanted to be afraid, I wanted to be afraid of what I was doing, “Every thought.” 

I think I’ve gone insane, I think the oil of my soul has seeped out and is staining the perfect picture I have wanted to keep, the mask of lucidity has fallen. But it's warm, and it doesn’t tell me how to talk and how to stand, doesn’t reprimand me for savoring the sharpness of new teeth as they poke into my lip when I smile, for liking the new predator that scratches under the cage of my skin. I like the insanity, and I’m starting to think that it was more crazy to deny and hide from it. 

Ianthe is pale as she looks back up at me, ruined and disheveled, but she still has hope of being rescued from me as she looks past me. She doesn’t talk to me when she continues to plead and I need her attention on me, I need her to listen and follow my orders. Maybe it's too easy to grab her consciousness, to hold it like a hand under a chin as I make her look at me, make her pleas die in her throat.

“You will never lay a hand on anyone again- If I hear even a whisper that you have, either you cut off the hand or I will cut off your head.” I grip her soul, grip her life and imbed it so deep in her brain it would kill her to even attempt to dig out. Red has pooled at my feet and it's dripping from her nose, and I wonder why Feyre was ever so afraid of the color when it's filling my chest with such jubilance it coats my tongue like dripping honey.  Something had slipped, my mind or my grip or my blood in my veins stuttered, and shattered in the air. 

Black floods in, glittering and cooling black night that nips at my skin and draws away heat I had not realized had gathered there. I am in those turquoise eyes, see the crushing force of ink flow forward and envelop us, see the disheveled face of Tamlin step back solemnly from the splintered door frame, Lucien in a rumpled shirt having to be dragged back with Tamlin. I see jaws move, words and curses must be coming forth from them but it is quiet. 

It is so quiet the heat radiating from thin hands has turned into a sound, a ripple of dripping and I am launched out of Ianthe’s mind and ricochet into my own, conscious rattling as it tries to find how to fit in a body again. Sea salt and citrus embed into my nose, flushing away iron and I’m falling back and away from the desk, stumbling through the dark.

My head is slamming into my brain, a headache erupting so abruptly my breath is stolen away, crushed from my lungs by a sledgehammer I cannot see. Things are wrong, so wrong and I can’t find up and down, I am being crushed in the empty space. There is sound again, or maybe the silence has ruined my ears because they are ringing, ringing so violently I am a bell being tolled at high noon.I am a bomb, mid explosion and I am desperate to contain it. I am pulling the fragments of myself back together, taught and condensing until I am ready to turn into a black hole, until I will implode and let the burn of my blood ignite me.

My blood cools so slightly as large hands encompass my shoulders, pulling me into a solid figure and I cling to it. The body is warm and I am being torn apart as I bury my face in soft fabric. I think I’m crying, my face is wet and I can’t breathe until one of the hands is at my back and I am being thrown through the star flecked black. Constellations burst behind my eyelids.

The black parts and I am surrounded by bright white as I blink my eyes back open, so pristine and glittering that I cannot see for a moment but I am moving. I don’t know where I was going, only blue and air and wind pulling me to a ledge, not as my legs collapse under me and I am pouring out. I think there is a scream, mine or someone else’s I never will figure out, as the beast inside me is clawing out, clawing out of my throat. Whatever gods had been playing with my soul were coming for repentance, some debt that I cannot pay and I am burning and freezing and splintering at the seams of my atoms. I am nuclear.

A claws drags across my mind ,nails across a chalkboard but the walls that held my mind together are gone and I am a raw wound exposed to the air. The tip of the claw is dipping in, a devil tasting my agony before they put me out of my misery, digging to someplace that has my heart suddering and stopping.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

My body hurts. Hurts in that deep space that nestles against the bone and will not dispel as I shift where I lay. My skin is tacky and fabric is clinging to my spine and the back of my legs as I roll over, dragging the blanket with me.

I think there are voices around me, a hushed discussion that had my heart beating behind my eyes painfully as I tried to focus. But my senses are slipping from my grasp and I am asleep again. This sleep is dreamless and I like its warmth, like the prickle of cold against my nose and cheeks from a stray breeze I can’t place. My mouth is dry and stale and my eyes are scratching like sand is trapped behind them, scraping along my eyes with each twitch as I try and keep them closed. I try to ignore the discomfort, to fall back into sleep.

I can feel the air of the room around me and each moment that has my senses reawakening is a moment I fight against it. But my mind is itching along with my skin, the chill of my nose as I breathe in thin air, the humidity and warmth of spring court is gone and my eyes are shooting open only to slam back shut against the brightness of the room.

I blink slowly, growing used to the light as I crawl from the bed, sheets dipping under me as my skin prickles against the air. I am in an ill-fitting nightgown, the shoulder too tight and the hem too short to be comfortable as I make my way across the room. Tall pillars of moonstone bracketed a balcony where the light breeze is coming from, the air smelling ever so slightly of lilacs as I walk out onto it. There is a light dusting of snow under my feet, I feel the cold biting my skin as I look into the gray-blue winter sky. 

I have lost my breath, lost a sense of place as the wind cools the tiring ache that sits in my body. There is a soft powder falling around me, catching in my hair before a chill racks up my body so violently that I rush back inside, some invisible barrier keeping the majority of the freezing cold out and my hand tingles with the quick temperature change.

There is a set of clothes draped over the arm of a chair I hadn’t noticed before where it is placed at a desk. I take this same moment to look at the rest of the room, and its extravagance weakens my knees. The windows that had framed the balcony were open to the world and amethyst curtains were blowing in that cooled breeze that seemed impossible so far up this mountain. The bed I had crawled from was a swath of cream and ivory, the top most blankets disturbed from where I had laid, two golden lamps were framing the bed, the settings for candles to burn clean and polished. An armoire and a dressing table were against the same wall of the open air arch-windows and further down a large arch of ivory stone with a set wooden door looks into a bathroom. There is porcelain sink and toilet and past them is a large pool that must be the bath, open to the air as its edge blends off the edge of the mountain and water flows over that edge yet the level in the tub never seems to lessen, more sconces for candles planted around the room.

This room was royal, even compared to my spring court rooms and it felt bright and free and fresh as I turned back to the desk as a flutter of paper caught my ear. A folded piece of parchment is there, a fountain pen clattering next to it as I watch. There is a spiraling scrawl over the front “Feyre” it reads, simple and the edges of each letter curling over itself. My hands are quick to reach for it.

My Dearest Feyre,

A large meal and the company of the High Lord of Night await you once you have washed and dressed. I presume you have your own questions of what has happened in the time we last spoke, as I have for you, and that will be discussed. We may also discuss what will be done in the future in light of your more recent explosive development.

-Rhys

A ball of lead is settling in my stomach, a snake coiling in mortification as I remember in blurry memories how I had ended up here. I had tortured Ianthe, had exploded with some magic force and my head was hurting again as I thought of it all. Tears are rising to my eyes from the pain and I blink them back with a shaky breath, a bath did sound nice as there was this invisible grime that clung to each joint.

Washing and dressing was a simpler manner than I had thought, the bath water was already steaming and unscented soaps had lined the edge with a rag. I have missed showers but more so I had missed the simplicity of washing myself without the aid of the handmaids Ianthe had insisted upon. When I was clean and my skin flushed a pink I toweled off with a towel so plush it could have been a blanket in any other court. The night court clothes they were laid out for me were even simpler to put on than the tunics of spring. No fastenings or buttons for my clumsy fingers to rip from the cloth, instead the two piece set was easy to slip on.

I walked from my room and down the corridors in the bottle green high waisted pants that matched with the top, both made of light gossamer gathered at the wrists and ankles. There was the same tug in the center of my stomach that I had felt that day under the mountain, guiding me before I had the chance to get lost in the towering isles of marble and moonstone. Doors dot the walls occasionally and I want to pause and snoop behind each of them but anytime my pace slows a sharper tug is felt with the faintest amount of exasperation. I climb flights of stairs, many open to the sky with those same glassless windows and I trudge past them with a sullen heart, wishing to admire the soft shimmers of snowflakes as winter sun reflects from them.

At the end of the upper level I see a veranda set with a beautiful display of breakfast, fresh cut fruits and pastries piled on a platter while jugs of juice and a smaller plate of what looks to be bacon and steak all sit on what looks like a glass coffee table with 3 plush chairs set around it. Rhysand is there, looking over the edge of the veranda into the snowy mountains. 

He is dressed in his usual black, and his wings are nowhere to be seen, as he is framed by the glowing light of the reflected sun from the snow. He sensed my presence the moment I had awoken, I knew that, yet I took the moment to lean against one of the pillars that framed the entrance of the veranda. The shape of him was regal, unbelievable, and I wanted to hide this image in a catacomb to visit another day, a dark day when I forget the possibility of such a simple sight. 

“You need to work on your hand writing.” I say to him, and I can't stop my grin at my own private joke, anything to push off the weight of the conversation that will need to happen if only for a few more moments.

“It seems you were able to translate it well enough, Feyre.” he says and I had been half afraid of his voice since I had awoken, afraid that I had angered him in all of this. I realize how stupid I was as he turns and his eyes are brighter than I have ever seen them. His skin has a new bronze color to it, transforming the beautiful man I had known before into nothing less than an artwork. If only a few short months had brought the color back to his skin I wondered how he had looked before, if the pale haunt of the mountain would ever leave me as it has him.

I push off the pillar and go to the table, cups and small plates appearing for me as I take a seat and I am more than happy to take the thick slices of fruit onto my plate. I don’t know how long it has been since I had mango or honeydew but they are the first ones I taste as Rhysand watches me as he takes his own seat, pouring a cup of orange juice for himself. 

His eyebrows are ever so slightly drawn together as he looks at me and I hold my cup out to him, asking for a glass of orange juice myself as I chew the soft flesh of the mango. I lick juice off my fingers before I see him spearing a pitted cherry on a fork.

“Thank you.” I say it as I reach for the set of silverware I am now just noticing next to where my plate had appeared. I pick it up with the softest touch and use it to stab a piece of cut steak.

“For what?” Rhys asks and I feel the consequences of my actions press in quickly, how to tell him I am thankful for so much he has done. I settled on the easiest thing, not to tell him I am thankful he remembered I existed and had finally come for me, that I had been removed from spring before I could hurt more than Ianthe.

“The food, its nice- good.” Maybe I had hit my head on something, a concussion would be a good excuse right now but Rhysand wouldn’t buy it.

“You need it, you overexerted your magic and your body has to heal itself from the inside.”He takes a deep drink and it is my turn to scrunch my eyebrows. I don’t remember much outside of the darkness that had swept in, but I had assumed that was Rhys and the light I had seen after that was the brightness of the sun in the Moonstone palace. He sees my confusion and sets down his glass and I follow suit, not all that hungry anymore.

“Magic can drive us insane if it does not have an outlet, like water building behind a dam. With you being made things are more complicated, it appears.”He pauses and I can see the gears turning as he tries to explain in a way Feyre would understand, like a mortal given a loaded gun of magic would understand, “ Usually when those like the high lord’s sons start presenting the type of magic ability that requires that release it is gradual, but you didn’t get that.” He looks away from me as he continues, studying the engravings against one of the pillars. “I had to manually flip that switch for you to release that power, but it seems there are multiple conflicting types of magic. The nature of your re-making is most likely linked to it, a piece of each court.”

I chew the inside of my lip, I hadn’t felt insane but every time I think back to what I could remember I was less of a person with the blade and more of an actor. In the time I had been awake and thinking over the actions I could remember, I had grown more and more repulsed over having lost control over myself. I swallowed thickly, “Ianthe?”

His lip pressed thin at her name, “Healing, and recovering from-” He pauses and I supply the word- you-“events.” Well, I hadn’t really been hoping for a full recovery, I had meant everything I had said and done, though with a clearer head now I might have just beat her rather than mutilated her with seemingly no explanation. 

My throat is raw and scratchy with anxiety and the awkward tension that was thickening the open room, “So, I guess you did get to call on your end of the bargain, is there anything for me to do for the next two weeks of each month for the rest of my life?”

“Tomorrow.” He says gruffly, rising from his chair having eaten nearly nothing, “Nuala and Cerridewen can help you get acquainted to the Palace, if you need anything they can help and you can always send for me.” He waves a hand and the twin wraiths are there with warm smiles, more solid than I had ever seen them while under the mountain. With the wave a peice of paper like the one that had appeared in my room fluttered into my lap before he was gone and walking out of the veranda.

I smiled at the twins sweetly as I finished the barest parts of the breakfast, chugging down another cold glass of juice before rising and setting off to explore the palace.

The silk slippers that had come with my clothing weren’t the best walking shoes but they were so comfortable that I did not notice any pain as I peaked into rooms as I explored the halls, the twins only ever intervening to steer me away from rooms that were apparently off limits. I found a small armory, a room full of paintings, another of jewlery that spoke of a tiny immortals touch, and yet more rooms that were full and full of clothing.

There were so many things, wealth pouring from each corner of the glittering palace I was taken aback. The cottage had been rough, even I knew that, but I had never been exposed to this level of wealth even before I had come into this world. I found stock rooms deep in the palace, away from windows and damp with the cold moisture of the earth, filled with wine casks and bottles, all stacked and with names engraved on wax.

The twins did eventually force me back to the surface, away from catacombs I was sure led to the court of nightmares below us, and back to my room when I rolled my ankle on a missed step and nearly slid down half a flight of stairs. A spread of foods, mostly soups and vegetables with thick slices of sourdough bread, waiting for me with crisp crystal glasses of water I had to ask Nuala to replace with wooden ones, afraid of shattering them.

They left me to myself during lunch and until the evening, and I spent the hours looking over every inch of my room. The armoire was full of fine clothings, mostly the same style of sets like I was already wearing, but a few gowns and tunics were thrown in there with exceptionally sweaters I was more than happy to slip on. Drawers filled with underthings had my face flushing ever so slighly and I abandoned the clothes to snoop around the bathroom.

Perfumed salts and soaps were hidden behind cabinet doors, but I was quick to close those as I found the same soaps that already lined the edge of the pool. The simple and unscented clean of them had my head light for a moment before I found a hairbrush with some ribbons to tie back the long locks of brown. I brushed my fingers under the bottom of the hair once it was put in a braid, perhaps it would be simpler to cut it, get rid of one more reminder that despite what that voice had whispered in my head in those blissful moments of black I had stolen this body from someone else.

Dinner comes and passes with no word from Rhys, not even another small letter. And I spend the night trying to find a comfortable way to sleep in the massive bed before I give up on civility and wrap myself completely in the blankets, tangling in them until nothing but the barest peak of my head can be seen from them and I fall into a peaceful sleep.

#fanfic #acotar #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #inkywrites #acotar rewrite #reader insert #rhysand #rhys acotar #Ianthe

[1nksta1neddesk]

GUESS WHO GOT IRON FLAM AT A MIDNIGHT RELEASEEEE

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Readers and Dreamers

Chapter 24: Tend the Flames

The next day I try to find Lucien as he leaves his room, which should have been easy considering it was just across the hall but even as I woke up well before the sun rose his door never opened. I left my room door open as I asked a servant girl with goose down for hair to fetch me a book from the library, one I had cataloged in a short book shelf at the front of the library. I had a little more than a month and a half, 42 days to be exact, and I needed to find a way to disrupt the marriage and somehow get Rhysand to come get me without Feyre’s wedding-induced panic attack. The servant came back with the book and I thanked her with a sweet and soft smile before I sat with my feet propped up on the covers, having changed into loose pants and a simple tunic during the time she had been gone. 

 My toes were tucked under a quilt and I stole glances into the hallway with each turn of the page, staring at one of the double doors that led to his rooms. My hands were tracing the edge of the page, feeling the ridge of each finger print catch against the rough edge of the paper. The page was familiar, the anatomy of sub-species of Prythian Fae. There were no terms like High Fae or Lesser Fae, it was near scientific and it calmed the academic part of me that was always on the edge of disappearing over the edge with each fantastical thing I was forced to live through.

Like dying, dying and coming back in newly forged flesh made for a different soul. That was not science, and I didn’t even know if the old rules of my world applied here. But the book was a solace and told me of evolutions between species the author had witnessed, some old souls who had been around for millenia of millenia, old even by fae standards. Wraiths came forth from shadows to other mediums, finding dark cast by water or wood before they were able to adapt and blend into the new matter. It was compelling and for once my eyes remained focused as I read and reread the evolution of Illyrian traditions and physiology.

Their ears had rounded over the generation, northern winds having left many with frostbite that rotted the tips of traditional fae ears that had once possessed. It was a similar assumption as to why the claws had formed on the apex of each wing, a trait that had not been apart of the ancestors of Illyrians that had come from a southern continent, the callused tip serving to cut the brunt of the cold wind that left everything half-frozen after an hour in the air. 

It was therapeutic to have academia, have reasoning and explanation at my fingertips where everything was so… in the air? Even with the suspense of magic there I was left with a bitter tang in my mouth at the lack of explanation or science at all that this world took into account. I had spent so long in school, hunched over books to understand formulas and theories, structures and lines to follow and now those were gone and it felt all so useless.

I was just about to turn the same page for the 3rd time that day when I saw movement in the hallway. I was excited for a moment, moving to close the book and stand before I realized Lucien’s door hadn’t opened at all and I was staring into the teal eyes of a Hybern Priestess. She smiled sweetly and I noticed the bundle she was carrying in her arms, the blue robes she always wore dragging behind her as she came into my room.

“I hope I am not intruding, especially after such an exciting night last night,” She sighs and I narrow my eyes at her slightly as I sit back down in my chair, “Too bad you had not stuck around later, the night was heavenly.”

 The connotation in her voice had my stomach wanting to crawl out of my throat and escape this conversation. Her promiscuity had been obvious since she had come to the manor, no more than a dozen days after I had come back. I had seen far too many half-dressed men and women alike scurrying from her rooms in early mornings for me to do more than grimace at the reminder. At least she had kept her hands off of anyone who lived in the estate, as far as I was aware.

“I’m similarly aggrieved, but I do think I had enough party to last me for quite a while.” I smiled at her and bit back on words that pushed their way to the forefront of my mind. “Now may I ask what you have come for?” 

Maybe there was some bite in my words, I wasn’t perfect at covering my dislike for her and I was also not perfect at caring if I tried to cover it. She gave me a tight smile and the line of moon phases on her brow scrunched together. “I was going to invite you to walk in the gardens, perhaps start talking about the details of your wedding since we have such a tight timeline for all these things. Perhaps set a schedule where I can help explain your role in this court a bit better.” 

The condescension hung from each of her words like a droplet about to fall, but still I gave her that trained smile with crinkling eyes and straight teeth. Maybe my animosity had no basis yet, but I saw the flicker of desire in her eyes everytime she looked at Tamlin; not the desire of bodies but the one of power, to situate herself at his side and get a foot hold for her sponsor across the sea. I had tried dropping hints to her over the weeks, asking about where she had been during the curse- a distant court, I was able to use a connection to get out of Prythian before the curse had come. 

“I was hoping to talk to my betrothed first before starting to plan. I hope you understand that I have never been the type to plan these sorts of things.” I lied through my teeth, and then I saw a new movement in the hall. Lucien’s door was opening and he was dragging himself out, hair messily braided back as he peeked his head into the hallway and grabbed the small arm of the fake woman that had brought me my book. “Speaking of which.” 

I brushed past her and caught the tail end of Lucien’s words before he started retreating back into his room again. I caught the edge of the door in my hand, the wood groaning against my grip as I smiled at him, this time more genuine with excitement to bring that burn back to my veins.

“May we have a word?” I half-whisper the words to him as he looked at me, still obviously exhausted from the task he had been doing during the time in his room. His eyes were bleary and it took him a long moment where he blinked slowly to nod and open the door to me more. I heard Ianthe huff slightly and the swish of her layers as she returned to her duties, whatever they were. I go into the room, eyes changing quickly to accommodate for the low lighting in his room.

While he may be the spring emissary his room is blatantly autumnal, littered with memorabilia from the other courts, as far as I could tell. The walls were a burnt umber and gold lined each textile from his bed linens to the carpet under my feet as I moved through it. It smelled like a low burning fire, mixed with the same roasting chestnut smell he must have gotten from his mother. He had obviously been in the middle of writing, crumpled pieces of paper overflowing from the waste basket near his desk and a glass ink-pen sitting next to an open jar of ink. I was more intrigued by the sun bleached conch shell that sat on a shelf over his desk, a large tapestry behind the desk depicting snow capped mountains with dark shapes I knew were wolves, all framed by the burning colors of fall leaves. 

“Look- Tamlin is out today with all the nobles but I’ve been thinking that if I can use your bargain with Rhysand I can get him to at least push back the date-- but that is if he doesn't fly off the handle. Gods,” He runs a hand down his face as I turn to him and I watch him pace across his carpet, “You do not know how angry he gets about that, but I can work with it.” 

His voice had grown reedy at the end of his sentence and he sat on the edge of the bed. This was taking a toll on him, in more than one way, and guilt sucker-punched me right in the nose as I walked back over to him. I had added more burden to him, asked him to nearly betray his friend he had spent centuries with and I am sure that if I walked over to that waste basket I would find dozens of ditched letters trying to explain to Tamlin on both of our behalfs. I leaned my shoulder against his, ignoring the prickling sensation that ran over my skin like a thousand needles searching for a vein.

“Can I help with it, any of it?” The question feels so useless, so small against everything else. It's even smaller when he shakes his head and slumps his weight against me, resting his head on my shoulder. I looked back to the room, now noticing the small piles of clothes strewn about, blades of all types out of their sheaths, broken quills on every flat table, open books stacked on top of eachother. 

“I can help with paperwork,anything. Honestly I need something to do, and if it takes some of it all off of you then we can have time to figure out how to keep me from setting up like a torch.” I tried laughing through it, to make it easier for him to accept because I could see it eating at him. The smile that I had nearly always seen that crinkled his scar under the mask had been gone for so long and he was drowning. All while I was wallowing and lounging about he was drowning in all of this. “Maybe we can even convince Tam you are trying to show me the ropes for my new life, figure out how to write between courts and deal with all your fae politics.” 

He contemplated for a moment before he straightened himself, taking his weight from me. “That would help, but we need to talk about that with Tamlin first. If he found out I got you tangled into politics - I think even being your fiance would not save my skin on this one.” We both take a minor twin cringe at the word fiance before I nod my head enthusiastically, assuring Lucien I would talk to Tamlin within the week.

“Sleep some, you can't work if you are going delirious.” I say as I raise from the bed, moving to pick up his room a little bit. He was drained enough that he just gave me a thankful look before dragging himself up the bed slightly and falling asleep right there, still dressed in his crinkled finery from the night before.

I moved around the room, trying to organize the mess. It had to have been weeks worth of clothes thrown everywhere, hanging from unlit candles and kicked under dressers, and every time I thought I found the last piece I would see a glint of a gold button from the corner of my eye and add it to the pile. The weapons weren’t much better, mixed in with the clothes as they were and stacked on top of shelves as I collected them as well. Every part of the mess found its own corner for me to address later, just me working my way through and trying to make a clear path where I walked.

When everything had been cleared I was left staring at the towering piles; laundry in one corner, books and knives in the other, multiple cups and mugs and wine glasses having been found with plates that had dried smears of sauce. I was silent as I slid from the room to ask a pair of twin male servants to get a laundry cart and a book cart from the library as I walked down the hall to the kitchen with my hands stacked high with dishes. The cooks and cleaners on staff looked horrified as I toed the door open with a sheepish smile before I set the dishes down by the sink. I saw whispers go up between the two dish girls for the night as I left and wondered what type of rumors that could possibly be spread over some plates. When I got back to Lucien’s room I saw the two carts had been placed outside. I threw in arm fulls of laundry, checking for more hidden knives as I went. When it was stacked high I gave the basket to a servant who had come to me, looking more and more distraught as she saw me wipe sweat from my brow and smile at her. 

The more I worked, ducking in and out of Lucien’s room as I took things out, the more staff seemed to find themselves walking down the hall. Sticking close together as their eyes followed me pushing a cart heavy with books. I was useful, tasks needing to be completed with a clear goal. It was so easy and nice to fall into it, to be able to stop thinking. Now the majority of the room was clean, with Lucien snoring softly in his bed as I sat down with a soft huff in the grand chair that sat in front of his desk. I still heard the wisps of servant shoes against the stone as they pressed against the seams of the door. It seemed the servants were just as nosey as the rest of spring, desperate for some drama ,including my arranged marriage, to entertain themselves.

I leafed through some of the papers I had organized on his desk, wishing for my old world’s filing cabinets just to organize the growing pile of addresses from other courts’ emissaries. They all asked for support, supplies, all while offering little in return. The worst of the demands seem to come from Autumn court, broken red wax seals that came back together to show a three pronged flame, echoing the shape of a maple leaf. I also noticed the lack of any Night court seals, none displaying Ramiel or any insinuation of the high lord that continued to infuriate me.

I had separated the piles by court and then ordered them by date, really for all the fine metal working I had seen in this world I would have assumed they could have made some letter holders that were more than wicket baskets. The wax from each court present was different and I studied each symbol while I waited for the servants to trickle away and I could sneak out to find the High Lord of this court and convince him to let me give a hand in his court. I sighed, a headache coming back, I was probably dehydrated from all my cleaning and I hadn’t had breakfast and thinking of how I was going to convince Tamlin to both let me help Lucien in emissary duties and to annul the engagement. And I had to do that today, or else the day of silence after he had sent a wrecking ball into my life would be too much of an acquiescence.

I heard a knock on the door, soft and quick, and got up to open the door. Tamlin was there, in a prim suit of dusty rose and beige, with his hands crossed behind his back. I hadn’t had a full conversation with him in weeks, not since he had awoken in my room under the mountain, and I had been avoiding him just as much as he had been avoiding me. But he looked sheepish here, young and inexperienced in the runnings of a court before Amarantha had staunched his learning.

I moved into the hallway, closing the door behind me softly before we started walking down the hallway, an arms length away from each other as we followed a familiar path. His study had been part of my daily path before, and walking back into it with new senses felt like walking into a childhood home years after a new family had moved in. Each groove of the wood was familiar but the creek of them felt new and off along with the stuttering of the feet of Tamlin’s throne-like chair. His desk was a mess, papers strewn about and crumpled where they laid under cups, water stains from where condensation had dripped down the side also sending the ink spreading like tendrils. He sat down heavily, dropping his body into it like it was too exhausting for his bones to hold up the rest of him. 

“Tam-” 

“Feyre-”

We had both started talking at the same time, stopping to let the other one continue until a lapsing moment of silence before I motioned him to talk first.

“Lucien had raised some issues with me about your engagement-” He coughed into his hands for a second before he ran a hand through his hair, the fingers catching on tangles that he ripped past in frustration. “And he made me aware that you had not been informed of it, at least before last night.”

He was frustrated as he brought his hand back to the edge of the desk, claws digging into the wood through a curled piece of parchment before he pulled back with another slight grimace. “It was my intent to discuss the proposal with you beforehand, but with the damage of the court making itself known I feel like I am being drawn and quartered into every village in the land. Still I should have found the time, instead of giving a letter to Ianthe describing the expectations of the marriage and the duties you will be incharge of. I thought the marriage is something you would be excited about, not opposed to- with how clear you had made it that you were not interested in me before I had sent you home, I had thought you and Lucien had grown closer on those patrols.”

He was rambling and maybe I would have found reasons to be more mad at him but I had stopped listening to the last part of his words. Ianthe, Ianthe had had a letter to tell me this, a letter never delivered in long hours forced into her company when I could not hide.

“I never got a letter.” I say the words in a blank rush, the panicking anger at the pristest boiling internally, the pressure building inside. But I could see past the cloudy haze of anger to where Tamlin gave a nod as he swallowed thickly, looking to a corner of a room with quick darts of his eyes.

“I was informed of that this morning,” He was becoming more anxious with his words and I smelled the iron tang of blood in the air as he worried the inside of his lip between sharpening teeth, the red staining the pale pink lips as he paused. “Again I would have discussed this in person with you before last night if I had been made aware, but I have also been avoidant of this place for my own reason.” 

“What-” I was going to ask for elaboration but he shook his head before handing me a sealed letter, the envelope thick with paper.

“I’ve detailed your duties there, none of them will be officially started before after the wedding, but it would be beneficiary to get accustomed to it. Lucien has also sent in a request for .” And there it was, the wedding was still on. He knew I didn’t want this but he wasn’t withdrawing his announcement.

“Tamlin.” I caught his attention with his name, firm and stronger than I had been expecting, warmed and hardened with a hot pulse under my skin. Still I had to be rational, needed to keep a foothold here to keep from the king taking the power vacuum Feyre had left before. “I would like to request some formal lessons on the dignitaries of this court and the other courts with Lucien, it would also help if he could delegate some of the simpler tasks of his to someone else. He is exhausted as it is now.”

Tamlin paused for a moment too long as he picks up a peice of paper that was more yellowed than the rest of them, the edge of the paper glinting with the faintest shimmer of gold. “I have contacted some old friends from Day court to free you from that bargain to the Night Court, do not think I’ve forgotten. But if we must travel that closer to their borders to do so it would be beneficial for you to at least know some of the courtiers and such.” He nods his head and stands, swaying slightly on his feet before he steadies with another clawed hand in that ornate chair of his. I take the dismissal and go to the door, swinging it in and holding it open for him to pass through before I follow suit, making sure I hear the door snicker shut before I continue down the hall with him.

“Once the Court has calmed I would love to play with you again.” He says as we pass the old room where we would spend hours playing over the old grand piano in there. I look at the closed door, at the dark shadows that come forth from the threshold of the room and hurry past it.

“One day.” I say before we come to a fork in the hall, one heading back towards the library and the other to the gardens. I look down the garden hall to see a small gaggle of courtiers that had been living in the Manor for the past month. They all turned and waved at Tamlin, ushering him over, and I balked, giving him a quiet goodbye as I ducked into the opposite hall, heading to the library.

I found a small room, a study for scholars that used to live here but had been left empty when many had fled from the manor when Amarantha had ransacked it. I sat onto the cushioned bench, small flurries of dust flying into the air. I just needed a moment to calm the galloping of my heart. God, just the idea of talking to so many people was daunting, terrifying for no other reason than their praise. I was afraid of the thanks, afraid that if I heard another ‘thank you,’ or ‘Mother bless you’ I would crack and scream and tell them how wrong they were, how broken and cruel I was. 

I lavished in the quiet, setting my elbows on the hard wood of the desk as I took in deep breaths. The stretch in my shoulders let my chest expand easier and I would have laid there until lunch if the door hadn’t started to open.I straightened, picking a piece of large dust from my tunic as I did so and brushed a stray section of hair from my flushed face. Ianthe’s face came into the door before the rest of her ,flowing robes a swaying mass of azure and silver where it clinked at her wrists and neck.

“Ah, Feyre, there you are.” She says it like a scolding mother, “I heard that you had gone to discuss things with Tamlin after some long hours in Lucien’s rooms.” The insinuation was clear enough that the quick crush of panic I had been working through was washed away on an icy wave that was already honing my own quips.

“I must apologize for my empty mindedness, a fortnight ago Tamlin had given me a correspondence for you.” She produces a stained and tattered envelope from somewhere in the folds of the fabrics, “I do so often get distracted when alone together that I simply forgot, and one day I hope to have a more formal role here so these things are not a regular occurance.”

Something slid into place, a fractiling piece of a puzzle that had been coming together around me and the image became clear. The closeness she sat next to him during dinners, how his hands always were tightly clenched around the silverware, why he had been avoiding me, avoidant for my own reasons he had said, why despite months of casual friendship he had not come to me in the long weeks, and how the way his steps had hurried toward the courtiers and away from the library where she often lurked in the corners like a soul sucking wraith.

Everything froze in the moment, the crinkling smile in her eyes that had the same gleam a redheaded bitch queen had looked at me with, the soft plane of her forehead where tattoos were unmarred, and hands that had a past of wandering to where they were unwelcome.I was going to be her hell and there was no god she could pray to that would spare her, not without having to snap my neck again and again. 

#acotar #fanfic #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #acotar rewrite #inkywrites #reader insert #Ianthe

[1nksta1neddesk]

Why is Peeta Melark In FNAF??

#the hunger games #peeta mellark #josh hutcherson #fnaf #fnaf movie #what if he just paints himself to escape #just blend into the 70s arcade tile and carpet #he will survive #let the girl be ruth pt 2

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Reader and Dreamers

Chapter 23: Stike the Match

The moon was high in the sky as I stared from a window deep in the library, hiding in the stacks as darkness had come down around me. A book laid in my lap, forgotten, just as many tomes had laid in the previous weeks since coming from the mountain. My eyes no longer wished to read the words and my mind denied the ability to retain the words or their meanings, leaving me stranded in the library as I took my only slice of quiet into its stacks. So now I was left staring at the sky, reading the stars instead. They yielded no secret meaning between their dots and streaks of light. 

I looked away from the stars and down to the burning candle, nestled in some high peaks of frosting on top of a small cake. The kitchen had been confused but I needed to honor her somehow. My eyes were sensitive from tears and my throat sore from keeping the emotions from disturbing the others in the library, a place that had become much more active as each day passed. I used a fork, a dessert fork Ianthe had told me the evening before last when I had apparently committed some cardinal sin for not using the right cutlery. Ianthe was occupied now, still outside in the revelries I had escaped from to have my own candied vigil into the night. I wanted to tell Rhysand of his mate, the woman who I had watched in pages and I had seen grow into a high lady, let him have the small sliver of her that I had stolen from under him. But the bond was silent, as it had been in the first weeks since the mountain entrance crumpled behind us. 

Servants still thanked me, and I stayed far away from the village restoration expeditions where I knew more hands and more mouths to give thanks to me. I didn’t want it, I wanted things to be quiet again because everything was so loud and there was a constant banging going inside of my head that only seemed to reverberate with a tolerable melody when I stared into the waning moon with new Fae eyes, let the night wind cool and soothe my irritated nerves. I rarely got those moments though, late nights becoming more and more filled with events conducted by a blonde priestess and an equally willing blond high lord. I enjoyed it now, with melting wax pooling in the grooves of frosting as the flame flickers and sputters as I run my finger through the light.

“Feyre,” The name comes as an insistent whisper just a few alcoves down from me. “Feyre, come on now.” It was Alis as she came down the rows, searching for me as I shrink back into the cushions around me. But is it too late and she has seen me as she stomps over. I blink out the flame between two pinched fingers and hold the cake close to my chest, I feel like a child being caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

“Come to bed, Ianthe has a full itinerary for you in the morning.” I fix Alis with a look and she shares the same exasperation with me as I once would have given her. “I know- trust me I know- but just appease the High Lord, he has far too much to deal with as it is.”

I lift silently from the alcove, and I see discomfort in Alis’ eyes as I rise to my feet, silent and lithe as a pure blooded fae. Everything had changed in that single night and now as I walked with Alis, my nightgown swishing around with my movements, I stood a head’s height taller than her. I let her open the doors in front of me, keeping my hands together on the cover of my book to keep from fidgeting.

Half a dozen doors had splintered or shattered under my heavy hand, not yet adjusted for inhuman strength. I found that a trend of the recent days, my body and mind not adjusting themselves to their new settings. I could no longer add the heavily scented salts and soaps to my bath without finding myself over the basin of a toilet. A whole set of silverware had bent under my fingers at this point, and I was tempted to eat with my bare fingers but when I had used my fingers to pluck up two pieces of fried potato both Tamlin and Ianthe had fixed me with such harsh glares that I did not dare violate the rule again. I was no longer allowed glass cups in my rooms or at dinner, roughhewn wooden ones given in replacement for me to nurse watered down juices.

Alis opens my chamber doors for me, guiding me in with a soft hand at my back to go to a low backed chair in front of an empty fire. She puts a cup of warm tea in my hands, and I grimace from the smell of it, taking a sip to appease her before setting it down on the nearest side table. I see the sorrow in Alis’ eyes at the movement, but she makes no comment on it, busying her hands to undo a halo braid she had put in that morning.

We spoke little, my occasional quip of how well everything seemed to be doing dying off after Alis had scolded me for empty conversation. It was the only conversation I could make though, there was nothing else I could say when someone asked how I was doing, rehearsed lines in the mirror with plaintive and honeyed smiles and crinkling the corner of my eyes.

Alis stood back from me once the golden hair fell in odd curls. I gave her a quick hug before she went wherever the servant chambers were. I was alone again, and I idly plaited the hair back from my face again, still not able to fully face it. I slid onto the bed, staying above the covers as I laid, the warmth of artificial spring having become more cloying since Tamlin had been returned to his power.

Tamlin had had quite a bit going on with the reconstruction of his court, Ianthe having come to aid with my own rehabilitation, like I was some wild animal . I had barely seen the High lord in the weeks we had returned outside of the nightly dinners, and even then there were many nights he was out in some town. The instruments that laid in a corner of the library and of my room were developing a coat of dust but my fingers flinched away each time I went to pick one up. Lucien was occupied with the paperwork of the court and was frequently left reading over curling parchment at the dinner table, ink staining his hands as he wrote fervently. 

It had left me alone to hold a conversation with Ianthe, which mostly had me agreeing to any plans she had already put in the schedule of the next day. Just as today, I had agreed to go dress fitting after she said something of the distaste of a High Lord’ associate to dress in worn pants and crinkled cotton shirts. I had taken back to running around the manor as I had before, but that had stopped last week when Tamlin had come back from some mission to see me. I had not even been able to start sweating, fae stamina was horrifying and I had just wanted to feel the burn of muscles again, when he had started ranting about presenting a united front to his people and that my ‘training’ was in direct opposition to that.

It was making me stir crazy, and with the inability to escape into foreign worlds, I was festering. The hollow in my heart was festering like my flesh had when I was mortal, I wanted to fill it with something, pack the wound to let it heal but nothing fit. Not floating into the kitchens to chop vegetables silently as the staff moved around me, only occasionally taking and giving new plants to chop or dishes to wash. Not sitting with the stable boys and picking clean the horses' hooves after long rides, or bottle feeding a brindle foal- the new mother having been too spooked by its movements to allow it to drink.

  I stared into the dark, willing shadows to bend in my mind's eye and translate to the deep dark around me. They did not yield to me, instead nipping at my fingers as I traced silken sheets. I had been trying to play with magic that had to lay inside of my newly formed veins, but none of it answered my call and it left me thrashing and angry and it felt good to be frustrated in a cold ocean of indifference.

I did need sleep, though, and I closed my eyes, needed the sleep for sanity not to put a steak knife through Ianthe’s hand if she tried to coax me into her vision of a human-made-fae. The warmth of letting consciousness trickle away welcomed me along with the smell of hot metal. I jolted, shifting to a spot of bed my body had not yet warmed to run from the nightmares that awaited me. Still they taunted me at the edge of my mind, the promise of their show daunting me and I rolled over to my other side.

When I did find sleep red spilled around me, bright and tinged with gold as I thrashed around in it. It was not blood, not even liquid, as strands of hair wrapped around my arms and legs and constricted, slicing the flesh until my blood had mixed with it. Smoke was in my nose and I was choking as Amarantha crawled on top of me and her eyes bore down into me as she grinned like a panther. Her hair flowed down around us and I realized it was her stands that were cutting into my skin. 

I was screaming as she drug the ash dagger down my skin, blood pilling up from my skin where the edge scraped along. My breastbone bloomed with red and it flowed down the sides of my ribs and I felt the hair under me stick to my skin with the help of the sticky liquid. The scent of my blood was replaced with something more noxious and I was in the dark, skin raw and scrapped against rough stone. The blare of a siren was down the street and I was suddenly in a new vision angle, there was a chime from a convenience store door I was leaving. A plastic bag crinkles in my hand as I tighten the grip, fluorescent light casting the street in a soft glow as I see a mass on the side of the road, a few feet off from a crosswalk. 

I walk past the form, ignoring the scent of carrion as I make it to the cross walk. There is music in my ears, scratching at a soft and comfortable part of me. There is a vibration from the phone in my pocket and I check it as I cross, a notification of a message from my father. I shut off the phone and put it back in the pocket. A horn blares to my right and I look up, light blinding me before a mass hits me. When I can feel again pain is radiating from each part of me and I am at the same first angle, staring at a street light that blots out the stars.

The cycle repeats and repeats and repeats and I am left to see myself become the mass on the side of the road.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

The week has been hectic, the staff moving in flurries as they prepare for some banquet Tamin has called for the aristocrats of the Spring Court. The kitchens turned me away and I was left to wander the halls before Ianthe swept me to my rooms. Tamlin was holed up in his study and I could barely hear the exchange of shouts behind the heavy door as we passed. Lucien had gone in there this morning after we had a quiet morning breakfast over some tea and I had not seen him since.

“Oh, come along now, we must get you into an appropriate dress.” Ianthe tittled by my ear as she dragged me along, not heeding to the sounds of shouts as she half shoved me into my rooms. She quickly sent me with two servants to wash up with some comment of me smelling like a puca. I heard her rustling in my room as I was placed into a bath. 

I have grown able to control my stomach against the heavy smell of bath salts but it still has my stomach clenching as I let them scrub my skin of the grime of the day. Thin fingers scrape my scalp as they work a rose scented shampoo through it. I am roughly handled by Ianthe’s servants as they clean and dry me, rubbing me down with perfumed oil that left me feeling dirtier than at the start of the bath. Ianthe came in with a dress, full skirt and billowing sleeves that distorted my senses even more as I was put into it.

My hair was done up in tight braids, straining my skin before I was done up in makeup. Through the entire process I did not resist, only the occasional jerk against Ianthe’s sharp nails as she maneuvered me. Though I knew I should hate her, and should probably kill her now before she was able to cause any damage, I could not find the energy to do much more than let my ire seam into my mental walls that I had been keeping up. The venomous thoughts served to reinforce the stone that had blackened and melded together.

I was escorted with Ianthe just ahead of me, robes of pale blue splaying behind her as I followed. The dress itched at my skin, the sleeves having been made of lace to disguise my swirling bargain, the bargain that has been terrifyingly silent for the two months since I had killed Amarantha. It was a sunny yellow that washed out my skin and tight slippers were already digging into my feet as we walked to a ballroom.

The ceilings were high and the floor swelled with the writhing of bodies, courtiers, ladies, and lords all mixing as bright music sung through the air. There were tall windows that revealed the setting sun, sky stained orange and burgundy and petal pink from behind glittering glass. I see Tamlin now, sitting in a throne at the front of the room and my heart races, eyes recalling a different room with no windows and another throne of stone. But he smiles at me as he stands and I am ushered to one of the two chairs that sits just next to the throne with its green twigs sprouting from under an arm rest and its clawed feet having roots that dive into the smooth marble floor.

He takes me into a warm hug with a laugh as I return it softly before he pulls back, “Sweet Feyre, I am so glad you were able to make it tonight. And I see Ianthe has dressed you to be as sweet as honey.” He shoots a glance to the priestess above my shoulder and I can feel her preen from here. I take a step back as the hug ends and I see nothing of the emissary, assuming Lucien has been lost to the crowd. 

“Of course, Tamlin, I would not miss this for the world.” The words fall easily from my lips, the right words, and it's not like I had much choice in being here. Still the niceties are common and effortless as I slide into the role I know he wishes to see me as. The victor of the lands, who fought for his and the rest of Prythian’s freedom and has come to reside peacefully in his manor once again. 

I take my seat, the farther chair from the throne, as the party continues on around me and I feel a sudden dropping in my gut and I am observing, removed from the crowd entirely as I watch. There is something haunting about no longer being an active participant in the room as I see Tamlin laugh with some stone skinned woman, her hair drooping mass of moss and lichen sprawling over the gray skin. Perhaps it is minutes or hours that flicker by as I nestle into my observatory. The windows grew dark until it was black outside and the flicker of fire lighting the room from burning candles made the glass shine like it had just been poured from a crucible.  

Lucien comes from the crowd, his face twisted in an odd expression, his brows furrowed and his eyes darting everywhere around me. Tamlin rises from his throne and the crowd goes silent, the movements of skirts and coattails coming to an end. I stand next to Lucien,I notice heavy bags have formed under his eyes and I let my knuckles brush against his in reassurance. His hand retracts from mine to cross with his other one in front of his body, I follow the same motion as Tamlin addresses the crowd.

“Two months has passed since we have been released from the curse” He says in a booming voice, pausing for a moment to allow the crowd to cheer, “And to celebrate the tremendous occasion I have pushed back the Tithe till the new year, let the land and it’s people heal and come together until tradition can yet be reinstated.” He paused before flourishing a hand towards us and Lucien stepped forward. “To help usher in the new beginnings of the Spring Court, I am here to announce the engagement of Feyre Archeron, our Liberator, and my faithful Emissary, Lucien Vanserra. The ceremony will be held under the new moon of next month, and I pray that all of you can attend.” With that he sat back down in his throne looking rather satisfied as he looked to Lucien.

I am still observing and I am afraid to come back to myself, to have to think about the words. Lucien still did not look at me, not because of formalities of the court but because he had been shameful. My stomach is in knots but I get through the night, watching the revelries around me as the party continues. Many faces of fae come up to me with congratulations and I am not sure what I say as I drink from heavy goblets of wine and flutes of champagne.

As the party winds down I am snapped back into myself and the night crushes down on me, thoughts blurring with the alcohol in my blood. I was disgusted and could not stop myself from fleeing from my spot, heading towards a servant's door that was closest to me. I bumped into a servant girl with a new tray of champagne flutes as I went and I heard Lucien apologize to her as he follows after me.

I can’t breathe, I can’t think as I go through the narrow walkway, ducking into another side passage that lets out into the hallway. There are a few trickling nobility in the halls, some glancing at me as I made my way to the nearest room I can think of with a semblance of privacy. I see the doorway of the infirmary and duck into it quickly, the fae lights on the wall staying dark as I hurl into the basin of the sink.

I am washing my mouth out with stale water in the faucet when I see the door open from the corner of my eye. Lucien slipped into the room with a deep set frown on his face. I send a glare at him before I pull away from the sink, sitting on the dusty bed in the infirmary. There was a thin coat of dust coating everything in here and it was obvious the staff had forgotten to clean it in the months since I had bandaged up Tamlin. 

Lucien sat next to me with his head hung low, hands folded in his lap as he opened his mouth and shut it again, repeatedly like a fish gasping on land. “I am sorry Feyre, I should have told you before the ball. That's not an announcement someone should learn about in front of others.”  

My skin itches and I resist scratching at my arm through the sleeves as I swallow a knot that had formed in my throat. “I don’t want to marry you, Lucien. You are a brother, not a lover.” The words claw out my throat, coated in fear that I want to wash away to the hot anger under my skin. He hums his response as he thinks some more, I see the gears in his brain whirring while his golden eye spins in place.

“I know, I know. Tamlin wanted to show everyone that the court has grown past Amarantha, and he knows you wouldn’t marry him. I tried telling him that this isn’t the way to do it but he wouldn’t hear me.” Lucien’s voice cracked as he reached a hand out to mine, squeezing my fingers as he moved in front of me to look into my teary eyes. I don’t know when I started crying, the fury over flowing from myself and I want to staunch it at its source. “I am so sorry, there was nothing I could do. I’ve known him for nearly 5 centuries and I-” He is about to start a sentence and I remember his executed lover but he regains his voice a moment later ,“ I never thought I would marry. But though it might not be a marriage of love I do not think it would be so bad to at least put up a front for a couple years.” 

Something burns in me and it consumes me so wholly I smell smoke as I rise from the bed, shoving Lucien away. “No-no, no!” I’m screaming it as I back up, running into the work bench, my hands bracing against it. The dam that I had been hiding behind was giving away and thoughts were pouring from loose lips, “Lucien, no. I am not going to become a figurehead for Tamlin’s shows of peace. Fuck, Lucien, things aren’t okay. Do you think Amarantha is the end of it? She was one general, one, from Hybern. Use your damned head, I know you know how, and see that things are not over in the slightest. Do you think that us having a ceremony is going to change that? It is a distraction for the hell readying against the world on the other side of the ocean.” My breathing had turned heavy and sweat was beading along my brow, anger burning me from the inside out, charring away the empty and filling it with that blood boiling rage that made me feel warm.

It was so good to feel again that I did not care that I was yelling at Lucien, not as he already looked cowed and his eye was shining with fear in the fire light. “A party and a wedding is not the solution when there is a King ready to slaughter and enslave my race. Please Lucien, make Tamlin call it off. Neither of us want this, a political play like this will not end well.” No matter how good it felt my voice was cracking as tears of anger rose to my eyes. I tried in vain to blink them away before they fell down my face.

There is silence, only filled by my panting and I still smell smoke, acrid and tangy as I heave. Lucien’s eyes aren’t looking at me in their shock, they are darting between the bed I had just risen from and to my hands. A light that should not be in the room flickers out as I look down to my hands, the last bits of embers floating down from my burnt cuffs. There are two distinct hand prints charred into the wood; and the cotton where my hands had gripped before I had risen were crumbling ash now. The smoke was not my mind supplying me with a new sense but actual smoke that was rising from where my hands touched.

Black ash smeared on my dress as I quickly batted my hands against the puffy skirts. The ink of skin had disguised the burned sleeves soot but now gave way, staining the bright yellow. My thoughts have gone quiet, silencing themselves as I am left in the moment, Lucien still staring at me through the dark. 

“Th- Has that happened before?” His voice is unsure as his words double over themself, his limbs rigid as he slowly rises to come up next to me. I was looking at my hands, where soot still remained under the edges of my fingernails as I shook my head slowly. A different heat was building in my chest though, pushing away fear as I matched Lucien’s gaze.

I squealed as I ran to him, taking him into a hug and spinning him around as I did so. Rage had turned to bubbling ecstasy that I never wanted to leave, it felt like getting drunk on solstice wine and I loved its warmth. He was taken aback for a moment before he stopped my spinning and I hadn’t realized I had lifted him from the ground until I had to lower him to the ground. I had been expecting nothing in the back of my mind, a tantalizing thought if I was different from Feyre and the mother had seen to deem me unworthy of the coiling energy in the center of my chest that tugged at me. But I was wrong and heat was thawing my veins and allowing a heavy pulse to push through what I had thought dead and withered. It was a rush, a falling into the sky where I was weightless and had nothing binding my mind, I was drugged on power and I never wanted to let it fade.

“Feyre- oh by the mother, Feyre.” He said with such grief it struck my joy upside its head and it evaporated from my heart. My anger rushed back in like a tide as he took my shoulder’s in his hands and I remembered the anger I had just been feeling at him, at his weak constitution against Tamlin. “We have to tell Tamlin, this changes so much Feyre. You are a target for the other high lor-”

“No” The word is harsh as I cut him off. For once I did not want him to tell each and every one of my secrets to Tamlin. I hadn’t told him of Tamlin coming to the closet under the mountain but I am sure he would have seen the commotion and- my bones are aching at any memory of the courtroom and who I had been with. I was a fallen angel from the sky and my words were venom dripping from serpent fangs, “I am done with being the trophy of the spring court. I won, Lucien. Not him or you, but me. I am the one that died and I damn sure do not want it to happen again so you will keep your mouth shut to Tamlin about this and you will teach me how to control this.” I steady my breathing and I am about to rub my hand over my face but think better of it. “I can pretend for a little while, but you will find a way to call this wedding off and I will find a way to control this is.” 

I leave him with my command before I walk out of the storage room, snagging a towel to drape over my arms and hide the burned chiffon and soot stains as I smile and nod to the servants I pass and the nobility that cut hungry eyes at me. I was in my head and did not see the trailing stares, not as I think of where I was willing to compromise and how I could change my life yet again.

My room is a welcome reprieve as I slam the door behind me and I wince against the shake of the door frame. I felt exhausted and drained of life as I looked in the moon washed room. The yellow dress was even more of an affront in the silver light than it had been when I had first gotten dressed. I sighed as I started to undo the laces at the back of it, at least with the engagement it would keep Lucien from Ianthe’s hands but it also removed the barrier that had stood in the way of Ianthe becoming a high lord consort. I worried the skin of my lip between my teeth as I chucked the puffy monstrosity into the corner of the room and returned to the bathing chamber. A tub of warm water always waited for me there and I slid into it easily.

There were no bubbles or salts in this one, just a few stray rose petals that scurried from my hand as I traced a finger along the water surface. The ash made the water gray and my eyelids were being drug down my face. A reverberating wrench of yearning hit my heart. I wanted things to be easy, I wanted to lay down and have a night where tears and pleas did not mar my face from nightmares or the overwhelming waves of cruel, wicked, poisonous emotions that filled me. I wanted to return to the early days of joking in spring meadows over a bottle of sparkling wine, of getting high off my rocker with witchberries. I wanted anything else than these high crests of emotion that left me hollow and ruined when they chased away to another shore.

An evil tide, those emotions were. My face was hot with tears and I wiped them away as I took to using a rough brush to scrub the soot from my nails and hands. I wanted to go home, it had been so close, and the door to it had been slammed into my face and I wanted nothing more than to rot into my bed and never come back to. But that was selfish and I could not be selfish when the sisters across the wall didn’t know their sister had truly died and the imposter was forever left wearing her skin like a cheap costume. Not when power that licked in my veins seemed to rejoice at the vile emotions that flowed with it. 

I drag myself to the cold bed with a fluffy robe around me, too tired to dig through the closet and find a nightgown as I collapse into it. I give an empty tug down the bargain with Rhys, he had missed coming to cash in our bargain twice but I knew it had taken 3 months to recover before. That had been with him reeling from the mating bond with Feyre and rebelling Illyrian camps. My head hurt and I decided to leave thinking to be an issue for me another day.

Sleep beckoned with its razor tipped hands that I was forced to take, drifting off easily to another night of terrors I knew would find me. Hopefully I would sleep through them, perhaps the dreams would be an empty expanse of dark sleep. Those nights were becoming rarer and I hoped honing the magic would exhaust me to dreamless sleeps like I had before.

That was a sweet thought, and I savored the potential promise as I faded into the night sky that danced just past my eyelids.

#acotar #fanfic #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #inkywrites #acotar rewrite #reader insert #rhysand #rhys acotar

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Readers and Ruins

Chapter 22: Round the Corner

I had been swarmed by the court faeries the moment I had stopped screaming and writhing on the floor. Tamlin had held me and brought me to my feet to embrace me, whispering reassurances that this was the only way to save me. I sobbed when he said that, readjusting to long ethereal limbs that had no strain of my mortal muscles. My empty eyes and despondent nods to the fae that gave their gratitude with bent heads and praying hands had eventually keyed him in to guide me to a room far in the catacombs of the mountain.   

I was put into a bedroom while the High lords convened for their meetings, taking the rare moment where they were all gathered in neutral territory to discuss old and new treaties. I had been alone for hours, watching notes from the other fae slip under my door as they each knocked and whispered a mix of prayers and thanks. I couldn’t move from my place on the bed, laying hollow on the plush comforter and staring at the wall. My throat was raw and my face was wet from the occasional rasping sob that would work its way up through me.

My new pointed ears picked up each wisp of cloth down the hall as faeries moved between rooms, many going to find a place to stay for the night. Each brush of air chaffed along my skin, some remaining wounds having stitched themselves up with new fae healing. I was lost on a sea of heady thoughts, ankles heavy with lead weights that dragged me deeper and deeper down till the candle light of the chambers was gone from my sight and I was staring at my cell walls. I felt so cold, frozen so deep to the bone my skin did not even dare turn to goose-bumps. The taste of lingering iron was on my tongue, a comingling of mine and a dead woman’s blood.

The door creaked open and I flinched away from the sound, pushing the side of my head deeper into the cushion of a pillow. I smelled chestnuts and lemon verbena as the air shifted around me and a warm weight settled next to my feet, dipping the bed slightly. I did not have to shift my head to know Lucien was there, rubbing his palms into his eyes. Still I sat up, the movement sending new senses racing up my skin like the hot sluggish movements one would make when they were sick as a child. 

Lucien’s mask was gone, a tan line of the offending piece of metal left in its place. Everyone was pale from months under here so it wasn’t as noticeable as it would have been in the spring sun, but there is a different wane to skin that has not seen light in 50 years and that of a few months.

“How are you doing?” He says it with exhaustion soaking every word, no doubt having to deal with the court proceedings having taken its toll on him and any other emissary. 

“Tired.” Is all I say, all I can say without dragging him down into the waters of my mind with me. I was exhausted, so utterly tired I had drifted to the madness that kept one awake. He hummed an agreement to me in answer and we stayed like that for a long while. Though my mind wouldn’t quiet, the best I could do was to let my body rest, unmoving as we both sat.

“Do you want to talk about…it?” The words are staggered, uncertain, like a hand being offered to a feral dog to sniff. I shake my head, there was so much I could scream if I wanted but I didn’t want to. I wanted to remain quiet and still and fade into the dark. This was the exact opposite of the confounding panic when I had died before. Because I had died before all this, had come to that rationalization in the hours I laid here. There were moments across the years I had considered there was no return, but having died again there was no denying the same falling sensation that had accompanied death, the same inky dark that beconed to ones aching and tired soul. Twice I had been promised that easy drift and twice I had been denied, twice I found I could not blame anyone but myself for hoping.

He sighed, “Okay, sleep. Tamlin is still in some meetings but said he would be down here before we leave, he needs to talk to you about things. We should be here for only a little bit longer, but with all the high lords it takes so long to maneuver around each other's schemes-” He broke his ranting with another sigh before he patted my leg, what should have been a soothing gesture feeling like rubbing salt in a raw scrape. “Just sleep well, Feyre, we owe you more than can ever be repaid.” 

I flinched away from the name, my whole body twitching in repulsion. The movement blended with his rising from the bed though as I watched him go to the door. He paused with his hand on the brass door knob, like he wanted to say something more but thought better of it as he opened the door and left. The clicking of the latch falling back into its latch sounded thunderous and I cursed everything.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

I did find sleep eventually, short bursts that I threw myself from as the smell of iron and hot metal would fill my nose. During a waking moment between two nightmare clips, where I was soaking in a tub of water in the attached bathing chamber to subside the shaking sweats that had overtaken me, a tug at my center. I ignored it the first time, trying to keep down nausea as I slipped down to my nose in the tub. Still the tugging did not stop and I was forced to follow it.

I sloshed from the water, wiping down with a towel before I put on a simple robe, tying it tight as I stumbled through the halls. I felt like a newly born fawn stumbling through a forest of cold stone walls. I followed the tug, incessant like a dog pulling on its lead. My vision was so bleary with half sleep I did not register the sun for half a moment as I made my way up a narrow, winding staircase. 

I saw him in the negative space of soft, late morning light as I found my way to the balcony he stood at. He leaned against the stone banister as I squinted at him, resisting the watering of my eyes to stare at him with new eyes. I was no doubt scowling, marring a newly given immortal beauty that was not mine to cherish, and he huffed at me as he turned. He let out a silky low laugh like he had not been the one tof summon me from my rest.

“I forgot that it’s been a while for you.” He said as he beckoned me over with a hand before he turned back to face the open air. My eyes had adjusted just barely and I was able to look at the scene in front of us.

It was beautiful, wicked and venomously beautiful from our spot on a barren rock face. Tall peaks of snow capped mountains glistened in the distance, and at this distance a soft haze blurred the edges of them, mixing shimmering white with the deep evergreen woods that rested at the roots of the distant mountains. And with him at the center of my vision, him, resting against twisting stone as heavy wings sat at his back. They were spread ever so slightly, rusting in an autumn kissed wind that rushed up the side of the rock. The talons at the apex of each caught the light. The membranes were cast in carmine and gold, so full of life and looking so warm where they rustled that I wanted to trace a finger along the lines of bone and sinew.

I kept my hands to myself, though, as I came to stand next to him, settling my own weight on the same stone banister. The wind rustled the hair at my shoulders, still damp from the bath, and I took a deep breath. The crispness of air promised delicate snow pacts and I was reminded how quickly this had all moved, how quickly I had been prepared for it to be over.

“Why aren’t you gone yet?” The words come out before I mean them too, before I can refine them into something not so abrasive. He looks at me sharply from the corner of his eye as I stare up at him.

“You are always so grateful anytime I try and do something kind. Can we not just have a goodbye like civilized folk?” He says as a gust of wind lifts his hair up from his face. His shadows go skittering along with them, much more prevalent than before and I consider that maybe he was taking the time to readjust to his powers, to having to burn off the excess to keep himself from madness.

“With our little custody agreement, this is hardly a good bye Rhys.” It's so easy to fall into banter, lean on it like a crutch and let it keep me from collapsing into another fit of sobs. The scent of sea salt and citrus soothes my nerves a tad and I resist leaning into Rhysand. “And I am sure that you would much rather be anywhere else than here.” 

That same breathy laugh, “I fear that is true, no matter what waits for me when I get back to my lands.” Some part of me pangs in achy pain, like a chime being rung with my bones. I don’t know what awaits me, especially not if I follow Tamlin back to Spring or find some other court to take me in, I have nowhere to fit now. Every court has an empty piece in their puzzle that needs to be filled after Amarantha, but I cannot see myself fitting into any of them.

For a moment I consider asking Rhys to take me back with him, but I can’t burden him with that when he should be getting back to his family, back to his normal. I am sure they would accommodate, but that is not what I want, I do not want to be a burden to be accommodated for. I wish I had trickled off into that darkness, where it was easy and my misshapen place in all of this was simple and inconsequential like a snowflake melting as it meets the ground.

“Thank you.” I say and I’ve thrown higher order thinking over the banister we lean upon, mind no longer willing to put in the effort to stop words. “For all of it, for making it bearable.” The air on the balcony had grown thick and I wish to flee from it, perhaps throw myself with my thinking over the banister to escape it. Anxiety finds the empty echo chamber in me and rattles around in there.

“It was the least I could do.” He says, “I know how I will be painted in the legends, the cruel high lord parading around a drugged mortal in the belly of a mountain. I just wanted to do something redeemable, something that my children can look upon and know that I was there and fought against her in the end, even if it was useless.” 

“It wasn’t useless,” the words don't sound as convincing as I wish they would, “You distracted her enough for me to stab her again, and gave me the time to answer her riddle.”

He doesn’t let us brew on it though, moving to the next topic to dodge the weight pressing down on both our shoulders. “How does it feel? Being High Fae?”

I grimace, running my thumb along the thin skin of my ring finger, “Weird.” It’s the closest word I can give him without sounding like a loon, “You ever woken up in the morning and touch the cold floor? It's like that but my whole body, all the time, forever.” He laughs and I don’t find my eternal discomfort all that funny. I sigh before I pull back from the balcony, running my hand down his arm in a goodbye before starting my way back down to my rooms. “Go home, Rhys, I’m sure you have people waiting for you.” 

I had just taken the first step down from the balcony when I felt that harsh tug on the bargain again. I turned back to the balcony, exhausted and irritated that he would not let me slip away quietly. But there was a beat of wind before I could turn fully and by the time I was facing the sky again he was gone. Skirting shadows scurry past my ankles, finding sanctuary in the cold stone as I make my way back down to my room.

When I get there I see the door ajar and I am just able to see the toe of a boot at the edge of my bed. I push the door open, careful of the creek of its hinges as I slide into my room, looking at my visitor. Tamlin is asleep on my bed, legs hanging off the end of it while his arms are sprawled out around him. His hair has a new cast of gold to it, silken like corn husk as it casts a halo around him. His face is relaxed and he looks younger even as immortality would keep him from aging at all, pale skin where the mask had rested before.

I let him rest as I went back into the bathroom to my bath that had grown even colder in the time I had been gone. I unplug it and watch the water swirl down the drain, my eyes hazing as I resist the tears blooming there. I wipe them away with the sleeve of my robe as I find some simple clothes. In a dresser drawer there is a rumpled collection of tweed and cotton fabrics and when I pulled them out a plume of dust bunnies fell with them.

When I do get dressed they hang loosely from me and with the new length to my limbs the pants rest above my ankles. When I pad back into my room Tamlin is still conked out on the bed, one arm having shifted to lay over his eyes. I sit lightly on the bed next to him and nudge his leg and he startles away, snorting away sleep as he straightens.

He groans as he raises himself, wiping a drying line of drool from the side of his face. I look at him blankly as I shift my weight against one of the posts of the bed.

“Oh Feyre,” Tamlin is clearing up from sleep. “I was going to talk to you about something, but it can wait till we are home and you are rested.” His eyes dragged over my form, crumpled in on itself as I slouched. I gave him a small nod, my eyelids becoming heavy as I blinked at him.

“I am so thankful for you Feyre, everyone is. Whatever I can do to repay what you gave, I will d0, just tell me.” He says it as he rises, leaving me in the bed. “We are leaving at noon, I have a few last things to do with the other High Lords but use this time to rest. I will have some food sent in for you, I know you must be famished.” He walks towards the door after I hum an affirmative. I am so damn tired that I am not sure I could have had a conversation at all. 

I wanted to sleep and forget for a little while, so I lay down and closed my eyes. The shadows sweep in quickly and I fall into the first restful hours of sleep I’ve had in months.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

I stood abreast with Tamlin at the mouth of the cave that Alis had left me at. The rest of the courts had left early in the morning, collapsing the tunnels to their courts as they trickles out. That had left the Spring court to be the last ones to leave, letting me have precious hours of sleep that had let my bones settle into my skin. Still the only feeling I had in my chest was like a ringing glass, empty and reverberating. 

The moment this last tunnel was collapsed the holy mountain would be closed off for eternity, or untill the future generations took time to dig through the rotted rubble of their histories. I would never return to the depth of its belly again, and it felt like a loss. The mountain had bore its witness to each of my moments, it was the last of my mortality I was afraid to lose again. But it was not my decision, and far to many people agreed to the forgetting of the winding halls hewn from artistry that had been painted with blood for me to contest with.

Amarantha’s body had been burned in the time I was in my room, Jurian’s eye and finger bone having gone missing with the Attor. The missing pieces of the man seem to bother Tamlin more than I, but I can’t fault him for that. 

So now I stood with Tamlin as the very last of the court trickled from its mouth. Tamlin waved his hand and the rock fell behind us, dust kicking up from the cold gray stone. I blinked against the dust that plumed before Tamlin took my elbow in his and guided us through the dark.

Buttery yellow sunlight spilled from the edge of the small tunnel I had used as we approached it. I tightened my arm against his as we stepped into the open air and I saw Lucien resting on log to the side but I was enraptured by the cerulean sky that yawned above me. I feel small again and I want to crush down and fall into the world like a grain of sand in a vast desert.

Spring air brushed at my face and I took in a deep breath heavy with the scent of wild flowers and soft rain. I hadn’t expected to ever see this sky again and though I should feel joy it hits me with another twinge of longing for where I thought I should be. Things are wrong but I can’t very well say that, not as I start walking to the 3 saddled horses waiting for us. Tamlin separates from me and gets onto his horse while Lucien comes forward to me, helping me navigate lifting myself up with new limbs and strength. 

We start over the hills and I am left breathless as the endless sea of green I had never truly appreciated for its richness yields to the long legs of our steeds. Lucien falls back next to me and smiles at me with unbridled joy as his skin shines with the sun. Life has returned to burn in his golden eyes as sun washes over him and if I was more respectable I might tell him of his paternity. But I am shameful and feel no guilt as we ride on, him pulling in closer to where our knees nearly brush. 

The peace lets the hollowness in me grow less prominent, no ringing of wrong through my heart as we approach Rose Manor. The tall walls of brackets have returned with lush green leaves and the gate sits upon its hinges once again. Shrieking cherubic laugher comes from the garden walls as we pull in closer and I see the sentinels back knocking shoulder to shoulder as they move past the stables where horses neigh and I see a wobbly legged foal shake its mane next to its mother in the pasture. 

Life is back here again, more than I had ever seen in the months I had lived in its walls. Now it felt foreign and I was simply an observer. I see two heads of blond hair bob over a low garden wall and I can’t resist my smiling as I see Alis follow behind them. I would be able to beg for her forgiveness then, and maybe I could fill this void with days of play for the sake of the boys and the innocence I tainted in them.

We come to a stop before the marble steps of the manor and Lucien guides me down from the horse. Tamlin awaits both of us as we approach and I take both of their hands in mine, squeezing them slightly. I see Lucien wince slightly and loosen the grip quickly.

Tamlin squeezes back though as he speaks, “Welcome home”. Tears shine in his eyes as we all take a step forward.

#acotar #fanfic #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #acotar rewrite #inkywrites #reader insert #rhysand #lucien vanserra #lucien friendship #We lived yall

[1nksta1neddesk]

Yall i just finished The folk of air series (well the first 3 books but yk) and i can say through the entire thing I am deeply in love with Cardan and constantly yelling at jude. i think maybe i am a little bit insane but i also think a 17 yr old raise in faery should have some critical thinking and patter recognition skill

#the cruel prince #the queen of nothing #the wicked king #cardan greenbriar #i love him your honor #jude makes me so mad #all the damn time

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Readers and Dreamers

Chapter 21: End of Days

I couldn’t fall into my usual fitful sleep, the usual wine that subsides my anxiety gone. Hours had to have passed with me finding warmth in the wools and furs of blankets as I stared blankly into the dark. I missed the easy access to music that used to lull me to sleep, maybe I shouldn’t have cursed out Rhysand for his sending of music to me.

I heard the clicks of his shoes against the stone before he slipped into my cell, Rhysand slumping against the wall as he ran his hand through already tousled hair. His tunic was unbuttoned and ivory skin shone through as his chest heaved, sliding down to rest against the floor. I sat up, pulling blankets with me to open a free space on the bed. Still he stayed on the floor even with an offered seat next to me.

We sat in silence for painful minutes, well painful for me as he seemed to need the wide expanse of time to let the iron set of his shoulders fall. His head was tilted back against the stone now as he let out easy breaths, and I thought for a moment he had fallen asleep and was prepared to drape one of the blankets over him before he shifted, dropping his head into his hands to rub at the temples. 

“Damned bitch is running me ragged,” he groaned out as his knees fell apart from each other, “You hate me, but imagine how you’d feel if I made you serve in my bedroom. I’m High Lord of the Night Court—not her damned harlot.” Disgust boiled the simmering rage, I was so ready to tear her throat out if only I could get some sleep. 

“You won’t have to deal with her much longer.” I say quietly , “Tomorrow it will all be set right.” My head pangs with pain as I blink, my eyes having gone dry as I stared at him. My vision blurred for a moment and when I blinked back rising tears I saw him looking at me from below long lashes.

“This is all so fucked,” Rhysand says and I let out a huffing laugh, I think it was the first time I had heard him use such a human curse. “I’m here, in a cell, talking to our one hope for freedom or condemnation and she is the only one I can talk to without risking everything.” His voice goes wiry on the last word and I know he is thinking of Velaris, of his family he had trapped there for the past 50 years.

The silence returns and this time it is me who breaks it, “What are you going to do after she’s gone?” Tiredness was starting to fuzz my brain and I leaned back against the wall, still keeping the blankets close to my body. Maybe I should request a last meal, some pasta would be divine after the months of soups and bread and cold meat. Is this what criminals back home felt like on their execution day? The peaceful fear and roiling anger?

“How about we worry about that after? Hm?” He teased and I ran a tongue over my teeth, where I could still feel the reverberation of our mouths colliding. We, he had said, like we would both see the sun again. I smiled at the thought, exhaustion painting a picture of snow kissed autumn winds as he soared to the house of wind. I hoped he enjoyed flying again after this, that taking to the air would be the first freedom he would give himself.

“Do you think he would fight for me?” I say and I know he knows I mean Tamlin, the blond highlord that has done little more than look at me during trials and completely ignoring me otherwise. I would have considered him a friend, hours of both of our fingers bleeding on strings of instruments bonding us in some way. Really I had intended for him to pull me into that closet at the party tonight, not Lucien. I wanted to use the time to warn Tamlin of Hybern, of Ianthe, if only to spare the citizens of Spring and the borders of Summer that would be ravished by the armies. Now those papers sitting in my dresser drawer were rotting away, the weeks of preparation going with them if I didn’t tell Rhysand about them.

Rhysand didn’t answer my question, rather answered around it, “You should have felt how angry he was when we revealed our little bargain, it was near palpable that first night. Thought he was going to try and gut me for a long while after it as well.” 

I laugh fully at the ashen face he sends to me, like he had been deeply worried that Tam’s claws would be turned on him. “Luckily for you, all your powers should be fully yours come tomorrow. If I make it” I add the last part as an after thought, not even fully aware I had let it slip by my lips. Really no matter what happened between now and then my plan wouldn’t falter. Best case scenario had Feyre coming back to her body, worst case left no Feyre behind and instead left a human girl’s corpse with the fae to deal with. Either way I would be long gone from this world come the next night, the after didn’t really matter all that much.

“You need to make it, Feyre.” He says harshly. “You need to.” 

I shake my head, “We both know that even if I complete her tasks she’ll kill me. I knew I wasn’t going to get to leave the moment I set foot here, you knew it too, everyone did.” This time I am the one pressing my head against the stones, communication should not take this much effort.

But he is silent again and I take the silence to play my last card up my sleeve with him. “At home, in the cottage I was in with my sisters before all this mess, I wrote some things and put them in my drawer. After all of this go there, for me at least, and read the things I wrote.” I stare up at the wet stones, the fire light glinting off them like flickering comets. 

“Why?” The word hangs in the air, heavy like a shoe waiting to drop. 

“Maybe I want someone to remember me, but its my own way to help with what comes after.” That was my regret from my past life, there had been effectively nothing left of me there when I had- well that doesn’t really matter now does it?

“How will I know which drawer is yours?” 

“You’ll know.” Sleep was finally beaconing for me, tantalizing hands weighing down my eyelids. I heard Rhysand rise from his spot, felt in the shift in the air I was slowly learning accompanied his shadow travel. “Sleep well, Rhys.” I say with a yawn and am sliding down the cot to nestle into the blankets, dense and warm as I fall asleep. I am wrapped in the fog of sleep as I hear him murmur something in return. Then he is gone and I hadn’t noticed the warmth he had added as the room feels cold once again.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

My trousers and tunic were returned to me in the early hours of morning, or what felt like morning, the ones that were taken by Nuala and Cerridwen that first night of parties. The other ones were filthy taters in the corner of my cell, rotting and stinking so much I had not touched them after the trial. It felt nice to be back in my clothes, to have boots cushion my feet against the stone as my guards brought me up to the throne room.

The doors open under the hands of two white eyed faeries, hair of deep inky blue spilling over their shoulders as the wood yielded under them. I had never noticed them before, the two of them silent sentinels that must have witnessed my drunk stumbling each night. But they were silent, just as the rest of the courtroom as the sound of grinding stones echoed through the chamber.

Everyone watched me, but not in the same wicked way of stands full of men betting on a race horse as they had in the previous trials. Not anymore, not when they were close to freedom and I was the one that could bestow it upon them. No flashes of gold passed hands in bets, in exchange many hands were brought to lips or chests as they prayed to nameless deities. The only gold that shown through the crowd was that of the masked spring court, their eyes especially piercing as they traced each breath I took. Many of the spring court fae brought fingers to their lips and extended them out to me, a fleeting sign of farewell to the dead.

The crowd parted before me and I felt holy as I was brought before the dais. It felt biblical, the twisted inversion of Moses and Aaron approaching the Pharaoh lest plagues rain down upon the land. I was here to rid the land of a plague though, of the blight. I stared up at Amarantha at the foot of her throne, and her hair was starting to look like blood the more I looked at it and I was more than prepared to make her blood spray. Her crown was still knotted in her hair, looking more like a bramble than anything regal. The fake Tamlin sat at her side now, and even if I did not know it was a fake the posture was too casual, the shoulders too relaxed and angled as the imitator grew accustomed to the empty baldric across their chest.

“Two trials lie behind you, though not without their mark.” Her eyes narrowed on the ink visible as I had rolled my sleeves to my elbows. Some red skin faeries, the soldiers from her putrid court, whistled out in joy. The hoops and hollers were obscene in the silence. “And only one more awaits. I wonder if it will be worse to fail now—when you are so close.”She pouts as she lets her court laugh, it felt like laughter at a funeral. My funeral I reminded myself as I dug my nails into my palms. No one laughed along with her men, even the autumn siblings that often taunted me from across the ballrooms were silent wherever they were in the crowd.

I plaster a grin on my face, dripping with that black anger I had been refining. “Good thing we won’t have to figure out, isn’t it?” Her pout turns sour and pride spreads my grin wider, poisonous. 

“You never figured out my riddle, did you?” I didn’t respond, and she smiled. “Pity. The answer is so lovely.” I really really wanted to kill her, now, but I staved off the wild thoughts and energy that itched my skin and tongue. Only a few more moments and her blood would be on my hands, ruby red to varnish my skin.

Her red dress was already such a pretty shade of red, darkening it wouldn’t ruin her image, instead would enhance the creamy expanse of her throat and arms. She clapped her hands twice and guards came from a side door, one for each prisoner with black canvas placed over their heads. When they settled in a row behind me the three of the guards broke off, returning back through the door they had come from. They all wore simple clothes, battered trousers and tunics for the two male figures and a molted blue dress on the female between them.Amarantha clapped her hands again and three servants approached, each holding a black velvet pillow presenting polished ash daggers embellished with iron. 

“Your final task, Feyre,” Amarantha drawled, gesturing to the kneeling faeries. “Stab each of these unfortunate souls in the heart.They’re innocent—not that it should matter to you, since it wasn’t a concern the day you killed Tamlin’s poor sentinel.” Andras, he deserved to have a name, rather than just a sacrificial sentinel that had fallen to a huntress’ hand. He was the first blood I had regretted having on my hands, and it was her fault.  She continues “And it wasn’t a concern for dear Jurian when he butchered my sister. But if it’s a problem … well, you can always refuse. Of course, I’ll take your life in exchange, but a bargain’s a bargain, is it not? If you ask me, though, given your history with murdering our kind, I do believe I’m offering you a gift.” 

I stay silent for a moment, not moving from where I glare down my nose at her despite the elevation distance between the two of us. “Well?” she was agitated as she snapped it out before she softened her face and presented her hand forward, letting Jurian’s wild eye settle on me. I resisted the shiver that demanded to run down my back, though the prickling of my skin was irrepressible. “I wouldn’t want you to miss this, old friend.”

This time I turn slowly, to face the intended victims of this trial. I stepped forward, in front of the first male figure. The servant pulled off the sack, revealing young skin and sharp features. I looked at the face of the young fae male in front of me and smiled down at him, sweet as a mother as I brushed a strand of fallen hair behind one of those arched ears. He was whimpering- begging to be spared as I reached for that wooden dagger. It was heavy, like it was made from true steel, and I twisted it in my hand. That handsome face of the fae tilted to look at me, at his death, and I stared back into those sky-blue eyes. The tears that streamed down his face did not suit such bright eyes and I whispered to him, low enough that Amarantha couldn’t hear, but the audience on the closest fringe could.

“Wish me luck” It was the only warning I gave before my grip on that dagger shifted, tightening as I twisted my body. I only took one step as I put my whole weight and years of training in those woods into the throw. The blade spun on its axis as it soared, and even her immortal reflexes could not dodge as it sunk into her, just above the hip. I didn’t wait for her shriek as I darted to grab the next blade, still next to the covered female fae. The servant who had been holding the pillow that displayed that dagger must have been too stunned to move as I grabbed the new dagger. My hand had grabbed the blade and it sliced into the flesh, red spilling forth before I readjusted to tightly grip it.

Magic slammed into me like a crashing wave, nearly driving me to my knees as I turned back to face the throne. Her red hair was whipping around her where she was standing and I did not have time to run as she came at me, manicured nails extended out as her own set claws. I felt one of the nails sink into my shoulder as she hurdled us over, and I was laughing, some insane part of me letting out cackles as we slammed into tile. And then she was on top of me, smashing her fists down onto my body as she shrieked curses and slurs. The magic that was roiling off of her kept me pinned to the ground, and I couldn’t move the arm that held that last dagger as the sickening crunch of my ribs breaking through my body filled my ears. 

Her blood was running into the bright red fabric, darkening it just as I had imagined it with every movement she made. Her blood splattered onto my shirt as she thrashed in her tantrum, speckling me like a robin's egg. Her hits cracked against bone each time and I would have been thankful for me not having to be around to deal with the healing process as I spat upon her.

My laughter enraged her enough to ignore the movement in the crowd that I watched from the corner of my eyes as I screamed curses back at her to keep her distracted even more so. She returned the slurs tenfold with each impact and drag of her nails. I watched the shadowed figure kneel next to Tamlin, reaching out for that last remaining dagger that had clattered to the floor as the last servants had ran. The blade was poised in his hand as I saw the flash of those wicked talons and wings as he launched himself at the red headed witch.

His dagger that had been poised for her throat was slammed back with him as she waved a hand at him, a white wall of power pulsing as it threw him. But the distraction was just enough for the magic pinning me to lessen for me to raise my arm, dagger still grasped in an iron grip.

I had raised it high enough to stab into her ribs, slitting the lacy bodice of her dress as it slid into the hilt, as a refreshed wave of that pulsing magic slammed me into the ground. I felt my head crack into the stone as pressure pulsed in my ears, and I bit down painfully on my tongue as she screamed in pain. She ripped the dagger out with a hand, looking aghast as a new river of blood flowed forth from her, going to meet the path of my first wound to her lap . Her blood was pouring down onto me as I smiled, toothy and stained with my blood. Another punch from those delicate hands and she grabbed my arms pinning them to the cold ground.

“I am going to rip you apart” The promise was dripping with her own blood as I couldn’t resist the accursed smile of a mad man that spread across my face as I spat back at her again, her and my blood mixing as it soaked into that ruby dress. It had turned to garnet and I felt pride swell at my art, my destruction of her after all these months-years I had devoted to bringing her to her knees.

“Filth- “another hit to my face “- putrid human filth.” Blood was filling my mouth as I wheezed “I knew the answer to your inane riddle this whole time, bitch.” It gave her enough pause that I laughed out “Love, the damned answer is love”. 

The rage of her scream shook the stone under me as I grinned up at her, blood splattering onto the red clay tiles as I coughed. I sent a last message down that reverberating chain linking my tattoo to him, an apology and an admonishment of all grief I have caused him with my foolishness. There was still resentment at him for the past month but more than that I do not think I could have held him to a fault for all of it, maybe not even any of it. It was much less words and more a pulse of that bleeding tightness of thorny vines wrapped around my heart. Then right after that pulse I send back warmth, the feeling of bones resting in a hot bath or basking in the sun in the summer as I feel nails dig into tender flesh at the base of my skull. I hoped he enjoyed a long life with his family.

“Rot in hell” I cursed her with a cackling laugh as she has wrapped her hands around my ears. In my last bit of defiance while staring down my nose at her I spit my rotting human blood into her face and she is twisting my neck until something in my spine- my neck- my head- broke irreparably.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

The snap reverberated through me, the wet stickiness of blood disappearing from my skin as I was dunked into a deep ink. I was swimming- floating- whatever in that abyss. It was warm as it whispered sweet-nothings into my skin, letting me sink farther and farther under, swirling down like a snowflake, delicate and precious in a fluttering wind. But before I could nestle down in that eternity of comfort I was dragged to view my body, twisted and mangled, on the floor. 

The fae queen was still straddling me, ash dagger still embedded above those slim hips deepening that red gown, seeping out of her like black ichor. Her hands raised from the side of my head before Amarantha stood from my body, looking up at the crowd with pleading eyes as she opened up her mouth. 

“Please”, it was the only word she got before the room exploded with power. Living ink grabbed her body and slammed her against the wall as a flash to the side. A guttural roar sounded in the room before the pounding of claws and Tamlin was there at her throat as he shifted back to that male form I had grown used to. His mask had dropped in his run ,forsaken and forgotten after he had ripped from his bonds, as his claw tipped hand sunk into her stomach and ripped-

My vision changed in a blink, and I was above mountains, city lights just behind me. Their peaks disappeared in a heavy cloud cover as the sky illuminated with white lightning, a moment of quiet before the shaking clap of thunder shook my vision. Rain was pounding down, and I wanted to howl in joy as the cold air kissed at a face that wasn’t mine. I realized then , as the vision rolled to look into the rain streaked clouds and away from the stone below, I was in the air. It was cinematic as the vision tilted again and I was barreling down- down- down-

I had braced for the impact but it didn’t come, instead the dark shadows of the rough stone had become a balcony, smooth and polished as my eyes looked down at the city. I clutched onto that vision, hoping it was my link to home as I watched the glittering lights below. I longed to go back to the days where I was kept up by the noise of traffic rather than fear of nightmares of the creatures and actions I had been forced to endure. But the vision was ripped away from me like a children’s blanket and I was back under the mountain. 

Amaranth was pinned like a doll to the stone wall, cracks radiating from where a gold hilted sword was stabbed through her head. Her intestines hung from the cavity that stretched from her sternum to those delicate hips, torn out by Tamlin, who was now staggering back from the body. His front was drenched in blood before he turned. Rhysand’s eyes returned to my body then, and I felt nausea bubble up in my now non-existent stomach at the sight of the body twisted at horrible angles, blood pooling around me.

Lucien was there though, cradling my head. I was reminded of the way I held Andras in his final moments and I was ready for that smooth ink to sweep me back to my world or to no world at all, but whatever held me to Rhys’ vision would not loosen its tie. Then Tamlin was there, taking the limp body into those corded arms as I saw tears drip from his face. Lucien was not much better as he grabbed at a blood-smeared limp hand, bringing it to his forehead as he wept.

 His mask was still in place as a man who looked like an older brother of Lucien approached, he wasn’t part of the autumn brood that had watched me over the months. My borrowed eyes knew who he was and supplied me with the answer with no more than a second of delay. The High Lord of Autumn Court did not look at Lucien as he approached the body, held right to Tamlin’s chest. He opened his hand, tilting it to where that drop of glittering liquid fire dropped onto my chest. Then two more males, tall and handsome approached. Tarquin and Kallis tipped their hands in succession, pearlescent and crystalline drops soaking into the skin above Feyre’s heart. I coaxed, in the darkness that I could still feel my corporeal body floating, for her soul to slide in, that her body was ready for her. 

I felt no other stirring in that darkness as I watched Thesan approach, his drop glowing with the golden haze that had brought me home to the cottage thousands of times over the years. Helion approached and I felt the resemblance in his and Lucien’s power, enough that the rumors of him being Lucien’s father started to make sense, as that pure gold drop fell. 

I wanted to scream into the abyss for Feyre to come for her claim, wanting her to take over her place of High Lady that I had laid bare to her. I wanted to thrash about as the body I was in, Rhysand, walked forward to where my body was cooling in the arms of the High Lord of Spring.

“For what she gave,” Rhysand said, extending a clenched hand, “we’ll bestow what our predecessors have granted to few before.” He paused, just for a breath. “This makes us even,” I felt that cocky glow of humor spike through him as he opened that palm, the brightest drop of starlight dropping down to where the rest of those seeds had soaked into the body of a girl who was abhorrently silent in the void. 

Tamlin pulled an arm from under me as he gathered a drop of the glowing power that promised blossoming flowers and prosperity in a calloused palm. I saw the drop roll between his ring and middle finger, watched as it fell to skin, and as he pushed that palm into my chest and whispered into matted hair. I doubted that even if I had been in that body I would have heard it, but Rhysand’s fae ears picked up on it as though it was a chime of a bell. 

“Come back, please” 

I was thrown back into that warm ink as the words ended and I started searching for a glimmer of the soul that rightfully belonged in the body as a braided rope dropped in front of me. I grasped at it , wading the darkness as golden light shined from above. 

I was about to scream out for her , demanding that she take what she owned so that I could return to my own home, but a voice caressed the inside of my ears. It was an ancient voice, unending and primordial as it spoke right into my mind, past the walls I had built.

 Live, little one, you are more than a string in the tapestry of the world. Weave a new story for me. 

The voice was distinctly feminine as it disappeared, I whipped around in that space. My hand ran along that rope, and I felt the connection that had shown me the city, braided in with my death and those illuminated clouds. I pulled myself up, conscious to only grab at the strands that spoke of that stormy night sky and sparkling city as I went. If I denied the bargain that led me to Rhysand- to Prythian- maybe I could go home even against the Mother’s wishes. So I climbed, feet kicking at the emptiness below as I went towards the light that promised me my freedom.

I felt bubbles grab my under arms, pushing me up toward that brightness and as a bubble came to rest under my chin I -

I gulped in air as I turned out of someone's lap, planting my hands on the floor. It was cool underneath my fingers as I opened my eyes. My hair draped around me, a golden- brown curtain shielding me from the stares of the onlookers. Golden brown hair-I bought a hand with too-long fingers to grasp at the strands. A beat of silence then- 

I screamed into the tile as my hope was ripped away from me.

#acotar #fanfic #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #inkywrites #acotar rewrite #reader insert #rhysand #rhys acotar #cassian acotar #azriel acotar

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Readers and Dreamers

Chapter 20: Monster Party

I do not know for how long I sobbed or slept, both happening interchangeably as I hid my face in the blankets. I felt unable to even face the shadows that held their spots in my cell. I often find myself biting into my hand to muffle the sounds , hoping Rhysand felt the dig of teeth into scabbing palms. He had to have known Amaratha had the boys, and god how long had she had them under her? Had they been in a cell near mine, one of the dozens I passed every night to be dragged up to the parties?

How could they ever forgive me, how could Alis forgive me? They had seen me smiling each night as I was led out, happy to dance in a court of their captors. Even if Alis forgave me it would be over a corpse, and I would never be able to apologize to her. It sent me into another sobbing wave.

The shadows that whispered in the corned wobble slightly, like air rising from a hot road and I drew the blanket over my head, turning my body to the damp stone wall. I felt his presence join me in the cell, I could hear the scrape of hard soled shoes against the rough stone as he took a pace forward.

“Still weeping?” The words were teasing and sent a hot bolt of rage through me that quieted my sobs. My hands tightened in the blankets and I could feel my nails form crescent indents in my palm

“You won her trial,again. Tears are unnecessary.”

I sat slowly from the cot, blankets pooling around my hips as I looked at him. Despite the heat of anger boiling my blood I felt icy disbelief paint my face as I gaped at him, disgust plain at the words. I looked him over, hair combed and his normal black clothes pressed finely.

“Did you know?” The words were louder than I anticipated, and I sounded sick from all the sobbing that had worn my throat raw. His eyes dropped to the floor with a small nod and I was on my feet pushing my shaking arms at his chest.

He hadn’t had time to brace himself against my anger enforced shove and he staggered back as I screamed at him. “Get out! Leave!” The tears were back, burning down my face as my heart twisted into knots. He knew, he had known the boys had been trapped for two months down here. I cursed myself a fool for being too open with him. I might remember him being a sweet male on pages but I also remembered the dozen children in winter court that were dead, the male with his wings torn from him, the head piked in the garden.

He caught my wrists, holding them both in one hand as I thrashed against the grip. Still he held them steadfast as I kicked at his shins, he did not pull me off my feet when I knew I had struck an especially tender spot at the top of his foot. The anger trickled out of me as tears came back stronger than before and I was left hanging limply from my wrists, just as I had when I had been swept from my feet in the water. He eased me back to the cot as I sobbed more, then he sat next to me with his own head in his hands.

“I’m sorry.” His words caught me off guard as I watched him from the corner of my eye, drawing my knees up to my chest to cover myself just a bit, the gossamer gown I still wore from last night -or was it two nights ago now?- having become more tattered and useless in covering anything. “I knew she had something relating to a servant in Spring Court, but I didn’t know they were children, or that they were involved in the trials.”

I couldn’t comfort him or tell him I understood, not when I don’t know where my emotions were trying to lead me, but I lean against him. It's what I can offer, a solid body next to his and an acknowledgment of his own turmoil. Moments of tension filled silence held between us like a taught string ready to be cut before he rose, dusting his pants of dust that did not exist.

“There is no party tonight, your services are of no need but we will return to normal tomorrow night.” He didn’t look at me as he walked into the shadows and disappeared with a ripple of sea scented wind.

I stared into the space he left, the shadows darkening and then lightening back to their normal as I felt drained. Normal, the parties were becoming normal and I was craving the release of body and soul the wine would give me night after night. Maybe the wine had addicted me already, and I was at its throes as I no longer wept. The tears dried against my skin and I continued to stare, unseeing as I contemplated all the prayers and apologies I would have to send out between now and the final trial.

I ate the backlog of slipped food trays I had been ignoring, cold soup and stale breads filling my stomach but I still felt hollow inside. I was waiting now, no more preparations to be made or scheming to think of as I awaited my execution.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

Nights did return to normal, though the jokes and smiles and playful insults between me and Rhys had died after the night he had visited me in the cells. Now I only followed him like a cowed dog having had its manners beat into it as I readily drank the wine each night, occasionally spurring the burn in my veins with a second glass before Rhys could stop me. Then I would sleep away the majority of my free time, dreaming of darkened waters and twisting bone before I would wake just to stare into that unwavering darkness until the wraiths came to fetch me.

I felt hollow and it was okay, good even, not to feel the shame that would burn me deep in the recesses of sleep. I wasn’t Feyre and I had done too much to change the story before and it had nearly gotten me and those two boys killed. I didn’t want to think about that so I drank and slept and drank again, it let me sink into the hollowness like a deep pitted bathtub of warm bubbles.

It was rare occasions that the crying would come back to me to burn that hollow cavity in me, like a flash fire before it died out and I was just slightly charred. Those nights would only happen would I awake from a memory; a hunt with Lucien where I ranted to him over the discontinuities between two texts in Tam’s library, or me weaving a flower crown with flowers of Queen Anne’s lace (I never did learn the name of the flower in this world, perhaps it was just wild carrot) for Elain, or the days of time I would spend with those aged artisans and craftsmen of the village. Memories I never made also came to me, of chasing the Beisenn and Luca down along Summer Court shores as Alis watched us from under a heavy hat, me spending time in the kitchens with Spring Staff to prepare a nightly dinner. Everything soft and domestic came to me in nights of harsh stone and shadow. A life line that dangled just outside of my reach and made my heart wail even more for the inability to grasp it and the traitorous feelings of glee at not being able to.

Maybe weeks passed with me in those alcohol laden dreams, but the dark was becoming a comfort. I cringed away from the torch light when Nuala and Ceridwen brought me through the halls, and even further cringed from the image of myself in the mirror of the dressing room as I watched my tan leach away. The golden brown hair lost its luster along the nights and now hung like limp waste around my shoulders. My eyes had sunken and the bags under them were a bruised purple. I was a dead man walking. Me laughing at that little joke in my head had the twins looking at me with worry as they painted me and further worried Rhysand when I shared the thought with him on grape reddened lips.

I was so far sunken into that warm darkness of the heart I started to imagine warping shapes in the shadows of my cell. Sometimes they took the shape of a prowling wolf, gold eyes shining as they pinned on me and shared every thought of disgust at his long dried blood on my hands and clothes, other nights they were waltzing couples that got tangled in the vines of a garden walkway and fell. Maybe I could start to understand Amarantha’s pension for cruelty at the thought of Nesta or Elain being butchered at the hand of some pompous lordling that must have asked for Elain’s hand by now.

Some nights the dark did not change all that much and I stared at the night sky of my own world, eyes tracing constellations that did not exist. Those nights were the simplest, where I could see and not think of my own troubles but the troubles of men and women who found themselves immortalized in the tales of the stars. One night music had started to trickle into the cell, light and soft as a mother’s lullaby as it weaved bright stories of blooming loves and summer nights. I cursed Rhysand 7 ways to Sunday that night as I growled the words into the center of my palm. But it did reawaken a spark in me, a spark of hate and promise for blood shed against the thought of trampling armies on the human realms if I did not succeed in my final days.

I asked Nuala the next day how many days were left until my trial, and she smiled at the spark in my eye, mistaking it for a vigor for life, as she told me two days. Good I could tend the fire of my anger for two days, had been letting that anger burn in me for far longer than that and three measly months here would not have it dying in its hearth. I would set this underground Court on fire before I let that happen, let everyone down here suffocate on the smoke before that.

_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_

The final night of partying was like every other except for the fact I was not drunk off my rocker already, Rhysand having been careful to keep me from the table of wine that whispered for me to indulge in its swirling liquid. My gossamer was a pale blue tonight as I waited along the stone walls of the ballroom as Rhysand laughed with some fae that looked like they were from Autumn Court, and the supple bodied female that was already clinging to him as her yellow hair fell to the floor like a pile of molded straw.

My mouth was dry but I was not so idiotic to believe if I left this wall I would be safe from the sharp gazes of the Autumn Court lordlings that still followed me each night. I could barely remember the eldest brother, Eris, having some redemption arc but I hadn’t paid much attention in the later books and still felt no need to lavish over the details I could remember. So I stay against the wall and rested my feet as I crossed my ankle over the other and my arms over my chest.

I spent the time observing the mess of bodies around me, lesser and high fae alike mingling as they danced and chatted together. Then there was Tamlin, still sat in his chair next to Amarantha’s throne and dressed in his greens and gold. There were no blades in his baldrick and his golden hair that had simply been long before had grown shaggy and frizzy under the stone. His eyes did not scan the crowd but looked ahead, vacant. There was a brush of a hand at my arm as I saw a flash of wine red hair.

I had told Lucien to stay away but he did not listen. I watched him slip into a storage door obscured by a tapestry of a sword piercing a sparrow just below the wing. I shot a quick glance over to Amarantha but found her leaning over the arm of her throne, a heavy wine goblet to her lips as she cackled with a doe legged woman dressed in an orange tunic and nothing else. I made my way through the room, slow and unassuming as I wandered toward the door. I was just another party guest who was finding their way through the room.

I slid into the door as I knocked into a distracted fae female, wine soaking the front of her dress. She shrieked and turned to accuse a thin boy with a dense cluster of moss like hair on his head. I was gone as the comotion rose, hoping to buy another minute or two from Rhys coming into the room.

I had only my arm through the door before a hand yanked me in and the door snickered shut behind me. I was in Lucien’s embrace, a warm hug that I found myself returning with damp eyes.

I went to open my mouth first but Lucien was already making a mess of his words as he pushed back to look over me. “Do you know how much trouble you have caused?” It was light with laughter as he joked but I saw the keen in his eyes and tightened my grip on his arm where my hand had fallen.

“I told you not to intervene Lucien,” I hiss it out because if I raised my voice much more it would crack, the thought that I would have been happy if it had been him and I under descending metal spikes making a darker form of guilt than I had considered possible blooming, “I already endangered Alis and her boys, I can’t be the reason you lose your head.”

He shook his head as I spoke.“I am trying to save you, Feyre, I found some tunnels that lead up to winter but you have to leave now.” He pulled at my arms while he spoke but I dug my heels in, face furrowed.

“I’m not leaving, Lucien, not when I am this close to freeing him, freeing all of you from her.” I saw his eyes go a little wild before he took a breath and stood back, running his hands through his hair. I looked him over, his finery in colors of mixed copper and evergreen matching him well as his hair was free to flow down and around his shoulders, small braids clasped with matching copper cuffs glinting with the barest amount of light leaking from under the door. His running of his hand through his hair had sullied it though, ink smearing at his roots and I saw more ink across his fine vest and white under shirt from our embrace. Fuck, he couldn’t leave now and I save his hide, now our only hope was that Rhysand came and transfigured the ink from Lucien to himself or what ever the hell else Rhysand would do to play little mind games with the courtier.

“Damn it, Lucien.” I swore at him as I started pacing, biting at the nails Nuala had painted the same shade of blue as the dress.He looked offended as I started pacing.

“I am trying to save you , Feyre. I get that you don’t have any self preservation skills but that is not true for all of us and if you don’t get out of here before your trial tomorrow there will be far too much blood on this floor for anyone to ever return.” He stepped up to me and I whirled, throwing out my hands in annoyance. I was in Lucien’s face, pushing a finger against his chest.

“Do you think they would come back anyway? Lucien, if I do not go through with my plan tomorrow there will be far much more bloodshed as she goes and kills my family and every other mortal south of the wall.” I was going to continue but then the shadows around us condensed and waivered before Rhysand stepped from the darkness. He came from behind Lucien so the other male didn’t notice as he started his own rebut.

“What plan? Do you know what she plans for you to do tomorrow? Because I don’t and I will not be made to see you die.” We had kept the conversation to whisper yells but his voice had returned to a normal volume which sounded far too loud for the small space as Rhysand chuckled. Lucien’s body went rigid as he took in the annoyed look across my face as I settled my weight on one leg and looked at the man incredulously.

“My, my, what a lover’s quarrel. If this is what Tamlin had to watch in Spring all these months I do not blame him for being so complacent with the Queen.” He was goating Lucien, I could see it easily but Lucien still let out a low growl as he stepped half in front of me. Rhys raised an eyebrow at the movement but I gave him an exasperated expression as I threw up my arms.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Rhys?” Lucien growled at him and I glared at the back of his head. If he would shut up and let me talk with the man who would either be the reason we both came out this closet with all our limbs or not I would be forever grateful to the Mother that controlled this world.

Rhys didn’t answer Lucien as he tutted his tongue at the blue-black ink marring the fine clothes, “Have some fun with my pet, now did you?” his eyes were flicking over the ink over the front of Lucien, wrapped around his side from the hug, and the trails through his hair that could very well look like I had been the one to run my hands through it. “How much fun Amarantha would have with this, the son of Autumn with her captive. What punishment would she give you? Lashings? The spit? Or maybe she will have your brothers take the head of this little lover as well.”

My breath stilled, Lucien’s breath stilled and I felt something feral spread through Lucien. Rhys had crossed a line, tearing open a scar that would never heal and rubbing salt and faebane into the wound.

“Rhysand.” I startled myself at the growl in my voice, something deep and angry stepping up to the plate to defend Lucien. The male who had spent days on horseback with me where neither of us shot a single squirrel, the male who cracked the same cheap jokes I did and laughed at them. Lucien was family, the same ease I moved around him as I did Nesta and Elain, the middle sister I knew was to be his mate.

I stepped in front of Lucien now, more to protect Rhysand from the male I could tell was hanging by less than a thread. The air didn’t even dare move around Lucien as I touched his shoulder. “Go, I can handle this.” I whispered to him.

“Enjoy the party, little fox.” Rhys taunted more before he flicked his fingers, the paint on Lucien disappearing before Lucien turned and walked out the small door. His movements were too robotic and his eye had taken a haze to it before he moved.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I yelled at Rhys, not caring if the sound of the party drowned it out or not. If I had pushed down the betrayal of the boys being held captive then this brought it back to the surface tenfold. Lucien may have not listened to me but he was also only trying to get me to escape, the polar opposite of what Tamlin had done in the original story. “He did nothing wrong, if you could get your head out of your ass then maybe you could see that he just doesn’t want me to die unlike the rest of this damned court.”

“I don’t like my things touched.” He uttered it as he stepped towards me, going to crowd me against the wall.

“I am not your thing Rhysand. You can drop the damn ‘wicked lord of the night’ act but that was a bastard move right there. We hugged, is that what you want to hear? We hugged because I missed having a friend and he thinks I am going to die tomorrow.” I was seething, the anger I had been tending was burning bright and I no longer had a grasp on it. All these times I had tried trusting Rhysand despite his insistence on his mask. Maybe it was all because it was under the mountain and Amarantha still watched from everywhere, but could he not give me a sign that he was the male I believed him to be.

“You two are fools, do you think that no one else in that throne room saw you two slink off? Do you think no one would notice that you disappeared on my watch and by fox boy’s hand?”

“Do you really think I knew what Lucien wanted? I wanted a good bye, that was it.” It held enough truth to it, and he felt it.

“Oh you two would be saying goodbye to both of your heads soon enough.” He was turning irate, the shadows whipping around him.

“Then let us die, maybe you should have let me die after that first trial because it seems that would have been so much easier for you. What does it matter anyway?”

I knew I was baiting for something, I wanted him as angry as I am. This is what I had craved for years, someone to scream at and be screamed back at. “What does it matter?” He was dumb founded before the wings I had longed to see condensed at his back. They were ginormous, expansive things that illustrations in Tamlin’s books would never be able to replicate. “ What does it matter?” I wanted him to say why it mattered, something twisting in my heart for confirmation that he felt Feyre still connected to this body.

He didn’t prove me right, though. Not as he pushed me up against the wall with a firm hand grabbing my chin and bringing my lips to his. The kiss was rough, teeth clacking as he pushed me up the wall, making my arms go to his biceps to steady myself. He kissed into my mouth like a drowning man taking a breath of air, desperate and despairing at the same time. I was so taken aback that I didn't kiss back for a moment and by the time my brain was working again the small door was flung open to let bright light pour in around us.

Amarantha stood with Tamlin at her side as Rhysand separated from me with a nip to my bottom lip. My face was flushed with a mixture of still boiling anger and embarrassment of being caught in what looked like a messy make out. I saw Tamlin’s eyes widen ever so slightly in surprise, he had been expecting me and Lucien here together, he had seen us slip in here and he had told Amarantha . I swallowed down bile at the betrayal of his friend as Amarantha laughed.

Rhysand separated from me languidly, hands trailing down my side as he gave them a lazy and indulgent smile. His wings were gone now, and the space they had occupied felt so empty now to me. A crowd of peering high fae and lesser fae alike were rising behind Amarantha like a sea of castigation as they joined her laughter. Her eyes burned with some depraved fire as Rhysand bowed to her

“I knew it was a matter of time,” she said, putting a hand on Tamlin’s arm. She lifted the other hand to present her ring- Jurian- to the entertainment. “You humans are all the same, aren’t you?”

I cringed away from the turning eye of the mad man, pulling myself off the wall as I readjusted the fabric of my dress over my chest. It didn’t help much though, not where everyone could see the smudges of paint on both me and Rhysand. When had he transferred the paint to himself? I hadn’t noticed it in the low light, but the warm fire light that normally set his hair into an oil-slick sheen had matte stripes of dark blue.

“Dull human hearts, so easily swayed by a pretty face.” She ran a finger over the glass encasing Jurian’s eye. I didn’t say anything as I felt the poison of words that would have me pinned on the wall, the spot that had been vacated by Emiline. She turned back to the crowd and left the door frame, presumably to return to her throne as her cortege parted and flowed behind her to return to their revels.

Rhysand pushed me along with a warm hand as I fussed with the fabric of the dress. I heard the laughing whispers of the court as we moved through it but I still refused to lower my head. I watched Rhysand’s blue stained hands as he paused along the wall, no more than a few paces from the exit.The crowd jeered at the paint that was usually so crisp, now defaced as I was.

“I’ve tired of your company tonight,” His fingers pushed more firmly at my elbow and I felt the nerves there twinge as they motioned me towards the doors, “Return to your cell.” I scurried off to the guards that had guided me to my rooms every night when me and Rhysand parted ways, though this was the first and last time they were going to return me sober.

#acotar #fanfic #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #acotar rewrite #inkywrites #reader insert #rhysand #rhys acotar #lucien

[1nksta1neddesk]

I made more ACOTAR memes rather than write depression:

#these are my pride and joys #no more than 30 seconds making each of these #this is art #i am art #its all so beautiful #acotar #rhysand #feyre archeron #cassian #azriel #the suriel

[1nksta1neddesk]

yall know how criminal it is that there is not a Street racer AU of any of SJM's series??? like seriously, criminal that I must instead take up this endevor (this is me saying im starting of a street racer AU drabble that I might post, but most likely not). And this means I get to make Cassian a grease monkey and Azriel the programer.

#If i do write this #All my knowledge of street racing will come from Fast and furious #or 5 minute google searches #I am not to be held accountable for my inaccuracies #My only intent #is to make these men hot #AND HYBERN CAN BE THE LOCAL POLICE?? #Insanity is nothing but insparation #Who is more insane than the sanest of us? #So really I am being totally normal about this #GOD DAMN I CAN MAKE THE ILLYRIANS A BIKE GANG #THE VALKARIES ARE ALREADY AN IRL BIKE GANG THOUGH??? #or am I crazy #I am crazy but that is besides the point #The archerons can own a parts store that was going under #untill Feyre went and got rid of Amarantha's gang that was sabotaging racing cars w/ like sugar in the gas tanks #THEN THEN #Rhysand offers to teach Feyre how to ride a motorcycle #but the archeron shop is in spring tertitory #so she had to visit the night court during the night #so that Merican muscle racer Tamlin #doesnt get mad at her #bc he had a crush on her from when she helped him find a part or smth

[1nksta1neddesk]

Little meme i made, these men will not leave me alone in my head

#acotar #rhysand #cassian acotar #cassian #i love them your honor

[1nksta1neddesk]

Everyday i wake up angry about the lysandra and Nehemiah fan art.

#i read these books in middle school #*which i so not endorse for obvious reasons #BUT #even then I never thought of those two as the skinny women shown in the fan art #nehemiah is a WARRIOR princess #LUGGING AROUND A GIANT STICK #and you think she is skinny?? #NO #AND LYSANDRA #actually i dont know my reasoning for lysandra #but she was never anything less than plussized #in my mind #these are all aparently headcannons but i do wish to make it cannon #why did my middleschool brain have more subconscious representation #than a fully grown woman writing? #who knows

[1nksta1neddesk]

A Court of Readers and Dreamers

Chapter 19: Riptide

The Attor stood in front of me, teeth bared like a rabies infected animal as its tail lashed at the cobbles of the wide room I had been dragged to for my second trial early this morning. I had been waiting for what felt like hours as faeries trickled into the rows of seats carved from the gray stone. A quartet was playing somewhere high in the chamber, the sound distorting to something angelic and so out of place for the refraction chamber of malevolence. Most of the seats were filled now, including a secluded section with 6 velvet seats that the High Lords were settled into.

My stomach was twisting so much I was thankful I had not eaten the watery soup that had been given with a slice of bread that morning. The chamber here was cold, so cold that my breath was puffing out in white clouds and my fingers had already gone pink where I exhaled into my hands. It would have been comfortable in any other clothing than the scrap of mauve that I was still dressed in. My feet were numb and starting to border into purple as I tried to keep moving, keep the blood moving so I didn’t freeze in place. 

I had just reached down to massage some warmth into my legs when Amarantha swept into the room in a sky blue and ivory dress, the hems lined with peppered furs. Tamlin accompanied her, still dressed in his dark green and browns as she took a seat in a high backed throne that sat at the center of a semicircle platform against the back wall. I sucked in a breath and straightened to stare at her as I suppressed my shivering muscles. 

She smiled down at me as she motioned to the crowd to quiet with a hand, “Well, you survived this long Feyre, and now your second trial has come.” She was self assured as she said it, like she was finally getting rid of annoying pest infestation. I tried to calm my heart as I avoided looking at the black eye that stared at me with such intensity that my hands started to sweat even in the cold. “Have you figured out that little riddle of ours yet?” 

I only moved to bare my teeth at her, my silence an obvious answer to her as she crossed a leg over a knee. “Too bad,” She sighed it out in feigned disappointment before that festering smile slid back onto her face, it seemed to be her favorite expression despite how tightly it pulled those lips. “But I am sure that we have something that will get your head turning quite soon, don’t you worry.” She waved her hand and the reverberations through the stone below me as the floor started to slide into the walls had me throwing my arms out, stabilizing as I spread my stance.

The floor was split into two, and an open pit was revealed, and the sound of rushing water had my blood pumping with such force through my ears I expected my eardrums to burst. If the room was cold before it now became an icebox as I peered down. My heart dropped so hard I swore I heard it splatter against the exposed rocks below that now flanked a coursing river. There was no Lucien chained to the floor, no red hot spikes to descend upon me if I answered her riddle wrong.

No, instead there was that river that pulled the breath from my lungs and on a small island in the center of the torrent were two crouching figures- two young crouching figures. I couldn’t think to fight back, to figure out a way to defy her as the attor’s claws scooped under me and dove down into the canyon, not as I fell closer and closer to see the two young boys come into focus. Their bark skin was like river birch, wane and peeling as they clung to each other. They both looked just over 12, but I could tell the older boy apart from how he curled around his brother, shielding him from the splashing water.

The Attor dropped me on a beach of bones and clay , the grinded bones making alabaster sands I hadn’t noticed before and I couldn’t draw breath as I looked back up at Amarantha, she looked like a child getting a gift as she clapped her hands together.

“I heard you had a friend with a little birdy, and when I saw that her two little nephews were left all alone in Summer I couldn’t very well leave them there.” She waved another hand and I barely scurried out of place as planks of wood clattered over the edge of the pit. They sprayed sand as they slammed where I had been, a length of rope following after the planks. She had kidnaped Alis’ boys, and they were collateral in my death. Fear collided with white rage that overcame my vision. “The river does like to ebb and flow -quite like your human hearts-, this one likes a two hour cycle and I think the last cycle has just ended, lucky you.” 

One hour, I had one hour to figure out how to get the boys from that small rock and out of this pit. I break my staring contest with her and look up the sheer walls. On the opposite side of the water where I am, there is a hallway opening just a few feet above the floor, warm fire light spilling from it where torches burned just past my eyeline. I couldn’t hear the murmuring of the crowd as I evaluated the resources I had. The river was little over 20 feet wide from one shore to the other, the boys were on a sinking rock at the center. The jeers of the crowd from above spurred me into action as I ran to the pile of wood and rope.

The wood was smooth but I grabbed the rope and started tying knots, testing it with a braced foot before I repeated the knots on another plank. They were beveled at one end, looking as though they were ripped from a suburban fence. Just enough for me to take a few steps back from the water that seemed an inch or so closer than the start of my tying and stab the end of the wood into the clay. It was secure enough for me as I gave it a harsh tug, it had to be enough. With the other secured piece wood in hand I toed close to the splashing water.

“Boys!” I yelled across the water and the one I assumed to be the older one lifted his head to look at me. A single glance and me and him agreed at that moment to work for the smaller boy, whose sobs I could just barely hear over the water. “Can you catch this if I throw it across?” I raise the piece of wood above my head, and maybe I should be more careful how I move around children as the chiffon shifted and I had to use my other hand to keep it from slipping off my breast.I should have made Rhys give me back my clothes last night but with the summer male the thought had slipped from my mind. I could barely see the small nod as the older boy detangled himself from his brother ever so slightly and scooted to the edge of their rock.

Adrenaline was shaking me in place as I pulled my arm back and threw the wood just as I had thrown the bone at Amarantha, but this one wasn’t to show my strength. This one displayed every weakness I had as I watched the wood sail through the air with a trail of rope. He caught it in his hands and before I could guide him on what to do he was shoving it between a crack in the rock he was on. I took one last look to the solid shore under me and grabbed onto the rope that was now just skimming the top of the tide.

I walked into the water, cursing the water felt like ice against my skin. There wasn’t time to tread water though and I was swimming, gripping the rope with both hands as the water ripped at the dress. Paint was smearing down my arms and chest but I couldn’t think past the blistering cold, only giving myself the single command to reach the boys. I reached the rock and tiny hands were at my wrists and pulled me onto the stone.I was shaking as I turned over and hurled into the water, but the rock was even closer to the water now in the minutes I had fought against the water.

Hands were running down my back as I hurled and I heard a chorus of laughter above. I looked up and I could see the small features of the boys now, the older one rubbing my back as I caught my breath.

“Can either of you swim?” The question came out as a choked plea as I pulled my legs under me and looked to the shore that promised the boys freedom. Both of them shook their heads and I swore again. “Okay- shit- Fine, okay” 

I turned and planted my feet along the rock and pulled at the rope to dislodge the plank I had dug into the clay, thankful I hadn’t wedged it in the stones as I dragged it across the water. My back burned at the movements and two sets of arms wrapped around my waist as a surge of water had me lurching just a bit. I paused my pulling for just a moment to ruffle my hand through blond hair on top of the younger one's head. 

The wood clattered along the stone as I hefted it up, the wood having become sodden in its time in the water. I pulled the dry piece from the crack the boy had put it in, replacing it with the wet plank before I told the boys to hold onto the end of the rope as the water was now sliding over my bare feet. I winced as I saw the edges of their trousers darken with water, hoping the boots tied tightly to their feet would keep them dry for a while longer.

I scanned the shore across from us, the shore I would get those boys to, an outcropping of rocks catching my eye where two rocks just barely overlapped, creating a V that would catch the board. One throw, I would have one easy throw before the porous wood became weighed down with water like the other, any throw after that would require twice as much effort and as my arms were already on the verge of shaking from my swim. I had spent years preparing for a small riddle that had been useless and I had endangered Alis and her boys. My eyes ached with the effort not to cry about it, I didn’t have the energy to spare or the humility to let Amarantha see how this was shaking me.

The plank missed the first time I threw it, then the half dozen other times after that. My back and shoulders ached but it finally caught on the stone, the chill from the water being replaced with rolling beads of sweat. A small hand was at my shoulder as I dry heaved over the water the moment I let the rope drop from my hands. I looked into the watery eyes of the younger boy before I knelt on the rock to talk to the two boys. I pulled the younger one under one arm and the older one into the other before I pulled back.

“What are your names?” I should have asked sooner but this next step would require trust I had minutes to earn. The younger boy had a rounder face with blond hair spilling from above to curl into the edges of the bark skin, his eyes the deep brown of rich soil. The older one's hair was a darker brown, almost the same shade as Alis’ and whose eyes leaned more into a honey brown that whispered of sun warmed wheat fields. They might be decades older than me but still they were children that deserved those eternal summer days.

“My name is Beisenn, Ma’am.” The younger one spoke first as he stepped back from my arms to hide half behind his brother. “Are you Auntie’s friend?” I could have cried at the mention of Alis, of what I risked for her by asking her to take me here, the boys who would either die or live because of my foolishness.

I nodded past the tears welling in my eyes, “Yes, your Aunt Alis is a very good friend of mine.” I then turned to the older one who still stayed inside my loosely hung arm. “ I am going to get you and Beisenn out of here, but you have to trust me just till we get over that water okay?” 

His face hardened, just like Alis’ did when she was about to put her foot down against my whining. “My name is Luca,” he looked to his brother and then to me again and I felt his age course through me in that look, “Beisenn gets across first.”

I nodded quickly, and told them of the plan to cross the river. I would cross with one boy at a time, each of us holding the rope until they got to the beach, then we would find a way to get them up to the hallway entrance I had seen. The plan wasn’t perfect but I needed to think and the crushing weight of two boys lives was slightly hampering my clarity. But they agreed after Luca made cut off a length of extra rope from the stake in the rock to tie around me and his brother. 

I was in the water with Beissen, my wrist wound in the loose length as I slowly lowered us into the water. Beinssen’s arms were wrapped behind my neck as I kept him close to me, he had flinched away from the cold of the water when it reached up to his calves that were wrapped around me. He was just like a human child filled with fear that clung close to any adult, and I would make sure Alis saw her boys again in their court. The edge of the rock dropped off harshly when I was submerged up to my waist and I had to heave to keep Beinssen’s head above the water that splashed up around us.

The tide must have gotten stronger since I had first swam across because water was now kicking up around us as we blocked its flow. I was grateful for my wrist wrapped in the rope even as it pulled at the skin as I started making my way across the river. My bones groaned against the cold and I could feel the shivers over taking both mine and Beisenn’s bodies as I dragged us across the water. Eternity passed with each pull along the rope but I gritted my teeth against it. During that eternity I murmured praises into Beisenn’s hair, telling him how brave he was being that it would just be a tad longer now. Halfway across the water the praises turned into reassurances for myself. If I was to die I could never face Alis’ in the afterlife if I was the cause of her only families’ deaths. 

Bone fragments scraped my heels when I finally came in close enough to the opposite shore. The bones on this side were older, yellowed and calcified after what might have been millenia in this pit. Their age also meant they were softer and every step I took against the shore had the bones crumbling under me, any hope for a foot hold slipping away with it. Beisenn was crying again against my shoulder as I pulled us from the water. He was shivering from the cold as I walked him inland, placing him right beside the rocks I had used to secure the plank.

“You did such a great job, now can you wait here while I grab your brother?” I said as I squeezed down his arms, ringing out the frigid water from the cloth. He gave me a sniffly agreement and I was back in the water no more than a moment later.

It was easier to pull myself across without the added weight of a child, but still there were moments I had to pause. In the moments I paused the taunts of the faeries above trickled down. I had been too preoccupied to notice them before, the chorus of slurs and insults having become unimaginative as they ran out of phrases to cheer together. They stoked the fire in me just enough to make it back to the rock, where Luca was standing, water now washing over his ankles fully even as he stood at the tallest part of the rock.

I would have been embarrassed for the scrambling it took for me to meet him up there if it wasn’t for the fact I had lost much of my dignity in the previous nights. I wrapped my arms around Luca as I used the board jutting straight up to stabilize myself, panting. I didn’t have the breath to talk to Luca but he understood enough when I motioned for him to climb onto my back. It should be easier to go through the water on my front rather than on my back. Still my mind nagged at me that it was ridiculous for immortal children who lived in summer court of all places did not know how to swim as I splashed back into the water.

This trek was the least graceful of all as I tugged myself along the rope, often ducking my head underwater just for a break against the sweat pouring from my hair and to cut through the surface tension if only slightly. Luca was silent on my back, arms wrapped tight around my neck as I swam, and did not complain even at the frequent stops I had to make. I was so exhausted, the panic ebbing away at the adrenaline that had been pushing me so far mixed with the fae-wine hangover I would usually be nursing right now. 

I grit my teeth against the rope burn forming in my palm as the water pulls me back slightly, the fibers of the rope cutting into raw skin. I couldn’t wallow in pity as much as I wished to, not with a life literally on my shoulders. Speaking of the life on my shoulders, I looked back towards Luca. His skin that had started to warm to oak bark had waned again, pale and flaky as he shivered against my back. I had to get us out of the water before either one of us succumbed to the cold.

I closed my eyes, no longer looking at the distance I still had to cross as I just moved hand over hand, my legs kicking at the water to push me forward along with my straining arms and core. Then I felt the bone strewn shore scrape along my knee and my eyes flew open. Beisenn was standing on a tall pile of ivory bones, the water has risen enough that only the rock faces are left dry still.  I dig my feet deep into the silt under me as I push up, out of the water as I wade out of the water.

A place where dry bones had crunched under me now had water up to my ankles as I walked Luca over to his brother, water dripping down both of us. My legs are shaking now with full force exhaustion and cold. Luca rushed to his brother, checking him over for any small wound that could have occurred in their separation. I smiled at the siblings, the worry reminded me softly of Nesta checking me over that first night I came back covered in the blood of a rabbit. That first kill had been for our survival as I knew it, and now I would need to continue on for just a month longer.

The promise of my freedom closing in dulled the pain in my feet and legs as I pulled the boys to just under the hallway entrance. I guided Luca to climb upon my shoulders as I kneeled in the bone mush, then offered my small support to Beisenn to climb on top of his brother. Bei was just able to reach the edge of the hallway when he stood on top of his brother’s shoulders and I had risen from my knees.

I felt Luca shift on my shoulders as his heels dug into the side of my chest. The weight above me changed and I heard the small grunts of Beisenn as his brother pushed his feet to have his chest half over the lip of the entrance. Then the weight was gone and I was left with just one child on my shoulders. I put a stabilizing hand against the wall as Luca pulled his legs from my side and moved to stand as his brother had. They were almost free from the pit but Luca was just too short to reach the lip of the entrance, even with Beisenn’s arms now draped over the edge to reach for his brother.

Every part of me shook as I put one of Luca’s still boot clad feet into my hand and pushed. I had to get him up to the small hands reaching for him, then I would curse at Rhys to get them out of here or so help me God. The weight was gone from my wrist and shoulders as I looked up to see a pair of trouser covered legs kick at open air before he was pulled fully over the ledge. I heard the children’s cheering and smiled to myself before I realized I was trapped in the rising water with no base to push me up to that ledge. 

Amarantha’s voice drawled from above and my empty stomach roiled at the sound. “You humans are so narrow sighted as to only see brute force as your way out of trouble? And after my kind sacrificed so many years educating yours and still you are left alone, been abandoned by those you saved.”

I didn’t look up at her as my eyes grew to saucers and I looked over the shore that was washing away under my feet. There, two body lengths to the side of the entrance were three juts of bone that had blended in with the pale stone, one of the bones holding the excess rope I had cut to tie Beisenn to me during our crossing. 

There still was a riddle. My breath was high in my throat as I rushed to the stone they came from. Small words were carved into the stone just above them, and I had to squint to make out the letters and the roman numerals stamped at the heads of each bone. I tried reading the riddle, but my eyes were burning in minutes. Not only was it wordy but it constantly contradicted itself, talk of brothers of stone and sky bickering over who shall own the oceans. I scanned the words for any hint that I could use to quickly find the answer but there were none and I was left in water that had risen to my hips. The bottom of the levers were starting to be covered by water and I quickly grabbed the length or rope before it was swept away. It was a good ten feet long and I made quick work of tying it around my wrist and securing it to a proper jut of stone from the wall so I could assure myself I would not be swept away on the tide.

There was no way I would be able to obtain the answer to this riddle before I was taken to where ever the water led so I would be left to guess. My hand extended toward the second lever, Second trial, Second lever. That was the extent of my thinking as I touched the silver letters. My palm burned with the same pain that had laced up it when I moved the shattered bones in it and I jerked my palm to my chest. The water flow must have increased because it was now licking at my navel as I panted.

The pain jarred me and I looked up to the crowd, searching for the eyes I knew were glued to me. Night sky met steel and I let go of a soft breath, the distance was too great to see his specific expression. Instead I looked to his hands, where they were hidden in his pockets and I knew he was the one sending the searing pain through that tattooed palm. 

I reached for the first one, One human lover, one human betrayer, really my rationalizations were becoming far more poetic than Amarantha’s weak riddle of love as I cursed at Rhysand for the pain that had me gritting my teeth against a wail. That left me with one lever, 3, and something clicked in my head.

Three trials, 3 sisters, and the riddle wasn’t of two brothers, but two eldests who spoke over the youngest brother who already played in the tides. I yanked the lever down with all my might, ignoring any pain that could sprout against the movement but none came as I heard stone groan once again.

I whipped my head around desperately to see the stone below the alcove opening slide back into the wall to form a ramp up. The harsh movement of my torso had cost me stability, though, and my feet slipped under me as bone silt was washed away from under my sole. I hit the water hard and was dragged a few feet down before the rope around my wrist grew taught and stopped me abruptly. My shoulder barked in pain as I resurfaced, sputtering up filthy water. I dug my feet deep into the bones below me, ignoring small sharp fragments of bone as I stood on shaky legs and unhooked my wrist from the rope slowly.

One foot moved an inch at a time as I hugged close to the stone wall, fingers gripping into whatever hold they could find even as the stone cut my finger pads. I came to the corner of the now open hallway and wrapped my hand around it as I quickly slung myself around. The suction of the water tried to pull me back but I was scrambling up the stone, desperate to get out of the water. I got to the top of the ramp and saw the two boys there just as I heard a chorus of boos from the open arena as more groaning stone was heard. The pit I came from grew darker until there was only a single candelabra on the wall illuminating the boys as they crowded to me. I hugged them as I limped further into the hall and away from the sound of crashing water.

Swirling shadows gathered and condensed to form Rhysand, grinning as he looked at me holding the boys close to me as I shook from the cold that had certainly made my lips blue by now.

“Get them out of here.” The words were sharp and Rhysand’s smile dropped as he saw my shaking was not just from the cold but a burning hatred that was threatening to send tears cascading down my face. I gave a quick squeeze to each of the boys shoulders with small murmurs of promise that Alis will be waiting for them when they get home before Nuala and Ceridwen came from the shadows and each took the hand of a boy as they moved down the hallway.

“How did she get them?” The tears were falling now as I saw Rhys’ face tighten. I was terrified, so terrified that I would have to live and die with the blood of two boy’s blood on my hand joining that of Andras’.

“I don’t know” his words were quiet and then he was gone, melded back into the shadows in the stone as the clattering sound of Amarantha’s lackeys came down the hallway. They must be coming to fetch me to throw me back into my cell. So I wiped my eyes and stood with as much composure as I could, hoping the dim lighting and cold would account for the blotchy redness of my face from my quick lived rage.

The warmth of terror washed away to cold shame mixed with some other emotion as I let them drag me through a series of tunnels till they found the cellar again. My cot was a familiar plushness as I wrapped myself in the furred blankets and sobbed myself to sleep.

#fanfic #acotar #reader #a court of readers and dreamers #acotar rewrite #inkywrites #reader insert #rhysand #rhys acotar #Creative liberties were taken with this one

[1nksta1neddesk]

I love waking up w the anxiety levels of a deer being hunted for sport 😍

#the worlds most dangerous game #but its just me waking up thinking i forgot to do an assigment #or that one time summer of 2nd grade #where i woke up and immediately started doing the Pledge of Aligence #im talking straight from my bed #i stood on the carpet by my bed #and did half the pledge #before i realized #ITS SUMMER?? #this is a cry for help #i think this says alot about me and america #*america as in United States #do other countries even do a pledge?? #like not just a national anthem but a daily pledge of alligence??