#There is both a punishing and wonderful sense of destiny haunting our main characters | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

flowerflamestars · 5 months

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In the style of @kayarai, new Effloresce pov options. The Illyrian legionnaires, because Cassian's personal legion must be having a day. Get called to the human lands presumably to do a job and go home. Instead they are given rights/respect/honor/a FUTURE by the most terrifying human(?) woman any of them have ever seen in their long, painful lives. Human villager pov, things are looking up and the fae don't take our children anymore then THIS happens.

Oooo these are both delightful!

The Illyrians, in particular, are primed for this dynamic to be successful. War is their only chance out, and for them, no matter how proud they are of who they are, they're safer/better cared for/better off, miles from the mountains. It's painful, but it's true. Cassian called for them, they came because it's Cassian, but also for them.

And at first, okay, humans have always been strange.

Humans, in their bondage, with nearly nothing to give, still shared.

(Zaphael remembers the war. Zaphael will never forget that particular war for a thousand reasons, but loudest and worst, he will never forget the humans, burying Illyrian dead with their own, singing, like the bodies of bastards were anything but carrion.)

But these aren't peasants. Slaves. These are royal women, in velvet and pearls and steel.

(If Kali had a single doubt, even one, augury a drum resounding in her bones, Nesta Archeron draped in Illyrian knives was enough to tell her the whole story Cassian's face couldn't hide.)

Giving them salt. Bread. Fire. Blessing and bounty and welcome, what they had been denied since birth, the snub a part of life. To be welcomed in honor means you possess honor in the first place, a thing no properly born Illyrian, no Lord of Night, would ever imagine.

There's nothing to go back to.

There's Cassian, the best of them, the proudest, the strongest, throwing himself into the sky just to fall back to earth at the human woman's feet, a sword so feared across the Courts it had songs sung of its blood-hungry edge pressed to her tiny, fearless hand.

It is no small thing to have a liege lord, when you've been denied even the right to have a name.

(Koram is a century old. He's never seen a human, and he doesn't understand now how the hell the fae ever had them in chains. These are their ladies, not even Queens, built like they don't know what fear is. Like it is nothing, to stand against the Morrigan. Illyrian women were allow to be that once, the true fury of the sky. He knows his stories. His songs. He'd rather drown the world in blood than go back to the life he has been given. He is not old enough to remember Shahar, their true lady, but he would have followed. It is no shame, to follow instead this scarce, ruthless chance.)

It is no small thing either, to be treated like people, not fearful animals. Audacity is a very valued trait, when paired with respect. These woman are mad, maybe, no one will say. No one would dare.

But there is questions as to what the hell they're on about, when they start talking about grain and land and contracts. To be Illyrian is to know the tithe of the imperial army above all else- to be bastard born is to know you will have nothing else.

Illyrians are not sent on rescue missions. Guard details. They're considered too dangerous, too uncivilized, too lacking in fae graces.

The Archeron want them to protect their children, no lives more precious. Their elders, their knowledge.

(All these things, Elias thinks, even the richest Illyrian lord in his freezing, iron disciplined citadel, living in the ruins of a civilization they are not allowed to rebuild- all these things they've been denied. All these things these ladies seem ready to kill and die to keep their own people from losing.)

It is insanity, but it is a chance.

On the other hand, the Archeron vassals are used to impossible things.

For years and years they had no intercession- you can dispute the crown tax without a lord to speak for you. Cannot shift around the crops in fields you don't technically own, even if they're ruining you. Cannot divorce, cannot reclaim lost property, cannot, cannot, cannot.

Respect was short on the ground for Lord Archeron.

Being wrecked by debt did not, actually, rescind his title. He left no stewardship, went off and hid in the woods when the collectors came, again and again, stripping his ancestral home until no walls even stood.

The other lords might not have listened to a man so reduced, but the estate remained.

Those three bright girls remained, and there was some question as to what happened to them.

And then they came back. Nesta Archeron, their lady, in worn out clothes and ragged cloaks, her sister Elain beside her. So poor they'd shared a horse, but still they'd come. Before their own affairs were settled, they'd sought the village council, and tried to do some good in their fathers name.

The money brought back trade, the trade brought back ships, the ships brought teachers and medicine and magic, the Archeron lands once more the beating heart of trade routes that spanned the world.

It takes time, to right years of neglect.

The lose their best every year, stolen away, their children. Women who laugh too bright, men who look too faraway. The fae come always, and then, so too, do the men.

Their ladies may run things in their father's name, but they have no legal claim to do so forever. Heiresses must marry.

And then, out of nowhere, the Lady Elain did.

A cousin, they say, an Archeron.

Not a drop of Archeron blood in that one, the vassals know. It cannot be felt, his claim. It helps, however, that he does not seem intent to enforce it to do anything but keep neighboring lords away. To protect their farms. To hold Lady Elains hand and spend his days fixing problems a Lord should not have even seen.

It takes time to notice, the fae do not come.

Not to their cradles, not to their fields. Not from the sea or to the shore.

It is the first year in memory of such safety.

And then, the gheas.

They are vassals, bound in blood to their land. When the binding breaks, all are meant to die. A complete and fae punshiment: to be erased, to be forgotten.

As though it is nothing, their lady tells them the binding in broken.

Like doom can be forestalled.

That not only have their lives been saved, they are offered places on Archeron's personal property. Equally, without servitude or cost. An escape, to somewhere that will be safe, with war on the horizon. The Archerons now, like the Archeron of old, take care of their own. Here, or on any shore.

A pride once, what was becoming a pride again.

There is fae blood among them, of course. Even now, centuries later, a rogue trait will spill over. The millers daughter has eyes like an owl, yellow, and the Lady Nesta provided glasses to hide the color. There have always been those who run too fast, who can breathe water, who live just a little too long. They often find themselves a true welcome on Archeron ships, half the crews of a continent where such mixture, such society, is safe.

Humans under the wall have never forgotten the war. It is songs they sing still, of freedom. Of fighting. Of Jurian who gave of himself to save hundreds from the wicked Clythia. Of Fatimah, who wrapt her braid around a fae princes neck as he slept, killed right in the bower he'd stolen her away to. In stories, they love fae and they kill fae.

In stories, they remember Illyrians.

Honor, kindness, devastating violence.

Fae castes are nothing to them.

But it is not nothing, for the Archerons, to share this bounty. They, who could fly away, sail away, to delay whatever punishment may come to bring along all who dare.

It is a return of heroes out a legend, when they, farmers and merchants and weavers, need it most.

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