Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

So, I’ve had this idea for a while: What if Feyre and Rhysand had a daughter… who absolutely hates them?
Not misunderstood, not lost and looking for love—just someone who genuinely doesn’t care about their existence. I’ve always wanted to explore that dynamic, but I struggled for the longest time to build a plot that would do the idea justice.

Now, I’m finally trying to make it happen.

That said—I’m not really a writer myself, so this is more of a passion project than anything polished. If you're a writer and you're interested in collaborating, helping shape the plot, or co-writing this fic with me, please feel free to reach out. I’d love to make this the best story it can be.

A few important notes:
This is 100% a Inner Circle bashing fic.

They will be called out for their hypocrisy, manipulation, and the decisions they made—especially the ones that always seem to get swept under the rug.

There will be no forgiveness arcs or “everyone deserves a second chance” themes here.

And this fic will be exploring the other courts of Prythian and the Fae lands that no talks about. (since there’s not really any fanfics about the other courts) Prythian is not the only Fae land!

I also want this to be a really long fic (it will probably have a second part continuing this story if it gets too long)

If you love the Inner Circle and don’t want to see them criticized, this is not the fic for you.

Thanks for reading—and for giving this chaotic little concept a shot. I really hope you enjoy what’s to come.

Chapter Text

The pain was blinding.

It pulsed through Feyre’s body like molten glass, searing every nerve, stealing her breath. Her magic, vast and wild, recoiled uselessly inside her chest. It could do nothing now. This was not a battlefield she could fight her way through — not with blades, not with power. Only with the raw, brutal endurance of flesh and will.

It pulsed through Feyre’s body like molten glass, searing every nerve, stealing her breath. Her magic, vast and wild, recoiled uselessly inside her chest. It could do nothing now. This was not a battlefield she could fight her way through — not with blades, not with power. Only with the raw, brutal endurance of flesh and will.

The agony rolled over her like a breaking wave, crashing through muscle and bone, leaving her shaking in its wake. For a moment, all she could do was float beneath it, adrift in the haze of pain and the sharp, frantic rhythm of her own heart.

Her mind spiraled, unbidden, grasping for something—anything—to ground herself.

Not Under the Mountain, she reminded herself, squeezing her eyes shut as another contraction gripped her body like a fist. Not there. Not again.
But her mind betrayed her.

The stone walls. The blood. The glittering eyes of the Fae watching her every move. Amarantha’s poisonous smile. The weight of lives balanced on her choices. On her suffering.

Her throat tightened, the ghosts clawing their way through the cracks in her carefully rebuilt walls.

It was supposed to be different now. Safe. Home.
Rhys had given her that. The freedom, the choice. The sky itself, when she’d thought herself nothing more than a pawn on someone else’s chessboard. He’d shattered her cage and taught her how to breathe again.

And yet…

The memories still lingered. The quiet ones. The cracks between the moments of joy.

The war — the smell of smoke and ash, the screams that never quite left her ears.

The meetings behind closed doors, filled with sharp glances and the weight of impossible decisions.
The whispered arguments about the baby, the looks exchanged when they thought she wasn’t paying attention. Madja’s carefully chosen words. Rhysand’s tight, quiet silences.

Feyre pushed the thoughts away, her grip tightening in the linen sheets. Sweat slicked her temples, cold and sharp as moonlight.

It didn’t matter now. Whatever doubts, whatever quiet fears still haunted her, they paled compared to this — this raw, visceral moment where life itself clawed its way into the world.

She trusted Rhys. She loved him. Even when the truth came in pieces, when the shadows of old wounds whispered at the edges of her mind.

He’s always tried to protect me, she reminded herself, her breath ragged as the next wave of pain seized her. Even when I didn’t want him to.

Her hands clenched in the linen sheets of the bed. Sweat drenched her hairline. The River House’s bedroom blurred around her. Moonlight poured through the open balcony doors, silver and sharp, staining the floor like spilt ink.

Rhysand’s hand was tight in hers.

“You’re doing so well, Feyre,” he said, voice cracking despite the smooth, practiced charm he usually wielded like armor. His violet eyes shone with terror, his power coiled tight beneath his skin, leaking into the room like smoke.

“Liar,” she ground out, her throat raw from screaming.
Rhys’s lips twitched, but the usual arrogance — the easy, unbearable confidence — was gone. Fear hollowed out his face, made him human in a way Feyre had rarely seen.

Madja, the healer, moved at the foot of the bed, calm but brisk, her lined face set with quiet urgency. The others stood clustered in the hallway outside — shadows pressed against the door, muffled voices bleeding through the wood.

Cassian’s rumbling voice. Mor’s sharp-edged worry. Azriel’s silence, colder than the night wind. Amren — unreadable, distant, as always.

The sounds filtered faintly through the door, but Feyre didn’t need to see them to know how they looked, how they hovered just beyond the threshold like shadows pressed against glass.

Her heart clenched — not just from the pain tearing through her ribs and spine — but from the heavy, sour tension hanging in the house. It settled over everything like dust no one could sweep away. It had been weeks like this. Fractured, sharp. The Inner Circle fraying at the edges like silk left too long in the sun.

Once, they had been unshakable. A unit of power and loyalty, of friendship forged in blood and war and quiet understanding. Or so it had seemed.

But nothing stayed untouched by time — not even them.

Mor, pacing, her laugh brittle as glass, never quite reaching her eyes anymore. The easy joy that had once been her armor — cracked. Feyre had seen it, though Mor smiled through the fractures, through the strained edges of her conversations, the careful avoidance of Azriel’s lingering glances. They never spoke of it. None of them did.

Azriel — silent as always, but colder now, the space around him laced with shadows that even Feyre, with all her power, couldn’t decipher. His loyalty to Rhysand was unwavering, but the shadows whispered of secrets too old to name, and Feyre wondered — only briefly — if even Rhys knew all the truths that lingered beneath his Spymaster’s sharp gaze.

Cassian tried — in the way Cassian always did. Loud, charming, warm when the world grew too cold. But there was a weight to him now, something settled behind his eyes that jokes couldn’t shake. The war. The losses. The endless battle to hold everything — and everyone — together.

And Amren… Amren had always been other, ancient in ways Feyre couldn’t comprehend, but lately even that amused detachment had curdled into something sharper. Watching. Measuring. As though waiting for the inevitable moment the carefully balanced house of cards they’d built came crashing down.

Feyre felt it — the gaps between them — widening by the day.

Feyre’s heart clenched, not just from the pain — but from the heavy, sour tension hanging in the air. It had been weeks like this. Fractured, sharp. The Inner Circle fraying at the edges.

Her sister’s absence clawed at her as fiercely as the pain in her body.

Nesta wasn’t here. Of course not.

The thought stung, a bitter ache layered beneath the tearing agony in her body.

Their relationship had always been… complicated. Fractured long before the Cauldron, before Prythian, before Illyrian training and burning houses. Long before power and politics had tangled their lives beyond recognition.

Nesta, who could cut the world to ribbons with her words. Who refused to kneel, refused to forgive — even when forgiveness might have soothed something raw between them.

But Feyre… she was not innocent in it.

She’d left Nesta behind once. Left her in that cold, crumbling cottage while she chased survival through the woods. And Nesta had never forgotten.

And maybe Feyre hadn’t either.

Their scars never quite lined up — they just layered over each other, tangled and impossible.

Still, a part of her had expected — hoped — that Nesta would be here now.

Not for her. For the child.

But Nesta was not the type to sit and hold trembling hands. She was fire and steel, and whatever tentative peace she’d found in the House of Wind hadn’t softened those edges.

Cassian had said she was… healing. Rebuilding herself, quietly, out of the rubble they’d all left her buried beneath.

Feyre wanted to believe that. Wanted to believe Nesta’s absence was self-preservation, not a deliberate cutting away of the fragile threads still binding them.

But the emptiness beside the door — where her sister should have been — gnawed at her anyway.

It wasn’t anger. Not quite.

But it wasn’t forgiveness either.

Just another fracture in a family already crumbling at the edges.

Another secret slipping through the cracks.

Another contraction ripped through her. She arched off the bed with a ragged scream.

Rhys pressed a kiss to her temple, his hand trembling slightly in hers. His shadows — or was it just his magic? — curled around her shoulders, protective, desperate, useless.

“Almost there,” Madja’s voice cut through the fog of pain. “One more push.”

The words felt impossibly distant — as though they were being spoken across a great, empty canyon, swallowed by the roaring in Feyre’s ears. Her entire body screamed with raw, unrelenting agony. Her ribs strained with every breath, lungs burning as if they’d been scraped raw by shards of glass. Her spine arched against the mattress, muscles trembling and locking, and every nerve felt flayed open, exposed to the air.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not this brutal. Not this impossible. She had survived worse — hadn’t she? She had faced the horrors Under the Mountain, had broken herself over and over in those dark, suffocating chambers. She had stood before Hybern’s army as blood painted the battlefield, had watched the Cauldron’s magic devour everything she thought unshakable. She had carried the weight of death, of choices that clawed at her in quiet, sleepless nights.
But none of that — not the torture, not the bloodshed, not even the bone-carver’s cruel whispers — could have prepared her for this moment. This sharp, tearing, primal undoing of her body.

Her magic — wild, ancient, stolen from seven High Lords — whimpered inside her, cowering uselessly beneath her skin. It could bring down mountains, could rend the earth apart — but it could not save her from this. It could not soften the unbearable ache of being split apart from the inside.

A voice—another voice now—low and tight with panic, wrenched through the haze.

“Stay with me, Feyre.”

Rhys.

His hand still gripped hers, far too tightly, his power leaking out of him in frantic waves of dark, star-flecked magic. It curled around her wrist, her shoulder, her ribs, as though he could shield her from the inevitable with shadows alone.

“You’re almost there,” he breathed, but the words cracked — the carefully crafted mask he wore before Courts and kings slipping entirely. For once, he sounded like a male at the edge of losing everything. Not a High Lord. Not the most powerful Fae in Prythian. Just Rhysand, the terrified mate watching helplessly as she came undone.

Feyre barely heard him. The pain was drowning her now, heavy and suffocating, dragging her beneath the surface.

But her mind — gods, her mind refused to let her disappear quietly.

It spat old memories back at her like cruel, sharp-edged stones.

The bitter wind of the mortal woods, when hunger gnawed through her bones.

The feel of blood beneath her nails in the Spring Court, when the lies piled so high they nearly buried her.
The suffocating, choking terror of Amarantha’s throne room. The screams echoing off stone.

The searing, impossible cold of the Cauldron swallowing her whole.

And beneath all of that—the quiet knowledge that no matter how far she had come, how much power coiled beneath her skin, in this moment, she was just Feyre. Flesh and bone. Fragile. Breakable. At the mercy of a force greater than magic itself.

Madja’s voice cut through the storm again, sharp and steady. “One more, Feyre. Push.”

Everything in her body screamed against it.

Her vision blurred. Her heart pounded like a war drum. Her muscles locked.

But Feyre gritted her teeth, every last shred of will snapping into place, and pushed.

Her back arched off the bed, every tendon stretched tight, as if the world itself paused — holding its breath along with her.

A moment.

Another.

The sharp, slicing relief.

And then —

A cry.

Thin. High. Alive.

Feyre’s vision blurred with tears as she collapsed back into the pillows.

Rhys’s breath left him in a gasp — a sound that cracked apart the fragile shield he always kept in place.

For a moment, the entire world seemed to hold its breath.

Madja stood at the foot of the bed, her weathered, steady hands cradling the impossibly small, squirming bundle. A child — their child — red-faced and wailing, her tiny fists curling with quiet, stubborn defiance.
But it wasn’t the cry that held Rhysand frozen.

It was the face.

The impossibly familiar, impossibly unsettling face staring back at him beneath tufts of thick, dark hair — the exact inky black of his own. Hair that curled already, wild and soft, as though woven from the same night sky Rhys commanded.

But it was the eyes that silenced him.

Even squeezed shut from the effort of her crying, there was no mistaking their color.

When they opened — wide, glassy, still adjusting to the world — they were not merely violet.

They were impossibly, unnaturally purple. Darker.
Deeper. So saturated with color they seemed almost luminous in the dim room — as if her irises held entire galaxies trapped beneath their surface.

A perfect, unsettling mirror of him — but more. Sharper. Older, somehow, though the infant in Madja’s arms could not be more than minutes old.

For all his endless power, for all his centuries of practiced charm and control, Rhys stumbled to Feyre’s side as though his legs might buckle entirely, his trembling hands reaching for the child as though he didn’t trust the world to hold her properly.

Madja’s knowing smile flickered across her face as she pressed the tiny, squirming form into his arms.

“The world rarely listens to our expectations, High Lord,” she murmured softly. “Especially where visions are concerned.”

Feyre barely heard the words — her pulse was a dull roar in her ears — but they twisted around her nonetheless, stirring quiet, unwanted thoughts beneath the haze of exhaustion.

Elain’s vision.

The words still clung to Feyre’s memory like half-forgotten fragments of a dream. But it wasn’t just Elain’s voice that haunted her now.

It was the Bone Carver’s.

“When the time comes, tell the bastard-born prince his time is near. Tell him his mate waits in the land of dust and bones.”
A prince. A son.

That was what they’d all assumed. What they’d whispered to themselves on sleepless nights. Even now, the memory of the Carver’s hollow, ancient voice curled around her, as sharp and cryptic as it had been in the depths of the Prison.

A prince, radiant as sunlight. A child wrapped in gold and flame. Hope reborn.

It had all sounded so simple then — so inevitable.
But the Bone Carver, with his ancient, ageless eyes, had never spoken plainly. His words had been a riddle wrapped in centuries of forgotten truths. And Elain’s vision… that, too, had never been what they thought it was.

The memory hit her in a wave, so clear it dragged her back into the quiet, tense sitting room of the River House months ago — before the pregnancy showed, before the fears whispered between walls.

Elain had stood by the window, her hands twisting together, eyes distant — too distant — as though watching something only she could see.

“I… I saw something,” Elain had whispered, her voice thin as gossamer. “I wanted to show you both.”
Feyre had looked to Rhysand, whose expression was carefully neutral, but the pulse of curiosity beneath his skin was unmistakable.

And then Elain’s hand had brushed against hers — and darkness bloomed behind Feyre’s eyes.

It wasn’t a memory, or a dream. It was… something else. A vision wrapped in light and heat.

A child — small, golden-skinned, with dark hair shining like polished wood beneath sunlight — laughing beneath an endless summer sky. His eyes were amber — no, not amber — molten gold, brighter than any mortal sun.

Fire flickered in the child’s footsteps. The earth itself seemed to bow beneath his presence. Power, raw and blinding, hummed beneath his skin.

A boy. A son.

Hope, reborn.

When Feyre had blinked, the image fading like mist, Rhys was already watching her — wonder and relief battling behind his carefully constructed mask.

Neither of them questioned it. Neither dared.
But now—

The child cradled against Rhysand’s chest was no golden beacon.

She was shadow and night and violet eyes deeper than the void beyond the stars. Her tiny fists curled defiantly against her father’s chest, the faint shimmer of otherworldly power coiling beneath her impossibly delicate skin.

A daughter.

The Bone Carver’s riddle. Elain’s vision. Both fractured, both seen through lenses clouded by hope and fear.

And Feyre wondered now, her heart twisting with fierce, terrifying love — and the quiet, curling uncertainty that the future was not nearly as clear as they had hoped — how many of their choices had been shaped by things they only thought they understood.

The child’s cries filled the room, raw and imperfect.
Feyre could barely see her — their daughter — beyond the tears and the exhaustion, but she was there. Warm and small in Rhys’s arms.

“She’s perfect,” Rhys whispered, cradling the infant against his chest. His voice shook — all the centuries of polished control, High Lord arrogance, and quiet cruelty stripped away.

Feyre let her eyes close for just a moment, overwhelmed.

The others filtered in, finally.

The room, already thick with tension, seemed to grow smaller with each arrival. The scent of blood, magic, and exhaustion hung heavy in the air, clinging to the walls, the curtains, Feyre’s skin.

Cassian was the first to cross the threshold — broad shoulders tight with strain, his Illyrian wings half-furled behind him as though he didn’t know whether to relax or brace for another blow. His grin was crooked, brittle at the edges, but familiar.

“Look at her,” he murmured, voice rough with something dangerously close to awe. He clapped Rhys on the shoulder — a gesture both grounding and protective — before leaning down to peer at the child nestled against Rhysand’s chest. “Tiny little thing, isn’t she? Good thing she looks like you, brother, or we’d all be in trouble.”

The joke rang hollow, but it was an attempt. Cassian’s eyes lingered on the baby longer than necessary, searching for something — relief, reassurance, maybe a glimpse of the future they’d all quietly built in their minds.

Azriel slipped in behind him, silent as smoke, his shadows curling along the floor and walls, darkening the edges of the room. He didn’t approach, didn’t speak — only stood near the doorway, his eyes sharp and unreadable, fixed on the infant. The shadows flickered toward her like they recognized something, and for a heartbeat, Feyre swore they recoiled — subtle, but there.

Her breath caught, but Azriel’s expression never changed.

Mor was next — and for all her usual confidence, all her radiant, effortless beauty, there was something brittle in her posture, something uncharacteristically cautious in the way she moved toward the bed. Her golden hair glinted like honey in the lamplight, her eyes wide, lips parted slightly as she took in the sight of their daughter.
The relief on her face made Feyre’s chest ache — raw, vulnerable, unfiltered.

But beneath it… beneath it lingered the faintest trace of uncertainty.

Not fear. Not dislike. But unfamiliarity, sharp and quiet, tucked carefully behind Mor’s practiced warmth.

Still, her smile when she finally spoke was genuine enough to ease the edges of Feyre’s exhaustion.
“Have you picked a name?” Mor asked softly, the brittle edge of her earlier nerves fading beneath practiced calm.

Feyre’s eyes drifted to Rhys, her voice weak but steady. “Vaelyra.”

A quiet hush settled over the room. It was not awe, not reverence — but the heavy silence of uncertainty. Of something unresolved.

The name — a relic from an ancient tongue — tasted strange in the air. Old. Sharp. Like the echo of some forgotten thing.

Amren remained by the window, her small, ageless frame bathed in moonlight. Her silver eyes glinted, cold and distant, tracking the child with a predator’s stillness. She hadn’t spoken, hadn’t moved, but Feyre didn’t miss the way her gaze lingered on Vaelyra — calculating, ancient, as though peeling back layers no one else could see.

The room pulsed with tension — layered, quiet, waiting — as the name settled over them like a whispered prophecy.

But no one questioned it.

Not then.

Not yet.

The celebration was brief. Hollow, really — like a performance they all knew their roles in, but whose meaning had long since bled away beneath fear and fatigue.

Within an hour, Mor was gone, her smile carefully constructed as she claimed exhaustion. But Feyre saw it — the edge behind her eyes, the weight of old secrets tucked neatly beneath that radiant beauty. The daughter of the Court of Nightmares, veiled in charm and silk — still running from shadows they never dared speak of aloud.

Cassian and Azriel lingered only minutes longer. They exchanged glances — unspoken words, old loyalties and unhealed wounds woven between them like threads pulled too tight. Cassian’s hand hovered briefly on Azriel’s shoulder as they left, a silent, grounding touch that said more than words could.

There had been… tension there. Not just tonight, but for months now. Quiet, sharp edges beneath the polished unity of the Inner Circle. The war had ended, but not everything had been put back together.

The cracks were subtle. The kind that only showed if you knew where to look.

Even Amren slipped away without a word. The silver-eyed creature, older than memory itself, had watched Vaelyra with an expression Feyre couldn’t decipher — part curiosity, part calculation. As though the child were not flesh and blood, but a puzzle waiting to be solved. And when she left, it was as silent as a ghost vanishing into mist.

Only Rhys remained.

Sitting by the bed, Vaelyra curled against his chest.
Feyre drifted in and out of sleep, eyes heavy, mind fogged with exhaustion and pain. But through it all, she watched him.

For all his power, all his endless, suffocating protectiveness — he looked fragile in that chair.
The High Lord of the Night Court, the most feared male in Prythian, wrapped around this tiny, squirming bundle as though the world itself were poised to snatch her away. His broad shoulders curved forward, shadows clinging to him like smoke, his violet eyes ringed with shadows of their own — not from magic, but from fear, sleeplessness, and a quiet, desperate love.

His grip on their daughter was too tight. Too possessive. As though daring the world to try.

But in the end — it wouldn’t be the world.

Not the mortal realm with its shifting alliances and trembling borders. Not the other High Lords, waiting in their palaces with sharpened smiles and hidden knives. Not even the ancient, treacherous games of politics that had never truly left their court, no matter how many years of peace they pretended to enjoy.

No, it would be something far older.

Far quieter.

Something that slipped beneath their carefully constructed wards, their endless preparations, their blinding love for a child they thought they understood — and none of them would even notice.

Not until it was too late.

Not until the shadows had already closed in.

Chapter Text

The house was too quiet.

Rhysand was the first to stir — though “stir” wasn’t the right word. His body had never truly relaxed. He doubted it ever would again. Even now, hours after Feyre had given birth, his muscles were still tight, coiled with tension that no amount of magic or exhaustion could unravel. His wings ached from where he’d kept them half-flared for hours, the instinct to shield, to protect, still burning beneath his skin.

The River House creaked faintly around him — old wood shifting beneath the weight of silence. Downstairs, the world slept. Velaris slept. But Rhys could not. Would not.

Sleep had never come easy to him, not even before this.

Not in the decades after his father died, leaving him High Lord in name but not in confidence. Not in the years after Amarantha, when every moment of rest had been a gamble between nightmares and suffocation. And not after the war, when peace had settled like ash on his tongue — fragile, temporary, always one heartbeat from shattering.

It was worse now, with her.

The pale blue light of dawn crept through the edges of the curtains, softening the edges of the nursery, the world beyond still curled in sleep. But inside the River House, sleep came like a fragile thing — fleeting, easily shattered.

Vaelyra had finally drifted off, small and warm and unnervingly light against his chest. The rise and fall of her breath was so faint, so delicate, that for long minutes he’d done nothing but listen — counting each inhale, each exhale, as though his own heartbeat was tethered to hers.

She made these quiet, hiccuping noises when she slept — not the loud, protesting wails that had filled the brutal, chaotic hours after her birth, but soft, uncertain sounds. Half-sighs, half-startled breaths, like her body was still learning what it meant to exist. So faint he might have missed them, if not for the way his entire being seemed tuned to her now, as if some thread deeper than magic tethered him to every rise and fall of her tiny chest. Rhys had once been attuned to the pulse of Velaris, to the rhythm of his court, to the subtle shifts in battle lines — but this was different. Quieter. More terrifying. He hadn’t realized how fragile sound could feel until her silence became something to measure his world against.

And it reminded him — horribly, involuntarily — of the battlefield after Hybern’s army had retreated. That moment when the screaming had stopped, not because the danger had passed, but because there was no one left standing to make noise. The eerie, suffocating quiet that settled over the scorched Illyrian camps like a shroud. The scent of blood and burning wings still fresh in his mind. Cassian’s body sprawled in the mud, his wings nearly cleaved in two. Azriel slumped beside him, blood soaking through the snow like spilled ink. The Cauldron's power lingering in the air, heavy and cruel. And Feyre — oh gods, Feyre — her breathing nothing but a broken rasp against his ear as he held her, ran with her, begged her to stay. Her soul, he was certain, had hovered on a blade’s edge. He had felt it then — the helplessness, the hollowness. The knowing that if the silence stretched one moment longer, he would break.

It was that same silence now — the quiet before the world tilted on its axis again.

Rhys held her a moment longer, pressing his nose to the crown of her head, inhaling the impossible, new scent of her. Clean linen. Warm milk. The faintest trace of starlight that clung to her skin, as if even the cosmos recognized what she was — what she might become.
My daughter, he thought. The words still tasted foreign. Terrifying. Holy.

His daughter — and yet, when he looked at her, it was like staring into a mirror of himself. But the comparison wasn’t soft, wasn’t gentle. It was unnerving. Disarming.
Her hair, even so new, was dark as the deepest hours of the night — black, not the shadowy brown of Feyre’s or the sun-kissed shades of other High Fae, but the same endless, ink-dark black that marked his own lineage. The kind of darkness that wasn’t merely color, but a claim. A warning.

And her skin — already rich with the same warm, deep-brown undertone as his, darkening by the hour, as though even her body remembered what bloodline she came from before her mind ever could.

But it was the eyes that held him captive — that set his every nerve on edge in a way he didn’t want to name. Even closed now, her lashes long and curling against soft, copper-brown cheeks, he could see them — those impossible eyes. Violet, yes, like his. But darker. Deeper. An unnatural, unnerving shade, so saturated with color they seemed to shimmer with their own quiet light, as though some ancient star had taken root behind her irises.

It unsettled him, that resemblance. Not for lack of love — no, his love for her was already so fierce, so utterly consuming, that it scared him more than war, more than the bloodshed that had defined too much of his life.

But there was something about Vaelyra that set him on edge. Something beyond resemblance, beyond blood. Something old. Watching. As though the child in his arms carried not just their magic, but something more ancient. Something forgotten. Something the Cauldron itself had whispered into her bones.

The room creaked behind him, the faintest sound of a footstep against polished wood.

“She’s finally asleep,” Feyre murmured from the doorway, her voice raw with exhaustion, but tinged with the same awe still strangling his heart.

He turned slowly, careful not to jostle Vaelyra in his arms, and found Feyre leaning against the doorframe. The golden light of early dawn poured over her, softening the hard edges of fatigue etched across her face. Her hair was mussed, strands falling free from her braid, the loose nightshirt hanging off one shoulder, revealing skin marred with the faintest scars — remnants of battles long past.

Her eyes — those wide, storm-gray eyes — were shadowed with dark circles, but they shone when they looked at their daughter. For a moment, Rhys just watched her. His High Lady. His mate. His impossible salvation.

She was radiant, even now. Disheveled, fragile in her weariness — and yet there was nothing about her that wasn’t strong, wasn’t resolute. It cracked something open in him all over again, the way it always had.

“You should be resting,” he whispered, though his voice betrayed the fact that he hadn’t done much of that himself. His words were quiet, but they held the same unrelenting edge of protectiveness he’d carried for years — protectiveness that, if he was honest, had been slowly warping under the weight of everything they’d built, everything they’d lost.

A flicker of memory pulled at him — Cassian’s voice, gruff and teasing, years ago during one of their endless strategy sessions.

“You hover too much, you know. She’s not going to break just because you blink.”

Rhys had brushed him off then, rolling his eyes, hiding the knot of worry buried beneath his chest. But Cassian had seen it — as he always did. Azriel, too — with his quiet, shadow-soaked stare that always saw too much.
But none of them understood what it meant to hold this much power. To know how quickly it could all be stripped away.

And now… now, with Vaelyra, that fear had tripled.
Feyre approached, the soft creak of the floorboards marking each step, and trailed a hand along the curve of his shoulder, her palm warm, grounding.

Her gaze fell to Vaelyra, her expression softening, cracking wide open with something raw, vulnerable.
For the first time in what felt like hours, Rhys let himself exhale.

“I’ll sleep when you do,” she replied quietly.
Rhys huffed a soft laugh — but even that felt strained. Forced. He turned back to the crib by the window, its silk canopy rustling faintly in the draft.

The moment he placed Vaelyra down, a cold unease slipped into his chest — the same instinct that had carried him through court politics, wars, and the blood-soaked sands of Hybern’s battlefields. But this wasn’t Hybern. This wasn’t the Court of Nightmares. This was home.

And yet…

“She’ll be safe,” Feyre whispered beside him, reading his thoughts as easily as she always did. Her hand ghosted over his, anchoring him, grounding him. “She’s safe here, Rhys.”

He wanted to believe that. Desperately.

But the shadows whispered otherwise.

His eyes lingered on Vaelyra’s sleeping form. Those impossibly dark lashes fanned against her cheeks. Her tiny hands curled into fists, so fragile, so utterly breakable.

“We thought we’d have a boy,” he said softly, the words tumbling out like smoke. His gaze drifted to Feyre. “Elain’s vision…”

Feyre stiffened, her hand slipping from his wrist. The name hung in the air like a storm cloud.

Rhys hesitated, then added, “The Bone Carver, too. He showed us… a boy. A prince.”

Feyre’s eyes clouded, distant for a moment, as if dragged backward in time.

It had been months before the war. Before the bloodshed, before the long nights filled with strategy maps and desperate prayers, before Feyre had seen the world crack and still been expected to keep standing. Before she’d learned that winning came with a cost — one that didn’t always wait to be paid in coin or blood.
It had been a quieter time, in that small lull when Elain had first begun seeing more than this world — more than she should have.

She remembered the way Elain had come to them, one cool spring evening. Pale and silent, the scent of the garden still clinging to her skin. She hadn’t spoken, only reached for Feyre’s hand, and then Rhys’s.

There had been no warning. Only the strange, sinking sensation of magic pulling her under — of the world folding in on itself like a dream being unwritten.

Elain’s visions had never made sense, not entirely. They had always come like scattered pieces of someone else’s story. But this one—
Feyre remembered the warmth of the sunlight. The golden-skinned boy running through tall grass, laughing, radiant. A glimpse of joy too rare, too bright to feel real.

And then it changed.

A child — different now. Younger. Still, impossibly small. Cradled in light and wrapped in something that moved like flame, like shadow. Eyes too old, too clear, too still. Not fearsome. Not cold. Just… present.

The vision had whispered of something more than destiny.

Something that didn’t come with a name.
Hope, reborn.

She’d thought of that often. Especially after the birth. Especially now, when her body still felt too raw, too mortal.

So when the words came, they came not with conviction, but with regret.

“We saw what we wanted to see,” Feyre said quietly, voice fraying like fabric worn too thin.

Rhys didn’t interrupt. He stood across the nursery, silent as a shadow, his eyes on the small sleeping shape beneath the silk-draped crib.

Feyre’s hands twitched at her sides. “That vision… the Bone Carver… it wasn’t specific. It never was.”

She swallowed hard, glancing at the crib, then back at him. “And now… she’s here. Vaelyra.”

Her voice softened, the name catching on something in her chest. “A girl. Our girl.”

Rhys’s jaw flexed. He looked at her then, and for a heartbeat, there was no High Lord in that gaze. Just a father.

“And still… there’s power in her. You can feel it.”
Feyre nodded slowly, arms wrapping around herself. “More than we were prepared for.”

She didn’t say what she meant — not entirely. That it hummed through her whenever she held Vaelyra. That her magic didn’t quite settle around the baby, like it didn’t know what to do with her. That sometimes, in the quiet, she swore the air felt too still.

They stood there in silence. Not the peaceful kind. This silence came with weight — with the echo of all the things they’d lost. It coiled between them, not just grief, not yet… but something beginning to feel like dread.
Rhys moved first. Crossed the floor and ran a hand gently down her arm, grounding her. “Come back to bed,” he said softly.

Feyre hesitated. Her gaze drifted again to the crib — to the soft, slow rise and fall of the blanket as their daughter slept. She should have felt comforted. Should have been able to walk away.

But she didn’t.

There was no reason for the unease pressing at the back of her mind. No logic to it.

Only instinct.

But she was exhausted. Still healing. And the day had been long.

So she let Rhys lead her down the hall, his fingers warm around hers, the soft tread of his footsteps always a few inches ahead — steady, certain. Her shadows followed, loyal and quiet.

The nursery door clicked shut behind them.

Neither of them noticed how still the room had become.
How the silk canopy above the crib had stilled, unmoving in the draftless air.

Or how the light at the window shimmered strangely, just once.

A flicker.

A breath.

Then gone.

The crib stood empty.
_________________

The moment Feyre’s eyes landed on the empty crib, her body reacted before her mind caught up.
Power surged, raw and crackling, igniting at her fingertips — that impossible, untamed cocktail of High Fae gifts still a living storm beneath her skin. A relic of all seven courts, bestowed in death and rebirth, and now threaded with the deep-rooted instinct of a mother who had just lost sight of her child.

Her heartbeat thundered in her chest, matching the deafening roar of her magic as it began to rise — uncoiling like a predator too long kept in check. Fire whispered beneath her ribs. Ice slid down her spine. Shadows flared and twisted around her ankles as if her very soul rebelled at the sight before her.
She didn’t remember moving.

One heartbeat they were frozen, staring at the impossibility before them. The next, they were in the hallway — stumbling into motion, power and fear and fury propelling them forward like arrows loosed from a bow.

Rhys was beside her, his breath low and tight, as if every second cost him something to contain the unraveling within. His magic bled into the corridor — darker than night, soaked in old power. The glamour he wore for the city, for the court, for them — the smiling High Lord of the Night Court — had long since cracked and fallen away. This was what remained underneath: the predator, the protector. The male who had once shattered a mountain for vengeance.

But even now, Feyre could sense it — the edge of his composure fraying, the careful calculations slipping. And still, he did not speak. Not yet.

She didn’t need him to. She felt it all.

His fear. His rage.

And beneath it... something colder. Something older.

Doubt.

Not in her. Never in her.

But in the house. In the wards. In the people who had promised them this home would be safe.
The River House was supposed to be the one place in Prythian where nothing could touch them. A fortress wrapped in spells and loyalties — Amren’s wards, Azriel’s shadows, Cassian’s watchful eye.

But Amren hadn’t been here in weeks. A quiet absence, unexplained. Elain had been drifting further into silence. Mor was in Vallahan again. Azriel had been chasing whispers on the continent, and Cassian…
Feyre clenched her teeth. Cassian had visited the house three times in as many weeks, but barely stayed long enough to hold Vaelyra. Always distracted. Always “needed elsewhere.”

They had said the right things. Smiled, toasted the birth, vowed protection.

But none of them had stayed.

Their footsteps echoed against the stone, the sound too loud in the hush of early morning.

Sunlight filtered through the high windows in fractured beams, like something had broken the light on its way in.

Rhys’s shadows skittered along the walls as if hunting something just out of reach.

And still, they did not speak.

Because to speak would mean putting shape to the possibility neither of them could yet voice.

That something had happened in the heart of their home — beneath the very noses of the Inner Circle that Rhysand had once called unbreakable. That perhaps... things had been breaking for a while.

Feyre felt it like a crack behind the walls.

A house of power built on shared trauma, on loyalty born in war. But wars ended. People changed. And Feyre… Feyre had been watching. Quietly. Carefully.

There were wounds the Inner Circle never truly addressed. Gaps in trust disguised as banter. Promises made during battle that didn’t hold up in peace. She had played along — worn the crown, hosted the meetings, let the Court of Dreams pretend it was still what it had once been.

But they weren’t at war anymore.

And still… none of them had seen this coming.
None of them had felt it.

Not the ancient power in the nursery. Not the flicker of something older than even Amren.

Not the silence that pressed in around her now like hands at her throat.

Feyre’s magic lashed out ahead of her — testing, probing. Looking for weakness. Looking for someone to blame.

Her daughter was gone.

And someone would answer for it.

They didn’t speak.

Words wouldn’t have made it real — not yet.
They found Cassian first, pacing the length of the drawing room like a caged animal. His wings were partially flared, the dark leather taut, every inch of his broad frame coiled with restless energy. His eyes flicked toward them the moment they appeared, his expression hardening with confusion and immediate concern.

“What—?” he started, stepping forward, but the look on Rhysand’s face — the sheer, brittle horror in Feyre’s eyes — cut him off.

The silence that followed said more than any words could.

Cassian’s mouth pressed into a grim line, his scarred knuckles flexing at his sides. The General of the Night Court — feared on battlefields across the continent — stood utterly powerless in the face of an empty crib. His warrior’s instincts, honed over centuries of war and loss, screamed for action, for blood, for something tangible to fight. But there was no enemy here. No swords to draw. No monsters to cut down. Only a yawning absence — and the slow, suffocating realization that whatever had happened, it had happened right beneath their noses.

“I should’ve been here,” he muttered, almost too quietly to hear. His voice, usually a booming thing of warmth and steel, had frayed at the edges. “I was supposed to—”
“You weren’t,” Feyre said sharply, cutting him off. Her voice held no malice, but the heat of her grief burned beneath each word. “None of you were.”

A beat. Then another.

Azriel emerged from the shadows in the corner of the room — so silently that Feyre hadn’t even realized he was there. His siphons glowed with a low, simmering light, casting flickering red across the polished floor. His shadows slithered around him, tighter than usual, coiled and tense like they sensed a threat they couldn’t yet name. His face was the same calm mask he always wore — the Spymaster’s façade — but his jaw clenched once, twice, and something dark flickered in those hazel eyes.

Guilt.

Not the sharp, brittle kind Cassian wore so openly, but the quieter sort. The kind that buried itself deep, the kind that Azriel never spoke of. He had been scouring the continent, chasing whispers of unrest in the southern territories — another potential plot that had turned to smoke. And yet, for all his shadows, all his surveillance… he hadn’t seen this coming.

“What about the wards?” he asked quietly, eyes on Rhys. “Amren reinforced them herself. No one should’ve been able to enter without triggering something.”
The sound of her name was a summons.

Amren appeared from the far side of the room, as if conjured from the stone itself. Her petite frame looked almost fragile perched on the edge of the armchair, but Feyre had long stopped underestimating the creature that now wore a fae skin. Silver eyes gleamed with a cold, measured light — calculating, dissecting, already turning over the dozens of ways this breach could have occurred.

But there was something else beneath her stillness. A flicker too fast to name.

Feyre knew her well enough to see it: this wasn’t just analysis. It was fear.

Amren didn’t fear. Not the way mortals did. But her silence now spoke volumes.

“The wards weren’t triggered,” Amren said, more to herself than to anyone else. “Which means either they were bypassed… or someone they recognized entered freely.”

Feyre went still. Her hand clenched at her side, magic coiling tightly in her palm.

No one spoke.

And then Mor shifted. She was crouched behind the couch, her hands braced on the cushions, her golden hair spilling over her shoulder like a silken curtain. The usually confident, glittering High Fae who could shatter armies with her presence looked suddenly… young. Pale. Her eyes were wide, rimmed with something that might’ve been tears — or simply disbelief.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered. “How could this happen here?”

The words floated in the air, unanswered.

Mor, who had once stood between Feyre and death in the Court of Nightmares. Who had called this city her home, who had claimed — over and over — that no safer place existed than the River House and its halls. And yet, now… she looked like a child in the aftermath of an earthquake. Like the world she’d trusted had cracked open beneath her feet.

And Feyre — still standing, still shaking — realized something bone-deep.

This wasn’t just about a missing child.
This was about the rot that had set in without anyone noticing.

They had grown too comfortable. Too certain. Too proud.

The Inner Circle had fought together, bled together, built a peace from ashes and crowned each other in memory of it. But they had changed. Grown distant. Each of them pulled by their own causes, their own secrets.

And somewhere in that distance… the cracks had widened.

Cassian, overextended with the Illyrian clans, the unrest never truly settled. Azriel, half-absent, chasing rumors Feyre was no longer privy to. Mor, disappearing more and more into diplomatic missions in Vallahan — half-truths on her tongue when she returned. Amren, no longer a god, but not quite a woman — guarding knowledge but offering no comfort.

And Rhys—
Feyre looked at him now, standing near the hearth, shadows clinging to him like a second skin. Her mate. Her husband.

But even he had begun to fray. The strain of rebuilding, of ruling, of pretending the scars from Hybern had faded. He had kept things from her before. For her protection. For the court. For peace.

And now…

Now their daughter was gone.

And no one could explain how.

The room held its breath.

Feyre’s throat burned as she looked at Rhys, her voice barely a whisper. “She’s gone.”
The words fractured the silence like shattering glass.
Cassian’s broad shoulders stiffened, his wings tensing behind him as though ready to launch into the skies. “What do you mean— gone?” His voice was low, disbelieving, but beneath it simmered the same rising panic.

Rhysand didn’t respond at first. His eyes were distant, locked on some invisible point beyond the walls — calculating, spiraling.

Azriel’s shadows recoiled briefly, as though they, too, sensed the weight of what was happening.
“We checked every ward,” Amren said, her voice flat, but Feyre detected the faintest waver beneath the carefully constructed detachment. “The house is locked down tighter than a prison cell.”

Feyre’s hands shook at her sides. Her magic pulsed like a living thing, desperate to be unleashed, to tear through the walls until Vaelyra was found — but there was nothing to direct it toward. Nothing but the deafening absence in her chest.

Rhysand’s voice broke through, low and sharp as a blade. “Vaelyra didn’t vanish on her own.” His hand slid to Feyre’s back, the familiar pressure steadying her, grounding them both as the room trembled with unspoken fears. His gaze swept over them — his Inner Circle — the trusted few who had been at his side for centuries, through wars, through kingdoms falling and rising again.

But now, even among them, there was a fracture. A hesitation. An uncertainty no amount of power could mask.

“She’s been taken,” Rhysand finished, his voice colder than winter, and far, far deadlier.

No one argued.

No one dared.

The weight of Vaelyra’s absence settled over the room like a storm cloud, heavy and oppressive, promising that nothing — not peace, not alliances, not even the fragile unity of their court — would remain untouched by this.

_____________

The Sun Room was far too bright.

Velaris shimmered beyond the tall windows — rooftops aglow beneath the rising sun, the Sidra winding lazily through the heart of the city like a silver ribbon. To anyone beyond these walls, it was just another peaceful morning in the Court of Dreams.

But inside the River House, peace was a lie.

The house was suffocatingly still, the usual hum of servants and soft conversations swallowed by the same hollow, echoing silence that had followed them since the crib was discovered empty. No one had spoken above a whisper. No one dared.

Feyre sat curled in the corner chair, her knees pulled tight to her chest, a blanket around her shoulders — though her skin felt cold, clammy, as if the chill had burrowed deep into her bones and refused to leave.

She couldn’t stop shaking.

Her knee bounced, again and again — a frantic, staccato rhythm that made the room feel smaller with every tap of her foot against the cushion. She barely registered the sound anymore. Her thoughts were too loud, too sharp, ricocheting inside her skull like broken glass.

She’s gone.

The words clawed at her throat, raw and bitter. Her heart was a mess of panic and disbelief, spiraling tighter with every breath. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. She’d barely had time — barely held her, barely whispered her name. And now…

Gone.

Her magic churned uselessly beneath her skin — vast, overwhelming, utterly powerless in the face of this. Seven High Lord gifts tangled in her veins, but none of them could fix this. None of them could find her.

It was like Under the Mountain all over again. The same helplessness. The same desperate, gnawing fear. Except this time, it wasn’t herself dangling over the edge of disaster — it was the only thing more fragile. More precious.

Feyre pressed her forehead to her knees, squeezing her eyes shut as her throat tightened.

Across the room, Rhys sat on the sofa, his posture deceptively composed — but even through the fog of panic clouding her mind, she could see it.

The cracks.

His elbow braced on his knee, thumb digging into his temple like he could physically hold himself together, but the faint tremor in his hand betrayed him. His shadows curled along the floor — wild, restless things — coiling tighter with every heartbeat.

The most feared High Lord in Prythian, and he looked… frayed. Haunted. His face pale beneath his tan skin, dark stubble shadowing his jaw, his violet eyes rimmed with shadows that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with exhaustion. Grief. Fear.
Neither of them had truly slept.

The hours since they discovered the empty crib blurred together in fragments — shouting, searching, the sickening realization that their wards had been untouched. The panic bleeding into rage, into the futile trawling through every corner of the house, into the eerie, unfamiliar quiet that had settled when there were no answers left to find.

Feyre’s voice finally broke the silence, brittle and cracked. “What if Elain’s vision was misread?”

Rhys didn’t look up at first, but his shoulders stiffened — that same controlled, coiled tension of a male barely holding himself together.

Feyre’s gaze drifted toward the window, unfocused. Her mind pulled her back to that quiet night — Elain, delicate and unsure, her voice barely above a whisper as she offered to share what the Cauldron had shown her. That flicker of flame, that vision of hope — a child radiant as the sun, wrapped in light and legacy.

A boy, they’d believed.

A future written in gold.

But belief was fragile. Dangerous.

Feyre’s chest caved with the thought, her voice breaking again. “What if we insisted on seeing a son because… of who we needed her to be? What if the child the Cauldron showed wasn’t supposed to be who we thought?”

Rhys finally lifted his gaze, shadows curling at the edges of his face like storm clouds. His eyes were distant, clouded, but sharp with grief.

His hand reached across the glass table, finding hers — cool, steadying.

“We read it wrong, perhaps,” he admitted quietly, his voice raw with an unfamiliar rasp. “But that doesn’t explain…” His throat bobbed, words faltering beneath the enormity of what they couldn’t say aloud. “Who she is. And what she means.”

Feyre turned her face away, blinking rapidly against the sting behind her eyes, but the tears slipped free anyway — hot and sharp, trailing down her cheeks as she forced the words out.

“She is who she is. A perfect echo of you.” Her lips quivered as the words left her. “Darker skin. That black hair…” The image of those impossibly violet eyes, bright and ancient, flashed behind her eyelids. “A girl. Something of us… and yet something else.”

Rhys tensed — she felt it through their bond, the quiet pulse of fear and denial warring beneath his skin.

“And yet…” His thumb brushed along her knuckles. “That doesn’t make her less ours.”

His voice shook, just slightly — enough for her to hear the truth beneath the words. The uncertainty. The terror.

His eyes locked onto hers, and the weight in them was suffocating. “It just makes this… more dangerous.”
Feyre’s breath hitched. She nodded, the motion stiff, mechanical. Her chest ached with every beat of her heart.

“If someone wanted—” She couldn’t finish. Couldn’t wrap her tongue around the possibilities, the nightmares clawing at the edges of her mind.
Rhys didn’t push her to. His gaze spoke for both of them.

They sat in silence, the fragile quiet stretching as sunlight poured across the floor, false and cruel in its warmth.

“We need the Inner Circle,” Feyre managed, but the words felt like ashes in her mouth.

Rhys leaned back, his expression darkening — not in anger, but in something more dangerous. More uncertain. The cracks in his certainty, his flawless mask, deepened.

“The Inner Circle,” he echoed, and the bitterness laced in his tone wasn’t lost on her.

Her chest tightened. The truth hung in the space between them, heavy and undeniable.

The High Lords wouldn’t help them. Tarquin barely tolerated their existence after the war — Feyre’s betrayal, their politicking, their quiet dominance in Prythian’s delicate balance of power. The Spring Court… there was no rebuilding that. Autumn remained fractured, violent, and dangerous. Winter and Dawn? Distant, unreliable, their allegiances locked behind careful neutrality.

Only Helion’s Day Court maintained any semblance of diplomacy with them, and even that was built on sand — old secrets and unspoken favors.

Feyre pressed her hand to her mouth, struggling to breathe through the rising panic, through the crushing realization that they were alone.

“We have each other,” Rhys said after a long pause — the words so familiar, so rehearsed, they should have been comforting.

They weren’t.

Not now.

Not when the most powerful court in Prythian couldn’t even keep a child safe in her crib.

Feyre let her head fall into her hands, her body curling tighter, as though making herself small could block out the truth clawing at the edges of their world.

_____________________________________
Earlier-last night when Vaelyra went missing

Cassian’s POV
_____________

Cassian couldn’t sleep.

He’d tried. Gods, he’d tried.

The House of Wind stood silent against the predawn sky, its endless hallways and sweeping stairs echoing with the quiet creaks of settling stone and the faint gusts of Illyrian wind. It was a home, supposedly. A sanctuary.

But tonight — it was a tomb.

The walls of his bedroom pressed in on him, the moonlight bleeding pale and cold across the floorboards. His wings itched with the urge to move, to fly, to do something — anything — other than sit here and drown in this helpless, gnawing uncertainty.

The shadows outside the window flickered, and for a heartbeat, his instincts screamed that something was wrong. That quiet, ancient Illyrian voice buried in his bones — the one that had kept him alive through countless wars — whispered of danger, of absence, of… something missing.

And then, the truth settled over him like ice.
Rhysand’s summons.

It came not with words, but a pulse of power through the bond — low, controlled, but sharp as a blade to the ribs.

Cassian was already moving, pulling on his leathers, adjusting the harness at his chest. His heart thudded hard and uneven, his gut coiling with unease.
They wouldn’t summon him like this unless…
He didn’t finish the thought.

Nesta wasn’t here.

The realization hit him next, cold and bitter.
She didn’t know.

It had been hours — long, tense, fractured hours — since they’d brought Feyre back to the River House. Since Nesta had been quietly, forcefully encouraged to remain at the House of Wind.

Imprisoned, if he was being honest with himself.
Not locked in chains. Not in the same cruel, obvious way the King of Hybern had done years ago.
But contained.

For her own good, they’d said.

Because Nesta — stubborn, sharp-tongued, impossible Nesta — had dared speak the one truth no one wanted to hear:
Feyre could die.

She’d said it aloud. In front of everyone. Cold. Brutal. Unapologetic.

And Rhysand… Rhysand had never forgiven her for it.
Cassian had seen it in the High Lord’s eyes — that quiet, simmering rage that never quite boiled over, but settled beneath the surface like molten rock, waiting for the perfect moment to erupt.

And Feyre — gods, sweet, blind Feyre — she’d seen Nesta’s words as cruelty. As bitterness. She hadn’t seen it for what it was.

Fear. Grief. Love, twisted and raw and clumsy, but love all the same.

None of them had.

Cassian had barely convinced Nesta to stay here — to stop pushing. To survive the rift that had grown between her and Feyre, and between her and… well, everyone.

And now… now, something was wrong.

The wind outside screamed as he leapt from the balcony, wings slicing through the air, carrying him swiftly down toward the River House.

The city below was quiet, the streets empty, but Cassian’s every nerve screamed of tension — of battlefields gone still just before the killing blow.
He landed with a soft thud outside the front entrance, the wards humming faintly beneath his boots.

Inside, the River House was dim, the lamps low, the silence oppressive.

He found them in the drawing room — Rhys standing by the window, shadows coiled tight around him like smoke. Feyre curled in one of the chairs, her face pale, drawn tight with grief and exhaustion.

Amren lingered nearby, her expression unreadable, silver eyes reflecting the low light like coins at the bottom of a well.

Mor sat on the arm of the couch, her hands clasped, knuckles white.

And Azriel… Azriel stood in the corner, shadows clinging to him like a second skin, his eyes sharp, watchful, dangerous.

Cassian’s heart hammered as he crossed the threshold. “What happened?”

Feyre’s head lifted, eyes glassy, lips trembling.

Rhys didn’t move. His voice, when it came, was low and razor-edged.

“She’s gone.”

The room tilted.

It took a heartbeat longer than it should have to understand.

“What—”

“Vaelyra is gone,” Rhys cut in, every syllable brittle as glass.

Cassian’s knees nearly buckled.

The floor beneath him swayed, the air punching from his lungs.

Gone.

The child — the one they’d all waited for, worried for, prepared for — gone.

Cassian’s hands curled into fists, his wings flaring slightly behind him, the old warrior in him clawing to the surface. “How—?”

“We don’t know,” Feyre whispered, voice shaking. “The wards… they weren’t touched.”

Cassian’s mind raced, images of Vaelyra flashing — too small, too vulnerable, Rhys’s mirror image in a tiny, perfect form.

And beneath that — Nesta.

Nesta didn’t know.

Wouldn’t know. Not until someone told her. Not until it was already too late for her to do anything about it.
His stomach twisted, a sick, ugly knot forming beneath his ribs.

He thought of her standing alone at the House of Wind, cut off, isolated — contained.

Thought of how easily they’d dismissed her warnings. How quickly they’d silenced her because her grief, her rage, had been inconvenient.

Because it didn’t fit the perfect image of the Night Court they clung to so tightly.

Rhysand’s eyes met his then — and for the first time in centuries, Cassian saw it. The raw, unguarded fury. The blame simmering just beneath the surface.

They would never say it aloud. Not yet.

But it was there.

Nesta had spoken of this.

And they hadn’t listened.

__________________

A day later
________

The war council assembled — though it hardly deserved the name.

The Inner Circle stood in the River House’s main chamber, the vast space usually reserved for celebrations or private discussions. Tonight, it felt like a graveyard. The high ceilings stretched into shadows, moonlight slanting across the polished floor in pale, fractured lines. The soft hum of Velaris beyond the windows — laughter, music, life — felt miles away.
The weight in the room was suffocating.

Rhysand stood at the head of the long obsidian table, his shoulders straight, his expression carved from ice and shadow. His power leaked out in quiet, steady waves — not the wild, untamed force of battle, but the cold, simmering threat of a storm held barely in check.
Feyre sat at his side, pale and hollow-eyed, her fingers curled tightly around a steaming mug of tea that had long since gone cold.

The others took their places in grim silence.
Cassian remained standing, his broad frame tense, Illyrian wings half-flared as though ready to launch himself into the skies at the first sign of movement. His eyes, sharp and restless, flicked to Feyre, then Rhys, then back to the sealed windows beyond — scanning, calculating.

Azriel lingered near the shadows of the room, his arms crossed, his hazel eyes gleaming with unreadable thoughts. His shadows curled protectively around his boots, shifting with his every shallow breath.

Amren sat to the side, her small frame perched elegantly in a chair, silver eyes sharp as cut glass. Her expression remained unreadable, though Feyre could feel the quiet calculations behind it — the weighing of possibilities, the ancient mind spinning through contingencies and threats none of them dared speak aloud yet.

Mor leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, her gaze distant. For once, her usual charm, her radiant warmth, were absent. What replaced them was… weariness. And fear.

No one spoke.

Finally, Rhysand’s voice cut through the stillness, low and precise.

“Vaelyra didn’t vanish on her own.” His gaze swept across them, steady, merciless. “The wards were intact. The magic untouched. Whoever took her… is either beyond our understanding of magic—” his jaw tensed— “or they were invited in.”

A heavy pause followed.

The implication curled through the room like smoke.
Cassian shifted his stance. “You think it was someone from inside?”

“I think,” Rhys answered, his voice sharp as glass, “we’d be fools to assume anything less.”

Feyre’s stomach twisted, but she said nothing. Her mind was too crowded with possibilities. With the countless faces that had filtered through the River House — healers, servants, emissaries from the Day Court, even family from the Court of Nightmares. Each one a potential threat. Each one a potential link in the chain that had led to an empty crib.

Amren’s voice slid through the room, soft but edged. “The Court of Nightmares hasn’t exactly been… silent lately.”

Mor’s head snapped up, her eyes narrowing, but she didn’t interrupt.

Feyre’s skin prickled.

The Court of Nightmares.

Their supposed vassal court. A den of vipers, chained beneath the weight of Rhysand’s rule — or so they all liked to believe. But Feyre had seen it. The cracks beneath the control. The quiet defiance. The smiles that never reached the eyes. The whispered rumors in the shadowed halls of Hewn City.

The Vanserras still schemed. The old families still whispered. Even after Keir’s disgrace, even after their displays of dominance… resentment simmered.

And it only took one viper to strike.

“We can’t rule them out,” Rhys said quietly, his gaze unreadable. “Or anyone else.”

Feyre forced herself to speak, her voice hoarse. “The other courts—”

“They won’t help us,” Amren cut in, her silver eyes hard. “Tarquin barely tolerates us. Beron’s Court is a pit of vipers. Spring is still bleeding. Dawn and Winter won’t get involved.”

“And Helion?” Cassian asked, his brow furrowed.

Rhysand’s mouth curved in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Helion… may offer sympathy. But little else.”
Feyre’s chest ached. The realization settled like lead in her stomach.

They were alone.

Rhys straightened, his shadows curling tighter around him. “We have each other. We have Velaris. We have resources.”

“We’re vulnerable,” Azriel corrected, his voice quiet, but cutting through the room like a dagger. “Someone has already slipped past us. Past me.”

The words lingered, heavy with guilt.

Cassian’s wings flexed, his eyes darkening. “We find them. We burn whoever’s responsible to ash.”

“We will find them,” Rhys promised, his voice low and deadly. “But we will do it carefully. Quietly. Until then… not a word leaves this house.”

The others nodded — most without hesitation.
Feyre’s heart twisted.

Quietly.

Carefully.

The illusion of control, once again, painted over the fractures.

But beneath the surface… the storm was already here.

Chapter Text

Three Hundred Years Later

Vaelyra POV

The sound of my pencil clattering to the floor pulled me from the haze of numbers and reports, snapping me back into the present — and to the time.
I was going to be late.

Again.

I leaned down, retrieving the worn pencil from beneath the heavy desk, the cool stone floor pressing faintly against my knuckles as I straightened. The faint scent of ink, parchment, and smoke clung to the office — remnants of long hours spent avoiding the inevitable.
The creak of the door opening pulled my attention across the room.

“You’re going to miss the opening speeches.” The voice was quiet, threaded with faint amusement, but steady beneath it — always steady.

I didn’t look up immediately. Instead, I tucked the pencil onto the desk, smoothing a hand down the heavy fabric of my cloak — not that it would help. The garment pooled around me like smoke, deep charcoal with faint embroidery stitched in silver-gray — spiraling roots, crescent moons, an old, subtle motif. No crests. No colors. Just neutral craftsmanship, understated and deliberate.

I had no desire to carry anyone’s banner but my own.
When I finally lifted my gaze, Vessar was standing in the doorway, leaning casually against the frame, arms crossed over his chest.

It had been centuries, and yet… there were moments like this, small and still, where my mind pulled back to that first day — the first time I saw him.

I had been a child then — newly walking, barely speaking, stumbling through the towering halls of Caladreth in wide-eyed silence. The Death God — though no one dared call him that to his face — had taken me in, his reasons his own. A stray plucked from the sea, or so they whispered. A child stolen from the other side of the world, though they never spoke of that in public halls.

I remembered the palace feeling endless — all sharp edges and impossible shadows, carved from stone and veined with silver, too large for a child to fill. And I remembered him.

A shadow trailing behind the guards, quiet, sharp-eyed. Watching. Always watching.

The first time we met properly — I had slipped away from the nursemaid, curling into the alcove at the end of the eastern gallery, hidden beneath a faded tapestry depicting some long-dead queen with a crown of bone and thorns.

I hadn’t cried. Even then, I’d known better than to draw attention.

But Vessar found me anyway.

I hadn’t heard him approach — only the sudden, quiet weight of his presence pressing in at the edges of my hiding place. When I’d finally peered around the tapestry, wary and unspeaking, he hadn’t scolded me. He hadn’t told me to return.

He’d crouched beside me — not a threat, not a warning — and simply… watched the sea with me. For what felt like hours.

No words. No expectations. Just the endless stretch of gray waves crashing against the cliffs far below.
And after that, he never really left.

Not in the way others did — attendants, tutors, guards cycling through as they pleased. Vessar had lingered. Shadowed my steps. Taught me without speaking half the time — quiet patience, sharp observation, knowing when to listen and when to strike.

It had never been formal. Never some assigned duty. But over the years, he became… unavoidable. Steady. Familiar.

An anchor in a place that had always felt just a little too sharp.

A flicker of shadows curled around his shoulders, faint, lingering wisps that faded as they brushed the candlelight.

The sight would’ve startled me once. It didn’t now.
“You could’ve warned me sooner,” I replied evenly, arching a brow.

“You were brooding again.” He pushed off the doorframe, crossing the room in smooth, measured steps, the faintest smirk curling his lips. “I thought I’d let you enjoy it.”

“I wasn’t brooding,” I corrected, reaching for the stack of parchment on the desk. “I was working.”

Vessar’s eyes flicked to the mess of reports, his expression unreadable beneath the tousled curtain of dark hair falling across his forehead. “You always work when you’re avoiding them.”

I sighed, adjusting the edges of my cloak as I stood. “They can survive five minutes without me.”
Survive being generous.

The council was many things — sharp, ambitious, old — but patient was not one of them. And certainly not when it came to me.

There was Callis, head of military strategy — all hard angles and cold calculation, his every word laced with the reminder that he’d been fighting border skirmishes before I could speak. He never bothered to hide his disapproval — of my age, of my bloodline, of my presence at the head of their table.

Beside him, Iria, silver-tongued trade envoy, smiled too easily and spoke in careful riddles — her allegiance a slippery thing at the best of times. She held the trade routes with Virelen and Ossirieth in her palm, and she never let anyone forget it.

Calyen, the ancient scholar — older than the mountain peaks, or so it seemed — drifted somewhere between loyalty and exhaustion, his mind buried in records and dusty books no one else could decipher.

And Veyric, who handled the court’s internal politics like a blade slipped between ribs — quietly, efficiently, and always with the faintest smile. His polite words rarely concealed his distaste for me, no matter how well he thought he masked it.

The others varied — ministers, minor lords, advisors pulled from old families and newer alliances — each with their own quiet ambitions tucked behind carefully schooled expressions.

“They’ll make you regret it,” Vessar remarked, that faint, knowing smirk curling at the corner of his mouth.
I ignored him, turning away as the fabric of my cloak settled over my shoulders.

Vessar fell into step beside me as we made for the wide glass doors at the far end of the study, his presence stretching like a shadow across the room.

He had the kind of height that made it impossible to overlook him — tall, broad-shouldered, built like a blade honed for silent violence. His features were sharp enough to draw blood — high cheekbones, a straight, severe nose, a jawline that looked carved from onyx. His skin was a rich, warm brown, several shades darker than mine, his dark hair falling in loose waves that brushed the nape of his neck, framing his face with a certain calculated messiness.

But it was his eyes that drew attention — a shade of cool, metallic silver-blue, bright as moonlit ice and wholly at odds with the shadows that clung to him like smoke. They glinted now as he glanced sidelong at me, unreadable, steady.

The faintest curl of shadow magic stirred at his heels as we reached the doors.

Beyond them, Athera unfurled in the morning sun — vast, wild, and old.

The jagged cliffs that ringed the coast plunged into the restless sea far below, their edges worn sharp by wind and salt. Past them, the land rolled on — endless highlands and silver-threaded rivers carving through the valleys like veins. Ancient forests tangled with ash and elm blanketed the hills, the trees towering high enough to scrape the clouds, their shadows deep as forgotten wells.

Marble spires rose from the distant cities, strongholds and markets gleaming faintly through the morning haze — the hum of life barely reaching this high into the cliffs.

Athera was not part of Prythian. It never had been.
We were distant — across the endless sea, far beyond the reach of High Lords and their carefully drawn borders. A land older than their courts. Older than their wars. A land that had never forgotten how to stand alone.

Trade still found us, of course. Ships from the desert realms of Virelen, their sails heavy with spices and glass, their captains carrying whispers of lost gods buried beneath the dunes. Merchant vessels from Ossirieth, bringing rare herbs and woven silks from beneath their endless, shadow-choked trees. And from Skareth, the icebound queens sent blades sharper than any treaty — goods crafted in the bitter, unforgiving cold of their frozen cities.

The other Fae kingdoms kept their distance. We preferred it that way.

Vessar fell into step beside me as we moved through the corridor, the steady rhythm of his footsteps echoing faintly against the black stone floors. The palace around us pulsed with quiet life — servants drifting between chambers, the distant clink of armor from the training yards, murmured conversations trailing behind closing doors.

The structure itself — Caladreth, whispered more like a warning than a name — was carved directly into the cliffs, the stone veined with faint silver that caught in the light like threads of starlight.

High overhead, vaulted ceilings disappeared into shadow, great arched windows framed in weathered ironwork letting in fractured beams of gray morning light. Their glass was etched with curling vines, tangled roots, phases of the moon that shifted as you walked past. The salt from the sea below lingered in the air, sharp and cool, carried through the maze of halls by the constant wind.

Statues flanked the corridors — forgotten monarchs and nameless warriors, their faces worn smooth by centuries, their eyes hollow, empty. Ivy trailed down from the balconies and rafters, curling over stone and metal like skeletal fingers clawing their way down the walls.

Shadowsinger guards passed us as we walked, their cloaked forms drifting between the pillars, shadows trailing behind them like mist. Here, their magic was neither hidden nor feared — a quiet part of the kingdom’s foundation, as familiar as the salt wind or the carved stone.

Vessar’s steps were soundless beside mine — not from magic, but from careful, deliberate practice. His shadows stirred lazily at his heels, dissipating only when we passed beneath the spill of sunlight pooling through the high windows.

We moved through a narrow antechamber, the floor beneath us a mosaic of dark tiles — a sprawling depiction of the Sea of Serath, each cresting wave rendered in painstaking detail, the jagged coastline curling along its edge like claws.

Beyond that, the corridor widened, opening onto a gallery that overlooked the eastern cliffs. The sea stretched endlessly into the gray horizon, its surface churning beneath the slate-colored sky. Far along the water’s edge, sails drifted — the faint silhouettes of merchant ships making their slow approach to the hidden coves below.

The faint brush of my curls against my back was a familiar weight, the thick, dark coils tumbling loose past my waist, heavy enough to snag on the silver clasps of my collar. The crisp air prickled along the exposed skin of my throat, a quiet contrast to the heavy wool at my shoulders.

The cloak itself was unadorned save for the bone-white embroidery stitched along the hems — curling designs of roots and smoke, subtle as a warning. No insignias. No desperate declarations of allegiance. It suited me.
Vessar didn’t bother with a cloak today — only the black tunic and leathers favored by the guards, his hands tucked easily into his belt. His expression betrayed nothing as we reached the last stretch of corridor. But I could feel it — the tension beneath his calm, the slight tilt of his head that meant he was listening to every murmur beyond those doors.

The carved wood loomed ahead — dark, veined with silver, the ancient sigils along its surface catching faint, fractured beams of light from the tall windows overhead. The edges curved like cathedral arches, their peaks disappearing into the vaulted shadows above.
Vessar’s eyes flicked toward me. “They’ll be waiting.”
His voice was low, even — but the quiet amusement beneath it was familiar.

I adjusted the edges of my cloak, the silver-thread embroidery whispering cool against my fingertips. The faintest reflection in the dark glass to my right caught the curve of my cheek, the sharp line of my jaw — and the unnatural gleam of violet in my eyes, brighter than any gemstone, catching the light for a breath before I looked away.

“Let them wait,” I replied softly.

And together, we stepped into the chamber.

The council room stretched long and narrow along the cliffside — high vaulted ceilings, dark stone walls carved with ancient reliefs, and wide windows that opened onto the restless gray sea beyond. A sprawling map of Athera dominated the black table at the center — rivers and peaks traced in silver, cities marked in pale blue, the coastline jagged and formidable.

The advisors were already seated.

Callis, head of military, remained unreadable as ever, broad-shouldered and still, his scarred face betraying nothing. His hands rested lightly on the table, but his eyes tracked my every movement.

Beside him, Iria, sharp as she was beautiful, toyed with one of her golden rings, her amber eyes glittering with contained interest.

Calyen, ancient and quiet, paged through a weathered ledger, uninterested in the simmering tension.

And at the far end, Veyric, polished as ever, lounged with one arm draped across the back of his chair, the faintest smile curling his lips.

“Your Highness,” Iria greeted smoothly, inclining her head.

I took my seat at the head of the table, Vessar remaining near the shadows behind me.

“Shall we,” I said simply.

The first portion passed with predictable routine — reports from the highland provinces, shipping records from Ossirieth, the usual grumbling from the southern borders where merchant caravans inevitably delayed their payments.

Then Veyric spoke.

“We’ve received a new proposal from the Winter Court,” he announced, sliding a sealed letter across the table toward me. His voice remained smooth, practiced, but the edge of ambition beneath it was unmistakable.
“They’ve requested to expand trade — namely, access to our ports along the eastern coast in exchange for their furs and iron.”

I didn’t touch the letter.

“They already trade through Ossirieth and Virelen,” Callis pointed out, his voice flat. “Why come to us?”

Veyric’s eyes gleamed faintly. “Because we control the largest trade route on this side of the sea, General. They want direct access to Athera’s markets without paying Ossirieth’s taxes or bowing to Virelen’s desert kings.”

I studied the seal on the letter — pale blue wax, the crest of Winter pressed cleanly into its surface. Sharp peaks, a crescent moon, and snowflakes etched like tiny daggers.

“Trade with Winter Court isn’t unprecedented,” Iria added, tapping her nails lightly on the table. “They’ve always maintained neutrality. And we don’t need them, no — but it’s never been about need.”

“It’s about control,” I finished for her, tone even.

Athera didn’t survive by hiding behind borders. Our land stretched nine times the size of Prythian’s fractured Courts. From the jagged peaks of the Frostveil Mountains in the north to the southern salt flats, from the river-carved valleys to the endless forests of the east — we were vast, ancient, and dangerous.
The other kingdoms knew it. Prythian knew it.

Even with their High Lords, their whispered wars and court intrigues — they knew.

Athera wasn’t some distant, forgotten pocket of land tucked beyond the sea. We sat squarely at the center of the continent’s trade routes — our ports, our mountains, our rivers threaded through the heart of commerce itself. Kingdoms from Skareth to Virelen passed through our borders to move goods. Our armies patrolled the spine of the Frostveil range, controlling the only reliable pass into the eastern realms.

Prythian?

They stayed on their island of courts — fractured, stubborn, and largely irrelevant unless their High Lords decided to start posturing.

But history had made things complicated.

Athera hadn’t forgotten the quiet tension that simmered along the western waters — the petty squabbles over disputed trade islands centuries ago, the long-ago assassination of a Summer Court ambassador in one of our port cities, the whispered threat that Prythian would send ships across the sea in retaliation.
They never did.

They couldn’t afford to.

But the cracks remained. And no one here — least of all me — was foolish enough to believe they wouldn’t test those cracks again, given the opportunity.

“Winter Court trades in more than iron and fur,” Callis warned, eyes narrowing. “They’re quiet, yes, but Helion keeps his eye on them for a reason. You’d be naive to think they aren’t testing the waters. First ports, then influence.”

“They’ll have no influence here,” Veyric countered smoothly. “We control the terms. We set the boundaries.”

I tapped a finger lightly against the letter, the faintest curl of annoyance beneath my otherwise steady expression.

“Athera’s ports aren’t desperate for Winter’s goods,” I reminded them. “And we aren’t chasing alliances.” I let my eyes drift across the table, meeting each of theirs in turn. “They come to us because the alternative is Virelen taxing them into the ground or Ossirieth’s shadow-marked merchants gutting them in negotiations.”

I straightened, sliding the letter back across the table. “Limited port access. No stationed ships. No envoys with diplomatic immunity. They trade — and they leave.”

Callis inclined his head, satisfied.

Iria’s mouth quirked, amused but measured.

Veyric smiled again, faint but polished, and settled back into his seat.

Behind me, I felt Vessar shift, the quiet sound of his boots against the stone, but his eyes never left the room. His presence was like a shadow at my shoulder — familiar, constant, calculating.

To my left, Lyric lounged near the tall windows, half-hidden in the pale daylight spilling through the glass. She wasn’t technically part of the council — never had patience for politics — but where I went, Lyric often followed.

A skilled bladeswoman, born to one of the old families in the northern highlands, she wore her dark, coiled hair in thick braids down her back, her green eyes sharp beneath the faint scar cutting through her brow.

Lyric and I had met years ago — during the Frostveil border negotiations that had nearly devolved into a skirmish. She’d been barely older than I was now, cocky, bold, terrifyingly good with a blade. Somehow, she’d stayed — her loyalty never declared in words, but always certain in the quiet ways that mattered.

Near the far wall, Talen, a half-Fae scholar with the kind of sharp mind the advisors alternately respected and resented, leaned over a stack of papers. His dark skin gleamed in the light, his black curls pushed back in a messy knot, violet runes etched faintly along his collarbones — remnants of his time studying Ossirieth’s arcane libraries.

Talen had grown up in Athera, but his mind… it belonged to older places. Older knowledge. He rarely spoke unless it was necessary, but when he did, people listened.

These were my people. Not all of them wore titles or carried swords, but they stood with me. And more importantly, they understood this kingdom. The weight of it. The history.

The tension in the room eased as the final terms were agreed upon — for now.

I sat back, watching as the council’s attention shifted. Trade routes. Border patrols. Resource allocations. The rhythm of governance, steady and relentless.

Calyen adjusted his spectacles, his pale eyes flicking across a weathered map rolled out over the table. “The southern rivers are running lower than expected this season,” he remarked, voice carrying that dry, papery edge of someone who’d spent the better part of two centuries buried in archives. “If we don’t adjust the water rights in the valley provinces, the harvest taxes will fall short.”

“I already spoke with the grain merchants,” Iria interjected, tapping a slender finger against the parchment. Her voice held the smooth cadence of a born negotiator. “They’re petitioning for reduced levies if the shortage continues. We’ll have unrest in the valley towns by mid-autumn if we ignore them.”

Callis frowned. “Or we could reinforce the aqueduct systems. The eastern river routes can be redirected—”
“And drain the marshlands?” Talen’s quiet voice cut through the table, calm but precise. He lifted his head from his papers, violet runes faintly pulsing along his collarbones beneath the open collar of his shirt. “The wetlands buffer the western forests. You weaken that, you invite wildland incursions. You know what lives out there.”

A pause.

Even Callis, stubborn as he was, conceded the point with a slight dip of his chin.

Vessar remained silent at my shoulder, his silver-blue eyes watchful.

The politics of Athera were never simple. We were vast, wealthy, and powerful, yes — but with that came old tensions, ancient promises, and borders stretched thin across dangerous lands.

Athera sat on a knife’s edge of diplomacy and strength. It had for centuries.

The other kingdoms — Prythian, Virelen, Skareth, Ossirieth — they watched. They waited.

And Kaelar ensured we remained standing.

The Death God, as the western courts still whispered. High Lord of the Shadowed Vale. Ruler of the forgotten lands beyond Athera’s borders — lands so cloaked in myth and warded with death-magic that few dared venture there.

My guardian. My teacher. My reminder that power wasn’t given. It was earned.

It hummed faintly now — deep under my skin, just beneath the surface. The quiet curl of shadow and something older, coiled beneath my ribs, a low, steady pulse that never fully slept.

I kept my posture relaxed, my expression even. But I didn’t miss the way Talen’s eyes flicked briefly to me — as if sensing it. He always did.

“We’ll review the water routes,” I said, steering the conversation forward. “But no reckless redirection. I want reports from the marshland stewards before the week’s end.”

A series of nods circled the table.

The council eased into quieter discussion, their voices dipping as logistical debates resumed — supply lines, fortifications, upcoming diplomatic visits.

Lyric drifted closer from her perch by the window, bracing a shoulder casually against the wall beside Vessar. Her green eyes flicked over me, one brow lifting slightly.

“Do you want me to drag Veyric into the training yards after this?” she murmured low enough that only I could hear. “Might loosen his tongue next time.”

A faint smile pulled at my mouth. “Tempting.”

Vessar’s gaze didn’t waver, but his lips curved ever so slightly, the closest thing to amusement from him during council matters.

It wasn’t finished. It never really was. But the undercurrent of tension had softened — replaced, for now, by the quiet, relentless machinery of running a kingdom.

_______________________________

The council finally adjourned — an unspoken agreement passing between them that the day’s tension, for now, had been settled.

But my day was far from over.

The private training courtyard was tucked along the northern edge of Caladreth’s upper walls, shielded by towering stone and veined with climbing ivy. Beyond it, the cliffs plunged down to the churning gray sea, the wind carrying the salt tang of the harbor below.

Vessar stood near the practice ring, silver-blue eyes sharp as ever, arms folded as he watched Lyric stretch, her twin daggers flashing faintly in the morning light. Talen leaned against the stone wall, reading — as always — though I didn’t miss the faint shimmer of runes across his hands, ready, quiet, listening.

The three of them had been at my side for centuries now. Friends. Confidants. The closest thing to a constant this kingdom, or my life, offered.

Vessar’s shadows curled faintly at his heels as I approached, dissipating when the wind caught them — curling like smoke around his boots, then vanishing as the salt-tinged breeze swept down from the cliffs. His silver-blue eyes flicked to me, sharp as glass, unreadable as ever.

“You’re late,” Lyric called, straightening from her stretch, her joints cracking faintly as she rolled her shoulders back. The sun caught the faint, silvery scar that split her left brow, disappearing into the dark braids coiled tightly along her scalp. A grin tugged at her mouth, crooked and sharp.

“Council meetings tend to drag,” I replied, unclasping my jacket as I stepped onto the practice stones. The fabric slid off my shoulders with practiced ease, the cool sea air prickling along my skin as I folded the jacket and set it aside.

The courtyard floor was worn smooth by centuries of footwork — wide pale stones veined faintly with silver, cool beneath my bare feet as I moved to the center ring. The cliffs dropped away just beyond the courtyard walls, the distant thunder of waves crashing against the rocks below filling the quiet between us.

The training was as it always was — brutal, measured, necessary.

Vessar moved first, his stance relaxed but his gaze calculating, sharp. His critique came not in words at first, but in the quiet way he shifted — correcting my posture with a subtle tilt of his head, a faint narrowing of his eyes when my weight balanced incorrectly over my heels.

Lyric’s strikes were fast, unrelenting. She darted in with the ease of a predator, her twin daggers flashing silver as she pushed me across the courtyard, her boots whispering over the stone. My body reacted instinctively — muscles coiling, breath steady, twisting to avoid the glint of her blades, the High Fae strength beneath my limbs allowing me to pivot on the balls of my feet, dropping low, driving my palm into her side.

She grunted, sliding back, grin widening. “Getting better.”

Talen leaned near the wall, still half-buried in his notes, but his violet-marked eyes tracked every movement — quiet, observant. His voice drifted over only when necessary.

“Your left shoulder’s open,” he remarked, eyes never leaving the page, but I could feel his attention like a taut thread across the space.

I adjusted, muscle memory kicking in, every line of movement ingrained from hours, days, years beneath Kaelar’s quiet, relentless tutelage.

The magic lingered there too — cool, quiet, waiting beneath my skin. It hummed low in my ribs, coiled like a blade unsheathed but held steady. Not summoned, not yet, but present. Always present.

The strikes continued — sweat dampening my temples, the steady ache in my legs building with each rotation, each pivot, each sharp exchange of momentum. My hair, heavy with dampness, clung to my back, coiling over my shoulders in thick, dark ropes.

By the time we finally stopped, my lungs burned with the crisp sea air, my muscles warm and thrumming beneath my skin. The frustration from the council, the faint simmer of political tension, had eased — burned away with every strike, every calculated dodge, every deliberate, controlled breath.

I pulled my jacket back on, the smooth fabric cool against my flushed skin, adjusting the bone-white embroidered collar along my throat. My pulse was steady. My hands, sure.

“I’ll be at the harbor,” I told them simply.

Vessar inclined his head in silent acknowledgment.
Lyric offered a half-grin, twirling one of her daggers between deft fingers before sliding it back into its sheath.

Talen, as always, barely looked up from his notes, but the faint curve at the corner of his mouth said he’d been paying attention all along.

_____________________________

The capital, Selvaris, sprawled wide beneath the cliffs — its streets a web of stone bridges, spiraling towers, and bustling squares that wove their way down to the lower terraces and docks. From the upper promenades, you could see the city unfold like a painted tapestry — marble spires gleaming in the sunlight, shadowed alleys tucked between narrow buildings, canals shimmering beneath graceful archways.

I passed through the upper market at an easy pace. Stalls lined the broad avenue — vibrant fabrics rippling in the breeze, merchants calling out offers for desert spices, carved bone jewelry, and glasswork from Ossirieth.

The crowds parted subtly as I moved. Not out of fear. But recognition.

A few nods of acknowledgment. A murmur here or there. No one questioned my presence — they didn’t need to. They knew who I was.

Vaelyra. Kaelar’s ward. High Lord of the Shadowed Vale’s daughter — though the truth of my blood ran deeper than that. The stolen child from across the sea. The one who never returned.

And they knew better than to ask what that meant.

The sun hung low over the city as I reached the lower terraces. I’d traded my heavy cloak for something lighter — a slate-gray jacket that cinched at the waist, tailored clean along the shoulders, with subtle bone-white embroidery curling along the hems. Beneath it, a soft black tunic, high-collared and sleeveless, tucked into slim, dark trousers and knee-high boots designed for navigating uneven docks and crowded streets.

My hair was loose today — thick, dark coils tumbling down past my waist, catching faint streaks of sunlight. The violet of my eyes — deeper than amethyst, unnaturally vivid — earned the occasional glance, but nothing more. The people of Athera were used to power woven into bloodlines, to unusual magic marked on skin and eyes.

At the harbor, the salt air curled along the wide, curved docks. Selvaris’s port was built into the natural crescent of the cliffs — wide enough to house dozens of ships, with stone piers arcing out like fingers into the deep-water bay.

Flags from distant kingdoms fluttered along the masts — the sunburst of Virelen, the icy blue sigils of Skareth, the shadowed trees of Ossirieth. Merchants unloaded crates of spices and textiles. Fishermen called out in the mixed dialects of the lower quarters. A few merfolk lounged along the sea walls, silver-scaled tails flicking idly over the water.

And farther along, a ship I didn’t recognize.

Sleek, narrow-hulled, its dark wood polished to a mirror sheen. Silver detailing curled along the edges — intricate patterns like desert flowers blooming in frost.
Virelen craftsmanship, unmistakable — but with a refinement not typical of their blunt merchant vessels.
A trader, perhaps. But a careful one.

At the foot of the gangplank, a tall figure stood — wrapped in dark traveling clothes, their pale, golden-brown hair tied back in a neat braid. Scaled markings shimmered faintly along their jaw and temple — Virelen blood, though their features were sharper, more refined than most merchants who frequented Selvaris.

Their eyes tracked me as I approached — cool, appraising. Calculating. But not rude.

“You’re far from the desert,” I remarked casually, stopping just shy of the gangplank.

The figure tilted their head, a faint smile curling at their mouth. “Selvaris isn’t exactly out of reach.”

The accent was faint — the clipped, musical cadence of Virelen speech, softened by years spent elsewhere.
“I haven’t seen your ship in these waters before.”

“First time,” they admitted, their eyes sweeping over the harbor — the bustling docks, the city unfolding beyond. “Your port is… efficient. Large. Athera runs tight operations.”

“Trade doesn’t favor the disorganized,” I replied.

The figure’s mouth quirked. “Wise words.”

There was something practiced about them — not just a trader’s polish, but the quiet calculation of someone used to political rooms and border negotiations. Likely an envoy, or something adjacent to it.
“What are you carrying?” I asked lightly.

“Glasswork. Spices. Information,” they added after a beat, tone dry.

I let a small, polite smile ghost across my face but didn’t press. If they wanted to offer more, they would.

“My name is Sevrin,” they offered finally, inclining their head. “I oversee Virelen’s trade interests in this region.”
So, not a common merchant. An official, then — perhaps one of their economic envoys. It explained the ship, the refinement, the subtle caution.

“I’m sure you already know who I am,” I replied simply.
Sevrin’s smile deepened, faint amusement lighting his sharp features. “It would be impossible not to.”

His appearance, now that we stood closer, carried the distinct sharpness common to the higher-blooded families of Virelen. His skin was a warm, sun-touched brown, faintly dusted with gold undertones, the faint iridescence of scales curling along his neck and jaw like delicate armor. His eyes were a cool, piercing silver — uncommon, even for Virelen — set beneath sharp brows that gave his face a constant expression of careful observation.

Not merely an envoy, then. Not with that level of polish.
“Oversee trade interests,” I repeated. “And yet here you are, greeting shipments yourself.”

He shrugged, his long frame relaxed but never careless. “Selvaris is important. Your kingdom controls the most lucrative trade routes across the eastern coast. Would you send underlings to negotiate with Athera?”

I tilted my head slightly, acknowledging the point.

“Besides,” he added, his gaze flicking to the stone terraces beyond the harbor, to the sprawling expanse of Selvaris, “I’ve heard enough stories about this place to want to see it myself.”

The corner of my mouth lifted. “Stories rarely do Athera justice.”

Sevrin’s silver eyes lingered on me a moment longer, thoughtful but not unkind. “No, they don’t.”

A faint, familiar tension curled low in my ribs — the kind that came with quiet, careful encounters like this.
Weighted words. Measured silences. No weapons drawn, no overt threats — but every sentence a chess move, every pause calculated.

I stepped lightly onto the gangplank’s edge, watching him. “And what does Virelen want, besides spices and sea access?”

Sevrin’s smile was faint. “The same thing everyone wants. Stability. Profit. Fewer enemies.”
A diplomatic answer. A non-answer. But an expected one.

“And what do you want?” I asked.

Sevrin hesitated — just enough for it to be noticeable. Then, softly, “To do my job. And to meet the most interesting pieces of this continent while I’m at it.”
“Careful,” I warned lightly. “We’re known to bite.”
His laugh was quiet, but genuine. “Duly noted.”

A ship horn bellowed across the bay, the sound cutting through the bustle of the docks. Merchants shouted, crates shifted, the faint clang of rigging filled the air.
Sevrin adjusted his jacket, glancing back toward the deck of his ship. “I’ll be in Selvaris for some time. Negotiating port fees, supply lines — the usual tedious business.” His eyes flicked back to me. “But… perhaps when that’s done…” He paused, tone still even, still careful. “You might consider visiting Prythian.”

The offer was quiet, measured. Not a demand. Not even a clear invitation. But a door left cracked — politically, personally, intentionally.

I didn’t answer immediately — only let the possibility hang there, as the sea breeze curled between us and the ships rocked quietly in the harbor.

Chapter Text

Feyre POV

Three hundred years ago
3 months later

Pain.

Suffocating, white-hot pain, the kind that hollowed out the chest and left nothing but ash in its wake. It was the only constant in these endless three months, louder than any voice, heavier than any silence. It was the kind of pain that made breathing itself feel like betrayal.

The empty crib mocked me. Still standing in the corner of her room, untouched, unchanged — the blanket Rhys had chosen folded neatly across the rail, the soft little stuffed rabbit Mor had brought from the Summer Court still waiting in the corner. I had begged everyone not to move it. Not to change a single thing. If I walked away from it, if I let it gather dust, it would mean she was gone. Truly gone. And I could not—would not—accept that.

The first week had been a blur, as if I’d been moving underwater. My hands had worked, my lips had spoken, my body had sat in meetings with the Inner Circle, but my mind had been elsewhere — replaying the same hours, the same second when the world had splintered.

I had sat across from Cassian, from Azriel, from Mor and Amren and Rhys, and I had listened. Nodded. Spoken. I had even held Rhys’s hand under the table, and everyone had looked at me with careful eyes, afraid that if they pressed too hard, I would shatter.

I hadn’t shattered then. Shock was a strange shield.

But now—three months later—the shield was gone.

Now I woke in the night and reached for her. Reached for the small weight that should’ve been in her crib, for the warmth of her little body nestled against mine. My fingers would find nothing but cold sheets, and the silence that followed was the kind that left me gasping, clutching my stomach as if to rip the emptiness out with my own hands.

Sometimes, without even thinking, my palm would drift down to my belly — muscle memory from the months I carried her there. I’d catch myself, and then it would happen: the collapse. The sobbing, wrenching collapse that left me crumpled on the floor, shaking until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t think.

Rhys never said a word when he found me like that. He would only sink down beside me, his arms strong and silent around me as my body gave out. His own grief was carved into every line of his face, but he bore it differently — quieter, like a knife lodged deep in his chest. Sometimes I thought he didn’t cry because he was too afraid that if he started, he wouldn’t stop.

The others tried. Cassian with his forced humor, clumsy and loud but meant to distract me. Mor with her endless chatter, always slipping her hand into mine like she could anchor me to the present. Amren with her blunt orders to eat, to sleep, to move, because “wasting away won’t bring her back.” Even Azriel — shadows curling around his shoulders, his eyes always scanning for answers no one could find — lingered more than usual, a quiet guardian in the background.

But none of it filled the void.

We had scoured every inch of Prythian. Every Court, every forgotten ruin, every shadowed border crossing.

Rhys had sent word to High Lords he hadn’t spoken to in decades, had opened doors in places where his presence was a provocation in itself. But the Night Court’s name was not the shield he once pretended it to be. Old wounds lingered. The other Courts still remembered the wars, the centuries of Rhysand’s rule cloaked in darkness and secrets. To ask for help from them meant bargaining with people who already hated him — hated us.

For weeks, we tried to keep the truth contained. “A personal matter,” Rhys called it in those clipped, distant letters he sent to Autumn, to Summer, to Day. But secrets rot in Prythian. By the second month, whispers were spreading. The High Lord of the Night Court, with all his power and shadows, could not protect his own daughter. And though Rhys never admitted it aloud, I knew those words were knives to him. To all of us.

Cassian and Azriel had flown until their wings bled, searching, scouring, interrogating smugglers and border guards, shaking free every shred of information they could find — only to return with nothing. Mor had gone south, to the human lands, where the gossip flowed freer but proved just as hollow. And I… I remained here. In Velaris. In the House. I sat through war councils where reports piled higher each week, every supposed “sighting” unraveling into lies or cruel illusions.

But that was the lie I told myself. That sitting there — silent, numb, breaking slowly inside — was enough. It wasn’t. I hated myself for it. Hated the thought that while Rhys was burning every bridge for a chance at a lead, while Cassian bled, while Azriel lost himself in shadows, I was waiting. Useless. Mother above, I was her mother — and I was sitting still.

So I went south. Alone. Not to the bustling towns where Mor had gone, but deeper into the human lands, where the whispers were older, more insidious. Villages where Fae were still cursed in the fireside tales, where fear lingered like mold in the air. I cloaked myself in mortal illusions, walked cobbled streets where no one knew me, listened at markets and taverns for even the barest rumor of a child gone missing, of strangers with violet eyes.

I found nothing. Nothing but human merchants selling charms they swore would keep the faeries from stealing babes from their cribs, nothing but drunkards spinning stories for coin, nothing but a dozen false trails that led to emptiness. But I kept walking, kept asking, kept listening until my throat was raw, because the thought of returning empty-handed was worse than the ache in my bones. Worse than the grief.

And still, every night, I returned to an empty bed. To Rhys, who did not sleep. To a House that did not laugh anymore. I told myself the next morning would be different. That someone, somewhere, would speak a name, a place, a truth that would lead me to her.

Because if I stopped searching, even for a day — if I let myself admit there was no trail to follow — I knew I would shatter into pieces I could never put back together.
__________________________________

Mor’s POV

2 years later since Vaelrya’s disappearance

The sound of pencil against parchment filled my office, sharp and steady, the scratch of it cutting through the quiet. Line after line, signature after signature, I worked through the stack of documents before me — laws on property rights, disputes over shopfront ownership, permissions for trade stalls along the main thoroughfares. Usually, this sort of tedium would have me restless, aching for an excuse to wander the city markets or lose myself in something less suffocating than ink and paper.

But now, the monotony helped. The work was something I could control, something that didn’t look back at me with grief in its eyes. These papers weren’t meant for me — they should have been Rhysand’s to sign, or Amren’s sharp scrutiny to cut apart. But since… since Vaelyra had been taken, no one had stopped me. No one had even blinked at me handling the tasks I usually left to others. I had always leaned toward diplomacy, not bureaucracy, but now? Now no one seemed to care who did what. Not when all of us were already fractured.

And that was the truth of it — none of us were really doing our jobs. Azriel’s reports came in half-finished, Cassian flew endless patrols just to avoid being still, Amren disappeared into whatever shadows she clung to, and Rhys and Feyre… they weren’t themselves anymore. Outwardly, the Night Court remained strong, efficient, untouchable as ever — Velaris still shone, the people still thrived. But within the circle meant to guide it, the foundation had cracked. What had once been seamless partnership now felt like fragments barely held together, each of us drifting in our own way.

Rhys and Feyre remained a unit, yes, but a hollowed one. They still sat beside one another in councils, still spoke in the same cadence that had once commanded us with clarity and certainty. Yet now, there was a hesitation between their words, a fragility threaded into every glance. Feyre buried herself in duty until her hands shook from exhaustion, while Rhys consumed himself in endless reports, scouring them for answers he would never find. Together, they bore the title of High Lord and Lady — together, they carried Prythian’s respect — but the grief that sat between them was a silent, immovable wall none of us could scale.

It wasn’t the Night Court unraveling. The city still thrummed with life, and the people never saw the cracks. No, it was us — the inner circle — splintering beneath the weight of the one truth none of us could fix: Vaelyra was gone, and three months of searching and still continuous searching had given us nothing.

There were still pressing matters that needed to be dealt with — the Court of Nightmares, for one, but more urgently, Illyria. Ever since Nesta had clawed her way back from whatever darkness had nearly consumed her, and since she, Gwyn, and Emerie had trained under Cassian’s and Azriel’s watch, things had shifted. They’d proved themselves in blood and steel, won their place not just in theory but in practice — at the Blood Rite, of all places. Word of it had spread faster than wildfire, though none of them would admit they were legends in the making.

And that, predictably, had started something. A ripple through the camps, a spark in the eyes of the females who had always been told to stay small, silent, weak. Suddenly, more women were stepping forward, asking to train, asking to learn how to fight.

Of course, the Illyrian males reacted exactly how I expected — like someone had threatened to cut their balls off. Gods forbid women pick up a blade and prove they’re just as dangerous, if not more so. Typical males, clutching at whatever power they thought they still had, roaring louder the more they realized it was slipping through their fingers.

I didn’t know the details of everything Nesta, Gwyn, and Emerie had gone through in those mountains, but I didn’t need to. I’d seen the scars they didn’t bother to hide, heard the way Cassian spoke of them when he thought no one was listening. Azriel, too, had carried back quiet observations that told me enough — how Gwyn’s laughter had returned in pieces, how Emerie had stood taller every time she refused to bow her head, how Nesta, despite everything, had found a steel in herself no one had expected.

Nesta. The woman had always driven me to the point of madness. After the war, when she was handed a second chance — Cauldron-born, stronger than most High Fae could ever dream of being — she did nothing but spit on it. She drowned herself in wine, in smoke and shadows, in anything that would keep her from facing what she’d become. And we all bore the brunt of it. Feyre, especially. Gods, the way Nesta lashed out at her own sister, the one who had nearly died to protect her — it made my blood boil just thinking about it. Feyre had only wanted to help her, to bring her back before she destroyed herself completely. But no, Nesta couldn’t see that. Wouldn’t. She dug her heels in, sharp tongue ready, daring anyone to try and pull her out of the pit she’d thrown herself into.

And I’ll admit it — I hated her for it, for a long time. Not because she was broken; I could understand broken. I could understand pain. But because she used it as a weapon against everyone who tried to care about her. I lost count of how many times I wanted to shake her, to scream at her that her behavior was going to get her killed in the end, and worse — it was dragging Feyre down with her.

Thank the Mother she’s better now, that she clawed her way out of it — even if it took Rhysand and Feyre nearly sacrificing themselves to make it happen. But even now, even after she’d found her so-called redemption, there was still that wall between us. We were… cordial, at best. Civil in the way strangers might be when forced to sit at the same table. I wasn’t about to pretend otherwise. She had her little circle now — Gwyn and Emerie, her Valkyries, her family. Maybe that’s what she needed all along. And maybe I was fine keeping my distance.

I stopped that train of thought before I let it spiral into another long rant.

I looked at all the complaints written by the lords in the court of nightmares, my father included.

Sighing, I knew the males hated it. They hated that it had started, hated that they couldn’t stop it. They hated that the story of three females walking out of the Blood Rite alive had spread to every camp, every corner of the Night Court. A beacon of hope that the men feared.
Good. Let them choke on it.

Sighing, I signed the last document with a flourish that felt like relief. Setting the pen down, I leaned back, pressing my palms flat to the desk, letting myself breathe. For a moment, I almost didn’t move. But the thought I’d been carrying all day — the thing I needed to say — pressed too heavily to ignore.

Anytime I would get this way, meaning my mind couldn’t stay quiet unless I did it, I would try think of other things. Bad memories rid to me of my present thoughts. Eris. Even though it’s been 500 years since what happened to me, I still questioned why, why did he leave me there? Nailed to a fucking tree like a damn toy not worth even fixing.

Signing the last paper on my stack, I pushed the parchment aside and rose from my desk, stretching out the stiffness in my shoulders. The work had been mindless enough, but it had done its job in keeping me occupied. Still, there was no delaying what came next.

It was time — again — to face Rhysand about the duties he had been neglecting. It felt like the hundredth time I’d brought it up, and I already knew he wouldn’t want to hear it.

Winnowing to the River House was simple; I could have done it in my sleep after all these years. But appearing on the front steps, with the low rush of the Sidra in the distance and the damp river air clinging to the paint of the blue door, I hesitated. The wood was carved with familiar patterns, lines I had traced with idle fingers during happier visits, but now it only reminded me how much had changed.

I drew in a long breath, trying to ease the tight coil in my chest. Nerves were a rare thing for me, but they were there all the same, buzzing under my skin. My stomach gave a small twist as I stood there, rehearsing the words I’d been turning over in my head all day.

What I wanted to say to Feyre and Rhysand — what I needed to say — couldn’t be softened with charm or diplomacy. It was going to sting, and I hated knowing I’d be the one to add more weight to shoulders already burdened by too much grief.

I raised my hand, ready to knock, but stopped just short. My fist hovered in the air, the practiced words unraveling into silence before I could force them out.

Click.

The door eased open, and there she was. Feyre stood framed in the doorway, the soft light of the house spilling behind her. Her smile was faint, polite at best, the kind people gave when they were too tired to offer anything more. Still, she stepped aside, a quiet invitation for me to come in.

I crossed the threshold, the familiar scent of river mist and old wood greeting me as it always did. My boots clicked softly against the floor, the silence between us stretching in a way that made me restless.

Before I could stop myself, the question slipped out. “Are you alright?” My voice was lower than I intended, careful in a way that made me wince. We both knew I wasn’t really asking about her day or her health. We both knew the answer I’d get wouldn’t be the truth, no matter how gently I phrased it. And yet, I asked anyway, because not asking felt worse.

The hand that settled on my arm was light, almost absent, but enough to pull my gaze back to her face. For a second I nearly apologized — the words already pressing against my tongue — but Feyre spoke before I could.

“I’m fine. Well, as much as I can be without thinking about her every minute of the day.”

Her voice carried no cracks, no stumble of hesitation.
Smooth, even, controlled. The kind of tone she must have practiced until it became second nature. She paired it with a smile, that same soft curve of her mouth she’d worn at the door, meant to reassure, meant to smooth away concern. But the look in her eyes, the restless tension in her shoulders, betrayed her. And when she turned, striding briskly down the hallway, her pace a little too quick, a little too pointed, it was clear enough — she was anything but fine.

The game again. Pretending. Playing at everything is fine as though it might stick if she repeated it often enough, wore it convincingly enough. Lovely. We’d all gotten good at it in our own ways. And maybe that was the real problem: every one of us choosing silence and performance instead of what was clawing underneath.

I fell into step behind her, the sound of our footsteps echoing faintly through the vast, quiet halls. The River House was large enough to swallow sound, its high archways and wide windows letting in the filtered glow of daylight that slid across polished wood and soft rugs. My eyes trailed over familiar paintings along the walls, a few of Feyre’s own pieces scattered among them, the strokes and colors holding so much life compared to the woman walking just ahead of me. The air smelled faintly of paper and wax, a reminder of the hundreds of candles that must burn here at night. It should have felt like home — warm, lived-in — but in moments like this it only felt hollow.

As we walked, I couldn’t help but notice the way Feyre’s hands stayed busy even without anything in them — fingers brushing against the edge of her sleeve, then flexing and curling as though she needed some outlet for energy she couldn’t quite release. She didn’t speak further, didn’t try to fill the silence, and I didn’t either. Words were too sharp in moments like this, more likely to cut than to soothe.

Eventually, she slowed, her steps deliberate now as she reached the end of the corridor. Without hesitation, Feyre turned to the right, pushing open the carved wooden doors of the library.

Inside, the space opened wide, towering shelves crammed with books stretching toward the ceiling. The faint, familiar scent of parchment and ink rolled out to greet us, blending with the subtle tang of herbs — and there, unexpectedly, was Madja, perched at one of the long tables near the back, a spread of papers and glass jars set neatly before her.

The surprise that flickered across her expression was brief but noticeable. She had the kind of composure that rarely cracked, but for just an instant, her eyes widened, darting between Feyre and me. It left me wondering if she hadn’t expected us at all — or if someone else had asked her to be here. Rhys, perhaps.

And if it was Rhys, had he told her to come without Feyre’s knowledge? The thought planted itself quickly, nagging at the back of my mind.

“Oh?” Feyre’s voice carried the same note of surprise I felt. “When did you get here? I thought you were coming tomorrow?”

The words weren’t accusing, not even questioning really, but the slight lift of her brows, the careful neutral tone — I knew Feyre well enough to recognize the hint of suspicion beneath it.

Madja didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she began gathering the papers she’d been working through, aligning the uneven stacks with deliberate precision, as though the act gave her time to shape whatever she wanted to say. Only once the sheets were squared away and the vials tucked neatly together did she rise from her chair and make her way toward us.

“Actually,” she said, her voice even, almost gentle, “there are some matters I would like to discuss with you and Rhys. When you both have the time.”

The phrasing was careful, but I didn’t need to look deeper to catch the real meaning. That was code — a request for privacy, and a signal that whatever it was wouldn’t be spoken aloud here in the open with me lingering nearby.

I didn’t press. There was no point. If it mattered enough, if it touched on something critical to the court or to Feyre herself, it would find its way to me eventually. If not, then it wasn’t my concern. That was how this circle had always operated, selective transparency dressed up as trust.

Feyre only nodded, the motion small, and stepped aside to let Madja pass through the doorway. There was no protest, no question, no push to know why Madja was here earlier than expected. Just quiet acceptance, the kind that came from being too tired to chase every loose thread. I watched as Madja slipped out, her steps unhurried, her dark robes trailing softly over the polished floor.

Feyre lingered a moment longer by the open door, her hand resting lightly on the frame, as though debating whether to follow or to let it go. In the end, she turned back into the library, her expression carefully blank, but I could guess well enough where Madja was headed next. Straight to Rhys, with the same request.

It seemed they no longer communicated through the bond the way they once had. That realization settled over me with a quiet finality as I trailed silently behind her, stepping into the vast, high-ceilinged library. The scent of old parchment and polished wood greeted us, familiar and grounding. Rows of books towered around us like ancient sentinels, casting long shadows in the gentle afternoon light filtering through the arched windows.

Feyre moved with quiet purpose ahead of me, her presence a calm ripple in the stillness. She turned once we entered the main reading hall, her expression unreadable—serene, but with something edged beneath the surface.

“So,” she began, her voice low but direct, “why did you decide to stop by today? Is something going on?” Her brow furrowed slightly, not in worry exactly, but with the weight of curiosity. “I thought you were staying at your house in the Winter Court.”

I stared at her for a moment, caught off guard by the precision of her assumption. My mouth parted, but no response came immediately. I blinked, once, twice—buying time as her words sunk in. How did she—
Before I could even form the question aloud, she offered an explanation with a small, almost sheepish shrug. “I saw the receipts in your office. It was a couple of years ago—on your desk. There were invoices for furniture orders. A lot of them. It stood out, so I... got curious.”

My jaw tensed, but I didn’t say anything right away. I just nodded, slowly, more out of habit than agreement.
Internally, I was trying—failing—not to bristle. My fingers curled into my palms, nails pressing into the soft skin as I tried to quiet the flush of irritation rising in my chest.

I hadn’t exactly advertised that I was building something for myself—certainly not to her.

Was I overreacting? Possibly. But no, no—this wasn’t about dramatics. It was about boundaries. About the quiet things we all deserve to keep to ourselves.

Curiosity or not, Feyre had no business going through my private matters. Payment ledgers were not invitations. She might be High Lady, but that didn’t give her the right to sift through pieces of my life that I hadn’t chosen to share.

“Mor?” she said again, gentler this time. She had taken the chair across from where Madja usually sat during consultations. The seat was empty today.

I exhaled through my nose, steadying myself as I sat down beside her. My fingers unfurled one by one, and I focused on the rhythm of my breathing—slow, even, steady. The tension in my spine loosened slightly.

“I’m fine,” I said at last. The words left my mouth far too easily, far too practiced.

And yet, even as I said them, I could feel the hollowness behind them.

It was a phrase I’d repeated over the centuries like a protective spell, like a charm that might keep the questions at bay if I said it often enough.

But it was never true.

Not really.