Okay, this is based off of a prompt I saw on Instagram, that I think might've come from Tumblr, and it's based around the idea of an AU where everyone is colour blind until you meet your soulmate and then you see colour. I tried to find the prompt again, but I couldn't, so if you created it or know who created it, please say so I can give credit.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the idea, so only the writing, really, is mine.
The first time Feyre Archeron ever crossed paths with her soulmate, she was barely four years old, and it was a beautiful autumn day, and the multi-hued leaves were vibrant enough to tug a gasp from her lips when her world was overwhelmed with colour.
Her family had gone on a holiday somewhere with a funny long name that young Feyre neither cared to nor could remember. Nesta and Elain were on the swings, having a competition to see who could swing the highest (Nesta was winning. Of course Nesta was winning. She was the oldest, with the longest legs) and had left her in the sandpit, making sand castles where she sat, and twirling designs in the grains, on her own.
She had scraped away the surface of pale dry sand to get to the damp sand beneath, and scooped a handful of it, and squeezed it in one chubby fist when the football slammed into the back on her head and pummelled her head into the sand.
It was but for a brief moment, but in the second of shock before instinct kicked in and she pulled back on her hands and knees, sand was crammed up her nostrils and her mouth, and into her eyes. She gagged and hacked and lumps of sand and spittle flew out like fur balls out of a cat and dotted the pit as she heaved and panted. Sand fell out of her nose as she scrunched it and into a dribble on her upper lip and chin. She reached up to wipe it out of her eyes, but her hands were covered in the cursed substance, so she only got more in.
She tilted her head back, and felt her eyes begin to clear themselves out as tears welled up and shoved all remaining grains out, even as she wailed. Most of it was gone fairly quickly, but a few stray grains itched in her peripheral vision as she turned to glare at the offending football, rolled to sit there in an indent in the sand, looking perfectly harmless and benign.
"Um," said a voice behind her. She whirled, all snapping eyes and welling tears and erupting anger, to see a boy the same age as her standing on the edge of the pit. He had a messy mop of hair as dark as a starless night, and eyes that Feyre somehow knew, without knowing what colours were, were a rare and unusual colour, and clear as glass. "Sorry about that. Are you okay?"
She made the split second decision not to snap at him, and instead surrender to that overwhelming urge to cry. She did so, great hot tears spilling over and cutting through the dirt on her cheeks. "I'm - fine." She sobbed.
If anything, the boy looked even more terrified than before. "Hey, umm," he began, before he broke off and walked over to get his football. He knelt down to brush some of the sand off of it, then turned back to her with that same deer in the headlights look. He glanced back behind him at an equally dark haired boy, who appeared to be waiting for him, and then scratched the back of his head. Finally, he dropped his hand and said, "I am really sorry about that, but. . . would you like a bracelet as an apology? My cousin made it for me, but I don't really like it."
Tentatively, she looked up. He was offering a hand to her, and in it was a crude wool and bead bracelet that was obviously made by someone just as young as they were. However, Feyre was in quiet awe of it, and her eyes were wide as saucers when she took it. "Thank you."
The boy nodded an affirmative, before scampering off. Feyre wouldn't see him again for several years.
But she didn't know that then; as far as she was concerned, she would never see him again. She fastened the bracelet round her wrist and stared at it, at the beads that she somehow knew were all different colours (still) without knowing what colours were.
It wasn't like a sudden epiphany, the gift of seeing them once she'd met her soulmate. It wasn't a great wash of colour, either, overtaking everything and irreversibly brightening her world (That was probably a good thing; it would have completely terrified her, and she'd have thought she was crazy). It was subtle, in the way that from that point on she knew that hers and Nesta's eyes were a very different colour to Elain's, could tell the different between pale green and pale pink, and she cherished a deep love for painting and drawing, now that she had such an expansive palette to use.
Nevertheless, she couldn't deny how annoying it was when, on the way home from the holiday, Nesta kept making snide remarks about why she had her nose pressed up against the car window, when all she wanted to do was appreciate the spectrum of fiery oranges and reds the trees wore on that cool autumn day.
Life went on, and Feyre's gift became a central part of it. Her rainbow bracelet had been christened just that: Rainbow Bracelet, and she kept it with her at all times as a good luck charm. She never knew why her instinct commanded she do so; not until she saw her soulmate again.
The colours never faded back to that black and white and grey she'd seen before.
It was months later that young Feyre pieced together that the sneering, derisive looks Nesta would shoot her whenever she was painting had the same origin as the gently puzzled expression that crossed Elain's face whenever Feyre told her she should change the layout of her garden: They couldn't see the colours.
Elain didn't understand why her garden was sore for Feyre to look at, simply because she insisted on putting garish yellow flowers next to crimson trellises next to blindingly purple blossoms.
Nesta did not appreciate Feyre telling her that the outfits and the makeup she put on didn't match.
And Tamlin, their neighbour, was petulantly indignant that every time she stepped into his room, she winced at the design of it. His parents would scold him whenever he got particularly aggressive about it, but they never explained to him what the colours were, despite Feyre's sneaking suspicion that they could see them too, so she was stuck trying - and failing - to describe them with inadequate similes and comparisons.
But truthfully, she could barely remember what it had been like without the colours, and there was nothing to compare it to.
Fortunately, two people she knew for certain saw them just as clearly as she did, were her parents. One day, after a particularly nasty argument with Nesta that had left to paint ruining both their dresses, and words such as "crazy", "liar" and "delusional" being spat like a snake's venom, her mother had taken Feyre aside and explained, quickly and quietly, that she wasn't going mad. She wasn't making it up, and that Nesta, a mature nine year old, simply didn't understand what was happening.
She would understand one day, her mother said. Everyone saw the colours at some point. Everyone lucky enough to.
Feyre was special, she continued. Most people didn't see the colours until their late teens at the earliest. Some people not until they were decades old. Some people not at all.
At the time, it was never explained to Feyre why people saw the colours - nor why it was unusual to see them so young. But she had just turned five, and she was young, so she didn't know to ask the right questions - the important questions. The ones that would shape her life.
So she hummed in concordance, her mother gave her a smile that look slightly pained, and ruffled her hair before going to make lunch.
Feyre's mother died five years later.
She contracted meningitis, and the disease tore through her body like a train, quickly and quietly, before they even had time to call for a doctor. She died in her sleep, and the family was distraught.
The funeral was a quiet affair, just the four of them in an empty room, sitting in a silence as cold and hard as the gravestone they stared at. Feyre had seen characters in soap operas attend funerals on the television, and there had always been something going on: crying, screaming, fighting, holding each other so tight in their grief that they might suffocate each other. But there was only an echoing, gaping silence between them, like the railways that bridged the gaps between her sisters had been uprooted, and now there was no hope for communication between them.
It was the darkest, greyest day Feyre had ever experienced.
The next two years were a struggle, as the sisters watched their father fall further and further into debt, until the creditors stormed into their house on a night Feyre would rather forget. Feyre had talked Nesta into stepping in with her, and though the sight of a fourteen-year old girl and seventeen-year-old girl wasn't anything particularly menacing, Nesta was a sight to see when she got riled, and Feyre had a way of looking at you that made you think she wasn't going to back down, so between them they drove them off, with promises that they'd get their money back doubled the next year.
They paid it off in large doses every month, after moving off their grand street into a cheaper house, Nesta working in a supermarket, Elain working as a gardener, and Feyre, who was too young to get an official job, trying to sell as many paintings as she could from the mediocre paint supplies she had. She would turn her back every time Nesta scoffed at her work, saying that there was no need to be so picky about the different tubes of paint, seeing as they were all the same shade anyway. She would parrot the sentiment whenever a buyer took less interest in the ones she'd taken more care over, but was grudgingly impressed whenever someone would compliment would Feyre had done, and share a secret smile with her.
Slowly but surely, they dragged themselves out of the hole they'd fallen into.
It had always been the plan to send Nesta and Elain to university - Elain to be a botanist, and Nesta to be whatever she wanted to be (honestly, sometimes Feyre thought her sister could say she wanted to be a blue whale, and she could find a way to make that happen) - but the possibility of her going had never crossed her mind until Nesta and Elain revealed to her casually one evening at dinner that oh, they'd sent some of her paintings off to a university prestigious for its art course and now she had an all-expenses-paid scholarship if she wanted to go.
Feyre had been torn between hugging them and strangling them. She'd settled for crushing their ribs instead.
When the autumn rolled round, and she left for the University of Prythian, she did so with a smile on her face and a sense of camaraderie with her sisters that she'd lacked before.
Her first few months there were. . . eventful, to say the least.
She'd met Tamlin, and his new friend Lucien, who happened to be staying in the same dorm building as her, Spring Court, though obviously in the males' wing. Her roommate was an almost insufferably bubbly girl named Ianthe who, though she seemed cheerful and innocent, Feyre swiftly learned about the sly, cunning mind that lay behind the façade. Everything about her spoke of false gold, from the liquid light off her hair to the smooth words that flowed from her lips, to the bright, cheery clothes she wore. But false gold wasn't real gold, and that term Feyre learned a hard lesson about setting stock by appearances, especially when she walked in on Tamlin - who she'd begun dating after the original hostility that came from childhood bickering had passed - in a compromising position with the girl. On Feyre's bed.
In fact, the highlight of the season was when Elain and Nesta had visited. Even though it'd given her grief every time Nesta and Tamlin were in the same room, the way Elain and Lucien had acted shy yet utterly fascinated around each other was something that Feyre had a lot of fun prodding both her sister and her friend about.
But the best moment was undoubtably the instant that Elain had pulled her aside and admitted that she'd always thought Feyre was lying about all the colours. But she believed, her now, because she could see them too.
Her heart soared every time she thought back to the words that had tiptoed off her sister's tongue, like they didn't want to leave the safety of her mouth.
Nevertheless, that amounted to perhaps one of a handful of happy moments during a few months of stress.
What occurred was ugly enough that when she appealed to the University to move rooms, they obliged, letting her move in with a girl whose roommate had apparently decided to move out and into her own flat the previous term. So Feyre walked into her new room in the dorm building Night Court - on the other side of campus to Spring Court, thank the Cauldron - with her head held high, even as her shoulders were tense and she clutched her boxes of stuff to her tightly, like someone might attack and try to steal her art supplies.
Fortunately, her roommate, a girl her age by the name of Morrigan, wasn't in, so Feyre was left to unpack in peace, assuming that the bed with tousled sheets and flung with pyjamas pulled inside out was Morrigan's. She'd finished with the first two boxes, and was just opening the third one, when laughing voices came from outside, and she detected the jangling of keys as they were shoved into the lock just outside the door. She kept her back turned, and her arms buried elbow deep in the neatly folded clothes in the box even as the door swung open and several footsteps filed in. They stopped abruptly, and Feyre's shoulders tensed at a sudden intake of breath.
"You must be Feyre!" Gushed a high pitched female voice. Hands on her shoulders swiftly spun her round, and Feyre hastily dropped the clothes back into the box before she was engulfed in an all encompassing hug.
Feyre's arms came up to the girl's back as an instinct, and weakly returned the embrace. A warm, low chuckle had the girl breaking away in indignation. "Mor, you'll suffocate the poor girl. A least let her see your face before you turn her ribcage to dust."
"Oh, shut it, Rhysand." The girl - Mor - quipped in response, but she pulled back, and allowed Feyre a glimpse of a face that wasn't shockingly attractive, but nonetheless aesthetically pleasing, framed by curly hair so gold it couldn't be natural, yet Feyre somehow felt like it was, and scarlet lips stretched into a beaming grin. She let go of her shoulders, and let Feyre to take a step back to get a better look at her. She smiled wider, and flipped her hair in a casually graceful gesture. "So, again, hi! I'm your roommate, Morrigan, but if you call me that I might have to kill you. Call me Mor."
Feyre was left blinking in shock. A part of her was unnerved by just how bubbly Mor was - and not in the way Ianthe was; this way felt undeniably real - but the other part of her wanted to soak up whatever sunshine Mor was living under and beam back.
She settled for a quick half-smile and an awkward wave, before wiping her hands on her jeans. "I'm Feyre. But you already knew that, so. . ."
"As sweet as this first meeting is," drawled that same voice that had teased Mor for her over enthusiastic hug, "don't you think you should either kick us out, or invite the rest of us in and introduce her, Mor?"
Mor rolled her eyes. "You say 'us', like Cass and Az won't be late. But by all means, come in." She stepped past Feyre and perched on her bed, shoving the messy sheets aside. Hesitantly, Feyre took a seat on her own bed, shifting her box onto the floor, as the stranger shuffled through and sat next to Mor.
Her breath caught as she surveyed him, and the smirk that tugged at his lips told her he knew it. But he didn't seem all that surprised, which was understandable, because who would be surprised when they looked like that? He looked like he'd been modelled of twilight and starlight, with a carved ivory face, and violet eyes that twinkled - the colour of the dusk sky, just before the sun descended, when the world teetered between night and day and the first stars were starting to emerge.
"This is Rhysand, my cousin," Mor said. She was digging through her stuff, looking for something, to all appearances bored with this conversation.
Feyre swallowed surreptitiously as Rhysand eyed her, then broke in a grin. "You can call me Rhys," he purred, and offered her his hand. She took it, and found it was exponentially larger than hers; her own fingers were enveloped. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Feyre darling."
She couldn't help it; she raised an eyebrow at the word 'darling'. He just grinned at her conspiratorially. "Likewise," she said curtly, tugging her hand back and folded it in her lap.
"Feyre?" Mor said suddenly, looking up from her phone. Feyre's head jerked up. "You finished unpacking?"
Feyre cast a sideways glance at the box with only a few sparse pieces of clothing at the bottom. "Um, pretty much, yeah."
Mor beamed again. "Great! Do you want to come to lunch with us? The place isn't too far away."
Feyre shot a look at Rhys, who seemed to be waiting to catch it. He took the chance to smile at her again, but it wasn't in a creepy or suggestive way. Feyre had a hard time deciphering what was behind that smile. "Uh, sure." She offered lamely, rubbing the back of her neck. It wasn't like she had anything better to do, anyway. "Why not?"
Feyre spent the entire afternoon with Mor and Rhys and their friends, who'd turned out to be two dark haired men named Azriel and Cassian, and Mor's old roommate, a silver eyed woman named Amren. Amren had left Feyre feeling slightly unnerved, though she couldn't say why.
That night, whilst Mor was using the bathroom they shared, Feyre turned on the desk light and began rummaging through the draw where she'd simply thrown some of the more sentimental things earlier, and came out with a crude multi coloured wool and bead bracelet, and a photo frame containing Elain, Nesta and her inside it.
She didn't question the logic of what she was doing as she slipped the bracelet onto her wrist and stared at the photo.
Feyre remembered the last time she'd looked at the photo, just after everything had gone to hell just before the holidays. She remembered how for a moment her vision had flickered, and her and Nesta's eyes had gone grey instead of blue, and the dark green floral pattern on Elain's dress had turned somewhere near black.
It had terrified her. Her ability to see the colours was slipping.
It had come back since then, but the fear hadn't quite faded yet, and she always breathed a sigh of relief whenever she saw a particularly vivid hue.
By the time Mor re-entered the room, she'd slipped the photo back into the draw, and tucked the wrist with the bracelet on it under the covers. Mor had climbed into her own bed, her golden hair in two messy plaits, and reached out to flick the light off. The sudden darkness was jarring, and had Feyre unconsciously twisting the sheets between her fists.
"So," Mor asked after an indefinite period of time. How the woman knew she was still awake, Feyre didn't know. "How did you like my friends?"
"They're nice," Feyre replied on autopilot, before elaborating. "They seemed very. . . charismatic. And each of them unique." Mor snorted, and Feyre's mounting bravery allowed her to ask what had been nagging her, "And. . . you and Azriel?"
The effect was instantaneous. Mor groaned loudly, and rolled over completely, burying her face in her pillow. Her voice came out muffled as she asked, "Are we that obvious?"
"Just a tad," Feyre answered, swallowing her laugh. Then she added, "It's subtle. Very subtle. But it's there." A pause. "Do Rhys and Cassian and Amren know?"
"Know? Know what? That I like him? Amren knows that, certainly; she claimed that half the reason she moved out was so she didn't have to put up with my ranting about him anymore. Rhys? I'm pretty sure he's clueless, although he does have a knack for noticing surprising things like that. And then Cassian has complained to me frequently about the sexual tension there, so unless he means between Azriel and Rhys, then he's noticed." A pause. "Azriel doesn't know, though."
"How could he not know? You're not exactly subtle."
Mor rolled back over and glared, though she stopped at the playful smile dancing over Feyre's lips. "Hey, you said it wasn't that obvious! You can't go contradicting yourself now. And what I meant was. . ." She swallowed, but looked Feyre dead in the eye, like she was taking a leap of faith. "Azriel knows I like him. At least, I think he does. But he doesn't know he's my mate."
Oh.
Feyre said carefully, "Mate?"
"Mate, soulmate, match, one true love, whatever you want to call it." She continued. "But he's my mate. I'm sure of it." The silence seemed to weigh heavily between them, and Mor didn't appear to like that, as she said, "Rhys seems to like you."
"So, that's the sentence to use to follow up a declaration such as 'he's my mate'?" Feyre asked, raising an eyebrow, even though the odds were, Mor couldn't see it in the dark. Mor just stared at her, waiting for a proper reply. "Your point? Rhys likes me. You like me. My sisters like me, most of the time, anyway. I'm a likeable person."
"That's not what I meant, and you know it. Rhys like likes you."
"'Like like'? What are you, ten?"
"Feyre."
"Morrigan."
"I said I'd kill you if you called me that," Mor laughed, and her eyes gleamed, even in the dark. "Are you not able to heed a simple death threat?" She shook her head then, and focused on the topic of conversation. "Anyway, stop ducking my question." At the look on her face, Mor's voice softened. "I'm just saying, Rhys definitely seems interested in you, and, speaking from personal experience, when you find your soulmate, it's wonderful. If there's a chance for you to find him - or her - then take it."
"How do you know if you've found your soulmate, anyway?" Feyre side tracked, trying to change the topic. Mor noticed, but obliged her.
"You don't know?" Feyre shook her head. She'd been told they existed, but not how to identify one. "When you meet them - actually, it can be anytime in their presence; I've heard of people who discovered their lifelong friend was their mate when they got to age seventy - the entire world is washed in colour."
Her heart started pounding hard. "What?"
Mor's hands started moving in the air, like she was painting a picture with her words. "Colour. Everyday, you see in black and white, but then something just changes and you suddenly see things in a new perspective. It's-"
"I know what colour is." Is this what her mother had meant all those years ago? When she said that different people saw the colours at different times in their life? That would make sense, as she'd said it was rare to start seeing them as a child. . . "I can already see it. I've been able to see it for years."
Mor froze. "You've found your mate?" She said it like she didn't believe it.
"I don't know. I didn't know it was linked to finding your mate. But when I was four, I began to see them, and put up with months of people telling me I was crazy before my mother explained."
"And she neglected to mention why you'd seen the colours?" Mor asked, and Feyre could practically see her in the dark, biting her lips and frowning.
"I was four. I suppose she always thought she'd be able to tell me when I was older, but she died when I was nine."
"So. . ." Mor trailed off, like she wasn't sure she wanted to broach the topic. "Who is your soulmate?"
"I don't know." Feyre thought about it. She'd known Tamlin for as long as she'd seen the colours, but the day she'd started seeing them, he hadn't been present. Besides, your soulmate wasn't meant to cause you heartbreak. Isaac Hale was out as well; she saw him regularly, him being their neighbour and all, but she'd seen the colours before she'd met him.
"The day I first saw them," she finally said, the memory rising to the front of her mind like a fish through cloudy water, "- the colours, that is - I was on a weekend trip with my family. My sisters were on the swings in the park, and I was playing in the sandpit, when a football came flying out of nowhere and slammed into the back of my head, and forced my head into the sand. I had it shoved into my eyes and down my throat and I was sitting there starting to cry when the boy who'd kicked the ball came over.
"He was nice, and apologised for hitting me, and to try to get me to stop crying, he gave me a small rainbow bracelet made out of beads and wool that he said his cousin had made. He left, and I never saw him again, but on the drive back home, I began to see them." She paused to take a breath. "I guess he was my soulmate then."
"I guess so." Mor agreed absently. "What did he look like?"
"He had a wild mop of dark, dark hair that hung in his eyes. I can't tell you what colour his eyes were - obviously; I couldn't see colours then - but I remember the clothes he dressed in were of fine make. He was with another boy, about the same age as me and him, who had equally dark and unruly curls, though he was a little more muscular than the first boy." Feyre stopped talking, and when there was no reply, she asked, "Mor?" tentatively.
But her roommate didn't say a word, and she presumed she'd fallen asleep as Feyre surrendered herself to the realm of dreams.
The next morning, Mor asked if she still had the bracelet.
"What bracelet?" Feyre asked, in her sleep induced stupor, more than a little irritated her roommate had seen fit to just poke her awake.
Mor tutted, and grasped the top of the sheets, and ripped them back. Feyre gasped in outrage as Mor also ripped the curtains open, and the light flooded in the illuminate Feyre curled up in the foetal position against the sudden lack of warmth. "Get up."
"It's Saturday." Feyre grumbled, rubbing her eyes. "Saturday is sleep-in day."
"No, Saturday is meet up with friends and have fun day." Mor corrected, and Feyre cracked her eye open to glare at her friend, even as the sun couldn't outshine the grin on the blonde's face. "Sunday is sleep-in day, so rest assured I'll let you do so tomorrow, even if Sunday afternoon is reserved for doing the homework you really should've done by now, since it's due on Monday."
"Don't remind me. What teacher sets homework over the holidays?" But Feyre stretched her arms out, and yawned, then rolled out of bed in one smooth, fluid motion. She stretched, flinching when her feet struck the cold floor, then asked absently as she rubbed the back of her thigh, "What did you ask again?"
Mor rolled her eyes. Feyre noted absently that her roommate was already fully dressed, with impeccable makeup and bright hair drawn back into a perfect high ponytail, not a strand out of place. How long had she been up?
"I asked if you still had the bracelet - the rainbow wool and bead one you described last night."
"Oh." Feyre furrowed her brows. "Yeah." She reached out, grasped the cuff of her sleeve, and pulled it up to reveal the tangle of colour that encircled her wrist. "Here."
Mor furrowed her brows, and studied it for an instant, before breaking out in a wide grin. "What?" Feyre asked curiously, a small smile curling her lips at the genuine wonder in Mor's face.
"Nothing," Mor shook her head, but that secret smile didn't fade. "Do you want to come meet Rhys and the others with me today?"
"Why not?"
Feyre found herself enjoying her time with Mor - and the rest of her friends - exponentially more than she had with Ianthe, especially as she felt the colourlessness of her time with Tamlin begin to slip away.
The months slipped by like stars at dawn, and Feyre found herself laughing more and more and more as the time passed. She began to believe she could count Rhys and Cassian and Amren and Mor as her friends. Some of her closest friends. Best friends. She began looking for excuses to spend time with them, instead of tagging along simply because she had nothing better to do.
And, though she denied it heavily and stubbornly whenever Mor would send her suggestive glances, or not-so-subtle enquiries about it, she began to fall in love with Rhysand.
It wasn't love, not at first. At first, it was purely physical attraction that caused her cheeks to flare up whenever he smirked at her. It was a good year before she started entertaining thoughts that her unrequited feelings might be as strong as love, though Mor was crowing to her (in private) about being the one to plan their wedding from the first week.
It was three months after they'd first met that Feyre voiced the question that had been bugging her. Over the weeks, during their conversations in the dark, she'd learned how to tell whether or not Mor was awake simply by listening, so when she lay there, restless, one night, staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars they'd pasted onto the ceiling, she heard the rustling of sheets and said, "Azriel doesn't know he's your mate."
It wasn't a question, and Mor didn't act like it was. There was a heavy sigh, then a small, "No."
"How? If you can see the colours," and, indeed, Mor showed enough intuitive when observing Feyre's artwork that it was clear she could see them just as well as Feyre could, "shouldn't he be able to as well?"
"Not necessarily," Mor admitted, and it was like she was admitting to some dark terrible secret. "Different people begin to see them at different times, but you have to have been in the presence of your soulmate less than twelve hours before. Which just makes it all the more painful," she continued, a little bitterly, and her voice rose slightly as she spoke, "because I've been in Azriel's company for what seems like everyday for the past seven years, yet he still hasn't noticed! I didn't think fate had such a cruel sense of humour."
"Neither did I." Feyre thought about it. "So, although I met my soulmate, he might still not see the colours, despite me being able to?"
"Yes. Supposedly at least. Scientists are still trying to work out the whole science behind the mating bond. And if you never see him again, then he'll never see them."
"Oh." The sound fluttered out of her mouth like a dying spirit. "I suppose I never will see him again, come to think of it."
She could practically feel Mor's sympathetic glance from across the room. "Don't say that Feyre," and the catch in her words might have made the brunette think that perhaps her friend was hiding something, were it not for the fact it was so subtle she half thought she'd imagined it. "Just, date around, I don't know. You're just as likely to find your mate again as those who haven't found their mates are to find them for the first time. Even more likely, if you think about it, since you said you met him not too far from here, whilst others have no idea where their mate is in the world. For all you know, he could go to Prythian."
There was that catch to her words again, but Feyre was too sleepy to comprehend it as she murmured, "Don't be ridiculous, Mor," and let herself be tugged into sleep's warm embrace.
Nevertheless, Feyre took Mor's advice.
She didn't close herself off to dating opportunities, and even went on a few dates, despite the fact that each seemed more forced and stilted than the last. Despite Mor's insistence, she did not address her blossoming feelings for Rhys, even as her friend told her adamantly time and time again that they were requited.
In fact, she did her best to ignore them, and on the whole succeeded, until the time came just over a year after she'd met them, when she and Mor turned up at the flat Rhys, Cassian and Azriel shared to hear loud guffaws emanating from inside, and exchanged curious glances before knocking firmly on the door. The sound rang out before the footsteps approached, and Rhys flung the door open to find two girls looking at him, eyebrows furrowed in question at the laughing grin on his face.
He stepped aside, an arm thrust out to keep the door open for them. "Come in. We're looking at old baby photos."
Mor perked up immediately. "Oooh this should be fun. Embarrass the boys."
Rhysand's smile was droll as he said, "Ever a charmer, Morrigan." She just stuck her tongue out at him.
"I don't understand," Feyre said, stepping inside. Rhys's gaze snapped to hers as soon as she spoke. "How bad can they be?"
Mor was practically skipping. "Bad," she assured her in a singsong voice. "Very bad, indeed."
The moment Mor plopped herself between Cassian and Azriel on the sofa, leaving Feyre to perch awkwardly next to Rhys on the opposite one, Cassian groaned. "You let Mor in? Now we'll never hear the end of this!"
"Damn straight," the woman in question said, leaning forward to yank the album out of Azriel's hands. He made a half hearted grab for it, but an amused smile quirked the corners of his lips as he let his hands fall into his lap and watched Mor rifle through the album.
"Oooh this one!" She cried, and whipped it out of the sleeve and tossed it onto the table. Cassian's arm shot out to pin it to the wood before it went skidding off, then he leaned over it and had a look, before slumping back with a relieved half chuckle. "Oh, thank the Cauldron. It's not me."
"Who is it then?" Feyre asked, leaning over to have a look at it. It was slightly faded around the edges, but she could make out two young kids, about four or five, one a girl with long blonde hair, and one a boy with shaggy black hair who was looking at the camera with a slightly lost expression on his face. "Is that-"
"Mor and me." Rhys said with a sigh. He grinned at her, and after a moment, she grinned back. "As you can see, I made an insanely attractive toddler, as well as an adult."
"Prick."
"You didn't deny it, Feyre darling."
She glowered, but turned her attention back to Mor as she said, "Hey, wasn't this taken the day I made you that bracelet? You one that you promptly lost?"
"Ah yes," Rhys grimaced. "I didn't lose it, for the last time. I gave it away." Cassian chuckled, apparently reliving the memory.
"To who?"
"This girl I met in the park," Rhys said offhandedly, leaning back and casually slinging an arm along the back of the sofa. Feyre's heart started pounding as she studied the photograph. "Cassian and I were playing football, when I kicked it at him especially hard, and it sailed right over to a little girl playing in the sandpit. It slammed her head into the sand, and she started crying, so I gave it to her to try to redeem myself. And make her stop crying." He turned to look at Feyre, and recoiled at the shock in her face. "What? It was an accident!"
That wasn't why she was shocked.
Mor snorted. "Ever a charmer, Rhysand," she parroted his own words back at him. He just chuckled again.
Feyre gave Mor an incredulous glance. She'd told Mor about the time she'd met her supposed soulmate. How had the girl forgotten? Or, a better question was, how had she not realised that Feyre's story matched Rhysand's?
"How do you even remember this?" Cassian asked curiously. "I just remember bits and pieces - it was years ago."
Rhys opened his mouth with a shrug, but Feyre cut him off with a tight, "Mor? Could I talk to you outside?"
The blonde girl looked at her, took in the accusative eyebrow, and the pursed lips, and smiled innocently. "Of course."
"Before you yell at me," Mor began as Feyre paced up and down the corridor. The force of her footfalls would undoubtably wear a hole in the carpet, and the boys would probably get complaints from the people on the lower floors later that day, but she couldn't find it in herself to care. "I did technically suggest you date him."
"Forgive me if I think pressuring me into a relationship and hiding the fact that we were mates are two completely different things!" Feyre made sure to keep her voice down, but she also made sure the roiling anger in her chest was projected into her words. "You could've mentioned it!"
"Feyre," Mor said in a placating way. "One of the recognised flaws to the mating bond is that the pair are thrown into a relationship with no pre-developed feelings for each other. It's like an arranged marriage. If the bond had been recognised when you were younger, it would have been like engagement before birth." Feyre swallowed, but tilted her head in a gesture for her to go on. Mor's words sped up. "But you can say that now, you're genuinely in love with him. He's your soulmate, and you love him, and you're exempt from those unhappy relationships where there is no love, only the colours. And sometimes they're not enough."
Feyre rubbed her forehead, and passed a hand over her face, before she dropped it with a sigh. "Alright. I see where you're coming from, even if it wasn't right of you to keep it from me." A beat, and when she spoke again she spoke softly. "Can he see them?"
Mor, understanding immediately what she was asking, hesitated. "I don't know," she admitted after an instant. "As far as I know, no, but he's been acting strangely the past few months. He keeps staring at your artwork, but I'm not sure if that's because he can finally appreciate it, or because you made it."
Feyre blushed at the insinuation, but she was silent. "He's my mate." She said slowly. "Rhys is my mate."
When she looked up, Mor's eyes were limned with silver. "He's your mate." She repeated, and Feyre beamed, broad and brilliant, as a fat, pearly teardrop rolled down her cheek.
Later that evening, Feyre heard a knock on the door, and she didn't have time to call, "Come in," before Rhys was slipping into the room and sauntering over to sit opposite her on Mor's bed. "My esteemed cousin said you wanted to talk to me?"
Right.
That. Feyre put aside her sketchpad, and folded her hands in her lap. She glanced up shyly through her eyelashes, and found Rhysand's attention fixed solely on her. The earnesty in his violet eyes gave her the courage to take a deep breath and, not looking at him, reached into her draw on the bedstead she and Mor shared. She drew out the rainbow bracelet, and held it up so he could see it. "This is the bracelet you gave me around fifteen years ago, as an apology for your football shoving my head into the sand. The one Mor made you."
Rhysand froze. She gave a tentative smile. "That was you?"
"Apparently," she answered. "That's not even the whole story, though." She tossed the bracelet; it landed squarely in his lap, where he touched it with reverent fingers. "I've been able to see in colour ever since."
He unfroze at that. His gaze snapped to her, something like elation in his face before he said in a whisper, "What?" He swallowed. "You're my mate?"
"I'm your mate." She confirmed quietly.
He was silent for a moment.
Then he said, "I knew it," and she blinked.
"What?"
"I knew it." He repeated, and that was definitely joy that made his eyes glow that way. He moved to sit next to her, and took her hands in his own. "I can see the colours too."
"Since when!?"
"Since Starfall," he admitted quietly, naming the celebration long since passed, when they'd danced at the party being thrown to celebrate the meteor shower going on overhead. "I didn't know how to tell you; I didn't want to scare you. And I wasn't even sure it was you. I mean, you're open about the fact you can already see them, but you're not dating anyone, so I assumed you'd already met them, and somehow not realised it, or you didn't get along, or maybe you were just an anomaly and had been able to see them since you were born, and there was a lot of people at Starfall anyway, so it could have been any one of them, and-"
"You're babbling." She observed. He smiled sheepishly.
"It appears I am. I'm just a little nervous."
"Of what?" She asked, genuinely surprised, but at the lack of answer, she went on to say, "So. . . what now?"
"Um." He scratched the back of his head. "Can I kiss you?"
She smiled at the way he looked at her, like he expected her to say no. He was her mate, for Cauldron's sake, and on top of that, she loved him. He had nothing to be afraid of. "Why not?"
And when their mouths collided, clumsily and awkwardly, it felt like coming home.
What did you think?