This was born when I listened to the song Flares by The Script, and shamelessly bawled my eyes out. It's set between ACOTAR and ACOMAF, and is basically another one of those thousand fics of how Feyre felt during that time.

Possible trigger warning for dark thoughts.

Disclaimer: I don't own ACOTAR.

It's always hardest at night.

I don't wake from my dream as much as roar from it, like I'm riding on the crest of a monstrous wave that will shatter me when it breaks. I feel my guts rush to the back of my throat with the momentum of it, but I clamp my mouth shut and press my palm against my lips as I choke it down. Tears wrestle their way out of my eyes and burn down my cheeks and chin like hot, mocking kisses.

(Kisses like Rhysand kissed my cheeks in that place and I wasn't sure if the heat was the kisses the tears or something else)

My legs tremble underneath me as they collide with the cold floor but I'm sprinting anyway and the lack of balance does nothing to alleviate my nausea. I reach the bathroom in a series of flashing images and only then do I let my legs collapse under me, as all the chunks of vomit spewed back up from where I'd tried to shove them down my throat. I choke on it all.

The vomit keeps coming, in more waves and more waves and more waves only unlike water it burns and my gut constricts like it knows, logically, that it's really not healthy to lose this much food in one night (every night...) but it can't stop and neither am I. I'm as powerless to stop this as I am to stop the images from that place playing on a loop in my mind like Rhysand or some other daemati has seized it and decided to have some fun.

(The fun they had in that place I'm glad I don't remember most of it I don't want to remember any of it what I remember is enough it's more than enough)

Sometimes I wonder if they'll kill me.

Sometimes I wonder if I want them to kill me.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone would miss me if they did.

Tamlin rarely speaks to me anymore as he's busy being the good High Lord I know he is. He does so, so well for someone who didn't want to be High Lord, and he puts his whole being into it, and it should just make me love him all the more, it does make me love him all the more. The most time we spend we each other is when we have sex, and he falls asleep next to me. He never wakes up when I'm like this; he's exhausted from his day. It would be selfish of me to want him here with me, who does nothing, and doesn't deserve her immortal life. It would just upset him more.

(Even if Tamlin did nothing when we were in that place; he only watched from his throne like a statue made of ivory and jade and gold and never gave me so much as a hint of encouragement whilst I went through hell and back to save him)

I finish retching and without the fire carving me up from the outside I'm cold. Freezing. The porcelain against my back is heatless and I feel goose bumps break out over my skin. I lean my head back against it anyway, and feel the warmth being leeched from my skin. I close my eyes.

I wonder, if I get cold enough, would the blood just abandon my skin for fear of frost bite? Would I go paler than a ghost, until I simply disappear, sitting here on the white bathroom floor?

(Pale - I was so pale when I returned to the Spring Court, but at least there was the pink flush to my skin that the mountain hadn't stolen. It's only gotten worse from there)

One would think that one so obsessed with appearances as Ianthe would comment on how mine slowly wastes away with my fat and colour, until I'm just a worn skeleton, and my bones are yellow with age, but she doesn't, she says nothing, and instead shoves me into white dresses like that monstrosity of a wedding dress as if she's challenging me to see how pale I can go. She just taps her nails against the wooden table and clucks her throat.

(Her nails, like her nails, that tapped the arm rest of an obsidian throne, her throat that wheedled such sweet horrors and tutted condescendingly whenever I showed some backbone no not her not her not her never her. She's dead; she can't bother me again. Can she?)

I bring my knees up to my chest. I hate these thoughts, that slip between the cracks in my mind and grab the entire thing, like it's theirs for the taking.

(It's my mind it's my mind get out of my head please it's my mind GET OUT OF MY HEAD)

Is this was victory is supposed to feel like? Is this what love is supposed to feel like?

Is this what Tamlin and the rest of the Spring Court waited fifty years for?

Is this what Andras and those two Fae died for?

(So much death...)

I sigh, and get up. My legs are still wobbly, and I just know I'll fall over soon. My nightgown protects little from the cold air that blows through the hallways, but I stagger through it anyway. I deserve this cold; I deserve this pain. I killed two innocent Fae, and let their blood warm my hands. I hope I'll never be warm again.

I reach out a hand and steady myself against a wall as I stumble. The world tilts for a moment, but it's all blurry, and it's so peaceful. Things slow down in the moments like this, until it's almost some semblance of peace. It's bliss.

I straighten again, and stagger further down the corridor into the window seat. I stare out the window aimlessly, but feel much more steady now I'm not standing on my own two feet. A part of me wants to stand up again, wants to stumble again, wants to feel that faintness wash over me, where the world is just as awful but I can't see it anymore, and I know nothing but sleep and a sense of peace I know I don't deserve but crave anyway. The sort of peace there was in the darkness of death.

The sort of peace I felt once before, when I chose to give it up for Tamlin.

(Everything - I gave everything up for Tamlin and he won't even get up for me...)

Maybe I was wrong in choosing life over death.

A horror recoils inside me at the thought - remember Tamlin remember how sad he was and Lucien too remember how much your death hurt them even Rhys was crying - and I feel something more physical too, a shadow claw retracting around my heart.

The knowledge of just how awful I am is what overwhelms me in the end. My tears stream down my cheeks with a fire that doesn't burn. My chest is tight and my sobs come in hiccups, but there's no one awake to hear them, no one's ever awake to hear them, there's no one there, no one cares.

My eyes are so blurry that all I register at first is a twinkling light that plays through my tears in the ethereal way all things do in the faerie realms. But then I open my eyes and see the lights.

The stars are so bright, so, so bright, like someone's sending up flares. I'm reminded of the fire celebrations we had in the village, where each person could purchase a firework, and set it off in their back garden, and how the artist in me loved the sights, and how the sparks would paint the sky with red and yellow and blue and green and purple and gold and orange like the clouds were a painter's canvas, and we the esteemed gallery guests.

I remember how the smoke that billowed from them would sting my eyes just like tears do, only in a good way, as your eyes would water and suddenly the sky wasn't just a painting, but a kaleidoscope as the light splintered.

The stars shine brighter and brighter, and it makes me cry harder. I press my nose to the window to try and see more, and like the person creating this phenomenon hears, the stars flare brighter. Brighter and brighter and brighter.

I can pick out the constellations now. My heart expands to fill my chest, and I weep as I look up and see that The Huntress is the brightest of all, her bow held straight and sure, her eyes shining like she too is crying.

Maybe they're not for me. Maybe the stars are meant for some other soul, who's broken and healing and actually deserves the buoyant feeling I have in my chest. But at least I got to see them. At least I know I'm not alone in this torment, in this craving of peace.

Or maybe I'm seeing things. Maybe the voice in my head is toying with me, trying to raise my spirits so it can crush them again. Maybe I'm so starved for some scrap of comfort that this is all a fancy in my head. But this - this - is the peace I fought so hard for. This city of starlight is what I found beautiful about life, and why I chose to stick with it.

And I will fight with everything I have - I will go under the mountain all over again - to protect it.