I ran my fingers through my near black, waist length hair one last time. I then quickly weaved it into a loose braid, and angling my dagger at the nape of my neck, sheared through the massive mane. I felt myself lighten as a sigh of relief escaped me. Everything was different now, including me. I clenched my once beloved hair tightly before lowering it into the silk bag. The wig maker had given it to me, other fabrics can damage the hair, he had said. I warily looked up into the mirror and didn't even bother to hide my smile from myself. My blue-green eyes sparkled and seemed to take on a new focus, as if they had been hidden by the hair somehow. I felt as if even I could see myself more clearly now.

The bell on the door tinkled as the door to the shop closed behind me. If I was completely honest, I found the shop to be a bit unnerving. All the faceless mannequin busts with various hair styles in different colors seeming to stare at me from their blank white eyes. The fae female behind the counter set me at ease with a warm smile and greeting, "Cerylia", she said simply. "Eloiny, how are you?" Her clear green eyes were offset by her olive skin, and her ever changing hairstyles were a daily occurrence. No matter the wig she chose to don each day, she was always stunningly beautiful. She let out a slight huff of air, "Bored out of my mind." she admitted. Indeed the shop was empty aside from the two of us, the wig maker presumably working somewhere behind the store front. I pulled the silk bag from its seat hanging on my belt and laid it on the counter before her.

"I see you went through with it." She smiled as she wrote up a receipt and passed me a few coins. "Would you," she started eyeing my hair a bit too casually, "...like for me to trim a bit off the back, a few places that your dagger couldn't reach?" I knew she was trying to be polite but I let out a loud laugh. "Yes, please fix it for me! And next time, just tell me it looks like shit." She motioned for me to sit behind the counter and pulled out a gleaming pair of gold shears. "Truly it suits you, would I lie to you?" Her delicate hands set to work soundlessly trimming bits of hair here and there, giving my hack job shape and design. Eloiny was the wig maker's apprentice, although in fairness, she had mastered the skill long ago. She had become a fast friend to me 6 months ago, ever since I came to Velaris.

I sauntered up the street, with a newfound confidence in myself. Coming up to the threshold of the townhouse, I knocked on the front door. Just as I had hoped, Mor answered the door while still carrying on something that seemed to be a verbal battle with someone already inside. Her eyes widened before she could give me a true greeting and smiled radiantly. "Honestly Cery, I can't believe you did it, you actually cut your hair. Or did Eloiny?" I walked in the door before I said, "I did- the first cut. She fixed it for me." I said with a flourish at my now gloriously textured pixie cut. She had left the bangs a bit longer to one side, just brushing my cheekbone. The rest she evened out, giving the whole look a polished finish. "Well I must admit that I'm surprised, given that you have never cut your hair, ever." Mor and I have been friends for 200 years, at least. And she was right. I had been religiously against altering it in any way. "But I love it. Now, come help me convince Cassian how stupid it would be to give Nesta a commissioned painting of himself to her for her birthday." She grinned broadly and waved a dismissive hand in his direction as he began to bark a protest.

"Feyre!" I could see her retreating skirts sweep around the edge of the garden, chasing after her I nearly dropped the large stack of teetering clay pots that had finished drying this morning and were ready for paint before being fired in the kiln. I knew I was a mess, covered in red clay from head to toe, but I didn't care. It was exhilarating and relaxing at the same time. Feyre and I would occasionally collaborate on pieces of pottery, the result always a piece worth treasuring. Turning quickly on her heel she quickly met me in the garden and took half of the pots, following me to the small corner of the garden that held the wheel, kiln, and countless clay pots and creatures I had made in the last few months. "These are fantastic." she breathed, fingering one of the larger still wet pieces on one of the shelves along the back wall fixed into the fence of the garden wall. "I wondered if you would be interested in any of them for painting."

Feyre and I had only known each other for the last 6 months, since the end of the war. If you could call it that... There was still so much left over anxiety and mess to be cleaned up from the aftermath that it sometimes still felt as if the war was ongoing. Despite the short time we had known each other, we shared an instant kinship. There was a part of her artist's soul that recognized mine. Perhaps as well as the part of my deep water magic that could see hers without really knowing. She quietly mingled amongst the pots, considering, almost listening to them. As if they could speak to her, something I also understood without question. She stopped at one of the larger pots nearly finished drying on the stone floor of the patio. "This one," she said quietly, "would you like to paint it with me?" Nodding quickly, I told her that most of my paints were at the House of Wind, where my room was. I loved the openness and quiet of the palace atop the mountain. Rhys had been gracious enough to offer me a room in the town house after the war was over and my place as a spy in the Court of Nightmares has ended. Mor and I had always been very close friends in secret, not ever allowing anyone in that wretched court suspect that I was anything more than another member of the court. Azriel is who I answered to all of those years, and I counted him amongst my most trusted friends, but Mor was the closest thing I had ever had to a real family.

The House of Wind eased the pain in my chest that had gripped tight after so much time passed in an enclosed space, with nothing but sneering faces and darkness to surround myself with. And stone, stone walls. No windows to let in the sunlight, wind, the rain, or even the gurgle of the nearby stream which I could sense despite those horrid stone barriers. The knowledge of that stream, the slight scent of it that I could impossibly gleam, kept me sane in my darkest moments.

"That's perfect," Feyre began, "We have a meeting tomorrow afternoon at the House of Wind with the high lords of the seasonal courts. If you've nothing planned we could meet afterward on the balcony outside of the library?" Such trivial pleasures as this were heart breakingly startling to me still. I could meet with her, my friend, to paint. It had been so long that such things were spoken of with such casualness that it nearly took my breath away. "It's a date." Mor and Rhysand descended the few stone steps from the town house into the garden and Rhys crooned with an amused expression, "A date? Tired of your mate already, Feyre darling?" Feyre, Mor, and I rolled our eyes almost in unison as he slid his arm soundlessly around her waist and announced that it was time for a date of their own. He gave Mor and I a winning smile before winnowing the two of them away without another word. I noticed then that Mor was bearing a basket full of a picnic supper the two of us were to share. I sighed as I filled us both a glass of the sparkling wine that she brought for us. "I think everyone needs a Rhysand." Mor burst out an undignified laugh, spewing only a few drops of the wine. "I think you mean a mate. Everyone needs a mate. Cauldron spare me a life time with Rhysand as the center of his insufferable romance." I chuckled loudly, clinking glasses with her before tearing into the meal laid out on the ground before us.

Feyre

Rhysand placed a chaste kiss on my lips as he led me to my seat at the candlelit table atop the roof of the House of Wind. The view was truly breathtaking, if not the most beautiful I had ever seen. "I've missed this." I said simply, allowing my glowing happiness to fill in the gaps of explanation. Despite the end of the war, Rhys and I had never spent so little time alone together. There was too much work to be done. So many lives to be rebuilt, much to be atoned for. I hadn't had a chance to inquire much about our new friend, Cerylia. I felt guilty now, thinking of bringing up something that might be difficult to explain or discuss. I knew that she had acted as a spy in the Court of Nightmares for many years, beginning in the years just before Amarantha had taken control Under the Mountain. Other than that, I knew nothing of her. Aside from the artistic passion that the two of us shared, there was an ease in her presence that I could not say I had felt in the company of many others.

"Just ask whatever it is that's caused the furrowing of that beautiful face." Rhy said simply. I smiled despite myself and relaxed back into my chair. "I'm wondering about Cerylia. Where did she come from?" He took a sip of wine and lowered his glass before taking a small breath. "I'm not sure how much she would appreciate me telling you, or even how much she would appreciate that I even know about her.. What I have been told by Mor and Azriel. She is a very private person.. Understandably so." I frowned at him and stroked a sensual finger down his inner mental shield. He laughed out loud and gave a conceding sigh.

"Cerylia and Mor have been friends for many years." He started slowly and I wanted to pinch him to make him speak more quickly. He only grinned in response as he could feel the silent tension, an order to go on. "She is a half breed." He stated it blandly, with a look as if the taste of the word was foul and he would rather not speak it. "Her father was a cruel man from the Court of Nightmares who one day happened upon a naiad, her mother, who dwells in the river that funnels into a small stream near the mountain." He gestured at the distant stream far below us in the dark. The faint gurgle barely audible above the sounds of the wind and city beyond. "I don't need to tell you that half breeds are not exactly welcomed into our society. Cerylia is fortunate to be the sort that is not physically marked as such. Her mother and father had a passing affair and her mother, knowing instantly that she had conceived her daughter that first night, did not kill him, as is common in naiad culture." He grinned at the shock on my face. "Naiads are a ruthless people, they do not allow half breed children in their culture. It is customary for any half breeds to be given to the father once they are born, the mother to never see them again." He paused again to drain his wine glass, and our food appeared, steaming and delicious before us.

I forced myself to eat as Rhys had begun to do so. He wiped his mouth after a bite or so and continued, "Her father, cruel as he may seem, refused to take Cerylia at first. He did not want her to grow up in the Court of Nightmares. He asked her mother to keep their daughter for as long she could without risking the wrath of the Naiad elders. Because Cerylia had not been gifted with the gills of the Naiad, it was impossible for her mother to take her to their underwater city. The best she could do was a small cottage at the river's edge, glamoured from all sight. She lived out her first 100 years of life this way, with very strictly limited contact, befriending mostly animals. Her mother died then, throat slit by the Naiad elders for her deception.. but before she did, she called for Cerylia's father." He paused for what I could only deem to be dramatic effect. "She met Morrigan shortly after arriving at the Court of Nightmares. Her father hid her arrival and parentage as well as he could, in fact no one ever seemed to question her presence. As if she had always been there. I suppose she had grown up accustomed to hiding and making herself scarce. I know that she faced many untold horrors the last 100 years... She was an invaluable spy for us after Amarantha took control, even I never knew her until now. Mor introduced her to Azriel those years ago, and she has been quietly aiding us ever since." I loosed a breath. "I feel this kinship with her, a part of me that feels comfortable. It's not just the art, there is something else as well." Rhys swallowed another mouthful and took a small sip. "It's her magic. She has unrivaled control of water. Your own water magic speaks to hers, recognizes that part of you as it's kin." It made sense, I realized suddenly. Those deep blue green eyes, as bottomless as the ocean, every shade of the sea' s color in them. Her manner as calm as a steady forest pool. The love for the river's clay, and passion for manipulating it. "Now..." In a blink, Rhys winnowed himself and his chair right next to mine. He slid a warm hand up the expanse of my exposed thigh, "let's talk about something else." I smiled looking deeply into his sapphire eyes, held his face between my hands and kissed him. He waved a hand and the table was replaced by a comfortable pile of cushions and pillows. I faked a dismayed scowl, "I was still eating." He grinned evilly lifting me from my chair and laying me atop the pillows, "I won't let you go hungry."

Cerylia

It was with serious difficulty that I pushed the practical leather clothing I had worn in one variation or another for the last 50 years. I could not force myself to be rid of them entirely, they had been too essential for too long. I selected a soft green tunic, short sleeved and flowing. Billowing in a breeze, but laying nicely against the curves of my body. I pulled tight black leggings underneath and leather sandals on my feet. The effort to not dress as if a fight could break out any moment was immense. But the effect was calming, settling the nerves that danced on my finger tips. I gathered up all of the painting supplies I would need later on with Feyre. I took them down the hall and onto the balcony outside of the library. It is so beautiful here, not constricting in any way, and I could hear the water singing to me at all times. I winnowed away to the city below for a slow stroll and breakfast on the river side before my 'date' this afternoon. I ate slowly, savoring the flavors of the fresh herbs used to season my cold fruit salad. The water's song was dismal today. I could hear the Naiads beneath, always there, always watching the world above them. Watching me when necessary, knowing that I could see and hear them. I heard a song of mourning and my spirits dampened slightly. Someone important, possibly one of the elders, must have died. I had heard the same sort of melody when my own mother had died, not nearly as loud then. She was no one in the grand scheme of things. A third grand daughter to an elder, never expected to become anything more.

The sun began it's ascent in the sky, and I made my way to the town house to collect the large pot we would be painting. A birthday gift for Nesta, that is what I would suggest before we began. I lowered the pot into a large canvas bag that I would strap to my back. When I was satisfied that it was secure, I took a breath and winnowed- before I hit a stone wall. My nose and eyes ran from the sharp impact. I forgot about the meeting with the other high lords.. Rhysand would have made the wards more strict for the occasion. I cursed quietly and thanked the cauldron that I had at least made it to the base of the stairs leading up to the palace before I grunted and began my trek up the infinite number of stairs.

10 steps to go and I realized how soft I had gone these last few months, I was so winded I stopped to gain a little composure before stepping foot inside the palace. When I was satisfied that my chest was only heaving slightly, I gripped the pack straps digging into my shoulders and stepped inside. I made my way through the hall and up a flight of stairs and stepped lightly into the library. I heard voices on the other side of the room. The meeting must be taking place in the large room situated within the library with its large polished wood book cases, comfortable chairs, and like every other room in the palace, the comfortable breeze flowing in through the open windows.

I quieted my breathing as best as I could manage and headed straight for the balcony. Crossing through the archway into the afternoon sun, I felt an odd sensation come over me. I was aware of the two males already standing on the balcony, hair as red as flame glaring in the light, but the sudden feeling clenching in my abdomen nearly knocked me to my knees. My eyes adjusted to the figures before me. One was Lucien, whom I had come to know and had began to befriend. The other... took my breathe away. I had absent mindedly taken the pack from my shoulders, and when the male I didn't know also turned to meet my gaze the feeling was so intense that I dropped the pack altogether, and heard the pot shatter inside , pieces scattering across the marble floor.

My friends and the other high lords present for the meeting appeared at my back almost instantly. They looked from me back to the red haired male. Then to me, and back again. My eyes were dazzled by the sight of him. His magnificent hair gleaming, his amber colored eyes so warm the heat seemed to leech into the core of me. "Cerylia, this is Eris Vanserra, High Lord of the Autumn Court. My brother.." Lucien began slowly, "Eris, this is-" Eris interrupted suddenly, "My mate."