AUTHOR'S NOTES:

CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR "A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN"!

This plot bunny came to me after reading "A Court of Wings and Ruin", specifically this paragraph: "Clever that Fae warrior. Her bloodline is long gone now - though a trace still runs though some human line." He smiled perhaps a bit sadly. "No one remembers her name. But I do. She would have been my salvation, had I not made my choice long before she walked this earth."

That made me realise that the Bone Carver had once been in love with a Fae female who was not only a tough warrior and a sly magic user (she was the one who tricked his sister, the Weaver and his brother, binding them both and ending their reigns as 'gods' to be worshiped), but she obviously didn't stay with him and instead married/mated someone else - someone human. Well, of course, that inspired my muse to go mad.

And then there's Az. Poor, sweet Az with his unrequited love that will never be realised because of Morrigan's sexual preference for women...and the interesting little spell that makes the Bone Carver look just like her. And how in "A Court of Mist and Fury", Az quickly volunteers to go see the Bone Carver in Feyre's stead that first time and even intimates he's been there alone several times in the past ("I'll go. The Prison sentries know me-what I am."). Hmmm...

DISCLAIMER: "A Court of Thorns and Roses" series is the property of Sarah J. Maas and Bloomsbury. This fanfiction was written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.

MAIN CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order): The Bone Carver x Azriel

SECONDARY CHARACTERS FEATURED (alphabetical order): Amren, Cassian, Feyre Archeron, Jurian, Morrigan, Rhysand

SUMMARY: A cannibal. A visionary. A monster. A death god... The Bone Carver has been called many things in his wicked immortal life. He has been worshiped by thousands, but has loved only twice. And now the end is coming, he has foreseen his own death, and with the time he has left, he struggles with leaving behind a legacy that will make up for all his past evil and for his very human-like failures.

RATING: MA (NC-17)

GENRE: Drama, Angst, Romance, Action

WARNINGS: This is a head canon story (events in the fic take place around actual events in the novels & make use of the novel information); War violence; Explicit profanity; Explicit consensual sex (Het & Slash); Implied incest; Implied child abuse; Implied child sexual assault; Sibling rivalry; Cannibalism (bone eating); Bittersweet ending. This is a DARK fic. Please take the warnings seriously.

EXTRA NOTES: This fic uses British spellings. Excerpts from "The Carver's Legacy" take place, obviously, after the war with Hybern ("A Court of Wings and Ruin"). The actual story starts soon after Feyre first meets the Bone Carver in "A Court of Mist and Fury" and is told from the Bone Carver's POV exclusively until the Epilogue.

THE CARVER'S LEGACY

By: RZZMG

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"Survival inspires savagery."

~ from "The Carver's Legacy", excerpt by Jurian The Repentant

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Time is different here, in Prythian.

It's slower, and more…ordered. Counted in the regular movements of the sun and the moon.

Across the void, in the world where I and my two siblings were Made, there were no seasons, only patterns of weather that changed from one moment to the next like eddying tides. We counted our lives in between the moments of searing heat, freezing rain, and air so cold it sometimes froze a creature in place in a matter of heartbeats.

"She was born three rains ago."

"He died at the start of the great sun's reign."

"I last ate during the snow fall."

We had no concept of weeks, months, or years, no way to gauge such things, except as we grew and aged, and felt the urge to mate.

There were also great sandstorms that struck those rocky hills and barren valleys, too. They occasionally blew so hard, skin was flayed from bone.

It was these gales that my tribe anticipated with a combination of dread and excitement, for those cyclones of suffocating heat and dirt that tore through the high deserts of our lands and sent us scurrying into rough underground burrows for countless hours until they passed were both reapers and sowers.

While we hid away in caverns of complete darkness and prayed to our gods, the young would tend to the crops of moss in the subterranean caves below. Levels above them, the adults would enter into a religious frenzy as the mating cycle began with the arrival of the twisting demons of earth. Females were used hard by every male of the tribe until they were bred.

At the same time, the aged and infirm, those gutted by life, were left above ground during the sand tempests, chained to stone walls outside the entrances. They screamed defiance at the murderous winds, even as it stole their breaths from them. Their deaths sustained the rest of us.

I will never forget the way their clean, white bones had cracked open in my hands or the sweet flavour of their marrow passing my tongue and filling my belly.

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"The first time we'd met, I'd known he was a different sort of monster."

~ from "The Carver's Legacy", excerpt by Feyre Archeron, High Lady of Night

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I carved carefully, slowly into the calf-bone, my talent fashioning a face from the osseous material.

The Middengard Wyrm's soul had been snuffed out by the sharper end. I could still taste the residual magic of that death on my tongue. Its marrow had been meatier than what I'd become accustomed to over the last several centuries, and I savoured it between my teeth.

"Your persistence could almost be called admirable, if it wasn't for the fact your High Lord was specific that you drop the idea," I informed my guest. He'd visited me often enough over the centuries that our level of familiarity allowed for some good-natured taunting. "Are you sure you wish to risk Rhysand's wrath?"

The shadowsinger stepped forward and threw a bag at me. It rattled as it hit the smooth, worn floor of my cell.

"From Andras," he offered me. "The Spring Court sentinel who sacrificed himself to help bring about the end of Amarantha's curse."

I gently placed the calf-bone down and crawled to the bag. It was filled with a variety of bones, but there was no skull inside, much to my disappointment. Still, it was a fine cache. Dying for a noble cause was almost as sweet a magick as dying for love. They were, in fact, closely related…as were the flavours.

These I would devour, as my own strength was waning of late. I'd starved myself for too long this time.

"Two questions," I negotiated. "Ask."

Azriel glowered down at me from his greater height. "Three. One extra for the face you're wearing."

I glanced up at him, knowing who he was looking at, seeing into the heart of his pain as he looked down into rich, brown eyes and long, golden hair that sparkled like sunlight, into the face of the Morrigan he loved.

"This wasn't my choice. You know how it works."

The visitor's heart chose my shape for us both. It was my curse that I be 'unknown': never to speak my real name aloud again, never to show my real face to any other. I had lied to the woman I'd loved once upon a time—about who I was, what I was—and so this was my punishment for all eternity.

The big Illyrian nodded, but was resolved. "Three questions."

I sighed in defeat. I never could deny any of the Night Court what they needed, and not due to any spell upon me.

"Ask, and be quick about it." My stomach was rumbling. I needed to eat.

"Where is the Book of Breathings within the human realm?"

A wasted question, for this I could not see. "Hidden from my sight. I do not know."

Azriel seemed frustrated by that answer, but it was the most honest I'd ever been, aside from when Feyre Cursebreaker had come to visit earlier.

"Will she accept the mate bond with him?" he asked me for his second question.

Ah, he was worried for his High Lord's sanity. How noble. "Yes, but it will not be easy for Rhysand. He will have to bare his soul to that female first, if he dares." I reached into the bag of bones and caressed a rib. Well shaped, but so brittle… "If you worry of her residual feelings for the Lord of Spring, do not. Feyre Cursebreaker and Rhysand are a true love match."

That seemed to relieve the soldier of the scarred hands.

He was still tense, however.

"No," I told him, before he could ask, because I knew what he wished me to tell him. "I do not know if your heart's greatest desire for a night spent in the Morrigan's bed will come true after Hybern is finished."

Before then, however...there was something indistinct, blurry about that possibility. Shadows of her, but not her in his arms played at the edges of my vision. It made little sense to me, and so I could not divulge it as any sort of fact or truth.

"As I have told you before, Secret Keeper, I cannot see beyond the boundaries of my own death."

The shadows seemed to grow longer around my guest. "So you will die in the coming war?" Azriel sounded saddened by that fact.

I pursed my lips into a disappointed, tight frown, letting him know without words that he was crossing the wrong line. I'd long ago resolved myself to what awaited me at the turning of the New Age. Dwelling upon it would not change that fate, and I did not like to think what awaited me in the hereafter, if there was such a thing. I'd done enough evil in this life to merit an unnaturally unpleasant afterlife, I was quite sure.

He pushed me on the subject, however, even knowing he was risking my wrath. "Is that why you asked Feyre about her experiences after Amarantha had killed her?"

Anxiety tightened a fist around my blackened heart. "Is that your third question?"

"No, I'm simply curious."

"Then be done with this interrogation, Master of Secrets," I snapped at him. "I grow…weary of your presence."

He stiffened, and I was instantly sorry for my words, especially knowing they'd seemed to come from the mouth of the woman he'd adored, but I made no indication that I cared. It wouldn't do to allow this warrior to feel he could be so friendly with me, despite our numerous encounters…or the fact I knew he was lonely for someone to understand the side of him that was more monster than male and could relate.

-Despite the fact I was the father of his race, and he was one of my favourite descendants.

I was, however, an eater of life—quite literally. That role did not allow me to become attached to others, for fear of killing them, and I'd had enough of doing that, both accidentally and purposefully. For that reason, I kept my expression blank, my true self tucked away behind the icy mask of the Bone Carver. "Ask," I hissed at him, desperate to send him away so I could feast on Andras the Brave, so I could fill this gnawing, hateful sensation in my centre that continually returned, despite all my efforts to appease its nature.

Azriel was quiet and still, as only one who'd experienced real horror could become. When he finally spoke, it was to inquire of me the one question I'd always feared someone would eventually be brave enough to dare.

"Are you afraid to die?"

The bones in the bag rattled, and I realised it was because my hands shook.

Was I afraid?

I knew the when, even the where and the why. I knew it would not be pleasant, but it would be fast. I knew I would die doing the right thing...

But I would be hungry even with my last breath.

"Yes," I said so softly I wasn't sure he'd heard me. It didn't matter, because I'd turned inward, to memories long past, to a life wasted by fear and need unsatisfied. I was lost in regrets that were darker than the mountain around me. "I'm afraid, because I don't know if this curse will end with my life, or truly follow me into eternity." I put my hand over my growling stomach to quiet it down. "I fear even death will not be able to give me the peace I crave."

It was quiet in my cell after that. So quiet, I only realised Azriel was gone and how much time had passed once the torch he'd left sputtered out at long last. Not even the air currents carried his scent any longer, and I could hear my fellow inmates rousing in their cells once more now that we were all alone in The Prison. Scratching, hissing, whispering...

With a wave at them and an expulsion of my will, the bone doors to my cell boomed shut, their echo reverberating through my self-imposed prison, sealing me in once more.

I lost track of time then, sitting on the floor in the dark. I counted those moments as I usually did: by prisoner episodes. When one barked a maniacal laugh, I stood up. When another shouted a demand to be set free at once, I moved to the wall. When a door above cracked open, I opened the bag of Andras' bones. And when one of the prisoners killed and devoured another, rending its flesh limb from limb, I feasted on my cache.

Time is different here in Prythian.

You count it in screams.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Author's End Notes-Chapter 1:

Tempus - Noun - Latin for "time".
Tempest - Noun - A violent, windy storm.

A play on words.

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Reviews are greatly appreciated! :)

XOXO,

- RZZMG