So here's the last chapter! Thanks so much to everyone who reviewed and read this story, and I hope you enjoyed it :)
Finally, this last one was a prompt from wavingthroughawindow.
Fall
Velaris was beautiful as ever in autumn, when winds blew crisp and vibrant skies conceded to pearly grey clouds and leaves stood like flames on the trees before they burned out, shrivelled, brown, dry. Feyre itched to paint it, but how could she?
How could she paint the beauty when it reminded her of another beauty? A cruel beauty, with red-gold hair, teeth that flashed white when she smiled, eyes as dark as the newly fertile earth?
Amarantha has fallen, she chanted. Hybern has fallen. They are as dead as the leaves I crush underfoot.
But how could she paint it when her heart hammered at the sight of it? Red: Amarantha's hair. Red: Andras's blood on the snow. Red: the petals on the ground.
"I can't do it," she told Rhys once.
"Then don't. No one will judge you."
She clenched her fist at the words. Her wedding ring bit into her hand; she glanced down at it, the blue colour reassuring. Like the sea, the free, open sky, her own eyes in the mirror, dry of tears.
But the ring was gold. The colour of those drinks Rhys had given her in that place, the blaze of the wolf's eyes, the tint of Tamlin's magic as he threw her against the wall-
"There's an abyss inside me," she choked out. "I'm on the very edge. I'm going to fall."
He just hugged her closer. "If you fall, I'll catch you," he promised, and held her as she cried.