"Good morning princess." He sniffed the air. "Who healed you?" he demanded.

"Kendryek." His lips pressed into a straight line.

"Are you ready to try harder today?" Hadrian asked me. I didn't respond. He hmmpfed. "You know what to do."

So I started running.

After the third time I was close to collapsing again. "No better today?" he asked. "Did you learn nothing?" I didn't respond. "Go to the training fields. I will meet you there."

Hadrian stood in the center of one of the bare fields. He wore only his robes. He held a sword in both of his hands. He handed one of them to me. It was a simple steel weapon, defining features other than an odd pattern in the center of the blade that appeared to be a part of the steel itself.

"This is the sword Vivianne neglected to give you," he said. As soon as I had it in my hands, he swung his sword at me. I was barely able to block it in time. The contact of our weapons sent a jarring shock up my arm.

"Aren't we going to dull the blades first?" Lysander had showed me a spell the other day that allowed one to blunt the edge of their sword for training purposes.

"No." He laughed darkly.

I immediately formed a fighting stance and prepared to duel him. I waited for him to strike again, testing the weight and feel of my weapon in the meantime. None came.

"I'm waiting," he said. "Are you too afraid to hit a poor, old, blind man?" I tentatively jabbed at his chest, testing his guard. He deflected it easily, batting my blade to the side. "Weak."

He lunged at me, swinging hard. I jumped back, dodging the swipe and retaliating with a jab. He disappeared and reappeared behind me, driving his heel into my back and knocking me to the ground with a teeth-jarring thud.

"You do not have any wards? Weak." I cursed and got back on my feet.

We began to circle one another, our blades at the ready. I tried to fake him out a few times. Each time he did not fall for it; he remained as stoic and stern as ever. It was as if he knew exactly what I was planning to do.

I attempted a few more swipes at him, each time he parried them with ease.

"You are not even trying," he said. "Are you a fae or are you a human?"

"I am a half-fae," I responded annoyedly.

He lunged towards me, his sword flashing in the light as he attacked me relentlessly. I was not able to block all of his attacks and my bruises began to add up.

"You are far stronger than this," he stated as the point of his sword ended up below my chin, my shirt in his grasp. I wrenched myself from his grip and retreated to catch my breath. "Why do you choose to be weak?" He did not give me much time to wait before launching another flurry of attacks.

Out of sheer luck I managed to deflect his attack and punish a lapse in his defense, stabbing towards his chest. Again, he vanished and reappeared behind me to kick me to the ground.

"Weak." I cursed once more and leapt to my feet. The cycle repeated again.

"Weak." And it repeated again.

"Weak." And again.

"Weak." And again, until I was unable to lift myself to my feet. He repeated that damn question another time before vanishing, leaving me alone in the field.

When I recovered I went straight to Kendryek's room in hopes he was there. He was, but he refused to heal me this time and did not give an explanation. I didn't challenge him. I knew why he wouldn't.

Many days passed, each of them the same. I grew to dread training with Hadrian more than anything else in the world. My body was in a constant state of pain from bruises, sore muscles, and the occasional cut. Erin and Kendryek refused to help me. Lysander was in the Spring Court for days and I didn't want to contact him - I didn't feel like I was that important. I didn't dare go to anyone else for assistance.

The only thing Kendryek was interested in was trying to get me to spend time in bed with him, but he did not want to help me catch up on sleep. Erin was always too busy to do anything. As a result I spent most of my free time inside of the reading room, trying to ignore the guard stationed outside the door and reading whatever piqued my interest at the moment.

Whenever I was too bored to focus on words I would return to a book of drawings from inside the Winter Court. The images of snow capped mountains, tall fortresses, blank fields of white, and blizzards instilled some amount of foreboding or worry inside most fae, but not me. They were fascinating and beautiful. They were pictures of my home, where my father had come from. By learning more about his homeland I felt as though I knew him better, even though I had no idea who he was.

I was disappointed to find that the book only consisted of a handful of drawings and a lot of references to other, similar books by the same author. When I asked Kendryek about these other books, he claimed they were lost to time. I did not believe him.

"What do you mean 'you won't like what's inside of it'?" I angrily asked Lysander. I had apparently woken him up from an afternoon nap, one he started as soon as he got back from the Spring Court.

"I've been back for all of-" he checked a nonexistent watch on his hand"-two hours and you've already woken me up from the first sleep I've gotten in two days and started shouting at me about some stupid book. Can you wait until tomorrow?" I opened then quickly shut my mouth.

He looked terrible. His face was dirty, there were great big bags beneath his bloodshot eyes, his hair was a mess, and he drooped as he stood in his doorway. He had spent the last few days spying from within the Spring Court and it showed.

I had not considered any of that before almost running to his door to wake him up - I had to use the connection between us to rouse him from sleep - so I could pester him about a book.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I haven't had a good week. Hadrian has been treating me like absolute shit and there's nothing I can do to make him stop. Kendryek has been acting weird, Erin has refused to help me, and you've been gone. I've been sitting alone in the reading room every day, reading and waiting for something to change." He nodded grimly and took a step back, beckoning me inside.

"I know and I'm sorry." He sighed. "I'll get you your book. Read it thoroughly, do not skip over any of it. It is important that you understand the true weight of what is within the pages. When you are finished, you can wake me up."

It was entitled "Horrors of the Winter Court". I initially assumed it was a collection of different Winter Court monsters. It was not. It was a collection of the effects of the actions of one monster. Kalista.

In her section of Prythian half-fae were not second class citizens. They were below animals. She had any half-faes caught within her borders arrested and imprisoned. If they were ugly, imperfect, or just simply not to her liking they were killed in a variety of horrifying ways, from impalement to being eaten alive. If they were to her liking, they were treated far worse.

In what were referred to as "Living Gardens" her favorite half-fae were kept. They were bound by rope and forced to maintain uncomfortable positions while standing naked in small courtyards. They were magically gagged and completely unable to make a sound. The rope that held them in place cut deep into their skin, causing blood to trickle down from wherever rope was tied. Many of the hands, feet, faces, and ears of these poor fae were blackened from frostbite.

Physical abuse was also frequent and the effects of it were everywhere. Lacerations on a bare back, bloodied eyes, missing teeth, few went without damage. All were starved of food and water, some to the point of death.

Worse things followed these already disturbing images, things I couldn't handle. I set the book down and rested my head in my hands trying to recover from what I'd seen. The faces of the suffering - so accurately and precisely drawn by the artist - were etched into my mind.

I spent a long while trying to process what I had seen before waking Lysander.

"So you've seen it all now," he said as he washed his face. "Do you now understand why I didn't want to give it to you?"

"Yes," I choked out. I'd been on the verge of tears for a long while. He dried his face and walked closer to me. I stared into the distance, my mind somewhat blank. He went in for a hug. I did not resist.

He was warm, soft, and strong. I felt as though I could root myself in him and repair the mess I'd made of myself. I held him back, squeezing as tightly as I could.

"Ow."

"Sorry." I loosened up my hold, but did not let go. I continued to hold him until long, long after it became awkward. He never complained.

"What could bring a fae to doing such things?"

"At the start of the Great War, Gaius worked with a group of half-fae rebels to destroy the Keystones, seven magical artifacts that give Prythian its power. He thought that he was strong enough to outlast the destruction of the stones and that the others weren't. The half-faes wanted to break the High Fae's of their stranglehold on the majority of power in Prythian. Neither succeeded.

"Prythian hasn't been the same since. It gets a little worse every year, the power in this world is fading. Snow falls in the Spring Court, the Sun sets in the Day Court, the lakes of the Summer Court freeze over. It is impossible to understate how much of a shift this was for Prythian. Nothing is the same since before. Magical creatures are slowly disappearing from the wilderness, certain relics no longer retain the power that they once had, and fae across Prythian can feel their magic slowly slipping away from them.

"Some blamed Gaius for what happened, some blamed the group of half-fae, and some blamed all half-fae. Many of those fae have moved on, but some still hold a hatred for all half-fae deep in their heart. Kalista is one such person," he explained. I drifted back to one of the chairs and sat down.

"I don't want to think about this anymore," I said. "I want to talk about something else."

"How is training with Hadrian going?" he asked me as he took a seat beside me, a bottle of white wine and a glass appearing in his hands. It had a hammer insignia on it along with a birch tree. "Spring Court wine," he told me. "Slightly stronger than what we have here and much, much tastier. I stole it." He laughed. I shook my head in disapproval.

"It is ass. Absolute ass."

"That's what I was afraid of." He poured himself a tall glass, drank half of it, then filled it back to the top.

"Heavens above Lysander, you're going to be drunk within the hour," I said incredulously.

"Nah, it takes a lot to really get me drunk. I get mildly tipsy, but never drunk." He proceeded to drink another half of the cup before laying back in the chair, watching the fire burn.

"Is that a challenge?" I asked, hoping he'd accept. Today felt like one of those days where I would rather be drunk than not.

"No, but if you insist on challenging me to a drinking contest I will accept."

"Then I challenge you," I said. He shrugged.

"Alright, you've made your choice." I wasn't very interested in winning before, but he sounded so sure of himself that I now wanted to prove him wrong. He poured me a glass and handed it to me. He swirled his wine around in the glass. "Hadrian was put through brutal training when he was younger and again when he was turned into a bloodworker. It's all he knows."

"Well tell him to know something different, because what he is currently doing isn't working." He chuckle dryly.

"I can't. Once he gets an idea, he doesn't stop till he fails beyond recovery or succeeds. It is both his greatest strength and flaw."

"That's dumb."

"I don't make the rules." I grumbled.

"So how are we doing this? I've never actually done a drinking contest before." I had never had a friend to drink with and by the time I was of age, alcohol would send my grandfather into a fit of rage.

"We'll both chug a glass at the same time, then wait a while to start the next glass."

"How do I win?" I asked.

"You don't." I narrowed my eyes. Now I really wanted to beat him. He smirked and gulped down his glass. "Your turn." It smelled sweet, like grapes and cherries. I took a small sip and found it to be fizzy, sweet, strong, and only a little tart. "What do you think?" Lysander asked. I chugged the rest, putting forgetting today in front of enjoyment of the wine. I gave him a thumbs up as I swallowed the last mouthful and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

My stomach exploded into a flutter of warm butterflies and my throat burned. Almost immediately I could feel the effect of the drink kicking in.

I relaxed and smiled at Lysander as the troubling book and the struggle of Hadrian's training, the horrors of that book, and all of the other stresses in my life slipped from my mind. I got the feeling that it would be a fun night.

Lysander

Despite her strong will to win, she wasn't even coming close. After two she was already a giggly wreck and after four her speech was starting to slur. That was when I decided to cut it off, as I didn't want her blacking out in my cabin.

Allyn truly was something. When the alcohol melted away her spiking exterior, she was a fun, adorable, and exciting girl. She had a lot of cute habits, most of them only coming out when I pushed her to do something that required concentration. During our game of chess, she incessantly twisted her hair around her finger and she made a soft, angry "ah" whenever I took one of her pieces.

"Are you ever going to let me win?" she demanded me after I beat her for the sixth time in a row. Was it mean to repeatedly beat a drunk, inexperienced player? Yes. Did I really care? No.

"I'm not going to hand you victory because then you won't really feel like you earned it and you'll still be mad." She crossed her arms, stuck out her lip, and scowled at me. The only thing that stopped that look from melting my heart and making me hers was hundreds of years of self control practice and twenty five years of being dead inside. "Someone's a little grumpy," I said, poking fun at her. She grumbled and stood up to stretch. She groaned loudly.

"I am so sore," she complained. I didn't blame her, I knew what Hadrian was doing. He was trying to break her enough to coax the magic out. It worked for him when he was a child in the Illyrian training camps and it worked for him when he was turned into a Bloodworker, but it wasn't working for Allyn.

"Would it help if I gave you a back rub? I've heard that I'm quite good at it," I asked, somewhat reflexively. It was something I often offered to do. I had told myself that I was going to keep my hands off of her, but I was bad at sticking to my word. She nodded her head enthusiastically. "Lay down on the bench," I told her. I would be awkwardly off to the side and she would be partially falling off, but I could make it work. Compared to trying to give someone a massage when my hands and feet were in cuffs, this would be easy.

She tried to do as I told, but she kept moving around and falling off. If she was sober she could have figured it out, but not in this state. The last time she fell onto the floor she grumbled and looked up at me.

"Can't I just lay down in your bed?" I shrugged and helped her to her feet. I hated how even something as simple as touching her hand made me feel.

"Sure, but it'll cost you fifty pieces," I replied.

"You're not funny," she said through a grin. Once we were in the loft she flopped down into my bed without hesitation, despite the fact that it was an untidy mess.

"Why is your bed so big," she asked me.

"In case I ever want to have more than a few people at a time over," I lied. "It allows plenty of space for everyone." Lying was a bit of a problem for me, but harmless ones like that weren't something I spent time worrying about. "Plus, the blankets are so large that it makes hogging them impossible." She made a face at me, one I was used to seeing. I got a lot of harassment for the job I worked and for what I enjoyed doing in bed. For some reason other fae couldn't comprehend the idea of being aroused by different things.

"I am going to do this in an utterly platonic way," I said before climbing on top of the bed and standing above her on my knees. It was a mildly erotic and somewhat dominating stance, so I felt the need to clarify my intentions. "I promise." This time I was doing my best to be truthful.

"That's a shame," she replied, her voice muffled by the sheets on the bed. My heart jumped, but I ignored it. It would be a few years before I felt comfortable doing anything serious with her, plus Kendryek had already staked claim - something I was thoroughly disgusted by for a variety of reasons.

I placed my hands on her shoulder and kneaded them as one would knead bread. From there I worked on each of her shoulder blades, gently working each of the many knots out of her back.

"You are quite tense," I told her.

"I'll - hhh - try to - hhh - relax," she replied in between pants. I continued to move down her body, the closer I got to her stomach the more she giggled when I touched her. She had a cute laugh that reminded me of a young pixie I had found in a patch of flowers in my youth.

"Stooooopppp," she told me.

"Okay, I'll stop," I said as I took my hands off her and moved away. "Nooo, don't do that either." I laughed a genuine, heartfelt laugh, something I hadn't had in a long time.

"What do you want from me?" She threw her hands above her head. "Mmkay." I resumed my job. When I had reached the small of her back I stopped going any further and returned to her shoulderblades, this time focusing more on relaxing her than working out the knots and tense areas of her back.

"You're better at this than Ken is," she murmured. Well, duh. I was better than Kendryek at just about everything.

"My job hinges on my ability to make people like me." She turned her head to the other side, allowing me to get a better glimpse at her face. Her eyes were half open and full of bliss and she appeared more relaxed than I'd ever seen her before.

"What is your job exactly?"

"What do you mean?"

"I know you have sex with people all the time-"

"Correct."

"But I don't really understand what you do." For someone who was this drunk, she was surprisingly good at creating coherent sentences.

"Officially I am supposed to go to other courts and negotiate, observe, and meet, other fae. In addition, I am somewhat of a mailman for Kendryek and I sort through most of the crap that fae feel the need to send to us. Unofficially I gather information on other courts by any means necessary and do whatever I can to make connections there. Usually that means a lot of sucking up to other fae and flirting with the right people to get the influence," I explained. I wasn't sure she was really paying attention. She was quite clearly daydreaming.

"You have a very nice voice," she said.

"Thank you, I get that a lot." I was almost at her abdomen again, and this time I was planning to do something mildly evil. "The best and worst part of my job is constantly having to act differently based off of who I'm meeting," I continued. I felt comfortable sharing this with her since I didn't believe she would remember much of what happened tonight. Spring Court wine had that effect. "I can't act like a twink in the Night Court and expect to get anywhere but underneath the boots of other fae, but convincing Quercus' second in command to be favorable is a lot easier when you're his 'special little plaything'." She shuddered.

"That's gross."

"Hey, don't kinkshame," I said as I prepared to execute my plan. "I can convince myself to enjoy it if I try harder enough." Just then, I pushed my fingers into the sides of her stomach and tickled her as aggressively as I could.

She screamed with laughter and shoved me off. I fell to the side of the bed and quickly reoriented myself before jumping back at her with my arms outstretched. She was ready, though, as she caught my hands in mid-air and gripped my wrists tightly. I twisted around in her grasp in an attempt to break free. When I managed to break one hand free, we both froze, staring at each other with wild eyes.

"Don't," she said, half laughing. "I'm serious." I poked at her with my one free hand and she jumped backward, letting go of my other hand as she did so. "Oh no," she said. I dove at her once more, once again aiming for her stomach.

She caught me and rolled to the side, sending my head straight into one of the wooden beams of the sloped roof.

Thunk

Stars flooded my vision and pain reverberated throughout my head. I went limp.

"Shit!" she exclaimed as she grabbed my hand. "Are you okay?" I didn't respond, I would be completely fine after my magic kicked in, but I wanted to pull her leg. "Lysander!" she shook my hand. "Oh no," she said, sounding genuinely upset this time. She pulled me out from the corner of the bed and the ceiling and looked down at me. She repeated my name a few times, growing more worried with each repetition, until I finally broke the ruse.

"Gotcha!" I said, opening my eyes and springing up in bed. She immediately punched me in the arm.

"Meanie," she mumbled, but I could tell she was relieved. She crossed her arms and looked away from me. I laid back on the bed and stared up at the stars through the window in my roof. In a moment, she joined me, leaving a moderate amount of space in between the two of us.

"Why do you have this window in your roof?" She asked me.

"I get claustrophobic easily." Something about collapsing a mineshaft on top of yourself will do that to you. "The window helps."

"Me too." She sighed and moved a little closer to me. "This is a very comfortable bed," she murmured.

"I try." Every ten or so years I ordered another custom bed - the only places that made these beds normally were located in the Night Court - from a kind old fae in the Day Court. It was expensive, but money meant nothing to me.

She continued to inch closer to me. I wondered if she thought she was being sneaky, because she most certainly was not. I didn't push her away, even though it felt extremely wrong.

"I enjoy spending time with you," she said softly, so softly I could barely hear it. She pressed her face into my shoulder. "You make me feel less alone." I said nothing.

The powers I had at my disposal allowed me to get a general idea of what the people around me were feeling or thinking. I used it frequently to get a better idea of how to react and respond, but I had only used it twice on Allyn. The first time was when I was scanning her intentions in the forest, the second was when she was first speaking to Kendryek.

Using it then had crushed me, but now, I did not know how to feel. She was happy, content, definitely drunk, and a little aroused. Nothing that was out of the ordinary for an intoxicated fae, but it was not all she was feeling at that moment. She felt so calm, as though there was nothing in the entire world worth worrying about. As if the fate of the court was not resting upon her shoulders. I envied that feeling.

There was one more feeling, though, the one that was much harder to capture than the others. It rested on the edges of her mind and it was buried deep within the subliminal thoughts she did not know she had. It permeated her thoughts like a faint mist; completely undetectable by the untrained eye. I could not bring myself to put a name on it.

"Allyn, I think it's time for you to go back home," I told her. I did not want her to, but I also did not want her to stay here. I had no good choices. She scowled.

"No. I don't want to. The mansion isn't my home," she said. She crossed her arms and glared at me.

"It's late, you're drunk, and Kendryek will get mad if you continue to stay here," I sternly told her. Plus I'm afraid I'll take advantage of you, if I haven't already, I thought to myself. "He probably already is mad."

"So?" She asked. "I don't care if he's mad."

"That's easy for you to say when you are not the one who will be burned." I got off the bed and took her hand. I tugged her towards the ladder. She stubbornly shook her head.

"I don't want to."

"You need to go home." She grew more annoyed.

"I already told you! The mansion isn't my home. I don't have one." A tear glistened in her eye. My heart ached. I reluctantly embraced her, hoping it would help calm her down. She stayed rigid, keeping her arms at her side.

"I am going to take you back to the mansion," I told her. "Kendryek will want to know where you are." And more importantly, Kendryek would be livid if she spent the night in my cabin. Even if I spent it in a different court entirely, he would still be furious that she was in here at all. As much as I liked making Kendryek mad, he was still the one who had my power stored away somewhere in The Forest House and I should be getting back on his good side.

I pulled her out of the door and down the pathway towards Kirkwall. She said nothing to me for the rest of the trip, not even "goodnight" when I left her at the doorway to the mansion.

I felt like I had done something wrong, that I could have done something better, but there was no telling what.