Author's notes for this chapter:
In traditional fairy folklore, the High Fae are divided into two courts: the Seelie Court (the court of light and life) and the Unseelie Court (the court of darkness and death). In Maas' world, these two seem to be combined aspects for most of the Fae in differing levels (Lucien and Tarquin are clearly Seelie Court material, while Keir, Amarantha, and Hybern scream 'Unseelie', and Rhys and Feyre skirt both—more Seelie, but willing to use Unseelie methods to do what must be done). For the sake of this fanfic, however, I'm referring to any Fae that embraces the 'Ruin' (the spell that causes madness to manifest in a Fae, making them embrace a path of destruction, conquest, and death) as Unseelie or Dark Fae.
18.5 hands = 6'1", 20.6 hands = 6'8"
Remember, this fanfic disregards anything after "A Court of Wings and Ruin" and is head-canon.
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~.~.~.~
"As I retched like a miserable animal into the grass, I heard a strange male hiss in my ear:
'CALL YOUR MATE TO YOU NOW, FEMALE!'
Through the pain, I saw a vision of the future flash before my mind's eye—of a searing white light that lit up the heavens for one shining moment, and then where there were once proud winged warriors rising on the wind, there was nothing but grey ashes falling from the azure skies.
I knew then what was coming.
Someone had sent me the augury…someone who could foresee Death's plans."
~ from "The Carver's Legacy", excerpt by Nesta Archeron
~.~.~.~.~
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My chest burned, my breath was gutted.
I lay on my pallet in the cold dark and could do little more than gasp from the pain that fired through every nerve, my peaceful night's rest shattered by the phantom injury that shot straight through my sternum and into my spine.
Azriel had been severely injured, pierced by an arrow or lance through the chest. I could feel the wood splintered against a rib, feel the path where the cold iron head had sliced through the flesh and come out through his back. I could taste his blood in my mouth.
The one-way mate bond that tethered me to my stealthy Illyrian lover amplified in me the injury he had apparently sustained while attempting to break into Hybern's lair tonight, until the agony of it was fever-pitched and as sharp as a blade through every nerve in my body. Upon my tongue, its tang was of tarnished copper, and I knew it to be Bloodbane. It flowed with fast and lethal precision towards his heart, its corrosion an acid through his veins…and through mine.
Death was coming for him.
A wail of despair echoed through my chamber, and it was only vaguely that I recognised the cry had originated from my lips.
A snarl of denial followed fast on its heels.
Without thought, driven by instinct, I shoved my magic down the mystical cord binding me to my shadowsinger, demanding my magic seek out and destroy the poison leaking into his lungs, tainting his arteries…
I clashed head-on with Hybern's magic, which turned and grabbed onto me, halting me in my tracks.
Old and savage, commanding and wicked, the Fae King's power reeked of every manner of dark sin I'd once embraced. Even as I struggled against it, instant recognition of that magical taint swamped my senses, leaving me shivering and sweating all at once: it was my Ruin, the spell that had taken me in its web of lies thousands of years ago and which had corrupted my soul. Koschei's curse, leveled upon me in retribution for Leonidas' death, had turned my wings of feather into wings of leather, my sky blue eyes into pits of black depravity. It had given me fangs and an insatiable appetite for blood and the life energy of souls. It had made me into a Death Knight, and had led to my kingdom's downfall through my depravity, the same as it had my sister and her Court of Roses.
And now, somehow, it had infected Hybern's King, too…which explained how he could be so powerful and so cruel.
But how-?
Before I could delve deeper into the mystery, the contagion spread down the mate bond towards me, racing with speed towards its newest victim while whispering its promises of power and glory, even as it demanded blood from me as tribute. Oily black fire seared me wherever it touched, leaving me aroused at the same time as in agony; it seduced even as it choked the air from me. The curse stretched forth its sinister hand and beckoned to me as wormwood to an addict. The overwhelming desire to fling myself into that abysmal void and let it consume me once more had me seizing up and panting for air.
All around me, the Fiends of the shadows—allies of darkness I'd long-ago tamed to my side for the purposes of the light—now screamed in my head, clamouring like junkies for another taste of that familiar evil as well. A demon calling other demons home…
No, I would never be taken like that again!
An age ago, with Phaedra's help, I'd broken the hold of this same chaotic spell—but the price had been everything I'd held dear. Only the Fiends had remained mine, and they'd stayed tethered to me simply because my soul had been so dark, so empty after all that loss that they could forever hide in its bigger shadow.
Not this time.
I would not let the madness seduce me into forgetting Azriel.
I would not be the instrument of Death for anyone else I loved!
With renewed fury, I smashed through the enchanted blockade that Hybern had erected to prevent me from aiding my mate, my ancient and alien will the stronger and more determined of the two of us and my continued alliance with Death too terrible a foe for the King of the Unseelie to stand against. I felt Hybern's surprise, and then his renewing efforts to regain his hold on my shadowsinger's life, but I fought him tooth and claw, until at last, I managed to oust him.
Even as the Ruined King released his grasp, Azriel's spirit sagged in my mystical hands. I held onto him through our bond and fed him my life's energy in exchange, as I directed my magic to reach into his heart and to begin siphoning off the Bloodbane. The distance between us made the effort as arduous as running through mud, and every inch of victory cost me vital strength, but I was determined to save my mate.
This time, I would not let go.
~.~.~.~.~
For the next hour, Hybern's power randomly returned to test my mettle.
Each subsequent attempt was stronger than the last, and it was only by the third stab at me that I realised why: the enemy was tapping into the Cauldron's essence to boost his own. Its memorable scent of fertile earth and slow rot polluted his magic.
Exhausted by the effort of conjuring to purge the toxins from Azriel, I faltered at times. During those moments, the pain in my chest would double as I took the brunt of my mate's suffering. Occasionally, I would feel Hybern's will stretch forth with tentacle-like cunning to shove the Bloodbane out of my reach and closer towards its goal. During those precious seconds, I would gnash my teeth and whip my magic forward in counter, and that awful power would quickly retreat, as if testing my strength.
Azriel's life hung in that delicate balance.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the stone-cold warding holding him released and Hybern's presence disappeared altogether…and then all I could feel was the cool wind of a Winnowing as it stroked along my magical aura. A beat later, there followed the smell of the salty ocean and a fresh breeze, and I knew someone had gotten him out of that godforsaken fortress.
Cleave unto me, I whispered down the mate bond, praying with all my might that at least that much would get through. I didn't have the ability to heal; that was not my gift. I could, however, share my life force to sustain others, and I did so as we waited for Azriel to reach a place of safety and be passed into the hands of a healer. Take what you need.
His body did as I bade, desperate to live on.
~.~.~.~.~
Across the distance and down the bond, the scent of jasmine and exotic flowers hailed the arrival of the Morrigan, who took up Azriel's healing where I was deficient.
Her Fae-borne power sunk into his body as a soothing balm does a rattling chest, and I felt his wounds begin to stitch together, the torn flesh restored to its flawless beauty. The Bloodbane was shoved down, filtered by his organs, and settled into his bladder to be discharged.
I felt it when Azriel took his first full breath and shuddered back into full consciousness, and for the first time in a long time, I wasn't resentful of the female who had become my unspoken rival. The Morrigan's selflessness had saved my mate…and I now owed her.
~.~.~.~.~
Much later, I awoke to the Wraith hovering at my doors, waiting for me to regain consciousness. Lying boneless on my pallet, I beckoned him forward with a tired crook of my finger.
You have need, he said as he hurried to my side and examined me.
Yes, I had a need to feed the ever-unsatisfied roar in my belly, a remnant effect of my Ruin. Still, I shook my head at his offer to give me some of his essence to recover. I would not harm him, not even to save myself.
He left me little choice in the matter, however. Before I could utter a protest, Muninn flowed up and over me, his spectral body a white ethereal blanket hovering inches above my own, our chests nearly touching, our lips as close as lover's. He stared down at me and gave me a shy, virginal smile that was both beguiling and…strangely familiar.
I closed my eyes, too tired to move, to hungry to fight. I surrendered.
He sank into me, and we…merged.
There is something seductive about the state of being undead that eludes the living. Life is warm and vibrant; it is feeling everything all the time, from the kiss of the wind upon one's face to the prick of the needle upon one's finger. It is ceaseless overstimulation. It is the sun without a horizon in which to set. What Muninn was, and to some extent what I was when I was alone, was the absence of that joy and pain. We were the cold night, the pale moon. As I was not truly undead, though, there were still forces that exerted their will upon me at times, requiring me to answer. My constant hunger was one such drive, sex and intimacy with Azriel another.
As the Wraith melded with me, though, there was only the endless silence and a sense of peace such as I had never known. This was not the bleak abyss of Death, for I knew that place well. It was…something else. It was a thing that felt too much like the Cauldron, and a little like the Void.
Who are you? I asked him, awed and a tiny bit afraid of his answer.
YOU KNOW, came the answer in an effeminate voice that sunk into me with the same inevitable, lovely power as a wave that rolls up and claims a piece of the shore. WE'VE MET BEFORE.
You seem familiar, I agreed, for I was beginning to understand that Muninn was more than I'd ever imagined. Tell me who you really are.
I AM TO YOU AS YOU ARE TO THE CREATURES OF THIS WORLD, he-she-it admitted.
Before I could puzzle out that meaning, I felt the Wraith's lips claim mine and steal the breath from me.
I AM YOUR PAST, KHARON…AND YOUR FUTURE.
~.~.~.~.~
I awoke days later, fully refreshed.
Whatever the Wraith had done to me, I was whole once more…and more powerful than ever. I felt the magic tingle in my bones, felt Death's favour upon my brow. I was alert to the tiniest tremor in the earth and to the lightest fragrance in the air.
These new, enhanced senses now alerted me to the fact that the Wraith was no longer in the Prison. I couldn't sense his passage through the corridors, nor his presence in any cell.
He was gone.
In all my long years here, Muninn had been my only real companion, and now it seemed he'd finally abandoned me, too.
I began to panic.
We'd not met prior to my imprisonment; the Wraith had already been here when Phaedra had turned her back on me and locked the doors behind her. I'd always believed that meant he'd been captured and incarcerated by her, too, but what if he hadn't? Aside from me, he was the only other Void-walker to have been able to leave this place at his will, the magic within the walls incapable of caging his spiritual essence.
Had he finally reached a plateau of irreconcilable boredom, or had he been chased off by persons unknown? Or worse, had he seen something within me during those moments we'd been united and run away screaming in terror? Is that what had happened after he'd healed me; had he seen something within my psyche that frightened him enough to rethink not only his choice of domicile, but our friendship as well?
Perhaps it wasn't that personal. Maybe he'd simply decided to wash his hands of The Prison and the games he'd been playing all these millennia, instead. Muninn could be fickle and flighty like a newborn colt, similar in that way to the Fiends…but then Wraiths and Shadows were opposite sides of the same coin, so the parallels made sense.
That conclusion, however, merely brought up more questions, specifically: why had he stayed this long when he could have floated out the front entrance at any time?
~.~.~.~.~
The reason for Muninn's leaving consumed me for the better part of a week.
I spent most of my time carving, tugging on the mate bond to feel Azriel's slow ascent into full health, and wondering if he could come to visit me soon.
Most of all, I could feel his concern for his High Lord and the slow recovery rate of his friend, the General. Apparently, Cassian had done his utmost to fulfill his promise to me, but Hybern had simply been a craftier foe than anticipated.
As I left my cell to travel upwards towards the well, my thoughts were consumed with fears of what came next? Hybern still had the Cauldron, and if the whispers from the earth were correct, the High Lady of Night had ensconced herself at the Spring Court to act as a spy for her lover. Worse, some sort of dampening field had been established by the Unseelie King so now I could not even sense the Cauldron's movement…or its use. Bringing down the wall wasn't his only goal, but I still could not determine what more there might be to his plans.
As I pulled the bucket from the well and threw its contents over me, using it to wash the sweat from my body, I felt a sweet, salty breeze caress my sodden cheek.
The front door to The Prison had been opened.
I turned…
Azriel stood at the end of the corridor, leaning an exhausted arm against the wall to prop himself up. He stared at me with a gaze that burned me to my core.
"You have wings."
The bucket slipped from my fingers, crashing to the ground and rolling away.
He could see them?
I looked down at my body, noting I hadn't changed form. I was myself. But that shouldn't be possible! Phaedra's final curse had condemned me to a lifetime of never speaking my true name, never showing my real form! And Azriel loved the Morrigan, so I should have changed, my body shifting to that of a buxom, blonde High Fae with a heartbreaking, lovely face…
My mate stepped towards me, one tired and slow foot at a time. "You said once you'd embraced 'Ruin' over your wings, but I'd thought-" He paused mid-way between us, and his gaze took me in, one inch at a time. "You're…Illyrian."
Pushing my fringe out of my eyes, I ran my hands over my body, wringing the water from it, feeling a self-consciousness I hadn't in centuries. "I-I'm O-Osedax," I stammered and stretched my wings and shook the droplets from them. Azriel's eyes watched them move with suspicion, as if he was in doubt of their legitimacy. "This is what we look like. Can you truly see me?"
Azriel looked like he'd just been hammered between the eyes with something hard and particularly unforgiving. He blanched.
"You're…big."
As I considered what to say to Azriel, I realised I was looking down at him from a greater height. He stood a good eighteen and a half hands tall, but I towered over him by at least another four hands or so. I was my usual height.
I raised my hand and clenched, then relaxed it. Yes, this hand was mine, not someone else's. Same scarring across the fingers where my marriage rings had melted, same stitch across my inner wrist where I'd once been sliced by a sword and had to use needle and thread to hold it together until I could see a healer, same strength in each long finger.
I hadn't shifted to take another form.
"What did you want most when you came in here today?" I asked.
Dropping the inspection of my arm, I stared hard at the floor, terrified of Azriel's answer. What if his wish had been to see the horrible monster called the 'Bone Carver', or to see what a 'Death Knight' actually looked like, or something even worse?
"Just to know the real you."
His answer was so simple, and yet… My chest burned, my breath was gutted by it.
"Why?"
I had to know, even if the knowing left me aching and wanting to die.
Azriel was silent for a long while before answering.
"Because…I felt you."
I glanced up, praying he understood the importance of that fact.
He closed the distance between us and stared up at me with acceptance in his eyes, and I thought it quite possible that he did understand, even if he couldn't feel the mate bond on his end.
"You gave me a piece of your life," he said, "and it saved me. You saved me."
Fearing rejection, despite all the signs contradicting that possibility, I still tensed up as I reached out to stroke a trembling hand over his cheek.
"I always will," I promised him.
My mate gave me a tired, but relieved smile.
I will willingly die for you, I thought, and suddenly, was no longer afraid of my fate.
TO BE CONTINUED...