The ground is cold. Colder than anything I had ever felt in many millennia now, the frost deep in the ground penetrating my body, curling around it, claiming it to the land. Lying face down in the snow, the only thing I can see is white. I cannot move; I can barely even blink. Motionless, the only thing I can do is track the snowflakes as they floated down to the ground from the sky. My mind seems to be as frozen as my body, my thoughts seemingly vanishing through me and into the cold, cold ground. I know I am bleeding; I know that both of my legs are probably broken, and my arms may have suffered a similar fate, and yet I feel no pain. Instead, I feel something different, so different from anything I have felt in hundreds of years. It begins deep in my stomach, a burning, powerful emotion which had been buried beneath years of pain and sadness and trauma. Only aware of my own labored breathing, I feel it snake its way up my body, claiming it's target. I can feel death coming, ready to take me, but I know no panic-in that moment, I only know joy. I had done it. Done the one thing I thought I was never capable of doing. I was home, home in Prythian. Home in the Night Court. My eyelids begin to droop, and my breathing, staggered and almost painful starts to slow. At that moment, the only thing I wished for was rest, deep, calming rest. But as I lay there, anticipating the strike of death, a voice suddenly speaks in my head.
Rhysand.
My eyelids fly open, my breath hitching. It was a fleeting moment, barely there and then gone. But I know what I heard.
Rhysand?
It came again. Mother save me it came again. The voice I hear is not mine; it is one of someone else. Someone who speaks in my native tongue, a young female, almost human-sounding. One who speaks of my brother's name like I once did; with unbounded love, with hope, with curiosity. And as I listened to her echoing within the once silent caverns of my mind, a hope I once killed mistakenly thinking it would never come true alit itself once more inside me. Rhysand was alive, and he was here. Somewhere, maybe miles away, maybe minutes. I could not allow myself to dwell on these possibilities, I could only take advantage of this newfound strength. So with it, I forced my mind to focus, to think of something, anything to keep me awake. The idea of rest I had beckoned with open arms moments ago, and yet I now did everything possible to reject it. Pain that I had dismissed earlier had come back with a roaring vengeance, striking my legs, my right arm. But it did not claim itself fully in my left one, a sign I took as a mark of no, or at least a little, injury. With all the might in the world, I placed my left palm flat on the ground, hissing at the pain that rang up through my arm. While it may not be broken, it still felt like absolute shit. Nonetheless, I pushed the little power I had into my hand, trying to get me away from the snow, from the cold. Despite the chill, sweat tracked itself down my forehead and dripped into the snow. Grunting, I finally was able to push myself over, to lie flat on my back. Now was the problem of getting up. I needed to get warm, somehow, so I could think, so I could find him. I didn't know how, but I would do it, and this was a start. Lifting my eyes to the sky, I fell snowflakes in my mouth as I see only a vast cloudless gray stretch above me. Ignoring the pain in my neck, I turned my head towards the right side and saw the seemingly pristine snow had been marked scarlet by my blood, and lots of it too. The taste of it marks my mouth, dripping from wounds on my face, flowing freely from my nose. My head pounds, and I feel slightly lightheaded as I realize exactly how much blood I lost, and was continuing to lose because I knew that the deepest wounds on my torso and legs had not clotted. A dreaded feeling within me knew that at this rate, I would not last the night.
Maybe this was it. Maybe this was truly the end of my life. I would die in the middle of this bleakness, my body reduced to nothing but a frozen carcass for the many animals of this forest to feast on. I have no more strength to feel scared at this idea, nothing left inside me to keep going. The only place I can retreat to is my mind, my infuriatingly empty mind. I grasp for the memory of that voice, of her, but I cannot find it. She's gone. As this reality rolls over me, I am vaguely aware of the tears falling down my cheeks. I have not cried in many years, had not allowed myself to. Back in Iktidar I could not let myself be vulnerable, could not show the cruel world any sort of emotion, so I bottled everything up and waited for a time where they could come out. Now, barely with any life remaining, the faint, rasping sobs still rattled themselves out of my failing lungs and into the freezing air, into the air that would not judge me, not manipulate me. I cried, for my life, for my family, for me. I cried like a child for its mother, like I did the moment they dragged me away from Mama's bloodied, headless corpse. And in my mind, my bleak quiet mind, I gave out the last message I could.
Rhysand.
No question, just him. Just his name, just the idea that he was here at the same time I was. Just that I knew he was being loved by a female who knew him as I did, not as he thought the world perceived him. Just Rhysand. And as I looked up in the sky, ready to take my last breath, I heard it. Faint as a whisper, and gone before I knew it was there.
Diana?
It was him.