A Court of Thorns and Roses Fanfic

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I woke up, in a tent made of light cream brown fabric. He was there, sitting on a chair beside my bed, and I recoiled. He didn't move, only stared. He was handsome. No, he was beautiful. So beautiful and deadly, and wrong. So, so wrong. Whatever he had done earlier - magic, it tasted rotten and wrong. He offered me a bowl of soup. "Where are you from?" He asked gently.

"I lived in the US, but I was born in France."

"Not of this world?"

"Where am I?" Feared strangled me.

"Windhaven, the Night Court." I looked at him, pretending the words sounded empty.

"Did you do something to my head?" I feared asking him these questions. At some point, he will be so pissed and accidently kill me. I was sure of it. I reached for my temples, but felt ears - pointy. I couldn't breathe again. No, no, no. I would be trapped here. This was the sign. This was it. I had nowhere to go. He rubbed my back, as I could only tell myself to breathe slowly, properly.

"No."

"Then what did you do?"

"Nothing that would harm you." I looked at his gaze, a gesture of thank you, if I could thank him. But for sparing me, for not striking me, I could thank him. And the other one too, maybe. Did he realise why I had panicked after I touched my ears? Foreign, pointy, and yet I felt the same. Was he still lurking in my mind, hiding beneath the shadows even I could not bear to look at myself? "Thank you. I would like to go home, if - if you -"

"To another world?" I looked at him.

"How come we speak the same language?" That easily, his voice became a conversation starter. These people - something was off about them: the way they turned into monsters and turned back into this humanity, or fae I supposed.

He shrugged. "I cannot take you home, but tell me your secrets, and I may know someone."

"Are you still in my mind?"

"Are you planning to lie?"

"What's the point?"

"No." I looked at him, tried to feel for magic around, that unfamiliarity and did not feel it.

"What secrets?"

"Which world are you from?"

"Earth." I wanted to laugh at myself. Yes, because that answer would surely help him. "The milky way. I don't know."

"And magic exists in your world?"

"Not that I knew of before."

"Come. I will take you to someone, who can help." He reached out his hand. Yes, a perfect kidnapping. This was how they kidnap little children - with false promises of candy waiting. I feared the possibility of them reading my mind. I feared to think of actual thoughts, and preferred for the thoughts in my mind to stay abstract, to never form words, and yet, because of that, I could not think. I wondered if they would be kind, would try to help me come home, or if they would interrogate me and leave me to fend for myself, for it was not their responsibility to help me. Follow him, do as he says, and perhaps you would survive, I told myself.

My hand reached out to clasp him. He has not yet confirmed his name. Air, filled with darkness and secrets unknown unfolded before me, enveloping me, swirling my mind, and before I knew it, that air dissipated and revealed a palace. So they took me here, not to their homes, but to their palace.

Its walls were far up ahead. Pillars flanked every side, similar in structure as those roman architecture, where a rectangle was held up by pillars. But it was large, empty. An empty palace. On the long sides of each palace were pathways, and behind me were stairs. But in front of me - in front of me I saw the sky - clear blue and clouds. The place where Rhysand first took Feyre before bringing her to Velaris. The place was rather plain, to be honest, quite boring, but grand and marvelous.