𝔸 ℂ𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕊𝕥𝕒𝕣𝕤 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝔽𝕝𝕒𝕞𝕖 (ACOTAR FANFIC)

Sixty-Eight

I was pulled from my nightmare-filled sleep by a tugging sensation in my chest, a thread deep inside.

    I didn't want to leave my bed. The thought made me nearly sick to my stomach. I was meant to leave and go back to spring court with Feyre, Tamlin, and Lucien in a few hours. A fact I dreaded more than anything—I never even had a choice in the matter. Tamlin had approached me when Feyre chose to retreat back to a room. He claimed that when Feyre saw me dead, he had never seen her so distressed. So broken. He said that I was coming back to spring court with them whether I wanted to or not. That Feyre needed her sister, and I was going to be the best one I could.

    Spring Court. Dreaded Spring Court. Where I would forever be alone– stuck there while I watched the people I love find their own happiness and I'm just stuck. I didn't deserve happiness, I know that at least. I deserved this suffering. This existence that I would loathe for the rest of my life. Forced to live as the thing I hated. That knowledge was the only thing that anchored me to humanity.

    I pulled myself from the bed. The last of my energy was spent on finding where the tugging sensation led me. Though I believed I already had an idea.

    I opened the door to the hall, immediately greeted by a flowing breeze that made me shiver. I began walking down, using the instinct inside me as a guide. I came to a stop at a spiral staircase leading up the side of the mountain. The sight alone made me want to crawl back into the room and sleep forever. But I started to climb the stairs anyway.

I had to adjust my body and stop on the steep steps many times to even make it to the large door at the top.

I wasn't used to it. The longer limbs, the sensitive hearing. It felt like I was on overdrive. I was a ghost stuck in my own body— nothing was familiar— my mind, my body, my heart. I was cursed. Cursed to spend the rest of my life in the body of the very species I had been trained to hate more than I do myself.

I had become everything I loathed, and I could barely stop from ripping myself apart just to make my misery end.

    As I soon found myself at the top of the staircase, coming to a large balcony that jutted out the side of the mountain.

I hissed at the bright sun that nearly blinded me, I covered my eyes with my arm as I adjusted to the sun. I'd thought it was night— I'd lost all sense of time Under the Mountain. Not that I had much use for it rotting in a dark cell.

Rhysand chuckled softly from where I could vaguely make him outstanding alongside the stone rail. "I forgot it's been a while for you."

My eyes stung from the light and I remained silent for a moment before I slowly, ever so slowly removed my arm from my eyes and looked at the vast expanse of land around me. I hated it.

It was beautiful. Full of mountains and rolling hilltops covered with snow. I could just barely make out a flower field off in the distance. I looked away as quickly as I'd looked up, my eyes immediately meeting with Rhysands.

I took him in finally. His membranous wings peeked out from behind his back. They were beautiful in the light. Creating a shadow on the ground. I had thought they were beautiful under the mountain but looking at them now I could truly appreciate them and their glory. I searched his hands and feet for talons but they were the same.

I briefly wondered what it was like to fly. To breathe the wind and taste the skies. I wondered if he loved it. I knew I had when I'd flown with Azail just that once.

"I was sleeping. What do you want?" The statement had no edge. No threat. I didn't have it in me anymore. I couldn't bring myself to be truly cold towards him after I died. It was odd realizing that it had been his eyes that I'd seen through in death. Knowing that he had been the first one to notice, the first to see if I was alive forced me to be even more confused about the High Lord of the Night.