The Dark Flower (Azriel x OC)

28. Breaking (Persephone)

The days were endlessly monotonous in Spring. No one bothered her anymore. It would seem that they'd all given up - even Ianthe scarcely intervened anymore. Only Moira bothered with her attempts of dragging her out of silence every now and again though they rarely left her room. 

Moira seemed to take it as a great accomplishment if she could coerce Percy into the gardens for morning tea. She'd quit with the pretense of lessons, stating that it didn't matter what poems and nonsense she memorized if she was walking around like a ghost haunting the manor. 

Father hardly even bothered to visit, always keeping his distance from her. His questions going unanswered because Percy just... she just couldn't get the words out. They sat there in her throat... in her mind, but they went no further. 

Some days she could manage simple answers. No. Yes. Maybe. Some days she could speak in full sentences. And other days... other days she was so trapped within herself that not a single sound could escape her. 

Ianthe had left a bottle of the sleeping drought that they dosed her tea with on the bedside table, and Percy had held it in her hands last night, contemplating. A single teaspoon was enough to put her into a deep, nightmare fueled sleep. The contents of the bottle was enough to kill three full blood fae males.

It was why Moira kept a tight grip on the bottle, why she only took it from her pocket before measuring that singular teaspoon of the sleeping drought. Then it went right back into her pocket. She never even dared to set it down. But Moira had been otherwise occupied last night and it had been Ianthe who'd come to force the tea down her throat instead. 

Percy drank the tea - her father was insisting on it now, no longer giving Percy the option of refusing it. But it took a few minutes to force her under... up to fifteen. 

Fifteen minutes for her to contemplate drinking the rest of that bottle and just... ending it all. She ended up setting it back on the nightstand and turning away from it, but even now she wondered if she made the wrong choice in denying herself the simple and painless death of that drought. 

"I thought perhaps you might like to visit the stables today," Moira said gently. "I know for a fact that one mare in particular has been -"

"You promised!" Feyre's voice cracked as the sound of her anguish drifted through the open windows of the manor to where Percy and Moira were seated in the garden. "I need to get out of this house." 

Percy paused, her cup halfway to her lips, before she gently sent it down onto the table. 

Father's voice followed, "Have Bron take you and Ianthe for a ride-" 

"I don't want to go for a ride!" Feyre exploded, and Percy's breath caught in her throat. It was going to happen. Another fight like last time. "I don't want to go for a ride, or a picnic, or pick wildflowers. I want to do something. So take me with you." 

Percy cringed in on herself.

"Oh, dear," Moira murmured to herself. "Perhaps... Perhaps we should make ourselves scarce for a while."