A Court of Graves and Flowers

CHAPTER TWELVE

Tamlin stirred, his consciousness flickering back like a sputtering candle. His body throbbed with a dull ache echoing from his ribs to his fingertips. He opened his eyes, and let them adjust to the dim light filtering through the silken drapes. Bandages, white and stark, crisscrossed his torso, a testament to the battle's brutality. The air was thick with the cloying scent of poultice, but beneath it, something else tickled his nose. A familiar note of jasmine and mint hung in the air, letting him know that someone else was nearby.

He whipped his head towards the window seat, heart jolting at the sight of Callisto.

The Lady of the Night Court was enthroned there, a thick tome sprawled across her lap. Her back was to him, but he could feel the weight of her gaze piercing through the pages, sharp and knowing. Even before she turned, he knew she'd sensed him stirring.

"So, you're awake," she said, her voice holding a nonchalant tone. "Took you long enough."

The statement, though laced with teasing, couldn't mask the concern flickering at the edges of her gaze. It irritated him, this newfound tenderness. He had not earned it.

The anger in his voice, when it finally came, was rusty, dulled by the haze of pain and the strange mix of relief and shame washing over him. "You saved me," he stated rather obviously.

A scoff escaped her lips. "Not without a fight, I assure you. Your stubborn insistence on bleeding out in front of your court was admirable but inconvenient."

"You didn't have to," he murmured, the words heavy with regret. "You should've let them mourn their High Lord. Let them remember him as he was, not—"

"A pile of mangled flesh with terrified children cowering behind him?" Callisto cut him off, her voice sharp as a blade. "That's the legacy you wanted to leave? No, Tamlin. You may have a knack for self-destruction, but I won't be a party to it."

He tried to push himself up, fueled by a desperate need to stand on his own two feet, to prove something, even to himself. But a sharp tug from his bandaged chest sent a wave of pain crashing through him, and he slumped back with a groan.

Callisto's gaze flicked from the book to him, the amusement gone, replaced by a flicker of something else, something hot and dangerous simmering beneath the surface of her amethyst eyes. "Stay down," she commanded, her voice as sharp as steel. "You're still healing."

He obeyed, the weight of her unspoken anger pressing down on him. "The defeat of the Naga," he began, his voice barely a whisper. "We need to talk about it."

He gestured vaguely towards the direction of the meadow, towards the memory of her power unleashed. An inferno of white-hot light that had turned the Nagas to dust and left him shaken to his core.

Callisto, however, seemed nonchalant. She flipped a page in her book, a studied indifference masking the flicker in her gaze. "That? Just a bit of Illyrian magic. Nothing special."

"Don't lie to me, Callisto," he spat, the effort pulling at his injured chest. "You never had... that before."

The book slammed shut, a thunderous punctuation mark in the silence. Her eyes met his, a challenge glinting in their depths. "Before what? Before your father butchered my mother and me?"

Tamlin winced. The past, always a festering wound, oozed forth, staining the fragile truce they'd built.

"Callisto," he began, his voice thick with regret, "that wasn't..."

"No," she interrupted, her voice icy cold. "Don't. Don't try to justify it. Don't try to tell me it was an accident, a misunderstanding. He knew who my mother was. He knew she couldn't fight back. And you... you stood by and watched."

A sob caught in his throat, choked by the weight of his guilt. He deserved her scorn, every bit of it.

"Maybe..." she continued, her voice hardening to steel, "maybe I didn't get the chance to use my magic then. Maybe I was busy being dead."

The accusation landed like a physical blow. Dead. He'd condemned her to that, had ripped the light from her eyes, and plunged her into an abyss of his own making.

Tamlin's gaze fell to his hands, clenched tight against the sheets. "I regret it, Callisto," he rasped, his voice hoarse with shame. "Every day, every hour, for five hundred years, I've carried the weight of what I did. The look in your eyes, the betrayal etched on your face... it haunts me. It's the first image I see when I sleep, the last before I wake."

It was the first apology he'd ever uttered, not to Rhysand, not to Feyre, only to her. He laid his pride, his very self, at her feet, a desperate offering for a forgiveness he had not worthy of.

Callisto met his gaze, her purple eyes shimmering with a storm of emotions. "You deserve it," she whispered, her voice tight with barely contained anger. "You deserve every restless night, every haunted dream. I'm glad my memory is an inconvenience to your conscience."

But even as the words tumbled from her lips, her features softened, a flicker of something akin to sympathy battling the storm in her eyes. He saw it, the minuscule concession and it clawed at his hope like a drowning man grasping at a straw.

"Being around you," he continued, his voice raw, "seeing those eyes every day, it's... it's like reliving my crime over and over. But I'd face that torture a thousand times if it meant a sliver of redemption in your sight, Callisto."

He saw a tear trace its way down her cheek, a single glittering pearl against the pale canvas of her skin. It was a dam breaking, a release of the emotions she'd held captive for so long. And in that moment, Tamlin knew that forgiveness wouldn't be easy, wouldn't be quick.

He laid his head back on the pillow, his chest heaving. The battle had taken its toll, but the war within him, the war for her forgiveness, had just begun. He knew the path ahead would be long and arduous, paved with thorns and shadows. But for the first time in five centuries, Tamlin, the High Lord of Spring, was willing to walk it, barefooted and humbled, hoping for the day when those amethyst eyes would once again shine with the light of his redemption.

Callisto swiped away the traitorous tear, not answering Tamlin. She wasn't sure she knew what to say. But she resumed her spot by the window, the book once again clutched in her hand. The room, bathed in the moonlight, held the weight of their shared past, the tension thick and palpable. Yet, within it, a seed of something new had sprouted, watered by tears, and nurtured by the embers of forgiveness.

The future remained uncertain, shrouded in the mist of what could be. But in that quiet room, with a warrior queen sitting by his bedside, Tamlin, the fallen High Lord, dared to hope for a spring to thaw his own frozen heart.

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A/N: Crying because the song fits them so well argh.