A Court of Secrets and Moonlight (Timeline Version)

50: Cold Chicken

Leur

When you're dead, you spend nearly every second dreaming of that moment.

The moment when you see your family again, your loved ones. You hang on to memories so hard, sights and sounds and the little things a person does. I'd spend hours thinking about the way my brother's voice would draw out words, or the way Mor laughed. Cassian taps his foot on the ground almost all the time, and Azriel- I remembered everything about Azriel. I dreamed of his scent, his laugh, that look he gets when he's calling me out, the whirling tattoos over his scarred hands.

So, you dream of these people, these things for so long. And then the moment that you thought would never arrive happens, and the wind is knocked out of your chest, and you can't seem to do anything but act as if nothing ever happened.

But it did happen.

In their minds, their stories, I died a gruesome, terrible death. They found my body, or whatever it was Tamlin glamoured to look like me. They weeped and mourned, burying me in the ground. And I was so far away, with no memories. I spent nearly 200 years, not knowing anything but my own name. Where I had come from, who might be looking for me, there was nothing. I was dead in every way that mattered.

And then slowly but surely, those memories creeped back in. They were so simple at first. The sound of Azriel's voice, my mother's hands stitching a dress, the mountain peaks towering over Velaris. Just these tiny flashes of a life I wasn't sure I'd ever remember living, swallowed up by time and distance.

Tamlin was there, always there, like a ghost from a past I couldn't remember. He watched me, talked to me, trying to bring me back from the brink of death. I knew what he was, knew he wasn't just some man I met in the village one day. He couldn't be, not when some part of me knew everything about him. I'd sit and talk to him, and it was like I could anticipate every word he said before he even opened his mouth. I could feel him begging me, silently, wrapped up in small talk and hesitation. But he was there, and he was begging me.

And then he said my brother's name.

It all came back so fast, too fast. The names came back, the disgusting truths I had lived, the lies, the blood, and finally how it all ended. I denied it, over and over. I screamed and cried, and forced Tamlin away more times than I could count. I yearned for the bliss that came with being unaware, so much easier than facing the gruesome truth. But in the dead of night, when everything was quiet and it was only me and the stars, I had nothing to do but grieve my own death.

And how odd it was to do so...

Hundreds of years passed, and I waited for it to get easier. I waited for that day to come when I didn't feel like I was falling to shreds at those memories. And when I came back, when the fresh air of Prythian finally filled my lungs again, it only took an hour before I was sitting in chains in Hybern, as if nothing had changed. And if I let myself think about it, if I let myself dwell on that pain, I wasn't sure I'd come back from it. The things they did to me, to Lucien, to Tamlin, the sounds of their screaming, and that bargain.

I fucking hate bargains.

Finally, I find myself back in Velaris, after so long. And so much has changed and yet nothing at all, and everything is happening so fast that I can barely think. Not two minutes ago, I was staring at my brother, now High Lord of the Night Court, real and in the flesh and talking to me. I laughed with Mor, and joked with Cassian. I met my brother's mate, for the second time, and this time got to see just how right they look standing next to eachother. And Azriel-

He was so real I thought I might burst with it. In my wildest dreams, I never could have imagined this moment, as he stood outside the doorway of the room I'd been given, hand laced in mine, looking like had no clue what to do.