Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

No One's Subject

Feyre spoke immediately without any room to trust me, her emotional fear for her family’s safety gutting her like a fish freshly hauled along a slick boat deck. And at once, I was the culprit holding the knife.

“Don’t invade,” she said, her voice coming in great, disheveled breaths. “Don’t invade - please.”

The level to which she was prepared to beg me to spare her and her sisters - already was begging me - tightened my throat with fear.

“You truly think I’m a monster, even after everything.”

A statement, not a question. But Feyre delivered the answer that flayed me alive nonetheless.

“Please,” and her voice dropped even lower. “They’re defenseless, they won’t stand a chance-”

“I’m not going to invade the mortal lands.”

I cut her off, unable to bear another word off her tongue as the disappointment crashed over me.

Three months under that rock together.

Three months she saw me torture her cruelly, parade her before her worst enemies, sneer at her love, and threaten her life if she did not commit to a bargain she would not have needed to survive in the end.

Had I really been so foolish to assume that pain would be erased by ten minutes of screaming for her on the throne room floor as Amarantha’s power - my power - knocked me down; as I bled for her and sobbed when I pulled her into myself to keep from hearing that awful sound of bone snapping from ringing in my ears...

Feyre’s sense of weightlessness as her mind started to dizzy and she felt the world let go so she could fall into fear and beggary at my feet was my condemnation.

“Put your damn shield up,” I growled, not even caring that it was harsh. I didn’t want to feel one more damned shred of proof from her that I deserved this villainy in spite of my miserable, continued hope. Not right now, at least. Not in front of her.

But all Feyre could think about were her sisters living unprotected and powerless in that mansion beyond the wall, how tired and weak she felt to do anything about it.

She still didn’t see herself as a soldier, as a weapon, as powerful or sleek as the billowing night - the way I saw her. That needed to change - immediately.

“Shield. Now.”

My voice was firm, halting even.

And it worked.

A momentary glimpse into her head of her family needing her to save them one more time and then... I saw and felt nothing from her. Her shields were replaced.

Good girl.

“Did you think it would end with Amarantha?” I asked.

“Tamlin hasn’t said...”

Of course he hadn’t said anything. I cursed inwardly and prepared to ready Feyre as one would a soldier on the battlefield staring the eye of death in the face.

“The King of Hybern has been planning his campaign to reclaim the world south of the wall for over a hundred years,” I said. “Amarantha was an experiment - a forty-nine-year test, to see how easily and how long a territory might fall and be controlled by one of his commanders.”

And it had given him all the bright, shining answers he’d longed for. In our blind, trusting ignorance, we’d fallen like dominoes, pawns across the chess table replaced by dirt and blood rather than queens.