Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

Are You All Talk

I winnowed directly from the townhouse in Velaris after dropping Feyre off. I hadn’t even said goodbye to her.

Azriel was waiting.

And so was Cassian, who greeted me deep below the mountains of the Hewn City. So far down in dingy cells and chambers, the only sound heard for miles were the screams Azriel elicited every so often from the Attor under Truth-Teller’s sharp blade.

Feyre could wait. She’d remained icy all through breakfast - and so be it. Right now, this took precedence.

“Anything?”

Cassian picked up the pace beside me as we met in the hall and walked to the prison room. It wasn’t a bar cell like the one Feyre had stayed in, but it gave me a shudder of remembrance all the same. I hadn’t been down here in... a while.

“Fifteen minutes before he told us a task force sent from Hybern had infiltrated our northernmost border,” Cassian informed me, his face a hard line. Still wet drops of silvery blood speckled the gauntlets over his leathers. “ Five minutes before he admitted to closing in on Illyrian territory with a few other choice beasts.”

Only five minutes.

Damn .

“Azriel’s in quite the mood,” Cass finished as we reached the door. A whimper sounded behind the wood panel.

“Lucky for us, a mood is just what the occasion calls for.”

Cassian’s grin was razor sharp.

“It’s done,” I said when I landed in the townhouse living room. Feyre sat on the couch, her feet curled under her as she read. But as soon as she saw me, she was up in flash, eyes all over me. Whatever that meant.

“We learned what we needed to. It’s up to you, Feyre, to decide how much of our methods you want to know about. What you can handle.” Feyre took a deep breath, brow drawn. “What we did to the Attor wasn’t pretty.”

“I want to know everything,” she said, no hesitation even if it was plain she understood the severity of the situation. “Take me there.”

She stepped forward, ready to take off.

“The Attor isn’t in Velaris,” I said. “He was in the Hewn City, in the Court of Nightmares - where it took Azriel less than an hour to break him.” Feyre didn’t so much as flinch. Hard as nails, Cassian would have said. I stepped forward - just one step, giving her the space to change her mind if she wanted. But she held fast. “I’ll show you,” I offered.

And... Feyre closed her eyes.

She watched the memory with perfect ease. Her face only slightly pinched when mention of Tamlin came up, but given the fresh information there it wasn’t surprising.

I showed her the Attor, bruised and bloody on the table. Showed the details he’d let slip both before I arrived and after, including that Hybern had found a way of tracking Feyre’s movements; we just didn’t know how yet. And even went so far as to let her listen to the wails as I exited and Truth-Teller dragged along the veins of the Attor’s wings.

It wasn’t pretty.

But it was effective.

I loosened my hold on Feyre’s mind and watched her as she came out of it, looking for a hint of distress or horror or revulsion for what we’d done. But there was nothing except a glint of rage that earlier this morning had been directed at my chest in the form of talons digging through my leathers against the snow.

“What situation with the Spring Court?” she said, staggering back to regain her balance.

“None. As of right now,” I swiftly assured her. And there wasn’t. Everything Azriel had said about the silence of Spring was true. It was only... “But you know how far Tamlin can be driven to... protect what he thinks is his.”