A Delicate Darkness | AZRIEL (ACOTAR)

x. oh, brother

OH, BROTHER

THE GRAND GALLERY OF THE FOREST HOUSE buzzed with tight-lipped conversation and gentle music pouring from the string orchestra upon the aerial platform.

It was a scene pulled straight from an encyclopaedia Auroria was gifted as a girl. The Wonders of Autumn, it was named. The great tome detailed many leagues of history surrounding the court, its landscape, its cultures, and its ruling families.

Families plural, because the Vanserras did not always reign over Autumn lands.

The House of Bernardi was a lavish family and loved to indulge in the finest cuisine, clothing, and decor, even if they had to be imported from the Mortal Lands. The peasantry, farmers, and merchants grew poorer and poorer as the Bernardis siphoned the land of its wealth, seizing their income through binding tithes to fund exquisite dinner parties in the ruling family's honour. These parties were as baroque as they were costly, but they were beautiful nonetheless. People sought invitation, but those were reserved for the premier gentry, and with such a high-class audience, only a grand soiree befitted them.

And the guests drank the finest champagne, ate the fattest poultry, the juiciest fruits, the creamiest cheeses whilst the labourers outside starved.

Then the Vanserras overpowered the Bernardis and claimed the throne, able to do so by the consequences of centuries of inbreeding finally coming to light. The Bernardi sons became frail and weak-minded. The Vanserras abolished the order of hereditary succession and replaced it with a system that favoured the strongest heir, in physicality and in intellect.

But they kept some of the Bernardi traditions, one being their magnificent banquets.

Tonight's banquet was thrice as lavish because it was thrice as important.

News arrived of the Spring Court's collapse, of Tamlin's soldiers dissenting and his subjects disillusioned with their High Lord. Of Tamlin's misstep in inviting foreign enemies onto their shores.

To stifle panic as well as ideas, Beron thought it wise to secure the fealty of the Higher Fae in his own court, to ensure the stability of Autumn.

And so, a week since Auroria last saw Lucien and Feyre, they were all summoned into the Forest House. The Vanserras sat on the High Table, lordly gazes and questions running marathons in their minds. The Spring Court was never predicted to fall, not even by the wisest magister in Belaven. Spring always stayed true to its heirs in succession, seldom involved in nefarious dealings and, for the most part, remained civil with the other courts — barring the Night Court, of course.

If it happened to the Spring Court, why should Autumn right next door be immune to the same fate?

Already many lord and ladies took their leave of Spring Court, wandering onto the neighbouring Autumn and Summer and spreading whispers of Tamlin's grievous misdealing. Many questions were had about their High Lord's incompetence — some brazenly asked out in the open, and that served to ruffle Beron's feathers, because though he never considered Tamlin to be a close ally, subjects openly questioning one High Lord was a slippery slope into questioning them all.

Indeed, there was a mass exodus out of Spring, and Beron had to put a stop to these whispers. Had to reinforce his power as much as his borders. Had to enforce stability in and amongst the disarray.

There, of course, came other questions. Had Tamlin turned his cloak on his country? Had he conspired with Hybern?

Auroria fed Beron every morsel of knowledge that Lucien and Feyre imparted, under the guise of her own scouts gathering this intel. No further questions were asked about how she acquired it — which she thanked the Mother for, because she wasn't sure she could answer them if they dug deeper.