Divine Intervention | An ACOMAF AU

01 || The Fall

RHYSAND

The disturbance scraped across the western ward like a fingernail dragged over glass, subtle enough that another High Lord might have dismissed it as an imperfection in the spellwork and wrong enough that every protective instinct I possessed sharpened at once.

One moment, Feyre was glaring at the sentence I had ordered her to copy, her fingers stained with ink and her mouth tightened as though every letter were a personal insult; the next, power gathered beneath my skin because something had entered my court without breaking, weakening, or visibly disturbing the wards meant to prevent exactly that.

It had simply crossed them.

I was already moving when Azriel appeared in the doorway, his shadows writhing violently around his shoulders, while Cassian followed less than a step behind with one hand reaching toward the weapons strapped across his back.

"You felt it," Azriel said, although the answer was obvious enough that I did not waste time providing one. We reached the balcony together, and I flung my wings wide before launching into the darkening sky with both Illyrians immediately falling into formation beside me.

Whatever had entered the Night Court had done so along the western border, north of Velaris, which was sufficient reason for concern before I discovered that I could not identify it. We flew hard above mountains turning black beneath the evening while I sent power sweeping ahead, searching for a mind, a magical signature, or anything else capable of explaining how something had passed through protections designed to detect armies, spells, and creatures older than most courts.

I found almost nothing.

There was no recognizable power and no spell residue, while the faint presence ahead felt distinctly and impossibly mortal. Cassian shouted over the wind, asking what I sensed, and when I answered, "Almost nothing," Azriel looked toward me because he understood why the absence was worse than an obvious threat.

Then I saw her.

A dark shape was dropping through the clouds ahead, and for one absurd second I mistook it for debris until long black hair snapped violently through the air behind a human body. She had no wings, no visible shield, and no magic slowing her descent, yet she was falling fast enough that the mountainside would turn every bone in her body to fragments.

I folded my wings and dove.

Wind tore past me while stone and pine surged upward, but I reached her less than a hundred feet above the mountain and caught her around the waist before snapping my wings open hard enough to send pain through both joints. Her body slammed into mine as I fought the momentum of her fall, and the first things I registered were that she was alive, warmer than the air around us, and far lighter than I had expected.

Then she looked at me.

For one heartbeat, I forgot the rest.

I had seen amber eyes throughout Prythian, particularly beneath the golden roofs of Day, but hers were not amber; they were true gold darkened toward whiskey near the pupils, enormous despite their deep-set almond shape and framed by black lashes. They should have looked calculating on a face that sharp, yet what stared back at me for that suspended moment was naked bewilderment.

The contrast held my attention long enough for me to notice more than I should have. Some kind of golden shimmer coated her shoulders, chest, and long bare legs without carrying the slightest scent of magic, while a black-and-gold top glittered across her ribs and a skirt barely covered the tops of her thighs.

Then there were the shoes.

They were narrow black heels, an absurd choice for plummeting through the sky, although I had only enough time to register that before her fist closed around my jacket and her legs locked around my waist.