Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

Shove Me Out

“Why would I?”

“Because you were resurrected and reborn by the combined powers of the seven High Lords. If I were you, I’d be curious to see if anything else transferred to me during that process.”

And it was true. Her lack of curiosity about her own potential was... unsettling given how much she craved knowledge of the rest of Prythian, even as I had spent considerable time hesitating at my own powers when I first came in to them. Still, I had wanted to know...

But I also hadn’t been nearly as distracted as a child learning to be the High Lord’s heir as Feyre now was by the consequences of her time Under the Mountain.

“Nothing else transferred to me,” Feyre said. Her horror spun right down the bond, shocked I would even think she had power. Her modesty and downright outrage that she could be such was absurdly endearing to watch.

“It’d just be rather... interesting if it did.” I threw in a smirk for good measure.

“It didn’t,” Feyre insisted, “and I’m not going to learn to read or shield with you.”

“Why? From spite? I thought you and I got past that Under the Mountain.”

“Don’t get me started on what you did to me Under the Mountain.”

Now it was my turn for my blood to chill.

I felt every ounce of my body still, the muscles pulling taut with the sensation of feeling the knife Feyre would rip across them.

It was one thing to feel her endless hatred rippling across that bond. Part of me was able to stomach the implications of it - the name calling, the crude gestures, the outright venom in her voice every time she spoke and her eyes glared at me sharp and full of reproach.

But to hear her say it? To hear her speak of the memory that haunted her day and night to the point that her own thoughts ran away from it so she wouldn’t have to suffer in the daylight, just to spite me... was another new hell entirely.

Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. I could hardly sit in the chair and share bread with her lest she see the devastating mess I’d become at her tongue, her stare.

I leaned forward, my breath coming in pants as the muscles at my back let loose looking for a release I only ever found in the skies. Just something to quiet the turbulent violence in my mind while I tried to find a way to apologize, to erase the past with some kind of sincerity that would let us go on, but-

I choked on the words, not knowing what to say.

Don’t get me started on what you did to me Under the Mountain.

A sharp pain split in two running parallel lines down my back and I felt a weight escape, a weight that I masked in smoke and ash behind me. I was on the verge of unraveling completely as I opened my mouth to speak, terrified of what might come out or what she might say, when I heard the faint clicking of heels across the marble floor approaching.

My body released and with it went the wings that had almost manifested. I felt my mask slip back in place as the relief allowed my lazy, cool smile to reappear that seemed to confuse Feyre before she heard the footsteps too.

“We have company. We’ll discuss this later.”

“No we won’t,” Feyre said, but then Morrigan was breezing into the room like a cool summer breeze, grinning ear to ear. Feyre’s eyes widened.

“Hello, hello,” Mor practically sang into every crevice of the room.

“Feyre,” I said, “meet my cousin, Morrigan. Mor, meet the lovely, charming, and open-minded Feyre.”