Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

No One's Subject

“Will he attack Prythian first?”

I pointed to the map between us on that cold stone flat and Feyre followed my gesture, her fingers fidgeting a bit on the ends of the display.

“Prythian is all that stands between the King of Hybern and the continent. He wants to reclaim the human lands there - perhaps seize the faeries lands, too. If anyone is to intercept his conquering fleet before it reaches the continent, it would be us.”

Feyre didn’t wait even a moment when I’d finished before she passed to one of the chairs a few feet away and sunk down. Her knees shook horribly to the point that I was slightly surprised she’d managed to walk the short distance her trip took.

But the first lesson any soldier learns on the battlefield is that even when all seems lost and as dark and treacherous as it might go, there is always room for an ensuing blow.

And it is best to learn that lesson swiftly.

“He will seek to remove Prythian from his way swiftly and thoroughly. And shatter the wall at some point in the process.” From the chair, even with her shields perfectly in tact, I felt Feyre’s blood run cold. “There are already holes in it, though mercifully small enough to make it difficult to swiftly pass his armies through. He’ll want to bring the whole thing down - and likely use the ensuing panic to his advantage.”

Feyre wouldn’t look me in the eye when she spoke, which she did with a shaking stuttering breath I didn’t think she quite registered. She was lost inside that head realizing the reality at hand - even unto herself.

“When - when is he going to attack?”

“That is the question and why I brought you here.”

At that, Feyre did look up.

“I don’t know when or where he plans to attack Prythian. I don’t know who his allies here might be.”

“He’d have allies here?”

Genuine shock, but beneath it all, Feyre’s curiosity was a treasure that continued to pump a lifeblood into my hope that my plans were achievable, even if torn from the frays of lunacy.

“Cowards,” I said, nodding in reply, “who would bow and join him, rather than fight his armies again.”

Just as they had when Amarantha took power and half my wretched court had joined her.

My own court lost... forever damned on the pages of history to terror and torment...

“Did...” Feyre looked at me thoughtfully, although unsure whether this question was allowed. “Did you fight in the War?”

Such an honest question... and perhaps the first personal question she’d bothered to ask me. For a moment, I was struck speechless by it, the idea that she cared even that much to learn some trivial fact about my past amidst a backdrop of increasing loathing for me.

Or perhaps it was merely her curiosity getting the best of her again.

Either way, I would have that personal invasion at once. Let her take whatever pieces great or small of me that she would have.

I nodded and then stepped to the adjoining chair where I sat, removing my general’s helmet in the process so she could hear my story for what it really was. Back then, I was just a soldier too, like she was now.

“I was young - by our standards, at least. But my father had sent aid to the mortal-faeries alliance on the continent, and I convinced him to let me take a legion of our soldiers. I was stationed in the south, right where the fighting was thickest. The slaughter was...”