Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

We Got Out

A monster inside and out.

From here to eternity .

And war was still to come.

“And I suspect I’ll have to do it again soon enough.”

The words came out dead - empty, as Feyre had once been. As if she could hear the toll it reaped upon me, Feyre asked, “What was the cost? Of keeping this place secret and free?”

I almost didn’t have a choice in the way we fell to the earth then. My body would have fallen whether I’d caught the downward wind and willed it or not.

Her emotion was genuine. A tender sympathy I hadn’t quite received from her thus far. But even as I’d spent so long craving it from her, thinking I might die without a taste of it, I couldn’t let myself take one ounce of it now. I didn’t deserve it. Not after -

“You know the cost already,” I said as I set her down and took her chin into my hands. I had to touch her. Had to feel her. The only real thing in my life. I had to know what it felt like just a little bit if we were going to go here tonight - now.

Whether she said the words aloud or shattered her mental shields with the force of the acknowledgement, I heard Feyre loud and clear as she answered me: Amarantha’s whore .

The Illyrian spat at my feet, the saliva mingling in the snow with the already falling drops of blood that splattered and fanned out like wilted rose petals in decay.

“Whore...”

“Whore...”

“WHORE...”

Feyre melted as I nodded confirmation. My fingers stiffened on her cheek and bless her, she didn’t pull away. Not one single inch.

“When she tricked me out of my powers,” I said, unable to stanch the flow ebbing out of me, “and left the scraps, it was still more than the others. And I decided to use it to tap into the mind of every Night Court citizen she captured, and anyone who might know the truth. I made a web between all of them, actively controlling their minds every second of every day, every decade, to forget about Velaris, to forget about Mor, and Amren, and Cassian, and Azriel. Amarantha wanted to know who was close to me - who to kill and torture. But my true court was here, ruling this city and the others. And I used the remainder of my power to shield them all from sight and sound. I had only enough for one city - one place. I chose the one that had been hidden from history already. I chose.” Me. This entire damnation was on no one’s shoulders but my own. “And now must live with the consequences of knowing there were more left outside who suffered. But for those here... anyone flying or traveling near Velaris would see nothing but barren rock, and if they tried to walk through it, they’d find themselves suddenly deciding otherwise. Sea travel and merchant trading were halted - sailors became farmers, working the earth around Velaris instead. And because my powers were focused on shielding them all, Feyre, I had very little to use against Amarantha. So I decided that to keep her from asking questions about the people who mattered, I would be her whore.”

I still remembered it - that moment my powers fled and I cast the spell to protect the city, told my family what had happened and what to do next and received panic in exchange for my decision. I’d never known sorrow until that night when I realized the chaos and fear my closest friends felt was going to be magnified a hundred fold in the morning when my sweet city of starlight woke up to a new world, a fractured world. A world that burned and destroyed.

The stars listened to me that night, but they were deaf in many other ways too.

Mor had been the loudest. Amren had had enough shrewd tact to understand the role she had to step in to that her emotions were more muted and whatever she felt was beyond me by the time it came through strong enough. I felt Cassian’s fire roar to life in agony and Azriel’s icy, bitter rage.