ACOTAR One~shots [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

Battle Scars

The last part wasn’t particularly motivational, but the rest had been flashing through my mind very few moments. I took a moment to check around me, jumping aside as Tamlin swung his sword for my legs. I spun to try and get to his side again, but he turned with me and I caught his sword with mine. I bared my teeth at him over our crossed blades.

“Do you regret not training me yourself yet?”

He hissed at me, thrusting his blade outwards and jostling me back away from him. I just laughed. “Maybe if you had agreed to teach me to fight, to control my magic, I would be fighting with you in this battle instead of against you.”

I caught Rhys’ gaze a few times through the steadily emptying field, making sure he knew that I was managing to enjoy myself, taunting and toying with the man who had turned me into a damn doll.

Tamlin was making a valiant effort, but he didn’t really want to hurt me, while I certainly wanted to hurt him. I had the advantage.

Or, I did until I forgot one of Cassian’s main warnings.

Tamlin snarled now, lunging for me sloppily. I dodged without a second thought, raising my own weapon for his unprotected back as I danced around him. And then my sword hit the ground, my fingers going limp at the pain that was suddenly tearing through me.

It felt like a blunt object laced with fire had been plunged into my back hard enough to split or burn through my skin, parting and tearing tissue and bone as it tore through my body. I screamed as it began to burn, starting where the object was still moving through my body and spreading until the agonizing pain had reached from my feet to the tips of my pointed ears.

Tamlin spun around and reached for me, dropping his weapon, as my knees went out and the object finally broke through my body and protruded out through my stomach.

A scream ripped up through my throat again when his hands caught my arms, jostling what I now recognized as a wooden staff that had been plunged through my body.

Ash wood.

I tried to grab it, tried to push it back out of me, trying frantically to end the burning that was slowly overtaking my body. But the flames became even worse when I touched it, and I screamed again.

Tamlin tried to say something to me, but his words were drowned out by the vicious roar that ripped through the field, the echo to my scream, freezing all the fighters still standing. The sounds of battle stopped as a steady, rumbling growl began.

“Get your hands off of my mate.”

Rhys. I moaned, lifting my head to look up at him as he made his way through the crowd that had began to form around us as soon as my mate had roared his fury across the field.

His eyes were dark with fury but softened when they met my gaze. “Rhys,” I choked out, lifting a hand in his direction. The movement burned, sending the poison from the ash through my system even faster. It felt like my blood was boiling in my veins, my flesh burning and crisping.

Was this how those fae I’d killed in Amarantha’s court felt before they’d died?

“Feyre,” Rhys rumbled, his voice deeper than I’d ever heard it, filled with pain and fury.

His eyes were darker than they’d ever been too, the violet deepening into a color closer to black than I thought they may have ever been. As I met his eyes, I felt as though the burning had faded a bit, making it almost bearable.

“Cauldron, Rhysand,” Tamlin said, his words barely making it through the fog on my mind that was beginning to lift as the pain became less severe. “I don’t think I’ve seen you so close to shifting since the day you slaughtered my family.” His words were barbed and poisonous. I groaned and tried to shove away from the arms holding me, but it was a futile effort that sent pain ricocheting through my body again. I saw Rhys flinch as though feeling the pain himself. I stilled.