If Aelin had known she would be spending 2 hours in that shitty, dusty, little room, she would have slipped away to run around the city and see what people were up to. Fortunately just when she was ready to beat her head off a wall, Rhys and Feyre arrived in the doorway, both looking as bored as she felt. It was an interesting persona, Aelin had often pretended to experience extreme boredom but never like the High Lord and Lady did, she personally preferred to threaten people with maniacal grins and a little bit of fire.
The fact the Inner Circle shot to their feet suggested that perhaps they did understand how disgusting the room they occupied was. Aelin took more time to get to her feet, exuding a lesiurely attitude while Fenrys got up and shook out his fur which dust had settled deep within. He didn't seem apologetic that it covered her legs in the spray, and looked almost amused at her discomfort.
Aelin gave a fake smile to the aide who was watching her warily and turned to Rowan who was still sitting, watching cautiously as she bared her fangs at the Fae who had incurred her irritated wrath. Aelin reached out a hand and he took it for her to help him to his feet. Feyre's eyes flickered with hidden amusement, and Aelin tried not to grind her jaw at her annoyance of being so closely observed and laughed at for her married relationship.
Rowan's posture was relaxed, similar to Fenrys becayse he was just happy to follow Aelin as she fucked around in this strange world. She could tell that while they both would prefer to get home, they were actually enjoying not having to hold up reputations and being able to do whatever they wanted while passing it off as 'cultural differences'.
"Leave us." Rhys's voice was soft and Aelin picked up on the slightest sliver of anger there, it seemed the meeting didn't go too well then.
A few of the males had been lurking behind them in the hallway all but sprinted away down the corridor the moment the High Lord spoke, vanishing off into rooms and forks in the main hallway. The aide Aelin had been having on and off staring contests with also vanished into a servants corridor with a low sigh that only the Wild Fae in the room heard.
The doors swung shut and immediately the rest of the room let out sighs, Cassian groaning and rolling his shoulders while Rhys ran a hand through his hair and shutting his eyes for a moment, likely to settle his mind.
"Seems like your Court's meetings are pretty exhausting." Aelin drawled, entertained by the fact that these great and admired warriors were all slumping around her after a couple hours of court politics. After 10 years on the throne Aelin had no issues with holding a queenly demeanor for days on end, especially on trips to new kingdoms where she was trying to establish trade for her own territory.
Rowan on the other hand had centuries of experience and didn't drop his guard in the slightest after hours of scrutiny. While Aelin didn't mind it, she still got pissed when Rowan didn't even show a hint of annoyance after being forced to look perfect for hours. God damn he looked perfect.
Her husband was watching her closely and picked up on the flicker of emotion, that was one thing he couldn't seem to hide behind his mask because he let out a low snort of laughter at her inner turmoil. This of course caused everyone in the room to turn and stare at him.
"Something funny to share with the group?" Cassian asked sarcastically, eyes half glazed with boredom.
Rowan narrowed his eyes, not appreciating the general's tone before choosing not to reply in any way other than straightening his posture and glancing to Aelin with a slightly pissy expression.
Nesta smirked and shoved her husband playfully with her shoulder at his rejection, Mor also snickered before turning to Rhys. "They didn't like our proposed guidelines I take it?"
Feyre threw her head back with a dramatic sigh and fell backwards into thin air, or what had been thin air. Aelin watched a rather expensive looking chair appear behind the High Lady as she collapsed elegantly into it.
Aelin stayed quiet, wondering how magic worked in the land which was Prythian. Perhaps Dorian, at least once upon a time, could have used his raw magic in such a manner. She realised now that it was really quite difficult to not think or talk about her friends, she always loved to chat away to people and a large topic of conversation was always her companions through life.
Maybe she could talk about them in vague terms, she had so many funny stories to tell about all of her friends. Rhys began bickering away about how Feyre should have gotten him a chair as well while the Inner Circle snickered away at their High Lord and Ladies antics.
Aelin wondered what had happened which meant she could no longer bring herself to care about these peoples' jokes and dynamics. A perfect little family. A found family. Just lovely.
Fenrys was the one to pick up on her conflicted mood this time, and he nipped at her trouser leg to grab her attention. She ruffled the fur atop his head and turned her attention back to the conversation at hand.
"They're currently gathering the citizens for us to speak to them." Rhys was explaining, "Hopefully if we speak straight to them the councillors won't have a chance to veto things if they're already promised to the public."
Rowan was, of course, being the perfect listener and nearly hanging off every word spoken, undoubtedly tucking facts and information into his mind for later. Aelin crossed her arms over her chest at the exact same moment that her mate did, in perfect synchronisation.
Amren was the one who looked amused that time, but had sensed Aelin's continued irritation and merely allowed the slightest curve of a smile to grace her lips. "We should make our entrance Rhysand." Aelin had always wondered why the small female insisted on calling the High Lord by his full name, although perhaps it was just a habit.
Glendalough really was a dump. The sideroom they had been left in was a palace in comparison to the podium overlooking the square. Citizens gathered below as the Inner Circle strode confidently to stand threateningly around the crowd. Aelin and Rowan had simply been instructed to glare at hecklers and look as menacing as possible.
That wouldn't be an issue, she had assured them. The pair were both so fed up with court demeanour that letting that anger ripple outwards would just be like sighing. Fenrys had slipped away from them to sit by Elain. Aelin wondered in that moment, where the wolf shuffled up beside the middle sister and Amren, if the ancient one knew what he was. For she gave a grateful nod to Fenrys, and strode off to go glare at the crowd from their east flank.
Nesta looked alarmed, it had clearly been arranged for Amren to be the Seer's personal bodyguard, such a delicate flower to even need one as an immortal, but Fenrys would do fine in Amren's place. The gathering people shot the strangers looks from the corners of their eyes, a lot of attention settling on the Terrasen trio.
Good, Aelin decided. It had been too long since she had held people's notice and she had always been one for the spotlight. She strategically led Rowan to stand slightly off to the side of the High Lord and Lady, who were looking over their people with vague disappointment. As a queen, Aelin couldn't help but wonder if they were in the correct occupation, neither of them seemed accustomed with reading the mood when it came to large groups of peasants.
Once a decidedly adequate number had gathered, Rhys straightened to his full height and began speaking. It was an incredibly boring speech, even Rowan looked taken aback by the cliches and obvious false promises oozing from the High Lord's words, and yet the Fae looked thrilled. Or at least the majority did.
"Cultural differences." Aelin murmured to her mate, who simply dipped his head in acknowledgement to the near silent words no others could hear. Rhys was certainly a smooth talker, even if his words were lacking. It was growing ever clearer however that there was a decently sized portion of the gathered Fae who had only come to nitpick.
A few of the young males were shifting in a manner which set Aelin's assassin senses tingling, they were making a move. Oh how glad she was to be here, this was going to be fun.
While Rhysand kept blabbing away, she began to move forward from behind the ruling pair. So slowly, creeping to the front of the ledge above the listening Fae. Feyre shot her a confused look, but remained still as Aelin stepped up beside them.
"Keep talking." She instructed quietly, eyes scanning over the crowd to pick out every threat. It wouldn't do to miss any when this was infront of so many people, that would be embarrassing.
There seemed to be a group of 6 males, an obvious pair, a trio who were trying to look sneaky, however the one Aelin picked out as the real threat was a small slinking creature coming up just below the dias. That would be her first jump, then making sure the trio knew she had spotted them. She could tell the guards had noticed the pair, that was the point, make the guards think they had seen the threat and dealt with it so that they wouldn't notice the true assailant.
It was a tactic she had used quite often, only Aelin was never noticed. In fact, she wouldn't even be one of the six, she would be on the rooftop 135 degrees from where she stood. Only in reality that perfect blind spot was disappointingly empty, amatuers.
Rhys's hand tightened slightly on his notes clearly waiting for her to make her move. But no, she wouldn't, the best way to handle this situation was to be as calm as possible. Wait, just wait.... aaaaaand- there. A knife threw flew the air so fast no one could catch it - apart from Aelin of course.
She had known it would be best to allow them to throw the first punch, otherwise the crowd would think she simply started throwing down with random crowd members for fun. Well, that was totally something she would do, but this was crowd management not a party.
The knife handle was solid in her hand, an absolutely lovely blade, which promptly found its way into the male's neck. Rhys and Feyre had told them before not to be worried about stabbing or near killing attackers, in fact they seemed quite calm with having people murdered for even just attemtping assaulting them.
The 'sneaky assassin' was floored, blood spurting everywhere from his neck as Aelin moved on to the next. The trio's eyes were flickering with anxiety and borderline panic as they began to move away because if the lone attacker had been caught they had no chance of being unseen.
She decided not to kill these ones and instead sent them flying to the hard stone with a few well placed kicks and punches to pressure points. That would keep them out for a while at least, enough time for her to deal with - ah, those two thought they could get away did they?
This was far too much fun, she could feel Rowan's mirth flickering through the bond as she gave chase like a rabid dog. Aelin ran low to the ground, diving through the crowd to sweep the legs out of the faster male as he ran. These High Fae were slow, and unfit. The one who had been lagging rushed on ahead, clearly hoping to flee while his friend was taken down but she could hear his panicked breaths, ragged as he pushed himself beyond his limits after about a 30 metre sprint.
Aelin ran along side him with a feral grin, "Nice weather today isn't it?" She asked conversationally, his wide eyes showed her he was about a smile away from pissing himself and so she ended it with a creative tackle.
She wrapped herself around his torso and swung, using her body weight to bring him crashing to the ground beneath her. It was nice having guards pick up her slack, without them she would have needed to take more care than just knocking the first runaway male's legs away but even the novice soldiers could catch someone who was already temporarily winded on the floor.
The crowd of civilians were staring at her, it was unlikely they got many skilled female assassins around here, at least none as good as Aelin. A few of them turned back to gape at Rowan, who just stood with his arms crossed at his chest, showing no inclination of moving to help.
Unable to help herself, Aelin raised the knife which had been thrown to stab the High Lord in the heart, and called out to her husband. "This is what I wanted you see, with the decoration on the handle? But of course none of the wedding presents were like it. I put it on the list and everything but all of our friends let us down!"
Her mate snorted, Aelin had a bad habit of flipping from terror-inducing assassin to a spoilt housewife in a matter of seconds and even the Inner Circle looked confused. As she strutted back through the parted crowd to the dias, Aelin realised there was a slightly strange shadow wrapped around her ankle. She could swear it was humming with laughter but the only time she had heard them clearly was when she had her tongue down Azriel's throat. Perhaps she should try that again to test hertheory....
Aelin's cloak flowed around her as she bowed infront of the High Lord and Lady with a smirk. "I apologise for the interruption. It could not be helped."
There was no longer any mocking part of her directed at Rhysand's rulership, he took everything in his stride and had obviously been doing this for a very long time for all he did was blink and she knew she was dismissed. Aelin decided she would get him to teach her that, it would be helpful for dispelling her court when they got on her nerves, which was often to say the least.
Aelin made her way back to Rowan's side, confident the danger was past and the crowd held no threats to those she had - even jokingly - been told to protect. The Queen of Terrasen took her assigned jobs very seriously and it was about time the people of Prythian learned that.
There had not once been an assassination attempt on any member of her court from a citizen of her kingdom. Other kingdoms sure, but never her own. Never had there been such a pitful attempt either, although likely because her reputation in hand to hand combat was unparalleled - excluding Fenrys and her court.
Surely, Aelin considered, they knew that the strongest High Lord and one of the strongest High Fae ever to exist, would be more difficult to kill than a knife at a speech about urban development. Unless there was more at stake here, deeper plans which were supposed to elude her through the simple surface of them. Adarlan's Assassin was going to have to keep an eye out, and she would be incredibly disappointed if it turned out to be nothing more than idiots with a single knife.
Perhaps Prythian had more to it than first appeared, but in a world with such pathetic attacks, and ridiculously underpowered immortals, Aelin thought the level of training the Fae dedicated themselves to was inexcusable. The only real exercise an immortal Fae could do, would be sparring of various forms. Yet so many here could likely be beaten by well trained humans from Erilea. These Fae were wasting their lives. While Aelin and her court had fought for their own, these fools were practically throwing them away through simple negligence. It was unfortunate that the Queen found this a grave insult to her own lifestlye.
----------------
Glendalough had to be the most boring place Aelin had ever visited. After the initial attack Aelin had gotten her hopes up for a rather interesting trip. Unfortunately for her murderous dreams, the male she had stabbed recovered in a few hours and was sentenced to manual labour as his punishment. It also turned out he was the leader of the main gang in the city. How someone so pathetic could lead a city's gangs, she had no clue. Ergo - no one else to play with.
She had taken out the big guns in the first 5 minutes and now she was pissed. Rowan wisely kept quiet, allowing her to rant and pace while flipping weapons around all the while rage burned in her gut like an inferno of emotion. Borrriiinnggggg.
The High Lord and Lady's party had been escorted to the top floor of the finest residence in the city. It had a common room of seating, with enough bedrooms for all of them. Aelin finally stormed out of her, Rowan and Fenrys's room to interact with the rest of them. Although they had undoubtedly heard her cursing the whole city for the past hour she decided now she would tell them about her displeasure directly.
Aelin never got the chance however, as the Inner Circle were all flopped out ontop of chairs, sofas and couches like ragdolls, drinking whatever alcohol they had managed to find and cackling about the gods knew what.
Rowan settled on a chair in the corner where Fenrys was splayed out, he already seemed to have decided his evening plans which would be to sit silently in the corner and observe. Aelin on the other hand threw herself into the centre of fun and landed half ontop of Mor in the process who just laughed louder and wrapped her arms around Aelin.
"Come join the party! We're just gonna get pissed and wreck their rooms."
"Why?" Aelin couldn't help asking as she broke into a grin. This was much more her pace.
"Funsies," Mor rolled her eyes and gave her a mock-dirty look, "Obviously."
Rhys had also broken his no-drinking rule, he had been helping Feyre get through her forced sobriety for health reasons, but today had been so bad he had gotten out his whisky and was alternating between drinking deeply and staring aimlessly into the middle distance.
"We can't trash the place Mor, I told you we need to be respectful." The High Lord was clearly exhausted, but Aelin was getting a high just from Mor's inescapable prescence of excitement.
"Then I guess we just need to go find a pub to trash instead!" She swiped Mor's bottle and finished it, causing the other blonde to swat at her for the now empty bottle with a feigned pout.
"No fair! I liked that one, I bought it myself!" The third of the Night Court gave a fake sniffle and burst out into tears.
Aelin couldn't stop laughing as she cradled the grown female in her lap, patting her head while loudly and dramatically exclaiming, "Now now dear, don't cry now. We'll buy you a new one when we go out."
Mor wailed even more at that and threw out a trembling hand to point at Rhys, "H-he said we weren't allowed to go out!"
She gasped in mock-horror and cradled Mor closer to her, "You didn't! Not when she's crying so!" Aelin gave the High Lord her best glare and held his gaze until finally -
"Oh why not. We're supposed to be scaring them anyway."
Mor was instantly on her feet, whooping and cheering so much that she toppled in the opposite direction straight onto Cassian who was stretched out watching the commotion. Aelin observed the quiet way he turned to meet Nesta's eyes as they communicated in the way only mates could.
"I'll join you two." Nesta said suddenly, sitting up and rolling her neck slightly to rid it of cramps. The Inner Circle seemed surprised but Aelin just grinned at the sharp female.
"It's gonna be a lot of fun, promise. We'll only wreck one or two buildings."
Rhys suddenly looked panicked, "One or two?!"
Feyre patted her mates arm condescendingly and went back to her catnap, evidently she was bitter about her no-drinking rule and was dealing with it by separating herself from the celebration.
Still, that didn't mean the rest of them couldn't enjoy their night. "Are you joining us Amren?" Nesta looked curiously over at the lone female who was sitting on the floor behind one of the seats scribbling frantically in a book.
Her neck snapped up upon hearing her name and it took Amren a moment to realise what had been asked. With a crack the book shut and the second rose to her feet, "It's been a while since I've been out, I need to change."
With that, their pair had become four and the night was looking a lot more interesting than it had two minutes ago. Mor seemed to realise something as she corrected her tipsy stance and gently poked the High Lady.
"You don't mind staying at home with Elain while we all go out do you?"
The middle sister in question was in her room to avoid the rowdiness of their family with a cup of tea and a book on gardening. Feyre just shrugged and batted her friend away. "I'll be fine, honestly go have fun. We've got some board games to pass the time."
Aelin couldn't help but grin as her newest friend spun around and beamed back at her, "Looks like we're going drinking."
AN: ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? My life is a mess right now cause
1. Bo Burnham: Inside
2. I'm finally watching Attack on Titan 2 years after I watched the first two episodes (help its got so many big themes and shit english class would be proud, also Levi can beat me to shit that man is so fucki- we're just gonna end that there anyway)
If you currently don't have a cold and can sleep well at night then appreciate that for one fucking minute cause one day you're gonna have a problem with one of those and you're gonna wish for when you didn't have it.
Basically big boi post-exam depression and breakdown, sorry cause i have 100 excuses and no one fucking wants to hear them. I dunno when updates will be, got a couple more chapters pre-written but one of them is really long and not finished and I've spent a 4 day weekend trying to write that fucking bullshit and I want to yeet myself out a fucking window and- okay.
Thanks for sticking around, sorry if you don't have a clue whats going on cause this chapter was written about 100 words at a time over 2 months and oh hey if you noticed I tried to learn some punctuation or whatever the fuck you wanna call it and I don't think I learnt it right so sorry if that bugs you but I'm having fun. (oh by the way straight A gang where u at? I brought the biscuits)