i. this was him personified
'go on, burn a while.'
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THERE WERE MOMENTS of Briar Desilva's life that she could not quite remember. Their edges were torn just enough to be blurry and details spoiled with age. It was these memories, these murky and fog-riddled moments, that heckled the back of her thoughts like an angry audience to an out-of-tune musician.
If she tried hard enough, she was almost sure she could sort out the clear from the hazy. Perhaps she could remember exactly which shade of brown her mother's eyes were - because sometimes she was certain they were the darkness of fresh soil and sometimes they were the green-stained bark of the weeping willows that decorated the river-valleys of her home. Her father may have had a pure ebony beard and it may have been flecked with silver, too. But Briar was sure his arms were speckled with scars and freckles and she knew that she had once spent hours tracing constellations over his skin while they giggled over warm milk and stories. She couldn't remember exactly which constellations she had mapped out.
Very vividly, she could recall watching with glee as her father would reenact the stories of how he received the scars that littered his skin. She remembered his joy and rowdy, booming voice and her mother's pink scarf that he would wrap around his head when he imitated her. His voice would rise in pitch and her mother would roll her eyes but the corners of her lips always twitched up in amusement.
Yes, she remembered their love very vividly.
But there were still details that evaded her and time that muddled certain memories. That forgetfulness nagged at her, tore at her, reminded her of all she had once had and now lost. Because there were moments that were gone and moments she had forgotten as soon as they passed, as if she was moving a pace too slow or too fast for the rest of the world.
As she drew back her elbow and inhaled with the whirring of wood against bowstring, that out-of-sync feeling tickled her brain yet again. She wasn't quite sure if it was the pine needles tickling her cheek and neck or the golden-streaked head of hair that her arrow was aimed at that had done the trick.
No; it wasn't that head that was nagging at her memory. There wasn't a damn thing about that head that she could ever forget, not even if she tried. The pure loathing and hatred for her coated Briar's heart much too thickly and lined her soul much too deeply to ever slip away.
So perhaps it was the redheaded male walking alongside the brunette, chatting merrily as they strolled through the winding streets of Velaris. The male was significantly taller than her and his fiery hair only a few inches shorter. Her mind whirled and for a moment she saw her father, then an old lover and then a lost friend. Her lips parted in confusion and her elbow dropped a fraction.
It was just a moment. Just a second. Just a fraction of a movement and the slight reflection of blinding light across the City of Starlight that had her mind racing and screaming it's time it's time right now it's time.
Briar forgot to refocus her aim. Forgot to exhale as her elbow hurriedly drew back and her fingers fumbled for grip and her mind was moving much too fast because there was something so familiar about the red-haired man beside her target. It was in his long hair and his height and glinting of a gold eye as he turned to smile and chuckle at his friend. Her enemy.
That white light flashed again from atop a tall, marbled building.
Her fingers released the string.
Briar had waited a very long time for the moment her gold-lined arrow would pierce the skull of that woman. That monster. She had dreamed of it, fantasized of the blood and the death and the victory.
But her elbow had faltered and her breath had caught. From the corner of her eye, she registered the faintest of movement from somewhere in the shadows.
At another time, on another day, she would have already slipped her dagger out from its sheath on her thigh. Would have had those slithering shadows pinned down and the silhouette within them facedown in its own blood. The thought crossed her mind as the shadows of the pine trees seemed to move closer, to envelope her in darkness.
Briar was much too busy staring at the arrow that had just grazed the pale forehead of Feyre Archeron to move at all. With a whizz of air, it had lodged itself into the bark of a tree and now thrummed with energy.
Her target, her very alive target, stood stock-still as her grey-blue eyes widened and lips parted in shock. A shaking, tattoo-covered hand reached up to pat the blood that had already begun its descent down the soft planes of her face. The redhead stared at her in horror for a moment, two moments, and glanced up at the gilded wooden arrow that was still bobbing up and down.
He whirled around, a snarl ripping from his throat, and stared right into the darkness of the pine that Briar had scouted and chosen days, weeks earlier.
The first thing she noticed was the scars that marred half of his face, dragging down his left brow and through his eye and cheek before tapering off near his jaw. The second thing was the metallic gold eye that rotated around and around in its socket, emitting the faintest of buzzing.
The third she noticed much too late. Shadows had almost completely devoured her body and they now tightened around her like ropes being stretched taught. Her eyes flicked down to her daggers in their sheaths and her hands, bound together by those slithering snakes of darkness. She tugged and bared her teeth as she snarled and stumbled back as the shadows tightened around her ankles and thighs. Briar growled and failed at wrenching her hands apart; the shadows only slithered in response as that silhouette stepped out of the shadows.
If the God of Darkness existed somewhere in this world, then this was him personified. He towered before her as he emerged from the pine, shadows emerging from behind his back like pythons readying to strike. They draped over him and shrouded him like armour, pierced only by the glowing sapphire light of seven jewels embedded into his leathers and sheaths. Black wings rose up behind him and shadows poured from them, too, flowing like a river over the ground and towards her feet.
She snarled as the shadows wound up her legs and over her torso, slithering up and up until they circled around her neck. She was starkly reminded of a gallows pole and a necklace of rope as they brushed against her skin, her jugular, and the clenched jaw and darkness of the man looked like a promise of violence.
Panic rose up in her throat. Panic, because this was not going according to plan at all. Feyre Archeron did not have an arrow buried in her skull and Briar was not already halfway across the city. Her hands were tightly bound together and the back of her throat burned because Plan B was not happening, either.
The burnished dagger strapped across her thigh had not yet slit her own throat.
The male thrust out a hand to grab her arm, fingers harshly digging into the thin fabric of her tunic. Darkness and wind swirled around them and Briar only caught a glimpse of that redhaired man staring at her with distaste and horror before she was in a whirlwind of shadows and darkness and burning panic because this was not Plan A nor Plan B nor Plan C.
They landed in a plume of shadows and she nearly vomited from the nausea that consumed her because that was not winnowing and the air surrounding her was awfully cold, the shadows around her neck a promise of certain death. She doubled over and dry-heaved for only a second because then that harsh hand was off her arm and tangled in her hair as he wrenched her head up and back, other hand shoving her chest.
Briar stumbled backward at the shove. Her knees bent when they made contact with a metal surface and she found herself slamming down into a sit as the shadows devouring her tightened and strapped her to the cold bars of the chair. The male's hand stayed tangled in her hair as he reached to his leather-clad thigh. The light screech of metal on metal echoed throughout the silent room and he tugged her head back until she felt a strain in the skin of her throat. She heard nothing but his breaths and drawing of the dagger as she heard it slide out of its sheath, reflecting deadly silver in the fluorescent faelight gleaming above them and scattering silver light onto the stone walls of the cell.
With a steady hand, the male raised his dagger to her throat.
The cold metal stung as it met her skin, its sharp edge digging into her shadow-covered skin. She was vividly aware of her blood the moment it was drawn and warmth began to leak down her neck and over her collarbones as it made its way down beneath her shirt.
Those stains would be hard to get out of the white fabric and folds of her leather holsters. She internally damned herself for choosing aesthetics over simplicity.
She damned herself for failing her mission, too.
The male was watching as her blood dripped, too, and his thick, dark lashes and mop of wavy hair looked out of place in the damp darkness of the cell. Even his lips looked oddly soft and his cheekbones elegant and abnormal in this place of violence and death. Yet, despite his beauty, the blood that stained the stones below them only proved that this might be the male's private executing room and Briar's final resting place.
No. He would not give her the honour of being here, buried below ground when she had tried to kill their Cursebreaker. He would undoubtedly dump her body into the sea or fly her out to the bog in the Middle, where she would neither rest nor rot. A death with no honour or value.
"I am going to ask you a few very simple questions," the male said, and his voice was deep and velvet-smooth and seething with hate. She squeezed her eyes shut at the sound of it. "You will answer them. Hesitate for a second and I will press this dagger deeper." Just for show, he put a little more pressure onto her neck and she hissed at the sharp pain and warmth of more blood cascading down her skin, eyes flicking open. "Resist and you'll lose those two fingers you used to draw the arrow you aimed at my High Lady."
She grit her teeth and nodded just enough for him to see and the knife to not shred into her throat. His lashes flicked up at her agreement and she was not surprised to find that his eyes did not fit in here, either, much too alluring and pretty. They were a bright hazel; a kaleidoscope of browns and golds and the slightest of greens. Briar was struck by their beauty, even as she knew that if looks could kill, she would already be six feet under.
He had not made eye contact with her for even a moment before his eyes were widening and in a flash, he had withdrawn his knife in from her throat and straightened to his full height, hazel eyes still bright and wide as he stared at her.
Perhaps he recognized her, this Spymaster of the Night Court.
Briar supposed she should be absolutely terrified of this male that stood before her. And truth be told, she was nearly shitting her pants. She had heard the stories of him, the Spymaster, and knew exactly what end came to those whom he interrogated. Her end.
But this dark-haired male didn't belong in this dungeon. In this dark and gloomy cell. He seemed much too tense to possibly be comfortable in the dark, despite the shadows that swirled round and round his wings.
She blinked away fearful tears that had begun to prick at the backs of her eyes and when she finally trained them on where he stood, she inhaled sharply in panic.
He was gone.
Briar whirled around - as much as she could while being held down by his tendrils of shadow - eyes wildly searching for him in the dark.
Perhaps he was going to creep behind her and slit her throat. Perhaps he was going to leave her there forever.
Either way, she was struck with the realization that she didn't want to die. Not here, not yet. And if she had been faced with the prospect of having to slit her throat to not be caught (Plan B), she knew she would have hesitated. Knew she wouldn't have done it.
But she would have killed. She had every intention to kill.
Perhaps it made her a monster, this innate sort of hypocrisy, because she thought that Feyre Archeron truly did deserve death after all she had done. And while Briar, too, might have deserved that same fate, she certainly didn't want it any longer.
The thought burned her, inside and out, because she was going to die. And as the Spymaster appeared in a billowing cloud of shadows, she was absolutely sure of that fact.
Because the High Lord of the Night Court stood beside him, and his blazing violet eyes and snarling lips promised death.
wowwowow first chapter done
i hope you all enjoyed this because
i am so in love with this story and
with briar because she is gonna be
a badddie. let me know if you have
any questions or anything!
love you with my whole ass heart,
lea
QOTD: what is your favourite court?
my super cool AOTD: low key the day court
because I feel like helion would be super
fun and also a great ruler. also he is hot