♚✭♛
She has spend a total of two days before Rhysand relented, first.
Aadya didn't want to leave, the court that has so much life. Everywhere she turned it was like a sun shining it's light on her. She spent her two days, with Helion and the members of the Day Court helping them restore the damage that was made by Amarantha.
While she was not spending the day chatting with Helion or reparing the damage, Aadya spent the rest of her time apologizing. For all the people she killed in the fifty years, Prythain endured the blight of Amarantha. Eventhough, she killed people under Amarantha's command, she wanted to ease her temper. Not all the apologies to people of the Day Court went smoothly.
While some understood her dilemma and forgave her, some people didn't. The Fae family of the last man she killed from the Day court, pushed her out of their home, and even came close to attack her, but stopped themselves. But their words kept ringing in her head, even as she sat with her friend, a drink in her hand.
"You deserve everything that is to come. You will destroy everything you love, just like your love suffocated your brother."
There were not wrong. She hated that they were right.
Aadya was snapped out of her thoughts when she felt a familiar pull in her heart. Rhys was calling on her. As soon as she stood up, Helion stood up with her, pouting. Sometimes she really couldn't believe he was a High Lord of Prythain. "Do you really have to go?"
"Yes." Aadya deadpanned, making Helion huff in defeat.
"Rhys is not going to stop calling. He is relentless." Aadya tried to convince him, or herself. Helion gave her a look that said he knew why she was really going, but held in his comments.
"Screw that, bastard." Helion said. And Aadya once again wondered what happened between the High Lord of the Night and Day, but she didn't voice her questions. It was not her place to get in between them.
"I might," Aadya teased Helion's wording, who made a throwing up face sticking his tongue out, at her twisting his words and insinuation.
And pushed her shoulders playfully.
"That's gross. Get out of here."
Aadya let out a laugh, and embraced Helion in a warm hug, who hugged her back. "Don't be a stranger, Aadya." He said as they both pulled away, with smiles on their face.
"I'll try not to."
♚✭♛
Rhys and Feyre stood before the table, as the map spread across it. A map of Prythain--and Hybern.
Every court in the land had been marked, along with villages and cities and rivers and mountain passes. Every court. . .but the Night Court.
The vast, northern territory was utterly blank. Not even a mountain range had been etched in. Strange, likely part of some strategy that Feyre didn't understand. Rhys turned to her and jerked his chin toward the map on the wall. "What do you see?"
"Is this some sort of way of convincing me to embrace my reading lessons?" Feyre couldn't decipher any of the writing, only the shapes of things. Like the wall, it's massive line bisecting their world.
"Tell me what you see."
The answer didn't come from Feyre, but from the doorway, where Aadya stood with arms crossed leaning against the door with her legs crossed. "A world divided in two."
Rhys' lips twitched at her words as he looked up from the map at the woman that stood with a smirk on her lips. But there was something definitely different he just couldn't put his finger on it. "And do you think it should remain that way, Aadya darling?" Only to receive a nonchalant shrug as she pushed of the door and entered the room and turned to Feyre.
"What do you think Feyre?"
"My family--" she halted, not wanting to say it front of Rhys who continued her words.
"Your human family," Rhys finished, "would be deeply impacted if the wall came down, wouldn't they? So close to it's border. . . If they're lucky, they'll flee across the ocean before it happens."
"Will it happen?"
Aadya didn't break her stare with Rhys as she answered Feyre. "Maybe."
"Why?"
"Because war is coming, Feyre Archeron."
♚✭♛
Feyre felt her veins freezing.
"Don't invade," she breathed. She would kneel at their feets if she has too. "Don't invade-- please."
Rhys cocked his head, his mouth tightening but Aadya was the one answered her plea. "Why not?"
"Please," she gasped out. "They're defenseless, they won't stand a chance--"
"I'm not going to invade the mortal lands," Rhys said too quietly. Feyre gave him a grateful smile before turning to Aadya who stood near the windowsill.
"As I said before. Why not? This is not my kingdom you know. When Prythain separated from my ancestors rule, they lost their right to ask for help or guarantee that we won't invade." She then turned to Rhys, who was absorbing the new information about Aadya, "She still doesn't have the ability to shield her thoughts. Your times up."
"Put your damn shield up, Feyre," he growled.
When Feyre didn't seem to be putting her shield up, to tired after thinking about her family and the sudden war threat-- Aadya's was came out in a sing-song tone, "Still no shield."
"Shield. Now."
The commanding tone of the High Lord of the Night Court sent a shiver of raw fear down Feyre's spine and had her acting on instinct, and her exhausted mind building the wall brick by brick. Only when it'd ensconced her mind, Aadya let out a hum a hum of approval. "Nice." She then turned to Rhys, her playful expression dropping.
"Now why don't you tell me what is happening in Prythain, Rhys."
When Aadya stood up from her seat to walk to the map, Feyre was quick to sit down in it, putting her head between her knees in pain, while keeping up her shield due to Aadya's constant prodding at her shield, even as she talked with Rhys. "Did you really think it would end with Amarantha?"
"I knew it won't. What I want to know is why am I here and not talk about Amarantha with any one of you in Prythain."
"The King of Hybern has been planning his campaign to reclaim the world south of the wall for over a hundred years," Rhys began, choosing his words carefully due to Feyre present in the room. "Amarantha was an experiment-- a forty-nine-year test, to see how easily and how long a territory might fall and be controlled by one of his commanders."
Aadya rolled her eyes at Rhysand's information. "This is old news. Don't forget that I was with Amarantha, when she came to Prythain which would indicate. . ." She trailed waving her hand for Rhys to continue.
"You were in Hybern before," Rhys finished her sentence, gritting it through his teeth, angry at what she had to go through in Hybern.
"Yes. So I will ask again, why does this concern me?"
"Prythain," Rhys said, pointing to the map, at the massive island of Prythain ok the table, "is all that stands between the King of Hybern and the continent. He wants to reclaim the human lands there-- perhaps seize the Faerie lands, too. If anyone is to intercept his conquering fleet before he reaches the continent, it would be us. And don't pretend you don't care, Aadya. I know you do. If you didn't you would have never come." When Aadya remained silent at his words, he allowed himself a bit of hope that she would stay and continued.
"He will seek to remove Prythain from his way swiftly and thoroughly," Rhys continued. "And shatter the wall at some point in the process. 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."
Each word about the wall was like a nail to Aadya's head. "No," her voice raised unintentionally. "He can't take down the wall. No one can and knows how except--" she stopped herself from telling too much and looked at Rhys who was watching her with an unreadable face, as she became more angry with him being so calm.
"Did. . .did you both fight in the War?" Feyre's scared voice cut through the tension of the room.
Rhys looked towards Aadya hoping she might say something about her, but she looked far away. He sighed before nodded. "I was young-- by our standards, at least. But my father had sent aid to the mortal-faerie alliance on the continent, and I convinced him to let me take a legion of our soldiers." He walked towards Aadya and pulled her to his side, and started drawing small circles on her wrist to calm the fear that was so evident on her pale face. "I was stationed in the south, right where the fighting was thickest. The slaughter was. . ." He stopped when he felt a shiver run up Aadya's arm, that was in his. "I have no interest in ever seeing full-scale slaughter like that again."
Feyre and Rhysand both turned towards Aadya, who still stood like a statue, as Rhys spoke, "We know you have some history with the Hybern King. You have to tell us something about it, so we can stop another Great War from happening, Aadya." Rhysand's soft voice snapped her out of the trance as she looked at Rhysand with such pain that nearly brought him to his knees.
"No. . .no I can't. I can't think of it. . .not again," Aadya was hyperventilating at this point. Her breaths were coming short and heavy as she leaned on Rhys for support to stand straight.
Rhys turned her to face him, and saw the pure terror that was under all the mask she had. The one that didn't know how to live, because all she has ever done was survive. And that broke his heart, piece by piece. "Look at me, Aadya." When she didn't, he hooked his palm behind her neck. "Aadya."
This time, her eyes raised at the low commanding voice to look at his purple eyes, piercing through her dark barriers. "You are not there. You are here with me. All you have to do is tell us the bare minimum. I am here, Aadya. And I'm not going anywhere."
The conviction in his voice gave her, some hope that he really wouldn't leave. She nodded at him, indicating she was fine to stand on her own making Rhys pull away but his hands never left hers.
"As you already know that I was transferred to Hybern from my initial prison, if you want to call it that. I didn't know what the King needed me for, but as soon as I got wind about the War, I knew he was planning to use me." Rhys' hand went stiff beside her and his hold on her hand tightened. Feyre was concerned but she held together to listen to Aadya.
"He used me as a battery, to suck my energy out and give it to his troops. Only because of my powers did the Hybern lasted the war for so long. But after 300 years when the War ended by the treaty, he didn't. . . He didn't let me go. He said it was my punishment to suffer for the next two hundred years for something I did. I-- I cre----" her voice stuck in her throat as she turned to Rhys desperate. And he understood her silent plea, she didn't want to tell more.
"It's okay."
She let out a sigh of relief, and she pulled away from his hands to pour herself some water, as both Rhysand and Feyre processed the new information. Aadya regained her voice and the indifference slipped on as she turned back to the both of them. "So yeah. After 500 years I came back to Prythain." She blinked as if erasing the horrors she endured in her head and placed her hands on the map, as she inspected it.
"But I don't think the King of Hybern will strike that way-- not at first. He's to answer to waste his forces here, to give the continent time to really while we fight him. If he makes his move to destroy Prythain and the wall, it'll be through stealth and trickery. To weaken you all. Amarantha was the first part of the plan. Now Prythain has several untested High Lords, broken courts with High Priestess," Aadya spit out the title, "angling for control like wolves around carcass,and a people who have realised how powerless they truly might be."
"Why are you telling me this?" Feyre said, her voice thin, scratchy.
Aadya walked away from the map to the windowsill as she looked towards the direction of Under the Mountain as she answered Feyre.
"I don't know why Rhys is willing to tell you, but I'm tell this to you for solely one reason," she began, as regained control of the wind and slowly waved her hand to calm it down. "One, you're close to Tamlin, whatever that entails. He has men-- but he also has long-existing ties to Hybern--"
"He'd never help the king--"
Aadya held up a hand. "I know who Tamlin is better than you Feyre, you need to start accepting that. In the first war, he sided with Hybern against humans, I saw every gore things he did in name of obeying his father. I want you to find out whether he will fight with us, against Hybern."
"He doesn't inform me of those things."
"Perhaps it's time he did. Perhaps it's time you insisted," Aadya snapped at Feyre, who considered her words before turning to see the vulnerable human territory in the map. She then turned to Rhys.
"What is your reason?"
Rhys didn't look up from the map as he answered. "Rumor has it you caught a Suriel."
"It wasn't that hard."
Aadya snorted in amusement at the statement as she turned to Feyre, with a sly look. "Did you really think that the Suriel, a creature with unimaginable knowledge was caught by you using a dead rooster?"
Feyre started thinking back, as to why the Suriel actually came. It didn't take a lot to connect the dots. "It came because of you," she breathed to Aadya in amazement. "You directed its way to me so I could get answers." Aadya just shurgged in return.
"Tamlin won't allow it." Aadya groaned in annoyance at Feyre's statement.
"Tamlin isn't your keeper, and you know it."
"I'm his subject, and he is my High Lord---"
"You are no one's subject."
Feyre went rigid at Aadya's angry tone. She was sure that her pupils went a little darker.
"I will say this once-- and only one," Aadya began, stalking to the map that was hanged on the wall. "You can be a pawn, be someone's reward, and spend the rest of your immortal life boring and scraping and pretending you're less than Tamlin, than Ianthe, than any of the High Lords. If you want to pick that road, then fine. A shame, but it's your choice." She turned back and pinned Feyre with an glare. "But I know you-- more than you realize, because at one point of my life I was you. I think--and I don't believe for one Dan minute that you're remotely fine with being a pretty trophy for someone who sat on his ass for fifty years, then sat on his ass while you were shredded apart---"
"Stop it---"
"Or," Aadya plowed ahead, "you've got another voice. You can make, me resurrecting you count for something. You can play a role in this way. Because war is coming one way or another, and do not try to delude yourself that any of the Fae will give a shit about your family across the wall of the humans. They didn't do anything the first time, they won't do anything now, not when their whole territory is likely to become a charnel house."
Feyre stared at the map-- at Prythain, and the sliver of land at its southern base.
"You want to save the mortal realm?" Aadya asked. "Become a weapon. Because there might be a day, Feyre, when I am going to stop caring who I destroy in the process to end the life of the Hybern King. And you, nor anyone in Prythain want that. Especially not your defenseless Human family."
With that Aadya left the room, clipping Rhys' shoulder on the way out. Rhysand sighed in defeat, at not being able to get to Aadya's true thoughts that she has behind the harsh words she spat out. He watched as Feyre's eyes lifted to meet his, as her eyes glazed over. She looked so much like his sister. He shook the thought out, as he advised Feyre, in a much more calmer way than Aadya.
"Think it over. Take the week. Ask Tamlin, if it'll make you sleep better. See what charming Ianthe says about it. But in the end it must be your choice to make-- no one else's."
With that he followed the way Aadya walked out of the room, but stopped at the threshold as he dropped another metaphorical lighting on Feyre's head.
"Oh and your will be learning to read, write and shield your mind from Aadya."
♚✭♛