𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟎
"𝘔𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 "
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╰┈˚ · ° . ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪʀꜱᴛ ᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴍᴀɪ ᴅɪᴅ after a long bath was looking for her sister.
She knocked on her door waiting for her voice to invite her in.
But it never came.
The human girl slowly opened the door, calling her sister's name softly. Looking around she found her at the end of her bed shaking, still covered in blood.
"Fey" Mai whispered, approaching her slowly. She didn't answer.
Maiven closed her eyes for a second. Her own emotion still muffled by the thick walls that she had created but she knew that her sister needed her. So she took Feyre's hands in hers. Her eyes snapped to meet Maiven's as tears started to pour down her cheeks.
"It's okay, you are safe now" Mai whispered calmly trying to soothe her twin.
The younger girl sat next to her sibling on the bed letting out a small breath before bringing her twin in her arms, hugging her tightly. Feyre's body shook with sobs as her sister stroked her hair trying to soothe her.
After minutes of crying Feyre calmed enough to start talking
"I'm sorry" She said quietly
"For what? You have nothing to be sorry for Fey" Mai replied with a soft tone
"I left you. You could have died"
At her response Maiven took her face between her hands
"I told you to run. If it makes you feel better you would have been a distraction" She said teasingly trying to lighten up the mood a bit "You did nothing wrong Feyre. Understood?" She continued with a more firm tone. The older Archeron just nodded even if still unsure.
"C'mon you need a bath" Maiven said earning a chuckle from her sister
They spent the couple hours before dinner together. Mai helped her bathe and they talked like they often did back in the cottage. Something that the younger girl really missed.
Eventually they both made their way into the dining room. Lucien and Tamlin already there waiting for them at the table.
"Good evening," Maiven said, moving to her usual seat. Lucien cocked his head in a silent inquiry, and she gave him a subtle nod as she sat down. His secret was still safe
Lucien slouched a bit in his chair. "I heard you three had a rather exciting afternoon. I wish I could have been there to help. Well, you two still look lovely, regardless of your Hell-sent afternoon." He said making the younger girl snort
"I thought faeries couldn't lie." Feyre said looking at the red haired fae
Tamlin choked on his wine, but Lucien grinned, that scar stark and brutal. "Who told you that?"
"Everyone in the mortal lands knows it," Mai said, piling food on her plate "Fools" she added
Feyre looked at her sister frowning
"I forgot to mention it. Sorry. They can lie"
Lucien leaned back in his chair, smiling with feline delight. "Of course we can lie. We find lying to be an art. And we lied when we told those ancient mortals that we couldn't speak an untruth. How else would we get them to trust us and do our bidding?"
"Iron?" She managed to say.
"Doesn't do us a lick of harm. Only ash, as you well know."
"Even though Lucien revealed some of our closely guarded secrets," Tamlin said, throwing the last word at his companion with a growl, "we've never used your misinformation against you." His gaze met hers. "We never willingly lied to you." He then turned to Mai "But you already knew. How did you know?"
"It's a closely guarded secret. I apologize, High Lord" Maiven answered mockingly
"Can you stop doing that?" He growled
"Doing what, High Lord" She replied faking innocence
He closed his eyes for a second trying to calm his blooming anger before reopening them and turning towards Feyre
"Are you feeling ... better?" Though he had his chin propped on a fist, concern—and perhaps surprise at that concern—shone in his eyes.
Feyre swallowed hard. "If I never encounter a naga again, I'll consider myself fortunate."
"What were you doing out in the western woods?"
"I heard a legend once about a creature who answers your questions, if you can catch it."
Tamlin flinched as his claws shot out, slicing his face. But the wounds closed as soon as they opened, leaving only a smear of blood running down his golden skin—which he wiped away with the back of his sleeve. "You went to catch the Suriel."
"We caught the Suriel," She corrected.
"And did it tell you what you wanted to know?"
"We were interrupted by the naga before it could tell me anything worthwhile."
His mouth tightened. "I'd start shouting, but I think today was punishment enough." He shook his head. "You actually snared the Suriel. A human girl."
"Human girls. I was there too, you know" Maiven mumbled under her breath
"Is it supposed to be hard?" Feyre asked
He chuckled, then fished something out of his pocket. "Well, if I'm lucky, I won't have to trap the Suriel to learn what this is about." He lifted a piece of paper "Unusual? Queue? Slaying? Conflagration?"He elencked
"Good night," Feyre said, barely more than a whisper
Maiven furrowed her eyebrows at her sister's sudden departure not understanding what exactly was going on.
Feyre was nearly at the door when he spoke again. "You love them very much, don't you?" He rose from his chair to walk to her. He stopped a respectable distance away. "I wonder if your family realizes it," he murmured, glazing for a second at Mai "That everything you've done wasn't about that promise to your mother, or for your sake, but for theirs."
Of course that damn promise
Mai clenched her jaw, not listening anymore to what they were talking about as she stared at her left hand that rested on her lap. At the thick scar in the center of the palm.
Her eyes clouded for a second before she quickly shook it away returning to her dinner. For a second the wall around her heart, around her mind, shook by the force of her emotion but she held them together. Hardening them even more.
"How did you do it?" Lucien asked in almost a whisper "How did you kill those three nagas and how do you know things about faeries that your sister doesn't" He asked. He was confused. Very confused by the look on his face
Maiven looked at him contemplating how much she should reveal to him or if she should reveal anything at all
"I would like to know that too," Tamlin said, sitting down in his chair. The human glanced back to see if her sister was there too but she wasn't
"I didn't always lived with my family" Maiven replied coldly
"When we left your house I glamoured your family" He said "And I discovered something interesting. There was already a glamour on them "
Mai looked back at him already knowing why there was already a glamour on them. But her face showed nothing.
"It seems that you went to your aunt Ripleigh 9 years ago. For four years, actually" The High Lord revealed
"Yes I know" She replied unbothered. Calm and collected.
"Would you like to explain?"
"No" She simply answered
"Why?"
"Because it is none of your business. And if you are questioning yourself if Feyre knows about this, the answer is yes. All you need to know is that I am here for Feyre and I'll protect her with any means" Maiven spoke. Carefully lacing her words with the coldness that radiate from her heart
He was really getting on her nerves
"Feyre is not in any danger" Tamplin replied
"Then we should not have any problem" She answered, raising from her seat "Good night Lucien." The human added before walking out of the dining room and to her room
•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•
╰┈˚ · ° . Her body screamed in pain as she laid there on the cold floor. Her mind screamed at her to get up and fight or she would die.
Maiven was covered in blood, her own blood. Bruises were already forming on half of her body.
She counted to three in her mind before taking a big breath and stood up from the floor with a groan
"Never show your pain" Braken said with deadly calm.
He never yelled. His voice was always the same, calm, strong, cold and deadly.
The girl clenched her jaw and regained her fighting position as Braken gave a nod to the man in front of her.
He was older. Probably in his mid thirties. Decades older than her 12 year old self. Twice as big.
The man fought against her, landing another punch to her already swollen cheek.
The little girl fought back her tears and groans of pain as she found herself on the ground once again. And another time she rose from the floor attacking her opponent with the last few drops of energy that she had left.
It was in vain as he easily threw her down to the floor. Mai was exhausted. She could not move anymore and black spots appeared in her vision. But that was what this training session was about.
She blinked, fighting against the need to succumb to the darkness.
"You did good, my little creature" He said crouching next to her on the ground. A smile on his lips before he nodded at the man again.
Mai let out a last breath knowing what would come next and she knew that when she would wake up she would already be healed almost completely by whatever magic the Fae possessed or from one of the healing potions.
The man landed his last blow leaving the 12 years-old unconscious on the ground with a last kick to her head.
•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•
╰┈˚ · ° . Mai woke up with a gasp, shaking. The memorie was from when she was 12 in one of his training sessions. They were always the worst.
She ran her hands through her sweat-damp hair. As her panting eased, a different sound filled the air, creeping in from the front hall through the crack beneath the door. Shouts, and someone's screams.
She was out of her bed in a heartbeat
Maiven changed from her nightwear and quickly walked out of the room, blending herself with the shadows with silent steps .
She reached the top of the grand staircase in time to see the front doors of the manor bang open and Tamlin rush in, a screaming faerie slung over his shoulder.
The faerie was almost as big as Tamlin, and yet the High Lord carried him as if he were no more than a sack of grain. Another species of the lesser faeries, with his blue skin, gangly limbs, pointed ears, and long onyx hair. But even from atop the stairs, Mai could see the blood gushing down the faerie's back—blood from the black stumps protruding from his shoulder blades.
Lucien rushed into the foyer below just as Tamlin shouted, "The table—clear it off!" Lucien shoved the vase of flowers off the long table in the center of the hall. Either Tamlin wasn't thinking straight, or he'd been afraid to waste the extra minutes bringing the faerie to the infirmary. Shattering glass set her feet moving, and she was halfway down the stairs before Tamlin eased the shrieking faerie face-first onto the table. The faerie wasn't wearing a mask; there was nothing to hide the agony contorting his long, unearthly features.
"Scouts found him dumped just over the borderline," Tamlin explained to Lucien "He's Summer Court."
"By the Cauldron," Lucien said, surveying the damage.
"My wings," the faerie choked out, his glossy black eyes wide and staring at nothing. "She took my wings."
"She took my wings," said the faerie. "She took my wings," he repeated, clutching the edge of the table with spindly blue fingers.
Whoever she was, she hadn't just taken his wings. She'd ripped them off.
Blood oozed from the black velvety stumps on the faerie's back. The wounds were jagged— cartilage and tissue severed in what looked like uneven cuts. As if she'd sawed off his wings bit by bit. "She took my wings," the faerie said again, his voice breaking. As he trembled, shock taking over, his skin shimmered with veins of pure gold—iridescent, like a blue butterfly.
"Keep still," Tamlin ordered, wringing the rag. "You'll bleed out faster."
"N-n-no," the faerie started, and began to twist onto his back, away from Tamlin, from the pain that was surely coming when that rag touched those raw stumps.
Maiven rushed into the foyer pinning the faerie to the table as gentle as she could still with a firm grip
She looked to Lucien, but the color had blanched from his face, leaving a sickly white-green in its wake.
"Lucien," Tamlin said—a quiet command. But Lucien kept gaping at the faerie's ruined back, at the stumps, his metal eye narrowing and widening, narrowing and widening. He backed up a step. And another. And then vomited in a potted plant before sprinting from the room.
The faerie twisted again and she held tight. His injuries must have weakened him greatly if she could keep him pinned down. "Please," Mai breathed. "Please hold still."
"She took my wings," the faerie sobbed. "She took them."
"I know," the human murmured, her fingers aching. "I know."
Tamlin touched the rag to one of the stumps making the faerie scream loudly.
He tried to rise but his arms buckled, and he collapsed face- first onto the table again.
Blood gushed—so fast and bright that it took Mai a heartbeat to realize that a wound like this required a tourniquet—and that the faerie had lost far too much blood for it to even make a difference. It poured down his back and onto the table, where it ran to the edge and drip-drip-dripped to the floor near her feet.
Maiven found Tamlin's eyes on her. "The wounds aren't clotting," he said under his breath as the faerie panted.
"Can't you use your magic?" She asked
Tamlin swallowed hard. "No. Not for major damage. Once, but not any longer."
The faerie on the table whimpered, his panting slowing. "She took my wings," he whispered. Tamlin's green eyes flickered, and she knew that the faerie was going to die. Death wasn't just hovering in this hall; it was counting down the faerie's remaining heartbeats.
Maiven exhaled before taking one of the faerie's hands in hers. The skin there was almost leathery, and, perhaps more out of reflex than anything, his long fingers wrapped around hers, covering them completely. "She took my wings," he said again, his shaking subsiding a bit.
The human girl brushed the long, damp hair from the faerie's half-turned face, revealing a pointed nose and a mouth full of sharp teeth. His dark eyes shifted to mine, beseeching, pleading.
"It will be alright," She said, stroking his limp hair, its texture like liquid night "It will be alright." The faerie closed his eyes, and she tightened her grip on his hand.
Maiven didn't really know what to do. She never did things like this. Emotions were not something that she knew how to deal with. Her years as an assassin made her heart cold because that was what she needed to do to survive. But as she heard the pained screams of the faerie, her head heavied under the weight of her memories. Screams, death, pain.
"My wings." the faerie whispered.
"You'll get them back." Maiven whispered
The faerie struggled to open his eyes. "You swear?"
"Yes."
The faerie managed a slight smile and closed his eyes again.
Tamlin began speaking, and Mai glanced up to see him take the faerie's other hand.
"Cauldron save you," he said, reciting the words of a prayer that was probably older than the mortal realm. "Mother hold you. Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey. Fear no evil. Feel no pain." Tamlin's voice wavered, but he finished. "Go, and enter eternity."
The faerie heaved one final sigh, and his hand went limp.
Maiven took a step back swallowing the lump in her throat before turning her attention to the blond Fae next to her
"Are you alright?" She asked to the High Lord
He whipped his head to her, probably surprised that the girl actually uttered a word that it wasn't for mockery or full of dislikeness for him.
"Why?" He asked confused
"Why what?"
"You don't care about me and you don't care about my people, so why did you hold his hand while he was suffering, while he was dying?" His face was contorted in confusion that it was almost comical. But everything she could feel in that moment, everything that she could think of, was that she too had died. Long time ago. And she was alone.
"Because no one did it for me,"
✎
˗ˏˋ 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ˊˎ˗
Hello everyone! New chapter!
The next one is Calanmai!
Anyway please if you liked this chapter, leave a comment and a star. I really appreciate it.
𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞!
– 𝐋𝐨𝐥𝐚 ☾