Naoise stood just outside the border of Velaris, as she had every day for the past 50 years.
A hand nicked in the scars of a life beyond the barrier behind her gripped at the sword hanging by her side. Yawning into her other hand and then scratching at the point of her ear, she held it out before her. Letting a breath filter in and then out, she watched her skin turn scaly and dark as the wings that twitched at every breeze between her shoulder blades. Then it rolled back as if it had never happened and all Naoise saw was the dark tan of her own skin. Free of the wrinkles she knew pulled at the mortals born five, maybe six centuries after her. The world was ever as cruel as it'd always been.
Deep within the trees sprawling before her, a branch snapped. Her feet shifted in the dirt within seconds, darkness darting into the familiar shadows and the shining silver of a sword held in front of her. When her darkness blanketing the earth returned without a soul writhing in its grasp, she relaxed and resumed her previous stance. Blood still sat in the crevices of her leather from whence she'd last killed to protect the city of starlight. A city whispered among the few to know of it, both the hopeful and those harboring poisoned hearts.
One Naoise would never admit to having spent days dreaming of when her father still lived. Walking those streets... living till the end of time by each other's sides. Focusing not on strength and fortitude and survival but the joys in life's every second.
Just as the years with him were never enough, those without would always be too many.
Something in the air shifted. Naoise jolted and focused on the darkness swirling by her ankles, watching as it swarmed the base of the barrier. One standing to protect a piece of life so divine from the cruelties she worked everyday to ward away. Until silence fell all around and it... rushed in. Just like that. Barrier gone, Velaris in her sights, in her grasp. Her fist clenched by her side. She stood and stared at the lights shining through the trees that could have easily been mistaken for sunlight, breath catching in her chest and absentmindedly slinging her sword into the sheath resting between two powerful Illyrian wings. Ignoring the lightning of spasms threatening to buckle her knees, she called the darkness to her and forced it into the modified siphon positioned just above her heart, shining with a wicked kind of depth akin to a void.
Then, as easy as breathing, Naoise's skin covered in inky black feathers, her wings warmed and shrank, and she stood in the forest as a raven, dark as night with wings too angular to be natural. But not enough to be noticeable.
Lifting off the ground, feeling more free than she had in 50 years, Naoise flew into the city of Velaris and all those dreams they'd never fulfilled. Feeling the wind sift through the layers of feathers over her skin, she focused on the light through the trees. Peeping through evergreens and great, ancient oaks like winking stars. Music and melodies meeting her halfway in flight over the trees.
Then it was there. Then she saw how it breathed with life, how a culture hidden away had grown into more than she'd ever been able to imagine. Truly imagine. Fae of all walks of life roamed cobblestone streets below her as shining beacons of life themselves, and when she saw the opportunity in an outreaching roof, Naoise landed without a sound. She tucked her wings that now seemed to glow with the same near essence of life and art as the streets below into her sides. Then, took a moment to watch, and she took a moment to feel the weight of what she'd been protecting settle into her heart. To push aside the wistful dreams she could see then for herself, her and her father walking where a high fae father and daughter did below.
That moment, same as any other for the past 500 years, was not one for mourning. The tight ache in her chest was now a familiar friend, and a reminder that he once lived, and she once had too.
Naoise shifted on the tiles of that roof above it all, and blinked to clear her vision. To set sights on what she'd waited 50 years to do. With a gentle flapping of large midnight wings that caught the brief attention of a few awed citizens, she descended into the dark alley between that building and the next. Then the raven was gone, and in its place a simple high fae, brown hair her own, ears sharper than normal, the wings upon her back merely glamored away from sight. As she stepped into the dimming light of the sky and the sparkling lights of the city around her, Naoise shifted her wings anxiously, feeling the path of the air and the breeze brush by, ushering her up the cobbled streets. Each step was measured and her arms hanging by her side, despite every effort of her own, were tense and clenched rhythmically to the click of her boots on the streets of Velaris.
Velaris... her chest tightened its hold on her heart. She was really here. Among passing laughter unburdened by a war that stained her beyond repair. 50 years but a flash of their lives passing them by, children growing and families evolving. Something she longed for an instant to know with such intimacy. But that was all it was. An instant.
It is not the time.
It never was.
Though admittedly, she'd never been much of anywhere before, Naoise had never experienced a place quite like this one. They smiled her way. Children laughed and their parents danced. A river roared beneath her feet as she passed over a bridge, gazing up as the sun continued to fall and the stars that gave this court its name winked from above. Mountains cradled the city at their heart on all sides, icy peaks and rough stone. In the side of the largest, she briefly considered a grand manor built into the side. Surely a home built for a High Lord. And it was just as the last of sunset bled from the horizon that the siphon tucked away in hiding above her heart gave a harsh tug. Naoise stumbled and continued on the course it claimed. Legs shaking once more from keeping the swirling mass of darkness always at her feet within such a feeble thing as a siphon stolen off the body of an Illyrian soldier killed at her hand when she was only 30.
And only when she stood on the doorstep of an assuming townhouse among many others did she know for certain that this was all real. The pain that traced through her bones, darkness and ice and all these powers not her own, thrummed and threatened destruction of the body she lay claim to. One that had already outlived the one before it, her mother torn apart from an ancestor's gifted powers from within at the age of 400. The lights that shone from the windows. The warmth and the fear so palpable in her own being that she tasted it as bile on her tongue. An ocean breeze tracing along the leather of her wings. The power that called to her own, stolen from an ancestor thousands of years prior, inside this home among those it ruled, and those it protected.
Then she knocked on the ornate door and surrendered to the breath that tore through her. And the fate she chose all those years ago.
Steps approached from the other side, her advanced hearing recognizing the regality in each floating clack of a heel upon the ground. Naoise straightened and shoved down the ache that begged her forth, begged the door to shatter and begged for the speeding of time. Something lodged in her throat and she shifted her stance to one of a soldier at attention before their general, clammy hands laced behind her back. It brought a sense of familiarity that slowed her heart rate down to a steady pulse, strong against her ribs. In time with swirling darkness that begged to billow over the earth. She listened not.
And then it was opening and the breath that she finally reclaimed escaped her once more. The high fae female before her... Naoise swore she'd never seen beauty on such a level. Long billowing blonde locks, a crimson dress she wore as surely as it were her own skin, and piercing brown eyes. It was none other than the Morrigan of stories and legends who was eyeing her with warranted unease and distrust.
Although Naoise had her share of legends too, and she knew this earth by a century times more.
Naoise swallowed carefully and inclined her head, brown locks of hair falling to obscure her vision for but a moment. "Good evening, Morrigan," she murmured in a low voice tinged in the darkness born with her that rasped harshly at each consonant. "I have come to speak with the High Lord of the Night Court."
The world seemed to fall silent with the utter still that took hold of Morrigan. Naoise met her sharpened gaze, unafraid. She knew how this looked. She was sure it had been days at most since his return. Days that he kept the wall that trapped those within, and kept those beyond from entering beyond a doubt, up for a few moments to deal with 50 years.
"How did you find this place?"
"Through others meaning it harm," Naoise said. "And as I am sure there are wards accountless guarding it, I am at a loss as to how I stand here."
She wasn't nearly as lost as she claimed. She'd been told of the land's acceptance to those of her family, and those of her intentions. The Night Court let her in, its High Lord had not. Least not yet.
"What of these others?"
"Their blood spilled by my hand."
Morrigan paused, mulling her over. "And who are you?"
A thin smile creased a long forgotten laugh line in her left cheek as she tilted her head to regard her carefully in turn. "Naoise."
"I'm afraid that means nothing to me."
"It is not meant to," Naoise said.
Morrigan only stifled a hostile grin that picked at the edges of her full lips.
They reached a stalemate, staring each other down with the music of Velaris ringing in their ears as a reminder to the threat she posed standing there as she was. The stars appearing in the sky ticked in her ears as mighty as a chiming clock. Finally, Naoise grew impatient enough to flit her gaze just over Morrigan's shoulder, past the marble and wood antechamber she stood in, to the layout of their living space adorned in a red carpet, wood paneled walls, and a stray painting or two. A home for sure. And with no time to react, she had encased Morrigan in a shield, binding her arms to her sides and, as gentle as could be with the gesture, nudging her to the side all while trapping any protest within that shimmering bubble of gold. Naoise spared her an apologetic nod.
Then she was striding up the wide oak staircase and past a large dining room and a lounge complete with black marble fireplace. Right to the room her darkness led her to like an unruly beast on a leash; where the High Lord awaited, no doubt wondering of the sudden silence. Yet again she had gone where others could not. Her shield fell as she gripped the doorknob and Morrigan shouted a warning down in the foyer, but she was too late. Because Naoise was opening the door, and in an instant, she was inside, the wood clicking closed behind her.
In an instant, the High Lord of the Night Court stood before her in a dark room lit by one lamp in a far corner. Light spare, darkness aplenty.
And she was a soldier again held still in his magic's grasp, staring head on into eerily familiar violet eyes. Eyes as changed and haunted as her own from the centuries since the years they once knew one another on a battlefield where they fought for much more than freedom, and much more than one race. More than any one clear ideal. Naoise couldn't help but take notice of the utter harsh beauty of his features, and the way his skin was now pale to speak for what she knew had happened. To speak for 50 years hidden behind his gaze. His lips were twisted in a positively wicked smirk of surprise and, maybe, anger.
So, now where she forced herself to remain relaxed and confident, standing in a place she'd fought to reach for so long, Rhysand was tense. He watched her with a wariness matching the grip his magic held on what he could grasp of her body, trapping her in a hold much tighter than which she'd just encased his cousin. His caution and his hold only increased when the door swung open and nails dug into the skin of her bicep. Naoise didn't so much as flinch, taking great care to hide the way she fought to shift away to prevent the brushing of a wing. Though when Morrigan gave a brief tug, a wisp of darkness slipped from her grasp and settled on the ground at the High Lord's feet. Her eyes of dark night unburdened by stars finally faltered to survey its gentle caress and she swallowed the lump in her throat. Naoise was quick to meet Rhysand's eyes again before either noticed.
She briefly glanced over her shoulder at the female gripping her. "I apologize," she rasped to both. She was grateful he had allowed her speech. "For the lack of decorum on my part."
Morrigan scoffed. "What are your intentions here, Naoise?"
"I was impatient, is all. I only wish to talk."
"Of what?"
Starless skies gazed upon violet once again, a grim hint of a smile accompanying. "The war."
Rhysand blinked and he shifted on his feet, studying her like he could see the contents of her mind. Naoise knew enough of mental guards that it was impossible, for the most part. Thus, she was not surprised when claws struck and delved into the weak outer barrier of her mind, unable to pierce where she bundled her thoughts and memories without a great deal more effort. But he did not find nothing.
After a brief pause, Rhysand smiled like she hadn't just intruded on his home, and gazed over Naoise's head. "It's alright, Mor. Give us a moment, would you?"
With a low snarl, Morrigan withdrew her hand and turned away, the door closing once more. He released every hold on her and Naoise shifted her wings, inching a step forward to avoid brushing the wood. Rhysand was smiling without a care in the world now, but the thickening of her own darkness around his ankles only intensified. As though they were more in tuned to his emotion than hers. He leaned against the desk behind him, effortlessly handsome, more so in so many ways than 500 years before. In wisdom and in the mature lines of his face and his skin. The laugh lines deeply embedded from over the years creasing with charm.
He gazed upon her with simple curiosity, but there remained a dangerous threat of cruelty as a glimmer in his eye. "I see this is not our first meeting," he purred.
"No," she confirmed. Naoise lowered her chin to gaze more intently upon him, wondering just what he remembered of her so prominently. "It is not."
"You are as... chaotic as you were then," he answered.
After all, he was Daemati. The chaos that swirled in her mind that day of the final battle had not abated in any way over the years.
"Time does not heal it all."
"No," he mused. "I suppose it doesn't."
She had a feeling whatever he'd endured in the past 50 years would remain as all that time did not mend. Did not touch. Such as so many things never would be from all the years between then and now.
Naoise steeled her nerves and met his eyes, mind as open as she would ever allow it to be as he gazed upon her every intention and even the worst of the emotions brewing within. "We may not have met before beyond those years, but I feel as though I know every inch of this court more than I know my own heart. And such as my heart, I will never wish harm upon any ventricle of its workings. Not you. And never this city."
He passed off her sentiment with a blink. Naoise found Rhysand to be nearly unreadable as he smiled to himself. His voice held a strange purr that demanded an answer, "Why have you come here?"
Silence occupied the space before her next words ripped from her throat with much more difficulty than she'd ever foreseen, "My father fell at the hands of a Hybern soldier in the last battle. Atticus was his name. You may even recognize it."
Realization seemed to dawn and Rhysand leaned a fraction closer, smirk fading for something of a truer nature. "I do. He was quite possibly one of the strongest Illyrian soldiers I have yet to meet. He served the Night Court faithfully for many years before his... disappearance."
"I'm aware," she admitted. "And that is why I am here. To carry on a tradition of a many Illyrian warrior in my ancestry."
"So you are Illyrian."
Naoise nodded simply.
"Your glamor is strong." Rhysand didn't sound like he appreciated it much, however.
Despite that, her lip ticked up briefly. "Why thank you." And then the glamor dropped and she briefly stretched her wings to the sides, wingspan in plain view. They returned to their place beside and above her and she felt all at once whole once more as they framed her with dark powerful leather and thick talons.
There was something simply intoxicating of another being gazing upon such a form of power they too had intimate knowledge of, acknowledging her own.
Rhysand returned to the topic at hand. "And what tradition is this?"
She swallowed heavily and then, as her chin rose and her hands fell to her sides, she accepted what she ought to have long ago. "As my father before me, and all those before him, I pledge the rest of my years to the prosperity and the security of this Court," she said.
Her tone was matter of fact, not much different from all else she spoke but something weighed heavier. Especially when she slowly descended to kneel on the ground, palm pressed to the ground of the court she was forfeiting her life for, wings flaring slightly to cast shadows that hid the darkness seeping from her hold. Her gaze daren't waver from his, because it was to him, too, that she was pledging herself.
He seemed frozen despite the nonchalant raise of his brows and his hands shoved in his pockets, for whatever reason she did not know. The first hint of something grander than whatever her life had meant before strung from her soul to his. Perhaps he could feel it.
Naoise continued in a grave proclamation, "It will not fall if I still stand and I will not stand if it falls. Its people's hearts beat with mine and its rivers run with my blood. This I promise to the leaders of this land, and this, I promise to all."
Then she felt it all. Just as her father had whispered in the dark when she was young and troubled with the nightmares of a home left behind. Of the females she saw as herself years in the future, clipped, beaten, lesser and never allowed to be more.
He cradled her hand in his, both feeling the loss of her mother and his wife, and whispered, "Our pledge has always been more than an oath, a promise easily broken. In reality, it is our binding to every citizen of the Night Court. A bargain we strike, and we strike alone, with the mother and the cauldron. You will feel their heartbeats as your own, and harm upon them is harm upon you." He grasped her cheeks in his hands and stared into her eyes, intent in a way that captivated her and always had. "It is dangerous, my dear. But it is also so much more."
And it was.
It raced in her heart with the beating of thousands of others, her blood roared in her ears like the river she'd only just seen rushing past, and her mind widened with an awareness of every fae and every creature that the land of the Night Court called its own. With a grimace, she hung her head and her hand raised to feel the beating hearts of them all.
Those children. Those families. Morrigan, worried and angry just outside the door. Then her hair parted around her face as she glanced up and met the High Lord of the Night Court's eyes. Even Rhysand's heart beat a steady, jumping tempo in her chest. Confusion, sudden compassion, but mostly... fear.
She felt the songs of their emotions like a technical pianist knew the keys of a melody. Listened. Observed. Orchestrated and did their best to help them along. But not even the saddest of songs could sway her heart to feel what they did to its true extent. Knowledge, not becoming.
It made her smile even as she pushed to her feet with the slightest sway and said, "I'm sorry I waited so long. I was not here when I may have been needed most. But I am now, and I will never be too far, not for them, and not for you, Lord Rhysand."
Rhysand nodded and she did not miss how he swallowed. "This oath," he began. "It's binding? Truly?"
"As any bargain," she said.
His gaze sharpened. "Bargain?"
"Would you like to see?"
His lips twitched as if to pull into a cocky smirk but instead he just chuckled and waved a flippant hand, the dark Illyrian tattoos twisting up his arms dancing with the darkness he had yet to see, still settled at his feet like a blanket in winter.
So she exhaled and the simple high fae she'd been masquerading as was no more. The tips of her ears blunted just slightly behind her hair, she grew by a few inches, and dotted over the Illyrian armor she wore, six siphons glimmered. The lines of her face sharpened almost ruthlessly. It came with a tinge of relief. He eyed it all with genuine interest, specifically the different colors of nearly every siphon, until she held out an arm and where tan skin once prevailed, the black markings of a bargain covered it in swirls, almost like the swell and glow of the stars overhead. Her heart ached to see the mark of her father, and all those before him sinking into her skin. Joining her to them at long blessed last.
This is not the time. Her eyes burned defiantly. And she blinked but once to clear it away and inclined her head to her High Lord. "You must first understand that this is not for you, but for Velaris, and for the Court of Nightmares as a whole. For Illyria in the mountains and for the dead of this court."
Rhysand smirked almost boyishly. "Of course," he murmured.
"I will serve to whatever end required. As you have these past 50 years, and for as long as my heart still beats."
It was the most earnest of promises she could make. Because it was one thing to protect a land. But it was another entirely to do what he had. And she knew in that moment as their hearts beat with hers, that she would not hesitate to do the same, only so she could shoulder the burden he held on his own.
When she hid and when she shied from fate, forcing it upon another.
Then Rhysand was straightening and picking at some invisible piece of lint on the shoulder of his embroidered tunic, smiling coy and yet genuinely. She felt the pounding of his overwhelming emotion in her chest and laced her hands behind her back once more, wings flaring uncomfortably. Naoise resisted the urge to glance away.
Naoise couldn't have guessed what he would do next. And as the High Lord of the Court that now hummed in her bones bowed low at the waist, her mouth grew dry.
Rhysand said, "Thank you."
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