Chapter Text
Feyre sat on the highest parapet of Vallahan's stronghold, looking out into the darkness. She couldn't see much, given that it was well past midnight by now. But she could make out the dull roil of the sea peeking through the gap in the mountains. That thin line marking the horizon. Lysandra sat in silence by her side.
They’d spoken casually here and there, though nothing moving enough to last very long. Mostly it was petty gossip; which wasn’t exactly Feyre’s specialty, but it provided a decent enough distraction from her swirling thoughts.
"Mor doesn't seem to like me,” Lysandra had remarked at one point.
"She's wary of shifters."
"Why?"
Feyre had sighed. “Sibila is a shifter. I'm not sure where she came from, to be honest. I never learned much about her after she arrived in our court. Not before I left it, at least."
Lysandra had hummed in contemplation, and that was the end of it.
They’d gone straight to the war room after arriving home—well, Feyre had. They didn’t arrive together, or even remotely within the same timeframe. After Velaris was just a hateful speck of light behind her, Feyre had steered Nithe as high as she would go—well above the clouds, until she thought she might be so far away from the world that only the stars would hear her scream.
And scream she did; she laid her forehead against Nithe’s neck, offered an apology to the poor beast, then threw her head back and screamed so violently that she was shaking and out of air by the end of it.
Then she heaved a breath and did it again.
If Lysandra heard her, she didn't say. Feyre had stayed above the clouds for the entire flight, letting the frigid air numb her face and hands to the bone.
Lysandra was already in the war room when Feyre arrived at the planned debriefing. But Fenrys still didn’t talk to her, and actually appeared to be actively avoiding her. Aedion probably would've said something snide—if it weren't for the sharp stomp on his foot that he'd received, courtesy of Lysandra's heeled boots. He'd grunted in pain, snarled at his wife, then limped over to the window and glared in silence for the rest of the meeting. Nesta’s face seemed permanently pinched anytime they were in the same room. Mor had been quiet and withdrawn.
None of them had hashed anything out yet, but she owed them all explanations: why she'd hidden this from everyone, including her sisters. Why, despite her revelation in that meeting, she still hadn't been willing to sit with them afterwards and pick apart everything Sibila had said, cluing them in on every reference and suggestion that only this new knowledge could make sense of.
Why she wouldn’t tell them what really haunted her. It was Nyx’s death, yes. Always. But it was something else, too, and they knew it.
Especially Mor.
Feyre sighed, tilting her face to the sky.
“Want to talk about it?”
Vallahan was secluded enough that no lights from any neighboring cities polluted the night. She could see the stars perfectly. She could count them, if she wanted. Maybe she’d stay up here all night doing that.
But the stars reminded her of Rhys. And she didn’t want to look at them anymore.
"They're angry with me,” she said finally, dropping her gaze back to the horizon.
"For keeping this from them?"
"Yes . . . and no." She took a deep breath. She couldn't lay herself bare to her friends just yet . . . but maybe she could do it with a stranger. "Because they know I'm keeping more."
Lysandra glanced over but didn't say anything. Her companionship was comforting in that way; silent and soothing, giving her the company to share if she wished it, or simply an ear to listen if she didn't.
So she stared at the sea.
After a moment, she said, "Mor knows Rhys about as well as I know him. And she can probably tell that this reaction is wrong. That everything he's doing is . . . it doesn't fit the situation."
Lysandra considered, then asked, "In what way?"
Feyre kept her eyes on that dark edge beyond the mountains, wondering whether she could see waves from this far out if she squinted hard enough. Trying to disassociate from what she was about to say.
"He was heartsick over Nyx," she heard herself whisper, although she didn't quite register ever commanding her mouth to speak. "My pregnancy and labor were . . . very difficult. It was a miracle we both survived," she smiled slightly at the memory. "An actual miracle, and a very long story." She shook her head. "But he was protective of Nyx after that. Of us both. So when . . . when—"
Unbidden, unwanted, the tears came.
Damnit, damnit, damnit, she scolded herself. Lysandra didn't speak, just continued to offer her quiet company.
She couldn't—wouldn't—talk about when Nyx died. Maybe she never would again.
"It was a while later that he came to me. Days, I think. I don't know. Weeks?" she shrugged. "But he'd found something. We all grieve differently. I spiral," she offered a blubbering, half-laugh and wiped at her eyes. "And forget to eat. Or laugh. Or get out of bed. Rhysand . . . he does things. And this time he went mad with research. Day and night he was trying to find answers, willing to singe every being across every world if it meant avenging Nyx. And then he remembered something. It was old research—something completely unrelated to the Asteri." she shrugged. "You saw it—his orrery. He loves that thing. He was looking for information on a world that . . ." How could she explain Amren? She palmed her forehead, realizing like a fool that this was such a convoluted story, that so much background was needed for someone to understand it, and she just didn't have the energy or the willingness to get into it. She sighed. "We had a friend who came from another world. That's a long story, too." She looked over at Lysandra.
The woman's face was patient and kind as ever, but an eyebrow was quirked in amusem*nt.
Feyre laughed.
Laughed.
A short, sad thing, but a real laugh. Something that she hadn't done in years. It was enough of a spark in her withered, broken heart that she kept talking.
"He wanted information on her home planet. They'd been searching for it for a while." Her smile began to fade, the brief jubilee of the moment disappearing with it. "Anyway. He remembered something he'd read. Something about a male—man—from that planet who'd lost his family in an accident. A scientist I think they called him—I'm not too sure, their language always confused me. The loss drove him mad. But he kept a journal about his attempts to bring them back."
Lysandra stared at her, then asked carefully, "Bring them back how?"
Feyre nodded. "That's the question he asked."
She was silent for a moment, then, “You said it was a god of gods."
"It is, in a way." Feyre slid her gaze over, sighing. “Throughout all of the worlds he’s studied, at least, it is a constant. Maybe not exactly the same in every world, but it exists, and it rules everything. Even the gods.”
Lysandra waited.
Feyre looked out once more at the sea. “Time,” she murmured. “It’s time itself.”
Lysandra blinked. "Time?"
Feyre nodded. “The scientist found a way to warp it. To go back in time so that he could stop his daughter from dying. But all he did was loop it like a big rope. He tangled it, creating two interlinked realities. It split the world in two. Light and dark. And the only way to undo that was to unravel the knot that he created.”
”And . . . how does that happen?”
Feyre reached into her breast pocket, pulling a few sheets of crisp white paper. She unfolded them to reveal the contents of the journal—the missing pages.
“I never said thank you, by the way. For getting these copies for me. You said it was a copy machine?”
Lysandra smiled faintly and nodded. “Something they use on Midgard. So you don’t have to replicate writings by hand.”
She didn’t have it in her to be interested.
“It must’ve cost a fortune, to have to call in one of our hired mercenaries on Midgard to get these. Someone trustworthy enough to do it, and quickly. How much—"
Lysandra waved a hand. "My uncle is a merchant. He made a fortune dealing in spider silk—so much that he has no idea what to do with it all. And Aelin knows a guy, who knows a guy, who—" she cut herself off, looking momentarily befuddled. She shook her head and said, "Let's just say Aelin knows a lot of interesting people, and chances are they owe her something."
Feyre raised her brows. "Good to know."
Lysandra grinned at her, but it faltered a moment later as her gaze dropped back to the papers. Feyre shuffled them, coming to a page etched with equations and scribblings and theories. She pointed to one word.
Apokalypse.
Lysandra’s brows furrowed, and Feyre saved her the breath of asking. “It means the end of the world. Their world—both realities that were created in the accident.”
Lysandra stared at it. And even though she couldn’t read anything else on the page, her face seemed to go a bit pallid.
Feyre sighed and refolded the papers, tucking them safely back into her pocket. “That’s what will happen to Prythian if he does this wrong.”
Lysandra’s face was tight with worry, but she said. “But he didn’t know that until tonight . . . did he?”
And here it was.
“No,” she said quietly, picking at a loose bit of stone with her torn and pitiful nails. “But I was still scared to death of it. Rhysand’s been known to hatch some pretty terrifying plans, but this one . . . .” she shook her head. “I wasn’t in the right mindset to discuss it, anyway.” She swallowed, already feeling the tears prick.
“He was angry,” she said thickly. “At the Asteri. At the world. At me for saying no. Later that night, he told me how he felt,” she swallowed against the pain in her throat, “that he thought we both owed it to Nyx, but me especially.”
“Because you are his mother?” she asked gently, touching her hand.
Feyre bit back her sob. “Because I let him go.”
Lysandra didn’t speak as Feyre’s chest convulsed against her determination not to cry.
“Because he was inmy arms when the blast came through. And I let him go.”
Did you mean it?
Yes.
“Rhysand isn’t acting. He’s played the villain before, but this time . . . the way he acts, the things he says are true. He hates me. Not because I said no to bringing Nyx back. But because it’s my fault he’s dead in the first place.”
There was no sound for a good, long while—and she was glad of it. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t . . . want.
She stared at the sea.
Seconds, minutes, or hours later . . . the door behind them opened.
Feyre turned. A young girl—a human teenager, from the look of it—strolled over to where they were sitting. "Can I join you?" she asked merrily, already brushing her skirts aside to sit down.
Lysandra tutted, “Why aren’t you in bed?”
The girl’s nose scrunched. “Don’t be so matronly.”
Lysandra rolled her eyes. “This is Evangeline. She has absolutely no sense of personal space, or boundaries, or manners."
Evangeline grinned at her. "But I'm still her favorite person in the world. Not even Aedion can take my place."
Lysandra chuckled. "That's true. And the constant competition keeps him always eager to please me."
The girls giggled, and Feyre watched them humorlessly.
"Are you two sisters?"
Lysandra shook her head, smiling as she plucked a fruit tart from a box Evangeline had just opened and presented to her. The young girl then offered the box to Feyre, who hesitated before gingerly reaching for one. "We were sold to the same place by our mothers. A brothel led by a horrible woman with terrible fashion."
"Lysandra cut my face up in a fit of rage," the girl said around a mouthful of tart.
"Stop telling people that," Lysandra snapped. "Someone's going to believe you."
Feyre watched them—knew she should feel amused at their banter. And still . . . nothing.
The girl was lovely, despite the jagged scars etched along her face. Feyre barely gave them more than a glance. They were shocking, yes—but nothing she wasn't used to after spending five years at war. There were plenty of scars on all of them—and not just on their skin.
She took a bite of tart, resisting the urge to close her eyes against the taste. She hadn’t had anything sweet in . . . she couldn’t remember. She usually ate whatever the rest of the soldiers ate, enough to keep herself strong and lean.
Evangeline smiled at her, then must’ve realized she’d been crying. “Oh,” she began. “I’m sorry—“ she made to gather her skirts again, but Feyre stopped her. “Please stay. I could use the company.”
Evangeline’s face crinkled in a smile, and she nestled back down. “Well don’t stop crying on my account. I love to cry.”
“We all know that.” Lysandra mumbled, but Evangeline just shrugged.
"It's alright to cry. When my mother sold me to a brothel, I couldn't stop crying. Not even when Clarisse beat me for it, or told me she'd keep beating me until I stopped. I cried until I vomited."
Gods, Feyre thought, immediately feeling nauseous from guilt. She looked at the girl, who couldn't be any older than Feyre was when she'd first walked into that forest to hunt. Younger, even. "You're very brave to endure that," she offered weakly.
Evangeline shrugged. "Everyone is brave, because everyone is troubled. We just don't always realize it."
Feyre's throat bobbed. "Other people have it worse than I do."
"Telling yourself that won't make the pain any less painful. For you, or for anyone else who suffers. So let yourself cry, if that's what your heart needs. It won't make you any less of a badass." The girl offered her a sweet smile, and something in Feyre's chest melted at the small kindness. "But I still won't tell anyone I saw you do it, all the same."
Feyre blinked against the wetness in her eyes, tried to swallow against the painful knot in her throat. "Thank you," she whispered. She turned watery eyes back to the distance. A moment later, she felt the young girl scoot closer, a breeze of lilac and cinnamon drifting by as Evangeline laid her head on her shoulder.
“You know what I like to do when I’m sad?”
Feyre sniffed. “What’s that.”
“Make Lysandra turn into a big leopard and lay her head in my lap.”
Feyre laughed. Again.
A second later—blinding light, and a softhuff as Lysandra’s furred head nestled into Feyre’s side.
Alone with two strangers, Feyre laid her head on her knees and wept.
