No longer if, but when.

When I would tell Feyre, I decided. It’s what had kept me up long after I’d flown Feyre back to our townhouse, kissed her brow at her door, and bid her goodnight. Sleep-addled, star flecked expressions had flanked both our faces until finally I had torn myself from her side, and spent the next hour wondering if I dared go back to discover what peeling her out of that gown would feel like or sleeping skin to skin.

We had danced all evening, until the streets were empty and the sun was cresting over the horizon, playing along the gentle ripples of the Sidra. Feyre barely moved to the last beats of music as we slowed in our dance. I scooped her up in my arms, enjoying her warmth as she cradled into me, her head resting in that open collar of my shirt against my skin, and shot into the sky. Below us, Azriel peeled a sleeping Mor from the settee off the dining room to tuck her away inside for the morning. Cassian had already disappeared.

And now we were airborne once more, shooting through the brightest day of spring I’d seen yet in Velaris, toward the House of Wind for a quick lunch before making for the Illyrian camps. Azriel and Amren would stay behind, while Mor went with the rest of us before taking off for the Hewn City herself to check on Keir. I had tried to convince her, in those days she chided me for pushing off Feyre, that he wasn’t worth her notice, but she’d nagged back that I was being a tart for ignoring Feyre, so she’d ignore me too until I’d wizened up.

But Mor wasn’t at the lunch table for me to attempt to persuade anew when Feyre and I breezed inside. Amren too was missing, though I could see the dark red stains in a tea glass at the end of the table that told me she was hissing about somewhere.

“Where’s Mor?” Feyre yawned, stretching out of my arms like a cat. She wore her flying leathers, which made her appear much more awake than any of us currently felt.

Cassian opened his mouth to answer, but it was Azriel, his eyes softly closed over the tea perched at his lips, who said dreamily, “She’s still asleep.” Cassian’s head twitch, a movement he would never have made had his brother been awake to bear it witness despite the shadows - shadows that seemed nonexistent this morning.

I wondered just how long my brother had stayed with Mor after carrying her from that settee only a few hours ago.

Feyre’s eyes slid to mine, the first real look she’d given me since we’d awkwardly stumbled into each other to fly here. It seemed neither of us were going to address the evening, that air of what if , quite just yet. She lifted a single brow and I scowled. It only made her chuckle silently.

“I’ll go get her,” she said.

Cassian snorted, but sitting there in his worn out leathers, it sounded flat - even for him. “Good luck,” he said and Feyre traipsed toward the hall. “If you want deal with the princess on less than appropriate sleep, be my guest.”

Feyre came to a grinding halt at the hallway threshold and wagged a finger at the commander of the Illyrian armies. “Ah-ah, Mor is not a princess.” Cassian lifted a single brow. “She is a queen ,” Feyre finished and disappeared, though not before returning Cassian’s scowl with a gesture that would have made the queen herself proud.

“Cauldron,” Cassian groaned, his head lolling back on the chair and turning toward me. “Now there’s two of them. This is all your fault.” Azriel bit back a smile as he finally opened his eyes to peer at the pair of us, and cut it short when he saw Cassian wasn’t quite laughing.

I sat down next, Azriel across from me and Cass at my side, and focused on buttering my toast with honeyed jams and berries rather than contemplate the leathers we all wore, the places we were all about to go - separately.

Last night we had all been inseparable. Now, we might never be whole again. The Illyrians... The Queens... Keir. The magic of Starfall was already a distant memory with the promise of brutality in differing forms lingering closeby.

My eyes kept darting back faithfully to that threshold where Feyre had been. Waiting. Watching. Wanting. Wondering when she’d be back. How long we’d keep dancing. It felt like we had never stopped dancing.

Amren walked in with a fresh cup, filled to the brim, and inspected us sharply, though I was the only one who bothered to acknowledge she’d come back. She didn’t say anything until Mor came back with Feyre and saw what had been a hesitant smile drop on her face now that she was faced with a last meal. Only Amren and Azriel spoke for the remainder of lunch.

One day... or fifty. This was not going to be a pleasant trip.

---

Mor made quick work of her food, meager for what she normally consumed with such fervor, and her goodbyes. She winnowed all four of us into the north and suddenly, my lungs were filled with a cold numbness, full from scents of pine and blood and sweat.

Feyre’s gaze swept out in a hard line from left to right, reading the mud, the shanties, the cliffs atop which shirtless Illyrian novices trained to a bone breaking degree. It had only been recently that arriving in these camps did not issue a shudder down my spine. I used to live and breathe (and sometimes not breathe) in those hell pits, fighting for scraps of respect and dominance. Cass and Azriel too.

Within seconds of landing, Lord Devlon spotted us and his back straightened impossibly higher, a sneer already landed on his face. “I hate this place,” Mor said at the sight of him stepping forward, the blood caked about his clothes as if it could hide the veneer of arrogance. “It should be burned to the ground.”

A fair conclusion, even on a good day.

Neither Cassian nor I moved. I made Devlon come to me - him and the five other brutes attending him. A thrumming twitched at my fingertips - power asking me to do something. He hadn’t even spoken.

Devlon paused and eyed me up and down. “Another camp inspection?” Now he gave Cass a go. “Your dog was here just the other week. The girls are training.”

“I don’t see them in the ring,” Cassian said, folding his arms over his chest. His siphons caught the light, a subtle reminder that the High Lord’s dog would always outrank him.

“They do chores first, then when they’ve finished, they get to train.”

A morning’s worth of tension snapped inside my cousin, a snarl ripping out of her mouth low and sweet. Devlon turned his head to her, not expecting her presence, and had the decency to go still. “Hello, Lord Devlon,” Mor said, a lover and a sinner’s prayer all at once. The smile she flashed him was beyond atonement.

And just as Nesta had once ignored Cassian upon dinner, Devlon barely acknowledged Morrigan’s hello before fixing his waiting, agitated gaze on myself.

“Pleasant as it always is to see you, Devlon,” I said, nothing pleasant at all about the way I let the power relieve itself in my tone, “there are two matters at hand.” His mouth tightened. Sometimes I still thought about challenging him to a go in the ring. “First,” I continued, “the girls, as you were clearly told by Cassian, are to train before chores, not after. Get them out on the pitch. Now. Second, we’ll be staying here for the time being. Clear out my mother’s old house. No need for a housekeeper. We’ll look after ourselves.”

“The house is occupied by my top warriors.”

“Then un-occupy it. And have them clean it before they do.”

I couldn’t let my powers roll out of me. High Lord magic tricks would mean little here. Would probably do more damage than good, in fact. So it was all down to dead end stare I gave him, the promise of death and disease lingering about my voice, to get Devlon to do my bidding as he knew he’d eventually be forced to anyway.

And indeed, he released my stare.... only to land on Feyre. His nostrils flared, sniffing. Once. Twice. It was a beautiful thing to hear that foul blackened heart of his beat so rapidly away in its cage when he first stared at my mate.

“Another like that... creature you bring here?” He actually sounded tentative. “I thought she was the only one of her ilk.”

“Amren,” I said cooly, “sends her regards.” And would have a field day when I told her how her favorite chew toy spoke of her.

I motioned to Feyre, who didn’t back away from Devlon’s critical eye. My mate and an Illyrian lord... A smile danced brutally inside my chest. “She’s mine ,” I said, the words easing off my tongue as if I’d said them out loud a thousand times before, never only in my head. Said them the way I’d wanted to when Tarquin had stared at her over meals and plied her with honey in his treasure troves. “And if any of you lay a hand on her, you lose that hand. And then you lose your head. And once Feyre is done killing you, then I’ll grind your bones to dust.”

The smile in my chest pranced out in a vicious smirk that made Devlon and his lackeys assessed Feyre. Power hummed in my veins, the same power I’d let loose stealing the book from Tarquin, attacking and taking down his sentries one by one. A new kind of freedom, one I could only truly indulge here.

It felt good . With my mate by my side to see it.

I think all of us felt it. Mor was eying Devlon behind me as he stepped away and I was surprised not to see a tail wagging excitedly behind her. Cassian similarly could feel his powers running wild - the killing power, alive and well. It was one thing to come here alone, another to visit with friends - allies.

“We’re heading out,” I announced, stepping toward the tree line and cutting Mor a look. “We’ll be back at nightfall. Try to stay out of trouble, please. Devlon hates us the least of the war-lords and I don’t feel like finding another camp.”

“I’ll try,” she said with a wink, and even though I shook it off, I was pleased to see some fire back in her eyes. Perhaps the afternoon would provide enough distraction she would not dwell so much on Keir. Perhaps, she would even change her mind about going altogether and stay.

I turned to Cass. “Check on the forces, then make sure those girls are practicing like they should be. If Devlon or the others object, do what you have to.” His grin was all the compliance I needed.

“Let’s go,” I said to Feyre, stalking toward the trees and halting when she didn’t immediately follow, but swung around to face me instead.

“You hear from my sisters?”

“No. Azriel is checking today if they received a response. You and I...” I paused, and positively ate Feyre alive with the filthy smirk plastered on my face. “We’re going to train.”

And see just how beautiful that killing power of yours Devlon fears truly is.

Her face sparked with the promise of flame and ice and maybe something more. Excitement. “Where?”

I swept one arm out wide, the trees and greenery and mountains just beyond where my fingertips led, and offered my other arm to Feyre. I was quite pleased when she took it and crawled into my embrace. “Away from potential casualties,” I said.

And then, we flew. And for a moment, it was just as nice as Starfall.

---

That wonderful spike in confidence ebbed into a pensive, contented flight with Feyre tucked warm against my chest. She didn’t seem to have a problem being nestled there. And she was also the braver of us to break the silence first. We were as close as we had been as the sun had crested over Starfall.

“You’re training Illyrian warriors?” she asked. Even the wind didn’t fight her words reaching me today.

“Trying to,” I said. My wings beat us higher into the air, over the canopy of trees. I stared at the tops as though I might see the Illyrian women themselves fighting or hiding beneath. As though I could see my mother. “I banned wing clipping a long, long time ago, but... at the more zealous camps, deep within the mountains, they do it. And when Amarantha took over, even the milder camps started doing it again. To keep their women safe, they claimed. For the past hundred years, Cassian has been trying to build an aerial fighting unit amongst the females, trying to prove that they have a place on the battlefield. So far, he’s managed to train a few dedicated warriors, but the males make life so miserable that many of them left. And for the girls in training...” I hissed, the memories of those initial trials crystal clear in my mind, the lengths to which Cassian and I - and those girls especially - had gone, through word and bone, to make it happen. “It’s a long road. But Devlon is one of the few who even lets the girls train without a tantrum.”

A slice of heat whipped down my neck from where Feyre’s skin connected - angry. “I’d hardly call disobeying orders ‘without a tantrum.’“

“Some camps issued decress that if a female was caught training, she was to be deemed unmarriageable. I can’t fight against things like that, not without slaughtering the leaders of each camp and personally raising each and every one of their offspring.”

“And yet your mother loved them - and you three wear their tattoos.” Not a judgment call, but close enough to it that I tensed.

“I got the tattoos in part for my mother, in part to honor my brothers, who fought every day of their lives for the right to wear them.”

“Why do you let Devlon speak to Cassian like that?” Another kiss of angry heat. Another almost judgment. My eyes began searching for the nearest clearing to make a home in for the afternoon.

“Because I know when to pick my fights with Devlon, and I know Cassian would be pissed if I stepped in to crush Devlon’s mind like a grape when he could handle it himself.”

Feyre’s hand turned from heat to ice for a brief space of time before her tongue set to work on my mind once more, this time more calculating and considering than the last. “Have you thought about doing it?”

“I did just now,” I admitted, and could still feel the remnants of power that had twitched to break free at my fingertips when Devlon had approached us. “But most camp-lords never would have given the three of us a shot at the Blood Rite. Devlon let a half-breed and two bastards take it - and did not deny us our victory.”

“What’s the Blood Rite?”

Finally, I looked at her, and was amazed how little exasperation was on her face for the drill she put me through. That curiosity hard at work, as always. “So many questions today.” Her hand gripping my neck slid down to my shoulder and pinched - hard. A new kind of fire. I chuckled even as it stung slightly. Feyre ghosted a pleased look in return, her head reclining back on my chest.

“You go unarmed into the mountains,” I explained, “magic banned, no Siphons, wings bound, with no supplies or clothes beyond what you have on you. You, and every other Illyrian male who wants to move from novice to true warrior. A few hundred head into the mountains at the start of the week - not all come out at the end.”

Slowly, that head on my chest tilted up - just slightly. “Do you - kill each other?”

“Most try to.” Only the wind kept my voice from creeping down low. “For food and clothes, for vengeance, for glory between feuding clans. Devlon allowed us to take the Rite - but also made sure Cassian, Azriel, and I were dumped in different locations.”

“What happened?”

“We found each other. Killed out way across the mountains to get to each other. Turns out, a good number of Illyrian males wanted to prove they were stronger, smarter than us.” As though in phantom memory, a number of small scars on my body sliced with a flash of knowing - blood and pain and death. But also Cassian coming over that hilltop like a god cut from the skins of heaven enact justice. And Azriel too, shadows carrying him through the trees and wiping the blood that caked his scarred hands and mouth. But mostly, the the twinkle in each of our eyes as we recognized one another and continued the blood shed all the way back to camp and received our markings. Warmth replaced the slicing pain along those scars. “Turns out they were wrong,” I finished.

Feyre looked up at me. But I shifted us downward into the clearing I’d spotted first. Snow crunched softly beneath our boots as we inhaled the fresh pine and sap of the trees. Winter would always be thick in the Steppes.

Feyre stepped out my arms, ruffling herself a bit as she went, and surveyed the clearing. “So, you’re not using magic - but I am?”

“Our enemy is keyed in on my powers. You, however, remain invisible.” She turned to look at me. And there was something stiff - something hesitating in those eyes of hers. Something that didn’t quite match the high of flying with her that I felt. “Let’s see what all your practicing has amounted to.”

I waved my hand that she should begin, but she stared at me flatly, and stumbled out, “When - when did you meet Tamlin?”

The hardest part was not flinching - not breaking eye contact with her. Tamlin... Tamlin? We were going to talk about - “Show me something impressive, and I’ll tell you,” I offered, because of course, I wouldn’t keep it from her if she really wanted to know. “Magic - for answers.”

And it worked. “I know what sort of game you’re playing-” I smirked and Feyre broke off. “Very well.”

Easy as breathing, Feyre held out her hand and willed water into her palm, bending and shaping it as merrily as she pleased - the artist at work in the huntress’ mind. A butterfly emerged and I didn’t realize until Feyre stared at me waiting, and I couldn’t fully... approve, just how much I did not want to discuss Tamlin with her.

“Tamlin was younger than me - born when the War started,” I said. Feyre watched me carefully, the butterfly flying and dancing on. “But after the War, when he’d matured, we got to know each other at various court functions. He...” I zoned in on that small butterfly, wishing I were it instead. My body stiffened, muscles contracting to keep a focus. “He seemed decent for a High Lord’s son. Better than Beron’s brood at the Autumn Court. Tamlin’s brothers were equally as bad, though. Worse. And they knew Tamlin would take the title one day. And to a half-breed Illyrian who’d had to prove himself, defend his power, I saw what Tamlin went through... I befriended him. Sought him out whenever I was able to get away from the war camps or court. Maybe it was pity, but...” but he had been my friend... once , “I taught him some Illyrian techniques.”

“Did anyone know?”

She didn’t have to do party tricks. She didn’t have to prove herself. But I motioned to that little creature flitting about her hand anyway, just to buy me time.

I did not like the part that came next, the part that arrived after Feyre had folded her butterfly into a multitude of birds that soared away on the wind and flew circles above us. A distant, less damaged part of my mind could have sworn it heard them singing.

“Cassian and Azriel knew,” I said. “My family knew. And disapproved. But Tamlin’s father was threatened by it. By me. And because he was weaker than both me and Tamlin, he wanted to prove to the world that he wasn’t.” Somewhere in the clearing, I lost track of those songbirds. Feyre’s eyes were slowly dimming. “My mother and sister were to travel to the Illyrian war-camp to see me. I was supposed to meet them halfway, but I was busy training a new unit and decided to stay.

“Tamlin’s father, brothers, and Tamlin himself set out into the Illyrian wilderness, having heard from Tamlin - from me - where my mother and sister would be, that I had plans to see them. I was supposed to be there. I wasn’t. And they slaughtered my mother and sister anyway.”

I’d thought it’d been difficult not to break eye contact with her before, but... I’d been wrong. So devastatingly wrong.

Feyre had visibly paled, her skin grown whiter than the white-grey clouds above us that promised more rain and snow. Redness stung her eyes as she shook her head biting back - what, tears of denial? Sympathy? Grief? I decided I didn’t want to know and didn’t bother seeking out the bond for an indication.

“It should have been me,” I said, wondering that my voice didn’t waver. “They put their heads in boxes and sent them down the river - to the nearest camp. Tamlin’s father kept their wings as trophies. I’m surprised you didn’t see them pinned in the study.”

It was said with enough bitterness that we both looked away, or... or maybe only I had. But I went looking for those songbirds again wishing I could forget. When the boxes had arrived, when the camp lords had seen what was inside and told me... it didn’t matter that I was a half-breed or that my father was a High Lord they spat at every time he left the camps. Or that he’d mated an Illyrian woman they’d been inches from maiming for life. That day, even the fiercest Illyrian warriors were sick for me.

Feyre had turned the songbirds into animals of many shapes and varieties, painting them about the clearing. “What else?” I demanded.

The bond between us pulled taut, enough that I almost looked at her, if not for the animals that froze between leaps and scurries about the air, the water cracking into fragments of ice that mirrored the way I felt in my heart - the way we both felt. They clattered to the ground and shattered, the sound rattling in my ears. Broken.

And it should have been me. I should have been a piece of ice on the floor or a head in a box or a wing on a wall, and my mother and sister well with my father in Velaris just now.

But Feyre had offered me another tribute of herself, so I forged ahead, bringing her story and mine full circle.

“When I heard, when my father heard... I wasn’t wholly truthful to you when I told you Under the Mountain that my father killed Tamlin’s father and brothers. I went with him. Helped him.” Feyre waited for me to go on, giving away nothing but that awful pressure testing the bond. “We winnowed to the edge of the Spring Court that night, then went the rest of the way on foot - to the manner. I slew Tamlin’s brothers on sight. I held their minds, and rendered them helpless while I cut them into pieces, then melted their brains inside their skulls. And when I got to the High Lord’s bedroom - he was dead. And my father... my father had killed Tamlin’s mother as well.”

Feyre’s head motioned heavily from side to side, but I couldn’t stop now I’d started. The ache was too heavy not to.

“My father had promised not to touch her. That we weren’t the kind of males who would do that. But he lied to me, and he did it, anyway. And then he went for Tamlin’s room.” The night swept by me. Suddenly, I didn’t see Feyre standing in front of me in the cold lonely snow. I saw my friend, who had murdered my family in exchange for me murdering his own. Part of me wished he was the one to hear this - to know . “I tried to stop him. He didn’t listen. He was going to kill him, too. And I couldn’t... After all the death, I was done. I didn’t care that Tamlin had been there, had allowed them to kill my mother and sister, that he’d come to kill me because he didn’t want to risk standing against them. I was done with death. So I stopped my father before the door. He tried to go through me.” Vengeance. For his mate. For his light. For his heir, even. “Tamlin opened the door, saw us - smelled the blood already leaking into the hallway. And I didn’t even get to say a word before Tamlin killed my father in one blow.

“I felt the power shift to me, even as I saw it shift to him. And we just looked at each other, as we were both suddenly crowned High Lord - and then I ran.”

Like a coward. Like a strategist. Either way, I ran. I didn’t need the bond, or to be within Feyre’s mind, to know Tamlin had never been forthcoming with her concerning our personal history. The horror streaked in tears and outrage across her face, hiding those lovely freckles, said it all for me.

“He didn’t tell you any of that.” Not a question.

“I - I’m sorry,” she said, barely able to put sound to the words, her mouth hanging open slightly. I realized we were both unhinged.

“What do you possibly have to be sorry for?”

“I didn’t know.” Suddenly, she surged forward a step, fevered. “I didn’t know that he’d done that-”

And maybe it was again for the distraction. Maybe because I hoped she would ask me something else. Maybe it was for some other reason altogether that I had no clue about, but I motioned to her beautifully broken ice shards and shrugged, “Why did you stop?”

The bond held true for the span of a few seconds - and then fell. Into smoke. Into fire. Into a roaring of flames that seared the entirety of the clearing, wiping those ice shards into nonexistence.

For a heartbeat in time, my body did not recognize those flames as my mate’s own creation, her wrath twisting around us like snakes to strike back at what Tamlin had done. And I knew - finally, I knew. She wasn’t angry at me for my retaliation. She found it justified .

My wings shot out behind me on either side, stretching past the fires as they rolled down to a low simmer, my body leaning instinctively towards Feyre before remembering she was their master, not their victim. It was consuming to watch and to feel, as her heart bled for me - for them . I wasn’t sure how I was still standing upright when the fire cleared, if not for that brief instinct to keep her safe. The flames left nothing untouched.

“Feyre,” I said, no longer able to look anywhere but my mate. The sound of her name seemed to call something to attention just then. Her eyes pinned me down with so much pain and promise, that the darkness was her friend too. My darkness.

Her darkness.

Easing out in soothing strokes that kissed both our cheeks, until our flesh was filled with color again and our lungs felt relaxed enough to expand comfortably. Until there was nothing and no one but us and the night. The fire - the smoke. It was gone.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked, face drawn up, eyes still rimmed red. But they were searching me, body and soul. I think something in both of us healed a little more right in that moment.

“I didn’t want you to think I was trying to turn you against him,” I replied.

Feyre softened and came right up into my arms, cutting the distance between us down to less than those dissipated flames, letting me wrap myself around her. Hold her. “I want to paint you,” she breathed, and a rush of wind swept right through me as I picked her up and pressed my lips to her ear.

“Nude would be best.”