Sixty years later

They came before dawn. I smelled their hate before they even broke down my bedroom door and wrestled me from the bed.

I felt their disdain through their hard, brutal hands where they crushed my wings and awful voices reminding me of everything I'd lost. My father's eyes unreadable and monstrous as he let them drag me like an animal for slaughter. My mother—my mother—she only stared with vacant, broken eyes.

"No!" I screamed at the male closest, teeth barred as I kicked him in the groin. "You won't break me." I lashed my head back, smacking the head of another at my back. He cursed and loosed his grip. I ripped a blade from his boot. "No!" I shrieked, animalistic and broken. "No, I know what you want, no . . . I'll kill you all . . . or you'll have to kill me first."

"Zansi . . . enough!"

Father's voice always caused a splinter of ice to form in the crevice of my chest. I choked on it. The anger, the hurt, the betrayal, it all collided at once.

"Please, papa, please don't let them," I begged, hand outstretched, fearful tears blinding my vision. "I did it for Zayde, please, I didn't mean to dishonour you. Papa, please, please not my wings?"

He never flinched, not once. He only stared with those unrelenting, dominant, male eyes. I hated him for it. Hated that he never cared, never once cared that Zayde was gone. Never cared that all I ever did was to bring justice for my brother. His only son. He went into that motherforsaken mountain and never came back. Never came home. He was too gentle, too loyal, and those bastard High Fea took every advantage of it. Now what? He wanted my wings clipped, keep me grounded so I couldn't cause any more trouble. I'd rather die.

"You've had too much freedom, for far too long," Papa said, eyes rolling upward in an exasperated sigh. "I blame myself. This will be good for you, daughter. You need to let go of your brother. He did his duty."

"He was a child!" I roared, lunging for my father. "You let him go. You could've put him in another legion, ordered him to stay home."

My mother flinched then, her deadened eyes filling with that echo of pain that just followed her like a shroud these past fifty years. I looked to her, begged her to say something, anything to make my father stop. He was punishing me for his own failures, and she let him. I didn't know who I hated more.

"He wasn't a child. He was a competent warrior, he survived the rite," father only rolled his shoulders. How could he be so dismissive? "You will not dishonour my son by referring to him as a child."

"He survived because of me!" I thumped my chest hard, as if I could beat the pain from it, somehow restart it after all these years. "I was there. Stop pretending I wasn't. You never cared then when I dressed up as a male and saved my brother. You didn't care then when I was advancing him. You turned a blind eye because I made Zayde look powerful. I made you-"

A stone hard fist collided with my cheek. My neck sprung back so fast I thought it might snap from my body. I spat blood, and a tooth, before I could look him in the eye again. My father was seething. Pure, unhinged rage rippled across his features as he grabbed a fistful of my dark hair and yanked my head back so I had no escape from his wrath.

"Then it's you who we've all to thank for my son's death," he sneered against my ear. "You made him. Constructed this illusion that he was a great warrior, and then let him go under the mountain. Why didn't you go then, daughter?" His fingers clawed tighter, pain shattered through my neck, while my heart felt like it was turning to ash in my chest. "You did this. Your reckless need to be considered one of the males. Your drive killed your brother . . . not me."

I buckled. My knees crashing to the ground as I tried to hold my chest together, convinced it was cleaving in two. Why didn't I go? Because Zayde told me to stay. He stood on the fringe of the camp, on the eve of their departure to Amarantha's court, and made me swear to let him do this on his own. Made me promise not to take the risk. There were too many males, too many generals, someone would notice me, smell me out. Not even the High Lord himself could protect me from that, not even Zayde. So I stayed. I stayed when everything inside me screamed to go, to protect him, and I ignored it.

"I only ever wanted to make you proud," I sobbed into the stone floor, my nose almost touching the mosaic tiles. "I only ever wanted to protect him. I loved him."

"And look where that got him!" Father roared, and I felt those rough hands capture me again. "You are a disgrace for an Illyrian, and no daughter of mine. Masquerading as a male, binding your breasts, and breaking every sacred rule of our culture. What am I to do with such reckless disregard?"

There was no answer for him, at least none that he would listen too. So I dug deep and found a shred of dignity to hold my head high in the face of my demise. If I was to be mutilated to sate his sins then so be it, but I wouldn't go down without a fight. Yes, my truths tortured me. Yes, I cried myself to sleep every night thinking of every way I could rewrite the past, but it did no good. So I arose every morning and fought to find my answers. I'd never stop looking for my brother, I wouldn't believe he was gone. I went into the camps in disguise. I gleaned what I could. I made a list of names, warriors who returned from under the mountain, and I hunted them. There were those who had sided with Amarantha; it was my pleasure to find them and rip off their wings. The rest, I picked them off and questioned them, made them divulge what they knew and let them go. Scared them enough that they wouldn't be stupid enough to out me. But I'd reached too high this time.

I'd one name left. A name that was untouchable, the only survivor who mattered. Amarantha's whore, and my High Lord . . . it was a conflict to decide if I hated him or pitied him? But I was loyal to my people and the Night Court; one deluded, arrogant High Lord wouldn't change that. Maybe I was deluded myself to think I could reach him? Maybe infiltrating Devlin's camp and stalking his entourage was stretching my abilities. Maybe seeing him, and his confidants, argue for the females touched a nerve. Maybe I'd tarried too long and left my scent too near brutes who where only seeking some tail to rape. Maybe I'd left too clear of a message when I shattered said brute's nose. Either way I got caught. There's always a payment to be wrought when a female steps out of line. Always a punishment for her when she shows up the incompetence and brutality of the males. Cowards.

"Don't think taking my flight will stop me," I said evenly, to all, not just my father. "Don't think for one second that I'll ever stop. I'll crawl if I have too, but I'll get justice for Zayde."

I wanted to say find. That I'd find Zayde. But I'd said it so many times before that I knew the reaction it garnered. They'd start calling me mad, and maybe I was, but grief was all I had left. I'd hold onto it if it brought me closer to him.

"You don't deserve to be called an Illyrian female."

She hadn't said a single word to me in months. She barely said anything, and she chooses now to speak. To grace me with her motherly assessment of her daughter. Cauldron, what did I ever do to deserve this?

"You don't mean that." I choked on the tears that lined my throat and burned my eyes. "Mother, please . . . this is barbaric."

"You are barbaric," she muttered, her head falling into her hand. "You've broken this family, Zansi, you've shamed us all. Disfiguring a prominent male? Plotting treason against the High Lord? What are you?"

"No! Not treason, I—"

I suddenly realised then that nothing I said would matter. I saw it in their eyes. I'd damaged a male's pride and therefore any damned story would be believed over the truth, so I changed tactics.

"So what? So what if I demanded an audience with a High Lord, it's the least he could do. The very least he owes us. Owes Zayde." I angled my head to glare at my parents. "If you weren't prepared to sacrifice your position to upset your High Lord, then someone had too. It's just a cauldron damned pity I had to have more balls than my own father and his legion of warriors combined."

This time my father's rage didn't send me into blackness. It was the hilt of an Illyrian sword across the back of my head that sent me to the stars. I cursed them before the lights went out. I cursed their cowardice.

A blow from behind? What honour is their in that? None.

I was sick of fighting to mean something. Sick and filled with rage, for if that brute had of raped me this same scenario would've played out. It would've always been my fault. Never his. Never theirs.

xXx

I woke too soon.

There was pain. Blinding, all-consuming pain that raged through my body like a fire.

I screamed and tore at my wings. I launched, nails exposed, at the male who touched me. Who broke my wings.

"No!" I roared so loud my voice broke into a tattered, hallow sound. "My wings!"

"Hold her down!" Someone shrieked and hands launched for me, but I was too far gone, too lost in the pain.

I slammed into the male, holding his face in my clawed hands, flailing and slapping my poor, poor wings in every angle. I dug my thumbs into his eye sockets, blood splattered his face and mine.

Blood from my wings. His blood? I didn't know.

Someone tore me from behind. Grabbing my ravaged right wing and tossing me off balance. I ripped around, forcing a powerful blow to the perpetrator.

A sickening crack echoed through the room. It clanged through my bones. Ripped straight threw my spine, and it took my feet from beneath me.

I hit the ground, screeching inhumane sounds when my right wing felt wrong—powerless—agony.

I held out my blood soaked hands and my screams intensified.

My wing. I'd ripped my own wing.

I knew. The pain, it caused black and red spots to colour my vision. I saw the boney sinew and the wrong angle. The entire tear that severed it an inch from the highest, clawed apex. The blood gushed like a river, soaking me, drowning me. The others, they just stood and stared, mouths agape.

Air, and blood, crackled and popped in my lungs. I howled and howled, holding the dead weight of my right wing in my arms. I tried to stand, but the agony. I just fell again. The balance was shot, everything tilted to the left. I couldn't walk. Couldn't stand without my wing.

"My wings," I cried into the night air. I glared at the three males who'd attempted to clip me, who'd caused this. "You severed my wing . . . you . . . you monsters." A broken wail sounded from somewhere deep in my chest as I beheld the snapped apex, the brittle bone poking out from the membrane, the deadness of the rest of the span. "I'm dying," I gasped and choked on the globs of blood that poured from my mouth and nose. "Please . . . mother please help me."

They just stared. No, they watched someone behind me. I dared the slighted twist, pain ravaged every muscle and I doubled over, left wing twitching, and my back convulsing with the strain.

"She did this to herself." Father moved from the shadows and walked past me, eyes unreadable, unfeeling. "Your rage destroyed you, Zansi. If the mother sees fit to let you survive this then perhaps you'll learn control, some semblance of obedience, and gratitude."

The males moved uncomfortably. All of them watched as my father tossed a knife my direction, then motioned for them to leave. I quivered and buckled under the pain and darkness swirling in my head. I felt tired, so very tired, and confused. Wouldn't he just kill me, wouldn't that be compassionate? But then, what did he know of compassion?

"This is your fault," my father spat, pointing a finger to me then to the horizon. "You're banished . . . what use have I for a mutilated female? No male would ever want this. You can bring our family no honour, you're a disgrace. Let the wilds decide if you live or die."

With that he left. They all left. Taking with them any chance of hope, or even the heat of a fire. They just left.

I lay in a pool of my own blood, in a snow speckled, frost flecked landscape. I lay for so long that I lost feeling in my hands, in my feet, in nearly every part of myself. Death should've been near, but it never came. It just floated around the trees, never coming close enough to claim me, like a sadistic ghost.

I hated being toyed with, so I started toward the shadows. If death wouldn't come to me then I'd go to it.

Every step was agony. Every fall or stumble trailed an awful, devastated sound from my lips, but I kept on. I walked until I couldn't, then I crawled, and when my knees gave out, I pulled myself across the ground on my belly. I did everything to reach those shadows. I begged them to come closer. I bargained with them, but they stayed so far away.

At the very last, when it hurt to draw a breath, when even the slightest twitch of my finger sent arrows of acid down my back, I gave up. I held out my upturned palm to the shadows, neck craned, eyes glazed.

"Please . . ." my voice disappeared into a swirl of snow on the breeze.

The shadows swayed and moved, then paused. Did they hear? My finger twitched, the pain of the movement pushed tears from my dulled eyes.

A slender, sleek of dark mist slithered and coiled out from the rest. It crept along the snow, silent and mesmerising, then hovered at my fingertips. I hadn't the strength to speak, only to express the agony in my eyes, in the crippled set of my features, I wanted it to know. Wanted the shadow to know I was ready to go into it, there was no light left in me, I didn't want the light, just the comfort of the shadows. My memories where in those shadows, Zayde lived in those memories, I wanted to go there.

Like it heard me, the shadow slid down my finger, coiled around my wrist, and enveloped my body in comforting dark. An agonised, barely audible cry of relief dragged from my throat as I sank into the shadows. Yes, I could stop now. I could go be with Zayde. We'd play in the shadows of the mountain again. We'd fly like dark wraiths caught in time. Nothing would ever pull us apart again, not in the shadows. In the shadows we'd be free.

The shadow that surrounded me grew and moved, it's shape more solid than I thought a shadow could be? I didn't care so long as it took me to that place it sung of, those spectres of memories. A world away, a place without feeling, without pain, just memory.

Then the shadow had eyes, and an ashen expression in the moonlight. Such a beautiful shadow. What a comfort he was, this shadow of mine, maybe the Cauldron wasn't so cruel to us Illyrian females after all?

I'd nothing to fear, at least that's what the shadow sang.

******************************

Author Note: What so you guys think, huh? R&R if you can, and Thank You all so much for reading and favouriting...and to the reviewers...you beautiful, beautiful people, keep that sh1t up!

So I finished Of Frost and Starlight! It was interesting, I have a lot feelings about it. What did you guys think?

Anyhoo, it sort of slightly changed my timeline for this story because I loved more of the inclusion of the Illyrians...but it doesn't change my plot...other than I've firmly decided to set this after the events of A Frost and Starlight, because I think that makes the best sense for Zansi.

Until next time!

xxx

Media: The Rasmus - in the Shadows (Crow Version).