𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏

"𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘢 𝘥𝘰𝘦?!"

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╰┈˚ · ° . ᴛʜᴇ ᴡɪɴᴛᴇʀ ᴀɪʀ ᴡᴀꜱ ꜰʀᴇᴇᴢɪɴɢ. The cold snow fell from the sky. Snowflakes covered the Archeron girls' clothes, hair and eyelashes. They had risked much in coming so far into the forest, but the family had finished the last loaf of bread the day prior, and the remainder of their dried meat the day before. Only a few hours of daylight remained. If they don't leave soon, they have to navigate their way home in the dark.

The icy snow crunched under Maiven's twin sister's fraying boots. With her hands probably numb from the cold she signaled her sister her next move.

Feyre slowly walked away hoping to find more luck while wandering around the freezing forest.

They knew that they needed this hunt to go well. They wouldn't last another week without food.

Maiven eased into a more comfortable position and calmed her breathing, straining to listen to the forest over the wind.

Just as her thoughts began to wander, bushes rustled across the clearing.

Drawing her bow was a matter of instinct. She peered through the thorns, her breath caught in her throat.

Less than thirty paces away stood a small doe, not yet too scrawny from winter, but desperate enough to wrench bark from a tree in the clearing.

A deer like that could feed the Archeron family for a week or more.

Maiven's mouth watered. Quiet as the wind hissing through dead leaves, she took aim.

The doe continued tearing off strips of bark, chewing slowly, utterly unaware that her death waited yards away.

They could dry half the meat, and they could immediately eat the rest—stews, pies ... the skin could be sold, or perhaps turned into clothing for one of the sisters. Feyre needed new boots, but Elaine needed a new cloak, and Nesta was prone to crave anything someone else possessed.

Maiven's fingers trembled. So much food—such salvation. She took a steadying breath, double-checking her aim.

The gold-brown haired girl fired her arrow just as the doe turned towards her. The sharp end clean through one of its eyes, killing it instantaneously.

A shaky and breathy laugh escaped the young girl's mouth as she looked at the now dead animal with relief.

Mai calmly walked toward it, kneeling in the snow next to the animal's unmoving body, before she hoisted her across her shoulders.

With her senses sharp Mai began to walk away, searching for her sister.

Her eyes widened as she found the girl skinning a now dead wolf. Its size, similar to that of a pony. Eyes of a vibrant yellow.

"Feyre?" The youngest twin spoke raising one of her eyebrows

"I thought that we could sell its pelt in the village tomorrow" She answered, continuing her work. As she turned around to look at her sister her eyes sparkled as they laid on the dead animal on Maiven's back "You caught a doe?!" Feyre let out a light, happy laugh as the thought of starving this week faded away for the next

A smile erupted on the youngest girl's face as she watched her twin sister sight in relief. But it quickly changed as she eyed the animal she'd killed.

Too big to be a normal wolf.

"Do you think it's...?" Feyre trailed out her question knowing that her sister could easily understand her

"I don't know. Let's just get out of here quickly"

With a firm nod Feyre stood up. She tied the pelt on the neck of the doe before the both of them started their walk back to their family cottage.

"Do you have... work soon?" Feyre asked, slightly cringing on the word 'work'

"Tomorrow," Maiven answered. She slipped on her cold facade as she was remembered of her doing

Feyre simply nodded, understanding her sister.

•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•⋅∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⋅•⋅⋅•⋅⋅•

╰┈˚ · ° . The sun had set by the time they walked out of the forest. The world was awash in hues of dark blue, interrupted only by shafts of buttery light escaping from the shuttered windows of their dilapidated cottage.

As the twins trudged up the path, each step fueled only by near-dizzying hunger, their sisters' voices fluttered out to meet them. Maiven didn't need to discern their words to know they most likely were chattering about some young man or the ribbons they'd spotted in the village when they should have been chopping wood.

The girl kicked her boots against the stone door frame, knocking the snow from them quickly followed by her twin sister. Bits of ice came free from the gray stones of the cottage, revealing the faded ward-markings etched around the threshold. Their father had once convinced a passing charlatan to trade the engravings against faerie harm in exchange for one of his wood carvings. The engravings were useless ... and undoubtedly fake. Mortals didn't possess magic—didn't possess any of the superior strength and speed of the faeries or High Fae. The man, claiming some High Fae blood in his ancestry, had just carved the whorls and swirls and runes around the door and windows, muttered a few nonsense words, and ambled on his way.

"Feyre! Maiven!" Elain's soft gasp scraped past Maiven's ears as she blinked back the brightness of the fire to find the second-eldest Archeron sister before her. Though she was bundled in a threadbare blanket, her gold-brown hair—the hair all four of the sisters had—was coiled perfectly around her head. Eight years of poverty hadn't stripped from her the desire to look lovely. "Where did you get that?" The undercurrent of hunger honed her words into a sharpness that had become too common in recent weeks.

Mai took a calming breath as she slung the doe off her shoulders. The animal hit the wooden table with a thud, rattling a ceramic cup on its other end.

"Where do you think we got it?" Feyre's voice had turned hoarse, each word burning as it came out. Father and Nesta still silently warmed their hands by the hearth, the eldest sister ignoring him, as usual. Mai peeled the wolf pelt from the doe's body, and after removing her boots and setting them by the door next to Feyre's, she turned to Elain.

Her brown eyes—our father's eyes—remained pinned on the doe.

"Will it take you long to clean it?" Them. Not her, not the others.The twins never once had seen the hands of the others sticky with blood and fur.

Elain pushed her hand against her belly, probably as empty and aching as Maiven's. It wasn't that Elain was cruel. She wasn't like Nesta, who had been born with a sneer on her face. Elain sometimes just ... didn't grasp things.

Mai clenched her jaw and decided to left the question unanswered

"Girls." The deep rumble voice of their father came from the fire. His dark beard was neatly trimmed, his face spotless—like the two eldest sisters'. "What luck you had today—in bringing us such a feast."

From beside her father, Maiven heard Nesta snort. Not surprising. Any bit of praise for anyone—Feyre, Maiven, Elain, other villagers—usually resulted in her dismissal. And any word from their father usually resulted in her ridicule as well.

Of all the sisters, Nesta had taken the loss of their fortune the hardest. She had quietly resented their father from the moment they'd fled their manor, even after that awful day. One of the creditors had come to show just how displeased he was at the loss of his investment.

But at least Nesta didn't fill their heads with useless talk of regaining their wealth, like their father. No, she just spent whatever money Feyre and Maiven didn't hide from her, and rarely bothered to acknowledge her father's limping presence at all.

"We can eat half the meat this week," Feyre said, shifting her gaze to the doe. The deer took up the entirety of the rickety table that served as dining area, workspace, and kitchen. "We can dry the other half," She went on, knowing that no matter how nicely she phrased it, the twins would still do the bulk of it. "And I'll go to the market tomorrow to see how much I can get for the hides,"

The man's ruined leg was stretched out before him, as close to the fire's heat as it could get. The cold, or the rain, or a change in temperature always aggravated the vicious, twisted wounds around his knee. His simply carved cane was propped up against his chair—a cane he'd made for himself ... and that Nesta was sometimes prone to leaving far out of his reach.

He could find work if he wasn't so ashamed, Nesta always said when they hissed about it. She hated him for the injury, too—for not fighting back when that creditor and his thugs had burst into the cottage and smashed his knee again and again. Nesta and Elain had fled into the bedroom, barricading the door. But the twins, they had stayed, begging and weeping through every scream of their father, every crunch of bone. they soiled themselves—and then vomited right on the stones before the hearth. Only then did the men leave. They never saw them again.

They'd used a massive chunk of their remaining money to pay for the healer. Feyre had explained to her younger twin It had taken their father six months to even walk, a year before he could go a mile. The coppers he brought in when someone pitied him enough to buy his wood carvings weren't enough to keep them fed. Five years ago, just as Mai came back from 'Aunt Ripleigh', the money was well and truly gone, and when their father still couldn't—wouldn't—move much about, he hadn't argued when the twins had announced that they were going hunting.

"I'd love a new cloak," Elain said at last with a sigh, at the same moment Nesta rose and declared: "I need a new pair of boots."

Mai kept quiet just as Feyre, knowing better than to get in the middle of one of their arguments, but the youngest girl glanced at Nesta's still-shiny pair by the door.

She clenched her jaw before squeezing her twin sister's hand letting her know that she was walking away from their family selfishness talk.

Maiven walked to the small second room in the Archeron cottage. The room where the sisters slept.

It was large enough for a rickety dresser and the enormous ironwood bed where they slept in. The sole remnant of their former wealth, it had been ordered as a wedding gift from their father to their mother. It was the bed in which all the girls had been born, and the bed in which their mother died. In all the painting that Feyre had done to our house these past few years, she'd never touched it.

The gold-brown haired girl slung off her outer clothes onto the sagging dresser—looking at the violets and roses painted around the knobs of Elain's drawer, the crackling flames painted around Nesta's, and the night sky—whorls of yellow stars standing in for white—around Feyra's. Her drawer was adorned with whirls and strands of red and black. Mai had never understood the meaning of it to be honest, but her twin sister had painted it so it was enough for her to love it.

Groaning, it was all she could do to keep her body from collapsing onto the bed.

✎

˗ˏˋ 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ˊˎ˗

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the first chapter! I hope that you liked it. This is just the beginning. I would like to clarify something first. This story will not be centered around the love interest (Azriel) Of course he will come later on. But this is a book dedicated to my oc and her life. With and without Az. I hope this will not be a problem but I don't like to write and create a character just to make their life be dedicated to their love interest.

Anyways thank you all for reading this and if you'd like please, let me know what you thought of this first chapter with a comment and a star. Wattpad readers have the best comments up their sleeves. As a reader myself I know that because they always make me crack a smile. lmao

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞!

– 𝐋𝐨𝐥𝐚 ☾