𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟏𝟓

"𝘐𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦?"

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╰┈˚ · ° .  ɪᴛ ᴛᴏᴏᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀʀᴄʜᴇʀᴏɴ ᴛᴡɪɴꜱ ᴛᴡᴏ ᴅᴀʏꜱ to arrive at the wall and another two to find mossy stones placed across from each other, a faint whorl carved into them both. A gate.

And soon they were riding in silicene passing the familiar trees of the Sprig Court.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

The human girls approached the front gate of the manor. It was open, but the iron had been bent out of shape, as if mighty hands had wrenched them apart.

Maiven and Feyre shared a look before dismounting their horses.

Sword in hand Mai walked in front of her sister, scanning the area that now seemed deserted.

"Tam?" Feyre called "Tamlin" she shouted rushing inside

"Feyre wait" Maiven yelled running to catch up with her sister

Alone in the wreckage of the manor, Feyre sank to her knees.

"C'mon Fey" Maiven whispered helping the girl on her feet

There were splatters of blood everywhere, along with small puddles and smears down the gouged walls. There were no bodies, and not much gore. They had to be alive.

Debris crunched from down the hall alerting the twins that they were not alone. They lunged behind the door, the only place where they could hide.

Something limped into the room and sniffed. Maiven could only see its back—cloaked in a plain cape, medium height ...The figure sniffed again, she dared a better glance at it

The figure turned slightly toward them.

"Alis." Feyre cried out shoving away the door

She gaped at them, a hand on her heart, her usual brown dress torn and dirty, her apron gone entirely.

"You can't be here. You were told to stay away." She said to Feyre

"Is he alive?"

"Yes, but—"

"And Lucien?" Maiven asked

"Alive as well. But—."

"Tell us what happened—tell us everything."

Alis grasped her arm and pulled her from the room. She didn't speak as they all hurried through the empty, too-quiet hall

"I had to come back. I thought something had gone wrong—I couldn't stay away. I had to help."

"He told you not to come back," Alis snapped.

"Where is he?"

Alis covered her face with her long, bony hands, her fingertips grappling into the upper edge of her mask as if trying to tear it from her face. But the mask remained, and Alis sighed as she lowered her tree-bark hands. "She took him," she said. "She took him to her court Under the Mountain."

"Who?" Maiven asked. But she already knew the answer

"Amarantha," Alis whispered

"Why? And who is she—what is she? Please, please just tell me—just give us the truth." Feyre begged

Alis shuddered. "You want the truth, girl? Then here it is: she took him for the curse—because the seven times seven years were over, and he hadn't shattered her curse. She's summoned all the High Lords to her court this time—to make them watch her break him."

"What is she—wh-what curse?"

"Amarantha is High Queen of this land. The High Queen of Prythian," Alis breathed, her eyes wide with some memory of horror.

"But the seven High Lords rule Prythian—equally. There's no High Queen."

"That's how it used to be—how it's always been. Until a hundred years ago, when she appeared in these lands as an emissary from Hybern. She went from court to court," Alis went on "charming the High Lords with talk of more trade between Hybern and Prythian, more communication, more sharing of assets. The Never-Fading Flower, they called her. And for fifty years, she lived here as a courtier bound to no court, making amends, she claimed, for her own actions and the actions of Hybern during the War."

"She fought in the War against mortals?"

Alis paused her gathering. "Her story is legend among our kind—legend, and nightmare. She was the King of Hybern's most lethal general—she fought on the front lines, slaughtering humans and any High Fae and faeries who dared defend them. But she had a younger sister, Clythia, who fought at her side, as vicious and wretched as she ... until Clythia fell in love with a mortal warrior. Jurian." Alis loosed a shaking sigh. "Jurian commanded mighty human armies, but Clythia still secretly sought him out, still loved him with an unrelenting madness. She was too blind to realize that Jurian was using her for information about Amarantha's forces. Amarantha suspected, but could not persuade Clythia to leave him—and could not bring herself to kill him, not when it would cause her sister such pain." Alis clicked her tongue and began opening the cabinets, scanning their ravaged insides. "Amarantha delighted in torture and killing, and yet she loved her sister enough to stay her hand."

"What happened?" Maiven asked

"Oh, Jurian betrayed Clythia. After months of stomaching being her lover, he got the information he needed, then tortured and butchered her, crucifying her with ash wood so she couldn't move while he did it. He left the pieces of her for Amarantha to find. They say Amarantha's wrath could have brought down the skies themselves, had her king not ordered her to stand down. But she and Jurian had their final confrontation later—and since then, Amarantha has hated humans with a rage you cannot imagine. After the two sides made the Treaty," Alis said, now going through the drawers, "she butchered her own slaves, rather than free them. But centuries later, the High Lords believed her when she told them that the death of her sister had changed her—especially when she opened trade lines between our two territories. The High Lords never knew that those same ships that brought over Hybernian goods also brought over her own personal forces. The King of Hybern didn't know, either. But we all soon learned that, in those fifty years she was here, she had decided she wanted Prythian for her own, to begin amassing power and use our lands as a launching point to one day destroy your world once and for all, with or without her king's blessing. So forty-nine years ago, she struck.She knew—knew that even with her personal army, she could never conquer the seven High Lords by numbers or power alone. But she was also cunning and cruel, and she waited until they absolutely trusted her, until they gathered at a ball in her honor, and that night she slipped a potion stolen from the King of Hybern's unholy spell book into their wine. Once they drank, the High Lords were prone, their magic laid bare—and she stole their powers from where they originated inside their bodies—plucked them out as if she were taking an apple from its branch, leaving them with only the basest elements of their magic. Your Tamlin—what you saw of him here was a shade of what he used to be, the power that he used to command. And with the High Lords' power so greatly decreased, Amarantha wrested control of Prythian from them in a matter of days. For forty-nine years, we have been her slaves. For forty-nine years, she has been biding her time, waiting for the right moment to break the Treaty and take your lands—and all human territories beyond it. Now they call her the Deceiver—she who trapped the seven High Lords and built her palace beneath the sacred Mountain in the heart of our land." Alis paused before the pantry door and covered her face again, taking a few steadying breaths.

"But ... the sickness in the lands ... Tamlin said that the blight took their power—"

"She is the sickness in these lands," Alis snapped, lowering her hands

"There is no blight but her. The borders were collapsing because she laid them to rubble. She found it amusing to send her creatures to attack our lands, to test whatever strength Tamlin had left."

"You could have been the one to stop her." Her eyes were hard upon Feyre, and she bared her teeth. They were alarmingly sharp. She shoved the turnips and beets into the bag. "You could have been the one to free him and his power, had you not been so blind to your own heart. Humans," she spat.

"I—I ..." Feyre lifted her hands, exposing my palms to her. "I didn't know."

"You couldn't know," Alis said bitterly, her laugh harsh as she entered the pantry again. "It was part of Tamlin's curse."

"What was his curse? What did she do to him?"

"Tamlin and Amarantha knew each other before—his family had long been tied to Hybern. During the War, the Spring Court allied with Hybern to keep the humans enslaved. So his father—his father, who was a fickle and vicious Lord— was very close with the King of Hybern, to Amarantha. Tamlin as a child often accompanied him on trips to Hybern. And he met Amarantha in the process.Amarantha eventually grew to desire Tamlin—to lust for him with her entire wicked heart. But he'd heard the stories from others about the War, and knew what Amarantha and his father and the Hybern king had done to faeries and humans alike. What she did to Jurian as punishment for her sister's death. He was wary of her when she came here, despite her attempts to lure him into her bed— and kept his distance, right up until she stole his powers. Lucien ... Lucien was sent to her as Tamlin's emissary, to try to treat for peace between them. She refused, and ... Lucien told her to go back to the shit-hole she'd crawled out of. She took his eye as punishment. Carved it out with her own fingernail, then scarred his face. She sent him back so bloody that Tamlin ... The High Lord vomited when he saw his friend.After that, she hosted a masquerade Under the Mountain for herself. All the courts were present. A party, she said—to make amends for what she'd done to Lucien, and a masquerade so he didn't have to reveal the horrible scarring on his face. The entire Spring Court was to attend, even the servants, and to wear masks—to honor Tamlin's shape-shifting powers, she said. He was willing to try to end the conflict without slaughter, and he agreed to go—to bring all of us. When all were assembled, she claimed that peace could be had—if Tamlin joined her as her lover and consort. But when she tried to touch him, he refused to let her near. Not after what she'd done to Lucien. He said—in front of everyone that night—that he would sooner take a human to his bed, sooner marry a human, than ever touch her. She might have let it go, had he not then said that her own sister had preferred a human's company to hers, that her own sister had chosen Jurian over her. You can guess how well that went over with Amarantha. But she told Tamlin that she was in a generous mood—told him she'd give him a chance to break the spell she'd put upon him to steal his power. He spat in her face, and she laughed. She said he had seven times seven years before she claimed him, before he had to join her Under the Mountain. If he wanted to break her curse, he need only find a human girl willing to marry him. But not any girl—a human with ice in her heart, with hatred for our kind. A human girl willing to kill a faerie. Worse, the faerie she killed had to be one of his men, sent across the wall by him like lambs to slaughter. The girl could only be brought here to be courted if she killed one of his men in an unprovoked attack—killed him for hatred alone, just as Jurian had done to Clythia ... So he could understand her sister's pain."

"The Treaty—"

"That was all a lie. There was no provision for that in the Treaty. You can kill as many innocent faeries as you want and never suffer the consequences. You just killed Andras, sent out by Tamlin as that day's sacrifice. It was all a cruel joke, a clever punishment, to Amarantha. You humans loathe and fear faeries so much it would be impossible—impossible for the same girl who slaughtered a faerie in cold blood to then fall in love with one. But the spell on Tamlin could only be broken if she did just that before the forty-nine years were over—if that girl said to his face that she loved him, and meant it with her entire heart. Amarantha knows humans are preoccupied with beauty, and thus bound the masks to all our faces, to his face, so it would be more difficult to find a girl willing to look beyond the mask, beyond his faerie nature, and to the soul beneath. Then she bound us so we couldn't say a word about the curse. Not a single word. We could hardly tell you a thing about our world, about our fate. He couldn't tell you—none of us properly could. The lies about the blight—that was the best he could do, the best we could all do. That I can tell you now ... it means the game is over, to her."

"When she first cursed him, Tamlin sent one of his men across the wall every day. To the woods, to farms, all disguised as wolves to make it more likely for one of your kind to want to kill them. If they came back, it was with stories of human girls who ran and screamed and begged, who didn't even lift a hand. When they didn't come back—Tamlin's bond with them as their Lord and master told him they'd been killed by others. Human hunters, older women, perhaps. For two years he sent them out, day after day, having to pick who crossed the wall. When all but a dozen of them were left, it broke him so badly he stopped. Called it all off. And since then, Tamlin has been here, defending his borders as chaos and disorder ruled in the other courts under Amarantha's thumb. The other High Lords fought back, too. Forty years ago, she executed three of them and most of their families for banding together against her."

"Open rebellion? What courts?"

"The Day Court, Summer Court, and Winter Court. And no—it didn't even get far enough to be considered an open rebellion. She used the High Lords' powers to bind us to the land. So the rebel lords tried calling for aid from the other Fae territories using as messengers whatever humans were foolish enough to enter our lands—most of them young women who worshipped us like gods. But Amarantha caught them all before they left these shores, and ... you can imagine how it ended for those girls. Afterward, once Amarantha also butchered the rebellious High Lords, their successors were too terrified to tempt her wrath again."

"And where are they now? Are they allowed to live on their lands, like Tamlin was?"

"No. She keeps them and their entire courts Under the Mountain, where she can torment them as she pleases. Others—others, if they swear allegiance, if they grovel and serve her, she allows them a bit more freedom to come and go Under the Mountain as they will. Our court was only allowed to remain here until Tamlin's curse ran out, but ..." Alis shivered.

"He tried," Alis said. "Even with her spies, he tried finding ways to break the curse, to do anything against it, against having to send his men out again to be slaughtered by humans. He thought that if the human girl loved true, then bringing her here to free him was another form of slavery. And he thought that if he did indeed fall in love with her, Amarantha would do everything she could to destroy her, as her sister had been destroyed. So he spent decades refusing to do it, to even risk it. But this winter, with months to go, he just ... snapped. He sent the last of his men out, one by one. And they were willing—they had begged him to go, all these years. Tamlin was desperate to save his people, desperate enough to risk the lives of his men, risk that human girl's life to save us. Three days in, Andras finally ran into a human girl in a clearing—and you killed him with hate in your heart." Then Alis snarled "You could have broken it," those sharp teeth mere inches from Feyre's face. "All you had to do was say that you loved him—say that you loved him and mean it with your whole useless human heart, and his power would have been freed. You stupid, stupid girl."

"It wasn't her fault. She didn't know. You can't blame her" Maiven hissed at that faerie

"Tell that to Tamlin. He had only three days after you left before the forty-nine years were over. Three days, and he let you go. She came here with her cronies at the exact moment the seven times seven years were over and seized him, along with most of the court, and brought them Under the Mountain to be her subjects. Creatures like me are too lowly for her—though she's not above murdering us for sport."

"But what of the King of Hybern—if she's conquered Prythian for herself and stolen his spells, then does he see her as insubordinate or as an ally?"

"If they are on bad terms, he has made no move to punish her. For forty-nine years now, she's held these lands in her grip. Worse, after the High Lords fell, all the wicked ones in our lands—the ones too awful even for the Night Court—flocked to her. They still do. She's offered them sanctuary. But we know—we know she's building her army, biding her time before launching an attack on your world, armed with the most lethal and vicious faeries in Prythian and Hybern."

"Like the Attor," Feyre said in horror and dread as Alis nodded. "In the human territory rumor claims more and more faeries have been sneaking over the wall to attack humans. And if no faeries can cross the wall without her permission, then that has to mean she's been sanctioning those attacks."

"I would not be surprised if she has sent her minions into the human realm to investigate your strengths and weaknesses in anticipation of the destruction she one day hopes to cause."

"If Tamlin were freed—if he had his full powers," Feyere said, staring at a blackened bit of wall, "would he be able to destroy Amarantha?"

"I don't know. She tricked the High Lords through cunning, not force. Magic's a specific kind of thing—it likes rules, and she manipulated them too well. She keeps their powers locked up inside herself, as if she can't use them, or can access very little of them, at least. She has her own deadly powers, yes, so if it came down to a fight—"

"But is he stronger?"

"He's a High Lord," Alis replied, as if that were answer enough. "But none of that matters now. He's to be her slave, and we're all to wear these masks until he agrees to become her lover—even then, he'll never regain his full powers. And she'll never let those Under the Mountain go."

"How do I get Under the Mountain?"

She clicked her tongue. "You can't go Under the Mountain. No human who goes in ever comes out."

"Feyre..." Maiven started but she knew that her twin had already decided. She was going Under the Mountain.

"How. Do. I. Get. There."

"It's suicide—she'll kill you, even if you get close enough to see her. You're a human," Alis went on, standing as well. "Your flesh is paper-thin. You were too blind to see Tamlin's curse," Alis continued. "How do you expect to face Amarantha? You'll make things worse."

"Show me the way," Feyre said

"No. Go home. I'll take you as far as the wall. There's naught to be done now. Tamlin will remain her slave forever, and Prythian will stay under her rule. That's what Fate dealt, that was what the Eddies of the Cauldron decided."

"I don't believe in Fate. Nor do I believe in some ridiculous Cauldron. Take me to her," Feyre insisted.

"Take us to her. I might be human but I was trained as an assassin. I don't go down without a fight" Maiven stated looking at the faerie in front of her.

And so Alis caved in "As you wish."

✎

˗ˏˋ 𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 ˊˎ˗

Hello everyone! New chapter!

I know, I literally changed almost nothing from the book in this chapter but I could do nothing about it. This part it's essential so I'm sorry if it's boring. I'm sorry if there are some errors but I was literally so bored while writing this that I can't even edit it. I have another chapter ready and I'm going to post it with this.

Anyways thank you for reading this and if you'd like, please, let me know what you thought of this chapter with a comment and a star.

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐞!

– 𝐋𝐨𝐥𝐚 ☾