Heart of thorns and iron

Prologue

The salty taste of my tears reached my mouth, but I wasn't going to care. Oh come on Stella, you don't cry a voice said inside my head. I drowned it down with sobs as I threw myself onto the messy bed of my cramped flat.

Because he was gone. Forever. Never to come back. Pain stabbed at my heart, making it bleed, and luring me into a whirlwind of despair and agony. Take me instead, I wanted to scream at death. Just make him come back.

But he wasn't going to. Nothing would make him come back now. The realization weighed on me as if the whole of the world had come down to my shoulders. So I cried. I cried until no more tears came, and my voice was hoarse, and blame started curling into a dark corner of my mind.

You should've saved him.

You should've been better.

You should've cared more.

Nothing would've happened if it weren't for you.

It was true. And that just made me want to scream, shriek, curl down into a ball and shut myself from the world forever. A morbid idea came to my mind as I reached for the draw where I kept my iron powder. I remembered my mother telling me off that time I'd cut myself with iron when I was playing at the woods. "Iron is poison for fae" she tutted at me. A bitter smile crept to my lips as I grabbed the pouch where I kept it. I was already going to swallow it and take myself to the realms of the dead when a delicate hand put it away from my reach.

"He would've wanted you to live" they whispered softly. "So don't leave us too. Don't leave me."

Sobs threatened my throat when I tried to open my mouth to reply, but the person shushed me and wrapped me in a hug. And I cried myself to sleep in the arms of my savior, onto a new page of my life. For he would have indeed wanted me to live.