If She Had Known

Innocents

For my final task I was given the clothes I had arrived under the mountain in. The old tunic and pants positively reeked but I did my best to hold my chin high. I had smelled worse things and would endure much worse than rotten clothing in the very near future.

I was escorted to the throne room by the guards who still didn't dare to touch me. They barely looked at me as the doors were flung open and the silence of the room assaulted me. I waited for the jeers and shouts, waited to see gold flash as the onlookers placed their bets, but this time the faeries just stared at me, the masked ones especially intently.

Their world once again rested on my shoulders, but it wasn't worry alone that was spread across their features. I had to swallow hard as a few of them touched their fingers to their lips, then extended their hands to me. I ignored the gesture, though I knew the gravity and truth of it. I would die soon.

I couldn't find the purple eyes in the crowd and hollowed out inside.

I strode up the path they'd cleared— straight for Amarantha. The queen smiled when I stopped in front of her throne. Tamlin looked to be in his usual place beside her, but I wouldn't look at him. Not even because I knew it was the Attor in a glamour.

"Two trials lie behind you," the queen spoke, picking at a fleck of dust on her blood-red gown. Her hair shone, a gleaming crimson river that would haunt my nightmares for years that so reminded me of the stream of blood I would pull from two innocent Fae. "And only one more awaits, I wonder if it will be worse to fail now— when you are so close." She gave me a pout and we both waited for the laughter. Not a single soul made a sound. Even her own cronies were too caught up in the moment that they forgot to follow her silent cues. She glared at them, but when her gaze landed upon me, she smiled broadly, "Any words to say before you die?"

The eyes I wanted to see were gone, so I spoke to the green ones in their place, pulling on whatever grasp of the string inside me so he would know it was for him. It was all for him. "I love you," I said. "No matter what happens, no matter what anyone tells you. I love you. We will be together soon." My lips trembled, and my vision clouded before several warm tears slipped down my chilled face. I didn't wipe them away.

The crowd gave me a gift of their silence. It gave me enough courage to bunch my fists, look her in the eye, and embrace the tattoo on my arm. There were many things missing from me, but those swirls of black ink were enough to remind me that I wasn't alone. I was not going to die alone, and that was all I could hope to ask for. "Let's get on with it."

Amarantha only widened her smile, and a door swung open. Three figures— two male and one female, with brown sacks over their heads were dragged in by the guards. Their concealed faces turned this way and that as they tried to discern the whispers that rippled across the throne room. My knees bent slightly as they approached. With sharp jabs and blunt shoves, the red-skinned guards forced the three faeries to their knees at the foot of the dais, but facing me.

It was a scene I had relived more times that I could count. So often that I forgot what was real and what wasn't. In some of my imaginings, I had taken that ash blade and slit my own throat. In some I had killed all three. In none of them did I make it out alive. A harsh tug ripped me from that falling sensation, the ringing in my ears fading, and the world pulled back into focus.

Rhysand.

Amarantha clapped her hands again, and the three servants clad in black appeared at the side of each of the kneeling faeries. In their long, pale hands, they each carried a dark velvet pillow with those Ash blades I had become oh so familiar with.

"Your final task, Feyre," the queen drawled from out of my sight that hadn't left the wooden dagger. I expected the words she spoke. I didn't even hear them, "stab each of these unfortunate souls in the heart."