Heir of Dreams and Princess of Light

Chapter 1: The Star-Crossed Lovers

Marzanna was going to Prythian, Lysandra in tow.

And Nyx and the Night Court was going with her.

Only Lysandra was coming back.

Nyx wasn't coming back.

He wasn't coming back.

He wasn't-- couldn't come back. Because if he did, the danger of the Queens using him or his blood to open a Wyrdgate increased. If he opened a gate to Erilea, or if Estelle herself opened one to Prythian, they were putting both their homes in danger.

Estelle tried, over and over and over again, to tell herself these facts. To make them real in her head. But no matter how many times she repeated those words, they refused to sink in.

The awfulness of it all was what stuck. Nyx would forever be a door away. Tempting her, taunting her, for the rest of her life. And she was expected to ignore it, ignore him. Something she had never been able to do, not since she'd met him all those months ago.

There was nothing she could say to make it better. Nothing he could say, either, and he didn't try. He just wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his side, sitting so close to her their hips were pressed together.

Absentmindedly, he played with the ring around her neck. It had been a gift from her mother on her fourteenth birthday. To show a new Galathynius legacy, she'd told her. But what kind of legacy was worth this-- this awful, meaningless feeling?

Rationally, Estelle knew she was being dramatic. She knew this wasn't like her, or at least not like the person she'd been before she'd met Nyx. But Nyx had changed her, not for better or for worse, but still a change nonetheless.

She desperately wanted him to stay. She just as badly wanted to go with him. And therein lay the problem. If Estelle was nobody special, if she wasn't a Galathynius, if she was even second in line for the throne, she'd have a choice in front of her. But she wasn't. And so there was no choice.

She couldn't leave Terrasen.

And he couldn't leave the Night Court.

Estelle had known all along they were doomed from the start. But it had been so easy to push those thoughts away in the moment, to put it off and pretend it didn't exist. Now that the time was here and smashing through every wall she'd put up to forget it, she didn't know what to do.

And she hated it. She hated that she didn't know. She hated that she knew the facts, what was set to happen. But she couldn't make herself face what came... after.

"I haven't known you for very long," Nyx said into the silence. After Aelin's declaration, Danica had sent them away, a worried frown on her lips.

"You two need to... to say..." She'd bitten her lip, but Estelle knew what Danica meant. Goodbye.

"That's not entirely true," Estelle murmured. "You've known me your whole life, even if you didn't remember."

"That's the thing, actually," Nyx said, his chin moving in her hair as he spoke. "I feel as if I did remember you. Or, that I remembered you were gone. My whole life, I always felt like I had to keep moving, to keep going until I found the next thing. I could never stop." He paused. "Then I met you, and it was like my entire world held its breath. Like I was waiting for you all along, and had no idea. You came into my life, and everything just seemed so... right. In a way it hadn't before."

Estelle pondered this. I feel the same, but opposite, she wanted to say. Before you, I never chased anything. I was content, happy even, to follow all the rules and lines I'd been given. Then I met you, and you made me want to be alive. To do more than exist.