𝙳𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝙿𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚎(𝙰𝙲𝙾𝚃𝙰𝚁)

𝖈𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝖙𝖜𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖞-𝖔𝖓𝖊**

     Battle was something Astraea was unfamiliar with.

    Cassian had taught her self-defense, but that was all. The only reason she'd been able to murder Demetri was because he hadn't expected her to be as strong as she was. She had the element of surprise on her side.

    So when she heard that there had been an attack on the Summer Court, Astraea had been frustrated.

     Astraea was up the whole night, tending to the wounds the healers were unable to fix. Some of the injuries were minor, others were near fatal.

     Evelina spent the night going around the tents to make sure her daughter wasn't one of the dead or injured.

"Diana doesn't live anywhere near here, she's perfectly fine," Rhys had assured her. But Evelina had always been a neurotic female, so she continued to search.

    Despite the circumstances, Astraea was still struggling to be surrounded by so many people. She kept having to ground herself and take deep breaths.

    Of course, most of the males were injured or too focused on the war to intimidate her. But the screams of pain, the sobs, the panicked female healers. All of it was only adding to the anxiety that was welled up in her.

    Only a few Illyrians died during the night. But high up in the hills, the screams and wails of Tarquin's people rose to us on plumes of smoke from the still-burning fires Hybern had set. They continued burning when they left in the early hours after dawn, winnowing back to Velaris.

    Cassian and Azriel remained to lead the Illyrian legions to their new camp on our southern borders —and the former left from there to fly into the Steppes. To offer his condolences to a few of those families.

     Nesta was waiting for them in the foyer of the town house, Amren seething in a chair before the unlit fireplace of the sitting room.

"What happened?" Nesta demanded.

"There was a battle. We won," Rhys said.

"We know that," Amren said, her small feet near-silent on the rugs as she strode for them. "What happened with Tarquin?"

"Well, he didn't try to slaughter us on sight, so things went decently?" Feyre said.

"The royal family remains alive and well. Tarquin's armada suffered losses, but Cresseida and Varian were unscathed," Rhys explained to her.

   Something tight in Amren's face seemed to relax at the words—his careful, diplomatic words. But Nesta was glancing between them all, her back still stiff, mouth a thin line.

"We leave for the meeting in three days," Rhys said. "Send out dispatches to the other High Lords to inform them. And I'm done debating where to meet. Pick a place and be done with it."

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

     Astraea took a very quick bath, just ensuring she got all the blood off of herself. She was going to take a very long nap.

     When she got out of the bath, I went to my bed, glancing at the clothes she had laid out. Her head turned towards the full-length mirror across the room.

     She stared at her naked body in the mirror, desperately looking for a part of her body that he had never touched.

     She could barely look at the name carved into her stomach without wanting to spill its contents into the trash can.

     Astraea hated what I saw. She despised it. It wasn't her body. It didn't belong to her anymore. She traced her fingers over the scars on her stomach.