The Prophecy - ACOTAR

Chapter 63 *

It had been nine days since Astrid had been grounded in Velaris, and Rhys would not budge on his verdict. It killed her inside not to be able to check-in with Feyre as she had been. That feeling of dread grew each day when she saw the look on Rhys's face. If she had to take a guess, she would say that something was happening with their bond, because he had the same look she would have if anything happened with hers and Az's.

As much as Astrid didn't want to admit it, she also worried about Lucian. She knew her cousins and Jurian were currently infesting his court and he had been a good friend during her time there. If she was more honest with herself, he was close to being one of her best friends. A platonic mate of sorts. They might not have been a match in the bedroom or trauma front, but they still bettered each other. They still made each other work to become better in different areas.

Just like Wren has helped her through her memories returning and helped her work through her anger towards Feyre. How Wren helped her realize that hers and Feyre's relationship didn't have to go back to what it was before, how she even offered that they didn't have to have one at all.

Just like Cass helped her realize that there were males out there that didn't want to hurt her or fuck her. He was just someone platonic who could take her bullshit and could match her in the sparring ring.

Wren, Lucien, and Cass had turned into her platonic soul mates, and she hated the idea of not knowing if any of them were ok. She hated being away from Az more, but Rhys would never do that to her.

It ended up taking most of the inner circle to keep Astrid distracted during those nine days. Most mornings she would spar with Cass lightly to help with his healing. After their sparring, it hadn't taken much convincing from Cass, but Astrid would then bounce over to the Illyrian war camps and continue working to train the female Illyrians.

Most of those sessions ended up being Astrid sparring and horrifically destroying the Illyrian males. At first, she had thought that by showing everyone in the camp that females could be just fierce and deadly as any male, she could coax and convince the younger females into her lessons. But as she stretched after her third victory of the afternoon, her blood was pumping with irritation and her skin with crawling at the thought of having to fight another Illyrian male.

It crossed her mind briefly that it wouldn't hurt to much to just slit the next one's throat or maybe to strangle him. She was leaning more towards the strangling since she could physically feel the life drain from his worthless body. But her thought process was redirected from cold blooded murder when she caught sight of a dangerously skinny, dark haired female Illyrian that looked familiar to her.

Astrid's eyebrows scrunched together as she slowly made her way over to her. As she got closer, the irritation that was flooding her body quickly boiled into anger as the wounds on her wings came into view.

Astrid cleared her throat loud enough for the female to hear so she didn't sneak up on her.

The female startled and quickly wiped the tears that had been streaking down her face, "I'm sorry, did you need something?" She asked in a hoarse whisper.

"I just..." Astrid struggled to find her words, "I kind of recognized you and I couldn't place where from... What happened to your wings?"

"Oh, I'm Emerie, we met outside the sparring wing one day after you fought Cassian." Emerie paused and glanced around before dropping her voice to a whisper that forced Astrid to move in closer to hear, "My father... he clipped my wings."

Astrid froze as the information swirled around in her mind and her anger boiled over, "I thought Rhys and Cass outlawed that." She said with her jaw clenched.