A Court of Secrets and Moonlight

53: Gone

Tamlin

500 years ago

I'd had a bad feeling all day.

It was deep in my gut, like I instinctively just knew that something was coming. I ignored it for most of the day, thinking it was just because of what tomorrow night would bring.

At midnight two days from now, I'd lose my best friend. I'd lose the only person who I felt truly knew me, the only person who I truly considered my family. And I had spent all day training with her brother, hearing him talk about her had nearly driven me mad.

Leur and I were meant to meet at our favorite childhood haunt tonight, to spend our final few hours together before she'd fake her death, before she'd go into exile on the continent, before she'd be gone and I'd be alone.

But she never came.

I waited all night, staring at that pool of starlight, trying to think of any way to stop the inevitable. She hadn't shown up. It wasn't like her, especially not when this was the last time we'd ever see one another. She may have been late, but Leur wouldn't have just not come.

It was three hours until dawn when the worry set in. I paced around, watched the forest, and tried not to rip my hair out for an hour after that before I couldn't take it anymore.

I knew that she was supposed to be in Illyria tonight, at the cabin hidden within the mountains that she and Rhys sometimes took me to for training. I winnowed there, only to find it empty. No trace of her scent or anyone else's, just a dark house and the autumn wind. I winnowed in the direction of Windhaven, the camp she had grown up training in. Rhys had taken me there once, and all I knew was that it was southwest of the Mountain Cabin. I had no idea where I was, what I was looking for as I ran through the dense woods. Leaves crunched under my feet for hours as I searched, hoping to push until I found something, anything. Autumn air filled my lungs and then-

Blood.

The unmistakable scent of blood, overwhelming in its stench.

Mixed with a scent I would know like the back of my hand.

"No!" I screamed, if only to the wind.

My body was moving faster than ever before as I winnowed towards it, as I ran in its direction. I had no idea what I'd see when I came upon the clearing where it was concentrated. All I knew was that I had to find her, had to help her, had to-

I was too late.

The carnage in front of me nearly knocked me to my knees. In all the years of my life, all the battles I fought in the war, all the things I had witnessed- I had never seen anything like this. I recognized what remained of Hashna, Rhys and Leur's mother, headless and wingless in the background.

But Leur was on the ground in front of me.

I barely recognized her.

She was naked, not wearing a thing, a knife coated in her blood and faebane lying in the pool of her blood at the side. Broken bones and cuts and bruises.

No heartbeat.

I fell to my knees on instinct, unable to stop myself from crying as I shook her. "Wake up." I begged, "Please, Leur. Wake up."

She was cold to the touch.

"You're not dead. You're not dead." I repeated it over and over, my battle training kicking in. I started chest compressions, screaming at the mother to bring her back. Her ribs should have cracked under the pressure. I remembered them telling us that it was normal, that it was necessary.