A Court of Secrets and Moonlight

78: The Beginning of the End

Rhysand

The carnage was unlike anything I had ever truly seen.

I hadn't been present for the final battle between the loyalists and our forces in the last war. Even months after Leur had rescued me from Amarantha, I was still healing. My wings had been torn to shreds, kept from healing for so long that I could not fly for nearly a year afterwards. More so, I was an emotional wreck, had gone nearly insane after all that time in captivity.

Leur had fought in my stead.

I could not possibly put into words at what I felt when I thought of my sister at this moment. If she was not dead or abducted by Hybern, I might genuinely kill her once she finally made an appearance. If there was not a reason good enough to warrant abandoning us at the beginning of this battle-

Four Hybern soldiers dropped at the swing of my sword. In the distance, heavy black smoke was rising from the area where Beron's forces were helping the Illyrians carve through the Hybern line. Even with all of us, even with the addition of Autumn, Spring, and the human armies- we were outnumbered nearly twenty to one.

Eris had explained that Tamlin had been the one to drag Beron by the hair out from his palace before I joined the battle. I didn't know how to feel, didn't know what to say.

So I just kept plowing through, aiming blindly for the other side, hoping I could find any path through the carnage towards the Cauldron. The King had erected wards that prevented us from winnowing, not that I would even know what to aim for if I could winnow. Helion was trying to find a way to break it while locked in battle, currently to no avail.

Arrows zipped past me, hitting the shield I formed around myself as I pushed harder and harder. A scent I recognized passed through my senses, faebane burning. It was earthy, and certainly not on purpose. A glance towards the Hybern line showed Autumn Court soldiers pushing through, their magic snaking around the thousands of soldiers to set the wagons containing the cashes aflame. Burning it into nothing, leaving no supply for Hybern to fall back on. The distraction cost me, just enough that the Hybern line surrounding me and the legion of Illyrians sat my back reformed.

Trapping us inside their forces, leaving us surrounded.

Black power ripped from me as fast as I could make it go, my wings flaring at my back as I prepared to abandon my spot. I had barely made an indent, but it was something, it was some progress. Abandoning it only meant backtracking, wasting time we did not have. But we were getting overwhelmed too fast, the surrounding enemy pushing us tighter and tighter together. It was either take to the skies or fall to the ground, sacrifice our progress or die for it.

I took a deep breath, the command about to leave my lips when a vicious roar ripped through the air. The line cleaved apart again. The soldiers that had enveloped us were ripped apart one by one by blasts of power stronger than a thunderstorm.

Revealing none other than Tamlin and his forces as the ones responsible.

His eyes met mine for a brief second, and for a moment he was not what he had become in the past 500 years. He was not the male I thought responsible for my mother and my sister's death, not the brooding High Lord who ruled the Spring Court, not the male who had sat by idly as Feyre wasted away. He was simply the friend I had lost all those years ago, the male I had seen as my brother long before Cassian or Azriel had come along, the male I had trained, the male who was best friends with my sister.

I could have sworn there was a slight nod from that beast of dark blonde fur and claws. A sign that he acknowledged the same thing I did, the hatchet between us being buried in the ground for now.