A vow of Stars

viii.cursing my name, wishing I stayed

'Battered and wrecked,

I come to you first...'

       -Homer-

My mate, my mate, my mate...

The words rang inside Rhysand's head over and over again, knocking away every other possible thought as he leaned against the high marble column, his knees nearly giving up on him.

Feyre, the brave brave girl who died right in front of him, with her icy grey ice, with her metal spine and admirable spite, the female who was in love with Tamlin, who had come to free Tamlin.

What an ironic twist of fate...

Hadn't the Mother tortured him enough? taking him away from his home, forcing him to give his own reins to a female that wrecked him, ripping him away from his family. Only for him to end up mated with a beautiful, unreachable female who was in love with someone else.

"Rhysand?" A voice called, broken, a hushed whisper cracking under the weight of tears "Oh Gods, Rhys."

He almost couldn't recognize Morrigan's voice, his cousin's voice, with her warm lovely tone, with her warm brown eyes, beautiful, friendly Mor. Family. She was family.

She held him closely, her arms circling his waist. "My mate..."He whispered, not even his cousin's embrace able to soothe him down as he held her fiercely, as if she's just an illusion that would disappear once he let her go, probably another twisted fantasy from his nights Under The Mountain.

"It's alright," Mor tried to calm him down, even if she didn't know who he was talking about, even if he was a sobbing, rambling mess crumbling in her arms, she knew that he was there, living, breathing "You're alright..."

"Feyre..." He breathed out, his voice hoarse, so hoarse "Feyre's my mate..." The words knocked the breath out of his lungs, they felt so right, yet so so wrong.

Wrong because she was away, wrong because she was in love with his enemy, with Tamlin.

The male who sold his family away, the male who broke his trust and family in one day, the male who had the people that mattered the most to him killed.

Family... Family... Family...

Mor was family...

Cassian and Azriel were family...

Amren was family...

Elayla...

His breath caught inside his throat at the reminder, the fact, the truth.

Elayla... His Elayla... 

"Layla?" He choked up, pulling away from Mor, his star-flecked eyes shifting in recognition at his own forgotten thoughts. 

His Layla, his little child, the girl who ran and laughed and teased. The one who danced and sang and lived.

"Elayla?" He called, stepping inside the house, his girl, he needed to know she was there, safe, warm, fed, sheltered. He coul feel it, the frenzied urge to have her there, to hold here like he had wished to do for five decades in the Caulrdon-damned Mountain. "Layla?" He asked his cousin this time.

"Rhys." Mor stopped him firmly but gently "Elayla is alright, Rhys." She assured "Elayla's alright..." She repeated. He couldn't believe it, not after the sleepless nights, the nightmares, not after the loose whispers that haunted him for forty-nine years.

Forty-nine year...

Elayla had aged forty-nine years without him...

It made him sick to the stomach, he couldn't bear the thought of it, couldn't breathe for a split second because of it. He had left her a child, wrecking havoc in every single room she walked in, flashing childish, dimpled smiles at him whenever he tried to scold her but failed miserably.

"Is she...?" He tried to ask, was she still around, did his absence mess them up beyond repair, had he dodged death only to lose his last living blood-tied family.

"Mor...?" A tired, cautious voice asked, its tone ricochetting against the House of Wind's hall. Elayla walked around the hallways with Nightfell in her hand, wary, careful, like walking on thin ice.

She had thought that she heard a voice she wasn't supposed to hear, not when the person who sounded like that was gone since she was a child. She had heard the whispers outside, of a broken curse and a Made Fae, yet she couldn't believe it, not when her hopes have been stomped over for decades.

Then, there he was, standing a few feet away like another one of her feverish hallucinations, looking exactly the way she remembered him to be, but there was something not there.

Maybe it was her childish, admiration tainted lenses...

"Baba...?" The word stumbled off her mouth, tasting like an old stolen lullaby, he hadn't been that for her in decades, her baba was gone, leaving nothing but the image of a Rhysand that still haunted her.

His stared at her, frozen like a marble statue, he stared at the female she turned into, at how she still looked like him, how her cheeks had turned less full, how her eyes had turned sharper, how she had gotten taller.

Every inch the heiress he never wanted her to be...

A stranger he could recognize anywhere...

Nightfell fell from her hand, the blade hitting the ground in a sharp noise, echoing between them in the fragile bubble their silence had created, but it mattered not, for when they saw each other straight in the eyes, starry nights upon starry nights, they finally realized that between them wasn't just a broken promise, but half a decade of stolen dreams and broken hopes.