A Court of Starfall & Deception - An ACOMAF Rewrite

Chapter 2

"I want to go."

"No."

I crossed my arms, tucking my tattooed hand under my right bicep, and spread my feet slightly further apart on the dirt floor of the stables. "It's been three months. Nothing's happened, and the village isn't even five miles –"

"No." The midmorning sun streaming through the stable doors burnished Tamlin's golden hair as he finished buckling the bandolier of daggers across his chest. His face – ruggedly handsome, exactly as I'd imagined during those months he'd worn a mask – was set, his lips a thin line.

Behind him, already atop his dapple-gray horse, along with three other Fae sentries, Lucien silently shook his head in warning, his metal eye narrowing. Don't push him, he seemed to say.

But as Tamlin strode toward where his black stallion had already been saddled, I gritted my teeth and stormed after him. "The village needs all the help it can get."

"And we're still hunting down Amarantha's beasts," he shot back, mounting his horse in one fluid motion. Sometimes, I wondered if the horses were just to maintain an appearance of civility – of normalcy. To pretend that he couldn't run faster than them, didn't live with one foot in the forest. His green eyes were like chips of ice as the stallion started into a walk. "I don't have the sentries to spare to escort you."

I lunged for the bridle. "I don't need any escort." My grip tightened on the leather as I tugged the horse to a stop, and the garish golden ring on my finger – along with the square-cut emerald glittering atop it – flashed in the sun.

It had been two months since the engagement – two months of enduring presentations about flowers and clothes and seating arrangements and food. I'd had a small reprieve a week ago, thanks to the Winter Solstice, though I'd traded contemplating lace and silk for selecting evergreen wreaths and garlands. But at least it had been a break.

Three days of feasting and drinking and exchanging small presents, culminating in a long, rather odious ceremony atop the foothills on the longest night to escort us from one year to another as the sun died and was born anew. Or something like that. Celebrating a winter holiday in a place that was permanently entrenched in spring hadn't done much to improve my general lack of festive cheer.

I hadn't been able to keep track of the explanations of its origins – the Fae themselves debated whether it had emerged from the Winter Court or Day Court. Both now claimed it as their holiest holiday. All I really knew was that I'd had to endure two ceremonies: one at sunset to begin that endless night of presents, dancing, and drinking - which I mostly stood around for babying a glass of untouched wine - in honor of the old sun's death; and one at the following dawn, bleary-eyed and feet aching, to welcome the sun's rebirth.

It was bad enough that I'd been required to stand before the gathered courtiers and lesser faeries while Tamlin made his many toasts and salutes. Mentioning that my birthday had also fallen on that longest night of the year was a fact I'd conveniently forgotten to tell anyone. I'd received enough presents anyway – and would no doubt receive many, many more on my wedding day. I had little use for so many frivolous things.

Only two weeks stood between me and the ceremony. If I didn't get out of the manor, if I didn't have a day to do something outside these damned gates –

"Please. The recovery efforts are so slow. I could hunt for the villagers, get them food –"

"It's not safe," Tamlin said, again nudging his stallion into a walk. The horse's coat shone like a dark mirror, even in the shade of the stables. "Especially not for you."

He'd said that every time we had this argument; every time I begged him to let me go to the nearby village of High Fae to help rebuild what Amarantha had burned years ago.