Acotar retelling

Summer Solstice

The next morning, I found a head in the garden.

A bleeding male High Fae head—spiked atop a fountain statue of a great heron flapping its wings. The stone was soaked in enough blood to suggest that the head had been fresh when someone had impaled it on the heron's upraised bill.

I had been hauling my paints and easel out to the garden to paint one of the beds of irises when I stumbled across it.

One of the men from Calanmai. Rhys's excuse for being out, for seeing me.

I didn't know where I went as I stared at that still-screaming head, the brown eyes bulging, the teeth broken and bloody.

His blood was so bright on the gray stone—his mouth opened so vulgarly. I backed away a step—and slammed into something warm and hard.

I whirled, hands rising out of instinct, but Tamlin's voice said, "It's me," and I stopped cold. Lucien stood beside him, pale and grim.

"Not Autumn Court," Lucien said. "I don't recognize him at all."

Tamlin's hands clamped on my shoulders as I turned back toward the head. "Neither do I." A soft, vicious growl laced his words, but no claws. Lucien stepped into the small pool in which the statue stood—striding through the red water until he peered up at the anguished face.

"They branded him behind the ear with a sigil," Lucien said, swearing. "A mountain with three stars—"

"Night Court," Tamlin said quietly.

Tamlin let go, coming to stand at my side as Lucien climbed the statue to remove the head.

"The Night Court does what it wants," Tamlin said. "They live by their own codes, their own corrupt morals."

You're wrong! Rhysand and the inner circle are not corrupt. They're kind and selfless.

"They're all sadistic killers," Lucien said. I dared a glance at him, trying not to glare; he was now perched on the heron's stone wing. I looked away again. "They delight in torture of every kind—and would find this sort of stunt to be amusing. It's a message," Lucien said, and I cringed at the thick, wet sounds of flesh and bone on stone as he yanked the head off.

the crime nearby, with the blood this fresh ..." A splash as Lucien landed in the water again. "It's exactly what the High Lord of the Night Court would find amusing. The bastard."

I gauged the distance between the pool and the house. Sixty, maybe seventy feet. That's how close they'd come to us. Tamlin brushed a thumb against my shoulder. "You're still safe here. This was just their idea of a prank. It's court posturing," he said. "The Night Court is deadly, but this was only their lord's idea of a joke. Attacking anyone here—attacking you—would cause more trouble than it's worth for him. If the blight truly does harm these lands, and the Night Court enters our borders, we'll be ready."

No you won't. He could wipe you out with a mere thought.

The image of my family coming and destroying Tamlin was the only thing that kept me from snapping at him in anger. How dare he badmouth my family.

~~~~~

Tamlin was called away to one of the borders hours after I found that head—where and why, he wouldn't tell me. But I sensed enough from what he didn't say: the blight was indeed crawling from other courts, directly toward ours.

He stayed the night—the first he'd ever spent away—but sent Lucien to inform me that he was alive. No small part of me marveled that Tamlin had bothered to let me know about his well-being.