A Court of Tears and Starlight

The gift of the Willow

I stood in the meadow. The breeze ruffled through the near by grass, rolling over it like half formed waves on the lake shore. The breeze picked at the stands of my hair until tendrils of free wisps sprang free of the carefully woven braids and wild flowers. The world around me was teeming with new life. Spring had sprung back with a fierce intensity since the shadow under the mountain had lifted.

All around me glowed vibrantly of new life and yet I felt nothing. The warm spring day only reinforced that I was void of warmth and cloaked in shadow. I stood like a wraith between worlds. Seeing the life and beauty I had spared, but was now forbidden to partake in it.

The days since I emerged from under the mountain blurred into a span of endless motions. Get up. Eat. Wander. Speak. Bathe. Eat. Stare at the ceiling and long for sleep. Tamlin and Lucien had long since stopped trying to reach for me. I didn't blame them, as I knew the darkness in me called to the nightmares reflected in their own eyes. Tamlin couldn't mask the hurt and shame in his as he stared longing at me every night across the dinner table. He was tormented with the knowledge that his lie about the Treaty had pulled me into his world and cascaded into the series of events that took place in the endless horror of Amarantha's realm.

We had saved his people through my sacrifice. What we hadn't realised was that we were also sacrificing our love. The irony of it brought a bitter upward twitch to my lip. The first expression my face had held in days. The love I had sacrificed everything for, was the only thing that was taken from me when my life, health, safety and comfort were all returned. I would have preferred the alternative. That was why Tam's shame deepened with each new day, as it became clear to him that his gift had been a curse. Better to have let me die full of love then to live and feel nothing at all.

I wandered through the endless beauty of Spring, damned by it, until finally I came to her who knew me best. The Weeping Willow. Her sorrowful song called to my shredded soul, caressing each shard of the shattered pieces of my broken heart. I longed to cry, but that release was kept from me.

Murderer...

How I wished I could trade my life for theirs. Their eyes and faces swam before me as my heavy lids finally closed and the Willow's song lulled me into a blissful abyss.

So I found my escape. Each day I would come to the Willow. Each night I would wake tucked in my own bed. I never knew whether it was Tam or Lucien who had carried me here and left the tray of food next to my bedside. I don't know how long this went on for. Each day and night identical to the last. Until now.

I had just awoken, again to find myself in my own bed. As I stirred I was immediately aware of his presence in my room. I rolled over towards the chair that sat underneath the window, next to my bed. I was met by his utter stillness and a single sorrowful eye. His red russet hair seemed to glow in the stray beam of moon light that escaped through the clouds and shone in from the outside world.

Lucien slowly lifted a single hand and gently caressed the side of my face. His face was completely unshielded, as I had never seen it before, all of the smugness and bravado swept aside. All that was left was a devastating sorrow that would have broken my heart had it not already lain in tatters. He draw an uneven breath and then released it into a sigh.

When he opened his mouth again it was to speak in such a soft whisper that even my fey ears could only just form the words.

"She was like new sunlight" he whispered.

"Everything glowed and blossomed in her warmth"

"... they killed her because of me"

"...because I refused to let her go"

" Every day I wish it had been me instead..." his words trailed off into silence.

He gently reached up and ever so softly stroked his hand through my hair, as if he had forgotten how to do this. As if he were trapped in another time and place where he stroked the soft hair of another lifeless fey. 

"It will never be ok. But Feyre...you will find your way back"

As I stared into his face I knew he knew. I wasn't alone in this darkness. A single fat tear escaped from my eye and dripped down onto my pillow. I closed my eyes and waited for his hand to lift and for the chair to slide back back on the floor as he left. But it never came. The soft rhythmic stroking continued, until for the first time since the mountain, I fell into a heavy contented sleep without the voice of the Willow.

In the morning I awoke alone and rested. There was not a single sign that anyone had been in my room the night before and I wasn't sure whether my visit was real or a vision gifted to me by the Willow. I arose, dressed and went down to join them for breakfast. I was ravenously hungry as I piled food onto my plate.

Lucien cocked an eyebrow at me. "Someone's hungry this morning"? he enquired.

"Well not all of us can survive on wine and sarcasm alone" I shot back.

Tam choked on his toast. I threw him a half smile and his eyes widened in shock at my small offering.

I glanced back at Lucien and was met by a smirk that didn't quite reach his eyes... eyes that mirrored my sorrow but not its emptiness.

He shrugged and I knew then that he saw through my charade; I wasn't fooling him.

I guess I wasn't fooling myself either.

Nothing was ok. Yet something tugged from within me. A thread that hadn't been there before. As I tentatively followed it inwards I was shaken to find what shone there. Not hope, but a slither of new resolve. I wasn't sure that I could ever come back from under the mountain, but somewhere in me there was a small but solid part that was determined that I would survive.

From that day forth, I never went back to the Willow.