After the Fact

Prologue--Part 1

Lysandra

Two years after Aelin Ashryver Galathynius sacrificed herself to reforge the Lock and seal the Wyrdkeys back into the Wyrdgate, all was well in Terrasen. The lords of the land were placated, at least for the moment, and the lands outside the kingdom were staying (mostly) within their own borders. The people were prospering as they rebuilt their broken lands and continue to look to the royals at Orynth for their well-being and safety. To Queen Aelin of the Wildfire, and her consort, Prince Rowan.

Gods, if only they knew.

Lysandra was eight months pregnant and itched to change her shape. The wild song in her blood only became stronger with every passing day. It urged her to shift, begged her to shift.

But she knew she couldn't. According to every text she had read, shifting while pregnant would only increase the chance of passing her powers on to her offspring, and that would be hard to explain.

As far as anyone knew, there was no shifter blood in either the Galathynius or Whitethorn lines. Shifter powers couldn't appear out of nowhere-they always had to be passed down.

And so, Lysandra remained as Aelin, even when she was alone in her chambers with no spying eyes pressed to the keyhole.

She was a painful reminder to Aelin's court-now her court, presumably. She saw the sorrow in their eyes whenever she walked by. Hell, whenever she looked in a mirror she felt the same.

It was worse whenever she was near Rowan. And she had to be, often. He had stopped looking as if someone had punched him in the gut after the first few months, but the grief and devastation remained.

Yet Lysandra carried on. She had no choice, really.

Sometimes she resented promising her life to the Queen. She had known the consequences at the time, what it truly meant to take up Aelin's role, but she hadn't lived it.

Did she regret her choice? No. She had done her utmost for her friend, for her family, and for Terrasen. But it was still painful, and some days an agony, to don Aelin's body and parade around as queen.

She was only an actress in Aelin's grand production. Only an actress, never the real thing.

But she had a part to play, and by all the gods great and small, she swore that she would play it.

Aedion

Some days he thought he hated her. Hated the both of them.

Aelin, for leaving them all to suffer through a lie. For not allowing them to publicly mourn her. For forcing them to live with a living, breathing Aelin that wasn't really Aelin.

Lysandra, for signing her life away. For being a reminder of what they all had lost. For helping to trap them all into one last elaborate scheme.

The anger roiled in Aedion's gut, a constant pain that gradually whittled away at his patience and his kindness. In ten years, would he be the same Aedion that had fallen to his knees in front of his cousin, begging her not to do it even as she clasped the Eye of Elena in her fist? The fear that he would not be that Aedion was what kept him awake at night, even as his Fae hearing picked up sounds from the other rooms.

Lysandra, hurling her guts up in the toilet. Elide, who sobbed some nights and lay quietly the others. Rowan, utterly silent.

There was no escape from the cloud of misery wreathed through their very souls. It was an ache that never went away, an ache made worse whenever Lysandra entered a room. How all of them managed to put up a happy, content front during the day was a mystery in itself.

Aedion lost himself in his troops, ever the general. He was the Wolf of the North, after all. If the rumors were to be believed, he practically bathed in blood.

He trained the new soldiers, trained himself. He organized constant patrols and rotated the guards about the city, seeing as no one had stepped up to fill the Captain of the Guard's position anyway. And he debated in council rooms about their allies (the foremost of which were Ansel of Briarcliff, Queen of the Wastes, Manon Blackbeak Crochan, the Crochan Queen, and Dorian Havilliard, King of Adarlan) and their enemies (which were mainly the Queen of Melisande and Queen Maeve of Doranelle).

Wendlyn, strangely, was waffling between allying itself with Terrasen and with Doranelle. Aedion supposed that drawing out their decision kept them safe for the longest, but sooner or later they would have to pick a side.

At least the ever-looming threat of Maeve was enough to distract him from Lysandra and the dead woman whose face she bore.

Most days, at least.

A/N: I'm going to go through Dorian's point of view next, then Manon's. After that...well, I'm going to take a dive into Rowan's brain and try to write him in a way that isn't totally cheesy. I'm putting him off for last before the real plot begins.