Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

Aelin's past

He laid across his bed, trying to lie as far away from her as he could. He wanted to lie to himself. Gods be damned it would be so easy to lie to himself. He had no right to uncover the feelings he was starting to feel. Not after Lyria. Not after he had failed her so thoroughly. Not after he had almost failed Aelin. Her burn out, her almost burn out had caused the territorial portion of his soul to reawaken.

He had selected her room based on his assumption of the spoiled bratty girl he believed her to be. The rag of a blanket left in the small room was more than that she would have been given. He has selected her chores based on the same thought. No wonder she did not argue about becoming a scullery maid, compared to being a slave it was nothing. The hours she chopped wood, an effective motivational punishment he had used for centuries, was nothing after spending a year swinging a pickaxe.

“You’re staying with me from now on.” He did not know what made him say that, there were spare rooms, better rooms. Deep down something in him was calling to him to keep her close.

“The bed is for tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll get a cot. You’ll clean up after yourself or you’ll be back in that room.”

He watched as she nestled into her pillow, like it was the first comfort she had felt in months. The thought that this princess felt gratitude and appreciation for a simple pillow— he chased that very thought away.

“Very well.”

Silence enveloped them, and he welcomed it. He needed time to sort through the last hours, to retrospectively look at the last few months.

She pulled him from the welcomed silence, “I don’t want your pity.”

He did not know if he had the strength for this. He was trying to reach out to her, to take a step out of the darkness. His kindness was not selfless, no quite the opposite. It was far from pity.

“This is not pity. Maeve decided not to tell me what happened to you. You have to know that I—I wasn’t aware you had—”

He was the strongest fae male in existence. The closest to him was Lorcan and really a fight between them would come down to who wanted it more. He had nothing to fight for, nothing but the peace that his death would bring. But here was this girl, this lost queen, with the power to break him so thoroughly that he would not even put up a fight to any killing blow.

He allowed his arrogance and pride, he allowed the ice that covered his heart to treat her—

He almost crumbled when he felt her arm slide across the bed. She was reaching for him, with everything he had done to her, she was reaching out to him to comfort him.

“I knew. At first, I was afraid you’d mock me if I told you, and I would kill you for it. Then I didn’t want you to pity me. And more than any of that, I didn’t want you to think it was ever an excuse.”

She was right, he would have treated her differently if he had known. Maybe they would not have wasted these past months. Or maybe it would not have changed a thing. Sometimes he felt like he was awakening from a very long nightmare.

“Like a good soldier,” he watched as she look away for a moment.

He took a long breath that made his broad chest expand. Together. He had promised her together. She was the first person to reach him, the first person that made him want to leave the dark abyss of frozen ice he had surrounded himself with. The first person he wanted to reach towards. He knew he had a long way to go, in these centuries he was past the grieving, but he had not made it further. He was surviving and did not know how to live without her. Without them.

“Tell me how you were sent there—and how you got out.”

He had expected a short answer, but it seemed like he had gained enough of her trust for her to tell him her story, at least parts of it.

He listened as she told him about her time in Rifthold, about the dance and music lessons she would have had even if the fates had not been cruel to her. As a crowned princess, she would have had to suffer through the same dance lessons he did as a child.

Instead of training with poisons and torture, would her father or her King’s captain still trained her in combat?

As she told him about stealing Asterion horses and racing across the desert, he wondered what his life would have been if he had not been in the market that day. If that fateful day had not happened to Aelin, if instead of stealing an Asterion horse, would there be story of her running off with her cousin Aedion on their Asterion horses.

Her story about Sam, made him wonder if he was the male he had tasted on her blood or if there was yet another loss she was about to tell him about. She had almost escaped the fate of an assassin, almost found a piece of happiness. Almost.

And when she spoke of Endovier and how she had snapped and sprinted for her own death. He understood that desire, that need to just end the pain.

In all of her stories, what surprised him was that he was waiting to be told of an escape and instead he was told of a bargain. That she had bargained her soul to the same tyrant that killed her family, her kingdom. Four years of her life serving a man that killed her family and set in motion a fate that seemed to want to keep her down. What did not surprise him was that she won the competition.

Aelin yawned, and he rubbed his eyes with a single hand, his other hand still in hers. But he didn’t let go. Instead he watched her sleep. In his near three centuries he had experienced much more than most. In a short span of eight years she had transverse a life from princess to assassin to slave and then champion for her enemy.

What he saw and what she could not is, that her life experience groomed her to be a better queen. He had given her a hard time for turning her back on her people, but had she really? The last ten years she had learned more about the world through her trials and tribulations than any lesson a tutor could teach her. A small part of him wondered if the fates had a plan. He could not help but remember all the pushes he had received from Mala. What were the fate’s grooming for him?  Was there a life lesson in Lyria’s death and his stupid pride?

He held her hand as he drifted towards his own sleep. He promised her that they would find a way together. Deep down under all her masks, she was just a girl that dreamed of a better world. And he was a boy that dreamed of the very same thing.

He kept her hand pressed to his chest, whether she knew it or he would admit to it, that hand was melting the ice surrounding his heart. Warmth rushed through him, trying to find the cracks in the ice. Not to hurt or mar—but to thaw. To free.

He rubbed his eyes, letting his brain catch up to the rays of morning light. Two hundred three years, forty-one nights filled with the threat of screaming darkness. Two hundred three years, forty-two mornings where if he fell asleep, he would have awaken covered in sweat so thick it felt as if his body was covered in blood, her blood, their blood. So many mornings where the echoes would still scream at his heart reminding him of his failure.

But this morning he awoke at dawn warm, rested and holding a small scarred hand to his chest. Two hundred three years, forty-two days he had been drowning in darkness, his heart encased in solid ice.

Fifteen days ago his darkness didn’t seem as dark as he learned of her darkness. He had no idea what this was, but one thing was certain, she had chased his eternal nightmare away. He had no idea what was left of the boy he had once been. Because that was what he was then, a boy, and over two hundred years had passed.

He walked the familiar hall leading towards the kitchen to assemble a breakfast tray for Aelin. He had almost failed her, but he did not, his magic pulled against every push of hers. Their magic sung a song so old and so rare, if he had a doubt that they were Carranam the doubt washed away in that bath house. What it meant to be bonded would just be another thing for them to figure out as they crawled from the darkness that surrounded their beings.

Last night he meant every word, he had every intention of procuring a cot. This morning he knew that her soul was made of fire and that fire kept the darkness that always crept in at bay. If he allowed it, if he let go, she could melt the ice protecting heart. Maybe a cot would not be the answer that either of them needed.