Acotar and Tog [Discontinued, Will be deleted]

Fight It

I didn’t even wait for the darkness to clear before my anger at Tamlin shifted into the offensive to see where Feyre was at.

And Feyre, I felt as I set her down and saw the agony in her eyes, was dying.

“What the hell happened to you?” I said.

“Why don’t you just look inside my head?”

Nothing.

No emotion. No sting. No spite in her voice.

Nothing.

“Where’s the fun in that?” I winked for good measure, but Feyre only slowly turned away from me eyeing the stairs that would lead to her room. I’d never seen her this deflated. “No shoe throwing this time?”

Again, no answer. This time she really did move for the stairs, ignoring the intention behind my words that was plain as day.

My skin crawled. My insides twisted horribly in pain. My heart wrenched.

My mate was dying and she didn’t care . Feyre did not care. Not for me. Not for her. Barely ever for Tamlin any longer.

All that power gifted to me since birth - the killing power, the darkness of Night, the ability to bend space and travel through thought and none of it made one damned difference because I was going to lose her.

My muscles trembled beneath my skin aching to let out some kind of release that would catch her, break her fall, but I was so fucking useless to do anything. And she was so horribly pale...

“Eat breakfast with me,” I sputtered. In the five seconds Feyre had her back turned, my mask was so far removed it had never existed in the first place. I was so absolutely unhinged.

The fabric of her top fell over one of her shoulders as she turned to face me again, revealing how pronounced her collarbones were. And still her voice sounded dead when she spoke.

“Don’t you have other things to deal with?”

“Of course I do,” I said, shrugging as casually as I could to maintain some kind of stasis for her because my words were about to fail me. “I have so many things to deal with that I’m sometimes tempted to unleash my power across the world and wipe the board clean. Just to buy me some damned peace.”

Perhaps, I dared hope, offering her that one piece of myself that let her know I was just as wretched and twisted inside as she was would help her understand me more.

But Feyre didn’t move, so I yielded all to her.

I grinned, nothing short of my usual arrogance even as my chest heaved to cover how badly I wanted to shake, and bowed at the waist deep and low as only she could merit. “But I’ll always make time for you,” I said.

Sweet, merciful relief flooded me so strongly when Feyre motioned for me to lead her to breakfast that I could have released a sob had I not wanted to trouble her.

Just stay I begged inside myself. Just stay. Just live. Feyre, please just live.

Her feet dragged across the floor as we made it to that heavy breakfast table well laid out with food. “I felt a spike of fear this month through our lovely bond. Anything exciting happen at the wondrous Spring Court?”

It was very easily too testy of a question to throw at her given her current emotional state, but I had to know - had to be sure Tamlin wasn’t going to drive the knife into her heart himself.

“It was nothing,” was all she said.

Nothing.

Because the shouting, the crying, the fracturing world around her - meant nothing to her now.