A Court of Darkness and Storm

Chapter 1 - Alynna

"Breathe. Breathe one more time".

The mental notes wandered through her mind, trying not to focus on the monstruosity that was happening to her body. She was feeling the pain of the hot whip in her back and belly but ignored it. Even with all the agony, she knew that her mind was stronger and needs to be protected. It was important that it wasn't dominated.

Alynna had lost the notion of time. How long had she been being tortured? The blood had already coagulated on the floor and the aggressors didn't seem to be not even a little bit tired. The only certainty that she had at the time, it was that she would be dead very soon.

- Enough.

The King of Hybern's dark voice echoed throughout the whole cell.

"Every time I was tortured, he was around. He had already tried to invade my mind, with his best daemati, but failed. Now, he was appealing to the insistent violence, hoping that I would surrender by exhaustion. Lucky me, the king didn't know me that well".

- I already gave you an option, rat. I won't stop until I get what I want, you know that. It can last days or weeks, I don't care. It's your problem, not mine.

- I rather die again than serve you.

The king only looked at the mutilated and bloody body of the female, and as it was nothing, laughed with scorn. He motioned for the fae to continue the torture session and returned to sit in a chair in the corner of the dirty cell.

Alynna deep breathed one more time before the first blast snapped against her destroyed skin.

With her body trembling, Alynna woke up from the nightmare. She hadn't slept well for weeks, always napping somewhere apparently safe; the sleep always slight and brief. Since she escaped from Hybern, she wandered from court to court, sneaking into dark places and eating rests she did find in the way. That night, the only safe place she could find was a high tree with enough foliage to hide. The dry heat of the Day Court was involving her body, consuming all the sweat drops that appeared in her pale skin.

Since her arrival at Prythian through the Summer Court, Alynna considered seeking refuge in an allied court, but after so much time and with the events at Under the Mountain, which ones she had listened very little about in Hybern, she didn't know how the situation between the courts and the High-Lords was.

It was morning already and the implacable heat of the Day Court was absorbing her few remaining forces. With the stomach snoring and her parched mouth thirsty, Alynna came down from the tree, observing attentively if there was someone close and prepared herself for the long walk until the border with the Night Court. When young, she used to spent weeks at Prythian's forests, training and testing her limits, what granted her a high level of knowledge concerning the creatures that inhabit the mystic fae lands. To Alynna, surviving alone for weeks without anything to eat or somewhere to sleep wasn't news.

During the several weeks she spent walking since her return, the female often wondered what she would say when she finds Rhysand again, but words run away from her imagination. Now the awaited moment was finally approaching, anxiety and despair took over her mind, fearing her brother's reaction.

Dead. She'd been dead for centuries. Her father was dead and now Rhysand is High-Lord, she knew from king's comments. How many things would have changed in Prythian since her last breath?

As she approached the border, she was feeling the temperature changing, the cold from the mountains taking over the cozy heat of the Day Court. Climbing mountains slopes had become an habit during the last weeks after travelling for so many territories searching for a hideout to spend the night.

And she finally arrived. After so many time of torture in Hybern, she never thought that she would put her feet in her homeland again. The wind was swaying her cape and the shabby white dress as soon as she came closer to the Night Court limitation. She knew exactly where the illyrian warriors were and when she was a few steps of the imaginary line that demarked the two courts, she began to observe an obscure point in the slope of a rock.

- Who are you and what do you want here? – The Illyrian warrior's voice echoed as he approached the fae, with a spear perfectly pointed in direction to her heart.

The female took off the hood that covered her face, revealing a tangle of long and dark crumpled hair. The violet eyes were facing the young warrior with a empty and anguished expression, deep and full of dark circles. She put the right sleeve of her dress down, revealing thin and dirty shoulders. But it wasn't the absurd thinness or the disturbing pallor that captured the illyrian's attention, but the black tattoo in her shoulder surrounded by black arabesques: The Night Court's insignia. The mountain and the three stars.

- My name is Alynna. I am sister of Rhysand, the High-Lord of the Night Court.

It was Alynna's last words before freeing her body from the spell that was hiding the black marks in her hands, a result from the Cauldron, and faint of exhaustion into the cold ground.