A Court of Darkness and Storm

Chapter 3 - Alynna

Darkness was surrouding Alynna. Ancient, disturbing darkness. It didn't matter which direction she looked at, her eyes could only see completely black darkness. Under her feet, the black and wet ground was fetid. Stank of dark magic, things that she couldn't name. She was feeling the tormented souls grasping her ankles, it didn't matter where she walked to.

There was a long time since she stopped fearing things, but something in that place bristled the last hair of her body. A whisper passed by her ear, so close that Alynna arched her back. The hunter she was trained to be had awakened. The whisper touched her neck again, something old calling her to the black infinity around her. Then she could finally see.

In the dark horizon, a flame was sparkling, inviting Alynna to approach it. She ran, into the flame's direction, the souls grasping her feet, but she suddenly stopped. She knew it was a trap.

The Cauldron was calling her. Like once before. The stink of magic clogged her nostrils. She couldn't move. Excruating power was taking over her body as the Cauldron's magic dragged Alynna close to it. She was so close to touch the black and putrid water inside the artefact; sweat coming down her body.

Alynna woke up suddenly. Sweating. One more of those nightmares. She no longer knew if it was only imagination or real visions of the Cauldron. That power was chasing her, trying to awake obscure forces inside her that the female was trying to hide at any cost. She didn't want to know what it was.

Lazily, Alynna looked around herself, tying to remember where she was. The room that she was in was vast, with luxury furniture. The Night Court. Her old home. She made it, she was free of Hybern.

When trying to move, she noticed that her wrists were tied and fastened to one of the bed's sides, however her feet was free. Alynna sat and finally realized the presence in the room.

At one of the armchairs in the corner, Rhys was sat, deeply sleeping. A book was resting in his hands. Maybe he had been there for a long time, because there was a small pile of books on the floor next to the armchair. For how long she had been blacked out? Alynna avoided doing any sound.

She observed her own condition: she was dressing a new white slip dress. Someone probably gave the female a bath, since there weren't any signs of dirt anymore and her hair was clean. There were white cloth bands around her hands and feet covered in cuts, consequences of the several weeks she spent wandering through Prythian. Completely unrecognizable in comparison to the dreadful appearance when she arrived at the frontier. The last thing she remembered was an illyrian guard member with a spear pointed to her.

She layed down at the large bed. The magic heat of the palace in the middle of the mountains warming her body. She felt as she was laying in a mount of plumes, for centuries she didn't know what was like to rest the body in a bed.

She was so relaxed that didn't realized that Rhys had awakened until she looked to her side. She met those powerful violet eyes carefully observing her. Alynna had longed for that meeting for months. The moment when she finally would be home and would find her brother. Everything she wanted was a long and silent hug.

The two faes examined each other, searching for answers. Rhys looked at the thin image of Alynna as she was a puzzle; there were too many questions to be made, answers that he desperately looked for in his sister's delicate face. Alynna didn't want nothing more than peace, her old life back. She was searching for signs of her true brother under the High Lord mask that she knew that he insisted on using with her at that moment.

None of them dared to speak for a few seconds, maybe looking for the right words to say, but Alynna was the first to break the silence.

- Did you really need to seize me?

Rhys continued to stare her like a statue.

- Alright. I'm gonna think that was one of your friends who ordered this.

- It is for... safety. – Those was the firsts words from Rhys to Alynna, in years. It was possible to feel the growing tension between them and the weight of each word. There was no right way to follow, a tutorial of how to do it.

- So... High Lord? – Rhys widened his eyes at listening his sister say that.

- Do you already know?

- The news flies.

Rhysand got up from the chair and gently approached to the bed, settling at the edge, at a possibly safe distance from Alynna, shrunken with the arms around her legs.

- Where... where have you been, Lynna? What happened? I... I don't even know what to think.

The female stared her brother. The pure violet eyes, with a violent and taciturn expression. She didn't know what to say, or even explain her situation. She tried to compose sentences in her mind, but nothing was making sense to herself. With tears running down her delicate and frightened face, she pronounced a single word that made her shiver.

- Hybern.

Rhys widened his eyes. Didn't want to imagine or think of what his sister had suffered. Hybern makes him nauseous. He remembered the unfortunate time when he been in Hybern. If, at the time, he knew his sister was locked there, he wasn't capable of imagine what he would have done to save her. But it wasn't the possible tortures that Alynna had been through, but the fact that the king probably used of very strong magic to bring her back to life. Ancient and obscure magic, prevenient of only one artifact able to alter the nature of life:

- The Cauldron...

The words came out as whispers. Feyre's sisters entered in the Cauldron for a few minutes and was horrifying enough but being brought back to life was disturbing to imagine.

The mortifying silence remained. But Alynna started to reveal a few information.

- It was after Amarantha. I am not sure, I... I did lose the notion of time. But the King struggled to find my... remains. It was years of searching, but he did find. He thought that it wouldn't work and was almost giving up, when I emerged from the Cauldron. I... I was confused. – Alynna couldn't stare hist brother as she was speaking but searched for Rhys's face for a few seconds. She found a perplexed look in her direction, carefully listening each word. She took that action as an encouragement to go on – I basically exhausted the Cauldron's forces. It took days to recharge itself. The King didn't know exactly what to expect from me. He thought that he could... that he could control me. He brought daematis, used all the possible spells and when nothing of this worked... He tried using force. I was... I was tortured every day. But... but I couldn't let him take over my body, so I protected my mind the best I could. That kept me safe for months. You asked what happened. That's it. I can't... I can't talk anymore... - tears started rolling down Alynna's face. In a matter of seconds, the female was sobbing. Rhys kept distance the whole time, but the moment he saw his younger sister in tears, in one second, he was with the fragile and tiny female involved in his strong arms. Each word pronounced by Alynna echoed in his mind, imagining harsh horrors and terrible torturing methods. His sister's crying ceased, and a deadly silence took over the environment. Alynna stepped away from Rhysand, throwing her body forward.

The small female was shrunken, with the body leaning on the other side of the bed. The empty eyes looking to no direction, granting a coldness to Alynna's countenance. It wasn't needed a word from the female and Rhysand assumed that as a sign to leave her alone.

Rhysand had a lot of questions whithout answers echoing in his mind. Alynna's report was traumatic enough for her, but the most intriguing thing was the fact that even being tortured by the King of Hybern, Alynna didn't have any scars in her body. The only noticeable mark of the report Alynna told, was her hands, completely dark. It didn't seem like dirt but a tattoo. A black layer under the skin, covering any fragment of Alynna's light skin, that started in her finger tips and ended around the wrists., in a gradient of skin and obscurity. Puzzling to Rhys, that was imagining why his sister was hiding the truth.