The Stars That Listen (ACOTAR Fanfic)

Chapter 1. The End

Lyster knew her life had come to an end as she watched her mothers head thud to the ground. Knew the bonds holding her would not give. Knew that her father and brother would not come racing through the forest to save her, not as they began to cut through the wings attached to her mothers still-warm corpse.

No. This was her burden. And soon it would be over.

She forced away the tears that threatened to roll down her cheeks. Her mother wouldn't want her to cry. Not in front of these monsters.

They all looked alike, similar in the way that families always were, but she recognized the one on the left, green eyes pinned to the ground. Like he couldn't bear to look at her. Her mother. And the fate he had doomed them to.

"You don't even have the stomach to watch them do your handiwork?" The words snapped out of her like a whip, striking true as a snarl contorted his mouth, but he still didn't look at her. The snapping of tendons to her right turned her stomach.

Wings. They were taking her mothers wings. And they would take hers, too.

At least she would be dead first. Better to die than to endure them taking that precious piece of her heritage and be able to do nothing.

She would never fly again. Never see Rhys again. Never return to Velaris.

Her violet eyes watered, but again, she swallowed those tears.

"You're a coward!"

Finally, his gaze snapped to where she knelt, dirty and bruised from trying to fight her way out when they'd been ambushed. Blood trickled out her mouth, already drying. In those green eyes she saw his temper already rising.

"That's enough." The High Lord of Spring stepped between them, shielding Tamlin from her ire-filled glare. "If anyone is a coward, it's that brother of yours."

Nose scrunching in a snarl, she glared at him now instead. Lyster hated him. Had always hated him and his bitter, human-hating ways. His sense of superiority over females.

His two eldest sons were the same, and she hated them just as much.

But Tamlin - Tamlin had been her brothers friend. He had even been her friend, however briefly.

Now... Now Lyster wasn't sure how she'd ever liked him. Even with his awful anger, he was so afraid of his father and brothers that he led them here, to this journey few knew of on their way to Rhys...

But Rhys hadn't come. And the attack meant for him was now theirs.

Hers.

Her mother was done suffering now.

Lyster spit at his feet in defiance. The backhand that struck her face in response had fresh blood coating her tongue.

They snapped through the first wing. Something broke inside of her as she heard it, more so as they began sawing through the second. She wouldn't let them see it. She wouldn't.

"You're the cowards," she growled. "If Rhys was here you'd all be pissing yourselves. Even together you can't stand up to him."

Crouching down, the High Lord of Spring roughly grabbed her face in his hand. "No wonder they haven't found someone to take you for a wife. Too much spirit. Your father should have broken that a long time ago." He sneered down at her. "But he won't have that burden much longer, will he?" A dark laugh as he stood back up, his elder sons joining in, a twisted chorus of misery.

At the sound, Lyster decided to damn the consequences, damn the warnings and the caution that had been drilled into her for nearly her entire life. She was little more than a teenager by Fae standards and she was going to die.

The least she could do was go down swinging.

Her eyes shifted slowly from violet to black, like clouds blocking out the sun. The silver flecks like stars stood out even brighter as Lyster felt her power surge and peak.

Her last act. Her last curse. She would make it count.

She turned her gaze to the brothers, one holding her mothers remaining wing while the other sawed through.

"You two will die, your minds burned to a crisp, your bodies broken, feeling a pain so complete you will try to scream but find you cannot. Your throats will have already been ripped out and you will sense every frayed nerve and broken tendon."

Turning her head back to the High Lord of Spring, her glower intensified. "You. Your wards will fail. You will die with your tongue ripped out and that same sword punched through your gut. But first..." She took a steadying breath. Cauldron beg Rhys to forgive her, but she was in agony, and they deserved to suffer. "Your mate will die next to you. Quick. Painless. But you will endure the severance of the mating bond and you will feel it ripped from your being like hot iron being cut through your soul."

Her lip wavered as she looked to Tamlin, to the male she had once admired for being different from his family, and felt only rage. "I curse you to live, but it will be with the knowledge that you brought this ruin. And you will live your miserable life with it. You will find some sort of happiness in your life, and it will be ripped from you. Not by any outside source, but because of your cowardice, your temper, your inability to accept things you can't control. You will be miserable, and I will relish in it from wherever I am headed."

He could escape it, she knew. But she would never tell him how. He didn't deserve that knowledge after all he'd done.

The second wing snapped free, and a sob threatened to break from her throat, but Lyster held her breath and bit her lip, as they all stared at her, at the magic she'd used.

Cursemaker.

A title rarely given to those in the Night Court. Then the High Lord guffawed, believing it a parlor trick, for to many, her magic was little more than myth. His prodigal sons joined in as they sharpened and cleaned the ash wood sword. A gift from their allies in Hybern, no doubt.

But Tamlin... Tamlin stared and stared at her, dumbstruck, as the color drained from his face. Rhys had made some casual mentions of her magic, and Tamlin knew what she was.

Knew she had doomed his family to die.

The roar that ripped out of him was beastly, and he pushed past his father, ready to demand she remove it, break it, but the sword had already been raised by his brother. Lyster did not cower as the sword came down.

~~~

Rhys stared at the severed head of his sister. A great emptiness filled him, and he knew if he had bothered to look in the High Lord of Spring's bedroom, the scene would match what Lyster had demanded in her final moments.

His sister had doomed them to die as revenge for what had happened to them in the woods.

The lady had died quickly. A small solace.

But now he was alone, just like Tamlin.

All because he hadn't gone to meet them. And his sister, his brave little sister had stayed strong in the end.

It was his fault. It was all his fault.

But Lyster knew him well, knew that all he needed was to find her head to peer into the final memories trapped inside for him to find her final message.

We forgive you, Rhysie. We'll love you always.

A phantom thought, really, but he felt it, swearing he could smell her honeysuckle-and-rain scent drift past.

With his face in his hands, Rhys wept for the first time since their demise.

It would not be the last.