The Fire in the Shadow

Illyrians

Celaena could hear the sounds of people speaking. She couldn't recognise any of the voices. Maybe she was dead, she hoped she was because the world was better off without her in it. But unfortunately she could still feel her body and she felt like she was alive. She opened her eyes and could see the outline of two women. One of them had wings and the other one didn't. The woman with wings must have been the one that saved her because there was no possibility that she could have hit the ground, if she did she would have been dead. A groan escaped her lips and the two women turned around and saw that she was awake. "Hello" The younger woman said, she was the one with the wings. "Um, hi? Could you tell me where the hell I am?"  "Oh, yeah you're in an Illyrian camp in the night court." the young woman answered. "I have absolutely no idea what an Illyrian camp is and I also do not know what the night court is. What world am I in?" "You're in Prythian." Prythian, she had certainly never heard of that name.

It had been morning when she woke up and she had been informed by the two women that she couldn't go out because she would probably be either interrogated or killed. Apparently the men here weren't very patient, especially with human girls like her, or just women in general. She already didn't like the Illyrian men and she hadn't even met any of them.  And unfortunately she didn't know what the two women were named. "Dinner!" someone yelled, probably the old woman. Celaena followed the scent of delicious smelling food and found her way to the dining room. The two women were already seated at the table and waiting for her. She sat down in one of the chairs and made sure the food wasn't poisoned before she started eating. The food tasted exquisite, she had never tasted something that good before. "Gosh, this food is so good." "Well thank you" the old woman said "I was the one that made it, so of course it's good. While Coraline here can't make something that tastes remotely good even if her life depended on it." Coraline, that was the young woman's name then. "Could you tell me your name, because you didn't mention it when I woke up." she asked the old woman. "My name is Victoire." 

When they were all done eating Victoire and Coraline started washing the dishes. Celaena wasn't sure if she should help them because she had never in her life done dishes and she would probably ruin everything. There was a knock at the door before a man burst in and when he saw her his eyes grew wide with fury. "What is a human girl doing here?!" he bellowed with spit flying out of his mouth. Celaena felt anger fuming inside of her, what was this man doing speaking like that to them. He wasn't even handsome. Before any of them could answer he grabbed Coraline and said "Now I can finally clip your wings. I have waited so long for you to break a rule and you broke a big one, welcoming a stranger into the camp. And considering you broke that rule I might even be allowed to do it with a dirty knife. So maybe then the wounds will get infected and I won't have to deal with you anymore." Celaena was about to explode, she would have fought him off if there weren't already other men standing in the doorway. 

The man that had grabbed Coraline had brought her down to this place. She didn't like it at all, it was way to dark and reminded her of the dark rooms in Endovier. There had to have been a person here before her, because there were marks all over the walls, kind of like someone was counting the days or at least trying to. She could also see something that seemed to be the  remnants of blood and dried out oil. Celaena knew that the clipping of Coraline's wings would happen soon and she was going to find a way out of this cell so that she could stop it from happening.

She heard someone open her cell and she sat up from where she was laying, it was that vile man. "You can come out now, we decided that we might as well just kill you when we clip Coraline's wings. Of course there are people that are opposed to us clipping the wings of the female illyrians but we simply don't care, they never come here anyway so it doesn't even matter." "And who doesn't want you to clip their wings?" she asked. "Well just the high lord and high lady of the night court and my stupid half-brother and his bastard friend. You know my half-brother stayed in here before you. Now let's go and stop asking questions before I shut you up myself." Oh, she wanted to knock his teeth out. She wanted to slit his throat so that he would choke on his own blood. But she couldn't do that, at least not now.

When they were finally outside she saw that Coraline was already there, tied up so that she wouldn't be able to escape. She seemed scared, there were Illyrian men all around her and Celaena wished she could do something, Coraline had saved her life and now Celaena had to somehow pay her back for that. Celaena was put beside Coraline, just a little behind so that she would have a full view of when they clipped Coraline's wings. 

*Feyre POV*

Her and Rhysand had been in a meeting with Devlon for hours now, and it had taken their full power to keep Cassian from beating him to a pulp. Devlon was refusing to train the females for more than an hour and it had gotten really frustrating. Especially for Feyre who had all of her hormones spiralling out of control because of her pregnancy. It wouldn't be many more weeks before the baby would be born and they still had way to many Illyrian camps to visit. She felt sorry for Az because the next camp they were visiting was the camp where his half-brothers were. Mor and Amren were both home in Velaris running the night court and Nesta and Elain were there too. While Cassian and Azriel had joined them. 

She did not look forward to the next camp they would go to. Because they expected that the women there wouldn't be allowed to train, the men there were brutal and vile creatures. They were some of the most sexist men she had ever encountered, and that was saying something.

When the meeting was finally over, and Devlon had finally agreed to let the woman train for 2 hours they moved on to the next camp. They hadn't sent a message that they were coming, because they wanted to see exactly what the men there had been hiding. Even if they already knew that they were hiding the fact that they were clipping their women, they just needed proof enough to shut them down.