Chapter 51: Forty-Five

Feyre had sunk to her knees on the floor as I gently consoled her, I knew what she felt in that moment—I'd been her after all. Before Kai's death, I had never been struck by grief like that. I'd killed people, but I didn't know them. They were strangers to me. I was a wreck after his death. I had cried. I had screamed. I had become lost.

But I'd healed. The wound was still there and it had scarred. But it no longer pained me to think about it.

Tamlin may or may not have been dead. Unless he did this to his own manor—which was entirely possible given his nasty little temper—he was in trouble.

I placed a hand on Feyre's arm and looked at my sister. Without a word, I pulled myself to my feet and offered my hand to my sister who gingerly took it. I pulled her up to her feet and we seemed to share a silent conversation.

She needed to know what happened here. And I was going to help her.

We needed clues. Evidence. Luckily I was good with these things. I separated myself from the scene, looking at it from a more logical perspective. As if it was a puzzle and all I needed to do was find the right pieces and the picture would magically reveal whatever happened.

I thought it was safe to assume that this had something to do with the "she" I'd heard about. They talked about her like they talked about the blight. I'd had time to properly examine the events that happened here in the Mortal lands. And I'd come up with...a few theories.

Tamlin and Lucien had told us about a blight upon Prythian, taking magic, poisoning the lands, killing younglings. I'd seen many "blights" before and those things weren't stated in the how to be a blight 101 textbook.

My most plausible theory was that this "She" was the blight—I forgot her name, it was like Amy or something.

Feyre and I began to walk around the house, I took note of the splattered blood and the claw marks that ould have been from Tamlin's struggle or rage.

Feyre rubbed her face behind me as she likely tried to try and re-route her thoughts from where they'd drifted. The two of us walked into the dining room, the windows had been smashed and there was a large trail of blood that flowed across the floor like a river, the walls were worse here the claw marks were constant and they were definitely from Tamlins rage and not struggle.

The blood on the floor was marred with footprints, almost like Tamlin and Lucien had been in here when this happened and walked out without a fight.

Something crunched from the hallway and without a doubt in my mind, I grabbed my sister and yanked her behind the door. It wasn't the greatest hiding place, but my hands automatically went to the daggers at my sides. Behind the door was a vantage point if anything.

Something limped into the room and sniffed. The only visible part of it was its back—cloaked in a black cape, medium height. My fist clenched around my dagger, ready for anything.

The creature sniffed again. Before it slightly turned toward me and I felt my shoulders slump. I placed my palm flat on the door before closing it, "Alis."

Alis jumped and turned around towards us with a hand on her heart. Her dress was torn and her apron was gone entirely. She looked relatively okay though, she wasn't hurt—save for the slight limp on her ankle. She rushed for the two of us, her tree bark skin bleaching birch white, "You two can't be here." She took in our array of weapons that had been strapped and hidden all over us, "You were told to stay away."

I had only met Alis a few times, but she and Feyre were close enough. She should know I listen to no one but myself.

"Is he alive?" Feyre asked instantly.

"Yes but—"

"And Lucien?" Feyre added.

"Alive as well, but—"

Feyre cut her off again, "Tell us what happened—tell us everything."

Alis grasped both our forearms as she pulled us out of the room and through the bloodstained and ruined halls. We entered the kitchen—it was charred and ashen like a fire had been set around the room.

Alis paused, sniffing and searching for a threat, "What are you two doing here?"

"We had to come back. We thought something had gone wrong—we couldn't stay away. We had to help." Feyre answered her, almost pleading with her.

"He told you not to come back." Alis snapped as her eyes drifted between the two of us.

"Where is he?" Feyre asked. I leaned myself on the side of the counter that hadn't been burnt. I rolled my eyes, this was way more complicated than it needed to be.

I interrupted the two, "Yes, yes, Alis, we weren't supposed to come back, blah, blah blah." I deadpanned, "Guess what? We did it anyway and we're not leaving until we get out answered. This would go a whole lot quicker if you just explained instead of telling us the mistakes we already know we've made."

Alis covered her hand with her face, her fingertips grazing the edge of her mask as though she wanted to rip it from her face, "She took him," she admitted, "She took him to her Court Under the Mountain."

"The mystery woman, correct."

"Amarantha," Alis breathed out the name as though it was a curse.

"Who is she?" I asked her.

Alis shuddered as though this conversation was taking a physical toll on her, "You want the truth? Then here it is; she took him for the curse—because the seven times seven years were over, and he hadn't shattered her curse. She's summoned all the High Lords to her court this time—to make them watch her break him."

"What curse?" I clarified.

"Amarantha is High Queen of this land. The High Queen of Prythian,"

"There hasn't been a King or Queen of Prythian in millions of years," I stated as I furrowed my brows in confusion.

"A hundred years ago, when she appeared in these lands as an emissary from Hybern." Alis grabbed a large satchel from next to the door—already full of supplies.

She began sifting through the ruined kitchen, pulling out different assortments of foods.

"She went from court to court," Alis went on as she stuffed an apple into her bag, " charming the High Lords with talk of more trade between Hybern and Prythian, more communication, more sharing assets. The Never-Fading Flower, they called her. And for fifty years, she lived here as a courtier bound to no court, making amends, she claimed, for her own actions and the actions of Hybern during the war."

"She fought in the war against the mortals?" I clarified.

ALis paused her gathering, "Her story is legend among our kind—legend, and nightmare. She was the king of Hyberns most lethal general—she fought on the front lines, slaughtering humans and any High Fae and faeries who dared to defend them. But she had a younger sister, Clythia, who fought at her side, as vicious and wretched as she...until Clythia fell in love with a mortal warrior. Jurian." I'd vaguely heard this story before, it was in the back of my mind reaching out to fill in the blanks, yet I couldn't grasp the entire picture. "Jurian commanded mighty human armies, but Clythia still secretly sought him out, still loved him with unrelenting madness. She was too blind to realize that Jurian was using her for information about Amarantha's forces. Amarantha suspected, but could not persuade Clythia to leave him—and could not bring herself to kill him, not when it would cause her sister such pain." Alis clicked her tongue, "Amarantha delighted in torture and killing, and yet she loved her sister enough to stay her hand."

"Jurian betrayed Clythia," I breathed out, as the memory surfaced from my mind.

Alis nodded at me, "After months of stomaching being her lover, he got the information he needed, then tortured and butchered her, crucifying her with ash wood so she couldn't move while he did it. He left the pieces of her for Amarantha to find. They say Amarantha's wrath could have brought down th4e skies themselves, had her king not ordered her to stand down. But she and Jurian had their final confrontation later—and since then, Amarantha has hated humans with a rage you cannot imagine." Alis added a jar of something to her bag.

"After the two sides made the Treaty," Alis said, now going through the drawers, "she butchered her own slaves, rather than free them." I raised my eyebrows in surprise, "But centuries later, the High Lords believed her when she told them that the death of her sister had changed her—especially when she opened trade lines between our two territories. The High Lords never knew that those same ships that brought over Hybernian goods also brought over her own personal forces. The King of Hybern didn't know, either. But we all soon learned that in those fifty years she was here, she had decided she wanted Prythian for her own, to begin amassing power and use our lands as a launching point to one day destroy your world once and for all, with or without her King's blessing. So forty-nine years ago, she struck.

"She knew—knew that even with her personal army, she could never conquer the seven High Lords by numbers or power alone. But she was also cunning and cruel, and she waited until they absolutely trusted her until they gathered a ball in her honor, and that night she slipped a potion stolen from the King of Hybern's unholy spellbook into their wine. Once they drank, the High Lords were prone, their magic laid bare—and she stole their powers from where they originated inside their bodies—plucked them out as if she were taking an apple from its branch, leaving them with only the basest elements of their magic." She looked at my sister, "Your Tamlin—what you saw of him here was a shade of what he used to be, the power that he used to command. And with the HIgh Lords' power so greatly decreased, Amarantha wrested control of Prythian from them in a matter of days. For forty-nine years, we have been her slaves." My heart clenched, this woman was wretched. "For forty-nine years, she has been biding her time, waiting for the right moment to break the Treaty and take your lands—and all human territories beyond it."

Cauldron boil me, this was out of control.

"Now they call her the Deceiver—she who trapped the seven High Lords and built her palace beneath the sacred Mountain at the heart of our land." Alis paused in the doorway to the pantry, once again rubbing her face with her hands and taking deep breaths.

"She's the blight on these lands," I stated and Alis nodded, confirming my earlier suspicions.

Alis shook her head, "There is no blight in these lands but her. The borders were collapsing because she laid them to rubble. She found it amusing to send her creatures to attack our lands, to test whatever strength Tamlin had left."

Alis emerged from the pantry and looked at my younger sister, "You could have been the one to stop her." Her eyes were sharp as a knife, "You could have been the one to free him and his power, had you not been so blind to your own heart. Humans." She seethed.

"And how is that? How would Feyre have stopped her?" I asked Alis, my voice holding an edge that made her regard me more seriously as she looked at me.

She turned away and began yanking the remaining jars from the shelves into her satchel, "Tamlin and Amarantha knew each other before—his family had long been tied to Hybern. During the war, the Spring Court allied with Hybern to keep humans enslaved. So his father—his father, who was a fickle and vicious Lord—was very close with the king of Hybern, to Amarantha. Tamlin as a child often accompanied him on his trips to Hybern. And he met Amarantha in the process."

The puzzle I had been building in my brain since we got her was beginning to scramble. Tamlin and Amarantha knew each other—she was cruel and terrible and wished to kill the humans and yet Tamlin had invited two into his home willingly? Things didn't add up and I had a feeling it was something important.

"Amarantha eventually grew to desire Tamlin—to lust for him with her entire wicked heart. But he'd heard the stories from others about the War, and knew what Amarantha and the King of Hybern had done to humans and faeries alike. What she did to Jurian as punishment for her sister's death. He was wary of her when she came here, despite her attempts to lure him into her bed—and kept his distance right up until she stole his powers. Lucien...Lucien was sent to her as Tamlin's emissary, to try to treat for peace between them."

I tried to swallow but my throat had dried.

"She refused, and...Lucien told her to go back to the shit-hole she'd crawled out of. She took his eye as punishment. Carved it out with her own fingernail, then scarred his face. She sent him back so bloody that Tamlin...the High Lord vomited when he saw his friend."

I shook my head in an attempt to clear the image from my mind, but it wouldn't go away.

Alis tapped on her mask, the sound ringing a little bit as though the mask was made of metal, "After that, she hosted a masquerade. Under the Mountain for herself. All the Courts were present. A party, she'd said—to make amends for what she'd done to Lucien, and a masquerade so he didn't have to reveal the horrible scar along his face. The entire Spring Court was to attend, even the servants, and to wear masks—to honor Tamlin's shapeshifting powers, she'd said. He was willing to try to end the conflict without slaughter, and he'd agreed to go—to bring all of us."

Alis paused in the center of the kitchen, placing her satchel now filled with an assortment of foods down, "When we all assembled, she claimed that peace could be had—if Tamlin joined her as her lover and consort. But when she tried to touch him, he refused to let her near. Not after what she'd done to Lucien. He said—in front of everyone that night—that he would sooner take a human to his bed, sooner marry a human, than ever touch her." Once an asshole, always an asshole, "She might have let it go, had he not then said that her own sister had preferred a humans company to hers, that her own sister had chosen Jurian over her."

His temper would always be his downfall. He allowed his emotions to cloud his judgment. I didn't feel bad for the consequences—I did. But the consequences of his reckless actions didn't only affect him, they affect the entirety of Spring Court. And to me, that wasn't right.

"You can guess how well that went over with Amarantha. But she told Tamlin he was in a generous mood—told him she'd give him the chance to break the spell she'd put upon him to steal his power.

"He spat in her face and she laughed. She said he had seven times seven years until she claimed him before he had to join her under the mountain. If he wanted to break her curse, he need only find a human girl willing to marry him. But not nay girl, a human girl with ice in her heart, with hatred for our kind. A human girl willing to kill a faerie." My eyebrows raised as I realized she was talking about Feyre. I then felt a sudden urge to kill the High Lord of Spring. Did he plan to use her only to free them? To toy with her only until she loved him before he broke her heart? "Worse, the faerie she killed had to be one of his me, sent across the wall by him like lambs to the slaughter. The girl could only be courted if she killed one of his men in an unprovoked attack—killed him for hatred alone, just as Jurian had done to Clythia...so he could understand her sister's pain."

Well, that was...convenient to say the least.

"The Treaty—" Feyre attempted.

"That was all a lie. There is no provision for that in the Treaty. You can kill as many innocent faeries as you want and never suffer the consequences. You just killed Andras, sent out by Tamlin as that day's sacrifice."

This was all too much to keep up with. Tamlin's curse. Feyre. Sacrifices. Prythian was in shambles.

"It was a cruel joke, a clever punishment, to Amarantha. You humans loathe and fear faeries so much it would be impossible—impossible for the same girl who slaughtered a faerie in cold blood to then fall in love with one. But the spell on Tamlin could only be broken if she did just that before the forty-nine years were over—if that girl said to his face that she loved him, and meant it with her entire heart. Amarantha knows humans are preoccupied with beauty, and thus bound the masks to all of our faces, to his face, so it would be more difficult to find a girl willing to look beyond the mask, beyond his faerie nature, and to the soul beneath. Not a single word. We could hardly tell you a thing about our world, about our fate. He couldn't tell you—none of us properly could. The lies about the blight—that was the best he could do, the best we could all do. That I can tell you now...it means the game is over, to her.

"When she first cursed Tamlin, he sent one of his men across the wall every day. To the woods, to farms, all disguised as wolves to make it more likely for one of your kind to want to kill them. If they came back, it was with stories of human girls who ran and screamed and begged, who didn't even lift a hand. When they didn't come back—Tamlins bond with them as their Lord and master told him they'd been killed by others. Human hunters, older women perhaps. For two years he sent them out, day after day, having to pick who crossed the wall. When all but a dozen of them were left, it broke him so badly he stopped. Called it off. And since then, Tamlin has been here, defending his borders as chaos and disorder ruled in the other Courts under Amarantha's thumb. The other High Lords fought back, too. Forty years ago, she executed three of them and their families for banding together against her."

"Open rebellion? What Courts?" I questioned her.

"The Day Court, Summer Court, and Winter Court. And no—it didn't even get far enough to be considered an open rebellion. She used the High Lord's powers to bind us all to the land. So the rebel lords tried calling for aid from the other Fae territories using as messengers whatever humans were foolish enough to enter our lands—most of them young women who worshipped us like gods." The Children of the Blessed. When they had made it over the wall, they had not become brides.

"But Amarantha caught them all before they left these shores, and...you can imagine how it ended for those girls." Bile rose in my throat and I suddenly felt sick as my mind wandered to different conclusions, "Afterward once Amarantha butchered the rebellious High Lords, their successors were too terrified to temp her wrath again."

"And where are they now? Are they allowed to live on their lands, as Tamlin does?" Feyre questioned.

"No. She keeps them all Under the Mountain with her." she looked at Feyre, "You could have broken it." She snarled in Feyre's face and I stepped over to Alis hoping that the look I cast her said all that needed to be said. She backed away but she still looked beyond me to my sister, "All you had to do was say you loved him—say that you loved him and meant it with your whole useless human heart, and his power would have been freed. You stupid, stupid girl."

"I'm sorry," Feyre spoke from behind me shakily.

Alis looked at me, "You had to complicate it further by inviting yourself along and blocking them from being together constantly. The blame is on both of you." She spat.

And she was right. The blame was on both of us. This was our fault and we needed to fix it.

"I'm sorry," Feyre whispered from behind me and I looked over to see her eyes lined with silver.

Alis snorted, "Tell that to Tamlin. He had only three days before the two of you left before the forty-nine years were over. Three days, and he let you go. She came here with her cronies the exact moment the seven times even years were over and seized him, along with most of the Court, and brought them Under the Mountain to be her subjects. Creatures like me are too lowly for her—though she's not above murdering us for sport.

"If Tamlin was freed—if he had his full powers," I spoke as my mind was swarmed with an idea that would likely kill me, "would he be able to destroy Amarantha?"

"I don't know. She tricked the High Lords through cunning, not force. Magic's a specific kind of thing—it likes rules, and she manipulated them too well. She keeps their powers locked up inside herself, as if she can't use them, or access very little of them, at least. She had her own deadly powers, yes, but if it came to a fight—"

"But is he stronger? Or at least one of the High Lords stronger?"

"He's a High Lord," She answered matter of factly, " But none of that matters now. He's to be her slave, and we're all to wear these masks until he becomes her lover—even then he'll never regain his full powers. And she'll never let those Under the Mountain go."

I looked right into Alis's eyes, "How do I get under the Mountain?"

Feyre stepped up to my side, "We." I looked over at my sister, about to tell her it would be dangerous—then I realized how hypocritical that was and stopped myself when I saw the stark resolve in her eyes.

Alis clicked her tongue, "You can't go Under the Mountain. No human who goes in ever comes out."

I narrowed my eyes at her, not wanting to be treated like a child, "How. Do. We. Get. There."

"It's suicide—she'll kill you, even if you get close enough to see her." she looked between us, "You're humans. Your flesh is paper-thin."

I was getting sick of this but Alis still continued, "You were too blind to see Tamlins curse. How do you expect to face Amarantha? You'll make things worse."

I raised an eyebrow at her, "You expected us to guess that Tamlin was under a curse that required him to sacrifice his men until a mortal girl with hatred in her heart found one and killed them before he took her to Prythian and made her fall in love?" I deadpanned, "No one is that smart." Alis rolled her eyes but I continued as I stepped up to Alis, "You're going to take us there, Alis."

"No." Alis slung her satchel over her shoulder, "Go home. I'll take you as far as the wall. There's naught to be done now. Tamlin will remain her slave forever, and Prythian will stay under her rule. That's what fate dealt, that was what the eddies of the cauldron decided."

"I don't believe in fate. Only actions. And I'll be damned if I let Prythian stay enslaved under her rule when it's partly my fault without at least trying to free them. I grew up without freedom, Alis, and I refuse to allow anyone else to suffer the same fate." Alis seemed to take me in for the first time as she looked at me, "Take us to her Alis," I swallowed my pride, "please."

Alis's eyes softened as she looked between the two of us. Bowing her head she spoke, "As you wish, Lady."

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

A/N: AHHHHH, finally going UTM

this chapter took a lot longer than I thought 😅 and is rlly long like 4,200 words and idk if i should apologize.

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