“
Warm, buttery sunlight through the leaves, setting them glowing like rubies and citrines. The damp, earthen scent of rotting things beneath the leaves and roots she lay upon. Had been thrown and left upon.
Everything hurt. Everything. She couldn't move. Couldn't do anything but watch the sun drift through the rich canopy far overhead, listen to the wind between the silvery trunks.
And the centre of that pain, radiating outward like living fire with each uneven, rasping breath...
Light, steady steps crunched on the leaves. Six sets. A border guard, a patrol.
Help. Someone to help-
A male voice, foreign and deep, swore. Then went silent.
Went silent as a single pair of steps approached. She couldn't turn her head, couldn't bear the agony. Could do nothing but inhale each wet, shuddering breath.
'Don't touch her.'
Those steps stopped.
It was not a warning to protect her. Defend her.
She knew the voice that spoke. Had dreaded hearing it.
She felt him approach now. Felt each reverberation in the leaves, the moss, the roots. As if the very land shuddered before him.
'No one touches her,' he said. Eris. 'The moment we do, she's our responsibility.'
Cold, unfeeling words.
'But- but they nailed a-'
'No one touches her.'
Nailed.
They had spiked nails into her.
Had pinned her down as she screamed, pinned her down as she roared at them, then begged them. And then they had taken out those long, brutal iron nails. And the hammer.
Three of them.
Three strikes of the hammer, drowned out by her screaming, by the pain.
She began shaking, hating it as much as she'd hated the begging. Her body bellowed in agony, those nails in her abdomen relentless.
A pale, beautiful face appeared above her, blocking out the jewel-like leaves above. Unmoved. Impassive. 'I take it you do not wish to live here, Morrigan.'
She would rather die here, bleed out here. She would rather die and return- return as something wicked and cruel, and shred them all apart.
He must have read it in her eyes. A small smile curved her lips. 'I thought so.'
Eris straightened, turning. Her fingers curled in the leaves and loamy soil.
She wished she could grow claws- grow claws as Rhys could- and rip out that pale throat. But that was not her gift. Her gift... her gift had left her here. Broken and bleeding.
Eris took a step away.
Someone behind him blurted, 'We can't just leave her to-'
'We can, and we will,' Eris said simply, his pace unfaltering as he strode away. 'She chose to sully herself; her family chose to deal with her like garbage. I have already told them my decision in this matter.' A long pause, crueller than the rest. 'And I am not in the habit of fucking Illyrian leftovers.'
She couldn't stop it, then. The tears that slid out, hot and burning.
Alone. They would leave her alone here. Her friends did not know where she had gone. She barely knew where she was.
'But-' That dissenting voice cut in again.
'Move out.'
There was no dissension after that.
And when their steps faded away, then vanished, the silence returned.
The sun and the wind and the leaves.
The blood and the iron and the soil beneath her nails.
The pain.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Frost and Starlight (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3.5))