Aelin was already by my side. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” I breathed as I stood up, “I’m fine.”
My head started to spin -- I was getting weak. Something in my body was changing, though I couldn’t tell. My face started to twist, and my body started to give out. My powers flickered, then died out. My wings vanished.
“What’s going on?” Aelin demanded as she lightly put her hand on my shoulder. She looked down at my face and paled. Rowan came up beside her, having stopped the fight with the man with the purple eyes and dark hair.
I fell to the floor, and cried out. The most terrible pain I have ever felt seared through my face; I screeched in pain. I started scratching at my face, trying to stop the twisting. I started to cry. I couldn’t feel my face. My hands became wet and gooey. I pulled them down from my face; they were stained with blood. What was happening?
“Aiyana,” Aelin whispered. “Stop pulling at your face. Stop.” Tears of pain silently fell as she beheld what was happening to me.
“What’s happening?” I croaked, my throat already scorched from screaming. Aelin just looked at me, her face as white as bone. “What is happening, Aelin.”
“Aiyana,” she softly replied, trying to keep me calm, “your face is changing. You don’t have blond hair and brown eyes anymore. I have no clue what is going on.” Her tears resumed their falling as I screeched in pain again and thrashed. Aelin put her hands on my arms, gently holding me down to the floor of the deck. “Aiyana,” she quietly cried, “please, Aiyana. Don’t scream.” Everybody on deck surrounded me.
At that moment, images flashed through my mind: my parents; a little boy with silver-white hair and green eyes; a queen with vibrant red hair and obsidian-colored eyes; a ship; a baby girl with short, silver hair and green eyes with a mark on her chest; the mark. My chest. The mark.
I fumbled for the zipper of my fighting suit, trying to see the mark on my chest. I couldn’t breathe.
“Aiyana, what is it?” Aelin asked, her voice a distant echo. I was losing it. I was going to die. I tried to speak, but couldn’t. All I could do was point at my chest.
“Her chest. Where Amren cut her,” I heard someone say in the background. Elide. A small, dark figure appeared at the corner of my vision, and it pulled on the zipper of my fighting suit. I tried to touch the spot where the dark-haired woman cut me, but I couldn’t. My vision was blacking out. I was going to die. The force of whatever was happening to me was too strong; it hit me like a wave, strong and enormous, and knocked me unconscious.
There was silence, and darkness. I started to scream and thrash. Not this. Not again. I heard someone sobbing. In the distance, I could hear voices; I could see a light shining. I reached for it, and held on. I was not going to let this kill me. I pulled, and something on the other side of that light pulled with me. I felt like I was underwater; I started to choke, air gradually filling my lungs. I gasped, and this time, I opened my eyes. I was still on the deck of the ship, and Elide was bending over me, face stained with tears.
“Aiyana?” she whispered, pulling back a strand of my hair. “Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
I slowly nodded. Someone behind me loosed a shuddering breath. I looked down at my chest. There was no mark; just a scar where Amren had cut me. I looked back at Elide. “What happened?” I croaked. I slowly sat up from where I was lying, getting dizzy. Elide grabbed my arm to steady me. “What happened?” I asked again. I slowly rolled up onto my feet, Elide holding my arm the whole time to help me.
I felt strange -- different. I felt stronger, and leaner. I lifted my hands to look at them, and quietly gasped. My fingers were extremely thin and bony, but were long. My skin was white, and there were scars covering every square inch of my hands. I reached for my hair -- it was thin and limp in my hands, and was as short as it was earlier.
I turned around in place, meeting the shocked stares of all the people on board -- strangers, and my friends and family. My senses had heightened: I could see clearer, hear much better, and I could smell everything. “What is that horrible smell?” I asked. My voice; that had changed, too. It was softer, but seemed older -- far from this world. As I turned around to see where the smell was coming from, I spotted a snow leopard sitting behind me, its face tilted to the side as if to say, sorry. Lysandra. I knelt down so I was face-to-face with Lysandra, and rubbed behind her ears. She purred. Sorry Lysandra, I said into her mind as I smiled. I didn’t mean to. She purred, and replied, It’s okay, and I rose from my crouching position. All the people on the deck were looking quizzically at me.
“What?” I asked them.
“Your face,” Lysandra said as she walked towards me, having changed out of her snow leopard form. She cupped my cheeks. “Beautiful,” she murmured. “You are so beautiful.”
Heat rose in my cheeks.
“You have wings.” Lysandra stepped away from me and turned to my right, facing one of my wings. “May I?”
I nodded once.
At her touch, my wings bristled. “Magnificent -- I have never seen anything like them,” she breathed. She then walked out from behind me, and faced me, looking at me straight in the eyes. They twinkled with something I couldn’t detect. She turned her back to me, and walked to Aedion. He took her hand.
I walked towards Aelin, the clanking of my tall, black boots on the floor of the deck the only sound. “Who are these people?” I whispered in her ear.
She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she whispered back.
“What are we --” I was going to reply as someone cleared their throat from behind me.
I slowly turned around, my brows raised. The man with the dark hair and purple eyes was standing there, arms crossed, his wings held in tight behind him. “It is not polite to whisper,” he said.
I stared at him. “Who are you.” I stalked towards him, stopping a good ten feet away.
“I’m Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court.” He didn’t smile. Instead, he dropped his arms, darkness rippling from his shoulders.
“From where?” I asked.
“The Night Court,” Amren angrily told me. “Get it right, girl.”
My wings flared as I glared at her. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
She laughed wickedly under her breath. “Be careful what you say around me, girl, or you might --”
“Don’t finish that sentence, Amren,” Rhysand interrupted, not even looking at her.
“What do you guys want?” I asked. “Why are you here in the first place?”
“It is a long story. To cut it short, we are here for your help,” Rhysand said.
“Our what?” I demanded.
“To start off,” Amren aggressively said before Rhysand could even open his mouth to answer, “you should stop using the word ‘what’. It is impolite, you winged fool. You are talking to a lord.”
All I did was glare at her. I turned my gaze back to Rhysand, whose focus was on me. “We need your . . . aid for something,” he said, trying to use the words that won’t have me fighting Amren again.
“What something?”
“A war.”
“With who?”
“With one of the courts on our continent -- Prythian.”
“Why?”
“One of its leaders is a very cruel man, who has hurt us in many ways.” His gaze was focused, unflinching.
I considered this. “Why do you need our help?”
“We have heard of you -- of what you,” he looked at my friends behind me, “have been doing on the continent you live on -- Erilea.”
I looked back at Aelin, her face tight with shock. “How?” she asked, walking up beside me.
“People talk,” Rhysand said, his gaze focused on Aelin. “We have heard about what you -- Aelin -- and your mate, Rowan, and crew have done. You, with your fire powers, the ‘Fire-breathing queen’, and Rowan with his ice. We have heard about the battle with Maeve, and many other things.”
Aelin’s face started to pale. “Do you know who we all are?” she softly said.
“Yes,” Rhysand answered. “You have not heard about us, I presume.”
“We have not,” Aelin said.
“If you knew who we were, why did you fight against us earlier?” I asked, curious.
“We did not attack you -- you attacked us.” He looked at Aelin, her face a hard mask of stone. “We heard that you were on a ship in the middle of the sea, returning to your homeland. We all decided to fly out here and find you, which we did. We flew onto the deck of the ship, and you guys attacked.”
Silence fell. “Do you already know what powers we have?” Aelin asked.
“Yes. That is how we came to the agreement that we needed you to fight alongside our armies -- with us,” Rhysand stated.
“Who is us?” I asked him.
He faced the people standing behind him. “Feyre, High Lady of the Night Court, Morrigan, Amren, Azriel, Cassian, me, and others living at my home.” His eyes moved to every single person as he said their names. They all stared at us, unblinking.
“You expect us to help you if we haven’t even gotten to know you?” Rowan demanded from beside Aelin. At some point, while we were talking, he must have moved beside her.
Rhysand quickly looked at the golden-haired woman standing on his right -- Feyre, High Lady of the Night Court -- and looked back at us. “Yes,” was all he said.
“Are you --” Rowan demanded as I interrupted him.
“Stop, Rowan.” He glared at me. I looked at Rhysand. “We will think about what you have asked us. First, we will get to know you better. We will take you to our continent, and you will all stay there until we become friends. Once we have told you our choice in helping you or not, you may return to your home. We can then proceed from there. Do you understand?” I looked at each of Rhysand’s court members in the eyes.
“Yes,” Rhysand answered.
“Very well, then,” I said.
“Would you please explain to us how you heard of us in the first place?” Rowan asked. My friends and I all looked at Rhysand, waiting.
Then, he started to explain.
By Alexa Gantt
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