Chapter Text
Rhysand
The battle was over.
Rhysand knew it. He could see the enemy lines disintegrating, the cries of surrender, the bodies scattered across the field like seeds in bloody soil. But his mind was still trying to piece together a puzzle whose pieces seemed to belong to different worlds.
What the fuck just happened?
He had landed in the center of the field minutes ago—or had it been seconds?—and hadn't stopped moving since. Coordinating evacuations. Checking on the wounded. But part of his mind—the part that never stopped calculating, worrying, fearing—kept searching.
"Rhysand!"
The voice cut through the air like an ice blade. Literally.
Kallias was crossing the field toward him with strides that left frost on the scorched grass. His face—usually serene—was twisted into a mask of barely contained fury. Behind him, Tarquin advanced with more measured steps, but the tension in his shoulders left no doubt he shared the sentiment.
Perfect. Just what I needed.
"Who are they?" Kallias stopped two meters away, pointing toward the field where the strange forces moved with military efficiency. "Who the fuck are those... women evacuating my people to a place I've never heard of?"
"Kallias—"
"They took Virren." The Winter Court High Lord's voice cracked almost imperceptibly. "My commander. One of those black arrows pierced him and before I could reach him, those strangers had shoved him through a portal and disappeared. They told me he's at something called 'the Nexus.'" He spat the word like it was poison. "What is the Nexus? Where is my commander?"
"I don't know."
The words came out more honest than he'd intended.
"You don't know?" Tarquin, calmer but equally sharp. "An entire army of... whatever they are, shifters and... that." He pointed at the dragon still circling above them. "And you expect us to believe you had nothing to do with it?"
"I know as much as you do."
"The dragon has violet eyes, Rhysand." Tarquin, cutting. "Don't insult our intelligence."
Rhysand didn't respond. Because Tarquin was right. He'd noticed. That violet that shouldn't exist in any beast.
"When this is over," Kallias said finally, voice still icy but more controlled, "we're going to have a very long conversation about what just happened here."
"When this is over, I'll be the first demanding those answers."
Tarquin exchanged a look with Kallias. A silent agreement. For now, the truce would hold.
They walked away toward where their own forces were regrouping, and Rhysand swept the field with his gaze again.
Searching.
And then he saw them.
Cassian was crossing the field with Azriel practically hanging from his shoulders.
He'd seen him fall. Had tried to reach him, but one of those flying creatures had intercepted—leathery wings and claws reaching for his throat. By the time he'd torn it apart, the dragon already had Azriel in its talons.
After that, everything had been chaos and fire and claws shredding enemy lines. Rhysand had lost sight of Azriel in the confusion, busy holding the eastern flank, trusting—praying—that the strange forces that had appeared knew what they were doing.
Now he could see him. Alive. More or less.
The relief lasted exactly half a second before horror replaced it.
Black veins. Visible even from this distance, snaking up Azriel's neck like roots of a rotting tree. Venom. He could feel it even from here—a dark and corrupt power trying to devour his brother from within.
But he was conscious. His shadows stirred weakly around him, reaching upward.
Rhysand crossed the distance in three strides, Feyre at his side.
"Az." His voice came out rougher than intended. "What the fuck...?"
"I'm fine." Azriel didn't even look at him. His eyes remained fixed on the sky, on the beast circling above. "It's nothing."
"Nothing?" Cassian let out a humorless laugh. "He's got black veins crawling up his neck and he ripped out the... threads, or whatever they'd put in, before those women could finish. The same ones who, by the way, nearly took my head off when I pulled him out of there."
"I wasn't going to lie there while..."
Azriel didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
While she was still flying above them.
And that was when Rhysand felt it. Something in the dragon. Something in those eyes. Something in the way Azriel's shadows writhed toward the beast with desperation that went beyond normal.
A visceral recognition that his mind rejected but that his blood, his magic, every instinct he had, whispered as an impossible possibility.
No. It can't be.
Three women approached with speed that made Cassian growl a warning. The one leading had silvery-white hair braided in an elaborate crown and eyes the color of winter ice. She wore a crimson cloak with a symbol embroidered in silver.
"We need to take him to the Nexus," she said with a clear, emotionless voice. "The venom is contained but not neutralized. If we don't treat him within the next few hours..."
"No."
The word came from Azriel barely as a whisper, but loaded with enough venom of his own to make the women stop.
The silver-haired woman tilted her head, studying him with those cold eyes.
"The dissolution venom is spreading. Every minute that passes increases the damage. You need to come to the Nexus where we have the equipment to neutralize it."
"No."
Something changed in the woman's face. A barely perceptible crack in her professional mask.
"If you don't come within the next few hours, the venom will kill you." She took a step toward him. "So either you come willingly, or you stay here being a stubborn idiot until it devours you from within. Your choice."
Azriel coughed and blood splattered his lips. But his eyes weren't watching the healer. They were fixed on the sky. On the dragon.
"Fuck the venom. I'm not going anywhere."
And his shadows—gods, his shadows were behaving as if they were alive in ways that went beyond normal. They stretched toward the sky, reaching for the dragon. As if they recognized something. As if they knew.
Rhysand looked between his brother and the beast.
No. Impossible.
And then they appeared.
A woman with hair red as forge fire, braided in two braids that swayed as she walked. Golden eyes that gleamed with light that wasn't completely human. When she smiled—a smile that didn't reach those eyes—Rhysand knew he was facing something ancient. Something dangerous.
She stopped a few meters away, evaluating them all with a gaze that classified threats. Her attention fixed on the silver-haired healer.
"Selene. Status of the wounded."
Selene. So that was her name.
The woman responded without taking her eyes off Azriel:
"Critical cases being evacuated to the Nexus. Or at least trying to with those who have half a brain." A loaded pause as she looked at Azriel. "Stable ones in field camps. The liberated humans... many in shock. Kaelith, some of them are going to need more than physical healing."
"I know. Baux is organizing teams."
Behind her, a man approached. Warm light brown skin, dark hair braided over one shoulder. Tattoos climbed his neck in complex patterns. He carried a bow and sword with the familiarity of someone born with weapons in their hands.
But it was his eyes that drew attention—intense blue, almost luminous, gleaming with something that made the air around him feel slightly warmer.
The red-haired woman—Kaelith—turned to Cassian:
"You, big guy, why don't you let him go so we can work?"
Cassian bared teeth.
"How about I break your face first?"
The blue-eyed man gave Kaelith a warning look before addressing Cassian:
"I'm Baux. And while I appreciate the drama, your friend needs treatment before that venom does something permanent."
Azriel looked at him with an expression that promised death, but his eyes returned to the sky immediately.
Baux raised his hands.
"Alright, alright. Message received." His eyes moved to Rhysand. "You must be the High Lord."
Rhysand didn't respond. Because at that moment, the dragon stopped circling.
It began to descend.
Slowly. As if making a decision. As if it had finally decided to face something it had been avoiding.
And Azriel's shadows reacted violently.
Not gradually. Not with the calculated caution that always characterized them. They launched toward the dragon as it descended, as if they'd been waiting five hundred years for this moment, as if they could finally go home.
Azriel gasped. A broken sound that made Cassian grip him tighter. His eyes were so wide Rhysand could see white around the hazel. He was trembling. His whole body trembling while his shadows completely disobeyed him.
"Az..." Cassian, worried, looking between his brother and the descending beast. "What the fuck...?"
Azriel watched the dragon with an expression that mixed pain and longing and recognition so deep it hurt to look at.
"It's her," he whispered, so low it was barely heard. "It's her."
The dragon landed fifty meters from them. The impact made the earth tremble, creating a crater that sent nearby warriors stumbling back, and then those eyes—those impossible violet eyes—fixed directly on Rhysand.
And he knew.
It couldn't be true. His mind screamed it was impossible. But his blood recognized.
"No..." he whispered. "It can't be..."
And then the dragon's shadows moved.
Not Azriel's shadows—the dragon's. They swirled from the ground, from the air, converging on the massive beast like a dark storm. They wrapped around the black scales, the monumental wings, until the dragon disappeared completely in a cocoon of living darkness.
Rhysand watched, paralyzed, as the shadows squeezed, compressed, made the massive form grow smaller. Smaller and smaller. Until it was no longer a dragon but something the size of...
A person.
The shadows dispersed like smoke.
And Rhysand stopped breathing.
Because there, standing in the center of the crater, was a woman.
Black hair with blue highlights plastered to her face. Leather armor soaked in dark blood. And violet eyes that were a mirror of his own.
Valerie.
His little sister.
Dead for five hundred years.
The world narrowed to her. Everything else—the battlefield, the strangers, the chaos, the venom in Azriel's veins—faded until only her remained.
But she wasn't the girl he remembered.
She was a warrior. Her leather armor was torn and burned, marked by claws and fire. A practical braid that had barely survived the battle. The strands clung to her stained cheeks, framing a face that had known pain in ways Rhysand couldn't imagine.
Her hands were covered in blood to the wrists, dripping from her fingers and forming dark puddles at her feet. And the dark stains around her mouth—black, wet—were brutal evidence that she'd used fangs as well as claws.
She had fought like a savage beast.
The girl he'd taught to fly, whose hair he'd braided when she couldn't sleep... She had become this.
Scars he didn't remember crossed her face—one on her left cheek, thin and silvered, deliberately cruel. Marks that spoke of five hundred years he hadn't shared.
And her eyes. Those dark violet eyes that were a mirror of his own—unmistakable mark of the Night Court royal family—looked at him with an expression that mixed terror, guilt, and longing so deep it hurt to see.
Valerie.
Five hundred years. Five hundred years of guilt. Of believing he'd failed as an older brother. That she'd been murdered, with no body to recover.
And now he discovered she'd been alive. All that time.
Questions crowded his mind like furious waves.
How? Where? Why?
Their eyes met across the devastated field.
And she vanished.
She didn't winnow in a flash of power. Didn't open a portal. She simply dissolved into shadows that scattered like smoke in the wind.
She fled.
His sister had seen him and fled from him. Again.
The silence that followed was absolute.
"Fuck." Cassian. His voice sounded strangled. "Did anyone else see that or am I starting to hallucinate?"
"You saw it." Azriel. Still pale, still bleeding, but with eyes fixed on the space where Valerie had been. His voice sounded broken. "It was her."
"Who was her?" Feyre asked, looking between them.
Mor had stepped back. Her daggers hung forgotten in trembling hands. And tears were running down her cheeks.
"Val." The word came out like a broken prayer. "Valerie. It was... Gods, it was Valerie."
Nesta observed everything with that piercing gaze, evaluating.
"Your sister. The one who died five hundred years ago."
"Apparently not so dead." Amren's voice was dry. "I always knew that story didn't add up. No body. No real witnesses. Too convenient."
But Rhysand barely heard them. Something was breaking in his chest.
A fierce relief flooded his veins.
She's alive. I didn't lose her.
But behind it came the fury. Cold. Contained. A thousand times more dangerous than any explosion of rage. She had chosen to let him believe she was dead for five hundred years.
In two strides he'd crossed the distance to Baux and grabbed him by the collar of his armor, lifting him off the ground.
"Where?" The word came out as a growl. "Where the fuck is she?"
Baux raised his hands, and his friendly expression hardened.
"I don't know, and even if I did, I wouldn't tell you."
"Excuse me?" The words came out low—a warning more than a question.
"It's not my story to tell. If you want answers, you'll have to get them from her. Not from me. Not from any of us."
"Rhys." It was Feyre, with a hand on his arm. "Let him go."
Rhysand clenched his teeth, but released Baux.
"I know where she is."
Everyone turned to Azriel.
He was still in Cassian's arms, pale as death, black veins spreading across his chest. But his eyes burned with absolute certainty.
"I know where she went. And you know too, Rhys." His shadows stirred violently. "You have to go after her. She's your sister."
Something passed across Azriel's face—pain so deep it made Cassian grip him tighter. Because everyone knew what he wasn't saying: that if he could, if the venom weren't devouring him from within, he would have already gone after her.
"You have to go. Now. Before she runs further."
And Rhysand knew.
He knew exactly where she'd gone.
Because he knew his sister. Knew how she thought when she was scared, when she felt guilty. Knew the only place in all of the Night Court where she'd felt completely safe when they were children.
"Cassian. Let the healers take him. Az needs treatment."
"What? No, I—"
"Now, Cass."
Cassian clenched his teeth, but finally, with infinite care, handed Azriel to the waiting healers. Selene grabbed him immediately, hands glowing with golden light.
Rhysand looked at Feyre. At Mor. At all of them.
"Stay here. Help with the wounded. Coordinate with them."
"Rhys—"
But he had already vanished in a blink of darkness.
Because five hundred years or not, scars or not, armies from other worlds or not...
That was his little sister.
And he wasn't going to let her run again.