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thesistersarcheron · 11 months

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Pairing: Feysand Word Count: ~2.8k Tags: AU - No Amarantha, Human Feyre Archeron x Fae Rhysand, Attempted Kidnapping, Dubious Consent - Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares Summary: Five times the High Lord of the Night Court tries to lure his human mate across the wall and the one time she hunts him instead. (Based on this prompt from deepwaterwritingprompts: Sometimes in the dead of night on the way to the kitchen for a glass of water, I see an extra door in the hallway, black and imposing.)

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It was hunger that woke her.

She became aware of it slowly—the low, rumbling growl of her belly, the dryness at the back of her throat, the acute emptiness that radiated upward from her gut until every limb ached with it. It was as if some ravenous beast had taken shelter in the vast pit of her belly and, unsatisfied with its sparse accommodations, took to shredding her insides in retaliation.

Brushing off the cobwebs of sleep from her mind, Feyre Archeron pushed back the threadbare quilt she huddled beneath and stood. She flinched away from the icy floorboards beneath her feet, stretching and yawning as she shuffled to the dresser at the foot of the bed for an extra pair of socks.

Still, even as she straightened, rubbing a bit of warmth into her arms, the grogginess lingered.

She pressed a hand to her aching stomach and swallowed hard.

The haze of hunger clouding her mind wasn’t a good sign. The pickled vegetables had run out weeks ago, and last night, her family had eaten the last of their bread and dried meat for dinner. The portions were pitiful, just a handful of bites each, and when Feyre went to count the coppers she kept tucked in her drawer to see if they might be able to afford another crust of bread from the village baker for breakfast, there had been none left.

A glance over her shoulder told her that both of her sisters slept undisturbed in the bed the three of them shared. Nesta’s puckered brow and the hand clutching the quilt over her stomach spoke to her own hunger, but sweet-tempered Elain simply sighed, curling deeper into the small pocket of warmth Feyre left behind.

Feyre meant to hunt in the morning. She needed to hunt, if they were to have any more meat for the table or hides to sell in the marketplace. Otherwise, they would starve. There were too many beggars in the village to compete for the rare coin thrown into their cups, and the other methods of earning some cash…

Well. Feyre wasn’t yet so desperate, and the men who could afford such a thing at this time of year were few and far between. She doubted they would take her up on it, anyway. Food may be scarce, but there were still plenty of women in the village whose ragged dresses strained at the bust and whose ribs couldn’t be counted as easily as hers.

But venturing into the frostbitten forest beyond their cottage would be too risky if she couldn’t fight back her hunger. If she didn’t fall asleep and lose fingers to the cold, then she would end up satisfying the appetite of the rangy pack of wolves she’d spotted stalking through her usual hunting grounds a week earlier.

There would be no outrunning them, even if the bone-deep chill didn’t lull her to sleep and make her easy prey; they were just as hungry as she, just as desperate, and far, far more vicious now that the deer and rabbits they both hunted had pulled back into the heart of the forest for the winter.

She took a deep breath, shuffling out of the small bedroom on a hunter’s silent feet.

Water. That’s what she needed. A glass of water would dull the worst of the hunger pangs, and then she could get a few more hours of sleep, at the very least.

She moved on nimble feet, dodging a crumbling floorboard and slipping through the door. After eight years, she could navigate the Archerons’ small, two-room cottage with her eyes closed—and so she did, pinching the bridge of her nose as the hunger pains migrated to her skull like claws scraping against the boundaries of her mind.

In the hearth to her left, the low embers of a fire crackled. Her father would be on a small cot in front of it; his breathing was just as steady as her sisters’. To her right, the painted dining table and dented, rusting iron range that served as their kitchen. There would be a pail of water at the opposite end beneath the small window, hauled from the well a half-mile away.

Feyre stretched out a hand, blindly seeking the edge of the table. As she made contact with it, following the familiar grooves and contours to the opposite end, the scent of the dried meat and stale bread wafted up to greet her.

Agonizing hope pounded against her breast.

She blinked her eyes open, squinting against the dim light searing into them.

Had she missed a bite? Was there something left to fill her belly—a molded crust or too-tough strip of jerky that made her sisters turn up their noses?

Anything. She would take anything.

But even before she saw the empty table and the barren shelves above it, she knew that hope was futile. No, if there had been even a single morsel left, she and Nesta would have fought over it viciously at dinnertime. There was never any food left after meals like this, not even a single crumb.

The scent seemed to grow even stronger in the wake of that thought, but it wasn’t salted venison or watery rabbit stew perfuming the air.

Feyre took a deep, ravenous breath.

Hot, fresh bread—that’s what it was.

She could picture it clearly. Warm and sweet and yeasty, still steaming, its crust a shining, golden dome. So unlike the flat, heavy loaves she was used to, made with more sawdust and chalk than grain.

Woven into ribbons of sweetness wafting off of the bread was the savory scent of roast chicken stuffed with fragrant herbs and fresh, summery vegetables swimming in melted butter, creamy and smooth.

And there, beneath it all—clean, zesty citrus.

Feyre breathed and breathed and breathed in the scent of that phantom meal.

Simple, elegant fare. Luxurious, but only to those who knew the true worth of each component of the meal.

She would have to sell a half-dozen hides to afford so much butter. Two dozen of her father’s whittled animals might equate to a small sack of flour for the bread. And how long would Nesta have to haggle down the price of a chicken in the marketplace before Elain swept in, blushing and batting her lashes, to all but steal it from beneath the butcher’s nose?

Feyre’s mouth watered, her tongue seeming to sting with the desire to eat.

When was the last time she had chicken? Two summers ago, perhaps, when her attempt to raise a hen for the eggs ended abruptly as it started when an intrepid fox took a bite out of the squawking bird.

She had gotten good money for that fox. She’d shot an arrow right through its eye, and one of the wealthier ladies in town had exclaimed over its orange fur and purchased it right there in the street when she went to sell it at the market. After feasting on what was left of the chicken, it felt indulgent to spend a bit of that money on a piece of tart penny candy, but she had anyway.

And the citrus she could smell now…

Lemon, perhaps.

Feyre remembered it well. How many afternoons had she spent in her father’s office before the world she knew crumbled, examining crates of exotic fruits from the continent? How many lemons had she held to her nose, greedily breathing in their sweet, sharp scent and wondering where they came from—and what it must be like to be surrounded by a grove of lemon trees full of that scent?

And how many times had her father caught her snooping and sliced open one of those lemons for her with a wink using the elegant penknife he always carried in his breast pocket, so she could dip one of the peppermint sticks he hid in the bottom drawer of his desk into it? How many sweltering afternoons were spent leaning out of a window of that seaside manor, savoring that cool, refreshing treat while her hair flew free in the salt wind?

Sea salt and citrus, forever the scent of perfect contentment.

She closed her eyes, breathing it in again as her heart stumbled. Sea salt and citrus and a fresh, warm meal…

It was a dream, all of it. It must be. She hadn’t felt such unblemished happiness since—

She couldn’t remember. That final summer before her mother died must have been ten years ago, maybe twelve.

Still, her stomach rumbled dangerously. If she were dreaming, and the food was real enough in her mind…

She looked at the table.

Empty, save for the fading flowers she had painted on its surface. The last of her hope gave way, crumbling.

But… Feyre bit her lip. Somehow, some way, chicken and vegetables and bread still scented the air, hanging heavy and delectable around her.

She turned, searching for its source.

And there, behind her: a door on an otherwise empty stretch of wall.

A door that, in her waking hours, did not exist.

It was made of heavy, polished oak, carved simply enough. Warm. Inviting. The wood was golden, practically glowing, welcoming her inside. The brass knob glimmered in the dying firelight, and buttery sunshine spilled out from the crack beneath the door.

It was such a beautiful door that, for a moment, she hesitated.

She ought to be wary. Traveling peddlers brought stories—more and more, lately—of other border towns reduced to smoking rubble by the uncautious village girls who invited handsome, bloodthirsty faeries into their homes. Strange folk, tall and graceful and shrouded in mist and shadow, searching for something they would not find below the wall that separated the human world from their own and driven into devastating rages when they were left wanting.

But her dream beckoned as a fresh wave of pain clenched her empty stomach in its fist.

She reached for the knob.

And strong, warm fingers wrapped around her wrist.

Feyre couldn’t stop the shriek that tore from her throat. Not a dream, not a dream!

That invisible hand pulled, dragging her to the threshold as the door swung open.

Feyre barely caught a glimpse of red stone and a long table as she skittered back, wrenching her wrist out of the shadows—shadows!—gripping it. They let go, disappearing as if they were nothing more than a wisp of steam curling off the platters she saw glistening beyond the doorway, and her hips clashed against the edge of her own table as she fell back with the full force of her panic.

Not a dream, not a dream, oh gods!

Her father’s soft snores cut off, replaced by grumbling. “What in the seven…” His cot creaked dangerously, “Elain?”

Feyre was dimly aware that she was shaking, her face buried in her hands, having collapsed to the floor after hitting the table. And though humans no longer had gods to pray to, her thoughts were reduced to a desperate litany.

Oh, gods. Oh, gods. Please no. No, no, no.

“Feyre?” Her father’s voice was louder, slurred with sleep.

“What?” In her ears, her own voice was shrill, terrified. Quavering.

She glanced back at the wall and found—

A hysterical sound bubbled up from her chest.

A wall.

Just a wall.

“Feyre?” Her father’s cane dragged against the floorboards, and the cot creaked again, louder this time. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing!” She scrambled to her feet, her attention locked on the wall. Not real, not real, please gods, no. She turned her head toward the hearth, but didn’t dare look away from the spot where the door had been. “Just a bad dream. I was getting a glass of water and tripped. Don’t get up.”

“Hmph.”

She listened to her father’s cane return to the floor beside the cot with a quiet clatter. His bedclothes shifted, and a low, pained groan rent the air as several stiff joints cracked and popped.

“You should be more careful in the dark, Feyre. These floors’re uneven.” His words were muffled, distant, muttered by a man already half-asleep beneath his blankets. “...shouldn’t stay so late. Twilight’s not good for maidens.”

Feyre’s head whipped to him—already sound asleep, wholly undisturbed. “What did you say?”

A soft snore answered her.

It didn’t matter. She knew the answer already, that fractured bit of verse dredged up from the tired mind of a tired man.

It was the sort of thing he might have said once with a conspiratorial grin. There had been so many nights when he’d caught Feyre up past her bedtime, slipping and sliding across the smooth, marble floors of their estate in her stocking feet in the pale moonlight.

Some small part of her still expected him to rise from the cot and sneak up on her from behind, to pinch her side and chase her back to her room, singing that hair-raising chant until she shrieked with laughter and woke her sisters. For a long moment, she waited, watching, as if he might wake and do just that…

But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. The warning was a rote thing, nothing more than a playful bedtime chant turned to habit sometime during the too-short years of her childhood.

Her shoulders slumped, and she turned back to the wall. To her relief, it was still an empty stretch of wall.

“Nevermind,” she murmured to herself. The word was bitter on her tongue. “Goodnight.”

She lifted a hand, testing the patchy wattle and daub wall beneath her fingers. Utterly normal, if one considered walls that crumbled under the slightest bit of pressure normal.

She heaved a sigh, squaring her shoulders. Her stomach protested against the movement with such force that Feyre ended up hunched in on herself for a moment, pressing a fist hard into the worst of the cramping in her middle.

Fear—real fear, deeper and more persistent than a split-second nightmare—clutched her, even as cool relief loosened her terror-stiff limbs. That’s all the door was. A hallucination brought on by hunger and exhaustion.

No. Not hunger.

Starvation.

The final, desperate act of the frenzied beast in her gut.

Heavy lead filled the pit of her belly. She had watched as other villagers succumbed to hunger before—at least a handful every winter. It was always the same, and the village was always a pitiless, starved audience forced to witness it.

First came the crying and begging brought on by the sheer pain and panic of that first, gut-shredding wave of hunger. Day by day, as she entered the marketplace to hawk her hides, Feyre noticed that the pleading slowed, melting into molasses-thick lethargy as round cheeks sunk and limbs withered.

By that point, most tended to lay down anywhere they could without being trampled at that point. Most never got up.

But a fair few did. They rose, calling out to forgotten gods and long-dead mothers for mercy, and then, without fail, a hunter—one of the older ones, a grizzled old man with dull, brown eyes—was called to put them down.

It wasn’t safe, the rag-tag council of old men who made up the village’s leaders said. Who could know what foul, bloodthirsty manner of faerie might hear them beckoning from death’s threshold and descend on them all, if they were allowed to live?

A chill dragged insidious fingers up Feyre’s spine.

She hastened to get a glass of water, blindly grabbing one of the dented pewter cups from their place on the window’s ledge. She needed something, anything, to stave off the worst of the pain. More sleep, too, and perhaps she would wake refreshed for once, and the door and the hand and the food would be nothing more than a distant nightmare.

The draft seeping through the window’s crooked sashing slammed into her, and she wrapped her arms around herself, conserving what little heat she could in her thin shift. The cheap panes were cloudy, so scratched that only a few small slivers of the world peered back at Feyre as she sipped from her glass.

Snow had fallen while she was asleep. A great, white blanket of it covered the barren earth of the small clearing beyond the cottage. The trees had long since shed their leaves, and they reached up into the sky like desperate penitents seeking mercy from the harsh cold that was bound to kill off several of their kin in the coming months. If not the cold, then the sheer weight of the snow would strangle and break them.

Feyre followed the line of those branches up and up and up, and there, high above her in the midnight sky, past that sparse canopy, two round clusters of stars twinkled down at her, looking for all the world like a pair of great, laughing eyes.

She stuck her tongue out at them.

Thanks for reading! I have several chapters of this fic fully written and the rest is thoroughly outlined, so I’m planning to post ~once per week. 💕

#feysand #feyre archeron #rhysand #a court of thorns and roses #acotar #a court of thorns and roses fic #my fics #atwfd #as the world falls down #please read the tags for content warnings!

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