What Rises From the Ashes (A Tamlin Ficlette)

**CONTAINS ACOWAR SPOILERS**

I knew what she was the moment I first saw her. To my eternal damnation, so did she.

Sometimes it takes years for the mating bond to click into place.

Ours took a second.

War was coming, our slaves were terrified they'd be labeled collaborators by one side and rebels by the other. All of Prythian walked on eggshells, the entire world was holding its breath as we hurtled for that precipice.

And in the calm before a storm that would drown the world in blood, she came to Spring.

Amarantha.

Like the first beat of a war-drum, she came from Hybern's shores with her doomed sister, ready for battle to at last break the rising tension. That blood-red hair, those crimson lips- decked in jewels of obsidian and in a black gown she presented herself to our Court as the Queen of Hell itself. A horror to be unleashed upon the world-

-and my mate.

She greeted us all formally enough, but I don't remember much. I don't remember what she said or how my parents responded. All I remember is the draw of our mating bond and the way she looked at me when no one was watching. I remember her lips curling into a cruel, cold smile as she taunted and teased me, trying to feel me out.

Mates are equals.

That haunts me to this day. It will haunt me to my very grave.

Mates are equals.

I knew she'd slaughtered innocents, I knew she did it for pleasure. I knew her black soul ran darker than even the High Lord of Night… and the Cauldron deemed us equal.

She never pushed me in those early days. She was a general of Hybern; I was a child, a curiosity but no more. Fae are patient- so incredibly patient- and in her own way she wanted a love story. I wanted to run off the end of the world and let the Cauldron claim me. I wasn't hers. She wasn't mine. I was good and strong and true. I was a lesser prince of Spring, she was the Queen of all things blood-soaked and cruel.

But that war finally arrived.

I met the heir apparent of Night and that monster was… kind.

Then Clythia died.

Then Jurian was slaughtered.

Then- then I told my father where the champion of the Loyalist army would be- that heir of Night I'd accidentally befriended. The war wasn't so past that we believed the matter yet settled. I felt rage and pain- I felt the bleeding of my mate's broken heart and I let that mating bond teach me hate. I betrayed my friend to the death and mutilation of two defenseless females.

And in his wrath, he and his father made me High Lord.

Then I returned the blow.

The world fell silent once more. Amarantha decided love was poison and her grief spared me, for a spell. No one knew what we were to one another- though I believe the fallen Lord of Night suspected. I think I saw it in his eyes as he died.

For five hundred years- or near enough- I convinced myself we were nothing. The burning ache in my chest wasn't for the female far away. That damned string of fate led to a void- not to her. It led to someone I had yet to find, a female made of burning light and the hope of new life. It led to a beauty worthy to sit by my side. A female to make my world bright and give me an army of plump, laughing children. That was who that thread truly led to.

When Amarantha returned to claim Prythian, she also came for me.

Lucien thinks I was one of the last High Lords to buy into her act of repentance. In truth, I think I was the first. She gave me hope, and that is a dangerous thing for a drowning male to hold. I couldn't be her equal in the darkness, but perhaps she was my mate in the light. If she truly changed, if she was truly repentant-

Well… 'if' is nothing more than the lies we tell ourselves to survive.

Her price for the lives of my people was me. Of course it was.

Amarantha was obsessed with love. She corrupted in others what she would claim for herself- all because of Clythia and Jurian. She stole our power, yet offered me mine back and then some. All I had to do was accept our bond…

But you didn't come here to hear all of that again. You know I refused her, you know she took Lucien's eye, set the curse in place, trapped me beneath a mask- you know she took my enemy as her bedslave.

It made my blood boil in the vein- knowing that a male I hated with every fiber of my being was inside my mate. Willingly or no. That was why she did it after all- to drive me insane with primal, territorial rage. She grabbed that mating bond and held it tightly like a leash around my throat. But I had denied that bond for so long, I wasn't about to acknowledge it. Not even if it shattered everything inside me.

The key to ending our curse was that I make a human girl profess her love for me, not that I love her in return. That was Prythian's first clue- and I was so scared they would see the truth just barely hidden beneath that spell. She toyed with me, she tortured them. How did they not see it?

But then- but then Feyre came. Well- then I dragged Feyre out of her home, spelled her into unconsciousness, and delivered her to Spring by force. She was fire and rage, stronger than any human had a right to be, and so used to cruelty, so expectant of it, that it took my very breath away.

Feyre… if Amarantha was my damnation, she was my salvation.

She believed us to be monsters. She thought we would eat her, enslave her, torture her, starve her to death in a cell, rape her in the night, break her body and soul- and she gave me my life back. She expected us to behave as Amarantha would, but with her I had a chance to be good. To prove that Amarantha's capacity to hate is equal only to my capacity for generosity. If we were equals, let it be in that small, strange way.

I seduced Feyre for my own ends, yes. I admit that freely. I let Lucien teach me how to be charming and pleasant, to be the best caricature of myself possible. Feyre fell in love with that male, and despite myself I fell in love with her too.

… no, that's not true, is it?

I fell in love with the idea of her. If she were Fae, she was who I might have once thought capable of being my mate. Her laughter was the ripple of a mountain stream, her rage the lightning of a spring storm, and her smile the warmth of a midday sun. She was good, and kind, and pure- she was who I should have been destined for. Not Amarantha. Not that bloody, cruel creature beneath our sacred mountain.

By the time Feyre and I made love, I had convinced myself she was what I wanted. What I deserved… but time was too close to running out, and with every thrust into her body that mating bond that had gone ignored for five hundred years thrashed and roared louder than either of us. I wanted to love her, I needed to love her. I fought it with tooth and claw, shredded it from myself as best I could- but it was no use.

I knew it was a fight I could never win.

Yes, I sent Feyre away to protect her from Amarantha's cruelty, to keep alive that one creature that proved I was still good. But I also sent her away because of the bond. A bond I finally had to acknowledge in myself…

And then she came back.

I'd given up. I let Amarantha use my body the first night Under the Mountain, but we were not yet equals it would seem. A mating bond requires the consent of both parties to fully activate. It would seem passive acceptance of the inevitable does not count. She made me watch from a corner while her toy serviced her- while she forced the most powerful High Lord in the history of Prythian to lap up the result of our disappointing attempt at mating.

When I saw Feyre dragged into that throne room I wanted to scream for her to go. I wanted to tell her it was useless, there was no point in saving one who was damned. Amarantha saw the love in Feyre's eyes, felt how I cared for her through our mating bond…

Again, you know how that turned out.

Feyre saved Prythian, Amarantha was killing her, I was roaring- but who was I roaring at? At Amarantha, for destroying that precious creature that brought hope back to Prythian? At the Lord of Night who wanted to kill my mate? Was I roaring because of the emotion blasting through that bond?

"Love."

Feyre saved us all with one word. When my power returned I did the unthinkable. I opened a wound in myself that can never heal. I made myself an abomination worse even than that red-haired beast who was bound to me by a string of fate-

-I impaled my mate upon the wall and ripped out her throat.

Every ounce of loathing I felt for my mate, every spark of hatred that she sent down the bond, it took everything in me and beyond to kill her.

And that's when I went insane.

Mate-killer. There are none so reviled in our culture.

Feyre became Fae- taunting me by finally becoming the mate I should have had, and it was not enough to keep me sane. To keep me alive.

For three months I watched her die, bit by bit. Half of me loved her. Half of me wanted her to be happy and bright, to paint and sit there at my side, the perfect image of a perfect bride. I told any who'd listen the mating bond was coming. If any even suspected what Amarantha was to me- the bloody hole that opened in my soul when she died- I would distract them with this pretty savior blessed by the High Lords of Prythian itself.

The other side of me- that's what killed her. The side that saw her as the creature that forced me to kill my mate. The side that woke me in the middle of the night and sent me stalking to the end of the bed in beast form, where the ache of the mating bond was less and where I could sleep without having to smell Feyre there beside me. That despicable, disgusting thing that made me slaughter my equal.

Every night I remembered to hate her as I watched Amarantha die over and over again- as my dreams twisted so that it was Feyre who took her from me. The mate I never wanted. The mate I was terrified of.

Every day I used Feyre to hide that darkness. I put myself between her legs and bathed in her scent from my tongue to my-

-well, you know.

Her scent sticking to me every second of every day was what threw off the trail. Lucien might have suspected, but he couldn't tell if my scent changed. Not if I was covered in Feyre's as well. Sex was the only thing that made her feel some semblance of life in the dark, and I was happy to use her. I was so scared of others finding out, so scared of the truth becoming known. I didn't care if she became a wraith of Spring, so long as I always had her scent upon me to hide the truth-

-that the night Amarantha finally had me inside her, the mating bond had glowed just a little brighter. Not fully active, but enough to add a tang of blood to my scent. Blood upon the roses of spring- that was what I smelled every waking second.

It was insanity, paranoia, and terror. I know that now. I broke something in myself when I killed Amarantha, and yet I used Feyre to hide that gaping wound. Even from my own eyes.

When she was taken to the Court of Night, I just about destroyed the manor. I told myself I was scared for her, for what was being done toher, but in truth I was more afraid I'd lost my shield against what I was. The blood upon the rose- I was certain everyone could smell it, and every second Feyre was gone that scent got stronger and stronger.

Each time she came back, she was a little more awake… At least for a day. Then I would crush her beneath me once more, every time with more force and more relentless drive. I said I was protecting her, I was protecting myself. I was smothering her and destroying her, punishing her and loving her in equal measure.

The disgust finally stopped me from going to her bed. It convinced me to limit how much of her scent I used on myself. I hated being inside the female who caused my mate's death- who forced me to take her life… and I hated myself for using someone so good, so pure as nothing more than a disguise. Feyre deserved better, but I'ddeserved better too.

Love and hate in equal measure… But they weren't equal anymore. I hated that she was still fighting every decision I made, questioning me in front of my people and showing them how weak their High Lord was. I- I was forgetting how to love, but I still wouldn't let go. Even if it killed us both I was willing to let my own insanity rip her apart. Feyre- the savior I should have loved, the mate I should have deserved.

And then- and then I killed her. I locked her in that house knowing it would be the fatal blow to an already damaged creature. I knew it would break her mind once and for all and- I told myself I cared, but I don't think that's what it was. I think it was revenge for a mountain of slights more imaginary than real.

Night saved her.

Night came for her, pulled her from my prison and I saw that as a challenge. I saw that Lord of Night finally coming to reveal to the world what he tasted between Amarantha's legs Under the Mountain- blood upon the roses. A mingling of scents that could only mean one thing. Even the rumor of it would destroy me. He didn't want to save her, it couldn't end there for him. It was a trap, it was a trick, and no matter what letters Feyre might have sent, I convinced myself they were lies. I was willing to rip apart the world to get her back- the mask that let me face myself. The creature to blame for my mate's death.

The female I loved and hated with such raging passion.

So I made a deal with Hybern, and let the world bleed anew.

When the masks were dropped, when I saw her again amongst the assembled High Lords she was happy, she was whole, and the love in her eyes when she looked at her mate, a love I could never hope to feel-

Tamlin closed his eyes and let tears drip onto his clasped hands.

He was curled up in a corner of his ruined study, inside his ruined manor. Hybern's forces nearly obliterated it, and it was where he'd exiled himself after that final battle. A home that wasn't fit to be a home anymore. A ruined Court torn apart by thorns and flame.

The study was the most whole of any room there, and it was still dark, cold, and damp. It was a cave in the middle of a meadow. A place where his power forced away even the sun's light. While his Court rebuilt itself without his cancerous presence, the Lord of Spring rotted away alone in an abandoned wreck. It was better that way. For everyone.

"Why me?" A deep voice came from the opposite corner where a winged Fae stood watching the broken creature on the floor. "Why did you tell me all of that?"

Tamlin couldn't meet his eyes, "Because I owe her an explanation above anyone else. Why I was so- why I let things happen the way they happened… I still hate her, and I still love her…" The other male gave him the courtesy of a warning growl. "When I see her I just get so angry that the words burn up. If I can never tell her- at least you can."

"I won't deliver that message. For everything you've done, for everything you put on her, you get to explain yourself. You owe her that much." Rhysand's arms were crossed and his face was hard. There was understanding in those violet eyes, maybe even pity, but he would not forgive Tamlin. Not ever.

"I-"

"You watched her die. You knew you were killing her, and after she came back to me- after you realized the strength she'd found you tried to rip her apart in front of everyone, to break her right back down. That is what I will never forgive and never forget." Rhysand's hiss was dark, feral, and more appropriate to his beast form than anything else.

Tamlin swallowed hard and nodded, "I was on the other side of the battlefield when you died." He closed his eyes and more tears fell, "Her screams- I've only heard that sound once in my entire life." He looked back to Rhysand, "The day she died. The day Amarantha-"

Rhysand growled again, but his eyes were edged in silver, "Don't," he warned. He remembered that day well enough in his nightmares. He didn't need Tamlin's reminder.

"I'm sorry… I heard her screaming and it was like I was back Under the Mountain listening to you scream. I didn't want to see. I knew what must have happened for that horrible scream to be heard so far away. I knew what winning must have cost… and I knew what was being done to change it."

"The only things I will ever thank you for are bringing her to Prythian, bringing her back after Amarantha, and bringing me back to her." Rhysand whispered, "Those are the only things keeping me from ending you."

"Do you know what happened on the hill?"

"No." his voice was flat, dead.

Tamlin stared at Rhys' shoes, "I was the last one. I was the last piece needed. I winnowed there and when she looked up at me… She promised me anything I wanted, anything at all, if I would just save you. I could have made her my prisoner here again-" another warning growl, "-I could have set as high a price as I wanted… But the way she looked at me- it was desperation, love for you and more grief than any creature should feel.

"I felt Amarantha by my side, smiling down at her. I think it was the Cauldron- still shuddering back to life itself, but I swear she was there. I heard her voice telling me to just stand there, hands in my pockets, and smile as Feyre's world burned around her. Smile as her mate died in front of her, knowing how easy it would be for me to save him… I heard the voice of that hateful, cruel monster I let destroy me and- and I realized it was my own voice.

"I was so consumed with hiding what we were to one another that I didn't even realize I'd turned myself into Amarantha. A male clone of that disgusting female." Tamlin could hardly muster the energy to shrug, "So I decided to try and be him again- Tamlin. The image of him I showed Feyre in those first months. I let the stain of my mating bond drive me insane ever since I can remember, I let it dictate the entire course of my life… The Tamlin who Lucien and Feyre loved was nothing more than a mask, but if this is what's beneath that mask-" he just shrugged, lost again, "-maybe the mask isn't so bad after all."

"That's a load of bullshit." Rhysand muttered.

"What?"

"I said it's bullshit. You hid from yourself for five hundred years and it nearly killed my mate. You wore your mask and the face beneath it turned into something rotten and festering, and you still think that's the answer? Cauldron boil me- again!" A snarl lit the side of Rhysand's nose, "You don't live behind a mask. You die behind one."

"Says the Lord of Nightmares and Dreams?" Tamlin's challenge was half-hearted at best.

Rhysand growled, "Says the Lord who used his mask as a shield for his people- not just for himself. If you hide how broken you are, you'll only fracture more. You'll become something mutant and unrecognizable- something as bad as she was. I surrounded myself with friends, with people I love and trust. Some things I still can't tell them about, but any time I feel brave- even for just one minute- I give them a sliver of what Amarantha shattered in me and let them put me back together. You pushed out anyone who cared about you, even your own people." He gave a pointed look to the ruined walls of the study.

"What do I do?" Tamlin whispered. "Tell me, please?"

"You get up off the floor, roll up your sleeves, and when your people say they don't want your help rebuilding, you give it to them anyway. You stop looking at those in this Court as your subjects and realize that the deep dark truth of our crown is that we are their power to wield. You resent the hand life dealt you? You find a way to make it better. Don't serve yourself, serve them. Surround yourself with Fae who will fight and challenge you- surround yourself with those who deem you worthy for the crown and let them help guide you."

"-and let us help you too." Tamlin's chin quivered when Lucien spoke from the doorway.

"Let us try to fix what was broken." He let out a sob as Feyre followed from where Rhys had left them to listen.

Lucien crouched in front of Tamlin and put a hand on his shoulder, "Prythian isn't so large that we won't come if you need us. You have friends who care about you. That will never change."

"The ones we love heal us. It's ugly, it's painful, but it's worth it. We were destroyed, but the creature that rises from our ashes can be beautiful too." Feyre smiled softly as Rhysand came up behind her and held her gently. "I'm sorry she was your mate, for what it's worth."

"I'm sorry- I'm so sorry," Tamlin sobbed openly. Lucien tugged on his shoulder and Tamlin let his friend draw him into a tight hug. Lucien let Tamlin cry, and gave him a shoulder to do it on. Four hundred years after meeting, and he was finally seeing his friend for the first time.

"We will never tell another living soul what she was to you," Feyre said once Tamlin's tears ran out. Lucien turned to sit beside his former High Lord and Feyre took her old lover's hand, "You can keep your secrets- but Tamlin, I don't know if you can heal without drawing the poison from the wound."

"Your mate is not your heart. They do not determine your measure as a Fae. It is rare and precious, so precious, when they are one in the same-" Rhysand breathed in the scent of Feyre's hair, "-but sometimes your heart beats for someone else. Find that female- or male- who heals you. Don't look for someone worthy of you- find someone who makes you want to be worthy of them first."

It wouldn't happen in a day, that fundamental change in Tamlin. It wouldn't happen in a week, a month, or even a year. It might not happen in a century, but it would happen. Lucien and Feyre could see that Tamlin etched Rhysand's words in his very being.

"Souls can be broken, crushed, burned, fractured, and mangled beyond repair- yet just because something will never be the same does not mean it cannot be better. Different- yes. But stronger." Lucien put a hand on his friend's back.

That night, after Lucien, Feyre, and Rhysand returned to their Court, Tamlin left his shattered study. By the time dawn broke he was at the village nearest the manor with what food he could find for those going hungry. He didn't say anything the first day, or even the second. He simply rolled up his sleeves and helped rebuild. He took strength from those around him- but for the first time in his life he also gave it back to them in kind.

Spring was a Court of renewal, regrowth, and new life awoken after the ravages of winter.

It was only fitting their High Lord mirror that.