River of Flames (Part 1)
summary: your duty is to your home, your river of gold, your forest, and your sisters. when a high fae lordling appears on your banks, you show him a mercy he likely does not deserve. unfortunately for you, the lordling happens to be the curious type...
pairing: eris vanserra x f!siren!reader
word count: 4k
warnings: mentions of killing, mentions of discrimination and exploitation of lesser faeries, gore, injury, animal injury (it gets healed though dw!)
author's note: this is my first time posting a fic, but i've decided to be brave and go ahead! i came up with this idea a year ago and went into a flow state writing it while listening to cry by cigarettes after sex on repeat... hope that helps <3 please enjoy, and any feedback is welcome!
The Sylvan River was filled with gold. It was not the fleeting shimmer of sunlight on water, but true gold, ancient and heavy. It glittered and gleamed at the banks. It settled in heavy, transient drifts on the mud floor. It shone in jagged rocks and smoothed itself into soft coins through the current.
So, they came. So, they stole.
You had wondered at it, sometimes. Pondered how, after centuries, lust and greed still sent their soldiers to you. None had ever won the battle.
It had always been High Fae, to start. Only those who had tasted riches, addicted themselves to it, would dare. Only they had been arrogant enough to swim to you, heads heady with power, convinced you were nothing to their might.
You’d been glad to addle such mighty minds and watch them drown themselves at your feet.
Then, the lesser fae–your sisters, brothers, siblings–were taxed. The Tithe became unbearable, and they came to you, gaunt, driven by emptiness, and you tried. You gave, when giving felt like ripping the scales off of your limbs, like bleeding yourself dry.
But hunger was a cruel master, one that nagged at you, pained you, until you’d feast on even your own kin. They came back, again and again, each time with greener, gluttonous eyes.
Still, they starved. Still, they stole.
A few had decided that your permission was not enough. They’d come with nets and blades, a tank in which they’d shackle you. What was one siren’s life when they could save their own?
Your voice had been broken with grief when you’d sung them to their deaths.
Now, there were humans. No wall stood to save them from your wrath, your sweet song. No wall stood to save you from their clumsy cheers when they found your gilded home, nor their leers when they beheld you.
For them, you did not know how to feel. They hardly even knew what they faced, they’d hardly even lived, before you dampened the breath in their fragile lungs.
Some believed your folk were born evil, that you and your sisters hoarded riches you had no use for, lured males with stunning beauty they could never exploit, sank razor sharp teeth into whatever caught itself in your thrall.
Only, you’d never killed anyone who hadn’t already decided you were theirs to claim.
It was nearly dusk when you returned.
You had been hunting with your sisters at the lake, grinning like fools, your laughter bubbling to the surface. You’d won the stupid challenges Bryn had come up with, and your wooden trunk was stock-full with fish, your tail damn near cramping from swimming the fastest.
Not that it got you much, apart from the incredibly important right to lord it over their heads.
Nerea had scowled at you, as she pinned seashells back into her stick-straight hair. “You should let the rest of us have a chance next time,” she’d said.
“My greatness simply cannot be helped,” you’d replied.
She’d sent you home with a river snail hurled at the back of your head.
You giggled to yourself at the memory as you swam back to the fresh currents of the Sylvan, dragging your spoils behind you. Your otter sniffed at the trunk pointedly, before tilting his curious little head.
“She is a mighty sore loser, Pascal,” you complained, opening it and throwing him a silvery carp. He tore into his treat and paid no heed to your grumblings. “I cannot believe she got slime in my hair.”
You set your chest on the river floor and drifted up to the surface, eager to feel the fading sun on your skin. The light wove through your hair, and your scales scattered rainbows across the water’s surface. You floated there for a moment, elbows resting in the silt, and basked in the last warmth of the day, before the wind shifted.
That was when you smelled it.
Blood.
It was fresh, and sharp, and laden with tamed magic. It was High Fae.
Pascal’s whiskers twitched and he slipped into the water beside you without prompting, dark eyes fixed downstream. The scent was threading stronger through the air, tainting your waters.
You followed it, too, your tail cutting through the stream in long, swift strokes. It led you into the shallows, where the Sylvan met the deep forest of the Spring Court; where pollen dusted the grass, fat bumblebees drooped over wildflowers, and the deer, who often drank from your river, ran free.
That was where you saw them.
A male, sprawled on the bank, chest heaving in short bursts of breath. Beside him, a black hound whimpered, its paw mangled in a cruel iron trap. You drifted closer, realising the male himself was caught, vicious metal sunk deep into his thigh, and smelling the ashwood that had been infused into them. Even so, the male’s hand rested protectively on the hound’s side, as though his own pain was secondary, his body shielding the animal even in unconsciousness.
The ground around them was charred, the fae’s blood leaking quick and sure, red spattering burnt black. He would die, you thought. They both would.
You should let them. He was High Fae. The very sight of him made your skin prickle with hatred.
High Fae, with their manors and palaces and finery so grand, their sneers and arrogance and liberties they claimed with no right. They hunted your kin for sport, wore your skins, mounted your limbs on their papered walls. They stole your lands, lands older than their histories, and thought that their courts and libraries meant the folk of the wild were nothing. Uncivilised, primitive, worthless.
And here he was, sprawled and broken, reduced to gasp and whimper at your door. You should let him know what it is to feel small, to feel powerless. Let him understand, if only for a moment, before he was no more.
But then, the hound met your eyes, with no greed, nor malice. Only pain, and a desperate love, for its fading master so pure that your chest tightened. Pascal padded on to the grass, his wet fur slick to his sides, and sniffed at the pair from a careful distance. Then, he turned back to you with a soft chuff.
You sighed, low and sharp. “Oh, do not look at me like that,” you murmured, at both the hound and the otter, already rising out of the river.
Your tail vanished into a pair of legs in a flash, and your knees nearly wobbled as you stood. It always took a while for you to remember how to walk; Mother forbid you’d have to run. The cool air settled against your skin, and you shuddered at the feeling of being so…dry. Still, your hair clung damp to your neck as you crouched beside the male, dripping onto his gilded jacket.
A true aristocrat, then. You were more inclined to leave him to rot by the second. The hound growled, weak but loyal beyond reason, as if sensing your thoughts. You sighed again, eyes drifting to the lordling’s face.
Mother, but he was… striking. His skin was as pale as the river-pearls strung around your neck, his hair as red as poppies, long and wild, flowing over delicately pointed ears. It was a cruel handsomeness, sharp and haughty, softened only by long lashes kissing keen cheekbones.
He looked like the very kind of male who would be glad to gut you where you stood.
You really should let him die.
Pascal nosed at your calf, before licking at the hound’s face. The hound whined softly. And godsdamn you, but your hands were already moving.
The trap was savagely forged, all jagged teeth and a maw large enough to vice even the forest’s bears. Every part of you hissed at the thought of touching the ash-laced metal. The humans must have made it and laid it here, over the border. Likely for you, you realised.
Still, you reached for it. It burned through your fingers on contact and you clenched your teeth against a scream of pain, bracing a knee in the dirt to wrench the jaws apart. Your arms shook with strength until, finally, the mechanism screeched as it gave. The hound yelped as the metal tore from its leg, the male groaning as blood loosed quicker from his maimed limb.
You tossed the vile thing at the base of a tree, where it landed with a dull thud. You’d deal with it later.
Their injuries were worse than you’d thought. The dog was not likely to survive; if it did, it would be lamed. And the male… the ashwood had lodged deep, poisoning him, mutilating his magic from within. His wounds sizzled faintly in the air, smoke curling where the ash ate at his muscle and artery, his healing slowed to a pace that would not save him.
You bit back a curse. Pascal chirped in distress as the smell of gore misted around you. The foolish lordling had likely killed himself to save his hound, pushing the pup out of a fatal blow just in the nick of time. How could he not have known, not have smelled it from paces away? You could not even drag the male into the Sylvan to help him, or he’d die for lack of breath.
High Fae were truly, utterly useless.
Instead, you called the river to you. It formed in a swell around you, glowing blue, always generous. Reverent, you bowed your head. Its magic answered gently, spilling into your skin, pooling in your cupped palms until it nearly overflowed.
You pressed that light into his thigh, and gleaming rivulets spooled into his wounds, cleansing him of the poison, washing the shrapnel from his tissue. The ashwood fought you, tooth and nail, but you were a daughter of the river, and you did not yield.
Even when your hands, already raw with burns, numbed with further pain. Even when rare tears of agony burned behind your eyes, you did not yield. The river would heal all.
The male shuddered under your touch, breath hitching, lashes fluttering as his suffering fought his fatigue. You ignored him, stubbornly forcing more magic into his flesh, the water cooling the fever that had already begun to claim him. The edges of his wounds knit slowly together, and you almost loosed a sigh of relief when his skin was once again whole. Until you remembered who exactly you’d be sighing over.
You sent the last of the magic into the hound, fusing bone and muscle and furred skin, until it, too, stood unscathed. The pup immediately leapt up, launching itself at the male’s face, a whirlwind of licking and whining.
You might have laughed, endeared at the sight. Except, when you finally drew back, your every muscle was trembling. Your limbs were leaden, your chest heaving as breaths rattled out of you and ringing filled your ears. Heat and exhaustion pooled in your head, and the world swayed, as you sank further into the ground, your fingers brushing the damp dirt for support.
“Oh, Mother of Pearl,” you whispered, trying to find solace in the earthy, clean air you drew deep into your lungs. Pascal nudged your foot, chirping again, and you tried to move. “Cannot you drag me back in?”
He merely blinked his big brown eyes at you. That seemed like a ‘no’.
The sun had almost fully descended and you guessed it would not be long before the male woke. You pushed against the ground, trying to summon the strength to stand, a task which was not your strong suit on the best of days, but your legs were bruised and watery beneath you.
The pup had calmed somewhat, now bounding across to you for some inane reason. You braced yourself for much growling and ankle-gnawing, and you doubted you could fend off even that skinny young dog in this state. Instead, it sniffed at you, before licking softly at your cheek, its tail thumping a beat into the grass.
You huffed. “Oh, you silly wee thing, no wonder you got yourself trapped.” You just about managed to bare your pointed teeth. “See? I am not friendly.”
It nuzzled your leg in response. You studied the dog for a moment, noting its sleek, shadowy body. It was a breed you had never seen before, and, if you had not been practically immobile, you would have committed the hound’s beauty to a sketch.
You tried again to rise. Your vision tunneled and bright sparks of protest radiated up your arms, but you managed to turn on your haunches. The Sylvan greeted you, waves calling you like a mother’s open arms, its song of rush prettier than any you’d ever sang.
At your back, the male groaned. The hoarse, low sound sent a spike of alarm through you which you cursed yourself for. You were so close, almost home, where your limbs would be buoyed and weightless, where the river would run soothing currents over your pounding head.
You staggered to your feet, swallowing your own whimper. You took one step, then another. Pascal followed you, and you heard the hound return to its master, holding vigil by his side.
You did not look back.
Eris was going out of his godsdamned mind.
Every night, he felt the burn of sunlight on his face. Every night, he screamed and screamed at himself to wake, begging his magic to ignite. He was still in the trap, his thigh searing with agony and the acrid taste of ashwood in his mouth. He was caught again, his youngest hound’s whimpering meaning he had failed to save her.
He could still smell it. That strange, sickly tang of magic, the very one that had lured him from the trees. It had smothered the scent of ash so thoroughly that he had hardly thought twice before trying to save his hound, sure in the thought that any temporary pain he would deal with would be a small price to pay for her life. He could not have known that the trap was not one from which he could escape. Although, knowing his luck, he really should have guessed.
Only, when he wrenched himself awake, there was no trap.
There was only the ghost of cool fingers against his fever-hot skin. The low murmur of your voice, wry and pointed. The great relief of your magic as it tore the ashwood from his blood, as you saved his sorry life. A face only half-seen, framed in hair that shimmered with droplets. A stubborn tilt of your head.
He’d sit up too fast, ignoring the way his vision swam, scanning the dark riverbank for any sign of who had touched him, who had healed him. He’d find only the Sylvan, its opulent waters rich with gold. Only smooth skin beneath the torn edges of his breeches, pale and unscarred. His hound, healed too, would press her soft head into his hand, tail wagging so furiously it was a wonder she didn’t topple over. He’d breathe the lingering scent of you, sweet and wild and maddening.
Because you were gone, but he could still feel your pain.
Every godsdamned night.
Eris prided himself on being a master of control. His court was the checkered board of a deadly game at which he played with ease, always two steps ahead, every glance and every word a move he’d weighted and chosen. His brothers could play at it, too, but often lacked the patience and the subtlety. His father fancied himself an equal, but relied always on brute force, on fear.
Eris never faltered.
Yet, now, each morning he woke with a phantom ache in his leg and a curiosity that gnawed at him. A ridiculous regret that he hadn’t glimpsed more of your face, listened more closely to the curses muttered under your breath, even as he bled out. The burn of a debt unpaid.
Sometimes, he wondered if you had even been real, or if you had been a wraith conjured up by his febrile mind. Then, he’d remind himself that there were no such things as miracles, and he could not have survived alone.
You’d saved his life. And, Mother help him, you’d saved his dog.
It unsettled him, confounded him. He could not reconcile it. You were a river siren. A lesser faerie. He’d always been taught, by priggish tutors and books penned by High Fae scholars, by the sneers and cruelty of his father, that your kind were dangerous precisely because you were untethered, without discipline or refinement. You were creatures of impulse, of survival. You had no allegiance to court or crown, no way to call in this debt, manipulate his weakness. You had no reason to spare him at all.
Why had you done it? Had you any idea who it was you’d saved?
Had you any idea what it meant?
Every sense, every one of his centuries-sharp instincts should have rankled the moment he crossed into the clearing. Ashwood sang to Fae magic, but that day, after another meeting with Lucien and his Night Court allies had left him seething, he had felt nothing. There was no warning, no shift of scent in the air.
Who had laid such a trap? Who were they trying to kill? And what role could a river siren play in this?
Eris lasted two more nights.
Before dawn, he was in the stables, waving away his insistent attendants. His hounds, all twelve of them, crowded around his legs as he saddled his horse, tails swishing with joy. They’d been fussing over him ever since he’d returned, as if the youngest, Agnes, had told them exactly what had occurred on the banks of the river.
She stayed close to his heels herself, watching him with those bright, knowing eyes. He slipped them each a neat piece of jerky from inside his jacket.
Then, he was winnowing them to the borders of the Spring Court, where the forest was dense, unbreached by villages, housing only wild creatures and trees gnarled with history. He breathed in the cool air, green and honeyed, tinged with metal and mineral from the Sylvan.
It was no Autumn Court forest, he mused, but it soothed him nonetheless.
He mounted his whickering steed, spurring him forward as his hounds followed, over root and grass and mud, until he found that same charred patch of land. He dismounted, boots sinking into the damp earth as he stepped into the clearing. The smell of smoke from his magic still clung to the spring growth, but his blood had been washed away. And the trap… it was nowhere to be found.
Had you moved it? He still recalled your gasps of pain as it singed you, as you tore it open. His jaw tightened. He crouched low, fingers brushing the ground. The soil was dark, but something heavier lingered: a residue that prickled against his magic, faint and foul and ancient.
He wondered how quickly it had taken you to heal. He wondered why you had even bothered. He could not decide which was more dangerous: that you had acted out of strategy or out of kindness. As far as most of his kind cared to know, lesser faeries were capable of neither.
His hounds darted around, noses twitching, while Agnes trotted up to the banks and whined softly. He crouched beside her, running a gloved hand over her silken black head, gazing out himself.
In the fading haze of the early morning, the Sylvan, prosperous and meandering, looked exactly like what the legends said of it. Long ago, the Mother’s beloved serpents had roamed the lands, great beasts broader than any forest and longer than any Wyrm. When their time had ended, the Mother laid each one to rest, turning their vast bodies into the rivers that carved the land. The Sidra, the Temis, the Lythos, all once scales and sinew, now the life force that nourished the lands.
And to protect them, to honour each of her rivers, she’d created the sirens. Beauty made flesh, with a voice impossible to ignore, that would drive one to madness just for a glimpse of its songstress. Angels of death, they’d been called.
The Sylvan had been the most precious of the Mother’s children, its serpent’s scales wrought from gold and gem. When it had breathed its last, its wealth had spilled into the waters. The sirens borne of it were said to be the fiercest, most vicious of them all. Eris supposed they had to be, to have protected the treasures of their home for centuries, when so many would seek to loot and destroy them.
A sharp bark from one of his hounds jolted him. Eris rose, brushing dew from his breeches, and pushed through the underbrush. There, he saw it.
A scrap of fabric, caught on a branch. Reeking of human.
He scanned the ground, kneeling again as he found tracks. They had come here as recently as the night before, if their footprints were unworn and unwashed by spring rain.
Eris straightened, mind working. Human trespassers were trying to kill you. They could have had no idea that they would have caught him instead.
A fortune lay within the Sylvan’s stream, enough to house and fuel an army, enough to build, and forge, and slaughter. The trap had been disguised in a way no human hand could manage unaided; they had no innate magic, nor did any of the so-called witches and mages have anything beyond magical artifacts which would hardly be so powerful as to incapacitate him completely. But, humans had a wealth of knowledge unknown and unbreached by Fae scholars. Moreover, humans were perfectly capable of making allies.
Could it be that there was a rebellion brewing on the other side of the border, too, separate from his father and Koschei? Had they found a way to exploit the weaknesses of Fae that his people were currently unaware of? Or had they been supported by some of his own kind?
The presence of an ash-laced trap alone, one that could dampen the senses of and maim a High Lord’s son, was provocation enough to broker war. The human lands would be ravaged, his armies decimated. His father was already itching for it, and this would be the spark to finally catch, to burn the rest of their world down. They had barely survived the last war. He could not let that happen.
He sighed. He truly did not have time for another enemy to account for. He hardly had the time between double-dealing the Court of Nightmares, appeasing Rhysand and his real court, managing his father’s alliance with the fucking Death Lord, trying to get his little brother to hate him a little less, and making sure his mother stayed safe.
Now, he would have to send this scrap to his spies, and pray that they could nip whatever this was in the bud. Or, better yet, discover that there was nothing deeper than some humans vying for a few gold coins.
Cauldron, he hoped it was just that.
But first, he would ensure that you did not kill them, whoever they were. They would not succeed against you, of that he was certain, but if their bodies washed up on the riverbank with sirensong still clinging to their last breath, the treaties would shatter. Prythian would bleed once more.
He cursed under his breath, trying to recall what he’d read about your kind as a student, what exactly could lure you to land, without you drowning him. A whisper crossed his mind, "Oh, you silly wee thing."
He looked at Agnes, still nosing along the riverbank, and smiled.
