Hi! I'm Zara, and I write for multiple fandoms and ships. Works are rated E/M unless otherwise indicated and listed by most recently updated. Please mind all tags and warnings!
All works below are primary Feysand unless otherwise noted.
Hind With Sharp Teeth 6/7, born fae!Feyre, first war, friends to lovers
Sliding in the Deep End 1/1, Drugged comfort sex
Pisted Off 2/3, Ski instructor Rhys
No Shame Among Thieves 1/1, the best brunch lineup ever
Salted Soil 1/3, Captured Knight Rhys
Cut From the Same Cloth 1/1, crackfic drabble
Pomegranate Season 1/1, postcanon, omegaverse, ⚠️dubcon⚠️
time won't fly (it's like i'm paralyzed by it) Chapter 19, UtM timeloop
Averno 1/1, Illyrian!Feysand, ⚠️noncon⚠️
The darker the fruit, the sweeter 1/1, Demon Rhys
In the low lamplight, I was free 1/1, Daemati sex
No More Dreaming Like a Girl 1/?, Post-ACOSF
All works below are primarily Ereri unless otherwise noted!
"And yet I found myself deciding that if you took his hand, I would find a way to live with it. It would be your choice."
I sipped from my wine. "And if he had grabbed me?"
There was nothing but uncompromising will in his eyes. "Then I would have torn apart the world to get you back."
-A Court of Mist and Fury
Lucien steals Feyre away from the safety of the Night Court as she and Rhys train in the Illyrian Steppes. Winnowing her to the Spring Court and Tamlin, Feyre must contend with the consequences of leaving while held against her will.
An ACOMAF Chapter 47 divergence.
Thanks to @witch-and-her-witcher and @foundress0fnothing for beta reading and giving me amazing advice!
It’s my birthday and…
This is a lil dramatic divergence I’ve been working on for far, far too long. So now it’s your problem!
Chapter under the cut or Read on AO3.
Lucien moved us, again and again through the fabric of the world, his face straining and sweat dripping from his forehead. I screamed and wrenched against him as we winnowed further and further south, barely glimpsing the changing seasons as he pulled us through the courts. I could only tell the distance by the air against my face: a brush of heat, the blast of an icy wind. The misty mountains of Illyria trailing further behind us as he dragged me south.
I knew where he was taking me. My body screamed as I clawed and fought, useless now against his iron grip, and the further we got the more I felt that something inside me had turned brittle and was ready to break.
Rhys. Rhys. Rhys.
Where are you?
My skull was a prison, my mind trapped within. Just moments earlier it had been free - scanning the little blur of impressions from birds and rabbits in the woods, reaching out to listen, shivering from the brush of the other mind that nuzzled against me, and asked me and played with me.
I felt for that bridge, for that gentle pulse around my chest, once so tangible I thought I could feel it as strong as my own heart.
But there was nothing. I was empty - hollow. All my magic had poured out, and Rhys along with it. No cunning amusement, no smiles or violet eyes teasing at the edges of my mind.
No Illyrian warrior to draw me back from this hell.
As we whipped through the courts, I knew with growing horror what awaited me at the end of this journey. A scream was building within me and I didn’t know if it would come out through my mouth or simply keep building inside me until I burst.
⊱⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⊰
Ten Minutes Earlier…
I didn’t hear the dripping of melting snow, the rush of the creek, or the howling of the wind. Not against the rush of blood in my ears.
Lucien. He found me. But –
“Feyre,” Lucien whispered, his red hair like a beacon in this black and white forest of ice.
In a blink, we weren’t alone. Spring Court sentries dressed in black and covered in weapons banked him on each side.
“Lucien. You shouldn’t be here.” The rushing river inched closer to me as I risked a single step, my stomach churning as he followed me forward, his boot crunching through the frozen top layer of snow.
His hand extended to me. No weapon in his palm, but he didn’t need one - now that I had trained my own powers, I could feel his own thrumming under his skin. The flesh of my arm prickled in warning. I wondered if the icy winter of this place would dim him, or if he could still set the forest ablaze, as I had with Autumn Court fire just yesterday.
“Put down the bow, Feyre. I’m here to take you home.” His voice was soft, strangely gentle.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, my voice firmer than I felt.
My mind was churning like the river, my thoughts a frantic blur against the blood rushing in my ears. Lucien. How had he found me? And Tamlin - gods, was he here? I haven’t used my powers in battle yet - what if someone gets hurt? What if I’m not ready? Rhys - he had to be close - would the High Lords rip this forest apart?
As if in answer, my shield dropped that small space we opened for each other, a tendril of my dark power spearing into the air.
Rhys! -I shouted into the void, just as the red paint stroke of Lucien folded into nothing. So quick I didn’t even take another breath of the cold Illyrian Steppes before his warm hand was on mine, and he had snatched me away into the space between worlds.
When we appeared again, we were still in the Steppes but somewhere higher - the air colder, the fog thick in the air.
I was going to scream, I was going to tear at him, but before I could even think, my power was coiling and twisting under my skin.
Lucien - my friend, whose life was in my debt three times over, had taken me. Was dragging me back - to him. The full length of Prythian wasn’t enough to escape it - this rot in the Spring Court, that gave them over to this haughty entitlement, this feeling of possession over me…
I swallowed the cold air into my lungs, letting the ice and panic hone my senses. With an exhale I threw my mind out to the forest like a swift wave, my body seeking his.
Where are you?
The grip of Lucien’s hands on my wrist was crushing. But my bones and joints shifted under his grasp as my fingers elongated and claws began to form, dark like black onyx. Fangs sprang to my mouth and I wasn’t even sure what I was turning into, just that I was in danger, I was angry and I was going to explode. Lucien wasn’t paying attention, was scanning the forest desperately, panting with exertion as I raised a clawed hand in the air.
“Fuck!”
But he was more prepared than I - using his grip on me to pull my body forward and off balance as he dipped to the ground and rolled out of my stumbling reach.
My jaw was widening, bones were popping and transforming in odd ways that probably should have been painful, but I wasn’t aware of such things. Anger burned through me and I felt my canines scrape against my lip as I roared, roared.
On the ground, Lucien turned pale as he scrambled backwards in the snow.
“Holy Mother,” he whispered, and threw something into my face.
Blue powder exploded against my cheek as the small satchel burst. Blue powder down my lungs like sharp metal dust, scratching and burning deep into my chest.
Whatever bones and sharp edges I was growing winked away in an instant, like a candle snuffed out. I didn’t feel the snow as I pitched forward, coughing and choking on the powder and the sudden breathless snap of my power disappearing within me.
In between the rasping coughs, I felt a silence, a cold and empty room within my mind - not a shielded space of mine, but a void of nothing.
Lucien gripped my wrist firmly as I coughed and sputtered, reaching over and over again inside of me for the power that was now gone.
“What did you do?” I screamed, the powder burning in my lungs.
“You’re not yourself, Feyre,” he said, breathless and shaking. He held my arm like a vise but kept me at the edge of his arm’s reach. “This is to protect you as much as me.” Maybe it was wishful thinking, but he didn’t sound entirely convinced. He was as tense as I had ever seen him - scanning the white and black landscape around us, a subtle glow coming from him, trying to pierce through the fog.
“We’ll get you free of him, Feyre,” Lucien whispered now, like we were being watched. I desperately hoped we were - imagined deathly black wings and piercing violet eyes descending on us through the haze –
The air around me whipped away into darkness as Lucien winnowed us from the Steppes.
⊱⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⊶⊷⊰
When we landed in Spring, on the cobblestones in front of the manor, Lucien and I collapsed.
He was on his back beside me, chest heaving, gasping for air.
It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes.
Birds were singing in the forest beyond, the sounds becoming clearer as my breathing slowed. A warm, gentle breeze blew over us. A peaceful spring day, a mockery of the fear and anger burning inside me like a forest fire.
My muscles shook and I heard my quiver of arrows clatter against my back.
She didn’t want me to rely on my powers alone, that gentle voice echoed back at me.
I had been human, when I first walked these paths and up these stairs. No powers or even decent senses to speak of. Ridiculous, how much I’d come to rely on them.
Now I had two Illyrian knives strapped to my thighs.
In an instant they were in my hands, and I leapt onto Lucien with a snarl.
He barely caught my arm in time and my shaking limbs fought against him, pressing forward, the knife in my hand shaking above his head.
“How dare you!” I screamed, spittle flying into his face.
“Tam!” he bellowed. Even without my powers he struggled against me, my knee on his ribcage, my sweat dripping onto his pale strained face. “Ow, Feyre, Cauldron, stop –”
Bruising hands wrenched my arms and legs into the air, restraining me. Someone loosened my fingers one by one until the knives clattered to the ground as I thrashed.
I scented him before I saw him. Grass and rain and roses.
My body froze, my heart stuttering. A wave of something cold and prickling traveled down my skin as the sentries set me on my feet in front of him, my arms still in their wrenching grip.
Tamlin stood, rooted to the ground at the foot of the manor. His face had gone white, his eyes wide and blazing as he looked at me. An outfit of green and gold, a blur of muscles and power.
“Feyre,” he said gently. As if he had run into me unexpectedly, as if I was a ghost haunting the woods. As if he hadn’t sent Lucien and his sentries to take me.
The sight of him after so many months - his face so familiar yet so estranged, made anger and terror mix together into something sickly and thick in my body, dripping down my stomach like acid.
The last time I was here, I had been a prisoner. Locked inside until the walls choked the breath from me.
“No,” I whispered, my limbs beginning to shake. Moments ago my body was buzzing, humming like a panicked animal. Now I was frozen. My mind went black except for the steady chant inside of no no no no…
“Let her go,” Tamlin growled, that High Lord power of his command compelling even me to tremble. I was set down gently on the stones, my knees giving way, every part of me shaking.
Tamlin stalked towards me, the beast within him cautious, his eyes wide. An apex predator, his eyes never leaving my face.
“Feyre,” he said again, striding closer. “You’re back. You’re free.”
You’re free, Mor’s voice whispered in my mind.
Something in me jolted and I scrambled back from him on the cobblestones. I didn’t get far until my back was up against the legs of one of the sentries. I hated this trembling fear in me. I was a wolf, I was the Cursebreaker, I was made from all seven courts. But here I was nothing more than a trapped rabbit.
The High Lord kneeled in front of me, extending a hand, palm down, so similar to Lucien in the woods. Tentative, calming.
Like I was a feral creature to be tamed.
“What have you done,” I said, swallowing down a sob in my throat.
Finally, his eyes left me and flickered to Lucien, now standing behind him, his hand wary on the jeweled hilt of his sword.
“We found her in the northern woods,” Lucien replied to his silent question. “I winnowed, but her powers…I had to use the faebane.”
A muscled jaw clenched tightly, as Tamlin looked back at me. He was thinner than I remembered him - the lines of his muscles under his tunic stark, his cheekbones sharp against his sallow skin.
“Was he there?” he asked Lucien, still staring into my face.
“I didn't see him, but he was close. We got out before he could interfere.”
I needed my powers - my strength, my weapons. But not even my body would obey me now.
Come find me, come get me
“You’re home, Feyre. We’re going to help you,” Tamlin’s voice waivered, and he swallowed thickly. “He’s in your mind, but we’re going to get him out.”
Something cracked inside my chest. The birds were singing and a sweet scent was in the air and I was terrified and alone. Hot tears were running down my cheeks.
“No, he’s not,” my voice was saying, but I was far away. “He’s gone.”
Tamlin furrowed his brows at me. I could see the pain on his face, in his forest green eyes. As if I was hurting him.
He stared at me for a long moment, as I willed my tears to stop, as I willed them to turn to waves of the ocean or daggers of ice. But no power echoed in my blood, my bones. I was an animal, caught fully in their trap.
The High Lord of Spring reached for me and I felt the scrape of phantom claws on my skin, the bruise from Lucien’s grip still burning onto my wrist –
“Don’t touch me!”
Tamlin’s face was white with shock, and something like devastation. He froze before me with what seemed like an eternity.
“Bring her inside,” he finally said.
And I was hauled up by my arms and carried back into the manor, prison bound once more.
“I don’t know why you think this is going to work.”
“Why not?”
He still won’t meet her eyes. “You’re looking for safety. You think you can manufacture what you need using a latent mating bond.”
Her heart pounds harder. She’s tried so hard not to use that word and here he was, just blurting it out while she’s half naked in the bath and trying not to let his scent overtake her senses.
Biting her tongue, she stifles the desire to apologize again.
“Could we just - pretend?” The moon is high and the room is getting colder, the water with it. Her teeth begin to chatter. “Could we just try, Lucien?”
She holds her breath as he slowly dips his hand down into the water. He doesn’t touch her, but the fabric of her skirts sways with the disturbance.
Magic hums, his hand gently stirs the water, and it warms her body as much as any fire.
“Yes, Elain. I can pretend.”
-----
Elain has been enchanted by Koschei. She must remember how she came to be in his thrall, if she has any hope of saving her mate.
For @elucienweekofficial 2026. Day Seven: Revival and I have chosen "Spellbound"!
All the love to the organizers who work so hard to put on this event <3
This is just a shortie thing that is mostly all vibes and is kind of a snippet of an idea. Just a little morsel.
Read Chapter One on AO3 or under the cut:
Elain wakes as from a fever-dream - mouth dry, skin burning. She blinks the heavy haze of sleep away from her eyes to a world of frozen white.
Where am I?
First she feels the sharp jolt of frozen air pulled into her chest. A sensation that burns. The cold is like a tight string around her lungs. Next she feels the aching freeze of her toes. Her soft yellow silk slippers are dark with snowmelt and mud. Mindlessly, she marches.
Around her, everything is draped in glistening, pristine white. A low, muted sun barely pierces the veil of the hazy winter morning. She’s in a line - girls in layered cotton-white dresses just like hers trudging a path through soft, newly fallen snow. It has melted against their long skirts, the hems weighed down and stiff with frost.
How long have I been sleeping?
Elain stumbles forward, her mind racing in search of a memory - any memory. When had she last seen her sisters? When did she leave the safety of her room in the River House?
Is she being marched to her death? Panic starts churning heavy in her stomach.
There are no guards, no weapons. They are not needed. The eyes of the other women are glassy and empty. They trudge uphill, a treeline in black charcoal slashed up against the horizon.
The frozen ice over snow crunches beneath her feet, gives way, and she falls. Ice-cold needles stab her palms. Elain is jolted into a memory.
White light flashes in her skull. Another forest - a soft winter sun, setting early. She’s running. Running til she’s out of breath. Gravity grabbing hold, the cold wet of the forest floor seeping through her dress onto her knees. Her palms scraping on stone and sharp twigs, sinking into frozen mud.
A voice, so familiar. Anguished. Crying out, getting farther and farther away. Elain! Please don’t do this.
Elain!
A voice she knows - one that calls to her always, and she runs from all the same.
Elain blinks. Her hands burn. The procession of women, drunk on their enchantment, trudge past her, unseeing.
The cold is a terrifying thing. It brings back bad memories - frozen wind that found every crack in their cabin walls, running out of wood for the fire, her sister’s cold feet on the bed. Hungry stomachs and the howling of wolves throughout the long nights.
Elain breathes.
The line of women is ending. She gets up and trudges to the end, willing her frozen limbs just a little farther up the hill.
When they crest it, Elain gasps.
She is on the edge of the world.
It’s flat, frozen, and endless. A lake - a frozen lake as wide as the ocean. Frozen since the dawn of time. Nothing lives here, where winter never thaws and magic has woven its hold into the very rock and ore and bark of the trees. The ice is strong as magic, holding the entire landscape in its grip.
A name tugs at the back of her mind, like an itch. She cannot quite make out the letters.
But there is something against the endless white - there - red, bright fiery red, just a little ways across the snow, seated upon a throne.
A woman sits there, warm skin, a mane of lionesque hair, her shoulders draped in thick white furs.
A Queen. A friend. Her name -
Just out of reach.
And beside her throne, another one, dark as fresh coal.
Koschei.
The name is a whisper of malice in her mind. An echo of a vision of long ago.
Elain’s hot breath fogs in front of her as she pants. The sound of axes on wood echoes across the empty expanse. Flames burst high in front of her eyes and she startles. The smell of pine and smoke burning sap fill her nose as a tree is thrown onto a bonfire as tall as the townhouse.
It dances with magic - the flames too bright to look directly at, the heart burning black as night.
There is a threshold, a dome of heat from the burning Queen that radiates off her body. When Elain passes through it she takes a deep breath for the first time, the heat almost painful against her numb, frozen skin.
Although the circle round the thrones simmers like a warm summer day, the snow under her feet does not melt. The Queen’s face is blank and hard. She does not look at Elain.
The impotent frustration of flame that cannot melt a drop of snow, her magic held in the tight fist of the one sitting beside her.
Elain worries about being caught, but no one seems to pay much attention to the women in white, now thawing in the circle of magic flame. She takes the opportunity to look around. It is a strange, macabre party.
There is only silence, but some of the women begin dancing, a mindless, tuneless swaying. Tables are spread with food, but no one eats. A delicate coat of frost covers plump pheasant breasts, delicately iced cakes, bowls of fresh berries. It is a performance, like a sad memory.
Koschei is a god of death and he looks it, scowling and dead-still on his throne of ice. The skin on his face looks paper-thin and ice-burnt. His fingers are long and pointed, the tips blackened.
Her memory is still thick, as clear as rolling fog, but Elain thinks on a shudder that she remembers the feel of his frozen hands.
Think - she has to think.
Her mind scrambles back to whatever seems familiar. Her garden in the River House - everything drooping and browning in the late heat of summer. Dark stars overhead. Her eyes always looking for red in the crowds of Velaris. Finding nothing.
A cold bath with the moon watching from her window. Waking from a vision, shivering and weak. The bite of autumn’s chill creeping through the crack in her window. Dark wings, a request whispered in carpeted hallways.
The opening of a door - and eyes, one golden and one green, staring back at her.
The soundless swaying stops with a wave of Koschei’s grizzled hand. The milling entourage, witnesses in name only, have lined themselves up into an approximation of a crowd. Elain slips to the end of a line. She wonders the price of her freedom were she to be caught.
The Queen finally moves - turning her head as the death god stands.
She is all beauty and flame, but tempered, under lock and key. Like Koschei’s cold fist fixes around her neck. Her robes are snow white. She will not look at Elain. But even without her eyes, Elain feels the name bubble up from within, rising with the warming fires.
Vassa.
A vibrant laugh echoes in her memories, pinging against the walls of her skull.
Vassa - Vassa Vassa.
“You’re all right, little dove.” The voice is clear and warm, rising from her memories.
I remember you!
The visions are fast and bright behind her eyes.
Vassa coaxing her through one of her visions, her warm hand holding her tight like an anchor, Vassa laughing on the pink couch with Jurian - Jurian! - Vassa in the cold woods behind the manor, screaming in pain as she transforms -
But there’s someone else in that memory, laughter and joy in the sitting room, the fires always blazing bright, the pink couch, the old green carpet, the strangely lived-in squalor of a manor that made her feel warm, home -
Something tears in her chest - not the searing freeze of the air nor the iron-tang of magic but hot, insistent, burning.
Elain stops. Her head clears. She looks at Koschei, staring out into the lake, and follows his gaze -
Her lungs are pulled tight again. Red hair flashes, wisps in the frozen wind. A scar, deep purple against too-pale skin. Green and brown, the colors of autumn.
Lucien.
He shakes in the cold. The fabric of his fine shirt is ripped. Blood stains it, drying dark. He is bound, a mighty tree melted into the lake, his hands tied tightly behind it, his chest pulled tight against his open wound.
No.
Elain chokes on a sob. Her hands begin to shake. She takes one step out of line. Two.
A chill wind blows between them. It kicks up the fresh snow, revealing dark ice. It is eons old, older than the beginning of the earth, ice that will never melt.
And inside the glassy depths, there are faces, bodies, skulls - frozen crystal clear.
Koschei’s prisoners. His lake of souls.
The death god points a shaking hand.
Lucien lifts his head. His good eye is swollen, a lip split.
Bronze flashes in the pale sun as his gaze darts across the landscape - tripping over Vassa, the death god, the rows of enchanted servants knee-deep in snow.
Then his eye meets hers across the ice.
Something inside of Elain’s chest rips.
Hot and sure, her pulse beats hard, something powerful burning through the fog of her enchantment, memories rushing back like visions projected on her skull.
