•Margo who collects useful and useless items in her inventory until it’s maxed out
•Margo who’s decked out a cute Portofino with some purple fur seats and a fur steering wheel, racing other drivers in Forza Horizon. Of course she trash talked, taunted, and took home that first place. (Sidenote: helped her improve her driving practice a TON)
•Margo who thought she was brave enough to play a horror game. She refused to pick up her headset for a week and had her decoys take care of work at the society if she was needed.
•Margo who spends way too much time in the catalog completely mesmerized by the hairstyles, accessories, and clothes at the reach of her finger.
•Margo who wholeheartedly believes that her training sessions include playing matches in combat games. She really has grown since her first matches.
•Margo who tries give her eyes a rest because too much Vr causes her to have headaches
•Margo who allows herself a break to go back to reality, leaving her ‘home’, and hightailing it to a park to enjoy the serene and real life display of artistry known as nature.
•Margo who also uses this time to stop by a library, gearing towards the physical copy section cause she enjoys how the pages feel against her fingers. Reading books on Sci-Fi Fantasy, early fashions trends, and even a book on coding.
I could sigh into your hide,
And say I hope I'm here forever
Summary:
The truth is - Tamlin knows he failed. He knows he could beg, and plead until the sun burned its last flame, and it would get him nowhere. Not with her. Not with his friends, or with his courtiers. Not with himself.
There was no amount of apologizing. There was only the future, the one he could build for his Court, and for this child.
Read on AO3
The woods were his home most days, when he couldn’t handle the stares. It happened often. He remembered war, anger, and piercing blue eyes. His paws thumped heavily as he stalked a familiar clearing, the light of the midsummer sun dappled and filtered through the canopy of trees surrounding him.
Alone with his memories, Tamlin remembered.
A female, her hair braided back and face bloodied screaming and praying for someone as she gripped the making and unmaking of their world..
Not for him, no. Not for Tamlin.
Rhysand.
Feyre’s name haunted not only his dreams, but corners of his home. There were rooms he could not enter - either because of the destruction, or because of the stillness of them. At times, he would forget, and wander into all he had given her. Though he had enough sense to cover the paintings, Tamlin could still remember the blood on her face, the ash from the fires, and the way they had mixed with her tears while she pleaded with the Gods, the Lords present, the Cauldron itself, to bring Rhysand back.
Tamlin remembered feeling alone. So alone - in a world that thought him a traitor, in a court broken by the female he had loved. And yet he had helped to bring Rhysand back. Because it was the only way to repay what he owed, just as Rhysand had given Feyre a drop of his power Under the Mountain. It was the right thing to do, Tamlin had convinced himself of it.
A debt for a debt.
Though Rhysand hadn’t taken Feyre. He had lost her in the madness of his desire to shield her, protect her, keep her from dying again - as she had done nightly in his dreams for months afterwards. He had lost Feyre, his court, his friends. Perhaps, if the whispers were to be believed, Tamlin had even lost his mind near the end.
Not that it could ever be the end for him. For a High Lord, there could be no end to his duties. His Court hung on a thread, a shaky line of nobles and those in Tarquin’s service who wished to not see the Spring Court reduced to a vassal of Autumn. The ministers’ council, the priestesses, even some of the former sentries sometimes visited the manor, tried to clean up for themselves, as well as for him. And Tamlin knew they were wary of him, and that only the most stubborn were still around, but it was more than what he’d had when he’d returned from the battlegrounds.
The woods sang the song only he could hear, and in these musings, he almost missed the acrid, iron scent of blood as it wafted into the clearing he paced.
He huffed a breath out of his flared nostrils, shaking leaves that had drifted down from the canopy overhead onto his antlers. The blood was fresh, or he would not have smelled it so strongly, and worst of all, it was sticking to him, calling his name just like his lands did.
Someone had bled in his woods, near his den. Tamlin took off into a run, nose in the air as he sought out the offending creature, the foreign blood spilled in his borders.
His agitation grew as the scent trail dragged him further north, into the Silverwoods. The northern borders of the Spring Court were now being constantly assaulted. Creatures bleeding over from The Middle had threatened his territory since the dawn of the Courts, but after her rule, the instability of war, and an influx of Autumn Court refugees (“deserters,” Beron called them,) encroaching on his territory, his already strained control over his lands had never felt weaker.
There had been villages at the mouth of the Silverwoods, he thought. Small hamlets of farmers, crofters, tanners. Folk that lived off the land and traded peacefully, for the most part. Blood was rarely spilled there, not without cause, and never as a wanton act. Until he took over.
Add that to his list of failures.
The magic of Spring shivered just under his skin, itching for release, and Tamlin felt his hackles rise at the thought of his people being endangered. He had never paid much attention to the border villages, and he knew few of the names, but he knew the noble families that ruled them enough to worry, enough to chase the scent disturbing scent.
Carving his way into the woods, he came upon the source of the blood. Worse than he could have thought, for it was not a battle, but a single body.
Prone, he found the mercifully clothed female fae, her black eyes staring upwards and unblinking at the leaf cover, her mossy green skin ashen and drained of color. The blood he smelled came from her throat, sliced wide and deep. She had not been there long.
Her clothes marked her as a resident of Spring, her brown-black hair braided in the way many of the working villagers did. She was dressed for travel, he could tell by the layers of clothing on her - much more than one would normally wear in the mild summer breezes. But other than the quality of her clothing, which was worn in, carefully patched in places, all he could tell of her was that she was young.
There was no way to tell just how young, as she retained much of the height and slightness associated with nymphs, but her colorless, ashen cheeks were still round with youth, with a childlike quality to the way her hands rested at her sides. As if she had merely fallen asleep, alone in the forests, far from any village that might claim her.
Tamlin felt the wave of sorrow, even with the lack of knowledge to who she might have been. And yet, there was not a soul nearby to bear witness or claim guilt.
Throwing his head back, he roared into the silence of the Silverwoods.
And the silence answered, in the wailing of a babe.
He cursed himself for not checking the clearing better, whipping around to try and find where the pitiful, frightened sound had emanated from. On the roots of an alder, bluebells in full bloom beneath knotted roots, he found the child.
Small, all wriggling limbs curled into a carefully constructed nest consisting of a traveling bag and a few blankets, Tamlin felt, more than decided, to walk softly towards the baby, scanning for traps as he went. But in the stillness, the only sounds were his own breaths, the startled chirping of birds, and the child’s cries.
Not even the scent of blood neared the youngling, and Tamlin thought there might have been some magic to that, how lovingly shielded the babe was, swaddled tightly into a cloth dyed marigold yellow. Their face, flushed with the effort of producing the loud wailing, was no larger than the pad of one of Tamlin’s paws.The babe’s skin marked them as nymph - a soft, greenish tint to it, under the angry red flush of its cries. A halfling, he realized, when he noted the pointed ears. Was the female behind him the mother, then?
Alone, the child wailed, and Tamlin could do nothing but watch. He knew little of babes, little of how to contend with the way the baby announced its presence, demanded to be seen and heard and -
This was an orphan, in his lands.
He could understand the distress in their strangled cries.
Tamlin nudged the babe with his muzzle, and instantly, the babe ceased crying, startling while giving pitiful shudders, and turning their head to look towards Tamlin. When their eyes met, Tamlin felt as if his world had frozen. There, in those eyes lay uncharted space. The babe’s eyes were just like his. Darker, sure, and certainly not as hollow. Unfocused, in the way younglings were. But still, this baby, with their green skin and black hair, had the eyes of the Spring Court.
When Tamlin looked into those glassy, reddened eyes, he saw himself as he had been. Chasing after his brothers, running to and away from lessons. He remembered his father’s sternness, his mother’s gentle hands as she showed him how to hold the fiddle. This baby showed Tamlin something he hadn’t seen in a long time. A reflection of his own being, of his soul untainted, by virtue of carrying the emerald green eyes of the Spring Court’s noble bloodlines.
Bewildered, Tamlin did all he knew. He nuzzled into the nest of blankets, touching his muzzle to the baby’s cheek again, attempting to soothe with his touch. Licked at its tears, and tried, as much as he could, to understand what to do.
The mother’s body lay in the forest, and Tamlin had her child.
But Tamlin couldn’t have just left them both. Not here, in the empty Silverwoods. Not alone, like he was.
In between cries, while the babe tried to open the world again by sheer force of will, Tamlin shifted into his Fae form. The first time in days, if he was honest, and he felt foreign in his own skin, in the way he could now see his hair spill beyond his shoulders. But it allowed him the movement needed to take the babe in his arms, and hold them to his chest. The child seemed to calm the moment Tamlin wrapped his arms around them, settling into the crook of his elbow, only their tiny face poking through the blankets. Stepping towards where the mother lay, Tamlin took a hold of her hand - cold, cold, so cold, and winnowed back to his home.
Landing with a thud onto the checkered foyer of the manor, Tamlin had barely straightened himself before Marius sprinted towards him, sword pommel in hand. Skidding to a halt, Marius could do nothing but gawk.
When he had been given orders, directly from Tarquin, to travel to the Spring Court and assist in the reinstating of their own Lord, Marius had expected very little, given the rumors that circled Adriata - a madman, a fae lost to all. A lord cruel enough to whip sentries in plain sight, to abuse his betrothed and ignore the pleas of his people. A High Lord so unworthy of his title that even Rhysand, pompous as he had been during the time Marius shared air with him, seemed more fit for the title.
Instead , he had found a fae all but dead. Tamlin’s eyes - once famous enough in their beauty that even Marius had heard of them, were dull and unseeing when he had arrived with his retinue. The first time Marius had seen the High Lord transform into the Beast he seemed to prefer had been the same evening of his arrival.
It had taken a month before Marius saw him again, barely long enough to explain his presence in the Court.
He missed Summer. He missed the warmth, the way the surf crashed against the rock walls of Adriata. Most of all, he missed the people. Though close to various villages, the High Lord’s manor in Spring was farther than he had ever been from the bustle of cities. At times he imagined drafting a report to Tarquin, telling his cousin that the High Lord of Spring had finally vanished for good, taken back to the Mother as some ancient fae had been in the stories, if only as an excuse to leave his post and return to Adriata.
Marius was no deserter, and he certainly was not a male who was easily surprised. The sudden appearance of the High Lord of Spring that afternoon had been far from expected.
There stood Tamlin, his blonde hair matted, his skin smudged with dirt and his formerly fine clothes not much better for wear. Marius shuddered at the scene, and the way Tamlin’s hollow eyes scanned the manor’s foyer. But what had worried him more was how Tamlin was holding onto the wrist of a clearly dead nymph.
Raw blood assaulted his senses immediately. Marius watched as Tamlin straightened, releasing the wrist of the nymph and adjusting a bundle of cloth in his arms.
No. Not just cloth.
Because from that bundle emanated the shrill, desperate cries of a hungry babe. In seconds, Marius ran through the reasons why Tamlin would have appeared in the manor carrying a dead female and a babe.
None sounded good in his mind, let alone spoken aloud. Instead, Marius stood to attention, as he had been trained, and placed his fist over his heart. “M’Lord,” he greeted. “Are you hurt?”
Tamlin looked at him, and Marius cringed. There had been precious little eye contact between himself and the High Lord of the Spring Court, but here was another moment.
“No.” the word was a raspy grunt, and nothing was said for a moment before another shrill cry from the babe turned both the male’s attention towards them. “I- hungry. It’s hungry.”
The absurdity of the statement nearly caused Marius to chuckle, before remembering the dead female in the room. “Sir, may I ask -”
“I found them in the Silverwoods. Can you feed it?” Tamlin did not wait before thrusting the babe towards Marius, who took them into his arms, regretting the thick, armored leather surrounding his forearms.
Marius watched as Tamlin took a step back, as if seeing Marius for the first time - and Marius thought it may as well have been, since this was the first time he had heard more than grunts of acknowledgement from the High Lord before him.
Silently, with little more ceremony, Tamlin lifted the female from the floor, and carried her through the halls, Marius and the crying babe following closely behind.
Tamlin lets his body carry him through the motions.
He buries the mother.
The skies above him begin to darken as he digs - shovel in hand, no magic, at the space beneath a shaded cedar. Close enough to his mother’s garden, but out of the way. Private. He digs until he hits hard-packed soil and rocks, and then he goes further. He’s vaguely aware of the Summer fae - Marius, he thinks - following him out, until he had finally tired of the babe’s crying and gone to try and feed it.
Maybe Tamlin should have felt some sort of guilt over the way he could barely remember the male’s name. He should feel plenty of guilt over needing fae from a foreign court to run his manor and most of the Spring Court for him.
Tamlin has never been good at sitting with his own thoughts. As a youngling, he would race away from them and into ponds and meadows. As part of the war bands, he learned that music could do the same for him. Take the noise in his mind away. Silence the fear, the rage. Eventually, music became one of the few things that brought him joy. Honing his body into a fine killing machine had been his father’s goal. The third son - captain of the armies, nothing more. His father had stopped the music as often as he encouraged it. He had been a master of the give and take.
He buries the mother, and he does it by hand, if only to spite the memory of his father.
There had been many burials in the Spring Court during his rule. Some in the manor itself. He remembers a time when a small human female had lived in the manor. He remembers bloodied stumps where membranous wings should have sat.
Tamlin remembers, most of all, what Feyre Archeron had said that night.
“I’d want someone to hold my hand until the end.”
He hadn’t been allowed to hold Feyre. In his dreams, he sometimes still watched her neck break. He wasn’t able to hold this female either, her name unknown to him, her youthful face and green skin and black eyes and-
When the grave is finally deep enough, Tamlin summons a meager scrap of his magic to clean her skin. To remove the dried blood from her throat, from her clothing. There’s enough in him, unpracticed as he is now, to re-braid the few strands of the female’s hair, and to shroud her in an undyed linen cloth. Before he covers her face, he looks at her once more. The lashes brushing cheekbones. The thin lips, the widow’s peak. Does the child have these features?
He realized he didn’t know the gender of the babe just as Marius reemerges from the manor.
The male had lost his vambraces, the blue tunic normally housed underneath his gambeson now with sleeves rolled up towards the elbows. In his arms is the babe, bundled in the same cloth as before, but quieter now. When Tamlin straightens and looks at him, there’s a moment of awkward, pained silence that passes between them.
“Did it eat?” is all Tamlin can think to ask. The baby is so small. Small enough they may still need to be abreast, and Tamlin doesn’t know how to ask.
Marius snorts. Tamlin feels a spark of anger at the male’s lack of deference. “Yes. She has some teeth. I fed her porridge.” Looking down to the freshly dug grave, and then appraising the surrounding area, Marius continues, “It’s a lovely place to rest.”
“She was young.” Tamlin looked down to the now shrouded body. “Someone did this to her.”
“Nothing was left with them?” Marius’ eyes narrow. “I sent a sentry to the Silverwoods - if there is a sign of a fight, Argent will find it.”
Tamlin felt his throat dry. He cleared it, drawing a raspy breath. “See if there is family searching for them.” Speaking hurts. When was the last time he had said as many words to anyone?
“Sir. Is that wise? Should we not send her to the Priestesses?”
“No. No priestesses.” Sharper than he meant to say it, Tamlin turned back to face Marius - looked the male in the eye, trying to speak the thoughts that had stormed through his mind as he dug the grave.
None came. Instead, he nodded to the mother’s still body. “Help me get her inside.”
Marius laid the baby down onto a patch of grass - well away from the grave, and came to stand on the opposite side of Tamlin, towards the bottom of the shrouded figure. Silently, the two males lowered the mother into the grave.
The sun sets behind the manor, and the stars begin to blink into existence above them as Tamlin shovels earth back into the grave, covering the female. Letting her go.
Tamlin doesn’t know her name, and can’t place a marker down yet. So the grave goes marked only by the sprouting bluebells he wills the freshly turned earth to present to her. Just like in the meadow.
Tamlin lifts the baby girl from the grass, and with the stars and her daughter as witnesses, lays to rest the immortal soul of an unknown female.
“Cauldron save you. Mother hold you.” Why are there tears? Why now? “Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey.”
“Fear no evil. Feel no pain.” Marius echoes the prayer, solemn.
