Arya laughs loudly as she chases her older brother down the hall of their townhouse, "I'm coming to get you!" Her wings flap a little making her slightly bump into the wall. "You'll never catch me Arya!" giggles a teenager Rhysand.
Arya scrunches her face in concentration with the tip of her tongue out on the corner of her lip, her eyes zeros in on the center of her brother's back before she flaps as hard as her 4-year-old wings can. A few more inches and I can tackle him.
Rhysand continues to jog while laughing until he realizes the sudden quietness behind him, worried that her sister accidentally winnowed out, he turns around to check only for the wind to get knocked out of him as his little sister tackles him onto the floor.
"I got you, I got you, I got you!" Arya giggles while Rhys tries to catch his breath with an amused smirk.
"What did I say about running and flying indoors?" their mom scolds as she stands at the end of the hallway with her hands on her hips. Though, you can see the smile threatening to take over her face. Vera's favourite sight is seeing her children just be children, something she was ripped off of at such a young age and now that her oldest is soon to be nine years old, she knows his time as a child will soon be limited, if there was free time to be given to him at all.
As soon as Rhysand turns nine, the High Lord of Night, his father will be sending him off to Windhaven for Illyrian training, therefore Vera savours these moments when she watches Rhys hold his little sister instead of holding a sword. The night heir was supposed to start his training at the ripe age of eight but Vera had begged her mate to give him a year more to be a child before sending him off to train.
"I'm sorry momma, it's raining outside and Rhy's and I had a lot of energy to burn out," Arya pouts up at her mother while rolling off of her brother and laying beside him on the floor.
"Oh is that so little one?" Vera smirks as she slowly walks over to the two and before they know it she attacks their sides making her smile widely as the two erupt in laughter.
"Wait- no!" Rhysand laughs as Arya tries to wiggle away. "How's this for burning energy?" Vera laughs before showing mercy and letting them breathe.
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Arya sips her cup of tea before placing it on the window ledge as she finishes the agreed amount of history she has to read for the day.
"I would rather go flying than read all these history books every day, I finished school years ago but I'm stuck reading to catch up on politics that happened thousands of years ago. I would take training over this momma," Arya whines as she finishes the last chapter for the day.
Vera, ever the graceful beautiful Illyrian female, sends her daughter a teasing smile, "I'm sorry little one, just be glad you were able to compromise with your father. Learn history for a few hours and then you can train in fighting and flying. You know he wouldn't have allowed the two to happen to his daughter unless he can exchange something for it."
Arya sighed as she stood up and walked to her mother who was working on a beautiful dress, "I don't even know why he's making me learn all the political ins and outs when Rhy's is the heir to the crown."
Vera's spine immediately relaxes under her daughter's soft caresses on her back. "Can you trust your brother to run the night court all on his own one day? He can barely organize his room as it is, Do you think he can organize correspondences on his table in the future?" Vera teases as she ties her last stitch on the dress.
"I'm sure Mor would love to do that," Arya chuckles before carefully lifting the dress her mother was working on off her mother's lap. "This is beautiful," the princess of night admires.
"Rhysand's future wife is lucky and she better appreciate every one of these or else I'm telling Rhy's she's not the one and I don't care if they even end up as mates," Arya comments as she hangs her mother's newest creation with the rest of the dresses she finished recently.
"Oh speaking of your brother's future wife, I need you to go to the weaver sometime this week when your brother gets here," Vera states making Arya scrunch her nose in confusion.
"Why is that?" Vera only smiles as she cleans her supplies around the room. "I want the weaver to hold onto my engagement ring for safe keeping and I want your brother to have his future wife to be one to retrieve it one day."
"Let me guess, his future wife is only worthy if she can retrieve this ring from the weaver?" Arya laughs, she loops her arm around her mothers as they walk to the dining room to prepare for dinner. "You're lucky the weaver likes me," she giggles before putting on an apron.
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Amren watches with an almost bored expression as Arya narrows her eyes at the ancient one across from her, concentrating on trying to get past the ancient's thick mental shield.
Amren's shield was a thick dark grey fog that went from top to bottom of her mental field, Arya could just about see the shapes of tall pine trees behind it, it was a vast forest surrounded with mist and fog swirling around which almost represented her silver eyes.
After almost a decade of practicing with Amren, Arya has only recently managed to walk through the forest of the ancient's mind and find the actual mental barrier. For years Arya kept getting lost in Amren's mental forest. Every time she got stuck and took too long in the forest the silver-eyed ancient locked her in there, for a minute or two to teach her that time was of the essence and to be careful using her daemeti skills.
Now the princess of the night court can get through Amren's mental forest in record time, even faster than her older brother, but the real challenge was finding a crack in Amren's shield and Arya has been trying for months with no luck.
Today, Arya woke up with more determination and she vowed to her reflection in the mirror this morning that she would get through the ancient's shield no matter what she had to do to get through it. She should have asked to train with Cassian first to get some anger out but there had been no time to ask Amren and Cassian to switch training time. No time when it was only this morning that Arya's father barged into her room talking about how she is required to spend some time with one of Beron's sons as she is scheduled to be betrothed to one of them when Autumn comes.
Vera was livid when she heard her husband's command. The High Lord of Night had sold her off to Beron's son in exchange for their alliance in the coming war.
"Come on, girl, I don't have all day," Amren tells her annoyedly. Arya scoffs before once again concentrating on the impenetrable shield in Amren's mind.
Arya focuses on the bottom of the ancient's shield, she conjures thick purple smoke from the bottom of the shield and with a quick flick of her wrist, the purple smoke covers the entire shield. The half-Illyrian female clings her smoke onto the shield, making her smoke act as a second skin to Amren's shield.
Before Amren could even grasp what was happening, Arya forced her smoke to bend along with the shield that her smoke now clung to. Arya smirks as she watches Amren flinch with a hiss and half a second later the ancient's shield cracks and Arya wastes no time before her purple smoke seeps through the cracks.
Arya conjures her purple eyes into Amren's mind before quickly retracting herself from her brain. The night princess gets a growl from the silver-eyed fae which only results in the princess' smirk growing.
"Only took me almost a decade," Arya says triumphantly. "I was honestly tempted to blast your shield once I heard it crack, luckily for you I took pity."
"I could kill you right now just for saying that," Amren hisses as she rubs her temple trying to stop the headache that was slowly starting.
"Please, you know you love me," that statement was true. Even Arya's father was afraid of the ancient one, but anyone can easily see how much Amren adores and cares for the princess of the night.
"You are a pain in my ass."
"Well, my sweet Amren, wait it out a few more months and you'll be rid of me," Arya shrugs crossing her arms over her chest.
Amren narrows her eyes at the princess, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Oh, so the news isn't out yet?" Arya says with a tone of disbelief, "Interesting. I thought the news would've been known by every fae and creature of Prythian by now."
"What news?" Amren growls, not liking the implication of what this news could be.
"I'm to be betrothed to one of Beron's sons," Arya says just above a whisper.
Amren shoots out of her chair with a growl that shakes the ground under Arya's feet, "You're lying."
Arya says dejectedly closing her eyes, "I wish I was Ams, I wish I was."
"Did that idiot of a High Lord not see what the Autumn court did to Morrigan?" Arya's eyes shoot open wide at the boldness of Amren calling her father an idiot in the open air. No one disagrees with the statement but no one dares to say it out loud. And apparently, Amren knew exactly what Arya was thinking.
"Please, you think I'm afraid of your father?" Amren shakes her head before she starts pacing again. "I will not let that male sell you off to those despicable males."
"There isn't anything any of us can do unless we want me dead because I assure you, if I did what Mor did, I won't make it out alive and I will die in the hands of my father."
I want to put a disclaimer that I do not claim the rights to the ACOTAR Characters and their storylines. All rights go to the fantastic, Sarah J. Maas.
I only have rights to my original characters and their storylines.
Sarah's plots and mine will be intertwined with each other.
This book will be a complete spoiler for all the books that are out in the series, so please take note of that if you haven't read all of them.
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You do not have any permission to steal, re-post, or translate ANY of my work. All works are of fiction.
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I do not own any of the pictures or illustrations that will be shared, but I am the creator of the collages.
