Hidden Among the Stars Chapter 1
Rhysand’s Sister x Eris Vanserra
Prologue
Warning: Angst, Political manipulation, Emotional tension, Family pressure, Slow burn romance, Court politic, Possible morally grey characters, Violence, bad grammar, let me know what else I should put in the warnings as it is my first post.
Summary: To the world, it is politics. To her family, it is a prison wrapped in silk and fire.
To her, Eris Vanserra is the opposite of everything she was warned about, Afterall, she knew him all too well growing up, so he can’t be that different. Right?
But the longer she remains in the Autumn Court, the more she begins to wonder if the cruel heir everyone fears is hiding something far more dangerous.
Something that might make her question everything she thought she knew about him.
Chapter 1: A Centuries Apart
Velaris glimmered beneath the stars, just as I remembered it… but softer and quieter now. The city had once been home now feels alien.
I drew a steadying breath. Every instinct screamed caution. Every memory of the past screamed fear. Fear of who I am now, who I used to be. But there was no sanctuary left for me to hide in, not one I can return to anyway.
For a moment, I simply stood there, reflecting on what was and what is.
“I can do this” I repeat to myself out loud as if I needed to hear it to believe it.
Then I forced myself forward.
Each step felt heavier than it should have, as though the past itself clung to my heels, reluctant to let me go. As I continued forward to what I once called home, I felt it.
A familiar pulse of magic. Strong and anchored in the city like a heartbeat I hadn’t realized I had been listening for all these years. Mother above knows how much I’ve been standing on the edge of oblivion, reaching to feel for any sign of him.
Of my family.
My homeland.
I would’ve traded breath for a heartbeat of them, just the warmth of their touch beneath my skin. I feel like a soul pressing itself to the veil, begging the dead to touch her back.
I watch as the shadows fades to show a grown man who looks like my father but carries himself like my mother. Could it really be him? My brother. The immature young man I left laughing by the campfire with his two best friends. Now… grown, dangerous, and commanding.
Is this what it feels like when grief loosens its grip on you?
I have to say something.
But what would I say?
I open my mouth to speak, but it feels like someone has wrapped my throat with a rope and knotted it.
Gods, what is happening to me? I thought I was stronger than this, but it feels like I’m that young naïve girl again.
All I am trying to do is utter a single word, to hold myself together long enough to but I’m failing.
Hot tears, running down my cheeks and I still cannot.
I force my eyes to meet his. the city seemed to pause, as if Velaris itself acknowledged the impossible. Recognition did not come immediately. It crept forward, careful, hesitant and in that suspended moment, it felt like the city held its breath.
I swallowed hard. The knot digging deeper, but I force myself to finally say
“Rhys?”
His fully composed stance showing the faintest of cracks. One no one would see if they didn’t grow up with him. His eyes narrowed, scanning and searching for something.
For what?
Does he not recognize me?
Well of course he doesn’t.
“I’m here,” I whispered, letting the words fall between us like fragile glass. “I’m here.” I repeat it. Not for him. For me to to fully process what is happening.
He didn’t respond at first. His jaw tightened, and the storm of emotions in his violet eyes made me wonder if he could even process it all. What is he feeling? Anger? Relief? Confused? Love? Or perhaps… hate.
Of course he would hate me.
Here I am standing here still while my Mother sacrificed everything for me.
“You should be dead,” he finally said. His voice broke, low, impossible. “I buried you. I—”
“I know,” I interrupted gently. “I had to. I had to no choice”
We stood in silence. Words were useless.
A century of separation could not be mended in a single conversation. But we were here.
Both alive, both changed.
Both… still bound by the memory of the little star that had once been a child, running barefoot through the campfires of the past.
It feels like we are strangers now and yet, we were family.
The weight of a hundred years pressed down on us, making each glance, each breath, each hesitant step toward one another heavy with significance.
But a star has to collapse just to burn that brightly once more.
I don’t even know what to do now. I keep fidgeting my hands trying to figure out what to do with it.
It was him who finally stepped closer, aware of the changes in me. the city around us seemed to exhale.
One step after another, slow and careful, like I might disappear if he came closer.
And then when he finally reached me, he stopped. Hands trembling, trying to touch me, to prove that I was real.
I didn’t move.
I didn’t breathe.
If I did, I am afraid the moment would shatter. That I would wake up back in that empty sanctuary, alone again, with nothing but ghosts and memory.
His eyes searched my face, not just looking, but studying. As if trying to carve truth from illusion.
“You’re—” His voice faltered. “You’re real?”
The question broke something in me.
A weak, breathless laugh left my lips, trembling at the edges. “I think so.”
That was all it took.
His hand closed the distance between us.
Warm.
Solid.
Real.
For a heartbeat, neither of us moved. Then his grip tightened and something in his expression cracked wide open.
Relief. Raw and unfiltered. Terrifying in its intensity.
“You’re alive,” he breathed.
Not a question this time.
A realization.
His fingers wrapped around my wrist, not gently, not harshly, but with a kind of desperate certainty, like he needed proof. Like he needed to feel bone and pulse and life beneath his touch and he pulled me into him.
Hard.
Like he was afraid I would disappear if he didn’t hold on tightly enough.
The impact knocked the breath from my lungs, but I didn’t care.
I buried my face against him, my hands clutching at his back just as desperately. He felt different; broader, stronger, solid in a way the boy I remembered had never been.
But beneath it all, I believe he was still him. And that was enough.
A broken sound escaped him. Something between a breath and a laugh and a sob and I felt it more than I heard it.
“You’re here,” he said into my hair, like he still couldn’t believe it. “You’re actually here.”
Tears slipped free, silent and unstoppable.
“I’m here,” I repeated.
For him.
For myself.
For the part of me that had spent a century wondering if I would ever get this moment back.
His arms tightened around me, almost painfully so.
“I thought you were dead,” he said hoarsely. “I thought they—”
He couldn’t finish.
“I know,” I whispered, pressing closer. “I know.”
We stayed like that for a long moment.
Not speaking.
Not moving.
Just… holding on.
As if a hundred years of grief could be undone in a single embrace.
It couldn’t.
But for the first time in a century—
It felt like something had been stitched back together.
“I’m home.”
For a moment we just stood there.
Us.
The kids who used to run around their father’s desk trying to catch their cat to once and for all prove who it liked more.
Then his stance changed. His head lifting slightly, as if listening to something far beyond mortal hearing.
“They felt your magic too,” he murmured.
A chill slid down my spine.
Of course they did.
Power like his didn’t exist in isolation. It echoed. It called.
And I—
The air rippled.
Shadows gathered first.
They curled at the edges of the street, pooling like ink spilled across stone. Not threatening. Not hostile...Familiar.
My breath caught. And I watch as a figure stepped out from the shadows.
Silent. Watchful.
Beautiful in that quiet, lethal way I remembered too well.
For a moment, I couldn’t place him.
Time has sharpened him into something colder, something more controlled. But then those shadows shifted again, brushing against his shoulders like old friends.
“Azriel,” I breathed.
His name felt strange on my tongue. Like a memory I hadn’t spoken aloud in years.
The shadows stilled.
His gaze locked onto me and for a heartbeat, for one fragile, impossible heartbeat, I saw the boy who used to linger at the edges of the room, watching everything and saying nothing.
Azriel’s shadows crept closer, brushing against me, curious, hesitant. Like they remembered something their master had buried.
“You’re—” he started, but the word never came.
Because a winnowing crack split the air. Light, bright, warm and blinding compared to the shadows surrounding us.
Cassian landed a heartbeat later, his wings flaring behind him, instinctively placing himself between me and the others.
He looked like a soldier who had just seen something that did not belong on a battlefield.
“That’s not possible” he muttered.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry.
“This is a terrible reunion,” I said softly, the words barely holding together. “Even for us.”
No one laughed.
No one moved.
Cassian’s hand flexed at his side, like he didn’t know whether to reach for a weapon… or for me.
And then Rhys finally spoke.
“I think we should take this reunion home, to where she belongs.”
Home.
I paused as I stepped inside, letting the scents and shadows settle over me.
Warm candles, faint lavender, the lingering trace of old books. The familiar warmth of home pressed against the cold distance I had carried for centuries and yet it doesn’t feel the same.
I don’t hear my mother’s singing voice nor can I see my father’s office door opened. Their things are not scattered around.
Where are her Mugs?
His scattered pens?
Is this what home looks like now?
Am I really coming back to a reality where they are not a part of?
My heart is breaking piece by piece but all I can do is look around with blurry eyes, trying to trace back memories of them.
And I see three women I do not recognise stood there. They were beautiful, dangerously so, and each of them carried a presence of power in the way they moved. They had grace that didn’t need words, and the intensity that made the air hum.
The first stood tall, regal, the kind of presence that could silence a room without a word. Her eyes held fire and calculation, a sharpness that hinted at strength forged over centuries.
The second’s beauty was quieter, almost ethereal, like moonlight brushing stone. She seemed to measure the world with her gaze, weighing each moment, each word, each heartbeat. Yet beneath that quiet precision was a core of steel, hidden and dangerous.
The third moved with a grace that made the shadows themselves pause. Soft, luminous, but every movement spoke of control, of intelligence, of power. She could break or heal with the tilt of her head, and I felt it. This force radiating off her, before I even knew her name.
They didn’t move, didn’t speak, their silence was loud, questioning and sharp. I didn’t know their names. They didn’t know mine. And yet, the room hummed with a strange tension.
Before I could gather my courage to speak, the air changed. A pulse of energy swept the room, subtle but impossible to ignore. Shadows deepened and shifted, curling against the walls and floor, and the world seemed to narrow until only one figure remained in focus.
Lucien.
He stepped through the doorway silently, every movement precise, every glance cutting, as if the space around him bent to his will. My chest tightened. He stopped, eyes locking onto me, and for a heartbeat, I felt the centuries collapse into nothing.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, low, sharp, and impossibly commanding.
The room froze. Shadows and light stilled and in that single, impossible moment, I knew the story of my return was only just beginning.
I blinked, startled. “…What?” My voice trembled, unsure, unsteady. The words felt small, fragile, inadequate.
Cassian moved slightly behind me, wings flexing, ready. Azriel’s shadows curled tighter, a warning murmuring through the air. Rhysand’s hand pressed lightly to my back, grounding me. I could feel their tension, their protectiveness, like a living thing pressing against my spine.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Lucien repeated, quieter this time, but every word carried a weight that made the room still. He stepped closer, and the shadows around him deepened, brushing against the walls and floor. “Your magic… it has been felt throughout the prythian,
Every corner,
Every shadow.
You shouldn’t be here.”
I swallowed, a shiver running down my spine. “…Why?” My voice was almost a whisper, curiosity and fear colliding in equal measure.
He looked at me then, and his gaze cut deeper than any blade I had ever known.
“Because… of the bargain,” he said, low, deliberate, almost impossible to bear.
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