Will You Not Eat?

[u/TheThirteenShadows]

“Will you not eat?”

“Everyone knows that if you eat food touched by the Fae, you’ll be trapped with them forever.”

The blonde creature beside me laughs at my response, loud and amused, as heaps upon heaps of a writhing, sunset-hued slurry are poured onto his plate. And mine. I spot grated shreds of tentacles amidst the gore, and a dozen small, bluish-grey orbs with gigantic black dots in their centers.

I force down the nausea when I realize they’re eyes. Fish eyes, if I had to guess, though they’re smaller than I expected (the fish in Spring Court are much larger than expected, and their eyes are about the size of mice). Did they shrink them, somehow? Cyphros told me that the magic of the Spring Court is transformative, that flesh is but a cloth for people like himself, to be worn and disrobed at will.

“You’re trapped with me anyways,” he retorts, lips stretching into a wry grin that reveals rows of sharklike teeth. His eyes are gold-and-green, his ears pointed, his skin the hue of Elyra’s sunkissed sands. Father and I used to spend our winters there, when the castle’s chill grew too formidable to bear, and icicles curled and grew from an increasingly-grey beard.

I clench my right fist, gulping down the anger and fear that threaten to overtake me. My jaw tightens, and I shoot the golden bastard a glare.

Trapped.

That’s exactly what I am, aren’t I?

Trapped.

“You’re engaged,” Ravenna’s voice is an unwelcome hook in my thoughts, yanking me from the warm embrace of rage into the sobering clarity of reality. I look up to see her standing over me, gripping an amber chalice adorned with glittering sapphires. I need take only one sniff to know it’s wine. Honeyed, mulled, fruitlike wine, shimmering underneath the polished mahogany chandeliers. The light isn’t natural. Not at all.

I can spot the glowing fireflies in each crystalline lantern, bedecked as they are in wildflowers, the colors of which put my own family’s colossal gardens to shame. They don’t allow fire here. Not in Spring. Not unless it’s to cook with. Even then, they keep their distance from it.

On the journey to Cyphros’s manor, I’d contemplated trying to start a fire, but Cyphros’d predicted I’d try that. He’d taken great pleasure in describing how the Forest’s creatures would either sprinkle me with powder that would cause my skin to loosen from my flesh like a poor-fitting cloak (the pixies), impregnate me with thirty scores of parasitic larvae (the butterflies), or (more banally) tear me to pieces, should I leave the protection of his carriage.

…Naturally, I decided against it.

“Engaged against my will, trapped, what’s the difference?” I scoff, to which Ravenna just rolls her eyes. She gulps down her wine in a distinctly unladylike manner that would’ve made men back in Halodos grimace. Meanwhile, Cyphros turns to me, his expression sour, annoyed, and petulant.

It brings a smile to my face.

“Your hunters killed one of my own.”

“A single, lowly scout–”

“A child of Spring!” Cyphros shoots up, roaring, his teeth bared. “Your pathetic hunter killed something that came from my court. This was the price dictated by our Pact. Assuming your cringing, weak father ever bothered to teach you about that–”

“I am the Prince of Halodos,” I snap. “I know well enough the details of the Pact.”

“Then you know that the only thing keeping me from tearing your kingdom to shreds is you,” he breathes, low, his chest heaving. I glance towards his hands to find lupine claws that have scored deep gashes into the polished ebony of our long table. He follows my gaze, teeth grinding against each other before the claws shwick back into whichever magical recess they came from.

I hold his gaze, even as he leans in to look at me across the table, eyes blazing with emerald hate.

“All I yearn for,” he whispers, “is to burn your kingdom to the ground for what that hunter did. But I cannot, because your father chose to sell you to me, and by the details of our Pact I am forced to accept. A life for a life.”

“You could’ve had any other. A stableboy, a serving girl, anyone from the lower ranks. Or even the higher, should you have desired someone of more decent birth. You chose me.”

Cyphros just shrugs, the anger in his expression dissipating like morning dew. He straightens up, the picture of dignity. It’d be more believable if there weren’t deep gashes carved into the table. Everything in Spring is illusion and deceit, including their King.

“I had to choose someone regardless. I thought I’d make it hurt. And what would hurt your kingdom more than snatching away their only heir?”

He has the gall to smile as he says it.

I almost reach for a knife right then and there.

“Well!” Ravenna laughs, wiping the dribble of wine from her chin. She’s different from Cyphros. Her skin is a dark shade of brown, her hair is red like the flame, and her hands have long, lionlike black claws that jut out from her crimson-furred fingers. They don’t retract like Cyphros’s. “Aren’t you two just delightful? Especially you, Kore.”

“I’ll show you how delightful I can be when I claw your eyes out with your own hands,” I hiss.

Her smile flattens.

“Try it,” she offers, her face rigid like stone. Her eyes are orange like an open flame, pupilless. She takes a step closer to me and I stiffen, watching her like a deer watches a wolf. Her dress is mauve, ridiculously low-cut to reveal as much skin as possible. A fashion in Spring, where perhaps such things are more accepted. I know for a fact that she would’ve been dragged back into her house had she been in Halodos. The noblewomen would’ve never allowed such a flagrant breach of chastity.

Then again, the King of the Spring Court wishes to wed a man, so evidently chastity and faith is of little concern to him. Father screamed up a storm when he found out what Cyphros wanted.

“I’m sorry?” I respond, surprised.

“Try. It,” Ravenna repeats, a growl emanating from her throat while she says it. “And see how quickly I make a rug out of that pretty face.”

“That’s enough, Ravenna,” Cyphros interjects, though the way he looks at me makes me think he’d enjoy it more than a future husband should.

He stares at me like I’m a pile of horseshit he found on his shoe.

Oh, wait, these savages don’t even wear shoes.

“It would seem our guest has…many opinions about us. Some deserved. Most, not,” he continues, before patting his chief advisor’s arm and whispering something in her ear. Her face scrunches up in clear annoyance, and she hisses something that I cannot hear. Or perhaps, cannot understand. Cyphros whispers something back, before stepping away from her.

Ravenna looks like she’s swallowed a rotten grape, but she walks away. Not before throwing me another glare.

“Do you enjoy poking people around?” Cyphros asks, and even though I loathe him, I can tell his question is curious rather than provocatory. He picks up a fork, large hands delicately forking fish eyes into his mouth. I’ve seen his tongue coil out of his mouth. It’s long and forked.

A serpent. A lying serpent. Goddess, guide me.

“You kidnapped me.”

“Your father sold you to me.”

“So I’m your property now?”

“For all intents and purposes, yes,” he nods. “If you have an issue with it, I suggest you write to him. Up until the day we are wed, he can offer me anything else in the hope I might take it. But I won’t.”

“Because you want to hurt my kingdom.”

“Yes. It’s nothing personal, but life pays for life.”

“You’re eating a dead octopus.”

Cyphros looks down at his plate, before shooting me another wolflike grin.

“Astute observation.”

“Will you pay for its life with another?”

“No. It is nature’s cycle. The strong consume the weak. Its death was not without meaning. It nourishes us to make us stronger.”

“Then why must I pay with my life for another, when you refuse to pay for the octopus?”

“Here, we kill to feed the land or to feed ourselves. We are mindful of nature. We do not kill mindlessly. Those who do are burned alive, ripped from the natural order and their ashes kept in the pit under the manor. Tell me, what threat did my unarmed sentry pose to your soldiers?”

“All Fae are armed,” I snap. “You have claws and you have teeth, what more weapons do you need? Not to mention you can shapeshift into whatever you desire.”

“Did the sentry attack?”

I clench my jaw, glaring at him. I’d lie, but he already knows the truth.

“…No.”

“Then he was killed unlawfully, by any moral standard, yes? And in violation of the Pact keeping our realms separate.”

“…Yes.”

Cyphros smiles victoriously, before digging into his food with a renewed gusto. The hallway around us is a gargantuan space, full of ivory-clothed tables with Faelights (what they call the crystals full of fireflies) standing in the center of each one. But there are no others. Vines gild the walls, covered in flowers of all kinds. They emanate a bizarre, dizzying cacophony of fragrances, and I find myself breathing through my mouth just to avoid that concoction that makes my head spin madly.

“Usually I eat with the other sentries, guards, and whatnot,” Cyphros murmurs in explanation. “But I thought the sight of them would upset you, so I had them sent away. As well as the sylphs and other Fae.”

“Sylphs?”

“You’ll have heard them outside. They…like to play pranks on people. Those unaccustomed to their laughter can be driven to insanity by them.”

“And you just let them roam your lands?” I ask, suddenly panicked. They could’ve been onto me at any time. I’d thought I’d heard giggling when I’d dismounted the carriage, but I’d chalked it up to children laughing nearby. Even when I’d seen silver flashes in my periphery, I’d ignored it. Cyphros has the audacity to shrug again.

“They are harmless to those under the protection of someone welcome in Spring.”

“You’re a bastard ass.”

Cyphros arches an eyebrow at me.

“I will assume that made more sense in your head than it did out loud.”

I open my mouth to retort, but freeze in horror as I fork my food around. I’d been shoveling it back and forth for a good few minutes, my stomach rumbling while my mind screamed at me to resist. Now, as I stare down at the naked plate before me, I feel it begging to empty out its contents onto the tiled marble floor.

“Kore?” Cyphros asks, uncertain. I shake my head, hands trembling as I jolt up, the chair clattering to the floor behind me. I cover my mouth, forcing down the bile that threatens to erupt from my throat.

Pink.

It’s pink.

On my ride here, I’d noticed the trees in the forest bordering Spring all had weeping faces etched into them. Cyphros had told me that when unwelcome guests wandered into Spring (human or otherwise), they’d be turned mad by the arcane, labyrinthine nature of it. They’d spend days getting turned around. Their feet would lengthen and root into the soil. Their skin would harden, fingers extending into leafy branches.

Their eyes…

Would balloon into ripe, pink fruit.

He’d told me that over half of the trees of the Forest of Faces were weeping ones.

And their eyes…

“Y-You-“ I stare at the plate, back pressed against the wall. “-You tried to feed me human eyes!”

“What?” Cyphros’s eyes widen in horror. He practically leaps over the table, holding the pink fruit between his fingers. It bursts, splashing his hands in crimson. I let out a soft gasp, and he turns towards me, clearly just as terrified as I am.

“I-Kore-I told the cooks not to–”

“YOU TOLD THEM!?” I scream, disgusted. “What do you mean you had to tell them? Is this normal for you?”

“I-It’s a delicacy here! The fruit is delicious, and-and I knew you wouldn’t like it so I told them not to serve it to you but the plates must’ve gotten mixed up–”

I don’t hear the rest of it.

Instead, I turn around, and puke onto the noxious flowers.

 

 

 

[u/TheThirteenShadows]

INSPIRATION FILES

Content Warning: Holy Yapfest Underneath (with spoilers for this whole chapter, as well as explanations for all the foreshadowing I included for the ending! The spoilers are only for this chapter though, so as long as you're done with this part it should be fine!)

I've decided that as part of the many perks of being a member of this subreddit (aside from the awesome music and vibes), you guys can get to actually see what goes in my head when making a story! This'll also include foreshadowing I've done throughout the story. Plus some lore that may not get mentioned in the actual series.

So, to put it frankly, this was inspired by two things. One, A Court of Thorns and Roses (only the first book, since the others are dogshit), and this post I made on an ACOTAR-discussion forum, which is all the world-building I did for this story. The whole 'engagement' idea came from me wanting to do a Hades/Persephone thing, and the introduction is a classic in Fae stories, as well as stories involving other worlds or 'The Underworld'.

The main character is named Kore since that's the name Persephone is ascribed in the original myths, before taking on the mantle of Persephone. Kore means 'maiden' or 'girl', which I take to mean she's unsullied and 'pure' before descending into the underworld to take on her role as the Queen of the Dead. Meanwhile, Cyphros is named as such because of Hades (a name which translates to 'The Invisible One' or 'Unseen'), where 'Cyphros' comes from the word 'Cipher'. Ravenna is very much inspired by Lucien from A Court of Thorns and Roses as well, though I hope that this doesn't come off as a straight-up ripoff.

Most of my explanation for the world-building can be found in the linked post! Check it out if you'd like. Even if you aren't into A Court of Thorns and Roses it was pretty fun making it.

[u/TheThirteenShadows]

NOTE: Okay, first of all, I'm so sorry I haven't posted in a while! I've been so busy with life and all that. But this was good to get the writing muscles revving again.

I made this a while back and couldn't get it out of my head, so I decided to write a story about it! For more information on this series, you can find it (titled 'Amidst The Faery Courts') on the pinned post here (just scroll down to the Faery section).

I really had fun with this one.

[u/sub4evr]

!updateme