irkallawrites

[irkallawrites]

| AO3 | Bluesky |

Fandoms: ✨ ACOTAR, 🪄 Harry Potter, 🪐 Star Wars, 🐱 Studio Ghibli, 🐲 The Empyrean

Ships: 🐍 Dramione, 🌙 Feysand, 🐉 Hakiro, 🦋 Reylo, ⚡️ Riorgail

Tropes: Canon-Divergence, Enemies-to-Lovers, Soulmate AU, Time Travel Fix-It

A Dragon’s Curse [The Empyrean]

ACOTAR

Fourth Wing

[irkallawrites]

Modern Rhysand Aesthetic

Interests include: champagne toasts, astronomy, dressing to impress, fast cars, stargazing, making the most of every moment, lazy mornings in bed, drive-in movies

→ You can find more modern ACOTAR aesthetics here

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Fourth wing summed up

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The Townhouse in Velaris

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When green fades to white.

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A Court of Thorns and Roses Locations

⤷ VELARIS, THE CITY OF STARLIGHT

For @shadowriel

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Jiji ♡

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Nesta Archeron

So Nesta had become a wolf. Armed herself with invisible teeth and claws, and learned to strike faster, deeper, more lethally. Had relished it. But when the time came to put away the wolf, she’d found it had devoured her, too.

(Chapter 4, A Court of Silver Flames)

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Elain Archeron

“She loves her garden. Always loved growing things. Even when we were destitute, she managed to tend a little garden in the warmer months. And when—when our fortune returned, she took to tending and planting the most beautiful gardens you’ve ever seen. Even in Prythian. It drove the servants mad, because they were supposed to do the work and ladies were only meant to clip a rose here and there, but Elain would put on a hat and gloves and kneel in the dirt, weeding. She acted like a purebred lady in every regard but that.”

(Chapter 12, A Court of Wings and Ruin)

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Feyre Archeron

“Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.”

Chapter 46, A Court of Thorns and Roses

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#my Heart is so full of you , I can hardly call it my own 🩵

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The Winter Court

while in the secret dark a fresh snow falls

filling our tracks with stars

- Gillian Clarke

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A Dragon's Curse

[Rated T]

The many riders of one dragon…through the eyes of their dragon.

Read on AO3

▾—▾—▾—▾—▾—▾—▾—▾—▾—▾—▾—▾

Rhodri was an old dragon.

Old even by a dragon’s standards. And he had had his fair share of riders. Some powerful. Some passionate. And some kind.

And all of them dead.

He was so very…tired.

So very, very tired indeed. 

◇

His first rider had been a boy.

Fierce. Brash. And endlessly brave. His signet—fire wielding—was as bold and reckless as the boy himself. And, truly, Rhodri had been no better than him. He had been young. So very young. And this boy—a child really—had mirrored his own brash self assuredness. His delight in his own power and invincibility.

It hadn’t taken long for those feelings to sour.

Altogether, they had only had a few months together before the boy had been taken from him. Killed in a brawl with another rider. Proof that all the swagger and brazenness of youth meant nothing in the end.

It was a bitter lesson.

◇

His second rider was everything his first had not been.

Quiet. Cunning. And ruthless to a fault.

She lasted the longest.

She had sailed through training at Basgiath like a feather on the wind. Lightly. Easily. Keeping her head down and her guard up. She saw all too often what became of those who made a spectacle of themselves. Of those who made enemies of their peers.

As had Rhodri. And he had been all too eager not to repeat the mistakes of his past.

And so he had shepherded her through that viper’s den the humans called a ‘college’ and she, like so few of her fellow riders, emerged unscathed and—most importantly—alive.

Her career had been much the same. She was smart, his rider. She knew who to please and who to avoid making an enemy of. She always knew exactly the right people to speak to and befriend to receive the best postings. The choicest of promotions.

Marya, her name had been.

He had loved her. So fiercely.

In the end, it had been illness and human frailty that finally killed her. 

All the cunning planning and sly wit in the world was no match for the plague. And he had been helpless but to watch it sweep through the riders’ ranks that year, claiming her the way it claimed so very many.

His only consolation had been that she had been old and gray by the time her time finally came.

We had a decent run, she had told him wryly as she shivered in her bed. Never thought I’d get to to this point honestly. Always thought you’d get annoyed with me and eat me.

You were never annoying, he had replied, earnest and gentle in a way he was only with her.

Don’t get all sappy on me now Rhodri. She smiled, even as she coughed. You’ll give me the wrong idea.

Only for you.

It was the last conversation they ever had.

◇

He didn’t take another rider for many years. The pain of Marya’s death was too fresh. Too deep.

But, eventually, even he could not deny the call so many of his kin felt.

To duty.

To battle.

And so he had taken a third rider.

It was a girl again. As different from Marya as she had been to his first rider. Shy and sweet, a bit naive. Completely unguarded.

She was everything Marya was not.

…And she was perfect.

He was getting old now. Jaded. Tired.

But this girl’s kindness was like a balm to his withered soul. Everywhere she went she was adored. She had no need to fight her enemies at Basgiath the way his previous riders had…because she had none. It didn’t even seem to occur to anyone to challenge this girl. To hurt her. She was like sunshine. They couldn’t help blooming in her presence—the way flowers sought out the attention of the sun.

The same way he did.

You’re just a softie on the inside huh? She had teased him once.

Only for you, he had replied, echoing the words he had once used for another.

And she had only laughed and stroked him under the chin the way she did those aloof felines that wandered the school grounds.

It was her death that finally broke him.

She did not die swiftly the way his first rider had. Or in her sleep the way Marya had.

She was tortured.

Over days and weeks. Separated from him during a battle and captured by the enemy and spirited away into some secure hiding place he could not reach.

He heard everything.

It was agony.

Piece by piece, they stripped away everything that made her her. Her charm. Her softness. Her beauty and intelligence. All of it was taken. Stolen. Ripped away with the cruelest of hands.

There was nothing left when he finally found her.

Nothing at all.

He burned her kidnappers. Reveled in their screams and pleas for mercy. But it did not matter in the end.

Their screams would not bring his rider back.

◇

Rhodri never took another rider.

He would not.

He knew it was his responsibility. To his kin. To dragonkind. And yet, he could not bring himself to suffer through the heartache of watching another of his riders die.

He was so tired.

So very, very tired.

[irkallawrites]

R H Y S A N D + F E Y R E | High Lord and Lady of the Night Court

For @officialfeysandweek2023