#logging off again. im exhausted. god. it feels like everything is going up in flames for me.

[cryolyst]

~

[vanserraseris]

END OF PART XV - Ok, so that is the final part (there will be an epilogue, but this is pretty much the end). Eris is not doing too well, just a warning that there is mentions of blood. Thank you to everyone who reads.

OH MY GOD IM SO SORRY I TOOK FOREVER TO GET THIS UP. and omgggg im so sad this is ending soon

Prince of Ashes. Part XV.

Eris jolted awake, lurching to a sitting position, nearly falling out of his bed as he tried to calm his breathing. It took him a moment to recognize that he was in his old rooms at The Forest House, not his cottage.

“Not real,” Eris spoke into his empty room, his eyes clenched shut, “Not real.” Eris hadn’t seen his brothers die, and it was on nights like these when he wished he had, if only to know that the dreams weren’t real.

In his dreams, his worst nightmares, Cato and Owain would beg Eris to save them and all he could do was watch as they met their end. The Mother must truly hate him, Eris thought, to torment him like that in his sleep.

Eris fisted his hands in the sheets, hating the quiet of the room and quickly lighting a fire only to fill the horrible silence. The flames danced, tiny embers popping off the logs and falling to the dark wood outside the fireplace. His room was still too quiet.

Eris took a deep breath as he tried to settle his nerves and almost tripped as he hurtled for the bathroom. Eris fell to his knees in front of the toilet, bracing himself over the porcelain bowl as he retched, glad that he’d once again forgotten to eat dinner as he coughed over and over again. Each time Eris took a breath, he could smell the blood on his hands. Owain had laughed at him once decades ago, claiming that Eris had a better nose than his hounds.

Eris curled his hands into fists at the memory, not wanting to think about his brother. Eris, upon his fathers orders, had spent the last two days torturing a rebel group that had formed a steady following in the past ten years. The smell of their blood, clinging to the pale skin of Eris’s knuckles and getting stuck under his nails, was making him dizzy.

He tried not to think about how much it bothered him to do those sorts of things, but at night, as soon as his head hit his pillows, his mind wouldn’t stop reeling. He could practically hear his father’s voice, knowing he’d call him weak, knowing his father would call him a horrible heir. His father’s voice often battled with that of his mother’s. Eris growled, pushing himself up off the floor, the iron scent of faerie blood lingering in his nostrils as he stumbled to the sink.

He reached for the bar of soap on the counter, trying again to wash the smell of blood from his hands. The honeysuckle scented soap did nothing but mask the smell of the blood, and he knew that he could wash them a hundred times that night and it still wouldn’t make anything better. Eris had washed his hands raw before he’d fallen onto his bed, completely exhausted. He hadn’t even bothered changing into sleeping clothes, had merely kicked off his boots and thrown his jacket onto a chair.

The smell of the blood was stronger as Eris splashed cool water onto his face and he fought his urge to gag once more.

Eris walked back into his bedroom, drying his hands with a small towel, but he paused when he saw his reflection in the mirror. Eris inched closer, dropping the towel onto the dresser, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt as he placed the palms of his hands on the smooth wooden surface. There were wild flames in his eyes, flaring uncontrollably in reds, oranges, and yellows.

Eris frowned, willing the fire to disappear. His frown deepened when nothing happened. “I’m in control,” Eris muttered. He tried picturing dying embers in his mind, just as his mother had taught him, but if it were possible, the flames seemed brighter. “I’m in control,” Eris repeated, his voice a low growl, the fingers of his one hand curling into a fist. Eris hadn’t struggled with taming his magic like this in over a century.

He was still looking in the mirror, at the sharp lines of his face, at the harsh line of his mouth, as he scowled. Eris thought he had never looked more like his father.

One moment, Eris had been standing still, the next, he’d moved as quick as a snake. He threw his fist forward with all his strength, the glass of the mirror cracking under the impact, his flaming eyes still visible in every shard. Eris punched the mirror again, small fragments of glass clinking against the floor.

The smell of faerie blood hadn’t really gotten any better, Eris realized, probably because it was still under his nails, in the lines of his palm, in the wrinkles on the knuckles of each finger.

A beastly snarl ripped from his throat as he grabbed the carved wooden frame of the mirror, ripping it off the dresser only to slam it against the floor. The glass finally fell from the frame, shattering, but Eris continued to hit the frame against the hardwood floor.

Eris was tired and angry and he didn’t want to see his own reflection, would have preferred if he never had to look in a mirror again. He broke the wood of the mirror, splinters littered around his bare feet along with the small pieces of glass. Eris threw what remained in his hands at the opposite wall, surprising himself when it turned into ash before it crashed against the stone. Eris ran a trembling hand through his long hair, his chest heaving with each breath.

He took a step back, leaning against the dresser before he slid to the floor, eyes clenched shut. “I’m in control,” he whispered, hoping the lie would become a reality.

Eris had always been aware of the little control he had in his life, but only very recently had he started feeling like a puppet with strings. Everything his father asked, Eris did, a cruel smile on his face all the while. Eris couldn’t even bear to look at his mother, didn’t want to face that kind of disappointment.

Eris breathed in from his nose slowly, opening his eyes as he reached for a larger shard of the mirror right by his hand. He angled it so he could see his face, and tightened his hold along the edges when he saw there were still flames in his eyes. 

Blood leaked from where Eris gripped the sharp glass, dripping along his hand, down to his wrist, and onto the floor. He had hoped that perhaps the pain would anchor him, offer him some control on his magic, but it didn’t even hurt. 

“Eris?”

Eris flinched, startled, dropping the bloodied shard and knocking the back of his head against the dresser with a loud thud. His mother had spoken so softly, he shouldn’t have jumped like that. He ran his uninjured hand through his hair, “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

She ignored his question, pushing the heavy door to his room open and slipping inside, asking another question of her own. “What are you doing?”

Eris took a breath, “I’ve made a real mess of things.” He waved his bloodied hand in front of him, and the Lady of Autumn gasped, but Eris just continued speaking. “Just a horrible, horrible mess of things.”

“What happened?” Eris could hear the panic in his mother’s tone, but he just shrugged, shaking his head.

She walked towards him on silent bare feet, “Watch the glass,” Eris barked. He must have looked quite frightening with the flames in his eyes shining bright in the dark of the room.

She didn’t even pause, expertly stepping around the pieces of the mirror, before she sat down right beside him. Close, but not touching. Her russett eyes hadn’t stopped looking at his hand. “Oh, Eris,” she breathed, a slight tremor in her voice, “There’s glass in your knuckles.” Eris hadn’t noticed. When he lifted his other hand to brush the pieces away, his mother placed a hand on his arm. “Not like that,” she said a tad sharply.

Eris faced her, and while she might have been slightly horrified to see what he’d done to his hand, she reminded Eris of the female he remembered from his childhood. She lifted her chin, her mouth set in a firm line and her back straight. Even in her nightgown, her hair in a messy braid over her shoulder, she was a force to be reckoned with. “You’ll make it worse like that.” She reached past his head to grab the towel he’d thrown onto the dresser, “Give me your hand.”

Eris scowled, he was too old to be getting told what to do by his mother. She raised a brow at him and Eris scrunched his nose, doing as she said. With gentle fingers, she slowly pried all the pieces of glass from his hand, wincing when blood dripped from his knuckles. “Tell me what happened,” it wasn’t a request.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Eris mumbled, he definitely wasn’t going to tell her why, he didn’t want her to know what kept him up at night. “And then I couldn’t get the scent off.”

The Lady of Autumn lifted her son’s hand closer to her face, sniffing subtly, “What scent?” 

Eris shook his head, refusing to answer. He didn’t know whether or not the High Lord had told his wife what his son had been spending much of his time doing as of late.

“I smell nothing but blood, Eris.” There was no judgement, no frustration, in her tone. She held his large hand in one of her much smaller ones, certain there was no more glass, as she pushed the towel against his knuckles.

“Me too,” Eris muttered, amber eyes following his mother’s every move. He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken to his mother for this long. He guessed that it must have been at Cato and Owain’s funeral. Eris hadn’t wanted to speak with her, not after he’d broken his oath to protect Lucien, not after he’d managed to fail at the only thing his mother had ever asked of him. Eris felt a burning behind his eyes and blinked a few times, taking a small breath.

His mother flipped his hand once his knuckles had mostly healed, but the deep cut he’d gotten from gripping onto the sharp shard of the mirror was still bleeding. It might even scar, Eris thought. The Lady of Autumn sighed, “I wish I knew what was going on in that head of yours.”

Eris was glad she didn’t know what was going on in his head, thanked the cauldron that his mother was not a daemati. His head was a horrible place to be, especially lately, now that he felt overwhelmed with everything.

Lagos had tried apologizing countless times. Eris had kicked him out of his cottage, had pulled rank and ordered him not to return, but that hadn’t stopped him yet. Eris wondered how long he’d keep it up. Eris hadn’t tried talking to Micah, and he knew perfectly well that Micah wouldn’t come to him, that he’d let Eris make the first move always and that wouldn’t change. Widge always came to the cottage and sat with him as he worked; Eris couldn’t shake the feeling that he did so out of pity.

Not only that, but Cato and Owain’s deaths meant that Beron was pitting Maddox and Priam against him. Eris was almost certain they wanted to kill him just to prove to their father that they weren’t as worthless as he’d always thought they were. Rufus was still trying to convince Eris that gaining their father’s trust was an impossible goal, and Eris knew that his actions would eventually push Rufus away. And Lucien was gone, exiled to Spring, and he hated his oldest brother.

Eris clenched his jaw, staring fixedly at the flames flickering in the fireplace on the opposite side of the room.

His mother placed a hand on Eris’s chin, tilting his face so that he looked at her concerned gaze, “Tell me what troubles you.”

Eris could have died at the sob that escaped his lips. He felt a rush of shame, his cheeks heating, as his mother’s eyes filled with tears as well.

His mother hadn’t seen him cry since he was eighteen. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d broken down like this, especially in front of somebody else. Many things troubled Eris, but he’d gotten very good at hiding behind sneers and scowls. Eris didn’t like following his father’s orders, Eris didn’t like smelling the blood on his hands, Eris didn’t like looking in the mirror.

Eris brought his uninjured hand to his face, covering his eyes with it as another sob fell from his mouth. He didn’t like the way his mother looked as if she saw into his soul, if she looked too close he feared she wouldn’t find one. Eris felt his mother wrap her arms around him, her hand going to the back of his head.

“I’m so sorry, Eris,” she whispered, “I’m so terribly sorry.”

Eris didn’t know why she was apologizing. He tried to shake his head, but his mother was still holding him tight.

“I never should have made you take that oath,” she spoke with her lips pressed to his hair. “I’m so sorry, Eris.”

Maybe she was right. That fucking vow had been the start of his downward spiral. Or maybe it hadn’t been. Maybe he’d been spiralling for centuries.

Eris didn’t say anything, he just ever so slowly wrapped his arms around his mother, his chin resting on her too-slim shoulder. Eris didn’t really like being held, hadn’t liked it as a child, but this wasn’t too bad.

He made a funny sounding whimper and bit his tongue to keep himself from doing it again.

“Eris, tell me what troubles you,” she repeated, her fingers pushing his hair over his shoulder as she moved back to look into his eyes. His mother lifted a hand to his face, gently wiping at the tears on his cheeks. “Please.”

Eris shook his head, he could not tell her what he was feeling, not really. His mother had enough to worry about.

He knew her thoughts were with Lucien, and if they weren’t, she was probably thinking about Cato and Owain. She didn’t need to spend any time thinking about what was troubling him, especially since Eris knew it would break her heart to know that he was unhappy.

“I’m alright,” Eris lied. 

“Eris, please,” the Lady of Autumn tried again.

Eris took a deep breath.

He needed to become High Lord, to sit on the Autumn Court throne, and he would do just about anything to steal his father’s crown. Beron had raised a monster, and it would come back to ruin him. He was the Tamer of Flames, the Heir of Autumn, the Prince of Ashes. He was not broken, and he would not break.

So Eris just flashed his mother an empty smile, the iron scent of blood still burning through his nose as he spoke.

“I’m just tired.”