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veenvss · 1 month ago

Text

I did love you

. : Tamlin x Rhysand

.. : angsty ?? ig..

Autumn was coming to Spring. Or it was coming as much as it could, before it was deterred by the ancient magic that ran through the court. Sometimes Tamlin wished the seasons would change. He used to wish that the leaves would turn orange and fall off the trees, creating piles that children would play in. He used to wish to see the variety of plants that he couldn't get in the warm air of Spring. Most of all, he wished the seasons would change so the air would feel as cold and lonely as he felt.

It had been a month since he was at the foot of his father's throne. His back was healing already, the blood drying on his skin. The soldier came into the room, holding a bloody sword and nodding his head.

"It is done, my lord."

"Dead?"

"Dead."

It was just a few hours after then that Tamlin heard a loud crash from the rooms down the hall. He was struggling to sleep, his back still aching despite the healed scars. He wished that he could have felt the bedsheets underneath him damp from blood but instead, they were dry and clean.

It was after the crash that he started to hear shouting. He didn't bother moving. Most likely, his father had found out that something had gone wrong during the mission earlier and was throwing a tantrum about it. Or one of his brothers was frustrated that their most recent favourite prostitute had been hired out by another lord and was also throwing a tantrum. Or both. The amount of shouting would've been accounted for if so.

It was only when he heard his mother screaming did he feel that something was wrong. No matter the situation, his mother never screamed. Sure, his father was never the nicest husband. He was violent and cruel, Tamlin could give you enough stories to prove it, but he never physically hurt his wife. He might shout at her, call her useless or a hag, but she was never physically harmed.

He rose from his bed, swinging his feet over the side. He stepped as lightly on the floor as he could to avoid creaking. He wasn't sure what he was going to do yet, but if his mother was hurt, he would rather kill himself than just lie in bed and let it happen. He heard thumps hit the floor, thick and heavy. People?

He crept forward, grasping a measly dagger that he had on the side. His hand turned the doorknob as he pulled it open, listening for any noise. Everything was silent. The corridor was barely lit, most of the candles had been blown out by whatever had happened. Two at either end, too high up to be affected by the draft of movement were left, shrouding the hallway in shadows. At the end, down at the corner before the main hallway to the rest of the manor, stood two silhouettes, barely lit by the flickering candle.

The smell hit his nose before anything else. Metallic. Blood.

They must have sensed movement, as they turned. He could see in their hand, swords. They were long and they shone gold in the light of the candles. He heard the dripping, blood dripping from their swords. His mother was screaming. Was. It was silent now, and the stench of blood was hanging thick in the air. Whoever was stood in front of him, they had killed his mother.

Within a second, Tamlin had moved. His small dagger, only used for cutting ropes and branches held tightly in his hand. Maybe if he moved fast enough, he could kill the murderers, whoever they were, and save his mother. She could still be alive, trying to save her energy, or hiding her breathing from the people who had managed to sneak into the Royal Manor without a single guard noticing.

It felt weird, his dagger plunged into the soft skin. He assumed stabbing someone would be tougher, especially with muscle. The man in front of him gargled, his back turned to Tamlin. He hadn't even sensed him coming. All this devastation, and he hadn't even known Tamlin was there.

"Stop it."

That voice. It was like velvet, smooth and dark. He knew that voice. He knew it well.

Tamlin's victim let out another gargle as the dagger pressed further into his neck.

"My mother is dead."

Tamlin said nothing but he held the dagger in place.

Tamlin was pushed into the wall. His head smacked against his doorframe and whatever left of his vision went blurry. The sharp point was now pressing into his back.

"Turn around."

Immediately, he did so. His head ached, his vision was swimming and his chest was sticky with the drying blood. He could see, not well due to his head collision, but better than before. Someone was gargling on the floor in front of him, whoever he had stabbed. Gruffudd, the High Lord of the Night Court.

Rhysand was stood in front of him, one sword hanging from his hand, the other pressed against Tamlin's chest. Both were dripping with blood, and a small trail of it led down the hallway. Tamlin followed it, down past the portraits of his mother and brothers. At the end of the hall, by his brothers' rooms, their bodies lay on the floor. They were both shirtless, Ruaidhri was completely naked. Blood pooled around them, dark and clotted. The door to his parents' room was off its hinges, lying on the floor in between his brothers. He didn't dare look inside. His mother was in there.

Rhysand spat in his face, landing directly in his eye. Tamlin didn't dare move to wipe it away, not with the sword inches from his heart.

"Your family were a foul stain on this land."

Tamlin nodded.

"You are no better."

He didn't dare move.

"If we had not just come from a war, you would be on the floor beside them."

He raised his eyes, looking at his friend.

Rhysand was breathing heavily. His swords were hanging loosely, and his leathers were clean. He had let his father do the murders. He looked up. His muscled arms were tight, even for the skin-tight clothing he had on. His Illyrian tattoo was peeking out from over the top. His hair was messy, like he had just woken up. His violet eyes were dark though, darker than usual. There was no love in them, not like before.

"This land owes us blood. Tonight was not enough."

The gargling slowed and a shuddering breath was echoing through the hall. Rhysand didn't pay his dying father any attention. He placed his swords back in their sheaths, not even bothering to wipe them. He acted so calmly, despite everything.

"I did ask for your mother to be saved."

Tamlin didn't say anything, he was breathing heavily, blood trickling down his chest from where Rhysand's sword had just been pressed into his skin. There was nothing in Rhysand's eyes, they were blank. Not even hatred, even as he was looking at his father and the bodies that lay in the corridor.

"For it's worth, Kinnaird, I did love you."

I did love you.

Tamlin stared at the sun that was setting over the trees of the forest. The sky was red, fading into a muted purple as the sun slowly sunk beneath the leaves. Those words had plagued his mind for a month.

I love you

Rhysand had said those words only a month before the slaughter. Tamlin was stood in the same garden as he was now, amongst his mother's carefully pruned roses. He was resting his head against the chinrest as he flicked through the sheet music. There was one passage, there was always one particular passage in a song that was never quite as perfect as the rest.

Birds were lining the side of the fountain, staring at him as he used their bath as a makeshift stand. The actual stave itself was almost unreadable due to the amount of annotations Tamlin had written. The beats written above the endless amount of demi-semi quavers that the composer had decided to throw into the piece. He was muttering the beats as he fingered them on the strings, as a twig snapped behind him.

Tamlin turned, almost throwing the fiddle down on the gravelled path. He was expecting the intruder to be Ruaidrhi, or Niven, his brothers, creeping up to humiliate Tamlin for his "useless" interests. Instead, in a soft tunic and flowing trousers, Rhysand was stood, grinning at him.

"Nice song, Music Boy."

Tamlin rolled his eyes, turning back to the sheet music.

"Not even going to say hello?"

"Hi, Rhys."

Rhys started walking over, looming his head over Tamlin's shoulder to read the bars of music. He was muttering under his breath as his eyes scanned the paper. Then he leaned back on his feet, grinning again.

"Yeah, I got nothing. Looks as if you're reading a book from the Far East or something."

Tamlin tried not to shiver as he felt Rhys' breath on his shoulder.

"Muir was an incredible composer, it wouldn't hurt you to listen in on the concerts."

"It most definitely would."

Rhys sat down on the bench, spreading his arms out either side of him and resting them on the back.

"Go on then, play it for me. I don't have all day, you know."

The two boys stared at each other. Rhys' eyes were full of amusement as he smiled. His fingers drummed along the wooden bench. Tamlin turned back to the sheet music, his fingers still mimicking the singular notes.

"I'm not facing you."

"Whatever makes you comfy, Tam."

He sighed, resting his head on the chinrest and perfecting his posture. He knew the first part of the song from memory. It was the easiest part, and the amount of times that Tamlin had practised this piece, it was like he could do it second nature. His fingers worked together to create the singular notes and then the chords. His bow was arching perfectly to create the right tones. If you asked him to do this blindfolded hanging upside down over a pit filled with Naga, he could probably do it with enough pizzazz to convince the Naga to let him go.

He squeezed his eyes shut as he reached that passage. He had been stood in the rose garden for at least 4 hours now, and all he had been doing was pressing his fingers against the strings in the exact same pattern over and over. And it still didn't work.

He faltered, his finger slipping. The chord sounded weak. Then his bow slipped and the tone sounded different to what it should've been. He tried to continue on as if nothing happened, but as if to stop him from any further embarrassment, Rhys started clapping.

"Beautiful enough to stop a war," he said. Tamlin turned, dropping the fiddle to his side.

"I messed up. I didn't press down hard enough and then my bow slipped-"

"I didn't hear any of it."

He had. Rhys hated sitting in on concerts, or really any sort of fancy music at all, but he still knew the basics. Even for something as "poor" as a fiddle. He stood up, walking over to Tamlin. He picked up the fiddle, bringing his fingers down the strings, and stopping them when he heard the gentle noises they made.

"I loved it," he said, looking at him. His usual grin was gone, instead, he looked more serious, but that gleam in his eye was still there. He leaned into Tamlin's ear, breathing so gently that Tamlin could barely feel it.

"I love you."

The red sky was almost gone, instead leaving a dark purple. There was a chill to the breeze and yet, the leaves were still green. Flowers were still blooming and animals still crawled around through the trees. Tamlin knew that despite his integral connection to this court, it would never fully reflect him, even if he was the High Lord.

His mother was gone, just a body in a coffin in the ground. He had lost his best friend, his closest companion. He knew that now, Rhysand would be five courts away, in the court of endless night. Would he be watching the same sky? Looking for the same moon? The very one that gave him his endless power?

Tamlin ran his hand across the roses that his mother had planted once she became the Lady of Spring. The thorns pricked at his fingers but it wasn't anything that he hadn't felt, practicing the fiddle for hours on end felt worse.

His mother's grave was placed in a secret corner of the garden, in the family tomb that held Tamlin's ancestors. She had always longed to be free, up on the surface where she had spent so long working on her gardens and flowers. Even now in death, her wishes were still left unanswered and forgotten.

Tamlin turned and walked inside. The guards shut the doors behind him, bolting them shut for the night. He walked past the dining hall, where servants were cleaning the table. At the end of the table, closest to him, lay his fiddle and the same sheet music he was working on the day Rhys had paid him a visit. Tamlin wandered through the halls of the empty manor. Portraits still hung on the walls. His mother's face, smiling as she stood getting married, and as she stood holding each of her sons.

He walked past the windows looking over the same garden she had tended to for years. She used to bring Tamlin in, showing him the plants that were safe and the ones that weren't. She had taught him how to plant a bulb and care for it till it grew.

Tamlin wandered around the manor, the only person living inside the walls. The same ones that he ran through, trying to find his mother and escape his brothers' torment. The same ones he sneaked through at night time, to find Rhys out in the garden somewhere for their nightly walks.

And as he wandered through the halls again, his heart cold, yet full of all the words he desperately wanted to say, he realised that he had no one to say them to. There was no one in the manor who loved him. The servants and guards worked for him. They said sweet words but that was only to keep themselves employed. The birds sang but they couldn't say anything as sweet as their melody sounded.

Tamlin had loved his entire life, his mother, his friend. Yet in the end, there was no one who loved him. Despite the people around him, there was no one to say "I love you". Not like how it had been said before.

lolz

i don't really like this but it is also midnight and i am exhausted. this is not edited, as you can probably tell and it probably will never be

#acotar #acotar fanfic #tamlin #tamlin acotar #rhysand #tamlin x rhysand #tamsand #crackship #not really a crack fic tho #acomaf #acowar #spring court #not well written but i try

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