Chapter Text
The knocking came like blows to the chamber door. Not a polite tap, but a sharp, insistent pounding that echoed down the corridor like a warning bell. Not the kind of knock Lucien ever gave, especially past midnight.
Amawyn sat upright in bed before the second knock landed. She was already moving, tying the robe as she crossed the room, Tamlin’s absence beside her registering in the hollowed-out sheets.
She opened the door and Lucien stood there, winded, face drawn tight with whatever he'd just seen or heard or lived through. His metal eye whirred softly as it adjusted in the candlelight.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Where is he?”
“Out at the borders. Reinforcing the wards again. Lucien, what is it—what’s wrong?”
Lucien’s jaw twitched. “We need him here. Now.”
Amawyn didn’t argue. She didn’t speak. She just reached for the bond and sent what needed no words— urgency.
It hit Tamlin like a bolt. She felt the sharp turn of his magic, felt him pivot and vanish mid-run. He winnowed straight into the bedroom, still half-beast, fur melting into skin, claws retracting as his boots hit stone.
“What is it?” he said to her, then spotted Lucien. “What’s wrong?”
Lucien didn’t breathe. “Elain looked into Velaris.”
The silence that followed landed like a blade in flesh.
“She saw Rhysand,” Lucien continued. “He’s going to bargain with Koschei.”
Silence crashed over the room. Amawyn pressed her hand to her mouth. Tamlin’s gaze turned sharp—dangerous.
“He means to give him his freedom using the Dread Trove items,” Lucien said, voice rough. “In exchange for Prythian. He wants to crown himself High King.”
Tamlin closed his eyes, just for a heartbeat. Then he exhaled—long, quiet, but not calm. The kind of breath a man takes before battle.
“We have to stop him,” Lucien said. “Now.”
Tamlin started pacing, fast, the way he only did when panic clawed at the edges of his control. “With the Trove, I might not be able to defeat him.”
“Then we call the High Lords,” Amawyn urged. “Tarquin, Thesan, Kallias, even Eris—they’ll never stand for this.”
“There’s no time,” Lucien said, “Elain thinks this happened two hours ago. She said he winnowed right after arguing about this with Mor and Amren. He could be at the lake already.”
“You cannot go alone,” Amawyn said, turning immediately to Tamlin. She knew him enough to know he was already planning to stop him. Her voice shook now, no longer steady, no longer calm. “If he has the Trove—if Koschei is even half awake—you won’t survive it. Not with nothing but claws and anger.”
Tamlin looked at her, the plea already in his eyes.
She saw it. And still, she said it.
“I’m going with you,” Amawyn whispered, her voice cracking but she already knew what he’d say.
He was shaking his head before the words came.
“You’re going with Lucien. You’ll reach every court you can. Call the High Lords. Strengthen them—so when they winnow to the lake, they’ll still have something left to fight with. Tell them what’s coming.”
He didn’t say because I may not come back. He didn’t need to.
Amawyn stared at him, and something inside her broke and the weight of it pressed beneath her ribs like stone, sharp and hollowing.
Tamlin was her mate . Her High Lord . He had always been the most powerful being she’d ever known—sunlight made flesh, steadfast as the roots of the court itself. With him, she’d dared to believe she could stop bracing herself for grief. That she could finally love someone without fearing the cost.
But this… this was familiar. Too familiar.
She had lived this moment before, watched Andras ride out, eyes soft, voice calm, promising to return. He hadn’t.
She had let her father kiss her cheek before he joined the last charge against Hybern. She never saw him again, only the news of his passing.
And now Tamlin stood before her. Her High Lord made of power. Her lover. Her mate. Telling her he would go alone to face yet another threat. And he would do it—she knew that. Gods, he would. For her. For the Spring Court. For Prythian. He would walk into that lake and never look back if it meant they would be safe.
And she… she was supposed to just let him .
She turned from him, pressing her hands to her face as the tears came fast and hot. She tried to hold them back, but the splintering inside her had already begun to crack wide open.
“I’m not letting you walk into that alone,” she said. Her voice didn’t sound like hers. It sounded like something broken.
She couldn’t look at him.
Both times, she told herself they would come back. They hadn’t.
“Please,” she whispered—not to beg, but because there was nothing else left to say. “Please, you can’t leave me.”
Tamlin said nothing for a moment.
“I’ve barely loved you yet” she whispered, her voice a gasp of breath.
The bond ached within her. He felt it all—the grief she had never mended, her father and Andras leaving her behind to save the court… But most of all, the deep rooted fear she now carried for years that anyone she loved would walk into a battle and never return.
He felt it all. And still, he spoke.
“Amawyn,” he said quietly. “Please.”
His voice was low. Frayed. As if this moment had cost him more than any battle.
“This gives us the best chance. Koschei’s lake is too far. If I burn my power just getting there, I’ll have nothing left when I arrive.”
He stepped forward and folded her into his arms, his voice falling to something only she could hear.
“I need you to give me the strength now. That’s all I ask.” But he was asking for more than she could give.
She didn’t speak. Couldn’t. Her face was pressed against his chest, the beat of his heart steady beneath her ear. The only thing steady in the world.
“Help the others get there,” he said. “Bring them to the lake. Bring everything we have left.”
Still, she said nothing.
“I’ll hold him,” Tamlin said. “As long as I can.”
Amawyn didn’t answer. Her face stayed buried in his chest, her fingers clutching at him with the same desperate strength she’d once used to hold Andras back from the border. The same useless strength that hadn’t stopped her father from riding to the front lines and never coming home.
The silence stretched, soft and aching, but heavy with old grief. He could feel it through the bond — the way her heart recoiled from the shape of this moment, because she had lived it before. Because twice already, the court had taken the men she loved and left her behind to pick through the ruin.
He needed her to be strong, but this… this was the one thing she could not give him. Not when every part of her feared she was about to watch history take him, too.
“I have to do this, Amawyn.” Tamlin’s voice was low, meant for her alone, his breath warm against her ear. “I cannot let you live in a world where he is High King. I have to protect you. Protect our court.”
Her fingers knotted in the fabric at his back, the way they once had in Andras’s sleeve, in her father’s cloak—grips that hadn’t been enough to keep them from riding into the dark.
“I know,” she said, and the words cracked in her throat. Not because she doubted him, but because she knew what came next. She had known it before. She had buried it before. And she did not know if she could survive burying it again.
“I love you,” he said.
Her head turned to his, tears glistening in her eyes, and then she was on him—her mouth finding his with a force that stole his breath. It was not gentle. It was fierce, hungry, the kiss of someone who knew they had only moments left and meant to live all of them in that one breath.
Her magic bled into him with the press of her lips, with the clutch of her hands at his shoulders. It came in waves, each one stronger than the last, as if her grief and fear and love had fused into something unstoppable. Power roared through her, pouring into him like a river in flood, filling every hollow, lighting every nerve. His skin hummed with it, the air around them shivering as though the world itself strained to contain what she was giving him.
And still she kissed him—not only to strengthen him, but to anchor herself, to memorize the shape of his mouth, the feel of him alive and here before the world tried to take him from her.
When she finally tore herself back, her breath was ragged, and he was alight with her power—sharper, stronger, a force barely contained within his skin. Nothing could possibly stop him like this, not even the Trove, not while her magic burned through his veins, amplifying his own.
The trouble was the winnowing. To reach Koschei’s lake, he’d have to cross the damn ocean, and the distance alone would eat at least half his strength before the fight had even begun.
Then came a voice from the doorway. Low, measured, but urgent all the same. “I hate to interrupt, but even if I winnow court to court,” Lucien said, “I’ll collapse before I reach them all.”
Tamlin didn’t turn. His arms still wrapped around her, his forehead pressed to hers “Amawyn will replenish you between courts.”
She drew back, just enough to see his face. Her grief hadn’t faded—but something colder had settled over it now. Strategy. Fear. Duty.
“You should take me with you. I’ll give you your strength back after you winnow to the Lake,” she said quietly, “I don’t want you there alone when we don’t even know what he’s about to unleash.”
“I’m asking you to help me stop it.” His voice steadied. Hardened. “If I had time to be selfish, I’d keep you here, where it’s safe. But I can’t. And I’d rather die trying than live to see him crowned King of Prythian.”
Amawyn stepped closer again, this time not to seek comfort—but to anchor herself.
Her fingers found his chest, just above the heartbeat she’d only moments ago buried herself against.
“If we’re too late,” she said, “I might be the only one who can seal Koschei back into the lake. I sealed the Dullahan in Autumn—”
“You also freed it,” Tamlin said. She flinched at the words—but didn’t retreat. “Not that I’d ever blame you for that, but this might be a trap, Amawyn. He could be luring us, and especially you to force your hand. Rhysand could crawl into your mind and use you to free Koschei.”
“I’ve stopped him before.”
“You surprised him before.” Tamlin countered. “He won’t be caught off guard again.”
There was no fury in his voice. Just fear and grief and love.
Then he reached for her again and drew her back into him, his hand splayed between her shoulder blades like he was trying to hold her together.
Her face pressed to his neck and her chest to his. And beneath it—his heart. Like he had already made peace with what had to be done.
“I can’t risk you,” he whispered. “And I need you to do this. I need you to get them there.”
Amawyn swallowed hard. The words lodged in her throat, bitter as ash… But she nodded.
Winnowing was no great mystery, not among the High Fae. A trick of distance, of willing the body where the mind dared to tread. Most learned it young, just after their first brush with magic and muscle. But like all things, the cost grew with ambition. The farther one reached, the more magic it ate—and the longer it took for one’s bones to stop humming afterward.
To winnow from Prythian to the Continent? Not impossible. But rare. And mad. And to the lake?
The lake was deeper inland, set like a rot-black gem in the middle of an empty forest. Ancient magic thickened the air there—dark, slow, watching. Even the stars seemed to blink slower above it.
Only a High Lord might make the journey without falling apart, his essence scattered like ash. Tamlin had done it but not by strength alone. She had helped him. His mate. His beautiful, brilliant, perfect mate. The one who deserved warmth and a garden and a quiet hand to hold at twilight—not this. Not any of this. And yet she suffered. Because Rhysand couldn’t get his court in order. Because he had, once again, become desperate enough to do things he shouldn’t do, and now the reckoning fell to Tamlin.
He had once called the male brother. Had once bled beside him in skirmishes along the northern ridge, shared wine in the hush after battle, even learned from him how to pivot faster in a fight. Rhysand had laughed then, without the cruelty he wore now like perfume. Was any of it real?
Regardless, that male was dead. And the one who remained Tamlin would kill, if only to stop the spiral of destruction trailing behind him.
It should not have come to this.
Tamlin stood alone on the bank of a god’s prison, the night pressed heavy with damp and silence. No crickets, no wind, no sound beyond his own heartbeat. The trees curled inward as if they too feared to draw breath. Rhysand was not there.
Had they been wrong to trust Elain?
He was about to step forward when he saw the figure.
A woman, slight and still as stone, stood at the edge of the lake. Her hair caught the moonlight, a pale banner in the dark. Feyre.
Of course.
“What are you doing here, Feyre?” Tamlin asked, voice low, each word a measured step as he advanced. “Did he send you to do his dirty work?”
She shook her head, but didn’t meet his eyes.
“Where is Rhysand?” he pressed.
“Not here,” she said. Still looking away. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Why?” Tamlin looked around the lake again, at the still water, the dead air, the oppressive silence. “Where is Rhysand, Feyre?”
“Please, Tamlin—” Her voice cracked, fragile as frost.
“Where is Rhysand, Feyre?” he asked again, firmer now, fury threading through the question.
“If you kill him…” she whispered, eyes finally lifting to his. “I will die.” He blinked, but had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. Something like shame flickered across her face. “We made a bargain to leave the world together.”
“You tied your life to his?” Tamlin asked, disbelief and disgust mixing in his throat. “ Feyre. ”
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
“Where is he?” Tamlin said again, and when she said nothing, he crossed the final steps between them and seized her by the arms. “ Where is he?! ”
“At the Spring Court,” she gasped.
Tamlin staggered back as if struck. “He can’t get past my wards.”
“He can,” Feyre said, almost inaudibly. “With the Harp.”
The words sank like lead. Tamlin’s face twisted with fury. Of course. Of course the bastard would use the Trove.
Tamlin seethed. “He knew I’d come here. He wanted me here.”
“I tried to stop him,” Feyre said, at last looking at him fully. “He wouldn’t listen.”
“Why?” Tamlin demanded. “Why go back? What does he want in Spring?”
She looked away again. “The Illyrian females.”
Tamlin froze. Cold bloomed down his spine.
“He wants to take them,” she whispered. “To drag them back. Not because he cares. Because if he returns them, if he lets the males think you stole them… they’ll fight for him. They’ll follow him to war against Keir and his Darkbringers. Against anyone .”
Tamlin stared at her, his mouth a hard line. “He’s going to fight his war… On the backs of the same females he let suffer.”
Feyre didn’t deny it.
“He’s stealing people,” Tamlin growled, “from a court that gave them refuge.”
She shut her eyes. “I told him it was wrong. I told him they were safe there. He doesn’t care. He’s desperate. He thinks if he can get them back, everything else will fall into place.”
Tamlin’s hands curled into fists.
“It won’t be enough to kill him,” he said, his tone deadly. “I hope you survive him, but you dying will not stop me.” He started to walk away, then paused just long enough to add, “You used to know this about me — against chains, against cruelty, I will fight to my last breath. Doesn’t matter whose freedom it is I’m defending.” His eyes found hers, cold and unyielding. “That hasn’t changed.”
“Take me with you,” Feyre said suddenly, the words breaking through the damp, heavy air.
Tamlin didn’t slow. “No.”
Her brow knit. “Tamlin—”
“You made your choice,” he said, not looking back. “Live with it.”
The shadows of the lake shifted behind her, the water lapping at the shore like a thing breathing. “Please,” she said, and there was a crack in it now—fear.
He glanced over his shoulder once, his eyes colder than the steel at his side. And then he was gone, vanishing into the night, leaving her with the still, black water.
He ran.
The shift took him mid-stride, bones reshaping, muscle swelling into the massive form of the beast. Claws tore the earth, carrying him faster, harder, toward the edge of the Continent. The air burned his lungs raw, but he did not slow.
He wasn’t sure he had enough power left to winnow—especially not from this far inland. Koschei’s lake lay well behind him now, deep in the belly of the land, and each stride only sharpened the hollow ache in his core where magic had burned itself thin.
He reached through the bond, desperate for her, but she was so far it felt like grasping a thread stretched taut over miles. Faint. Frayed. Alive—he knew that, knew it in the marrow of him—but too distant for the rush of emotion he wanted to send her, a hint or something of what was happening. His mind was also having a hard time concentrating. Feyre. How could she tie her life to his, what an idiotic thing to do. And this, this stupid trap they fell for.
His thoughts snagged on Feyre. On the sheer idiocy of tying her life to Rhysand’s. On the trap she had led him into—this stupid, clumsy snare. And yet… the whispers came back to him, the ones he had heard in taverns and war-camps and quiet council halls. That Rhysand had wanted to be High King long before Amarantha had cursed them. That it had always been his hunger. Easy enough to believe he’d grown desperate enough to try something like this.
The shoreline broke open before him at last, the lake spilling into the vast sweep of ocean. He could keep running south along the coast, find a point closer to Spring, but the distance would eat what little time he had left.
Or he could winnow to the Winter Court. That path was shorter, and he might just have the strength for it—but it would drain him. He’d have nothing left to winnow to Spring afterward. He could call in Kallias’s aid; the High Lord would grant it, given the current state of his relationship with the Night Court… But reaching him would still take precious minutes, and those minutes might cost more than he could afford.
If he could make it to the Spring Court now—before Amawyn and Lucien left for the Summer Court—he might still reach her in time. There was no other choice.
He reached down—down into the last burning scraps of power rattling in his bones, into the raw, searing gift Amawyn had poured into him with that kiss—and winnowed.
The world ripped apart.
The pull of the ocean yawned wide beneath him, the continent stretching away into nothing, and for a heartbeat he thought he’d scattered himself to the wind. Then the magic snapped him back together and hurled him forward—too far, too fast.
He hit water.
Freezing salt slammed into his mouth and nose, choking him as the current spun him under. His boots struck sand somewhere deep, and he clawed his way up, breaking the surface with a ragged gasp. Every stroke toward shore was a battle, the weight of his drenched clothes dragging him down, the burn of magic-debt gnawing at his muscles.
He crawled onto the sand, coughing seawater, the tide lapping at his heels like it meant to pull him back.
The sky reeled above him. His chest heaved, each breath a scrape of glass. The last flicker of magic sputtered out, leaving him hollow, shivering.
He managed one more breath, the faint tug of the bond—Amawyn, somewhere far inland—tugging like a promise he might not be able to keep.
Then the dark took him.
Amawyn had just finished giving Lucien enough power to winnow the both of them to the summer court when she felt the fading tug of Tamlin’s bond, calling out to her from the shore.
“He’s back” she told lucien urgently. “Take me to the easter shore, now. Oh gods, he’s so weak. He winnowed back.”
Lucien was startled, but grabbed her arm and pulled them to the eastern shore quickly. They immediately began looking for him frantically, finding it difficult to rely on the bond when he was so drained.
“Tamlin!” Lucien yelled, searching for him.
“There’s no point. He’s unconscious” Amawyn said, running through the shore. “You head south on the shore, I will go north”
“There’s zero chance I am leaving you alone if Tamlin winnowed immediately back from the continent” Lucien argued.
“Then we’ll both go north” she said “it would have made for the smallest distance”.
They hadn’t gone far when she saw him—crumpled where the tide met the sand, the waves licking at his legs as if to drag him back.
“There!”
Amawyn dropped to her knees so hard the shells bit into her skin. Her hands went to his face, his neck—cold. Too cold. Seawater clung to him, his lips pale, his breathing shallow and fragile.
“Why did you come back so fast?” she demanded, her voice breaking. “What happened? Why didn’t you wait—”
Nothing. No flicker in his eyes, no twitch in his jaw. Just that faint, uneven breath.
She pressed her palm to his chest, shoving magic into him, trying to warm him from the inside out, but it wasn’t enough. Her power was meeting an emptiness too vast to fill on her own. “Stay with me, Tamlin. You hear me? Stay.” She rubbed his skin, as if the friction of her hands would help more than just giving him her power would.
“Lucien—can you winnow us to the silver spring by the clearing? The one a few miles from the manor?”
“Yes, but why—”
“Just do it,” she snapped, not looking up from Tamlin’s face. She took a breath to try and calm her nerves. “I can’t do this fast enough. I don’t know if I have enough on my own.”
Lucien didn’t argue. His hand gripped her arm, the other locking around Tamlin’s shoulder, and in the blink of an eye they were beside the silver spring, moonlight rippling across its still surface.
“Help me get him in the water,” Amawyn said, already pulling at him. He was dead weight, his body limp, far too still.
Lucien took him easily, slinging him over his shoulder and wading into the pool. Amawyn followed, the cold searing her legs.
“Hold him up,” she told Lucien. He obeyed without a word, his gaze already locked on her as she knelt in the waist-deep water.
She plunged her hands beneath the surface, reaching down, down—past the chill of the water, past the stones lining the bottom, to the heartbeat of the Spring itself.
And Spring answered.
Light bloomed around her fingers, climbing her arms in threads of molten gold. It raced over her body, catching in her hair, her skin, her eyes—until she glowed like something half-divine. The water around them shimmered and swirled, the silver of the pool turning to liquid gold that lapped at Tamlin’s bare skin.
Amawyn breathed deep as the magic poured into her, hotter and purer than anything she had ever drawn before. Lucien’s jaw tightened, his eyes widening—he’d seen her replenish others, but never this. No one had. She wasn’t just giving—she was taking . Drinking deep from the Court’s heart as though it belonged to her, as though she had always been its chosen vessel.
And then she pushed it into Tamlin with ruthless urgency, the air around them humming with raw power.
“Come on,” she whispered to him, her voice breaking. “Don’t you dare leave me, Tamlin. Not you. Not now.”
The glow grew brighter, the water churning as if the Spring itself refused to let him go.
Lucien held Tamlin’s weight in the water, but his eyes were fixed on her. In that moment, he understood why some would call her a blessing. Why others would call her dangerous. And why, if word of this ever left the Spring Court, Prythian would never look at Amawyn the same way again.
“How are you doing this?” Lucien asked, as if the words might make sense of what he was seeing.
Amawyn didn’t answer.
Lucien’s throat tightened. It was as if the Spring Court itself had claimed her—made her its living conduit to pour magic into its High Lord. “Amawyn?” he called again, sharper this time.
No response.
The magic sank into her, through her, and into him. Her eyes glowed now, just as they had that night after Calanmai—when she had breathed life back into the entire court. But this was fiercer, wilder. Her breath came in shallow, rapid gasps, golden tears spilling down her cheeks, each one catching the light like molten glass.
It was burning her. He could see it.
Tamlin’s color was already returning, strength flooding back into his limbs, and then—with a jolt—he woke.
The first thing he saw was her: hands splayed over his chest, her body rigid, her face contorted—not merely from strain, but from pain. Her brow drawn tight, her jaw locked, teeth gritted against a scream she couldn’t give voice to. The glow pouring from her eyes was almost blinding now, her whole body trembling with the force of what she was channeling.
“Amawyn,” he said, the magic still surging into him in relentless waves. “Amawyn, that’s enough.”
But she didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop.
He knew this—had seen it once before, the night her powers had first awoken. Then, without the bond, dragging her back from it had been like wrestling with the roots of the earth itself. But now… now he had a direct line to her.
He reached into the bond and pulled .
It wasn’t gentle. It was the raw, ripping pull of a drowning fae hauling another to the surface. The bond resisted him—no, she resisted him, or maybe it was the Spring itself, unwilling to let go of the magic coursing through her. He shoved deeper, through the blinding gold and the roar of power, until he found her—buried beneath it all.
She was power and pain and heat.
Come back to me, he ordered, his voice a growl in her mind. Not a plea. A command— a High Lord’s command —driving the magic of Spring back from her, forcing it to release its hold.
Her body jerked, her grip on him faltering. The glow around her stuttered, then dimmed as he tore her hands from his chest. The magic broke away in a shuddering wave that rippled through the water, leaving her sagging forward into him.
She collapsed against his chest, trembling, gasping for breath as the last of the gold bled from her eyes.
Tamlin wrapped her in his arms, holding her tight, his voice low and rough in her ear. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
“I think she’s the one who’s got you,” Lucien mumbled, though his voice lacked its usual bite. His gaze flicked from Amawyn to the still-glowing ripples of the spring, his expression unreadable. But Tamlin saw it—the awe, yes, but also the unease.
Lucien had watched her draw directly from the Court’s heart and force it into its High Lord, as if it had always been hers to command. And Tamlin knew, without a doubt, that Lucien was wondering the same thing others might if they ever saw it.
Whether Amawyn was the Spring’s greatest blessing… or its most dangerous weapon.