Hello, I'm Kariman Dohan. I Am Writing This Letter To You Feeling A State Of Sadness And Grief, After

Hello, I'm Kariman Dohan. I am writing this letter to you feeling a state of sadness and grief, after the war on Gaza completely destroyed our lives. My husband works as a fisherman, but the fishing boat, which was our only source of income, was badly damaged and no longer usable😭😭😭. My young son, Hamoud, suffers from malnutrition due to the lack of food and the polluted water we drink. My husband, Ayman Olwan, and I are trying with all our might to survive, but the situation has become too much for us. We are desperate to escape to a safe place where we can start over, but we don't have enough money to do so.💔😔🥺 Therefore, I ask you for your generosity and kindness to help us so that we can overcome this crisis. Please consider our situation and help as much as you can by donating and sharing the link.💔🍉🥹😭😭😭😭

My campaign was vetted by 90ghost🫂

https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-kareman-dohans-family-from-despair

!!!!!

"We hope this email finds you well" babe, the only emails I'm excited to get is the ones from Archive of Our Own

“Why is snoop dogg at the Olympics-“

WRONG QUESTION!

WHY ISNT MARTHA STEWART THERE WITH HIM?

do you ever laugh with your friends and think oh this is the point. this is the point of everything

You Painted Me Golden

Did you know that while your mate was warming Amarantha’s bed, most of our people were locked beneath that mountain?

Did you know that while he had his head between her legs, most of us were fighting to keep our families from becoming the nightly entertainment?

SUMMARY: Eris Vanserra never wanted a mate, never wanted a wife. When a chance meeting in Day Court alters the course of his life, Eris will be forced to acknowledge both. But a new threat is looming, and an old foe has come back to Prythian.

And it will take more than luck for Eris Vanserra to keep himself and his family safe when he's dragged beneath the sacred mountain

Read on AO3

Fifty years.

Fifty fucking years trapped under that once sacred mountain, hoping and wishing and praying Tamlin would be able to break the curse. All he had to do was convince one stupid, sniffling human to love him. A task any one of them could have done with both hands tied behind their backs. Could he not be charming? Clever? 

Had he tried at all? 

Amarantha swanned through the court that evening, draped in glittering black jewels that sparkled beneath the twinkling fae lights overhead. Tamlin stood impossibly still, cheek a little bruised though fading with each blink of the eye. His clothes were worn, his hair limp. Standing before the other six courts, Tamlin was a defeated male.

He’d been their only hope. 

Eris wanted to kill him. 

He wasn’t the only one. Standing beside him, Beron Vanserra radiated hatred, though anyone looking at his face might see nothing but faint amusement. They’d played their parts—all six High Lords had put their own masks on, had danced and drank and bowed to Amarantha’s whims, all under the hopes Tamlin would succeed. 

“Did you try?” Amarantha asked, voicing the question echoing through the room. Even Rhysand looked as though he were in a dark mood, those typically taunting eyes of his more storm cloud than anything. Had he, too, banked on escaping? Had he been counting the minutes, too? Their eyes met and Eris, pissed and wanting to hurt the High Lord where it hurted, dropped his mental defenses for only a moment.

Where is Morrigan, Rhys?

Rhys’ eyes widened, his body going taut like a bowstring. Eris slammed them back up just as he felt the kernel of Rhys’s power batter against his mind with brutal force. Eris turned his eyes back to Amarantha, watching those long, blood red nails of her scrape beneath Tamlins chin.

“This has been such a little game between us,” she crooned, that voice dripping like syrup. 

Was it wrong to be relieved Tamlin, at least, would take her attention off the rest of them. How long before she just killed them? Eris felt desperation claw at his chest. They’d put off all talks of escape, but now…

What was left? Better to die on their feet than slaughtered like animals. Right? 

Eris didn’t dare look to his left where his mate stood, her face ashen with fear. He couldn’t protect her anymore. If Amarantha decided to make her dance until she dropped dead, he’d simply have to clap and laugh with the rest of them. He wanted to pull her against him, bury his face in her hair, and promise he had some grand plan to get them out.

Beron would kill him if he tried. 

Maybe it was worth it. He knew if he brought the idea to Arina she’d say yes—she’d tell him to leave his family behind and escape with her like so many others had done when Amarantha first arrived on their shores. He had once thought them all cowards, too afraid to fight.

Now he thought they’d been smart—they’d seen the writing on the wall. 

“It’s done,” Tamlin said, eyes pinned on Lucien’s brother. The mask was still over his face, a gold eye where his russet one had once been. Eris hadn’t seen him in fifty years, either. He didn’t need the whispered order from his father to know they weren’t to speak with Lucien…and still his eyes strayed to Helion against his will. The newly crowned High Lord simply looked bored, goblet hanging from two fingers with lazy arrogance. Oh, how he’d taken to the power. And now the only heir to his throne stood twenty feet away, blissfully unaware of his indiscretion given form. 

His mother, though, looked as if it was taking everything in her to keep from going to her youngest son. Eris simply couldn’t hate her for it—not then, anyway. Maybe he would later when the rest of his emotions settled and there was room to feel resentment, too. She’d always put Lucien first, just like she’d always risk everything for Helion. She simply could not help herself, even when it killed her. 

Eris didn’t know if he’d ever loved anyone as much as his mother loved Lucien and Helion. It was well trodden territory to wonder why she didn’t love him that way—why he was the acceptable collateral damage. Was it his face? Did he look too much like Beron, which made him too hard to look at? Eris had once examined his features in a mirror and had found too much of his father staring back. 

Beside him, Arina bumped into him with her shoulder, reading his mind. She looked up through dark lashes, reminding him that at least he had her. He thought he would have shattered into a thousand pieces had she not been with him, that his mask would have fallen away years before leaving nothing but a hollow husk in its wake. 

The throne room melted away, leaving nothing but soft, swaying grass and falling leaves in their wake. He could almost pretend they were home again, could see it so clearly every time he looked at her. She blinked and the onyx stone returned, forcing Eris to stand in his reality.

Tamlin had failed.

They were all doomed.

It’s done. 

They didn’t have to stand in watch—they did because there was nothing else left to do. Every amusement had been done a million times before. Some filtered to their usual places, dropping into chairs to drink themselves into oblivion, even though Amarantha had ordered they celebrate this night. She’d be planning a wedding by the end of the month and Eris wanted to claw his eyes out.

What was her endgame goal? Surely it couldn’t be this. The once terrible, feared general reduced to little more than a babysitter? There had to be more than just this. Eris didn’t believe for a second she wasn’t just as bored as they were. She seemed like she was having fun, circling Tamlin like a vulture over a corpse. Tamlin didn’t put up a fight at all, eyes glassy as though he’d retreated somewhere private in his mind. He was a coward who had likely quit well before that moment, and Eris hated him for it.

He turned, making his way back to the table his family sat at, grateful Arina immediately turned to come with him. She caught his pinky, letting him half drag her to that wide chair before yanking her into his lap. It was supposed to look possessive, though over the years they’d learned it was simply the easiest way to talk without anyone catching on.

“I can’t believe it’s over,” she murmured, turning her head as though she might kiss him. She wouldn’t—not in here. 

“He was never meant to be a High Lord and it shows,” Eris hissed in response. That was a rumor he’d heard from his father when Lucien had joined Tamlins court. Eris had once dismissed it at the time, but now he was inclined to agree with Beron.

“What now?” she asked him, betraying her fear for only a moment. It seemed strange to remember she’d once been engaged to Helion—that had they never met, she’d be across that wide room with Helion himself, a stranger to Eris. Now she seemed Autumn born, cunning and clever and every inch a princess of his court. It was unusual to see her mask slip—perhaps she did it purposefully to let him see how afraid she was.

Eris reached for her fingers, brushing a kiss along her knuckles. “We bide our time and wait. For now.”

Amarantha had what she wanted—Eris had no doubt she’d get Tamlin into her bed, too. Perhaps there, Tamlin would wield the little influence he had to free them all. Already, Amarantha was making him pretty promises in front of them all. Rhysand still watched from the shadows, eyes narrowed as he took it all in. If Eris didn’t hate him, too, he might have asked what the High Lord of Night made of it all.

Perhaps he was simply jealous he’d been replaced. 

“For how long?”

“Not here.”

Arina pressed her lips together before reclining back, fingers tapping alongside the thrumming beat of the music. He couldn’t join in, couldn’t make himself seem as easy going and unbothered as she did. She’d join the revelry, dancing with his brothers and drinking herself silly, cheeks flushed and eyes bright as she did so.

And Eris retreated into himself, moody and angry with no outlet to release any of it. He spent too many nights taking it out on her body, fucking her into sleepless oblivion in an attempt to relieve himself of his feelings. It worked in the short-term—Eris always started his day too exhausted to be anything but quiet, but eventually it all came roaring back like burning flame. Sometimes he felt like a forest fire and nothing could put him out.

He was going to destroy them both someday.

Arina’s fingers moved from the arm of the chair to his thigh, just high enough to recapture his interest. Eris had long stopped wondering if it would always be like this—if he’d always be so obsessed, if he’d always want her. The answer was an unequivocal yes. What he felt bordered on obsession, and sometimes he’d catch himself staring at her the way he’d often seen his own father watch his mother.

The impulse was there, though—to lock her up where no one could see her, to keep her all to himself. He told himself it was simply their circumstances that made him feel that way, but deep down, Eris wasn’t so sure. He could see himself confining her to his bedchamber once they returned, guarding her jealously the way a dragon might guard treasure. 

He didn’t want other males to look at her.

Amarantha made a whole show of crowning Tamlin in spiky onyx adorned in blood red rubies before seating him beside her, declaring him her consort. Eris hoped that night, when Amarantha dragged him to her bed, that he staked her through the heart. Judging by the stone with which Tamlin imitated, though, Eris doubted he’d try.

All he’d ever had to do was try.

It was a miserable evening. No one could pretend amusement and it was lucky Amarantha was too distracted trying to tempt Tamlin into her bed with all kinds of lurid promises. Arina listened, ears sharp, as Eris tried to contain his fury. Power, position, riches— things that could save them all if Tamlin would merely accept.

He swore, were it him in Tamlin’s shoes, he’d have done it. Gritted his teeth and swallowed his revulsion, but he would have. For even a fraction more of his magic back? Eris would have gotten on his knees and done whatever she asked.

Tamlin said nothing at all.

Eris nearly dragged Arina back to their designated space, not bothering to look at his younger brother at all. Not that Lucien looked at him, either. He’d be forever complicit in Jesminda’s death as far as Lucien was concerned. Nevermind that he owed his life to Eris—it had been Eris who’d warned Tamlin, after all. Lucien didn’t know and he never would. It had bothered Eris, once upon a time, when Lucien turned up his nose the first time they’d crossed paths. I did everything for you!

Now he felt nothing at all. If Eris allowed himself to feel, the dam would crack and water would come flooding in. He left Arina to change for bed, pretending he wanted to talk to his father and brothers. 

Eris didn’t— he just wanted her to be asleep by the time he came in. 

Eris dropped to a dust coated sofa gracelessly, watching as Beron paced the room. “Nothing changes,” Beron said, face purple with rage. “We will continue on as we’ve been.” No one dared to say a word. The air was so tense, Beron so irate that it was simply a game of pick-up-sticks to decide which of them would be on the receiving end of his wrath.

One of them would sacrifice themselves to spare their mother. Glancing toward his brothers, their faces dripping with dread, he decided it might as well be him.

Why not? 

“For how long?” Eris heard himself ask, voice dripping with disdain. “Shall we die down here?”

Beron spun, eyes locking on his eldest son. Heat crawled up Eris’s throat, choking the words from his lungs. He’d been on the receiving end of this punishment before and though it wasn’t as brutal as it would have been had Beron been at the height of his power, it was still enough to burn the tender flesh of his mouth and throat.

Against his will, he reached for his neck, coughing violently as he attempted to suck in a breath. “I don’t remember asking you, boy,” Beron hissed, pushing that flame deeper into Eris’s gut until he felt the blood bubble in his veins. He would have preferred a beating—that would have been better than this slow, miserable death.

Beron wouldn’t kill him, though. The heat extinguished, leaving Eris with the taste of blood dripping into his mouth and a sweat soaked body prone on the cold, stone floor. Through the roaring in his ears, he could hear his father continue speaking, ignoring Eris laying there trembling at his feet. 

At some point the voices stopped and Eris slipped out of consciousness, back to the forest he’d grown up in. The air was cool and sweet—like vanilla. He could feel the air caress his face before rain droplets penetrated the heavy, multi-colored canopy overhead.

“Eris,” the trees chanted, their voices a soft, sweet lullaby. “Come back to me, Eris.”

Eris’s body healed that evening, just like it always did. He woke in a tub of cool water, Arina asleep on the floor beside him, hair floating beside him.

Come back to me, Eris. 

He couldn’t even wish he was dead. Not when she was still alive. Not when he knew she wouldn’t follow him. Eris had no capacity for hope anymore.

Arina carried it all in his stead.

ARINA:

There was a human standing in the throne room. Arina was certain she was hallucinating from all the wine she’d been drinking lately. It was the only way to cope with their circumstances. Eris was merely a shell of himself, going through the motions without any interest in being alive. She didn’t know what he clung to anymore—it certainly wasn’t her. She’d tried, those first few days. Arina made her jokes, she stripped him naked, she danced, she laughed and Eris merely watched. He did whatever she wanted, but his soul was locked away somewhere she couldn’t reach.

Whatever had happened between him and Beron was a mystery to her, even now.

But the human—she was real. Skinny, with eyes a tad too big for her face and sharp cheekbones. Her golden brown hair was braided down her back and she’d equipped herself with a bow and a dagger, both of which would be taken from her before she was killed.

Eris leaned forward in his chair, eyes sharpening. 

“I’ve come to claim the one I love,” the human woman announced, eyes looking at Tamlin.

The room sucked in a collective breath. For days, Amarantha had tortured a human woman now pinned up on the  throne room wall, forcing them all to watch the girl swear she’d never seen Tamlin while Rhysand swore that was the human he’d seen in the manor. 

Arina had thought him a gutless coward for it, but now…had he been protecting someone? Even Amarantha seemed taken aback, stunned that this secret had been kept from her. Arina, already standing, looked around the room at the potential players on the new chessboard laid before them. Rhysand stood like a black knight, hands jammed in his pockets and an expression a little too innocent to be real. 

On the other end, Tamlin—the golden king, clenched his jaw and declared he’d never seen that woman in his life, a lie if Arina had ever heard it. Amarantha sat as queen on the same side Rhysand was on, though she seemed more undefended than she’d ever been. She’d been caught unawares and that gave the human the upperhand.

All seven High Lords were suddenly put back into play and they knew it. Arina saw Beron Vanserra inching closer to the front of the gathered crowd, his eyes cunning and clear. Helion, at the far back, clasped his hands behind his back with a look of contemplation she’d seen many times before. Thesan and Tarquin, both separated, watched impassively though their courtiers had begun to form a ring around them.

Kallias, too, returned to his table, every inch the bored nobleman save for the icy in his pale blue eyes. The wheels were turning, now. Everything hinged on what Amarantha decided to do next. If she was smart, she’d kill the woman immediately and use it as leverage over the endlessly silent Tamlin. 

But Amarantha had never once revealed herself to be smart. Only cruel. And as the woman spoke, it became clear to Arina that Amarantha saw this as a moment to finally teach Tamlin a lesson. 

Arina hadn’t prayed since Eris had arrived in her life. Everything seemed so unfair, so stacked against her that there was no point in asking the Mother to intervene. But right then, Arina begged.

Please spare this human. 

She wasn’t the only one who did so. Across the room, she swore she felt a hundred identical prayers whisper upward to the heavens. If Amarantha spared her, they had a fighting chance, something they could rally around. She was nothing, truly—so fragile it was almost laughable, her heart fluttering up against her pale, translucent skin.

But she was hope. 

Arina was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t notice Eris come to stand beside her until the smell of him slammed into her. Looking up at her husband, her mate, she saw something like life crawl back into those amber eyes of his. His mind was turning itself over with the possibilities of what might happen next.

Fifty years of nothing…and now this. 

She reached between them for his pinky, afraid if she took his hand he’d withdraw again. Eris didn’t react at all, eyes pinned on that human as Amarantha proposed her deal. It was a foolish bargain she almost certainly couldn’t win—solve the riddle, or play in three trials in three months, all of Amarantha’s choosing.

The alternative, of course, was death.

If she won—and she almost certainly wouldn’t—was freedom for the Spring Court. They only needed to free one High Lord to free them all. Whatever magic Amarantha commanded must be weak, if she had any at all. In the fifty years they’d been locked beneath that mountain, Arina had never seen a whispering of it. 

Solve the riddle and free Tamlin right then and there—no strings attached.

Compete in the trials and free them after. There was a trick they were all familiar with, one that no one would abide by should the human win. The mood in the room had shifted, was sharper, crueler— excited. Everyone wanted to exact their pound of flesh for the horrors inflicted upon them and the people they loved. 

The human couldn’t guess the answer to the riddle, and when the room laughed, there was no amusement behind it. No genuine mirth. They laughed because Amarantha demanded it—laughed because she was so stupid, so convinced of her own invincibility, she couldn’t tell every single person in that room had just silently vowed to do everything within their power to see that human survive no matter the costs. 

She looked tired. Defeated. Whatever she’d seen in Tamlin, he was not the same male under the mountain and she was too focused on trying to get him to admit he knew her rather than focus on what was important. She hadn’t come to save any of them but Tamlin and hadn’t asked to be their unwitting savior.

But as Amarantha had the attor beat the girl into unconscious sleep, she was their savior. Something to rally around. She was dragged away, leaving Amarantha to laugh.

“Oh, Tamlin,” she crooned, leaning over the arm of her onyx throne so her breasts spilled from her dress. “What were you doing all those years? Surely not… that slip of a thing?”

Tamlin said nothing. 

Eris reached between his body and Arina’s, lacing their fingers together before bringing her hand to his lips.

“The answer was love,” he whispered, brushing a kiss against her knuckles. Arina’s body ignited with heat better suppressed before everyone around them was gagging. 

“No one is to tell the human the answers,” Amarantha ordered, using the stolen power of the High Lord to bind them all.  “If you try, I promise you will not like what happens.”

So they couldn’t tell her the answer. They weren’t forbidden from helping her. Everyone in the room had caught this error except Amarantha, who wore her anxiety all over her expression. So Tamlin had managed to convince a human to fall in love with him and his silence had a purpose. She’d thought him easily broken, convinced to take her as a lover with the right combination of words.

But if his heart belonged to another, well…

Arina turned to Eris, heart thudding. Are you awake again? She didn’t dare ask. 

“Father will say we need to wait this out,” he whispered, guessing her thoughts before she was able to voice them. “But I’m tired of waiting.”

“What would you have me do?” Arina breathed in response, though she knew. Eris would want to know what the other courts were planning—none of whom would think to include them. They’d spent five decades play acting that they were enjoying themselves. And Beron would sell his co-conspirators out to save himself. Everyone knew that. 

“You know.”

Arina hadn’t talked in Helion in years . She didn’t dare—not with Beron watching them all so closely, and with the Lady of Autumn still sneaking around to see him. Beron wouldn’t kill his wife, but he would kill Eris’s. If she had to choose, it was an easy one—she’d always choose Eris. Even if it meant lying to an old friend. 

Arina pressed a swift kiss to his cheek, the wheels turning in her mind. She’d need to be careful—Helion wasn’t stupid. He’d know what she wanted, just as he’d know Eris had sent her. Arina needed to lean into his assumptions and instead convince him that he could trust the pair of them.

Eris glanced at her again, something dark crowding his gaze. She didn’t ask, instead making her way toward the long table laden with food. Every time she saw the spread, she knew it was their people who’d toiled to make it. She’d heard rumors of cells crammed to the brim with the lower fae, though she’d never seen it. 

But some, surely, were still outside Prythian made to work. Her people. However trapped she was had nothing on what was going on with them. They hadn’t tried hard enough to free anyone. She was certain it wasn’t just her court wallowing in self-pity. Least of all, the High Lord of Night. As Arina approached, she saw him down his goblet of wine quickly, red forming at the corners of his mouth as he struggled to get all the liquid down quickly. 

He’d poured another before she reached him.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you felt guilty,” she hissed.

“Good think you know better,” he replied, rounding on her so quickly that drops of wine splattered against his inky jacket. She might have believed him had she not been married to a rather clever liar. She knew that haunted fog creeping into his eyes. 

“She should have killed the human,” Arina heard herself say as she poured her wine, not bothering to look at Rhys at all. She didn’t need to. His black mood spilled out of him like shadow, seeping from the cracks he couldn’t keep patched. “Maybe Amarantha will pin her body up on the wall, too.”

There was nothing to gain by provoking Rhysand besides her own death. And when she dared to look at him, she saw he desperately wanted to end her life. 

“I didn’t realize you’d become so blood thirsty.”

Arina shrugged. “What’s the point of giving her hope when we all know how this ends.”

Rhysand took a step toward her. From the corner of her eye, Arina saw Eris pivot, watching the pair of them without moving. 

I don’t need your help, she thought, tugging gently on their shared bond. 

“And how does it end?” Rhysand murmured, daring her to say another word. It was stupid to provoke him—if he killed her, Amarantha was likely to reward him. Eris couldn’t stop him even if he could get close enough to put himself between the pair of them.

“How does it end, lordling?” she heard herself whisper. “You knew that wasn’t the same human from Spring.”

All at once his features shifted, rearranging themselves into boredom. “They all look the same to me.”

He tried to turn, but she grabbed his arm, stopping him. Rhysand looked down, a cruel smile curling over his face. “I can appreciate the interest, lady, but I’m not interested. As fun as it might be to show you how a real male—”

“Oh, gods,” she interrupted, pulling her hand away from him. “We’re even Rhysand. You know something about me, and I know something about you.”

“You know nothing—”

Arina interrupted him once again. “I know you were supposed to be in Spring for Calanmai. And I know you were watching Tamlin. You must have seen her face at least twice.”

“As I said. They all look the same to me.”

Arina glanced at the decaying corpse of the other human. “I don’t think you forget a face like that.”

Arina turned, heart racing in her chest. Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods. She’d turned her brain off to talk to him, but as she walked back to Eris, her good sense came flooding back to her. Rhysand was terrifying and she’d just called him a liar. Worse, she’d betrayed that she didn’t care for Amarantha. He could saunter right up to their High Lady and tell her everything. He didn’t owe Arina anything. No one would believe her if she claimed he, too, was conspiring. 

Rhysand poured himself a third goblet of wine, downing it before he stalked off, a trail of shadow following in his wake. He didn’t look at her as he vanished from the room, off to do whatever males like him did in their free time. Sulk, most likely.

But he wouldn’t rat her out. 

“What was that about?” Eris breathed, pulling her close when she was in grabbing distance. 

“Just doing what you asked,” she replied with what she hoped was a pretty smile. Amarantha may be distracted with her court, but the rest of the people were not. Eris wouldn’t have been the only person watching—wondering. 

“We can’t trust someone like that,” Eris informed her, gripping her elbow to lead her from the Throne Room. His father was already gone, leaving his brothers behind. As they left, Arina caught sight of Tanewen shamelessly flirting with one of the new Spring courtiers wearing a pretty, jeweled bird mask. 

It was probably the only court he hadn’t fucked by then. 

Inside their corner of the mountain, Arina could hear Beron berating a silent Amera from behind closed doors. 

“...hear that you even looked at him, you will not leave this mountain—”

She didn’t want to listen to it. She’d heard it all before. They all knew Beron was never going to kill her, just as they all knew his wife would never love him the way he wanted. Only Beron seemed to think otherwise. 

Eris, too, ignored it. He’d been ignoring his mother a lot lately. How many beatings was he supposed to take on her behalf? At least his brothers sometimes put themselves on the line to spare Eris, too—it was a reciprocal relationship, though Eris tended to take the most. Arina resented her, perhaps unfairly. Her life wasn’t of her own design—but she owed her children something, at least. 

Locked in their bedroom, Arina turned, excited to start plotting with Eris once again. It had been so long that she’d forgotten what it was like to listen to him talk. Eris reached for her, eyes gleaming and oh. 

She didn’t protest when his mouth collided against her own, teeth clashing violently. For months it had been her coming on to him. Her unbuttoning his jacket, her falling to her knees until his eyes closed and he left her fully. She’d wondered, on occasion, where he went. Did he dream of someone else? 

If she didn’t touch him, he didn’t reciprocate and for a moment, it felt good to be held in his arms again. Her relief was beginning to crack, letting her anger and resentment fill in the gaps. Hands flat on his chest, Arina shoved a little just as his teeth sank against her bottom lip.

Blood flooded her mouth as they pulled apart. Eris wiped it from his lower lip with his thumb, eyes wild with warning. He wasn’t taking no for an answer tonight, which only made her want to punish him more. 

“You left me,” she hissed, holding his gaze.

He tried to prowl forward and dismiss her, but Arina darted around the bed. 

Eris watched, head cocked like a predator. He was enjoying her resistance, the utter bastard. 

“Come here,” he growled, but when he tried to step around the bed to snatch her, Arina leapt up on the mattress. There really was no good place for her to go and he knew it. Eris snarled, spinning on his heel to catch her around the waist and drag her to the floor. With her face buried in his shoulder, Arina’s scream was muffled, though loud enough anyone nearby would have heard it. “Why are you mad now?”

“You left me,” she repeated, twisting in his lap to look at him. She wanted to hit him, to scream at him, to vent all her fear and rage out on him until he felt as badly as she did. “I’ve been here the whole time but you…”

Eris exhaled a breath, some of the animal winking out of his expression. “I’m sorry,” he told her, his grip changing. Stretching out his legs, Eris nestled her between his thighs, arms pinning her back to his chest before he rested his chin atop her head. “I don’t want to die down here.”

Arina felt his fear grip her throat as though he’d wrapped his hands around her and squeezed. 

“There’s no way out,” he added, before kissing the top of her head. “And now…”

“Now she’s distracted,” Arina murmured. 

“How much do you know about the first war?” Eris asked, his voice still low—intimate. The erection he sported, once pressed roughly against her spine, was softening as he spoke. Arina was grateful for it. All she wanted was to hear him talk to her again.

She shrugged. “I was a scholar, remember?”

She felt him smile into her hair. “Of course. Then you remember the whole business with her sister? Falling in love with the human Jurian only to be butchered in the end? Amarantha never thought much of humans to start with—they’re only good for slave labor, even now. But when Jurian killed Clythia…it was personal. She’s still wearing his eye, has bound his soul to that ring and she’ll torment him forever for his audacity to think he was ever better than her.”

Eris took a breath. “Now a human has declared her undying love for Tamlin and Amarantha has to be thinking of her sister. She’ll drag this out to prove this woman is no better than Jurian. All we have going for us is for the next month, she’ll be distracted.”

“You don’t think she can win?” Arina asked, thinking of that thin woman with the big, blue eyes. 

Eris snorted. “I’m sure whatever Amarantha is devising for her will obliterate her in moments. 

“So we have a month?”

“Maybe more if she gets help, which I’m sure she will. Everyone will be working on a loophole to tell her the answer to the riddle. We don’t need to the help the human, though. We only need to help ourselves.”

“How?”

“What magic does Amarantha command?” Eris murmured as though he were genuinely answering. “Beyond our own.”

“None.” When he kissed the top of her head, Arina felt like the teacher's best student all over again. Only, back in school, she’d never wanted to undress any of her instructors with her teeth. 

“Exactly,” he breathed, adjusting his hold to pull her tighter. “We won’t be the only ones conspiring to kill her.”

“And your father won—”

“Fuck him,” Eris murmured under his breath, lethally soft. Twisting her neck, Arina looked up at him. 

“Are you…are you sure?”

“Eight hundred years is enough,” he told her, voice so soft it could have been a dream. “And if we’re very, very careful…we can have both.”

“You know that I’m with you, right? Until the very end,” she swore. “Just don’t shut me out. Not again, not ever.”

“I swear,” he promised, swallowing hard. “I swear.”