I Am A Fool, He Muttered. Being Missed Does Not Matter. Being The Last One Standing The Last Man Standing

“I am a fool,” He muttered. “Being missed does not matter. Being the last one standing — the last man standing on the line between right and wrong — that matters.” | Tamlin, a ballad of thorns and roses chapter three | coming soon from positivelyruined

4, 15, 16 for the character ask

Ask the High Lord | Character Portrayal Questions ✨

4. Favorite line

“I love you,” He whispered, and kissed my brow. “Thorns and all.”

15. Worst thing they’ve ever done

During one of the most intense battles between the humans and the faeries, Tamlin found himself protecting a group of both human children from a terrible onslaught of beasts. He managed to winnow eleven of them to safety. By then, the conflict had been over twenty four hours. Even his great wells of strength were fading. The twelfth child waited for him in a nearby church, hiding between the benches. He arrived just in time to place his hand over the little boy’s mouth before he screamed in terror and alerted the nearby fae. Yet, they saw him anyway. Tamlin’s ability to fight was greatly barred by the child’s instinct to run away. As he struck the killing blow to one of his own, the little one ran in front of him and accidentally ended his own life on Tamlin’s blade.

He didn’t scream. He simply looked his guardian in the eye and thanked him for trying.

Tamlin screamed.

He screamed while holding the tiny, bloody body and watching life fade out of it.

He screamed in the night when the images forced their way back into his mind.

He still does — in his heart — every time he walks through his own village and sees a small fae playing in the sun.

The worst thing he’s ever done was not save the last one when even the last of them deserved to be saved.

16. Deepest darkest secret they won’t even admit to themselves

Tamlin blames himself for his mother’s death. His father was a senselessly violent man, who had two sons by the time that his mother conceived him. For nearly all his life, he listened to his father berate her over his existence. Often, his father claimed that she had cheated with another behind his back. These senseless allegations started before he was born. Six months into her pregnancy, his father attacked his own mate and she nearly lost her own life — not to mention her child. After that, she moved as far away from the manor as she could and into a cabin on the shores of Lake Naimore, which bordered the Winter Court.

This was where his mother birthed him and raised him for the first three years of his life. When he was five, the High Lord of Spring demanded a paternity potion — which quickly backfired in his face.

Tamlin was his son.

Faced with a son whom he’d never wanted and a mate whom he’d all but destroyed his connection to — Tamlin and his mother were reluctantly welcomed back to the Spring Court.

She was very protective over him. The abuse often continued.

Tamlin was often the one who bound up his mother’s wounds after she came back from a conversation with his father. Then, he transformed into a barrage of tiny animals to help her smile again.

The stress slowly took its toll on her. She retreated more often into her chambers as he grew up, but his loyalty never wavered.

His mother held one powerful card over his father — a secret, one that the High Lord never wanted discovered.

This kept Tamlin safe from his physical tirades except for once. The one time that he looked his father square in the eyes and said, “One day I will be big enough to hit you back.”

His mother died when he was eighteen. “It was her heart,” they said. “She’d gone through too much.”

No. Tamlin thought to himself. It was me. If I had never been born, she would still be dancing with the roses.

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