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system-of-a-feather · 3 months

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Is it really final fusion if there are parts that you're still keeping separate and disowning from yourself? These parts deserve to feel like they have a right to exist, that healing is possible for them and that they are not a lost cause. It isn't fair to call yourself final fused when these parts are being excluded from your recovery. Repressing trauma is not healthy and it isn't sustainable to do that forever. It would be healthy if you worked with them, held compassion for them, and helped work through their trauma beliefs with them. Sometimes to heal you need to be disregulated sometimes, because you're letting yourself finally feel the feelings, and they've been kept away for so long, naturally it will cause disfunction for a while.

Bro, you are assuming an awful lot off of an awful little combined with a lot of poor interpretations of that post. I also find it a bit rude and crossing some boundaries for you to be 1) telling me how my vulnerable parts feel 2) telling me that I dont know what >I< feel and 3) telling me how my vulnerable parts - both when they are operating seperate from me and fused with me - should be treated.

If you think you aren't doing that and are not encroaching on territory you don't know about (ie my trauma, my system, my recovery and my healing) then please, tell me the details about my vulnerable trauma holders that you seem to know more about than I do, because man, between being literally them and living 24/7 with them and talking with them for my entire life, I really thought I'd know them better than a random anonymous stranger online. Go figure. You learn new things every day.

Putting aside the honestly disrespectful breach of boundaries under the assumption its well intended, I will continue the rest of this post assuming you asked me about how the post on how we handle our vulnerable parts relate to our fusion rather than assuming and judging because I honestly think the question I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you MEANT is actually a really interesting one! Because it can be totally confusing how our system that does not actively engage and actively interact and actively force our trauma holders to go through trauma processing could POSSIBLY fuse with them.

(Actually I have to comment on a few points of confusion and disclaimer on this before I can fully just move onto the next topic in case there is some really strange miss understanding or reading comprehension issue that might make the interesting part of this response confusing if not addressed)

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Confusion and Clarity Section:

To remove any potential confusion, I'd first like to state that it is "really" final fusion because they're literally me, I know what they feel, I know what they think and I know what they've been through. I can only write the post about how we used to handle things and how we operate now AND speak for those parts because I AM them like, genuinely and fully. Not even "technically them" I deadass AM them, so please don't assume I can't speak for myself and my own trauma and recovery. I know myself and my needs.

There isn't really a debate whether or not we are "finally fused" or what aspects of our life determine "final fusion" other than, you know *checks notes* the fact we literally operate like 75% or more of the time as a complete solid whole with little to no dissociation and honestly even these days, no disconnect between our identity beyond a general and standard IFS way of navigating complicated feelings.

Clearing up that odd comment on "really final fusion", I'm pretty sure you are referring to this post? And if so, I think you missed the part where we have always stated they are absolutely welcome to engage and hang out and we don't "lock them up" or repress them in any way or form.

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Final Fusion & Our Sleepy "Dragons" / Trauma Holders

The post in reference discusses some of how a lot of our heaviest trauma holders and parts that have been extremely disconnected and dissociated from life for years actually don't regularly spend a lot of time near the front and our system / whole has STRONG rules against EVER forcing those parts to "recover" or process their trauma or "engage in the real world and life and exist" if they don't want to.

It's a concept our system didn't really understand and used to REGULARLY do the opposite of because of good intent and good will "these parts deserve to live and exist and they deserve to heal and be better and so they need to heal from their trauma or they will be forever suffering and they deserve better" and its something we spent over a year learning from one specific part in our system - a major trauma holder - that it is far far more HARMFUL than helpful and that A LOT of that good intent / good will interest in making parts heal came from a lot of 1) projection of me wanting to be perfectly healed right now and projecting that need for healing onto other parts and 2) very trauma-unresponsive, inconsiderate, and not respecting either the autonomy, individuality, or ability for those parts to speak for themselves and their own needs.

Trauma informed care, both internally or with other people, is built on a principle of respecting the traumatized individual and ACTIVELY listening to what THEY are saying and what THEY need and what THEY are experiencing. Often trying to push your ideals, your agenda, your recovery schedule and pacing and trying to push an individual to heal faster than they are ready, serves in small amounts of reinforce the idea that the traumatized individual can not make their own decisions, they do not know how they feel, they do not know whats best for them, they shouldn't have a say in how they are treated, and that they have to conform to another person's standards and heal correctly.

I would LOVE for those parts to come sit with us and talk with us for hours upon hours about trauma. I would LOVE fro them to cry and throw things and be in crisis. We actually get slightly excited whenever those parts are around and in crisis because it gives us an opportunity to support them, show them some coping skills, and help them learn that life is actually pretty okay. Some of our best and most happiest moments (on both sides) have been in those post-crisis where those parts have, for the first time in their entire life, EVER felt ANY support from ANYTHING or ANYONE and those moments are so warm, healing, and impactful on both the supporting and the supported end.

That being said, while our whole and our supporting parts would LOVE to be able to speed run those moments until those parts are completely comfortable existing immediately, that would require us to ACTIVELY make them suffer, feel pain, and relive their trauma when they otherwise would not have to.

These parts have COMMUNICATED to us, when they were more stable and when they were not, that they >do not< want to regularly be around the front and out because everything as it is is too much for them. They have actively asked us to let them rest and have extended periods of calm and peaceful sleeping when things are good so that they can have a break from chronic suffering.

Yes, if we dragged them out, made them process trauma, made them look it straight on, made them dysregulated, eventually they'll "get over it" and "get used to it", but that is only after EXCESSIVE pain as those parts are EXTREMELY prone to being thrown into deep and intense flashbacks. We COULD quickly desensitize them and get them used to life, but the quick method is honest to god cruel, inconsiderate, trauma-unresponsive, and arguably traumatizing to those parts.

Instead, we listen to what those parts have communicated and meet them where they are at in their recovery. Those parts have told us that they are in *peaceful* sleep when they are not triggered and that sleep / distance actually helps them process the sheer amount of stimuli and information that is required for them to regain some stability.

Of course, sometimes triggers come in our life that forcibly wake them up and they get thrown into flashbacks and thats okay! Not ideal, not fun, and I feel bad for them but its okay! Because while they are suffering deeply, they are also surrounded with SO many parts that are actively and intently here to support them, help them, show them the world, and help them develop an understanding for the present and coping mechanisms that are healthy.

And usually after we have helped calm them down, showed them around life and given them some time to enjoy and appreciate existence, they - in a good mood that is now regulated and calm - actively ask to go back to sleep because they are 1) tired and 2) have a lot of new things to process and anything more would be overloading.

And so we have parts - specifically Lin - who is good at holding the front and keeping them company while they fall back to sleep, much like a parent reading a kid a bed time story. It's a very healing and very helpful and trauma informed way of approaching, supporting method that respects the communication and feelings of the individual parts and minimizes the amount of unnecessary stress, triggering, and flashbacks for those parts.

And thats all when we operate as independent parts - which we mostly do when those parts need support because its easier for us to give them focused support when operating as independent parts than as a fused whole as it can be hard to utelize our coping skills as a fused whole when they're triggered. (Think of it like using IFS framework, but instead of parent part and inner child, they just have actual names)

As a whole, I don't "stop being those parts" or exclude them, I am still them and their traits are integrated into the whole. As a fused whole those parts can actually exist and engage in the world A LOT easier than as individual parts because they themselves don't have to be over active and the predominant part of the brain while the trauma they hold can really just remain sleeping in the back. As a fused whole they aren't "trauma holders that are sleeping" they are Feathers and their trauma that they held remains sleeping.

And as a fused whole, I don't think I have to be chronically experiencing and processing my trauma to be me, to be happy, or to be present. My trauma isn't my identity and I am not any less "existing" by not chronically living in my trauma.

As a fused whole I'm literally just Feathers. I got "brains" because I know where certain thoughts and feelings would have come from as individual parts, but like... I'm Feathers. I'm literally just fucking Feathers XD And I literally am those vulnerable trauma holding parts as well. And thank you for your concern, but as those vulnerable trauma holding parts, we're fine and honestly enjoying our life the way it is man.

If you are really that concerned about us, please check to make sure you aren't projecting your own struggles because if you are, please take care of your trauma holders and give them lots of love, support, patience and understanding and please don't rush them to heal faster than they need to.

(the pink is very much explicitly from an Evaline brain which is one of those heavily traumatized vulnerable parts; I am explicitly calling that part of this out because I am genuinely very fucking proud and surprised any of them actually wanted to voice anything for themselves and I am gonna reinforce that cause its awesome and I love that for them)

#feathers speaks #ask #asks #anon #fusion #functional multiplicity #didrecovery #final fusion #trauma holders #trauma processing #alter: evaline

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highqueenofelfhame · 1 year

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IT'S BEEN A LONG TIME COMING. I didn't mean for this to go a whole year without an update. I'm so sorry. I hope this 4.5k chapter makes up for it somehow <3

masterlist // fafs masterlist // rowaelin

As soon as he took that first deep breath upon waking up, Rowan knew he was being watched. Maybe that was thanks to all his years as an agent for the bureau, or perhaps it had to do with the months he had spent with Aelin that had honed that instinct into a sharp blade. Regardless of what had made him develop the sixth sense, he knew that when he opened his eyes to the soft light filtering through the cracks of the curtains, there would be a golden gaze pinning him to the bed.

Instead of looking at her, he reached across the bed to rest his hand on her thigh. Rowan could tell she was sitting with her legs folded up like a pretzel, her hands in her lap while she watched him. He moved a fraction of an inch closer until he could easily press his lips to the spot just above her knee.

"Rowan?" The tentative sound of her voice had him cracking open an eye to look up at her face. A deep crease was set between her brows while she worried her bottom lip in thought.

"What has you awake so early?" This soon after waking, the lilt of his accent was heavier, his tone deeper and more gravelly than usual.

"It wasn't you, right?"

"Baby–" he started, pushing himself up on his good arm to a sitting position. He shifted so they were sitting knee to knee, one of his legs dangling over the side of the bed so he could move closer to her. Aelin looked away as she licked her lips before shaking her head. "Look at me, love."

"I know. I know you didn't; I just–" Her eyes found his again, and she huffed out a sigh. It sounded like she had been carrying it in her lungs for years. "Somebody found out. They found out, and they told her. But everyone I know is dead except for Elide and Gavriel, and they think I'm dead. Even if Gav put it together, I can't see him spilling everything to Maeve before talking to me to see what the hell happened to me all those years ago."

Digging her palms into her eyes, she took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. Rowan counted the seconds, his thumbs brushing in soothing circles over her tan skin. It was something he had been thinking about non-stop since everything exploded in the bureau lobby. Even as the bullet pierced his shoulder, he tried to make sense of everything that had come to light.

How had Maeve known? It definitely hadn't been Gavriel. At the very least, her uncle would have approached him before going to Maeve. It didn't make any sense for him to find his long-lost and assumed-dead niece and go straight to his boss. Rowan knew firsthand that the deaths of his sister-in-law and her husband had plagued him. He was one of the few people that Gavriel had ever talked about it with, him and Aedion never having fully given up hope that maybe she was out there somewhere. It wasn't something he voiced frequently. Those admissions came after everyone else had left the bar, and it was just the two of them sharing a beer in silence after a difficult case. No, it definitely hadn't been Gavriel.

Who then? Aelin was right. Essentially everyone from her childhood was dead now. All her confessions had happened in places where he knew they weren't being recorded. By that time, he himself had become paranoid enough that he checked all the pens in his pockets, his cufflinks, and the buttons of his shirts, even to ensure nobody had slipped a device somewhere in his clothes. If they had been recorded, it would have been inside his apartment. But he would have known about that, too. He checked regularly and had frequency blockers hidden in every room.

If working for the bureau taught him anything, it was to always be on your guard and that a healthy dose of paranoia kept you from being surveilled.

There was Elide, but Rowan had a strong feeling that any of her suspicions would have ended with Lorcan beating down his door in the dead of night in search of the truth. She wasn't even an option, not really.

Who, then? Had Arobynn Hammel let the truth slip to Maeve before his heart had been ripped from his chest? Did Maeve have eyes and ears everywhere that whispered back to her, even when they were sure no one was listening? It seemed far-fetched, but he knew his boss had her moments of being ruthless. But if she'd known the truth since Arobynn, why did she wait so long to tell Aelin she knew? The window of when she found out and when she spoke with Aelin had to have been a small one. Nothing else quite made sense.

Rowan looked back at the woman he loved, her eyes fixed on his face while he processed every bit of information they knew. All he could do was shake his head and rest his brow against hers.

"I don't know. I wish I could give you more than that, but where it stands right now, I have no fucking idea. We will figure it out– all of it. Who told her, what kind of jeopardy it puts you in, what our next steps are. We will figure it out together."

There was a determination in her eyes that was admirable. And though he could tell she wanted to push back about something that he'd said– he had no idea which part– she nodded slightly and repeated, "Together."

~*~

Hours later, Aelin was sitting on the floor in front of the couch with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Despite a warmer day outside, a fire flickered in the fireplace. Watching the flames dance and twine around one another was a welcome reprieve from the near-constant headache she'd had for the last few days while trying to make sense of everything.

In the kitchen, Rowan hummed quietly while preparing dinner. The aroma of garlic, basil, and lemon was strong throughout the cabin. It felt bizarre that this felt like the most normal night she had ever experienced in her whole life. The sounds of dinner being prepared, a man she loved making everything with care. The reality was that it was the furthest from normal, considering she was on the run from the FBI. It was only a matter of time before she was found, captured, and dumped into a prison cell for the rest of her life. It made her stomach turn to know that the same thing would happen to Rowan for harboring a fugitive of her caliber and committing treason.

"I don't understand how this has become my life," she said aloud, and Rowan ceased his movements. The water turned on, followed by the sound of him washing and drying his hands before lowering his body to the floor beside her. "I don't mean I don't understand exactly how I ended up here. I understand that part. What I don't understand is how my life got here."

"You mean how you ended up an assassin in the first place." He shifted to drop his arm around her shoulder, and Aelin quickly turned into him, resting her face against his chest. It always surprised her when he understood what she was trying to say, even if the words were twisted and confusing on their way out of her mouth.

"How did I go from living in a mansion surrounded by family and friends, my father gearing up for a presidential run, having tea parties with my very best friends, or running through bonfires on Beltane with flowers in my hair to this?"

"What do you remember about that night?" The night she'd spent so much time running from, one that her brain had blocked out almost entirely. Aelin sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes still locked on the flames as she chewed on it for a moment.

"Not much," she admitted. "I've never talked about it out loud to anyone before, either. But it really isn't much."

"Do you want to go over what you do remember with me? Maybe something will spark, and we can work backward to figure out what is happening now." Only with Rowan would she ever talk about it, the night that ruined her life. Perhaps she had emerged from the ashes like a phoenix, but everything she had wanted to be before died that night. So she had become something else entirely. Something horrible that her friends and family would be ashamed of and would judge. But he wouldn't.

Aelin turned so she was leaning against the couch, her arm propped on the cushion with her fist against her temple. Rowan mirrored her body language, reaching out to lace the fingers of their free hands. A silent reminder that he was there, he understood her, and he would follow this path with her to whatever end it may have. The thought alone made her want to cry, but she swallowed her emotions.

"The night that my parents were murdered, I was sleeping upstairs in my bed. Every night I went to sleep snuggled in a mountain of stuffed animals. Most of them came from when my dad went on business trips. He always brought one back for me. I had to have at least twenty stacked on top of my bed, dozens more littered around my room. I rotated them out frequently so that none of them would feel lonely having to sleep by themselves." Rowan's lips had curved into the smallest of smiles, his thumb making circles on the back of her hand. He was there. He had her. She was not alone, and she would not be afraid.

"I remember having a hard time falling asleep that night. I'd been to my parent's bedroom twice because I thought I heard things. It was a big house; it made a lot of noise. My mom repeatedly promised me that everything was okay, and she and my dad tucked me back into bed. I remember still feeling unsettled and scared. Like something was wrong, but I didn't know what. I couldn't place my tiny finger on it then, but I would hold my breath to see what I could hear in the silence. Once, I heard soft voices, which my mom said I was just hearing the two of them talking downstairs. I heard footsteps, but again, they were still up and getting ready for bed. I was just hearing them."

Aelin paused then, tears already filling her eyes and threatening to slip down her cheeks. Not once had she said any of this out loud. Nobody had ever heard this part. With Rowan, she could do this. She could say it aloud despite her throat burning from trying to suppress her emotions. Maybe it was time she let them out. Had she ever really grieved? Those first few weeks at the keep, maybe. But Arobynn had quickly shut down her wildfire range of emotions some months into her training when he decided she should be over it by now. With a deep breath, she found it in herself to continue.

"I slept a little bit that night, but it was that kind of sleep where you hear everything around you. Somewhere between being awake and dreaming. At first, I thought I was dreaming. But I heard my mother begging someone. Her voice had so much raw fear; I will never forget how it cracked when she said my name. As scared as I was, you think you're invincible as a child, you know? So I snuck downstairs, tip-toeing down the hallway to their bedroom. And then I just… froze. There was enough moonlight to see my dad completely limp on the bed. Something dark was on his skin and the sheets, running down his arm and pooling on the floor. His eyes were staring at nothing.

A man had my mom's hair gathered in his hand; her head pulled back with a gun to her temple while she begged and begged. But she wasn't begging for herself; she was pleading that he let me go. Over and over, she just kept saying let my baby live, please don't hurt her. And then she saw me standing at the door, and the last thing she said was my name before the gun went off. I have never heard anyone's voice sound so panicked and full of terror. My mom slumped against my dad, and then I turned and ran. At some point, I slipped, banged my head on the ground, and I don't know what happened after that."

Aelin only realized she had fully begun to sob when Rowan pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her tightly. While she was talking, she had registered the sounds of gasping, sharp breaths, and broken words, but it hadn't registered that it was coming from her. When she started talking, it all started pouring out. One broken word after another until her shirt was soaked with tears. On the one hand, it felt so good to finally get it out and tell someone what had really happened that night. On the other, it shattered her into a million pieces to recount those events.

The papers had gotten it all wrong. Most of them said it had been a quick assassination. Aelin didn't know how fast it had happened for her father, but the man that killed her mother had stood there and listened to her begging for her daughter's innocent life for long enough that Aelin had made her way downstairs and heard the end of it. That she saw the end of it. That it was burned into her brain no matter how hard she tried to shut those images out.

Aelin still had nightmares about it.

Rowan didn't say anything for a long while, just holding her and stroking her hair while she let out every emotion she had kept locked in an iron cage in the back of her mind. Emotions she had been trained to keep a firm hold on for nearly her entire life. Arobynn used that against her, beating her down until she had become distant and cold. Only when she had met Rowan did any of it start to slip out, and she had spent months hating herself for it. Aelin had always known from the time she started to get to know him that he would be her unraveling one way or another. He would either throw her in prison or make her feel alive again. At the time, she couldn't decide which was worse.

"I know that there were two men. I saw a second one when I turned to run. But after that, I didn't know anything else until I woke up in a bed in the keep. Arobynn never talked about how I fell under his 'care.' For a while, I thought it was just an orphanage. That I had been found and taken there while I was unwell. It didn't click until I was a few years older that it certainly wasn't the case because I would have woken up in a hospital before I got taken anywhere, and then I would have been taken to my aunt and uncle. I just remember seeing all these papers about how I was missing and presumed dead. Arobynn would show me news footage of Aerin and Gavriel begging for someone to just let them know where my body was so they could bring me home."

Her tears felt cool against her flushed cheeks, even as Rowan chased every one of them away with calloused fingertips. The memories of her aunt, uncle, and cousin standing on the porch of their home, desperately asking for her return. They hadn't known if it would be her alive and well, or if it would be her dead body. It had not mattered. Her family just wanted her back. Wanted to keep or safe or lay her to rest next to her parents. The image of Aedion's young, tear-streaked face floated to the front of her mind, followed immediately by his unseeing eyes the day she had shown up at the crime scene to find him dead.

It was all too much. The murder of her parents, her upbringing to become the underworld's most deadly assassin, that she was now everything her parents hated about the world. All of her friends that now lay six feet under simply because they were tied to her in some way.

The guilt had been gnawing at her bones since it all started. Aelin would give absolutely anything to trade places with them. The cost didn't matter. It would have been better if she were the one that was dead because if she had died that night, at least everyone she loved would still be breathing.

Throughout the years, Aelin had kept tabs on each of them, knowing they would do incredible things. They all had done their best to put something good back into the world. Dorian was nothing like his father, doing what he could to speak out and back his words up with actions to pave a better way for the rest of the world. Aedion had spent countless hours working with underprivileged youth in Big Brother programs right up to his death. Even Sam was taking steps to better his life until he was killed for trying to run with her.

Nehemia… gods, the things she could have done if her life hadn't ended so shortly. She had been a beacon of hope to so many, her charity work speaking for itself. It was only about doing everything she could to help people in need, including raising money through the Lotus Foundation, one her parents had helped her create to build housing in underdeveloped parts of their home country, Eyllwe.

Yet she was the one still living. She who had taken countless lives, that had so much blood caked onto her soul she would never be clean. It didn't matter what she did going forward; it didn't matter the circumstances of how it all happened. Aelin was the one that lived, and she had brought so much shame upon everyone in her life.

There were no bright sides to her friends being dead. That she would never have to face them, never have to tell them the truth, though… She was too much of a coward to ever have looked any of them in the eye after the life she had been forced into.

"Do you remember anything about the men that killed your parents? What they looked like?" Rowan's voice stirred her from her thoughts, soft, deep, and lilting. His thumbs still brushed the tears that fell from her cheeks.

"The men Maeve captured and convicted were the ones that did it. I know that for sure. I could never forget Cairn's face. His accomplice is harder for me to piece together, but he confessed after Cairn ratted him out to avoid the death penalty. I only saw him for a brief moment before I fell. If the wrong people had been convicted, I would have hunted them down and killed them myself." And she would have. Those lives would have been two of the few she held no remorse over, and it wouldn't have been quick. It would have lasted long enough until some of the grief had eased in her chest. Until she wasn't so scared to look back on her childhood memories anymore.

"That case got her the appointment for FBI Director." Rowan lifted the bottom of his t-shirt to wipe the snot gathered in her nose and upper lip.

"She deserved it for that. Even though I had just turned nine, I was hyper-aware of what my life was turning into by that point. And seeing justice brought down on them… it brought some relief. Not much, but enough to know they were behind bars. I would have preferred the death penalty for them both, but at least there was a confession." Aelin shrugged her shoulders. It was true. She would have killed them after her arrest if she had been in the same prison. Clearly, the gods had other plans for her, though.

"Is there anything else you can piece together?"

"Right now, no. But if I have any eureka moments, you'll be the first and only one to know."

Aelin had been waiting for Rowan's apology. The one that came from a place of empathy, that made her feel like she was pitied. But it never came. Instead, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead. The gesture said more than words ever could. That he understood, that he hated the shitty hand life had dealt her, that he stood with her. That he was there.

And that meant more to her than any words ever could.

~*~

Whitethorn had been right. In the days after Sardothien's arrest, he had gone on and on about how it was too convenient. It didn't make sense that she was just a whisper in the wind and suddenly became so sloppy in her work that boxes of evidence had, literally, been dropped on the steps of the FBI headquarters.

Raking through every piece of information that they had on her, he could see that clear as day. For years their department had chased a ghost, someone quick and silent. There had never been a drop of her own blood, a single hair that fell off her head. No fingerprints, no saliva. None of her DNA packed under someone's fingernails from a struggle. They didn't even have proof that it was her at all, actually. They only knew that the legendary assassin was a woman based on one witness account, and the woman had been so old and frail and unsure of her account that it would have been inadmissible in court.

All of her alleged crime scenes had been scoured with a fine-toothed comb. They knew it was murder; that much was clear. But Celaena Sardothien had dozens of aliases, hundreds maybe. He was sure of that. Yet the "proof" they had received in a box full of her fake passports and IDs seemed too good to be true. None of them led them anywhere; it was like she'd never touched them, never used them at any point. Anyone could pay someone to make fake identification, and what they found in those boxes was so blatantly fake that it wouldn't fool anyone.

Her case was a puzzle that he was dying to solve. Usually, he loved cataloging evidence that led to a trial. Sure, they would have to find and capture her again before she saw her day in the courtroom, but he enjoyed this part of the work. Except for right now, when not a single loose thread took him anywhere at all. The woman simply did not exist.

With tired eyes, he pushed away the file he'd been reading and turned to another that kept him up at night. Lorcan wasn't usually so personally invested in the cases they solved, but the look in Gavriel's eyes when he found out his son had been murdered still haunted his nightmares. The sounds of the sobs that broke free from his throat were the sounds of a soul dying. Gavriel had loved his son with everything he had, and Lorcan almost couldn't forgive himself for having to be the person that broke the news.

Flipping open the Ashryver file, he scanned the evidence log and accompanying photos. When he got to the images of Aedion's lifeless body, he started to flip faster, not needing to see the pictures to remember them in vivid detail.

Just as he was about to skip the last one, a close-up shot of his face and neck, Lorcan's fingers froze against the glossy page. In the photo, Aedion's glassy eyes stared at the cloudy sky. Eyes that were a bright turquoise, his pupil rimmed with gold. They were dimmer now than they had been while he was alive, but…

But he knew those eyes. Not just because they were a strong trait of the Ashryver gene pool but because he had looked into them himself. Yes, he had met Aedion several times at various get-togethers and holiday parties. But his eyes were identical to a different pair he'd become all too familiar with for the last several months.

Then there was his face. Gavriel's son favored him strongly, but there was a softness in his features that he had spent months looking at on a different face. A woman's face. The same shade of golden hair, though in these photos, it was sticky with dried blood.

Lorcan pulled his laptop closer to him, quickly opening a tab and sending his fingers flying across the keyboard. It was probably the fastest he had ever typed, and he had never been so impatient for the single second it took to get hundreds of images back from the search result.

He clicked on the third photo down, one of a small family standing on a stage. The man and woman waved to the crowd while the young girl beamed where she stood between them. No older than seven, her little hands clasped her mother and father's tightly.

Rhoe and Evalin Galathynius pictured with their daughter, Aelin, on Vice President Galathynius's presidential campaign trail in Perranth.

A few weeks ago a conversation of Lorcan arguing with Rowan about Celaena's involvement in Elide's attack had him pushing back from his chair. Ice slithered up and down his spine, blood turning cold as he recalled one specific thing that Rowan said to him that he hadn't caught in the moment because he was so upset and worried about his fiancee's life.

Rowan had called her Aelin. Said that Aelin didn't have anything to do with what happened to Elide. He vividly remembered feeling bothered by the conversation afterward, that there was something between the lines that Rowan hadn't been saying plainly with words, but perhaps they were there. Whitethorn had been so fiercely sure that Celaena didn't do it, didn't have it ordered, had clean hands where Elide was concerned. He might be a raging dumbass for dating a woman with multiple charges of murder to her name, but the man was not stupid.

Lorcan's eyes snagged on another image, a group photo of two dozen or so people. Standing in the front were five children. All of them were dressed in their holiday best, standing before a towering Yulemas tree covered in glittering ornaments and twinkling lights. They appeared to be gathered in a great hall of sorts. Everyone in the picture shared wide smiles as they looked at the camera.

In the middle of the group of children was a young girl with long dark hair wearing a red and green plaid dress. A bright red bow gathered some of her soft curls from her face. A face that Lorcan would know anywhere because not only had he seen hundreds of childhood pictures of her, but he woke up to that face every godsdamn morning.

Elide's arms were looped through two other girls, one with long golden hair and fair skin, the other with black hair in carefully woven braids, her skin dark. The three of them wore similar dresses, the color being the only thing different about them. The blonde girl on her right had a silver and dark green dress, while the one on her right had a dress of purple and silver.

Aelin Ashryver Galathynius was on Elide's right. That was factual. Beside Aelin, Aedion Ashryver stood with his arm thrown around her shoulders. Dorian Havilliard and Chaol Westfall were on the other side of Nehemia Ytger. Behind them were their parents and friends of their parents. All of them gathered before one of the famous Galathynius family Yulemas parties.

It wasn't just Aelin standing beside Elide, though. That thought clanged through Lorcan hard. He felt it in every nerve and bone of his body; he had never been so absolutely positive of something in his entire life.

Celaena Sardothien was Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, a girl long since presumed dead to the world and everyone that loved her.

Holy gods.

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