Laurie

“Dying.
I slid to my knees before it, sinking into the bloody moss. “Let me help you. I can heal you.”
I’d do it the same way I’d helped Rhysand. Remove those arrows—and offer it my blood.
I reached for the first one, but a dry, bony hand settled on my wrist. “Your magic …,” it rasped, “is spent. Do not … waste it.”
“I can save you.”
It only gripped my wrist. “I am already gone.”
“What—what can I do?” The words turned thin—brittle.
“Stay …,” it breathed. “Stay … until the end.”
I took its hand in mine. “I’m sorry.” It was all I could think to say. I had done this—I had brought it here.
“I knew,” it gasped, sensing my shift in thoughts. “The tracking … I knew of it.”
“Then why come at all?”
“You … were kind. You … fought your fear. You were … kind,” it said again.
I began crying.
“And you were kind to me,” I said, not brushing away the tears that fell onto its bloodied, tattered robe. “Thank you—for helping me. When no one else would.”
A small smile on that lipless mouth. “Feyre Archeron.” A labored breath. “I told you—to stay with the High Lord. And you did.”
Its warning to me that first time we’d met. “You—you meant Rhys.” All this time. All this time—
“Stay with him … and live to see everything righted.”
“Yes. I did—and it was.”
“No—not yet. Stay with him.”
“I will.” I always would.
Its chest rose—then fell.
“I don’t even know your name,” I whispered. The Suriel—it was a title, a name for its kind.
That small smile again. “Does it matter, Cursebreaker?”
“Yes.”
Its eyes dimmed, but it did not tell me. It only said, “You should go now. Worse things—worse things are coming. The blood … draws them.”
I squeezed its bony hand, the leathery skin growing colder. “I can stay a while longer.”
I had killed enough animals to know when a body neared death. Soon, now—it would be a matter of breaths.
“Feyre Archeron,” the Suriel said again, gazing at the leafy canopy, the sky peeking through it. A painful inhale. “A request.”
I leaned close. “Anything.”
Another rattling breath. “Leave this world … a better place than how you found it.”
And as its chest rose and stopped altogether, as its breath escaped in one last sigh, I understood why the Suriel had come to help me, again and again. Not just for kindness … but because it was a dreamer.
And it was the heart of a dreamer that had ceased beating inside that monstrous chest.
Its sudden silence echoed into my own.
I laid my head on its chest, on that now-silent vault of bone, and wept.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin