Chapter Text
The church bells rang across Sidra, Velaris County every Sunday morning without fail. Their echoes rolled over the immaculately tended cemetery, drifted along the sleepy high street where American flags stirred lazily in the breeze, and carried all the way to the edge of town, where two motorcycle club houses stood on opposite sides of the river, separated by barely five miles and almost forty years of bad blood.
Everyone in the small town of Sidra knows the rules. You don't wear a Sons of Illyria patch on Crimson King roads. Most people had learned long ago to lower their eyes and pretend neither club existed. I had spent my whole life doing exactly that.
"...But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes... then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. The Lord will send upon you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake, until you are destroyed and perish quickly because of the evil of your forsaken deeds."
My father's voice carried steadily through Saint Michael's Church as I sat in the second pew with my hands folded neatly in my lap. I'd heard some version of this sermon countless times before. Different scripture. Same message. Obedience.
I glanced sideways. Nesta stared at the stained-glass windows with the same thinly veiled impatience she wore every Sunday, while Elain smiled warmly at every parishioner who caught her eye. The perfect daughters, or at least they tried to be.
I shifted on the hard wooden pew, tugging absently at the sleeve of my cream cardigan, desperate for some excuse to move. Across the aisle sat Tamlin Springford, the doctor's son, recently returned from Harvard. He was clean-cut, with an easy smile and impeccably pressed clothes that I suspected owed more to his mother than to him. He was the very picture of respectability. His blond hair was tied neatly back in a ponytail that was more Mayflower than Metallica. He was exactly the sort of man every father quietly hoped his daughter would marry. Unfortunately, he was chronically boring.
When the service ended, I could see him leaning against the fence and hoped he wasn’t waiting for me.
“Feyre” he said “how have you been? You look beautiful today” he said
"I’m well Tamlin, thank you."
He leaned in and kissed my cheek and the gesture should have made me smile. Instead, I felt like my hymen was trying to grow back. Lately, every touch from him left me feeling repulsed and hollow, as though my body had recognised something my mind had been too polite to admit.
He knew me as the dutiful minister's daughter. Polite smile...careful words... a package my parents had carefully curated and the congregation had so readily accepted. Sometimes I wondered whether I had become so convincing that even I had started to believe in her. But beneath that carefully constructed version of myself was something wild and restless that I kept pressed beneath the surface like a secret I was too frightened to speak aloud. If anyone in Saint Michael's ever glimpsed that part of me, my doubts, my anger, the hunger I carried for a life I couldn't yet name, I doubted they would look at me with quite the same affection.
My attention drifted beyond him to the distant rumble of motorcycle engines climbing the hill from town, the sound settled somewhere deep inside me. The bikes were always there, lingering at the edge of life in Sidra. Most of the congregation saw them as criminals, but I wasn’t so sure. For all the whispered stories and fearful glances, I'd seen more genuine kindness from the men wearing leather cuts than I had from many of the people filling the pews of our small whitewashed church. The engines faded into the distance, but something inside me remained restless. It felt as though that distant growl of bikes were speaking directly to my conscience, asking the questions I had spent years trying not to hear.
Who would you be if you stopped caring what everyone expected of you?
Who would you be if you'd had the courage to become yourself?
Before I could lose myself in the thought, my father appeared beside us.
"Tamlin." He said with an outstretched hand
"Father Archeron." He replied straightening his back with sycophantic precision.
They shook hands.
"I was wondering if Feyre might like to join us after we set up the stalls for the Founders Day Festival, it would be nice to catch up with you both."
My father's face brightened.
"I think that's a wonderful idea."
Neither of them looked at me, and I forced a smile for the benefit of onlookers. Something about having the decision made for me, again, left a bitterness in my mouth. I stood there, reluctant to embarrass my father and felt despondant.
I watched the stream of bikes leaving the Sidra garage in the distance, wondering whether Rhysand was amongst them.