Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Welcome to my home.”

It was a damned miracle to watch Feyre survey my townhouse, the most private space I occupied. And here she was suddenly inside it.

The moment was so surreal, that I had to lean against the oak threshold separating us from the sitting room to keep myself steady. Feyre, despite what I could tell was a decent amount of surprise at where she’d landed and a considerable amount of concern for what she might find beyond these walls, didn’t miss a single detail. From the plush fabrics lining the furniture to the woven carpets and open windows, to worn bookcases and soft sounds from outside, she saw it all.

And I wondered if some part of her registered that she was really seeing a glimpse of me .

The palace she had spent two weeks in miles and miles away was easily representative of one half of me - the calculating, regal half that delighted in luxury without apology. But that portion was also who I was as a diplomat, the High Lord .

Here, I was home .

And she was still apprehensive.

“What is this place?” she asked and she sounded almost disbelieving, like any moment she might wake up.

“This is my house. Well, I have two homes in the city. One is for more... official business, but this is only for me and my family.”

Feyre kept a sharp eye as her gaze flicked immediately away from me and stared down the hallway behind her questioning. The house replied with a warm, open silence - an invitation of sorts.

“Nuala and Cerridwen are here,” I said. “But other than that, it’ll just be the two of us.”

I waited for her to say something, but her biting commentary never came. Mercifully, it wasn’t the silence I’d come to expect that cried out hatred upon my back when I left the room or slashed at my soul with cuts and sneers to keep me out. Feyre was simply frozen in time and space as she stilled to look at the walls. I only hoped it was more from shock than any actual discomfort. Being here - I needed her to be okay with it, with even just this one small part of me, the most honest and normal portion there was. And also, the most human - the most like her.

Too long a stretch of silence passed. I took a careful step towards her, ready to explain further, when a shock of sound slammed into the fogged glass of the atrium door that led outside. I didn’t have to look to know who was behind it.

“Hurry up, you lazy ass,” Cassian barked behind the glass. Feyre’s head whizzed to the sound. She looked exhausted just by the very idea she might have another guest to deal with let alone two more. I knew for Cassian to be here this early, he wouldn’t be alone.

“Two things, Feyre darling,” I said, interrupted by another pounding.

“If you’re going to pick a fight with him, do it after breakfast.”

Azriel .

Feyre’s brow peaked as if she could feel the shadows that cocooned my brother day and night even with a door between them. Knowing Azriel, he was likely experiencing something similar himself thanks to his smokey friends.

“ I wasn’t the one who hauled me out of bed just now to fly down here,” Cassian said tartly before sneering at Az, “Busybody.”

The exchange was so brief, and yet, when Feyre slid her gaze to me at the end of it, it was hard not to laugh - to smile. Even if only a little bit.

The reality of the moment hit me then in full force. Feyre was little more than a handful of steps away from my brothers, my family, my city - people and places I thought she would never see except maybe on a battlefield or in a court room with sentinels from an entirely different court at her side.

And yet, here we were. Cassian complaining about being dragged out of bed at an ungodly hour like I knew he would, Azriel dutifully pushing him here to do it. And Feyre hadn’t even met them yet but she was so close to seeing them, seeing it all.

The thought made me rather... giddy inside.

But she was tired. The hollows under her eyes were a deepening purple and her shoulders sagged at her sides so that her back and neck slumped. One would have thought she’d never slept a day in her life, never mind the hours she’d spent in bed only thirty minutes ago.

“One,” I said, making sure to shirk off the smile threatening to break free so she could understand that she needn’t worry here, “no one - no one - but Mor and I are able to winnow directly inside this house. It is warded, shielded, and then warded some more. Only those I wish - and you wish - may enter. You are safe here; and safe anywhere in this city, for that matter. Velaris’s walls are well protected and have not been breached in five thousand years. No one with ill intent enters this city unless I allow it. So go where you wish, do what you wish, and see who you wish.”

Another pounding sounded at the door and again, it was an effort not to give in to Cassian’s inexhaustible ability to dig at me.

“Those two in the antechamber,” I continued, ready for the snide remark sure to follow, “might not be on that list of people you should bother knowing, if they keep banging on the door like children.”

I didn’t bother lowering my voice so they wouldn’t hear me outside, but I hadn’t raised it either, and all the same, Cassian still pounded relentlessly on the door and added, “You know we can hear you, prick.”

A little thrill went up my spine that I stood solidly firm over to hide it. They were so close - both halves of my life. So, so unbearably close that the anticipation of it was just as much a nuisance to lock down as a happiness to feel.

“ Secondly,” I said casually, with just enough emphasis to piss Cass off and with any luck earn a long suffering sigh from Azriel, “in regard to the two bastards at my door, it’s up to you whether you want to meet them now, or head upstairs like a wise person, take a nap since you’re still looking a little peaky, and then change into city-appropriate clothing while I beat the hell out of one of them for talking to his High Lord like that.”

Feyre looked at me in bewilderment. Her shields were in perfect tact. I didn’t want to rifle through her head for every little emotion and thought, not at the cost of her personal space. But I would have been lying if I’d said it would not have been nice for this to have been one of those beautiful moments where she let me in on her mind’s turbulent seas to understand her better. What I would have given to know what she was thinking just then and here I was too scared out of my mind to ask while I waited for a decision, even as the adrenaline begged me to...

Her face appeared easy at first, some of those muscles in her tired body relaxed as she surveyed my face in a way I’d never seen from her before. And then it fell, miserably low and I thought she might yawn or fall over on the spot.

“Just come get me when they’re gone,” she finally said. It was an effort not to let my disappointment show. Part of me wanted everyone I loved to meet then and there and be done with it, but her peace was more important.

Then again, that peace might never be possible if Feyre found my family wasn’t one she could be a part of, if she found them too -

“You Illyrians are worse than cats yowling to be let in the back door.” Amren’s razor thin voice cut the silence between Feyre and I sharply. I heard the handle of the door jingle harshly as she tried it. “Really, Rhysand? You locked us out?”

Whatever was in Amren’s tone today was not one Feyre was ready to face apparently because she immediately dismissed herself without another word and made for the stairs where I knew Nuala and Cerridwen would be waiting to intercept her. I listened for her footsteps, waiting until she was well out of the danger zone, before I opened the door and my entryway was flooded by my hulking brothers and the short, blunt woman who somehow outsized them both.

Cassian clapped me on the back, shaking the chill off of him as he strode past me towards the warmer air. “Welcome home, bastard,” he said by way of greeting. “I sensed you were back. Mor filled me in, but I-”

Amren stepped directly into my path, cutting Cassian off with an annoyed glare. “Send your dogs out in the yard to play, Rhysand. You and I have matters to discuss.”

But while her displeasure had been directed at Cassian, it was Azriel who replied with that cold, deadly insistence, the only one who dared go toe-to-toe with Amren for my attention. When it came to political matters, at least.

“As do I,” Azriel said and there was no mistaking his meaning. Amren didn’t so much as move.

“We were here first,” Cassian said, much more casually than Az. “Wait your turn, Tiny Ancient One.”

Okay, maybe Azriel wasn’t the only one willing to play with Amren. The snarl that ripped from between her sharp teeth was low, but perfectly clear.

Mor startled me when she rounded the corner from the kitchen, a steaming cup of tea between her hands and wearing a lazy set of loose pants and a sweater that said she could have just woken up. I wondered whether she’d stayed the night here after forewarning Azriel of the last day’s events or if she’d met him this morning and winnowed in without bothering to change.

“Why is everyone here so early ?” She said, still sleepy. “I thought we were meeting tonight at the House.”

Everyone stared at me waiting and for a second, seeing my house full of people with nothing but complaint while Feyre went through her own mini-hell adjusting upstairs was tiresome. “Trust me, there’s no party. Only a massacre, if Cassian doesn’t shut his mouth.”

Cass blew me off. “We’re hungry. Feed us. Someone told me there’d be breakfast.”

Az’s lips gave a tug as he chose a plush backless seat to lean over, ready as ever to get straight to business.

“Pathetic,” Amren said. Never one to be outdone, she took her own seat across from the shadowsinger. “You idiots are pathetic.”

“We know that’s true. But is there food?” Mor flashed that insatiable grin of hers that won the hearts of men and women up and down Prythian, but Cass cut across her with a derisive snort.

“You’re the one who just came from the kitchen,” he said.

“That was for tea,” she said raising her mug and shaking it faintly in his direction. “And you know I don’t cook.”

“ Can’t cook, you mean,” Azriel said. Their eyes met across the room and held some kind of quiet, teasing exchange the rest of us were never privy to.

When the shadows informed him that Mor’s eyes weren’t the only attention he held, Azriel cleared his throat and spoke in that cool stoicism of his. “So what’s the plan?”

“Hold on, hold on,” Cassian said. “I’d like to know what prompted these oncoming plans before we actually get in to them. Some of us don’t have shadows and personal secretaries to inform us of every little movement Rhys makes.” He gestured between Azriel and Mor. It was Mor who replied.

“Some of us,” she said, staring pointedly at Cassian, “need to learn the value of minding their own business and a little patience. And I thought we were eating first?”

“By the Cauldron,” I said, snapping my fingers. The coffee table filled with fruit and muffins. Mor squealed, reaching for her preferred chocolate muffins, Cassian not far behind taking a fat pomegranate, their conflict temporarily forgotten. Amren eyed the food with clear disdain.

“Miserable though this is,” Amren said, “I too would like a full account of recent events and the plans to follow.” Amren gave me half a heartbeat before her eyes lifted slowly to the ceiling above us where Feyre undoubtedly stayed, hopefully fast asleep between the fresh sheets of her new bed.

Everyone followed suit and I sank in to a chair, taking a nut muffin for myself with a few bites, and then let the incident in the Spring Court unfold.

“So she stays here from now on,” Azriel asked. I nodded. “And you’re content to trust her with the knowledge of this city - with Velaris?”

“Obviously,” I said. “She’s here, isn’t she.”

“You know what I mean, Rhys.”

“Azriel isn’t wrong,” Amren said. “This is a considerable step, Rhysand.”

“One that hasn’t been weighed without a great deal of consideration, Amren ,” I replied and she eyed me stonily. I didn’t appreciate the full use of my name.

Though I’d only taken a handful of seconds before acquiescing to Feyre’s request to join me here, there had never been a doubt in my mind that she could handle keeping this secret or even that she would if she chose to assume the burden of it. I trusted my mate with that secret - and so much more, really.

“Feyre is now in a period of transition,” I went on. “She has survived a great deal in her return to the Spring Court alone and it has cost her almost everything. For that and because of certain... understandings with her, she is to be afforded the rights of this court until such a time comes where she chooses to no longer be apart of it. And even then, her word is good that she will not betray us.” Azriel’s shadows tightened tensely around his body as if searching for the validity of my statement. “None of you have reason to doubt me on this.”

I didn’t need to add that that was final. “And now?” Azriel asked.

“You’ll meet her tonight and have your fun, and then tomorrow we work. So long as Feyre resides in Velaris, we know she is safe. But if she should leave this city, Tamlin is bound to have every sentinel and guard in his court trying to find her whether she wants it or not. And not just Tamlin.”

Mor shuddered and swallowed the bite of fruit she’d been chewing. “You think others will be looking for her? Our enemies?”

“And Tamlin’s.”

“Because of-”

“Amarantha? Yes. Anyone who sided with her and managed to get out of that mountain alive will almost undoubtedly be looking for her.” My mind flicked through the suspects, from the Attor to creatures of a much darker sort. “If they’ve allied with Hybern, then it’s almost a guarantee. Tamlin might be foolish enough to think no one will suspect Feyre of being more than just another High Fae noble, but I am not.”

“You think she is more than what she appears?” Cassian asked, genuinely intrigued - enough to stop chewing, at least.

“I already know she is, and will discuss it another time. For now...” I looked at Azriel. He had information, but his eyes narrowed, the shadows flickering over his face in a haze that told me to wait. “For now, eat your food and make my life a living hell like you always do.”

Cassian huffed a laugh and swiped another piece of fruit off the table, this time an orange. He threw a blueberry that stuck in Mor’s hair and I thought she might light his leathers on fire.

They stayed for most of the morning. For the most part, we chatted about strategies for keeping Feyre safe from the enemies who might try and snatch her if the time came for her to leave while at the same time scheming how to use that to our advantage if it was Hybern or one of his cronies behind any attacks. And then there was general conversation about the war itself, the Illyrian war-bands constantly harping at me from the North, the temples, Tamlin...

It was exhausting. As excited as I’d been having them arrive and share the same roof as my mate, part of me would rather have joined Feyre upstairs and taken a good, long nap away from the endless chatter about subjects hell bent on killing me.

Amren pulled me aside onto the outdoor patio midway through the discussion to give her own private report. She left as soon as it was over and Azriel took her place.

“Any news yet?” I asked. Azriel didn’t have to ask what I meant as he eyed the balcony to Feyre’s room just above us.

“Nothing,” he said. “Tamlin put the entire court on lock down almost as soon as he realized Feyre was missing. The gap was open for a short time and likely only because he wasn’t home when Mor got her out. I’m not sure he realized right away what had happened.”

“His wards are weak - even for him.” Something that was deeply unsettling. For a High Lord intent on protecting what was owed to him, he sure missed one hell of a show from Feyre for all her trouble should have alerted him to what was happening in his own home. An explosion like that... he should have met Mor and I at the gates.

“Keep an eye on the court,” I said. “Go back tomorrow yourself and see if you can’t get anything out of it. She’s only been here a day and Tamlin’s not going to let this go even if Feyre shows up and puts a knife in his heart herself.”

Azriel nodded. A cruel shadow twisted off his lips as if it spoke the order itself to whatever eyes and ears awaited him tomorrow in the Spring Court - that they should be watching. Azriel didn’t move.

“Spit it out,” I said.

“It’s happened again,” he said with that cold, unyielding blade of a voice he had.

I sighed. “Tell me.”

And I already knew what was coming.

His face cracked just the slightest, knowing the blow he was about to deal.

“There’s been another attack. Same as the rest - priestesses slain, the place ransacked, and something missing even if it’s not apparent what.”

Relentless, icy rage glittered in my veins. Had I not wanted to leave Feyre to possibly meet my little entourage for the first time alone, I would have shot straight up into the skies and flown until sundown.

“Where?” I asked instead.

But just as before, I already knew the answer. Knew the doom it spelt. Knew that another clue to the riddle I suspected I’d already solved was coming.

Azriel’s lips tightened into a hard line before he answered, his eyes cold and screaming with the same rage I felt.

“The Temple at Sangravah.”

Cesere...

Sangravah...

And countless others.

My mind flashed to the war room I’d shown Feyre, and the maps strewn with marks and figures.

War was coming.

Chapter Text

I assumed that it was no coincidence that Feyre waited until everyone had left before she tip-toed down the stairs to meet me some fifteen minutes after the fact. I hadn’t really done much other than stand there waiting restlessly for her anyway trying to get the blood in my ears to stop from hollering at me as I counted the number of priestesses who were likely now dead in Sangravah.

Priestesses were a fickle, questionable breed throughout Prythian, especially now that Amarantha had fallen. But every drop of fae blood was a waste when slain. Our numbers, despite vast cities and territories, were few compared to the Mortal Realms, which bred like mice.

And besides, those priestesses had been innocent. As innocent as Feyre who approached me now with quiet feet and the same undeserved punishment in her eyes.

I looked her over and swallowed tightly before she could catch my eyes. The cream sweater she wore complimented her pale skin, but it hung low enough on her chest that I could see how sharp her collarbones had become. And while the blue coat she wore, the same color as the crisp clear sky I’d seen outside while talking to Azriel, should have brought out the blue in her eyes, they remained dull - lifeless.

And yet, she was still stunning somehow with her hair artfully braided around her head and a rich brown hue in her pants that reminded me of the dirt and forests I’d first glimpsed her in, where she was home and in her element.

Alive or half-dead, Feyre was perfect. Seeing her look so comfortable in regular clothes my own court had provided even if she didn’t feel okay in her own skin... Cauldron, I just wanted to touch her, to bring her close and hold her until it was okay or less not okay, if such a thing existed anymore.

“Those two certainly like to fuss,” I said instead.

Feyre didn’t react much as she followed me out the door and I couldn’t blame her, not when all of Velaris stood before her to steal her inquisitive attention.

Just as she had when she’d first entered my townhouse, she took in every detail. It was a time before I joined her just outside the little gate running the perimeter of the yard.

Fae - lesser and high alike - strode casually up and down the lanes. Spices wafted richly through the air attracting Feyre with closed eyes as she followed the various scents, until the shouts of children laughing as they played games begged her open her eyes back up and pay attention.

But the sea, stretched out of that snaking river the Sidra that wound through the city, was what really caught her attention, made her see the city as one collective tableau beyond the brushstrokes she initially spotted.

Velaris was such a dynamic, varied city. It was one reason I adored it and thanked the Mother every day my predecessors had seen fit to keep this city secret and safe above all others. There were just as many stretches of even, flat land to roam as there were mountains to climb, and the sea offered a never ending adventure to escape to. I grew up inhaling the salty, fresh scent of it deep into my lungs every morning until it was just as ingrained into my being as the wind and air were at my wings.

Feyre followed the wind as it took her over the many rooftops that clustered the city’s hillsides until she spotted the massive cliff side carved of red stone and her breath hitched.

Her mental shields were shut as I approached, clamped down tightly, so I couldn’t tell if she was impressed or curious or something else entirely.

“The middle peak,” I said softly, trying not to scare her, but she still jumped to face me, “that’s my other home in this city. The House of Wind.” I spotted Cassian and Azriel over Feyre’s shoulder flying toward the topmost reaches of the House, two blurs of black and danger carried on the wind to remind me of what was at stake. “We’ll be dining there tonight.”

Feyre cut away and took one more sweep of the city. We had barely stepped outside my townhouse and I already felt this horrible sense of dread that she would be displeased, would find it taxing and tiresome to be here as the city raged with life.

A city - this city. This damned city I never thought I’d see again, never thought I’d get to show her.

“How?” Feyre asked.

And I knew she was really asking how it even existed.

“Luck,” I replied.

“Luck?” she said quietly, too quiet. But with enough steely force behind it to knock the wind from the skies and render me silent. “Yes, how lucky for you that the rest of Prythian was ravaged while your people, your city, remained safe.” She paused to survey me, a glint of malice in her eyes that was quickly lost in the sea of rage and emotion she was slave to these days. “Did you even think for one moment to extend that luck to anywhere else? Anyone else?”

Every damn day for fifty years , I wanted to say. Not at her - but at me. At my own stupid inability to act.

“Other cities,” I said, trying to explain as much to myself as to her, “are known to the world. Velaris has remained secret beyond the borders of these lands for millennia. Amarantha did not touch it, because she did not know it existed. None of her beasts did. No one in the other courts knows of its existence, either.”

“How?”

“Spells and wards and my ruthless, ruthless ancestors, who were willing to do anything to preserve a piece of goodness in our wretched world.”

A piece of goodness that I was willing to preserve - by whatever means. It was an argument I had given myself daily under that cursed rock while I remained there, trying forever to convince myself that sealing this city up to keep it safe while the rest of Prythian went to hell was worth it.

And if Feyre didn’t eventually see that, it would be failure in bringing her here and would mean that I was wrong, had lied to myself for fifty years in vain. I didn’t think there was any coming back from that, to fail my court...

When Feyre replied, it felt like the hot venom hissing from her was directed as much at me as it was for the demon who had enslaved us to her rule. “And when Amarantha came, you didn’t think to open this place as a refuge?”

For a moment, I went blind. Blind with panic and anger at how difficult Amarantha had made this, to even be here in this situation. I had made the choice that would keep my court safest as every other High Lord had done to their own abilities and I would not be sorry for it.

“When Amarantha came,” I said, gritting on the words, “I had to make some very hard choices, very quickly.”

Feyre shoved away from me, her eyes dragging with disgust towards the sea, something I assumed was far more pleasant to look at just then than my unyielding face. “I’m assuming you won’t tell me about it.”

Dinner. Just a few more hours and then we would be at dinner with my brothers - with Mor. And then maybe we could...

“Now’s not the time for that conversation.”

It wasn’t likely what she wanted to hear, and I hated myself a little bit for shutting her out the same way Tamlin had at every turn. But right now... she needed to see the city, need to see and feel and live it to understand just what was at stake.

As if sensing the direction of my thoughts, Feyre stared at the Sidra and asked, “So what is there that was worth saving at the cost of everyone else?”

I met her eyes with relentless dedication and loyalty, the idealogies that bound me blood and soul to my court.

“Everything.”

I tried to explain as much of the city as I could, but it was... difficult doing so. Feyre rarely replied to my commentary and her gaze was bland as she took in details at every turn.

We reached the Palace of Thread and Jewels - the first of our four main market squares - and I found myself taking trips into the various jewelry shops just for a reprieve from my one-sided conversation with Feyre. I had needed a gift for Amren, anyway.

A gift I honestly could have purchased in the first shop, had Feyre not decided to stay outside and the time alone provided me with space just to think of what to say to her. But the first shop was full of rings, all beautiful and glimmering with golds and silver and every kind of gem imaginable, that reminded me too much of the one ring I was most anxious to retrieve. With any luck, I’d have it soon.

I glanced from the display out the shop window to where Feyre stood, her head constantly turning, and walked out the shop with a quick word of goodbye to the shop keep. By the time I had bought something for Amren, I was content to shove the small bag into my pockets and leave my hands there to cut some of the tension riding my nerves.

Feyre we so, so silent. I’m not sure what I had expected the first time I showed her my city, but it wasn’t quite this.

We wandered for a long while and I said less and less as we went, keeping a few steps from Feyre who didn’t seem to want be near me regardless. Occasionally, someone would stop to say hello, maybe shake my hand, but for the most part, passerby kept to silent nods and waves.

We’d made it through the Palace of Bone and Salt - a spice and meats market - when the first flecks of color cut my vision in the distance and I knew the test we were nearing. A jolt of adrenaline crashed through my stomach like lightning in the middle of a still and peaceful dessert.

Feyre stopped dead in her tracks the moment she spotted the first shop and realized what it was, realized that before her lay a minefield of memories.

“This is what Velaris is known for,” I said keeping a low voice as she stared into the art shop as though it were a torture chamber she might find my spymaster working in. “The artists’ quarter. You’ll find a hundred galleries, supply stores, potters’ compounds, sculpture gardens, and anything in between. They call it the Rainbow of Velaris. The performing artists - the musicians, the dancers, the actors - dwell on that hill right across the Sidra. You see the bit of gold glinting near the top?” I pointed and barely, she followed my direction and I wondered if this was a mistake. “That’s one of the main theaters. There are five notable ones in the city, but that’s the most famous. And then there are the smaller theaters, and the amphitheater on the sea cliffs...”

Feyre’s eyes glossed over as they trailed away uncaring or - something. My explanation died. All life inside of me seemed to die. Her shield dropped for the first time that day and I was once more standing before the ghost who had visited me for two weeks out of obligation.

I knew she hadn’t wanted to paint, knew that color and creation sometimes rotted the very bones she stood on. But I had not thought - had not realized that her passion had been so deteriorated, so tainted by what had happened that even the very core of who she was had become dead inside.

Through her now opening mind, there wasn’t even a faint glimmer of that desire and it was crushing to feel the hollow ache that now took up occupancy inside that human heart of hers. Cauldron, even on my darkest nights under that mountain, I’d still wanted to fly ...

“I’m tired,” Feyre said. It was barely audible.

“We can come back another day,” I said, because of course I wasn’t going to give up on this, nor let her give up on herself. She deserved these passions, these pursuits. We’d just have to wait. “It’s almost time for dinner, anyway.”

I took our walk back up and Feyre moved with me, but each step seemed to crack her walls open ever wider as her anger, insatiable and roaring and gutted beyond comprehension, drowned her out and took me with it.

It wasn’t just the sight of her former love sitting at every window behind us as we strode away. It was every single person she saw smile, heard sing, or laugh, or chatter merrily on that burned her.

And I understood because I wanted it too. Wanted a life that was carefree so damned badly that I sometimes thought I would burn the world to ash just to have it, even if it meant being alone with the darkness crackling in my blood from when my powers had first awoken. That roaring had never stopped since despite dimming somewhat over time.

And now I felt it roaring inside of Feyre, ascending towards a breaking point. The last time I’d felt that snap inside her, she’d -

“Easy,” I said gently and felt her turn to look at me hotly. I wondered what would come out of her this time if she broke. Ice? Fire? More darkness, perhaps. Nothing she would want to expose so publicly and nothing my court deserved the ire of. “My people are blameless.”

Without any pause whatsoever, Feyre drained of all emotion and I staggered a bit to look at her. The rage - it was gone, blinked out of existence as if it were never there in the first place.

A harsh numbness fell over her that I hated to feel. That favorite sentiment of the ghost that so loved to inhabit her mind and steal her away from the world as she reiterated with the most defeated look, “I’m tired.”

I felt like I’d failed her. I’d shown her Velaris. Shown her the jewel of my court and what I’d most hope might inspire her in all the ways I couldn’t and she felt... empty again.

It was an effort not to cry as my throat went raw. “Tomorrow night, we’ll go for a walk. Velaris is lovely in the day, but it was built to be viewed after dark.”

Like Feyre. Like myself.

Desperate. I was so fucking desperate. A miserable fool right back in that sitting room trying to pull something - anything, out of her.

The effort of walking up the hills back towards the townhouse grated on Feyre as she mustered some energy to hold the conversation. “Who, exactly, is going to be at this dinner?”

“My Inner Circle. I want you to meet them before you decide if this is a place you’d like to stay. If you’d like to work with me, and thus work with them. Mor, you’ve met, but the three others-”

“The ones who came this afternoon.”

I nodded. “Cassian, Azriel, and Amren.”

Cauldron, would they be enough? After our tour through Velaris, I wasn’t so sure anything would be anymore. That momentary giddiness I’d felt this morning at having Feyre so close to meeting them vanished.

“Who are they?” she asked and I puzzled over how to best explain my court.

“There are tiers,” I said, “within our circle. Amren is my Second in command.” Feyre’s eyes widened incredulously. That she had not been expecting. “Yes. And Mor is my Third. Only a fool would think my Illyrian warriors were the apex predators in our circle.”

Feyre mused trying to make sense of the cheery, sunny woman she knew with the powerful warrior Mor had to be to have earned her keep as my Third. The thought made me smile inwardly, but Mor wasn’t who I was so concerned with Feyre meeting, not after the brief flare up we’d just gone through...

“You’ll see what I mean when you meet Amren,” I continued. “She looks High Fae, but something different prowls beneath her skin. She might be older than this city, but she’s vain, and likes to hoard her baubles and belongings like a firedrake in a cave. So... be on your guard. You both have tempers when provoked, and I don’t want you to have any surprises tonight.”

“So if we get into a brawl and I rip off her necklace, she’ll roast and eat me?” Feyre asked, and she was actually a little genuinely curious about my Second and her mysterious nature. The scene that sprang to mind of Feyre trying to steal from Amren was comical.

“No,” I laughed, “Amren would do far, far worse things than that. The last time Amren and Mor got into it, they left my favorite mountain retreat in cinders. For what it’s worth, I’m the most powerful High Lord in Prythian’s history, and merely interrupting Amren is something I’ve only done once in the past century.”

I meant it to come out offhandedly, a simple way of explaining the depth of Amren’s power. But the gates to Feyre’s mind burst full and free, latching on to that one phrase: the most powerful High Lord in history ...

And Amren, with her seeming ageless existence.

The city went very quiet then. Everything narrowed down to Feyre as my every thought disintegrated into the empty, empty starving void that was her mind, a mind that looked at my friends - looked at me - and decided it didn’t even have an impulse to want to try anymore, that death might be better.

My hand snatched her chin and I willed myself not to dig in to her skin lest I hurt her. But I pulled her towards me, unable to go any longer without touching her and affirming that she was still real, was not this ghost haunting her skin, was still here alive and breathing even if she didn’t want to be.

Fuck, she had to be.

She wins. That bitch wins if you let yourself fall apart...

“Don’t you ever think that,” I said. “ Not for one damned moment.”

And I yanked hard on her mind. I hadn’t quite meant to, but I was so worn down from watching her not care, watching her waste away and gladly do it that I felt compelled to do something . I couldn’t - fuck, I couldn’t lose her. Not again. Screaming for her on the floors of that mountain had been enough to last me lifetimes.

But tugging on her mind was like hitting a reset between us. One moment, we were standing in the middle of the Velaris with the Sidra on one side and pleasant shops on the other. And the next...

The next, I was on that balcony Under the Mountain, feeling the bond snap into place with tautness between us before Feyre dragged me even deeper, back to the moment she had died and the only way to save her was to fold her into myself. She saw through my eyes - saw herself standing there under the glittering sun of Velaris, how hollow her eyes were, how sharp her cheek bones stood out, how loosely her clothes hung from her body.

And she was broken. We both were. Crying out in mourning for how far we’d fallen. At how much she had lost. Her humanity gone right along side her passion, her drive, her fierce courageous spirit. All of it seemed lost in those moments of staring at herself for what she’d become. It broke her to the point that she released the bond and fell into the chasm of that incredible despair while I scrambled for purchase on the bond itself, clinging to it if it meant it would keep her alive.

And if it didn’t. Fuck, if it didn’t...

I pushed my desperate screaming out of my ears from when Amarantha had hurled herself at Feyre and I’d heard her neck snap, heard my heart die alongside her. “Was that a trick?” Feyre said, dripping with contempt.

“No,” I rasped, my head tilting to one side to study her. “How did you get through it? My shield.”

Bond or no bond, it shouldn’t have been easy to get inside my head to the point of co-habitation like that. Shit, this meant that was -

Feyre blazed past me, no longer content to stand about sluggishly, though she remained dejected. She was running away.

Carefully, I grabbed her elbow and held her back. “How many other minds have you accidentally slipped into.” The answer flashed through her mind faster than her brain could put words together to articulate thought. “ Lucien?” I snorted at that, no love lost for the Fox of Spring. “What a miserable place to be.”

Feyre returned my short laugh with a vicious snarl. “ Do not go into my head.”

“Your shield is down,” I said, watching proudly as she hauled it right back up, cared enough to do it. “You might as well have been shouting his name at me. Perhaps you having my power...” I stared at her, chewing my lip.

It was too perfect. Everything I’d been hoping for in terms of her abilities, assuming she agreed to use them with me, was staring me in the face. All of the evidence that this crazy plan could actually work was appearing like wildfire. If she said yes tonight...

A cottage some hundreds of miles away deep in the forests of Prythian flashed briefly through my mind.

It was a dream, my turn of luck. I couldn’t believe it, to the point that I snorted a laugh. “It’d make sense, of course, if the power came from me - if my own shield sometimes mistook you for me and let you slip past. Fascinating.”

I’d tell her why that was fascinating later. After she had decided whether or not to work for me.

Feyre glared at me and some of the old fire returned to her features, the fire that danced and played and bantered with me for sport, not hate. “Take your power back. I don’t want it.”

Mother above, thank you.

I smiled cooly. “It doesn’t work that way. The power is bound to your life. The only way to get it back would be to kill you. And since I like your company, I’ll pass on the offer.”

We resumed walking and I gave her a few paces before I brought the conversation back to less savory details to her.

“You need to be vigilant about keeping your mental wards up. Especially now that you’ve seen Velaris. If you ever go somewhere else, beyond these lands, and someone slipped into your mind and saw this place...” The impact of that happening never failed to distress me as I repressed a shudder. “We’re called daemati - those of us who can walk into another person’s mind as if we were going from one room to another. We’re rare, and the trait appears as the Mother wills it, but there are enough of us scattered throughout the world that many - mostly those in positions of influence - extensively train against our skill set. If you were ever to encounter a daemati without those shields up, Feyre, they’d take whatever they wanted. A more powerful one could make you their unwitting slave, make you do whatever they wanted and you’d never know it. My lands remain mystery enough to outsiders that some would find you, among other things, a highly valuable source of information.”

Feyre snapped. It seemed her newfound abilities were just one more thing to hate about herself or me - maybe both of us.

“I take it that in a potential war with Hybern, the king’s armies wouldn’t even know to strike here?” She waved generally at Velaris all around us, her voice cold and sharp. I didn’t want to argue again, not when I’d just gotten her back, not when - “So, what - your pampered people... those who can’t shield their minds - they get your protection and don’t have to fight while the rest of us bleed?”

She was out of my reach and storming up the street before I could even blink at her. But she needn’t have bothered. Her words were so clipped, so chaotic, I knew they were shallow attempts at angering me, pushing me away. But beneath them stretched that dark wasteland where I had spent fifty years convincing myself everything was worth it.

I stayed well behind Feyre as we made it back to the townhouse. I didn’t need her shields to drop - which they didn’t - to tell me what kind of empty void she’d fallen back into where colors had faded and life itself stopped existing.

My own life felt colorless. Felt bleak. How long had I been pushing Cassian’s blunt attempts to call me back away? How long had been avoiding Azriel and curtly rushing out on Amren when the conversation didn’t call for my attention? How long had Mor been watching me wake up and pretend I wasn’t still sleeping all through breakfast?

We were both lost, Feyre and I. I just hoped by the end we could find our way back to whatever life was calling us home.

The remainder of the afternoon was quiet.

Feyre went upstairs to get ready for dinner, though I imagined she was stewing just as much as I was. I made quick work of the brooch I’d purchased, wrapping it in a plain white box adorned with a thick silk ribbon and sending it off to its recipient. I had a feeling I wouldn’t have to wait long to see it worn.

Dinner.

My stomach churned in response. Not at the thought of food, but... the conversations and the people to come. And - Feyre.

What she would think.

After how turbulent her emotions were today, I had no idea what to expect she’d make of this evening.

I took a steadying breath as I searched my closet for the right tunic to wear, something simple - black, with silver threading, carrying that note of elegance that I enjoyed indulging in. Not all of my High Lord’s mask was a lie. The fabric was soft and cool along my skin.

It didn’t take long to dress. I was outside waiting for Feyre on the balcony minutes later as the sun went down. Lights winked into existence over the stretch of Velaris all the way down to the Sidra, across it, and beyond. A city that slept in the day and waged life in the night.

A city I never thought I would see again.

A city, I might lose in a matter of weeks and months.

That vicious chain of nerves rattled in my bones shackling me to the earth. My wings burst free in gentle reprimand, strong and independent and yearning for the skies. For home. For that wildness that belonged solely to me.

I wanted to free again. Of everything.

There was music growing steadily louder like a heartbeat in the throws of fear except that the music was happy, was jubilant as it carried its notes to me and grounded me in this place.

Always torn in two - two feet on the ground and one head in the skies content to remain that way if it meant another night like this, teaming with possibility. Feyre might agree to stay tonight, might choose to spend her days with me even if only in a political capacity. She would choose whether to be a part of my court.

She would meet my friends .

A smile blossomed on my face. My eyes closed as I scented her approach. Somehow the idea of taking her up there wasn’t so terrifying as it had been. Or at least, where it was worrisome before and still was, now it was also somewhat hopeful.

Feyre cleared her throat and I turned, my breath hitching at the sight of the spectacular dress she’d selected. The length of the skirt and sleeves complimented her thin frame and the color - a swirling midnight blue like the depths of a pool of starlight and the dust of the heavens that one might fall into, sparked a soft glow in her blue-grey eyes. My eyes followed the deep plunging vee of her neckline, falling into that pool down, down, down...

“Rhys?” Feyre quirked her brow up at me and I realized I was still smiling like a lost fool at her. I brushed it away, but the sentiment behind it remained locked in my core.

She was lovely.

Feyre was lovely.

Feyre was hope and wonder and the future. The only person who made me feel normal anymore.

She straightened and let out a breath of air glancing up at the night sky, perhaps seeking some similar brand of comfort.

“Shall we?” I asked.

Feyre nodded and half turned for the door when I held my arms out and her body stiffened, registering what I intended. Her eyes went wide and I didn’t know it was possible for her skin to grow even paler, but it did.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “No.” Her tone was perfectly clear.

I crossed my arms and let my wings convey the bulk of my meaning as they rustled behind me, stretching and flexing with the moonlight around us in that courtyard.

“The House of Wind is warded against people winnowing inside - exactly like this house,” I explained. “Even against High Lords. Don’t ask me why, or who did it. But the option is either walk up the ten thousand steps, which I really do not feel like doing, Feyre, or fly in.” I didn’t bother adding that I didn’t feel like walking up all those damned steps just as much out of a desire to hold her again - properly - as a desire to be lazy.

Feyre seemed to realize something similar about the position this would put us in as she glanced over me, over the wings that would carry her high into the skies, and swallowed hard. That grin slowly stretched back across my lips like a cat prowling out to play.

“I promise I won’t drop you,” I said, a luxurious purr.

Feyre was near to dancing on her toes as she dropped down to examine her dress, her fingers fidgeting with the thin fabric at either side. She looked up and stared at me hard. “The wind will rip the gown right off.”

And then she’d be -

The hard, agitated feeling that had been rolling in my gut all afternoon went loose becoming a warm, delectable energy I hadn’t been sure I could still enjoy. But clearly, it was there as Feyre took one look at the feral grin I’d let slip and bolted for the door.

“I’ll take the stairs,” she said with an edge of annoyance. My wing snapped out and blocked her path, forceful enough that she couldn’t get away, but smoothly, without anger, for her to not feel threatened.

Feyre stared at the membrane of my wing for a long time almost as if she could see through it to the safety and comfort her room inside the townhouse provided. I wanted her to feel that way with me so near. Her shoulders rose and fell with her breath as she considered... something.

“Nuala spent an hour on my hair,” she said. I wondered what that hesitation really translated to. If it was me, our proximity, or the same nervous weight I carried for the meeting she would have in the next five minutes with a host of new information that might easily overwhelm her, even if I didn’t doubt for one minute she could deal with it if she really wanted to.

Gently, I brought the wing towards Feyre and she turned to face me, one step closer. A light breeze pushed at those delicate curls resting against her face and neck, one annoyingly skirting her cheek. “I promise I won’t let the wind destroy your hair,” I promised, staring at that lone rebellious curl. The desire to reach out and just touch it rose so suddenly in me that I was paralyzed to go through with it.

“If I’m to decide whether I want to work against Hybern with you - with your Inner Circle, can’t we just... meet here?”

“They’re all up there already. And besides, the House of Wind has enough space that I won’t feel like chucking them all off the mountain.”

Feyre swallowed and stared at the stretch of space - of hollow distance - between us and the House. “You mean,” she said quietly, nervous, “that this town house is too small, and their personalities are too big, and you’re worried I might lose it again.”

I brought my wings in a little closer, not sure how she’d react, but then... she took another step toward me and she didn’t brush off my wings at her shoulders.

Cold. She was so cold. But standing so close to me near enough that we could share breath now, that it felt like she might trust me for two damned seconds, I felt inexplicably warm. And suddenly, so too did she.

“So what if I am?” I asked. I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of her power, if I were truthful.

“I’m not some broken doll,” she said, but she wouldn’t quite look at me when she said it.

“I know you’re not.” And I meant it. She was strong and fierce, a storm that commanded the skies and tossed the seas about in their scurrying. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll throw you to the wolves. If you meant what you said about wanting to work with me to keep Hybern from these lands, keep the wall intact, I want you to meet my friends first. Decide on your own if it’s something you can handle. And I want this meeting to be on my terms, not whenever they decide to ambush this house again.”

“I didn’t know you even had friends.” She was suddenly sharp, but I didn’t quite mind. The moment felt too intimate, too honest to bite out a retort.

“You didn’t ask.”

We stood close enough now that I slid my arm around her waist, enjoyed the feel of her weight leaning into me. We shared too few precious heartbeats before her eyes locked on to my wings and I felt her back stiffen beneath my hold.

Friends.

Flight.

A cage .

My wings snapped back, but my arm stayed true, wrapping more tightly around her. To hold her. To keep her safe. To live when she lived and die when she died.

I will not let you fall, Feyre. I will not let you go it alone.

Feyre knew what was coming. Knew there were no ten thousand steps to take tonight. Her fingers clutched nimbly at my tunic searching for somewhere to stop the shaking from coming on.

“You say the word tonight,” I breathed, “and we come back here, no questions asked. And if you can’t stomach working with me, with them, then no questions asked on that, either. We can find some other way for you to live here, be fulfilled, regardless of what I need. It’s your choice, Feyre.”

Her body went still, but for once it wasn’t with paralyzing fear that crippled her into the shadows. It was the stillness that readies for war, that stands tall and proud and marches into the shadows willingly to cast them down before they can swallow a person whole.

Feyre’s eyes slid around me, looked at my wings with something like readiness, and a jolt of adrenaline went through me. To touch her, to hold her... to fly with her, with my mate. Every ounce of instinct the Illyrian man I was made of threatened to burst out of me waiting for her to say the word. And then -

“Please don’t drop me,” Feyre whispered. “And please don’t-”

Those instincts exploded.

Up, up, up we went into the deep waters of the velvet night sky about us surrounded by stars and music and laughter. Wind whipped by our faces in a glorious triumph, drowning out the small yelp Feyre gave as we ascended into speed and a blur of color. I tucked my arms securely around her torso and legs.

And Velaris.

Velaris was a paradise below us of diamonds and onyx sparkling, dancing, moving through the night. Feyre could hardly take her eyes off it as we flew higher towards the House, the wind settling into a gentle breeze upon our skin giving us the space to think and hear once more.

And it was heaven. We had only a few minutes before we would land and this would all have been some lovely dream, but it was a few minutes with her that I could have lived in for eternity.

We shot up into an updraft and Feyre coiled into my chest, fisting herself in my tunic with chilled fingers. Her head was tucked just below my neck so that when I leaned down to murmur in her ear, I could smell the fresh scents coming off her hair of grass and sun and even now some of those old familiar notes of paint that might not ever leave her no matter how long she resisted the practice.

“I expected more screaming from you. I must not be trying hard enough.”

“ Do not ,” she hissed at me, but there was a lightness in her eyes as she watched the city, a lightness I had been waiting for since I first took her from the Spring Court. The lightness that only flying and freedom could bring.

Feyre was too captivated by the city to notice the soft smile I bore as I watched her.

“When I was a boy,” I said, “I’d sneak out of the House of Wind by leaping out of my window - and I’d fly and fly all night, just making loops around the city, the river, the sea. Sometimes I still do.”

“Your parents must have been thrilled.”

“My father never knew - and my mother...”

My mother would have loved to see this, to have met you...

“She was Illyrian.” And she loved to fly. “Some nights, when she caught me right as I leaped out the window, she’d scold me... and then jump out herself to fly with me until dawn.”

“She sounds lovely,” Feyre said and my heart wrenched that she would never get to find out for herself.

“She was.”

We flew the rest of the way in silence and I may have let an imagined pocket or two of turbulence in the air force into a few maneuvers that took extra time in getting us to that great stone balcony at the House. But finally, we landed and Feyre spared the interior dining room through the great glass doors half a thought before she was once more at the balcony railing staring out at the city, at the night.

I held her for a moment until she had her balance and then stepped away as she shook me off. Her face was blank, but not that empty void that wasted away. Just silent, contemplative as she considered my court, had been doing all night and all day.

“Out with it,” I finally burst, leaning against the railing next to her. She lifted a brow at me. “You say what’s on your mind - one thing. And I’ll say one, too.”

Instantly, for whatever reason, Feyre shook her head and turned back away. And the not knowing was what snapped the words out of me. Her shields were up and I wasn’t going to pry anyway, not anymore, but I was so desperate to know if she approved or if she was hating this whole affair or if she was okay.

Mother above, just tell me she was okay.

“I’m thinking,” I said, feeling Feyre’s focus on me even as she stayed staring in the other direction, “that I spent fifty years locked Under the Mountain, and I’d sometimes let myself dream of this place, but I never expected to see it again. I’m thinking that I wish I had been the one who slaughtered her. I’m thinking that if war comes, it might be a long while yet before I get to have a night like this.”

I looked to her, glad to see her looking back, and waited. But Feyre only said, “Do you think war will be here that soon?”

“This was a no-questions-asked invitation. I told you... three things. Tell me one.”

Just tell me one thing - one piece of yourself that is real, that is honest, that isn’t just to spite me. Tell me one piece of your soul, Feyre, and you can have all of mine...

Feyre took a breath in which she seemed to inhale the entirety of Velaris and breathe it back out with her words.

“I’m thinking that I must have been a fool in love to allow myself to be shown so little of the Spring Court,” she said quiet, raw. “I’m thinking there’s a great deal of that territory I was never allowed to see or hear about and maybe I would have lived in ignorance forever like some pet. I’m thinking...” Her voice broke. I thought she might cry and I was one second from finally brushing that damned curl away from her cheek when she shook and pressed on. “I’m thinking that I was a lonely, hopeless person, and I might have fallen in love with the first thing that showed me a hint of kindness and safety. And I’m thinking maybe he knew that - maybe not actively, but maybe he wanted to be that person for someone. And maybe that worked for who I was before. Maybe it doesn’t work for who - what I am now.”

I wanted to tell her how proud of her I was.

I wanted to tell her that I understood all of those things and more and that they were perfectly valid.

I wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked standing there with her head held high, speaking her truths that pained her to her very core even if they were necessary now in order to think and feel again.

Most of all, I wanted to smack the stupid grins on Cassian and Azriel’s faces as they paused in the glass doorway and snickered at me.

So close...

“That was five,” I told Feyre, stepping back so that she was alerted to my brother’s appearance. “Looks like I owe you two thoughts - later.”

Feyre turned and caught sight of the males smirking at her and for a moment the world stopped.

We were finally here.

Chapter Text

I pushed off the balcony and walked towards my fate with my hands shoved deep into the plush fabric of my pockets. The motion only seemed to sharpen Cassian’s grin. There was no going back now.

Feyre stayed behind, but Cassian was quick to chomp at the bit wasting absolutely no time. “Come on, Feyre,” he said, his voice all playful teasing, a wolf ready to pounce. “We don’t bite. Unless you ask us to.”

Feyre jolted forward. Her instant reaction to his commentary had me biting out, “The last I heard, Cassian, no one has ever taken you up on that offer.”

Azriel snorted as Feyre stepped within proper viewing of my brothers and took her first real look at them and... quietly surveyed with a hint of awe ghosting her face.

Cassian stood slightly taller than Azriel with a longer crop of hair that fell to his shoulders compared to Az’s blunter cut. They both had that deep, tanned skin that marked the Illyrian people - and the hazel eyes, but beyond that... Cassian was all muscle and brute force, fashioned from the ground up, while Azriel was folded into smoke and darkness itself, the shadows crafting his form from the hollows of secrets themselves.

Day and Night, my brothers. Fire and ice. Stone and sword. A match and an opposition in every way.

The two briefly did something of the same to Feyre, Azriel lingering on her form a tad longer as Cassian looked me up and down with disapproval. “So fancy tonight, brother,” he told me. “And you made poor Feyre dress up, too.” He gave Feyre a wink and I wanted to smack him into the mud upstairs.

It wasn’t flirting, but it was enough of that banter I’d been anticipating since Feyre arrived in Velaris that the insufferable itch I’d known was coming, the one that would determine how this night ended for better or for worse, tugged along my skin.

Mercifully, Feyre didn’t give Cassian much thought as she slid her gaze to Azriel first, deciding he was the easier of the two to get along with. She held herself upright, stiff, as though she sensed the darkness that prowled beneath his skin, but she wasn’t afraid.

“This is Azriel,” I said, by way of introduction. “My spymaster.”

“Welcome,” Azriel said and extended his hand, which Feyre took and shook carefully. Feyre’s eyes flitted briefly over the brutal scars twisting along Az’s hands like ivy growing along a wall of stone ruins that had been warped and aged with time and war. The brief glance escaped none of our notice, most especially Azriel’s I was sure, though he gave no indication he’d felt her brief curiosity.

Feyre released Azriel’s hand, but her eyes didn’t move from the leathers he wore, nor Cassian’s when she shifted her gaze back to him. They didn’t often wear anything other than fighting leathers, but I’d asked them all the same to wear them tonight rather than a more casual ensemble. If Feyre was to work with us, she needed to see everything and all up front, and that included the painful bloodshed we were always one breath away from at all times.

“You’re brothers?” Feyre asked glancing between us.

“Brothers in the sense that all bastards are brothers of a sort.”

She looked at Cassian, tone tight. “And - you?”

Cass gave a shrug, forcing his wings to constrict behind him. “I command Rhys’s armies.”

Feyre gave a start, one I should have expected given that any mention of the war to come narrowed her focus and heightened the intensity of her thoughts, her feelings.

And Cassian - Cassian was watching her with utter delight already imagining all the ways he might play with her. Her movements. Her reactions. How he might teach her, which had been another of my requests for the evening. With how much Feyre was holding herself back just then, I wondered if it had been a mistake. If this all had been one giant mistake.

I went utterly quiet, forcing myself to let this play out as it would and it was Azriel who dealt me the mercy of ending the torment having not missed a single second of the exchange going on. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he knew the tension it was wringing over me either.

“Cassian also excels at pissing everyone off. Especially amongst our friends. So, as a friend of Rhysand... good luck.”

Cassian shoved Azriel aside immediately, which Az didn’t look entirely thrilled with, but he stepped back all the same.

“How the hell did you make that bone ladder in the Middengard Wyrm’s lair when you look like your own bones can snap at any moment?”

My insides froze and waited to shatter, to see how Feyre would take it. The prick . Azriel waited too standing near assessing every move she made as if he could read the thoughts behind them, bond or no bond.

Cassian just stood back expectantly and I knew that while he wanted to see what Feyre was made of just as much as Az, there was a genuine part of him - the warrior who had survived years in the cold with little-to-nothing inside him - who was truly curious how this fellow survivor, this fellow victim, had made it.

Feyre wouldn’t give him even that much.

“How the hell did you manage to survive this long without anyone killing you?” she spat back, fire in her blood roaring at that beast in front of her. I half expected her to inform him that next time he’d have to say please if he wanted anything from her.

A brief flash of a bone cleaved in two, a javelin hurled at a red-headed queen, and Cassian’s laughter ringing in my ear - both then and now. And I breathed.

Feyre could take him.

Azriel snorted once before the shadows consumed him into darkness and Feyre drowned in that darkness looking for answers herself, my inquisitive, curious little -

Not your anything .

Mor’s breezy waltz to join us on the balcony interrupted Feyre’s silent searching of me. “If Cassian’s howling, I hope it means Feyre told him to shut his fat mouth.”

“I don’t know why I ever forget you two are related,” Cassian said between Mor and I as she approached. At that, I rolled my eyes. “You two and your clothes.”

Mor ambled right up to Cassian, who looked like he might attack her if she made one more comment about his fat mouth , and mocked him with a glowering bow as the skirts of her red dress flared out around her, the gold cuffs flashing a sort of wild, antagonizing grin at us all.

I stepped back, content to let my cousin take over from here and admittedly relieved that she did.

“I wanted to impress Feyre,” Mor said, flashing Feyre a gleaming look, all bright bubbling champagne for this woman she already spoke to me of like a sister. “You could have at least bothered to comb your hair.” I was half surprised she didn’t run her hands over Cass’s head and ruffle it up more.

“Unlike some people,” Cass said, his feet digging into the stone, Azriel’s gaze not far behind, “I have better things to do with my time than sit in front of the mirror for hours.”

Mor tossed her hair and I knew, one word and she would gladly go to war with Cassian if it meant winning this little game our family constantly played.

“Yes, since swaggering around Velaris-”

“We have company,” Azriel said at last, his long suffering patience and anxiety winning out over watching his friends snip at each other.

Cauldron, we hadn’t even gotten to Amren yet.

Azriel stretched his wings wide to herd us forward, and indeed the leathery membranes were enough to sweep us all up a few times over as together we made it inside. Mor alone darted out of that pen created by the great wings, marching straight up to Feyre, but not before she’d placed a hand on Az’s shoulder and murmured to the shadowsinger softly enough that it felt an intrusion to overhear, “Relax, Az - no fighting tonight. We promised Rhys.”

And then she was gone, grabbing Feyre by the hand and leading her inside while Azriel’s face softened, his shadows momentarily gone in that brief solace he found in the sun.

That sun that filtered through the entire room as I watched Mor lead Feyre further inside by the hand like a dear friend she hadn’t seen in ages. A rough force shoved into my shoulder.

“Get your hands out of your damned pockets,” Cass hissed at me and then nodded in Feyre’s direction. “And stop sulking. She’s fine . Fine is good, remember?”

My eyes went up with great care, but I would not let them roll as Cassian snorted at me and moved on. Azriel clapped me on the back. “Fine is great ,” he said and I shoved him off me.

“Okay - shit ,” I said low, glad Feyre had been distracted enough by Amren’s entrance not to see the exchange, and indeed Amren was quite the distraction.

Easily the shortest one in the room by a heavy margin, Amren stood the tallest of us all, her sweeping presence overshadowing the power surrounding her by miles. Those silver eyes looked ready to dance as she beheld Feyre, swirling with what seemed like the mists of the ancient realms that had birthed her one cursed morning into ours.

Mor sank into one of the chairs at the dining table with a simpering moan, undoubtedly disappointed her private time with Feyre was so short. She poured herself a glass of wine and tossed the bottle at Cassian who sat across from her at the table, the two of them content to spend an evening in such close proximity if there was enough liquor between them. Azriel alone stood with me.

“Your taste remains excellent, High Lord,” Amren announced to the room at large, flashing the beautiful silver-and-pearl broach I’d picked up for today with Feyre. She’d get to her in a moment.

I waved my hand as if it were nothing and truly, after centuries of plying Amren with gifts she didn’t really need to keep the firedrake happy, it was, and inclined my head. “It suits you, Amren.”

“Everything suits me,” she said with quiet, subtle precision. The entire room was silent. Finally, those dusty eyes alive with ancient wisdom fell on Feyre. And I was proud to see her stand tall and confident at Amren’s hard stare. I wondered if that was any indication of how she felt or if she was squirming as much as I was inside.

“So there are two of us now,” Amren said. Feyre gave a small flicker of confusion and Amren went on unfazed. “We who were born something else - and found ourselves trapped in new, strange bodies.”

Quick as lightning and equally as punishing, Amren directed Feyre to the chair beside Mor’s and took the seat opposite her. Azriel and I were left with no choice but to take the remaining seats which placed us next to them.

“Though there is a third,” Amren went on with the air of someone who shared a very great secret none else were privy to. “I don’t think you’ve heard from Miryam in... centuries. Interesting.” Amren’s cunning silver eyes slid to me, two swirling orbs ready to prophesy me a future in war and bloodshed.

“Please just get to the point, Amren,” Cassian said decidedly bored. “I’m hungry.”

The table went silent save for Mor choking on her wine. Feyre stiffened and I wondered if she recalled what I’d told her about interrupting Amren. Cassian wasn’t usually so testy.

But Amren shot my general a wry smile that was ready to cut him into pieces for her to feast on. “No one warming your bed right now, Cassian?” she asked slick as a serpent. “It must be so hard to be an Illyrian and have no thoughts in your head save for those about your favorite part.”

“You know I’m always happy to tangle in the sheets with you, Amren,” Cassian replied, leaning in closer to her and refusing to drop her stare. Amren looked ready to pounce and Cauldron boil me, I didn’t know who would move first - me or Azriel. “I know how much you enjoy Illyrian-”

“Miryam,” I said, cutting off exactly where I knew that sentence was heading, “and Drakon are doing well, as far as I’ve heard. And what, exactly, is interesting?”

But rather than return her focus to me, Amren’s eyes slid to Feyre and my mind buzzed in excitement all over again trying to ready for what was coming, what Amren would... assess, as I knew she inevitably would at some point during the course of the evening.

Amren studied Feyre for a long pause and this time, none interrupted her as we waited. “Only once before was a human Made into an immortal,” she said finally. Feyre sat straighter in her chair just as intrigued as the rest of us, seeing an equal of sorts before her. “Interesting that it should happen again right as all the ancient players have returned. But Miryam was gifted long life - not a new body. And you, girl...” I tried not to let the clipped girl grate on me as Amren tilted her chin up and sniffed the air coming off Feyre, and gave a start, that smokey gloss in her eyes clearing into surprise. Her head snapped to me and it felt as though my heart had leapt into my throat.

Mate.

Amren knew. Not just about what she announced to the room next, but about the bond. She questioned it in her stare. I merely nodded and averted my gaze where I caught Mor grinning into her wine glass, glancing at me out of the corner of her eyes.

I’d be hearing about this later.

“Your very blood,” Amren went on again addressing Feyre, “your veins, your bones were Made. A mortal soul in an immortal body.”

Amren and I had discussed this theory many times since I’d returned from the Mountain. In some ways, it had seemed more important to her than all the rest. Perhaps she saw something of herself in Feyre or at least the potential for it, if Feyre didn’t disappoint her as nearly all fae creatures did.

But we didn’t really have time to discuss it as a group. Mor snapped her fingers and announced in that chipper way she had of dismissing grim subjects, “I’m hungry.” And our table filled with food. She started piling her plate high prattling on as if Feyre were the only person in the world actually present. “Amren and Rhys can talk all night and bore us to tears, so don’t bother waiting for them to dig in. I asked Rhys if I could take you to dinner, just the two of us, and he said you wouldn’t want to.” I held back a groan. That hadn’t been quite how I’d phrased it. “But honestly - would you rather spend time with those two ancient bores, or me?”

“For someone who is the same age as me,” I said, “you seem to forget-”

“Everyone wants to talk-talk-talk,” Mor cut me off and stared pointedly at Cassian who had been ready to throw in with me. Anything to cut the queen down a notch and throw a tally up on his half of the scoreboard. “Can’t we eat-eat-eat and then talk?”

And it was Azriel - Azriel who laughed quietly at Morrigan and her incessant love of life and food and friends, and dissipated the subtle tension floating about the room. Mor’s lips quirked a quick smile at him before carrying over to Feyre, whom she filled a wine glass for and set in front of her plate. “Don’t let these old busybodies boss you around,” she said. The girls drank cheers to that.

“Pot. Kettle. Black.” Cassian pointed his fork at Mor with each word, but she didn’t deny it. Only started eating. Feyre had started eating herself and though the first few bites had been tentative, her plate rapidly diminished. I wondered with each bite how many would come running back up her stomach before the night was over, if the nightmares would chase her from sleep or if my friends would be enough to trap them down in merry conversation and pleasant meeting.

“I always forget how bizarre that is,” Cassian said grabbing Amren’s plate and dumping half of the food onto his own. Azriel immediately scowled, but... did not entirely hesitate from taking his half of the plate.

“I keep telling him to ask before he does that,” Az said quietly to Amren, half an apology.

Amren vanished the plate away with cold indifference. “If you haven’t been able to train him after all these centuries, boy, I don’t think you’ll make any progress now.”

Finally - that was what made Feyre speak. “You don’t - eat?”

Amren’s smile was all teeth and venom. “Not this sort of food.”

“Cauldron boil me. Can we not ?” Mor took a huge gulp of wine, her shoulders rising up to her chin in a shudder.

So much for merry conversation and pleasant meeting. And Feyre’s face - she looked like she’d just watched a cow sent to the slaughter and wasn’t sure how she felt about it yet. I stifled the chuckle I let out from bursting into a fuller, deeper laugh. “Remind me to have family dinners more often,” I said.

And at last, I felt settled. Tense as fuck, but still settled.

These were my friends - my family - and Feyre hadn’t looked at me once with so much as an inkling of flying straight back to the townhouse to give in to the solitude. The bantering, I could handle. Had handled for close to six centuries. But our brand of love layered in sharp jibes and wounded histories was unique to adjust to. Feyre continued eating, watching my companions in the longest stretch of silence we’d had yet, and Mother above I wanted her to find that adjustment tonight so badly .

But... if I could only have one night of this before she... said no, and resorted to the occasional dinner with Mor in the city while never seeing Cassian or Azriel or Amren again, then it was worth it. Because watching her sit there next to me in that dazzling blue dress that flowed around her body like water made from silk, looking to each of my companions and not flinching or backing down, it was something only my most bright and brilliant dreams were made of. And also, because it meant we were both pondering the same thing - what it would be like if she joined us. What it would be like if she called them family too.

And I realized they were waiting for her. That the silence around us as we ate was an open invitation for Feyre to choose where this started. I’d asked them to let me have this one night. Not all of them knew flat out the depth of the importance of it to me, but then again they really did know, didn’t need to be told what Feyre... being here meant. And not only had they given me that, they gave it to her too, yielded the choice and the comfort and the terms to my mate to figure out where this went.

And I don’t think I had ever loved them more than I did right in that moment.

Azriel, as it turned out, was where it started. Feyre’s gaze turned to the shadowsinger bathed wholly in smoke as though it were sunlight, and halted on the cobalt stones atop his hands that mirrored the ruby colored ones atop Cassian’s.

“They’re called Siphons,” Azriel said, lifting his hands to afford Feyre a better view. “They concentrate and focus our power in battle.”

“The power of stronger Illyrians tends toward ‘incinerate now, ask questions later,’“ I explained. “They have little magical gifts beyond that - the killing power.”

“The gift of a violent, warmongering people,” Amren concluded.

And though he agreed, the shadows constricted around Azriel to the point that they could have been physical roping binding him down. Cassian’s eyes narrowed at our brother who dismissed him at once. Always dutiful, always self-sacrificing, was Azriel.

“The Illyrians,” I pressed on, trying to give Az some space as we headed into meatier discussion on less savory topics for dinner, “bred the power to give them advantage in battle, yes. The Siphons filter that raw power and allow Cassian and Azriel to transform it into something more subtle and varied - into shields and weapons, arrows and spears. Imagine the difference between hurling a bucket of paint against the wall and using a brush. The Siphons allow for the magic to be nimble, precise on the battlefield - when its natural state lends itself toward something far messier and unrefined, and potentially dangerous when you’re fighting in tight quarters.”

Azriel’s shadows lessened considerably, especially once Cassian jutted his hands out, Siphons on full display, and flexed like a peacock strutting about. “Doesn’t hurt that they also look damn good.”

“Illyrians,” Amren muttered. Mor gave silent agreement that fell away in disgust as Cassian grinned ear to ear, damned proud.

I looked at Feyre and found her lips quivering slightly, her brow knitted together.

Adjust, please adjust. Please be okay , I silently begged the Cauldron.

When she spoke, it was all at once in a great rush that she kept trained on Azriel, the easiest to approach by far. “How did you - I mean, how do you and Lord Cassian-”

She was cut off by a howling cackle from Cassian that masked my own snort. A cackle that sent wine spewing all over Mor’s dress.

“Mother’s tits, Cassian - you ass!” Mor shot up out of her seat and glared at Cassian who didn’t give a shit that she was pissed, he kept right on laughing. And within seconds, Mor’s dress was clean and Cassian’s flying leathers decidedly dirty with the stains of wine.

Feyre blushed crimson, sitting as far back in her chair as she possibly could. I felt an instinct I’d never experienced before, one that had been locked away deep inside of myself waiting for her perhaps, incline me towards her chair to cup her face between my hands and kiss her cheek. To care for her, to share the joke in ways I’d never been intimate with anyone. Not like this.

I remained rooted to the spot instead knowing how she would recoil if I ever so much as moved one inch toward her.

“Cassian,” I said, “is not a lord. Though I’m sure he appreciates you thinking he is.” Sure enough, Cassian wiped tears from his eyes in affirmation. “While we’re on the subject, neither is Azriel. Nor Amren. Mor, believe it or not, is the only pure-blooded, titled person in this room.”

Feyre’s embarrassment shifted quickly into confusion as she examined me and perhaps just as she had when Amren had scented her earlier, I felt somewhat... exposed underneath that stare. “I’m half-Illyrian. As good as bastard where the thoroughbred High Fae are concerned.”

“So you - you three aren’t High Fae?”

“Illyrians,” Cassian said in between his remaining fits of laughter, “are certainly not High Fae. And glad of it.” He pulled his hair back so that the rounded tips of his ears showed. “And we’re not lesser faeries, though some try to call us that. We’re just - Illyrians. Considered expendable aerial cavalry for the Night Court at the best of times, mindless soldier grunts at the worst.”

“Which is most of the time,” Azriel chimed in.

There were a few lingering smiles and chuckles sent around the ring of us before Feyre cut us cold, her question silencing us deeper than the grave. “I didn’t see you Under the Mountain,” she said.

No one knew quite where to look, but the answer was apparently everywhere but to myself. Which was good because... I didn’t know what to say. Not when Feyre’s words from this afternoon when we’d fought still clanged through my consciousness, dragging me through hell and back.

“Because none of us were,” my savior of a cousin said at last.

Feyre’s gaze slid to me and I kept my face a mask. If I cracked, even a little bit... there might not be any coming back from this conversation. It was one thing to fall to pieces in front of her, and a part of me had started to want that in some twisted way. What a privilege it would be to become a trembling, shattering mess in her arms. But to do so in front of the others, to lay that burden at their feet... there might not be any coming back from that, not when I knew what my leaving and their staying had cost them too.

“Amarantha didn’t know they existed,” I said, willing myself forward into territory I knew would come up eventually between us. “And when someone tried to tell her, they usually found themselves without the mind to do so.”

Feyre shuddered and I resisted the impulse to do the same, knowing it meant she likely... despised me for what I’d done, what I had saved at the cost of so much else.

“You truly kept this city, and all these people, hidden from her for fifty years?”

“We will continue to keep this city and these people hidden from our enemies for a great many more.” Amren. Sharp. Shrewd. Resolute. Unyielding as stone.

This was it. I could feel it in the silence that reigned over us all. This was the moment where Feyre decided. This right here. It wouldn’t be the end of the night when she’d taken the full measure of every person at this table because just then, she saw everything she needed to make her decision.

Cassian’s hard stare at the plate in front of him, his anger raging across his skin, so palpable we could feel it.

Azriel’s cocoon of shadows storming over his person, wrestling with a desperate, icy rage even now months after my return that longed to go and slaughter every cretin creeping in the mountains who might have once held me to my prison and escaped detection when Tamlin ripped Amarantha’s throat out.

Amren’s cruel defiance, her refusal to bend law or deed to fit anyone else’s approval so long as her city and High Lord were held to the justice they deserved in this world.

And Morrigan.

Morrigan’s quiet, shattered heart that had flown at me when I came back, had waited patiently to cry buckets against me after my own grief was finished pouring out. Morrigan who had poked and prodded and kept to companionable joy at my side since we were kids. Morrigan who took every burden I had unjustly hurled at her and spun it into brilliant resilience so like her very own.

Morrigan, who now looked at Feyre with redness stinging her eyes, lips tight, and said, “There is not one person in this city who is unaware of what went on outside these borders. Or of the cost.”

Not one person - including these four, my Inner Circle. My blood. My family.

For them, I had sacrificed everything. For them, I would stay Under that Mountain. For them, Amarantha was a gift to delight in if it meant keeping them safe.

If it meant her hands on me, groping and teasing and testing until I was hard and cursing my own body and had no choice but to fuck her until she...

Feyre was so quiet, I missed the moment when she asked a question that must have been something to do with our meeting. She was staring at me. Cassian was too. It was his reply that made me understand what direction she’d shifted the conversation into.

“We all hated each other at first,” he said. I could hear a faint smile in his voice. It was not until Cassian had drawled on considerably that Feyre took her eyes off me. For the first time, I didn’t desire them back. “We are bastards, you know. Az and I. The Illyrians... We love our people, and our traditions, but they dwell in clans and camps deep in the mountains of the North, and do not like outsiders. Especially High Fae who try to tell them what to do. But they’re just as obsessed with lineage, and have their own princes and lords among them. Az,” and he pointed in our brother’s direction, “was the bastard of one of the local lords. And if you think the bastard son of a lord is hated, then you can’t imagine how hated the bastard is of a war-camp laundress and a warrior she couldn’t or wouldn’t remember. Az’s father sent him to our camp for training once he and his charming wife realized he was a shadowsinger.”

I cleared my throat, realizing Feyre still had no idea what a shadowsinger was and needing to... reclaim my part in the evening. I might remain lost otherwise if my thoughts were left to fester. “Like the daemati,” I said, “shadowsingers are rare - coveted by courts and territories across the world for their stealth and predisposition to hear and feel things others can’t.”

I had half a mind to assume Feyre would jump right in with that insatiable curiosity of hers to ask Azriel exactly what that meant, but one look at him wrapped in his shadows with stone cold silence bringing predatory stillness over his face and I was glad, for his sake, that she chose not to.

Though Azriel had grown more comfortable with his past over these many centuries, it was seldom a topic we ventured in to. Some demons come back too easily.

Which was why Cassian was the one who continued talking.

“The camp lord practically shit himself with excitement the day Az was dumped in our camp. But me... once my mother weaned me and I was able to walk, they flew me to a distant camp, and chucked me into the mud to see if I would live or die.”

Mor snorted. “They would have been smarter throwing you off a cliff.”

“Oh, definitely,” Cassian said, agreeing with her for once. There was a shared understanding that passed between them then, the torment of families gone terribly wrong. The common thread connecting us all together. “Especially because when I was old and strong enough to go back to the camp I’d been born in, I learned those pricks worked my mother until she died.”

The tension born of that admission unleashed an awful silence once more. The anxiety and scars flickering on Cassian’s face stirred some of that same icy vengeance Azriel carted around within myself.

“The Illyrians,” I said, taking Feyre’s attention away, “are unparalleled warriors, and are rich with stories and traditions. But they are also brutal and backward, particularly in regard to how they treat their females.”

“They’re barbarians,” Amren amended. “They cripple their females so they can keep them for breeding more flawless warriors.”

Mor’s incessant nodding to the left caught my eye, but she was staring straight at Azriel, worry creasing her brow as he wouldn’t meet her gaze, nor any of us. She bit her lip and waited for him to look up at her anyway.

What Amren had said was nothing short of true. My own mother... Cauldron, only earlier I’d thought of flying with her, of introducing her to Feyre. My mother and my mate...

“My mother was low-born,” I said, wanting Feyre to know her in some way where she couldn’t in real life. “And worked as a seamstress in one of their many mountain war-camps. When females come of age in the camps - when they have their first bleeding - their wings are... clipped. Just an incision in the right place, left to improperly heal, can cripple you forever. And my mother - she was gentle and wild and loved to fly. So she did everything in her power to keep herself from maturing. She starved herself, gathered illegal herbs - anything to halt the natural course of her body. She turned eighteen and hadn’t yet bled, to the mortification of her parents. But her bleeding finally arrived, and all it took was for her to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, before a male scented it on her and told the camp’s lord. She tried to flee- took right to the skies. But she was young, and the warriors were faster, and they dragged her back. They were about to tie her to the posts in the center of camp when my father winnowed in for a meeting with the camp’s lord about readying for the War. He saw my mother thrashing and fighting like a wildcat and...”

And...

“Be glad of your human heart, Feyre,” I said. “Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.” She simply nodded and with her mind locked, I didn’t know what she thought of me. It was agonizing not to know. “Well, good-bye for now,” I said hating that I had to go with this question mark left between us.

I bowed low for her, a gesture only Feyre could ever merit from me, and then began to fade away. But as my wings returned to my body and I rose back up, my eyes found hers and my entire body seized. My blood raced through my veins with the scent of her, of Feyre and everything that she was. Her mind, her body, her soul, I felt all of it and I wanted every ounce and then some. She was radiant, like hope and joy made manifest and my life felt complete just looking at her. It shocked me so thoroughly that I fell backwards, all of my usual grace utterly gone.

Feyre.

The name curled around my heart and I was lost. The entire world was her and she was me and if I didn’t have her now, I would go mad.

My mate. My mate. My mate.

Feyre had very clearly noticed my reaction even if she didn’t understand what it was due to. “What is-” she started to say, but the sound of her voice was a new frenzy, a war cry thrumming in my body to take her then and there, something I knew could not happen. And so I winnowed, without a word of explanation.

The recollection was clear as day, as if I had been there that day my father first saw my mother in all that grief and despair, and known precisely how he had felt. Like nothing else in the world mattered except saving that precious flesh and blood before him.

I swallowed.

“The mating bond between them clicked into place. One look at her, and he knew what she was. He misted the guards holding her.”

“Misted?” Feyre asked.

Cassian’s faint laughter was signal enough of his recovery that I enjoyed floating the lemon wedge off my plate to dance in front of Feyre before I clicked my fingers and barely registered feeling my power shred the lemon into a citrus-scented sheen in the air. There was something oddly satisfying about it and knowing how much I would have liked to have done that every day my mate had been forced to suffer Amarantha’s court, I could imagine my father had felt a similar satisfaction the day he met my mother.

“Through the blood-rain, my mother looked at him. And the bond fell into place for her. My father took her back to the Night Court that evening and made her his bride. She loved her people, and missed them, but never forgot what they had tried to do to her - what they did to the females among them. She tried for decades to get my father to ban it, but the War was coming, and he wouldn’t risk isolating the Illyrians when he needed them to lead his armies. And to die for him.”

“A real prize, your father.” Mor’s voice was low, but full of malice that I imagined was directed elsewhere just as much as it was my father’s memory.

“At least he liked you,” I offered. But when I looked at Feyre, she still seemed confused and I knew precisely why. And it was ironic, really, given what we were to each other that I should be here explaining it to her in a different way while she was unaware of the truth between us. I didn’t dare look at Mor, lest the guilt sink in fresh.

“My father and mother, despite being mates, were wrong for each other. My father was cold and calculating, and could be vicious, as he had been trained to be since birth. My mother was soft and fiery and beloved by everyone she met. She hated him after a time - but never stopped being grateful that he had saved her wings, that he allowed to fly whenever and wherever she wished. And when I was born, and could summon the Illyrian wings as I pleased... She wanted me to know her people’s culture.”

“She wanted to keep you out of your father’s claws,” Mor said. The sound of her voice seemed to snap the life back into Azriel who looked up from his silent reverie and trained his thoughtful gaze on Mor as she swirled her wine about testily in her glass.

“That, too,” I affirmed. “When I turned eight, my mother brought me to one of the Illyrian war-camps. To be trained, as all Illyrian males were trained. And like all Illyrian mothers, she shoved me toward the sparring ring on the first day, and walked away without looking back.”

“She abandoned you?” Feyre looked near outraged and I cringed at what memories of her own abandonment this might be conjuring up for her. If I ever met her father...

“No - never,” I said with a firmness that was resolute. My mother never - never abandoned me, nor my sister. “She was staying at the camp as well. But it is considered an embarrassment for a mother to coddle her son when he goes to train.”

Feyre didn’t seem any bit more appeased by this piece of information. It brought a snarky laugh hustling out of Cass. “Backward, like he said,” Cassian told her.

“I was scarred out of my mind,” I said. As if it had been yesterday, I felt the quick, sharp course of adrenaline that had flooded me that first day and every day afterwards for a long while. Thinking about it now was almost comical. “I’d been learning to wield my powers, but Illyrian magic was a mere fraction of it. And it’s rare amongst them - usually possessed only by the most powerful, pure-bred warriors.” Feyre’s eyes went right to the Siphons sitting on Cassian and Azriel’s hands, questioning. “I tried to use a Siphon during those years and shattered about a dozen before I realized it wasn’t compatible - the stones couldn’t hold it. My power flows and is honed in other ways.”

“So difficult, being such a powerful High Lord,” Mor crooned. Azriel looked rather smug.

I rolled my eyes, but on the whole ignored her. “The camp-lord banned me from using my magic. For all our sakes. But I had no idea how to fight when I set foot into that training ring that day. The other boys in my age group knew it, too. Especially one in particular, who took a look at me, and beat me into a bloody mess.”

Cassian .

The filthy prick shook his head with such smug arrogance. Had it not been for Feyre, I would have dragged his ass outside to settle the matter just for the sport of it, for the fun. Something I had not done since - since...

I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had a go just because we could.

“You were so clean ,” Cass said pulling me away from - whatever direction I’d been going. “The pretty half-breed son of the High Lord - how fancy you were in your new training clothes.”

“Cassian,” Azriel chimed in, now that the brutality of Illyrian origins had passed, “resorted to getting new clothes over the years by challenging other boys to fights, with the prize being the clothes off their backs.“

Cassian started chuckling, no hint of darkness lingering, but Feyre... Feyre stared at him hard, so hard that I don’t think she really noticed anyone looking at her, at how sharp the planes of her face had become. Cassian saw her, saw the honesty and agony written on her face not just for what he had done, but for the simple fact that he’d had to, to survive.

Just like her...

Fire ignited in Cassian’s eyes as together, he and Feyre shared blood and history without saying a word. But it was a fire of life and love and understanding, something none of the rest of were a part of even if we shared those pains in other ways.

When he spoke, it was with that same amusement, that same charm that brought an ease to the ache. The same way Morrigan so often righted wrongs into triumphs.

“I’d beaten every boy in our age group twice over already,” Cassian explained without it being a bragging comment in any way. “But then Rhys arrived, in his clean clothes, and he smelled... different. Like a true opponent. So I attacked. We both got three lashings apiece for the fight.”

Amren cut off the shock and horror of Feyre’s flinch. “They do worse, girl, in those camps. Three lashings is practically an encouragement to fight again. when they do something truly bad, bones are broken. Repeatedly. Over weeks.”

Feyre turned hotly to me, shifting in her seat, demanding answers. She was so outraged, the stillness in her voice was like an arrow darting through the night - quiet and deadly and full of lethal surprise you did not suspect was there until it struck you blind through the chest.

“Your mother willingly sent you into that?” Her fingers curled on the table.

“My mother didn’t want me to rely on my power,” I explained. “She knew from the moment she conceived me that I’d be hunted my entire life. Where one strength failed, she wanted others to save me.

“My education was another weapon - which was why she went with me: to tutor me after lessons were done for the day. And when she took me home that first night to our new house at the edge of the camp, she made me read by the window. It was there that I saw Cassian trudging through the mud - toward the few ramshackle tents outside of the camp. I asked her where he was going, and she told me that bastards are given nothing: they find their own shelter, own food. If they survive to be in a war-band, they’ll be bottom-ranking forever, but receive their own tents and supplies. But until then, he’d stay in the cold.”

Azriel leaned quietly across the table, but his manner conveyed that unending search for vengeance that he reserved only for when those he loved were hurt. “Those mountains,” he said, “offer some of the harshest conditions you can imagine.”

Feyre’s hand softened, but that ire was still lit in her eyes.

“After my lessons,” I said, “my mother cleaned my lashings, and as she did, I realized for the first time what it was to be warm, and safe, and cared for. And it didn’t sit well.”

“Apparently not,” Cassian said with that way he had of brushing off all too serious things as though they were inconsequential. There was a ghost of a smile on his face as he recalled the memory for Feyre, but his eyes were heavy - knowing. “Because in the dead of night, that little prick woke me up in my piss-poor tent and told me to keep my mouth shut and come with him. And maybe the cold made me stupid, but I did. His mother was livid .”

Cassian wasn’t wrong. I could still feel the phantom lump she gave me on the back of my head some nights when I went to sleep visiting in the camps and I thought of my time there. I don’t think she’d ever been more heated - not even at my father, so far as I’d seen up until then.

Cass’s eyes glossed over, staring into the air above Feyre’s head. “But I’ll never forget the look on her beautiful face when she saw me and said, ‘There is a bathtub with hot running water. Get in it or you can go back into the cold.’ Being a smart lad, I obeyed. When I got out, she had clean nightclothes and ordered me into bed. I’d spent my life sleeping on the ground - and when I balked, she said she understood because she had felt the same once, and that it would feel as if I was being swallowed up, but the bed was mine for as long as I wanted it.”

My mother - who was kind and compassionate even in the midst of the tempest that are the camps - had granted me a friend, even if Cass and I had shot each other vulgar gestures before retiring to our rooms that first night. The following morning had been... a struggle to say the least. It made me want to laugh thinking about it now.

I glanced at Cassian and knew he was thinking the same thing. That enduring spark still glinted in his eyes - I can take you, you little shit .

Feyre’s shoulders had relaxed considerably, her hands resting back in her lap. “And you were friends after that?”

“No,” I said, nearly a snort. “Cauldron no. We hated each other, and only behaved because if one of us got into trouble or provoked the other, then neither of us ate that night. My mother started tutoring Cassian, but it wasn’t until Azriel arrived a year later that we decided to be allies.”

If Cassian’s eyes had sparked for me, then they were an inferno of warmth for Azriel as he reached around Amren to clap out the sigh Azriel let loose. Everyone save for Amren seemed to smile in one way or another. Amren, who was glaring through the back of her head at Cassian’s arm and deciding how best to remove it from the back of her chair.

“A new bastard in the camp,” Cassian said, with the air of giving a congratulatory speech. “And an untrained shadowsinger to boot. Not to mention he couldn’t even fly thanks to-”

“Stay on track, Cassian,” Mor said swiftly, and all of us save for Cass stilled. Even Feyre, though she couldn’t have known the implications.

Mor remained casual, but even before cutting in, the little bit of light there had been kindling in Azriel’s eyes died out. Cassian removed his arm with a shrug and plowed on, but Mor gave Azriel a hard stare he wouldn’t meet even while her hand twitched uncomfortably, as though trying to reach him across the many chairs and plates and people dividing them at this table, a division too large to properly separate the pair of them.

Her hand that reached for his - covered and mangled and brutalized in those wicked scars from the flames those filthy pricks he had for a family had given him. Not Cassian’s fire - warm and soft and steady. The fires of hell that burned and incinerated and stole.

“Rhys and I made his life a living hell, shadowsinger or no,” Cassian said, ignoring or simply not noticing the brief moment of pain lingering between my cousin and his brother. “But Rhys’s mother had known Az’s mother, and took him in. As we grew older, and the other males around us did, too, we realized everyone else hated us enough that we had better odds of survival sticking together.”

“Do you have any gifts?” Feyre asked. She inclined her head towards Azriel and myself. “Like - them?”

Cassian started to grin, but Mor chimed in first, “A volatile temper doesn’t count,” and that grin spread its wings and flew to the skies.

“No. I don’t,” he admitted, but then, “not beyond a heaping pile of the killing power. Bastard-born nobody, through and through.” A complete and utter lie, though I knew certainly Cassian would forever object the way Azriel would forever deny his self-worth. I leaned forward to tell the smug little prick off for being noble the one time he had every right not to be, but he met my brief stare and plowed ahead anyhow with a curt fuck you, Rhys in the dancing timbre of his voice.

“Even so, the other males knew that we were different. And not because we were two bastards and a half-breed. We were stronger, faster - like the Cauldron knew we’d been set apart and wanted us to find each other. Rhys’s mother saw it, too. Especially as we reached the age of maturity, and all we wanted to do was fuck and fight.”

“Males are horrible creatures, aren’t they?” Amren said, a fact, not a question.

“Repulsive,” Mor agreed. The click of her tongue had me fetching my wine glass to drown out the temptation of a smile and a groan.

All those years. So many memories. So many truths that had led us all here. I had spent more time buried in blood and sweat than I had oils and linens in those camps, but we had been happy. It was... the start of us.

And now Feyre was here too and looking from Amren’s non-attempt at disguising her genuine disgust to Mor’s mocking disdain, to the way Cassian shrugged it all and she looked... okay, with it.

Smile , I thought. Join us. Please.

“Rhys’s power grew every day,” Cassian continued. “And everyone, even the camp-lords, knew he could mist everyone if he felt like it. And the two of us... we weren’t far behind.” He held up his hand and flicked at his Siphon. It glowed with an iridescent red in reply. “A bastard Illyrian had never received one of these. Ever. For Az and me to both be appointed them, albeit begrudgingly, had every warrior in every camp across those mountains sizing us up. Only pure-blooded pricks get Siphons - born and bred for the killing power. It still keeps them up at night, puzzling over where the hell we got it from.”

There was no time for pride or celebration. Azriel brought the cold reality right to the forefront. “Then the War came,” he said solemnly. I felt Feyre stiffen - felt myself stiffen. Things got tricky from here. “And Rhys’s father visited our camp to see how his son had fared after twenty years.”

Something in my blood simmered at that causing my hold on my wine glass to tense as I swirled it about.

My father...

Mor was glowering.

“My father,” I said, “saw that his son had not only started to rival him for power, but had allied himself with perhaps the two deadliest Illyrians in history. He got it into his head that if we were given a legion in the War, we might very well turn it against him when we returned.”

He’s not going to kill me, mother.

No, but he’ll do the next best thing. You listen to me, Rhysand. You listen to me well and good. ..

It took many years after that for certain wounds to heal properly and even then... But where my bones were still brittle from the affair, Cassian found it amusing entertainment.

“So the prick separated us,” he said with a snicker and a shit-eating grin. “He gave Rhys command of a legion of Illyrians who hated him for being a half-breed, and threw me into a different legion to be a common foot soldier, even when my power outranked any of the war-leaders. Az, he kept for himself as his personal shadowsinger - mostly for spying and his dirty work.” The shadows around Az tightened. The stories he’d told me later, and those were just the ones he would talk about, never mind the ones he wouldn’t , save for... I glanced at Mor, but her face remained impassive. “We only saw each other on the battlefields for the seven years the War raged. They’d send around casualty lists among the Illyrians, and I read each one, wondering if I’d see their names on it. But then Rhys was captured-”

All thoughts of battles and missions and spying flew right out of my head at that, replaced by dread and a red-haired faced and venom snapping out quickly instead.

“ That is a story for another time,” I said. I felt a kernal of my power flash through me and reigned it in before the darkness could rupture out. Cassian sat back, albeit some what surprised, and was quiet.

And Feyre - Feyre alone seemed to feel that crack of power, that whip of adrenaline that had coursed through my muscles. She studied me, her innate curiosity molding into intuition that I couldn’t refuse answering somehow.

“Once I became High Lord,” I said, skipping far too many details for which I could feel guilty over later , “I appointed these four to my Inner Circle, and told the rest of my father’s old court that if they had a problem with my friends, they could leave. They all did. Turns out, having a half-breed High Lord was made worse by his appointment of two females and two Illyrian bastards.”

Something deep inside Feyre shivered then. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there all the same. “What - what happened to them, then?”

Fuck all if I cared .

Except, given what had come next and how the War had ended, I had been obligated to care a great deal at the time.

“The nobility of the Night Court fall into one of three categories: those who hated me enough that when Amarantha took over, they joined her court and later found themselves dead.” A task I had very much savored for fifty years and five months thus far. “Those who hated me enough to try to overthrow me and faced the consequences.” A task I had very much savored for several centuries . “And those who hated me, but not enough to be stupid and have since tolerated a half-breed’s rule, especially when it so rarely interferes with their miserable lives.” A task I waited anxiously to deal with every damned day. As did Mor.

“Are they - are they the ones who live beneath the mountain?”

I didn’t dare let my surprise show that she’d mentioned that place aloud. It wasn’t the mountain, but I knew it was close enough in Feyre’s mind. I merely nodded. “In the Hewn City, yes. I gave it to them, for not being fools. They’re happy to stay there, rarely leaving, ruling themselves and being as wicked as they please, for all eternity.”

And for all eternity I would wait in dread for the days Mor might winnow home and tell me who’s blood would stain my hands next. It was one thing to tear about the filthy cretins who had defected, who had chosen to let their prejudices and bigotry blind them to what my court could have offered and instead sought after the miserable chains of Amarantha’s court.

Those kills had been easier to make. Those kills had a justification on their side.

But the ones who had settled now, who stared my cousin and I in the face every time we entered that mountain and lied to us as they contemplated the risks and the benefits... those were the kills I didn’t want to make because they were broken promises that stood in the way of so, so much more.

Mor was likely thinking the same thing. Her face had turned dark. “The Court of Nightmares,” she said to no one in particular.

And thinking of how her light had so soothed my darkness that first day I came back, I wanted to tear apart the mountain she came from until her father and all the bastards who made her sit here now looking like this were shredded in never ending night and pain.

Azriel alone of us looked like he could imagine an infinitely worse fate for them as he stared at Mor, stared in precisely the same manner she had looked at him earlier.

Sometimes I didn’t think I’d ever get used to that back and forth, even after five centuries, the little shits.

Feyre pointed blandly at the five of us. “And what is this court?” she asked.

“The Court of Dreams,” Cassian said. And in that moment, he was not the fierce warrior who led my armies, but the eight-year-old handed food and drink and a home and love at my mother’s wish.

Finally, Feyre looked to Mor and Amren, her eyes ending on the firedrake. “And you?”

Amren bothered to look Feyre in the eye, but sounded so decidedly bored, “Rhys offered to make me his Second. No one had ever asked me before, so I said yes, to see what it might be like. I found I enjoyed it.”

And that was that.

The second Mor leaned back in her seat, Azriel leaned forward in his for reply.

“I was a dreamer born into the Court of Nightmares,” she said with vicious ease. Her curls were suddenly very interesting for one moment - too long a moment - before she looked at Feyre and mustered all her usual grace and charm to say, “So I got out.”

The table was not quiet long enough for any of us to dare prompt her when Cassian nodded at Feyre and my attention snapped on her. “What’s your story, then?”

A brief flicker of surprise down the bond, but nothing more.

She looked at me and it took everything I’d learned in nearly six centuries not to beg Feyre to spill her truth to me, to us, to hear it from her own lips as I’d never been able to before.

I shrugged.

Your choice.

She straightened, and much to my soul’s sweet relief, she spoke.

“I was born to a wealthy merchant family, with two older sisters and parents who only cared about their money and social standing. My mother died when I was eight; my father lost his fortune three years later. He sold everything to pay off his debts, moved us into a hovel, and didn’t bother to find work while he let us slowly starve for years.”

A fire capable of rivaling Cassian’s and destroying the world crackled in my skull with every word she said. I’d never heard... I’d never known... Feyre ...

When I’d see those brief visions of her Under the Mountain, hunting through the forest or painting quietly by a dim fire... She’d been starving.

My mate. How - how she’d suffered. How she’d survived .

And I realized just then what I’d known all along, since the second I saw her fall into that pit with the Middengard Wyrm and hurl herself out again, arm broken and bleeding right down to the bone, what a miracle this human woman was.

“I was fourteen when the last of the money ran out, along with the food. He wouldn’t work - couldn’t, because the debtors came and shattered his leg in front of us. So I went into the forest and taught myself to hunt. And I kept us alive, if not near starvation at times, for five years. Until...” her voice grew heavy and she looked down at her lap before resolving herself to the truth. “Everything happened.”

Until Tamlin happened.

I wanted to swear. To unleash the darkness and send it hurtling across fields and skies until it found her father and demanded answers.

No one except Cassian had any idea what to say to Feyre. “You taught yourself to hunt,” he said. “What about to fight?” Feyre shook her head no and Cassian sat up straighter, leaning on the table. “Lucky for you, you’ve just found yourself a teacher.”

Feyre’s mouth fell open, but then she paused staring at Cassian like she wasn’t quite sure she was still sitting here, had ever gotten to this point in the first place.

I don’t think a single one of us - not Mor, not Cassian, nor even myself, though if I’d reflected well enough on the conversations we’d been having these past weeks, I should have at least been prepared - could have expected the words that next tumbled out of Feyre’s mouth and sent us all reeling in our seats with sorrow and bitter, bitter rage.

Not at Feyre.

But at them .

“You don’t think it sends a bad message if people see me learning to fight - using weapons?” Feyre asked.

Her face shattered into... grief? Guilt? Regret? I couldn’t tell. But whatever it was, I wanted to clean it up, wrap it in a box, and send it to Tamlin’s door for him to stare at before he descended into the bowels of his worst nightmares night after night.

But mostly, I just wanted to see what that beautiful face of Feyre’s might look like when the grief was stripped away and the warrior underneath shone through. The warrior I was pretty sure would claim a post here by the end of the night.

It was quiet for a long moment. I was not the least bit surprised when I heard Mor speak, her own warrior showing through the shadows.

“Let me tell you two things,” Mor said, “as someone who has perhaps been in your shoes before.” And there was no mistaking the resolution in her voice, the resilience or the need for Feyre to understand what it is to exist and live properly in this new world. And Feyre - Feyre was going to listen, was willing it with the way she was clinging to every word coming off Mor’s tongue. I really did hope they went to dinner together soon.

“One, you have left the Spring Court,” Mor explained. “If that does not send a message, for good or bad, then your training will not, either.” Mor stretched her hand flat on the table - a silent proclamation all its own. “Two, I once lived in a place where the opinion of others mattered. It suffocated me, nearly broke me. So you’ll understand me, Feyre, when I say that I know what you feel, and I know what they tried to do to you, and that with enough courage, you can say to hell with a reputation.”

Mor paused and I didn’t think Feyre registered the way Mor had leaned closer towards her. “You do what you love, what you need,” Mor said. It wasn’t until those last, quiet, soft words were out that the air around us breathed again. I had but a moment to see the corners of Az’s mouth relax into a faint, soft smile before the shadows swirled at his ear and I averted meeting his gaze.

Feyre stared at Mor for a long time and it drove me to near insanity not to see her eyes, to attest to the color of them and how they turned more grey when she was determined and blue when she was feeling overwhelmed.

And her shields were so perfect, so damn near flawless now after so little practice that I felt... nothing. Nothing when I wanted to feel everything.

So silently, I was begging. Praying and pleading to the Mother above that she would turn to me and would be okay. That I would look in her eyes and see more grey than blue, see the steel and the iron and the dawn of the next day even if she wasn’t sure how she would get there. Just one day. It was all I wanted. One more day with her so that I could help her find the desire for one more after that.

Cassian got his answer first. Feyre turned toward him and my insides clenched waiting. “I’ll think about it,” Feyre said and then her head flew in a turn towards me, almost as if she knew what I felt, how pleased and proud of her I was that she would even consider strengthening herself with him.

But I still didn’t know my answer and for that, I kept my mask in place. For her .

Your choice.

“I accept your offer,” Feyre said, the words ringing out clear in the room, wrapping tightly around me so that each one could be engraved upon my bones for me to remember forever. “To work with you. To earn my keep. And help with Hybern in whatever way I can.”

If she hadn’t been looking at me - if they all hadn’t been looking at me - my mask would have been nothing more than torn strips of fabric lying on the floor.

“Good,” I said, keeping it to as few words as possible before the real storm descended. “Because we start tomorrow.”

Feyre’s jaw dropped and her brow shot about a mile high. “Where? And what?” she said in a flash.

And just like that, as I leaned forward bracing my arms on the table looking at my Inner Circle, Feyre was one of us. And the time for war was nigh.

Amren raised a wary brow as I opened my mouth and announced, “Because the King of Hybern is indeed about to launch a war, and he wants to resurrect Jurian to do it.”

“Bullshit.” Cassian sent his fork clattering against his plate as he fell back with a thud in his chair. “There’s no way to do that.”

“Why would the king want to resurrect Jurian ?” Mor moaned, her face undoubtedly scrunching up.  I was too busy to notice though, watching Azriel and Amren sit back stone-faced and still while I felt... only that quiet curiosity from Feyre. “He was so odious. All he liked to do was talk about himself.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“That’s what I want to find out,” I said. “And how the king plans to do it.” Even though in that I already had my suspicions as much as I did about the rest.

“Word will have reached him about Feyre’s Making,” Amren said. I was surprised it took her so long to chime in. “He knows it’s possible for the dead to be remade.”

“All seven High Lords would have to agree that,” Mor said. “There’s not a chance it happens. He’ll take another route.” And it was with a twinge of guilt, though it had all been necessary, that I felt Mor direct her attentions to me, and we six settled in to the conversation I’d been anticipating for weeks now, that none of the others, save Amren, could have entirely guessed at. “All the slaughtering,” Mor said, “the massacres at the temples. You think it’s tied to this?”

“I know it’s tied to this.” I braced myself from looking too hard at Az. “I didn’t want to tell you until I knew for certain. But Azriel confirmed that they’d raided the memorial in Sangravah three days ago.” Mor’s eyes widened, her lips pursing as she looked at Az. But it was nothing more than quiet surprise. “They’re looking for something - or found it.”

Only the sharp hitching of Feyre’s breath could have pulled me away from them then. “That,” she said, stumbling a beat, “that’s why the ring and the finger bone vanished after Amarantha died. For this. But who...” Her face froze. She wouldn’t look at me. At any of us. “They never caught the Attor, did they?”

The Attor flew. Tamlin’s teeth sank. Amarantha screamed... and was no more.

And in my wretched misery of Feyre’s death, my own it may as well been, I saw nothing and no one but her. The Attor walked out free as a bird. Stupid. Stupid and blind and stupid . That’s what I had been.

And now Feyre suffered for it. We all did.

“No,” I replied. “No, they didn’t.” And because she was the only one who would stomach telling me what I needed to hear, I asked Amren, “How does one take an eye and a finger bone and make it into a man again? And how do we stop it?”

“You already know how to find the answer,” she said. “Go to the prison. Talk to the Bone Carver.”

Mor and Cassian cursed in unison. Under any other circumstances, it would have been comical.

“Perhaps you would be more effective, Amren,” I said, a half-tease given that I already knew the answer to this dilemma too. But Amren’s face became positively wicked as she hissed at me.

“I will not set foot in the Prison, Rhysand, and you know it. So go yourself, or send one of these dogs to do it for you.”

The others were ready to go to war over who would go visit the Carver straight away, Azriel piping up first. But Amren and I simply continued to watch each other, Amren leaning out of that snarling rage she’d let forth and sipping her wine because she knew every move I’d planned. I’d told her barely anything about my suspicions over the course of the past five months and yet, that one word alone - Jurian - had told her everything.

“I’ll go,” Azriel said. I wasn’t the least bit surprised. “The Prison sentries know me - what I am.”

“If anyone’s going to the Prison,” I interrupted, before Mor could make her pleas for her Illyrian, “it’s me. And Feyre.”

“What?” Mor said. It was more than a request. It was a need , a demand for truth.

Still, I looked at Amren.

“He won’t talk to Rhys,” my Second explained, as I knew she would. “Or to Azriel. Or to any of us. We’ve got nothing to offer him. But an immortal with a mortal soul...” Our stare broke as she looked into Feyre’s heart, listened to it hum away with all that lovely humanity I yearned to seek out and feel. “The Bone Carver might be willing indeed to talk to her.”

The Bone Carver.

Shapeshifter. Knower. Seeker. Solidifier.

Demon.

Or close to it.

A man built of sharpened knives and needles enshrining an infinite number of coveted truths within, if one was willing to pay the price to listen.

Feyre, of course, had no way of knowing what a visit to the Carver meant. He wouldn’t hurt her. Feyre was in no form of physical danger going to meet him. But it was the emotional risk we all sat back and contemplated that could be an undoing, one I would make sure she was clear of before we left.

If she accepted.

Finally, I broke from Amren and found Feyre staring at me. Her eyes were grey.

“Your choice, Feyre,” I said.

She shrugged. “How bad can it be?”

“Bad,” Cassian said, and I could feel the axe already falling over my neck.

As we cleared the table and ended our evening, Feyre agreeing with less reluctance than before to climb back into my arms and charge the night sky for the townhouse, there was really only one thought in my mind beyond the haze of tomorrow.

I accept your offer - to work with you.

She had said that. Had said that to me clear as a cloudless sky, sure as a winter wind.

For tonight, perhaps, I would let that be enough.

Chapter Text

Feyre was quiet through the remainder of dinner, though she tracked the conversation with steady discipline. When the others had finished fighting over plans for the following day (which was mostly just a power play between Azriel and Amren that Cassian and Mor had little pleasure moderating), I looked at Feyre and saw the droop of her eyelids, the sinking of her shoulders.

One look and she nodded. We promptly said our goodbyes and the night sky welcomed us into its fold.

She was quiet, softer than the velvet blankets that cradled the stars. I focused on the currents of wind that guided us down into the city where music ushered us home to keep from obsessing over what she might be thinking. Her thoughts and impressions of my family were dear to me, and I hated not knowing them, but even more than that I hated not knowing if she was okay, if this was too much or if she was ready to face the challenges that staying here would carry to her feet.

Thank the Mother for flying. In the silence between us, it almost felt normal to take to the skies and feel the wind lick my cheeks whilst Feyre was tucked safely in my arms. I could almost imagine for a moment that we weren’t just going back to a lodging with four walls and a roof, that it could be something more one day. A home, if she ever wanted it. And that when her hands clutched my tunic tighter, it was for warmth and love, not necessity.

It was a nice dream while it lasted.

We flew over the first of the four markets and snaked up the Sidra, music from the Rainbow sneaking down every street and alleyway to dance from one city corner to the next. I counted the measures to each song and when Feyre spoke, it startled me.

“Tonight - I felt you again,” she said. “Through the bond. Did I get past your shields?”

I couldn’t quite meet her gaze. Not yet. There was such a softness in the way she asked that I treaded carefully in my words.

“No,” I said. “This bond is... a living thing. An open channel between us, shaped by my powers, shaped... by what you needed when we made the bargain.”

When the Cauldron made us .

“I needed not to be dead when I agreed,” she said flatly.

“You needed not to be alone.”

Finally, I looked at her and Feyre appeared almost as broken by the honesty of my statement as I felt by how it horribly it damned me. She stared almost immediately at the oncoming cobblestone streets after our eyes met.

“I’m still learning how and why we can sometimes feel things the other doesn’t want known,” I said, and it was true. Bond or bargain, so much had become muddled. “So I don’t have an explanation for what you felt tonight.”

Silence, and then - an awful truth that was louder than any music or dance or light on any street in the city.

“You let Amarantha and the entire world think you rule and delight in a Court of Nightmares. It’s all a front - to keep what matters most safe.”

Finally. Such a small piece of quiet understanding I never thought she would gift me. It broke me to pieces to hear that much alone from her.

“I love my people, and my family. Do not thinking I wouldn’t become a monster to keep them protected.”

“You already did that Under the Mountain.”

A monster.

Not trapped in a prison, as Amren. Not chained and misconstrued by choice deep inside, as Azriel. Not truly evil either as those I’d defended against for centuries.

A monster inside and out.

From here to eternity .

And war was still to come.

“And I suspect I’ll have to do it again soon enough.”

The words came out dead - empty, as Feyre had once been. As if she could hear the toll it reaped upon me, Feyre asked, “What was the cost? Of keeping this place secret and free?”

I almost didn’t have a choice in the way we fell to the earth then. My body would have fallen whether I’d caught the downward wind and willed it or not.

Her emotion was genuine. A tender sympathy I hadn’t quite received from her thus far. But even as I’d spent so long craving it from her, thinking I might die without a taste of it, I couldn’t let myself take one ounce of it now. I didn’t deserve it. Not after -

“You know the cost already,” I said as I set her down and took her chin into my hands. I had to touch her. Had to feel her. The only real thing in my life. I had to know what it felt like just a little bit if we were going to go here tonight - now.

Whether she said the words aloud or shattered her mental shields with the force of the acknowledgement, I heard Feyre loud and clear as she answered me: Amarantha’s whore .

The Illyrian spat at my feet, the saliva mingling in the snow with the already falling drops of blood that splattered and fanned out like wilted rose petals in decay.

“Whore...”

“Whore...”

“WHORE...”

Feyre melted as I nodded confirmation. My fingers stiffened on her cheek and bless her, she didn’t pull away. Not one single inch.

“When she tricked me out of my powers,” I said, unable to stanch the flow ebbing out of me, “and left the scraps, it was still more than the others. And I decided to use it to tap into the mind of every Night Court citizen she captured, and anyone who might know the truth. I made a web between all of them, actively controlling their minds every second of every day, every decade, to forget about Velaris, to forget about Mor, and Amren, and Cassian, and Azriel. Amarantha wanted to know who was close to me - who to kill and torture. But my true court was here, ruling this city and the others. And I used the remainder of my power to shield them all from sight and sound. I had only enough for one city - one place. I chose the one that had been hidden from history already. I chose.” Me. This entire damnation was on no one’s shoulders but my own. “And now must live with the consequences of knowing there were more left outside who suffered. But for those here... anyone flying or traveling near Velaris would see nothing but barren rock, and if they tried to walk through it, they’d find themselves suddenly deciding otherwise. Sea travel and merchant trading were halted - sailors became farmers, working the earth around Velaris instead. And because my powers were focused on shielding them all, Feyre, I had very little to use against Amarantha. So I decided that to keep her from asking questions about the people who mattered, I would be her whore.”

I still remembered it - that moment my powers fled and I cast the spell to protect the city, told my family what had happened and what to do next and received panic in exchange for my decision. I’d never known sorrow until that night when I realized the chaos and fear my closest friends felt was going to be magnified a hundred fold in the morning when my sweet city of starlight woke up to a new world, a fractured world. A world that burned and destroyed.

The stars listened to me that night, but they were deaf in many other ways too.

Mor had been the loudest. Amren had had enough shrewd tact to understand the role she had to step in to that her emotions were more muted and whatever she felt was beyond me by the time it came through strong enough. I felt Cassian’s fire roar to life in agony and Azriel’s icy, bitter rage.

But Morrigan - her heart was the one that sang her grief aloud, had shoved my commands aside and said Come home, cousin and then I’ll come get you before the gates closed and I heard no more. There were many nights I found myself inside Amarantha and clung to those words and the knowledge that my city was safe because of them to keep me from going insane.

That, and my wings. The wings I showed no one under that rock for fifty years, save for -

I staggered back from Feyre and finally released her chin, staring at the sky. I needed to go back up there, I realized. But Feyre - she grabbed my wrist, wouldn’t let me go. Anchored me down to life and sound and music and all the things she herself couldn’t grab hold of yet. Maybe through each other, we could find a way to do that again.

“It’s a shame,” she said, her thumb brushing over my palm. “That others in Prythian don’t know. A shame that you let them think the worst.”

I released her, pommeled by the blow of her words because it didn’t matter what the world thought. Only her, her, her and she was already too much. Too kind, too forgiving, too everything after the hell I’d put her through to stand there and give me the only approval I really craved.

My wings beat great torrents against the chill winter air, already lifting me off the ground. “As long as the people who matter know the truth, I don’t care about the rest. Get some sleep.”

Feyre was a dot on the earth within seconds of my ascent.

I flew for hours. So long, I lost track. Loop after loop above the city counting the lights below, tracking the different melodies that mingled in the air when I dared dip low enough to hear them again.

The rest of the time I was too high up to remember what music sounded like. Even my own thoughts disappeared. The dinner, Jurian, the Prison, Amarantha, until...

A jolt blasted through me, a sort of frenzy shooting through my veins, like flying through wind in a storm that was built on emotions all clamoring over one another for supremacy until at long last... cold, miserable agony claimed victory.

It was worse than fear. It was sheer, undiluted terror. And it was precisely how Feyre was feeling in that exact moment.

Feyre .

And she was too far away.

Winnowing did not get me to her room fast enough. My wings had flown so vigorously at first hearing her, it took me a moment to snap them away and wink out of the sky, leaving the peace of the stars behind.

The scene that greeted me as I stumbled into her room was nothing short of disastrous. The flickering visions she’d sent unwittingly through the bond of her nightmares while in the Spring Court were nothing compared to how Feyre looked now.

The bed was burnt and shredded by the claws rippling from her hands, alight with flame that threatened to burn her alive in her bed. And the darkness. Oh, the beautiful mangled darkness. So cruel and thieving as it curled around her with the promise of decay. It consumed her.

Feyre must never have nightmared as such before in the Spring Court or else Tamlin would surely have done something… Looking at the mess she’d become atop the ash that remained for sheets, it was impossible to imagine he couldn’t have.

I winnowed from the doorway to the bed, the time running would have taken too long, and forced myself over her against her ceaseless thrashing and shook her, calling her name. Her shields were fully engaged blocking her mind from me, so I had to search out where I might slip through.

“FEYRE,” I screamed over and over, both aloud and into the recesses of her mind. A faint sliver appeared grasping, the smallest trace of light beaming through almost as if she heard me, as if the bond were there.

Together, we followed it - I to her and she to me. And all the while I shouted for her to come back to me. I never wanted to see her like this again.

Feyre’s body went utterly still. It scared me into oblivion until I realized that she was relaxing against my grip, not giving up or losing the fight.

“Open your eyes,” I said firmly, holding her slick face in my hands and she obeyed, staring up at me with the face of panic and a million hopeless questions.

Her first night. It was only her first night. Velaris had done nothing to soothe the aches disturbing her soul. And dinner - fuck, I’d put her through too much. And tomorrow... Cauldron it was only her first night.

My fault. This was all my fault.

“It was a dream,” I said with a hard pant. I repeated it over and over, my mind racked with endless sadness that she had to experience this torment as I did night after night. I knew what these nightmares were and never would I wish them upon her.

But she didn’t seem to really hear me, her eyes trailing up and down my exposed chest from where my tunic had torn open getting to her and taking in the tattoos inked into my skin, now equally drenched as hers in sweat. It felt like the first time she’d seen me. “A dream… A dream…” I repeated. A mantra. A beckoning home.

I knew it was coming before she did. The moment her eyes left me to take in the chaos that had erupted around her, that she had caused, I knew all too well from the countless nights she’d spent being ignored in the Spring Court how her body would react.

As Feyre ran to the bathing room and retched into the toilet, I stepped cautiously into the doorway behind her and watched my mate destroy herself. An intense longing to go to her, comfort her, filled me, replaced swiftly by an even greater fear that she wouldn’t let me.

But I would sure as hell try.

Her fingers hissed against the toilet, still trembling with fire and ash, too near her face as she vomited. Gently, with enough pressure to reassure her, I pulled her long, soft hair back from her face. She didn’t flinch, only heaved again. “Breathe,” I said, anchoring myself to the role of damage control so I wouldn’t slip with her. “Imagine them winking out like candles, one by one.”

Almost all at once and completely opposite to my suggestion that she take the flames on individually, Feyre heaved and intense light collided with the heat at her hands. All that was left in their place was darkness. And not the darkness from before that had threatened to cut her to the core of her being. This darkness was radiant, the darkness that soothed and comforted, erased the aches and pains, accepted the scars.

My darkness.

One day, I wanted to show her what that darkness meant.

“Well that’s one way to do it,” I said. She would never fail to surprise or impress me.

She sat silent. Too quiet. The purple rings under her eyes looked like a thin surface ready to give way to an endless hollow pit at any time. Beads of sweat rolled off of her and her chest still shook with each shudder her stomach forced into her throat.

I didn’t have to read her mind to know how alone she had felt since Tamlin took her back from Under the Mountain, how much these nights had wasted her. It made my bones rattle furiously for vengeance.

Mostly, it scared me, for how much that pain called to me as I watched her shudder and cling in spirit to the touches I applied along her back. She’d never had this connection. Nor had I. The pain, I had run from it for months, always making sure I slept away from the others. Seeing Feyre now... the pain scarred on her body recognized me as its own. I loved my family here in the Night Court, but none of them would ever understand as Feyre did how this felt.

And then I knew how I might save her - if only for tonight.

“I have this dream,” I said, my voice thick, trying to reach her so I could shoulder the weight and unwittingly unload my own, “where it’s not me stuck under her, but Cassian or Azriel. And she’s pinned their wings to the bed with spikes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. She’s commanded me to watch, and I have no choice but to see how I failed them.”

Still, waiting... Feyre kept silent, taking her time to flush the toilet and consider my words and I feared that perhaps I had overstepped, that she was not ready or simply did not wish to hear any more of my story Under the Mountain. So I focused on the feel of her, willing what strength I could lend her into my grip on her skin, her hair.

“You never failed them,” Feyre spoke, her voice a quiet rasp I had to crane my ears to hear. A small stone atop a mound of similar pebbles that piled among one another, building downward to larger rocks and boulders weighing in on my heart, removed itself at those four simple words. But there were many stones and pebbles yet to go.

“I did… terrible things to ensure that.”

“So did I.”

She turned, her remorse forcing her back to the toilet, the same remorse I felt every second of every day. So I dared a little further and offered a long soothing caress up and down the length of her back. I savored the touch when she didn’t turn away, when I realized it was the first open touch free of inhibitions and doubts that she had allowed between us.

“The flames?” she asked when the last of her stomach had heaved itself up.

“Autumn Court.”

Feyre sat still for a very long time, unable to reply. Never did my hands stop their comforting trek up and down her spine, a spine that I could feel so painfully through her too thin back. Never did Feyre stop me from doing so. And when her head fell against the neighboring bathtub, her eyes drifting back off to sleep, too weary to wrestle with words and simple thought, even then I continued to touch her, to love her, wishing she knew how far that love was already burning for her.

I waited until she was deep asleep to be sure she would not fall into another fit.

I waited until she was deep asleep to let any tears fall.

Only then did I allow myself the privilege of scooping her fully into my arms and tucking her safely back into bed. I magicked the sheets so that nothing but pure, soft linens free of damage were there to envelope her. And then I simply stared, sitting at her side too scared to move away lest she fall further down the pit without me there to watch over her. The funny thing was that even if she fell, I would be there to catch her because I was already deep within that pit myself. The real fear, I knew, was that I wouldn’t be able to pull us back out.

But after I’d kept watch long enough and Feyre had not stirred beyond the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she drew breath, I supposed that I had gotten us out of the pit enough at least for tonight. I stroked my thumb along her cheek wondering when she’d next let me in so close as she had tonight without her usual reproach, if ever again she would, and left her to her dreams.

The nightmares I took with me until the dawn.

I made it back to my room before I turned around and walked right back out the door, stopping when I reached the study. I collapsed inside.

Moonlight poured through the large window panes. Everything was always so open and full of light in this house. I hated it when it made no difference.

I sank into the worn leather chair at my desk and let my face fall into my hands debating if I could put Feyre through this tomorrow - the Bone Carver. Mor and Cassian’s faces and mutual curse at dinner when I’d proposed the idea told me enough.

One day at a time .

That’s what I had told her. Looking out at my slumbering city through the window, it had to be enough. For them and for us.

I spent the better part of an hour running through the list of things to take care of come morning before I finally took what little sleep was left. Feyre didn’t utter a single sound when I paused outside her door listening.

And when the sun cracked the sky like an egg spilling yolk, my mind was still so tired.

I let Nuala and Cerridwen attend to Feyre when she woke and met her over breakfast at the dining table. A similar array of foods to what I’d presented during out brief weeks of the bargain was spread atop the table. Feyre picked at some fruit and, I suspected, forced some of the more filling breads and muffins down. The tea she drank in earnest.

She stopped and looked me up and down upon entering the room, taking in our identically fashioned attire for the day. Had it not been for how feeble she sounded, I would have been relieved when she asked, “High Lord and trend setter, hmm?”

“I was going for handsome, debonair warrior, what with the leather and all, but I suppose fashionable will have to do for now. Though I appreciate you thinking me fancy and forward thinking all the same, Feyre.”

She grumbled incoherently and took a seat. From beside my chair, I lifted a shaft of material housing about a dozen different knives and blades and slid them across the table along with bands and straps for Feyre to affix the weapons to herself with.

She raised a brow at me.

I shrugged. “I’m anything but trend setting without good accessories,” I said. Feyre rolled her eyes.

“Is it really - that bad?”

“Not if we stick to a few simple rules, it won’t be.”

“There are rules?”

“Only two,” I said, exchanging the daggers for a simpler knife at my plate, which I used to cut into my eggs. “One - never lie. Not ever. Not about anything no matter how simple or inconsequential you think it may be. He will know if you do and may likely damn us for it regardless of what he stands to lose in doing so.”

Feyre nodded slowly and took a long sip of the cup of tea she’d poured. “And the second?”

I took a bite of food to buy a bit of time. “Whatever the Carver gives you, Feyre, you will be asked to give in return. Whatever question you demand, he will want five of his own. You can not let him do this. He will likely play us against one another to confuse us and see how much he can trick us into giving, but that doesn’t help us. His goal is to ascertain as much information as possible for as little a cost to himself. The longer he keeps us giving at no risk to him, the longer he keeps us there and remains entertained. Five minutes of our time will be enough to satisfy him for months, maybe even years, and our visit will likely take much longer than that.”

“So you want me to - what? Interrogate him?”

“After a fashion - yes. No matter what happens, you have the right to demand payment of him, Feyre. If he gets a question, so too do you. Set the rules from the start and... we should be absolutely fine.”

She nodded and continued eating, not saying another word. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, so I waited until she’d finished eating, helped her strap the band of knives to her body, and took us on a brief detour to the study before departing.

“Just one more little task before we leave,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you have helmets coming, too. I’m not really a hat person.”

I snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind come the next Solstice. Just a quick letter to that merry Lord of Summer and we can be off.” I pulled paper and ink out of the desk drawer, including an early draft I’d written after her first visit to the Night Court.

“The Summer Court... Tarquin?”

“The one and only, it would seem.”

Even if Cresseida certainly thought otherwise. I was not looking forward to seeing her .

“Why are you writing to Tarquin?”

“Always so curious, you are.” I scribbled the last few sentences and looked the letter over to be sure it was right and winked it off to Amren for review. She would send it when it was ready. Feyre waited patiently seeming to understand I wasn’t just ignoring her.

“I want to visit the Summer Court.”

Feyre’s head leaned to one side. “And why exactly do you need to visit the Summer Court?”

“ We need to visit for improving diplomatic relations with them. And it doesn’t hurt that their beaches are particularly lovely this time of year.”

Feyre glowered. “Their beaches are lovely every time of year. It’s always summer there.”

The smirk slid onto my face before I could help myself.

“True, but just think how lovely you’d look in a strappy little beach number running toward the water.”

Feyre hugged herself tightly as if she thought she’d look anything but lovely half-naked on a beach. “Can we just - get on with it.”

I stood up from my desk and stepped around it, offering Feyre my hand. The brief pickup in mood disappeared entirely.

“Ready?”

Her touch was her only reply.

Into the wind and smoke we flew, landing in a grassy hillside with the sea falling off steep cliffs to one side and a towering fortitude of mountain and rock to the other. Feyre’s eyes snapped to that pillar of stone at once and her forehead creased. All around us, the skies were grey and the air stale.

“Where are we?” she asked.

I looked up at that mountain.

Hell , I thought.

“On an island in the heart of the Western Isles,” I said instead. “And that,” I pointed to the dungeon before us, “is the Prison.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“The rock is the Prison. And inside it are the foulest, most dangerous creatures and criminals you can imagine.”

The silence around us was palpable as we stared at that behemoth - and waited for Feyre to say something. She never did.

“This place was made before High Lords existed. Before Prythian was Prythian. Some of the inmates remember those days. Remember a time when it was Mor’s family, not mine, that ruled the North.”

Ancient. Powerful. And corrupted.

That was the beast before us. A slumbering dragon that would never wake, but would always sleep with one eye open hoping for the day that might change. If what I suspected of the Cauldron and Hybern’s plans came true, that might be an additional problem we would have to face.

“Why won’t Amren go in here?” Feyre asked.

“Because she was once a prisoner.”

“Not in that body, I take it.”

No, not one bit.

It had been horrific the day she’d been Made. The day she’d been simultaneously freed and shackled for all eternity. A beast birthed with no other purpose but to suffer.

I smiled at what she might do - should the magic be strong enough to break this prison, it would break her free too and then the world would see her for what she really was.

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

Feyre shivered. Rightfully so.

I took a deep breath of the mountain air, but even with the sea churning salt into the wind, it remained stagnant and bland. There was nothing invigorating about this island save the climb, and that was really more a punishment than a help.

“The hike will get your blood warming,” I cautioned Feyre. I found her rigid and unmoving as she stared at the Prison. My soul trembled, worried. “Since we can’t winnow inside or fly to the entrance - the wards demand that visitors walk in. The long way.”

A mistake. A mistake - this is all a mistake.

For Prythian. For Velaris-

She’s dying and you brought her here.

For Mor. For Cassian. Azriel. Amren.

Feyre -

“I-” Feyre choked, her voice and body shaking underneath her cold, pale skin. Even with her leathers on, I felt like I could see the bones sticking through them that the Carver would smell and yearn to lick before he could one day carve them up.

The mountain.

The cursed damned mountain. Everywhere we looked, this court held a prison to shove us back under. Nightmares at home. Cells and dungeons in the hills. My court was built to confine and torment her.

For Feyre. For yourself.

For your crown and all the good that is left in the world.

I stepped as close as I dared without worrying she’d feel trapped, and said gently next to her, trying to hold her within the steadiness of my voice, “It helps the panic to remind myself that I got out. That we all got out.”

“Barely,” Feyre said. Her chest rose up in a great swell and held for far too long. I didn’t need her shields down to feel her anxiety attacking her. I felt it myself. My court alone kept me grounded. As it had for fifty years. As it would for centuries more until the day I released my last breath.

“We got out,” I reassured her. “And it might happen again if we don’t go inside.”

Feyre stared at the ground hard - stared, and cracked. I barely heard her voice above the wind.

“Please,” she said and in her mind and in her heart, I think it was a sob.

I grabbed her hand and winnowed immediately. It was dinner before I stood from outside her room where she’d slept since our return and went to visit the firedrake.

Chapter Text

“Mates, Rhysand? Really?”

I hadn’t even closed the door to her treasure trove before Amren was side-eying me from her desk. Amren’s home was more about function than entertaining, her sitting room doubling as a work study that greeted you upon entry. There wasn’t even a space to accommodate a dining table or kitchen.

“And when do you plan on telling her?” she said above the dull scratching of pen on paper. I refused to sit.

“If Mor had her way, she’d already know,” I said.

“That is not what I asked, boy.”

I was quiet for a moment, watching her write before staring at her book shelves. “She hates me, Amren.” All scratching stopped.

“Clearly not,” Amren said. She threw her pen against the desk and leaned back in her seat inclining her head toward the seat opposite her. When I didn’t budge, she glared.

I sat.

“One does not agree to work for someone they hate unless they have ulterior motives, and from what I smelled on that girl at dinner last night - believe me, her human heart does not hate you.”

“Well she doesn’t like me, either, and that’s not enough to burden her with a mate bond.“

Amren snorted. “With you , you mean.”

My voice was harsher than I wanted it to sound. “Amren-”

“And what about you? What about your burden, Rhysand? Who takes care of you?”

“I thought that was your job as my Second,” I said to mask the increasing anxiety in my tightening lungs. I didn’t deserve a caretaker.

“My job is to kill people, among other things, and you are people whom I might kill if you don’t explain what you’re doing here. It’s the middle of the night. The stars are out and the sky is black. Shouldn’t you be flying around and making darkness appear or some nonsense.”

“You’re certainly chipper this evening-”

One sharply crafted eyebrow lifted hotly, cutting me off. I sighed and lifted my hands in defeat, and then relayed what had happened that morning with Feyre.

“She’s still asleep. I waited all day for her to get up, to eat, to bathe - do something. But she hasn’t moved once. Nuala and Cerridwen suggested I find another way to occupy myself.”

Amren glowered. “You mean that shadow bastard you work with told them to tell you to get out and stop fussing.”

Fucking Azriel. I hadn’t even -

“ Yes ,” I ground out. “That may be a possibility.”

Amren rolled her eyes and stood up to fetch a glass decanter from the side table that swam with a dark, crimson liquid. She poured herself a glass. “I shall take care of Feyre.”

After she’d taken a sip, she stared casually out the window without another word. “What - that’s it? You’ll just take care of it?”

“Did I stutter, Rhysand? No, I did not. Now get out so I can go to sleep.” I stood, but my feet hardly moved, hands in my pockets as I gave the woman a curious look over.

Centuries. I’d known her for centuries and it still felt sometimes like I all I’d learnt in that time was her name and favorite jewel.

(Every jewel was her favorite.)

When she caught me staring, her eyes narrowed into slits. “I said get out. ”

“Goodnight to you too,” I mumbled, my foul mood growing worse, and shuffled for the door. When I turned the handle, Amren hissed one last time. “Rhysand,” she said, catching my eye. “For the record, your cousin is right.”

A gust of wind or magic caught the door and hit me on my way out.

Feyre knocked on the door to my study early the next morning - dressed head to toe in her fighting leathers. I tried to hide my smile at the bandoliers and straps of knives she’d hooked incorrectly into the fastenings.

And around her neck was - a soft blue stone surrounded by pearls and a gold setting. A necklace I recognized, had not last seen since -

Since I’d given it to Amren years ago.

Feyre’s head dipped as she watched me looking her over, probably assuming my thoughts had taken a nefarious turn. “And to what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked simply, folding my arms and leaning against the door frame.

Feyre took a deep breath. “I’d like to go back to the Bone Carver,” she said, her voice wary, but steady.

I smiled proudly.

“Lovely.”

The mist was thick upon the Prison hillside as we climbed. It creeped along at a sluggish pace, globs of it rolling past us in an ooze that did little to settle the tension our visit brought.

Feyre knelt below the boulder where I stood, drinking from one of the many trickling streams we’d met. She’d had to stop a few times and there were moments I could have sworn I’d heard the faint groans and cracks her body made as her muscles and bones worked to make each step... but she was here. And she was trying. And in her quiet focus, she hadn’t once asked to go back.

She pulled her hair over her neck to keep the wind from catching it as she drank, giving me a full view of Amren’s necklace around her neck. In the dim morning sun shrouded by all of that mist, the blue stone looked more like an eye ready to examine me.

Feyre pulled up from where she crouched and caught me staring. “What?” she asked, standing and wiping at her mouth.

“She gave you that,” I said. Amren had never given any of us anything .

She walked closer to the start of the rock and peered up at me. “It must be serious, then. The risk with-”

“Don’t say anything you don’t want others hearing,” I said, and pointed below us to that smooth expanse of stone and the prison below it. The prison that ran for miles. “The inmates have nothing better to do than to listen through the earth and rock for gossip. They’ll sell any bit of information for food, sex, maybe a breath of air.”

Feyre glanced nervously down at where I pointed, her lips parted slightly, but she nodded all the same. “I’m sorry,” she said after a beat and looked back up at me. “About yesterday.”

I extended my hand and... she took it. And allowed me to help her up the stone without flinching. She’d done so all day. I savored the feel of the touch as she came level with me and wondered when next I’d feel it - if ever again.

Strong .

Feyre was strong and resilient and determined for being here at all.

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” I said. “You’re here now.” Feyre’s chest sank. “I won’t dock your pay,” I added with a wink when I saw how her chest had deflated, as though agreeing to come with me was still a loss.

Feyre didn’t react, but pushed forward and so, we continued to climb.

High, high, higher still until the mist had begun to fade away and you could actually see the full stretch of that glorious grey sea surrounding the island glimmering in the ever rising sun. Our hillside had become perilously steep forming a wall of grass and stone before us over which we could go no further.

Facing that wall, I stepped towards it, drawing my sword as I did. Feyre’s brow peaked as she eyed the blade and my hand gripping it. “Don’t look so surprised,” I said.

She sounded a bit dumbfounded when she replied. “I’ve - never seen you with a weapon.”

I brought the sword whipping around from where I held it aloft and stood back. “Cassian would laugh himself hoarse hearing that.” If you don’t marry her, you stupid prick, I will. “And then make me go into the sparring ring with him.”

And then he would win the hand of my mate beating me into a bloody mess and I’d be fucked.

“Can he beat you?”

“Hand-to-hand combat? Yes. He’d have to earn it for a change, but he’d win.” And I’d still be a bloody mess at the end of it. The only chance I might stand winning against Cassian, no magic involved whatsoever, would be if Feyre and I mated and he challenged me.

But that was never going to happen.

“Cassian is the best warrior I’ve encountered in any court, any land. He leads my armies because of it.”

Feyre’s sense of awe was short lived, though, her expression darkening. “Azriel - his hands. The scars, I mean.” We each looked away for a moment. “Where did they come from?”

Azriel.

Cauldron damn us all - Azriel .

He would never tell Feyre this story, but he’d want her to know all the same. And neither Mor nor Cassian liked talking about it for lack of having someone to throttle afterward. So...

Azriel ...

“His father had two legitimate sons,” I said, and the softness of my voice had nothing to do with not wishing to be overheard by the sneaking creatures chained below us, “both older than Azriel. Both cruel and spoiled. They learned it from their mother, the lord’s wife. For the eleven years that Azriel lived in his father’s keep, she saw to it he was kept in a cell with no window, no light. They let him out for an hour every day - let him see his mother for an hour once a week. He wasn’t permitted to train, or fly, or any of the things his Illyrian instincts roared at him to do. When he was eight, his brothers decided it’d be fun to see what happened when you mixed an Illyrian’s quick healing gifts with oil - and fire.” Feyre’s face went ghostly pale. “The warriors heard Azriel’s screaming. But not quick enough to save his hands.”

His hands.

I still remember the first day he’d come to camp and got beaten up into a bloody, broken mess same as I had on my first day. The blood was so thick over his body, none of us noticed his hands until later that night after he’d cleaned up.

My mother had insisted he stay with us and I had wondered at the time if it was because of those hands, whatever story went with them. If maybe there were some lines that even in Illyrian culture you didn’t cross and that was why she commanded he was to stay with Cass and I. Even after we allied, it had been five, six years at least before Az told us where the scars had come from...

“Were-” Feyre tried, little color returning to her cheeks, “were his brothers punished.”

A startling crack split my ears in two as bone fractured - followed by another.

And another...

And another...

“Eventually,” I admitted, though it hadn’t been enough. I gripped the hilt of my sword tighter, wishing I could winnow then and there to finish the job, our task at hand be damned.

“And Mor,” Feyre said suddenly, “what does she do for you?”

What doesn’t Mor do for me ?

“Mor is who I’ll call in when the armies fail and Cassian and Azriel are both dead.”

Mother above, save us and keep us from such a day.

“So she’s supposed to wait until then?”

“No. As my Third, Mor is my...”

Counselor.

Best friend.

Nagging pain in my ass...

“Court overseer. She looks after the dynamics between the Court of Nightmares and the Court of Dreams, and runs both Velaris and the Hewn City. I suppose in the mortal realm, she might be considered a queen.”

“And Amren?”

“Her duties as my Second make her my political advisor, walking library, and doer of my dirty work. I appointed her upon gaining my throne. But she was my ally, maybe my friend, long before that.”

And another nagging pain in my ass, I thought, looking at that amulet around Feyre’s neck and the exchange we’d held last night.

“I mean - in that war where your armies fail and Cassian and Azriel are dead, and even Mor is gone,” Feyre clarified, but it fell heavily on my ears. With the prison at our backs and bloodshed undoubtedly in our future... I’d never had to fight in a war before with my entire Inner Circle on the line.

We had each fought in the War separately, but never in waves, never one life going down before another. Always with the fear that we might lose each other, but never with the actual belief that we would.

But now, we just might. And Amren -

I blew out hot air upon the wind.

Amren.

I stared at the hard rock that led to the gates of the Prison, the chamber that had once housed the wicked beast herself. “If that day comes, I’ll find a way to break the spell on Amren and unleash her on the world. And ask her to end me first.”

“What is she?” Feyre asked and there was no curiosity behind it as usual. Only stone cold dread.

“Something else,” I said, not wanting to think of what she was before I met her. Not wanting to stomach it before I breached the Prison walls and scented her in the stone and earth we’d walk on. “Something worse than us. And if she ever finds a way to shed her prison of flesh and bone... Cauldron save us all.”

Feyre didn’t seem to want to push the subject further, for which I was glad, because she walked up to the stone before us and stared pointedly up at its height. “I can’t climb bare rock like that,” she said candidly.

My grip tightened once more on my sword as I prepared for what came next. I placed my free hand flat on the stone and both saw and felt it move, the magic in my blood singing to its keepers.

“You don’t have to,” I said before the light had finished flaring from the rock.

Feyre took a step back and stared at the gates of the Prison carved from rock and earth and bone .

Darkness loomed ahead of us. Grey and black and silent .

Three white orbs floated to the forefront of the channel as soon as the gates had parted, but Feyre was a pillar of stone beside me staring into that abyss. Her hand clutched at Amren’s amulet and I wondered what the beast had told her concerning it to make her think it would help her now.

Tentatively, I put a hand on her lower back with a faint pressure asking her for a step - just one. And at length, she took it, but not without holding tighter to that stone at her chest.

And together - we walked inside.

The chill hit me like a bloodmist - invasive and permanent and every bit the recollection of Amarantha’s madness. Feyre felt it too and shuddered at the touch of it, her body leaning back against my hand at her back until I stopped and damned my better judgment, letting my instincts take over to just be with her.

“Breathe,” I whispered, leaning down to her ear and savoring the scent of her, letting her be near my own and not question for one second that I was there. “One breath.”

I prayed it against her skin, her soul.

And for a moment with light behind us and darkness in front, it was just the two of us - just my mate and I standing in the black of our past.

“Where are the guards?” she said, her voice almost nonexistent. Her body still trembled. I wondered if she had noticed.

This was worse than the Middengard Wyrm, I decided. Worse than that riddle, and almost as horrible as watching her kill those three fae. What pain she’d been living with all these months that just looking at the mountain tore my mate -

Not your anything .

Tore my anything to shreds.

I grabbed her hand and Feyre threaded her fingers through mine with earnest, squeezing tightly. And then... her feet moved.

One breath.

One step.

Only her .

“They dwell within the rock of the mountain,” I said, referring to the guards. “They only emerge at feeding time, or to deal with restless prisoners. They are nothing but shadows of thought and an ancient spell.”

And those guards would help us if we needed it, but I kept my sword held firm at my side all the same.

Especially as we rounded that corner and the light from outside died . And the darkness before us suddenly felt... terrifying, constricting at my throat and lungs. The way Amarantha’s hands had looked when she would -

Feyre. I would get through this for Feyre.

Feyre who was gripping my hand so hard it hurt and throwing questions at me to keep herself distracted, not knowing it was helping me too.

“Do all the High Lords have access?” she asked as the darkness swallowed us whole.

“No. The Prison is law unto itself; the island may be even an eighth court. But it falls under my jurisdiction, and my blood is keyed to the gates.”

“Could you free the inmates?”

“No. Once the sentence is given and a prisoner passes those gates... They belong to the Prison. It will never let them out. I take sentencing people here very, very seriously.”

“Have you ever-”

“Yes.” Cauldron - yes, and hated every minute of it. And now, those prisoners sat too closely by, listening. “And now is not the time to speak of it.”

Feyre’s questions died off for a considerable time after that as we plunged on, and so too did sound... and sight... and all sense save a cold, tingling feeling emanating from the walls that pressed in close.

And it was awful.

A stillness and a language I didn’t want to speak or understand.

And it was wholly inescapable. Where you did not see it, you felt it in your bones. And where you could not feel it, you breathed it. Into every muscle that pushed forward and every vein that strained against the lungs and hearts racing to survive.

It was not the terror I’d known when Feyre died, nor even that miserable depression we’d buried ourselves in after. It was that simple anxiety that only waiting could bring as the monsters prowled about unseen just before they attacked, and you did not know if you would make it out alive or not.

“How long,” Feyre said, her words no more than air slipping between us. “How long was she in here?”

I didn’t have to ask who she meant.

“Azriel looked once,” I said. “Into archives in our oldest temples and libraries. All he found was a vague mention that she went in before Prythian was split into courts - and emerged once they had been established. Her imprisonment predates our written word. I don’t know how long she was in here - a few millennia seems like a fair guess.”

“You never asked?”

“Why bother? She’ll tell me when it’s necessary.”

When I’m so far gone, my very existence depends upon that knowledge...

“Where did she come from?”

“I don’t know. Though there are legends that claim when the world was born, there were... rips in the fabric of the realms. That in the chaos of Forming, creatures from other worlds could walk through one of those rips and enter another world. But the rips closed at will, and the creatures could become trapped, with no way home.”

Feyre’s feet dragged slightly on the stone at that. “You think she was one of them?”

“I think that she is the only one of her kind,” I said, not daring to name her, “and there is no record of others ever having existed. Even the Suriel have numbers, however small. But she - and some of those in the Prison... I think they came from somewhere else. And they have been looking for a way home for a long, long time.”

Feyre went silent once more after that, her body still shaky as we walked, exhausted and worn out from both the trek and the escapades her mind was playing with her. We stopped frequently for her to take water, but she never once allowed me to let go of her hand.

Not that I wanted to. Not for one heartbeat .

It was soon enough that the path took an ever steeper angle downward, bringing us into a steep, steep descent towards hell. Towards him .

Feyre scented him at the same time I did, though I wasn’t sure she recognized who precisely she was discovering. Or if she was stiffening because of some other fear that only her nightmares and my cruel need to protect my court could bring her.

I squeezed her hand - a reassurance. “Just a bit farther.”

“We must be near the bottom now,” she said.

My heart sped up, anticipating. This was it. This was - our chance.

Her chance.

“Past it. The Bone Carver is caged beneath the roots of the mountain.”

“Who is he? What is he?”

“No one knows. He’ll appear as he wants to appear.”

“Shape-shifter?”

I swallowed.

“Yes and no. He’ll appear to you as one thing, and I might be standing right beside you and see another.”

It was a question that had haunted me all day as we trekked up the mountain side - the Bone Carver’s form.

Feyre was already petrified to be here. I was enormously pleased and proud to find her mental shields well in tact when we winnowed to our starting point, but how easily would they crack? What would the Bone Carver transfigure himself into that might break her?

The worst part of it all was that I wouldn’t even know. The Carver would likely show me something entirely different from Feyre and if her shields held, I wouldn’t see it. I only prayed to the Cauldron that whatever the Carver chose to show her, it wouldn’t be Amarantha.

Anything but that.

“And the bone carving?”

“You’ll see.”

We arrived at a slick stone cover hiding the Bone Carver’s den. I released my grip on Feyre’s hand, which had grown sweaty in my palm with how tight her grasp had been, and touched the smooth surface willing it to release. In the blink of an eye, the stone melted into a cascade of bones, hundreds of them, each one intricately carved to detail every scene imaginable with magnificent, gruesome splendor. Beside me, Feyre inhaled sharply.

And then, the Bone Carver spoke.

“I have carved the doors for every prisoner in this place, but my own remains my favorite.”

“I’d have to agree,” I said, stepping into the Carver’s den where I was shocked by the sight of the him.

He sat low and crouched on the dirty floor of his cell drinking in the sight of Feyre, his eyes roaming the length of her body hungry for new information. I might as well have not been there for all he cared.

Feyre did not balk, and I knew the Carver could not have taken on Amarantha’s form for her, thank the Mother. But what I saw, the person I watched slide his eyes to me as I magicked a bag into my hands, was the very last person I had expected and I felt foolish to not have seen it coming.

Of course, the Carver knew .

I felt more than saw Feyre tense beside me as I pulled the bone out of my bag and tossed it at the Carver, an offering to begin our game. “The calf-bone that made the final kill when Feyre slew the Middengard Wyrm,” I said. The Carver beamed up with delight and it disgusted me to see that smirk on the new face he wore especially for me.

“Come inside,” he said. Feyre chanced but a single step. “It has been an age since something new came into this world.”

“Hello,” Feyre said, her voice far too light, the Carver far too happy. It made my stomach feel sick knowing how he would dance with her.

I missed the feel of her hand in mine.

“Are you frightened?”

“Yes.”

Never lie. Not ever. Not about anything no matter how simple or inconsequential you think it may be.

The Carver stood, but did not approach, a subtle indication he would play. “Feyre,” he said, testing the syllables out on his tongue. “Fay-ruh. Where did you go when you died?”

“A question for a question,” Feyre offered and though he did not take his eyes from her, he nodded smartly at me.

Set the rules from the start...

“You were always smarter than your forefathers,” the Carver said in my direction before proceeding with Feyre. “Tell me where you went, what you saw - and I will answer your question.”

Feyre looked at me and I nodded, urging her to go on with the hope that she didn’t see that agonizing worry flowing through my veins that this would tax her too much. And it would be all my fault if it did.

Or worse, that she would think I didn’t believe enough in her to do it, which could not have been further from the truth. The seconds dragged on and I didn’t need to breach her shields to know what thoughts flitted through her head of pain and agony and death.

Just when the Carver began to look particularly intrigued, perhaps enough to begin taunting Feyre with her weaknesses, Feyre’s hands bundled into fists at her sides and she spoke, and with each word, words so honest and haunting that I had not expected them, I started to cleave inside.

Just one step. One breath. One day.

We’ll figure it out - day by day if we have to.

“I heard the crack,” Feyre said, my eyes abandoning the Carver to watch her instead. “I heard the crack when she broke my neck. It was in my ears, but also inside my skull. I was gone before I felt anything more than the first lash of pain. And then it was dark. A different sort of dark than this place. But there was a... thread.”

My heart sped up. She couldn’t possibly have meant... when I’d thought she never -

“A tether. And I yanked on it - and suddenly I could see. Not through my eyes, but - but his...” Her hands uncurled from her fists as if a mighty weight had removed itself in admitting such a truth.

The bond.

She was talking about the mating bond, did she even realize? No, she couldn’t have. But...

She’d felt it that day. The same as I had. I had thought myself alone in feeling it between us, that Feyre could never have felt the bond between us from how intensely she hated me, much less accepted it. I had thought myself alone in reaching for the bond and for her, but after everything, she had groped for it in the darkness too.

It was all we had in death - the bond between us. We had pulled on it together.

My body went sort of weightless at the confession.

“And I knew I was dead,” Feyre continued, each word placing a grip on my heart that was equal parts ice and fire. “And this tiny scrap of spirit was all that was left of me, clinging to the thread of our bargain.”

“But was there anyone there - were you seeing anything beyond?” the Carver asked.

“There was only that bond in the darkness. And when I was Made anew, I followed that bond back - to me. I knew that home was on the other end of it. There was light then. Like swimming up through sparkling wine.”

Feyre finally looked at me then and I think my soul exploded, desperate to collide with hers and restitch itself back together in fury and passion.

Not my any-

My mate.

My mate. My mate. My mate.

Soul divine, I wanted her. Wanted more than just a hand to hold in the dark, more than just a touch to push forward through the crowded passageways of death and decay. Wanted to knit our beings together until we were one and she never cried again for lack of light or love or sun.

I can be your Light , I thought. Though I am the Night, let me be your Moon. I can reflect the Sun. Let me find the light for you, Feyre.

“Were you afraid?” the Carver next asked. Question Two.

“All I wanted was to return to - to the people around me. I wanted it badly enough I didn’t have room for fear. The worst had happened, and the darkness was calm and quiet. It did not seem like a bad thing to fade into. But I wanted to go home. So I followed the bond home.”

Home.

There was only that bond in the darkness...

The thought beat a steady rhythm in my head as everything from unbounding joy to nervousness to sorrow tore at me.

To be Feyre’s home.

“There was no other world?” the Carver asked. Question Three.

“If there was or is, I did not see it.”

“No light, no portal?”

“It was only peace and darkness.”

“Did you have a body?”

“No.”

“Did-”

“That’s enough from you,” I purred, quickly resuming my persona reserved for the outside world. Feyre didn’t need to relive every detail, she had offered him enough to make him talk. And my own thoughts were selfishly running away with themselves... If I didn’t pull back now, Feyre’s story had a chance to so thoroughly wreck me to the point of never coming back. “You said a question for a question. Now you’ve asked... six.”

Mercifully, the Carver relaxed and so too, I think, did Feyre at having the power shifted back to her.

“It is a rare day when I meet someone who comes back from true death,” the Carver said. “Forgive me for wanting to peer behind the curtain. Ask it, girl.”

With renewed confidence I was glad to hear in her voice, Feyre spoke, “If there was no body - nothing but perhaps a bit of bone, would there be a way to resurrect that person? To grow them a new body, put their soul into it.”

"Was the soul somehow preserved? Contained?”

“Yes.”

“There is no way.” Knowing, I waited. “Unless...”

There.

“Long ago, before the High Fae, before man, there was a Cauldron... They say all the magic was contained inside it, that the world was born in it. But it fell into the wrong hands. And great and horrible things were done with it. Things were forged with it. Such wicked things that the Cauldron was eventually stolen back at great cost. It could not be destroyed, for it had Made all things, and if it were broken, then life would cease to be. So it was hidden. And forgotten. Only with that Cauldron could something that is dead be reforged like that.”

The Cauldron. My first suspicion confirmed. Along with my first nightmare.

Visions of the ruined temples I’d visited with my brothers flashed through my eyes fueling my energy to persist. This wasn’t just for Feyre, I had to remind myself. My court was on the line as well and equally important.

“Where did they hide it?” I asked the Carver casually.

“Tell me a secret no one knows, Lord of Night, and I’ll tell you mine.”

I shrugged, almost enjoying toying with him. “My right knee gets a twinge of pain when it rains. I wrecked it during the War, and it’s hurt ever since.”

The Bone Carver’s laugh barked through the air. Feyre was gaping open mouthed at me, not entirely unamused herself. Had we been under different circumstances, I might have smiled at her - real and genuine.

“You always were my favorite,” the Carver said deliciously. “Very well. The Cauldron was hidden at the bottom of a frozen lake in Lapplund and vanished a long, long time ago. I don’t know where it went to - or where it is now. Millennia before you were born, the three feet on which it stands were successfully cleaved from its base in an attempt to fracture some of its power. It worked - barely.

“Removing the feet was like cutting off the first knuckle of a finger. Irksome, but you could still use the rest with some difficulty. The feet were hidden at three different temples - Cesere, Sangravah, and Itica. If they have gone missing, it is likely the Cauldron is active once more - and that the wielder wants it at full power and not a wisp of it missing.”

Hybern .

My blood growled the name. I knew what I would find in coming to the Carver, but some part of me had foolishly hoped I would be wrong regardless.

“I don’t suppose you know who now has the Cauldron,” I asked, more casually still. I felt anger wash over me as I watched the Carver point a long, bony finger at Feyre.

“Promise that you’ll give me her bones when she dies and I’ll think about it.” My veins went cold freezing hell over and I stilled, the Carver chuckling at me like a cat toying with a mouse. “No - I don’t think even you would promise that, Rhysand.”

“Thank you for your help,” I said, my voice made of steel. I moved to guide Feyre out of the room. We were done with his games. Much as his affirmation of my suspicions would have been nice, I didn’t need it to really know who was responsible. He’d told me enough to begin the real work now anyway. And the subtle threat at Feyre was enough to make me wish her and I far, far away from this prison camp.

But Feyre did not follow with me. Her body froze beneath my hand pressing in on her lower back as she turned her gaze back to the Carver, sensing how to unravel him. Little did she know she would unravel me in the process.

“There was a choice - in Death,” she said. One simple phrase and I could sense without looking at him, could feel it in the scent of him, that he was rapt with attention.

“I knew that I could drift away into the dark. And I chose to fight - to hold on for a bit longer. Yet I knew if I wanted, I could have faded. And maybe it would be a new world, a realm of rest and peace. But I wasn’t ready for it - not to go there alone. I knew there was something else waiting beyond that dark. Something good.”

The Carver looked ravenous for more when he spoke. “You know who has the Cauldron, Rhysand. Who has been pillaging the temples. You only came here to confirm what you have long guessed.”

My gut twisted. “The King of Hybern.”

Silence sifted through us as we waited, but the Carver kept quiet. I felt Feyre shifting beside me, weighing her options. There was more to give, but the bastard still wanted more in return first and Feyre - my sweet, bold Feyre - was too willing to oblige him with her pain.

“When Amarantha made me kill those two faeries,” she said, “if the third hadn’t been Tamlin, I would have put the dagger in my own heart at the end. I knew there was no coming back from what I’d done. And once I broke their curse, once I knew I’d saved them, I just wanted enough time to turn that dagger on myself. I only decided I wanted to live when she killed me, and I knew I had not finished whatever...” she paused and sounded utterly exhausted, “whatever it was I’d been born to do.”

Nothing and no one could have ever prepared me for those words. I had to quickly mask the devastation written all over my face as Feyre turned that beautiful face of hers on me and caught the heartbreak in my eyes.

Don’t you ever think that. Not for one damned moment .

That’s what I’d told her that day by the Sidra when she’d - when she’d thought of what it would be like to just... stop.

I searched my mind, my memories of that day her neck snapped. My attention had been so wholly connected with her thoughts trying to will her the last morsels of my strength just so she could keep a level head and defeat Amarantha. How had I not seen her break so entirely? To the point that she wanted to - no, I could not even think the words.

But then a vision came sweeping into my mind of Tamlin and what had really been the Attor sitting on the dais next to Amarantha as they watched Feyre slaughter the first two faeries. Realizing what was about to happen was the sole moment I’d lost my hold on Feyre’s thoughts, the exact moment the veil over the real Tamlin kneeling before her was lifted, when she’d felt...

My chest sank. The guilt of how I’d failed her in that one small moment when she felt the most alone, when I had silently promised never to leave her, wrecked me from the inside out. If it weren’t for the fact that it would mean reliving the horrors of that day, I’d go back right that very second and never leave her side ever again.

How she’d suffered. How she’d lived .

How had we all.

“With the Cauldron,” the Carver said with surprising softness, “you could do other things than raise the dead. You could shatter the wall. It is likely that Hybern has been quiet for so many years because he was hunting the Cauldron, learning its secrets. Resurrection of a specific individual might very well have been his first test once the feet were reunited - and now he finds that the Cauldron is pure energy, pure power. And like any magic, it can be depleted. So he will let it rest, let it gather strength - learn its secrets to feed it more energy, more power.”

“Is there a way to stop it?” Feyre asked.

“Don’t offer him one more-” I started to say at the Carver’s silence, but he cut me off.

“When the Cauldron was made, its dark maker used the last of the molten ore to forge a book. The Book of Breathings. In it, written between the carved words, are the spells to negate the Cauldron’s power - or control it wholly. But after the War, it was split into two pieces. One went to the Fae, one to the six human queens. It was part of the Treaty, purely symbolic, as the Cauldron had been lost for millennia and considered mere myth. The Book was believed harmless, because like calls to like - and only that which was Made can speak those spells and summon its power. No creature born of the earth may wield it, so the High Lords and humans dismissed it as little more than a historical heirloom, but if the Book were in the hands of something reforged... You would have to test such a theory, of course - but... it might be possible.”

Feyre nearly gasped beside me as she realized the implications.

The temples.

The Cauldron.

The Book.

Feyre.

“So now the High Lord of Summer possesses our piece, and the reigning mortal queens have the other entombed in their shining palace by the sea. Prythian’s half is guarded, protected with blood-spells keyed to Summer himself. The one belonging to the mortal queens.... They were crafty, when they received their gift. They used our own kind to spell the Book, to bind it - so that if it were ever stolen, if, let’s say, a High Lord were to winnow into their castle to steal it... the Book would melt into ore and be lost. It must be freely given by a mortal queen, with no trickery, no magic involved.” The Carver chuckled, amused. “Such clever, lovely creatures, humans.

“Reunite both halves of the Book of Breathings and you will be able to nullify the powers of the Cauldron. Hopefully before it returns to full strength and shatters that wall.”

Without a fight, Feyre moved with me to leave the chamber as I grabbed her hand gingerly in my own. Though she did not have the mental strength to grip my hand in return, her mere touch on my skin warmed and soothed my spirit after all the Carver had to say.

“I shall carve your death in here, Feyre,” were the Carver’s parting words and then we were gone.

We did not speak for a very long while afterwards, not until we were far away from his hideous existence. I left one awful thought or memory behind with each step, to be considered and tortured by another time. I’d had enough for one day.

“What did you see?” Feyre asked almost as soon as we’d stepped back into the sun - into the light.

“You first,” I replied, wondering if her vision would in any way match my own. But what she said surprised me.

“A boy - around eight; dark-haired and blue-eyed.”

I shuddered. It was not nearly as bad as Amarantha, but to use a child to manipulate an already abused and broken individual seemed particularly cruel.

“What did you see?” she pressed and with a deep breath, I replied.

“Jurian,” I said. “He appeared exactly as Jurian looked the last time I saw him: facing Amarantha when they fought to the death.”

Covered in blood, cackling like a madman, and vicious as hell.

It was Feyre’s turn to shudder this time.

Chapter Text

We made our trek back down the mountain mostly in silence. Since the laws of the island demanded we forgo magic to get to the Prison, the same principles applied to leaving it. So back on our feet and down, down, down we went.

Feyre must have known I would explain everything when we returned and indeed, the silence gave me a good long while to think. About what the Carver had said. And what this meant moving forward.

Pieces I’d long since thought on started stitching together in my mind - different courts and magic and lands we would have to visit, have to manipulate and hopefully not destroy to get to the ultimate goal of finishing the Cauldron.

Each lick of the wind as we stepped through dirt and sweat was a promise we would fight hard to see those goals through.

I scented my clingy band of misfits before we’d barely finished winnowing to the rooftop of the townhouse. Feyre had held me a little tighter than normal as we whipped through the air, but she stood of her own accord when I let go.

“Amren’s right,” I announced, taking a patient lean against the door frame of my sitting room, eying everyone sprawled about the room. “You are like dogs, waiting for me to come home. Maybe I should buy treats.”

In truth, I was grateful they were there. I didn’t feel like wasting any more time or energy going up to the House of Wind and Feyre looked a little worse for wear taking a seat by the fire, savoring every flicker and flame it gave it.

Cassian flipped me off with Mor looking a little impatient by his side. Azriel kept nothing but shadows for company by the window. The anticipation radiating from the three of them was palpable.

Feyre seemed to want nothing to do with it, her back turned away from them, but... I knew she was listening, in her own quiet way while demons chased at her as surely as my own did for me.

“How’d it go?” Mor finally asked.

“The Bone Carver,” I said, watching Feyre and keeping casual to stem that rising sense of dread I felt, “is a busybody gossip who likes to pry into other people’s business far too much.”

“But?” Cassian sounded impatient. And indeed, his wings shook at his back.

“But he can also be helpful, when he chooses. And it seems we need to start doing what we do best.”

Silence.

And three strained glances on three very important faces.

And as always, never one to shy away from the worst of it, Azriel pushed forward, clearing the way through his shadows to confront reality. “Tell us.”

The last thing I heard before diving into our day was Feyre’s deep breath by the fire. She didn’t turn around to look at us the entire time we talked. Not once.

I avoided Feyre’s own personal details as I explained, as Azriel questioned, as Cassian sat back and swore internally. Mor said little herself, chewing her lip instead and watching Azriel carefully each time he spoke, like she could see the threads of his carefully laid groundwork weaving together behind those hazel eyes she drowned in day after day.

“I’ll contact my sources in the Summer Court about where their half of the Book of Breathings is hidden,” Azriel said when it seemed my tale was over. “I can fly into the human world myself to figure out where they’re keeping their part of the Book before we ask them for it.”

“No need,” I said, and shook my head definitely. “And I don’t trust this information, even with your sources, with anyone outside of this room. Save for Amren.”

“They can be trusted,” Azriel said. Even Feyre turned at that, hearing the the glint of malice in his voice. There was nothing Azriel liked less than thinking he’d disappointed someone at the one thing he felt born to do. But I couldn’t trust anyone, including his sources. Not with a secret so monumental and hazardous as this.

“We’re not taking risks where this is concerned,” I said, fixing Azriel with what trust I could in a single stare.

I’ll be throwing you to the wolves soon enough, brother. I trust you - heart and soul.

Azriel’s hands flexed once - and then released. I waited, and right on queue -

“So what do you have planned?” Mor asked, finally deciding to chime in. Az cut a glance at her and took a step back, his shadows relaxing. I picked at my leathers and pretended not to notice, pretended that what I was about to say would not end us all.

I felt Feyre’s gaze shift to me, watching, weighing...

“The King of Hybern sacked one of our temples to get a missing piece of the Cauldron. As far as I’m concerned, it’s an act of war - an indication that His Majesty has no interest in wooing me.”

“He likely remembers our allegiance to the humans in the War, anyway,” Cassian said and was not wrong. “He wouldn’t jeopardize revealing his plans while trying to sway you, and I bet some of Amarantha’s cronies reported to him about Under the Mountain. About how it all ended, I mean.”

Feyre dropped her hands slowly from where they’d rested gently in the air against the heat of the fireplace. Cassian looked tightly between us for a brief moment.

“Indeed,” I said. “But this means Hybern’s forces have already successfully infiltrated our lands - without detection. I plan to return the favor.”

The room tore in two, one half in the direction of feral, instinctual excitement written across the blood thirsty grins on Cassian and Mor’s faces, who would go to their deaths willingly for retribution; the other half slanting towards the quiet, calculating mindset Feyre and Azriel shared, to question and plot and plan first before jumping into the fray where danger lurked.

“How?” Mor asked, and she sounded ready enough to rip open her heart and shred the world with truth on the spot.

I crossed my arms. “It will require careful planning. but if the Cauldron is in Hybern, then to Hybern we must go. Either to take it back... or use the Book to nullify it.”

And as much as I hated to admit it, especially after a day like today that would damn me later when thoughts of Feyre and the Carver and death caught up with me, I felt... excited at the prospect of how stealing that Cauldron right out from under Hybern’s nose might feel.

To save my court, gain that vindication it deserved...

The Illyrian bastard in me, born for blood and savagery and everything that was not masks and finery, gloried at the thought indeed.

“Hybern likely has as many wards and shields around it as we have here,” Azriel cut in. “We’d need to find a way to get through them undetected first.”

Remember the wolves brother? It is time for you to go and meet them .

Azriel seemed to understand the look that passed between us. His shadows danced immediately.

“Which is why we start now,” I said. “While we hunt for the Book. So when we get both halves, we can move swiftly - before word can spread that we even possess it.”

“How are you going to retrieve the Book, then?” Cassian asked, nodding, but his expression clouded.

And that excitement flared right back up in me. I had to temper it down to keep the brute inside me from raging too loudly. “Since these objects are spelled to the individual High Lords, and can only be found by them - through their power...” I looked at Feyre, who sat very fixedly towards the fire, chin tucked to her chest, “Then, in addition to her uses regarding the handling of the Book of Breathings itself, it seems we possibly have our own detector.”

Feyre squinted as she felt three extra sets of eyes slam into her skin.

“ Perhaps ,” she said, “was what the Bone Carver said in regard to me being able to track things.” She looked at me and I couldn’t help it - she was so damned powerful, so capable. That it struck me to my core in that very moment. I smiled, knowing what I was about to ask was too much, and knowing that I would ask it anyway because of what my mother had told me long, long ago when she’d described Feyre without ever even knowing her. Someone worthy with the ability to bend rules and defy the impossible.

“You don’t know...” Feyre said, her words dying as my smile widened.

Because I did know. I knew it and so did she. She was powerful and strong and she was going to find out in the most precious way possible to me.

“You have a kernel of all our power,” I told her, “like having seven thumbprints. If we’ve hidden something, if we’ve made or protected it with our power, no matter where it has been concealed, you will be able to track it through that very magic.”

“You can’t know that for sure,” Feyre said with long suffering look worthy of Azriel. She was tired. So very, very tired.

So I smiled even further to encourage her, or at least infuriate her enough that she wouldn’t slip back down the void.

“No,” I admitted, “but there is a way to test it.”

“Here we go,” Cassian grumbled. I didn’t see how the others felt about the matter, my focus resting solely on keeping that beautiful heart in front of me beating and pushing and trying.

“With your abilities, Feyre, you might be able to find the half of the Book at the Summer Court - and break the wards around it. But I’m not going to take the carver’s word for it, or bring you there without testing you first. To make sure that when it counts, when we need to get that book, you - we do not fail. So we’re going on another little trip. To see if you can find a valuable object of mine that I’ve been missing for a considerably long time.”

“Shit,” Mor said.

“Where?” Feyre asked. And any one of them could have answered her because by now, they all undoubtedly knew where I was gunning for. All shared the same singular vision in their thoughts of my mother and her last remaining possession for me before she died.

“To the Weaver,” Azriel answered Feyre. I held a hand up to silence Cassian before he even parted his lips to say whatever colored admonition he wanted to hurl at me.

I knew it was unfair. I knew it was even, slightly mean, perhaps, what I was asking of Feyre. But I would still ask and give her the choice in the matter because this was... my mate and I knew as soon as she’d looked at the Carver and told him she’d wanted to die that there was still some desperate, insignificant part of my soul clinging to this stupid, miserable hope she might choose to stay here one day. Choose me .

And if Feyre ever did, I wanted her to have everything she deserved, everything that was owed to her and more.

And that required visiting the Weaver. Feyre alone could make that happen, so to the Weaver we would go.

“The test,” I said, “will be to see if Feyre can identify the object of mine in the Weaver’s trove. When we get to the Summer Court, Tarquin might have spelled his half of the Book to look different, feel different.”

“By the Cauldron, Rhys,” Mor said with more genuine heat than I usually got from her. “Are you out of your-”

And much to my delight, it was Feyre who cut her off, wanting to know more.

“Who is the Weaver?” she asked.

“An ancient, wicked creature.” Azriel. The shadowsinger cut me a cruel stare. “Who should remain unbothered. Find another way to test her abilities.”

His stare alone in that room, perhaps, could have cut me down enough to back off. The risk was monumental, but the payoff...

The payoff...

I shied away from Azriel’s glance and shrugged at Feyre.

Your choice .

Always, always her choice.

She bit her lip and studied me. And whether she saw the primal need in my eyes or simply didn’t care anymore or something else altogether, possibly, Feyre shrugged back. “The Bone Carver, the Weaver... Can’t you ever just call someone by a given name?”

Cassian chuckled on the sofa.

Feyre looked ready to mist us all away for the evening as she stared at me with those eyes that lingered ever so slightly in the grey tonight. But soon, she would drop off. And still my selfish, demanding heart required more. I’d been dreading asking this of her most of all as we descended that mountain.

“What about adding one more name to that list?” I asked.

“Rhys,” Mor hissed, trying to call me back even as I stepped past the horizon point, too far gone to be considered sane or reasonable anymore.

“Emissary,” I persisted. “Emissary to the Night Court - for the human realm.”

“There hasn’t been one for five hundred years, Rhys,” Azriel said, the perfect mask of stoicism.

“There also hasn’t been a human-turned-immortal since then, either. The human world must be as prepared as we are - especially if the King of Hybern plans to shatter the wall and unleash his forces upon them. We need the other half of the Book from those mortal queens - and if we can’t use magic to influence them, then they’re going to have to bring it to us.”

The room went quiet - waiting. Feyre tried to look away, to some other part of the world outside these walls, but my voice quickly called her back. And though she sat several feet from me, the heavy look in her eyes felt more like a call between us than my speech, like I was sitting right beside her holding her up with each word, brushing away the hair from her face and enjoying the fire at her side.

Before I asked this one awful task of her.

“You are an immortal faerie - with a human heart,” I told her, our gazes locked. “Even as such, you might very well set foot on the continent and be... hunted for it. So we set up a base in neutral territory. In a place where humans trust us - trust you , Feyre. And where other humans might risk going to meet with you. To hear the voice of Prythian after five centuries.”

It clicked at once. “My family’s estate,” she said. I didn’t have to confirm.

“Mother’s tits, Rhys,” Cassian cursed. His wings shot out disturbing the various objects nearest him on the sofa. “You think we can just take over her family’s house, demand that of them?”

Mor looked equally displeased, and yet... “The land will run red with blood, Cassian, regardless of what we do with her family,” she said. “It is now a matter of where that blood will flow - and how much will spill. How much human blood we can save.”

Which left it down to Feyre once again. Feyre who sat by the fire ready to hug her knees into her chest and disappear as she spoke in that low tone. “The Spring Court borders the wall-”

No - never. Not to you.

I wouldn’t do that to her. Not in a million years.

“The wall stretches across the sea,” I cut in before that fear could fester inside her a second more. “We’ll fly in offshore. I won’t risk discovery from any court, though word might spread quickly enough once we’re there. I know it won’t be easy, Feyre, but if there’s any way you could convince those queens-”

“I’ll do it,” she said, and sweet utter relief flooded my system. Relief - and pride. She straightened her knees back out and held her head high. “They might not be happy about it, but I’ll make Elain and Nesta do it.”

Strong.

Powerful.

Infinite.

Feyre was infinite. As infinite as the sea and stars. She just didn’t know it yet.

“Then it’s settled,” I said. “Once Feyre darling returns from the Weaver, we’ll bring Hybern to its knees.”

Feyre went to bed for the evening, and was hardly up the stairs and inside her room before the others pounced.

“The Weaver, Rhys?” Azriel said. “Honestly?” And I was a tad surprised he was the first one to speak.

“I have to go see Amren,” I said, striding for the door. “You can all yell at me tomorrow after it fails if you think it’s such a monstrous idea.”

“It is a monstrous idea,” Cassian said. “You seem to be having quite the streak of them lately.” He got up and blocked my path, Mor hot on his heels behind him. “First the Weaver. Now her family’s estate? Is that really necessary?”

“Yes - now move please.”

Cassian growled, Mor stepping between us with a hand on either of our chests to pry us apart. “Much as I know Azriel would love to watch me rip you boys to pieces and then explain it to Feyre when the roof caves in, can we please be civil.” Her face warped on the latter half of her statement, focusing on me and we pulled apart. “You two need to stop. This is serious.”

“You don’t think I don’t know that?” I stepped back and shoved my hands in my pockets, staring at the floor while my shoe dragged circles in the carpet on a hop.

“Cauldron boil and bake me,” Cassian said after a hot silence. “You’re excited about this.” My head jerked back, but I couldn’t quite meet his face. “You are!” And then he broke into an uproarious laugh, his hands clapping together as he stepped back and fell over on Azriel shaking with the breath coming out of him.

“Cassian, for fuck’s sake,” Mor said.

“It’s too good!” he yelled. He turned around and sank onto the arm of the chair next to Az, who stood beside him with his arms crossed, siphons flaring a bit in color. “You’re going to take your girlfriend-”

“She’s not my anything,” I growled, stepping forward. Mor’s eyes flashed.

He waved a hand through the air. “You’re taking your whatever you want to call her into the most dangerous part of Prythian just to prove she has your powers, something you could do literally anywhere else on this forsaken continent-”

“Cassian.”

“All because you want to get back her future-”

“ Enough - shit.”

He crossed his arms. “Do you deny it?”

We stared hard at each other for several painfully long seconds, enough time for Cassian give me his biggest shit eating grin. “Didn’t think so,” he finally said.

I looked at Azriel who conveniently had decided now was a nice moment to stare at the sunset, and then to Mor. She bit her lower lip...

And then shuddered as she suppressed her chuckle.

“Oh come on,” she said, her eyes bright. I shrugged her off, determined not to give in, but my foot still danced on the floor. “She does have you rather adorably wrapped around her finger. I just can’t wait for the day she finally realizes it.”

“She does not-”

“ Feyre darling,” Cassian mimed and this time, I didn’t miss Azriel’s smile, even if it was tight. He was likely still musing on my decision to take Feyre to the Weaver tomorrow.

I let out a loose breath. “Can we go eat now? I’m starving and could do with some food. Some of us have work to do tomorrow.” I looked pointedly at Cassian and made it to the front door.

“Food isn’t all you’re starving for.”

My insides tightened, some deeper part of me rising up to the surface ready to shove him off the nearest balcony and dive right over him after it. Feyre was just upstairs. If she heard any of this-

“Man, look at you,” Cassian said with a shake of his head. “You can’t even function just thinking about her.” He looked me over head to toe, sizing me up like he would for a fight, and it felt like my first day in the war camps all over again. “I am gonna wipe the floor with your ass the day she finally fucks you.”

Azriel’s shoulder gave a heave. He strode from the window and took Mor’s hand, guiding her past us towards the door where I stood. “Come on,” he grumbled to her. “They’re gonna be at it for a while and I actually am hungry.”

“Fine by me!” she chirped, sticking her tongue out at me like she did when we were kids.

They left and then it was just Cassian and I, and Feyre somewhere upstairs. Cassian’s mouth frowned as he shrugged. “Do you really have to take her tomorrow?”

Feyre.

Feyre, Feyre, Feyre upstairs and eating or sleeping or something . Feyre who had wanted to die, but chose to stay here instead, with me and my court to find another way. Feyre, who had told me yes today to so many questions I’d asked of her.

Feyre, who I would take to the Weaver bright and early to find my mother’s heirloom that she might one day have it herself.

I didn’t let the voices tell me she wasn’t my anything this time. She was my something and even if that something always remained an enigma and never more, I was going to fight like hell for it. Cassian was right about more than just the danger tomorrow’s trip harbored - I could barely stand just thinking about Feyre upstairs.

I gave Cassian the grim look that meant there was no further room for debate. “Yes. I do.”

Dinner with my family resulted in very little to cool the ball of frantic energy that coursed through me in droves, heightening with every second I got closer to dawn. Though they certainly did their best to try regardless. Mor alone seemed willing to let it go and just accept what I’d decided and no one stopped her when she bought a round of drinks.

But I hardly touched my glass all evening. Hardly slept when I got home.

I danced outside Feyre’s room early before the sun was even up, pacing back and forth down the hall, listening for her breathing to hitch. The moment it changed and I felt her mind stir, even if it didn’t let me inside, I had her door open and was gliding right in as though I could feel the wind itself at my feet carrying me along.

“Hurry,” I said, making straight for her armoire and digging through it until I’d pulled out her leathers. “I want to be gone before the sun is fully up.”

“Why?” Feyre sounded groggy as she got out of bed, blinking owlishly at the leathers I’d thrown on the bed.

Because if we wait any longer, my insides might explode .

Today she’d be tested in new and different ways from the Bone Carver, ways that wouldn’t have to torture her mind, but might pull at those beautiful powers of hers, would certainly test her physical capabilities that had slackened in recent months.

But today was also the first real day of putting Hybern on our scent, the first real day of war. Going to the Weaver, though it had little to do with politics in what Feyre would hopefully retrieve there, was in its own way our own declaration of war. It would make or break every move we made from here on out.

Which was why we had to get moving - for all our sake’s.

“Because time is of the essence,” I said, chucking her socks and boots out onto the floor. That was really all she needed, but in my frenzy, I kept digging anyway. “Once the King of Hybern realizes that someone is searching for the Book of Breathings to nullify the powers of the Cauldron, then his agents will begin hunting for it, too.”

“You suspected this for a while, though,” Feyre said, sounding suddenly much more alert. “The Cauldron, the king, the Book... You wanted it confirmed, but you were waiting for me.”

I’ll wait for you for anything .

“Had you agreed to work with me two months ago, I would have taken you right to the Bone Carver to see if he confirmed my suspicions about your talents. But things didn’t go as planned.”

I looked up to catch Feyre piercing me with a sharp eye - not of reproach, but simple understanding, before she shuffled closer. “The reading,” she said. I stopped moving completely, pinned down by that magnificent, insightful stare. “That’s why you insisted on the lessons. So if your suspicions were true and I could harness the Book... I could actually read it - or any translation of whatever is inside.”

Two days and there was already so much she was putting together on her own, so much she was turning herself into that sparked a kindling brush I longed to watch transform into a magnificent wildfire.

And so much of it because of how hard I was pushing her.

‘The Weaver, Rhys? Honestly?’

‘Her family’s estate? Is that really necessary?‘

“Again,” I said and snapped myself back into action, “had you started to work with me, I would have told you why. I couldn’t risk discovery otherwise.” I strode across the room to her dresser and made to open the top drawer, but I couldn’t quite shake what had jumped to my mind. The guilt... “You should have learned to read no matter what. But yes, when I told you it served my own purposes - it was because of this. Do you blame me for it?”

“No,” Feyre said at once. I looked over my shoulder and found nothing doubting in her expression. My stomach settled. “But I’d prefer to be notified of any future schemes,” she added, her head tilting forward in a way that wasn’t entirely unfriendly.

“Duly noted,” I said, inclining my own head in agreement. I whipped back to the dresser and yanked open a drawer, not even remembering what remaining part of her leathers she still needed, and came face to face with enough lingerie to make my cock twitch if I hadn’t been caught off guard.

I picked up the first pair I saw and held it out with a chuckle - a dark scrap of midnight blue lace. Cauldron, this would hardly cover her-

The crack of heat and embarrassment that flooded past Feyre’s shield cut the thought mercifully off.

“I’m surprised you didn’t demand Nuala and Cerridwen buy you something else,” I said, grinning like a fool.

Feyre had the lace out of my hand faster than winnowing. “You’re drooling on the carpet,” she said and stalked into the bathing room. She gave a mighty slam with the door and took a particularly good while changing while I took one last, long look at the open drawer.

‘Man, look at you. You can’t even function just thinking about her.’

With a groan and a stretch of my neck, I closed the drawer and concentrated on anything but that pretty blue lace while I waited for Feyre to come back out.

When at last she emerged, strapped inside fighting leathers that were still a tad loose on her, I held up her belt of knives for her to step into. She ran a finger carefully over some of the blades examining.

“No swords, no bow or arrows,” I said, conscious of the heavy sword strapped down my own back.

Feyre’s gaze flicked up to me, fingers still poised on the belt. “But knives are fine?” Her fingers circled one of the loops, ready to yank it out of my hands perhaps, but that damned lace...

Cauldron she’d taken it into the bathing room with her, so was she wearing it under the leathers? There was hardly anything to it. The leathers would brush right up against her -

Oh for fuck’s sake.

I knelt down and concentrated on separating the straps of the belt apart, tapping Feyre’s right foot to step forward when I was done. She obliged and when both feet were through, I set to work on the fastenings, not the least bit enjoying the curve of her thighs every time my fingers brushed a little higher on her leg.

Not the least bit.

“She will not notice a knife,” I said, “as she has knives in her cottage for eating and her work. But things that are out of place - objects that have not been there... A sword, a bow and arrow... She might sense those things.”

“What about me?”

All of the blood that had been heading south for my cock stopped and went raging back up to my gut. My fingers gripped the strap I’d wound tightly at her thigh and suddenly, the feel of her muscles beneath my touch was so much more than some stupid piece of lingerie. It was her life .

It’s dangerous .

Azriel had cornered me one more time before I’d retired for the evening. He wasn’t wrong.

“Do not make a sound, do not touch anything but the object she took from me,” I said.

If she didn’t, we could both wind up dead, and I’d already done that with her twice. I didn’t want to repeat the experience of watching my mate fail - my mate whom I would fight through hell for, whom I would defy tradition and law to take on the Weaver for should it come to it, whom I would -

I looked up at Feyre, looked up from where I knelt on my stars and court and mountains for, and wished so foolishly that I already had in my hands what I was sending her into that cottage today for. And for one brief, glimmering moment - her eyes sparked, though I wasn’t entirely sure why.

I cleared my throat and continued adjusting straps on her legs. “If we’re correct about your powers,” I said, “if the Bone Carver wasn’t lying to us, then you and the object will have the same... imprint, thanks to the preserving spells I placed on it long ago. You are one and the same. She will not notice your presence so long as you touch only it. You will be invisible to her.”

“She’s blind?”

I nodded. “But her other senses are lethal.” And I swore for a moment I heard her breath shake. “So be quick, and quiet. Find the object and run out, Feyre.”

For both our sakes .

“And if she notices me?”

It’s dangerous, Rhys...

I willed myself not to audibly sigh, though my hands had stopped moving once again.

Az had pleaded with me to tell Feyre exactly what she was up against, but I was such a coward that she would say no and I wouldn’t get my possession back - wouldn’t have the opportunity to give it to Feyre one day even if I knew that moment was damned to begin with - that I ignored him until he let it go. It took all of Mor’s shy smiles, the ones she reserved only for him, to get Az back to his usual even stoicism after dinner.

I rubbed one thumb over Feyre’s leg considering, savoring.

“Then we’ll learn precisely how skilled you are,” I replied.

She glared and I got the sense she would rather I didn’t finish fixing her belt, but I was in too deep now. “Would you rather I locked you in the House of Wind and stuffed you with food and made you wear fine clothes and plan my parties?”

“Got to hell,” she snapped, arms crossed. So much fire. I could play with fire. “Why not get this object yourself, if it’s so important?”

“Because the Weaver know me - and if I am caught, there would be a steep price.” In the form of my mother’s ghost coming back to kick my ass for breaking my promise to her. “High Lords are not to interfere with her, no matter the direness of the situation. There are many treasures in her hoard, some she has kept for millennia. Most will never be retrieved - because the High Lords do not dare be caught, thanks to the laws that protect her, thanks to her wrath. Any thieves on their behalf... either they do not return, or they are never sent, for fear of it leading back to their High Lord. But you... She does not know you. You belong to every court.”

I finished the last strap and would rather have leaned forward and kissed my way through the leather down to the skin in farewell than let go as I held the backs of her knees gingerly.

“So I’m your huntress and thief?”

I looked up and Feyre’s face was a muddle of questions I wanted so badly to understand. But there was purpose. There was determination. And so, so much possibility - everything that stone she was going after represented.

An image of it shimmered in my mind along with the love and promise behind it. Finally, I knew the answer to that question of what Feyre was. And it brought a smile broad and ready for adventure to my face as I told her clearly, “You are my salvation, Feyre.”

She did not deny it.

Chapter Text

The damper on my powers was fully locked down as we winnowed into the wood and I could feel everything. And what there was to feel around us was nothing .

The air was hollow, void of all creature and movement. A sign of how dangerous and deceiving the predators lurking about this jungle really were. It was perhaps the one benefit of being so near the Weaver’s cottage that we wouldn’t run into other beasts so long as we trespassed.

Feyre, for one, didn’t need the added pressure.

The moment we touched down, her body stilled and her breath came out sharply. Though my High Lord’s powers were all but non-existent to avoid giving the Weaver even the smallest hint of my arrival, that lethal killing power gifted me by my Illyrian ancestors stalked beneath my skin keeping watch.

“Where are we?” Feyre said, her voice no more than a soft whisper for the ancient, gnarled trees surrounding us to listen to.

I kept my own voice steady - for her sake. “In the heart of Prythian, there is a large, empty territory that divides the North and the South. At the center is our sacred mountain.” Feyre’s heart sped up at that, but her feet continued moving as we began our trek through the woods. “This forest,” I said, sensing her growing unease, “is on the eastern edge of that neutral territory. Here, there is no High Lord. Here, the law is made by who is strongest, meanest, most cunning. And the Weaver of the Wood is at the top of their food chain.”

The silence of the wood did not refute me.

“Amarantha didn’t wipe them out?”

“Amarantha was no fool,” most unfortunately. What I wouldn’t have given for a Naga to come claw her neck out in place of Tamlin forty-nine years too soon. “She did not touch these creatures or disturb the wood. For years, I tried to find ways to manipulate her to make that foolish mistake, but she never bought it.”

“And now we’re disturbing her,” and I could feel the scowl on her face, “for a mere test.”

So not only was she nervous, but she was nervous enough to be angry with me too. And that heartbeat of hers was skyrocketing.

You can do this, I thought, willed in strength toward her.

Feyre would need to master that panic. It was just as important to me as her coming out of the cottage we approached successfully. Her ability to track the Cauldron, the Book, would all be pointless if she didn’t learn how to see the capability in herself.

Cruel .

It was a cruel, wicked test. And where no one else would push Feyre to do it, I miserably would.

Along with a bit of sport to distract the pair of us, if that was what Feyre needed to see past the fear. And she was good at it - playing with me. She always had been.

I chuckled at her comment, preparing to distract her any way I could, and admitted my own shortcoming since it was on my mind anyway, “Cassian tried to convince me last night not to take you. I thought he might even punch me.”

“Why?” Feyre asked, still glancing about.

“Who knows?” I said with a bored voice. “With Cassian, he’s probably more interested in fucking you than protecting you.”

Decidedly untrue. However -

“You’re a pig.”

That temper flared right to life as Feyre’s head snapped at me. “You could, you know,” I said, helping her through a thick patch. “If you needed to move on in a physical sense, I’m sure Cassian would be more than happy to oblige.”

Slicker than oil, Feyre angling her body in front of me in ways I’m not sure even she was aware of, purred, “Then tell him to come to my room tonight.”

“If you survive this test,” I said, far, far too quickly. I knew she wouldn’t let me get away with baiting her so easily, but I hadn’t thought she’d actually - not when she knew I would never tell him... surely she...

She stepped atop a large, smooth rock and stopped, and it was not unlike that feeling I’d had seeing her trek up the mountainside towards the Prison only a day ago. “You seem pleased by the idea that I won’t,” Feyre said.

“Quite the opposite, Feyre.” I held her gaze as I stepped up beside her, the rock keeping us eye level with one another. That lid I had clamped down on myself flicked briefly, threatening to unleash night and wind and stars into the space around us, the mate bond plucking at my impulses like the strings of a harp. “I’ll let Cassian know you’re... open to his advances.”

“Good,” she said, and not only did I hear that word, but I felt it. Felt some essence of her . Right before her heartbeat slammed into me like an endless processional of drums on Fire Night - beating, beating, beating.

And maybe it was the panic, panic she had to master, and maybe it was the knowledge she would even consider being open to another male’s advances - genuine or not - but when Feyre made to take one step off that rock, breaking my gaze, the lid inside me cracked just enough .

My hand reached out and slid easily over her neck, cupping her chin in a smooth, slithering caress. Through the crack inside, a cool burst of steam slid out and filled my vision with starlight as I looked into the blue of her eyes. “Did you enjoy the sight of me kneeling before you?” I didn’t have to hear it for myself to know how the words must have sounded in her ear.

Feyre took one look at me, heard the invitation in my voice, and Mother above she accepted . “Isn’t that all you males are good for anyway?” she crooned, slinking her chin casually out of my reach with a damn smirk that had my blood boiling and praying not to think of whatever blasted pieces of lingerie were under that suit.

Feyre was flirting back.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

But her voice - it wavered, just enough. And I knew that the flirting was little more than a pretty charade she needed maintained to keep her focus. Even if for a moment... it had felt almost... real.

So I fluttered my eyes into a midnight stare as she jumped down from the rock, and our feet tangoed to avoid nearly touching on the ground. We were inches apart by the time she looked back up, our smirks doing a tango of their own that kindled a small pool of heat in my crotch.

Just before her mind flicked back to the cottage now sitting prettily in front of us, the rooftops covered in something I would not mention to Feyre glinting in the sunlight.

“Nice try,” she said, her voice strained. So I shrugged and stepped around her and enjoyed the loving irritation swimming through the bond between us.

She caught up to me quickly enough and together, we beheld the cottage, quaint and quiet and isolated from the world, it felt. Nothing stirred or gave any indication that there was life inside that hovel, all part of the Weaver’s beautifully laid trap.

Even the well sitting just outside its door was laced with deceit.

The only sound, the one we had to strain even with our fae ears to hear, was a low, merry humming coming from within the home - from that wicked Weaver herself.

I turned to Feyre and bowed, just as much to distract myself as her from how hard it was going to be not to hear her while I waited, and gestured for her to move forward.

Her back straightened as she stepped forward, catching my eye. Good luck I mouthed, and glamored myself into the air when she was past.

I waited in those woods and watched her, rooted to the spot, until she’d made it all the way to the door and held herself back for just a moment. That panic rising in her throat like bile was all that tethered us together. And I wondered if this wasn’t a huge mistake.

Dangerous.

So very, very dangerous.

But you can do it, I thought, as her hand reached out for the door. You are strong. You are Night and Dawn and Day combined. You are infinite, Feyre. Let nothing stand in your way .

Her fingers turned the knob. I winnowed as she stepped inside.

Seconds quickly turned into minutes as I waited in the trees surrounding the Weaver’s home - close enough to see the cottage, but far back enough to avoid detection.

I stuck to the tops of the trees, sitting within the branches never farther than a quick reach from the heavy blade weighing down my back.

That weight closely mirrored the tight line of dread Feyre felt, her mental shields closed to thought but wide open to all emotion. And I felt everything . Or most of it, I was fairly confident.

And with every sense of panic I encountered, I prayed to the Mother for her to understand how powerful and wonderful she was until I felt some faint recognition of it drifting through her awareness. Small and timid at first, but there nonetheless.

There as she stalked my ring - my mother’s ring. The one meant for one person in my life and one person only.

I think we felt it at the same moment, Feyre and I. The vision of how I’d last seen the ring floating to the surface of my mind while Feyre stared at it in the present with a good deal of confusion. I couldn’t see her, but I felt her reaching for it - felt it in how overwhelmingly my powers tugged at me in recognition of the object that was so, so close to being returned.

But Feyre’s mind started screaming.

I closed my eyes and all I could feel and see was blood even without a viewpoint of where she stood.

Blood. Fae blood on her hands. Along with a dagger that could have been the one she’d used then or one of the blades she had on her now, it didn’t matter.

My lips tightened, my own hand reaching behind my back on instinct, wishing desperately just to know where she stood, how she looked, if she had her - my ring, if she was getting out safely...

And then the Weaver’s voice died.

And louder than thunder to my ears, I heard her cottage door shut .

My eyes opened scanning the wood for any sign of movement.

Out. Please tell me she got out first.

Before the Weaver realized she had even been there.

I grasped the hilt of my sword, ready to draw it and be gone at a moment’s notice. Feyre remained a river of panic gushing over the bond, but I couldn’t read where that panic went. And still the forest seemed too quiet.

Until...

A scream shattered the stale air. Not Feyre’s voice - but the Weaver’s. I tensed into a crouch and within seconds, saw smoke billowing up from one side of the house, too thick for me to see through.

My heart hammered into my chest as Feyre’s panic raged at me, the only thing keeping me back this small kernal of confidence beating rapidly away down the bond.

I latched on to it, savoring how it felt and the knowledge that it was her own. Was Feyre’s. That whatever she was doing, she was accomplishing it without me and likely kicking so much ass in the process.

Please, please, please...

Sixty seconds. I counted them down one by one in my head. And if Feyre wasn’t out by the end of it, then Cassian would have a magnificent time scolding me before six High Lords came to tear me limb from limb in punishment for my deeds.

Except that I didn’t need that minute. Barely any time had passed before -

There .

Grass. And sun. And pine.

Feyre.

There you are.

I scented her even though there was no wind to carry that perfume to me.

I released the grip on my sword scanning the ground, but only the Weaver emerged, running out of the cottage screaming her head off, demanding to know where her intruder had gone.

And Feyre was no where to be seen. Feyre was-

Coming straight at me upon the trees with an absolutely murderous look in her eyes that pinned me in place. I could have kissed her for it would it not have actually driven one of those knives glinting on her thighs deep into my chest.

And her body . Cauldron alive, I hoped Mor wasn’t there when we winnowed back to see it. Feyre was positively covered in the ash and fat and decay of the Weaver’s work, blood the only color peaking through from the scratches covering her skin.

“What the hell did you do ?” I asked, listening to the Weaver rage and thinking - my mate did that.

“You ,” Feyre hissed, venom flying off her tongue at me.

I silenced her with a swift finger to my lips and took her into my arms, cupping her against my chest, my shoulder. She was going to hate me again in a moment, enough that even Amren wouldn’t deny it.

We winked into nonexistence, the Weaver’s screams stolen by the wind and sea and sky as we fell into the open air of Velaris. For a few heart-stopping moments, I let us fall, enjoying the fresh burst of adrenaline and hoping it was enough to distract Feyre from what she’d just experienced, before my wings rippled at my back wide and powerful, lifting us easily into the House of Wind.

Where Cassian and Amren saw us and promptly gaped at our appearance, Cassian’s hand flying for the dagger at his side.

I set Feyre down and her eyes immediately caught on her reflection from the mirror hanging on the wall. Her eyes widened, mouth parting slowly. Her body shook just trying to even out her breathing, but seeing herself only seemed to make the task harder...

Cauldron , she was covered.

“You smell like barbecue,” Amren said. Even the fire drake who bathed and battled in blood turned away from Feyre then. Cassian retreated from his fighting stance, but made no further move.

“You kill her?” he asked.

“No,” I said, watching Feyre carefully. “But given how much the Weaver was screaming, I’m dying to know what Feyre darling did.”

As though the jab was a trigger, Feyre doubled over on herself and vomited all over the floor, forcing all of us to take a jump back. Amren immediately magicked away the mess from Feyre and the floor, and Feyre mercifully didn’t seem to feel inclined towards more.

“Shit,” Cassian said and threw me a dark, disapproving look.

“She... detected me somehow,” Feyre said, holding herself up against the table. “And locked the doors and windows. So I had to climb out through the chimney. I got stuck and when she tried to climb up, I threw a brick at her face.”

Feyre threw a brick at the Weaver.

Slowly, all eyes turned towards me. “And where were you?” Amren asked. I couldn’t tell if there was a threat beneath that question or not.

“Waiting, far enough away that she couldn’t detect me.”

Feyre stepped forward, anger fueling her reserves of strength. “I could have used some help,” she growled at me, that same venom on her tongue when she’d seen me in the woods.

‘You.’

“You survived,” I said. “And found a way to help yourself.”

Feyre studied me hard, considered what I was saying, and let fire flare inside her veins. I was almost surprised she didn’t ignite on the spot.

“That’s what this was also about,” she spat. I didn’t dare look at Cassian. “Not just this stupid ring ,” she said, slamming her hand hard against the table, “or my abilities , but if I can master my panic.”

Her hand backed off the table and - there it sat. My mother’s ring. The star cut sapphire still glittering and shining as wondrously as if it had been newly cut this morning. And only moments ago, it had been in Feyre’s hand.

She’d done it. My mate had done it.

She’d retrieved the ring my mother had set aside for her - for someone worthy of my hand to find.

“Shi- it ,” Cassian said again, staring at the stone. We all did.

“Brutal, but effective,” Amren stated, before shuffling back to whatever work she and Cassian had been attending to.

“Now you know,” I said to Feyre. “That you can use your abilities to hunt our objects, and thus track the Book at the Summer Court, and master yourself.”

“You’re a prick, Rhysand,” Cassian said, but it was soft, low in impact.

I shrugged and finally my wings saw fit to relax. “You’d do the same.”

Cassian’s expression was sharp, but he shirked and didn’t deny me all the same.

Feyre stepped closer to Cassian, her hands flexing before her as if she were seeing a ghost. And then she fixed my Illyrian general with a ready mind. A soldier at the call to enlist. “I want you to teach me - how to fight. To get strong. If the offer to train still stands.”

For the first time in a while, Cassian looked taken aback. I didn’t blame him. This wasn’t the reaction I’d anticipated out of Feyre upon returning, but it did make sense she’d want to train after facing death again. “You’ll be calling me a prick pretty damn fast if we train,” Cassian said and he wasn’t lying. “And I don’t know anything about training humans - how breakable your bodies are. Were, I mean.”

He winced and I refrained from questioning him on his hesitancy when he’d been so quick to offer his services to her at dinner two nights ago.

“We’ll figure it out,” he concluded, agreeing to work with Feyre.

“I don’t want my only option to be running,” she said.

“Running kept you alive today,” Amren spoke up.

“I want to know how to fight my way out. I don’t want to have to wait on anyone to rescue me.” I beamed at Feyre for that, for taking two days of adventure and torment, and fashioning herself into a new person already who was willing and ready to grow, to heal. But then she turned her stare on me and all pretense dropped. Arms crossed and mood decidedly sour, she barked at me and again I wondered if she wouldn’t erupt in flame.

“Well? Have I proved myself?”

Proved yourself and more , I thought, walking over to pick up the ring. A curious, tickling sensation sparked along my skin as I touched it and for a quick second, my nostrils filled with the scent of snow and wildflowers and all the things that made my mother the strong, warm woman she was.

I nodded at Feyre, unable to conjure up the words necessary to drown out the emotion and tell her thank you. “It was my mother’s ring,” I said simply.

“How’d you lose it?” she said, still hot, but not quite so tight.

“I didn’t. My mother gave it to me as a keepsake, then took it back when I reached maturity - and gave it to the Weaver for safekeeping.”

“Why?”

“So I wouldn’t waste it.”

So you could find it - my mate.

I wasn’t sure what did it, but all at once Feyre’s knees gave out. I caught her and exploded into flight without question as a wave of exhaustion hit me.

Cassian was right. They all were.

I was a horrible prick.

We free-fell again for a long while, enough to hopefully shake a little wind and life into Feyre so she wouldn’t pass out, and then winnowed into the townhouse, straight into Feyre’s room. My magic struck out and spurred her bathing chamber into life. The trickle of steaming water filling the bath tub was soothing as I set Feyre back on her feet.

She slumped forward to the tub as I leaned on the door frame, feeling that anger flicker away into weariness.

“And what about training your other... gifts?”

“I think you and I would shred each other to bits,” Feyre said over the tub.

“Oh, we most definitely will.” Feyre’s eyes darted to me at my use of future tense. “But it wouldn’t be fun otherwise. Consider our training now officially part of your work requirements with me.” Feyre looked utterly not thrilled. I straightened. “Go ahead - try to get past my shields.”

“I’m tired. The bath will go cold.”

She didn’t move.

“I promise it’ll be just as hot in a few moments,” I said. “Or, if you mastered your gifts, you might be able to take care of that yourself.”

I thought I would die if she didn’t do something to show me she was okay after today. That she would still tease and play with me even when I was being obnoxiously overbearing.

Feyre frowned, but in time... she pushed herself forward until I was forced off the threshold into her room two steps. I knew not what she was thinking, but power radiated in those steps charged with the heat of battle and action and blood.

I felt it.

And Feyre felt it - whether it was due to me or the violence at the Weaver’s or something else entirely.

Two days. She was already so fierce and just then standing there in the bathroom hunting me down, she felt like a force that might split me apart and forge me anew.

“You feel it, don’t you,” I murmured, very well aware of the intimate space on which I stood. Feyre’s eyes flashed wildly. “Your power, stalking under your skin, purring in your ear.”

“So what if I do?”

A challenge. And maybe a promise.

But her mind remained quiet. Maybe if I offered her a reason...

“I’m surprised Ianthe didn’t carve you up on an altar to see what that power looks like inside you,” I said with a careless lift of my shoulders. Feyre’s eyes narrowed.

“What, precisely, is your issue with her?”

“I find the High Priestesses to be a perversion of what they once were - once promised to be. Ianthe among the worst of them.”

Her face blanched, the struggle gone, replaced by that marveling intrigue Feyre’s mind ran rampant with constantly.

“Why do you say that?” she asked carefully.

“Get past my shields and I’ll show you,” I offered.

Feyre was quiet... but then, I felt her. Just a quiet, subtle inspection between us, like a cool summer breeze idly picking at a flag hoisted high, so high it was hard to be sure it really moved. She ran her eyes over the bond between us careful not to touch and decided when she reached the end that Ianthe wasn’t worth the effort.

“I’ve had enough tests for the day,” she said. I closed the gap between us before she could retreat and slam the door on my face. She was inches from me.

“The High Priestesses have burrowed into a few of the courts - Dawn, Day, and Winter, mostly,” I said. “They’ve entrenched themselves so thoroughly that their spies are everywhere, their followers near-fanatic with devotion. And yet, during those fifty years, they escaped. They remained hidden. I would not be surprised if Ianthe sought to establish a foothold in the Spring Court.”

“You mean to tell me they’re all black-hearted villains?”

“No,” and immediately I thought of the countless number I’d witnessed strewn about the stone temple floors in Cesare who died a pointless, innocent death. “Some, yes. Some are compassionate and selfless and wise. But there are some who are merely self-righteous... Though those are the ones that always seem the most dangerous to me.”

Feyre leaned up on her toes, her head tipping forward slightly. “And Ianthe?”

Come on, Feyre darling. Play with me, please .

Behind Feyre, steam hissed up gloriously from her waiting bath.

The attack Feyre assaulted my shields with was nothing like that delicate steam. An explosion - like paint hurled upon the canvas was a more apt way of describing the force that hit me. Had it been more refined, it might have made a dent, but it repelled right off sending Feyre back a physical step with it.

Her freckles near disappeared, blurring together with how her face scrunched up in frustration. She was - adorable when flustered.

Fuck, I really was a prick.

“Admirable,” I said chuckling. “Sloppy, but an admirable effort.” She glowered at me and would have pulled away, but I took her hand and held it gingerly in mine, not bothering to lace our fingers together. “Just for trying...”

I pulled on the bond between us sharply until a clear bridge had formed. And our minds descended into darkness.

Feyre’s force was a turbulent sea on the other end approaching, raging and uncontrolled and passionate . Those waves reached up and licked against the wall of adamant surrounding my mind and it felt...

It felt...

Cauldron, it sent a shiver down my spine. She’d never touched me before. Not like this. Intimate and private and allowed between us both. That outermost shell of my mind flexed until a door cracked at the seams and Feyre stepped inside. Memory destroyed the darkness around us casting a vision that sent Feyre reeling back towards the door - the door I’d now closed.

The scene played out in real time.

Ianthe sprawled atop a massive ivory bed, tucked deep within the heart of the Hewn City. My bed.

And she was naked. Completely bared to me breasts and ass and heat and all as she watched me enter the room.

Feyre tore viciously, already as disgusted as I felt, but I urged her to stay. “There is more,” I whispered to her mind. More she needed to see - and understand.

“You kept me waiting,” Ianthe purred along the sheets, a ridiculous pout on her lips. I fell against the door at my back. I had just walked through it, but even so it felt like a stone slab locking me inside with a wild animal.

“Get out,” I said.

Ianthe spread her legs wide shamelessly. “I see the way you look at me, High Lord,” she teased. Horror roiled in my gut.

“You see what you want to see. Get out.”

“I heard you like to play games.” Not these kinds of game, I thought. Where her hands trailed dangerously low on her stomach and traded my self-worth for whatever power it might grant her. If I didn’t stop her now, she would go door to door until she found a willing participant, the ramifications meaning little to her if it got her what she wanted. “I think you’ll find me a diverting playmate.”

Kill her or send her packing.

She wasn’t yet so important to the Priestesses that she would be missed, but there would still be a penalty to pay for splattering her useless blood all over the walls. A penalty my court would pay.

But after the way she’d touched Cassian last night, briefly on the shoulder when she thought no one was looking. How she’d looked at Azriel and whispered in his ear until Mor had snapped the stem of her wine glass standing next to me... those penalties might be worth it.

“I thought your allegiance lay with other courts,” I said. A judge ready to deal out sentencing to the foulest of heathens.

Ianthe’s cheeks blossomed into a sweet smile. “My allegiance lies with the future of Prythian, with the true power in this land.”

That hand that had rested on her belly sank lower... lower... lower. Until her fingers brushed her clit once.

Darkness snapped out of me in a cruel tendril casting her hand brutally aside. She seemed unphased. “Do you know what a union between us could do for Prythian, for the world?” Her eyes were claws reaching inside my skull tearing me apart limb to limb. I’d never felt so damned violated before.

“You mean yourself.”

“Our offspring could rule Prythian.”

I bit back a dark storm of laughter. I was the High Lord of the Night Court. Not some damned piece of meat for her to fuck and feast on. And yet - she dared. “So you want my crown - and for me to play stud?”

The very idea of her bearing me children made my stomach sick. My power held her still on the bed, but through it I could feel her body struggling to break free, to entertain and entrance me into touching it.

“I don’t see anyone else worthy of the position.”

A wave of her scent rolled off her, the only weapon left in her arsenal to throw at me. I wanted to throttle her - to kill her. She’d be worth the blow. For Ianthe to be so fresh and already so crafted to the politics of this land, she had a bright future ahead of her. One that would cast a dark stain over us all one day if she went far enough.

Or maybe, if we were lucky and the Priestesses kept a close eye on her when I sent her back in pieces, she would fair far more friendly in the future and not forget how this little visit ended.

“Get out of my bed,” I said, each word a death sentence if she disobeyed. “Get out of my room. And get out of my court.”

I released my hold on her and Ianthe slithered off the bed and danced toward me with ease. Her nipples were pink and peaked as she stopped inches in front of me. “You have no idea what I can make you feel, High Lord,” she said, and reached her hand out to feel a hardness at my crotch that wasn’t there.

Everything came flooding back to me then - the present me. Fifty years of violation and submission and sacrifice. It wasn’t Ianthe I stared at... I knew it was. But my mind - the part of it locked away from Feyre whom I would have forgotten was even there had she not recoiled in horror with me - saw only red hair and a demon’s crown.

Ianthe was lucky not to see a blood mist reign down on her then and there distorting the truth.

Power struck her down instead, splintering her bones inch by inch until that hand hanging in the air before my crotch was a fracturing mess of wood beneath a butcher’s axe. Her scream was horrible enough to shatter cities as one by one I broken the tendons and shredded the muscles.

And when I spoke, it felt like - I wished, that it were Amarantha who heard the words.

“Don’t ever touch me,” I said with deadly grief. “Don’t ever touch another male in my court.” Ianthe screamed as one last fragment of bone shattered into oblivion. I stepped aside for her to reach the door. “Your hand will heal. The next time you touch me or anyone in my lands, you will find that the rest of you will not fare so well.”

“You will regret this,” she hissed, even as she sobbed.

I made a mockery of her, cackling as I threw her into the hall and sent her piss-poor excuse for clothing hurtling after her, the door a mighty whack! at her back.

But what I felt and what caused me to end the memory in near violence between our minds was a deep, lonely emptiness in my soul. Feyre must have felt it from the way she staggered away from me in the curt severance of the bridge linking us. Her face was pale, white as a sheet.

Now my own panic rose up. I needed to leave. Get out. Get away. To fly. Do something other than sit inside and look at Feyre - Feyre who had suffered today because of my horrible, selfish ambition and pride. I’d known I’d been unkind to her today, but it didn’t really hit me until just then when Ianthe - when Amarantha reminded me.

“Rule one,” I said, “don’t go into someone’s mind unless you hold the way open. A daemati might leave their minds spread wide for you - and then shut you inside, turn you into their willing slave. Rule two, when-”

“When was that,” Feyre cut in aghast. “When did that happen between you?” and she looked... she looked...

Not concerned, Rhysand . I could hear Amarantha’s voice in my ears clear as day, as if I were still Under that fucking Mountain. Tisk, tisk. No human bitch would be concerned. Not for you .

Dark, dark laughter ringing against my skull .

“A hundred years ago,” I managed to say. The words sounded dead, even to me. “At the Court of Nightmares. I allowed her to visit after she’d begged for years, insisting she wanted to build ties between the Night Court and the priestesses. I’d heard rumors about her nature, but she was young and untried, and I hoped that perhaps a new High Priestess might indeed be the change her order needed. It turned out that she was already well trained by some of her less-benevolent sisters.”

Feyre’s heart pounded hard, but even the sound of her humanity wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out Amarantha’s hissing.

“She - she didn’t act that way at...” Feyre’s face tightened. I thought she might cry. She certainly felt like she might. That or be sick. Her shields were still low. Up until then, I hadn’t been listening. Too distracted. But Lucien’s name came to the forefront and Feyre’s stomach retched.

Her friend. Maybe. Possibly. Someone she cared about in some way.

My enemy.

But victim to Ianthe’s advances, no less.

Sooner or later, the Fox would have to make a choice for himself. Sooner or later, Lucien would have to see if he had the will to leave and forge his own fate.

Until then... he would rot away in the Spring Court with Ianthe on his heels night and day. Feyre and I both knew it. And enemy or not, there was no joy in my heart for what he suffered.

I knew that pain all too well.

Feyre poised to say something, but I couldn’t breathe any longer. “Rule two,” I said quickly, “be prepared to see things you might not like.”

I winnowed away and returned to that free-fall of the skies far out to sea and let myself plunge down, down, down into the watery depths until my lungs forced me back to the surface for air.

“No, Tarquin hasn’t replied to your letter. And yes, I'm sleeping. Come back tomorrow.”

I found Mor catnapping on the sofa in one of the lounges at the flat she shared with Cassian and Azriel. A plush blanket covered her from head to toe even though she had the room heated to boiling to keep out the winter chill.

Sometimes I wondered if she hadn’t been meant for Summer or one of the other warmer courts when the Cauldron saw fit to misplace her birth.

When I didn’t say anything, Mor winked a single eye opened and looked me over. Near to drowning in the middle of all that water, I decided going home for the evening would only bring a fitful sleep and visions of Amarantha’s honeyed poison licking at my ears, her nails racking my throat as she sat against my hips and rocked slowly over me.

So somehow, I wound up here looking for a distraction.

Mor closed her open eye and whistled. “You look like you could use a drink, cousin.”

“You look like you’re in a position to help me find one.”

A slow, lazy smile tugged at her. “I will if you promise to take me out dancing after - with Cass and Az.”

“Only if you promise to go to the Mortal Realms with us tomorrow.”

The smile dropped, replaced by a perfectly smooth, neutral expression. “We’ll see about that.” Her eyes popped open. “Rhys,” she said calmly. “Do I need to be aware of anything?”

I scratched a piece of sand out from under my fingernails and frowned slightly. “Not particularly.” I caught her scanning me for the lie, but she didn’t refute me. She did, however, whip the blanket off of her and Mother above, she was already dressed for a night out. I rolled my eyes and stifled a groan.

Mor beamed as she made her way to me, a bounce in her step.

“Then stop standing there looking like death warmed over and fly me down from this damn piece of rock. I want to dance!”

Chapter Text

Drunk.

I was so drunk.

I hadn’t been that wasted that quickly in... some time. Not even after Feyre’s first visit to the Night Court. And with a looming trip to the Mortal Realms in the morning, there were considerable consequences to my decision.

Though I didn’t regret the night. It was infinitely better than the one I would have had alone in my townhouse bedroom fighting sleep and dreams and terror. My bones still shook with anxiety born of the visions Ianthe’s memory had brought to mind.

Mor made quick work of Cassian and Azriel and within half an hour of me finding her on the sofa, we were passing through the market squares and heading into one of our usual taverns. The liquor flowed steady and abundant with the close of the door behind us.

And for a time, it made me forget.

But not so fast that I couldn’t try to persuade Mor to go with us in the morning. To which she continually objected, Cassian aiding her along while Az kept silent watch on her other side.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand her objection. I understood to a degree. We’d fought that war together. I would not have wanted to go had I been in her shoes, but I was selfish. Having Mor near when dealing with Feyre was an easy crutch to lean on that helped abate some of the tension I felt ahead of our time spent together.

I relented in the end, much to my chagrin. Cassian and Mor knew it, but they helped me plan the following day out before we would be too drunk to do it. And then Azriel casually suggested Ritas, knowing Mor wanted to go, and it was all downhill from there.

She didn’t even give him a chance to sit down first before she’d swept him into a fast paced beat upon entering the crowded dance hall. Cassian sat with me at the bar watching the pair of them spin. Music thrummed thoughtfully in and out our ears as the bar keep slid us two drinks.

“What?” I looked over at Cassian and found him watching me, face drawn up in amused curiosity. He waited while I looked at Mor and Az on the floor a second longer. “She’s not coming. So you might as well drop it.”

I squinted, shaking him off. “I know. I wish she would reconsider, but I won’t force her.”

“Then - what is it?”

I drew a long breath. He and I hadn’t spoken since, since...

“You really think she might sleep with me one day?” Cassian’s brow rose slightly. A knot tied somewhere south of my abdomen. “Not now obviously, but…”

“Who - Feyre?”

I swallowed. Cassian howled.

“How many times have you thought about her naked?” Cassian asked after he’d calmed down.

Again, I didn’t answer.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he chuckled. “Well for your sake, you better hope she does sleep with you eventually. Otherwise, you’re in for one hell of an eternity.”

I groaned and cocked my head back. And felt Cass’s broad, calloused hand grip my shoulder. He wore none of his leathers tonight. Neither did Az. Just a simple dark green tunic and casual trousers.

“Will you relax?” He grinned at me ear to ear. “It’s not so bad to be eternally fucked, you know.”

I gave him a reproachful eye. “You’re one to talk, brother.” He didn’t deny it. I held out my glass. “Here’s to being eternally fucked,” I offered.

Cass snorted and clinked his glass with mine. “Cheers.”

I didn’t tell Feyre until morning that lack of word from Tarquin meant we would venture into the Mortal Realms to meet her family. And by telling her, I meant I sent Mor who woke up and landed on our doorstep bright and early anyway looking to chat.

Mor came in and I went out with a pounding headache, meeting Azriel and Cassian who wanted nothing to do with me so early nor I with them.

“You look like shit,” Cassian said over his coffee as I flew inside the House of Wind. He hadn’t even looked up at me, dressed in my leathers, my sword strapped to my back. My brothers, I knew, would leave dressed in a similar fashion.

“Not half as much as you do,” Azriel said quietly, sipping his own mug of tea steeped with cinnamon and honey.

Cassian groaned, his chair creaking as he leaned back in it. “Ugh, I hate you fucking pricks.”

“No you don’t,” Az said.

“Yes. Yes I do.” He got up and announced another round of coffee, and then we sat and went over our plans for traveling to the border and keeping detail on Feyre’s family estate so long as we stayed.

Feyre herself emerged from downstairs at the townhouse near ten when we flew down to fetch her, bundled up tightly in a thick fur cloak. Her hood was down, and atop her head sat a small, simple diadem of gold that one of the twins or perhaps Mor had wrapped with her hair.

Mor herself had already dashed off. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find her curling up on Amren’s couch to discuss tactics for the coming weeks. The two really did run this court - and far better when myself and my brothers weren’t along for the ride.

Feyre paused at the bottom of the stairs when she found three Illyrian faces dressed in leathers and swords and knives staring. She flicked from Cassian to Azriel to myself and paused, giving me a once over and staring for a moment too long at my hands, before declaring boldly, “I’ll fly with Azriel.”

I could feel Cassian’s amusement dancing on my left, practically baiting me into denying her with some witty retort just so he could take a stab at me after.

“Of course,” Azriel said, nodding his head.

I grabbed Cassian, announcing I’d be back shortly, and winnowed the pair of us into the open skies far out to sea where the wall loomed in the distance and the flat, grassy expanse of the Spring Court loomed to the west.

Cassian’s wings snapped out and he shot out of my grasp catching the wind, but not before he’d thrown me a dirty gesture.

Asshole.

I winnowed back, wondering if Feyre had said anything to Azriel while they’d waited, and found the pair a perfectly respectful distance apart in thoughtful silence. I breathed easier... until Azriel spread his arms and Feyre stepped into them gracefully.

Why hadn’t she flown with me?

I reached out to grab Az and winnow, but Feyre looked at me sharply, noticing my displeasure. “Don’t let the wind ruin my hair,” she said. There was enough play behind it to distract me, that I snorted and winnowed without further hesitation.

Wind rushed over my face and neck, danced brutally through my hair, and kept me alive as I broke apart from Az and Feyre over the ocean and flew ahead to where Cassian had spotted us and taken off. Flying was a welcome distraction from the horrors dancing before and around us.

The wall.

Tamlin.

And lest I forget - Hybern. That island too far off to see at this distance, but a threat large enough that my body felt the thrum of its presence all the same.

It brought us our mission, the very reason we made for the human lands to bring fighting and politics and sin to innocent hands we would die mercilessly without. Knowing what little I did of Feyre’s sisters, it would be a miracle to earn any level of trust from them today.

I tilted a split second before Cassian, my wings tucking in and my body darting forward into a descent towards the oncoming weight I could feel bearing down on my lungs - my power. The wall pressed over me tightening as though searching for a reason to deny me entry and finding no excuse.

The crack we passed through - it felt so much like my own betrayal, for all my crimes. All the ways I had deceived Feyre and continued to do so with the bond, the truths I sometimes withheld. And all the ways I now burdened her with my own problems, how they would plague her family too.

And none of it could be stopped.

We sank into the human lands, the weight of the wall lifting as we flew over beaches and into the woods above, the air noticeably different, the scents shifted.

All of this and more would be attacked in the coming months, but to what degree would it burn? To what end would it shatter?

I looked at Feyre as we flew lower and lower, closing in on her estate. It wouldn’t be easy convincing her family to help us, but it would be far, far worse not to try at all.

Not to try to save them from the inevitable.

War is coming .

We landed in the snow within feet of the doorstep, a glamour keeping us concealed. I’d cast it once we’d come near enough to the village that we might be spotted.

Feyre stepped out of Azriel’s arms keeping her head down for the most part, though she eventually gave the manor her family now kept one long look before trudging up toward it.

She stood on the doorstep while my brothers and I held back remaining hidden. Get reacquainted with her sisters, introduce them to the realities of what was coming, and explain the plan. Then we would come into the picture.

Until then... it was entirely on Feyre’s shoulders and as I watched her struggle to straighten them, I saw that those shoulders were suddenly very heavy.

A servant - the housekeeper - opened the door with a good degree of disdain even before she realized who was standing in front of her. “May I help...” She and Feyre stared silently.

“I’m here to see my family,” Feyre said, the words coming out a little shaky.

“Your - your father is away on business, but your sisters...”

The woman’s eyes went cold. I felt Feyre tense. Her hood was up, covering her delicately pointed ears to conceal her from discovery from anyone who wasn’t born of her blood, but this woman... she watched Feyre with suspicion.

How many others would see her and suspect as well?

“Mrs. Laurent?”

A light, springing voice filtered toward us and Feyre drew a sharp breath, drawing back a step towards where Cassian, Azriel, and I stood undetected. I tensed, suddenly terrified this was all too much for her and that she would turn away, but then -

A reedy young woman with ash blonde hair and warm brown eyes appeared beside the Mrs. Laurent and Feyre took her retreating step back.

The girl was young, but if she was Feyre’s sister, she must have been at least a couple of years older than twenty. She had a soft charm about her that felt soothing and was instantly recognizable. When she saw Feyre, tears broke out streaming down her face. She covered her mouth with her hand, but didn’t go to her sister.

I suddenly realized what was happening - what I’d brought Feyre back into. Love, perhaps. But not a home.

Feyre’s voice sounded like shattered glass strewn about the floor as she took her sister in. “Elain,” she said.

Elain...

The quiet one. The gentle one. The gardener and the grower.  Or so I’d been told. Which meant -

“Mrs. Laurent.” A cold, piercing voice frozen in snow from somewhere in the house. On either side of me, Cassian and Azriel stood a little straighter as though even they could sense the fire shrouded by the house, the smoke escaping on Nesta’s voice through the open door.

Elain and the house keeper turned toward the eldest sister, Feyre’s gaze not far behind.

“Draw up some tea and bring it to the drawing room,” Nesta said, a clear command, not a request. A minor flare of red on my left briefly caught my eye.

Feyre drew herself taller and beheld the sister we could not see before stepping over the threshold, the door snapping into place firmly behind her.

“It’s like watching mice scurry before a trap,” Cassian said, perched next to me on the roof of the enormous house Feyre’s family kept. It was really more of a chateau.

After he and Azriel had done rounds of the surrounding forests to see what beasts might have followed after Feyre looking to snatch at her, the pair had joined me in surveying the house. Azriel was already well aware of the number of occupants within those walls who would be vacating - servants, maids, chefs, and all manner of household staff.

“They’re scared,” Azriel said. “That housekeeper knows what Feyre is or she highly suspects.” A shadow tightened over my brother’s elegant face. “I would not be surprised if she had let a word of warning slip among the rest of the staff.”

“Elain’s bid to leave was surely enough to set them fast in motion,” I said watching the footmen load up the last of the carriages and help some of the lady’s maids inside. Heavy polished trunks were placed in back. “Is that the last of them?”

“One more carriage,” Azriel said and sure enough, it came around front off the trail that circled the house at once. It loaded quickly, taking Mrs. Laurent with it, who gave one of the sisters a warning glance before alerting the driver to take off.

The front door closed dully.

“Let’s go.”

We flew down to the threshold, standing precisely where Feyre had when she’d shivered and come face-to-face with her middle sister, and waited for the carriage to finish disappearing before I knocked with a heavy thud .

Feyre opened the door almost immediately. She’d been waiting.

And she looked - like a ghost. Or a child. Maybe the ghost of the child she’d once been. It gave me a chill.

For one heart stopping minute, I didn’t think we were in the Mortal Realms, but in the Spring Court, and I wasn’t knocking on her family’s estate, but on the door to her rooms. Tamlin might be but a step behind her.

She surveyed the three of us with an expression I couldn’t read before staring down the drive where all the servants had fled.

“You’d think they’d been told plague had befallen the house,” I said. No one so much as chuckled. Feyre closed the door behind us as we entered the house, but it did little to shut out the chill in my bones.

“My sister Elain can convince anyone to do anything with a few smiles,” Feyre explained as though this was normal, as though this was still her day-to-day and she knew her sisters well.

Cassian’s whistle was sharp and drawn out as he appraised the entryway. I spared it half a glance - golds, ornate carpeting, detailed portraiture, all the usual fineries as befitted the upper class - before returning to monitor Feyre, who kept her arms tight around her and stared at the treasure trove with... little interest.

“Your father must be a fine merchant,” Cassian said. Feyre’s face was tight. “I’ve seen castles with less wealth.”

Feyre drew her attention away from all that ‘wealth’ and found me staring at her.

But your father didn’t earn this, did he.

No. This was all due to Tamlin, and anything before it was because of Feyre. What she’d hunted to keep them alive in a hovel I could probably turn to Azriel and ask him the location of only to be given it.

Young... Mother above, how young was she when she did that...

“My father is away on business,” Feyre informed us, “and attending a meeting in Neva about the threat of Prythian.”

That explained his absence at the door, though I hadn’t much expected him to welcome her anyway.

“Prythian?” Cassian said, leaving behind the trinkets and bobbles for the first time to tune himself to Feyre. “Not Hybern?”

“It’s possible my sisters were mistaken - your lands are foreign to them. They merely said ‘above the wall.’ I assumed they thought it was Prythian.”

“If humans are aware of the threat, rallying against it,” Azriel said, stepping up to Feyre quietly, “then it might give us an advantage when contacting the queens.”

It was as if I could see the weight that single word pressed into Feyre as Azriel said it: queens .

This was a mission. This was work. But it was a burden to be here for her too. Because it wasn’t just work. It never could be. This was family and blood and history and poverty wrapped up in a shiny bow that came with carriages and servants and pretty gowns with no one to bother wearing them. At least - Feyre never would.

It was... the same way my mother had looked when she’d taken me to the Illyrian camps for the first time. I’d been too distracted to notice at first, caught up in the adrenaline of just trying to survive a fight in the ring and then acclimating to Cassian one room away from me day and night.

But it had been there. A weariness written on her face that I eventually noticed and never saw it fade. An exhausted haunting that said this is my home but it is not . I wasn’t sure who my mother was on certain days when the sky turned grey and the snow fell fresh over those mountains.

Right now looking at the hollows of Feyre’s dim blue eyes standing out stark even with her hair done up around that beautiful little diadem and her clothes comfortably suiting her, I wasn’t sure she knew who she was anymore either.

She looked at me and those hollows told me everything.

“Come,” I said, and I almost held out my arm to her but - not now. Not yet. One day perhaps... “Let’s make this introduction.”

Feyre’s cloak was gone as she led us into the dining room paneled with shining wooden floors. Her attire was every bit befitting a queen out on a casual weekend retreat, but when her sisters eyes went straight to her glossing over the three Illyrians hulking behind her, Feyre was dominated by the shadows trailing her mind.

My own attire vanished as we walked those halls, my leathers exchanged for the same crisp black suit I’d worn on my first trip back to the Hewn City with Mor when I’d come home - Elegant. Refined. Ready to play whatever games they might propose, but very much hoping I wouldn’t have to. The lone difference between then and now was the absence of my power. In the Hewn City, I wore my Cauldron given gifts like armor. Here, where fear already lined the walls as we drew near, I hid it like a secret weapon in the presence of the innocent.

Cassian and Azriel remained in their leathers. I knew every second that Azriel spent inside, he had shadows and spies beyond keeping mind on the estate and whatever might come lurking nearby.

The air in the room was already stale as the sisters took Feyre in among the clothes and the crown, giving little to no reaction - no real warmth or welcome. But the air turned absolutely dry with a thin veil of disapproval as their attentions turned towards myself and my brothers.

Elain visibly stiffened, her eyes grown a little apprehensive with a twinge of fear. But Nesta - Nesta who looked little like either sister with her tall, proud stance and reproachful stare sat atop high, cruel cheekbones - stepped directly in front of Elain, protecting what was hers.

Cassian felt it. Azriel did too. It was like watching an Illyrian guard his young or a feral male freshly mated defend his female. I knew at once what lengths Nesta would go for that girl behind her - in ways she never possibly had or would for Feyre, though I was curious to find out.

Feyre closed the gap between our parties with a tight hold on herself. “My sisters, Nesta and Elain Archeron,” she said.

Archeron.

If Azriel had still had his shadows out for the occasion, I was sure one would be circling his ear marking the name.

As if the women knew the vulnerability of that name being suddenly unleashed, their heartbeats sped up to a dramatic new height. All that lovely considerable dead air in the room vanished, replaced by monstrous terror as Feyre extended her hand in Cassian’s direction and moved between us.

“Cassian,” she said. “Azriel. And Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court.”

I stepped forward and bowed at the waist - a courtesy extended to her blood alone.

“Thank you for your hospitality - and generosity,” I said, trying my best to smile kindly as the sisters leaned just perceptibly away.

“The cook left dinner on the table,” Nesta said without preamble, ignoring me and my brothers entirely. Azriel was a mask suited to my own, but Cassian - I could smell the irritation rolling off of him already. He did not like being ignored even if he was not the one in the line of fire. “We should eat before it goes cold.”

And then she left. Without another look. Without another word. Without a hello or a goodbye or an anything.

Elain looked ready to faint and I had hoped that she would show some of her sister’s resolve even if it was wary, but... “Nice to meet you,” she squeaked and then followed after Nesta like a furry little lap dog with nothing better to do than trail after the familiar, the comfortable, the safe.

Feyre already looked dead on her feet, dreading the conversation to come as she stared daggers at the pathway her sisters had taken toward the table. But... still, she went and took the seat right beside Nesta, who naturally took up the head of the table. I sat beside Feyre without taking my eyes off her once.

Azriel sat beside me and Cassian next to Elain, who sat across from me clutching her fork as though scared it might shatter lest she let go. A noticeably sized ring sat on her fourth finger, glittering and - made of iron .

Wonderful.

I wondered if it was the source of Azriel’s faint smile as he too spotted Elain’s white-knuckled hand at her plate.

With human chairs at their backs, Azriel and Cassian fidgeted now and then to make their wings more comfortable.

A deep sigh on my left from Feyre recalled my focus.

She lifted the lids on several large overbearing platters and revealed a feast worthy of a king waiting, steam wafting off the chicken and salmon with earnest. It was, undoubtedly meant to be an impressive display.

We commenced eating in reasonable silence. And I wondered if maybe this would not be so horrible after all, if we could make it through dinner unscathed and come to a mutual understanding. Feyre wouldn’t have to survive because she would simply be okay , she’d -

“Is there something wrong with our food?” Nesta said staring down her youngest sister. Feyre had barely managed more than a bite while the Illyrians of the table were quickly clearing plates.

Feyre took one carefully measured bite, chewed, then swallowed. “No,” she said, her throat and mouth dry, and it clicked. She hadn’t had human food since she’d been human herself. A long drink of water followed that lonely little word.

“So you can’t eat normal food anymore,” Nesta said, imperial judgment now ringing off her tongue where before there had not, “or are you too good for it?”

My fork dropped with glittering rage to my plate. I think Elain made a noise.

My gaze slid to Nesta - Nesta, who had lightning crackling in her eyes like starlight, fire shooting down her veins to cast my mate down and condemn her for a sin she hadn’t committed.

So much disdain. So much disgust. It was hard to believe they were even sisters with the way she outright glared at Feyre when only moments before she’d been ready to go to blows for Elain if she’d needed to.

And she wasn’t the only one with that fire nesting deep inside her. Feyre had it too. Her shields were perfectly in tact, but I could feel her deep inside, the bond heating with so many emotions - anger, hurt, horror.

Feyre looked evenly at Nesta and, more alert than I’d seen her since we breached that wall, stared right back into that ice and snow. “I can eat, drink, fuck, and fight just as well as I did before,” Feyre said. “Better even.”

Yes you fucking well can , I thought, pleased that she had realized it in the first place and then had the nerve to finally say it out loud.

Cassian made a choking sound as Nesta laughed, a hollow unimpressed sound that might be taken dismissively.

Feyre’s fire grew.

As too did my own inability to command my self-control.

Grew and grew and grew and sparked and flared and seared across the bond until I was certain her skin was going to erupt into flame.

I was used to this sort of conversation. I’d been around it all my life. It was the first lesson I learned growing up. Words were weapons and political discourse the target and they would kill in a heartbeat.

Feyre was used to it to some degree too, but not with so much power suddenly available to help her fight for a change.

Her fire crossed the channel between us, reached my soul and just licked at me ever so. I blew a cool kiss of the night back, keeping my exterior blank, and licked the flames away until Feyre had leaned away from Nesta and was staring at me. Our eyes met but briefly before I turned to her sister, and in those eyes I saw starlight flicker in victory.

“If you ever come to Prythian,” I told Nesta as though she hadn’t acted so curtly to her own flesh and blood just then, “you will discover why your food tastes so different.”

“I have little interest in ever setting foot in your land,” she replied, looking me over with disapproval, as though Prythian were a land written across my chest, “so I’ll have to take your word on it.”

Now my own blood boiled.

“Nesta, please,” Elain said soft and low.

And mother above, Nesta ignored Elain too - and turned straight to Cassian who was leaning as far as his seat would allow him towards Nesta and sizing her up like a new opponent to play with. Azriel looked politely away to mark Feyre and Elain.

“What are you looking at?” Nesta said, her lip curling in a snarl - at Cassian . Cauldron how that gaze hadn’t made her feel all of two years old alone...

Cassian’s brow rose and had we actually been in the sparring ring, I was certain he would have cracked his knuckles. It didn’t matter that this was Nesta and she was human and breakable and ignorant of our ways. Cassian attacked.

“Someone who let her youngest sister risk her life every day in the woods while she did nothing,” Cassian said to Nesta’s unflinching face. Feyre’s chest stopped moving beside me - waiting. “Someone who let a fourteen-year-old child go out into that forest, so close to the wall. Your sister died - died to save my people. She is willing to do so again to protect you from war. So don’t expect me to sit here with my mouth shut while you sneer at her for a choice she did not get to make - and insult my people in the process.”

For a moment the room was silent. I didn’t know if I expected Nesta to shout or leave or throw something at him, but I knew she wasn’t going to fold easily. And indeed she didn’t as she merely turned her head without so much as a blink, Cassian a mere ant for her to trample on her way to more important matters.

It was as impressive as it was infuriating. And a shame she wasn’t more open to what the world had to offer her.

Cassian went taut with animal rage looking like he might really fight her in a sparring ring if she’d let him and I had no doubt she’d last longer than I had against him on my first day in the camps.

And fuck it all to the hell Nesta drew her fires from if that wasn’t the faintest hint of arousal dripping off his pores, the bastard. Definitely not something he’d felt pummeling into me during that first fight five hundred some odd years ago.

“It...” Elain said and cleared her throat, trying to find some semblance of a voice amid the rage that floated from chair to chair and chained all our voices. “It is very hard, you understand, to... accept it.” Her brown eyes found mind and pleaded - practically begged for mercy and kindness and all the things her sister had rejected. For her, I listened. And for Feyre. “We are raised this way,” she said. “We hear stories of your kind crossing the wall to hurt us. Our own neighbor, Clare Beddor, was taken.” I dropped her stare. “Her family murdered.”

Her own family, Rhys? Is that really necessary...

My fault. If this failed, it would be all my fault. If Feyre’s sisters died, she would have no one and nothing to blame but myself. If I saved her from one captor, I might very well drag her to the next. Already the blood of my handiwork was everywhere.

Clare Beddor.

That was supposed to have been Feyre.

What might have happened if it had been Feyre that day and I’d had to hold her mind in my hand and whisper sweet nothings as I did for Clare while Amarantha tortured her soul from her body and ground it into a fine dust.

But of course, I didn’t have to wonder. I already knew what Feyre dying felt like. It was an effort not to shudder in front of the rest of the table, though I was certain only Feyre was watching me anymore.

“It’s all very disorienting.”

Thank the Mother for Azriel who had a skill set that would not erupt in a thrash of fists and blood nor needed political games to glean the truth. “I can imagine,” he replied. It was all the encouragement Elain needed to turn finally to Cassian and confront his accusations.

“And as for Feyre’s hunting during those years, it was not Nesta’s neglect alone that is to blame.” Feyre looked like one more word might break her face with cracks, veined like the marble adornments throughout the estate. “We were scared, and had received no training, and everything had been taken, and we failed her.” Elain didn’t look - couldn’t look - at Feyre as she swallowed and said to Cassian, “Both of us.”

Nesta stared distantly at her plate, a silent grave of secrets and history. Not entirely closed off, but reluctant as hell to admit even half as much as Elain had.

Tentatively, Feyre reached her hand out and laid it on Nesta’s arm. I found myself wishing she had it even though I wanted this to be peaceable. But if Nesta said so much as one more foul word towards my mate and broke her spirit again, there would be hell to pay for it.

Nesta looked up at Feyre, pride in her mouth like a bit to guide her. “Can we just... start over?” Feyre asked.

It look a second, and perhaps it was Cassian’s shit-eating grin chasing Nesta into reply that brought out the venomous undertone, but she agreed with a curt, “Fine.”

Each of us watched another in turn as eating resumed feeling more like a prison sentence than a shared meal among family and friends. So different from the dinner at the House, even with so much strife on the table that night for Feyre to dissect.

Elain cleared her throat. And said to Az, “Can you truly fly?”

Azriel blinked. If Mor had been here, she would have given him a pointed little smirk hidden quickly behind a sip of wine. “Yes,” Az answered. “Cassian and I hail from a race of faeries called Illyrians. We’re born hearing the song of the wind.”

“That’s very beautiful,” Elain said, looking almost as though she might find a fae concept pleasing to consider for a change. “Is it not - frightening, though? To fly so high?”

Feyre relaxed back into her seat.

“It is sometimes. If you are caught in a storm, if the current drops away. But we are trained so thoroughly that the fear is gone before we’re out of swaddling.”

“You look like High Fae,” Nesta said, regaining control of herself, but not entirely unfriendly. “But you are not?”

It was Cassian who answered for Az, gesturing at myself and Feyre vaguely. “Only the High Fae who look like them are High Fae. Everyone else, any other differences, mark you as what they like to call ‘lesser’ faeries.”

“It’s become a term used for ease, but masks a long, bloody history of injustices,” I said before Nesta could make another judgment call about our kind having such horrifying classifications riddling our social structure - that anyone should be called lesser as her family might once have been. “Many lesser faeries resent the term - and wish for us all to be called one thing.”

“Rightly so,” Cassian agreed, but Nesta again ignored him and turned a thoughtful mind on her sister - on Feyre.

“But you were not High Fae - not to begin,” she said. “So what do they call you?”

Disdain, or merely some of Feyre’s own curious appetite peaking through, it was too close to call.

“Feyre is whoever she chooses to be,” I said, but Nesta’s gaze slid up from Feyre’s gaze and nested at the crown atop her head. I knew she thought it was a lie, that I had decided for her sister who she was to be by giving her a crown.

But another desperate part of myself hope that it was something different - something more - as the lines of Nesta’s face that Feyre’s skin would never earn from age appraised the position her sister had attained. Did she see the potential? Could she feel the power and the strength and the sacrifice her sister had within her.

I’d never given Feyre a crown. She’d earned it. Earned everything.

Whatever Nesta thought, it apparently was enough.

“Write your letter to the queens tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow, Elain and I will go to the village to dispatch it. If the queens agree to come here, I’d suggest bracing yourselves for prejudices far deeper than ours. And contemplating how you plan to get us all out of this mess should things go sour.”

She froze Cassian in place with a single look, but the words - the demand that she and Elain remain protected - I knew, were for me. And damn me to hell if I failed her after bringing Feyre here.

“We’ll take that into account,” I agreed as amicably and earnestly as I could.

Nesta drawled on as though bored. “I assume you’ll want to stay the night.”

Through the windows of the dining room, night had already fallen, the servants having stolen most of the sunshine to light our way home. But if Feyre wanted to leave - then we’d go.

Your choice .

Feyre politely tried, “If it’s not too much trouble, then yes. We’ll leave after breakfast tomorrow.”

The stark contrast between Elain’s bright and cheery face - that she would be happy finally to have her sister home for an evening despite the occasion - next to Nesta’s near disappointed glower set my teeth on edge. “Good,” Elain beamed. “I think there are a few bedrooms ready-”

“We’ll need two,” I cut in as gently as I could. “Next to each other, with two beds each.”

If Nesta wasn’t going to play nice, then nor was I. Not entirely, at least.

Feyre peered up at me a mask of confusion. I wondered if it was the specificity of my request or if she’d registered that we’d be sharing a room that troubled her.

One room...

I pushed back the thought, ignoring the still pungent heat hitting me from Cassian’s direction every time he so much as looked at Nesta.

“Magic is different across the wall,” I told Feyre, and longed for the time hopefully soon when I could speak to her again and feel as though it really were just the two of chatting, even if she’d hate me for dragging her here and putting her family through further hell. “So our shields, our senses, might not work right. I’m taking no chances. Especially in a house with a woman betrothed to a man who gave her an iron engagement ring.”

That beautiful beaming grin Elain had given me not thirty seconds prior vanished. “The - the bedrooms that have two beds aren’t next to each other,” she sputtered.

Feyre sighed, sinking in to her chair. Nesta, I could tell, took it as a signal this meeting was adjourned. “We’ll move things around,” Feyre said. “It’s fine. This one,” and she pointed at me with a tempestuous glare, “is only cranky because he’s old and it’s past his bedtime.”

A joke. She’s making a joke, I registered.

I chuckled, softly, wishing she’d look at me properly and remove the disdain from her regard.

Feyre... darling, smile. Laugh - please.

Nothing. But she eased considerably and where Feyre offered no sound nor pleased expression, the others did.

Nesta alone stood from the table unfeeling and unmoved. “If we’re done eating, then this meal is over,” she announced and promptly left the room. I wasn’t sorry to see her go.

Nesta and Elain kept mostly out of our way after dinner, appearing only when necessary and sticking to factual, need-to-know type information, like where to find our rooms and which study to use. It made me question how excited Elain really was to have Feyre share the same roof as her for the night if she was going to excuse herself to bed the moment she was no longer needed by her sister.

When only the four of us remained, we stayed up far too long in the study drafting our letter to the queens. Feyre was tired and sat in the plush chair her father might use when home looking like she might fall asleep at any moment. Whether from physical or mental exhaustion, I imagined it was both.

For her sake, I wrote fast, but every word counted and the minutes easily ticked by into hours by the time we opened the guest room Feyre and I were to share for the evening.

Feyre spun around to face me looking more alert than I’d seen her since dinner as I shut the door - and noticed the lone bed taking up the luxuriously decorated guest room. “I’m not-”

Magic cut her startled exclamation off, a small bed popping into existence right by the door upon which I sat and began removing my boots and socks.

Feyre relaxed and I was - sad, that she was so surprised by my gesture.

“Nesta is a delight, by the way,” I said.

“She’s... her own creature,” Feyre replied, retreating back towards her own bed. And again, she carried that heaviness about her which stifled the air and stole breath from her heart, her lungs.

Thoughts rolled tumultuously about her head in a storm cloud ready to break free. And I was a sea below ready and desperate to feel the rain upon the waves and know what that storm thought.

“It’s been a few centuries since someone got under Cassian’s skin that easily,” I tried. “Too bad they’re both inclined to kill the other.” Quiet. “And Elain should not be marrying that lord’s son, not for about a dozen reasons, the least of which being the fact that you won’t be invited to the wedding.” I threw my boots casually aside hoping... Feyre looked aghast. “Though maybe that’s a good thing.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, sounding almost like her eldest sister. At least now I knew where that contempt for me came from.

“At least you won’t have to send a gift, either,” I shrugged. Feyre’s temper flared. “I doubt her father-in-law would deign to accept it.”

“You have a lot of nerve mocking my sisters when your own friends have equally as much melodrama,” Feyre hissed, standing taller. For a second, I thought her ready to tear the world in two. A low wave of apprehension struck me down over what particular piece of my family’s ‘melodrama’ she might have noticed.

Feyre snorted, her eyes rolling. “Oh,” she said, a near derisive laugh. “So you haven’t noticed the way Azriel looks at Mor?” My stomach tightened. That . “Or how she sometimes watches him , defends him? And how both of them do such a good job letting Cassian be a buffer between them most of the time?”

It was an effort not to groan. I thought of Cassian a couple rooms over, and Azriel with him. Morrigan, who had not come.

Morrigan.

Whom Azriel watched and whom she in turn waited patiently on.

Those two morons need to stop eye-fucking each other so damned much for all the world to see except each other.

It was a history too complex, too personal to fling casually about and I had no idea how much of it Mor had confided in Feyre, though I knew she wouldn’t hesitate if Feyre asked her about it.

Regardless, it was her story to tell. All of their story. Which Feyre needed to know at some point. But I wouldn’t be the one to push her into that. I hadn’t spent five hundred years letting my friends live however they chose and respecting that decision to throw the threads binding them together out the window now.

“I’d suggest keeping those observations to yourself,” I said with a very pointed look.

“You think I’m some busybody gossip?” The words were appalled, though her voice was anything but. “My life is miserable enough as it is - why would I want to spread that misery to those around me as well?”

“Is it miserable?” I asked, our eyes meeting, “Your life, I mean.” Any sense of argument about my family forgotten - an argument I didn’t think had really been brewing to begin with. Not about them, at least. Not really.

My heart waited for her answer before jumping further in my chest between the bones of its prison.

“I don’t know,” Feyre admitted. “Everything is happening so quickly that I don’t know what to feel.”

She slumped, and those hollows that had not faded the entire day stood out in the pale lighting of the room. Hollow - the way her mind felt when she wondered what her soul felt like these days.

The way she’d been when she’d first come to the Night Court.

So I scrambled to pull her beautiful soul back out of it.

“Hmmm,” I mused carefully. “Perhaps once we return home, I should give you the day off.”

“How considerate of you, my lord .”

Another joke.

Or maybe even -

I laughed, thinking she hadn’t shown any of this heat with me since we’d gone to the Weaver.

Good.

I felt Feyre watching me and looked up to see her eyes trained on my fingers as I unbuttoned the fastenings on my jacket. Absentmindedly, her own fingers nudged the fabric of her clothes where they hung at her sides.

I snapped my fingers and her bed things appeared at her side - including a set of lacy unmentionables that Feyre noticed straight away with a scowl. “I couldn’t decide which scrap of lace I wanted you to wear, so I brought you a few to choose from.”

“Pig,” she threw at me and left to change.

I smiled as she exited, admiring her as she went and the way her clothes hugged around her hips, her breasts... the two places those scraps of lacy fabric would go.

I twisted my neck, flexing the muscles. “Cauldron...” And removed my jacket.

But as I shrugged the shirt underneath off, and the chill of the winter air that had crept inside the room met my bare chest, my mind wandered into the realm of questions...

What Feyre would look like shrugging her own top off. Would her nipples peak in the crisp, night air the way my own skin had shivered at the feel of it? I pulled my pants down and swapped them for something softer to sleep it, pulling them up my thighs and wondering if she was standing somewhere close by just then pulling the delicate underthings up over her own legs to meet her hips. What that might look like. How tightly they might caress her skin...

The cold of the room was the only thing keeping me grounded as I waited for her to come back. And even though it helped abate the heat forcing a slight pressure into the front of my pants, I knew Feyre was freezing.

I crawled into the small bed I’d made for myself, letting the light die out save for the faint glow from the fireplace, and forced my back to Feyre’s own bed. If I saw her when she walked in, I might... say something embarrassingly regrettable that she’d never forgive me for.

Feyre returned silent as the night and slid into bed. I thought, perhaps, that was to be it, but then she spoke. “Thank you for warming the bed,” she said.

“Amarantha never once thanked me for that.” The words were out before I could stop them, but anymore... with Feyre, I didn’t care if she knew the truth. At least she’d understand.

“She didn’t suffer enough.” Anger rode between those words.

I suddenly felt incredibly uncomfortable for having thought so freely minutes ago about Feyre and whatever unmentionables she might now be wearing. Amarantha was - fuck, I didn’t want to go there. Not now. Not here in Feyre’s family home.

Her family.

Sharing a room with her.

“I didn’t think I could get through that dinner,” I admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“Your sisters mean well, or one of them does. But seeing them, sitting at that table...” Older. Mature. With full lives of some sort or another ahead of them with little-to-no concern even now for where Feyre’s might go, as though they’d have been content to forge ahead and forget she had a future too. “I hadn’t realized it would hit me as strongly. How young you were. How they didn’t protect you.”

“I managed just fine.” It was all the explanation she offered me. All she needed , I realized.

Maybe Feyre had discovered how to reconcile who her sisters were with what needed to be done a long, long time ago, and now I was only just beginning. I wanted to know more, I realized.

“We owe them our gratitude for letting us use this house,” I said and briefly hesitated for how she might take my next admission, “but it will be a while yet before I can look at your sisters without wanting to roar at them.”

I heard the blankets shuffle and wondered if I’d said too much, if she’d lock me out from the privilege of knowing her thoughts. I’d have deserved it for bringing this day upon her if she did.

And yet.

“A part of me feels the same way,” Feyre said. “But if I hadn’t gone into those woods, if they hadn’t let me go out there alone... You would still be enslaved. And perhaps Amarantha would now be readying her forces to wipe out these lands.”

Even the mention of Amarantha wasn’t enough to stop the force of this truth from sweeping my mind away.

This room. These halls. She’d spent so little time in them. But she was here. Even the woods around us for miles smelled of her - of Feyre. Still to this day. I noticed it the second we swept lower into the woods and I knew that was where she’d hunted. The faint scent of pine still nestled in her skin.

She’d only been fourteen .

Feyre had sacrificed and now she would sacrifice more under the guise of ‘work.’ A thought snapped into place.

“I am paying you a wage, you know. For all of this.”

A pitiful way to make up for her efforts, I knew.

“You don’t need to,” Feyre said straight away.

“Every member of my court receives one. There’s already a bank account in Velaris for you, where your wages will be deposited. And you have lines of credit at most stores. So if you don’t have enough on you when you’re shopping, you can have the bill sent to the House.”

“I-” her words caught, thick in her throat. “You didn’t have to do that.” A pause. “And how much exactly, am I getting paid each month?”

As much as you want .

Have the world and the skies and the seas for all I care, Feyre.

But my mind kept reeling back to the pine filling my nose and the small bundle of a person curled up behind me. “The same amount the others receive. When is your birthday?”

Feyre made a low, guttural humming. “Do I even need to count them anymore?” She sighed when I didn’t budge and admitted, “It’s the Winter Solstice.”

The Winter -

It was near spring. “That was months ago.”

“Mmmhmm,” she said wholly uncaring, the syllables dragged out with a bit of contempt.

I flicked through my memories of her, what she’d allowed me to see during her time with Tamlin around the turn of the Winter -

On the longest night of the year .

Cauldron, the fates that be were laughing at me, I was sure of it.

“You didn’t... I don’t remember seeing you celebrate it.”

“I didn’t tell anyone.” Feyre’s voice became rather faint. “I didn’t want a party when there was already all that celebrating going on. Birthdays seem meaningless now, anyway.”

Meaningless.

She thought herself meaningless. The very idea that she’d even exist or grow older unimportant to her. Didn’t matter. Pointless, now that she’d died.

But how could it be meaningless, that the Cauldron saw her born on one of the most sacred nights for my court. The hour that sang to my powers and weaved a history of seasons and renewal in the stars among the dark, winter sky?

Was it pure, simple, dumb luck that Feyre’s birthday was a day I cherished and called upon with my very blood to celebrate? Or was it fated that I would find my mate in the heart of Night where darkness joined with the heavens to form us both.

Mates - my mate.

Twins.

Match.

Mate.

“You were truly born on the Winter Solstice?” I asked. I wished I hadn’t turned my back in bed so I couldn’t see her.

“Is that so hard to believe?” she asked, well unaware of the thoughts teasing and testing my hope. “My mother claimed I was so withdrawn and strange because I was born on the longest night of the year. She tried one year to have my birthday on another day, but forgot to do it the next time - there was probably a more advantageous party she had to plan.”

Of course there was.

“Now I know where Nesta gets it. Honestly, it’s a shame we can’t stay longer - if only to see who’ll be left standing: her or Cassian.”

“My money’s on Nesta.” Feyre said it without a trace of doubt or hesitation despite the hulking Illyrian and the strength of his body and mind.

But I knew Cassian. And I still recalled that hideous arousal I’d caught lingering on him all about dinner and for a long while after.

I chuckled and agreed with Feyre, who had let me into her world tonight more than she ever had and had not once shied away or made me feel like I didn’t deserve to hear pieces of her story.

“So’s mine,” I said, hearing Feyre’s low hum sounding miles away as she stumbled into sleep.

Chapter Text

“I want to train.” Feyre’s voice drifted over to me as she came back to the room after she’d woken and left to change for the day. Her face was resolute. “With you - I mean,” she said and folded her arms.

Dawn had barely crested outside our window. And it was an icy cold morning.

Regardless, I snapped my fingers and wondered what had wormed into her mind that she suddenly didn’t find my request to train her so repulsive anymore.

My clean suit vanished, replaced by Illyrian fighting leathers. Thick snow boots appeared at Feyre’s feet along with a bow and quiver of arrows. I summoned my own sword and strapped it to my back as Feyre took a deep breath and started working on the boots, casually ignoring the weapons I’d given her.

I had a feeling that it wouldn’t be long before we’d both be in need of them.

When she’d finished, I extended my hand and we winnowed outside into the snow, which crunched beneath our boots as we entered the thick of trees surrounding the estate.

The wind nipped cold at my nose. And even though these forests smelled of Feyre, there was a dull, lifeless stillness to the way they sat unfriendly and unwelcome at our advance.

“Freezing my ass off first thing in the morning isn’t how I intended to spend our day off,” I told her.  “I should take you to the Illyrian Steppes when we return - the forest there is far more interesting. And warmer.”

Feyre crinkled her nose. “I have no idea where those are. You showed me a blank map that one time, remember?”

“Precautions.”

“Am I ever going to see a proper one, or will I be left to guess about where everything is?”

First the training, now the map, and all of it so demanding and unapologetic. Where - had this woman come from today?

“You’re in a lovely mood today,” I said stopping in a small clearing. A map unfolded between us, this time the names of cities written across it. “Lest you think I don’t trust you, Feyre darling...”

But Feyre was glued to the map considering, trying to understand. It was hard not to think what she might have done if her family had bothered giving her a real education. She was a focused, intent pupil.

“These are the Steppes,” I explained, guiding her through the northern lands. “Four days that way on foot will take you into Illyrian territory.”

Feyre’s brow furrowed as she understood and then seemed to recoil away slightly, uncomfortable. Her eyes flitted south on the map towards other courts and her face went very solemn.

I nearly split the Spring Court in two vanishing the map away. “Here,” I said. “We’ll train here. We’re far enough now.”

Far enough to keep the other safe lest Feyre lose control.

And far enough that anyone lurking about in the all too silent woods might get cozy enough to want to come a little nearer and see what they might make of Feyre.

I had to know.

I summoned a candle and held it to her. “Light it, douse it with water, and dry the wick,” I instructed.

Feyre stared at the candle like it were a giant question mark upon paper.

“I can’d do a single one of those things,” she informed me hotly. “What about physical shielding?”

Red paints.

A flash of blonde hair and green eyes.

And an explosion before air had cocooned around her and kept her from... what, what would Feyre have met that day had her body not taken over for her?

“That’s for another time,” I said. “Today, I suggest you start trying some other facet of your power.” Something simpler and less pleasantly connected to the High Lord she feared. “What about shape-shifting?” I offered, to drive the point in.

Feyre leveled a hard gaze at me. “Fire, water, and air it is.”

She took the candle from me and stepped back. I waited, but Feyre didn’t keep long to the candle before her eyes were snaking over me from the ground up, following my legs up to my hips before the broad expanse of stomach and chest over which I’d crossed my arms.

And finally, across my wings. She avoided my face altogether.

And she... wasn’t afraid.

“Maybe you should... go,” Feyre said, swallowing.

I had to go. We needed to see who was going to attack first, but I suddenly didn’t want to anymore.

“Why? You seemed so insistent that I train you,” I teased. I didn’t really expect much to come of that, but -

“I can’t concentrate with you around.” Feyre stepped back still eyeing my chest, my neck. Heat flared down the knots of my stomach in a low growl as the lightest trace of - fuck, arousal hit me.

She - is she? Does Feyre actually -

“And go... far,” she said. “I can feel you from a room away.”

Delicious. Absolutely delicious.

I could do a lot from a room away. Twenty rooms, even.

A feline grin split my face and Feyre scowled, her disapproval and perhaps a slight twinge of something else evident.

“Why don’t you just hide in one of those pocket realms for a bit?” she asked, looking away.

“It doesn’t work like that. There’s no air.” Feyre gave me a pointed look - Then that’s exactly where you should be . I laughed. A room without air was probably exactly what I needed if she was going to keep looking at me that way, like she not only didn’t mind the person in front of her rippling with Night and power, but that she... liked what she saw.

Shit - I wanted to stay.

“Fine,” I said, willing the words into existence. “Practice all you want in privacy. Give a shout down the bond if you get anything accomplished before breakfast.”

Feyre lifted her hand, examining the eye etched upon her palm. “What - literally shout at the tattoo?”

Her fingers curled around the design, and I swore I could almost feel the touch it sent between us along that tether we shared.

I stepped close and breathed, “You could try rubbing it on certain body parts and I might come faster.”

I winnowed, just in time to miss the cock of her arm as she prepared to hurl the candle at me, but as I landed back inside our shared room imagining all the places that hand might touch, I could have sworn I felt a low groan of amusement from down the bond.

Before breakfast, I made sure to attend to a particularly cold shower.

“What - no biting words of welcome this morning, Ms. Archeron?” Cassian’s grin was borderline indecent as we sat down for breakfast. Nesta poured tea without so much as a glance.

“It’s no wonder fae have such a horrid reputation for being incorrigible dogs with the way you flaunt yourself about,” Nesta finally said. She’d taken her usual seat at the head of the table.

She passed a cup of tea to Elain, and then herself, but none other. Cassian made sure to take the pot up next.

“Dogs we may be,” Cassian said, “but you’ll find that even the dogs have their uses, Nesta.”

She spared him a glance and Cassian winked wickedly. “I’m really more of a cat person and I think I prefer Ms. Archeron from you.”

Cassian lit up brighter than the sun. “Ooh, pet names-”

“Let’s not,” Azriel cut in, taking the tea pot from Cass and pouring himself a cup. He added no extra cream or sugar. It did little to abate the early morning arousal Cassian gave off. Azriel and I shared a look.

Elain looked painfully uncomfortable.

I had no right to judge really. My shower had been far too long. But Cassian and Nesta... Feyre might truly self-combust.

Feyre.

Holding that candle tighter and tighter against the palm of her tattoo, squeezing it and clenching and not unlike what I’d done in the -

Azriel cleared his throat loudly enough that I looked up from my plate in time to clear the wisps of darkness that had risen off my hands. His brow rose.

And I ignored it.

I reached for a slice of bread and some cherry jam to spread over it when a flat piece of paper winked into its place on my still clean plate. Everyone at the table stopped to stare at it, greatest of all Nesta.

I’m bored. Any sparks yet?

My message was written neatly across the top of the page, left behind in Feyre’s pack for her find at some point when she grew restless trying to summon a spark of flame.

And beneath it -

No, you snoop. Don’t you have important things to do?

The pen clattered to my plate. I was fairly sure Nesta made a comment that had Cassian reeling once more, but I ignored it and wrote back.

I’m watching Cassian and Nesta get into it again over their tea. Something you subjected me to when you kicked me off training. I thought this was our day off.

The paper vanished.

I looked up and found Azriel watching me in silent amusement over his cup of tea. And it was so like what Mor would have done because of course he knew what game I was playing.

Judgmental shadowsinging prick.

Feyre’s reply came quickly: Poor baby High Lord. Life is so hard .

I smiled, Cassian well distracting Nesta and even Elain by now, and grabbed the pen. This was fun .

With her. With Feyre.

I hadn’t had innocent fun like this for... a long time.

So I told her.

Life is better when you’re around. And look at how lovely your handwriting is .

You’re a shameless flirt .

I was halfway through jotting down just how shameless I could be when Feyre’s shields split, the chasm opening before us for a an icy blast of fear to fall through.

‘Stop, or I snap your neck.’ was all I heard before I looked at my brother and barked, “ Azriel, ” and winnowed to Feyre.

And the Attor.

“Good,” it said at Feyre’s ear, it’s grip around her neck not unlike how Amarantha had held her. All previously sensuous thoughts flew out of my head replaced by the wrath of Night. “Now tell me-”

Darkness ensnared him, his fevered shrieks piercing the morning air and filling that horrid silence of the woods with despair.

My powers flew out of me, the damper completely released in those seconds. And it searched and it searched until it had wrapped around the Attor in thick, constricting bands that showed no mercy. When the dark cleared, Feyre was in a low crouch on the ground, a knife drawn, and the Attor was flailing against a tree where the Darkness continued to pin him.

“I’d been wondering where you slithered off to,” I said to him.

The Attor tried to shimmy free, but I shot its wings with arrows of lightning, locking him in place. Silver blood dripped from the cuts almost as disgusting as the Attor’s pitiful screams.

Feyre stood and looked as though she very much did not mind.

“Answer my questions, and you can crawl back to your master,” I said.

“Whore,” the thing spat. We could have been back Under the Mountain.

Without hesitation, I reached for the open hole gushing silver blood and flashed him the devil’s smile. “You forget that I rather enjoy these things.”

“ No!” it screamed. “I was sent to get her.”

My finger paused. “Why?”

“That was my order. I am not to question. The king wants her.”

Hybern .

Of course he’d fled Amarantha and retreated back to his true master upon her death. It wasn’t that surprising really. But he knew more than he was willing to say.

“Why?” I took a further step closer revolted by his horrid discolored skin and letting him damn well feel how revolted I was. Power slid from my skin like water.

“ Don’t know, don’t know, don’t know. ”

My voice dropped, commanding his tongue. He was going to be easy to break. “Where is the king currently?”

“Hybern.”

“Army?”

“Coming soon.”

“How large?”

“Endless. We have allies in every territory, all waiting.”

Which meant even the Night Court was fallible. I’d prepared myself to learn our weaknesses as a court since birth, and the weaknesses of the Night Court were many riddled with prejudice and backwards thinking from within, but I hated to hear it all the same.

Azriel landed silently in the snow behind me. The Attor’s eyes went wide as he took in the Illyrian and Truth-Teller at his hip and the wings like my own that I’d never shown the cretin during our tenure in Amarantha’s court. His body shook.

Azriel and I traded places and it was then that I finally saw how pale Feyre had gone.

“The next time you try to take her,” I said, “I kill first; ask questions later.”

I signaled for Azriel to move. His scarred hands gripped the Attor, still chained in darkness that would follow them through the wind and folds of the universe, and then they disappeared on a wave of Azriel’s power.

“Will he kill him?” Feyre stared at the spot Azriel had vacated, her attention more on the shadowsinger’s calculating, deadly gleam than the beast that had been spiked against the tree.

“No.” Feyre shuddered. “We’ll use him to send a message to Hybern that if they want to hunt the members of my court, they’ll have to do better than that.”

Now that the Attor was gone, the anger - the wrath seeped properly into my mind. I wanted to kill the king for this, for hunting down my mate. War no longer seemed an adequate enough excuse to tear him limb from limb next to this.

“You knew,” Feyre said, stepping away from me. “You knew he was hunting me?”

“I was curious who wanted to snatch you the first moment you were alone,” I admitted, and readied for her venom.

“So you never planned to stay with me while I trained. You used me as bait -”

“Yes, and I’d do it again. You were safe the entire time.”

Let her hate me for it. The attacks and attempts to kidnap Feyre would come no matter what. Better we find out who wanted her more first - Tamlin or the king.

“You should have told me!”

“Maybe next time.”

“There will be no next time!”

Feyre lunged, a flash of teeth and nails, and shoved into me hard, so much so that it knocked me back and it was only my fae instincts that kept me upright. She was a force. A wind and a fire and a sun bearing down on me in all that glittering rage to birth a new creation.

She lifted her hands and stared at herself hard, criticizing and lamenting. The last time she’d been this upset, her powers had unlocked in full force. Looking at her now, the delicate mixture of heat still surfacing from earlier, I wanted to see more of her - see it all.

I wanted to watch her play and I would let her hate me to do it.

“Yes, you did,” I said reading her still open thoughts about how she’d forgotten how incredibly strong she was. It felt like an eternity since her shields had last been down for me and Cauldron, they felt nice. She felt nice. So I kept pushing. “You forgot that strength, and that you can burn and become darkness, and grow claws. You forgot . You stopped fighting. ”

Feyre’s eyes rose and exploded with mayhem and darkness.

And hatred for all the terrible things that had been done to her.

Come on Feyre darling, let it out. Let it all out.

“So what if I did?” she said, a serpent striking as she pummeled into me. Glory ripped through my chest. “So what if I did?”

She shoved again, but I winnowed out of reach.

More, more, more - Feyre .

“It’s not easy.”

She stormed toward me in a death march and I continued to winnow, her irritation evident. I landed behind her and let my breath tickle her ear, restraining myself from leaning all the way down at nipping at the lobe with my teeth - another thought to save for later. “You have no idea how not easy it is,” I whispered and disappeared as she spun for me, fists flying.

When I reappeared some feet away, I chuckled. Feyre’s eyes flashed, but there was some kind of delight in them too, I thought. Her hair was slightly askew and there was a dark energy gathering about her person that was so powerful, so tantalizing.

If she wanted to, she could have ripped me into shreds.

And I would have let her.

“Try harder,” I laughed, enjoying the way Feyre ground her feet tougher into the snow, finding the dirt hidden away beneath. Her hands sliced open, her fingernails elongating into beautiful startling claws as her fingers wrenched into talons ready to cut me open.

It was gorgeous, a beautiful disaster.

Feyre hit a tree as she aimed for me and tore the bark to pieces in her frustration.

She whirled, and I laughed, folding into smoke and wind and shadow that carried me further away. But when I solidified on the earth and spun, Feyre was right in front of me appearing out of her own mist - winnowing with her powers cascading around her in a frenzy.

It was the most beautiful, wonderful vision I’d ever seen.

And I loved every second of it that she let me witness before her body crushed mine and we landed in a heap of tangled limbs and grinning snarls on the snow.

“ Don’t ,” Feyre said, her voice raw, “ ever ,” and she shoved my chest roughly, her taloned nails ripping into my leathers, “ use me as bait again. ”

Her face was vicious, ready to collect her winnings for the victory in our fight.

Beautiful. She was so beautiful .

Even when she despised me.

And she did. Just then looking up at her, she hated me again. All of the air went out of my lungs.

She was so small in my arms. Redness stung her eyes.

“You said I could be weapon,” she said, continuing to pound into my chest. “Teach me to become one. Don’t use me like a pawn. And if being one is part of my work for you, then I’m done. Done.”

Done.

The worst word she could have ever said to me. I never wanted to hear it again.

My grip tightened on her, reluctant to let go. “Fair enough,” I said. Feyre stood, her talons nowhere in sight anymore, and pushed away from me. It felt more devastating than when she’d been trying to bite my head off.

“Do it again,” I said, trying miserably to will her back into the heat of fighting, into the flirtation I knew had been there, into something other than done and disgust. “Show me how you did it.”

“No,” she said. “I want to go back to the chateau.” Away from me. Away from this and what it had been. Away from us .

But she had winnowed...

“I’m sorry,” I said, rising from the snow and extending my hand. She didn’t take it. Why didn’t she take it?

Not my - Fuck. I washed the awful thought away. Not now, I prayed. Not after this, whatever the hell wonderful thing it had been, however brief.

“Why does the King of Hybern want me? Because he knows I can nullify the Cauldron’s power with the Book?”

My anger flared again. Back to politics. Back to work. Back to the only neutral space she wanted between us.

Back to the people who would torture and imprison her for what she’d become.

“That’s what I’m going to find out,” I replied. My hand still hung cold and empty between us. “I’m sorry,” I said again and Feyre finally looked at me. “Let’s eat breakfast, then go home.”

Feyre took my hand and for a second, I felt warm again. But her next words were a lashing upon my back, a curse to take with me before we winnowed back to the dining room.

“Velaris isn’t my home.”

Three days with me in the Night Court and it suddenly meant nothing.

xx