Chapter Text
Later, standing in Amren’s apartment as alternating waves of fear and betrayal washed over me, I would remember this night differently. But at the time, being woken up by an aching bladder during the darkest part of the early morning was such a sweet inconvenience.
I had come to know the sounds and textures of Night; the loneliness and terror after nightmares wrenched me from sleep, the grief and despair that could keep my mind and guts roiling until dawn. And now, thanks to Rhys, I knew what it was like to face the terror down, to be comforted and offer comfort, or lie with my mate, breathless and sated, under the dazzling Night sky.
These weeks were another kind of Night to share. Tending to the needs of my body and mapping the changes wrought by my child within was a pleasure under these calm stars. Unlike the changes of being Made, these were routine, predictable, shared by every mother. I wondered what my mother had felt, and in her absence, felt connected to women and children at the studio in a new way. Human jokes I had heard long ago suddenly made sense. I was always hungry and tired and hungry, but every rogue wave of nausea or emotion also made me happy. I knew it was all for him. Nyx, we had decided.
I couldn’t stop cupping my hands over my now-protruding belly, and Rhys had an especially reverent way of gliding his fingertips along the curve that always had me smiling. He could be so gentle now, sometimes gazing at me with all the depth and quiet of this witching hour. “I won’t break,” I found myself reminding him, but he’d just shake his head and give half a smile.
Love wasn’t always screaming and blood and tears, curses and bargains and fae magic. Love could be like this, too, I laughed to myself. Just shuffling quietly to the toilet, growing and taking care, and the magic of changing a little bit every day.
My body’s new shape could still be concealed under a sweater, but soon that wouldn’t be enough. My balance was already off. Despite Rhys’s best magical and rhetorical efforts, I wouldn’t hide myself, our family. Mor’s reaction had been glorious and overwhelming. We had spent her only spare hour on her last return from Vallahan marveling at my complexion and squealing over onesies and crib blankets before I took a nap. She and Rhys went over strategy for the return journey, and by the time I woke up, she had left for another round of negotiations.
I was rinsing off my hands and gazing at the late Autumn constellations I could see over the Sidra, weighing my desire for a slice of Elain’s leftover cheese and mushroom pie against the risk of heartburn, when I felt tendrils of Rhys’s Night power pooling around my ankles like tar. It had seeped under the bathing room door in the minutes I had been gone, and then I felt the bond. This was not his usual playful, friendly tug; it was as though Rhys had grabbed me around the middle with both arms and pulled. It nearly knocked me off my feet.
I rushed back into the bedroom, where Rhys sat upright, rigid, a hand stretched over to my side of the bed where the sheets must still be warm. The floor was covered in viscous, knee-deep Night. I started wading through it, but it was tough going. The room smelled of panic, and I tried not to gag as I switched to breathing through my mouth. After dinner he had spent a few more hours in his study poring over tomes Thesan sent over, in languages I couldn't read even if I wasn't too tired to help. He had gotten to bed late and unsettled, which often triggered a night of bad sleep. I reached out on the bond and tried to find a crack in his shields, but they were as solid as ever, and didn’t budge when I passed my mental hand along their edge. “What’s wrong?” I stage-whispered at him from across the room, stumbling into an Ottoman in my haste to get back to him.
All I could see were the whites of his eyes as Rhys slowly turned to me in the dark. I couldn’t tell if he was truly awake or still gripped by whatever nightmare this was. For all the ways we had joined our lives and minds and bodies, there were still times when my human heart skipped a beat at the strangeness of my mate in the thrall of his own magic.
“Feyre.” He exhaled and the whole room exhaled with him, becoming a fraction lighter and less oppressive. I took a few last steps through the thinning Night-tar, and finally crawled up onto the foot of the bed, kneeling astride his shins. His hand had gripped the pooled sheets, just where my heart would be if I had been asleep there. I watched his shirtless chest rise and fall, gulping down breaths like he had just sprinted uphill. Lately I had been waking up to him caressing my back, my arms, but just took it as an invitation to kiss his nose and snuggle closer before dozing off a few minutes longer. Or nestle my backside into his lap, arch over my shoulder for a kiss, and start the day off deliciously. I thought we were both feeling a surge of hormone-fuelled desire. Had he been spending the mornings alone with his nightmares each time?
I must have been frowning as I gazed at him from my perch just below his knees. “Is everything alright?” he asked, casually, pulling his arm back to himself.
I glanced around the room where pools of blackness seeped away into the floor. “I don’t know, is it? I get up to pee and two minutes later you’ve redecorated with a swamp theme.” I eased off his legs and crawled up to the head of the bed, pulling his face into my hands. I wanted to touch him, and examine the haunted look he wore more closely. “You look like Bryaxis stopped by for a visit.” I meant that as a joke, but honestly… “He didn’t, did he?”
He shook his head, gave half a smirk, and cleared his throat. His voice was heavy despite it. “No, no. The mushrooms in that pie aren’t settling right.” He flicked his fingers, and we watched the remnants of his dream or worry or whatever-had-manifested on our bedroom floor wither into smoke.
Bullshit. “I’ve never seen this before,” I noted, stroking one hand down his temple, the other carding through his silky hair. “Do you want to tell me about it?” Our common refrain.
He leaned into my hand, and his eyes fluttered closed. He knew he could tell me no, and sometimes he did. But this wasn’t a no. It was like the burden of whatever horror he had seen tonight pressed his head into my palm, too heavy for him to carry alone.
“It’s all right,” he said, soothing. “It’s just the mating instinct. I admit I’m being a bit overprotective, but I know you’re both here and safe now.”
“A bit.” I gestured around the room, referring to the seeping, sticky mess that had coated our comfortable bedroom, if only for few minutes. “All of that happened in the time it took me to go to the toilet?”
“What can I say?” he mumbled, kissing into my palm, “I never want to be without you, Feyre darling.”
“You aren’t. You won’t be. Can you look at me, please?” I asked, gently.
He kept his eyes closed. I knocked firmly at his mental shield, and a tendril of his mind came out to still the knocking hand and run a gentle stroke back down to me. He mirrored the movement with his actual hands, running them up and down my wrists and arms, as though he were sculpting me from the dark.
I started again. “If you’re not going to show me, at least talk to me. You don’t have to tell me every detail, but don’t lie to me about mushrooms and gloss over what you’re feeling.”
Rhys sighed. We had a shorthand for the more common nightmares. ‘Her and Azriel’, or ‘after the third trial’, or ‘Cassian’s face at Hybern.’ Sometimes it was an even smaller fragment, just ‘Helpless’ or ‘War.’ It went both ways. I knew how hard it was, how much it cost him to put words to those feelings, and was grateful for whatever small relief my presence, my listening, could bring him, as his presence comforted me. But he didn’t come up with any of those.
“It was just a nightmare. And then you weren’t here, and for a moment I wasn’t sure what was real.” I nodded. He took my hands in his and settled back against the headboard. “You should — we should go back to sleep. I’m sorry it upset you, I won’t let it happen again.”
His words had a grain of truth in them, but rubbed me the wrong way. He wouldn’t let it happen again? We both knew the nightmares came regardless of what we wanted. I pulled my hands away from him and he frowned. It would happen, and it would hurt him, and he would try to carry it alone instead of sharing it with me.
A shiver went down my spine. I’d had this fight before, and lost, terribly. Suddenly it was like my past self from the Spring court was one of Azriel’s shadows whispering a warning in my ear, reminding me of what happens when I let someone hide all the difficult and painful things from me, control what I knew, decide what I heard and saw and could do. A bottle of red paint smashed in the study. My hand beating against an invisible wall. A ring melting off in rage. It was like my own shadow from back then came to say ‘If he’ll lock you out, he’ll lock you in.’
So I stayed sitting, refusing his invitation to curl up in his arms. Didn’t trust the idea of being coddled by him; smothered by him. “I’m not upset that you had a nightmare, I”m upset that you’re not telling me the whole story. I wasn’t even upset until now. What do you mean you won’t let it happen?”
Rhys sat back up and gave me a level stare. “Mother help me, can you ever just let me care for you without turning it into a fight?”
“I guess not. Which one is it, Rhys? You can’t resist your mating instincts, or you can maintain perfect control over everything all the time?” We were getting louder. Madja told me if I couldn't stop my magic, it was better to be warm than cold, so I sent my anger into fire rather than ice. I could feel the room warm up as my voice rose. “Because LET ME be extremely clear — I LET you! I let you do too much already! I’m walking around my own house in a bubble, for Cauldron’s sake!”
His brows furrowed above the cold stare he hadn’t dropped. “I let YOU do too much. Anyone can walk into your studio, you don’t even keep records of who’s coming and going. Azriel’s brought it up more than once, and it drives me up the wall any time I think about it.”
Now, I was mad. He did not just threaten my studio, the thing I had built with his full support and cherished more than any other part of my work. He couldn’t have.
I brought my voice down into the commanding register I was still learning to wield. It wouldn’t do a thing on him, but it would give the lighting fixtures a solid rattle.
“Rhys. My love. You warded every brick of the studio yourself, and the people of Velaris — your people — are the ones who come and go. We are very safe. I promised not to take any risks, but I’m not going to stop going to the studio and you won’t be escorting me every time I go to the bathing room.”
He brought a drop of that thunder into his own voice. “You’ve only been fae for the blink of an eye, and part of this court for even less time. There are risks you don’t always see, and I am trying to anticipate those problems for you—” he winced, correcting himself “— with you.”
We had been sitting inches apart on the bed, staring daggers at each other. My skin was hot and crawling, and the voice from my past was still whispering at me, now simply ‘Get out, get out, get out.’
I edged off the bed and started pacing, even as I held his gaze. I wasn't going to listen to my past self, but I couldn't make the same mistakes again, either. “Well, that sounds great, Rhys. I wonder how long it will take for ‘anticipating a problem’ to turn into an impenetrable shield the size of the house? That always works perfectly, much better than telling me about your concerns or sending a hint of them down the magical fucking psychic connection you are usually all too happy to share.”
He rolled his eyes and shook his head, so I went further. “Maybe you and Tamlin can reconnect over Feyre-trapping strategies. There are a few ways to guilt me you haven't tried yet.”
The power went out of his voice, and the light went out of his eyes. “I could never take freedom away from you.”
I knew that was low, but it got his attention. I pressed on. “That’s the thing. You and Helion made sure you could do it, technically, and now I have to trust that you won’t.” I came back to stand at my side of the bed, crossing my arms. “I have to trust you and anticipate your problems, too, which is a lot harder when you won’t tell me what’s on your mind. You’re completely unreasonable right now.”
“This whole conversation is completely unreasonable,” he muttered, “Your safety is on my mind. Constantly.”
“Well, I don’t feel safe when you keep things from me. You try to hide it, but when you’re worried, it seeps in to everything. Cassian said you had been moody, even Nesta noticed it.”
The cold was back in his voice. “I hope Nesta gets a lot of satisfaction from criticizing my character instead of examining her own.”
“She doesn’t worship the ground you walk on, you mean.” I spat out. Nesta didn’t know about half the things Rhys had sacrificed for others. He would never share them with her, and they weren’t my stories to tell on his behalf. Maybe she would see him differently if she knew any of the context, or maybe she would use it as ammunition in some startling, hurtful way. He was right to keep so many secrets, but not from me. So, Nesta only knew the preening, proud, powerful mask he put on. The mask that had disgusted me at first, too. “Nesta barely knows you. And there’s plenty you don’t know about her.”
Now that the fight was on less sensitive ground, we were getting louder again. He thundered back, “I know Nesta’s dangerous. We have no insight into what she can do, intentionally or by accident. She’s been completely out of control.”
“You mean she’s out of your control. She’s been trying! We knew it was going to take time. Cassian says she’s already made a real change.”
“I wouldn’t believe what you hear about her from Cassian. You wouldn’t either if you had caught a whiff of that house.”
I couldn’t believe he would say that right now, given our previous exchanges. My mind was racing, and the words couldn’t come out fast enough. “Maybe I would if you let me go there. You just hate that you can’t get into her mind to force her or glamour her, and I guess she’s not worth the effort of having to actually negotiate with, unlike the Illyrians or Eris or Keir, who are always so agreeable.”
He groaned, and picked up the familiar threads of this old fight. “That’s not what I — our allies are at least a known quantity, and at the end of the day I have leverage, I know I can handle them.”
Here we were, at last. Rhys’ power. My power. All the strange, Cauldron-wrought threads that brought us to this moment in our lives and this part of tonight’s fight, the root of every fight.
“I know it’s a great burden to be the most powerful High Lord ever, Rhys, but it’s not you against the world anymore. The only reason you’re alive is because our allies, including Tamlin, including Beron, against all odds, helped you. So you can stop this self-sacrificing bullshit, because we are equals in every way, by choice and bargain and bond, and you are actually not alone.”
“And I would give anything to keep it that way, anything including pissing you off, because I’d rather watch you get angry with me than watch you in a moment of pain or fear that I could have prevented!” He was raging at full volume now. “I’ve watched too many people I love die, I fucking can’t do it again with you!”
Unbelievable. “YOU can't do it again!” I shouted. "YOU. DIED." I crawled back onto the bed to kneel and meet him at eye level.
“You died FIRST!” He shouted back, hands raking through his hair. “And I was too weak to do anything but watch!”
“I had to watch you!” I was inches from his face, shouting and giving my best imitation of Nesta’s accusatory point right into the center of his chest. “After you blocked me out because you knew it was coming!”
“At least you got to take me home after! I had to see you -- my mate -- die, resurrect you, and then, yes, LET YOU go off with my worst living enemy!”
“I'm truly, very sorry about that, because I am literally the one person who understands how you feel, but I couldn't do anything about it at the time, because I didn’t find out you were my mate until the Suriel told me while I was saving your wretched life months and months after it was relevant!”
We both paused. Rhys leaned back against the headboard and closed his eyes again, running his thumb across his bottom lip. "You're not wrong about any of this," he mused. "I know that. But I don't think I'm wrong either, and my love and fear for you are so strong, I can't..." He trailed off.
I sank down and crossed my legs in front of me, arranging the hem of my nightgown as a distraction. I kind of had to pee again.
“This isn't helping,” I said, quietly, “and we’re tired. I love you and you’re not allowed to leave me behind, and that’s all.”
“I agree completely,” he said, lying down with a huff and angrily fluffing his pillow with one hand.
“Before you get comfortable, I’m going to the toilet and will be back in approximately two minutes,” I said primly. “Just in case you want to tag along.”
His shoulders relaxed and he smiled up at me. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
I made another trip to the bathing room. When I opened the door, two rows of faelights along the floor lit a path back to my side of the bed, skirting the Ottoman which I guessed would be gone tomorrow. Too hazardous.
I settled back onto my own pillow and studiously avoided Rhys by staring up at the ceiling, but that made my back ache. I turned on my side and dragged my pillow toward him, slipping a leg over his. He cautiously draped an arm over my waist, running his thumb along my back while our heart rates came back down.
“Did we really just fight about Elain’s pie and who had the worst magical resurrection?” he asked.
I exhaled sharply, in place of a real laugh. “No. It was about you acting like a controlling bastard mother hen and me trying to live a normal life.”
“Of course, right,” he nodded. “I was distracted by your extreme beauty and intoxicating scent, but I remember now.” He kept stroking my back, eventually scooting closer to tuck my head under his and take a deep breath at the (apparently intoxicating) crown of my head.
Our inhales and exhales started to match rhythm, and my ire gave way to the edge of sleep. The darkness was calm again.
He whispered. “I was scared in the dream. You were being taken from me, it was my fault and I couldn’t go with you, I couldn’t help you or stop it. I tried to get help from every friend we have, but no one could fix it. I knew it was just a dream that had scared me, but then I reached for you, and you were gone, and it was the worst feeling. And then I remembered it wasn’t just you, it was Nyx too, and the feeling actually got even worse, and the fact that he wasn’t even in the dream makes me… “ His words ran out. He shook his head. “I am wretched. There’s so much I should do — there’s so much I want to do, I’m happy to do — to be worthy of you. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t keep bad things from happening to the people I love. People get killed because of me.”
“Thank you for telling me.” I murmured back to him. I let my own words slowly roll out of me. “I don’t think bad things happen because of you, Rhys. Bad things happen to everybody sometimes. We do the best we can, and we help each other try to find the right way to go, and we help each other if it all goes wrong anyway.”
He felt far away, but nodded. I let it go. Maybe it really had been about the pie.
I drifted back to sleep as dawn broke, and Rhys and the ottoman were gone by the time I woke to the brightness of mid morning.