Chapter Text

Chapter 56

Arwen stretched in a lounge chair planted on a balcony. She had kept the blanket from her bed with her, and grabbed a book along the way. It sat abandoned in her lap now, tire from her restless night creeping back up on her. She had not seen anybody since that morning, missing out on lunch but she hadn’t been hungry enough to hunt it down.

Rhysand’s approach was annoyingly silent.

He sat down on the lounge chair next to her, on the edge to face her. “Azriel said you had a rough night,” he said quietly. “Want to tell me about it?”

Arwen ran her thumb over the pages of her book’s edge. “No,” she said weakly.

His wings were out. It made sense since he had to fly his way up from the town house. But she had seen him on that flight hours ago. So she assumed it must be a display—conscious or unconscious—that he wanted to be exposed, and quite likely, sway those around him to do the same.

“I haven’t eaten yet,” he remarked. “We could go down into the city, go to that place along the Sidra. Sven’s restaurant. Get something at a bakery and find a nice seat. We don’t have to talk about last night.”

Arwen pulled her legs up, tipping her head back against the tilted seat. “I’m not hungry.” She hadn’t seen Azriel yet, but her hand itched to smack him for going straight to her brother.

“Have you eaten yet?” he prompted with a pointed tone, telling her he already knew the answer. So she kept her mouth shut. He arched his brow. “Did you eat breakfast?”

No, she hadn’t. But neither had Cassian. They had stayed on the rooftop for hours and by the time they decided to return, he murmured something about having work to do and left her be.

Rhysand sighed at her silence. “Arwen, you need to eat.”

“I will eat when I’m hungry,” she disputed. “And I’m not, so you can stop pestering me about it.”

“Pestering?” He gave an empty laugh. “I’m trying to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. Can you please at least come inside and have something to eat with me?”

Arwen looked up at the sky, and watched as rumbling storm clouds breached the horizon. They’d be over the city by nightfall, and it looked like it would be a long storm. She already had plans for it—to feel the rain and wind. To feel what nature intended to be felt, and at its full wrath. “I just told you I’m not hungry. You can stop trying to do this—I’m sick of people coming up to me with the same questions.”

“Because we’re worried,” he said without a breath. “We’re worried about you, Arwen. I’m worried and you won’t talk to me. You’re blocking me out.”

She wasn’t going to argue with him. She didn’t have the energy to raise her voice, or the motivation to pick her thoughts apart. “Why are you here?” she whispered. “It has been less than two weeks since a war. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“I have things to do,” he agreed. “But none of it is important right now. Not when my sister is refusing to take care of herself. When she won’t let me take care of her.”

There it was again. His honour bound sense of duty to her. Forged by the simple fact that they shared the same parents, a fact that reorganised his life to fit her into it. Changed things for her convenience. “I eat, Rhysand. I eat when I’m hungry and I sleep when I’m tired.” She lopped her head towards him, lifting her book. “When I’m bored, I read. So you don’t need to do any of this because I’m fine without you breathing down my damn neck. I don’t need to be your duty.”

It knocked him back. He physically recoiled and burrowed his brows as if assessing the pain of a strike to his chest. “Arwen, you have no idea how much I regret those words,” he said through a tight throat. “What I said to you—I was angry, I was upset. At what happened and at myself. Please do not for one second think that I believe them. That I would ever believe that of you.”

Arwen pulled the blanket tighter around her front. He had said them. Perhaps it was in anger, but they were still said which meant that he had to have thought them. And she wanted to believe, even back then, that he was just upset as Cassian had told her. But then she had to watch him tear the remains of her existence away, day by day, piece by piece. How he would strike down any mention of her name. And when there was nothing left of her, only then did he smile again.

“Let me in,” Rhysand begged. He leant towards her again, bargaining for her gaze back with the threat of falling off the lounge chair. “You are my duty as my sister.” He slid off the chair, moving to the side of hers, gripping the narrow armrest. Arwen eyed the closeness. “But that is a duty I chose, and I continue to choose it every day. Talk to me, hit me, cry, scream at me. I will take it. But do not shut me out.”      

“I don’t want to.”

He didn’t leave her. Rhysand laid back in the second lounge chair on that balcony and sat with her as she reopened her book and read until the world around her was lost. He summoned a plate of food, placing it on the floor between them but Arwen, feeling more stubborn than she had in a while, refused, and kept to her word. It wasn’t until the rain started that she made her own retreat, for no other reason than to protect the book from water damage. Rhysand followed her in, but she veered off before he could attempt to speak with her again.

She ate with Cassian for dinner, finding him in one of the sitting rooms alone, feet kicked up on a desk. In one hand he had a paper, reading over it, the other held his side. His nose was wrinkled in a permanent wince. Arwen felt the guilt pick at her, suddenly remembering how injured he had been only days before. How he had then let her hold him, how he carried her, without a whisper of complaint. So she made sure he ate and took a break from whatever work he was supposed to be doing.

But when thunder struck and the windows were pitch black except for the silvery splatter constantly hammering against the glass, she left him. Arwen moved from one end of the House to the other and climbed up the stairs that took her to the rooftop.

Rain lashed against her the second she stepped out from cover. It stormed so wildly—the rain, wind and thunder—that she could hear only its howls and could barely see the city lights in the distance. Arwen closed her eyes, feeling every drop on her skin and it was beautiful. It soaked through her black slip dress, the cold penetrated her bones and she shivered violently. Still, she stayed. Just to feel it.

The soft blue glow of a siphon disrupted the storm’s dark cloaking. Arwen held her arms to her chest and watched it near. Azriel walked towards her, one hand over his head, the siphon creating a small shield against the rain. Water surged down against it, trickling off the side around his feet, leaving him completely dry.

“What are you doing out here?” A question. Not an accusation or a lead into a remark about her ill choice of standing on a mountain during a storm, just a question. Lighting struck in the distance, beyond the borders of the city. The harsh light flashed across Azriel’s face. She couldn’t help but note how dark it made him seem—how lethal and honed the planes of his face were. How lethal he could be.

Azriel took a step forward when she didn’t answer, extending his hand and shield toward her. Arwen didn’t break from her thoughts until it began to cover her and the constant hammering against her body stopped.

“No,” she whimpered and flung herself back. She had to keep feeling it. Had to make sure that it didn’t stop. That she wasn’t back in that place.

Azriel stared at her in confusion, then up at his shield. It flickered, then dissipated as he lowered his hand. “Is that better?” The rain enveloped him as it had taken her. His hair darkened from black to something that melted into true darkness, the strands at his forehead thinning as beads curved down them. “What are you doing up here, Arwen?”

In answer, she looked up, squinting. Azriel followed her gaze.

“You’re soaked through,” he murmured, but she did not look back down at him. Not until she felt the graze of his fingers along her bare arm.

Arwen snapped away from him, eyes hardening in warning. Azriel’s own widened, fingers curling back to his palm and dropping his arm altogether. It was difficult to form any sort of apology, by word or show, so she didn’t.

Touch was an investment. An investment of her emotion, of her devotion. It was a gateway into her. The bank she once had, the size of Velaris itself, had dried. She’d given all she had left to Cassian, in his security. Given it in a moment that if she hadn’t given it at all, it would have ruined her. All she had wanted from him was that warmth of flesh, that certainty that she wasn’t back in that place. Her investment in him was returned in equal. Arwen knew that it was given to her without a thought of anything else—because that’s who Cassian was.

But Azriel…

She didn’t know what would come of investing herself in him. Of attempting to reforge something. Not when she had seen what he had done to move on from her. Not when he had given Elain—given, not only offered—Truth Teller. Not when she knew that any loss on her end would crumble everything within her.

So to feel his skin on hers, she couldn’t stand it. It was nauseating.

The way Azriel looked at her on that rooftop hurt. His hurt became hers and her knees couldn’t hold it, so she let the rain wash it away. “Go inside, Azriel.”

He did as she asked.

~

Rhysand returned to the town house. He wouldn’t stay there the night, but he needed a moment away from the House before he returned. Mor and Feyre talked in the dining room over lunch—something about the treaty plans. Nesta and Elain were no doubt locked in their rooms, but he couldn’t care less about either of them at that moment.

He flashed a small smile to Feyre as he passed the archway, heading towards the stairs, but of course, she caught on to its tightness. “Rhys?”

Everything pressed onto him. It squeezed him, twisted his gut and made his knees weak.

“What is it?” Mor called out as Feyre left her seat.

Rhysand held out his hand. “It’s fine. I’m just tired.”

“Rhys,” Feyre called again, this time in a scolding for his pathetic lie. Her words, not his. “What happened?”

He couldn’t answer, bile sitting in the back of his mouth. The memory kept playing in his head like something was shouting it at him, forcing him to remember everything that he tried so hard to forget. And what he had done after in shame—things not even Amren or Feyre knew about.

Helping Feyre recover had been a mix of instinct and trial. He knew what she needed and handed it on a platter that she only had to reach out and take from. But his mind ran a blank with Arwen. He knew that an extent of it, perhaps all of it, was his fault. He knew that arrogant remarks and sending her small notes would not heal what he had done, nor what happened to her.

The bedroom door swung in his wake, the sound of something flat hitting it confirming that Feyre was following. Rhysand marched across their bedchamber to the connected washroom, his pace quickening with each second. Just as he fell to his knees in front of the toilet, he threw up everything in his gut. When that was empty, his body dry heaved until his jaw ached and his stomach grew weak. Feyre knelt over him but he pushed her away. This was his burden to deal with. He would deal with it alone.