Chapter Text

Chapter 66

Arwen placed a steaming tea down on the table. Rhysand perked up from where he had held his head in his hand, looking between her and the mug. “Thank you,” he said through a hoarse chuckle that told her he knew he needed it as much as she assumed. She nodded and moved around him.

Cassian and Amren sat on the opposite side of the table, amidst an argument that Rhysand had drawn himself out of.

“Where’s Azriel and Mor?” she asked, sliding a plate of sliced fruit across the table.

Rhysand rapped his knuckles against the wood. “Mor went to Hewn City this morning. Azriel… left too. To the mortal lands I think.”

“You think?” Arwen frowned and took the seat next to him. “You don’t know where your spymaster is?”

After a long sip of his tea, her brother muttered, “He didn’t deign to inform me. Went in the middle of the night and left a note.”

Curious and concerning information. “What are you doing today?”

“I am going to pay Helion a visit. Feyre is coming with me,” he said. “He’s got some books that I want to have a look at.”

“Books?” she echoed. “Don’t you have other things to attend to?”

Rhysand looked into his cup with a small laugh. “No, it’s important that I find them. If they exist.”

Arwen remained seated in silence, her thoughts travelling far from Velaris.

~

A week passed and Rhysand’s birthday rolled around. Arwen sat on the edge of her bed, dressed, and with the black box in hand. Azriel still had not returned. The morning sun still welcomed her through her drapes, leaving honeyed marks along her floor. Soon Cassian knocked at her door. The skirt of her emerald dress swept between her near bare feet, which were clad in strapped sandals.

Greeting Cassian with a smile, Arwen slipped her hand into his and they headed out to the balcony before taking flight over the city. Landing before the town house, Arwen made a small screech as he attempted to place her down on the snowy cobblestone road.

“Why the fuck would you wear those shoes in winter then?” he grumbled, exaggerating a grunt as he lifted her back up.

She hmphed. “Aesthetic.”

Dumping her at the small step before the door and sending her a look of disbelief, he rapped on the front door. It was Mor that greeted them, dressed in a sweater and pants. Arwen smiled at her and entered first.

Rhysand stood in the common sitting room with Feyre under his arm, both smiling softly as they talked with Azriel who stood in front of them. Arwen paused in the threshold at the sight of him, her heart beating twice in one second. Leather still clad his toned body, the two siphons on either hand dull like they had been recently exhausted.

Heads didn’t turn until Cassian trailed in behind her, his footsteps resounding. He immediately headed to Rhys, bringing him into a brotherly hug. Arwen remain on the threshold even as Mor passed her to drag Feyre away from the males and into conversation. Looking down at the box, she fiddled with the silver ribbon, second-guessing her choice.

When Rhysand’s voice died out, her eyes drew up. Cassian had turned to Azriel, their conversation falling quiet but civil. Rhysand sauntered across the sitting room and Arwen straightened. His lips moved into a soft smile, hands delving deep into the pockets of his pants as he twisted into the hallway. She turned with him.

He looked down at her hands. “You didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Do you not know me at all?” she sang quietly. Rhysand chuckled. Tightening her lips, she offered him the present while they were in the solitude of the empty hall. “Happy birthday, Rhys.”

He took the box and pried the ribbon off under her watchful gaze. Peeling off the lid, he peered down curiously at the contraption. It was a black band about the width of two fingers, made to sit on his wrist. “You’re going to have to tell me what this is.”

Arwen smiled to herself. She pulled it from the box, tossing the box to the side where it disappeared on account of her magic. Pulling out his hand to hover between them, she placed it on his wrist and fitted it to his size. “It’s like a sand timer of sorts,” she told him. “I know you always get lost in your own world when you work so I thought that this might help.” Thumbing the indiscrete silver dial on the side, she pushed it forward until two clicks came. “Each click is an hour. When that time is up, it’s been enchanted to heat and remind to take a break.”

Rhysand hadn’t taken his eyes off of her the entire time but Arwen knew that he listened to every word. “It’s an amazing gift, but admittedly not the best I’ve been given this year.”

Well if that wasn’t a small punch to the gut. Arwen blinked. “I’m sorry it didn’t live up to the standard,” she said, sealing her shock behind a flat voice.

“It is a high standard,” he continued. “It’s one of a kind and I’d been wanting it for so long that it was driving me crazy to not have it with me. I used to have one, but I lost her.” A tremble went up her spine. Her, he was talking about her. “I think that was the worst day of my life.”

Her cheek ached where she bit the inside of it, eyes turning glossy. Arwen thought of his time Under the Mountain, Feyre dying, the war. “I’m sure there’s been worse,” she croaked, unable to meet the eyes that were a mirror of hers.

“There were bad days,” he agreed. “Days that if I didn’t have a family and an entire court relying on me, I don’t know if I would be here. But I will never forgive myself for what I said to you that day. For not listening to you. The cost was your life. If I had known you would be waiting for me in death, waiting for me to bring you back, I would have taken a knife to my chest the minute after your heart stopped.”

Hot tears rolled down her face and Arwen struggled to withhold the quivering of her lungs. Using the hard part of her palm, she wiped roughly at her cheeks. “That would have been stupid, Rhysand,” she said, her voice scratchy. “We would have both been dead with no way back.”

“Semantics,” he whispered.

She let out a blubbering sound that might have become a laugh under other circumstances. Well aware of listening ears only a room over, Arwen forced her composure, rounding off her shoulders. Looking at her brother, she saw everything she had missed. Every part of him that she had wanted to see. Her arms rose from her sides and she rose to her toes.

Rhysand’s face shifted in those few seconds of movement. His shoulders seized up, his back lengthening. But as soon as her arms latched around his neck, she was enveloped within the stronghold of his arms. Arwen’s eyes clenched shut, tears beading between her lashes and her knees became weak, but he held her entire weight. Rhysand gripped her as though she might disappear in the very next second.

Then and there, Arwen decided that she would never tell her brother about what she had been through. How she was tethered to him. She wanted to forget it all, wanted to never have to think about anything during that time. She wanted her brother back and if that meant pretending, she would do it. For all their sakes.

They stayed in that embrace, neither interested in releasing. Cassian may have become her rock in these past weeks, but Rhysand had always been her pillar. Her best friend.

Soon she couldn’t hold herself together and released her cries. Arwen felt the seclusion around her, breaking her eyes apart only enough to find that he had winnowed them up to the privacy of the sunroom on the upper floor that looked over the garden. 

How long they stayed there—only the sun, the sky, and the Mother knew. But after some time, they moved onto the large chaise in front of the windowed wall. Despite being only a few hours after sunrise, Arwen already felt exhausted enough to fall back asleep.

At an itch on her nose, she used the end of his shoulder to cure it, but her nose twitched even more as her brain took in an unrecognisable scent. She had noticed it earlier but hadn’t realised it came from him.

Rhysand sighed and gave a small laugh. “Amren’s gift. A cologne. Feyre doesn’t like it.” Resorting back to her own hand, Arwen wiped her nose again. He didn’t smell like himself. Rhys laughed again. “Message received. Just don’t tell Amren.”

“Don’t need to warn me,” she muttered, but the thought had her glancing back over her shoulder towards the closed door. “Shouldn’t you be down there? It’s your birthday after all.”

“And I get to spend it how I desire. But—” he shuffled to the edge of the chaise— “will you wait here for a moment?”

He slid to his feet and left the sunroom with nothing but a soft ripple through the air in his wake. Pulling her feet underneath her legs, she looked back to the garden. This used to be her favourite spot to draw.

As promised, it was only mere moments before Rhysand returned, his footsteps near silent. He sat back down on the chaise, the hand closest to hers rolled into a fist. “I don’t know if you want this, but it’s not mine to decide what to do with.” Unfurling his hand, he revealed the silver chain and that that bluish-green iridescent light swirled across the inside of a delicate vial. “You can throw it in the Sidra if you want. I just wanted it to be by your hand.”

Her fingers ran over the vial before curling around it entirely. Arwen looked to Rhysand as she took it from his hand and pulled it close to her stomach. “You kept it?”

He nodded.

She studied it long and hard. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Does my opinion really matter?” he asked. She sent him a look that told him she wanted to hear it, nevertheless. She could decide after to listen to it or not. Rhys looked down at her hand. “I want you to wear it.” I want you to forgive me.

It was more than just an apology gift for dislocating her shoulder. It was a piece of her—a piece of her memory. The last Starfall that they truly shared with each other. Starfall had once meant everything to her. “You’re not supposed to be the one giving gifts on your birthday.”

He smiled and leant toward her, pressing a kiss to her hairline as his thumb stroked her far shoulder. “This is a gift for me.”

They stayed in that sunroom until Mor hunted them down on account of a lunch being served. Considering it would be rude for the guest of honour to be missing, they joined the rest of the Inner Circle downstairs. Arwen held the necklace in her fist.

As Arwen passed the main sitting room, her feet came to a stop at the sight of the back of a neatly pinned crown of golden hair. Nesta Archeron sat alone in front of the low fire, her head bowed. Arwen took a step in enough to see the book in her lap.

There were a lot of thoughts that appeared in her head at the appearance of Nesta—so many that there was little room left for her to sort through them one by one. So it came as a surprise to both Arwen and Nesta when she marched across the room towards the bookshelf adorning the far wall. Prying a well-read romance from the packed line, she turned back and held it out.

“I think you would like this.”

Nesta looked at it like Arwen was handing her garbage found in a sewer. Not even bothering with a response, the eldest Archeron angled herself away and returned her gaze to her book. Arwen’s chest seized, a panicked sense of loss claiming her. She truly had lost all confidence when it came to conversing, not at all like how she had once been.

Rhysand appeared at the room’s threshold, waiting silently. Arwen looked between her brother and Feyre’s icy sister. Her lips moved a few times before sound arrive. “It’s one of my favourites,” she said and placed it down on the lowered table near her legs.

‘Don’t take it too personally,’ Rhys said into her mind as she joined him in the hall. ‘Being my sister has probably kicked off a few of the likeability points since she despises me. And so has your relationship with Cassian.’ Arwen peered up at him as the tone dropped low even though there was no need to watch his volume inside her head. Rhys only looked down at her, neither accusing nor approving. ‘That is something we should talk about.’

“I’m not certain I understand what about,” she said aloud, fiddling with the necklace’s thin silver chain between her fingers. Cassian’s laugh sounded from the dining room where plate bottoms scraped against the mahogany of the table.

‘Why do you think Azriel has been keeping his distance?’

Mor appeared in the hall, her face taut with frustration. “Cauldron bite me, Rhysand. If I have to wait one more minute to eat—”

“We’re coming,” Rhysand cut in with a bright grin, shoving his hands back in his pockets as he sauntered around their cousin. Mor made a motion of strangling him behind his back, her fists still clenched at her sides as she marched behind him, Arwen only a step away.

Happily taking a seat between her brother and Cassian, she began inhaling her meal. Even Cassian seemed impressed by the vigour of her first bites. It wasn’t until a small piece of food lodged in the back of her throat that her knife and fork clattered against the ceramic of the plate. Arwen coughed into the crook of her elbow, still perfectly able to breathe, but faced with the irritation of the food stuck to the wall of her throat.

She waved away Cassian’s assisting hand at her back, pushing away from the table as the racking of her chest failed to cease. Huddling down onto herself, she faced away as her coughs grew raw, fighting for air between each one.

“Arwen.” Two hands came to her shoulders, their grasp almost painful. They were easy to recognise as Rhysand’s. He moved in closer, one hand moving to her chest, the other to the back of her neck as he pushed her up. It was hard to see him through her tear filled eyes, but Arwen discerned the wild panic in them. She tried to communicate that she wasn’t choking to death, but the scratch of her voice only agitated the sensation more. “Breathe it out,” he whispered and she realised he had been speaking longer than she had listened. “Please.”

Soon she was able to purge the irritation and suck in a proper lungful of air, slumping in her chair. Rhysand’s eyes hadn’t left her, examining every inch of her face. It was as she looked into them, as she felt the flicker of what he did from a ghost of their mind’s connection that she realised what was going through his head. How similar her coughs sounded to the ones that she died choking on. The expectation to see black blood drizzling down her nose.

Arwen briefly closed her eyes as she reset her chair, cheeks flaming as eyes were pinned on her. Motioning to her throat, she muttered, “A pea.”

Feyre snorted, immediately covering her mouth with her hand. Azriel, opposite Arwen, sent the High Lady a short but cutting look.

“Good gods, girl,” Amren sighed with a bored roll of her eyes. “Think about joining one of the theatre groups.”

Arwen bared a small smile as Cassian took her plate and used his fork to shovel the remainder of her peas onto his own plate. “It got caught in my throat,” she offered in pathetic explanation, reaching back for her meal only for Cassian to give a mirthless, incredulous laugh and begin removing the small cuts of carrots as well. “I’m not going to choke to death on carrot—give me that!” Arwen snatched it back, sour at the missing quarter of her meal. “For my next death, I plan on it being far nobler than by poison or peas.”

“Do not make jokes of that,” said Azriel, his voice like venom to her blood. “You are not the one who has to live with your death.”

“Good thing I do not jest,” she replied, ignoring the looks directed at her. “I despise that I let it happen to myself.”

Rhysand’s hand laid on her arm. “It was not your fault.”

She looked down at it. “I know I didn’t pour the poison in my own cup, Rhys. But I still knew something was amiss.” The look he gave her—it was broken. He didn’t want this talk, he didn’t want to remember. To feel the blame.

“You know,” whispered Mor. Arwen dragged her gaze away from her brother to her cousin. Mor’s grim face had grown pale. “You know who did this to you, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Cassian’s hand slammed against the table, shaking every plate, cup, and fork on it. Arwen stiffened in shock at the aggressive display. “Like hell it doesn’t!” He swivelled in the seat to face her, his face a painting of wrath. “I have lived without knowing for over two hundred years. Do you not think that isn’t agonising? That it hasn’t tormented me?” 

She kept her composure. “It doesn’t matter because they are dead. And from what I know, it was a horrible death.” Arwen couldn’t tell if those words placated the general, or only turned his fury into something colder and more hidden.

“Arwen.” Azriel’s voice called to her like a song she couldn’t resist. She looked across the table. He stared at her, palms eased onto the mahogany. “Please.”

Arwen blinked and looked to her brother. “I’m honestly disappointed you never figured it out.”

There wasn’t even a need for her to say the name. Realisation crossed his face like the cut from a dagger. “Ianthe.” He spat the name in a whisper like it was the filth it deserved. 

Arwen looked back towards Cassian. “You see? It doesn’t matter because she’s dead. Thanks to our High Lady and a certain death-god.” Feyre didn’t smile when Arwen’s gaze passed to her, giving only the tiniest nod to confirm the manner of the priestess’s death. “This is a horrible discussion for a birthday lunch.”

Despite her very clear hint, Azriel said, “Thesan’s servant died the same evening.” He frowned at his plate, hazel eyes darting at things she could not see. “She was the only one other than the cook to touch your food and drink. Rhysand searched the cook’s mind and found nothing. Searched Thesan’s. Ianthe was there on his invite and was accompanied by one of Thesan’s guards all morning. I found nothing.” And that haunted him—haunted him because it was his job to know.

“Ianthe didn’t touch my drink,” Arwen said. She fingered the base of the wine glass in front of her. “But she spoke with that servant. Convinced her that Rhys and I had—” she shook her head with an empty chuckle— “relations.” Feyre frowned in confusion. “That we were fucking.”

The High Lady paled. Rhysand glared at the space between himself and Arwen, the muscles in his face ticking. The rest of the table remained in dead silence.

“Ianthe gave her something to slip into my drink that the servant believed would help cure me.” Arwen scoffed and rolled her eyes. “I figured out that Ianthe had done something, but other things came up and I forgot about it until it was too late.”

Before she had even finished speaking, Rhysand’s chair scraped against the floor. Feyre leaned for him, but her hand only brushed his before he left the dining room completely. Arwen remained seated, part of her wanting to go after him, the other part knowing that he wanted space. And she didn’t particularly feel like someone in the position to offer comfort to another.

Feyre did soon leave the table, taking Rhysand’s unfinished plate and her heels clicked against the stairs. Arwen didn’t bother looking up to examine their faces—their reactions—nor did she feel like finishing her meal.

For the first time since her revival, Arwen let herself feel anger at her own death. Not the events after or with Rhys, but at what had happened to her. The naivety and assumptions that the servant made—the rumours that could have spread from it.

Cassian next stood from his chair. Arwen perked, breaking her long stare at the glass in front of her. Reaching for him, her fingers pinched the fabric of his pants near his hip. He sighed and smiled down at her, his lips flat and his eyes dull. Placing a hand at the nape of her neck, he whispered, “Come on,” and waited for her to stand with him.

His hand dropped to the low of her back as he guided her away. Arwen peeked over her shoulder. Azriel remained seated at the table, not even looking up as they left the dining room.