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Feyre paces and finds herself, embarrassingly enough, holding back tears. It seems that these days, when she isn't puking her guts up, she's either lost to grief and frustration and guilt, or completely, utterly numb. The only times she finds true bliss is when she and Tamlin make love. When she can lose herself in his expansive embrace, the warm, hard press of his body, the unimpeded movement that reminds her that they're alive, alive, alive . 

But even that can be overshadowed by the sleepless nights that follow. 

She needs to get out, put herself somewhere new that could spark a feeling other than dull dread. And Tamlin doesn't let her. Not without a watchful eye, not without so-called protection . It's almost laughable. Had she not proven herself? Had she not slayed horrors beyond imagination when she was a human? And yet he won't let her out of sight of people she barely knows. He won’t let her help, he won’t let her travel past the manor grounds. 

And she can't do anything about it. 

So she paces, and paces, and refuses to leave the small sitting room that she'd sequestered herself into. She can't go outside. She can't handle another inane, migraine-inducing task from Ianthe. She can't paint, not when the sight of it leaves her feeling so...empty. Or leaves her stomach clenching, visions of pleading eyes and bleeding chests swirling before her. 

Distantly, she can hear the main doors of the manor opening. 

It's strange, being able to hear and see and smell everything . Strange and overwhelming. Too much at once, all the time, with no end. Even in sleep she can never find reprieve, her nightmares practically more vivid than real life. 

She waits to see if he will come into her little hideaway, soothe her with apologetic touches and gentle words. 

It's for the best, he'll say. It's for your safety.

And she won't have the strength to say, but what about my happiness? 

But the scent that pricks at her heightened senses is not that of Tamlin. She merely looks at the door as the knock sounds on the other side. 

"Feyre?" Lucien says, voice unbearably soft, even through the muffle of wood. Part of her wants to shout at him to go away, to tell him that she isn't a child in need of consoling. A larger part of her is too exhausted and frustrated to even form proper words. So she goes to the door and opens it without speaking, letting Lucien in and sitting on the loveseat with a tired sigh. 

Lucien doesn't sit, but his stance was comfortable, open. His hands are in his pockets. The casual posture reminds Feyre of someone she'd rather forget, and she has to look away. 

"He's going to be out for a few more hours." Lucien says tentatively. "Maybe you could get outside? Have a walk in the gardens?" 

Feyre feels what has become a familiar ire overtake her, and she tries not to let her face sour. 

"I can't." She says staunchly. She could easily use the roses as an excuse. A color that slams her back into the past, into the dark, unforgiving hell that Amarantha had put her and so many others through. But the Manor gardens are sprawling, immeasurably extensive. There are plenty of areas that don't have a lick of red in them. 

But all are guaranteed to have watchmen. 

Lucien raises a brow. "Forgotten where they are after being holed up in here for so long?" He asks, the teasing tone just slightly forced. 

"Those guards will try to go with me." Feyre corrects, wrapping her arms around herself. 

Lucien shrugs. "I could go with you." 

Feyre...does not dislike the sound of it. But she still feels the burn of anger coloring her face, pricking at her eyes. 

"It doesn't matter." She breaks, turning away. Before she can stop them, a frantic flurry of words spill out of her. "Not—I mean, no matter what, he wants someone there with me. And you're my friend, so I appreciate the company, but when it's not you, it's just...all these people I don't know. And they don't know me , and it feels like they think they do." 

She doesn't face Lucien. She can practically feel his pity boring into the back of her head. 

"And you've spoken to him about this." He half-asks. 

Feyre presses her lips together, looking away. "Every time, he sort of...closes off. It's like a shield falls into place, and he says the same thing. 'It's for your own good, you don’t need to do anything more for the Court.'" She sighs. "But I have this new body now—I'm practically immortal now. I don't need his protection, and I don’t need to spend all my time resting or just doing nothing of importance."

She does turn to look at Lucien this time, to find his lips pulled into a thin line. 

"Feyre," he says seriously. "He couldn't protect you when it mattered most. And now, with this bargain, he's—he's scared, and he's angry with himself, and he's guilty. This just may be the only way he thinks he can make up for it. And the only way he can ensure that you don't get hurt." 

Underneath his words, she thinks she can detect an implication. The bargain, ever looming in the distance. Feyre has tried to pretend it doesn't exist, and she thinks Tamlin has done the same. 

But the tattoo scrawled across her left arm remains. So she knows that they can never truly forget. 

She understands. She really, really does. When she had been Under The Mountain, and she had seen Tamlin forced by Amarantha's hip everywhere she went, Feyre had known that she would do anything to get him back. And she did. 

But it was her choice to make, and Tamlin can't seem to shake the impression that he could have deterred her. Or deterred her butcher. 

Even Rhysand couldn't stop Amarantha from getting to Feyre, and he'd been allowed more power than the rest of them. 

"Then why doesn't he tell me that?" Feyre counters, clenching her arms harder. Lucien runs a hand through his long hair, blowing out an exasperated breath. She already can practically hear what he's going to say. He just can't. He doesn't know how. He's never been good at that sort of thing. 

Surprising her, however, Lucien asks, "Well, how do you approach the subject with him?" 

Feyre blinks, somewhat blindsided by the question. This, thus far, is the longest conversation she's had about the issues she and Tamlin have been having. Issues Tamlin would probably deny outright, if Lucien asked him. The unspoken nature of it had always just seemed like the easiest option to Feyre, anyway. For the both of them. She and Tamlin don't burden each other with their respective problems when they both already have enough to get through individually. It's just how it is—how it should be. 

"I…” Feyre blinks. “I don't know, I usually just ask him why. He always says the same things about needing me to be safe, or the Court not needing my help. And when I tell him that I can learn to protect myself, he tells me that he just can't risk it." 

So suddenly that Feyre almost chokes, a wave of undeniable sadness and hurt washes through her. 

With a voice that she wishes weren't feeble, she adds, "It's like he doesn't trust me anymore." 

Lucien purses his lips, and Feyre has to look away again. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Lucien move over to the wall of books that makes up one side of the sitting room. For a moment, the swish of his red hair looks a different shade, a different texture in the low Faelight. Feyre stifles a gasp and looks away entirely, focusing on the filigree of the wall opposite Lucien. 

"Have you ever thought about a less direct approach?" The Autumn Faerie's voice muses, curious and without conviction. 

"What?" Feyre asks dimly, risking a glance at Lucien. She finds him studying the texts on an eye-level shelf. When he spins to face her, there's an unidentifiable spark in his real eye. 

"A metaphor." He proclaims. 

Feyre feels a faint blush of embarrassment begin to crawl onto her face. She had not paid attention in her early language studies, her mother having given up on her after a few halfhearted, unenthusiastic tries, and it had nearly cost Lucien his life. 

"Saying one thing while meaning another." Lucien elaborates. He plucks one of the books off the shelf and flips through it, his metal eye whirring at an impressive speed. After landing on a page, a small, foxish smile appears on his lips. He clears his throat in an undeniably theatrical manner. "My heart is a river," he recites. "It flows ever freely towards the object of my soul. A torrent, a raging rush when I am far too removed from her incomparable presence. A serene, lazy crawl when she is in my arms, traveling to its destination without haste, but not without intent." 

Feyre blinks at him, a part of her almost feeling flustered. Lucien is her friend, and she would never really be attracted to him in the way she is Tamlin. But she's sure there's a whole host of Faeries out there who would grow weak in the knees if the youngest Vanserra read poetry to them. 

"Obviously," Lucien says, still holding the book half-open, "the author's heart isn't actually a river. It's a writing device that helps communicate a concept through a comparison. Usually between two entirely separate things. It's indirect." His tone becomes soft and sincere. "But, it can sometimes help get the message across more effectively." 

Feyre wets her bottom lip, her mind beginning to race. 

"You think I should ask him...in a metaphor?" 

Lucien shrugs plainly. "Tamlin's sort of a literary fellow. I think there's a chance that he would be more receptive to hearing you out if you made him think a little. When he gets an idea in his head, it can be hard for him to step back and examine it once it's taken root. But if you make him work for it, give him a different angle to unravel, he may start to realize that there are some holes in his logic." 

Feyre gnaws on her bottom lip for a moment, her mind suddenly feeling a little less cavernous and dull than it has in weeks. Or at least like it’s trying to be. She thinks of Lucien's recitation, wondering how she could possibly communicate her problems through such flowery, sentimental language. 

"I can take an hour before I have to check in with the Tradesmaster.” Lucien says. “We can look at more examples, if you'd like." 

Swallowing somewhat bashfully, Feyre nods, glancing over at the wall of books warily. 

"Who knows," Lucien says with a rakish grin. "Maybe by the end, you can read one to me." 

Feyre's eyes widen as she thinks of harsh, unforgiving words set above three levers . Heat—it's so hot, there's sweat in her eyes, already blurry as it is from the fear. It doesn’t matter. She wouldn't be able to read the riddle anyway.

"I can't—I couldn't—" She stammers, seeing the spikes descend upon the male before her. 

"Or maybe not." Lucien shrugs. Something close to pity enters his eye, but he doesn't let it affect his voice. Feyre is grateful for the courtesy. She barely knows how to react to the gratitude of the strangers she's supposedly saved. Pity, from Lucien of all Fae, would be a whole new kind of hurdle to get past. 

The emissary offers a raised brow, looking casual and disinterested. "You've got time to learn if you'd like. It took nearly a decade for one of my brothers to grow comfortable with reading and writing." 

Feyre feels her eyebrows raise of their own volition. Lucien rarely speaks of his family, and when she had seen their striking, handsomely cruel faces Under the Mountain, she could understand why. She wonders which one Lucien is talking about. Which set of foxish, brutal eyes had struggled just like she always has. 

"I'm not...opposed to the idea. Of looking at more metaphors, I mean." She confesses, rubbing her arm a little to ground herself. A small, conspiratorial smile finds its way on Lucien's face. 

"Alright then. Let's trick a High Lord." 

~~~~~~

It takes two weeks for Feyre to work up the nerve to talk to Tamlin. To present her game. That's what she's taken to thinking of it as—a mind game. Lucien liked calling it a trick, but Feyre suspects that he just wanted to keep her interest. Turn it into something less serious. 

As much as she appreciated the gesture, she doesn't quite like the idea of tricking Tamlin. But thinking of it as a game, something that will get his gears turning, makes her somewhat optimistic about the whole idea. 

But alongside that, she still feels undeniably nervous. 

"There's always a chance he'll respond the same way he always does." Lucien had warned. "But it can't hurt to try." 

And he was right. It won't hurt to try, but damn , Feyre wants to be successful. She had been less nervous fighting the Middengard Wyrm than about this. Scared out of her wits, angry beyond belief, sure. But not nervous. She had been fighting for Tamlin, then. 

Now, she has to fight for herself.

Nobody had warned her that it is an infinitely harder feat to overcome. 

"Tam?" She asks gently, rapping her knuckles on the doorjamb of his study. 

"Come in, my love." He says distantly, still hunched over his desk. When she approaches, she sees a grid of numbers before him, and a few basic arithmetic problems scribbled on a piece of scrap paper. 

He taps his ink pen a few times before sighing frustratedly. The ire melts away when he looks up at Feyre, and she has to stop her breath from hitching. 

Even months later, she's still sometimes surprised by the beautiful face that had been trapped underneath the mask. She swipes a thumb across one cheekbone, and can't help but feel a little spark of something at the way he nuzzles into her hand. 

And then she looks at the tattoo scrawled across it, and the feeling withers. She wonders if her bargainer is watching this moment on the other end, wherever he is. Feeling the warm, strong angle of Tamlin's jaw, thinking up some way to use Feyre's soft love against her. 

Loving softly is something that is new to her. She suspects it's something someone like Rhysand would try to kill. 

"What are you working on?" She asks, tearing her eyes from the swirling markings on her arm to look down at the problems once more. 

"Just," Tamlin sighs, throwing up a hand. "High Lord responsibilities." 

She finds a flicker of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Basic arithmetic is a High Lord responsibility?" She asks, almost managing to be wry. Tamlin snorts. 

"When you're trying to redistribute funds, yes." 

"Do you need...help?" She asks tentatively, unused to seeing Tamlin disgruntled by something so simple. 

"No." He says, the slightest edge of defensiveness to his voice. 

"It's—can I see your pen?" She asks anyway. 

"No, you surely didn’t come to do paperwork." Tamlin mumbles, a faint dusting of color high on his cheeks. Feyre gnaws at her bottom lip. Every time she's asked him, it's always been some variation of this. You don't have to worry about it, Feyre. This is mine to handle as High Lord. Do not let my work burden your mind. 

Sometimes, she was glad he waved her off. The days where she could barely slog her way through wedding planning, her new full time job. Other times she wished she could tell him that she felt out of place, not knowing the inner workings of the Court she supposedly belongs to. 

Her mind racing, she caves into an impulse—something she hasn't quite felt in a long time. But, she supposes that if she can concoct some indirect, illustrative story to communicate her needs, she can do this too. 

She leans down to kiss Tamlin, and plucks his ink pen out of his loosened hands at the same exact time. When she pulls away, she offers a victorious little smile. Tamlin's green eyes flash, and for a moment, Feyre can pretend that nothing has ever changed. She leans down towards the parchment.

"It'll be easier if you try it this way." She says, re-doing one of his scratched out problems the way she learned from her childhood tutor. 

Proficiency in math had always been something her father insisted upon, as a master merchant and tradesman, and she had never found herself in disagreement. Nesta had been good at it, Feyre remembers, but she hadn't particularly cared for it. Elain loathed it entirely. Feyre, however, had picked it up easier than all her other studies. Her father would stroke her head proudly, jest to the tutor that she was already a tradesman in the works. 

It meant, however, that he didn't notice when she was falling behind in her mother’s minimal literary lessons. A precursor, she supposes, to his stagnation and neglect following the loss of their fortune. 

Even after they had lost everything, after Feyre couldn't study under a tutor anymore, she had to continue her arithmetic when her father got bad about keeping the books, if it could even be called that. She would often be the one to keep track of expenses—and, after all, she was the one who got most of the money that funded their survival, anyway. 

Doing this isn't much different…just on a monumentally larger scale. 

"There." She taps the completed problem. Tamlin had been watching the scratch of her pen the entire time, completely with rapt attention. "Now you don't have to do so much work in your head." Feyre tells him. "It's a little more tedious, but it makes it a lot easier on your brain." 

Tamlin looks up at her, his eyes wide with wonder for a moment. 

"And this comes...naturally for you?" He asks, dipping his eyes down shyly. 

"Sure." Feyre shrugs. "Always has. Even though my studies stopped when..." She clears her throat, the crunch of her father's knee echoing in her ears. "It has always been straightforward to me." 

Tamlin looks like he's about to speak, but Feyre cuts him off, afraid that her window of time is closing. 

"I was wondering if we could talk." She rushes, her hand finding its way to Tamlin's uncovered face again. His broad arm wraps around her legs, and she feels a little less jittery. 

"I have time for a break." Tamlin says, looking up at her with unguarded eyes. "Is it serious?"

"No," Feyre says too quickly. "Well, in a way. But it's also a game.  

Tamlin raises a brow, and he almost seems like he's perking up. "A game?" 

She nods, sucking on her bottom lip for a moment. "It's a story game. I'm going to tell you something, but it has an entirely different meaning than what I'm talking about. You have to guess what it is. But you can't tell me," she warns, watching Tamlin's emerald eyes brighten with interest. "You have to respond using the same metaphor as me once you figure it out." 

A little grin starts to turn up the corners of Tamlin's plush lips, and for the second time within the past few minutes, Feyre feels the impulse to kiss him there. This time, with no ulterior motive. His small noise of gratified surprise almost seems to warm something inside her. 

"How does that sound?" She asks after pulling away. 

"Consider me interested." Tamlin replies broadly. "What if I don't get it?" 

"You don't have to get it right away." She tells him softly, running her tattooed hand through his long, thick hair. It's a little dull, Feyre notices distantly. Ironic, she thinks, that it was more lustrous when he had only half his power. 

"Alright." Tamlin says curiously. "Give me your story." 

Feyre clears her throat. She runs over the idea she had prepared, swallowing thickly before speaking. She has to stop her voice from quivering. 

"When we have sex, you don't really bite me anymore." 

Tamlin's lips part in surprise. And, if Feyre isn't mistaken, a faint scrawl of pink begins to spread across his cheeks. 

This, in a sense, really is just a metaphor. Tamlin does sometimes bite her, in a sensual, performative way. But never like that first time on Fire Night. Never enough to leave a mark. 

Or, perhaps it's just her fast Fae healing. She hopes not. Tamlin raises his eyebrows, and Feyre continues. "You used to do it all the time when we were alone together. Now, though, you only do it in public, when other people are watching." 

Tamlin's arched brows seem to inch impossibly higher, and Feyre holds up a hand to signal that she isn't done. 

"But it's not something I want other people to see. It's intimate, and it can be fun, or sexy, or...rough. But it's not something I need other people to be there for. It makes me feel invaded upon, and like I’m exposing something private to people that don't have any business seeing it. The fact that I don't know them makes me feel like I'm something just meant to be observed. When you bite me, I want it to be for myself, and those who I choose to share it with." 

After she finishes, Tamlin blinks at her. 

"That's it?"

"That's it." She concedes. He hums contemplatively. 

"I need a moment." He tells her, leaning an elbow on the desk and cupping his chin in one hand. Feyre waits, wondering what may be running through her love's head. Had he already figured it out? Is he running the words through his mind over and over, trying to parse out the meaning, like she had with Amarantha's riddle?

Suddenly, the idea seems far more unpleasant than before. Feyre feels her stomach turn, and an immeasurable tiredness begins to sink into her bones. 

Then, Tamlin opens his mouth to speak. 

"I don't bite you anymore," he says, his voice low and rumbling. "Because my teeth have gotten...sharper." He glances up at Feyre. She gives a little nod of encouragement. "My bite is...stronger now, and I have," he clears his throat, drawing his brows a little. His voice is jerky when he speaks again. "A lust for violence. But if there are people there, I know that I can't hurt you. Because they will see." 

Feyre nods lowly. "I understand." 

The world is a violent place. The woods and towns and cities are bound to have any amount of creatures lurking in the dark, waiting to snatch her up. She can think of one in particular that she knows has Tamlin on edge the most. Feyre takes a deep, stabilizing breath. 

"I understand, but I also am afraid that you don't bite me because you don't like my taste anymore. You...you're afraid that my skin is covered in poison." Tamlin draws his brows, and she elaborates, "You don't trust it." 

You don't trust me . 

Tamlin tips his head back. When he speaks, there's a slight rumble to his words. Like he's trying not to snarl. 

"I don't trust the solitude of a bedroom. I don't trust the dark." 

Feyre nods. "But there are ways to disarm you, no? When your teeth get too sharp? And I have had experience slaying beasts before." 

Tamlin swallows. 

"There may be concern if people think you are gathering the means to slay a beast, when all you want is for me to bite you." 

There are implications to your every action now that you are known far and wide. 

Feyre has a feeling that the self defense conversation will have to happen at a different time, perhaps wrapped in a different metaphor. 

"I don't mind if Lucien sees you bite me." She tries. "But he isn't usually available." 

Tamlin nods. 

"But when he is, you'd be okay with him being there? The whole time." 

It's not preferred, but it's better than anything Feyre had gotten before. She nods. 

"Just him, though. Not Ianthe, or the guards, or anyone else."  

Tamlin nods again, leaning forward. A part of Feyre begins to feel...different. In bloom, almost. 

“And there is no one else you'd be alright with watching?” 

The warm feeling in Feyre’s chest continues to unfurl. She's starting to think it may be something close to hope. 

She's not sure if it scares her, or excites her. Either way, it makes her feel, and that's more than she can say about much else these days. 

“Alis.” She says decidedly. Tamlin nods before chewing the inside of his cheek for a moment. 

"What if, say, they look away?" He asks. Feyre can hear the edge of feral apprehension he tries to conceal. She watches his pupils contract, as sharp as needle points. Despite it all, his voice is entirely even when he continues. "Could we have a signal? Something loud and unmistakable that would let me, specifically, know if I'm biting too hard." 

"Yes, I'd certainly be alright with that." Feyre agrees instantly. It's not only something she'd be alright with—she would prefer it. It was how Tamlin had saved her from the Naga, those months ago. 

It feels like a lifetime between now and then. She supposes, in a way, it is for her. 

Tamlin stares up into her eyes, seeming to search them for an answer. 

“And you really feel like you need this. You can't find pleasure without me…biting you?”

Feyre feels her long, pointed ears heat a little. 

“I feel like, without it, I am becoming something…different. Removed from myself, a—a shadow. But when you bite me, it lets me know I'm still a person. It allows me to settle into the bedroom without feeling like I am becoming one of its pieces of furniture.”

Not quite a prisoner. Not quite a living thing at all. 

Tamlin rears back a little, a flicker of hurt flashing across his face. It's gone in an instant, and Feyre wouldn't have noticed it if she hadn't been tracking his face without blinking. 

“All because I don't bite you?” He asks, voice carefully flat. 

She knows that what he means is, because of me? I make you feel like an installment in the home I keep you in? 

Feyre shakes her head. “Not everything has to do with this. But it is a major factor.” 

Tamlin wets his bottom lip, emerald eyes darting from her face to the floor, and then back again. 

"Can I have time to think about this?" 

This puts a slight damper on the blooming feeling that had begun to spread through Feyre, but she nods nonetheless. 

"You were quick to figure it out, anyway." She tells him dimly. He hums a little, and pulls her close, burying his face against her bodice-covered stomach. He presses a kiss there before tilting his head up, looking at her with imploring eyes. 

"Would you like to share a meal with me? I've been at this for hours now, and I could use something to eat." 

Feyre says yes, but the near-hope dies further. Eating has not been easy, lately. Especially not with how often she can't keep it down. Tamlin looks up at her, and once again she wishes she could see what he is thinking. 

But that thought reminds her of Rhysand, so she smothers it, and follows Tamlin to the dining room. 

~~~~~~

One morning, Tamlin tells Feyre he has a gift for her. On his desk lies a map. And beside it, a thin, stick-like object. He places his hand on the parchment first. 

"This map has areas with low activity circled. I have it magically tethered to one of my own, so when I update my copy with any changes, it shows up on yours." 

Feyre glances down at it. The map itself is clearly designed by a map-maker, but there are new, crude markings on it as well. Penciled in circles around certain areas, and little devilish faces in others. Feyre almost smiles. Tamlin picks up the small, tube-ish stick next. 

"This," he explains, "is called a Siren's Whistle. Whoever owns it can bind their magic to it so that only they can hear when it's used, no matter from how far. And the magic bond ensures that the owner can winnow to the whistle's location, even if they don't know where it is. Since I’m the one who first bound my magic, I technically own it. But you would have it—I could find you wherever you are." 

Feyre stares, dumbfounded, at the whistle clasped gingerly in Tamlin's massive hand. He holds it out to her.

"Want to try it?" 

She takes it, keeping a fragile hold on the small object. She turns it around a few times, and when Tamlin says, "Yes, that's right," she puts her mouth on the proper end and blows. 

No sound comes out. 

Tamlin, however, claps his hands over his ears and winces. 

"Can be heard from anywhere," he reminds her. "No need to do it that hard." 

Feyre feels a blush crawl onto her cheeks and holds the Siren’s Whistle back out to him. He shakes his head like a hound, blinking a little, and pushes the whistle back towards her. 

"Right now, it’s technically in a neutral state. If we key your magic into it, access can be denied to anyone else. That way no tricks or traps can be pulled if the whistle falls into the wrong hands." 

Feyre looks down at the innocuous whistle. 

"And Lucien and Alis can also...bind their magic to it?" She asks tentatively. A part of her is afraid—if she sets Tamlin off thinking about scenarios where she wouldn’t be able to use the whistle, he may bar her from going off Manor grounds entirely, chaperone or not. But he only hums in confirmation. Wetting her bottom lip, Feyre looks up with determination. 

"How do I do it?" 

She's never used magic before, beyond her body's natural functions. Fast healing. Stronger force. The ability to survive a long while without eating. 

"Well, you have to...dip into it, almost.” Tamlin says softly. “It helps if you have a visual to go off of. Whenever I have to imbue an object, I envision a physical well. But it can be whatever you want. A raging tide, a candle, a handful of stones. It may also help to close your eyes."

Feyre obliges, shutting her eyes and holding the whistle delicately with two hands. 

"Alright," Tamlin says in a low, soothing timbre. "Conjure the image in your head. Whether it be a flowing river, or a field of wheat, or anything in between." 

My heart is a river , Feyre remembers. So she imagines that. 

"Picture that you are gathering whatever source you've come up with. It doesn't need to be a lot. Just envision yourself dipping into it." 

Feyre pictures a small bucket in her hands. She dips it into the flowing river in her mind, and...nothing happens. She tells Tamlin as much. He chuckles a little, and she has to fend off a rush of embarrassed indignance. 

"It's okay. Just keep trying. Imagine that source exists within you, in your physical body." 

Feyre imagines the river flowing directly through her heart. 

Her heart, which is still beating. 

Unlike those of who she killed. The lives she stole, the strangers she snuffed out. Two entire existences, cut into nothing by a blade sinking through a heart. Like they were only animals, unfortunate enough to come face to face with her depthless hunger. 

"Breathe," Tamlin's voice says. Feyre lets out a gasp, sucking in a few sharp, ineffective breaths. "Hey," Tamlin says, cupping her jaw with his hand. "It's alright if you don't get it now." 

Feyre opens her eyes, her heart still racing. He thinks it's about the magic. 

She is content to let it stay that way. A far smaller burden for him to shoulder, on top of all the others.

"It's just so frustrating," she tells him. Not entirely a lie. She wishes she could have gained access to her magic without spiraling into a blood-soaked panic. 

"It's alright. We can try another time." 

"And until then, I can't go outside?" She blurts before she can stop herself. Tamlin's brows pinch. She doesn't say sorry. 

"You can still use the whistle without your magic keyed into it." He tells her slowly. Then, quieter, he adds,  "But I need…I need to know we've taken every possible precaution, Feyre. I need to know you're safe, I can't—"  

He chokes off and shakes his head a little, looking away. 

Feyre's breath hitches a little as she watches him. It's the most he's ever remotely alluded to the events they'd been through—the way it’s changed them. 

"I'd like to try again." She tells him resolutely. He looks a little surprised for a moment, and then unmistakably relieved that she's not asking him to speak more on it. 

"Alright." He tells her, a little stilted.

She takes the whistle and shuts her eyes again. This time, she imagines still waters, not settled anywhere near her heart. She imagines it in her abdomen instead, right below her ribs. 

"Remember to breathe." Tamlin tells her quietly. She offers him a small smile and listens, taking a few deep breaths. 

She imagines dipping her bucket in the placid pond of her power. 

Feyre gasps when she can feel it in her body. A small piece of her being carved out, but not in a painful way. 

"You're doing well, Feyre." Tamlin murmurs. "If you've got that drop of power, imagine pushing it into the object in your hands." 

Feyre takes that kernel of magic within her chest, and imagines it flowing down her arms, two little rivulets. She pushes it out of her fingertips and into the whistle, and distantly wonders if this is what it felt like for Tamlin and the other High Lords to push new life into her. The power, as minute as it is—an atomic speck in comparison to the drops the High Lords gave her—seems to pulse through her very veins. 

And just like that, it's gone. Her body settles back to normal. Mostly. She’s a bit out of breath, her heart beating a rapid, worked pace, and she can feel that sweat has beaded on the back of her neck. When she opens her eyes, Tamlin has a smile on his face. He starts forward for a moment, like he's going to pull her into an embrace, but seems to stop himself. She glances down at the whistle, which still looks utterly ordinary. 

"I did it?" Feyre asks dimly. 

"You did." Tamlin says, stepping forward a little and giving her a somewhat shy, commending kiss. "It was glowing. You were glowing, it was...I didn't expect that." 

Feyre raises her brows, mouth parting. "I was glowing?" 

Tamlin nods. "Like..." 

Suddenly, his smile withers away. The serious set to his face that has become default snuffs out the light in his eyes. 

"Like what?" Feyre pushes. 

Tamlin shakes his head and does a poor job of pretending he didn't just look so stricken. 

"You did wonderfully, Feyre." He tells her, bringing her forward to kiss her forehead. "Thank you," he mutters, "for agreeing on the precautions. I can't...I can't be okay with you going out alone yet. Not with so many threats still at large." 

She only nods as he pulls her into a loose hold, a warm embrace. 

Then, taking a gamble, she offers, "If there's ever anything you want to tell me, but you don't know how, we could," Feyre has to take a fortifying breath. "We could play another game." 

"Already have more stories to tell me?" Tamlin asks, clearly trying for a light tone. She can feel the edge to it, though. The apprehension about her unhappiness. 

"I'm not saying that." She says softly. "I'm just saying that you don't have to be...direct. If that's hard for you." 

Tamlin hums, but doesn't reply. Still, a part of Feyre thinks he may be considering her offer. 

As she tightens her arms around his waist, she finds herself smiling into his chest. 

~~~~~~

It's as if Feyre has been in a haze since she and Tamlin got back to the Spring Court. Days blurring together, time having little meaning. Just an endless flurry of planning things she knows nothing about with Ianthe, wishing she could be places she wasn't allowed . It had been similar Under the Mountain, as chilling as the comparison is. 

Now that she's talked to Tamlin about one issue, though, it's like she's finally able to see clearly again. 

The days still sort of meld and bend oddly, and she still finds herself awake at night and feeling spent during the day. But she's found herself thinking more sharply at times, too. 

And, just a couple weeks after Tamlin had given her the Siren’s Whistle, she's finally able to go beyond the Manor grounds. A rare pocket of time—just thirty minutes where she and Lucien both happen to be free, where Ianthe isn’t lurking with a book of fabric swatches or lace patterns or formal dinner recipes.

It's not necessarily ideal. Feyre's not able to do anything helpful or productive, not able to go all the way to the nearest village like she had once prior. But also, it's more freedom than she's felt in weeks. It's practically a miracle, with the way Tamlin's insistence that she stay inside had been getting. 

So she goes for a walk in the forest with Lucien, whistle hung by a cord around her neck, map safely tucked away in Lucien's satchel, and everything ends up...fine. No bargaining High Lords emerge from the shadows. No bogges or pucas or plain old wolves pick up their scent. She and Lucien make it back to the Manor without a scratch on them, mostly. The hem of Feyre's dress gets torn on a low root. It's something she wouldn't have noticed until much later if it had happened five, six weeks ago. Now, though, with that odd veil slightly lifted, she notices as she's walking back. 

Lucien picks up on it, raising a brow in a way that she can practically hear. 

"Tam'll get…bristly if he thinks you've gotten hurt." He comments plainly. 

Bristly is an optimistic way to put it, Feyre thinks. She doesn't reply, her stomach sinking a little. She doesn't want this to be taken away already. 

When she gets back to the Manor, she changes without a word, and hides the dress at the bottom of her laundry bin. 

~~~~~~

Feyre finds Tamlin exactly where he had been the last time she visited his study. Hunched over his desk, ink pen in hand. This time, though, it was at his call. She approaches the desk silently, peering at his work. More arithmetic. When she looks up, she feels her mind stall a little. Perched across the bridge of Tamlin's strong, straight nose is what is undeniably a pair of wire-rimmed, round-lensed reading glasses. 

“What,” Feyre says, fingering the arms of the glasses with both hands as delicately as possible. “Are these?” 

Tamlin offers a slight twist to the mouth, almost a smile. “There were no spectacles in the human lands?” He says wryly, though with a bit of a strange hush to his voice. As if he is afraid to bring up what Feyre once was, thus drawing attention to what she is now. She must take too long to answer, because Tamlin, no longer joking, says, “Wait, you did have reading glasses there, right?” 

She's able to conjure up a small smile of her own at this. “Yes, Tamlin, humans have reading glasses. I just…you weren't wearing them last time. And I suppose I assumed your—Faeries, I mean, wouldn't need them. ” 

Tamlin shrugs. “Most don't. I technically don't. But I don't want to have to shift my eyes every time I have to read something.” He says plainly. Then, taking the glasses off and looking down at them fondly, he murmurs, “And they remind me of my mother.” 

Feyre blinks. 

“Oh,” she says softly, feeling inadequate in her reply. Tamlin hasn't spoken much of his parents, other than what he told her of his family before…before. 

To distract herself from her inability to form a proper response, Feyre turns then towards Tamlin's paperwork. 

“More distributing funds?” She asks with a raised brow. Tamlin offers a slight chuckle, like she's told a joke. 

“Sort of.” 

“Need help again?” 

Tamlin looks like he's considering for a moment, but he shakes his head, placing his glasses on top of his papers. 

“I wanted to talk to you.” He says, standing swiftly. Sometimes, his size takes Feyre aback. Seeing him sitting at his desk, surrounded by thick books and mountains of parchment, it's easy to forget that he's practically a wall of muscle, towering over her by at least a head. Although, Feyre notices distantly, his clothes don't seem to sit the same as they used to. A little baggy, a little loose. Nonetheless, she observes him appraisingly and wishes, for a moment, that she didn't hate painting so much anymore. Wishes that every time she picks up a brush, the only faces she can imagine aren't those of Faeries she never learned the names of.

Tamlin holds out a hand. “If you'll join me?” 

Feyre takes it, practically sighing in relief. The late afternoon sun already slants through the windows, and the air is crisp with a breeze as they make their way outside. It's a welcome contrast to what the rest of Feyre's day has consisted of—reviewing the banquet hall and ballroom to start planning the decor for the wedding. It's not for a month and a half, and Ianthe has approached it with a flurry of matrimonial excitement that Feyre just can't seem to match. It leaves her insides feeling knotted, her tired brain overstuffed with the Priestess’ superfluous suggestions that do nothing to help the people of Spring. People who are still suffering in the wake of the past forty-nine years. 

Going outside, though, beyond the Manor borders, makes her feel settled again. They walk in silence, mostly, even though Tamlin had said he had wanted to talk. His large hand grasps her own—her right hand, unmarked and pristine. She laces their fingers together and forces herself not to look at her left one. 

Eventually they make it to a sprawling field, rolling with verdant hills as far as the eye can see. They face the setting sun, and when Feyre looks at Tamlin, he is illuminated like a god of the land, the true Lord of Nature. Gilded with gold, eyes keen and soft at the same time. It's almost like how he had looked once before, when he had blessed her eyes with the ability to see like a Faerie. Before she had become one. The only other time she had seen him without his glamour was as she was dying, as his curse was broken. When Amarantha had begged for her life. He hasn't shown that part of himself since. 

But in the liquid-fire light of the sunset, Feyre can almost pretend it's the same thing. 

“There's a forest in the Northeast of the Court,” Tamlin suddenly speaks, still looking ahead. She looks at him intently, watching the way his beautiful, soft mouth forms the words. “An undeniably gorgeous section of trees,” he tells her. “Resplendent. When the sun gets low like this, and it streams through the branches, I feel like I am truly…alive. Home.” 

On this, Tamlin turns to face Feyre. The sincerity in his eyes nearly steals the breath from her lungs, and she knows then that he's not talking about a forest. His gaze wanders back towards the open hills again, and Feyre follows it. Tamlin's voice carries on the breeze like the burble of a brook, the whoosh of new leaves brushing against their budding brethren. 

“But something has been plaguing the forest. It withstood a devastating storm recently, but since the weather has calmed, it still hasn't grown back to full health.” Tamlin swallows hard enough that Feyre can hear his throat click. His voice is a little raw, a little hushed, when he continues. “The branches have become bare, and I can't figure out what to do about it. I've spoken to a few experts—arborists, foresters—but they kept giving me treatments to administer to the bark of the trees. They said that it would cut down on the loss of leaves, but I knew it wouldn't treat the source of the problem. But I just can't figure out what would.”

Feyre holds her breath as Tamlin's metaphor turns over in her head. If she is this forest he speaks of, then that means the arborists and foresters…

He'd spoken to healers, medics, about her health. Her lack of eating, no doubt. Possibly even the vomiting. 

But Feyre can't even be sure that he's noticed that. 

“I love the nature of my Court more than anything,” Tamlin continues. “And seeing it sick or in pain hurts me in a way that little else does. I even spoke to a dryad in hopes that she would have more firsthand understanding of this sort of issue, but she said that sometimes, forests just need to grow and evolve on their own. That it's a strong stand of trees, and it will thrive once more in its own time.” 

Feyre’s heart drops a little at this. There's no other explanation—Tamlin is talking about Ianthe. He had discussed Feyre's health with Ianthe before her. A spark of hurt and frustration fizzles at her fingertips, in her chest, her throat. 

Feyre can't tell if Ianthe actually believes she's strong, or if she had simply said that to dissuade Tamlin's worries. Feyre really doesn't even know if Ianthe actually said it at all. It could be something that Tamlin twisted or added on his own, perhaps even subconsciously. 

But, as revolted as Feyre is at the thought of Tamlin going to Ianthe for advice about her, she can't help but understand. Ianthe is his closest female friend, and though he's over five hundred years old, he and Feyre's relationship is somewhat…unprecedented. She can't fault him for seeking advice. 

Even if she wishes he would have just talked to her first. 

He's talking to her now, though, she supposes. And it's not in the reverent, consoling way that every stranger that passes seems to approach her with. They always either look at her like she's a god, or a doll made of the most fragile porcelain. 

Tamlin isn't looking at her though. And he's not speaking like she's something about to break, or something to be worshiped. Feyre is starting to understand why it's easier for him to take an indirect route of communication. 

“It’s…I’m unused to not knowing what to do in a situation like this.” Tamlin murmurs. “I should be able to…to fix things, I'm supposed to know how to keep every part of my Court healthy and safe at all times. But that forest isn't getting its leaves back on its own, and I can't force it to grow, but I can't stand to see it so bare.” Then, so quiet she almost doesn't hear it, he adds, “Sometimes I feel like if I just pretend nothing is wrong, everything will work out on its own. Like the dryad said.” 

Feyre lets the cool afternoon breeze wash over her for a moment. She takes Tamlin's hand, having fallen out of her grasp during his story, but doesn't turn to look at him. 

“Maybe this isn't something you can fix.” She says. 

Tamlin’s voice is strained and cracked. “I can't—” 

“But,” Feyre cuts in before he can finish. “I also don't think this is something you can just leave alone.” Feyre chews the inside of her cheek, searching for words that Tamlin won't run from. “I think maybe you just have to be there. You're the High Lord of Spring. The very land bends to your whims, no? Perhaps your presence alone is all the forest needs to begin to return to health.” 

Silence stretches between them, long enough that Feyre has to glance at Tamlin to make sure he heard. She knows he did, though—he could probably hear the crunch of boots from across the entire field with his heightened senses. 

“It's silly, almost,” he whispers, still watching the disc of molten light that sinks over the horizon. “That the worst is supposedly over with, and yet I am still so…undone.” 

Tamlin turns his head away entirely at this, like he can't bear to look at Feyre. Like he can't bear for her to see him. She squeezes his hand in what she hopes is consolation. 

He takes a breath and says, “It's like, when I close my eyes, I can pretend that everything is alright.”

Feyre’s jaw grinds in contemplation. She runs her tongue along her molars, her teeth. All new, like the rest of her changed body. They do feel different—healthier, harder, stronger. 

It helps ground her as she works up the courage to say, “But you can’t spend the rest of your life in the dark.” 

Tamlin turns to face her, his eyebrows twitching with what could be anger. Feyre swallows. An image of a thunderstorm, unbidden, billows up in her mind. The skies darkening in the far distance, the air hazy with torrential rain. 

If only she could bring herself to paint it one day. 

She bites her lip, willing her vocal chords into action. 

“Eventually, you'll just try to drag everyone in there with you. And you won't be alone in your blindness anymore, but the people around you will start to forget what it's like to see.” 

Tamlin does snarl at this a little, his jewel-like eyes hardening. 

“You think me to be that selfish?” 

Feyre feels her chest squeeze a little. Not fear, necessarily, but certainly some type of nervousness. 

She thinks of Alis, seeking refuge and receiving it without question, asking for work to pay back the High Lord’s kindness. She thinks of the Faerie that had died holding her hand, Tamlin cradling his body as he carried him off to be laid to rest in a Court he'd never even lived in. She remembers what he’d told her about the War—how he would have fought for the humans’ freedom, even if it meant fighting his own Court’s legions. She thinks of her sisters and father, pulled out of destitution while Amarantha's noose was tightening on Tamlin more and more by the minute. 

And she thinks of herself, falling in love with Tamlin—Tamlin falling in love with her —despite it all. Despite what she’d done. 

Despite who she is. 

And Tamlin, over time, loving her because of that. 

“I think you're one of the most selfless people I've ever known.” Feyre replies honestly. “But that doesn't mean you're…you can’t be scared.” 

Tamlin shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. His next words come choked and strained in a way that Feyre isn't used to hearing. 

“You know, there was a time when I thought I had run out of people to be afraid of losing.” He confesses, heaving a breath after, as if he’s coming up for air. 

Feyre's heart pangs at the admission, the backs of her eyes suddenly burning. It reminds her of something a different man—male—had said to her once, in the same lighting, opposite time. Early morning. Everything I love has always had a tendency to be taken from me.

A fleeting moment of vulnerability from the otherwise roguish, conniving, deadly High Lord. Feyre isn’t sure Tamlin would love the comparison, so she doesn’t voice it, but a part of her can’t help but think that the two males may have more in common than they think. They had been friends once, Rhysand had said during that daunting encounter in the dining room. Feyre hadn’t been able to imagine it at the time. Now, though, she thinks she may understand. 

Tamlin swallows thickly, his free hand coming up to rub at his chest absentmindedly. 

“And now, I don't know if it’ll ever go away.” He whispers, voice ragged. “The fear.” 

Feyre’s breath hitches, and in that moment, she doesn’t know what to do—what to say. She knows how he feels. It seems, at least once every day, she reckons with a similar feeling. Not about fear, but about horror. 

Will she ever overcome the horror of what she’d done? The sickening guilt that poisons her veins every single time their faces resurface in her mind?

Even now, weeks and weeks later, she can’t voice it. 

So she turns to face Tamlin fully, and drags him down into a hard, secure kiss. She pushes everything she can into it: I understand, and I’m sorry, and I am here for you. And, underscoring it all, I’ll try. 

For him, she’d try. She’d do anything. She has done anything. She has killed for him. She has died for him. Now, she supposes, she has to start learning how to live for him. 

And maybe…maybe, once she gets the hang of it, she can one day look in the mirror and see someone worth living for there, too. 

~~~~~~

The tears stream hot and insistent as Feyre places the tip of the dagger against the innocent Faerie’s chest. So hot that they're practically boiling, leaving tracks of reddened, blistering skin in their wake down her cheeks. 

I'm sorry. She tries to say. No sound comes out, and the Faerie only looks at her. Looks right into her eyes with irises so blue that she can practically fall into them. He doesn't say anything either, not this time. He only looks. It's worse than the pleas, the desperate begging for his life. He is resigned to his fate. He had expected this from her. 

I'm sorry! She hollers, to no avail. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you need to believe me! I'm sorry !

But the words aren’t spoken. And before she can stop herself, her arm is moving, and the dagger plunges deep into the Faerie’s ever-waiting chest. 

Blood pours out, spraying onto Feyre, reaching all the way up to her face until she can't differentiate the slick slide of blood from the hot flow of tears. It seems to be endless as the young Faerie crumples into a dead heap of corpse. The red fluid keeps pumping out, far too much to come from one person. 

By the time Feyre reaches the second Faerie, it is up to her ankles. She has to concentrate not to slip and join the body on the floor. 

The second Faerie, with her fair brown hair and her bronze, shining eyes, is not silent. She speaks—but not the prayer that Feyre has since memorized, turning it over in her head again and again whenever sleep evades her. 

No, this time, in the same even, steady tone, the Faerie says, “Murder me, beast. Creature of blood, slayer of innocents.” 

A broken sob tears from Feyre's lips, but that goes as unheard as anything else she’d tried to say. 

“Take my life for your own, Queen of Greed.” The Faerie murmurs with that steady, soft beat. “Save yourself, and rip me from the world. I am nothing but a thread in need of snipping. I am nothing but a doll for you to discard. I am nothing, and you make it so. Because of you,” over and over she repeats, “I am nothing. I am nothing. I am nothing.” 

It begins to echo in Feyre's mind, an icy maelstrom trapped in her skull. The Faerie’s face doesn't change at all, remaining as even and stoic as ever, but the chant gets louder until it is utterly deafening. 

“ I AM NOTHING. I AM NOTHING. I AM NOTHING.” 

Feyre sobs over the cacophony, her burning tears splashing down into the blood that bathes her feet. It tears through her, so loud that she is sure her human eardrums are about to burst. 

And, just as the incessant sound reaches a crescendo, Feyre stabs the knife through the second Faerie’s heart. 

The silence that follows is more ear-splitting than the chant. The blood of this Faerie rushes even faster than the previous, filling and filling and filling until Feyre has to slosh through it, soaked to the knees. If she doesn't put a stop to it soon, she is going to drown. But she doesn't know how to stop it. If she kills another, she might drown anyway. If she gives up, then the two Faeries would have died in vain. 

She's solely banking on chance alone. The chance that this third life will free him—will free everyone. 

The black sack over his head has already been removed by the time Feyre gets to him. 

Tamlin stares up at her through his golden mask with wide, green eyes. Eyes that are filled with a shocking, striking sort of terror. One that Feyre has never seen on him before. 

He is afraid of her. 

It's okay. She tries to tell him. But still, she can't speak. She thinks the words anyway as she positions the knifepoint in the center of his chest. It's going to be okay. Your heart is made of stone. You will survive this. 

Tamlin shakes his head, never taking his fear-widened eyes from her own. Feyre nods helplessly, fresh tears pricking at her eyes. 

I can't let them die in vain. 

With that final thought, she pushes the dagger into his chest—past the layers of skin, the knots of sinewy tendons, pushing through his breastbone with a sickening series of cracks, pushing and pushing and awaiting that hard stop. 

It never comes. She plunges the dagger deeper, searching for the rock that she knows had replaced her love’s heart. But all she is met with is the give of muscle, the squelch of organ flesh. 

Tamlin's heart is not made of stone. Feyre can hear it when it slows to a stop. He collapses, and does not move again. 

A scream like no other tears out of Feyre, and finally, her voice works. The wail pierces the air, so ragged and resonant that it doesn't even sound human. 

She is still screaming when the blood reaches her mouth.

~~~~~~

Feyre's entire body clenches and tightens as she heaves, pulled so taught that it's painful. Her stomach is empty by now. It has to be. But her insides still manage to find substances for her to cough up, and bile burns her throat time and time again as she vomits. Distantly, she recognizes that she is sobbing. But the sound barely makes it through to her ears, as sensitive as they now are. They feel like they've been filled with water. Or blood. The only thing she can really hear is a distant echo, a single sentence. 

I am nothing. 

She had been doing good. She hadn't had a nightmare in two nights. 

Or rather, she hadn't had to vomit in two nights. That didn't mean that she hadn't been haunted in her sleep. But it was merely a flighty, ghastly slew of images that had surfaced the two nights before. The Attor, Amarantha, the Naga, the Faeries that had cornered her at Calanmai. Hands on her body that did not belong to a male she wanted. They had plagued her dreams the past two moons, but it was never enough to make her race to the washroom. 

This time, though, was a hell like no other. A punishment constructed perfectly for her crimes. And yet, she did not become blameless in her atonement. It hadn't made her feel any closer to forgiveness. 

How can she ask for it, when those whose forgiveness she seeks are dead by her hand? 

As she coughs and sputters, something cuts through the thick, white noise in her ears, the sound of her own crying. Quiet at first, barely there, until suddenly, it's practically on top of her. 

“—eyre. Feyre . Feyre, it's me. I'm going to pull your hair back.” 

She can't choke out anything but a sob as deft fingers peel her hair from where it’s stuck to her sweat. When she gags again, nothing comes up. Her body clenches with it nonetheless, and she dry heaves into the toilet bowl until she can't breathe. 

A large, warm hand presses against the center of her back. She focuses on that feeling, that sureness, until she can get air in her lungs again. When she finally does, she collapses backwards with a shaky sob. Someone catches her from behind, and the same hands that had pulled back her hair wraps comfortingly around her chest. 

The voice that had cut through the fog in her ears is whispering something. Over and over again, a low hymn. 

“You're safe, you're alright, you're safe.” 

A familiar, male voice, rough with tiredness, strained with concern. Feyre’s eyes fly open with a gasp, and she turns around to come face to face with Tamlin. Unmasked, awake. Alive. 

She breathes the word as her eyes land on the center of his bare chest, unmarred. 

“I'm here.” Tamlin assures her, looking at her with pleading, wide eyes. 

He's alive. But the others…

Feyre scrambles out of his grasp, kicking away until there's a few floor tiles separating them. 

“Don't touch me,” she gasps wildly, “don't—I’m—” 

Tamlin holds up his hands in surrender, keeping them where she can see them. 

“Alright, it's okay. I won't touch you, Feyre. I'm not him, I'm not that…that monster.”

Feyre feels her brows draw, her face scrunch up as fresh tears welled in her eyes. Rhys. Rhysand, that’s who Tamlin is talking about. 

“ I’m the monster.” She gasps, barely able to suck breath into her burning lungs. “I’m the monster, I’m the—I’m a murderer .” 

Tamlin looks at her for a moment, completely silent, his skin a little more pallid than usual. Then, with a great sigh, he slumps back. He’d risen to his knees at some point, probably when she had backed away, and when he sits back, his bare feet kick out in front of him somewhat dejectedly. He pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezed shut, before looking away entirely. Feyre feels her bottom lip tremble.

Then, in a voice different from what she’s used to hearing, low and raw, Tamlin says, “I know what it’s like.” 

Feyre sniffs, wiping her eyes in futility. Tamlin looks at her then. In his own eyes, two emeralds gleaming in the low Faelight, there is no pity. Or fear, or apathy, or even concern anymore. It’s just understanding. 

“I know what it’s like,” he repeats, “to feel like everything you touch meets a violent end.” 

Feyre blinks, the image of a bleeding rabbit flashing in her mind. 

“Does it ever stop?” She asks feebly, a part of her feeling terribly naive for even asking. Tamlin shrugs.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it comes back.” 

Feyre’s voice crackles and frays when she asks, “What do you do about it?” 

Tamlin seems to bite the inside of his cheek for a moment, averting his eyes. 

“I’m still figuring that out myself.” He says. Feyre deflates further. “But,” Tamlin offers with a less heavy voice, “it helps to remember all the people who rely on me. All the lives that are dependent on my command of the Court. If…if they need me to live, then how could I be a harbinger of death?”

That had been her reasoning too, once. When she had a father and two sisters to take care of, to keep alive. But now, they could survive on their own with the wealth that Tamlin had gifted them following Feyre’s payment. A life for a life. 

And now, there were two lives she’d taken for the sake of one. 

“I didn’t even know their names.” She whispered, the sound coming out broken and distant. She could feel the air still between her and Tamlin, an oppressive silence falling over them. 

Through it, the High Lord says lowly, “Would that help? Knowing their names? Would that stop…this from happening?” 

Feyre takes a few shallow, gasping breaths, thinking of the male’s desperate cries in real life. His deafening silence in the nightmare. She imagines putting a name to that face, those depthless blue eyes. Would it change anything? Would it make things worse?

“I don’t know.” She says honestly. Then, her attention snapping to Tamlin, “You know their names?”

Tamlin doesn’t look away when he says, “Yes. I gave my regards on behalf of the Court to their families within the week after you freed us.”

Feyre feels her throat constrict for a moment, her breath coming fast. “You—you what?”

She watches Tamlin’s throat bob as he swallows. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should’ve asked, I should have—” 

Feyre blinks rapidly, trying her best to clear her head as she imagines approaching the families of the people she killed. “No, no, it’s…I wouldn’t have been able to face them.”

She’s still unable to face them. What would she say? How could she ever possibly make up for what she’d stolen from them? A daughter, a son, a wife, a brother. With lives and names and so, so much innocence. 

“You saved us all, Feyre.” Tamlin whispers, still not having moved from his spot across the bathroom floor. He suddenly feels miles away. 

“That doesn’t take away what I did.” She breathes, her eyes filling with hot tears once more. “That doesn’t bring them back.”

Tamlin averts his eyes as he murmurs, “Their sacrifice was not in vain. And you have been long forgiven.” 

A cracked sob tears out of Feyre's chest, her breaths coming even faster. Tamlin's gaze snaps to her, and he's nearly on top of her in an instant. Cupping her face, wiping her tears, looking worried again. 

“Feyre,” he whispers desperately. “Feyre tell me how I can—” 

He swallows, smoothing back her hair as she trembles. Her heart simultaneously races and feels like it's turning to stone.

“Tell me.” She gasps out, locking eyes with Tamlin. Sharp green, the color of rolling hills, the color of spring. The color of life. Feyre’s words run together as she tries to catch her breath. “Tell me, tell me their names.” 

Tamlin runs his hands over her hair again, pursing his lips. Then, in one easy motion, he hooks his arms underneath her and rises to his feet. 

“Tamlin,” Feyre pleads as he begins to walk out of the bathroom. She clutches onto him, scrabbling at his bare, warm skin. Her next words are lost, morphing into incoherent sobs as he makes his way to the bed. He sets her down gently, so unbearably gently, and flicks his hand. Something appears in it, but Feyre can barely make it out through her tears. 

She realizes, as he begins to drag it across her forehead, that it's a damp washcloth. 

Then, in a soft, low voice, Tamlin says, “The male’s name was Silvanus Kalderon.” 

Feyre hiccups. “Spell it.” She manages weakly. 

Tamlin pauses the drag of his washcloth for a moment before obliging. Feyre mouths each letter after him. 

After a moment, Tamlin continues, “He was forty-six years old, and he was from a town in the Winter Court that sits right on the border of Summer.” 

Feyre thinks of his pale, smooth skin, the way his voice cracked when he pled for his life. Silvanus.

Tamlin gently swipes the washcloth underneath her eyes next, working with even, measured precision. “The female was Bronwyn Laith.” He spells the name again without Feyre having to ask. Tamlin keeps his voice as even as the movements of the washcloth. “She was from here, from Spring. A town about a half-day’s journey from here. She was two hundred and twenty-one years old.” 

Tamlin doesn't stop the gentle caress of his washcloth. Feyre takes a shuddery breath, mouthing Bronwyn on the exhale. 

She had lived just a half day’s journey from the Manor. She wasn't able to see it—her town, her home—for forty-nine years. And never again after that. 

“And the families…” Feyre murmurs, exhaustion sinking through her body, her tired bones. 

“There were countless innocent lives lost during Amarantha's reign.” Tamlin says quietly. Even with the softness of his tone, though, there's a striking edge to the way he says the wretched Fae Queen’s name. Feyre fights not to shiver at the sound of it. “There have been vigils organized in each town in addition to all the private funerals that have been held. I just—I thought you would be overwhelmed, and—”

“No.” Feyre sniffs. “You're right, I wouldn't have…with the way people treat me now, with how recently I had…” 

Killed them. 

“They don't hold you accountable.” Tamlin says softly, setting the washcloth on the side table and joining her on the bed. He stretches out beside her, a strong, heavy, warm presence. “They know, Feyre. They were there, they saw what she was capable of, they saw the lengths she was willing to go. You were never the monster.” 

His voice cracks a little on that as he gently runs a hand across Feyre’s hair, her shoulder. Her eyes slip shut, though the pain tightening in her chest doesn't let up. 

“I butchered them.” She whispers. “Like they were animals.” 

“No,” Tamlin argues without raising his voice. “You were as trapped as they were. You had nowhere to turn, there was nothing else you could have done. There was nothing any of us could have done.” He continues to caress her arm with his knuckles, but his voice takes a more fortified quality. Less hushed. “She took our powers, drank it down like it was nothing but wine to fill her cup. Even a male that can break into minds, that can normally dissolve an entire being with the wave of a hand, couldn't cut through her defenses. And you were a human girl.” 

Feyre feels her face tense as she fights off another bout of tears. Tamlin traces his thumb across the curves of her cheeks, the flat of her forehead. 

Then, with a voice softer than the velvet of a licorice leaf, he murmurs, “When I first became High Lord, I couldn’t control my power.” 

Feyre's eyes snap open, and she turns to meet Tamlin’s verdant gaze. He only strokes her face some more, her body, until her lids lower halfway again. 

He tells her, “It was like my body was too small to contain everything, and I still had this storm of grief within me from my mother’s…from her death.” 

At this, Feyre is able to will herself into action. She tentatively reaches out the hand closest to Tamlin, gently pressing against the first part of his body it can reach—his hip. 

She listens to the breath he takes before continuing. “I thought it would be good enough to simply spar through it, but I didn’t realize how out of control I would be. I made a bad call, and I severely hurt my sparring partner. One of my friends. I had trained with him along the border in my father’s war band, we…we practically grew up together. But once I became High Lord, and he my sentry, it became clear that we were not the same. And just like that, suddenly the male I had learned alongside, sparred with for decades at that point, was on the training floor, and he wasn’t waking up.”

Despite the grim words, Tamlin’s voice has a quality to it that Feyre isn’t used to. Something hushed, almost melodic. As if he is reciting a poem—a real one, not just suggestive rhymes to make Feyre blush. But the verses like those she and Lucien had perused to find metaphors and analogies, works composed of the heart by people who had thought a lot about how they wanted it to sound. Even though Tamlin’s words don’t rhyme, or don’t have the same structure that Lucien had explained during their research, there is still something undeniably poetic about it. Soothing.

“He lived.” Tamlin tells her, and she lets go of a small held breath. “But he wasn’t able to walk after that. For a long, long time.” 

Feyre steadily inhales and exhales through it as he tells his story, letting the soft words seep into her like a soothing balm. 

“I felt awful. Unforgivable. I could barely even face him. I would take my lunch alone, work on paperwork for hours on end to avoid seeing him. But he took me aside one day, and I was so… scared. I thought he was going to leave, or worse. But instead, he gave me the earful I needed in order to look at him again.”

Feyre hums a little on her exhale—almost a sigh—as she thinks about all the times she’s ducked her head from the mirror, from Lucien, from Tamlin. It’s not something she would have expected Tamlin to relate to. Not because she thinks he has never done any wrong, but because he always looks at her in a way that’s so…all-encompassing. Even after what she had done. 

“He told me,” Tamlin continues, “that I was going to have to buckle down and deal with the fact that I was a very powerful person with the ability to live for a very long time. There would always be the chance that I would hurt the people around me. Even innocent ones. And that was a barbed knowledge that I had to come to terms with very quickly.”

Feyre, eyes now closed, feels her brows draw together, the hand still pressed against Tamlin curling a little. 

She lets Tamlin keep talking, though, fortifying herself for whatever his next words may be. 

His voice barely has any sound to it when he speaks next. A mere whisper, as if she is already asleep, and he is afraid to wake her. 

“I have done things that I regret to this day.” He confesses. 

Between his words, a sudden glimmer of a memory billows up in Feyre’s mind. 

Before her family had ended up in the position that it did, Feyre had once gone with her father to a small pond. Not too deep in the woods—she still had a chilling story Nesta had told her when she refused to go to sleep of a Faerie drowning one of their cousins in a river. So she didn’t go in, only skirting the edges of the little pond, waiting for her father while he went on a “hunt” with a few investors. She had begged and pleaded the entire morning not to be left home with her mother, who wouldn’t even notice her absence, until he had finally relented.

While there, mostly just drawing in the dirt and dipping her toes in the water, she saw a boy, not much younger than her, begin to drown. 

He’d been pulled out by a big, burly man, presumably his father, and she had watched without blinking as he pressed on his little son’s chest. Then, he had leaned down and sort of blew into the child’s mouth, as if he could breathe new life into his unconscious body. The boy was up and walking within ten minutes after his father’s successful revival. 

She would go back there time and time again later on, once she wasn’t confined by a working father, learning a little more about how to stay afloat each time. And not end up flat on her back with water in her lungs.

Feyre is reminded of the moment as Tamlin speaks. The way his voice is so shadowed, so soft, almost makes Feyre feel like he’s breathing the words into her. Like it’s his way of keeping her afloat.

“But for my friend,” Tamlin whispers, “for the people that believe in me, I had to keep going. I have to believe that I can be better, and that I can change.”

For a fleeting second, he almost sounds doubtful. Feyre squeezes a little where her hand rests against his hip.

“But you can’t change the past.” She murmurs, the darkness behind her eyelids seeming to press in on her like a stormcloud.

“No,” Tamlin agrees. “You can’t.”

The words don’t sound like they should be comforting. But with the way Tamlin’s syllables flit off his tongue in that quiet, melodious way, they almost are. It’s enough for Feyre to be able to keep her eyes closed, to not glance down at her new, lean stomach and wonder if it will start churning again. Tamlin pulls closer, draping an arm across her elongated abdomen. 

Close enough to hear the beat of his heart as the dark night stretches on.

~~~~~

It’s the strangest thing when Feyre blinks awake the next day, feeling almost…rested. The sun streams through her windows like a warm, golden shroud of light, warming every surface. She blinks the sleep from her eyes and turns, only to find the other side of her bed empty, save for a small piece of paper. 

On it, is a little graphite drawing, almost childish in composition. Similar to the map Tamlin had given her, it depicts simple symbols—a little drawing of Tamlin, only indicated by comically long hair and a little sash, presumably his bandolier, over his box-ish body. He’s depicted walking towards a rectangle—the door, she supposes—and next to it is another little figure with long hair laying down, little curved lines representing closed eyes.

Underneath is an inscription. 

Feyre can read the individual letters, and some of the easy words on their own with a little effort. 

“Cal–” she reads aloud, realizing soon that it seems to say Called away underneath the little Tamlin drawing. There’s more words in the second part, though, and through the bleariness of sleep, Feyre can’t parse all of them out without the backs of her eyes starting to ache. She gets up slowly, stretching her stiff limbs, and pads over to the window. Above the sprawling, everlasting Spring, the sun is already high in the sky. 

She’s slept in. A lot. A spike of panic shoots through her as an image of a disappointed, passive aggressive Ianthe comes to mind. But she remembers the note Tamlin had left, the little drawing of her sleeping. There were a lot of words under there…some may have explained if Ianthe is aware of Feyre’s morning off. She flits back over to the note, rubbing her eyes a little before trying to read it again. 

You is the first word, she can tell that much. The next, however, has double letters—something she’s always struggled with. After having to close and open her eyes a few times, she finally parses out needed the. Then, after less contemplation, sleep. 

The next word is what can only be Ianthe’s name. She only needs to read the first few letters to understand that. 

“Ianthe,” she reads out loud, “k…kn—” Another enemy of hers. Silent letters. She reads each letter in the word out loud individually, finally getting, “Knows. Ianthe knows.” 

A small smile tugs at her lips even though the sentence isn’t technically over. The hard part seems to be finished, though, the rest of the sentence only consisting of shorter words. 

“ Iathne knows you have the day off.” 

Feyre’s heart seems to almost soar as the words set in—along with the fact that she actually got through them. A smile settles naturally on her face as she studies the little drawings. She imagines Tamlin hunched over the small piece of parchment, spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, as he scribbled down little pictographs for her to understand. 

It’s not long before Alis arrives in her room, a knowing look settling across her face when she greets Feyre. 

“Restful night?” She asks with a glimmer in her glassy, dark eyes. 

Feyre shrugs, allowing her in and settling before the vanity like clockwork. “Something like that.” 

Technically, it hadn't been restful at all for a good long while. She was sure it would have been past the second or third hour by the time she actually fell back to sleep

But what a dreamless, satisfying sleep it was. 

Alis helps her fashion her hair into a simple braid down the center of her back, and by the time it’s done, Feyre almost feels something akin to energy. 

And on top of that, she can’t deny the hunger that’s settled into the pit of her stomach. It’s not the same as it used to be. When winters were cold and unforgiving, the days she could only scrape the bitter inner bark from surrounding trees when hunting was scarce. Since Under the Mountain, Feyre has mostly felt the opposite of hunger. Like if she forced anything down her throat, it would only come up later ‘til her teeth began to ache.

This is neither of those. She isn’t starving—probably would never feel close to the way she had felt those years in that frigid, unforgiving cottage—but she is hungry, and this time, in a way that doesn’t make her feel close to vomiting. 

She supposes she got it all out of her system the night before.

Wanting to wave the memory from her mind as thoroughly as possible, she turns to Alis and offers a grateful smile.

“I suppose it would be more like lunch for you, but would you like to have breakfast with me?” Feyre asks the bark-skinned Faerie, who only blinks a few times before offering a closed-mouth smile and a raised brow.

“No plans for your free time today, my lady?” Alis asks in her brusque, mature accent. Feyre couldn’t stop herself from wrinkling her nose.

“I preferred it when you would call me girl .”

If Feyre isn’t mistaken, Alis almost seems to hold in a laugh for a moment. “My lunch period isn’t for another quarter of an hour, but I suppose I can make an exception.” She agrees with a reasonable tilt to her head. 

When the food arrives, Alis seems to think it preposterous to eat in Feyre’s bed. 

“Fine. Be civilized, eat at the vanity. I refuse.” Feyre mutters, already taking a bite of her eggs. She glances up with a grin made purely of what she hopes is good-natured foolery. 

Alis takes the seat, one of her brows—made up of what almost looks like fine twigs—raising. She shrugs, though, offering, “I suppose as the Savior of Prythian, you can eat wherever you like.” The bite in Feyre’s mouth sours, and she has to look away. She’s barely able to get the mouthful down as the title echoes in her ears. “Or perhaps that wild soul of yours has always fanned your flame of defiance.”

Feyre is able to look at Alis again, her own brows screwing together. “Defiance?” She all but spits, though unoffended. 

Alis nods, taking a prim bite of her own meal. After swallowing, she plainly elaborates, “You wouldn't have been able to set snares in your bedroom, or capture a Suriel, or venture into the depths of Hell itself for your love without it.” Feyre has to look away again, but this time, the food in her mouth at least doesn’t seem to turn rancid. In a voice that Feyre is grateful isn’t soft, Alis adds, “You have a fire within you, Feyre. Don’t let a dead witch douse that.”

Feyre hums in thought as she takes her next bite of late breakfast. 

For some reason, something about Alis’ words fortifies her enough to go out for a walk on her own. It takes a lot to dodge the sentries that are still a permanent fixture on the property, though a bit more sparse than before. But she does it eventually, whistle and map with her. 

Once she does make it out, it almost seems too easy. It takes her fifteen minutes to calm her heart as she convinces herself that there's no one there to take her away, no one there to lock her up. 

But she knows, very keenly, that there could be. She glares down at the cat eye etched into the palm of her left hand, and begins to plan once more. 

~~~~~

It's almost like clockwork at this point. 

Feyre goes to Tamlin's study when she knows he's there. 

It's days after her secret, solitary walk in the forest, and there has been no indication that he or anyone else caught wind of it. 

Her new metaphor has been crafted, and she hopes this one is a little less…bold than the first. Something that will make Tamlin really think, really understand . Something that he can relate to, perhaps. 

This time, once she garners his full attention with a kiss and a few strokes of his hair, plucking the reading glasses from his face and settling them on the desk, she doesn't hesitate to present her game. 

“The North Wind blows cold and fierce.” she tells him softly. Almost as if she were actually just relaying the weather. 

She's seated practically in his lap, and his eyes flicker from where they stare up at her. Not quite with reverence, which Tamlin can occasionally seem to overflow with. Not quite concern either, yet. Just a muted, cautious curiosity. 

“It may take days to reach us.” She continues. “Weeks, months. That sort of weather is tricky that way. But it is a storm that will reach us, no matter what. And not even you can shield me entirely from nature’s will.” 

Tamlin’s eyelids flutter a little, and he looks away. Feyre strokes his hair back once more. 

“I want to be able to keep myself warm if the need arises.” She whispers down to him, watching his pointed ears twitch a little. Tamlin looks back up at her with a hard, harsh look in his eyes. 

“We can find a way to stop it. Break the—stop the storm.” 

Feyre shakes her head, something torn between anger and sadness threatening to well up within her. 

“We can't. We simply can't, Tam. We've encountered the North Wind before, and we know that it doesn't blow in any direction other than that which it pleases. It doesn't play by rules, it's not…” 

She thinks of High Lord Rhysand, of all he'd done. The good, the bad. Both of which he'd exemplified at times, though not necessarily in equal measure. 

“It's a hard thing to predict. And there's always a chance that it will turn to a calm breeze by the time it gets here, or that you could be there to shield me from the cold, if temporarily. But I want to be prepared for anything.” 

Tamlin only stares up at her, then, and she can see the muscles in his jaw working. Can practically hear his teeth grinding. His hands don't leave the spots they've taken on her waist. 

“The borders still need my attention.” He tells her, voice low, gruff. “I'm not sure when I would have time to help you…find more cloaks to ward against the cold.” 

Against Feyre's will, a smile begins to tug at her lips. Just the fact that he didn't try to break out of the game is somewhat of a comfort, in a way. 

“And up ‘til now,” he cuts in before she can respond, “I was under the impression that you wouldn't want to go cloak shopping with anyone else.” 

Feyre hums, working her fingers into his hair at the base of his skull, scratching her nails there a little. Those, like everything else about her, are different too. They had gradually become healthier while she was still a human living under Tamlin’s care, but now, with her High Fae body, they almost seem nearly indestructible. It’s something she thinks she could actually get used to, if nothing else. 

“It doesn’t have to be for long. Less than an hour every day, every other. But if you really can’t look for winter clothes with me, I suppose I could…make an exception. I wouldn’t want to burden you further by—”

“It’s not a burden.” Tamlin interrupts. “If it’s something that would make you feel safe, it could never be a burden. It’s just—there’s the issue of time , and I simply don’t—”

Feyre cuts him off with a soft, “Tam.” He looks up at her, somewhat wide-eyed, lips slightly parted. Feyre pushes the pad of her thumb lightly against the pillow of his bottom lip, pink and soft. “I said I could make an exception.”

Tamlin’s eyes get a dazed sort of look. Not like his mind is whiting out, thoughts dispersing, but just the opposite. Like the cogs are turning, ideas rapidly forming one after another. 

“I may have something in mind.” He tells her quietly. “But you would have to be up before dawn tomorrow.”

Feyre swallows to prevent a toothy grin from splitting her face. “Done.” She tells him. Just like that.

If she had approached him directly— I want to train —there certainly would have been  more push-back. If word spreads that the savior is training to fight, the Court may feel unsafe.

But she knows now that, above all, he wants her to feel safe. And now that he’s admitted it out loud, she thinks it’s sinking in for him, too.

For the first time since Feyre clawed her way out of death’s grasp, she finds herself unable to wait for dawn for a reason other than running from nightmares. 

~~~~~

Feyre awakens with Tamlin, her body feeling recharged and sated. She’d had strange dreams after their coupling the night before, full of flashing green eyes, violet-blue ones, writhing bodies and splashes of blood. But nothing tangible enough that she had to get up and vomit. She was still tired, but she’s never felt weaker than she had been when she was human. She had shattered enough doors just from closing them enough times to prove that. 

She is rifling through her dresses when Tamlin’s voice, guttural from sleep, rumbles, “What are you doing, Feyre?”

She pauses a moment, turning just enough to see him in her peripheral vision. “Can’t go wherever it is we’re going in just my underthings, can I?”

A slightly strangled noise sounds from Tamlin’s throat, and Feyre turns fully.

It’s wonderful, delicious, to be able to see his blush everywhere it touches. The bridge of his nose, the high points of his cheeks. 

“Well, you certainly can’t go in a dress, either.” He tells her, his eyes tracing the length of her body appraisingly. The look leaves a burst of heat in its wake, as if her body were flushing from neck to thigh. 

“What shall I wear, then?” She asks, not bothering to mask a spark of flirtatiousness in her tone.

Tamlin clears his throat, but doesn’t look away from her loosely clothed body—a slip of a silken robe, a pair of simple, cotton underwear. He flicks his wrist, and in his hand appears a stack of folded clothes. He hands them towards her, but doesn’t get up, watching with an undeniable glint of hunger in his eyes as she approaches. 

When she actually shakes out the clothes, though, she’s surprised to find a simple tunic and pair of trousers. And a brazier different from the ones she’s gotten used to—stiffly wired, often decorated with lace laid out in intricate patterns. This, though, was anything but decorative. Simple, lightly padded, unremarkable. It looks far more comfortable than her others.

“Training clothes.” Tamlin tells her. “No sense in learning to fend off the North Wind in a dress.”

Feyre has to suppress her surprise as she looks up at him. “You don’t mind?” She breathes, the trousers hanging limply in her hands. Tamlin’s brows twitch together.

“Why would I mind?” He asks plainly. Feyre shakes her head a little.

“It wont…send a message?” She asks, somewhat incredulous of this reaction from Tamlin.

He sighs a little, leaning back as she tentatively steps into the soft, brown pants, cinched at the ankles. 

“I figured the cover of darkness before sunrise would be enough to assuage any apprehension about you getting into fighting gear. But then again, you’ve carried your knife on you every day now. It feels foolish to think that people wouldn’t expect you to be some kind of warrior after what you’d done to save Prythian.” 

Feyre cinches that very knife to her side, strapped into the belt that Lucien had given her to match it. Without missing a beat, she replies, “I did it to save you.”

Tamlin stands then, flicking his wrist again and summoning clothes of his own. “Me. And my people. Don’t try to deny that you included them in your bargaining with Am…with her .”

Feyre purses her lips before turning to look in the mirror. She doesn’t look how she used to when wearing her simple day clothes. Her face has a sharpness to it, her ears pointed and long. Despite the familiar outerwear, she’s still Fae underneath. 

Behind her, Tamlin murmurs, “Do you want to be a warrior?”

“I just want to help.” Feyre murmurs. “I want to be able to support and protect the people I call my own.”

Tamlin hums thoughtfully, though not without an edge to the sound. “The villages are rebuilding,” he says lowly, “but it’s…hard. A really, really hard thing to move on from. But just your presence in their Court is enough motivation to re-grow.”

Feyre whirls on him. “I don’t want to be a source of motivation .” She tells him, earning a stricken look in response. “I could help with the books.” She says, grasping at straws. “The finances, the distributions and balances, whatever it is you’re always working on in the study.” 

Tamlin looks away with a sigh. “You have enough on your plate as it is.” He dismisses.

“Nothing that is helping the Court, nothing that is helping you —”

“You are helping me, Feyre. The wedding coming up, the way you’ve taken your position in stride—it’s been more than I could ask of you.”

Feyre blinks, wordless with surprise. In all her time planning with Ianthe, frustration brewing within her, she had never thought that it was anything but something Tamlin had thrust upon her to get her to stop trying to get out. Stop trying to visit the villages, put herself to meaningful work. 

Your position. Before she can ask what, exactly, that position is, Tamlin turns to her. He is dressed with his bandolier and baldric strapped in an X over his chest, the two straps of leather not quite meeting right in the middle. They cross a little to the left, right over his heart. A long sword hangs at his side from the scabbard attached to the lowest point of the baldric. 

“We’re going to be late.” He says flatly. 

Without another word, he strides out the bedroom door, and Feyre can’t do anything but follow. 

After a quiet, shared breakfast, it’s not a long walk to their destination. About fifteen minutes, the spot not even separate from the manor grounds. It’s in an area tucked behind Tamlin’s mother’s rose garden, which Feyre has to avert her eyes from, the darkness of early morning turning the red of the roses into a deep, muddy crimson. It’s just as bad, if not worse. By day, the roses look more like Amarantha’s garish lip paint. In the dark, though, the color gets closer to real blood than ever. 

They make their way through a few different gates, then through a small stand of trees before reaching a clearing. There are already Faeries milling about, some in full sentry uniforms, like the ones Feyre had finally been relieved of after her first big conversation with Tamlin. Others are in training clothes similar to hers. 

And everywhere, there is gear and weaponry. An archery range with targets ranging from no bigger than an appetizer plate to nearly as tall as Feyre. Multiple separate rings, large enough for at least forty Fae each to mill about easily, though none occupy more than two. In one of the rings, indicated by short walls made of simple wooden boards, two men—males—clang against each other with swords not unlike the one hanging at Tamlin’s side. 

“Swordplay,” Tamlin nods towards that ring, then one of the empty ones, “grappling,” and finally, the last ring, also unoccupied, “magic wielding.”

There are wooden racks with an impressive range of weapons, some metal, some wooden. A small hutch a little far from the action, presumably an outhouse. 

“This is a fraction of the training resources Spring possesses.” Tamlin tells her dimly as he watches his soldiers make their way around the area in tight, cohesive groups. Everyone seems to be teeming with energy and focus, though whenever close to him, they bow their heads in deference. “The largest camps are near the Wall, where there’s the most free woodland. The naval forces train closer to the coast.”

Feyre nods, forcing herself not to have wide eyes and an open mouth as she takes in the buzzing action around her. The sky is becoming hazy with the distant tease of morning light, but the Fae around her are unphased—as if they’d already been awake for hours. 

She pretends to be unaffected as she follows Tamlin through the training ground. They make their way through the area until they come to an empty area, similar to the fighting rings, but not as explicitly sectioned off. A group of soldiers in armor a little different from the usual sentries settle into a line at the sight of Tamlin. Each as still as a statue, their backs ramrod straight, one hand held behind it. The other hand of the soldiers is held over their heart in a fist. 

“At ease,” Tamlin tells them. The hand across their chest joins the one behind their back, all perfectly in sync, and their demeanor seems to slightly loosen. Barely. 

“Lieutenant Ashwanta.” Tamlin says gruffly, and the second to last soldier in the line steps forward sharply. 

Tamlin doesn’t even need to give a command beyond a jerk of the head for the other soldiers to retreat, returning to their own training regimens in the open area. Tamlin approaches the soldier with Feyre, and she comes face to face with the tall…female. 

She has an angular face, with cheekbones that could cut glass. Full, round lips, and angular eyes, with tanned, well-toned skin. As regal as any other High Fae, even in the fighting clothes she wears. 

“Lieutenant Taro Ashwanta,” Tamlin says, gesturing towards her before turning to Feyre, “Feyre Archeron.”

Feyre, unsure what to do, nods once and holds out a hand. Taro takes it without breaking eye contact and says in a husky, dark voice, “It’s an honor.”

Despite the praising words, the tone is flat and somewhat dull. It’s the only thing that stops Feyre’s stomach from turning completely. 

“The honor is mine,” she replies honestly. 

“Taro is a prospective recruit for the position of General of my armies.” Tamlin says brusquely, still looking at the lieutenant, even as he speaks to Feyre. A spark of hot, molten jealousy strikes in the pit of her stomach, and she has to force herself not to show it on her face as she listens to him explain. “Though I technically uphold the highest command over all military operations in my Court, I still need a leader capable of directing them when I am unable. I’ve been running trials of my remaining high ranking officers since we were freed from Amarantha.”

“What happened to your last General?” Feyre asks, tearing her focus from the lethally beautiful female before her. She makes a note to express her gratitude for Tamlin not saying “ since you freed us” later. Perhaps more privately. 

Tamlin’s mouth twitches a little, as if he can’t choose whether to frown or smile. “You bested him in the winter woods almost a year ago.”

Feyre swallows, guilt sinking through her stomach, making the meager contents of her light breakfast stir. 

Andras had been Tamlin’s General. That was why he’d been so opposed to him going out, searching for a cure—or rather, a key. A woman that hated Faeries so much she would kill one in cold blood. Someone to fall in love with Tamlin. 

The High Lord continues without dwelling. “Taro is currently excelling in her position, and I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to test her a little further. From now on, when I am unable, she will be training you in basic hand-to-hand self defense, and eventually, dagger and sword training. I will set aside as much time as possible to monitor your progress, over the coming weeks. Taro will take an hour out of her training time every day to instruct you.”

Feyre looks back up at the imposing female, a slight tremor of nervousness running through her. She can’t get a gauge on what’s going through Taro’s head. Does she hate Feyre for what she did to Andras? Does she revere her for what she’d done Under the Mountain? 

Feyre doesn’t care to examine the part of her that would prefer the first option over the praise and groveling she gets from other members of the Court. 

“I trust that you two will make good progress.” Tamlin says in that commanding, militaristic way of his that Feyre hadn’t really encountered since her initial arrival in Spring. Taro nods silently, looking at him once before focusing back on Feyre. The words, she realizes, are more for the lieutenant’s benefit than her own. 

Tamlin has crafted a way for her to train without inspiring fear in citizens who may get word. She is a temporary project for this possible future General. No reason to be scared that the supposed Savior of Prythian is gearing up for some sort of fight. 

Though with the way the soldiers around her are working, she wouldn’t be surprised if there was something they’re preparing for. Something imminent. Perhaps they always are. They need to rebuild as much as the villages, she realizes dimly. 

Before leaving, Tamlin softens a little, the Army Commander persona seeming to fall away for a moment. He brushes his large, warm hands down her arms, leaning down to kiss the corner of her mouth gently. 

“I love you.” He tells her quietly, the corner of his own mouth ticking up a little. 

“I love you too.” She replies, and for a moment, she feels herself getting lost in the endlessly shifting greens of his eyes. 

And then he’s off, gathering a few soldiers with him with a few silent commands. Feyre watches until he disappears past the trees they had emerged from. 

When she turns back, Taro is watching her, an unidentifiable glimmer in her dark eyes. She jerks her head towards a section of ground not occupied by soldiers warming up with exercises that look nothing short of greuling. Feyre nods to one of them. 

“Are we going to be doing that?” She asks apprehensively. 

“Eventually.” Taro says, her mouth turning up ever so slightly. “But you have to work to get there. And I won’t be going easy on you just because you saved us all.”

Feyre nods, placing her hands on her hips with an expelled breath. “I wouldn’t want you to.” She replies, not bothering to keep her voice soft. Taro’s eyes flash in a way that makes Feyre think she’ll regret those words. 

But all the lieutenant says in her raspy, low voice is, “I like the way you think.” Feyre doesn’t stop herself from smiling at that. Taro grins back, the slightest uptick to the corners of her mouth. “Just know that you won’t be smiling like a showman by the end of the hour.”

“Let’s get to it then.” Feyre says, not without sharpness. “Perhaps you’ll find it takes a lot to break me.”

~~~~~~

By the time their hour is up, Feyre is sweating possibly more than she’s ever sweat before.

And they hadn’t even gotten to the combat aspect of it all.

“If you want to defend yourself, your body is going to need to have power behind it.” Taro had told her. “Throwing punches, pushing off assailants, even crushing someone’s toes under your feet—it all needs to be backed by something.”

“I feel stronger than I’ve ever been.” Feyre told her honestly, copying her stretches as she lengthened her body into elegant, strong positions. 

“And yet that is still a fraction of the strength of someone who’s been training for, say, five centuries.”

Feyre had thought of Tamlin’s rippling body then. She thought about trying to fend him off, if he were someone else. 

She wouldn’t stand a chance.

She had been thoroughly bested by Taro’s regimen, despite the simplicity of it. Her breaths are sawing in and out of her lungs, her throat practically burning with each inhale. Her back, underarms, the backs of her knees, underneath her breasts— everywhere is slick with sweat. All she wants to do is flop onto her back right there in the middle of the exercise space on the bare, dirty ground. 

But she’s a little afraid of what Taro will do to her if she dares. Taro, who barely looks affected, and seems quite proud that she did, in fact, successfully break the Savior of Prythian after a fairly basic hour of training. Feyre can’t deny that she’s amused by the look.

So, well-worked and smiling, her body already sore in some places, Feyre returns to the manor. And no one tries to go with her. 

She’s still out of breath by the time she gets to her room. Alis informs her that there’s a second breakfast waiting in the dining room, but Feyre ignores it in favor of a hot, relaxing bath. 

It’s there that she gathers the confidence to turn away Ianthe. If the Priestess tries to approach her, she’ll deny her. She usually does all the work anyway, and as much as Tamlin seems to appreciate Feyre working with her, she doesn’t want to.

She has another plan in mind. 

~~~~~~

In the end, she doesn’t need to turn away Ianthe. In her plain training clothes that she puts back on after the bath, along with a hairstyle that she isn’t usually recognized by, she’s able to slip to the study without garnering much attention from any of the Fae she passes, none of whom are the High Priestess. Not Tamlin’s personal study, but the expansive, overwhelmingly massive one that she had first tried to learn to read in.

There’s parchment and graphite pencils on the table that she had last read at. As if it had never been cleared away from when she’d last copied down the words she’d struggled with the most. 

Feyre swallows, forcing her stomach not to twist or heave as she takes her seat. She has to take a few deep breaths before she even touches pencil to paper, and even more when she actually brings herself to do so. 

It takes her an entire fifteen minutes to get just one of the names down. Silvanus Kalderon.

It takes a little less long for Bronwyn Laith. 

And Feyre doesn’t vomit, or start sobbing, even though with every letter her heart seems to twist more. She forces herself to keep going, though, rewriting the names again and again until her shaky, ugly writing becomes more legible, comes more naturally. Until it takes less than five minutes for her to write each full name. 

In between, she finds herself sketching little drawings in the margins of her parchment. The act is so distracted that she doesn’t even fully realize what she’s drawing until it’s complete. A set of eyes, filled with fear and hate and sadness. Silvanus Kalderon.

After a few last tries at writing their names, those eyes staring her down in accusation, she does have to push away, scrambling from the study before she can vomit on the mahogany table. 

~~~~~~

It becomes a part of her routine for the week, then. Every time she trains with Taro, she practices writing their names afterwards, and after that, if Tamlin’s available and her stomach isn’t too dead set on turning inside out, she indulges in a second breakfast. 

The parchment is always where she leaves it the next time, untouched. She’s able to last longer each session, with less stomach twisting. Occasionally, she tries to write other words. I’m sorry, which doesn’t look right for a long time. She has to pick through books, flipping through until she finds the word, to figure out that she was missing an r. 

She tries other names, too. Her own, her sisters’. Tamlin’s. The alphabet, which she copies down after finally relenting and bringing herself to use one of the children’s books for help.

But she always circles back to Bronwyn and Silvanus.

~~~~~~

It is only a little over a week after she had begun training with Taro that Tamlin has time to review her progress. It’s not on the training grounds where she goes every morning, but in a natural clearing in the woods, the ground covered with a soft bed of grass. 

“Alright.” Tamlin says simply. “Show me what you got.”

Feyre smiles a little, and moves into the exercises she and Taro have been practicing. The stretches and warm ups, the simple things that Tamlin can’t really see. The tightening and untightening of her abdomen, the recentering of her stance, her balance. The regulation of her breathing. She does it all, until she is as sweaty as she gets with Taro.

And all the while, Tamlin is not a silent observer, which surprises Feyre. Occasionally, he’ll step in and place a hand on her back, helping her adjust her position, or he’ll remind her of aspects of certain movements that she had forgotten to focus on. 

“You don’t want your body parts to be so isolated in their movements.” He tells her, assuming the same stance as her. He executes the series of poses—strong, flexible movements meant to center her, force herself to find stability and strength no matter what position she ends up in—as elegantly as Taro usually does it. 

Feyre copies him, and he gives her an appraising nod, his eyes glimmering. Possibly at the fact that he told her to do something, and she actually did it. 

There had been a time where she had refused to do anything he asked of her. And if he eventually got her to agree, she would do it not without reluctance.

There was still a part of her that is like that, she knows. The part that longs to be free of the Manor when he tells her it’s the only place she’s safe, the part that wants to pull up a seat at Tamlin’s desk and go over Courtly business like it’s something she understands completely, whether he likes it or not.

But this is different, because he’s telling her to do something that she had asked for in the first place. 

And when she gets it right, and he looks at her that way…she can’t deny that it feels good. 

Even once she’s done relaying what she’s learned over the past few days, Tamlin continues training her as Taro had. He introduces new exercises. Not as flowing as Taro, but a little more intensive, focused on developing quickness, precision, while also building muscle. It’s still nothing close to defense—Feyre couldn’t fend off Rhys or anyone else by doing rapid sit-ups or moving her arms in specific ways based on practically gibberish commands. 

But it does make her feel worked out, and she supposes that’s all she can ask for for now. 

It’s on a break from this training that Tamlin asks, “So, how are you liking Lieutenant Ashwanta?”

Feyre holds up a hand, receiving a chuckle as she chugs from the skin of water Tamlin had brought. 

“Good.” She says breathlessly, wiping her mouth and regulating her respiration. “I like her. More than Ianthe.” 

It takes a few seconds of pregnant silence for Feyre to realize what she’s said. She whips to look at Tamlin, wide-eyed with apology. 

“I didn’t mean—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like—”

Tamlin’s guarded, blank look only cracks from a brow raising. “You don’t like Ianthe?” He asks, his voice not betraying any emotion. 

“No, I—I just meant—” Feyre snaps her mouth shut, worry beginning to swallow her whole. 

Then, completely at ease, Tamlin chuckles a little. “I know she can be…a lot, sometimes.” He concedes. “Whereas Taro only ever speaks when she has something to say. It’s why she’s up for the position of General, and not Ianthe. Among other reasons.”

A breath whooshes out of Feyre, a half-laugh at the thought of Ianthe anywhere near the training grounds for any reason other than finding an attractive man to flirt with. Feyre relaxes a little where she sits beside Tamlin on an impossibly massive, moss-covered log. 

“I really do like Taro. A lot. She’s tough, but she’s kind.” After a moment of thinking, Feyre grumbles, somewhat bluntly, “She doesn’t get distracted pursuing males that aren’t interested in her.”

Tamlin laughs a little, looking sidelong at Feyre as he stretches out his long legs in front of him. “What’s that mean?” He asks, not sounding anything but genuinely curious. 

Feyre shrugs, not bothering to look over at him as she studies the way the leaves flutter in the cool Spring breeze. “You know how Ianthe is with Lucien.”

Something in the air changes, then. It becomes still. Feyre can tell because, all at once, the greenery before her stops shifting and flicking. Feyre looks over at Tamlin to find any mirth drained from his face. It is set with complete seriousness, unblinking and severe. Devastatingly handsome, undeniably fierce. 

“Feyre,” he says lowly, practically growling. “What are you saying?”

Suddenly more uncomfortable than before, Feyre feels her body lock up. Her spine straightens, her fists clench to stop from trembling. Despite it, she forces her voice to be reasonable and soft, casual. 

It had been something she’d only just begun to notice, what with her fogginess slowly clearing up day by day. Ianthe would talk about Lucien a lot, but more than that, she would act differently when he was around. 

“You know, always finding ways to talk to him, get him alone at big events.” Feyre explains. “Touch him on the elbow or shoulder. He never really responds the way she wants him to, but I think that just makes her more determined. Not that there’s anything wrong with her setting her sights on someone. But she’s my friend, and at big events, it sort of feels like I’m being abandoned in favor of a…certain sort of pursuit.” 

Feyre has relaxed again, Tamlin’s intent silence encouraging each word more than the last. 

His body, however, has tensed where he sits. His own fists are clenched now, his brow set harshly above his sharp eyes. His shoulders are raised, and he almost seems like he’s bristling, on the verge of turning into a beast. 

But what is most eerie about the sight is his silence, his stillness. 

Then, in that even, scarily measured tone, he says, “She touches Lucien when he doesn’t want her to?” 

Feyre takes a moment to stare before she offers, “It doesn’t really seem like he does.” 

At that, Tamlin stands, so abrupt that the breath is torn from Feyre’s lungs. He rounds on her with such sharpness that the grass at his feet flutters a little, though no wind blows. 

“That’s not nothing.” Tamlin growls. “That is wrong, Feyre.”

He doesn’t bother to wait before he begins stalking away, back towards the Manor. Feyre scrambles to catch up with him. 

She pursues him with questions, asking for an explanation, a word, anything. He doesn’t oblige, completely silent and focused as he strides through the woods, too fast for Feyre to keep up with without jogging.

She follows him all the way into the Manor, all the way to the Eastern wing, where Tamlin’s study is—and Lucien’s, apparently. Tamlin enters without knocking, the hinges groaning in protest when the door slams against the wall. Lucien doesn’t seem surprised when he looks up. He raises a brow, opening his mouth to speak—or rather, snark—but Tamlin bites out, “Why didn’t you tell me?” before the red-haired male can.

At this, Lucien actually blinks in confusion. “What are you on about?” He asks, practically sputtering the words. 

“Ianthe.” Tamlin growls. “Why didn’t you tell me about Ianthe.”

This time, it’s not a question. It’s a command.

Lucien’s face flickers a little, and Feyre can tell, from where she can barely see him around the wall that is Tamlin, that he is choosing his words very carefully. 

“What about her?” He eventually asks, shutting his russet eye with a sigh through his nose, like he knows it was the wrong response. 

“Don’t act like you don’t know.” Tamlin spits, the words ragged. “Is it true? That she touches you in ways you don’t like? That she pursues you despite your dismissal?”

Lucien blinks a few times, the only outward sign of any nervousness. Then, straightening resolutely, he gathers himself enough to say, “Yes.”

Feyre can see Tamlin suck in a breath, even with his back turned to her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Lucien responds immediately this time. “It’s not an issue. We need—” 

Tamlin’s voice barely sounds like his own as he says, “It very much is, Lucien.”

But the emissary keeps talking, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “We need a High Priestess to officiate the wedding, and with what happened to Idrissa, we don’t really have any other options—”

“And you think that’s worth more than your well-being?” Tamlin bellows. “More than your autonomy?” 

“Tamlin, it’s not a big—”

“Do not give me that, Lucien.” Tamlin commanded, and Lucien didn’t. He shut his mouth with a click. “If a Faerie under my direct employment, which Ianthe is , is found treating another courtier like this, they are not welcome in my ranks, nevermind in my home .”

“Tam.” Lucien says calmly, almost exasperatedly. “She’s your friend, above anything. I wouldn’t expect you to sever her ties to the Manor just because—”

No! Feyre wanted to scream from where she’d been forgotten in the hallway. Why are you defending her?

The female that he seems to want to strangle half the time.  

“Because she surpasses boundaries?” Tamlin cuts off Lucien once more. “Because she prioritizes her attraction to a male over anything else? Even over his feelings towards her?”

Lucien visibly swallows at this. 

Then, in a way that is uncharacteristically raspy, he says, “I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

Tamlin barks an incredulous, humorless laugh, bringing a hand up, seemingly to his forehead. His voice is even more guttural than Lucien’s when he says, “Well it’s a good thing Feyre did, then, isn’t it. Or else, what? You would have just put up with it for the rest of time, or until she was successful in her pursuit?”

Feyre’s mouth sours, and she sees Lucien’s expression match it. 

“You can’t dismiss her, Tam. Not if you want the wedding to happen on schedule. With the vetting process, there’s no saying when we may find another High Priestess fit for the union of a High Lord.”

Finally, Feyre finds it in herself to speak up from behind Tamlin. “So be it then.” She says plainly. Both Lucien and Tamlin turn their attention to her with striking precision. She holds her ground despite the way it makes her heart beat faster. 

“You deserve to feel safe in your own home.” Feyre tells him, ignoring the look Tamlin is giving her. A mixture of anger, for inserting herself into the conversation, and a slight look of disappointment. She moves past him into the room, focusing solely on Lucien. “If that means Tamlin and I have to wait a little longer to wed, then so be it . As long as he is mine and I am his, I’m happy. And of course, of course I can’t wait to solidify that through marriage. But your comfort in this home is more important than keeping a date for something that can happen at any time.” 

When she finishes, she finally looks back at Tamlin. He’s looking at her as well, but not with the same expression as before. This one is unreadable to her. But it’s far from anger, far from disappointment. He nods once before looking at Lucien once more. 

“Feyre is right. I would never wish something like this upon you just so that I could keep a schedule that can be easily changed. I just…” He sighs, and there’s definitely sadness in it. “I can’t believe Ianthe, of all people, would act this way.”

Lucien shrugs one shoulder, looking to the side dimly. “I suppose she wasn’t under there with us.”

The words clang through Feyre, and she looks up at Tamlin without masking the look of realization on her face. 

Amarantha. That’s what Lucien is talking about. Ianthe hadn’t been careful with her attempted seduction of Lucien because she hadn’t been there to see how Amarantha had acted with Tamlin. Keeping him contained, isolated. Grazing a hand across the shoulder, on the knee.  Little touches that made Feyre nearly see red every time.

And, what’s more, Rhys had done something similar to Feyre. The wine, the hands on her arms, her waist, as she danced for him. All to rile Tamlin up further. 

That’s why Tamlin had reacted the way he had in the woods, moments ago. That’s why he’s so furious, so immovably insistent about Ianthe receiving consequences to her actions, despite their closeness, their lifetime of friendship. 

“No. She wasn’t.” Tamlin says softly, his demeanor cooling a bit. He is imposing enough as it is with the baldric and bandolier. He nods once, straightening. 

“I’ll have her removed from my ranks effective immediately. We can send out an announcement to the guests that the wedding is postponed until further notice. And a warning to the Temple that she’s been acting this way.”

Lucien scoffs, surprising Feyre.

“She is a Spring Priestess. She’s expected to put an emphasis on copulation.”

Tamlin shakes his head, his expression somber. “Not like this. Not when it’s unwanted.”

With that, he saunters over to a stuffed leather chair in the corner of the room, the only other piece of furniture besides the desk and desk chair. Tamlin slumps down into it with a sigh, scrubbing at his face tiredly. Lucien looks at him with something close to sadness, or perhaps resignation. 

“Feyre,” Tamlin says with a wave of the hand. “You did well today. We’ll continue later in the week. For now, would you mind if I…”

Feyre nods, not forcing Tamlin to finish the sentence. One he can barely get out while maintaining eye contact. 

“I have a bath to take.” She excuses herself pointlessly, shutting the door quietly when she leaves.

It’s only when she reaches the end of the hall that she allows herself to smile. Not just because Lucien will finally be free of unwanted advances, or that she will be free of Ianthe’s somewhat unmanageable personality, but because she can scratch off a metaphor she’d been devising.

It would have been harder than anything to tell Tamlin that she wants to postpone the wedding. 

But now she can have just a little longer to settle into her new body, her new life. 

She makes a note to thank Lucien later. Without his suggestion to approach Tamlin in a different way, Feyre isn’t sure where she’d be. Where Tamlin would be, what kind of effort he would be putting into their relationship in addition to the maintenance and rebuilding of the Court. 

All because of a simple change to the way she broaches tough subjects, Feyre doesn’t have to worry about any of that. 

~~~~~~

Feyre is with Tamlin in his study when he writes to the Temple. 

It wasn’t by design, her being there. But when she did get there, and she saw the stack of handwritten letters beside him that she knew was about their wedding, she decided to take the opportunity to do some extra practicing. With more than the same names she’s been writing over and over again for nearly a month now. She’s practically perfected Silvanus and Bronwyn, Tamlin and Lucien—though she’d had to ask the latter, with reddened cheeks, how he spells it. Her own name has become second nature, and she’d grown used to Elain and Nesta. She’d even begun practicing Marisol and Theodore Archeron, since she had learned how to spell those in her earliest lessons. 

But she has to do more than that to learn how to properly read, and the innumerable books are always so daunting. She reserves the ones for children strictly for copying the alphabet. Anything else feels…pathetic. 

But a simple letter isn’t as overwhelming as a book. It’s barely even a page. 

To the est—es-tem—no. 

Feyre huffs. Already stumped. She looks over from the spare chair she’s slumped in, watching Tamlin effortlessly scrawl down his second letter. She approaches him on soft feet, thrusting the copy of the letter in front of him. He pauses to look up at her, adjusting his spectacles a little in a way that is unfairly endearing. Feyre points to the third word on the page, keeping her face blank.

“What does this say?” She says, nothing short of demanding. 

Tamlin, after a fleeting look at the page, says plainly, “Esteemed.” 

His expression doesn’t change to one of mocking amusement. He simply goes back to writing the letter to the Temple. 

Feyre goes back to her chair. 

To the esteemed guests of the Sh—

Feyre realizes that it’s a family name. That, she doesn’t really need to know. 

… of the Sh-something Estate,

Due to conck—concerns reg…re-gar-ding a member of the Spring Court tied clos—close-ly to the up-combing? Feyre blinks, brows drawing together as she tries to decipher the pronunciation. Upcombing does not seem right. Up-come-ing, she parses out eventually. Upcoming union of Feyre Archeron and High Lord Tamlin De—

She’ll have to ask him the pronunciation of his surname later.

…of Feyre Archeron and High Lord Tamlin, the date of the wedding will be postponed in—

She doesn’t even try with that one, already feeling the headache behind her eyes brewing just by looking at it. She brings the letter over to Tamlin and points again, and he distractedly informs her that it’s indefinitely . 

Postponed indefinitely. Our sin—sink-ehrest? 

Feyre huffs again, not wanting to go back to distract Tamlin more when she had just sat down again. 

“Sincerest.” Tamlin calls from his seat, seemingly reading one of the other copies. Feyre looks at him incredulously, but he can’t see her. He’s already going back to his other letter.

Our sincerest apo-log-ies. Apo-loggies? Apo… Feyre stares with drawn brows before letting out yet another frustrated sigh, returning the paper to its stack. Before she can return to sulk in her chair, Tamlin grabs her wrist softly. 

“Try this one.” He tells her, handing the new letter he’d just finished penning. 

“Why?” She asks immediately, wrinkling her nose. He shrugs.

“Or don’t. Just give up if you want, I can’t stop you.”

Feyre’s eyes widen at the tone, the…the audacity. With a snarl that she didn’t know she was capable of producing, she snatches the parchment out of his hand, remaining where she is. Tamlin turns his chair, settling in and crossing his arms. His legs, however, separate a little in a way that is…quite distracting. Tamlin gives a moment that says get on with it, and Feyre remembers her ire, ignoring his thick, muscled thighs in favor of glaring at the paper in her hands. 

“ Your grace,” she reads easily. “ It has come to my at—at-tent-tee-ohn.”

“Attention.” Tamlin corrects, watching intently. “Keep going.” 

Feyre glares a little before she starts again. “ It has come to my attention that the High Priestess Ianthe Dia…Diamada,”

“Good.”

Feyre gives another dirty look despite the praise. Or rather, because of it. 

“ ...has ex… hm. Ex-hibited. Exhibited in-app-rop-riate. Inappropriate behavior towards other members of my close as…ass… ”

Tamlin snorts a little, and Feyre glares up once more in frustration, forcing herself not to crush the page in her distaste. “ You’re an ass.” She spits. Tamlin holds his hands up in surrender, and he gestures at the page again. 

“ Ass-embly. This in-cludes unw…un-war-anted. Unwarranted touching, deli… I don’t know this one at all.”

“Deliberate.”

“ Deliberate iso-late-ion. ” Feyre draws her brows, glancing up at Tamlin. He stays quiet, but she knows it’s not right. Tion. Attention, she realizes. It’s the same thing. “ Isolation. ” She declares proudly. Tamlin nods, but doesn’t give anything more. Feyre clears her throat. “ Isolation in group settings, and sug—sug-ges-tive—sug-jes-tive re-marks that were not prompted or desired. These ad-van-ces have not been rec— hm.”

“Received.”

“Right, yes. Received with no ac-cep-tance or en-cour-age-ment. Encouragement from the subject of Ianthe’s pur-suit. For these re-ah-sons—reasons—I have since removed High Priestess Ianthe from my ranks and saw fit to inform you of this behavior in case of future, sim-ylar—similar act—ack-shuns. Actions.”

She is about to continue, but the paper is suddenly plucked from her hands. And suddenly she’s plucked from the floor. Tamlin lifts her like she weighs nothing, spinning her effortlessly in a circle, the skirts of her dress swishing around like a flared cape. 

And before she knows it, he’s kissing her, deep and soft, his lips warm and unchapped. Feyre eagerly kisses back, though unsure of what she did to prompt such a reaction.

When he pulls back to look at her again, his eyes are shining with what is undeniably pride. Feyre has to fight a hitch in her breath at the sight.

“That was wonderful, Feyre.” Tamlin whispers gently.

“I didn’t even get to finish reading it.” She argues, the wondrous magic of the kiss barely ebbing as she wrinkles her face a little at him. 

“You didn’t need to. You got through so much on your own. Even tough words, you still—you did it, Feyre. Have you been practicing? Learning on your own?”

She nods, a blush inexplicably beginning to warm her face. Tamlin only embraces her again, leaning in for another congratulatory, excited kiss. Feyre accepts it enthusiastically, parting her lips for Tamlin to slip his tongue between, licking along her own, into her mouth. 

Instantly, a heat begins to simmer in her veins, the pit of her stomach, her core. She forces herself not to outright whimper as the movements of Tamlin’s mouth become more insistent, claiming. He kisses her and kisses her and kisses her until she’s practically dizzy with it. She feels like she’s melting under his touch. Like with every swipe of his broad hands down her back, she’s closer and closer to catching flame. The hot, wet slide of his tongue in her mouth is nothing short of intoxicating, furthering the spread of heat underneath her skin. All self-respect out the window, Feyre moans openly as he moves against her, and even more so when he spins her and settles her down in his work chair. 

It’s only then that Feyre realizes that the heat she was feeling wasn’t entirely internal. She yelps as she looks down to find the bottom hem of her dress literally aflame. It’s not a lot of fire—barely more than a candles’ worth. 

Tamlin doesn’t even make a sound as he sort of slices a hand through the air. Feyre feels a concentrated bolt of wind against her ankles, and the little flame goes out.

Tamlin’s eyebrows are drawn. 

When he doesn’t ask, she does it for him. “How the Hell did that happen?” 

Tamlin shakes his head a little, face smoothing back out, as if it were nothing. He runs his hands up her thighs, looking at her with a renewed expression of flickering desire. Feyre’s own, despite her singed hem, had not fully retreated. That look from Tamlin only encourages it. As does the way he drops to his knees. 

And suddenly it doesn’t really matter anymore. 

~~~~~~

There is a fight one day. 

A bad one. So bad that Feyre can hear it from outside the Manor as she’s returning from training with Taro, sweaty and breathless as always. 

There are shouts that she can tell belong to Tamlin and Lucien, though the words are fairly indistinguishable. As she’s entering, she feels the very ground shake in accompaniment to Tamlin’s growling bellow. 

A part of her is afraid to even go near the wing that they’re fighting in. 

Tamlin’s argument style has never been pretty, and from the sounds of it, this is far more than a regular spat. There’s no saying whether it could get physical. And with Tamlin’s powers fully returned…Feyre thinks back to the story he had told. Of how he’d been so out of control of his power when he’d first inherited it that he’d rendered his friend unable to walk. 

If this is anything like that, Feyre doesn’t want to be anywhere near it. 

But the majority of Feyre…the majority of her really wants to know what it’s about. 

So she slips into the stealthy, prowling mode she hadn’t had to use since she’d met a wolf in the woods that wasn’t a wolf at all.

She creeps towards the sounds of voices, which have barely quieted, quick on her feet while remaining quiet and subtle.

She finds herself outside the doors to the dining hall.  

“—asked for my opinion, and I’m giving it!” Lucien’s lilting, pretty voice snaps. 

“You knew what I meant, Lucien, you knew I was—”

“Don’t bother asking if you just want me to tell you what you want to hear!”

Tamlin’s responding growl nearly shakes Feyre to her core. “Do not speak to me that way. This is no longer a matter of opinion. I am not speaking as your friend when I tell you that you will not bring it up to her. You will not speak a word of this, do you hear me?”

Silence settles then. Lucien is not responding. 

Then, finally at a volume that can’t be heard from rooms away, he says, “She deserves to know.”

“She deserves to stay safe and unburdened.” Tamlin responds, his own voice not quite lowered. 

“She is , Tam. With you here, with the training with Taro, she is as safe as she could possibly be.”

Feyre forces herself not to gasp a little at the revelation that this truly is about her. Moreso at the fact that Tamlin is hiding something from her. 

“You know what she’ll want if I do tell her.” Tamlin says, sounding defeated. 

“And why not give it to her? Why not provide that choice?”

An animal, shuddering growl. “You know why. You know it’s too risky. Wearing training clothes, gaining strength with the help of a lieutenant, that’s all one thing if that gets out. That’s something we can spin easily if people start getting the wrong idea. This, though…Lucien, you know how people would react if it got into the wrong hands.”

“Then explain that to her. ”

“And if she doesn’t listen? If she gets herself dragged off by someone like your father, or Rhysand, or worse ?”

Feyre can barely listen then. Tamlin is keeping something from her, and it scares him so much that he thinks someone would take her away from him because of it. 

“Tamlin. You know the power you hold. You know you could protect her if you really needed to.”

“And risk the loss of innocent life over something that could be easily prevented if you just keep your mouth shut?”

Another exchange of silence. Then, Lucien’s hard, unwavering tone once again. “I won’t tell her if you command it. But you should. It’s the right thing to do, Tam, and I think you know it.”

Feyre holds her breath. The seconds tick by in time with her heartbeat. 

Then, in a voice like grinding stones, Tamlin says, “We’re done here, Lucien.” 

Feyre has to practically run to get away before either of them catch her outside the doors. By the time she gets to her room, her heart is beating as fast as it had been during her exercise with Taro. 

~~~~~~

It ends up being four days. Four days where Feyre has to wonder if Tamlin is going to continue keeping something from her. Four days of avoiding eye contact and placating kisses, lovemaking in place of conversations, unsure smiles instead of knowing, shared glances. 

Tamlin’s guilt practically bleeds out of him. Feyre wants to just shake him and demand he tell the truth, for nothing if not to alleviate the shame that practically visibly weighs on his shoulders. 

It’s the fifth day when he finally says, “Feyre, I need to play a game with you.”

She smiles sweetly at him, and pretends she doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Which, of course, she doesn’t . Not really. And if he makes the metaphor hard to figure out, it may be even more days of not knowing for her. 

Tamlin’s hand is bizarrely clammy when he takes hers, and once they get into a secluded part of the gardens, mercifully free of guards and red roses, he wipes his palms on his vest. 

It’s almost cute enough for Feyre to forgive him for keeping something from her for four days, if not longer.

For a little while, he just stares at her. Feyre stares back. It’s not her conversation to start, so she doesn’t, but it does get to the point where she has to clear her throat and sort of prompt him to start talking.

He coughs a little, looking away with a blush reddening his high cheekbones. 

“If I…hand you a strawberry without washing it,” he starts. 

Feyre blinks when he doesn’t continue. “I’m with you.” She assures him, somewhat perplexed. It’s like talking has become physically painful for him, like he has to literally choke out the words. He takes a fortifying breath.

“If I hand it to you unwashed, you just have a strawberry, and that’s it.”

Feyre nods, raising her eyebrows. “Right.”

“But if I hand you a strawberry that I’ve rinsed, but haven’t dried, you now have a strawberry and water on your hands.”

He swallows, and Feyre watches the knot of his throat bob with it. “Okay.” She says flatly, prompting him to continue as she tries to parse out where he could possibly be going with this. Is she the strawberry? But who would he be handing her over to? What’s the water, then?

“Now, if, say, seven people hand you strawberries that they haven’t washed, you then have seven regular strawberries.” Feyre blinks. Seven people. Seven…Courts? Seven High Lords? “But if they each give you a rinsed strawberry, you get seven strawberries, and the water from each one on your hands.”

Feyre straightens as it begins to settle in. Seven people giving her seven strawberries. Seven High Lords giving her seven drops of life-saving power. 

But the water on her hands…something more. Something in addition to bringing her back, in addition to transforming her into this new, nearly indestructible being. 

Tamlin thinks that she received something more than life from each High Lord. 

His breath shudders as he says, looking away, “There are some people who may not be happy to know that you got some of their water, as well as the fruit they offered. The fruit was the only gift they’d intended to give. And if they find out you got water with it, they may try to get it back. Even if it’s impossible, even if the drops have already seeped into your skin.” When he looks back at her, his eyes are wide and shining. Almost…scared. His voice is hushed, a little broken when he finishes, “I imagine that would hurt very much.”

The note of finality leaves the air around them feeling dry and still. Feyre purses her lips, clenching her fists a little. She glances down, catching sight of the whorls of ink on her left forearm. 

Would Rhysand do that? If he found out she had been given more than just a new chance at life?

If she had been given…

Her eyes widen as she realizes. The flame the other day, when she’d felt so hot with need that she was about ready to combust. The High Lord of Autumn, a wielder of flame. And then before, when she had imbued the Siren’s Whistle. You were glowing, Tamlin had told her. Like…

Like the High Lord of Dawn. Or perhaps Day. She isn’t even entirely sure what their individual magicks entail. But Tamlin seems to think that she’s inherited a bit from all of them. Their personal power in addition to the power of life. 

And he’s afraid they’ll want to take it back if they find out. 

“So, if I have all this water now, but I can’t let other people know I have it, what do I…do?” She asks. Tamlin only shakes his head and looks away, almost sadly. Feyre gnaws at her bottom lip. “If I don’t know how to handle the water, what if it starts to…what if I splash people by accident, when I don’t mean to?”

Something Tamlin should know a lot about. She makes sure that sentiment makes its way into her tone, watching him even as he doesn’t look at her. He shakes his head again, the curtain of his blonde hair swaying a little.

Taking a gamble, Feyre breaks her own rule. She doesn’t bother continuing the metaphor when she says, “The magic wielding circle. I could train close to the manor, where no-one but the soldiers would know. They could swear an oath of silence.”

Tamlin looks at her then, face stricken. “Taro knows a lot of things, but she is not versed in teaching the powers of the seven most powerful people in Prythian.”

“But you’re one of those people, Tamlin.” She reminds him. He looks at her abruptly, as if he had forgotten. 

“I can’t—I—” His breath comes fast, short, and he doesn’t blink. Feyre draws her brows, reaching out to place a hand on his own. 

“You don’t have to decide right now.” She tells him, hating the way his hands twist into fists, the way she can hear his heart speed up. “But I think it could help, if what you’re saying is right. If people were to find out, would you rather it be by accident, while I still don’t have a grasp on all the…water? Or would you rather keep the information controlled, so if there is a time when it can be revealed, it’s revealed on our terms?”

Tamlin grinds his teeth, but he nods, a low duck of his head. Feyre gently tilts it up with a hand under his chin. 

“Thank you for telling me, Tamlin.” She tells him honestly before leaning down to press a kiss to his lips. She hums contentedly when he presses back.

~~~~~~

Feyre stands in the center of the ring, practically buzzing with excitement. Tamlin is circling her like she’s prey, but it doesn’t make her any less giddy with anticipation. In fact, it only seems to amplify it. 

“First,” Tamlin tells her, “you’re going to show me your progress from your work with Taro.”

Feyre whips to face him, her brows drawn. “We’re in the magic wielding ring.” She tells him indignantly. Tamlin seems to consider this. Or rather, pretend to consider it. 

“I suppose one of us will have to wield magic then.” He says. It’s almost…conspiratory, which has Feyre’s hackles raising. That’s more of a Lucien tone, or worse. A Rhysand tone. 

As if he’d heard her thoughts—something Feyre has begun to suspect that she’s actually capable of, if she truly does have the powers of all seven High Lords—Tamlin’s body begins to change. His pale training shirt turns to a night-dark tunic, tight at the waist with a sash of maroon fabric. He stands a few inches shorter than usual, and his long, strong legs become slim and elegant. His blonde hair turns darker than a raven’s wing, his skin becoming a shade or two tanner than his own. As if the pale tone he’d been when Feyre had met him had been a result of his forty-nine year long captivity in Amarantha’s Court of evil. And his eyes…his beautiful, verdant eyes, full of every leaf’s shade, every green of the sea and land, highlighted by burnished gold fit for a king, are gone entirely. Replaced by a blue so deep that the irises look like delphinium petals under a night sky. 

Feyre stands in the center of the ring, and before her stands Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court. 

“Tell me to change back, and I will.” The night-kissed Faerie before her says in Tamlin’s voice.

Feyre’s mouth has gone dry. She doesn’t know what to do, or say. She feels rooted to the spot by the sheer deadly beauty of Tamlin’s new body. 

It takes her all of thirty seconds to shake out of it. Immediately, she assumes the defensive stance she’d drilled with Taro the week before. Tamlin nods, his black hair shining in the early morning light. 

And then, just like that, the last scraps of the male Feyre knows—the Tamlin she loves—is stripped away. His entire demeanor changes, going from calmly authoritative to eerily casual, strong as a rock to fluid as a river. With a glimmer of mischief in his blue eyes, he disappears into thin air. 

Feyre allows her minimal training and her instinct, honed by years of hunting, to take over, turning quickly enough to lash out behind her. Tamlin is faster, though—and he has less weight than usual, meaning if he was as fast as lightning before…

Feyre forces her breath to stay calm as he catches her wrist with one hand, as if it were nothing. The other is in his pants pocket. He tuts, shaking his head a little, and it’s such a Rhysand mannerism that Feyre is momentarily taken aback. Distracted enough that Tamlin easily spins her and pins both of her hands behind her. 

Feyre ends up with her chest in the dirt before she can even try to slam a foot down onto one of his own. 

And thus, begins their compromise. 

Tamlin will teach Feyre how to shapeshift only once she can best him—best Rhys —in the ring. 

Feyre flips herself over, Tamlin’s lighter-than-usual weight no longer present on her back. She takes a few moments to recenter, getting her heart rate back to its usual pace, before getting up and dusting herself off as much as possible. When she looks up, Tamlin is back in his usual body. There's a bright look in his eyes, a closed-mouth smile gracing his pretty, full lips. As eerily gorgeous as Rhys is, she’s immeasurably more glad to look at Tamlin’s usual face.

“What?” Feyre asks, a hint of amusement making its way into her tone. 

Tamlin, arms crossed, seems to sway a little, like he can't decide what to tell her. 

Then, almost like he's breaking free of an invisible barrier, he approaches with arms outstretched. He takes her face in his hands, one cheek still coated with dirt, and brings her into a kiss so swiftly and suddenly that she can't stop a small noise from escaping her throat. She eventually relaxes into it, settling further back into her resting physicality, no longer thrumming with the adrenaline of the “fight”. Her hands find his waist, and she presses into the kiss with no shortage of passion. 

“You did wonderfully.” Tamlin tells her, his face clear of any doubt or deception. “You were fantastic.” 

Feyre looks up at him with raised brows and an unladylike snort. “You had me on the ground within half a minute.” 

His thumbs, still resting on her cheeks from the way he is cupping her face, move in soft, short caresses.

“You knew exactly where I'd be in the beginning, though. And when you hit the ground, you regulated your breathing properly so that you weren't gasping for air as much as you could have been. And I'm sure breaking out of holds will come easily to you once you go over it with Taro, if you're already this far with the amount of training you've had.” 

He leans in and kisses her again, soft and full. 

When he pulls back, his eyes are full of nothing but love. 

Feyre allows herself fifteen seconds to stare. To get lost in those forested depths, those chips of gold and viridian and emerald and sage. 

And then, when she feels just on the verge of being stuck in the god-like gaze, she tips her head back and laughs. 

A true laugh, coming straight from her belly, her throat bobbing with each chortle. She laughs and laughs, because she is covered in dirt, and Tamlin had thought nothing of it as he kissed her. She laughs because she had the quickest loss of any sort of fight in her life, and Tamlin had praised her as if she’d won. She laughs because Rhysand still hasn't come to collect her, and she still hasn't learned how to properly defend herself, and yet she is unafraid. She laughs because, after all she had done, Tamlin is here with her. And he loves her. 

Sometimes to the point of fear, to the point of wanting to lock her away forever, untouchable by Fae less kind than him. 

But also to the point of change. To the point of being able to understand what she is trying to tell him when she tells it indirectly. To the point of finding meaning between words, underneath sentences, in the pockets she crafts for him to explore. 

She laughs because he loves her, and she loves him right back. And she knows that, more than anything, that will protect the two of them when it matters most. No amount of thick Manor walls or combat-based training or High Lord-given powers will ever replace that. 

Once her bout of laughter subsides, Feyre tells Tamlin, “My heart is a river.” 

His brows draw together, a small, confused smile on his face. But before he can question her out loud, Feyre pulls him down into another kiss. And that, it seems, is enough of an answer for him as any.