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I awoke with a jolt, a sort of frenzy shooting through my veins like flying through wind in a storm built on emotions all clamoring over one another for supremacy until at long last cold, miserable agony claimed victory. It was worse than fear. It was terror. And it was precisely how Feyre was feeling in that exact moment.
Feyre.
I leapt from bed leaving my sheets in a crumpled mess and taking just enough time to pull some sort of clothing over my legs to cover myself before I was shoving through the door to her room.
The scene that greeted me was nothing short of disastrous. The flickering visions she’d sent unwittingly through the bond of her nightmares while in the Spring Court were nothing compared to how Feyre looked now. The bed was burnt and shredded by the claws rippling from her hands, alight with flame that threatened to burn her alive in her bed. And the darkness. Oh the darkness. So cruel and thieving as it curled around her with the promise of decay. How it consumed her. Feyre must never have nightmared as such before in the Spring Court or else Tamlin would surely have done something… wouldn’t he?
I crawled atop the bed, forcing myself over her against her ceaseless thrashing and shook her, calling her name. Her shields were fully engaged blocking her mind from me and I had to search to find where I might slip through.
“FEYRE,” I screamed over and over, both aloud and into the recesses of her mind. A faint sliver appeared, the smallest trace of light beaming through almost as if she heard me, as if the bond were there.
I pulled and Feyre’s body went utterly still. It scared me into oblivion until I realized that she was relaxing against my grip, not giving up or losing the fight.
“Open your eyes,” I said firmly, holding her slick face in my hands and she obeyed, staring up at me with the face of panic and a million hopeless questions. “It was a dream,” I said with a hard pant. I repeated it over and over, my mind racked with endless sadness that she had to experience this tormetn as I did night after night. I knew what these nightmares were and never would I wish them upon her. But she didn’t seem to really hear me, her eyes trailing up and down my exposed chest and taking in the tattoos inked into my skin now equally drenched as hers in sweat. “A dream… A dream…”
I knew it was coming before she did. The moment her eyes left me to take in the chaos that had erupted around her, that she had caused, I knew all too well from the countless nights she’d spent being ignored in the Spring Court how her body would react. As Feyre ran to the bathing room and retched into the toilet, I stepped cautiously into the room full of an intense longing to comfort her and an even greater fear that she wouldn’t let me.
But I would sure as hell try.
Her fingers hissed against the toilet, still trembling with fire and ash, too near her face as she vomited. Gently, with enough pressure to reassure her, I pulled her long, soft hair back from her face. “Breathe,” I said. “Imagine them winking out like candles, one by one.” Almost all at once and completely opposite to my suggestion that she take the flames on individually, Feyre heaved and intense light collided with the heat at her hands and all that was left in their place was darkness. But not the darkness from before that had threatened to cut her to the core of her being. This darkness was radiant, the darkness that soothed and comforted, erased the aches and pains, accepted the scars. My darkness.
“Well that’s one way to do it,” I said. She would never fail to surprise or impress me. But she was still silent. Too quiet. The purple rings under her eyes looked like a thin surface ready to give way to an endless hollow pit at any time. Beads of sweat rolled off of her in waves and her chest still shook with each shudder her stomach forced into her throat. I didn’t have to read her mind to know how alone she had felt since Tamlin took her back from Under the Mountain. How it made my stomach ache with fury.
But it scared me, too, for how much that pain called to me, recognized me as its own. I loved my family here in the Night Court, but none of them would ever understand as Feyre did how this felt.
“I have this dream,” I said, my voice thick, trying to reach her so I could shoulder her pain, “where it’s not me stuck under her, but Cassian or Azriel. And she’s pinned their wings to the bed with spikes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. She’s commanded me to watch, and I have no choice but to see how I failed them.”
Still, Feyre kept silent, taking her time to flush the toilet and consider my words and I feared that perhaps I had overstepped, that she was not ready or simply did not wish to hear any more of my story Under the Mountain. So I focused on the feel of her, willing what strength I could lend her into my grip on her skin, her hair.
“You never failed them,” Feyre spoke, her voice a quiet rasp I had to crane my ears to hear. A small stone atop a mound of similar pebbles that piled among one another building downward to larger rocks and boulders weighing in on my heart removed itself at those four simple words. But there were many stones and pebbles to go.
“I did… terrible things to ensure that.”
“So did I.”
She turned, her remorse forcing her back to the toilet, the same remorse I felt every second of every day. So I dared a little further and offered a long soothing caress up and down the length of her back. I savored the touch when she didn’t turn away, when I realized it was the first open touch free of inhibitions and doubts that she had allowed between us.
“The flames?” she asked when the last of her stomach had heaved itself up.
“Autumn Court.”
Feyre sat still for a very long time, unable to reply. Never did my hands stop their comforting trek up and down her spine, a spine that I could feel so painfully through her too thin back. Never did Feyre stop me from doing so. And when her head fell against the neighboring bathtub, her eyes drifting back off to sleep, too weary to wrestle with words and simple thought, even then I continued to touch her, to love her, wishing she knew how far that love was already burning for her.
I waited until she was deep asleep to be sure she would not fall into another fit. Only then did I allow myself the privilege of scooping her fully into my arms and tucking her safely back into bed. I magicked the bed so that nothing but pure, soft linens free of damage were there to envelope her. And then I simply stared, sitting at her side too scared to move away lest she fall further down the pit without me there to watch over her. The funny thing was that even if she fell, I would be there to catch her because I was already deep within that pit myself. The real fear, I knew, was that I wouldn’t be able to pull us back out.
But after I’d kept watch long enough and Feyre had not stirred beyond the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she drew breathe, I supposed that I had gotten us out of the pit enough at least for tonight. I stroked my thumb along her cheek wondering when she’d next let me in so close as she had tonight without her usual reproach, if ever again she would, and left her to her dreams.
xx