a drag path (etched in the surface)
For @littedidyouknow as part of the @acotargiftexchange
I was so excited when I found out I was writing for you! I hope you enjoy <3
Pairing: Feysand
Summary:
To protect his family and home from Amarantha, Rhys takes drastic measures and cuts them out of his own mind as well. He never expected he'd be unable to fix it. After so long on his own, Rhys jumps at the chance to have Feyre in the Night Court with him, but threats lurk both at his borders and within the shadows of his city, leaving him scrambling to hold it all together. With intercourt refugees seeking asylum, a dead high lord, new magics appearing all around him, a mating bond that aches, and the knowledge that somewhere out there is a family he loves yet can't remember, the last thing Rhys needs is the daughter of a traitor distracting him. Especially when his enemies have plans for her too.
Read on Ao3 or Chapter 1 below:
Before
In the moments between the wine passing his lips and his magic siphoning away, Rhysand realized three things.
The first - that his desire for revenge had blinded him to seeing what was right in front of him, and, had he only been more cautious, less trusting - a lesson he’d thought he’d already learned after losing his mother and sister to a supposed friend - he wouldn’t have been tricked so simply.
The second - that Amarantha was a cruel female who delighted in torture, who had been friends with the previous High Lord of Spring, dead at his father’s hands, and that she might delight in taking his own loved ones away from him, forcing him to reveal them to her using the very gifts she was stealing from him in that moment, if she didn’t call for any of the daemati from Hybern still in her own confidence to do so for her.
The third - there was truly only one way to fully protect his family, his city, his dreams and efforts and every single person and thing he cared about in this world.
Rhysand ripped into the minds of the rest of his Court, erasing the knowledge of it all from their memories, threw up an impenetrable shield around the city of his heart, and then, with but a single moment to spare for grief, tucked the knowledge away in a darkened corner in the fabric of his mind, grabbed at it with his own mental talons, and sliced the damning memories away.
Now
The sun on his wings felt better than he could ever remember. He’d grown to accustomed to the dark, for all that he was the Lord of Night, for all that his court was a city dug into stone. Rhys tilted his face up toward the light, basking in the gentle feeling.
A slight wind tugged at the membranes of his wings as he told Feyre about them, catching them and trying to pull him off balance.
“How does it feel to be high fae?” he asked her, watching her face turn to the mountains as she thought about her answer.
“I’m an immortal who has been mortal,” she finally said. “This body … this body is different.” She put a hand on her heart. “But this… this is still human. Maybe it always will be. But it would have been easier to live with it… easier to live with what I did if my heart had changed, too. Maybe I wouldn’t care so much; maybe I could convince myself their deaths weren’t in vain. Maybe immortality will take that away. I can’t tell whether I want it to.”
Rhys understood that feeling all too well. Still, he said, “Be glad of your human heart, Feyre. Pity those who don’t feel anything at all.” Feyre merely nodded her acceptance, so Rhys rolled his head around on his neck as he said, “Well, good-bye for now,” starting to bow when he locked eyes with her, and something inside him just clicked.
Mate. She was his mate.
Rhys threw himself backward, toppling over ledge and winnowed as fast as he could.
He’d had an instinctive destination, but as he tried to grasp it, to fully pull him in that direction, it slipped from his own mind, the result of whatever it was that he’d removed from his own memory some fifty years earlier. Thrown by it, his winnow faltered, and rather than landing as intended, he hit the ground hard. His shoulder burned with the impact of the stone ground, wings screaming in pain as he rolled until he managed to vanish them, just in time to hit the wall of the hallway and finally stop rolling.
He lay there for a moment, whole body smarting with the pain of the unintended impact.
His mate.
The bond pulled at him, trying to get him to return to Feyre’s side, to the warm sunlight that fell on them. Rhys ignored it, groaning as he pushed himself to his hands and knees, then to his feet.
His whole body shook with the feeling, and from the sudden chill.
Rhys looked around to see if he could recognize where he’d gone, and something in his heart shattered as he recognized the architecture, the furniture, the decor on the walls.
It was his rooms in the palace in the Hewn City.
Underground, again.
But where else would he go? Why did he feel like there was somewhere else waiting?
Rhys knew the real reason - he’d known of it before her, before he’d removed the memories to save whoever it was.
Rhys wanted them back. He closed his eyes and delved in deep within his mind, finding the place where he’d cut them out. He grasped for the threads, but they slipped away, a wound he’d inflicted yet needed another daemati to fix.
He’d been too rushed when he’d done it, and now...
There wasn’t a daemati alive that he trusted enough to fix his mind.
Safe in the privacy of his chambers, Rhys wept at all his losses.
His mate, his memories, his hope.
And perhaps, after everything he’d done Under the Mountain, his very soul as well.
.
Rhys gave himself an hour to mope. An hour to cry and scream and throw things at the stone walls of his palace. Not a single other soul existed in the whole building - the rest of his people were still making their ways back, being freed from the cells underneath Amarantha’s court. It would take days for anyone to come back, for any of the staff he’d once had to come seeking their old jobs back, or for deliveries of food to be dropped off, or for the aristocrats of his court to show up and get the court running again.
Everything was covered in dust.
Dust was better than the blood he’d become used to while with her.
Rhys used his magic to get rid of the dust, and the simple joy of it coming freely to him was almost enough to make his lips twitch.
He left his rooms and the palace after that, wandering the empty streets of the city he ruled. Most of it looked unchanged. Nothing had rotted or been destroyed, given that it was stone, but it felt wrong. Sounded wrong.
His footsteps shouldn’t have echoed the way they were, not if the city had been full of people.
It was dark as well - the faelights that should have faintly glowed up at the top of the cavern that housed the city had long faded, leaving only a ghostlike light that barely reached him. Rhys had to summon his own faelight, and the bobbing motion it made at it drifted after him left his shadow dancing in all directions, writhing as if in pain or ecstasy.
It didn’t feel like home.
Rhys was sure, even if it was bustling and the way it had been before Amarantha, it still wouldn’t feel like his home.
He’d spent barely any of his life here, but he had nowhere else to go, unless he wanted to live the rest of his life in the palace above the city, alone. He could go to Illyria, he supposed, but his mother’s people held about as much love for him as the people of the Hewn city did.
Wherever it was he’d lived until now, it wasn’t either of those.
At least here, there wasn’t any snow.
.
Rhys returned to the palace soon after. There was too much to do in preparation to allow for his wanderings to continue. In the following days, as the newly born mating bond in his chest ached and pulled at him, Rhys distracted himself with his people returning to their homes. They avoided him at first, hesitant about his presence when for so long he’d never shown much interest, but after the first few fae had come and gone, more started showing up in droves. Some were missing items of great value to them, ransacked in Amarantha’s pillage of the city. Other’s were still looking for people they loved, for family members and staff, friends and extended relatives.
Rhys needed the distraction, especially once the dreams started coming in full force. Horrible nightmares sent down the bond from Feyre, where it was all he could do not to winnow right to her and damn the consequences. When it grew to be too much, he built a wall in his mind between them.
Then news came - the first of the inter-court messengers getting a system of communication back up. Feyre was engaged to be wed to Tamlin in less than three months. Rhys spent the night drunk out of his mind, and when he’d finally sobered up, decided what he needed was to visit the other half of his court, far away from any news of his mate marrying his enemy.
The Hewn City was settling, and would likely appreciate a break from him after so many centuries used to him not interfering. Keir for one was barely bothering to hold back his frustrations. Rhys could use his own break from the male himself.
The trip to Illyria proved to be more involved than Rhys had anticipated. The whole region had been decimated by Amarantha’s forces and control, and the few camps that had followed her and been spared weren’t too keen on coming back into following him again.
One week turned into a month, which soon turned into three, until before he knew it Rhys was watching as the snow melted with the spring.
Feyre’s wedding had been in the heart of winter. The day had come and gone, and Rhys hadn’t even noticed, too busy fighting a one-male battle with regaining control over his court.
He returned to the Hewn city when it was done, cautiously lowered the wall between his mind and Feyre’s, and felt nothing at all. She was still alive, but she’d learned to shield herself from him. Rhys wondered who’d taught her that, or if she’d figured it out on her own. She was brilliant like that - if there was anyone who’d be able to figure out how to shield against a daemati that was already linked to them, it would be Feyre.
Starfall came and went. Rhys opened the palace above the city up for his people to visit, to enjoy the celebration in his home for the first time ever. Their joy was a sight to see, especially for a group he was so used to seeing cowed and angry. He wished he could have spent his first Starfall free with Feyre, but at least he could see his people happy, even if he himself was miserable.
The day after, more messengers arrived, this time with proof that Rhys’ suspicions on Hybern weren’t unfounded. The King was making plans, and Tamlin was right in the middle of it.
He recruited Nuala and Cerridwen to spy in the court, but they returned with nothing, having been unable to make it into the estate itself. Tamlin’s warding had been too strong, too improved by something other.
Rhys took to cultivating his ties in Illyria, trying and failing to convince the leaders of the camps to fight should the need arise.
Week after week, month after month, failure after failure.
Sometimes, he just wanted to give up. To pass the title of High Lord off to Keir and run somewhere where he didn’t have to do all this alone.
But then he’d look at the man, and a kernel of hatred in his heart would burn quietly, a dying ember that had just been given air again. Rhys couldn’t remember why he hated this male, but he knew there had been something, and it was bad enough that the emotion it had caused lingered even without the memories tied to it.
So Rhys pushed on. Even when nothing went right. When his heart ached for something he could not get. When the news from the Spring court remained a blank nothing. When his messengers to other courts returned, stating that no other courts were willing to see him. Even Helion could spare him no time, not while he was busy repairing a sacked Court and establishing himself as a High Lord for the first time out from under Amarantha’s thumb.
And then, as the anniversary of Amarantha’s defeat was coming around, something changed.
Rhys was woken by the feeling, just as every other High Lord would have been.
One of them was dead. Another had just been chosen.
Rhys ordered his wraiths out to gather information, and they returned within the hour.
Tamlin is dead, they told him. Spring is unshielded. A male barely out of childhood has taken his place. The King of Hybern has been killed as well. Feyre’s sisters are fae, and they are fleeing north, in hopes of crossing into Summer.
The previous Lady of Spring has killed her husband, and the whole court is hunting her.
Except the other High Lords wouldn’t let such a slight go by. Beron would hunt her too, and Tarquin might not be willing to shelter her at the risk of bringing war to his shores. Neither would Kallias, nor Thesan. Helion might, but would Feyre be able to even get that far on her own, with her two sisters accompanying her?
The Night Court could handle it. He was the strongest of them, and most already thought him an enemy. What did it matter if he sheltered them? So what if they tried to fight him?
He’d do anything for Feyre, and she needed him now.
Damning the consequences, Rhys winnowed to Spring.
