after the rain falls, the sky often becomes clearer, allowing sunlight to break through.
NANAMI KENTO X READER
a/n: hi! i hope you all enjoy chapter one, thank you so much for reading!
LINK TO MASTER POST.
CHAPTER ONE:
In Japan, the rainy season, called tsuyu, typically occurs from early June to mid-July. While it doesn’t rain constantly, the likelihood of rain is higher, and sunny days are less frequent.
GOOD MORNING, TOKYO! I'm afraid we're looking at another soggy start to the week. The low-pressure system that moved in overnight has brought us some fairly intense rainfall—we've already seen about thirty millimeters since midnight, with more on the way.
The morning news hummed softly in the background as Nanami ran a hand through his hair, his reflection in the bathroom mirror staring back at him with dark, tired eyes. The weatherman’s familiar voice drifted in from the living room, accompanied by the noise of the unrelenting storm outside.
The rain had been falling steadily since about four in the morning.
Nanami knew this because he’d been awake since 3:30, listening to the gentle percussion against his apartment windows gradually intensifying into the kind of downpour that would leave himself and other commuters huddled under convenience store awnings, checking weather apps with increasing desperation.
By the time his alarm sounded at 5:15, the streets below his seventh floor window had transformed into rivers of reflected neon and headlights.
We're expecting the heaviest downpours between seven and nine AM, particularly affecting the Yamanote and Chuo lines. JR East is already reporting delays of up to fifteen minutes on several routes due to safety precautions.
Toothbrush in hand, he leaned into the hallway to catch the traffic report, brows furrowed and worry lines prominent on his forehead. Nearly every route was speckled red with congestion. He sighed, stepping back into the bathroom. Despite the growing headache that throbbed behind his eyes, he continued on with his routine, rummaging through the medicine cabinet for pain relief, swallowing the tablets with a handful of water from the sink. It was more than habitual, it was ritualistic, a constant in his life, something that he could control every morning. He’d learned long ago that consistency and preparation was the only reliable defense against chaos, whether it came in the form of natural disasters, or, corporate restructuring.
Nanami took quick, measured sips of coffee as he paced back and forth from his bedroom to the bathroom. He dressed methodically, as always, reaching for the outfit he had selected the night prior–charcoal suit, navy tie, and leather shoes that could withstand the temperamental weather.
Knotting his tie with precision, he stopped midstep, debating on cracking the sliding doors that led to a tiny balcony for a quick smoke. Tempted to take the risk, he looked at the scattered cigarettes on the coffee table, then to the rain outside, and begrudgingly, opted against it. He tucked the pack into his briefcase. Later, maybe.
The good news? We might see some clearing by the weekend, though it's still too early to make any promises. Until then, this is just the rainy season reminding us who's really in charge here in Tokyo.
He gave his briefcase a once over before moving toward the entryway where his umbrella was waiting, black and sturdy, the kind that wouldn’t betray him when the wind picked up. Just as he stepped into one shoe, he realized the TV was still on, murmuring incoherently in the background. He grunted, kicking off the shoe and making a beeline to the couch where the remote sat, cutting the last of the weatherman’s report as the screen turned dark.
Stay dry out there, and remember to drive carefully on those wet roads. Traffic and transit updates every ten minutes. Now back to you in the studio.
The train was packed with damp salarymen and students, everyone pressed together in uncomfortable solidarity. Nanami found his usual spot by the door, briefcase held firmly against his chest, and watched the city blur past through rain-streaked windows.
Monday mornings were always challenging, but Monday mornings with new hires were particularly exhausting. He’d received the email last Friday, brief and cold, with minimal information about you, who was about to become one of his (many) responsibilities: …she will be joining your team as a junior analyst. Please ensure proper onboarding procedures are followed.
Another fresh graduate, no doubt. Another eager face that would inevitably dim once she realized that financial consulting was ninety percent spreadsheets and ten percent explaining why the client’s unrealistic expectations couldn’t be met. He had trained enough new employees to recognize the pattern–initial enthusiasm, prompt disillusionment and the eventual transfer to a different department or resignation entirely.
The Gojo Financial building loomed through the rain as he emerged from Shibuya Station, its glass facade streaked and gray. Nanami’s umbrella cut through the morning rush with quiet efficiency, and he arrived at the office forty-seven minutes before his scheduled meeting with the new hire. Enough time to review her resume properly and prepare the standard orientation materials.
He settled into his chair and pulled up your file on his computer. Economics degree from Waseda University, decent grades, relevant internship experience at a smaller firm. Standard qualifications, nothing particularly remarkable. The attached photo showed a pretty young woman with hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, eyes looking directly at the camera with what appeared to be cautious optimism.
Nanami glanced at his watch. You were supposed to arrive at eight-thirty for their nine o'clock meeting. It was now 8:45.
He returned to his morning reports, working through the weekend’s accumulated emails. The rain continued its steady assault on the building, and he found himself occasionally glancing toward the elevator bank.
At 8:53, the elevator doors opened with a soft chime.
The woman who stepped out was unmistakably you, the new hire, though you looked considerably less composed than your professional headshot suggested. Your hair had escaped its attempt at neatly styled bun, damp strands framing your face, and your gray blazer bore the telltale signs of a losing battle with the morning’s deluge. You clutched a leather portfolio against your chest like a shield, a purse haphazardly slung over one shoulder, while your eyes scanned the office with barely concealed anxiety.
Nanami watched as you approached the reception desk, speaking in hushed tones to the secretary, who simply pointed in his direction without bothering to look up. You turned, and your eyes met his across the office. Even from this distance, he could see your slight wince–the universal expression of someone who knew they were late and was bracing for the consequences.
You walked toward his desk with careful, measured steps, as if sudden movements might compound your transgression. As you drew closer, Nanami noticed that despite your disheveled appearance, you maintained your posture and your shoes–sensible black pumps–showed no sign of the morning’s treacherous conditions. Prepared then, just unlucky with the weather and traffic.
“Excuse me, Mr. Nanami?” Your voice was softer than he’d expected, with a slight tremor that could have been nerves or the cold. You introduced yourself quickly, before taking a breath. “I’m so sorry I’m late; the trains were delayed because of the weather, and I–”
“It’s fine,” Nanami interrupted, promptly standing and only showing a touch of irritation by adjusting his wire rimmed glasses. “The weather is unpredictable this time of year. Please, sit down.” He gestured to the chair across from his desk, noting how you immediately straightened at his words, some of the tension leaving your shoulders.
You settled into the chair, placing the portfolio on your lap and smoothing your damp hair with one hand, now loose from the bun. Looking at you now, it was oddly charming. “Thank you for understanding. I left early, but the Yamanote line was completely stopped for twenty minutes near Harajuku.”
Nanami nodded. He’d taken a different line this morning specifically to avoid such delays–a small advantage of experience, and, of course, the weatherman. “The rainy season can be unpredictable. You’ll learn the alternative routes quickly enough.”
Something flickered in your eyes, relief, perhaps, or gratitude. “Yes, sir.”
“Just Nanami is fine.” He pulled out a folder containing your training materials and set it on the desk between them. “Before we begin, would you like some coffee? It’s going to be a long morning.”
Your face brightened. “That would be wonderful, thank you.”
He stood and walked to the small break area adjacent to their section, aware of your quiet presence following a few steps behind. The coffee machine hummed to life, and steam began to rise from the brewing pot. Outside, thunder rumbled in the distance, and the rain hammered against the windows.
“How do you take your coffee?” he asked, reaching for two of the plain white mugs from the cabinet.
“Oh,” you turned your gaze from the storm to him. “Black, please, with one sugar.”
“Good choice,” he said, preparing both cups. He liked his coffee similarly, less so for the taste and more for the practical efficiency. “The coffee here is actually decent, unlike most office buildings.”
“That’s a relief,” you replied, and he caught a hint of a smile in your voice. “I was worried I’d have to find the nearest convenience store every morning.”
Nanami handed you the steaming mug. You whispered, thank you, and held the coffee in one hand while you waited for him to finish making his own. He glanced at you from the corner of his eye, subtly admiring the way you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear, as your gaze drifted across the office, a gesture that seemed unconscious, revealing the gentle curve of your neck. He glanced at your ring finger, no wedding ring, which he promptly told himself was standard information to be filed away in the recesses of his brain for team dynamics purposes.
They returned to his desk, and Nanami flipped through the documents in your training folder. “We’ll start with an overview of our current projects and your role in each one. The learning curve is steep, but manageable if you stay organized.”
You nodded, pulling a notebook and pen from your portfolio. You opened it to a fresh page and wrote the date at the top in neat, precise handwriting.
“Our primary client right now is Osaka Manufacturing,” Nanami began, sliding a project summary across the desk. “They’re looking to expand into Southeast Asian markets, but their financial projections are…” he paused, searching for the diplomatic term, “optimistic.”
“Unrealistic?” You suggested quietly, looking up from your notes.
Nanami blinked, momentarily caught off guard. Most new employees spent their first hour nodding enthusiastically at everything, afraid to voice any opinions that might be construed as criticism.
“Exactly,” he said after a moment, adjusting his glasses. “Your job will be to help me compile the data that will guide them toward more feasible expectations.”
You made another note, then looked up at him with those careful eyes. “How do you typically handle clients who aren’t receptive to revised projections?”
It was a good question. Nanami found himself reassessing his initial assumptions about eager-but-naive new graduates.
“Carefully,” he replied. “With comprehensive documentation and alternative scenarios. We’ll go over the specific techniques as we work through the Osaka project.”
For the next few hours, they reviewed project files and client requirements. You asked thoughtful questions and took detailed notes, occasionally glancing out at the rain-soaked city when thunder interrupted their conversation. You were an attentive listener, not just the polite attention most colleagues gave, but genuine engagement with what he was saying.
“The quarterly reports are due next Friday,” he concluded, closing the final folder. “I’ll have you start with data verification for the Hiroshima account–it’s straightforward but important. Any questions so far?”
You looked down at your notebook, now filled with neat columns of information. “Just one. What time do you typically leave the office?”
Nanami glanced at his watch–already past eleven. The morning had passed more quickly than usual. He removed his glasses. “It varies. Usually around seven, sometimes later during busy periods.”
You nodded matter-of-factly, making a final note. “I’ll plan accordingly.”
Not a complaint about long hours or a request for work-life balance policies. Just practical acceptance of the job’s demands.
“Your desk is over there,” he said, pointing to an empty workstation near the window. “Mr. Yamamoto will get you set up with computer access and office supplies.”
“Thank you.” you stood, gathering your materials with the same quiet efficiency you’d displayed throughout their meeting. “I really appreciate your patience this morning, especially with my late arrival.”
“Weather happens,” Nanami replied blankly, then found himself adding, “Tomorrow’s forecast shows more rain. The 7:42 Chuo line train is usually reliable, even during delays.”
youpaused, looking slightly surprised before a tiny smile appeared on your lips, brightening your face. “Thank you. That’s very helpful.”
He found himself slightly flustered at your smile, nearly bristling. “Please be sure to ask questions. Revising mistakes can be more of a hassle instead of just asking from the get-go.”
You nodded, offering one more quick thank you as you walked toward your new desk. Nanami watched you navigate between the cubicles with careful attention to your surroundings. You paused to introduce yourself quietly to nearby colleagues, bowing politely at each introduction. Professional but not overeager. Respectful but not obsequious.
As you sat down and began to settle at your new workstation, you glanced back at him for a brief moment, catching his stare. Clearing his throat, Nanami adjusted his glasses and turned away, directing his attention to his computer, typing furiously.
Nanami stepped out for a cigarette in the late afternoon, huddled beneath an awning and engaging in meaningless conversations with coworkers. One cigarette turned to two, and soon, he found himself smoking what seemed to be an endless chain for lunch. He leaned against the building, exhaling smoke, looking through the floor to ceiling glass windows at the bustling lobby.
Then, he saw a figure exit the elevator. It was her, the newbie.
Your hair had fully dried by this point, loose around your shoulders and brushed neatly. You sat in one of the many benches scattered about, smoothing a hand across your skirt as you crossed one leg over the other. You produced a cellphone from the purse that rested by your feet.
Tapping ash from the cigarette, his eyes watched as you began tapping away, a small smile on your face. Occasionally, you would pause and look out at the rain, your face softening as you watched the water streak down the glass. In those moments, something wistful crossed your features–a brief vulnerability that you quickly tucked away as you returned to your phone. Using its reflection, you reapplied lipstick, brushed stray hair from your face, until a young man approached her. He wasn’t unfamiliar, instead he was just another colleague whose name escaped Nanami at the moment. you stood to speak with him, your face bright. Nanami studied your profile as you spoke, noticing that you had a habit of tilting your head slightly when in conversation, creating a delicate line from your temple to your jaw.
Nanami wasn’t sure how much time had passed until you met his gaze mid-conversation with their coworker. He blinked, his neck growing hot as he was caught, again. He held steady, looking back at you straight-faced, until you smiled and lifted a hand to mouth hello. Despite the window that separated them, he felt the chill in his expression thaw. He adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose and nodded, turning away as soon as their colleague noticed your distraction.
Professional curiosity, he told himself. Nothing more.
Outside, the rain continued its barrage against the windows as the hours slogged by, the sound of keyboards and distant rumbles of thunder competing in a steady, endless rhythm.
It was nearly eight when Nanami made the executive decision to head home for the day. Others remained in the office, although the numbers were beginning to dwindle.
He was exhausted, as he always was, the spreadsheets and data rattling around in his head to the point of nauseum. As he made his way down to the lobby, he exhaled, looking at the worsening weather. He felt for the pack of cigarettes he tucked away into the breast pocket of his coat, a tinge of relief pricking at his chest, and he decided to give it a few minutes before making the mad dash to the station.
From the corner of his eye, once again, he noticed her, realizing he didn’t look for you as he left the office. He’d just assumed that you left hours ago. Their eyes met, and he dipped his head in polite acknowledgement. you smiled, returning the gesture, and he found himself wedged in the social dance of whether he should approach you or not. Ultimately, he decided not to, and hoped that you wouldn't approach him either.
Nanami began to open his umbrella as he moved through the revolving doors, aware that you were making similar motions with your own. Hers was green, and clearly flimsy. One wrong gust of wind and it would be turned inside out. He thought little of it once outside, snapping his open and trudging toward the crosswalk.
He peered over his shoulder, catching one last glimpse of her. You were buttoned into a smart raincoat, green umbrella open, walking in the opposite direction, away from him. Their eyes met again, and as you smiled at him awkwardly from afar, the walking sign flashed on, and he turned away.
Nanami groaned, dragging himself down the hallway to his apartment, his shoes sloshing with every step. He tucked his briefcase under his arm, balancing a bag of takeout, beer, and umbrella in the other as he twisted the key into the lock. Shouldering the door open, he stepped inside, finally crossing the threshold. He kicked off his shoes and umbrella, dropping the takeout and beer on the counter. Out of the wet gloom, and into the warm solace of home.
There were more delays on the commute home, the damp salarymen and students having turned into even soggier variants of themselves from earlier in the morning.
Grabbing a beer, he turned on the TV, shrugging off his jacket and placing his briefcase safely beside the couch as he made his way to the bathroom. He took a quick shower, occasionally sticking his arm from behind the curtain to reach the beer he left perched on the edge of the sink, taking long sips.
A few hours later, Nanami sat beside the coffee table, leaning casually on his palm, paying only half attention to the drone of the late night news anchor and flashy headers filling the screen. He’d changed into an old university T-shirt and sweatpants, his hair falling messily across his forehead. He took the final sip of his third beer and cast a lazy glance at the time glaring at him from the corner of the screen. It only reinforced the obvious: it was late.
He shifted awkwardly, tensely, rolling his shoulders and stretching his back with a yawn. When he finally rose to collect the empty beer cans and takeout containers, he made a soft groan, something like displeasure or irritation. Another casualty of a long day at work, especially the more sedentary parts.
The sound of his phone buzzing broke through the dull, fake cheery drone of the latest repetition of the week’s expected weather. After cleaning up in the kitchen, he went to retrieve his phone. It was a notification from work, go figure. You were online, currently editing a spreadsheet. He had tried to make it a habit to avoid work when he was officially done for the day, especially when he wasn’t getting paid, but of course, that was easier said than done. He scrolled through your edits, you’d been working for quite some time. He almost felt bad, in a way.
Whether it was from the alcohol or some other nameless emotion, he clicked on your profile and prepared to type out a message to her.
You don’t have to work this late, you know.
He quickly deleted it, and then rewrote it. He typed and deleted several variations of the same message nearly 10 times, until you pinged him.
Hello! I apologize for the late message. I noticed your icon typing in the chat and I just wanted to follow up. I see you’re viewing the Hiroshima account spreadsheet that I’ve been editing, did I do something wrong? Thank you so much!
Shit.
At best, he felt like a micromanaging asshole. At worst, he felt like a creepy micromanaging asshole.
Embarrassed, he typed a blasé response in return. You replied with a cheery and overly thankful message, far too many exclamation points for his liking, and he simply sent a thumbs up.
As he settled into bed, he turned on the AC and sighed heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose. He reached for his phone, mindlessly tapping through a few apps before swiping to the work channel. He scrolled through his emails and other notifications, still kicking himself as he reread their conversation. He stopped mid-scroll, looking at your profile. You had already updated your photo. It was newer than your headshot–you were smiling wide, your face lovely, and it was cropped in a specific way that made him think it was a group photo at some point. Maybe with friends?
Your icon was yellow, idle. Last seen 24 minutes ago…
Nanami locked his phone and turned onto his side. The room was silent, except for the rain.
LB.
RELEASE ANOTHER CHAPTER OF ABITD AND MY LIFE IS YOURS.
It’s coming!!! But god, the next chapter is intricate. I reread my draft last night and I was so surprised by how much I’d written and by how much there was still left to go. There’s about 5 different scene breaks and I can’t cut any of them because I need chapter 13 to end at a very specific moment that will 💯 land me in author jail.
Enjoy a little snippet in the meanwhile!
-
Tears burned behind Elain's eyes. "You love him?"
She didn't really need to ask. She could hear it in Feyre's voice.
"Yes," Feyre said again, glancing fondly across the ballroom, to where her husband looked to be having an increasingly displeasurable conversation. "With every piece of my heart, I love him."
"Is he…" Elain searched for a polite wording, "different from what the rumors claim?"
Feyre's lip twitched. It was an expression Elain recognized, from when Feyre used to intentionally misbehave to rile Nesta or their nursemaid. Naughtiness, but with a darker, more wicked twist that she suspected was all Rhysand's influence.
"It depends what rumors you've heard," she said. "Do you mean the ones about his—"
"Do not say something crass to me at my own ball, Feyre Archeron!"
Yay! Nesta’s here and shenanigans are underway! Elain’s longing for Lucien and resisting the urge to jump his bones (girl, same!) l. I can’t wait for Feyre’s return and the Archerons’ reunion in the next chapter!
I feel obligated to share Feysand's entrance because I've been giggling to myself about it for a while now:
The taller figure, a man with blue-black hair and violet eyes, leaned over and whispered something to the attendant, who looked aghast.
The attendant hesitated, assessing the new arrivals as if he were considering saying something to them. Elain could see the conflict drawing tightly on his face before he cleared his throat and announced to the room, "Princess Feyre of the Northern Kingdom and her husband, Prince Rhysand."
And her husband. Like his title as Prince came second.
Summary: As Feyre lamented quietly over the misfortune of her life, there, in the marketplace, she heard a merchant instruct to its patron: Place a butterfly wing under your tongue before you sleep, and you will dream of your true love.
A gift for @sideralwriting 💕 I really hope you've enjoyed this story!! I've had so much fun writing it for you! Also fair warning, this chapter gets 🌶️🌶️
Read on AO3・Previous Chapter・Series Masterlist
-
By the time the Veritas stopped glowing, the fire in the hearth was reduced to soft glowing embers.
Feyre was grateful for the darkness.
She knew that Rhysand was watching her, the dulled orb still cradled in his open palm. Her eyes burned from staring at the white light for so long, and her body was stiff from how intently it had held her attention. But it was her mind, most of all, that was difficult to settle back into.
He expected her to say something. Feyre opened her mouth. She shut it. She thought there were too many things to feel at once. Her thoughts might as well have been a letter tossed into the fireplace, left to burn in the absence of magic. It would take a lifetime to sift through the ashes and craft them into one, neat sentence she could offer to him.
Feyre had never been skilled at expressing how she felt. That was for perfect, posed, sentimental Elain. Whereas Feyre and Nesta were opposite sides of the same coin. Stubborn, reticent, temperamental. She didn’t know how to make sense of this raging tempest in her mind, swirling endlessly around the image of Rhysand holding her, so gently, to his small body and vowing, with all his boyish conviction, that he would look after her for the remainder of his life.
It was too similar to the way he was holding her now. The positions weren’t the same, but it was the gentleness of his touch. One arm braced beneath her, curling around her waist, the other holding the Veritas. He held himself perfectly still in his anticipation—apart from the thumb that etched steady circles into her hip.
Feyre searched and searched for that once overflowing well of resentment and found herself scrabbling into empty space. There was nothing there, just an echo of what she wanted to feel, what she wished she felt. What’s worse, if she dived deeper, peeled back the memory and her silence and the maddening touches against her hip, she found something far more alarming than an empty well. Because now laying exposed at the bottom, no matter how she’d attempted to smother it beneath her empty resentment, was an undimmable source of light and warmth.
Rhysand’s touch slid down, caressing her thigh. With it, Feyre lost her grip and plummeted into the pit of that fervid, all-consuming light. It was deeper than she expected. She found herself swimming against a current, legs kicking and arms flailing as Rhysand continued his coaxing touches, unaware that the current was growing with every touch, forcing her towards what she wasn’t ready to confront. It was all too much.
“Rhys.” It came out hissed.
He paused, body tensing. “What’s wrong?”
Feyre didn’t know how to explain that nothing was wrong. Everything was wrong. He’d finally been vulnerable with her, and in doing so had dismantled all the anger she hadn’t been ready to let go of. Because if she wasn’t angry, if she didn’t resent him, then all she was left with was his fingers against her thigh and how badly she wished they hadn’t stopped moving.
One chance was all that he asked for, but Feyre was all too aware that one chance was all it would take. She would never be able to pull herself out of this current—this river—of light.
“We should go to sleep,” she said.
Feyre counted the seconds in the silence, each one more excruciating than the last.
“Okay,” Rhysand said.
He pulled away under the guise of setting the Veritas on the bedside table. But Feyre knew better. She knew that when he settled back on the bed, the distance he maintained was purposeful. And that was fine. Distance was safe. Even if Feyre had to gnash her teeth against the impulse to move closer.
The silence wedged between them like a physical body. She shifted, trying to find a position that would make her feel settled, but the dissonance of the quiet was overbearing. There was so much to say that it was smothering her.
“One thought,” Rhysand murmured, finally. “Please, Feyre, just give me one.”
Feyre knew she couldn’t admit what she was thinking, not yet. She searched for something she could navigate, something easier than I want to give you a chance or I don’t think I care that you’re not my true love.
“I’m thinking that I liked your fingers on my hip.”
There was no denying that they’d been attracted to each other from the moment their eyes had met in the ballroom—that was much easier to admit to.
Another pause. She knew he’d wanted vulnerability and maybe he wouldn’t let her hide behind that admission. After begging him to be honest, she couldn’t blame him for demanding the same from her. But then there was a whisper of movement, and Rhysand’s familiar warmth settled beside her.
It was dangerous, letting him wrap his arm around her shoulder, drawing her against him until her back was to his stomach and she laid her head atop the hard planes of his chest.
She could hear his heart thundering.
“Like this?” He asked, resuming those lazy circles with his fingers.
If she opened her mouth, she worried one of the more vulnerable, more concerning truths might slip out. So instead she ducked her face against the soft fabric of his shirt, savoring the scent of citrus and the sea. It was familiar in a way that made her stomach twist into a tangle of knots.
“Good,” he said. The anxiety in his voice had smoothed, once again rich, luxurious velvet. “Let me know if you want to feel them anywhere else, Feyre darling.”
Feyre darling.
It was the drawl that did it, the way his voice lingered on the second syllable of her name. How darling rolled off his tongue, like a promise.
She had gotten so used to meetings in the dark, it was easier to put the pieces together now that she couldn’t see him. She’d been imagining blonde hair, but now she slid a hand from his sternum, along the column of his neck, and stopped where her palm slid against the stubble at his jaw. There was no butterfly wing under her tongue, though she could feel a million of them fluttering in her stomach.
Feyre fought moisture back into her mouth. “Where else were you considering?”
He wasn’t her true love. She had kissed him, and the bargains had remained.
There were far more questions than she had answers, but Feyre did know a few things for certain.
That Rhysand was her husband.
That this marriage was his design—spurred from an act of kindness, not cruelty.
And that when Rhys ducked his head to purr, “Do you want me to show you?” Feyre was answering honestly when she said, “Yes.”
His hand dipped, following the shape of her hip, down the slope of her outer thigh, until he paused at the hem of her dress. Feyre held back a gasp as his hand slipped beneath the fabric, skin to skin. His fingers curved inwards and upwards along her thigh, dragging the material of her dress as he went.
“Relax,” he murmured, feeling how she’d stiffened. “Just say the word, and I’ll stop.”
Gods, that was the opposite of what she wanted. He must have realized, by the breathy laugh he released, which skirted along the back of her neck as teasingly as his calloused fingers at her thigh, sliding up, up, up.
Feyre leaned into him, feeling the solid heat of his body, pressed so closely that she could feel each unsteady rise and fall of his chest. Her awareness narrowed to his touch, how it singed every nerve, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. Rhysand chose in that moment to press his mouth to her neck, nipping her skin while he swept his thumb higher on her thigh, brushing against the fabric of her underthings.
Her breath hitched, the flesh all along that side of her neck pimpling in response to his teasing. Rhysand chuckled and kissed the spot apologetically. Like that made things better in the slightest. Feeling like she’d been swallowed by the sun, Feyre squirmed, pushing her backside against him only to find that he was hard as granite.
This time, Feyre couldn’t contain the moan that escaped her. She felt her blood ignite as every thought eddied from her head, apart from Rhysand’s fingers tracing the seam of her underthings while she ground herself against his erection.
He groaned. “Feyre.” His other hand snaked to her hips, stilling her motions. “I thought you wanted my fingers.”
For emphasis, he trailed them upwards, finding her clit through the wet lace to rub drawn-out circles through the fabric. That long awaited friction coaxed her hips forward, silently begging him for more as her head fell back against his shoulder, eyes fluttering shut.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “My beautiful wife. Do you like having your husband touch you like this?”
Feyre bit her lip. Nodded, even as a sense of shame threatened to tighten around her chest. How many nights ago had she let her true love touch her this way, insisting she wanted him to be the first? That felt like a distant memory now, the desire she’d felt in her dream hardly an echo of what she felt as Rhysand teased her.
“I want you to tell me,” Rhys crooned.
He hooked a finger into the lace, tugged it down to her knees.
Heat flushed over her face, mortified that she could feel the air caress the wetness between her legs, seconds before his warm fingers did.
“Yes,” she whispered. And that single word felt liberating.
Feyre reminded herself that her true love wasn’t here to see how she was coming undone beneath her husband’s touch. Or maybe he was, maybe he was the one diving his fingers lower, coating them through her arousal before he pushed one finger slowly inside her.
It didn’t matter. It didn't matter because as she stiffened against the intrusion, he made a soft cooing noise and thumbed her clit to help her adjust, and everything numbed into white, blissful pleasure. It didn’t matter because true love or not, she was going to devour him, and let him do the same in turn.
Rhysand swore. “You are…” He sounded dazed, and cut himself off with a kiss against her shoulder, then another at her throat, over her pulse. Feyre moved without thinking, pushing her hips against his hand, and Rhysand swore again. “Fuck, Feyre. That’s a good girl.”
“Rhys,” she gasped, embarrassingly close to a whimper.
She felt his body tense, his fingers still. It was so far from the reaction she wanted that she groaned, trying to twist in his arms to see what had made him stop.
But then Rhysand let go. It was so much more brutal, more devastating than it had been in the carriage. His fingers retreated, leaving her feeling empty, clenching around nothing as the heat at her back vanished. She reached blindly for him, panting, “Rhys, wha—”
Strong arms pushed her back into the mattress, gentle but urgent.
“Say it again,” he said.
Say what? She would have asked, but he didn’t give her a chance to say anything at all before his lips were crushed against hers. Feyre arched against him, utterly lost to sensation—the taste of salt and sweat and citrus on his tongue, the way he pinned her to the bed, hips rolling against her exposed cunt, letting her feel the promise of what waited for her between his legs.
The only men that Feyre had ever seen naked were the nude depictions she’d seen in art, and even then they were usually covered with loincloths. She had a feeling that the heavy length she felt grinding against her, coiling heat around her spine, would be nothing like the paintings.
Consumed with curiosity, she snaked a hand down to rub at the bulge with her palm.
Rhys hissed into her mouth, hips bucking forward before he pulled them away.
The wild look in his eyes fascinated her. “Show me how to touch you,” she whispered.
“Another time,” he said, darting his tongue against her neck in what she was certain was an effort to distract her.
“I want you to feel good, too,” she protested.
He laughed, low and soft. “Sweet wife.” He nipped gently at her pulse, before ducking lower, a kiss against her collarbone, mouth following the neckline of her dress. “I assure you, this will be equally pleasurable for me.”
Feyre pushed onto her elbows to watch him settle between her legs. His hands slipped beneath either of her thighs to part them wider and she watched in disbelief as he pressed an open kiss to the lips of her cunt, unabashedly parting her with his tongue. That was all it took to send her back into the mattress, fingers fisting into the sheets.
“Rhys.”
“Yes,” he whispered—begged. “Say my name, Feyre. Who do you belong to?”
She would have been affronted, if not for the tremble in his hands. The desperation in his eyes as he stared up at her face and licked her again. Oh, she thought, marveling with the revelation. Rhysand liked it when she said his name.
“Rhys,” she said experimentally, feeling drunk on power as she watched his shoulders slant with pleasure. It was remarkable how such a simple thing could have such a powerful effect. How in admitting that she belonged to him, he was proving that the opposite was true.
Rhysand groaned, answering her with another brazen lick that filtered every word out of her lexicon. Suddenly there was only Rhys and more and please, bubbling from her lips in unintelligible pants. Her hands flew into his hair before she could think better of it, fisting in the silken blue-black strands to tug him closer, harder.
Light built behind her eyelids, and in the rare moments where she opened them, she swore she saw shadows building, coalescing around Rhysand, coiling around her ankles, up her legs. But compared to Rhysand sucking her clit into his mouth at the same moment he plunged that wicked finger back inside her, those details hardly registered.
She bowed off the bed, forgetting entirely about the shadows until one of them scraped down the walls of her mind. Feyre opened the gates without any hesitation, far too wrung out with pleasure to allow for any proper scrutiny, and Rhysand flooded into her mind, enveloping her so completely that she wondered how she ever thought she could run away from this, from him.
Feyre, he murmured into her mind, his mental voice sounding just as breathless. Just as ruined. You taste—fucking exquisite.
He slipped a second finger in, plunging them deeper. Harder.
She moaned, nails digging in his scalp, feeling how his chest rumbled in response. How he cooed in her mind, My sweet wife, do you want more?
Please, she whispered, utterly broken down from the pressure ratcheting up her spine, rising to her skin like a fever. Making her feel overheated, overwrought, desperate for more—for his tongue, for his fingers, for his…
Delightful creature, tell your husband what you want.
Feyre understood the mechanics of what she wanted, but didn’t know how to articulate that she wanted him. That she wanted to consummate their marriage as husband and wife, wanted to feel him so completely there was never any doubt. That regardless of who waited for her behind a butterfly wing, she would always have Rhys, and she would be loved.
And maybe she would love him, too. In frighteningly equal measure.
Her lexicon was still limited, managing only Rhys, please, but that was enough.
Come for me, Feyre, he said roughly. Come for your husband, let me taste how badly you want me.
The fever reached its pitch, cresting and shattering over Feyre. She cried out, coming undone against his fingers and tongue, feeling herself clench and tighten around him. Rhysand moaned, the sound echoing through her ears and in her mind, amplifying the need already building again.
He climbed back up her body, fingers snatching on her dress as he went. She sat up to help him unlace the back, heart fluttering as he pulled it over her head. She felt dizzy as he paused, dark eyes roving over her skin. Feyre resisted the urge to cover herself, but the impulse was forgotten once Rhysand fell on top of her, lips again seizing hers, unhurried and open and mind-numbing. It was all she could do to hold on, gripping his hair, his face, scraping her nails over his back.
As he kissed her, his hands worked the laces of his trousers, springing himself free. And then she felt him, warm and smooth, against her thigh. Feyre sucked in a breath, her entire body tingling as Rhys hooked a hand beneath her thigh and guided her leg over his hip.
The next time he ground his hips against her, there was no barrier between them. And if she’d thought his fingers had been torture, that was nothing compared to his bare cock sliding against her wet cunt. Hovering over her, she could see a satisfied smile blooming over his face as the head of his cock bumped against her clit and Feyre’s lips parted in blind pleasure.
“Is this what you want?” He asked, chasing the question with another teasing thrust and an open-mouthed kiss, this one rougher, hungrier. Like he wanted to taste each moan before it rose to the surface.
Feyre’s hand slipped between their bodies, wanting to feel him in her palm. But Rhysand caught her hand, threaded their fingers together and pinned it beside her head.
“Look at me, Feyre darling.”
She did. Eyes wide, she met Rhysand’s gaze and saw glittering stars staring back at her.
He notched himself against her entrance, the pressure just a suggestion of what was to come, but already her body was trembling.
Rhys asked again, “Is this what you want?”
Feyre couldn’t help thinking he was asking about more than the sex. Was he what she wanted—this life, this marriage?
“Yes,” she whispered, to everything. “I choose you, Rhysand. I want you.”
“You’ve had me, Feyre,” he grunted, pushing his hips forward. And at that first slide of him, it was like the embers in the hearth had roared to life, the entire word catching fire as he added, “You’ve had me since the day we met. Since the very first moment I laid eyes on you.”
Her body tightened around his, fingers locked, thighs clenched, teeth gritted. Her body’s final safety mechanism, warning, there will be no coming back from this.
Feyre didn’t want to.
Rhys was panting as he stilled his hips, letting her adjust. His forehead fell against hers. “Are you okay?”
She nodded, using her ankles to urge him forward. “More than.”
That was all the encouragement he needed. Rhysand pulled out and thrust back in, slow and deep, letting her get drunk on the stretch. Her body became molten beneath his touch, relaxing and opening to each decadent slide of his hips.
“My beautiful wife,” he panted.
Her body became molten beneath his touch, relaxing and opening to each decadent slide of his hips. The next thrust sent stars wheeling behind her eyes.
“Look at you being so sweet for me,” Rhysand purred. His voice had gone rich and dangerously rasped, catching as he added, “Doing so well, Feyre.”
In the back of her mind, something cracked and splintered. She didn’t register what had happened until she felt his shadows, still caressing the walls of her mind, brush over a hollow space in the wall. She jolted, realizing the bricks in the walls of Archeron manor were breaking to pieces, crumbling in mirror to her own undoing.
His movements picked up speed, more frenzied in the way he claimed her mouth, tongue prying open her lips, until there wasn’t a single part of her body that didn’t ache with the pleasure of touching him. Feyre met him stroke for stroke, willing to be consumed, craving to be known so completely that there wasn’t any part of her he would shy away from.
“Say my name,” he groaned. “I want to hear you say it when you come for me.”
“Rhys,” she whimpered, the current rising, the fire raging, until Feyre knew what it was to drown and burn and balance at the edge of ruin and still feel desperate for more.
He didn’t notice when the first brick crumbled, nor the second, but as the walls around her mind gradually collapsed, inviting him in to survey the wreckage, she watched as those violet eyes widened. The rhythm of his hips faltered, pushing to the hilt at the same moment she drew him into her mind and shattered around him.
Pure euphoria tore from her lips, fractals scattering down every nerve, twining through the shadows that curled around her mind. A sound caught in Rhysand’s throat, something like a whine, as his head fell against her shoulder and his body shuddered his release.
Feyre could feel the presence of him in her mind, raw and trembling and so flooded with joy that it bubbled into her chest, causing her to laugh as she kissed him again, sweetly.
Cruel, wicked creature, he murmured to her, returning the kiss with heartbreaking gentleness. Who taught you that little trick?
A wretched despot, she answered, chest still heaving. I found him wandering around at night.
Hmm. Another kiss. She felt his cock twitch inside her, swelling like he had every intention of flipping her over and doing it all again. Lucky despot.
-
“Come back to bed.”
Feyre paused with one toe posed on the floor, her balance delicate, weight trembling. She’d been attempting to ease onto her front foot without making a sound, but the creaky floorboard had betrayed her efforts. Now Rhysand sat up from his place at the bed, frowning at her through bleary eyes.
“I’ll be there in a moment,” she called to him.
The floor creaked. Feyre turned to see her husband approaching her, smile soft and sleep-addled. His hair flopped into his face, messy from her fingers, and she found her heart warming at the sight. He looked nothing like the Prince of the North. He was her husband, and as he stopped to press a lazy kiss to her exposed shoulder, she thought that was all that she ever needed him to be.
“You go back to bed,” she chided, resisting a shudder, and with it the flood of warmth that cascaded down her spine. Feyre was hoping he would be the first to sever their connection so that she wouldn’t have to.
Rhys hummed, lips tingling against her skin. That single touch crackled with heat, making her feel breathless and far too awake for the middle of the night. His hands found her hips, thumbs etching those slow circles, each one responsible for a new bolt of lust that urged Feyre back to the bed. She should have stepped away, but somewhere in the devastation of his touch, her legs had stopped obeying.
“Without my wife?” Another kiss, closer to her neck. He was testing his luck and Cauldron above, she was letting him. “Who’s going to protect me from the dark?”
Feyre thought of the darkness that often pressed around him, flowing from his body like weeping ink. She whispered, because it distracted her from his wicked mouth and the way she was arching her neck too deliberately to be anything other than an invitation, “You are the dark.”
At her back, she felt him pause. His fingers on her hips stilled, lips an inch from finding her pulse and discovering just how quickly it was leaping. One of the hands lifted from her hips, finding her chin. He turned her head, violet eyes meeting hers intently.
“Then you are my stars,” Rhys said to her. “Radiant, despite the darkness that clings to you.”
The embers in the hearth were not bright enough to illuminate his face. The task of cutting through the thick shadow was left to the moonlight that poured in through the small slatted window at the ceiling’s peak, but even squinting Feyre couldn’t make out Rhysand’s expression. She could feel him step away, though. Heard the whisper of his arm fall back to his side, felt its absence burning against her skin.
“Let me find you something comfortable to wear,” he said, like nothing had transpired at all.
She hated that—that he could walk away from things so readily, while she was always stuck. Overthinking, reacting too much, too little.
“Rhys,” she called to him, watching the tension in his shoulders ease just the slightest bit.
He didn’t turn his head as he bent over the trunk, rummaging for night clothes. “Hmm?”
Her eyes flickered down to her hands, the twin markings distinguishable from her pale skin, even in the darkness. They were the evidence that Rhysand was not her true love. But a voice, no longer quiet or small, begged, so what? Would it be so terrible to love him anyway? The boy who begged his father to let her live, who could have married anyone but decided to wait 17 years to marry the youngest Archeron.
Feyre followed after him, fingers drawn to his elbow without even registering the motion. Rhysand turned fully to face her, and beneath the weight of those dark eyes she found herself wanting to reassure him that his affections were not completely one sided.
The stars don’t shine in spite of the darkness, they shine because of it.
She could have said that. But then her eyes met his, and her memory snagged on his one, simple request. Come back to bed.
Feyre dropped her hand like he’d stung her, nails digging into the palms of her hand as she impulsively asked, “Do you have any parchment I could use? I want to send a letter to my sister while the sun is still down.”
Rhysand stiffened imperceptibly. There was parchment at the bottom of that very trunk, she knew, many pages of it scrawled with her own penmanship.
“Of course,” he said, stepping to obscure her line of sight as he reached back into the trunk. “I’ll rekindle the fire for you.”
She listened to the unmistakable crinkle of the letters, waiting for her anger to return as she counted every lie he’d told, either directly or by omission. The anger didn’t come. All she could think about, with sudden and horrifying clarity, were the things that she had written about her husband and how she wished in that moment she could take it all back.
I didn’t mean it, she almost said to Rhysand once he handed her the parchment. I didn’t understand.
He placed a folded up nightgown to the side. “For when you’re done with your letter,” he said, blissfully unaware of the slant of her thoughts. Feyre watched him offer her a small smile before he left to attend to the fire, once again so ready to move on while she stood there, stiffly holding the paper, wondering where to even begin.
She knew the steps, at least, even if her mind was focused elsewhere, honed on her husband nursing the fire on the other side of the room.
Find a quill.
The floorboards creaked beneath his shifting weight.
Dip it in ink.
Rusted metal scraped together as he lifted the poker off the hook.
Push the tip to the page.
Wood tumbled from the charred stack, producing a soft protest of sparks.
Write something, anything.
Rhysand swore softly under his breath.
The ink blotted. Feyre shut her eyes, released a deep exhale.
Dear Elain,
That part was easy. Familiar. It was the next words that were difficult.
I have a favor I must ask you.
Once she was finished, Feyre walked over to the fireplace with the folded letter, a piece of her hair, and the aster Rhysand had given her at the winter market. In the time she’d taken to write it, the fire had already roared to life within the hearth, allowing her to admire the glow of her husband’s bronze skin as he rose to his full height.
His attention immediately snagged on the flower. He didn’t demand an explanation, but Feyre found herself stumbling over one anyway.
“You said to include something that reminded me of my sister. She, uh, likes flowers.”
Rhysand’s smile did not reach his eyes. “So much for that love potion.”
Feyre wanted to assure him she wouldn’t need one, but in the time it took her to summon the confidence, he was already jerking his chin towards the flame.
“Throw it in. She’ll find the letter on her desk when she wakes up.”
He didn’t stay to watch the fire engulf the letter, and the aster flower with it. She stared until both had completely disappeared, listening to him shrug into his own pair of night clothes and crawl back into the bed.
At least he was waiting for her when she finally joined him, violet eyes curious, if a little wary.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what was so urgent that you needed to send a letter in the middle of the night?”
“I’m just worried about my sisters,” she said, which wasn’t a lie.
Fortunately, Rhysand didn’t press the issue once she slid into his arms. And in the safety of his warmth, sleep found her easily.
-
Elain didn’t return a letter in the night.
It was to be expected, considering Feyre had likely sent it long after Elain had gone to bed. But even so, Feyre was disappointed that she’d need to wait until sundown to receive her sister’s response.
Not that it was any trouble to wait.
Especially when Rhysand was in the best spirits she’d seen him in all week.
“Would you like a bath before we leave?” he asked, winding an arm around her waist so that he could draw her closer and press a kiss to her temple.
Feyre decided she could get used to the casual intimacy. Especially when he looked at her like that—eyes gentle, so intent as he watched her wrinkle her nose at the thought of the communal bathing room a floor below.
“I think I’d rather bathe in a stream,” she said.
Her husband let out a low laugh. “I’ll think you’ll find them all frozen.”
And indeed, what waited for them outside of the inn was a landscape swept in the throes of winter. Everything was decorated in a generous layer of snow—the layers of the nearby pine forest, the roof of the inn, the stables where their footman disappeared to fetch their horse. It didn’t look real to Feyre, like the entire land has been frozen in time, covered in frosted glass. Except Rhysand was real, his hand warm in her own, his breath expelling from his lips in dense clouds.
“I rescind my willingness to bathe in the streams,” she said, fascinated as she watched another cloud collect in front of his face in the shape of a laugh.
“A shame, I was about to suggest going with you.”
“Why? So you can melt the ice with your magic?”
He grinned, ever shameless. “I was imagining we could produce heat the more traditional way.”
“Rake,” she accused.
Rhsyand seemed to pause at the use of that word. And she paused with him, watching as he opened his mouth, then shut it.
Feyre ventured, feeling all those butterfly wings collected in her stomach, “What is it?”
He looked away, towards the frosted pine trees. Cool air collected on his cheeks, giving them a rosy finish. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
She waited. He didn’t continue, but she could feel the truth rising in him, prepared to shatter this newfound amity if it meant being honest.
Feyre put a hand to his cheek, marveling at the heat his body emitted, wondering how he didn’t flinch from the ice that had already leached into her fingers.
“Tell me later,” she said.
He nodded, catching the hand at his cheek, then her other hanging at her side. He brought them both to his mouth, cradling them between the heat of his hands and breath.
“As you wish, Feyre.” He blew against her fingers, letting them warm in his grip as they waited for the footman to bring the carriage around. “You tell me when you’re ready to know.”
Feyre could love him for that alone. She only nodded, continuing to hold his gaze, wondering if he knew what she had put together. If this was just an open secret they were content to dance around, because it no longer mattered so long as they were able to continue holding hands.
Soon the carriage ambled along the snow-carved path, worn down by whichever travelers had set off earlier, and Rhys released her hands so he could help her inside. She was deliberate in sliding onto the bench he’d occupied since they’d first set off and on their journey, and when her husband raised an intrigued brow, she merely patted the space beside her. With a roguish grin, Rhys happily claimed the space at her side, and swept his cloak around them both without being asked.
Feyre rested her head against her husband’s shoulder, watching out the window as the pine and mountain rock passed by. And she found herself wishing that the journey to the Northern Kingdom could last just a little bit longer.
-
The letter appeared after dinner.
Resting atop the writing desk of the inn bedroom like someone had placed it there, was a piece of folded up parchment with the words Feyre Archeron scrawled atop in fresh ink. Feyre recognized Elain’s handwriting immediately—refined and more elegant than her own, as Elain was in all things.
Rhysand eyed the letter curiously, but gave her the privacy to open it alone by ducking into the bathing room with the excuse that he was changing out of his day clothes.
There was no chair at the writing desk, so Feyre sat on the edge of the bed to open the letter, the parchment sticking slightly to the moisture already building in her palms. Feyre watched the edges of the page tremble, her vision going blurred as her heart raised to her throat, and she wondered why she was so nervous, when she knew precisely what the letter would contain.
A single butterfly wing had been tucked delicately into the center. It fluttered from the open parchment, lighter than air as it drifted slowly into Feyre’s lap. Her eyes followed its path, sucked into the gravity of the fragile black and orange wing, sitting in such heavy contrast against her pale blue dress. She stared, unable to move beneath the weight of this weightless object.
The tap in the bathing room squeaked. Feyre forced her eyes to the quivering parchment.
Dearest Feyre,
Your letter did not specify the breed of butterfly, so I hope this will be sufficient (it better be, as frankly the whole ordeal was horrifying and I hope you never ask me to strip a creature of its wings ever again).
I pray that this gives you the answer you’re looking for and that, regardless of what you discover, you are able to find happiness. True love is sacred, but love can still endure in other capacities. If you choose to harbor love for another, that bond would be just as rare and precious.
This is what I am reminding myself as I, too, am being pushed into marriage with a foreign prince. I am not brave like you. I couldn’t convince myself to run away, so I am choosing to have hope instead. I believe that love can exist in many forms, even between those that fate did not originally choose.
I know, above all, that you are not someone who would let magic and fate make decisions for you. Trust what your heart is telling you, even if you are afraid to listen.
Your loving sister,
Elain
Feyre turned the page, finding a familiar sketch of the ocean—the trinket she’d instructed Elain to include. Her heart constricted, thinking of the Feyre who had wanted nothing more desperately than to see the world beyond the walls of the Archeron manor. And now here she was, at an inn on the other side of the continent.
Her eyes fell back to her lap.
Rhysand would be coming out of the bathing room any second now. That gave her the courage to stroke her thumb over the gossamer-like material, stomach already curdling at the thought of putting it in her mouth. Not just because it was unpleasant, but because…
You are not someone who would let magic and fate make decisions for you.
Last night, Feyre had given herself to Rhysand completely. She had her suspicions, but as Feyre sat on the bed, she imagined the possibility of drifting to sleep with the wing under her tongue and waking in the arms of someone who wasn’t Rhys—someone like Tamlin.
It was a herculean effort to lift the butterfly wing from her lap, but she was able to do so with purpose. She folded the wing back into the letter, crossed the bedroom to the waiting hearth, and tossed them both into the flames. With no magical recipient, she felt the heat crawl over her skin as she watched the parchment crumple and burn.
It didn’t matter who was waiting for her on the other side of the butterfly wing. All that mattered was who waited for her on the other side of the bathing room door.
She turned her head at the soft click, finding him patting his face with the hem of his shirt, exposing the slope of his hips and the tight muscle beneath his navel. He must have splashed himself with water—stray pieces of hair stuck to his temple, and his eyelashes were wet and clumping together.
Rhysand smiled when he saw her, soft enough that when combined with the warmth of the fire, Feyre feared she’d melt into that very spot.
“How’s your sister?” He asked, dropping his shirt.
He walked straight up to her, sweeping his hands around her waist. They’d been touching so readily in the wake of their night together, and now Feyre questioned why they hadn’t started doing it sooner.
“Not well,” Feyre answered with a small frown. “Father’s married her off to a foreign prince, too.”
His brows merged. “Which one?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Well,” he frowned. “Let’s hope it was one of the Princes from the Western Kingdom. Like Prince Tarquin—I’ve heard he’s a joy.”
Feyre’s chest felt heavy. It would make sense for Father to send Elain to the Western Kingdom, renown for its warm climate and warmer culture. Elain would get on well there, marveling at the diverse plant life, soaking in the heat, greeting the ocean with wide eyes. Feyre could imagine her, beloved by her husband and his people. And yet, Feyre had the impression that Elain was not being sent to such a place.
I couldn’t convince myself to run away, so I am choosing to have hope instead.
“Are there Princes of the Eastern Kingdom?” she asked.
Rhysand’s eyes sharpened. “The Vanserras,” he said, like it was a filthy word. “There are seven of them. If you thought my reputation was poor, Feyre, you’ll find it rather complimentary compared to theirs. I don’t see any reason why your father would marry his daughter to one of King Beron’s sons.”
“He married me to you,” she said pointedly.
Rhys shrugged, not the least bit offended. If anything, as his eyes roved over the tattoos on his arm, he looked pleased. “He didn’t have a choice.” Fingers grazed her chin, gentle as they lifted her face to his. “Would you like to write her back now and find out?”
“No,” she whispered, struggling not to fret when there was so little that could be done. “I’m sure you’re right. She’s probably on her way to the Western Kingdom as we speak. I’ll write back to her soon.”
Her husband ducked his head, kissing her so adoringly that some of the tightness in her chest loosened. “Shall we head to bed?” He asked, mouth still against hers. Eyes shut in utter contentment.
“Yes,” she whispered back, warm from the fire and his touch and the promise of another night spent wrapped in his arms. Turning away from the hearth, hands securely in her husband’s, she left the butterfly wing burning in the flames.
-
Feyre woke to darkness.
Then a burst of light—like someone had stripped the dark away, returning her sight to her all at once. It was so blinding that she cried out, pushing up a hand to shield her eyes.
It dulled after a moment, allowing her to lower her arm, to blink, adjust to the new light. Feyre wasn’t in the bedroom she’d fallen asleep in. She wasn’t in a bedroom at all. Fingers twisting in the silken bedsheets, she warily turned her head to study the walls of the cool cavern surrounding her, lit by thousands of glowing blue butterflies. They flocked to the ceiling, clumped together by the hundreds, wings twitching as they laid mostly stationary. Sleeping, she thought.
“Where am I?” Feyre asked.
Because she knew this wasn’t just a dream. And that she wasn’t here alone.
Long, strolling steps answered her. She swiveled her head to the cave entrance in time to watch Rhysand duck his head around the corner, hands tucked into his pockets. He wasn’t wearing the clothes he’d gone to sleep in. Instead, he was dressed elegantly in knee-high boots and fine trousers. He had on a silver embroidered jacket and the thick cloak she had spent the day huddled beneath. Resting atop his head was a silver crown that marked him as the Prince of the North, not her husband.
But the smile on his face—bashful, a little hesitant—that was all her Rhys.
“You’re in the Northern Kingdom,” he said. The glow of the butterflies tinted his hair, turning it more blue than black for a change. “In our butterfly caves.”
She blinked. “This is a real place?”
Rhysand raised a palm, carefully batting one of the butterflies that flittered lazily over his shoulder. It hovered on his hand for a moment, the glow of its wings concentrated on his tawny palm, before it rose to return to the others at the cavern’s peak.
“They’re attracted to the dark,” he said. “I find a kinship in them. They made their home in the North centuries ago, nesting in these caves in the winter, pollinating our flowers at night during the spring. Some say their glowing wings make them a powerful conduit, but they are actually a protected species.” He glanced towards Feyre, eyes unreadable. “The royal family must grant a license to use them in spells.”
Feyre lifted her eyes back to the ceiling to marvel at the soft light of their wings, glittering like the night sky, as if each of the stars was a living, breathing creature.
“So there are butterflies in the North,” she breathed, lifting her hand as one of them drifted towards her. It bumped against her fingertips, small legs ticklish against her skin, before continuing on its way.
Rhysand took a tentative step towards the bed. “You don’t seem surprised.”
She knew he didn’t mean about the butterflies.
“You asked me to come to bed last night, and I didn’t.” She turned to meet his eyes again, finding that he had taken another step closer. “It was a command, so why didn’t the bargain make me obey?”
She knew the answer. So did he.
“You’ve used all five of your questions,” he said.
Feyre recognized the gleam in his eyes, felt a mirrored thrill spark in her own. “Then give me one more.”
He prowled closer, wrapped one arm around the bedpost to lean closer. Every bit the wolf leaning over his prey, saying sweetly, “You’ll have to give me something in exchange, Feyre darling.”
When she nodded, he released the bedpost in favor of closing the distance between them. He braced an arm over each side of her head, pushing her further into the bed so he could breathe against her face, “Ask your question, then.”
Magic twined in the air, electric on her tongue as she asked, “Are you my true love?”
“I’m your husband,” he said. Feyre blinked, tilting her head at the unexpected answer. He smiled to himself. “But, yes, you could also call me your true love. If you insist.”
Feyre smiled, because she knew he was telling the truth, and that it didn’t change anything at all.
Though she was still curious enough to ask— “Why didn’t you tell me?”
That sobered him. Rhysand pulled back with a small sigh. “Because Tamlin used his magic to intercept our letters and convinced you he was your true love. And then you began to believe the worst things about me.” He ran his hands through his hair. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to accept me as your husband simply for being your true love.”
Something cracked and shattered in her chest.
Rhysand continued, his voice rasped, “I wouldn’t have forced you into the marriage, if I’d known. When I made the arrangements with your father, I thought you knew it was me. I thought you wanted it.”
Feyre fought a tremble in her lower lip, though it still escaped in her voice. “I do want this marriage, Rhysand.” She reached up, cupping his face. “I decided that before I knew the truth.”
He leaned his face into her touch, his expression open and anguished in a way he didn’t typically allow her to see. “You did?”
“I did.” she whispered. “I decided I didn’t need that aster flower because I won’t be needing a love potion to love my husband. And I want you to know that—” she swallowed. “I want you to know that I am honored to be your wife. Just as much as I am honored to be your true love.” She reached to grab the lapels of his jacket, tugging him back down to her. She could feel him shaking, his entire body trembling as she pressed her lips delicately to his and added, “I am honored to spend the rest of this journey by your side.”
To the North, and whatever waited for them beyond that.
Tears glimmered in his eyes, a river reflecting the blue stars above, flowing down his cheeks as he pressed his mouth to hers again. “I love you,” he said, kissing her, letting her taste the salt water and citrus. “I have been waiting for months to show this place to you.”
Rhysand kissed her slowly. Like the way he had before the ball, when she had begged him to come marry her, and he had done precisely as she asked.
He broke away with what she could sense was reluctance. His finger flexed with longing where he’d cradled them behind her neck. He murmured, “And now that you know the truth, I’m calling in my side of the bargain.”
The words had a sultry scrape that made Feyre laugh, breathless and unrestrained. She could have pointed out that their kiss just nullified the bargain, but her curiosity got the better of her. Especially as he nipped at her pulse, sending her head back towards the glowing ceiling.
What do you want? she asked, voicing the question silently because she didn’t want his mouth to move from its place at her neck.
Rhysand smiled against her skin. I want you to wake up and put on that lacy negligee for me.
-
Dear Elain,
I have a favor I must ask you.
Do you recall the magic spell I told you about, the night I tried to run away? The one where you place a butterfly wing beneath your tongue so that you will meet your true love in your dreams?
I’m afraid the context has become too complex and confusing to divulge to you in its entirety over letter, but I suspect that my husband is, in a strange turn of events, my one true love. I know it is a gruesome task, but I desperately need you to send me a butterfly wing so that I can confirm it.
Once you have a butterfly wing, I believe you will be able to send it to me by folding it into this letter. Add a lock of your hair and a trinket that reminds you of me, then burn them all, and this letter, after sundown.
Don’t give up on true love, Elain. It’s still there, waiting for you.
-Feyre
Elain twisted the aster stem between her thumb and forefinger, watching the petals blur into a circle as they twirled.
She was happy for her sister, truly. After spending so many days grieving for Feyre and raging against their father’s decision to marry her off to the cruel Prince of the North, it was a relief to discover her sister had potentially found a life with her true love, after all.
It was also terribly difficult not to be consumed with envy.
The lone butterfly wing taunted her from where she’d left it, hastily discarded, atop the drawing table. She’d gagged through the entire ordeal of ripping it from the poor insect, and now that she’d sent one of the wings to Feyre, Elain was uncertain what to do with the second one. It seemed cruel to rip them from a living creature only to discard them, but the prospect of putting it beneath her tongue… Elain’s skin pimpled with disgust at just the thought.
It wouldn’t be practical, besides. Tomorrow, Elain would be marrying the youngest son of the Eastern Kingdom’s royal family. So really, she had no use for the folly of magic and supposed true loves. Even if she met her true love in her dreams, there would be no backing out of tomorrow’s ceremony. So really, it was for the best to leave her fated other half unknown. It would be less painful that way.
Still, the wing rested on that table, just to the side of Feyre’s letter and the words that jumped out towards Elain. Don’t give up on true love.
It was an easy assurance for someone to make once they had found themselves married to their true love. But Elain knew, with decided certainty, that such would not apply to her own marriage. Not that she had ever met her soon to be husband.
From what she had heard, Lucien Vanserra was as cruel and miserable as the six brothers before him. Elain hadn’t yet decided what to make of the rumors surrounding the Vanserra men, but what she did find offensive was that Lucien hadn’t had the decency to so much to as write her a letter. He’d made no effort to know her before their marriage, which made Elain feel very much as though she was just the byproduct of a far more interesting transaction.
“You’ll be marrying a prince,” her father had told her proudly. “Just like Feyre. I wouldn’t expect anything less for my beautiful Elain.”
It hadn’t occurred to him to ask if she wanted to marry a prince, but why would it? Before Prince Rhysand had stormed into the manor, the best their father had hoped for was a Duke from their own Kingdom. Now he had letters spanning not just the Kingdoms of Prythian, but even from the distant shores of the continent. And with the abundance of interest in the unwedded Archeron sisters, it had become rapidly clear that their father had no intention of seeking his daughter’s input on their potential matches.
Nesta continued to rage against it, but Elain was resigned to their father’s will. Despite his less than complimentary reputation, Elain hadn’t exactly loathed the idea of being married to a prince. But when she asked her father when Lucien would be visiting the manor to begin their courtship and he had frowned in response, Elain realized Lucien Vanserra had no interest in romancing his future wife.
On the eve of her wedding, knowing nothing about her husband besides his apparent disinterest in his soon-to-be wife, the butterfly wing was inviting in ways Elain shouldn’t allow. She was not Feyre. She would never be brave enough to pack a bag and run away in the pursuit of true love. She was good, obedient Elain, who only ever stirred trouble for the sake of gardening.
But this was not being scolded for “forgetting” to wear gardening gloves, this was magic. Magic that would only cause her heartache. It would only make tomorrow that much more unbearable.
But the butterfly wing would go to waste otherwise. And it was easier to pretend she was a victim of her empathy than her curiosity.
When she went to bed that night, she did so with the butterfly wing placed under her tongue. And when she woke up, it was to darkness.
She sat up, feeling the slide of silk sheets and blankets that certainly did not belong to the bed she’d fallen asleep in. It was too dark to see anything. Even when she held her hand in front of her face, Elain could not distinguish her fingers from the gaps between. She frowned, thinking it was odd that Feyre had not mentioned this part of the spell. Had she done something wrong?
After a bout of blindly patting the mattress, she determined there was no one else in the bed with her. A relief, she supposed, though she was crestfallen to think her true love had decided he wanted nothing to do with her, too.
Then, the sound of footsteps. Light. Curious.
“Who’s there?” she called.
The footsteps paused.
“Who are you?” he answered, with an accent that was certainly not from the Southern Kingdom.
She wished she’d encountered more people beyond the walls of the manor, if only so she was better equipped to place where he was from. Even so, she could admire the richness of his voice. Warm, honeyed, but with a rasp that made her skin feel heated.
Summary: As Feyre lamented quietly over the misfortune of her life, there, in the marketplace, she heard a merchant instruct to its patron: Place a butterfly wing under your tongue before you sleep, and you will dream of your true love.
A gift for @sideralwriting 💕 This is the real penultimate chapter haha, I hope you enjoy!!
Read on AO3・Previous Chapter・Series Masterlist
-
Feyre woke to fingers fluttering, butterfly soft, against her cheek.
She opened her eyes.
Rhysand was leaning over the bed, knuckles against her cheekbone, lips tilted into his wickedest impression of a smile. “Good morning, wife.”
In the early stages of waking, it didn’t seem like such a terrible thing to be called wife in that low, honeyed voice. The morning light complimented him well, near glowing against the warm tones of his skin, and it lit his eyes so that she could see all the colors within them. The outer ring of his irises were darkest, near violet, but closer to his pupils she could see radial streaks of a much lighter blue, flecks of silver scattered amongst them.
It was like looking into the stars on a night with the full moon.
Somehow, it was morning, and the night sky was still watching her.
For a moment, it all clicked together. That a man with starlit eyes really could be her true love, be the one who waxxed poetic about love and defying societal expectation. She could make sense of Rhysand being the person who would see them together at any costs.
Then he opened his mouth.
“I see you’ve found the nightclothes I packed for you.”
Indeed, the blankets had fallen beneath her breasts, exposing the lacy, low sweeping neckline of the negligee she’d put on last night. It was no less immodest than when she had worn a towel in front of him, but even so she scrambled to cover herself, resolved that he was not to see another inch of her in the clothes he’d bought for his own perverse satisfaction.
Rhys looked satisfied regardless.
In an effort to wipe that smug grin off his face, she asked, “Were you under the impression we have a lack of nightclothes in the South?”
She watched him frown at her tone.
“No,” he said, reaching forward to thumb at one of the soft straps on her shoulder. “It was simply meant to be a gift for my bride on our wedding night. I didn’t imagine your father would have bought you these sorts of clothes.”
No, he certainly hadn’t. And her face heated to think of Rhysand’s intentions with the gown, that she was even wearing it at all…
“Why didn’t you give this to me on our wedding night, then?”
The thumb at her shoulder paused. He looked at her considerately, then answered simply, “Because you weren’t interested in such things on our wedding night.”
Feyre recalled the way he had fallen asleep on the armchair, hardly sparing a second glance at his wife parading the bedroom in a towel. She had even wondered if he was the one not interested in those sorts of things, since she was his wife regardless of her feelings on the matter, and her husband was owed—
“Feyre,” he said sternly, if a little exasperated. “Shield.”
Rhysand watched her through dark eyes as she fought against her sleep-addled mind to raise her mental shields. Once she was finished, he sighed. “To be clear, I have no interest in taking you to bed unless you would enjoy it, too. I will not have you any other way, even if that means I die an abstained man.”
Feyre snorted. She couldn’t resist it.
Her husband raised a groomed brow. “Is something funny?”
His voice was darker than she was accustomed, rasped from sleep and accompanied by an undercurrent of warning that had her pressing her lips together, considering if it was worth speaking her mind. Then she said, “It’s just that I’ve read the marriage manuals. I know that men do not abstain if their wives can’t perform their marital duties, that men will seek it elsewh—”
She was interrupted by Rhysand lunging forward, one arm braced on either side of her body. Feyre slumped back into the pillows, but he followed, face inches from her own so he could practically growl, “You can think as many uncharitable things as you like about me, Feyre, but I will not have my fidelity questioned. You are my wife. You are the only one permitted to touch me, and if you refuse to, then no one will.”
“You expect me to believe that a man—a prince—wouldn’t take a mistress if his wife refused to touch him?”
“I believe,” Rhysand said, enunciating each word with venomous precision, “that you will, in time, warm to your husband, so that I won’t need to. Though I recognize I married an obstinate woman, in which case I am content to use my hand and my imagination to satisfy my needs for however long I require.”
His breath fanned against her cheeks, warming them with his suggestive words. Already, her mind was muddying with the idea of Rhysand pleasuring himself, what image he’d evoke while he took himself into his hand. Feyre pushed at his chest like it might banish the thought, but he did not budge, nor did the image of his flushed skin and soft, panting groans.
“That’s crass!” She snapped, temper rising the longer the vision stayed, lodged into place as an endless loop in her mind.
Rhysand scoffed. “No less than you, suggesting I would take a mistress.”
From the way his expression hardened, and the darkness she could see peeling off his shadow, rippling over his shoulders, Feyre thought she had truly offended him. And it struck her, only then, that Rhysand was unhappy, too. That he’d expected his wife to be a willing participant, and once again Feyre Archeron had turned out to be a bitter disappointment.
“So, what?” She demanded, blinking rapidly to expel the sting building behind her eyes. “We are both to remain in this marriage, miserable, until the end of our lives?”
At this, Rhys did pull back. Just enough so that he could look at her face, and she could read the carefully guarded expression on his. He said, softly, almost wounded, “You misunderstand me.” Then, with a sigh, Rhysand retreated entirely. “Regardless of your sharp words, you, Feyre darling, will never be the source of my misery. It remains a beast entirely of my own invention.”
Feyre sat up on her elbows to watch him stride across the room. He paused in front of the bathing room door, his hand on the bronze handle, to glance over his shoulder at where she still laid on the bed. The look on his face made her feel stripped raw. There was no blanket pulled to her collarbone, no lacy nightgown, not even the physical distance between them that Feyre could hide behind.
Her fingers tightened in the quilt. She opened her mouth, prepared to say something, call him back to the bed, perhaps. But then his expression shifted. As quickly as it punched through her gut, that rare moment of vulnerability was pushed behind a counterfeit smirk.
Rhys added, gaze scraping over the outline of her body through the quilt, “You looked ravishing, by the way.”
She knew he only added it to distract her from what she’d just witnessed, and that she was indulging him by reaching for one of the pillows at her side. But as she tossed it across the room, she knew neither of their hearts were truly in it. Rhys slipped into the bathing room, the pillow slapped against the wooden door, and Feyre fell back against the bed, thinking again about that letter and how the man on the other side of the door could have possibly been in possession of it.
He wasn’t her true love.
He couldn’t be.
-
“A thought for a thought?”
Feyre lifted her head from where she’d been resting it against the back wall of the carriage. Rhysand was staring at her, sitting forward like a true prince despite the way his wife had taken to slumping ungraciously across the entirety of her bench.
“Pardon?”
He smiled, not in the mocking way he was usually inclined, and that made her immediately wary of his intentions. “An exchange. You share something you’re thinking about with me, and I’ll share a thought with you.”
Feyre shook her head, shrugging her cloak tighter over her shoulders. They’d been ascending through a region of white-cappted mountains for the last half hour, and with every mile their carriage bumped over the rocky terrain, the temperature inside dropped considerably.
“I have no more interest in bargains with you,” she said.
“There’s no magic involved, just trust.”
She snorted. “That’s in especially short supply.”
“Then let me start.” He leaned closer, so she could smell the lavender soap he’d used at the inn that morning. And beneath that, the smell of him, the scent of danger-twined freedom that made her head spin. She wanted to ask him to move back, seeing as they were ascending a mountain and oxygen was becoming scarce, but she held her tongue rather than risk complimenting him.
“I think that you look cold,” he said. “And I’m wondering if you would like to share my cloak again.”
“Well, I’m thinking that you’re perfectly capable of warming this carriage with your magic and that you’re choosing to keep it cold so I might share your cloak with you.”
He grinned. “You can forgive your husband for wanting an excuse to be close to his wife.”
Feyre huffed, “I’ll add it to the list of things to forgive.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“Perpetually.”
“Did I offend you this morning?” He pressed.
But she wasn’t going to make it that easy for him. Feyre stubbornly crossed her arms. “Seeing as you have no issue in taking things that don’t belong to you, why don’t you just take the answer from my mind?”
“Because you’re getting much better at using your shields,” he said, and she could tell, simply by the purr of his voice, that he was enjoying this new little game between them. “And I could never deny my wife the pleasure, seeing as you are typically delighted to remind me of all the ways I’ve wronged you.”
Feyre wasn’t certain what to tell him—not yet. Not until she knew if he was the same visitor in her dreams. And if he was, which she was not certain, did that mean he was her true love, or was it all some cruel, elaborate scheme for his amusement?
She sighed. “We can share your cloak, if you promise to do something for me.”
“You’re very demanding this morning,” he said with a small chuckle. The sound was lighter than air; it drifted lazily across the space between them until she accidentally breathed it in and felt the slightest bit lighter, too.
She didn’t know how he did it. He was a scoundrel through and through yet still managed to be effortlessly charming. She loathed it about him, that she could feel a burning anger in her gut and still feel tempted to make him laugh again.
“Very well,” he said, perhaps mistaking her silence as irritation, when in truth she was still recovering from the strange effect of his laughter. “What do you need from me, Feyre?”
Feyre took a deep breath. To steady herself, and to chase away the flutter in her stomach that raged at the idea of sharing his cloak again.
“Magic,” she said. “I want you to teach me magic.”
If Nesta or her governess were there, they would have told her to run at the look that crossed his face. The slow blooming smile, like a poisonous flower peeling open its petals, daring nature to come closer, to discover how that sweet scent would taste on her tongue. There was no escaping him; she was in a carriage bumping through a mountain pass, miles away from her home and anything she’d known. They were irrevocably bound. Through marriage and magic and maybe something deeper, too. Something she wanted to deny, but as he opened his cape and she moved across the carriage into the heat of his body, it no longer felt impossible.
“What do you want to know,” he murmured.
He was so much closer. The entire side of his body was pressed against hers—his arm draped across her shoulder, their hips and thighs aligned. If she moved any closer, she’d be sitting in his lap. Feyre was completely enveloped in his warmth and heady scent, and she knew she’d be a liar if she said that sitting on the cold seat by herself was preferable.
“I want to know how to send letters,” Feyre said. “To my sisters. I don’t know what became of them.”
“You can send ordinary letters to your sisters.” Rhysand shifted, leaning back against the upwards cushion, forcing Feyre to draw herself closer against his chest to maintain the heat. “Why the interest in using magic?”
“Ordinary letters will take days.”
“Is there a matter of urgency?”
Feyre bit her lip, refusing to reveal the information he was attempting to pry from her. “You promised you would help.”
“Then you can add my curiosity to the list of things to forgive.” When she said nothing, he sighed. “Fortunately, spells for sending letters are not very complicated.”
He glanced at her, almost wistfully, and she wondered what it meant. Knowing that he’d received her letters and he knew, at the very least, that she’d been using magic to send them.
“How do you ensure they get to their intended recipient?” She asked, dangerously pointed.
But Rhysand did not know she’d found the letters, and she could assume he answered with honesty when he said, “It will depend on the connection you have with the person. The stronger your connection, the more simplistic the spell.”
As Feyre mulled that over, wondering if three drops of blood was considered simplistic, Rhysand took advantage of her mind’s absence to stroke his fingers over the curve of her shoulder. He snagged at a lock of her hair, where he rubbed it considerately between his thumb and forefinger.
“A strand of your hair should do, since it is shared between you and your sisters. Write your letter after sundown, drop it into the flame with a strand of your hair, and be sure to think of the sister you intend to receive it. If you can include a trinket, or something that reminds you of her, even better. Otherwise, there’s a risk it could go to the wrong sister.”
“Does that happen often?” Feyre whispered, turning her head. She was surprised to see how close he’d leaned in, their noses nearly brushing. She stiffened, eyes meeting his, fearful that he’d see past the question to what she was truly asking, praying that he’d think the tension in her spine was caused only by their proximity. “Are letters commonly sent to the wrong person?”
If it was true, it would explain so much.
“Letters sent from an inexperienced mage can be sent to the wrong person, certainly. You’ll need to be careful they contain nothing condemning, in the chance that they’re delivered to the wrong person.”
He was still staring at her in that peculiar way of his, like he was seeing every secret she’d ever tried to hide from the world. That look made her feel like she was drowning. And the worst part was that his eyes flicked away, more enthralled with the lock of her hair he was twisting between his fingers than anything he’d discovered within her eyes, and she couldn’t help thinking this was all so very inconsequential to him.
“Is there a way to know if it went to the wrong person?”
“By the responses I presume,” he said. “That’s the risk of using magic, isn’t it? Do you know your sisters well enough to identify an imposter?”
The question made her mouth go dry. Could she detect if an imposter had assumed a letter with one of her sister’s signatures? Perhaps. But for someone to have pretended to be her true love, for months, and to have never noticed the difference between the dreams and letters. How well could she claim to know her true love, if she hadn’t been able to tell?
“I’d be able to tell them apart,” she said. More in an attempt to assure herself than anything else.
Her husband only clicked his tongue. “You ought to heed caution, my dear wife. It’s your confidence that will make you easy to deceive.”
Was that a confession?
“And you,” she whispered. “Have you ever deceived me, husband?”
She expected more smooth lies. Never or how could I deceive someone so beautiful or do I look like a dishonest man, Feyre darling?
Rhysand dropped the lock of her hair. She felt it brush over her neck as it fell back into place. He’d pried her open again with a single look, and she wished so desperately she could return the favor. To stare through his chest into the secrets he kept hidden and unravel just one. He leaned closer, lips finding her ear. Their cheeks brushed, enough so that she could feel the soft scrape of his stubble. Her eyes fluttered shut, suddenly transfixed on that one sensation.
Smooth skin, high cheekbones, the softest scrape of stubble
“If only you hadn’t used up all your questions,” he murmured. It was one thing to hear the low, smooth velvet, and another thing entirely to feel the vibrations in his chest, to feel his lips—tulip soft—against her earlobe. “You’d be able to ask what you truly wish to know.”
Are you my true love or have you been pretending to be him?
She could ask it now, and he could lie.
“You wouldn’t be honest with your wife?”
She heard him sigh. Felt his warm breath shudder over her neck, before it rippled, trickling heat over each notch of her spine.
“I believe you've already made up your mind about what is true. Your assessment of my honesty relies on whether my answer aligns with your decision.”
There was a note to his voice… a sort of hopelessness that found her reaching towards him, for a change. Her hands found his stubble first. Cut short and clean, just enough to scratch her palms as she carefully traced the strong shape of his jaw. He allowed her to turn his chin, so that they were again nose to nose and she could finally glimpse some of the vulnerability behind his mask. His expression was soft, but there was a certain sorrow in his eyes that she found she couldn’t bear. Feyre reminded herself she disliked her husband, but it was ineffective in stilling the pang in her chest.
“I would prefer it if you were honest,” she said, with a gentleness she didn’t know she was capable of extending towards him. “Even if you are afraid of how I’ll react.”
“You want honesty?” He ducked closer, lips hovering over hers so she could feel the crackling heat between them, and felt each spoken syllable dance over her lips. “I see no purpose to it. You will ask me what you want to know so badly, I will answer how we both expect, and you will be angry with me because it’s not what you want to hear.”
Rhysand’s gaze dropped to her mouth. Maybe it was the proximity. Maybe it was the fact that she thought he might kiss her, and maybe it was because he was considering it, but the sadness in his eyes had sharpened, now full of challenge as he practically growled, “So ask me, Feyre.”
He had laid the trap so perfectly. She would ask if he was her true love and he would say yes, and if she refused to believe him then she only proved his point. But if the opposite were true, if he wasn’t her true love and this was all a grand manipulation, he would lie. And she would fall for it, in her naivety. In her desire to believe that maybe it could be true, and she was married to her true love, and this was a happy story, afterall.
Feyre refused to bend to his will—she refused to.
She surged forward, curling one hand iron-tight around his bicep while the other slid from his cheek to the back of his neck. She felt Rhys stiffen in surprise, saw his eyes go wide as he anticipated her movements just a moment before she crashed her lips to his.
It was like witnessing the dive into water through the Veritas. Where everything was loud and crisp and clear, the world all at once became muted. There was only Rhysand, his hands at her hips to reposition her into his lap, returning the kiss with fervent interest. She’d long shut her eyes, but even in her blackened vision she could see the world turning fuzzy at the edges.
Rhysand pulled away, gasping, “What—”
Her mouth sealed away the question, and he was all too happy to expel the rest in a low, gratified moan. She hadn’t meant to go in for the second kiss, or the third. The fourth. But it was like her body took over, desperate to taste him again each time they parted for breath.
In the back of her mind, she continued marveling at how natural this felt, to be kissing him, to feel his strong body against her own. He was her husband, and he answered to every seeking touch with small gasps and groans that made her wonder if this was all new to him, too. She roved her hands over the planes of his chest, and in turn he deepened the kiss, pulling her forward by the hips until she was firmly cemented against him.
She felt him harden. And her hips, her traitorous hips, ground forward in response. The moan that escaped her throat, the one that harmonized with his own, belonged to some other debauched woman.
Rhys pulled back to survey her, pupils so wide his eyes looked black. “Feyre,” he whispered, and now he sounded pained. “I don’t understand.”
Even so, he kissed her again. His cloak still enveloped both of them, trapping heat in the small safety of this bubble. Where true love and butterflies and magic didn’t exist. He was just her husband, she was just his wife, and they were kissing because that’s just what married people did.
But that was not why she kissed him.
Eventually Rhysand must have figured it out, because he pulled away again. And he looked at her. And then he looked at the tattoos still on either of her arms she’d banded around his neck. And he looked as if his world had begun and ended all in the space of that moment.
He pushed her off. It was gentle, but being pried from the heat of his body felt like losing a limb. The cold seared every inch of her exposed skin, weeping like an open wound as she readjusted herself on the carriage seat opposite.
She watched him pull his cloak around himself, adjust his trousers, and wipe off his mouth. As if that simple act could dismiss what had just happened between them. Feyre watched it all, feeling numb, feeling mute. Waiting for him to say something, anything.
Finally he said, darkly, “Did you get your answer?”
Feyre stared at her hands. The contrast of the ink felt more exaggerated than before, standing out on her flesh like fresh ink upon parchment, spelling out everything she’d wanted to know in simple, brutal terms.
The only thing more powerful than a lifelong bargain is a kiss from your true love.
“Yes,” she said meekly.
There was nothing vindicating about watching Rhysand turn away from her, jaw set, glare as icy as the frosted window he set it on. Meanwhile, Feyre hugged her arms around herself, fighting off a shiver from the cold. If Rhysand noticed, he didn’t pay it any mind. She had a feeling as far as he was concerned, she wasn’t sitting across from him at all, her presence just an echo of the howling winds outside. As the silence hung between them, thicker the longer it was sustained, she weathered the frozen carriage and wondered if this was the renown Prince of the North.
She didn’t recognise her husband in him at all.
-
“A thought for a thought?”
Feyre’s question was punctuated by the creak of wood beneath her feet. The floorboard beneath Rhysand groaned in answer, the most noise he’d made since she’d kissed him in the carriage.
He didn’t turn around to dignify her question. She might as well have directed it toward the cobblestone hearth he was attending with an iron poker. The inn was old and small, the only room left once they’d finished supper being a makeshift bedroom in the attic that the innkeeper had needed to fetch a ladder for the two of them to access.
They were assured it would be warm. Cozy. Devoid of any armchairs that the Prince could retreat to, not that he would have volunteered to sleep on one. Rhysand wasn’t likely to be feeling gracious towards Feyre at the moment.
“Silence?” She questioned, quickly losing patience. “Is this really your chosen form of punishment, when it’s all I’ve sought since the moment I met you?”
The only confirmation he’d heard her at all was the small shake of his head. It was enough.
“And you’re passing up a chance to know my thoughts,” she pressed, venturing forward, “Which is a shame, since I was thinking about putting on that lacy negligee tonight.”
At this, he turned. “I’m not in the mood.”
“It’s the first time we’ll be sharing a bed as husband and wife. That’s what you’d bought it for, right?”
Those remarkable eyes were filled with the same hollow darkness she’d felt building in her chest all day. She watched them shut. Watched him take a deep breath.
“Feyre,”’ he said.
A warning if she’d ever heard one.
“I suppose I could wear nothing.”
His teeth flashed. “And would that be a test, too?”
Feyre flinched. She knew it’d been wrong to kiss him, knew that she’d taken it too far. But the bite in his words… that wasn’t just anger. It was pain.
She swallowed.
Just as she opened her mouth to say something, to apologize, he asked, “How long will I need to compete with him? This man you’ve never met?” The hearth sparked to life and Rhysand raised to his feet, turning to face her fully. “You know nothing about this man, in truth. He gets to be a mysterious, distant figure you project your every desire unto. But me?” Rhys put a hand on his chest, unintentionally smearing soot over the impeccable fabric. “I will be here, your flawed and fallible husband that is at your side. Through every moment of pain and pleasure, it will be me, not him. He will do nothing to earn your affection, you will give it to him simply for existing and knowing your name. How can I possibly compete?”
She shook her head. “It’s not a competition, it’s—“
“It’s our life, Feyre. You asked me this morning if I intend for us to be miserable and I am doing everything in my power to prevent that but—“ his hands, still covered in soot, flew into his hair, leaving streaks of ash in the wake of his fingers. Now Feyre knew what that felt like, to be left ruined from his touch. “But you are not giving me a chance. You think I am the cruel prince, so that is all I will ever be to you.”
The words cut into her, each one sharper than the last.
“Who are you, then?” She asked. And when met with bitter silence, she said again, “Who are you, Rhysand?”
“Rhys,” he seethed. “To you, I’m Rhys.”
“Rhys,” she repeated.
It felt right saying it, in a way she couldn’t quite explain, like pushing a key through a lock and feeling the mechanism finally turn into place.
Something within both of them softened.
He said, quietly, “I am just a boy who convinced his father to save a little girl from dying. And when I held her in my arms, I decided that she was going to be the person I married. By fate or otherwise, you were brought to me before anyone else.”
His eyes fell to the black markings on her arm.
Feyre almost felt like hiding them, after what happened in the carriage. But she could see behind his eyes that he was somewhere far away—reliving the memory of that day.
She cautiously walked forward and extended a tattooed hand towards him.
“Show it to me.”
Seconds stretched into eternity as Rhysand stared at her outstretched hand. She supposed she couldn’t blame him for not taking it. How many times had he reached out his hand towards her, only to be slighted?
Just as she was about to drop it and find some way to recover her pride, Rhysand took a tentative step closer. His fingers grazed hers. Warm, still covered in soot, but she didn’t care. When she didn’t pull away, didn’t step back, he caught her hand and raised it upwards, until her knuckles were pressed against his lips.
It was a terrible habit. Terrible, because each time he did it she could feel another stone crumble in the mental fortress of her mind, like maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to let him in.
Rhysand looked up, meeting her eyes. His fingers tightened around hers, and he smiled. A real, rare smile that she wondered if anyone else had ever had the privilege of seeing. If it was reserved for his wife, then it was probably for the best, because that smile was dangerous. That smile had Feyre retrieving the Veritas and choosing to tug him by their joined hands over toward the bed.
Even with all his endless flirtations, she could see him stumble when she climbed onto the quilt and indicated for him to join.
“Did you think I was going to make you sleep on the floor?” she teased, pretending her chest wasn’t hammering at the sight of her husband climbing into bed beside her.
“I was relieved you didn’t make me sleep in the carriage,” he admitted. The mattress shifted with his weight, accommodating his much larger body as he stretched himself out beside her. “I could make peace with the floor.”
Words became harder to shape once they were fully laying together. She struggled for what she should say, searching for something quick-witted, but all she could think about was the way his mouth had tasted beneath hers and the overwhelming instinct to move closer, taste it again.
She blurted, “The bed is nicer.”
“Yes,” he said, with a soft laugh. “I agree.”
Neither one of them moved.
Uncertain why she was feeling so nervous, Feyre asked, “Are you going to show me? The memory?”
Rhysand nodded. “Come here.”
He opened his arm to her, and she shuffled closer until she was resting on his shoulder, the entire side of her body pressed against his. He wrapped one arm around her, ensuring she was tucked firmly against him, and the other reached for the Veritas in her hand.
There was only the soft crackle of the fireplace, the glowing embers casting their warm light over the orb’s smooth surface. Rhysand held it aloft in the space between them, murmuring, “Are you ready to see how we first met?”
-
Everyone knew that the stairwell in the Northwest Tower was the best place to hide in the moonstone palace. Well, perhaps not everyone. If everyone knew it was the best place to hide, that would defeat its purpose. But what mattered is that Rhysand knew it was the best place to hide, and he’d been hiding there for the better part of an hour.
The reason it was the best place to hide was that, foremost, there was only one entrance to the tower. And from where he sat beneath the smooth, carved stone stairwell, he could watch through the arrowslit to the rampart below to be sure no one was coming. And if there was someone coming, he could rush to the top of the tower and take the ladder down to escape while his pursuers were climbing up.
It was how Rhysand knew, with confidence, that Cassian and Azriel would not be winning their game today.
Except Rhysand had been crouched by that arrowslit for so long, his legs were beginning to ache. And just as he was beginning to wonder if he cared so much about winning that he’d risk enduring that position much longer, he noticed a commotion amongst the guards at the rampart.
Azriel and, particularly, Cassian lacked tact on their best days, but he doubted they would risk the wrath of his father by creating such a disturbance. And if they were it’s cause, well, even more reason for Rhys to rush from the tower, the game be damned. He’d rather not see his friends lose their heads for the sake of his pride.
Whatever attracted the guard’s attention was further below, towards the gates of the palace. Curious, Rhysand peered over the parapet to see an abandoned carriage parked just before the front steps, its doors thrown open, and its occupant, he presumed, the man who was on the front step, shouting to the guards that had stopped him from moving any further.
“Let me speak to his majesty!”
From the look of the carriage, with its velvet-lined seats and gilded doors, he was certainly no commoner. An angry aristocrat, maybe, but he possessed an accent that was unique to their Northern lands.
“I demand you let me speak to his majesty!”
Rhys snorted, about to retreat back into his hiding spot and let the guards handle their uninvited guest. But as he turned, he caught sight of what the man was holding in his arms.
Or rather, who. A person—a little girl. Easily younger than he was, though it was hard to place her age from the distance and the amount of blankets that were buried over her. Rhysand could only make out a brown braid and a pale, sallow face peeking out of the fabric.
Everything went quiet in that moment.
Suddenly he found himself leaning over, calling to the guards below, “Let him in.”
They obeyed. Despite knowing that the King would not be happy, a request from the young Prince was sufficient in letting the man through to the entryway. Rhysand rushed through the palace, determined to get to the man before news of his arrival filtered to his father. Whatever the man wanted—gold, Rhysand assumed—they had in excess. Rhysand could give it to him, could help that little girl in the way he felt so inexplicably compelled, and they would be gone before his father needed to know.
Or at least, that was the plan. It was thwarted by the body that came barrelling around the corner, tackling Rhysand to the hard marble floor.
The impact lodged all the air from his lungs, so as he gasped, “Get off of me you stupid bastard,” it lacked the full breadth of his urgency.
Cassian only laughed. A hearty, full-bodied cackle, accompanied by a boastful, “It’s about time someone knocked you down a peg.”
“Get off of me,” he repeated, his teeth gritted as he forcefully pushed at his friend’s shoulder. “I don’t care about the game. Get. Off.”
Cassian reared back. “What’s your problem? Wounded pride, princeling?”
He only shook his head, trying to tell his friend that there wasn’t time to explain. Rhysand scrambled to his feet, ignoring the page glowering at his back. He sprinted across the corridor, down the stairwell, across the great hall, and—
“Please, your majesty. I have tried every other treatment. Healers and mages from all of the kingdoms in Prythian. They have each told me the same thing, that the only thing that could save her—”
“No,” the King said. Stern, though not unsympathetic. “I am sorry your child is unwell, truly, but she is not a citizen of my Kingdom and therefore is no concern of mine. You will need to take her elsewhere.”
Rhysand slunk around the corner. “What,” he asked, drawing the attention fo the man and his father, “What is it that the healers said could save her?”
“Rhysand.”
So many meanings his name could take on, when spoken by his father.
Rhysand: Come here.
Rhysand: Go away.
This one,
Rhysand: Don’t you dare interfere.
The man, desperate to save his daughter, did not heed the warning in the King’s voice. Nor did Rhysand, stepping closer, eyes zeroing in on the child, no older than four or five. Her cheeks were flushed, though the rest of her skin was deathly pale, colored only by the candlelight that caught on beads of her sweat.
Someone so close to the brink of death would ordinarily be a ghastly sight, yet Rhysand was struck by a different sentiment. One that saw him speaking out of turn.
“What’s your daughters name?” He couldn’t say, for certain, if the question had been volunteary or if it merely slipped out from his desperation to know the answer.
The man hesistated. “Feyre. Feyre Archeron.”
Fey-ruh. Rhysand mouthed it, aware of his father’s disaproval, bolting towards him like round after round of poisoned arrowheads, digging beneath his skin. But if there was ever an antidote to his father’s anger, it was that name. How it jolted through him.
How he knew, without truly understanding the gravity, who this girl was to him.
“You’re here for the Aquae Moira,” he said. “The healing waters.”
The man looked down at his daughter. “Yes,” he answered, lip wobbling as he pushed aside a stand of hair pastered to her delicate face. “It is my last hope for her.”
“You will need to direct your hope elsewhere,” said the King.
“Father—“
“Rhysand.” Every guard in the room stiffened at the King’s tone, imbued with command so raw that Rhysand felt every hair along his arm stand to attention. “Only the royal family is permitted to use the healing waters. We will make no exceptions.”
“Surely, we can make one!” Rhysand protested. “What is the harm in saving one little girl?”
“The pool’s resotarative magic was a was a sacred gift, permitted for use only to members of the royal family. It is forbidden by laws that predate me, and to break them for citizens of another Kingdom, no less, would be an offense to the Mother who guides the waer beenath our palace.”
Rhysand knew this already. And from the grave expression on the man’s face, he thought the girl’s father had known this, as well.
“Then…” Rhys swallowed. “Then let her become a member of the royal family.”
The girl’s father blinked. “Pardon?”
The King, though—his lips tilted with dry amusement. It was a reluctant sort of pride—or, the closest thing to it his father seemed capable of mustering. Rhysand knew he was an astute child, because his instructors had always told him so, but also because of that occasional look that crossed his father’s face when they were in opposition. Utter vexation, but curbed by a warmth Rhysand could almost label as affection. Almost.
“The Prince is suggesting something that he is far too young to understand.” The King said.
Rhysand could have raged at the condesencion in that tone, but that is precisely what the King expected a child his age to do. Still, it was an effort to contain all the emotion bubbling inside his chest, forcing him to push all of his rage and uncertainty through a fine metal sieve until all that remained was a boy who was calm. Rational.
“Betrothels are not uncommon, even at my age.”
The father of the young girl gasped. “You are not suggesting—”
“If Feyre becomes a part of the royal family, then our laws would permit her to bathe in the healing waters.”
“She is only four!”
The King’s eyes fell considerately to the little girl in her father’s arms. It was the first time Rhysand had noticed the King fully acknowledge her, like if he examined the girl any closer she’d become more than a pile of blankets to him..Rhysand imagined it was difficult to stare directly into the face of a child and condemn them to death.
Then, his father’s cold gaze lifted. He leveled it towards Rhysand. Stern, considerate.
“You would accept such a commitment? It would be a bond that follows you for life. One that any future lovers, even your future queen, would need to live with. It would be irrevocable.”
Irrevocable. That should have been a startling word to Rhysand, yet oddly he felt comfort in it. Surefooted, like stepping onto a familiar path. There was no need to question where to go from here, he knew the way forward, and it felt natural.
One step, then another, until he was standing before the man and that little girl with his arms outstretched.
“I understand,” he said.
The man’s lips had gone white. This close, Rhysand could see he was shaking. “I can’t agree to this.”
“Then you will need to seek help elsewhere,” said the King, not unkindly. “These are the only terms I will accept.”
Rhysand met the man’s eyes and again stretched his arms in invitation. “I’ll take care of her.”
A promise for now, and the rest of his life.
In that moment, Feyre turned her head towards her father’s chest, further into the blankets. He heard a muffled, rattling cough that shook her entire body. It jostled something loose in her father. His face crumpled and he handed his daughter to Rhysand in solemn silence.
Only once she was secure in his arms did Rhysand realise that the man wasn’t shaking—it was Feyre.
“Hello, Feyre darling,” he whispered in a soft voice, the same he used for lulling his infant sister to sleep. He couldn’t explain what compelled him, no less with his father as witness, besides that she was unwell and he instinctually wanted to soothe her. “I’ve got you, now. You’re going to be okay.”
Feyre’s eyelids fluttered, revealing a vast gray-blue sky impossibly contained within two small, groggy disks. Pretty, he heard her think, the first coherent word he’d strung from the haze of her mind. She made a soft sound in the back of her throat, before she shut her eyes again and ducked her head against his collar.
“You’ll need to make a bargain,” came the distanct instructions of his father.
Rhysand nodded, feeling a little lost to the world. Someone had placed a glass bowl over his head, resulting in everything sounding muffled and blurred at the edges. There was only Feyre, so frighteningly weak and fragile in his arms.
He said to her, “Feyre, darling. Listen to me for a moment, hmm? I’m going to help you, but you have to promise me something in return. We can use the Aquae Moira to get better, but in exchange…” he swallowed, throat suddenly feeling thick. “In exchange, you will become a member of my family. You will be my betrothed, and one day I will come to bring you home, to the North. Do you agree to those terms?”
A small, exasperated sound came form Feyre’s father. Rhysand didn’t think he’d meant for it to escape, but once it had, he summoned the courage to add, “Her fever’s made her delierious. She cannot agree.”
“Feyre,” Rhys murmured, fingers nudging her gently where he held her shoulder. He cast his magic against her mind, calling through the fog: Open your eyes. Say ‘Yes’.
She shifted, head rolling like she was fighting the pull back to the waking world. He pressed harder. Say ‘Yes’, and you can go back to sleep.
Finally, more whimpered than spoken, the small girl in his arms muttered a weak, “Yes.”
That was all he needed for the the bargain to take. He could taste the magic, sweet and tangy, as it curled over his arm, from wrist to elbow. He knew if he unfurled Feyre’s blankets, a twin would now be permanently etched into her flesh, too.
He supposed they were engagement rings, in a way—as profound and everlasting as the bond they now shared.
What happened next was all a blur to Rhysand, marked only by every shallow breath he could hear Feyre struggle to intake. He followed his father through the palace, a labrinth of cooridors and starwells that were once familiar to him, but now felt like he was observing through new eyes. Each time he glanced over his shoulder, he was met with the pinched face of Feyre’s father, eyes fixated on Rhysand holding his daughter, on the markings now exposed beneath the cuff of his sleeve. The man said nothing, but Rhysand did not mind weathering his silent disapproval. This was the only way to save Feyre’s life, afterall.
When they stepped from the stone stairwell into the damp tunnels of the cavern, the King paused. The air was denser in the caverns, damp from the river that ran beneath the stones and equally as cool. Rhysand pulled the blankets tighter around Feyre.
“Lord Archeron, you and I will wait out here. Rhysand will take your daughter into the healing waters.”
Rhysand had been to the Aquae Moire before—many times. He’d been born in the waters, just as his sister had been, and their father, and all royal children before them. It was here he’d been treated for collic as a babe, later for a broken ankle, another time from an incident with Cassian involving swords. He knew these waters well, knew what to expect when he stepped into the open cavern and saw the glowing water bounching and shimmering off the stone walls.
The pool itself had occured naturally, filled from a branch of the Sidra that flowed from the sacred peaks of Ramiel. Before it had been imbued with magic from the Western Kingdom, as a gift of alliship long ago, the pool had already been used as a place for ceremony. It was here that every King before Rhysand had been annointed, where he would one day kneel and take his father’s crown.
He stepped to the edge of the still waters and looked again over the girl in his arms. Feyre Archeron. He hoped that after she was healed, her father stayed long enough so that Rhysand might get to know her. A name and a flushed, sickly face was not nearly sufficient, not when he could feel the glowing thread in his chest that connected them—could she feel it too? Holding his breath, Rhysand tugged gently on that thread, and the girl in his arms made a soft whimpering sound.
“You’re okay, Feyre darling,” he soothed again. With a trembling hand, he began the task of gently prying her from the heap of blankets. All the while murmuring, “This is the Aquae Moira. The healing waters of the North.”
Her eyes were not open to see it, so he pressed the image into her mind. The turquoise water sparkled as if the sun was reflecting off it, though the pool itself was the lone light source in the cavern.
Feyre’s shivering worsened in the absence of the blankets. It panicked Rhysand enough that he hurried into the pool without so much as removing his jacket. His mother would scold him, but that was an issue for later.
Now, there was only Feyre, fluttering her eyes open at the sensation of the warm water.
Her eyes were still a bit distant, like she was still lost somewhere deep in the fog, even as the water began rippling and shimmering around them.
Rhysand said, “Our Kingdom is watched by three stars that rest over the peak of Ramiel, our sacred mountain to the north.” Those blue eyes grazed aimlessly over the pool, the cavern wall, moving slow. But eventually her eyes found his, and Rhysand again felt that shocking warmth flood his body. “From its peak, beneath the three stars of our kingdom, flows the Sidra river. She has delivered her water to us, here, blessed by the Mother and the stars of Ramiel.”
He did not know if she understood him, or if her eyes were just wide because she was gaining better awareness of her surroundings and he was a boy she didn’t know.
“This pool has welcomed every member of the royal line, remade them into Kings and Queens,” Rhysand told her, because he was afraid if he stopped talking, she would look away. “And as the river flows from the peaks of Ramiel, into the caverns beneath our very own palace, so, too, will you bathe in these waters and be remade, Feyre darling.”
He could see her turning that information over, could hear her processing it in her mind—still hazy, still slow, the softest trickle of a thawing river. And, with relief, he noted color had returned to her face.
Feyre whispered, softly and half awake, “What will I become?”
Summary: As Feyre lamented quietly over the misfortune of her life, there, in the marketplace, she heard a merchant instruct to its patron: Place a butterfly wing under your tongue before you sleep, and you will dream of your true love.
A gift for @sideralwriting 💕
Read on AO3・Previous Chapter・Series Masterlist
-
Magic always comes at a cost.
Feyre couldn’t count how many times she had heard that warning from her governess. From Nesta. Sometimes, even from Elain.
She supposed the evidence of their warnings now laid on her skin in permanent ink, binding her to the man who stood just over her shoulder. Magic did come at a cost. And that cost, apparently, was three copper coins.
“What does it do?” She asked the shopkeeper, staring at the glossy surface of a translucent sphere. It shaped perfectly to her palm, small enough that she could close both hands around it. No larger than a ripe apple.
“It allows you to share memories,” the shopkeeper answered.
Feyre raised the orb higher, watching it catch and twist the sunlight, throwing a multitude of colors against the cloth drapes of the stall. When Feyre turned, she could see the reflection cast on Rhysand’s cheek. Red and blue and green. And sparkling violet, staring at her with open delight.
She quickly flitted her attention back to the shopkeep and the velvet-clad table of magical wares. On one end, there was a jar with several thin sticks of wood, wafting a thick, fragrant smoke. Smoke—but no fire. She wanted to ask if that was magic, too, but held her tongue. It was enough to take a deep breath, inhale the scent of rose and jasmine that she wished she could bottle and take with her when they left.
Oh, how she never wanted to leave.
“How does it work?”
The shopkeeper shared a grin over Feyre’s shoulder, at Rhysand, who was undoubtedly preening at Feyre’s enthusiasm. The elderly woman held out a wrinkled hand, adorned with rings and bangles and sharp plum painted nails.
Feyre placed the orb delicately into the shopkeeper's palm, watching with fascination as the glass emitted a soft, misty glow. Like a deep fog was trapped beneath the surface, and someone had lit a lantern from within its center. She swore smoke lifted from the orb and as she stared, images began taking shape. A man and a woman, undetailed at first, but then she could make out the blue-black hair and winning smile of her husband. And spinning in his arms, eyes sparkling with unfettered joy, was… herself.
“You made quite the handsome pair, on that stage,” the shopkeeper said.
Had she really looked that… happy? Feyre blinked, staring at that laughing girl, hardly recognizing herself. The image faded, drifting back into shapeless clouded glass. And the orb was just an orb again.
“Focus on a memory,” the woman said, handing the sphere back to Feyre. “The veritas will show it to you.”
“Does it have a cost?”
“Three copper pieces.”
“No,” Feyre said, a bit bashful. “I mean the magic. Is there a consequence to using it?”
The shopkeeper shrugged. “Some memories are better left unvisited. You would be surprised how many people become trapped in their pasts.”
An arm stretched over her shoulder, and the proximity of Rhysand’s body warmed Feyre’s back, making her feel again as breathless as she had felt dancing on the stage. Perhaps she still had yet to recover from the exertion.
He dropped three copper pieces into the shopkeeper's hand, murmuring behind her, “We’ll take the veritas.”
Rhysand had been doing that all day. Indulging every whim, whether Feyre asked him to or not. It was how she’d earned herself a sugar covered apple and a cup of spiced rum and now, a magical orb that could revisit any memory.
As they wandered out of the women's draped stall, Feyre wondered how many times she’d revisit this one. Her cheeks bloomed from the contrast of the sudden cold. It had been warm in the shop—through magic, Feyre was certain, since aside from the thick fabric of the tent, there was nothing in the shop that could have fought off the winter air.
“Is it time to go?” She asked, solemnly.
Rhysand had been making passing glances at the sun, and at the carriage parked on the other end of the market. She supposed they had wasted most of the morning; the sun was at its peak.
“We could stay here another night,” he suggested.
Delaying their arrival to the Northern Kingdom was a tempting offer. But it also added another day to their journey—another night at an inn, a far more intimate setting than a palace where she imagined they would stay in separate rooms.
She mulled that over, before shaking her head. “We can go.”
“There are plenty of markets like this in the North,” he said, reaching for her hand. She let him take it, surprisingly compliant in allowing him to raise her gloved fingers to his lips. That was becoming a habit of his.
Their eyes met. She again seized the opportunity to relish the sight of him in the daylight. There was more blue in his eyes. They were so much darker at night.
“I’ll take you to all of them,” he promised.
Feyre couldn’t imagine a prince and princess roaming around the street markets in a place they would be recognized. His words were simply a condolence, a means of coaxing her back into the carriage. She was tempted to tell him her older sisters used to play the same trick on her. But perhaps it was to her benefit that he thought her naive.
And maybe the little girl who climbed to the treetops, risking injury and more importantly, her smart clothes, just so she could peer over the manor walls to see what laid beyond—maybe that girl wanted to believe he was telling the truth, despite every rational reason she had to believe otherwise.
Feyre breathed, “Are they all like this?”
She thought she could see the memory behind his smile. The veritas hummed in her hand like it could sense it, like it wanted her to place it in his palm so it could shape the images in his mind. Feyre was tempted, if only for the opportunity to reveal what he kept beneath his mask. She wanted to measure the light and darkness that warred inside of him, to know which side won, and how closely it mirrored her own.
“In essence,” Rhysand said, elbow looping through her own to guide Feyre through the crowd of bellowing merchants. He murmured at her ear, “Though you’ll find some are more exceptional than others. Ones that are held in jeweled caverns, obscured beneath waterfalls. Some, even, are held at the bottom of lakes.”
Feyre scowled at him, “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not.”
He said it off-handedly, more concerned with turning to pluck a flower from a passing wagon piled with red and purple asters. The merchant’s back was to the prince, calling to the market that he was selling the flowers for one copper a bunch.
“And I’m supposed to trust a thief?” Feyre asked, raising a brow at her husband. Rhysand ignored the accusation in favor of sliding the aster stem into a notch of her braid.
“Hold on to that,” he said. “Asters are a key ingredient for most love potions.”
“And praytell, what use do I have for a love potion?”
“As you said, there aren’t many butterflies in the North.”
It was remarkable to Feyre how easy it was to suddenly lose her footing on the ice, especially when Rhysand said things that made her chest feel little more than a wooden cupboard he’d pried open, exposing her heart to the cold elements and his careful scrutiny.
Did he know, then? That her true love had visited in her sleep? The stone wall around her mind was still in place, but he could have simply guessed. In all of his charm and sweet whisperings, she’d nearly forgotten how he’d attempted to deceive her at the ball by pretending he was her true love.
The rumours are true, that you have eyes like stars. They are the most beautiful color I have ever seen.
He’d known about it then, and even in their argument that morning he’d attempted to assume his identity.
You presume I’m not your true love?
He wasn’t. He had known the phrase because he’d plucked it from her mind. Tamlin had known without magic, though Tamlin had also arrived empty handed, where Rhysand had brought a necklace laden with blue gemstones, just as her true love had promised.
Feyre’s head spun. What on earth was she thinking? She had met her true love just last night and he had been utterly distraught at their circumstances. Why would Rhysand have reacted that way? He’d gotten what he wanted.
It was evident by the curve of his mouth as he caught a stray strand of her hair and twirled it around his finger, whispering, “Perhaps if you get tired of longing for your true love, you can learn to love your husband instead.”
And there—confirmation from the liar himself. His violet eyes flickered to the flower in her hair and Feyre resisted the urge to pull out its stem and throw it to the ground.
A stolen aster for a stolen bride.
“Let’s get in the carriage,” she said, mood now soured despite the lovely time she’d had at the market.
Rhsyand sighed, clearing sensing the shift. He led her away regardless, the two of them dodging shouting vendors and aimless shoppers.
Molten chocolate—two for a copper.
Come see the spectacular Koschei juggle six daggers!
Newlyweds, having trouble sleeping? I can brew a special potion—
—break any spell or bargain.
Feyre grinded to a halt, cocking her head towards the hunched man sitting at an empty table. There were no trinkets, or any signs, but he grinned when he saw Feyre. A serpent's smile.
“Bound by bargain or law?” He asked. “I can only assist with one.”
“You can break a bargain?” Feyre asked.
They were just on the outskirts of the market, within seeing distance of the carriage. Rhysand pulled at her arm, urging. “You can’t. He’s trying to swindle you.”
“An interesting accusation, given you have just lied, and I have yet to make a single promise—false or otherwise.” The man’s beady eyes turned to Feyre. He crooned, “Yes, madam. Bargains can be broken. But doing so requires powerful magic.”
“Feyre,” Rhsyand said. Not a warning, but a plea.
“What kind of magic?”
The man leaned forward, eyes sparkling in a way that caused the hairs on her arms to stand on edge. He turned his head like an owl, before licking his lips and answering, “That will depend on the bargain in question. A small debt is more easily broken. How has this man bound you?”
Feyre glanced over her shoulder at Rhysand, studying the way he held himself still. He was staring at her, not the man, his expression so guarded she couldn’t say if it was anger or fear that held the tension in his back.
She held his gaze as she answered the man, “an eternity of obedience.”
The vendor laughed, an awful wheezing sound that stretched long enough to transcend into mockery. “What a foolish thing to promise.”
Her cheeks burned. Rhsyand touched her arm like he was intending to comfort her, but his jaw was clenched tight, and the anger burning his eyes was far from consoling.
Feyre forced her pride to heel, turning herself to the man still laughing at her expense.
“Can it be broken?”
“Not by any spell I can offer you.”
“But it can be broken?”
The man gazed over her shoulder, at Rhysand, and smirked. “Yes.”
It was clear he wasn’t going to provide any more information. Not for free, and clearly nothing that he believed would be helpful to her. Feyre huffed, pulling her arm out of Rhysand’s grasp to shuffle the rest of the way to the carriage. She would have stomped, if she wasn’t afraid of slipping on the ice. Rhysand trailed after her, maintaining the quiet in what she suspected was his own ire—but was it directed at her, or the shopkeeper?
He opened the carriage door for her, regardless, and she climbed in without looking at him, arms crossed over her chest. Rhysand said something to the footman before stepping in across from her, and the carriage jolted forward. Onwards to the North, once again.
She could feel him staring. But Feyre was still sifting through all her thoughts, trying to reconcile these different, confusing fractals of her husband. A liar and a thief and a prince who was gentle and cruel and manipulative and devoted. Which pieces were real? They couldn’t all be, could they?
“Feyre—“
“Do you know how to break the bargain?”
Rhysand slumped forward, running his hands through his thick, frost-dampened hair.
“As one of the five questions—“
“Feyre.”
“—do you know how to break the bargain?”
“You only have two questions left.”
She gritted her teeth. “Answer it.”
“Yes.”
Feyre exhaled, waiting for more. But that was all Rhysand would say. His lips were pressed tight, his brows bunched together.
“Tell me how,” she demanded hotly.
His golden brown skin had been flushed from the cold, but now she watched it drain of color. “That would be another question.”
Feyre shrieked, wanting to throw something at him and, having nothing besides the veritas, she lobbed it at his head.
He caught it between two hands, lips twitching to hide a smile that only kindled more of her rage. “This would be your final question, do you still want me to answer?”
“Tell me every possible way,” she amended, learning her lesson. “I want to know precisely what I must do to break the bargain.”
Rhysand sighed, staring at the veritas like he hoped it might transport him away from the carriage, towards a memory that did not involve angry wives who shouted and threw things in his direction. She quietly felt smug that the veritas could do nothing more than show Rhysand his own dastardly reflection.
“There are two ways,” he said, finally. “The first is to see the bargain through to its terms. Since each of our bargains is a lifelong commitment, I’m afraid you would need to see it through to your death. The second way is to break the bargain’s spell by using a more powerful magic. The only thing more powerful than a lifelong bargain is…”
Rhysand swallowed like he was trying to push down the truth as it rose in his throat, but the magic forced it to his lips, until he practically spat the words: “A kiss from your true love.”
Feyre’s heart sunk into her stomach.
It’s rumored that true love’s kiss is the most powerful magic in existence.
Her true love had said that, hadn’t he? But… he had kissed her last night, and the bargain remained. Did they need to kiss with the intention of breaking the spell? Perhaps it had not worked because they had kissed inside a dream.
“I don’t need to be in your mind to see what you’re thinking,” Rhysand said. “And I’ll remind you that regardless of bargains, you are my wife. No magic will change that.”
Feyre stared out the window, not wanting to let him see how much that thought deflated her. She knew he was right. He had already told her that if she ran, he would stop at nothing to find her again. Knowing the bargain could be broken changed very little, especially if true love’s kiss didn’t work in her dreams.
The silence between them stretched, becoming a heavy, tangible thing. She could hear Rhysand shift, felt his legs—so much longer and more constrained in the small space—bump hers. He was trying to get her to look, and Feyre refused.
Until she saw something shining in the window’s reflection. Then, she turned to find Rhysand cupping the veritas in his large hands. He was looking at her, and she wished she didn’t notice the way his face lit up at her attention. The soft glow of the veritas left two silver disks shining around his pupils, and the contrast with the violet made his eyes look impossibly wider, more childlike than she’d ever seen him, but still filled with mischief.
“Can I show you something?”
Feyre hesitated. He was leaning toward her conspiratorially, and the smile he wore offered no hint of the man who had warned her, just a mere moment ago, that she was to be his reluctant bride for life. Was this his attempt at smoothing things over?
He leaned his broad shoulders forward to extend the orb into the space between them. It was humming—no, roaring. Feyre jumped as a spray of white mist burst out of its surface, crashing over her.
“It won’t hurt you,” he said, gently. “It’s just a memory.”
Indeed, the mist was intangible and brushed straight through her, then retreated, folding back into a pool of rock and water just beneath the vantage point. Then, a dark wave rose in the distance, curling at the top before it, too, crashed against the rocks, its momentum more violent, causing the white-tipped water to shoot towards the sky.
Feyre reached out a hand, trying to feel it. “What is this?”
She recognized the soft call of birds, nearly drowned out by the sound of the powerful push and pull of water. She could guess what it was.
“The ocean,” Rhys said, his eyes shining.
“It’s…” she frowned. “It seems so dangerous.”
And it was louder than she imagined.
“It can be,” he murmured. “But it can be gentle, too.”
The vision shifted, and Feyre could see a smooth, beige beach where foamy water rushed to the shore like a playful lover, clinging to the blushing sand, reluctant to return to the sea, but always rushing back. She could see the low light of sundown, reflected not just against the water, but on the wet, polished sand, gilding everything in sight in bright orange and gold. And if she shut her eyes, she swore she could feel a warm breeze tangling in her hair.
“It can be warm in the North,” he said. “I used to take my little sister to the beach in the summers. The water stays cool, even with the sun shining against it all day long.”
Feyre studied the surface of the glistening water, awed and fascinated that something so majestic could truly be real. “What’s it like?” she whispered. “Swimming in the ocean?”
“It’s wonderful,” Rhysand said.
And then the image rippled, like they’d dived beneath the surface. The sound of the lapping tide immediately muted, replaced with the soft, lulling sound of bubbling air, rushing to the shining surface above. But below… Below was deep, beautiful blue water, crowded with schools of colorful fish and the most curious rocks Feyre had ever seen. She hadn’t known there were plants that could live underwater, but she could see their long vines swaying leisurely to-and-fro as striped fish darted by. The backs of her eyes stung. Feyre raised a hand to cover her mouth, uncertain why she was crying, just—that it was so beautiful. So tranquil and vibrant, flush with a diversity of life that Feyre had never even imagined, could never fully describe, it was so outside of her exposure to the world.
“I’ll take you there,” Rhysand promised softly. He offered her one of those rare, sweet smiles. Devoid of any mockery or pride. He said, “You’d need to let me teach you how to swim, first.”
Feyre fought a sob, but it came anyway, bursting out at her first attempt at speaking when she asked, “Is it hard?”
“No,” he soothed. “You’ll love it.”
Bashful, Feyre sniffed and brushed away her tears. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying.”
Rhysand shifted the orb to one hand so he could reach forward to cup her face, chasing away the tears he could reach with his thumb. “There is a great, beautiful world that has been waiting for you, Feyre, and I intend to show you all of it.”
She should have pulled away. She was angry at him, wasn’t she? Feyre grabbed his wrist and instead of pushing, she tugged him across the carriage until he was seated beside her.
“Show me more,” she said. “Show me the North.”
He made a quiet noise, something she interpreted as compliance though it sounded more as though he’d been punched in the stomach. But when Feyre turned her head to gauge his expression, he was wearing his usual sideways smile, nothing more than pleased she’d taken an interest in his kingdom.
Feyre nearly asked for him to forget it, not wanting to offer him the satisfaction, before the image changed again and she could see a city nestled between ocean and mountain and sprawling river. They flew past boats and piers, past homes and streets and theaters. Past a colorful plaza teaming with stalls and restaurants and artwork. People wandered about, happy and thoughtful, kind and welcoming, and they waved to the memory’s observer—to Rhysand, their Prince. Waved, not bowed.
“This is Velaris,” Rhysand said. A note of warmth in his voice, one that wasn’t entirely foreign. “This is the heart of the North, the city that you will call home.”
Moment after moment, images of marketplaces and townhomes and the glistening river that ran through it all. And though Feyre could not explain how, she could have sworn there was love in the images. She did not understand how the veritas conveyed it, but the colors, the light… They were rooted in something deeper, something linked to Rhysand and his memories.
“It’s beautiful,” she admitted, still waiting for the sight of the castle and walls that would contain her.
But they never came. Instead he showed her a townhouse and a palace carved into a mountain and he walked her through each section of the city, and she realized, with every passing citizen who greeted him by name, that the walls wouldn’t come. Her eyes began to sting again. And even though she fought the tears, Rhysand must have noticed, because he wrapped an arm around her shoulder and she didn’t stop him. He was warm, and he smelled like she imagined the ocean might. Salt and danger and freedom.
“Do you want me to keep going?” He asked.
She would never admit it, but she tilted her head to move closer, so she could let his scent soothe and steady her. When she nodded, Rhysand swept his cape over her shoulder, settling into a position they both knew they would stay in for the indefinite remainder of the carriage ride. Her head fell against his shoulder, and she could feel the quiet exhale of his breath at her temple. She could hear his pulse, and she nearly joked that she was surprised he had one at all. But somehow, through the combination of his warmth and his scent and that ever-beating metronome, Feyre drifted to sleep in her husband’s arms, while his memories of their kingdom continued playing.
-
She woke to darkness.
Feyre sat up in bed, waiting for the sound of strolling footsteps.
They didn’t come, and slowly she pushed through the disorienting haze of sleep to realize a hearth was crackling in the corner of the room, and she could still see its light.
She wasn’t dreaming, then.
The lighting was dim, but slowly her eyes adjusted until she could make out the details of the inn’s bedroom. She didn’t remember leaving the carriage, which surely meant her husband must have carried her in. Thankfully, she was still wearing the elegant navy dress she had put on that morning.
Slipping quietly out of bed, Feyre measured each footstep against the old wooden floorboards, unaware if Rhysand was a light or heavy sleeper. He again had chosen to occupy an armchair in front of the hearth.
Feyre reminded herself, sternly, that it was not charming he’d decided not to share a bed with her when she was not awake to protest otherwise. But… it’s what other men would have done. He was a prince, and it was the second night in a row he’d claimed the armchair without complaint, without her asking. It was a little charming.
It was the least she could do not to wake him up now as she searched for a nightgown. He’d placed their trunks in the window bay across the room, and Feyre was able to easily find a silken negligee at the top of the folded clothes—short and delicate and pink and certainly not one that she had packed for herself. With a sigh, Feyre threw the fabric aside and began digging for something more suitable. She pushed past the heavy cloaks and dresses, searching for the unmistakable feeling of silk.
While she searched, her hand brushed against something thin and solid, which made a crinkling sound beneath her fingers. Parchment. She froze, head swiveling over her shoulder to see if Rhysand had overheard, but he remained still. Holding her breath, Feyre carefully pulled the parchment from beneath the heavy piles of clothes—buried so deep he had clearly been trying to hide it.
Thinking perhaps she had finally unburied one of his secrets, Feyre eagerly held the paper to the moonlight. The moonlight, which was always honest with her. It was hard to read the black ink in the dim lighting, but as Feyre pulled the crumpled parchment close to her face, she immediately recognized her own handwriting.
My dear rake,
At first, her mind couldn’t truly make sense of what she was reading. Had he found the letters she had kept from her true love? But—no. This letter hadn’t received a reply.
Perhaps this will be the last letter I ever send you.
Feyre dropped the parchment back into the trunk, trying to make sense of this. Had he… had he been intercepting their letters? Is that how he’d known about the identifying phrase, and the gift, and—and when to intercept her, before she made it to the Archeron gate? Had any letter ever reached her true love? Did her true love exist at all? Or was he… was he…
She scrambled to rearrange the trunk to its original state, burying the letter and her fears beneath the heavy piles of cloth. With shaking hands, she tore at the eyelets on her back, leaving her bodice and skirts as a heap on the floor before shrugging into the indecent nightgown.
Rhysand stirred as she walked past, but he didn’t wake. Which was just as well, because Feyre had no intention of letting him see her in the nightgown—ever. She crawled back into the large bed, still reeling at what she had discovered. At what it could mean.
Feyre only knew one thing for certain: she needed to trap a butterfly.
Summary: As Feyre lamented quietly over the misfortune of her life, there, in the marketplace, she heard a merchant instruct to its patron: Place a butterfly wing under your tongue before you sleep, and you will dream of your true love
A gift for @sideralwriting 💕
Read on AO3・Series Masterlist
-
When Feyre peeled her eyes open to darkness, she knew she was still sleeping.
Even though she could not see the bedroom, it was clear it was not the one she had fallen asleep in. The biggest tell was the drift of a warm breeze, delivering the fragrant salutations of spring when it had been an alpine winter that kissed her goodnight. If she held her breath and listened, there was no sign of the crackling hearth that had lulled her to sleep. But she could hear crickets just outside her window. Swaying wisteria. The heralding creak of floorboards beneath familiar feet.
Her hands tightened on the blanket that pooled over her lap. She didn’t know whether to be distraught or overjoyed. Feyre had told him her last letter was a permanent goodbye, that continuing to meet in these dreams would be too painful.
Already, she could feel her eyes welling up.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His voice sounded different, she noticed. Disguised, like something in the dream was distorting it. The wood shifted again as he took another step toward her. Then there was a subdued thud just before the edge of the bed, like he’d dropped to his knees. If she reached out, she was certain she would find his silken hair beneath her fingers. “I’m a selfish man, and I couldn’t resist visiting you like this.”
“You’re sorry?” Feyre echoed.
“Unspeakably.”
Did that mean… he hadn’t been waiting for her at the Archeron gates?
“You are my true love.”
For such a beautiful statement, it sounded so ugly with the way Feyre had to pry the words past her constricting throat. She blinked rapidly, trying to stave off the tears because once they started falling, she knew they would not stop.
“You are my true love, and I married another man, and you are apologizing to me?”
“I would have done everything differently, Feyre.” His voice sounded so small. “If I had known—I was overly confident. I messed this up and I wish so desperately to fix it, but I don’t know how.”
Feyre crawled towards the edge of the bed, letting her legs hang over the side as she tentatively reached into the dark. Her fingers pressed into soft skin, a gentle scrape of stubble. She heard him exhale.
“It is already done,” she whispered. “I am already married, and bound to him through magic. There is nothing that can be done, my love.”
Strong fingers closed around one of her wrists, drawing it towards his lips. His kiss was fleeting, quick as her fluttering pulse. Then he bowed his head forward, resting his forehead where his lips had just touched. His eyelashes brushed the back of her hand as he screwed his eyes shut, and she was relieved that they felt damp as well.
“Do you think you could ever be happy with your husband?” he asked. Excruciatingly quiet. Like he feared the answer.
No, Feyre wanted to say. To comfort him, to protect her own pride. But she hesitated on that answer, which felt so cruel that she settled on confessing, “I don’t know.” Then, when that felt insufficient, she added, “They say that he is cruel.”
“Has he been cruel to you?”
“Not yet.”
She could hear him swallow. There was a grit to his words as he choked, “But you expect he might be. That it is only a matter of time.”
“I…” Feyre started to speak, then bit her lip, thinking better. How much longer could she speak to her true love of her husband, before she became the one who was cruel?
“Do not hide from me, Feyre. Not here.” His fingers tightened, gripping her the same way she remembered gripping onto Nesta and Elain at their mother’s funeral. Like it was all too much. Like it was all he could do to hold on.
“We have not laid together,” she said. “As husband and wife. I expect he is not being cruel to me for that reason. So that I might be easier to… coax.”
Her true love gave some strangled rendition of a laugh. A sound that a wingless butterfly might make, weakened and crumpled and still trying to pretend it was whole. Or at least, that is how she felt sitting before him, knowing that he was hers but she could never be his.
“I see,” he said hoarsely. “You deserve better than a wicked man like him, Feyre.”
“I deserved you,” she cried.
He raised his head, her wrist still encircled in his large hand. “No.”
She started to stand and he tugged her arm as a means of discouraging her, but she pushed forward anyway, fell to her knees on the floor in front of him.
“No,” he was saying. “No, Feyre, you deserve bet—”
It was effortless, the way her body slid against his, how her arm hooked so cleanly around his neck, as though that had always been its intended resting place. When her mouth slotted against his, she knew that its shape had been molded to fit his. And when his grip on her wrist surrendered, sliding up to thread his fingers through her own, she knew they were made to lock in place.
“Feyre,” he moaned, his voice expressing the discouragement his body did not have the strength to. Even as he said it, that small two syllable protest, his palm roved over her lower back, pulling her closer. And it was not her tongue gliding against the seam of their lips, though it was her mouth that opened.
When his tongue stroked over hers, Feyre felt his entire body shudder. She could feel him pulling away, and Feyre thought if this was the small fraction of eternity that she would be granted with her true love, then she would not let him slip between her fingers. So she wound them through his hair, instead, holding him with that same vigor he had held her wrist. Like it was all she had, her lone possession in this world.
“Please,” she whispered against his mouth. “Don’t let go of me until the sun rises.”
Who had the power to decide what was a dream and what was reality? Maybe this could be her life, and the daylight beside her husband just a nightmare. A thing that faded away when the dark set in, warm and rich and lovely. It was the night that had always known her. The stars that had never judged her.
“I can’t,” he said, tearing his mouth away. It was how the butterflies must have felt to have their wings stripped. Feyre knew it because she felt like dying for every second she could feel his ragged breath caress her face and his lips did not follow.
Maybe that was the true cost of the magic. To feel whole just long enough to have it ripped away.
“Because I’m married.”
“Because I have ruined everything and I cannot—” Reprieve came to her in the shape of his hands, fingers curving behind her neck, thumbs sweeping the shape of her cheekbone. He whispered, “I cannot ruin this, too.”
“I want you to ruin it. Ruin me.”
The fingers stilled. “Feyre.”
It was a groan more than anything else.
She raised up on her knees, pushing against his hold to seek his lips again. He did not stop her, but kept himself utterly still.
In an effort to persuade him, she confessed, “I want the first time I’m touched to be from you.”
Like a letter thrown into the flames, he crumpled, body curling forward until his forehead slumped against hers. He was gasping.
“I can’t let myself take that from you—“
“It is not my husband’s to take,” Feyre said, pulling at the hem of her nightgown. If he was too much of a gentleman, then she would do it. “I should get to decide, and I choose—“
“Feyre,” he begged, reaching out to still her hands. “Feyre, please. I know you will only regret it.”
“You don’t know that,” she snapped. Her frustration made her impatient. In a different world, she might have allowed this dance of propriety and doing what was right. But the sun—the one who hid so much from her, who never let her look too closely even as it scrutinized her in turn—it would be up too soon. Feyre took his hand and guided it between her thighs, letting him feel the evidence of her wanting. He sucked in a breath as his touch feathered over the slick seeping through her underwear.
“I’ve thought about you touching me like this before,” she whispered, thankful that the darkness wouldn’t betray the flush spreading over her chest.
Slowly, Feyre guided his hand upwards, until the tip of his index finger nudged against a small bud that made her gasp.
“Like this?”
His voice was so guttural. A man condemned, surrendering to her whim as he swept his fingers likely over that sensitive spot. Feyre’s breath sped up. The sensation rushed to her head, making her feel light, airy—powerful, to be taking this right from her husband. From a Prince.
“Yes,” she lauded, tipping her head back. “Just like that—please.”
He brushed the silken fabric aside to touch her with his bare skin, and immediately she felt like she was on fire. It was clear he knew what he was doing, even in the dark—she tried not to think too carefully about that as she focused on the way he drew tight, small circles with his fingers. Over and over.
“Feyre,” he breathed. An absolution. She was surprised to hear him so close until his lips found her neck, laying a trail of devoted kisses from her shoulder to her collarbone.
A glowing chord inside her twisted tighter and tighter, fracturing every breath so they splintered at her lips. She could hardly speak, but in that surging euphoria she needed to return that feeling of devotion, of desperation and unbecoming and utter ruination.
As her pleasure crested, her fingers flew to his hair, burying her nails into his scalp as she gasped out, “Tamlin!”
The dream shattered.
Like a lashing whip, her body was ripped into the physical world, leaving her skin stinging against the winter chill, her chest rising and falling. Residual pleasure tremored down her spine, feeling so wrong in the absence of his warmth.
What had happened?
It was not yet day—though she could catch its embers on the horizon, warming the twilight sky.
The hearth was still on, chasing away the winter chill, which she supposed would have felt less invasive if she hadn’t kicked the blankets off the bed. The armchair, she noted, was empty. It’s occupant was nowhere to be seen—though by the sounds of retching from the bathing room, she had a decent guess as to where he’d gone.
Feyre tried to smother her resentment as she realized that her husband’s movements had likely woken her up, dragging her forcefully from sleep. Or maybe when her true love had warned her that his name couldn’t be spoken, he wasn’t being mysterious for the sake of it.
Either way, Feyre summoned enough pity to pad across the bedroom. She rapped her knuckles softly against the doorway, a small warning before she pushed the door open.
The only light came from the frosted window across the room and the hearth crackling at her back. It was enough to make out Rhysand, hunched over the sink. The porcelain caught in the moonlight, glowing a lovely ivory that stood in sharp contrast to the dark figure draped against it. His arms shook where they braced either side of the bowl and his knuckles, normally a tawny brown, sported four pale circles where they protruded against the skin.
He was gasping, black hair flopping across his forehead, stray pieces clinging to the damp collecting on his skin. It was hard to tell if he had been sweating or if he’d splashed water in his face, but either way he painted a portrait of a man so unkempt Feyre wouldn’t have recognised him from the Prince that had strode into her family’s manor days ago.
“I’m fine,” he said, before Feyre could ask.
He didn’t sound like it.
“You should go back to bed.”
She might have, if only because staying risked her husband believing that she cared. But the command, its abruptness, drove Feyre forward.
Rhysand laughed, soft and breathless. Resigned. “I suppose your father warned me you would never do as you’re told.”
Her father had likely said many things to try and dissuade the Prince from calling in the bargain. Feyre tried not to let that sting, but already she was a child picking at the scab, wondering at all the reasons her father might have painted Feyre as an unfavorable match. Until the wound was fresh again.
“You’re the one who wanted a bride, knowing nothing about her,” Feyre accused.
Rhysand shook his head. “Go to bed, Feyre.”
Suddenly Feyre’s spine forced her upright, not of her own will. She could feel the black ink coiling around her arm like a sentient creature, hissing its silent laughter as she was forced to turn, to walk back to the bedroom.
“Wait.”
She stopped. Then turned, finding her husband in the doorway. He clutched the frame, silver light pouring over his curved shoulders, clashing with the warmth of the fire that lit his face. Feyre could see, now, the red splotches sitting high on his cheekbones. Almost like he’d been crying.
“I’m sorry,” he said, tickling something in the back of her mind. “I didn’t mean to—that wasn’t a command.”
Feyre shifted on her feet, painfully aware of the night gown she wore. It felt too intimate to be dressed like this for his perusal, so soon after being held by her true love.
She crossed her arms. “It sounded like one.”
“I know,” Rhysand said ruefully. “And I will be more mindful of my wording.”
“Or you could release me from this bargain—from both of them.”
“And if I did,” he murmured, stepping into the bedroom. Feyre retreated a step, an unconscious reaction that the Prince certainly noticed. He was frowning as he stared at her feet, the way she yielded every stride. Feyre thought he might have cornered her all the way to the bed, but he stopped again at the armchair, tilting his head as he studied her. “Where would you go, princess?”
Feyre wondered that, too. She placed herself tentatively on the edge of the bed, watching him. “I suppose that depends. Would you let me go freely, or would I be on the run?”
She already knew the answer. He had said as much in the carriage. I would have searched as long as it would take to find you again. Because you are mine.
Mine.
Pinned beneath his gaze, that memory turned over and over. A spit in her mind, burning the longer he stared.
“Suppose, for the sake of the question, that you went freely.”
A careful way to answer.
She leaned forward to curve her arm around the bedpost, so sturdy she thought she might draw strength from it. Let the solid wood keep her upright as she steeled her nerves to ask, “Do you believe in true love?”
A piece of wood popped in the fireplace, erupting in a swarm of sparks. It was so loud in the smothering quiet. She could hear the wind whipping against the glass outside, cold and stolid as the man before her. He’d turned his head away, staring toward the fire like the noise had distracted him from answering.
“As one of my five questions,” Feyre pressed, heart thundering. “I want you to answer, do you believe in true love?”
It was a fool’s gamble, to waste one of her questions in the hope she could appeal to his empathy. But she’d seen him genuinely laugh, and just a moment ago he had seemed truly vulnerable. And perhaps he wasn’t so hardened by the North as the rumors would have her believe.
“Yes,” he said finally. To the fire. A secret he shared with the flame.
“If you freed me,” Feyre whispered, “I would find him. My true love.”
Rhysand turned to glance at her over his shoulder, a dark brow raised. “And you presume I’m not your true love?”
“I know that you aren’t.” Feyre had to grind her teeth through every syllable to keep her temper at bay. “I know that he is a kind man. He wouldn’t have held me to a bargain that was made by my father—”
“He wouldn’t have needed to,” Rhysand said. He grabbed a poker, thrusting it into the fire with more force than was necessary. Sparks burst beneath the iron prod, hot as the words that flew from his mouth. “You would have married him by convention. You would have praised him for using the bargain to take you away from that place. Tell me, Feyre, would you have viewed my actions so deplorable, if you perceived me as your true love?”
Feyre stared, watching him work the fire with a set jaw. She imagined he was angry that she would always belong to another man, connected to him in a way the ink on her arm could never erase.
“It does not matter,” Feyre insisted. “I find you deplorable because you are not him—because you took him from me and ruined my chances of marrying for love.”
The Prince seemed to contemplate that answer. “Sounds like a nice idea,” he said. “A pity for your true love that you are my wife now.”
My wife.
“A pity for me.” Feyre flopped backwards, glaring at the velvet drapes overhead. “I will be the one caged.”
Rhysand likely thought she didn’t notice the way his eyes drifted back towards the bed. “From the way I see things, you have been freed, Feyre. No more walls surround you.”
“A wall of stone or a ring of gold.” She waved her hand dismissively. “I see no difference between them.”
“Then you mistake the ring’s purpose.”
“It’s a claiming—“
“It’s a promise.”
Don’t look, she whispered to herself. But she was a traitor, turning her head to glimpse her husband standing before the dancing embers. The light caressed him, soft and warm, a match to the expression that swept his face. What’s the promise? She wanted to ask. But she could tell, by the look on his face, that the man who would answer was the same one who had bowed before her in the snow.
An answer from him was dangerous.
She wanted the man who had purposely intimidated an entire ballroom. The one who had tricked her into a second bargain. He was sharper with his words, easier to hate.
“When do we leave?” She asked instead, turning her head towards the window to see the purpling sky, already tangled with vines of orange and gold.
“You can take another hour or two of rest,” Rhysand answered. He straightened his sleeves, glancing at her one last time before he covered the distance to the door. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go.”
The door shut before she could form a response. Feyre sighed, left marveling in the wake of their anger. She knew she should rest, but whenever she shut her eyes, burning violet stared back at her. Who had started the fight, again? He had looked… upset. But she had been so irritated that her dream was interrupted that she hadn’t stopped to care. But oddly enough, she cared now, enough to be curious. Enough to keep her from sleep, wondering what had bothered him while she absently watched the sun’s slow conquest across the sky.
Rhysand returned hours later, wearing what Feyre was certain was a new set of clothes. The cape slung over his shoulders he had certainly not left with. And Feyre remembered a flash of collarbone beneath his loosened collar, which was now freshly pressed, a fine black waistcoat buttoned over it.
His hair, at least, was still rumpled. Like he’d been threading his fingers through it.
“Good morning.”
He strode past the bed, hardly glancing towards her as he threw open the curtains to let in more of that oppressive light. Feyre groaned, burying her face into a pillow to mutter a string of complaints that would have sent her governess on a rampage.
Rhysand only laughed. “Would you like to have a bath before we leave?
Even beneath the warming sun, frost still curled against the glass at Rhysand’s back, and frozen hair would only make a miserable carriage ride all the more miserable. When she said as much, Rhysand went immediately to their trunks, withdrawing a dress she had never seen before.
“Did you bring that from the North?” she blurted.
He offered her a faint smile. “I assumed that my spring-bound bride wouldn’t have much in the way of winter dresses. Couldn’t have you freezing before we made it to my kingdom.”
Feyre took a moment to process that. The preparation that had been involved to have dresses made for her in advance. How many months ago had he decided he was ready to claim the youngest Archeron as his bride?
At least he’d done it with forethought. The woolen petticoat he’d brought was warm, though heavier than she was used to. The navy overdress was fur-lined, with silver eyelets at the back that she was certain Rhysand had chosen deliberately, so she would need to call him into the bathing room to clasp the bodice shut.
“Our clothing suits you,” he murmured, sweeping his eyes over the full length of the mirror. Feyre was staring, too, particularly at the decorative buttons sewn at the front, each stamped with the crest Rhysand had shown her yesterday. The skirts were ornamented around the bottom with an intricate golden border and above it the fabric had been pressed with flowers of the same rich color, stopping just below her knees.
She thought she truly looked like a princess of the North.
“You look beautiful,” Rhysand added, meeting her eyes in the glass.
Feyre pressed her lips together, saying nothing.
He raised his brows. “Another day of silent treatment?”
How the mirror did not splinter beneath those piercing eyes was a mystery. Feyre had to look away, certain she would be the thing cracking if she endured his assessment any longer.
Rhysand sighed. “Very well, then,” he said, before escorting her out of the inn.
She had only a moment to savor the glimpse of freshly laid snow before she was urged back into the wretched carriage. Like the day prior, she kept her gaze fixed towards the window. The alternative was facing her husband, who would either be amused or disappointed that they’d regressed back to silence.
Feyre wasn’t prepared to confront either, though she imagined his expression in his head all the same. She could feel him watching her, swore her skin warmed beneath his stare, like she was sitting beneath a shaft of sunlight. Fortunately, she didn’t need to weather the unrequited glances very long.
Hardly an hour into their journey, the gilded carriage bumped to a stop. Peering out the window, Feyre could make out the tips of colorful tents, pitched row after row. Smoke stacks rose among them, heat rising to defy the ceaseless cold, twining like lovers with the drifting snow crystals.
Rhysand opened the door to a blast of frosted air and Feyre leaned into it, her curiosity outweighing the sting on her cheeks.
“Where are we?”
“A market,” he answered, sliding gracefully out of the carriage. He extended his arm to help her out and when she resisted, he grabbed her by the elbow anyway, murmuring, “Careful—it’s slippery.”
Feyre didn’t believe him until she touched the ground and found her foot sliding, unable to find traction against the slick surface. She yelped, falling forward, and the Prince immediately slid an arm around her waist to steady her.
“What is this?”
“Ice,” he said, and she could tell he was holding in a laugh. “We’re standing on a river.”
That was such a fascinating answer that Feyre could embrace their proximity. She continued clutching onto him for balance so she could use her foot to brush the powdery snow aside, revealing the solid ice beneath them, swirling like clouds over the dark blue water.
“A river,” she repeated, her breath condensing in the cold as it fled her lips. Her eyes roved back to the rows of tents, the sheer number of people walking around them, gathered around great fires that suddenly seemed impossible. “They’re holding a market over a river? It won’t… it won’t break? Or—melt?”
“Neither,” he said with a sideways smile.
“Is it magic?”
“No.” He tugged gently at her waist, taking a confident step backwards on the ice in an effort to move her closer to the tents. “Come, see for yourself.”
Feyre stared for a long moment at their feet, trying to process how to move without falling.
“It’s okay to hold on to me,” he added. “I assure you, the only type of falling I’ll allow my wife to be doing is—”
“Don’t start,” she snapped, venturing a step forward so she could slap his arm.
He was grinning, unbothered by the slap and, if anything, pleased to have Feyre so close. The thumb at her hip began drawing a small circle as he purred, “It’s like you’ve been walking on ice your whole life.”
A blatant lie, given how effortlessly the patrons around them seemed to be moving. No other women looked to be hanging on to their husband’s for support, but Feyre didn’t feel confident enough to let go. Even as she loathed the way Rhysand’s lips tilted into a smirk, far too satisfied with the excuse to be touching.
They slowly made their way into the market, soon enveloped by the hollars of peddlers and tradesmen trying to sell their wares. It was much like the marketplace she and her sisters used to attend on the rare occasion they needed a dress fitted, though there was a crackling energy to this market that was incomparable.
And more importantly, she was permitted to look anywhere she wanted. None of the passersby spared many glances on Feyre, despite her fine clothes and despite the Prince at her side. There were more intriguing things to focus on, like the roasting of an entire ox and the tents selling warmed alcohol.
A crowd was gathered around a man contorting his body into unnatural positions and Feyre stopped to stare with them, mouth agape.
“Magic?” She asked quietly.
“Could be,” Rhysand murmured, unexpectedly close to her ear. “Or perhaps the fellow is just extraordinarily flexible.”
They carried on, passing more performers. A man swallowing swords, another breathing fire.
“Magic?”
“Hard to say.”
There was a group of musicians playing beside a large wooden platform, where couples gathered to swing each other about. Not the same ballroom dancing she was accustomed to. Something looser, more carefree. Feyre watched a woman with unbound hair twirl and twirl and twirl, her laughter puffing into the air around her, visible proof of her joy as the music twisted in time with her skirts.
“Care to dance?” Rhysand asked, smile nothing short of devilish.
“Can we dance like that?”
As royalty, perhaps they weren’t allowed. Held to a different standard—
“We can dance however you’d like,” he said, already guiding her towards the platform.
Higher up, she had a better view of the market. She could see children playing games, tossing balls at stacked bottles. There was a man standing beside a large, colorful wheel. It was too far away to see what was written on each painted section, but she watched them blur together as the man gave it a hearty push.
Then Rhysand was turning her, reclaiming her attention with those infuriatingly bright eyes. A snowflake caught on one of his lashes, many more landing on his hair before melting into the inky strands, and she hated how badly she wished she could capture the moment in a painting.
He smiled in response to her staring, a smart comment inevitably on the tip of his tongue, but Feyre didn’t wait for what he had to say. The fiddlers had picked up the pace and she grabbed her husband's hands, surprising even herself. All she knew was that the music burst around them, upbeat and lively, and that her body simply moved, pulling Rhysand with her into the thrall of dancing bodies. Clapping and hopping and swinging in time.
There were whoops from the other dancers and the patrons that passed, spurring her onward. Feyre danced until she was gasping for breath, left swallowing the cold winter air with abandon, and the whole time Rhysand was beside her, only letting go to let her spin and spin and spin and—just when she was dizzy from it, he caught her with laughter etched on his face, the sound dispelling into a cloud of frost.
He looked so different from the Prince she had danced with at the ball. He was equally lithe and graceful, but this Rhysand was filled with light and life and joy. It shone in his eyes, so infectious she found herself laughing, too.
And that only made his smile wider. “That’s my new favorite sound.” He leaned closer, until the clouds of their breath mingled. “I want to hear it again.”
Her laughter? It wasn’t the sort of thing someone could do on command—
Feyre shrieked as he lifted her by the hips, spinning them around. “Brute!” she shouted, but she could feel the wind lift her hair and saw the other dancers cheer and the laughter erupted from her anyway. “Put me down!”
Rhysand obeyed, setting her back on her feet with a guilty chuckle. She grasped the lapels of his overcoat, leaning in to be heard over the music.
“You are a fiend!”
“I believe the proper term is Prince,” he crooned. “Though for the lucky few—husband.”
“They all mean the same to me,” she said, breathless.
“Precisely.”
The music lulled and Rhysand helped her off the platform, his breath just as short as her own. One of the musicians grinned at her as she looked over, clapping his hands for the dancers coming off the platform. The fiddle in his lap continued playing, even with his hands removed from the instrument.
She blinked. “Magic?”
“It felt like it,” Rhysand murmured. He still held her hand in his own, which he raised to his mouth to leave a kiss against her gloved knuckles. “Would you like to see more?”
Feyre peered down the rows of tents—so many that they could spend the entire day at the market and still not see everything. Vendors passed by, selling baked gingerbread and skewered meats and one of them, a woman with a crystal ball swearing she could see the future.
“Please,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I want to see it all.”
