Discover Top Posts Tagged with #imtymis

i mean, technically, (y)our marriage is saved - 8

Chapter summary:

Feyre has Emotions and hates them. And Rhys sure has a mouth on him… sure has…

Read on AO3 + Tumblr Chapters Overview

General warnings: Rhys' mouth, 9k

~*~

We took refuge from the harsh morning sunlight in the library soon after finishing up breakfast. The sprawling chamber with built-in bookcases at least thrice my height laid on the other side of the palace, with the large, open windows that characterised the building’s architecture facing the west. As it was early still, the horizon was painted a dark blue; Rhys had flicked his fingers after we entered and put up a myriad of tiny, flickering stars to offer additional lighting. One floated near each of our faces, bathing the papers and books in a silvery glow.

Though I’d expected to fall back into the familiar, trusted bickering that Rhys and I had cultivated during our brief altercations the previous week, Mor’s presence ensured that we both remained relatively amicable with one another. My temper was tempered, and Rhys’ ferocious appetite for being as annoying as he possibly could be to coax reactions out of me was relaxed. How she did it, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps Mor’s general air was just strong and cheery enough to cut through my irritation like a knife through butter. Perhaps she just urged Rhys to be less of a prick by way of existing in the general vicinity of him. Whatever it was, I found myself less snarky; Rhys held his tongue and reworded whatever he drivel he emitted more often than not. Both helped immensely to keep the atmosphere somewhat pleasant.

My progress in reading, writing, and mind-shielding was the subject of our discussion. As Rhys could check the latter at any time, we’d inevitably latched onto my swiftly improving literacy: Mor, at least, seemed utterly delighted at how well I was doing.

“It’s like you did nothing but practise,” she said cheerily, shoving the marked paper my way. I had to write the words Rhys and her dictated down and had made an almost negligible amount of mistakes. “Were your weeks in Spring that boring?”

Not boring, per se—but I wasn’t going to tell them that. “I just found myself with a surplus of free time.”

“Well, it paid off.” Mor grinned at me. “Leaps and bounds, Feyre. Really.”

“Yes,” Rhys drawled. “Remarkable. I’d imagined you’d have been far too busy accepting your fiancé’s enthusiastic welcome to occupy yourself with writing lines.”

“Imagined me accepting an enthusiastic welcome often, did you?” I shot back, tone frosty. Rhys sat back with a smirk, though he did seem a touch flustered. “But no. I just had nothing better to do.”

“Nothing?” Rhys asked, at the same time that Mor said, “Ah.”

“Why on earth wouldn’t you be busy with other things?” Rhys continued, before Mor could say anything else. He ignored the sharp look she sent him with ease. “I would’ve thought you’d be swamped with doing all kinds of Lady things.”

“Like what?”

“Like,” he flapped a hand, “managing the household, picking out dresses, having tea parties, starting up embroidery. Those things. Ladies do those, don’t they?”

“You sound like someone we both despise,” Mor muttered. He shoved her chair and she stuck her tongue out at him. “Just saying…”

I punched out a sigh through my nose, mouth tight and shoulders pulled up to my ears, it felt like. “Yeah, no.”

“No?”

“No,” I confirmed, and then I said, before I could calculate whether it was a good idea to tell them, “the wedding’s off indefinitely, so I’d wager I won’t become the Lady of Spring any time soon.”

Mor’s mouth fell open. Rhys, for his part, didn’t show more shock than a small jump of his eyebrows.

“I’ve decided it’s best to wait until we’ve both healed,” I said stiffly, “before we make any hasty and relatively permanent decisions like marriage.”

“Ah,” Mor repeated. When I looked her way, her face was tight but, I thought, vaguely approving. “I understand.”

She reached over and patted my wrist, and I pressed my mouth into a thin line and nodded. Rhys chewed absently on his lip and refrained from doing much of anything but stare at me—I personally refused to look at him directly. To an almost irrational degree, I felt frightened that he might be able to see what had occurred prior to my refusal to marry Tamlin. I didn’t know how he’d react, what he’d think; though I suspected he’d be angry for me, I had a nagging, anxious suspicion that he’d think I’d pushed Tamlin too far too soon.

“My life so far is just a small blip for the rest of my immortality, as someone kindly reminded me,” I said regardless. “And I fear that if we were to marry now—”

I halted. Too much. Too much information. They didn’t need to know about the ins and outs of my relationship with Tamlin, all the grievances and frustrations that came with it. My intermittent coldness towards him. The bouts of apathy and compulsion for cruelty I’d feel when he was near.

If anything, Rhys, upon realising I’d been unhappy lately, would find a loophole to keep me here. That seemed just like the kind of thing he’d do.

“Yes?” Mor prompted.

I cleared my throat and played with the edge of the marked sheet. “He’s a choice. We’re not—fated. I don’t want to forget that.”

Right after I said it I bit down on my cheeks so hard that my mouth flooded with something wet and warm that had to be blood. It was odd—faerie blood didn’t taste like slightly salted copper. It tasted sweet and cloying. More like lead.

My hands clenched and unclenched repetitively.

None of us said anything for a moment, though Mor seemed to be searching for words. Rhys didn’t; he just stared at me with those star-flecked eyes of his, almost calculating but with a hint of vulnerability.

He’d caused it. The revelation he’d admitted to, the gift the cauldron had offered us and he’d deemed proper to share in a drunken stupor, had made me realise I had a choice. I didn’t need to be with Tamlin just like I didn’t need to be with Rhys.

It was like he’d yanked the wool off my eyes.

“You know,” Mor said then, “I once—was engaged to be married.”

I stared at her.

“After I’d bled for the first time and my powers awakened, I was to be married off to a male I didn’t know well and into a family that would treat me as a broodmare.” Mor didn’t smile, didn’t soften. “My virginity was the highest asset in this. And because I wanted to have a choice, I lost it to a male who would become a friend.”

I knew virginity was important in the human world. I didn’t realise it was here as well, within the faerie realms of Prythian; it seemed like such a small, dismissible thing in comparison to immortality.

“The reaction was violent,” she said. “Rhys and his family, of course, weren’t happy about the political implications, but they all understood why I did it. My family, however,” and then she swallowed, the only tell of her discomfort, “was so furious that they tortured me when they found out. I was dumped into the Court of my betrothed with a note nailed to my stomach that I was his problem from that point onwards. A—another friend rescued me and brought me to Rhys, where he and his family nursed me back to health and allowed me to stay if I so wished.”

“Who was your fiancé?” I asked in a whisper.

“Eris Vanserra,” she said. “You probably saw him in that bitch’ Court. He’s the firstborn.”

Eris. I’d seen him, yes; only shared the smallest resemblance with Lucien, but that may have been because of their hair colour alone. He was the one who’d snarled at me when I told Amarantha my name.

My warning to Nesta before Tamlin took me away rang through my head in a dizzying echo. His father beats his wife and the sons do nothing to stop it. The Lady of Autumn seemed regal but drawn; I would’ve assumed that that came from being imprisoned under the mountain, had I not known that Beron was a horrific piece of work.

“Good that you got away and avoided… what could’ve happened,” I said.

“Yes.” Mor’s smile was tentative and brief. “We always have a choice, Feyre. Even when it doesn’t look like we do.”

We continued our work after that. Rhys hadn’t spoken up to add anything to Mor’s story, nor did he pipe up with additional information afterwards. The only thing he did was go back to helping me work through difficult words with many syllables, much like Mor did as well. He did seem a bit more subdued somehow, however—like something had left him reeling.

They coaxed me through my stumbling over difficult and long words before slowly and carefully moving on to intertextuality and the effects of word choice. I knew much of it already — I was an adult, after all, and was rather fluent in our language — but the underlying meaning woven into sentences and their structures was quite different from regular speaking language. Rhys explained how words and phrasing could affect the meaning of a text or speech, used to strengthen or weaken arguments; Mor explained the more exact examples of it, like rhetorical questions and unreliable narrators, metaphors and motifs.

Knowing these, recognising these, was key to navigating the world of the Courts, Rhys told me. Faeries spoke in riddles and the courtly fae even more so, for their entire life was bathed in political games—I needed to be able to move past them in order to survive, or they’d eat me alive.

“Of course,” he said, “I wouldn’t mind eating you, if you catch my drift.”

I threw a balled-up piece of paper at his head, nailing him between the eyebrows. As he spluttered — for show, I suspected; he would’ve been able to mist it if he so wished — and Mor giggled obnoxiously, I demanded we just continue with my lesson.

As was par for the course for Rhys, he wrote down ridiculous sentences for me to read out loud before I was tasked with copying it down and explaining the word choice. Mor let him do so if only because I did a lot of eye-rolling and sighing as I completed my little tasks and continued to throw little balls of paper at his stupidly perfect face. Rhysand is in possession of a wingspan that pales all others, Rhysand will sweep you off your feet without warning, Rhysand shan’t hold back and will break Tamlin’s nose the next time that welp puts his paws anywhere near Rhysand’s person, et cetera; I could tell the self-centred nature of the sentences originated largely from his mission to annoy me as much as humanly — well, faely — possible, but that didn’t make me any less annoyed.

If I was being honest, it was brainless work: simplicity woven with increasing difficulty in an attempt to keep me on my toes. It’s why I didn’t feel my brain make a connection until I’d copied half of the sentence ‘Rhysand shall obliterate all the pathetic enemies he will come across on the immortal battlefields spread across Prythian’—a realisation that felt so sudden I nearly broke my pen.

“Tamlin doesn’t believe there will be a war, by the way.”

There was an elongated beat of silence before either of the cousins blinked.

“What,” said Mor, without any inflection.

“I suggested I would start training,” I said, “but Tamlin vetoed it, as he believes it’ll put a target on my back and there won’t be a war for me to fight in anyway.”

To my horror, my tone was irritable. The idea that Tamlin thought he could order me around like I was his subject, like he had any right to tell me what to do, did still annoy me. It was actually so immensely frustrating that I still saw red when I thought about it for too long.

“I thought him being allowed to remove the masquerade mask Amarantha cursed him to wear would have made him less blind,” Rhys said sharply, “but it appears I was wrong.”

“Rhys,” Mor chided, but it didn’t have a lot of heart behind it. “He genuinely doesn’t believe war will come, Feyre?”

“I thought he did,” I said honestly. “He’s been pacing the perimeter of the house and often gets called out to the border. There’s been an increase in sentries too. But I think—the danger he’s seeing is in his head.”

Mor’s stare was hard, calculating, and appallingly neutral. For a moment I felt laid bare, like she could see right down to my bones, to what I hid there and refused to say. I shifted and looked away.

“Feyre,” she said slowly, “when you said you had time to study—”

“I had time to study,” I intoned.

“Right.” Mor paused. “But did you have time because—”

“Mor,” Rhys snapped.

“I’m worried,” Mor cried instantly, turning to face her cousin. “Can’t I be worried? Feyre is one of the first friends I’ve made in centuries and I want to make sure she’s—”

“She can tell you whether she is on her own time,” said Rhys, sparing me a brief, apologetic glance, “not during a round of questioning she’s not comfortable with.”

“Like you haven’t done the exact same thing,” Mor replied. “I know you, Rhys, and I can tell when you’re brooding…”

“I’ve never brooded a day in all five hundred and thirty-six years of my life—”

“By the Gods, you’re old,” I blurted, “that’s like, twenty-one human generations.”

Silence fell almost instantly. Against my better judgement I sank a touch the moment both immortal gazes fell upon me, fiddling with my pen. And then, after what felt like an age of tension-riddled quiet, Mor burst into loud, witch-like cackles.

“Well,” said Rhys, tone about as dry as high land during a drought, “I can confirm you’ve managed to land a solid kick against the royal plums of my ego, Feyre, darling. Thank you.”

Mor collapsed onto the table. “Old—”

“It’s true, though,” I defended weakly. “Humans can barely reach eighty years before they die of old age—sometimes a hundred, if they’re lucky and have good teeth. Rhys, you were born when humans still practised the old religion en masse.”

“Twenty-one generations—” Mor hiccupped.

“Tarquin, Summer’s High Lord, is eighty,” Rhys said, “and he’s like a teenager. I’m quite certain he hasn’t even started growing pubic hair yet.”

“How the hell would you know that?”

“OLD!” Mor yelled, face having turned red. “Rhys—Rhys, you’re geriatric…”

“Frame of reference,” Rhys said, before he told Mor in a tight voice, “you are a year older than me, Morrigan.”

Mor sobered within seconds and bared her teeth. I turned my lips inward and bit down on them to keep from smiling or, worse, gaping.

“It’s impolite to reveal a lady’s age,” she snapped.

Rhys grinned. “It’s a good thing you’re not a lady then, but a horrific harpy instead—”

He flattened himself on the table in the next moment, so quickly it would’ve been a blur for human eyes, as Mor went to whack him with a rolled up sheet of paper. What happened next was just as swift: Rhys twisted, reached up, and grabbed Mor’s wrist to prevent further whacking. Mor retaliated by bringing her leg up and kicking so hard at his chair he went sprawling with a yelped curse.

I pressed both of my hands against my mouth, but it did very little to muffle the snort that escaped me. And as Rhys climbed back upright, frazzled, head popping up from under the table with his mouth open like a fish, the chuckles that fled my mouth could no longer be corralled and brought back. My hands fell, and I was smiling, and Rhys’ expression became laced with wonder.

Mor snickered along in merriment, though I barely registered it. The sudden burst of laughter, a kind of mind-blowing amusement that flooded all throughout my body, was as unnerving as it was relieving; I couldn’t genuinely remember the last time I’d laughed, let alone at others. I thought my time under the mountain and my brief death had sucked that ability out of me.

But it was here now. I shook with the force of it, the twinge in my cheeks and the pressure on my stomach stark reminders of how long it’d been.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” I stuttered, gasping, and I felt a spark of panic at how difficult it was to stop and calm down. “I haven’t—I—”

“Don’t say sorry,” Rhys said quietly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile before.”

He hadn’t. I’d never smiled in front of him, at least—as far as I could remember, though perhaps my nights drugged with faerie wine had urged me to. But maybe he’d thought it wasn’t real then. Ingenuine.

As sudden as the unignorable amusement had been, it got replaced by something heavier and more painful, and the tears of joy morphed, very suddenly, in tears of grief.

“Oh, fuck,” I choked out, and the amazed expressions on the faeries’ faces made place for concern. I took a shuddering breath. “Sorry, sorry, I—”

“It’s okay,” Mor whispered. She was beside me in a blink, hands hovering before resting loosely atop mine. “It’s… been a while, hasn’t it?”

I nodded, staring resolutely at the blurred table. Tears dripped from my lashes at a frankly impressive pace, some falling on my lap but most trailing down my cheeks to my jaw, then down my neck and collarbones to be absorbed by the collar of my tunic. Every breath stuttered on both the inhale and the exhale; I couldn’t close my mouth, lest my bottom lip trembled so much it would fall open anyway.

“This is ridiculous,” I breathed, choking on a sob. “I was just—laughing, it’s not—”

“The first time I laughed after I was tortured, I had a panic attack,” Mor said gently. “When Rhys came back after you freed him…” she paused, head twisting to look at him, before she swallowed, “—and he laughed at something one of our friends said, he threw up so violently he spat blood. It’s… normal, and understandable, to be shocked when you do something you haven’t done in a while. And it’s normal—”

I sobbed louder. Mor tucked some hair behind my ear and squeezed my hand. And then Rhys said, hoarse and quiet yet perfectly audible:

“It’s normal to grieve the person you were, and what you could do.”

I jerked and looked at him. His jaw was tight, eyes intense, brow low.

“We’re made up out of our experiences. Those experiences all change us, just slightly. What you went through…” he swallowed, “…is more than enough to change someone nearly beyond recognition. But when you get a sliver of your old self back it’s a shock to your system.”

I bit down on my cheeks again, so hard my mouth flooded once more with my sweet, cloying faerie blood.

“Don’t apologise for something you can’t help, Feyre,” Mor said firmly. “Don’t ever.”

“Especially not,” Rhys added in a murmur, “when it’s a step towards helping you breathe.”

~*~

It was safe to say the lesson didn’t continue after that.

It could’ve. Rhys called for tea as I was making significant progress in calming myself down with the help of Mor, and after the teapot had been emptied, the only evidence of my sudden tears were my swollen eyes, the itching tear tracks, and that wrung-out kind of exhaustion that only followed a bout of intense emotion.

I asked to go to my room, however, for a bath and a nap. The cousins acquiesced. Mor said that I could ask for her whenever I was ready, and she’d be there; Rhys merely guided me to my room with a steadying hand between my shoulder blades and nodded as I entered, disappearing into a far less extravagant swirl of shadow than usual.

I could call for him whenever I wanted, I knew. He’d come. I figured it was the bond that tethered him to me so much that he couldn’t ignore my requests, which didn’t do much more than make me feel miserable—especially now that Mor had hammered down on the concept of choice so much.

Perhaps it was different for male faeries. Or perhaps it was because the bond hadn’t snapped for me yet — I figured the word ‘snapped’ felt like a literal snap somewhere in your chest, rather than the mild, dismissible pull I usually felt around him — that I was able to ignore him, but as it had snapped for him he couldn’t ignore me.

I was too tired to commend him for his self-control though, even to myself, and simply slunk into the bathroom to soak for a while, undoing my braid before slipping out of my clothes. The water, as always, was the perfect temperature; I shivered at the feeling. After a few seconds of letting the heat wash over me, my body relaxed carefully, in increments, lessening the ache that accompanied loosening back.

I groaned and sunk under, scrubbed at my face to rid myself of the tears, then went back up for a breath. Poured soap into my hand and scrubbed at my hair. It smelled like bergamot and cedar this time, warm and soothing.

Confusion and warring emotions were a constant in the Night Court, I decided. In Spring, my emotions had recently been limited to anger, sadness, numbness, and terror, but Night only made me feel confused with the comfort it brought me. And yes, of course I felt annoyance, strong and firm; I felt anger and frustration; I felt that bone-deep longing for something I wasn’t sure of as keenly as I usually did.

But my moping was different. My emotions felt heightened, less subdued. I had a feeling I could rage as much as I wished and nobody would judge me for it. I could hurl shoes and pieces of paper at its High Lord’s head and all he would do was laugh, rather than yell.

And, Gods—I’d called Rhys old to his face and in front of the overseer of the Court of Nightmares, and all that happened was a sulk and a cackle. I’d burst into tears and there was no panic from them. I could probably tell Rhysand I found him unappealing, and scary, and oblivious as to understanding me… and he’d probably just grin tightly, jest a little before nodding, before moving on.

It’s like a part of me knew for certain, doubtless in its confidence, that if I asked Rhys to be better, to improve—he would do it without whining. He’d work on himself. He would give me the results I wanted to see.

It was terrifying.

It felt like a betrayal of the highest calibre.

I rinsed my hair and climbed out of the bath, exhausted but head whirring. I didn’t want to think and compare and do all those things that made me feel like a horrible person, but it’s like I couldn’t stop it—the way Mor, as a friend of Rhys’, pushed back and ridiculed him at every available opportunity, but how Lucien bit his tongue more often than not, disinclined to trigger the beast that lurked below Tamlin’s skin.

I was still dripping water as I rummaged through the armoire — my dress was still in there — for underwear and a comfortable nightshirt. When I pulled both on, the fabric darkened where the droplets still stuck to my skin; my back felt sticky where the ends of my hair dribbled moisture.

Then I crawled into the bed, that massive, fluffy nest of a bed, kicked off a variety of decorative pillows, and curled beneath the duvet. Closed my eyes. Gripped at the pillow. Buried my nose into the fabric and inhaled the scent of the detergent, cold mountain air.

My eyes were leaking again. I gritted my teeth against it, wanting to scream; because why was I sad, now? Why did I need to cry?

It was fine. Everything was fine. The Spring Court was stifling and though I’d anticipated the Night Court to be worse, it was not. Nobody pressured me to act like everything was okay. Nobody told me I didn’t need to do anything because I’d already done so much. Nobody said I couldn’t leave the palace because it was unsafe to do so. I could wander wherever I wished without encountering even a single faerie; no sentries at my back, no expectations to dress a certain way.

The day was still so long, so bright. My eyelids were orange. But I burrowed deeper into the blankets and drifted away, stomach coiled into a knotted mass of writhing serpents.

~*~

The most quizzical thing happened then, because I woke up that evening and could barely move.

It was a momentous struggle to climb out of bed and dress myself into something more appropriate for dinner; every single step I had to take up to the large, open space felt heavy and laborious, like I was walking through syrup. I could barely pay attention to Rhys’ and Mor’s light-hearted bickering during dinner either, too focused on making sure I chewed and swallowed—and I had to beg off Mor’s offer to have a glass of wine and some cheese as dessert, because I was so tired I felt like I’d fall where I stood.

Sleeping that night didn’t help me, even with the peace and calm that the moonstone palace emanated. My energy remained low, as if sapped. The apathy was lingering on the edges of my consciousness, ready to take over. And most tellingly, I completely stopped rising to Rhys’ taunts.

It worried him. It worried Mor too, because I ceased to react the way I’d had to her too. It was plain on their faces. I couldn’t tell them that my guilt for—for feeling relief here, that it ate away at my ability to act like myself, so drained that I could barely lift my hands to wash myself, could barely climb out of bed, could barely dress myself. I could read though, and write, even if the lessons didn’t truly register; my wall of adamant remained firm in spite of my exhaustion.

No matter what those two threw at me — Mor’s gentle kindnesses and Rhys’ teasing flirtations, their shared banter in attempts to make me smile, the outrageously absurd sentences Rhys had me write — I was almost too weak to even speak.

On the second day, I didn’t join them for breakfast. On the third, I only joined them for dinner. The fourth, I ceased leaving my room at all; and though they visited, together at first and then alone, I remained in the solitude of my bedroom.

I slept a lot, of course. Better than in Spring. The architecture of the palace gave me comfort unlike anything I’d ever felt—so open, so wide; the scent of jasmine that permeated every room, the scent of snow on the breeze fluttering past the gossamer curtains, the endless sights of mountains and sky. My nightmares were easier to struggle out of, and the aftershocks had lessened in intensity. I actually slept. I slept, and I ate, and I kept things down. I breathed in fresh air and read in the sunlight and took baths that lasted hours.

But I was still exhausted beyond belief. It shocked me, frustrated me, in spite of the apathy that had taken up residence inside of my chest. The sedentary and lonely hours prompted a discomfort that I could only equate to terrible nerves: my muscles were always a little bit tense, my heart always felt a bit constricted, and my stomach was always tight. As was my chest, for I felt some subtle kind of additional guilt whenever I hid myself away again.

I read a lot, now. Folktales and history, and one book on mates that’d snagged my attention and I was slowly parsing through. Then, on the fifth day, or sixth, I hadn’t been counting—but at the tail-end of the week, I exited the bathroom to find Rhys on my bed once more.

“Hi,” I greeted, and I turned to dress myself, but mainly not to see the disappointment flitting over his face at my lack of reaction.

“I thought we could just relax today,” he said. “Mor has business in Hewn City to take care of, so we could just read. Or do other things, with this new privacy she’s so kindly afforded us.”

His tone was teasing, sounded like an insistence—play with me, come on, do it. But I just shrugged, tugging on my underwear under my towel before letting it drop.

I could hear him swallow.

Not paying him any mind, I slipped into small bodice and a sweater, then some loose, billowing trousers I remembered seeing Mor in before. The clothing, at least—getting out of the clothes I slept in helped me stay awake during the day, rather than just letting myself rot.

I turned, blindly twisting my hair into a knot resting at the back of my head. Rhys sat staring up at me like I was some sort of apparition.

“So you want to just sit and read?” I asked.

He blinked, shrugged. “Like you’ve been doing anything else? Do you want to paint instead, Feyre?”

My mouth flattened. “You’re not funny.”

“I never claimed to be,” he replied. “I’ve just been taking note of your hobbies.”

“My hobbies,” I repeated flatly.

“Yes, your hobbies.” He rose to his full height in one smooth moved, stuffing his hands in his pockets and sauntering closer. “The ones you’ve been so diligently performing here. Reading, sitting, sulking…”

My jaw clenched.

“You can’t be bothered to climb a set of stairs, so you take all your meals here,” he said. “You can’t be bothered to talk to anyone, so you don’t leave this room. All you do, I’m assuming, is sit, stare out of windows, and read. Why can’t I join you in such ambitious endeavours? Hard work is always better done together.”

His voice dripped with a mixture of vitriol and teasing. He was grasping at straws to get me to react to him the way he wanted me to.

“Sure,” I said, tonelessly. “Okay.”

Rhys’ chin tilted up, eyes slightly wider than usual. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I repeated, brushing past him to pick up the book I’d been working my way through. “Go ahead. Do whatever you wish.”

He stood frozen, even when I made my way to the room’s balcony to take a seat on one of the chairs there. It was a good place to zone out and stew, I’d found. Much better than under the cover of the building.

It took a few seconds, but eventually Rhys stalked out into the sunlight to join me.

“You’re not even going to protest?”

I didn’t look up from the book, despite the fact that the words on the page didn’t even register. “Should I?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, you should. You ought to—I don’t know, complain that I’ve entered your room without your permission? Tell me to fuck off, maybe? Call me a prick with a bloated ego the size of Prythian?”

“How dare you enter my room without my permission,” I intoned. “Fuck off, Rhys. You’re a prick with an ego about as big as Prythian itself.”

Rhys snapped his teeth in frustration. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.”

“Sounded like it.”

“No,” he snapped. “No, it’s—Cauldron, Feyre, this is the problem. You laugh once and shut down? Did it shock you thatmuch? Don’t you ever laugh in Spring?”

“What’s the Spring Court got to do with it?” I asked, heart kicking up in speed. I squeezed the book tight. “I just don’t want to do things, Rhys.”

“Like smile?” he retorted, barking out a sharp, mean laugh. “Like talk to people who care?”

I squeezed the book harder.

“I—Mor and I waited for you,” he said. “Every single morning, we wait for you until Nuala or Cerridwen announces you won’t be joining us. Then we wait for you to join us for lunch. Then for dinner. Feyre,” he said, insistent, “you can go anywhere you’d like in my Court, but you’ve just been staying holed up in your room—”

“I thought I was only supposed to learn how to read, write, and shield my mind,” I said quietly.

The sound of chair legs screeching across stone told me he’d collapsed in one of the chairs. “That doesn’t mean it’s all you need to do.”

I chewed on my lip, nostrils flared and staring resolutely, unseeingly, at the book. The upper edge of my nails had gone a pale yellow with pressure.

“Is that it?” Rhys asked, tone awfully close to begging. “Do I need to take you somewhere? To a—to a town? Or the woods? To a peak of one of the mountains, or an Illyrian encampment, or a frozen lake?”

I sighed harshly through my nose. “Why do you care what I want, Rhys?”

He froze in my peripheral vision. I lifted my head, looked at him: his eyes were wide and bright, jaw tense and jutted slightly forward. Did I have him there? His frustration with my indifference had to be nothing more than the mating bond rearing its head—it was in the book I was reading, that a mated faerie felt an almost impossibly strong urge to protect and cherish. Though it was about a mutually accepted bond, I figured it wasn’t that different.

“It’s not just the bond,” he said. “Feyre, I—”

“Get out of my head,” I bit out.

“I’m not.” Rhys bared his teeth and looked away. “I just know that damned book.”

Oh. Without bothering to mark the page, I snapped it shut.

“So what’s it then?” I asked. “Pity for the once-human? Afraid your little toy has broken beyond repair?”

He laughed without humour, a quick, hiccupping expulsion of breath. “I just like you.”

I felt my mouth pull into a scowl.

“You glowered at me, and sneered, and glared,” he said. “You were scared of me but you taunted me despite it. You threw the bone that killed the Wyrm at Amarantha and walked away, even with your arm broken, even while covered head to toe in excrement and mud. You were a fox in a Court of wolves and won—”

“So I was just intriguing, then,” I concluded, oddly disappointed. I wanted to accuse him of masochism but didn’t have the energy to. “A fun little jester—”

“You reminded me of my friends.”

My mouth closed.

“You reminded me of Mor, and Azriel, and Cassian, and Amren,” he told me, voice hard and slowly rising in volume. He didn’t seem to have realised that I had no idea who three of those people were. “You ensnared the Middengard Wyrm like a fucking rabbit, you flipped me off, and I could see people I hadn’t seen in nearly fifty years, whose voices I’d almost forgotten, who I tucked away to protect—I could see them, standing right alongside you, throwing that bone. I like you, Feyre, as a human and as a faerie, and—”

“You liked the idea of me,” I said, mouth dry. “I’m not the idea, Rhys. I’m the whole person. And I’m not the girl I was who went under that mountain—”

“You’re being smothered,” he hissed. “Can’t you see it? The human you were, the faerie you are—by… by just letting time pass, by refusing to let yourself breathe, you’re allowing her to win.”

The fire inside of me was cold. Freezing.

“I’ve done enough,” I breathed, though it didn’t feel true. “I’ve died.”

“And you were granted life,” he said. “You were Made. You’re immortal—you can do anything you fucking wish, but decide to waste the days away sitting idle?”

I stood. “I don’t need to hear this.”

“Yes you fucking do.” Rhys stood too, footsteps announcing he was following me inside. “Do you want to give up? Feel nothing? Do nothing? Tell me you do, truthfully, and I’ll leave you alone.”

I breathed. My grip on the book was so tight the hardcover edges were cutting into my palms. I felt cold all over.

“I want to do nothing,” I said.

He laughed again. “That’s a lie.”

And I didn’t know what happened exactly, but all I remembered later was a surge of emotion, high and hot and cold, and me whirling around to launch the book at his awful, beautiful, infuriating face.

He caught it, hissed, and peeled his fingers off the cover with a grimace. “Ice. Winter Court. Good job, Feyre darling.”

“Leave,” I murmured, eyes wide. “Get out of my room.”

“No,” he replied, arching a brow. “No, I don’t think I will. Not when we’re finally having a riveting conversation again.”

“It’s one-sided,” I said, taking a few steps back.

His smile was fanged. “You’re still replying to me.”

“I’ve been trying to shut you down.”

“Doing a bang-on job at that, my love,” he crooned. “Not feeling very ‘shut down’ here, actually. No, I think you do want to talk to me, but you simply think you don’t.”

My heart was stuttering, and I briefly thought he’d gone mad with resisting the pull—or I was dreaming. And if I was dreaming, then I was lucky it wasn’t a nightmare, because it meant I was in control here.

Wasn’t I?

“Just get out,” I whispered. “Just listen to me for once—”

“I’ve always listened,” he said. “I keep listening to you. Every emotion, every want, every fucking thought you allow to filter through your shield—I watch, and I listen. Did you know your nightmares still reach me?”

My breath caught.

“I can see them, I can feel them…” he snarled at nothing in particular, “so much so, so vibrantly, that I can’t tell whether it’s your nightmare or mine. Of course I fucking listen—”

“You took me away from my wedding against my will,” I whispered.

“You asked,” he hissed. “You demanded it. You said no, three times, and you stepped back so I came and took you so I had an excuse to be there!”

“You still took me,” I continued stubbornly, like I hadn’t been insurmountably thankful for it in the days after. “You took me when I didn’t want to go. And before—before, you twisted my broken arm to get me to agree to the bargain, you dressed me up in a dress that was more like a cobweb, you drugged me—”

“I twisted your arm,” he said heatedly, “to set the open fracture. You recall the bone was sticking out of your arm, don’t you? And the dress, the faerie wine… I explained why, because Amarantha would have simply killed you if she figured out you were more to me than just a human toy, and I was terrified the debauchery of the revels would break—if you saw what she made me do—”

“You could’ve explained it,” I snapped, anger, familiar and hot and sudden, sparking through my veins. “You could’ve been nice! You could’ve—could’ve grabbed me a day before the wedding, or a month, not as I was about to walk down the aisle!”

“Cauldron, Feyre,” he groaned, “you’re saying it as if I didn’t do you a damned favour—”

“I can’t exactly see you jumping at the chance to ‘save’ me as a favour.” My voice dripped with derision. “Weren’t you waiting for it? You said so, didn’t you? You may have tried to ignore it, but you still listened…”

Rhys stared at me, chest heaving, and he laughed incredulously for a third time. Threw out his hands, shook his head.

“All of Prythian was aware of the wedding,” he said. “Everyone—even those in—High Lord Tamlin of the Spring Court and Feyre Cursebreaker, saviours of the High Lords,” he spat, “united at long last; love that conquers all. And all I could think about was the inevitable happiness and pleasure that I’d feel because you’d feel it. I was prepared to numb myself into incoherency just for the chance I would only remember the barest hints of it the next day.”

I set my jaw and tried to glower, because I shouldn’t care. His happiness was not my responsibility. But he advanced, face dark and eyes bright, like smouldering purple coals in the remains of a hearth fire, and I forced myself to stumble back, back, back—pressed myself against the door so as to not meet him halfway.

“Imagine my surprise,” he said quietly, “when I, having gone through fucking bottle of liquor already, barely able to stand upright, didn’t feel happiness or joy, didn’t feel pleasure, but earth-shattering terror instead.”

“The rose petals frightened me,” I replied, cursing myself when my voice didn’t come out even, but instead breathless and shaking. “I was remembering blood—”

“Yes,” said Rhys, “blood. You were getting married in the court of thorns and roses but you can’t even stand the sight of the colour red. Can’t look at a rose, can’t prick yourself on a torn. I’d wake up most nights to the feeling of you hurling your guts out after a harrowing dream of pure terror that would leave me fucking paralysed, and I couldn’t even pinpoint whether someone managed to comfort you from the horror and the pain.

“And then I took you, and you were angry, and I thought—” he blinked rapidly, scowled, “—I thought, thank the Cauldron she’s still feeling things. Thank the Cauldron she can still be angry with me, or furious, or just frustrated. That she can talk back and slap back if she deems it necessary. Because I know,” he said, “what it’s like to freeze when the rest of the world needs you to keep moving, and I wouldn’t have put it past you to have gone numb with it all. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you were so exhausted you couldn’t even tell me to fuck off.”

“Then why are you so angry now?” I asked, almost whispering. “Why is it—”

“Because I don’t want you to!” he hissed. “Because freezing and rotting only makes you feel even worse. I need you to feel, Feyre. Be deliriously happy, be incandescently furious, be achingly sad—Amarantha wanted to break you, so you can’t break. She wanted to break all of us, so we mustn’t. Not now that the bitch is finally dead.”

I closed my eyes and willed the tears to remain behind my lids. There was—a point, to what he was saying. I knew that. A part of me knew that like it knew the sky was blue and leaves dropped in autumn. Amarantha had wanted to break me and I couldn’t, shouldn’t let her, like I hadn’t allowed her to when she was still alive.

But I was just—

“I’m so tired of holding myself together,” I breathed, chest shuddering. My hands went up, covered my eyes. “I’m just—I don’t know what to do, what to think, who to please, and I—”

I thought that he was a good distance away from me. A few steps, enough for me to shape a gaping chasm between us that made me feel saner—like it was supposed to be, so I wouldn’t have to resist the urge to burrow myself into him while I was too exhausted to prevent that from happening.

But then he was close.

So close I could smell him, feel the warmth of him. His hands encircled my wrists and he pulled, gentle, until I listened; tilted my head back and swallowed through all the thick saliva gathering at the back of my throat, blinked, squinted at his face through the blur of moisture.

“You don’t need to please anyone but yourself,” he said, voice suddenly small and emotional and desperate. “You have eternity; all I ask is that you won’t spend eternity pleasing those who don’t deserve it. All I ask is that you don’t break.” His mouth set into a thin line, and he squeezed my wrists, shook them lightly as if to hammer his point home the kindest way he knew how. “Do not break, Feyre. You’re no toy, no trophy, and you cannot shatter the way objects are wont to do.”

I wished to sway forwards and rest myself against his chest. He was solid, steady, like we were moments away from winnowing—but it wasn’t time yet, so it couldn’t be.

“No toy,” I heard myself whisper. “No toy, no trophy, no object—” my throat bobbed, “—no subject.”

“No-one’s subject.” He shook my wrists again, gently. “You don’t bow to anyone. Least of all those who demand it of you.”

And I knew, actively, that this could be a manipulation. That this was a way to alienate me from Tamlin, who demanded things and commanded me like I was below him, so Rhys himself could swoop in and save me once more. A favour; there was no such concept as a faerie gifting you something. A favour to have me help the way he wanted me to.

But if it was a manipulation—if it was, why were his words for my strength? Why did he not want me to take a knee?

“I’m a selfish male, Feyre,” he said, as if he’d read my mind—but he couldn’t have, for my walls were still strong and glinting, impenetrable.

He released my hands and they automatically came to rest against his chest, almost against my will but not wholly. I wanted to touch him, feel him. Something inside of me eased.

“I’m a very selfish male,” he repeated. “I’ll be honest, I want to keep you with me forever—though I can’t, couldn’t, do that to you. But know,” he said fiercely, “please know that I’d never, ever, want you to bow for me. You are my equal in every way that matters.”

He was so close my senses were utterly overwhelmed. Nothing but sea salt, and citrus, and petrichor—the intensity of his star-flecked eyes was keeping me frozen, caught. I was caged in but nothing in me wished to rebel. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave.

“Rhys,” I whispered. I didn’t know why. My hands were against his chest but they wouldn’t push him away. “Rhys, I—”

“Tell me to stop,” he said. He leaned closer, chest heaving. “You can tell me to stop. I will. I promise.”

My traitorous hand slid up to his neck.

One moment, we were making nothing but eye-contact, wide and so still it was as if the air itself had stopped moving. The next, his mouth was on mine.

He tasted like tea. Not the faerie kind, with its unplaceable flavours and intoxicating smells, but simpler: human tea, the way I remembered it. Hot and earthy, bright and bold, the slightest tang of something like citrus but mostly smoked malt, caramel made on a fire. Comforting.

Home, my mind told me. Rhys tasted like home.

My fingers tangled in his hair and my biceps curled until he was pressed against me, one hand slipping to rest on the small of my back and the other skittering, hesitant and desperate, to find the place where it belonged. It belonged on me, I knew. Somewhere.

He groaned in the back of his throat as I went up to the tips of my toes, pressing hard. I couldn’t get enough of him, of his mouth, of the taste of it. His teeth clacked against mine as I sucked at his tongue until it curled around my own. The hand that had been wandering came up to cup the back of my head with heart-stuttering softness and desperation. It was like there was nothing to it, this kiss, as natural and normal like two magnets colliding and refusing to let go.

No sparks. No incomprehensible heat. Just comfort and warmth, Rhys’ hair between my fingers and his scent in my nose and his body against mine. I never wanted to let go again.

And as his pinkie finger brushed the nape of my neck with a soothing press, I felt it.

A snap.

Like a string had been strung and strummed, I felt my side of the preliminary mating bond lock into place with a resounding twang. My heart constricted, my stomach burnt, my breathing hitched; I lost my balance and we went stumbling back against the door. He licked into my mouth with an almost reckless sort of abandon and I wanted to swallow him whole, consume him, keep him in a spot in my chest that had been carved out just for him.

My leg lifted and curled around the back of his. Rhys lifted his mouth from mine with a rattling keen, took a steadying, gasping breath, and descended once more.

I wasn’t sure if I’d breathed in the brief time our lips had been apart, but my lungs were burning, so I inhaled sharply through my nose so as to not dislodge myself from him. He was so warm and cool at the same time, hair strong yet soft like a rabbit’s pelt. I hadn’t wanted to keep much of the prey I’d caught, but sometimes I had wanted to, when the days and nights were equally as freezing, when my fingers had gone stiff with cold.

Just a pelt. Just one.

I’d never kept any of them. None of us knew how to sew a coat or scarf. Nesta and Elain had only ever learnt how to embroider, and later, how to darn socks and stitch up worn fabric gone ragged with wear to reinforce it; I’d never been taught how to hold a pen, let alone a needle.

But his hair was soft and strong, like a rabbit’s fur, and I wanted to keep him. Perhaps I could.

He moaned as my fingers tightened their grip, pressed against me so firmly it was impossible for us to get even closer to one another. I wondered when he went to cut his hair, because even the back of it, where it was the shortest, was easy to take hold of. I wondered if he’d consider growing it out, if I asked. I wondered if he’d still be so damn irresistible with dorkily grown out hair—he probably would be.

Then he nipped my bottom lip with sharp teeth, and my mind went blissfully blank.

I couldn’t remember if kissing Tamlin had ever felt like this. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever been kissed like this in general. All I knew was Rhys, and his mouth, and the taste of him and the smell of him and the feel of him. It swelled up inside of me and pressed against my skin, bloated and almost painful. My heart thudded and jumped.

Rhys retreated with a harsh intake of breath, clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut, swayed back to press his forehead against mine. My head spun; the sudden burst of oxygen and distance was so violent, so much, that I felt dizzy—every breath was seeped with his scent, his taste. I was shaking.

“Sorry,” he whispered, frantic, “sorry, Feyre, I’m—”

I tilted my head up and kissed him again, relishing how he groaned and slumped back onto me, pressing me against the door. We both panted with every spit-slick slide, every short time we came up for air.

Gods. Mother. Cauldron—

Blessed, blessed contact. The barest hints of his stubble scraped against my chin, beneath my thumbs and pointer finger when the kiss he gave me was closed-mouthed and I needed to open his jaw with a simple press. And then he slipped away, kissed his way down my jaw and towards my neck. Latched on, right where the tendons began to strain as I tilted my head to the side.

“Feyre,” he murmured, voice hoarse and trembling. “Feyre. Feyre, Feyre, Feyre—”

Like a prayer.

Like how Tamlin had sounded—

“Rhys,” I answered him, “Rhys.”

He groaned again, shivered as I stroked my hand down the broad, clothed planes of his back. My other tightened in his hair; my eyes fell closed, head thudding against the door as I dropped it.

I didn’t feel guilty. For once, for this brief moment, I simply didn’t. Not apathy—no, not that, not now, because I felt warm and safe, comfort zapping through me with every press of Rhys’ mouth against my neck, every scrape of his teeth. Because I knew that with one kiss, one snap inside my chest, there was no possible way I’d ever be able to let him go.

No, I didn’t feel guilty for granting the person who was made for me a kiss. I didn’t feel apathy for Tamlin either, even if I was certain with every fibre of my being that I’d never be able to give myself to him again. It was near indifference.

One kiss. Just the one, and I felt indifferent to the future of the male I’d died for, in favour of the touch of the male who’d crawled over broken bones to defend me as I lay dying.

But I’d died for Tamlin—and he loved me, even now that I’d hardened for him. Even if his love was suffocating.

He deserved closure.

“This isn’t a good idea yet,” I whispered.

Rhys froze. His head lifted from my neck, but not much further—merely rested against mine, cheek to cheek.

“No?”

“Not yet,” I repeated, clutching at him so hard it would hurt when I let go. “Not now.”

Rhys said nothing at first. And I thought—I thought I’d hurt him, again. Broke something between us instead of just myself. But then his head rested heavier, and so did his body, and his forehead dropped against my shoulder; and I relaxed, because that meant he’d understood.

“The five hundred years I’ve been waiting for you felt like nothing but a single breath the first time I saw you,” he whispered thickly. I felt his eyes close, lashes tickling my skin, and I breathed him in like I’d never be able to smell him again. “If you’d ask it of me, Feyre, I’d wait for you until the sun burns out.”

#imtymis

Trending Tags

Recently Viewed Tags

#imtymis