A/N: As always this was gonna be a smutty one-shot and it spiraled into a full fic. Here's part 1 of Cauldron-Knows-How-Many. Enjoy!
Summary: After a failed rebellion, Rhysand ends up enslaved to the Asteri as their Umbra Mortis; working off his debt to Amarantha he finds himself as the bodyguard to Senator Beron Vanserra's daughter after she's attacked by a mysterious shadow demon.
Content Warnings: Drinking, Language, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, Blood and Gore, Canon Typical Violence
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Steam clogs the room in suffocating puffs, the vapor from the scalding shower head hot enough to burn. He reaches out a bloodied hand and cranks it even higher, watching as the cascade of water flows red off his blistering skin. It’s still not hot enough to cleanse him of his sins.
Rhysand grabs the bar of soap--something cheap, citrus scented, regulation--and scrubs furiously at the gore caked under his finger nails, then at the blood stains in the grooves of his palms and over the bruises on his knuckles. He doesn’t stop until the suds are white again. Then he moves up his aching wrists, over forearms with fingerprint shaped bruises in them, over the twirling patterns of tattoos from a home long gone, up biceps spotted with scars and cuts, till he reaches his shoulders, where the dried blood is the thickest. He hisses as he scrubs at it, not because it hurts, but because the blood that isn’t his won’t come off, even under the near boiling water.
He tries turning up the heat again, no matter that every inch of his bare skin is red and raw. He’s still not clean. Even as the water starts to run clear again. Even as he scrubs and scrubs every curve and muscle, every inch of him is still not cleansed.
He’s still scrubbing as the heat runs out and the water turns icy. Still scrubbing when the bar of soap is gone, using his hands and his nails to claw at the mess he still feels wrapped around his body. It just won’t come off!
Eventually his hands become too shaky to continue his thorough cleaning. His teeth are chattering as he lowers himself onto the tiled floor, the cold porcelain biting into the back of his thighs. The water batters against him like a thousand ice picks now. He doesn’t care. He can only sit there, staring at the gray shower tiles. The last little rational part of him that’s still conscious knows that he should move to the bedroom and sleep--he’s so damn tired--but he can’t find the energy to do it.
Besides, he knows what he’ll see when he closes his eyes.
A knock on the bathroom door makes him flinch, breaking the staring contest with the wall.
“You dead in there, man?”
He’s too tired to answer. Too tired to move. Hell, even breathing feels exhausting.
Rhys runs a hand over his eyes, trying to pull himself together.
When it takes too long, Jurian pounds his fist against the door again. “Helion wants you in his office.”
He doesn’t groan. Doesn’t curse Helion or the Triarii or the gods that abandoned him. He doesn’t slander the Asteri or the brand they stamped onto his wrist. He doesn’t have the energy to complain about his miserable existence. He just puts his callused hands on the cold tile floor and forces himself to his feet. His body screams in protest, skin scraped raw, muscles battered and bruised. Slowly, hands still shaking, he turns off the water. There’s no more steam to cloud the bathroom mirror, so he looks away before he can see his reflection. He knows what he’ll see.
The towel on the hook by the door is rough against his still red skin as he ties it around his waste and opens up the door.
Jurian still stands there, looking like he was contemplating breaking down the door.
Rhys pushes his way past him without a word.
They’re both here because of their decisions; both dogs at their master’s feet. That doesn’t make them friends. The barracks keep them within reach of each other, but that doesn’t mean they have to speak to each other either. He goes to his closet sized room and shuts the door behind him, just to ensure Jurian doesn’t follow. The other male is too chatty for his own good.
He dresses quickly, unthinkingly. It’s not as if he has a lot of options, everything in the closet is regulation: Stiff cargo pants, form fitting t-shirts, combat boots. They slide on like a thin set of armor.
His guns lay in the top drawer, disassembled and cleaned to a shine. He tightens the holsters around his thighs and puts one on each leg, then tucks a blade into the back of his belt, just hidden behind the shadow of his wings.
It’s cold in Lunathion this time of year, he grabs a leather jacket as an afterthought, sliding into it as he walks out the door.
“Good luck!” Vassa, another one of the Fallen, calls from the shared couch in the living room.
Jurian sits tucked on the opposite side of the couch, flipping through stations on the tv to find the sunball game. “Better you than me!” He says jokingly.
Rhys still says nothing as he steps into the elevator that makes up the front door and hits the button for the top floor of the building. He’d already given his report about his last mission, the fact that there’s another this soon makes unease sink like a rock in his stomach. Hadn’t he spilled enough blood today?
The elevator opens to an office framed by glass windows, bathing the usually starch space glow in golden light. Helion stands facing the windows, hands tucked behind his back, watching the sun slowly set.
“Lunathion isn’t as pretty as Prythian,” Helion says forlornly.
Rhys positions himself in front of the desk, hands behind his own back at attention. He knows how much Helion lost in the rebellion against Hybern, it is nearly as much as his own loss, but he can’t tell him that, not here. Not within the walls of the Commitium with the Asteri and Amarantha listening to their every word. So he says nothing. He’s gotten good at saying nothing; at shoving every want and desire down into the deepest, darkest parts of him until he can no longer reach them. He is not a male awarded the luxury of wanting; he is a tool, a well oiled weapon in the hands of his masters.
It’s only when the sun finally dips behind the sprawling city line that Helion finally turns to face him, his golden eyes damp with unshed tears. “You miss it too, don’t you?”
Helion had not led his people to their deaths on Mount Hermon. Helion hadn’t disrespected the Asteri and gone for their mouthpiece’s head. Helion hadn’t damned Prythian to destruction. Rhys had.
And he’d spent every damn day thinking about it.
When he doesn’t say anything, Helion snags a tissue off the desk and dries his eyes. Then he motions for Rhys to take a seat.
“You know I hate giving you missions back to back, especially after this last one.”
He tries not to think about the woman who had gripped onto his arm, nails digging through his shirt, begging and screaming for her husband’s life. She’d had no thought for her own self-preservation, nor had she tried to fight him. She had only held on and begged for him to be merciful, to spare them, and their unborn child.
“But this one came from her, so…”
Amarantha. The master that had bought him for more gold marks than he was worth, just to tout him around like a dog on a leash. The Umbra Mortis at her beck-and-call. She promised that if he killed 2,227 people to make up for the lives he’d taken from her people, then she would free him. She had never said she wouldn’t get creative with how he was presented with those challenges.
“It’s fine,” he lies. It’s not like he has a choice.
Helion pushes a manilla folder across the desk. “This one is different.”
Helion continues as he pulls out the file instead. The picture of a female fae is paper clipped to the front. She’s pretty; about his age; eyes a startling shade of amber that reminds him of embers in a fireplace. “Senator Vanserra is up for reelection next month. To keep the support of the Valbaraan fae, he’s arranged a marriage between his only daughter and one of their sons. Problem is, she was attacked last night, by some… thing.”
“Demon?” Rhys asks as he flips through the file. It’s mostly empty. The girl hasn’t done much after graduating college, just a few internships that had landed her a gig at the Archives. Only a few friends. No socials; that nearly makes a recluse in this town. No past relationships, just this arrangement with a male she’d probably met once. Yet, the back page of the file includes the police report, some crime scene photos of a trashed apartment, and another picture of the girl, this time with half her face slashed open. The report lists more stitches than he can count on not just her face, but her chest and left side as well.
“That’s what Vanserra would like to know.” Helion says as he rubs at his temples, clearly frustrated.
Rhys looks up briefly from the photos. “He doesn’t know?”
“See, here’s where things get weird.”
Rhys’s wings twitch behind him, the only sign of curiosity he’ll let slip.
“Her place? Surrounded by cameras and a private security detail. The girl is never, and I seriously mean never, not being monitored. Security guys log her meals, her movements, hell probably even how many times a minute she blinks. Beron knows everything she does as she does it. With the exception of last night.”
Rhys closes the file and sits up straighter.
“All the cameras went dark. Security is either dead or missing. The girl swears up and down that nothing unusual happened. She had dinner, went to bed, and woke up to something shadowy clawing at her face. She couldn’t see anything, blindly threw a couple fireballs at it, and that was it.”
“That’s…” a lie? Some kind of prank? He really doesn’t know what he wants to say about it.
“I know.” Helion says. “We’re missing something clearly. But Vanserra doesn’t want this to have any more media attention than it already has. He wants a quiet protection detail, who can keep tabs on his daughter and find out what the hell this all is. So naturally, Amarantha pulled your name.”
“What does he think happened?”
Helion pinches the bridge of his nose. “He said on the phone that he suspects his daughter is trying to find a way out of her coming marriage.”
Rhys looks back at the grizzly stitches in the photos. “He thinks she did this to herself?”
“What do you think?” Rhys asks with a frown. It would be pretty hard to make those slashes from those angles on their own, but he can’t totally discount it. He hasn’t encountered many demons with those kind of claws.
“I think there have been a lot of cases of women throwing themselves off cliffs to avoid marriages and with good reason, but still… there’s something about this one… feels like I’m looking at a puzzle with missing pieces.”
Rhys slides the file back into the envelope and sets it back on the desk. “It’ll be taken care of.”
Helion stands and glances back out the window. “Vanserra will meet you at her new apartment. Jurian and Vassa will provide assistance if needed and you’ll be required to check in with Beron and myself once a night.”
“Understood.” He turns to go.
“Rhys,” Helion says quietly. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this one, just be careful, all right?”
Rhys doesn’t tell him he feels the same as he steps into the elevator and lets the door close behind him. It doesn’t matter what he feels about it anyway.
The apartment is in an upscale neighborhood, just on the outskirts of town. Close enough to fae territory that Berron can get there quickly, but far enough away from the sprawling grounds of the Autumn estate to let his daughter maintain an air of independence.
The Senator is waiting in the apartment lobby when Rhys arrives.
While half of Prythian had immediately bowed to the Asteri’s arrival, the other half had followed Rhys on his path to rebellion. The 2,227 lives he owed weren’t enough to cover the number of lives he’d lost to Lunathion’s armies. Beron had never been on the battlefields, had so easily bent the knee and reaped the rewards of their new overlords from the beginning. Destruction had not touched him until now. It’s clear that Beron is not a male used to being on the receiving end of misfortune.
Beron won’t stand still in the lobby, pacing back and forth, hands wringing in front of him as he rattles off orders to the Aux members lent out as personal guards. Upon Rhys’s approach, he finally collects himself enough to stand still. “It’s about time!”
Rhys remains hidden under the hood of his helmet, shielded by the dark visor over his eyes, yet his reputation alone earns him a sneer of contempt as Beron takes him in.
“Amarantha promised me aid hours ago.”
“Apologies,” he lies. “There are sometimes delays in our communications from the capitol.”
Beron huffs in annoyance. “You were, at least, briefed on your responsibilities?”
Beron fiddles with his shirt collar. “This is already becoming a media circus, I have all those damned reporters calling my office all hours of the day! It’s a miracle they’re not congregating outside like vultures.”
The flight over here had been uneventful, just the usual Lunathion traffic. Rhys had already done a quick sweep of the street and rooftop. Nothing and no one had been loitering.
“I’ll keep things quiet.” He promises.
“The crime scene will be opened to you later this evening, for now, introduce yourself to my daughter as her new protection detail. The Auxiliary can show you around their surveillance set up. Everything gets reported to me, understand?”
Beron points him in the direction of a staircase, tucked behind the mailroom. It used to bother Rhys that he had to take back entrances and hidden stairs instead of following the main flow of traffic; he doesn’t have that in him anymore. It’s routine now.
His mission’s apartment is on the sixteenth floor. A penthouse view that encompasses the whole top floor of the complex. Not exactly subtle; Beron clearly isn’t trying that hard to hide her.
There’s an elevator door on one end of the hallway, the door to the stairwell on the other. For roof access, she’d need a key to get through a bolted door inside the stairwell.
Two Aux members stand guard outside the only way in or out of the apartment. Both wolves by the smell of them. They say nothing as they let him inside.
For a brand new apartment, it’s well decorated. Probably one of those fancy elite interior design places that can renovate and furnish a place in a couple of hours doing. It’s all high end furniture, white and shiny and unused. The living room and kitchen have no dividing wall, just a long mahogany table that could serve twelve if necessary. The whole place smells like caramel apple candles and there’s half a dozen of them scattered around the sprawling space. A pot of coffee brews from an expensive looking machine on the counter, but it’s the only sign of movement as the door closes behind him.
He makes a quick assessment of the floor to ceiling windows that make up the far wall. None of them open. One way in, one way out. There’s a hall to the left, presumably leading to the bedroom.
He steps towards that direction as a door at the end of the dim hall opens.
“Oh. You must be my new babysitter.”
He’s spent the last 50 years cold; the rebellion had hollowed him out and left him a shell of his former self. There has only been blood and darkness, as if someone had locked him deep beneath a mountain, caged within stone, no light to be found. He had accepted it as he had the tattoo across his brow; had surrendered to the dark and let it chain him to his masters. Nothing in 50 years had made him wish for sunlight. He deserved this cold, dark cage. Yet, as his new mission stalks down the hall to face him, something aching and hungry claws its way out his rib cage. The cinnamon and burning cedar scent of her pushes its way through his mouthpiece—the breathing apparatuses situated in the helmet are supposed to filter out all scents, in case a room is filled with toxins, yet hers breaks its way through like it’s trying to personally introduce itself to him. He can’t help but breathe in deeper, letting the honeyed scent warm that thing inside him that’s cold and empty. For a flicker of a moment, he feels real; like he’s a person again and not just a weapon.
For a moment he forgets his place in the world and lets this fire-eyed creature approach him. Everything about her screams of restrained power—a wild fire caged within flesh and bones. It’s so strong her amber eyes glow with the flicker of flames.
Words escape him as she stops a hair width away, so close her forehead nearly touches the chin strap of his helmet. He can feel every second of her assessment like a brand. She doesn’t touch but she might as well have run her hands up his body with the heat that consumes his very being.
He can’t move. Can’t think. There’s just her. In his space. In his lungs.
“That’s a lot of leather for a babysitter,” she purrs, moving now to circle him like an animal inspecting its enclosure.
She’s looking for chinks in his armor, poking at the iron bars of her cage. His wings flatten tighter against his body as she loops around his back, and he forces himself not to turn and follow her. She’s not armed—there’s nowhere to hide a weapon, her legs are bare all the way up to the hem of her oversized band tshirt; she’s not going to fight. Not yet anyway.
Her breath on his wings makes his whole body tremble and he has to lock his knees to keep himself upright. He can’t remember the last time he felt like this. The last time he felt anything at all.
“The Umbra Mortis,” she muses, the words a caress down his spine instead of an insult. “But you’re not an angel?”
“No,” the voice modulator in the helmet still picks up the hitch in his voice as he scrambles to find the ability to speak. By the goddess, you’d think he’d never spoken to a female in his entire fucking life!
“Interesting,” she purrs as she comes back around to face him again. “Do you have to wear that ugly helmet the whole time?”
She grins, or at least, she tries to, the movement pulls on her stitches and her whole body shrinks in on itself as she hisses through her teeth. A trickle of blood rolls down her lips and she finally steps out of his space, a hand pressed over her mouth.
He’s not sure what he thought she was going to do, but walking right to the massive fridge, pulling a bottle of vodka out of the lower freezer door and knocking back half the bottle in one gulp wasn’t it.
He’s still standing there, still staring dumbly at her as she drinks half the bottle in the next gulp. The words that come out of his mouth next make him feel like his brain and tongue have disconnected, “Should you be drinking that on painkillers?”
He’s still kicking himself when she sets the bottle down on the counter with a mirthless laugh. The fire in her eyes burns brighter as she sneers, “You think Beron would let me near painkillers?”
Something hot and heavy flairs in his gut, the feeling unfamiliar after all these years in the dark. Beron Vanserra always had an air about him that made Rhys suspect he was just like every other politician in Lunathion, but the admission still jars him. What kind of father would let his daughter suffer like that?
“You must not keep up with the tabloids,” she continues, pausing only to knock back another drink. “I tried to fucking kill myself by summoning a demon.”
He studies the curvature of the marks over her face, following the path down over her chin and throat before it disappears beneath her shirt collar.
“I’m clearly a danger to myself so the place has been cleared of all pills and sharp objects.” She holds the bottle up in salute. “Had to fork over a pretty hefty bribe to convince one of those wolves outside to sneak down to the liquor store on the corner.”
His mind works to process all the information she’s so willingly offering, but he can’t manage to make sense of it. Why would she tell him all this if it wasn’t true? What could she gain by slandering Beron knowing that he’d take that information back to him in the morning?
She takes the bottle with her as she plops herself down on the couch with a hiss, hand pressed over her damaged side. “You’re welcome to tell him I can think of a few more creative ways to get back at him for shackling me to that dickhead from Valbara. None of which involve me looking like this for the rest of my miserable existence.”
She looks small on the couch. The deeper into the bottle she gets, the more she seems to curl in on herself. It’s like watching a campfire burn out.
He steps closer, fascinated with her every move. She wants to toy with him, or maybe she had started out that way, but the pain of those injuries is clearly more intense than he’d anticipated they would be. None of this information tells him anything useful about that night, yet, he finds himself unconcerned about the details. Not if it means he gets to be near her a little while longer.
Rhys dares a step closer, then another, until he’s standing behind her with just the back of the couch between them. She doesn’t shy away from him like most people do; just snags the remote and flips on the tv to some reality show.
“Are you going to torture me?” She asks as she flips to a different channel.
All thought eddies out of his mind like someone had turned on a fan and thrown open a window. There’s only the pounding of his heart in his ears. He wants to tell her he doesn’t do that kind of thing, but it would be a lie.
For the first time in 50 years he wants to lie. He wants to be anything other than what he is right now in this moment.
“I think you’ve been hurt enough,” he says quietly.
She snorts and takes another drink from the bottle. “Tell that to my Father.”
The tv settles on some crappy romance about vampires. Fake blood splatters across the screen as she takes another sip from the bottle, slower this time. “You know you can sit, right?” She says after a while of him standing stock still behind her.
This is a mission. He needs to focus. Rhys gives himself a mental shake. “I need to check your room, if that’s all right?”
She raises the bottle in mock salute. “If I find I’m missing any of my lacey underthings, I’ll roast you alive.”
Despite himself, a laugh slips out of him. His voice modulator crackles from the unfamiliar noise. When was the last time he had laughed at anything?
“Trust me, Princess,” the words come from somewhere inside him he forgot existed, “if I wanted to take anything, it wouldn’t be from the drawer.”
Does he have a death wish?! He can’t talk to his superiors like that! He should know better.
But she only grins, the reflection caught in the tv screen as a spicy scene fades to black. It’s a faint flicker, but it’s there, a challenge glinting in those fiery eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind, Umbra Mortis.”
