When Feyre and I landed on the rocky outcropping above the House of Wind for her first sparring lesson, Cassian was already there wrapping his fists, an arrogant grin plastered all over his face. I set Feyre down and her brows rose slowly as she took in Cassian wearing his leathers - all however many pounds of thick, corded muscle of him.

Cassian beckoned Feyre with a single finger. “Good luck,” I managed to sing into her ear before she’d gotten too far. A curt prick and adjoining scowl was all the reply I got.

After Cassian showed Feyre how to wrap her hands and wrists to protect the bones and muscles best, he let her finish prepping them and came over to meet me for a brief check-in.

“Are you going to tell me to go easy on her?” Cassian said.

“Not a chance,” I said with a single shake of my head, hands in my pockets.

“Good,” he replied, and that shit-eating grin dropped. “Go in and change into your leathers then. Az’ll be back soon.” I cocked my head to one side. The sun was directly overhead, barely mid-day. Cassian leveled a knowing look at me. “Mor seemed to think it was a good idea to read on the balcony not long after breakfast ended. That was not quite an hour ago.”

“Ah.”

“Ah indeed.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and went back to Feyre who was flexing her hands in the new bandages, testing the new feel of them against her skin. “They’re not paintbrushes,” Cassian barked at her, making her jump. “Get in the ring.” Feyre’s eyes narrowed with a sharp edge to them. I chuckled and took my leave, excited to see how much of Cassian was left standing by the time I came back.

---

“Shit.”

I spat the ground behind me before whirling in a quick spin to meet Azriel’s second blow. His sword came down brutally this afternoon.

We’d been going at it for a good hour, possibly even more, Azriel showing no signs of slowing down any time in the near future. To our right, Cassian corrected Feyre on her punches, something I was only vaguely able to pay attention to as Azriel brought his sword against me with ease - and a good deal of power.

I was either far more rusty than I had realized, or Azriel was exceptionally pissed off for how his morning had gone. Judging by the cold, hard look he’d given me after I’d found him in the living room and intruded on his conversation with Mor, I would have guessed it was the latter.

They’d been sitting so close, on a friendly, plush cushioned seat of a velvet fabric. Her hand rested gently on his knee. His eyes had flashed when he met my gaze, frustration returning to the surface behind whatever calm Mor had managed to lull him into. I could only imagine how much worse it would have been had she not been there.

The visit to the mortal realms must not have gone well, I’d taken it.

“They’ve got some sort of barrier around the palace,” Azriel had told me after I’d been invited to join them. Mor didn’t leave. “I expected some kind of protection around their general quarters, but not magic and not nearly to this extent.”

I nodded once as Azriel’s lips drew tight. Mor’s hand was still on his knee. “He’s going to take some time to consider the best way of handling those protections so as not to sound the alarm that we’re sniffing about.”

A delicate way of saying Azriel was pissed as hell he hadn’t been able to get in today. Not surprising, given his tendency towards efficiency and never failing - not ever. Azriel’s methods were brutal and unrelenting at best, and most especially where his own capabilities were concerned.

“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “I’m glad you spotted the wards first. That means the queens are far more clever than we had dared hope and that we have more to consider than originally planned. Especially if they’re already aware Hybern’s strategizing moves and plotting against it.” A small consolation for the day, but it signaled success to some degree.

Azriel finally looked up from where he’d been staring at the floor. “Like Feyre’s sisters gleaned.”

“Exactly.”

He nodded, his gaze hitting the carpet again. Mor looked at me and bit her lip. I shrugged and offered, “Cass is training Feyre on the roof. Want to have a go?” He knew I meant with me.

Mor fixed him with a soft, encouraging smile and Azriel sighed, a wisp of smoke flexing over his hands. “Let’s go.” The shadows might have spoken for him.

Not even two seconds inside the ring and that sword had flown out of its sheath at Azriel’s back. We peeled halfway out of our leathers not even ten minutes later when the sun had started to bake into our skin. And then it all came right back - anger and aggression pouring down on me like a violent rainstorm as we danced, softening into a more steady rhythm when those damned shadows curled up into Az’s ears and warned him of how much fatigue I was feeling. I only half wished they wouldn’t.

Today was a first day of sorts for Feyre and I both, it seemed. I briefly noticed her watching Az and I move as she sipped from a cup of water, and was near enough to hear Cassian explain the markings along our skin - over our arms, chests, and down a narrow column along our spines nestled between the roots of our wings.

“We get the tattoos when we’re initiated as Illyrian warriors,” Cassian said, “for luck and glory on the battlefield.” There was a prolonged silence interrupted only by the clashing of our swords before Cassian said with no attempt whatsoever to keep out of earshot, “Rhys is out of shape and won’t admit it.” A near snarl rose in my throat. “But Azriel is too polite to beat him into the dirt.”

Not when he’s doing such a damned good job of trying to kill me , I thought.

Az shot me an immodest grin and brought his sword down hard.

Cassian was right - on both accounts. I was out of shape and my pride dictated that I never confess it out loud. I held back a panting breath every time our blades met in the air and we stumbled back from one another.

Under the Mountain, I hadn’t trained. It wasn’t allowed and even if it had been or if I’d found a way around Amarantha’s rules, it was too brutal, too Illyrian, too other for me to be seen with a sword in hand. My weapons had been sourced in other areas better suited to my mask of whore and politician.

But fuck if it hadn’t taken its toll on me.

I couldn’t bring myself to spar for weeks when I first came back. Azriel had offered, in his own understanding way, and Cassian knew straight away that I’d likely be off-kilter, but every time I thought about throwing a punch, knowing it would take me down hard and fast when it should have been uncomplicated, I died a little inside.

Mor was the one who took me out and made me practice after I’d ‘sulked’, as she had informed me, about it for too long. We went at it into the hours of the night until I was back on my feet enough to stand.

But my muscles had screamed at me the entire time. And my footwork was horribly sloppy. I barely felt like I remembered how to grip the hilt of a sword from how foreign fifty years without one had made it feel in my hands now stripped clean of all their callouses.

Just one more way Amarantha had violated me. Even a part of me that I had never shown her, she’d managed to find somehow.

Azriel caught the lapse in my attention and struck, nearly catching my arm if I hadn’t blocked at the last second. This time, he didn’t bother indulging me with a grin.

“So,” I heard Cassian say, right as I went on the offensive and struck at Az. “When are you going to talk about how you wrote a letter to Tamlin, telling him you’ve left for good?”

I took my eyes off Az and his sword, hunting for Feyre not far away, and missed landing the blow on him. But Azriel brought his sword around more slowly, driving it underneath me as I hurtled forward and catching my blade to stop me falling. The force of it as he pushed drove me back up.

“How about when you talk about how you tease and taunt Mor to hide whatever it is you feel for her?” Feyre’s voice was a venomous sting. And from what little shots of her I could catch, she looked as pissed as Azriel had been feeling all afternoon.

Azriel - whose sword slipped through the air. This time, I caught him. Neither of us looked anywhere but our blades - when I wasn’t watching Feyre, at least.

Cassian, bless the filthy prick, was laughing it off easily. “Old news,” he said. But he promptly fumbled with his own parry of words when Feyre shot back, “I have a feeling that’s what she probably says about you.” Cassian’s reply wasn’t the only thing with a little added heat to it as Azriel gained the upper hand on me for the umpteenth time.

It was a good thing Mor had stayed inside for this.

“Get back in the ring,” Cassian barked. “No core exercises. Just fists. You want to mouth off, then back it up.”

Azriel calmed down from his rage, sensing the turn the conversation was about to take, and held me on my toes just enough to keep me moving, but back enough that we could listen.

“Rhys told you?” Feyre asked.

“He informed Azriel, who is... monitoring things and needs to know. Az told me.”

Azriel, for his part, did not balk.

“I assume it was while you were out drinking and dancing.”

I looked with just enough time to see the frustration pulling on Feyre as she tried to side-step Cassian and was caught by his arm. “Hey,” he said, stripped of the rigid commander who had been instructing Feyre moments ago. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit a nerve. Az only told me because I told him I needed to know for my own forces; to know what to expect. None of us... we don’t think it’s a joke. What you did was a hard call. A really damn hard call. It was just my shitty way of trying to see if you needed to talk about it. I’m sorry.”

I saw him let go of Feyre’s arm, but only heard rather than saw Feyre say, “All right,” the heat and tension gone. My chest uncoiled with relief.

Thank the Mother above for the day she’d instructed the Cauldron to form Cassian and planted the wild idea into my head to go pull him from that flimsy makeshift tent in the camps.

“Thirty one-two punches,” he told her. He must have had pads up on his hands for her to hit. “Then forty; then fifty. You didn’t answer my question.”

Silence as Feyre positioned herself and made the first hit. “I’m fine.” The strikes formed a dull thudding sound.

“One.” Feyre struck again. “Two. And fine is good - fine is great.”

The same thing he’d told me. Had he not been working with Feyre, I would have bet my status as High Lord he’d be telling me to eat shit with those great big fists of his, the same way Azriel smiled at me every time someone said the word ‘fine’ out on that rooftop.

But Feyre was not fine - far from it. We had that lie in common.

I quickly lost count of her punches, the dull thuds increasing in pace. I think Cassian stopped counting too as her fists turned to smoke and ash and fire, burning through the pads as great, heaving sobs burst out of her.

The bond was closed. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but it was obvious without her having to say it. We all saw it written all over her face, as Azriel and I ceased sparring: grief. A grief so far-reaching and gut-wrenching it made it easy to understand why Feyre hadn’t found a moment in time to wish herself into non-existence, however much she hadn’t really wanted it.

I found myself walking toward her, leaving Azriel behind. The bond pulling me onward to go to my mate - to help her see the light she needed. But I was also just pleased that some of the emotion had finally broken free.

Freedom.

That was the other end of this if Feyre could say it out loud, could admit it to herself. It wouldn’t matter if we were there to bear witness to it or not, so long as she herself could say the words that would allow her to start really healing.

She gave Cassian one final punch, realizing she’d burned the pads on his hands to dust. Her face was so red, her many freckles seemed to vanish. “I’m all right,” Cassian told her, his hands giving a short gesture upwards to encourage her should she need to go again. My brother would have let her knock the world out of him if he thought it was what she needed to break free from her prison.

I took a steadying breath.

Cassian.

My brother. In truth, the heart of this court and all it stood for.

Through the many tears now flowing freely down Feyre’s heartbreaking face, she choked out, “I killed them,” barely even forming the words before the sobs shuddered over her body anew.

I remembered what she’d told the Bone Carver. How those deaths had haunted her. How she’d wanted to end herself afterwards. I hated that. Hated that Amarantha had wrecked her so thoroughly.

“I know,” Cassian said, lowering his hands to give her space.

“It should have been me,” Feyre cried.

My powers flew out of me without command. I think... I think the mate bond felt the struggle and reacted on instinct just then. Because looking at Feyre and feeling that immeasurable grief she experienced wash over me in waves, it was all I could do to find a way to soothe the act and let her know she wasn’t alone.

Cassian didn’t even look at me as he passed. He simply went straight to Azriel and began trading blows while I looked into Feyre’s tear-stained face, her eyes red and burning. Calm, reassuring darkness flooded between us, both real and imagined. Gently, I cupped her face and brought it up to read mine, my wings wrapping out around us, again without any instruction to do so. Everything at this point was just pure instinct showing me the way to Feyre - to keeping my mate from going it alone.

That had been her one wish in death: to never feel alone. I’d felt it, right before her neck had snapped.

“You will feel that way every day for the rest of your life,” I told her. Feyre’s eyes were blue - so, so blue as she watched me, and tried to push herself out of my hold so she could run, but I held her firm. “And I know this because I have felt that way every day since my mother and sister were slaughtered and I had to bury them myself, and even retribution didn’t fix it. You can either let it wreck you, let it get you killed like it nearly did with the Weaver, or you can learn to live with it.”

I wiped the tears away gently with each word, my thumbs pausing here and there to pay homage to her skin and the quiet pains that hid behind it. The last time I’d cleaned her face of tears, it had been with cruel, taunting licks meant to distract her from Amarantha’s torture. Too similar to the exchange we shared now even if the manner about it was entirely opposing.

Feyre stared at me for a long time searching my face and finding whatever truths she saw there and needed to keep her going. The tears finally slowed to a stop. “I’m sorry - about your family.” Her throat was raw. That hadn’t quite been the answer I’d expected. It sort of... broke my heart anew.

“I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to spare you from what happened Under the Mountain,” I countered, “From dying. From wanting to die.” I found myself still stroking her cheek as I held this most precious treasure the Cauldron had ever seen fit to merge with my life. Feyre shook her head, about to protest, but she no longer tried to pull away. “I have two kinds of nightmares,” I said, and she stopped moving. “The ones where I’m again Amarantha’s whore or my friends are... And the ones where I hear your neck snap and see the light leave your eyes.”

Silence. But her body relaxed as I continued to hold on to her, savoring the calm that slowly ached into her skin beneath that touch, and unwittingly across the bond tying us to one another.

My mate.

My resilient, wonderful mate.

Who was now looking me over as though inspecting me for faults and cracks of my own before finding her hands, wrapped in pitiful scraps of charred fabric, all that was left of her handiwork with Cassian. “Ah,” I said, taking her hand and feeling my wings release smoothly behind me. “That.”

Cassian and Azriel were having a true fight beside us, one I still couldn’t match even if I’d given it my all on a good day.

Feyre looked up, her face squinting as the piercing light of the sun resumed its place between us. The coloring on her face was not quite so crimson anymore. “Autumn Court, right?”

“Right.” I ran my hand over her palm, her fingers. Her skin was perfectly in tact, unharmed from whatever fires she’d sent forth.

Interesting.

“A gift from its High Lord, Beron.”

Though he’d certainly never see it that way. Feyre took a deep breath. “I’m not well versed in the complexities of the other High Lords’ elemental gifts, but we can figure it out - day by day, if need be.”

“If you’re the most powerful High Lord in history...” Feyre mused, “does that mean the drop I got from you holds more sway over the others?”

Some deep feral instinct, rooted within the male that the mate bond held prisoner, purred that I damn well hoped my drop held more sway.

“Give it a try,” I suggested. “See if you can summon darkness. I won’t ask you to try to winnow.” I grinned, and Feyre’s face tugged as though trying to remember what this play between us was like after the episode we were coming out of.

“I don’t know how I did it to begin with.”

“Will it into being.” Her face fell, exasperated. So I gave her a hint of how to come back to me - to us and what we were. “Try thinking of me - how good-looking I am. How talented-”

“How arrogant.”

“That, too,” I admitted, just pleased she’d bitten at all. I crossed my arms and waited, Feyre’s gaze falling down. And further down, down... over my arms and, and - she was looking, I realized.

“Put a shirt on while you’re at it,” she said, far too quickly.

Ooh, she was definitely looking. The feral beast inside me purred again, yanking on his leash. “Does it make you uncomfortable?” I asked, leaning forward with a smile to match the wicked beast pounding away at my chest. I liked my mate watching me.

I liked it very much .

“I’m surprised there aren’t more mirrors in this house,” Feyre said, quickly recovering, “since you seem to love looking at yourself so much.”

She stood back and leveled her own feral gaze at me - one of attack and daring while Azriel and Cassian tried not to be too loud with their sudden fit of coughing that had apparently interrupted their sword play... pricks.

“There’s the Feyre I adore,” I said, almost smiling. And though Feyre scowled as she closed her eyes to look for my Night, the gentle peace had resumed its rightful place between us once more.

Her face strained, her body reaching for something it alone could not find. I stepped closer once more and sang her the story that might lead her nearer to it. “There are different kinds of darkness,” I murmured, fashioning each one at my fingertips. “There is the darkness that frightens, the darkness that soothes, the darkness that is restful. There is the darkness of lovers, and the darkness of assassins. It becomes what the bearer wishes it to be, needs it to be. It is not wholly bad or good.”

With each new form, darkness welled out of me looking for Feyre, filling the rooftop with infinite black and adding unique layers. Some were filled with starlight. Others with dust and shadow. Some still with pain. But all of them powerful and connected in never ending Night.

“Open your eyes,” I whispered and enjoy the glow in Feyre’s gaze as she took in the darkness shrouding us like a veil to plummet into deepest sleep with.

It wrapped us up thickly, enjoying the way Feyre felt against it. There was darkness inside her somewhere - and not the kind that ate away at her soul and forced her worst memories retching out of her throat night after night. It was a part of her and she of it. One day, I hoped, we’d find it together.

Feyre played with a piece of starlight that bloomed iridescent on the inky black waves caressing her skin and hair. And then, in a quiet wink, it was all gone. Feyre looked at me with something like awe left behind in her expression.

“We can work on it later,” I said. “For now,” and I sniffed the air with exaggerated disgust, “go take a bath.”

Feyre didn’t look back as she flipped me off, strode right in the middle of my brother’s match play, now free and wild once more without the darkness, and informed my general that he was flying her home.

“She’ll be fine,” Az said, clapping me once on the back as we watched them fly off.

And for once, I knew she would be.