The sentries moved at once, all of them braced in a half step forward with their hands poised at the glimmering hilts resting on their hips, the beginnings of the silver blades beneath just beginning to show. Tamlin and Lucien took up the front, a delightful mixture of outrage and confusion I’d never tire of seeing muddling on their faces.

They wanted to attack. They wanted to attack so damned badly, I could smell it on them. Feyre likely did too even if she hadn’t honed her senses well enough yet to figure it out.

So much male aggression and it fell entirely flat against the Illyrian towering in their midst.

So much magic... and it felt like a shallow ripple above their lovely little lakes, delicate and dainty against the surge of venom hissing in my veins.

I held a single hand up and marked Ianthe, the only one with any sense among them, backing down.

“What a pretty little wedding,” I mocked, the taunting persona coming back to me with ease. Tamlin and his sentries froze and I felt Feyre go still with dread beside me.

I pressed my hands deep into my pockets and contentedly turned to Feyre when the guards didn’t dare move.

They’d been there. They’d seen me Under the Mountain. Lucien especially. I’d held his mind without so much as clicking my fingers at him. They wouldn’t dare move against me until I allowed them the courtesy and they knew it.

And Feyre.

Feyre standing there in a dress that positively drowned her out, the layers of tulle and gosselin piling up until every ounce of skin had disappeared save her face.

And then there were the gloves, lurking over her skin just up to the elbows where the lone mark - the lone trace of other lingered. Naturally, they’d seen fit to cover it up and Feyre had... let them do it.

Out of spite, I clucked my tongue disapprovingly at it and felt Feyre stiffen.

“Get the hell out,” Tamlin growled. His claws snapped out of his hands revealing the beast within.

Of course his instincts inclined him towards violence as the most natural answer for dealing with the situation. He hadn’t learned anything in fifty years, not in fifty lifetimes.

In all the time that he’d known me - the most powerful High Lord to be born, heir to the Night Court, an assumed vicious and monstrous territory, and an Illyrian to top it off - never had he seen me as the savage he thought I was. All of my moves were made in carefully crafted words and twice concealed actions. If Tamlin hadn’t seen that by now, hadn’t seen me shudder away from the wings and talons and animalistic forms that came out so naturally in him, than he was a damned shade more foolish than I’d hoped.

And yet still his first instinct in anger was to shift, attack. Ever born from noble causes, still, he would have made a reckless trainee unable to survive the Blood Rite if he’d been born in the cold peaks of my homeland.

And here Feyre lived in the midst of his pathways daily.

I sent a reminder of that stupidity with another click of my tongue. “Oh, I don’t think so. Not when I need to call in my bargain with Feyre darling.”

No way in seven hells was I leaving her with this for life’s great answer to love. I’d been a fool not to have seen it sooner.

And yet, her stomach physically recoiled at my demand, the bond breaking her so open I could feel the clench of her insides against me. I was too livid to bother caring how much she loathed me, just so long as I could get her out when the evidence of her suffering was written all over her from head to toe, mind to mind.

I’d deal with my own issues later. Feyre first.

“You try to break the bargain,” I said in reply to her silent objection, “and you know what will happen.” The guests began disappearing, some of them winnowing on the spot while others merely clawed tooth and nail over their chairs to scamper off. I wanted to laugh at them, how easily they bought my lies. They did half the job for me.

Feyre for her part remained rooted to the spot, but her arms shook - terribly so.

“I gave you three months of freedom. You could at least look happy to see me.”

I said it just for her, low and injected with enough mockery that she could have... assessed it for some of our previous banter had she... had she wanted to.

All Feyre did in response was shake further. No flicker of rebuttal. No words to hurl at me. No fight left in her at all. The lowest blow she could have laid at my feet.

Shoving the groan building in my chest aside before it could grapple too aggressively with the wrath that seethed, I turned towards Tamlin.

“I’ll be taking her now,” I said, a statement, not a request.

“Don’t you dare,” he snarled.

“Was I interrupting? I thought it was over.”

And as I savored the look of Tamlin all alone up on that dais, his sentries gone and Ianthe escaped, no one but Lucien to call help, I suddenly found myself temporarily back in Amarantha’s hall the first night I’d brought Feyre out and he’d seen the tattoo glinting on her arm, a mark of the bond forged between us that neither of them understood.

I’d felt a glory then in taunting him. And I felt it now all over again tenfold.

The smile that dripped off my lips as I looked back at Feyre was unprecedented, full of the venom and majesty I allowed to fill my court.

And maybe it was cruel, in that moment, to... savor it so much. To relish the joys of being the masked madman they all deigned to fear if it meant that I understood Feyre more than they ever could. She would have said no. She would have objected and they would have forced her up on that dais anyway until the wrong words came out of her lips and likely made her believe it was her choice in the end.

She was just as misunderstood as I was.

“At least,” I concluded, “Feyre seemed to think so.”

“Let us finish the ceremony-”

“Your High Priestess seems to think it’s over too.”

I didn’t have to look at Tamlin to see him still. In the silence that poured momentarily over us, I heard the tiny scratching of his claws retreating.

“Rhysand-”

Civil at last. And here it was his wedding day. I should have hated to see how long it took to tame the damned beast on his deathbed.

“I’m in no mood to bargain,” I said, cutting him off, “even though I could work it to my advantage, I’m sure.” I tugged along Feyre’s elbow not entirely kindly and she jolted. I tried to tell myself it was from not expecting the gesture than from my touch itself. “Let’s go.”

And cauldron damn me into the earth until I died, I had half a hope that she would acquiesce. That she would go willingly - begrudgingly, of course. But that she would accept a way out even if it was the least of what she would have chosen to do.

But she didn’t move. She didn’t accept me or fight me. Still, she chose him .

“Tamlin,” she said and instantly, her beloved moved, finally desperate enough to take a single step.

How long did it take you to move before her neck snapped...

“Name your price,” Tamlin said.

“Don’t bother,” I crooned, sliding my arm around Feyre’s with merriment I didn’t feel as she again recoiled from me.

Her mind raged with anxiety.

The Night Court .

Scenes of Under the Mountain played out to an unimaginable extreme filtered into her head and though I could understand the sentiment given the fury she’d endured from Amarantha under the guise of my court, it was rather outlandish.

And I hated it.

“Tamlin, please,” she said.

“Such dramatics,” I replied lingering on her open, gaping thoughts. I pulled her closer waiting for the final offer, but...

And finally, those hands of Spring that Tamlin bore were pure and whole, the beast done away with, though not gone; only caged.

“If you hurt her-”

“I know, I know. I’ll return her in a week.”

How utterly boring. Even if no one else seemed to think so.

At last, I slipped my arms around Feyre’s waist and holding her in close to me, whispered at her ear, “Hold on.”

And as we winnowed, I finally allowed myself to realize some of my own sorrow at how dejected she felt clinging to me for a safety she didn’t feel in my arms, how hated and despised I was that even giving her the perfect scapegoat for her refusal at the altar, she wanted nothing more than to push our bodies away and plummet into the void of wind and shadow through which we flew.

We landed, not in Velaris where my secrets slumbered, but in my palace estate high in the snow capped mountains of my court. The darkness lifted and Feyre blinked up at me and then... and then...

There was starlight. Glittering, glimmering, shining everywhere for her to see. It reflected off every surface from the moonstone columns that built the infrastructure to the celestial swirl of colors built in to the fabrics shading the open scene. A hint of jasmine wafted between the currents of air cascading over the room.

And just as when I’d met her on Calanmai and she’d first seen me, a single thought sprang immediately to her mind:

The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.

The softest reassurance she could unknowingly give.

I set her down gently and murmured, “Welcome to the Night Court.”

---

It took her a while.

I don’t think she realized it.

For several long moments after I’d backed away, she just stood there taking it all in. A part of me stood back in a self-satisfied manner. My court was glorious and in that moment, however brief, however small a glimpse of this home she received, Feyre saw that glory and delighted in it against her better judgement.

I took in the scent of jasmine with her, letting it calm the heaviness in my soul as I stared at Feyre. Against the stark white of her dress, the bold depth of reds and blues hanging from the gossamer curtains seemed to reflect against her. The lantern lights added a warm glow to the open, airy space that tilted slightly towards her in the wind, welcoming her.

To come.

To stay.

Shit - she was here . Feyre was here in the Night Court .

In my court. In my kingdom, and she was feeling the majesty of my lands imbue her with the sort of awe and wonder I only ever dared dream for her to have.

And still her ears were filled with imaginary screams she anticipated to hear at any moment.

“This is my private residence,” I said finally, just to break the silence and calm the fears lingering about her startled eyes.

Her attention turned carefully towards me and took in my appearance, noted the changes my body had made in complexion just as I took her in properly for the first time in months.

No indication one way or the other as to whether my darkened skin attracted her or not, she at least seemed... pleased to see me in one piece.

Enough that it brought the smirk back to my face, and promptly snapped the facade on us both that we’d found in those first few blissful moments of arrival.

“How dare you-”

I cut her off with a snort. It was too wonderful, too hilariously familiar how fast we sunk back into our rhythm from the start.

“I certainly missed that look on your face.” Stepping nearer again, my focus narrowed in on her. “You’re welcome, you know.”

She looked absolutely scandalized that I would even imply it.

“For what?”

“For saving you when you asked.”

“I didn’t ask for anything.”

As fast as the peace had found me, it left, amble and quick, carried away by the wicked wind licking about us. The venom leftover in my blood from the Spring Court hissed .

No, Feyre hadn’t asked for anything.

Oh, she had begged for freedom of her Tamlin, of Lucien, of Ianthe. Even if freedom should never have been obligated to be an answer to a question in the first place. But of those three, she had asked the world and received nothing.

But of me she would go down to her death denying she had asked anything even when I would offer her everything.

The pure frustration of being so misconstrued that my mate should not only shy away from my advances just to help her live again regardless of who and what we were to each other but also deny that she had even shouted into that void of desperation at all, was an assault so vicious against my heart that my body rallied as the temper engulfed my mind.

My hand shot out and Feyre’s body went rigid beneath my touch, her eyes wide as the moon on the fullest night.

Snarling with what little control I had left, suddenly exhausted by the facade I’d relished only minutes ago, I ripped the gloves right off her and felt her flinch as I held her tattooed palm in my hand, caressed the eye I’d left there to watch over her.

“I heard you begging, someone, anyone , to rescue you, to get you out. I heard you say no .”

“I didn’t say anything,” Feyre insisted and again, it was an effort not to rage.

Not at her. But with her. With her against all the backwards misconceptions she’d been given.

To think that Tamlin had let her sit by for three months broken and beaten and left to assume help would never come, so why bother asking? Why bother trying? To the point that she couldn’t even accept it nor see it when it stared her plainly in the face for the sake of social facades...

Cauldron damn me if I didn’t throw centuries of diplomacy and careful training out the window to go back south and rip that beast to tatters for damning her so.

Turning that eye up to stare blatantly at the pair of us, I tapped the pupil aggressively and insisted, “I heard it loud and clear.”

Feyre tore her hand away, her own rage seeping into her skin. I would never get used to her recoiling from me. “Take me back. Now . I didn’t want to be stolen away.”

The truth.

She wanted out, just not to be here.

At least, here she was safe. But she would hate me for it. Always, always she would curse my name for stealing her. Always, always I would hate she had learned herself as a prize to be stolen.

I shrugged. “What better time to take you here? Maybe Tamlin didn’t notice you were about to reject him in front of his entire court - maybe you can now simply blame it on me.”

If Feyre wanted a scapegoat, so be it. I would mold myself into whatever she needed even if it tore us apart, made my blood pull tightly in my veins and my muscles scream for the skies.

“You’re a bastard. You made it clear enough that I had... reservations.”

“Such gratitude, as always.”

Feyre drew breath and her body trembled with the effort as she stared me down so defiantly even in her exhaustion to defend her choices. “What do you want from me?”

“ Want?” The word snapped from my tongue like a reproach in the Illyrian camps for disobedience. Any minute now, I would feel the lashings against my back. And then I earned my sentence with the words toppling out of me in a rolling current. Control was an idea long since lost on me today.

“I want you to say thank you, first of all. Then I want you to take off that hideous dress. You look...” Disgusting, I wanted to say, as I eyed her up and down. A lamb sent to the slaughter. “You look exactly like the doe-eyed damsel he and that simpering priestess want you to be.”

“You don’t know anything about me. Or us.”

Mother above, help me .

Tightly, I smiled, some small semblance of the mask left between our crumbling facade. “Does Tamlin? Does he ever ask you why you hurl your guts up every night, or why you can’t go into certain rooms or see certain colors?”

Feyre went positively still as knife after knife came hurtling off my tongue.

I did not care that I hurt her. I cared too much that I hurt her. I was vile and vicious and cruel and all the things she expected me to be, so I let myself be them to see if it would wring the truth out of her. I already suffered for how I had failed to her this point.

Cauldron, let me suffer again.

“Get the hell out of my head,” Feyre barked at me, thinking of her Tamlin and how I ought to leave him be.

Always, she would think of him. Never would she give her heart - her love, her every first thought - to me. Her own mate...

“Likewise,” I said, backing away. Stay out of her head. Stay out of my head. Stay out of my heart for all it’s killing me.

And suddenly, it was all just too much. Too, too much.

Her being here. Having her so close and knowing she was still so far. Knowing she would never willingly choose this life, would never think my Court safe.

That my mate was my enemy. Worse yet - the lover of my enemy. We were, perhaps, a match more ill fitting than the Cauldron had seen fit to design.

My father would have laughed.

My mind collapsed.

“You think I enjoy being awoken every night by visions of you puking? You send everything right down that bond, and I don’t appreciate having a front-row seat when I’m trying to sleep.”

Another nail in the coffin as Feyre spat “Prick” at me and rightfully so, I was earning it, twisting on my heels in retreat with a near cackle, growing maddeningly drunk on the horror this had become. How far we’d fallen when we should have never jumped to begin with...

I was done. I needed out. Needed to breathe again that salvation of the skies.

Having Feyre here, i thought it would be a mercy and in some ways it was knowing I was guaranteed at least one more week of her alive because I knew she’d be cared for.

But it hurt just as much, to see her in that dress, to feel her so close and know that our souls couldn’t be farther apart even with the bond - the bargain, whatever the fuck it’d been distorted into.

“As for what else I want from you... I’ll tell you tomorrow at breakfast. For now, clean yourself up. Rest.” I eyed that monstrosity of a dress she wore, felt herself flush from the stare I pierced her with, and took my direction as much for myself as for her. “Take the stairs on the right, one level down. Your room is the first door.”

I edged around for the door, but there was one last nail to hammer into my deathbed before Feyre would let me go.

“Not a dungeon cell?”

Would there ever come a day she saw my Court as something other than the ghastly vision she saw of it Under the Mountain?

I couldn’t even fully face her to give her an answer.

“You are not a prisoner, Feyre. You made a bargain, and I am calling it in. You will be my guest here, with the privileges of a member of my household. None of my subjects are going to touch you, hurt you, or so much as think ill of you here.”

Something in that open room emptied out then. For all that the space was light, was relaxed, was void , an awful pressure filled Feyre’s chest and caved in on us both as she approached her next question, a sense of dread and panic filling her to the brim.

And I understood.

In all my arrogant anger... I understood.

“And where might those subjects be?”

“Some dwell here - in the mountain beneath us. They’re forbidden to set foot in this residence. They know they’d be signing their death warrant.” With painstaking focus, I forced the anger to the back of my mind and met her eyes, so crisp and clear as the blue bit through the grey fog to see me and know that she was safe in my care.

Feyre.

“Amarantha wasn’t very creative. My court beneath this mountain has long been feared, and she chose to replicate it by violating the space of Prythian’s sacred mountain. So, yes: there’s a court beneath this mountain - the court your Tamlin now expects me to be subjecting you to. I preside over it every now and then, but it mostly rules itself.”

“When-” and she stumbled on the word, trying to shove those horrifying images out of her mind as they rattled through the weariness in her bones. “When are you taking me there?”

She looked so tired. So starved for some semblance of truth to see the light by. The ache in my core that cursed and praised the anger as one quieted into a darkness as I looked at her.

Feyre. Oh, darling. My -

“I’m not,” I said, rolling the thoughts off my shoulders. “This is my home, and the court beneath it is my... occupation, as you mortals call it. I do not like for the two to overlap very often.”

Feyre’s brows rose surprised. “‘You mortals’?”

I felt a light glimmer along my skin, the eye of the storm perhaps, we’d reached.

She was so innocent still, even of her own Making.

“Should I consider you something different?”

For a brief moment, I saw the consideration dance behind her eyes, take my challenge in and breathe it right back out. Coming to terms with her own fae existence - a debate for another day.

Still, my lips gave a tug and Feyre scowled as she deflected, “And the other denizens of your court?”

“Scattered throughout, dwelling as they wish. Just as you are now free to roam where you wish.”

“I wish to roam home.”

I laughed and finally deigned to leave her, though still my body made instinctively for the open veranda that sat beneath the stars where it might recuperate while Feyre left. “I’m willing to accept your thanks at any time, you know,” I called over my shoulder.

A shooting star blinked through the space behind me between where Feyre and I stood, the bond between us going taut with steely rage that boiled and burned. A shock of pain crashed into the back of my skull that I immediately gripped and whirled to find Feyre... and the shoe she’d struck my head with lying at my feet, her other already in her hand gripped tightly.

It took me so aback, so off guard... I’d never expected it, and yet, here we were. I felt us both slip out of the eye of that storm and back into the belly of the beast.

I was the High Lord of the Night Court. If Cassian could have seen this, I didn’t even want to think of it -

“I dare you,” I snarled, lips quivering over my teeth, partly just to see what she would do.

Feyre through the shoe as hard as she could - harder, I dared imagine, than she had the first and it pissed me off to no extent. I snatched it straight out of the air and as I lowered my hand from my face, I met Feyre’s eyes with determination to see this through to the end. The shoe shriveled into a black ash that fell from my hand now thrumming with power, carried away in bits and pieces of dust on the wind.

I looked Feyre over. No trace of her own power. No trace of anything more than her fae senses. No trace of the talons I sometimes glimpsed in her waking nightmares or anything... or anything else I suspected she might have.

Just pure hatred and venom in one powerful throw.

And yet.

And yet...

I felt her presence fill the open space like a mighty wind ripping through a canyon. Somehow, I had to find a way to wake her up.

An impossible task if this continued.

“Interesting,” I said.

And that was it. I left her and she left me, making for her new chambers for the week. I just heard her opening her door when -

“So, that went well.”

Even I had not anticipated the snarl that rang viciously out of my throat as my cousin spoke in that delighted way of hers. Morrigan, for her part, did not look entirely appalled, although always she would be irritated.

Naturally, she’d seen fit to follow me here from Velaris after my trip through Tamlin’s springtime festivities.

“She’s got some bite in her,” Mor said. “You two deserve each other.”

“It’s not funny,” I spat.

Mor’s lips twitched. “It’s a little funny and you deserve it for how much you push and poke at her, though I can’t say I don’t blame you given the circumstances. You’ve always been something of a jackass at the best of times.”

“You should be working.”

“And miss the show?” Mor made an indignant pft! noise with a dismissive hand gesture. “Not a chance. I wanted to catch a glimpse of my new sister-in-law and I am not disappointed by any means if that little display between you was anything to go by-”

“She’s not mine and she’s not your anything!”

Morrigan opened her mouth to say something further and I merely... retreated, until my back hit the balcony railing and my hands went to my knees. A sick, nauseated feeling sank into my gut.

I couldn’t even try to hide it anymore, the physical and mental reactions this woman wrought on me. Feyre was simply inescapable.

My vision blurring slightly, Mor took a wary step towards me and I shook her off.

Feyre explored her room with that blasted bond still a wide open chasm between us. With each new feature she found, sorrow rose with the awe, depression swallowed her with the inspiration. She hated and loved it at the same time and all she wanted was to go, as far away as she could because though the palace was lovely, I was not.

My mate found me disgusting - a hollow shell encased in beautiful adornments and nothing more.

I was empty to her. Empty to my mate.

A gasp heaved out of me just before my knees smashed cracks into the marble floor, as I realized the full weight of what I’d done to her, not just in bringing her here, but in everything I’d ever done. Morrigan moved at once.

“Oh, Rhys,” she said, her voice no longer bright and amused, but grown soft and warm, the one that could make my Commander stand down at the worst fight and my Shadowsinger find peace without shadows on the rainiest, darkest day.

But her skin was not the skin I wanted to feel. Her voice was not the one I wanted to hear. She was not my mate, though I was glad she was here all the same.

I needed her. The only one who saw it all.

“She hates me,” I breathed.

“She does not,” came my cousin’s adamant reply.

“Yes, she does. Don’t deny it. She hates me and she’s dying. My mate is suffering a fate worse than death and I don’t know how to fix it.”

Mor was quiet for a long moment, the gears in her head turning before she sighed and gave my arm a squeeze. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll find a way to get her back. Get Feyre back. We’ve all been to the brink at some point or another and had to claw our way back. This time will be no different.”

“Stay” I said as I shook on the marble floor, darkness beginning to leak back out of me. “Take the week off from court. Your father can wait and I have enough business to attend to with the rogue war bands and temples without Feyre’s added visit that I could use the extra hand.”

Morrigan nodded and sat herself beside me rubbing circles on my back. She understood.

For all the spirit that poured out of her in constant droves, Morrigan was nothing if not dutiful and compassionate.

It was enough to almost get me through the moment. Almost .

When Feyre tore that wedding dress off herself and threw herself into bed, sobs tore at her throat, screamed their way out of her until her pillow was drenched within the darkness as she descended into the depths of the hatred she bore me.

And in the darkness, I cried too.

---

The early morning dawn brought a stillness with it that quieted the noise in my head.

I slept with the window shut, lest the darkness leak out of me to excess and disturb whatever visions wandered about outside. Lest Feyre or Morrigan wake to any thrashings I might have and see the worst of me.

Naturally, my first thoughts jumped towards Feyre and brought the buzzing back to the forefront of my mind.

She hadn’t woken from any terrors of her own in the middle of the night, but then again... I sensed she hadn’t slept much to begin with. And I didn’t want to fight anymore, though I was sure it was inevitable to some degree.

The bond between us was still, though I sensed a dull throbbing behind it even in sleep that was sure to follow Feyre when she opened her eyes. She would need help.

Nuala and Cerridwen were already instructed to wake Feyre and attend to any of her needs, so long as she was awake and okay by morning. I’d seen to them last night after Mor carted me off to my rooms and spent half an hour fussing over me. By the time Feyre slipped into her bath and that throbbing I’d felt slightly intensified, I was already dressed and sitting patiently at the breakfast table.

I gave her time to just be, trying my best to stay out of her head. Despite the tension knotting in her skull, she was relatively peaceful. Quiet. It made staying back somewhat easy as I considered what I needed her to do.

And how I was going to manage it.

She wasn’t going to be thrilled, but if I started small, then maybe... I might stand a chance.

A chance of keeping my court safe. I anchored myself in the truth of my purpose, of why I was here, what I was made to do. The Cauldron had seen fit to instill me with powers vast and fortified for the sake of my court and I would not yield to the temptations or threats that would drive me down.

If I could not have Feyre as my mate, then perhaps at the least I could have her as my ally to keeping my court safe in the storm yet to come. And that started today.

Perhaps the Cauldron had not seen fit to mate us as lovers, but as political acquaintances, equals who might join strength and will to keep a land safe. I’d never deserved a partner in love, not for nearly six centuries. It seemed fitting fate would not fold on its hand to me now.

The flicker of comforting heat from her bath licking deliciously about in her mind finally startled the bridge between us. I felt warm - happy, knowing she felt something similar even if distantly so while she stayed here. The fact that she could still enjoy a simple pleasure, some small gift I could give her, brought amusement to my features.

I leaned back in my chair closing my eyes. My thumb trailed idle circles over my glass on the table as I reached out, careful not to see through her too much.

Just a tug, a simple pull to say good morning was all I sent.

Feyre glowered and I felt the heat of the bath rise a little higher through the bond as she sank deeper into the water. Chuckling, I tugged once more.

Come find me , it seemed to say.

Feyre did not enjoy being sent for. Understandably so, but even as soothing as those moments of self-care were, I also knew I could not let her sink so far down that she drowned in the despair of her thinking either.

Her displeasure rang hollow between us as she dressed and I waited for her at a table laden with food, every dish imaginable for her to choose from. My spread was not normally so lavish, but Feyre would need to eat and I hated that I didn’t know by now what she would prefer.

Outside the open airways and passages, the mountains of my home were capped thickly with crisp, white snow. The morning sun shone off them like glass beaming with light and warmth.

Even as Feyre approached and paused behind me teaming with the impulse to turn back around and crawl anywhere but here, there was something oddly at rest about this morning.

“I’m not a dog to be summoned,” she said by way of greeting.

I took a steadying breath before slowly turning to look at her. We’d see how long this rest would last.

She stood wearing the fashions of my court - a pale peach set of trousers and matching blouse, cut to bear her midriff and ending in gold cuffs. Her fists curled in cold irritation at me as I took her in... and frowned, frowned at how thin she’d grown since I’d seen her. Not even Under the Mountain after weeks of abuse and malnourishment from Amarantha’s wrath had she ever looked so feeble.

There was something oddly comforting and horrifying to see her standing there, looking at home in the colors of my lands as her body threatened to waste away into dust.

Calling her out on it would only have inspired a fight and I was desperate to have some semblance of peace between us, even if it was the shallow flirting I’d shielded us with Under the Mountain. Thus weakly, I spoke, “I didn’t want you to get lost.”

The throb I’d felt earlier pulsed behind her eyes and her gaze crested over the silver tea pot steaming in front of me on the table. She quickly looked away, lest she be tempted.

“I thought it’d always be dark here,” she said, straining.

“We’re one of the three Solar Courts.” I gestured towards the table, unwilling to deny her what she wanted, what she needed . Mercifully, she sat. “our nights are far more beautiful, and our sunsets and dawns are exquisite, but we do adhere to the laws of nature.”

“And do the other courts choose not to?”

So much she still had to learn. I was constantly reminding myself.

“The nature of the Seasonal Courts is linked to their High Lords, whose magic and will keeps them in eternal spring, or winter, or fall, or summer. It has always been like that - some sort of strange stagnation. But the Solar Courts - Day, Dawn, and Night - are of a more... symbolic nature. We might be powerful, but even we cannot alter the sun’s path or strength. Tea?“

Feyre dipped her chin with admirable restraint. My heart ached for her that she felt so repulsed here, she would not even take basic nourishment from me with any ounce of emotion.

“But you will find,” I pressed on as I poured her tea, as I served her, “that our nights are more spectacular - so spectacular that some in my territory even awaken at sunset and go to bed at dawn, just to live under the starlight.”

Feyre added milk and I watched her thoughtfully. Question after question spilled out. She was nothing if not inquisitive.

“Why is it so warm in here, when winter is in full blast out there?”

“Magic.”

“Obviously.” The effort of repressing a self-relieving gasp at the first sip of tea was all that momentarily paused her from going on. “But why?”

“You heat a house in the winter - why shouldn’t I heat this place as well? I’ll admit I don’t know why my predecessors built a palace fit for the Summer Court in the middle of a mountain range that’s mildly warm at best, but who am I to question?”

Feyre went quiet, content to just sip her tea and lessen the burden of her headache. I had to bind up every impulse in my body that urged to throw food upon her plate until she found something pleasing to eat as I watched her. At long last, she set her tea aside and chose some fruit from one of the nearest trays and I let out a sigh I hoped she wouldn’t hear.

Breakfast thus far had been... pleasant.

A gentle reprieve from the waves that rocked between us constantly on the best of days. So long as we stuck to facts and principles, these tangible qualities that grounded us to the earth and taught us basic truths, we remained on stable terms with one another.

That peaceful middle ground between us was what gave me enough courage to dare speak again, dare tempt fate that we might bleed with our anger at each other once more.

“You’ve lost weight,” I said, quietly so as not to rattle her.

“You’re prone to digging through my head whenever you please,” she said. “I don’t see why you’re surprised by it.”

I smirked. The comment was not entirely unkind, but the way she stabbed at the piece of melon on her plate warned me enough that she was still up for sending a little fire at me when she wanted.

“Only occasionally will I do that. And I can’t help it if you send things down the bond.”

Indeed, she was the source of most of what I saw whether I wanted to or not.

“How does it work - this bond that allows you to see into my head?”

Just the way she placed the emphasis on that word - bond - terrified me. Enough that I stalled with a sip from my own teacup.

We were so near and yet so far.

“Think of the bargain‘s bond as a bridge between us - and at either end is a door to our respective minds. A shield. My innate talents allow me to slip through the mental shields of anyone I wish, with or without that bridge - unless they’re very, very strong, or have trained extensively to keep those shields tight. As a human, the gates to your mind were flung open for me to stroll through. As Fae...” I shrugged halfheartedly, not even sure myself of the answer. “Sometimes, you unwittingly have a shield up - sometimes, when emotion seems to be running strong, that shield vanishes. And sometimes, when those shields are open, you might as well be standing at the gates to your mind, shouting thoughts across the bridge to me. Sometimes I hear them; sometimes I don’t.”

Feyre’s hand clenched tightly on her fork. “And how often do you just rifle through my mind when my shields are down?”

So she hadn’t realized just how open and susceptible she’d been to me all these months. She didn’t like how vulnerable it made her either and I didn’t need to read her mind to know it.

Feyre watched me, watched me not just frown, but deflate as the darkness settled between us and I told her the first of these most awful truths we shared.

“When I can’t tell if your nightmares are real threats or imagined. When you’re about to be married and you silently beg anyone to help you. Only when you drop your mental shields and unknowingly blast those things down the bridge. And to answer your question before you ask, yes. Even with your shields up, I could get through them if I wished. You could train, though - learn how to shield against someone like me, even with the bond bridging our minds and my own abilities.”

Quiet agitation rolled through her as she ignored my offer. I didn’t like that I’d have to make her train when she didn’t want to, but lacking this skill could kill her.

“What do you want with me?” she finally asked. “You said you’d tell me. So tell me.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms preparing for the fight sure to come. Our quiet, relaxed morning would be over after this and just as when I’d first deceived myself putting that mask back on at her wedding, I felt a gentle joy bloom in my chest for the match play to come even knowing it may once again send me to the slaughter in the end.

A match play I knew just from looking at Feyre, dressed so wonderful in the fashions of my court that added color to her cheeks and a highlight to her eyes, I could never resist indulging in.

Staring innocently at Feyre, I casually, finally revealed the seeds of my grand schemes.

“For this week? I want you to learn how to read.”