I felt sick. For the first time in centuries, power was not my friend accompanying me to the Hewn City - the Court of Nightmares. Though it would have to be my ally if we were going to accomplish this mission.

It wouldn’t be like last time, with Tarquin. I wouldn’t let it. We would enter, Azriel would swoop in to snatch the Veritas, and we would leave.

But Feyre would see every moment.

I’d once pledged to her that she would not become a weapon nor a pawn so long as she worked with me. Holding her tightly against my chest as we flew through the cold mountain air towards the gates, Cassian and Azriel flying nearby, the memory tasted of a lie on my tongue. I couldn’t look at her knowing how Mor would transform her when she received us. So I only held on more tightly instead.

Feyre had sat with me for a long while after I’d explained her role in today’s proceedings. When we’d finished and I was certain she understood, would decide it was too vile and demoralizing to go through with and walk out, she squeezed my hand tighter.

And now we flew, all I could think of as I stared at the slowly melting snow and surrounding forests was whether she would forgive me today’s grievances only to enter that mountain and see Amarantha anew - and panic.

Panic the way my heart did now, beating away a wild tension rapidly in my chest.

It was an odd contrast to the trees that sat so silently near us as we flew by. Not even the brief stirrings of the wind seemed to ruffle their branches. The birds hiding among their number remained utterly silent.

So cold, my court. So unyielding and stern, and -

“Amren and Mor told me that the span of an Illyrian male’s wings says a lot about the size of... other parts,” Feyre said in the middle of that great silence. It was an effort not to jerk in surprise through the air currents. Of all the -

Briefly, I glanced at her, and saw a shy, coy face watching me. “Did they now,” I said offhandedly. Feyre shrugged as though we were merely discussing the ease into spring the weather had taken.

“They also said Azriel’s wings are the biggest.”

Of course they did.

I was going to murder my cousin after this trip. Feyre bit her lip in a near smirk and slid her gaze carefully to my brother, flying slightly ahead of us now. My heart sped up for entirely new reasons.

“When we get home, let’s get out the measuring stick, shall we?”

Feyre’s fingers danced across my forearm and pinched. The grin I flashed her just before tucking my wings in tight was undeniable. Her arms went wild scrambling for purchase around my chest - my neck - as we fell, dropping several feet. But the scream the fall elicited out of her as Feyre buried her face in at the side of my neck was sensational.

My wings fanned out at my back, sending us into a smooth even glide with a few measured pumps. Ahead, Azriel barrel rolled over, his expression questioning at Feyre’s cry.

Biggest span, my ass , I thought, as my subsequent grin and laughter sent him back off.

Tilting my chin down, my lips found the little pathway between Feyre’s ear and neck. “You’re willing to brave my brand of darkness and put up one of your own, willing to go to watery grave and take on the Weaver, but a little free fall makes you scream?”

She didn’t even move so I could better hear her reply through the wind whipping about us. Her arms were locked firmly around my neck, fingers gripping at my leathers. I quite liked her clutching at me like this, holding me tight, making her scream -

“I’ll leave you to rot the next time you have a nightmare,” she said, poison behind those words. More and more these days, I seemed to come up with the proper antidote.

“No, you won’t,” I teased. “You liked seeing me naked too much.”

“Prick.”

But her fingers tightened on me. And it loosed a deep laugh rumbling out of my chest. The gates to the Hewn City loomed not terribly far off in the distance, but for just a moment, they were a little further away in my mind.

I shifted my arms around Feyre as she adjusted against me, her head still buried at my neck. Something brushed along the underside of my wing, too quick to register, until -

A tremor ran down the column of my spine as Feyre softly ran one delicate finger over my wings, forcing a low groan to hiss out between my lips. A groan that was guttural and primal and enough that Feyre snatched that mischievous, unsuspecting little finger right back.

“That,” I said a bit breathlessly, trying not to register what my cock was or wasn’t doing in response, “is very sensitive.”

My eyes met Feyre’s as she quickly tilted her face up against my chest to consider me. “Does it tickle?”

Cauldron no - not if the good degree of heat that had already pooled below my waist was any indication.

I thought a moment, excusing myself to the trees and mountaintops to shove certain inclinations aside, and whispered, “It feels like this,” before blowing softly into Feyre’s ear. She rewarded me with a shudder in her back and better access to that beautiful damned neck of hers. The skin was hot and just a hair’s breath beneath where my lips rested.

“Oh,” was all she said, a small gasp. I smiled and removed myself from that delicate skin of hers.

“If you want an Illyrian male’s attention, you’d be better off grabbing him by the balls. We’re trained to protect our wings at all costs. Some males attack first, ask questions later, if their wings are touched without invitation.”

I should have known Feyre wouldn’t simply leave it there, though I didn’t quite expect, “And during sex?” to come flying so readily out of that mouth. A flicker of pleasure swam through that delicious pool of heat in my crotch.

“During sex, an Illyrian male can find completion just by having someone touch his wings in the right spot.”

“Have you found that to be true?”

Now I couldn’t look away. Feyre’s eyes were dancing on my chest and slowly rising higher to meet me - toy with me even. Cauldron - what would she do once we were inside the mountain?

“I’ve never allowed anyone to see or touch my wings during sex,” I admitted. “It makes you vulnerable in a way that I’m not... comfortable with.”

Feyre peered off into the mountains - bored, apparently, and drawled, “Too bad.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, her face appearing rather taut. And damn me to my grave, I hated that even in ways she might never find herself concerned with, I might have disappointed her somehow.

And yet - “Because I bet you could get into some interesting positions with those wings.”

A roar of laughter stumbled blindly out of my chest, and before I knew what I was doing, my head was nuzzling into Feyre’s side, inhaling the fresh scent of her hair that sped my blood along at a tumultuous pace, grazing the cool skin of her scalp beneath with my nose. My lips met her ear, readily parting to apply a reckless kiss of appreciation.

That’s when the first arrow flew by.

Fuck!

An army of deadly darts followed. I snatched one clean out of the air and took one look at the ash makings before my hands had snapped it into mere fragments.

Feyre’s body went rigid against me as we hurtled down to the ground in immediate descent. I wouldn’t winnow lest we lose whoever assaulted us. Magic tore from me to form a shield against the arrows trailing us - trailing me and my mate , seeking to wound or kill, I didn’t want to know. My arms engulfed Feyre in response, every instinct in my body telling me what protecting my mate’s life truly meant.

Cassian and Azriel were at our side in seconds, blue and red orbs blazing around them to form their own shields. Shields I had seen many, many times over the centuries in battles and in wars.

Blood pounded in my ears vying for dominance over the brittle wind.

This was my court. And someone had infiltrated. The Attor hadn’t been lying that day Azriel carved him up and feasted on his dirty little secrets.

The moment we slammed into the ground, I handed Feyre to Cassian - barely registering she was unharmed - ready to demand payment from whatever bastards were roaming my mountains.

“Take her to the palace,” I told Cassian, who’s eyes were made of fire and sun, “and stay there until I’m back. Az, you’re with me.”

Cassian didn’t so much as blink. But Feyre stepped away from him, retreating back towards the embrace I’d made her quit. “No,” she said.

I whirled around back around from where I’d turned to face her and was not proud of the snarl that ripped from my mouth. “What?”

My mate.

My - my mate .

But Feyre was strong. And she did not budge.

“Take me with you,” she said, neither a request nor a demand. I steadied a breath. My wings, my arms, my everything - collapsing inward. Feyre’s gaze glossed over me noticing it all, a huntress marking every detail. “I’ve seen ash arrows,” she said, her words no more than a breath of air. “I might recognize where they were made. And if they came from the hand of another High Lord... I can detect that, too. And I can track just as well on the ground as any of you. So you and Cassian take the skies. And I’ll hunt on the ground with Azriel.”

You think like an Illyrian .

And it was still true.

Not only true, but just.

Hybern. Tamlin. Some other beast I knew not about. My own people... Even Tarquin now. I did not know what sought after us. But Feyre could. And I trusted her to do it. Trusted my - my friend.

My friend through danger and doubt, who had not left me to myself these many weeks. And who now stood straighter, no longer starved, but confident and assured of who she was becoming.

I turned to Cassian, my mind searching rapidly to see the details. “Cassian - I want aerial patrols on the sea borders, stationed in two-mile rings, all the way out toward Hybern. I want foot soldiers in the mountain passes along the southern border; make sure those warning fires are ready on every peak. We’re not going to rely on magic.” Cassian nodded, just as my other brother sent shadows spilling out of him in a frenzied rhythm. “When you’re done,” I told Az, “warn your spies that they might be compromised, and prepare to get them out. And put fresh ones in. We keep this contained. We don’t tell anyone inside that court what happened. If anyone mentions it, say it was a training exercise.”

The shadows cleared, sent off somewhere I knew naught. Both their siphons continued to glow with a steady, near violent energy, as though they might burst at any moment.

And when I looked at Feyre, she held her head high, her eyes clear and sharp. The huntress called from hiding in the dark caves of the mountainside, ready to fight once more.

“We’ve got one hour until we’re expected at court.” Feyre held my gaze. “Make it count.”

---

We didn’t find anyone. Not so much as a single fallen arrow. Cassian and I flew until we’d carved the earth up from above with our eyes, but there was nothing in those trees.

Nothing we could discern, at least. It set my teeth on edge. Not a good start to our visit.

“When we get-”

“I know,” Cassian cut me off. Mor had taken Feyre away already to change and go inside. I stood with my brothers away from the gates where the sentries might overhear. “Set the new rotations as soon as we’re back. It’s as good as done already.” Azriel affirmed his own intent with a nod. My chest still felt tight. “Who do you think was behind it?”

There was a pause before I answered during which Azriel’s shadows stilled, listening - preparing. “Hybern more than likely. That’s twice now they’ve found us. Found Feyre.”

Cassian’s voice was sharp as an Illyrian blade. “The Attor.” I nodded. Even after the affairs in Adriata, I doubted the two incidents of attack on Feyre were unafiliated. Cassian turned on Az and groaned, “Why couldn’t you have just killed that sick fuck and saved us all this trouble.”

“Believe me, it would have been a pleasure.” Az’s face paled slightly as a flicker of black kissed the shadowsinger’s ear. “It’s time.”

I sighed, avoiding their gazes and finding that cold, calculating mask I wore all too well. It felt oddly comforting to slip behind it, where Feyre might not see too much of me. Where she and I might both be safe from whatever ash would chase us next.

And there would be a next, and a time after that.

An eternity of war and high lords chasing after her.

An eternity of death.

A warmth pressed upon my shoulder. I looked up to find Cassian’s hazel eyes, equally soft and warm as that touch, boring in to me. “One hour,” he said. “It’s just one hour. That’s all she’ll see.”

“But it’s enough,” I replied. He shook his head.

“Nah. It’s not.” He brought his free hand round to my other shoulder and squared me up. “She’s fine. And you know she is. So will you stop worrying so much and let us deal with keeping both your asses safe today?” He smirked. “You know I get cranky when you try to do it yourself.”

I put my hands in my pockets, eyes scoffing away to land on Azriel who merely shrugged. “You do kind of suck at it,” he said.

Cassian shirked his head as if to say, See?

“Fine,” I relented and stepped out of Cassian’s hold. “Let’s go.”

Azriel tipped me a small, easy smile before his wings beat into the air. My own stretched wide behind me, but I stayed a moment to look at Cassian - bastard, commander, brother. “Cass-”

“I know,” he said. “I always know.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Just promise me one thing?”

“Name it.”

“Kick Kier’s ass in there today.”

Our twin smiles were greedy as we flew to the mountain.

---

For the first time in 500 years, I was nervous stepping through those gates. The Court of Nightmares had never been my home, nor even a place within in my own court that I took interest in ruling. The beasts it housed were cretins, the lot of them, easy to rule and I had enough power several times over to drown them all if I wanted. Wearing the cruel mask of the High Lord they cowered before was easy.

But today was not that day. Today, someone important would be watching. Someone I still couldn’t quite fully understand how she felt towards me, much less how she would feel after I’d exposed her to the monster that would be pawing at her in front of the court I despised.

Cassian and Azriel stood before me at the handles of the doorway that would lead me to my throne. Beyond, Feyre readied herself beside my cousin. I could hear the cutting voice of Kier, Mor’s father, as they met, my gut twisting in revulsion.

Memories of that night centuries ago, when she’d only been seventeen and untested, curled through me as I remembered how I’d barely been able to tell it to Feyre the night previously. I didn’t allow myself to slip into Keir’s mind now and witness how he was experiencing Feyre, lest I slip and splinter him to ash.

Azriel budged almost unnoticeable, hearing the exchange of words too. “Ready?” Cassian asked, brows raised at me.

Easy as flicking a button open on a shirt, I lifted the damper on my power. Darkness flowed off my body in rippling waves, so thick with fog that you couldn’t tell where the black of my clean, crisp tunic ended and the smoke began. The stars that swirled atop my head shimmered with uncompromising light weaving a thick crown even those sheathed in the darkest reaches of the mountain could have felt.

I took comfort in the feel of it all, of releasing my true self that I so seldom was able to become. My oldest friend, the darkness that soothes. Only here did that darkness appear so abhorrent.

I nodded at Cassian and together, he and Azriel pulled back the doors. I allowed them to enter first into the now deadly quiet hall where dozens had gathered. The palace the mountain cradled within was a mammoth compared to the pitiful imitation Amarantha had fashioned Under the Mountain for us. With every step, the ground quaked beneath my feet as I followed my brothers, instantly spotting Feyre where she stood with her face lowered the way I had instructed her to do.

All at once, the room knelt.

“Well, well,” I said, soaking in the power I had over my despised court. “Looks like you’re all on time for once.” Boredom drawled from my voice, from the disinterested sway of my surveying eyes as bodies cowered away from my passing approach.

The eyes were what beckoned, leaned forward as chests tightened and breaths held still. Power. So much power before them and they wanted it even when their foolish minds instructed them differently. It was hard not to wonder at how many of them had longed to lick at Amarantha’s feet for fifty years while I was away. Mor had already sent me so many to... attend to.

But there would always be more.

It was Feyre who stopped my blood in its tracks. I nearly whistled at the sight. Mor had done a number on her.

She knelt in a thin sheet of black fabric, fabric rippling with sparkles and grace, that threatened to expose her most intimate parts. And for a brief second, we were back Under the Mountain and I was readying to ply her with booze to make her forget my wicked schemes. Even if here, she looked... a cheek more refined, more sleek and powerful than when I had dressed her. Guilt nipped at my heals as I stopped in front of her and gripped her chin with hard intention.

“Welcome to my home, Feyre Cursebreaker,” I bit, turning her face to me with predatory command. Her gaze was focused, cunning as she did not flinch from the cruel touch. “Come with me.”

Feyre stood, the fabric around her swaying to allow subtle peeks at little hidden expanses of her skin, and Cauldron damn me, my guilt shifted from revulsion at what I was doing to one of pure, animal instinct. This was my mate, I realized. Not just my friend, but my mate parading before me. I tightened the leash on my mask watching Feyre prowl toward me on the throne, as the fabric exposed her hips, now so much more rounded and soft than when she had first left the Spring Court. Her breasts were high and supple, threatening to burst from behind the thin slips covering them and her lips - damn Morrigan for her cunning skill - her lips were full and red and pulsing at me to bite them.

She wasn’t starved anymore. There were no longer any bones to count. Feyre was simply herself - stunning, seductive, and powerful.

A small, inviting smile, not entirely meant for my court, rose on my face as I sat on my throne and practically pulled Feyre atop me. My hands found her exposed rib cage, her inner thigh and began to run teasing circles over her skin with my thumb. Other than a small twist of discomfort at finding my fingers cold, which I immediately rectified, Feyre seemed… okay.

So I let the act begin, well aware my court was still kneeling and watching. I brought my lips in close on Feyre’s ear and half whispered, “Try not to let it go to your head.”

“What?” Feyre asked, the innocent plaything of the High Lord.

“That every male in here is contemplating what they’d be willing to give up in order to get that pretty, red mouth of yours on them.”

I tensed inside my head, waiting to see how Feyre would handle her first test, if she could stomach the ruse that so mimicked some of what I imagined were her worst nightmares from Amarantha’s vile prison sentence.

But then Feyre looked out at my court as if they were her court too. No fear. No revulsion. Just pure, cold command as she offered up a smile as slippery as the serpents crawling along the engravings of the throne where we sat.

My blood hummed. How much had I feared this day would ruin her? Maybe even bring her back to square one with all the memories it was sure to stir in her. We still had a ways to go, but my confidence grew at seeing the deadly smile Feyre aimed at the kneeling fae, all of them High born and rotten. A smile I hoped I would one day soon earn for myself.

My thumb ventured maybe half a centimeter higher on Feyre’s thigh and she leaned quite noticeably into it, and here we were, already slammed so close together.

“Rise,” I said at last, power tempering my voice, and the court obeyed. I dismissed them to their pointless charades with obvious boredom before calling Keir to the dais. Morrigan’s father looked pained as he approached. Off to the sides, my inner circle watched the man with narrowed eyes, Azriel worst of all as Keir spotted him and took in Truth-Teller at his hip, the small Illyrian dagger promising a lifetime of pain as soon as the golden woman beside him gave the command.

The day Azriel sliced the blade into that man was a day that couldn’t come fast enough. But for Mor, we would wait. Mor, who tensed to be here but now stood staring at me with her own pride and power drumming in her veins. A queen come to hold court.

“Report,” I spat, nodding my head imperceptibly to my friends who immediately dispersed. Within seconds, Azriel was no where to be seen and I could feel more than see Mor and Cassian within the throngs of people.

“Greetings, milord,” Keir said with an even voice I didn’t think him capable of mustering anymore, least not to me. “And greetings to your… guest.”

I looked at Feyre, momentarily pausing my lazy sweeps of her thigh. “She is lovely, isn’t she?”

“Indeed… There is little to report, milord. All has been quiet since your last visit.”

“No one for me to punish?”

“Unless you’d like for me to select someone here, no, milord.”

“Pity,” I said, never removing my gaze from Feyre. Nervousness entwined itself through my bones as tightly as the stars stitched atop my head as I considered her. My friend would likely think me vile, irredeemable for using her body like this the way Amarantha had used me, but I had to do it to make Keir, and what would end up reaching the farthest corners of Prythian, believe our act. They already believed her my whore, so what else would she appear visiting if not that?

And Feyre knew. I’d told her all of it and she had agreed without hesitancy, knowing it would cost us both. I’d apologized for it more times than I could count before she’d squeezed my hand and told me to stop, that it was okay.

I had to trust that as I moved in on her then, a fear I hated so intensely flickering in my mind teasing me with images of rejection and loathing to come. But I reached for Feyre with my lips anyway, lightly tugging at her earlobe with my teeth. Shivers broke out all over her body. Her stomach tightened, back arching slightly and I thought she was going to pull away, and I’d be forced to feel the bond between us pull taut with disgust.

And then her limbs went limp, her legs widening a margin around my own, and she fell back against me - no, into me. The bond seemed to loosen, a sigh of relief between us.

Licking the inside of my mouth, I dared to begin the enticing circles of my thumb over her thigh and heard her breath hitch, felt her core pool with heat across the bond. My thumb immediately stopped.

Cauldron - was she actually enjoying this? It felt like someone had unzipped my body and shaken my bones, laid them stark along the ground for everyone to see, I was too startled.

Feyre sighed in an almost inaudible way, urging my stroking to resume. It was an effort to remind myself to nod at Keir as he prattled on and I lost track of his one-sided conversation with me.

Feyre didn’t flinch at my touch once. Her body melded into mine as the room became glued to us despite the music and the food. My index finger joined my thumb, sliding higher with each pass along her thigh even as my other hand grazed the underside of her breasts and I realized how hard I was falling into the mixed haze of deceit and longing.

Would she hate me for this? Would she curse me? It felt like a violation what I was doing to her, the guilt gnawing more vicious than a sea beneath a wild storm when I took in the fact that she had no obligation to be here. Forcibly, I clamped the lid on my mind shut while widening the damper on my powers, begging for some kind of release, forcing myself to run as far away from the doors of her mind lest I be tempted to enter and see the ugly truth of who I was staring back at me from her thoughts.

Because no - she wouldn’t enjoy this. These touches. These hasty, heat filled strokes.

Yet... I couldn’t stop touching. Couldn’t make my fingers find another restless land to explore to beg forgiveness. She felt simply exquisite wherever my fingertips roamed. It was both a mercy and a grievance when Keir interrupted my thumb only inches away from slipping under the fabric at Feyre’s crotch.

“I had heard the rumors, and I didn’t quite believe them,” he said. “But it seems true: Tamlin’s pet is now owned by another master.”

Wrong.

Pet. Master.

So very, very wrong.

How far from the truth those words were. Feyre had no master even as I sat there luxuriously stroking her and she didn’t back down. But I forced Keir’s impression onto myself as I replied.

“You should see how I make her beg,” I said, running my nose along her neck, a momentary reprieve to my fingers.

“I assume you brought her to make a statement.”

“You know everything I do is a statement.”

“Of course. This one, it seems, you enjoy putting in cobwebs and crowns.”

Disgust laced his voice. Feyre and I both halted, our gazes snapping to Keir. I could have throttled him dead for that one remark alone, but Feyre was faster than I and far more cunning as she stared Keir down with wicked disapproval on her lips.

“Perhaps I’ll put a leash on you ,” she said.

The demon working inside my mind flew back to the doors of Feyre’s mental shield as fast as he had fled only moments prior, knocking at her mind’s door with approval.

“She does enjoy playing,” I said. “Get her some wine.” Keir left and sitting alone with Feyre a mountain full of eyes staring at her in her near-nakedness pulled me back into my guilt. I pressed a light kiss below her ear hoping she would understand how irrevocably sorry I was for making her play the harlot. It was the last thing I wanted her to ever be.

And that’s when it hit me.

Sorrow filled me to the brim. I shouldn’t have let her come. I couldn’t rob her of her freedom to choose, especially not after how cruelly Tamlin had treated her in that regard, but I could have tried harder to convince her to stay. Surely there could have been something I could have offered her, another task seemingly as important to beg her to stay behind in Velaris while still feeling useful. Anything to spare her this role.

I should have found a way to protect her just as much as free her. Sitting there with Feyre half-naked on my lap, I was no better than Amarantha. Still her lover. Still her wretched whore. I told myself I did this for the good of my court, and in part I did, but my court included the beasts now watching us. The ones I had never found a way to tame.

I didn’t deserve Feyre. I didn’t deserve Cassian, nor Azriel, nor my cousin who my eyes went out pleading for and couldn’t find in the sea.

The sea of eyes and disapproval.

That was my fate. That was what I deserved for stripping the huntress with the human heart down like this to make a mortal court owe us their allegiance.

As if sensing my change in mood, Feyre turned to look at me, her eyes searching. My grip on her thigh tightened marginally, and her lips turned down softening. Her mental shields lowered a fraction, inviting me in.

What? I dared asked into the folds of her mind, but she wouldn’t answer. Not there. Her internal touch caressed my mental shields instead. It felt soothing, light. And I couldn’t help but to lean into her. So I opened my mind to Feyre as much as my fear would allow and her voice filled me up like the melody of the music I’d once sent her, speaking a salvation I had craved for centuries.

You are good, Rhys, Feyre said. You are kind. This mask does not scare me. I see you beneath it.

The care in her words, the absence of all the fear and disgust I was sure she would hurtle at me from now on, shocked me so thoroughly that my grip on her tightened and I instantly found her cheek where I pressed a kiss of gratitude and adoration against her skin.

It was so soft. And it smelt of jasmine.

Feyre pressed in to me. Her legs widened again. And her next words undid me as she silently begged, low and sultry, Why’d you stop?

A low, feral growl almost escaped from me in an eruption that would have been loud enough to shake the snow from the mountains outside. Feyre felt the pulse of music around us and started to writhe in my lap, allowing my hands to roam and touch at my leisure, her own hands exploring my thighs. My inhibitions escaped right at that touch alongside her own as I went hard beneath her, consumed with want. She’d taken all of those doubts and rumpled them up like paper. I took deep reverent breathes at her neck, inhaling the perfume of her skin, imagining what it would be like to taste it all, to consume her with the full force of my body and mind. I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.

My mate.

My mate. My mate.

Heat radiated from Feyre’s fingertips sending warmth over my thighs as she gripped me. Her thoughts swam across the bond, barriers down and unguarded for me alone, with visions of the burning she felt in her core made manifest. I had to choke back a pleased laugh at how intensely she was reaching for me. How much I felt that fire burning me up myself.

Easy , I said to her down the bond. If you become a living candle, poor Keir will throw a hissy fit. And then you’d ruin the party for everyone.

Feyre’s hands cooled, but to my utter delight, she flung her head back and pressed herself into the crook of my neck as I shifted below her. The sensation of that pressure on my skin was ravenous, the feeling that she wanted this just as badly as I - a divine glory to my soul.

My hand slid high enough on her thigh to finally hook underneath the fabric, dangerous territory, while my other hand cast a knuckle firmly along the underside of her breast, her nipples now very peaked. She might never love me, might never accept or forgive me, but maybe if she gave me this, and her friendship.... maybe I could settle for these scraps. If they kept her from the lifetime of running instead, if they kept me near enough my mate to see and feel, but never have...

Feyre’s mind opened to me and I read nothing but the desire for more, more, more before Keir made a startled movement.

We turned to see the stupid prick standing there, mouth wide open, a forgotten glass of wine in his hand. Feyre quickly lost interest and I wanted to laugh at him for how foolish he was. I settled for licking my way up Feyre’s neck instead watching him gape at us. Feyre’s back arched.

I stifled a chuckle. This was somehow... oddly fun. In ways I had never anticipated.

I think he’s so disgusted that he might have given me the orb just to get out of here , I said to her.

You and I put on a good show , Feyre replied in a voice I never imagined she would bestow me with. It was heavy. Sultry. I could feel it grasping for me through the bond. My fingers curled along her thigh, tightening in approval, starving for that attention from her. Her body twisted in my lap fighting to get impossibly closer when she stilled entirely feeling how hard I’d become for her every movement.

My breathe caught. I waited for her to pull away, but suddenly she was even closer, grinding on me and returning my earlier licking with one of her own up my throat.

My head swam. Her scent was intoxicating, a rich, sweet liquor I could drown myself in drunkenness on night after night in never ending ecstasy. I wanted this. I wanted all of her. Right there on the floor in front of everyone until she would scream from the pleasure of how I felt inside her and we were mated, never mind the consequences. It was like standing on that balcony and realizing she was my mate, and all the little impulses that went along with it, yet magnified tenfold.

A laugh of feline amusement that was nearly a growl flicked out of me. I trailed kisses across her shoulder, her neck, and dug my fingers in at her thigh, dragging them up, up, up until they met with a thick, sticky slickness.

Feyre froze the second my fingers touched the wetness dripping from between her thighs. I was so blind with the desire to dip my fingers in and taste her - fuck, what did she taste like - that I almost forgot what was even happening.

It’s fine, I said in an attempt to calm Feyre’s unease. It means nothing. It’s just your body reacting. But my words sounded ragged in her mind, even to me. Her body was reacting the same as mine had and still was. We both wanted this. At least, I thought we had. But the contact between us just then had brought a very harsh reality to Feyre’s mind that she perhaps wasn’t ready to confront just yet.

Because you’re so irresistible ? Feyre sounded out of breathe herself. Mercifully, Azriel returned at this precise moment, sparing us the discomfort of pressing the growing tension between us further.

Keir offered me the wine and I grabbed it with the hand that had rested between Feyre’s legs. It was a pain and a relief to remove myself from the spot on her thighs. My fingers ached at losing the new home they so enjoyed, but as I grabbed the wine goblet and caught the scent of Feyre lingering on my fingertips where I could see some of her slickness shining, my blood boiled with desire all over again and I knew one very certain thing: Not my anything, something, friend, mate - I was so fucked. And maybe not in a good way.

“Should I test it for poison?” I said to Keir at the same moment I told Feyre, Cassian’s waiting. Go . Our act was finished and I desperately needed the reprieve. Another moment on my lap with that scent catching me and I would have flipped her over and closed the gap between us entirely all the while wondering how much of the monster she saw in my eyes while I fucked her.

Feyre pranced away, the perfect image of the High Lord’s plaything. Was this how Amarantha had felt watching me leave her room in the morning? What the fuck was wrong with me that I’d done this to Feyre now too and enjoyed a great part of it, immensely so.

Even if she had seemed to... even if Feyre had also...

The room followed her as she made her way to Cassian, including Keir. He stared at her with rank distaste as she passed at the foot of the dais, his mouth parting in a foul line as he whispered words he thought only she could hear.

“You’ll get what’s coming to you, whore,” he spat.

Darkness split the room, consuming and hungering.

For several seconds, no one could see an inch in front of their noses as my body directed the madness. The inky darkness whipped and cracked until I could feel it drag Keir to his knees.

It was fear. It was confusion. The darkness that punishes.

And punish me just as much as Keir, it did.

Whore .

I’d made Feyre my whore. All of Prythian would soon know it no matter what I did to Keir to refute it. I wasn’t just Amarantha’s whore anymore. In a way, I was Amarantha in all her despicable manipulative ways for how I’d betrayed Feyre. It cut me to my core, replacing all that unbearable heat we’d shared together with shame.

So I did the one thing left for me to do. I saw the mask of the cruel, villainous High Lord of the Night Court everyone wanted to see, twirling in front of me and yanked it harder to my being.

When the smoke cleared, I appeared on the throne as the perfect image of casual terror ready to reign down on Keir and break him for every bone he was worth.

“Apologize,” I said with lethal intent lacing my voice and yet, the bastard had the nerve to stay quiet. “I said, apologize.” Still he was silent, so I started at his shoulder and forced the bone to splinter four times down to the elbow. I didn’t even move a muscle to do it. My cousin stood in the far corner, my eyes having finally spotted her, looking rather pale. But her eyes sparked with a hint of venomous pleasure. Azriel stood just behind her, close enough to touch. I imagined, they were.

Still Keir said nothing except to choke on his sobs. Anger flashed through my veins, and power crashed out of me. His elbow disintegrated and only then when half of his arm was shattered did he barely manage to mouth the words I’m sorry to Feyre between his screams. I broke the bones of his other arm for his lack of effort with a dangerous smile on my face.

This was the monster I hadn’t want Feyre to see, but Feyre looked almost as pleased as Morrigan to see Keir fall beside her.

“Should I kill him for it?” I asked to the room at large, feeling as though I’d somehow fallen with him. No one spoke. “When you wake up, you’re not to see a healer. If I hear that you do…” his pinky - gone, “If I hear that you do, I’ll carve you into pieces and bury them where no one can stand a chance of putting you together again.” Keir collapsed and I ordered him away to his rooms, hauled off by some guard or other. I relaxed in my seat, feeling pleased that however I had betrayed Feyre, I’d at least been able to provide her with some small form of amends.

Slowly, other courtiers dared themselves forward on pained feet to fill in for Keir. I sat on my throne listening for well on an hour, feeling my ears grate on the idle chatter.

One hour.

I allowed myself to take in Feyre at the back of the room only periodically.

It’s just one hour. That’s all she’ll see.

Now and then, she would stare back at me. No fear. No revulsion. But her face was as pale as my cousin’s. And her gaze drifted in and out over the crowds. Too like Amarantha’s crowds? Too much like the murderous whore looking back at her from my seat?

Just one hour. But Cassian had been wrong when he’d refuted that sixty minutes were enough. Every time I lost Feyre’s gaze, I knew it had been plenty.

For the remainder of that hour, only the darkness dancing and delighting at my fingertips kept me company.