Chapter Text
The table was empty. Feyre hovered just outside the library in the Moonstone Palace, staring at the spot that until now had unfailingly held Rhys’s latest, obnoxious writing lessons: Rhysand is the most handsome High Lord or Rhysand is the most cunning High Lord. Even when he’d been absent on business, he’d always left her something.
But now—nothing.
Debating with herself whether to go back to her room, she ultimately huffed, squared her shoulders, and took her seat. She’d been so tired, lately, so tired, but after days of rest in her room, she’d finally grown—bored, she supposed. And she didn’t need Rhys to help her with her reading and writing, when the books and paper were all right here for her. She’d been practicing on her own for weeks, now.
She took a spare sheet of paper and pulled it to her. Biting her lip, she thought carefully for a few long moments, then began to draw letters on the page. It was slow going, her hand clumsy with the unfamiliar movements, but she kept at it, repeating the line she’d chosen over and over.
A loud crash shattered her concentration.
She jumped at the noise, startled, and turned in her seat to see what had happened. The clatter was followed by a much softer, “Ow. Fuck.” And then Rhys emerged into the hall, a hand rubbing at his thigh and a thunderous expression on his face.
She hadn’t realized he was back from his work elsewhere. Reluctantly, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head, as if dismissing the question. She could almost see him attempting to cover up his distemper with his usual, unflappable armor. When a pale imitation of his usual smirk was in place, he said, “I see you started without me, Feyre darling.”
The pet name dispelled any softening she’d felt towards him. “I can work just fine on my own without your annoying little messages,” she snapped.
He brushed by her chair and slumped into the seat across from her, his elbow resting on the table and his fingers combing through his blue-black hair. Now that he was closer, she noticed a smudge of blue under his eyes and patches of rosy-pink color across his cheeks. Sweat had beaded on his brow.
“It’s good to see you up,” he said, more sincerely.
She ignored him, casting her eyes back down on her paper, as if to pretend she hadn’t just been studying his face.
He rubbed at his temples before fisting his hand back into his hair and examining her paper as well. “Rhys is the most arrogant High Lord,” he read aloud.
A smirk lifted at her lips.
“You missed an ‘r’ in arrogant,” he said. “It’s ‘a-r-r-o’.”
The smirk fell away as she looked down at her paper. “Oh.”
“Otherwise, well done. And your penmanship is improving.”
She sneered at him, even as she carefully added the second ‘r’ into the word on each line.
“Shield,” he ordered.
The walls of adamant were already up when his claws tapped at the barrier of her mind. He gave her a nod of approval as his mental tendrils retreated. “Very good. All that practice is paying off. You won’t need me at all soon.”
Ice infused her voice as she hissed, “I’ve never needed you.”
“Are you really so unhappy here?” It was meant to be casual, maybe even teasing, but she could hear a pained undertone beneath the question. His mask was paper thin today. Or perhaps she was growing to know him better?
She stared at him, mentally spiraling. She couldn’t tell him the truth—could hardly bear to admit it even to herself—but her time at the Night Court had become an increasingly welcome escape. No expectations, no decisions, no entertaining; just rest, and quiet, and peace. Even thinking it felt like a betrayal.
Instead of voicing any of that complexity, she snapped, “You want to know if I’m enjoying captivity?”
“You agreed to come here,” he said, softly.
“Under duress. I was going to die; I would have given you anything in the moment. Only a monster would hold me to those terms.”
He flinched. She could have sworn his bloodshot eyes went a little damp, and she had to work hard to fight down the guilt that threatened. Swallowing, he gave her a searching look.
“Do you want me to take you home?” He sounded so sincere, so soft, that dark mask of his suddenly nowhere to be seen. He would take her, she realized, at the same time she realized he would have taken her at any point since she’d arrived in the Night Court if she’d insisted.
Did she want to go back early? Did she really want him to let her out of this bargain, and give up the peace and quiet of this mountain top? The real answer was too terrible, too selfish to voice.
Out loud, she said, “I love Tamlin.”
It wasn’t any kind of answer to his question, but he didn’t call her on it.
“I know.” He looked pained. The fingers of the hand not tangled in his hair rubbed at his eyelids like they were hurting him. “I know you do.”
A moment of quiet hung between them. She studied him again, observing his pallor and his fever-flush. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine.”
He pushed himself up from his seat as if to prove his point, took an unsteady step, and then promptly crumpled to the floor. A terrible thud sounded when his head made contact with the hard marble.
She froze in place, stunned, staring down at him. His chest rose and fell, she noted with relief. But he didn’t so much as twitch.
“Rhys?” Finally shaking off her shocked immobility, she pushed herself from her seat and knelt beside him. Still no movement.
Shit.
She looked behind her, hoping help would magically appear. No one did. She tried shaking him. “Rhys. Rhys!”
Nothing.
“Please, come on. Wake up.” She couldn’t carry him, and she didn’t know how to summon anyone else to her aid. Focusing, she tried shouting the words down that bond between them at the same time she called aloud, “Rhys! Wake up!”
His eyelids fluttered at last.
Relief coursed through her. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” he mumbled agreeably, a touch delirious.
“Come on, wake up,” she urged.
“What?” The word was slurred as he blinked blearily up at her.
“You fainted.”
“I’m fine,” he said again.
“Yes, that’s what you said right before you fainted.”
He shook his head as if to banish the fogginess and pushed himself up to his hands and knees. “I got a little dizzy,” he said. “That’s all.”
“That was more than a little dizzy,” she countered. Her mind went back to minutes before, when she’d first heard him approaching. “Is this what happened in the hall, too? Did you get dizzy and knock into something?”
“No.”
Despite the situation, she had to hide a smile; his stubborn streak could rival hers.
His face drained of color when he pushed himself upright to his knees. He looked so woozy she could almost see the stars spinning around his head.
“Mother above, Rhys,” she muttered, reaching out to steady him. “You look like you’re about to pass out again.”
“Sorry.” He blinked, hard, several times, then sniffled and conjured a little smile for her. “I’m fine. Really.”
Shaking her head, she inched closer and maneuvered her shoulder under his arm to support him. His scent, citrus and salt, filled her nose. “Easy does it. Let’s get you to bed.”
He groaned as she urged him fully upright. With clear effort, he wrestled an attempt at a leer back onto his face as he purred, “Why, Feyre darling, I thought you’d never ask.”
She smacked him on the chest with the arm not wrapped around him, then reached back to anchor his arm further around her shoulders, holding his wrist lightly. “Prick.” The moniker came out oddly affectionate.
They were into the hall when he said, half panting from the strain of walking, “I could—I could still bring you, you know. If you want to go home.”
She snorted. “I think I’ll hold off on traveling though the fabric of the world with you, at least until you can walk a straight line unassisted.”
“Someone else could take you, then,” he said, insistent.
“My week isn’t up.”
“You’re not trapped here. I’m not a monster,” he said. Her blow had landed hard, then; harder perhaps than she’d meant it to. Almost to himself, he added, “I’m not like her.”
Her.
She shivered even though he hadn’t said the name. He knew, maybe better than anyone else, why it mattered to her to know she wasn’t stuck. It probably mattered to him just as much, knowing he was free, unconfined. Almost fifty years he’d languished under that mountain to her mere three months.
The things that had been done to him in that time, all those awful things: I was tortured and beaten and fucked, he’d confided in her earlier in the week; Amarantha’s whore, Lucien hissed in her memory.
She could still see Rhys picking up that ash dagger and surging for Amarantha’s throat, when no one else had done anything to help her, not even Tamlin. Could still see the way he’d crumpled under Amarantha’s power, hurt and bleeding. The way he’d tried, even then, to get back up and defend her, screaming her name like he cared.
No. He wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t anything like the creature that had held them both, hurt them both.
Giving his back a gentle rub, she said only, “I know that. I know you’re nothing like her.”
He didn’t answer.
After struggling in silence for some minutes, she adjusted his arm more securely around her shoulders and asked, a little breathless, “How much farther is your room?” Cauldron boil her, but he was heavy. Or maybe she was just weak. All that weight she’d lost, even the few days of three solid meals here hadn’t undone her boney, thin frame.
His throat bobbed. “Not—too much farther.”
His knees wobbled. He was sagging against her, barely holding any of his own weight as they approached the stairs. They were both panting hard as they went down, one step after another. She grunted, struggling to keep him upright, as he staggered from the bottom steps towards a wall and braced himself, his palms pressed to the wall and head bowed.
Panting in relief as he supported himself against the wall, she rolled her shoulders and examined him. His complexion had turned an unpleasant color. His throat bobbed again with a thick, audible swallow. Nausea, she understood without having to ask him; intense nausea from the look of him.
“Need the bathing room?” she asked.
He swallowed again. “No.”
“You sure?” She touched his back gently. “You might feel better if you let yourself be sick.”
“I—I think I’ll be all right once I lie down.”
“All right,” she said. Her hand traced down his spine, her touch light. “When you’re ready, we’ll get you to your room.”
“Thanks,” he said hoarsely.
After a few minutes of deep breathing, he pushed away from the wall. His arm wrapped around her shoulders again, but the short break seemed to have left him more capable of supporting his own weight.
Finally, well past her room and towards the end of the seemingly endless hallway, he turned into a set of rooms. They were beautiful, ornately decorated, but seemed to lack a personal touch, much like his room Under the Mountain. He didn’t spend much time here, she sensed.
His arm unwound from her shoulders as he pitched himself face first onto the massive bed. She looked at him, limp, his boots still on, shivering atop the blankets in the warm room. She couldn’t say why the picture made her heart squeeze as it did.
Sighing through her nose, she knelt down and began to work at his laces. One boot slid free from his foot, then the other. “Jacket,” she said, when his boots were off.
He moaned, but adjusted to start unbuttoning the jacket, working his way down from his throat to his chest. When the jacket was loose, he struggled, trying to pull his arms out. She leaned over and helped guide him until he was clad in only his soft cotton undershirt, the black tattoos she’d seen glimpses of before peeking out around the lower cut neckline.
Next she urged him to roll over, wrestling the blankets from beneath him to tuck him in more properly. Her hand went to his brow once he was settled, the way she’d seen Nesta test Elain’s temperature when she was poorly.
Burning up, she determined.
“Should I call for someone?” she asked. “Mor? Or maybe a healer?”
“Hm?” He was drifting off.
“You’re feverish. I could call for someone, if you tell me how?”
“No.”
“You’re sure? No one?” He’d always been alone Under the Mountain, but surely here, in his own home, someone would care to know he was in this state. Mor, at least, had seemed close to him. “You’re really sick, Rhys.”
He blinked up at her. “Will you stay?”
“Me?”
“Mm.”
“What can I do?” She had no skills at healing, and she had never cared for anyone before, not like this. She wasn’t even doing a very good job of looking after herself these days, if she was being honest.
“Read to me?” he asked.
She was about to snap at him again, but bit it back at the last moment when she realized it hadn’t been a jab at her illiteracy. He really did want her to read to him. And she had been improving; she’d even made an attempt on a book from the Spring Court’s library while she’d been home. Still, she warned, “It’s not going to be very good. Or very fast.”
He nodded. “That’s all right. All you need is practice, and we didn’t get to your lesson properly.”
Leather-bound books decorated his nightstand, held in place by massive, onyx bookends carved to look like fearsome creatures. She ran her fingers over the spines, considering, anxiety starting in her gut at the size of each one. Even the titles seems impenetrable.
“Not those.” He’d noticed where her attention had turned and was shaking his head. His hand wormed out from the covers to point across the room. “Pick one of the ones over there, in the stack on the bookshelf.”
She crossed over and examined the small stack of books on the second shelf. Most of the books lining the shelves were similar to the ones on Rhys’s nightstand—leather-bound with long, difficult titles she couldn’t begin to sound out; some may have been in an entirely different language. But the ones pulled out and stacked were much shorter than the others, designed, from the look of them, for a beginning reader, with cartoonish illustrations decorating the covers.
Anger washed over her. “These are children’s books.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
Children’s books he’d clearly gathered to give to her. “I’m not a complete idiot, you know. And I’m not a child.”
“They were my favorites, when I was young. I used to read them over and over. And I thought—I thought the artwork might help you make sense of the stories, get a little more enjoyment out of them, while you’re still working on recognizing words.”
“Oh.” Actually, that was—rather thoughtful. She picked up the top book in the pile and flipped through the pages. Characters danced in rapid succession as she flipped, and she saw glimpses of a dragon breathing fire towards the end. Holding it up to him, she asked, “How about this one?”
“That one’s the best,” he said, giving her a sleepy smile.
She slid the chair from his desk closer to the bed and settled beside him, opening the book to the first page. The words swam for a moment, but her eyes settled on a comically drawn duck in the corner. She forced herself to be calm, to focus, and began to sound out the words in the first sentence. They were all short, all relatively recognizable: “If it had not been for the duck, none of this would have happened.”
Rhys flipped onto his side while she read, snuggling into his pillows as he listened.
*
“Isn’t this cozy?”
Mor’s chipper voice made Feyre nearly jump out of her seat. She was on the second book in the pile, and fully immersed in a world with an inept ruler whose wishes were resulting in increasingly hilarious disasters as he tried to use the powers of cursed object for good.
Rhys had been drooling on his pillow, having fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of the first story. She hadn’t had the heart to leave him, even then. The sound of Mor’s voice had him jolting awake as well, and glaring at his cousin.
“What do you want?”
Mor swept into the room and seated herself on Rhys’s bed.
“Madja’s on her way, as requested.” Of course, his gift, Feyre realized—no wonder he hadn’t needed her to call anyone for him. “She should be here any minute. Azriel’s bringing her.”
Mor’s hand went to his brow in an easy, familiar gesture, and she hissed at the heat coming off him. She didn’t comment on his temperature, though, and only added, “She’s pissed, just so you know.”
Rhys pushed Mor away. “Why?”
“She told you to stay on bed rest until you were fully recovered. In your own bed.”
“Whose bed do you call this?”
Mor’s eyes slid to Feyre briefly. “You know what I mean.”
Feyre frowned, turning over the curious information. Did Rhys have another room, then? Another home, perhaps, somewhere else? Somewhere secret?
Instead of pushing, Feyre asked, “What were you recovering from?”
Mor shared a look with Rhys, a half second of hesitation, before she answered, “There’s a nasty fever going around in the Illyrian camps. Rhys picked it up last time he visited. And he was supposed to stay put in his bed until the fever completely disappeared.”
“It had disappeared,” he grumbled. “And I had things to do.”
“Maidens to kidnap?” Mor teased, winking at Feyre.
“Shut up,” he snapped.
“Not very friendly,” Mor said. “I’m only teasing.”
But she gave his arm an affectionate rub and smiled at Feyre again, eyes flicking down to the book still held loosely in Feyre’s hands. Mor raised her brows like they were sharing a secret.
Feyre frowned down at the book. Defensive for no real reason, she said, “He wanted company. And I’m working on my reading anyway.”
“Of course,” Mor said. Her knowing grin made Feyre bristle further.
Before she could say anything more, though, an older female appeared in the entryway, huffing as she hauled a black leather bag with her into the room. Madja, Feyre supposed.
“I told you not to tax yourself, High Lord,” Madja tutted. “As if winnowing all the way to the Spring Court when you were barely back on your feet wasn’t bad enough, then I hear you traipsed off to oversee the camps again this week, and then drained yourself further in the Court of Nightmares just now? It’s no wonder you collapsed.”
“Keir was forgetting his place,” Rhys said darkly. “He needed a reminder.”
Mor’s expression turned serious and a little distant. Her hand clutched at Rhys’s, squeezing lightly. Gratitude, Feyre recognized. Whatever Rhys had done earlier, it had been for Mor’s benefit.
“And your little jaunt to the Spring Court?” Madja pressed.
“Couldn’t wait either. I made a binding agreement with Feyre darling to deliver her to the Night Court once a month.”
But that could have waited, Feyre thought. Neither of them had made any promises about which week in the month she would spend in the Night Court. She’d been floundering, though, desperate for an escape after that disastrous tithe. Had he sensed that? Risked his health for her benefit?
“Your fever is back to dangerous levels,” Madja said. “You’ll need complete rest. I mean it this time.”
He rolled his eyes.
“If you’d rather be confined—” Madja paused, eyes flickering to Feyre “—elsewhere, you should decide that now. Azriel came along to escort you, if you wish, given Mor is busy with other duties.”
Rhys pushed up on his elbows and fixed his eyes on the doorway. Feyre followed his gaze, and started when she noticed a winged male hovering in the shadows just outside the room. A faint blue glow was visible beneath the deep shadows encircling him.
“Get away, Az,” Rhys barked. “You can’t be near me. And tell Cassian to stay away, too, while you’re at it.”
“I’m a safe enough distance,” Azriel said calmly.
“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t be if you were carrying me.”
Azriel said, “This fever wouldn’t be as dangerous for me, Rhys. Or for Cass.”
“You don’t know that,” Rhys snapped.
“We just thought we might have more success with keeping you in bed if you were home.” Azriel tilted his head, eyes zeroing on Feyre. “Though perhaps the Moonstone Palace has it’s—benefits.”
“Bastard,” Rhys grumbled, collapsing back against his pillows.
The slightest hint of a smile played at Azriel’s lips.
Madja pressed, in a no-nonsense way, “Which is it to be, High Lord? Here or there?”
“I’d rather not be confined in the first place,” Rhys said.
Mor snorted. “Oh, well, fine then. Go ahead, get up, run around like an idiot. Az, tell them to start preparing a pyre. We haven’t had a good funeral in centuries.”
Azriel gave a nod full of mock solemnity. “A fitting end for the most powerful High Lord in history—felled by his own stubbornness.”
“It’s not that grim,” Rhys said. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
Mor punched him lightly on the arm. “Madja says it is. And I’ll take her medical opinion over yours any day.”
“I’ve worked through far worse,” Rhys huffed.
Mor retorted, “Not when we were around to stop you.”
Azriel stepped forward, a show of strength as much as support for Mor’s statement. “And we’re here now.”
Rhys softened a little. “I know. I appreciate it. I just—I don’t need coddling. Especially not from my two Illyrian watchdogs. I’ll get some rest, and shake the last of this fever off before you know it.”
“Of course, no coddling.” Mor grinned at him. “We’ll just leave Feyre to read you your bedtime stories in peace.”
“It’s a reading lesson,” Rhys hissed.
“Yes, you looked very active in teaching, drooling on your pillow.”
Feyre could have sworn she felt the very foundations of the house rattling with Rhys’s annoyance. Mor looked utterly unperturbed, even when he ordered, “Get out. All of you.”
Mor swept out with the same regal air as when she’d entered, herding Azriel with her. With a last wink at Feyre from the hall, she whispered loudly, “He’s a big baby, really. Yell if you need us.”
Madja fussed for several more minutes despite Rhys’s demand. He was plied with multiple potions before the female deemed him safe to leave. The way the healer handled him, Feyre could easily picture them when Rhys was much smaller, a disagreeable child raging at being kept in bed. At last, Madja packed up her bag with her supplies and ordered again, “Complete bed rest.”
Rhys waved the healer off only when she’d followed the same path as the others, Feyre noted with amusement.
The room seemed oddly quiet without the hectic presence of the three visitors. Feyre shifted in her seat, unsure what to do. Rhys was boneless against his pillows, drained of energy from the encounter. His pallor was on par with how she’d first seen him, after fifty years without sunlight. He looked tired and weak, in a way that made her unsure he’d want her to stay.
“Should I go, too? So you can get some rest?”
He rolled his head on the pillow to look at her. “Do you want to go?”
She felt herself shake her head without consciously deciding to do so.
A smile twitched at Rhys’s lips. “Then I’d like you to stay.”
She shifted again. “Mor wasn’t with you Under the Mountain. Neither were the other two, Madja and Azriel. Or that other male you mentioned—Cassian.”
“No,” he said, “They weren’t.”
“Where were they?”
“Somewhere—better. Safer.” He didn’t elaborate.
She bit her lip, about to enter dangerous territory. “You said you worked through worse. Was it with—?” She let the silence fill in the name for her.
“Yes.”
“Doing—?” Amarantha’s whore echoed in her mind again.
“Yes.” The word was clipped.
Disgust washed over her.
Rhys seemed to sense her reaction, because he added, softer, “She never much cared for my comfort, or my pleasure, so long as I was servicing her. But it wasn’t so bad. Others had it far worse than I did.”
She wasn’t so sure that was true. To have his body used like that, with no regard to his own feelings, or even his illnesses, and for fifty years? She shuddered.
“Can you read again?” he asked.
The dark circles under his eyes seemed more pronounced. She recalled the healer’s demand that he rest, and said, “Maybe you should try to sleep for a while instead.”
He yawned. Settling into the pillows again, he said, “It helps me sleep, hearing your voice.”
Did he have nightmares too? she wondered. Rhys had certainly seen and endured enough horrors to warrant some sleepless nights of his own. Maybe a familiar voice in the darkness really would help?
She opened the book to where she’d left off and began to read again.
*
Fae lights in the corners of the room allowed her to continue reading after the sun had set. Rhys had slumbered for most of the afternoon, waking on and off to listen to her reading. He’d fallen asleep again several hours ago and had remained insensible to the world since.
She’d stopped reading aloud when it was clear he’d fallen into a deeper sleep than his usual doze. Her voice had been going on her, anyways, fading from the sudden usage after weeks of barely speaking at all.
But she didn’t leave. That quiet peace of her room seemed lonely now in comparison, and she found the soft rhythm of snores almost soothing. So instead, she’d selected some more books from his shelf, somewhat longer this time, and read them quietly to herself, losing herself in the stories. The pictures helped, the art a familiar crutch to lean on when unfamiliar words danced and swayed on her, but the more she practiced, the less she felt she needed it. The words alone began to form the pictures in her head.
A thrilling chapter was unfolding when she heard a small, muffled sound of discomfort come from the bed. “Rhys?” she asked.
He twitched lightly, his eyes closed and moving rapidly beneath his lids. Sweat was lining his pallid forehead. Nightmare, she recognized.
Unsure what to do, she reached out, laying her hand on his arm. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “You’re dreaming. That’s all.”
Darkness seemed to leak from him, spilling onto the floor like a dense, black fog and swirling around her feet. She set her book aside and adjusted, petting his forehead as well, brushing back his sweat-soaked hair. “It’s all right, Rhys,” she tried again.
A strangled scream came out of him, and he suddenly jerked awake. He twisted away from her hands, breathing rapid, and she pulled away quickly. She could imagine whose hands he thought they were.
A few harsh breaths, and he blinked, seeming to focus on her. “Feyre?”
“It’s me,” she confirmed.
He pushed himself up, his legs sliding out from the blankets.
“Hey,” she said, trying to halt his progress. “You’re supposed to stay in bed.”
He shook his head, gesturing towards the bathing room.
Ah. She’d had the same reaction countless times to her own dreams. Slipping an arm under his shoulder, she helped him out of bed. He stumbled his way towards the bathing room, wrenching away from her to throw himself down in front of the toilet.
She winced while he was sick. Perhaps he’d want privacy, she considered, letting her eyes wander over the massive bathing pool stretching out over the mountaintop and the marble onyx countertops gleaming in the moonlight. Then again, how many times had she endured this, wishing someone would help her?
Steeling herself, she crossed behind him to the stack of soft, clean linens and ran one under the sink. After wringing it out, she knelt beside him and laid the cool, damp cloth across his neck. “Deep breaths,” she said.
He gasped and vomited again. Then again, weaker. When the heaving finally stopped, he spit into the water, then reached up to flush the mess away. He remained hunched over, shaking.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
“No.”
Fair enough. She never wanted to, either. “Think you can make it back to bed?”
He pushed himself up from the toilet a little, sucking in a breath through his nose. Pulling the cloth from his neck, he wiped his face with it before tossing it aside. “I don’t want to go back to bed.”
“Rhys—”
“Help me outside? Please?”
The healer’s insistent demand that he remain on strict bedrest flashed through her mind again. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
“I’ll rest,” he said, pleading. “I will. But I need—I need some air. I need to be outside.”
He needed to know he wasn’t trapped Under the Mountain with Amarantha, she understood. “Ok,” she agreed. “Come on. Lean on me.”
Together, slowly, they staggered to the balcony outside his rooms. She helped him into a chair, then quickly retreated to the bedroom to collect his duvet. When she returned, she tucked it around him carefully.
His legs were stretched out before him, his head lolling back to look up at the clear night sky above him. His breathing seemed far more even than it had been in the bathing room.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yes.” He rolled his head towards her. “Thank you.”
“I understand. Sometimes after my nightmares, all I want is to see the sky, too,” she confided.
“What do you dream about?” he asked. When she hesitated, he added, “How about a dream for a dream?”
She considered. It would be nice, perhaps, to tell someone who would really understand. “Sometimes it’s her killing me. Sometimes it’s that horrible cell. Sometimes it’s things that didn’t even happen—Tamlin dying, me failing to come up with the answer to the riddle. But mostly it’s when I did it—when I hurt those two young Fae.”
He nodded, not an ounce of judgement in his face. “For me, it’s almost always her bedroom. Her on top of me, using me. The worst ones are the ones that didn’t happen—my friends lying in my place, suffering my punishments.”
“Is that what you dreamt of tonight?”
“No.” His eyes focused on her, drinking her in. “Tonight, I dreamt of you dying.”
Her? That’s what had caused that reaction? “Well, I’m here, now. I’m fine.”
“Are you? Really?”
She wasn’t entirely sure she was ready for such a direct question. Deflecting, she asked, “Aren’t you?”
His expression went distant, considering. “Not really. Sometimes—sometimes I feel like I’m falling apart.”
She inhaled, unprepared for such a real, raw answer. “Oh,” she said, then cringed at her clumsy callousness.
He continued, unphased, “But I feel like, if I let myself fall, let myself get dragged down to that dark pit, she wins. So I pick myself back up.”
“How?” The word slipped out.
“Mor helps. And my other friends. Knowing I have people around me who would fight for me. That keeps me fighting.”
She thought again of that day, those terrible last moments of her humanity: Rhys running at Amarantha, lying on the ground, bleeding—all for her. And even before that, all those times he’d annoyed her, provoked her, all to keep her angry, keep her fighting.
“Thank you,” she said. Realizing he’d have no idea what she was talking about, she added, “For fighting for me.” She’d tried thanking him before for all he’d done, right after everything had happened, but he hadn’t really accepted it.
“It was the least I could do, for all you were sacrificing. I know it was for Tamlin, but—we all benefited.”
“You did more than anyone else did.” More than even Tamlin had attempted.
“Well—” He trailed off into silence. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was embarrassed.
In the quiet between them, she reached out, palm open, and he slipped his hand into hers. Their fingers tangled together as they both gazed up at the stars in companionable silence.