Feyre was quiet through the remainder of dinner, though she tracked the conversation with steady discipline. When the others had finished fighting over plans for the following day (which was mostly just a power play between Azriel and Amren that Cassian and Mor had little pleasure moderating), I looked at Feyre and saw the droop of her eyelids, the sinking of her shoulders.

One look and she nodded. We promptly said our goodbyes and the night sky welcomed us into its fold.

She was quiet, softer than the velvet blankets that cradled the stars. I focused on the currents of wind that guided us down into the city where music ushered us home to keep from obsessing over what she might be thinking. Her thoughts and impressions of my family were dear to me, and I hated not knowing them, but even more than that I hated not knowing if she was okay, if this was too much or if she was ready to face the challenges that staying here would carry to her feet.

Thank the Mother for flying. In the silence between us, it almost felt normal to take to the skies and feel the wind lick my cheeks whilst Feyre was tucked safely in my arms. I could almost imagine for a moment that we weren’t just going back to a lodging with four walls and a roof, that it could be something more one day. A home, if she ever wanted it. And that when her hands clutched my tunic tighter, it was for warmth and love, not necessity.

It was a nice dream while it lasted.

We flew over the first of the four markets and snaked up the Sidra, music from the Rainbow sneaking down every street and alleyway to dance from one city corner to the next. I counted the measures to each song and when Feyre spoke, it startled me.

“Tonight - I felt you again,” she said. “Through the bond. Did I get past your shields?”

I couldn’t quite meet her gaze. Not yet. There was such a softness in the way she asked that I treaded carefully in my words.

“No,” I said. “This bond is... a living thing. An open channel between us, shaped by my powers, shaped... by what you needed when we made the bargain.”

When the Cauldron made us .

“I needed not to be dead when I agreed,” she said flatly.

“You needed not to be alone.”

Finally, I looked at her and Feyre appeared almost as broken by the honesty of my statement as I felt by how it horribly it damned me. She stared almost immediately at the oncoming cobblestone streets after our eyes met.

“I’m still learning how and why we can sometimes feel things the other doesn’t want known,” I said, and it was true. Bond or bargain, so much had become muddled. “So I don’t have an explanation for what you felt tonight.”

Silence, and then - an awful truth that was louder than any music or dance or light on any street in the city.

“You let Amarantha and the entire world think you rule and delight in a Court of Nightmares. It’s all a front - to keep what matters most safe.”

Finally. Such a small piece of quiet understanding I never thought she would gift me. It broke me to pieces to hear that much alone from her.

“I love my people, and my family. Do not thinking I wouldn’t become a monster to keep them protected.”

“You already did that Under the Mountain.”

A monster.

Not trapped in a prison, as Amren. Not chained and misconstrued by choice deep inside, as Azriel. Not truly evil either as those I’d defended against for centuries.

A monster inside and out.

From here to eternity .

And war was still to come.

“And I suspect I’ll have to do it again soon enough.”

The words came out dead - empty, as Feyre had once been. As if she could hear the toll it reaped upon me, Feyre asked, “What was the cost? Of keeping this place secret and free?”

I almost didn’t have a choice in the way we fell to the earth then. My body would have fallen whether I’d caught the downward wind and willed it or not.

Her emotion was genuine. A tender sympathy I hadn’t quite received from her thus far. But even as I’d spent so long craving it from her, thinking I might die without a taste of it, I couldn’t let myself take one ounce of it now. I didn’t deserve it. Not after -

“You know the cost already,” I said as I set her down and took her chin into my hands. I had to touch her. Had to feel her. The only real thing in my life. I had to know what it felt like just a little bit if we were going to go here tonight - now.

Whether she said the words aloud or shattered her mental shields with the force of the acknowledgement, I heard Feyre loud and clear as she answered me: Amarantha’s whore .

The Illyrian spat at my feet, the saliva mingling in the snow with the already falling drops of blood that splattered and fanned out like wilted rose petals in decay.

“Whore...”

“Whore...”

“WHORE...”

Feyre melted as I nodded confirmation. My fingers stiffened on her cheek and bless her, she didn’t pull away. Not one single inch.

“When she tricked me out of my powers,” I said, unable to stanch the flow ebbing out of me, “and left the scraps, it was still more than the others. And I decided to use it to tap into the mind of every Night Court citizen she captured, and anyone who might know the truth. I made a web between all of them, actively controlling their minds every second of every day, every decade, to forget about Velaris, to forget about Mor, and Amren, and Cassian, and Azriel. Amarantha wanted to know who was close to me - who to kill and torture. But my true court was here, ruling this city and the others. And I used the remainder of my power to shield them all from sight and sound. I had only enough for one city - one place. I chose the one that had been hidden from history already. I chose.” Me. This entire damnation was on no one’s shoulders but my own. “And now must live with the consequences of knowing there were more left outside who suffered. But for those here... anyone flying or traveling near Velaris would see nothing but barren rock, and if they tried to walk through it, they’d find themselves suddenly deciding otherwise. Sea travel and merchant trading were halted - sailors became farmers, working the earth around Velaris instead. And because my powers were focused on shielding them all, Feyre, I had very little to use against Amarantha. So I decided that to keep her from asking questions about the people who mattered, I would be her whore.”

I still remembered it - that moment my powers fled and I cast the spell to protect the city, told my family what had happened and what to do next and received panic in exchange for my decision. I’d never known sorrow until that night when I realized the chaos and fear my closest friends felt was going to be magnified a hundred fold in the morning when my sweet city of starlight woke up to a new world, a fractured world. A world that burned and destroyed.

The stars listened to me that night, but they were deaf in many other ways too.

Mor had been the loudest. Amren had had enough shrewd tact to understand the role she had to step in to that her emotions were more muted and whatever she felt was beyond me by the time it came through strong enough. I felt Cassian’s fire roar to life in agony and Azriel’s icy, bitter rage.

But Morrigan - her heart was the one that sang her grief aloud, had shoved my commands aside and said Come home, cousin and then I’ll come get you before the gates closed and I heard no more. There were many nights I found myself inside Amarantha and clung to those words and the knowledge that my city was safe because of them to keep me from going insane.

That, and my wings. The wings I showed no one under that rock for fifty years, save for -

I staggered back from Feyre and finally released her chin, staring at the sky. I needed to go back up there, I realized. But Feyre - she grabbed my wrist, wouldn’t let me go. Anchored me down to life and sound and music and all the things she herself couldn’t grab hold of yet. Maybe through each other, we could find a way to do that again.

“It’s a shame,” she said, her thumb brushing over my palm. “That others in Prythian don’t know. A shame that you let them think the worst.”

I released her, pommeled by the blow of her words because it didn’t matter what the world thought. Only her, her, her and she was already too much. Too kind, too forgiving, too everything after the hell I’d put her through to stand there and give me the only approval I really craved.

My wings beat great torrents against the chill winter air, already lifting me off the ground. “As long as the people who matter know the truth, I don’t care about the rest. Get some sleep.”

Feyre was a dot on the earth within seconds of my ascent.

---

I flew for hours. So long, I lost track. Loop after loop above the city counting the lights below, tracking the different melodies that mingled in the air when I dared dip low enough to hear them again.

The rest of the time I was too high up to remember what music sounded like. Even my own thoughts disappeared. The dinner, Jurian, the Prison, Amarantha, until...

A jolt blasted through me, a sort of frenzy shooting through my veins, like flying through wind in a storm that was built on emotions all clamoring over one another for supremacy until at long last... cold, miserable agony claimed victory.

It was worse than fear. It was sheer, undiluted terror. And it was precisely how Feyre was feeling in that exact moment.

Feyre .

And she was too far away.

Winnowing did not get me to her room fast enough. My wings had flown so vigorously at first hearing her, it took me a moment to snap them away and wink out of the sky, leaving the peace of the stars behind.

The scene that greeted me as I stumbled into her room was nothing short of disastrous. The flickering visions she’d sent unwittingly through the bond of her nightmares while in the Spring Court were nothing compared to how Feyre looked now.

The bed was burnt and shredded by the claws rippling from her hands, alight with flame that threatened to burn her alive in her bed. And the darkness. Oh, the beautiful mangled darkness. So cruel and thieving as it curled around her with the promise of decay. It consumed her.

Feyre must never have nightmared as such before in the Spring Court or else Tamlin would surely have done something… Looking at the mess she’d become atop the ash that remained for sheets, it was impossible to imagine he couldn’t have.

I winnowed from the doorway to the bed, the time running would have taken too long, and forced myself over her against her ceaseless thrashing and shook her, calling her name. Her shields were fully engaged blocking her mind from me, so I had to search out where I might slip through.

“FEYRE,” I screamed over and over, both aloud and into the recesses of her mind. A faint sliver appeared grasping, the smallest trace of light beaming through almost as if she heard me, as if the bond were there.

Together, we followed it - I to her and she to me. And all the while I shouted for her to come back to me. I never wanted to see her like this again.

Feyre’s body went utterly still. It scared me into oblivion until I realized that she was relaxing against my grip, not giving up or losing the fight.

“Open your eyes,” I said firmly, holding her slick face in my hands and she obeyed, staring up at me with the face of panic and a million hopeless questions.

Her first night. It was only her first night. Velaris had done nothing to soothe the aches disturbing her soul. And dinner - fuck, I’d put her through too much. And tomorrow... Cauldron it was only her first night.

My fault. This was all my fault.

“It was a dream,” I said with a hard pant. I repeated it over and over, my mind racked with endless sadness that she had to experience this torment as I did night after night. I knew what these nightmares were and never would I wish them upon her.

But she didn’t seem to really hear me, her eyes trailing up and down my exposed chest from where my tunic had torn open getting to her and taking in the tattoos inked into my skin, now equally drenched as hers in sweat. It felt like the first time she’d seen me. “A dream… A dream…” I repeated. A mantra. A beckoning home.

I knew it was coming before she did. The moment her eyes left me to take in the chaos that had erupted around her, that she had caused, I knew all too well from the countless nights she’d spent being ignored in the Spring Court how her body would react.

As Feyre ran to the bathing room and retched into the toilet, I stepped cautiously into the doorway behind her and watched my mate destroy herself. An intense longing to go to her, comfort her, filled me, replaced swiftly by an even greater fear that she wouldn’t let me.

But I would sure as hell try.

Her fingers hissed against the toilet, still trembling with fire and ash, too near her face as she vomited. Gently, with enough pressure to reassure her, I pulled her long, soft hair back from her face. She didn’t flinch, only heaved again. “Breathe,” I said, anchoring myself to the role of damage control so I wouldn’t slip with her. “Imagine them winking out like candles, one by one.”

Almost all at once and completely opposite to my suggestion that she take the flames on individually, Feyre heaved and intense light collided with the heat at her hands. All that was left in their place was darkness. And not the darkness from before that had threatened to cut her to the core of her being. This darkness was radiant, the darkness that soothed and comforted, erased the aches and pains, accepted the scars.

My darkness.

One day, I wanted to show her what that darkness meant.

“Well that’s one way to do it,” I said. She would never fail to surprise or impress me.

She sat silent. Too quiet. The purple rings under her eyes looked like a thin surface ready to give way to an endless hollow pit at any time. Beads of sweat rolled off of her and her chest still shook with each shudder her stomach forced into her throat.

I didn’t have to read her mind to know how alone she had felt since Tamlin took her back from Under the Mountain, how much these nights had wasted her. It made my bones rattle furiously for vengeance.

Mostly, it scared me, for how much that pain called to me as I watched her shudder and cling in spirit to the touches I applied along her back. She’d never had this connection. Nor had I. The pain, I had run from it for months, always making sure I slept away from the others. Seeing Feyre now... the pain scarred on her body recognized me as its own. I loved my family here in the Night Court, but none of them would ever understand as Feyre did how this felt.

And then I knew how I might save her - if only for tonight.

“I have this dream,” I said, my voice thick, trying to reach her so I could shoulder the weight and unwittingly unload my own, “where it’s not me stuck under her, but Cassian or Azriel. And she’s pinned their wings to the bed with spikes, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. She’s commanded me to watch, and I have no choice but to see how I failed them.”

Still, waiting... Feyre kept silent, taking her time to flush the toilet and consider my words and I feared that perhaps I had overstepped, that she was not ready or simply did not wish to hear any more of my story Under the Mountain. So I focused on the feel of her, willing what strength I could lend her into my grip on her skin, her hair.

“You never failed them,” Feyre spoke, her voice a quiet rasp I had to crane my ears to hear. A small stone atop a mound of similar pebbles that piled among one another, building downward to larger rocks and boulders weighing in on my heart, removed itself at those four simple words. But there were many stones and pebbles yet to go.

“I did… terrible things to ensure that.”

“So did I.”

She turned, her remorse forcing her back to the toilet, the same remorse I felt every second of every day. So I dared a little further and offered a long soothing caress up and down the length of her back. I savored the touch when she didn’t turn away, when I realized it was the first open touch free of inhibitions and doubts that she had allowed between us.

“The flames?” she asked when the last of her stomach had heaved itself up.

“Autumn Court.”

Feyre sat still for a very long time, unable to reply. Never did my hands stop their comforting trek up and down her spine, a spine that I could feel so painfully through her too thin back. Never did Feyre stop me from doing so. And when her head fell against the neighboring bathtub, her eyes drifting back off to sleep, too weary to wrestle with words and simple thought, even then I continued to touch her, to love her, wishing she knew how far that love was already burning for her.

I waited until she was deep asleep to be sure she would not fall into another fit.

I waited until she was deep asleep to let any tears fall.

Only then did I allow myself the privilege of scooping her fully into my arms and tucking her safely back into bed. I magicked the sheets so that nothing but pure, soft linens free of damage were there to envelope her. And then I simply stared, sitting at her side too scared to move away lest she fall further down the pit without me there to watch over her. The funny thing was that even if she fell, I would be there to catch her because I was already deep within that pit myself. The real fear, I knew, was that I wouldn’t be able to pull us back out.

But after I’d kept watch long enough and Feyre had not stirred beyond the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she drew breath, I supposed that I had gotten us out of the pit enough at least for tonight. I stroked my thumb along her cheek wondering when she’d next let me in so close as she had tonight without her usual reproach, if ever again she would, and left her to her dreams.

The nightmares I took with me until the dawn.

---

I made it back to my room before I turned around and walked right back out the door, stopping when I reached the study. I collapsed inside.

Moonlight poured through the large window panes. Everything was always so open and full of light in this house. I hated it when it made no difference.

I sank into the worn leather chair at my desk and let my face fall into my hands debating if I could put Feyre through this tomorrow - the Bone Carver. Mor and Cassian’s faces and mutual curse at dinner when I’d proposed the idea told me enough.

One day at a time .

That’s what I had told her. Looking out at my slumbering city through the window, it had to be enough. For them and for us.

I spent the better part of an hour running through the list of things to take care of come morning before I finally took what little sleep was left. Feyre didn’t utter a single sound when I paused outside her door listening.

And when the sun cracked the sky like an egg spilling yolk, my mind was still so tired.

I let Nuala and Cerridwen attend to Feyre when she woke and met her over breakfast at the dining table. A similar array of foods to what I’d presented during out brief weeks of the bargain was spread atop the table. Feyre picked at some fruit and, I suspected, forced some of the more filling breads and muffins down. The tea she drank in earnest.

She stopped and looked me up and down upon entering the room, taking in our identically fashioned attire for the day. Had it not been for how feeble she sounded, I would have been relieved when she asked, “High Lord and trend setter, hmm?”

“I was going for handsome, debonair warrior, what with the leather and all, but I suppose fashionable will have to do for now. Though I appreciate you thinking me fancy and forward thinking all the same, Feyre.”

She grumbled incoherently and took a seat. From beside my chair, I lifted a shaft of material housing about a dozen different knives and blades and slid them across the table along with bands and straps for Feyre to affix the weapons to herself with.

She raised a brow at me.

I shrugged. “I’m anything but trend setting without good accessories,” I said. Feyre rolled her eyes.

“Is it really - that bad?”

“Not if we stick to a few simple rules, it won’t be.”

“There are rules?”

“Only two,” I said, exchanging the daggers for a simpler knife at my plate, which I used to cut into my eggs. “One - never lie. Not ever. Not about anything no matter how simple or inconsequential you think it may be. He will know if you do and may likely damn us for it regardless of what he stands to lose in doing so.”

Feyre nodded slowly and took a long sip of the cup of tea she’d poured. “And the second?”

I took a bite of food to buy a bit of time. “Whatever the Carver gives you, Feyre, you will be asked to give in return. Whatever question you demand, he will want five of his own. You can not let him do this. He will likely play us against one another to confuse us and see how much he can trick us into giving, but that doesn’t help us. His goal is to ascertain as much information as possible for as little a cost to himself. The longer he keeps us giving at no risk to him, the longer he keeps us there and remains entertained. Five minutes of our time will be enough to satisfy him for months, maybe even years, and our visit will likely take much longer than that.”

“So you want me to - what? Interrogate him?”

“After a fashion - yes. No matter what happens, you have the right to demand payment of him, Feyre. If he gets a question, so too do you. Set the rules from the start and... we should be absolutely fine.”

She nodded and continued eating, not saying another word. I didn’t know if that was good or bad, so I waited until she’d finished eating, helped her strap the band of knives to her body, and took us on a brief detour to the study before departing.

“Just one more little task before we leave,” I said.

“Don’t tell me you have helmets coming, too. I’m not really a hat person.”

I snorted. “I’ll keep that in mind come the next Solstice. Just a quick letter to that merry Lord of Summer and we can be off.” I pulled paper and ink out of the desk drawer, including an early draft I’d written after her first visit to the Night Court.

“The Summer Court... Tarquin?”

“The one and only, it would seem.”

Even if Cresseida certainly thought otherwise. I was not looking forward to seeing her .

“Why are you writing to Tarquin?”

“Always so curious, you are.” I scribbled the last few sentences and looked the letter over to be sure it was right and winked it off to Amren for review. She would send it when it was ready. Feyre waited patiently seeming to understand I wasn’t just ignoring her.

“I want to visit the Summer Court.”

Feyre’s head leaned to one side. “And why exactly do you need to visit the Summer Court?”

“ We need to visit for improving diplomatic relations with them. And it doesn’t hurt that their beaches are particularly lovely this time of year.”

Feyre glowered. “Their beaches are lovely every time of year. It’s always summer there.”

The smirk slid onto my face before I could help myself.

“True, but just think how lovely you’d look in a strappy little beach number running toward the water.”

Feyre hugged herself tightly as if she thought she’d look anything but lovely half-naked on a beach. “Can we just - get on with it.”

I stood up from my desk and stepped around it, offering Feyre my hand. The brief pickup in mood disappeared entirely.

“Ready?”

Her touch was her only reply.

Into the wind and smoke we flew, landing in a grassy hillside with the sea falling off steep cliffs to one side and a towering fortitude of mountain and rock to the other. Feyre’s eyes snapped to that pillar of stone at once and her forehead creased. All around us, the skies were grey and the air stale.

“Where are we?” she asked.

I looked up at that mountain.

Hell , I thought.

“On an island in the heart of the Western Isles,” I said instead. “And that,” I pointed to the dungeon before us, “is the Prison.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“The rock is the Prison. And inside it are the foulest, most dangerous creatures and criminals you can imagine.”

The silence around us was palpable as we stared at that behemoth - and waited for Feyre to say something. She never did.

“This place was made before High Lords existed. Before Prythian was Prythian. Some of the inmates remember those days. Remember a time when it was Mor’s family, not mine, that ruled the North.”

Ancient. Powerful. And corrupted.

That was the beast before us. A slumbering dragon that would never wake, but would always sleep with one eye open hoping for the day that might change. If what I suspected of the Cauldron and Hybern’s plans came true, that might be an additional problem we would have to face.

“Why won’t Amren go in here?” Feyre asked.

“Because she was once a prisoner.”

“Not in that body, I take it.”

No, not one bit.

It had been horrific the day she’d been Made. The day she’d been simultaneously freed and shackled for all eternity. A beast birthed with no other purpose but to suffer.

I smiled at what she might do - should the magic be strong enough to break this prison, it would break her free too and then the world would see her for what she really was.

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

Feyre shivered. Rightfully so.

I took a deep breath of the mountain air, but even with the sea churning salt into the wind, it remained stagnant and bland. There was nothing invigorating about this island save the climb, and that was really more a punishment than a help.

“The hike will get your blood warming,” I cautioned Feyre. I found her rigid and unmoving as she stared at the Prison. My soul trembled, worried. “Since we can’t winnow inside or fly to the entrance - the wards demand that visitors walk in. The long way.”

A mistake. A mistake - this is all a mistake.

For Prythian. For Velaris-

She’s dying and you brought her here.

For Mor. For Cassian. Azriel. Amren.

Feyre -

“I-” Feyre choked, her voice and body shaking underneath her cold, pale skin. Even with her leathers on, I felt like I could see the bones sticking through them that the Carver would smell and yearn to lick before he could one day carve them up.

The mountain.

The cursed damned mountain. Everywhere we looked, this court held a prison to shove us back under. Nightmares at home. Cells and dungeons in the hills. My court was built to confine and torment her.

For Feyre. For yourself.

For your crown and all the good that is left in the world.

I stepped as close as I dared without worrying she’d feel trapped, and said gently next to her, trying to hold her within the steadiness of my voice, “It helps the panic to remind myself that I got out. That we all got out.”

“Barely,” Feyre said. Her chest rose up in a great swell and held for far too long. I didn’t need her shields down to feel her anxiety attacking her. I felt it myself. My court alone kept me grounded. As it had for fifty years. As it would for centuries more until the day I released my last breath.

“We got out,” I reassured her. “And it might happen again if we don’t go inside.”

Feyre stared at the ground hard - stared, and cracked. I barely heard her voice above the wind.

“Please,” she said and in her mind and in her heart, I think it was a sob.

I grabbed her hand and winnowed immediately. It was dinner before I stood from outside her room where she’d slept since our return and went to visit the firedrake.