Drunk.

I was so drunk.

I hadn’t been that wasted that quickly in... some time. Not even after Feyre’s first visit to the Night Court. And with a looming trip to the Mortal Realms in the morning, there were considerable consequences to my decision.

Though I didn’t regret the night. It was infinitely better than the one I would have had alone in my townhouse bedroom fighting sleep and dreams and terror. My bones still shook with anxiety born of the visions Ianthe’s memory had brought to mind.

Mor made quick work of Cassian and Azriel and within half an hour of me finding her on the sofa, we were passing through the market squares and heading into one of our usual taverns. The liquor flowed steady and abundant with the close of the door behind us.

And for a time, it made me forget.

But not so fast that I couldn’t try to persuade Mor to go with us in the morning. To which she continually objected, Cassian aiding her along while Az kept silent watch on her other side.

It wasn’t that I didn’t understand her objection. I understood to a degree. We’d fought that war together. I would not have wanted to go had I been in her shoes, but I was selfish. Having Mor near when dealing with Feyre was an easy crutch to lean on that helped abate some of the tension I felt ahead of our time spent together.

I relented in the end, much to my chagrin. Cassian and Mor knew it, but they helped me plan the following day out before we would be too drunk to do it. And then Azriel casually suggested Ritas, knowing Mor wanted to go, and it was all downhill from there.

She didn’t even give him a chance to sit down first before she’d swept him into a fast paced beat upon entering the crowded dance hall. Cassian sat with me at the bar watching the pair of them spin. Music thrummed thoughtfully in and out our ears as the bar keep slid us two drinks.

“What?” I looked over at Cassian and found him watching me, face drawn up in amused curiosity. He waited while I looked at Mor and Az on the floor a second longer. “She’s not coming. So you might as well drop it.”

I squinted, shaking him off. “I know. I wish she would reconsider, but I won’t force her.”

“Then - what is it?”

I drew a long breath. He and I hadn’t spoken since, since...

“You really think she might sleep with me one day?” Cassian’s brow rose slightly. A knot tied somewhere south of my abdomen. “Not now obviously, but…”

“Who - Feyre?”

I swallowed. Cassian howled.

“How many times have you thought about her naked?” Cassian asked after he’d calmed down.

Again, I didn’t answer.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he chuckled. “Well for your sake, you better hope she does sleep with you eventually. Otherwise, you’re in for one hell of an eternity.”

I groaned and cocked my head back. And felt Cass’s broad, calloused hand grip my shoulder. He wore none of his leathers tonight. Neither did Az. Just a simple dark green tunic and casual trousers.

“Will you relax?” He grinned at me ear to ear. “It’s not so bad to be eternally fucked, you know.”

I gave him a reproachful eye. “You’re one to talk, brother.” He didn’t deny it. I held out my glass. “Here’s to being eternally fucked,” I offered.

Cass snorted and clinked his glass with mine. “Cheers.”

---

I didn’t tell Feyre until morning that lack of word from Tarquin meant we would venture into the Mortal Realms to meet her family. And by telling her, I meant I sent Mor who woke up and landed on our doorstep bright and early anyway looking to chat.

Mor came in and I went out with a pounding headache, meeting Azriel and Cassian who wanted nothing to do with me so early nor I with them.

“You look like shit,” Cassian said over his coffee as I flew inside the House of Wind. He hadn’t even looked up at me, dressed in my leathers, my sword strapped to my back. My brothers, I knew, would leave dressed in a similar fashion.

“Not half as much as you do,” Azriel said quietly, sipping his own mug of tea steeped with cinnamon and honey.

Cassian groaned, his chair creaking as he leaned back in it. “Ugh, I hate you fucking pricks.”

“No you don’t,” Az said.

“Yes. Yes I do.” He got up and announced another round of coffee, and then we sat and went over our plans for traveling to the border and keeping detail on Feyre’s family estate so long as we stayed.

Feyre herself emerged from downstairs at the townhouse near ten when we flew down to fetch her, bundled up tightly in a thick fur cloak. Her hood was down, and atop her head sat a small, simple diadem of gold that one of the twins or perhaps Mor had wrapped with her hair.

Mor herself had already dashed off. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find her curling up on Amren’s couch to discuss tactics for the coming weeks. The two really did run this court - and far better when myself and my brothers weren’t along for the ride.

Feyre paused at the bottom of the stairs when she found three Illyrian faces dressed in leathers and swords and knives staring. She flicked from Cassian to Azriel to myself and paused, giving me a once over and staring for a moment too long at my hands, before declaring boldly, “I’ll fly with Azriel.”

I could feel Cassian’s amusement dancing on my left, practically baiting me into denying her with some witty retort just so he could take a stab at me after.

“Of course,” Azriel said, nodding his head.

I grabbed Cassian, announcing I’d be back shortly, and winnowed the pair of us into the open skies far out to sea where the wall loomed in the distance and the flat, grassy expanse of the Spring Court loomed to the west.

Cassian’s wings snapped out and he shot out of my grasp catching the wind, but not before he’d thrown me a dirty gesture.

Asshole.

I winnowed back, wondering if Feyre had said anything to Azriel while they’d waited, and found the pair a perfectly respectful distance apart in thoughtful silence. I breathed easier... until Azriel spread his arms and Feyre stepped into them gracefully.

Why hadn’t she flown with me?

I reached out to grab Az and winnow, but Feyre looked at me sharply, noticing my displeasure. “Don’t let the wind ruin my hair,” she said. There was enough play behind it to distract me, that I snorted and winnowed without further hesitation.

Wind rushed over my face and neck, danced brutally through my hair, and kept me alive as I broke apart from Az and Feyre over the ocean and flew ahead to where Cassian had spotted us and taken off. Flying was a welcome distraction from the horrors dancing before and around us.

The wall.

Tamlin.

And lest I forget - Hybern. That island too far off to see at this distance, but a threat large enough that my body felt the thrum of its presence all the same.

It brought us our mission, the very reason we made for the human lands to bring fighting and politics and sin to innocent hands we would die mercilessly without. Knowing what little I did of Feyre’s sisters, it would be a miracle to earn any level of trust from them today.

I tilted a split second before Cassian, my wings tucking in and my body darting forward into a descent towards the oncoming weight I could feel bearing down on my lungs - my power. The wall pressed over me tightening as though searching for a reason to deny me entry and finding no excuse.

The crack we passed through - it felt so much like my own betrayal, for all my crimes. All the ways I had deceived Feyre and continued to do so with the bond, the truths I sometimes withheld. And all the ways I now burdened her with my own problems, how they would plague her family too.

And none of it could be stopped.

We sank into the human lands, the weight of the wall lifting as we flew over beaches and into the woods above, the air noticeably different, the scents shifted.

All of this and more would be attacked in the coming months, but to what degree would it burn? To what end would it shatter?

I looked at Feyre as we flew lower and lower, closing in on her estate. It wouldn’t be easy convincing her family to help us, but it would be far, far worse not to try at all.

Not to try to save them from the inevitable.

War is coming .

---

We landed in the snow within feet of the doorstep, a glamour keeping us concealed. I’d cast it once we’d come near enough to the village that we might be spotted.

Feyre stepped out of Azriel’s arms keeping her head down for the most part, though she eventually gave the manor her family now kept one long look before trudging up toward it.

She stood on the doorstep while my brothers and I held back remaining hidden. Get reacquainted with her sisters, introduce them to the realities of what was coming, and explain the plan. Then we would come into the picture.

Until then... it was entirely on Feyre’s shoulders and as I watched her struggle to straighten them, I saw that those shoulders were suddenly very heavy.

A servant - the housekeeper - opened the door with a good degree of disdain even before she realized who was standing in front of her. “May I help...” She and Feyre stared silently.

“I’m here to see my family,” Feyre said, the words coming out a little shaky.

“Your - your father is away on business, but your sisters...”

The woman’s eyes went cold. I felt Feyre tense. Her hood was up, covering her delicately pointed ears to conceal her from discovery from anyone who wasn’t born of her blood, but this woman... she watched Feyre with suspicion.

How many others would see her and suspect as well?

“Mrs. Laurent?”

A light, springing voice filtered toward us and Feyre drew a sharp breath, drawing back a step towards where Cassian, Azriel, and I stood undetected. I tensed, suddenly terrified this was all too much for her and that she would turn away, but then -

A reedy young woman with ash blonde hair and warm brown eyes appeared beside the Mrs. Laurent and Feyre took her retreating step back.

The girl was young, but if she was Feyre’s sister, she must have been at least a couple of years older than twenty. She had a soft charm about her that felt soothing and was instantly recognizable. When she saw Feyre, tears broke out streaming down her face. She covered her mouth with her hand, but didn’t go to her sister.

I suddenly realized what was happening - what I’d brought Feyre back into. Love, perhaps. But not a home.

Feyre’s voice sounded like shattered glass strewn about the floor as she took her sister in. “Elain,” she said.

Elain...

The quiet one. The gentle one. The gardener and the grower.  Or so I’d been told. Which meant -

“Mrs. Laurent.” A cold, piercing voice frozen in snow from somewhere in the house. On either side of me, Cassian and Azriel stood a little straighter as though even they could sense the fire shrouded by the house, the smoke escaping on Nesta’s voice through the open door.

Elain and the house keeper turned toward the eldest sister, Feyre’s gaze not far behind.

“Draw up some tea and bring it to the drawing room,” Nesta said, a clear command, not a request. A minor flare of red on my left briefly caught my eye.

Feyre drew herself taller and beheld the sister we could not see before stepping over the threshold, the door snapping into place firmly behind her.

---

“It’s like watching mice scurry before a trap,” Cassian said, perched next to me on the roof of the enormous house Feyre’s family kept. It was really more of a chateau.

After he and Azriel had done rounds of the surrounding forests to see what beasts might have followed after Feyre looking to snatch at her, the pair had joined me in surveying the house. Azriel was already well aware of the number of occupants within those walls who would be vacating - servants, maids, chefs, and all manner of household staff.

“They’re scared,” Azriel said. “That housekeeper knows what Feyre is or she highly suspects.” A shadow tightened over my brother’s elegant face. “I would not be surprised if she had let a word of warning slip among the rest of the staff.”

“Elain’s bid to leave was surely enough to set them fast in motion,” I said watching the footmen load up the last of the carriages and help some of the lady’s maids inside. Heavy polished trunks were placed in back. “Is that the last of them?”

“One more carriage,” Azriel said and sure enough, it came around front off the trail that circled the house at once. It loaded quickly, taking Mrs. Laurent with it, who gave one of the sisters a warning glance before alerting the driver to take off.

The front door closed dully.

“Let’s go.”

We flew down to the threshold, standing precisely where Feyre had when she’d shivered and come face-to-face with her middle sister, and waited for the carriage to finish disappearing before I knocked with a heavy thud .

Feyre opened the door almost immediately. She’d been waiting.

And she looked - like a ghost. Or a child. Maybe the ghost of the child she’d once been. It gave me a chill.

For one heart stopping minute, I didn’t think we were in the Mortal Realms, but in the Spring Court, and I wasn’t knocking on her family’s estate, but on the door to her rooms. Tamlin might be but a step behind her.

She surveyed the three of us with an expression I couldn’t read before staring down the drive where all the servants had fled.

“You’d think they’d been told plague had befallen the house,” I said. No one so much as chuckled. Feyre closed the door behind us as we entered the house, but it did little to shut out the chill in my bones.

“My sister Elain can convince anyone to do anything with a few smiles,” Feyre explained as though this was normal, as though this was still her day-to-day and she knew her sisters well.

Cassian’s whistle was sharp and drawn out as he appraised the entryway. I spared it half a glance - golds, ornate carpeting, detailed portraiture, all the usual fineries as befitted the upper class - before returning to monitor Feyre, who kept her arms tight around her and stared at the treasure trove with... little interest.

“Your father must be a fine merchant,” Cassian said. Feyre’s face was tight. “I’ve seen castles with less wealth.”

Feyre drew her attention away from all that ‘wealth’ and found me staring at her.

But your father didn’t earn this, did he.

No. This was all due to Tamlin, and anything before it was because of Feyre. What she’d hunted to keep them alive in a hovel I could probably turn to Azriel and ask him the location of only to be given it.

Young... Mother above, how young was she when she did that...

“My father is away on business,” Feyre informed us, “and attending a meeting in Neva about the threat of Prythian.”

That explained his absence at the door, though I hadn’t much expected him to welcome her anyway.

“Prythian?” Cassian said, leaving behind the trinkets and bobbles for the first time to tune himself to Feyre. “Not Hybern?”

“It’s possible my sisters were mistaken - your lands are foreign to them. They merely said ‘above the wall.’ I assumed they thought it was Prythian.”

“If humans are aware of the threat, rallying against it,” Azriel said, stepping up to Feyre quietly, “then it might give us an advantage when contacting the queens.”

It was as if I could see the weight that single word pressed into Feyre as Azriel said it: queens .

This was a mission. This was work. But it was a burden to be here for her too. Because it wasn’t just work. It never could be. This was family and blood and history and poverty wrapped up in a shiny bow that came with carriages and servants and pretty gowns with no one to bother wearing them. At least - Feyre never would.

It was... the same way my mother had looked when she’d taken me to the Illyrian camps for the first time. I’d been too distracted to notice at first, caught up in the adrenaline of just trying to survive a fight in the ring and then acclimating to Cassian one room away from me day and night.

But it had been there. A weariness written on her face that I eventually noticed and never saw it fade. An exhausted haunting that said this is my home but it is not . I wasn’t sure who my mother was on certain days when the sky turned grey and the snow fell fresh over those mountains.

Right now looking at the hollows of Feyre’s dim blue eyes standing out stark even with her hair done up around that beautiful little diadem and her clothes comfortably suiting her, I wasn’t sure she knew who she was anymore either.

She looked at me and those hollows told me everything.

“Come,” I said, and I almost held out my arm to her but - not now. Not yet. One day perhaps... “Let’s make this introduction.”

---

Feyre’s cloak was gone as she led us into the dining room paneled with shining wooden floors. Her attire was every bit befitting a queen out on a casual weekend retreat, but when her sisters eyes went straight to her glossing over the three Illyrians hulking behind her, Feyre was dominated by the shadows trailing her mind.

My own attire vanished as we walked those halls, my leathers exchanged for the same crisp black suit I’d worn on my first trip back to the Hewn City with Mor when I’d come home - Elegant. Refined. Ready to play whatever games they might propose, but very much hoping I wouldn’t have to. The lone difference between then and now was the absence of my power. In the Hewn City, I wore my Cauldron given gifts like armor. Here, where fear already lined the walls as we drew near, I hid it like a secret weapon in the presence of the innocent.

Cassian and Azriel remained in their leathers. I knew every second that Azriel spent inside, he had shadows and spies beyond keeping mind on the estate and whatever might come lurking nearby.

The air in the room was already stale as the sisters took Feyre in among the clothes and the crown, giving little to no reaction - no real warmth or welcome. But the air turned absolutely dry with a thin veil of disapproval as their attentions turned towards myself and my brothers.

Elain visibly stiffened, her eyes grown a little apprehensive with a twinge of fear. But Nesta - Nesta who looked little like either sister with her tall, proud stance and reproachful stare sat atop high, cruel cheekbones - stepped directly in front of Elain, protecting what was hers.

Cassian felt it. Azriel did too. It was like watching an Illyrian guard his young or a feral male freshly mated defend his female. I knew at once what lengths Nesta would go for that girl behind her - in ways she never possibly had or would for Feyre, though I was curious to find out.

Feyre closed the gap between our parties with a tight hold on herself. “My sisters, Nesta and Elain Archeron,” she said.

Archeron.

If Azriel had still had his shadows out for the occasion, I was sure one would be circling his ear marking the name.

As if the women knew the vulnerability of that name being suddenly unleashed, their heartbeats sped up to a dramatic new height. All that lovely considerable dead air in the room vanished, replaced by monstrous terror as Feyre extended her hand in Cassian’s direction and moved between us.

“Cassian,” she said. “Azriel. And Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court.”

I stepped forward and bowed at the waist - a courtesy extended to her blood alone.

“Thank you for your hospitality - and generosity,” I said, trying my best to smile kindly as the sisters leaned just perceptibly away.

“The cook left dinner on the table,” Nesta said without preamble, ignoring me and my brothers entirely. Azriel was a mask suited to my own, but Cassian - I could smell the irritation rolling off of him already. He did not like being ignored even if he was not the one in the line of fire. “We should eat before it goes cold.”

And then she left. Without another look. Without another word. Without a hello or a goodbye or an anything.

Elain looked ready to faint and I had hoped that she would show some of her sister’s resolve even if it was wary, but... “Nice to meet you,” she squeaked and then followed after Nesta like a furry little lap dog with nothing better to do than trail after the familiar, the comfortable, the safe.

Feyre already looked dead on her feet, dreading the conversation to come as she stared daggers at the pathway her sisters had taken toward the table. But... still, she went and took the seat right beside Nesta, who naturally took up the head of the table. I sat beside Feyre without taking my eyes off her once.

Azriel sat beside me and Cassian next to Elain, who sat across from me clutching her fork as though scared it might shatter lest she let go. A noticeably sized ring sat on her fourth finger, glittering and - made of iron .

Wonderful.

I wondered if it was the source of Azriel’s faint smile as he too spotted Elain’s white-knuckled hand at her plate.

With human chairs at their backs, Azriel and Cassian fidgeted now and then to make their wings more comfortable.

A deep sigh on my left from Feyre recalled my focus.

She lifted the lids on several large overbearing platters and revealed a feast worthy of a king waiting, steam wafting off the chicken and salmon with earnest. It was, undoubtedly meant to be an impressive display.

We commenced eating in reasonable silence. And I wondered if maybe this would not be so horrible after all, if we could make it through dinner unscathed and come to a mutual understanding. Feyre wouldn’t have to survive because she would simply be okay , she’d -

“Is there something wrong with our food?” Nesta said staring down her youngest sister. Feyre had barely managed more than a bite while the Illyrians of the table were quickly clearing plates.

Feyre took one carefully measured bite, chewed, then swallowed. “No,” she said, her throat and mouth dry, and it clicked. She hadn’t had human food since she’d been human herself. A long drink of water followed that lonely little word.

“So you can’t eat normal food anymore,” Nesta said, imperial judgment now ringing off her tongue where before there had not, “or are you too good for it?”

My fork dropped with glittering rage to my plate. I think Elain made a noise.

My gaze slid to Nesta - Nesta, who had lightning crackling in her eyes like starlight, fire shooting down her veins to cast my mate down and condemn her for a sin she hadn’t committed.

So much disdain. So much disgust. It was hard to believe they were even sisters with the way she outright glared at Feyre when only moments before she’d been ready to go to blows for Elain if she’d needed to.

And she wasn’t the only one with that fire nesting deep inside her. Feyre had it too. Her shields were perfectly in tact, but I could feel her deep inside, the bond heating with so many emotions - anger, hurt, horror.

Feyre looked evenly at Nesta and, more alert than I’d seen her since we breached that wall, stared right back into that ice and snow. “I can eat, drink, fuck, and fight just as well as I did before,” Feyre said. “Better even.”

Yes you fucking well can , I thought, pleased that she had realized it in the first place and then had the nerve to finally say it out loud.

Cassian made a choking sound as Nesta laughed, a hollow unimpressed sound that might be taken dismissively.

Feyre’s fire grew.

As too did my own inability to command my self-control.

Grew and grew and grew and sparked and flared and seared across the bond until I was certain her skin was going to erupt into flame.

I was used to this sort of conversation. I’d been around it all my life. It was the first lesson I learned growing up. Words were weapons and political discourse the target and they would kill in a heartbeat.

Feyre was used to it to some degree too, but not with so much power suddenly available to help her fight for a change.

Her fire crossed the channel between us, reached my soul and just licked at me ever so. I blew a cool kiss of the night back, keeping my exterior blank, and licked the flames away until Feyre had leaned away from Nesta and was staring at me. Our eyes met but briefly before I turned to her sister, and in those eyes I saw starlight flicker in victory.

“If you ever come to Prythian,” I told Nesta as though she hadn’t acted so curtly to her own flesh and blood just then, “you will discover why your food tastes so different.”

“I have little interest in ever setting foot in your land,” she replied, looking me over with disapproval, as though Prythian were a land written across my chest, “so I’ll have to take your word on it.”

Now my own blood boiled.

“Nesta, please,” Elain said soft and low.

And mother above, Nesta ignored Elain too - and turned straight to Cassian who was leaning as far as his seat would allow him towards Nesta and sizing her up like a new opponent to play with. Azriel looked politely away to mark Feyre and Elain.

“What are you looking at?” Nesta said, her lip curling in a snarl - at Cassian . Cauldron how that gaze hadn’t made her feel all of two years old alone...

Cassian’s brow rose and had we actually been in the sparring ring, I was certain he would have cracked his knuckles. It didn’t matter that this was Nesta and she was human and breakable and ignorant of our ways. Cassian attacked.

“Someone who let her youngest sister risk her life every day in the woods while she did nothing,” Cassian said to Nesta’s unflinching face. Feyre’s chest stopped moving beside me - waiting. “Someone who let a fourteen-year-old child go out into that forest, so close to the wall. Your sister died - died to save my people. She is willing to do so again to protect you from war. So don’t expect me to sit here with my mouth shut while you sneer at her for a choice she did not get to make - and insult my people in the process.”

For a moment the room was silent. I didn’t know if I expected Nesta to shout or leave or throw something at him, but I knew she wasn’t going to fold easily. And indeed she didn’t as she merely turned her head without so much as a blink, Cassian a mere ant for her to trample on her way to more important matters.

It was as impressive as it was infuriating. And a shame she wasn’t more open to what the world had to offer her.

Cassian went taut with animal rage looking like he might really fight her in a sparring ring if she’d let him and I had no doubt she’d last longer than I had against him on my first day in the camps.

And fuck it all to the hell Nesta drew her fires from if that wasn’t the faintest hint of arousal dripping off his pores, the bastard. Definitely not something he’d felt pummeling into me during that first fight five hundred some odd years ago.

“It...” Elain said and cleared her throat, trying to find some semblance of a voice amid the rage that floated from chair to chair and chained all our voices. “It is very hard, you understand, to... accept it.” Her brown eyes found mind and pleaded - practically begged for mercy and kindness and all the things her sister had rejected. For her, I listened. And for Feyre. “We are raised this way,” she said. “We hear stories of your kind crossing the wall to hurt us. Our own neighbor, Clare Beddor, was taken.” I dropped her stare. “Her family murdered.”

Her own family, Rhys? Is that really necessary...

My fault. If this failed, it would be all my fault. If Feyre’s sisters died, she would have no one and nothing to blame but myself. If I saved her from one captor, I might very well drag her to the next. Already the blood of my handiwork was everywhere.

Clare Beddor.

That was supposed to have been Feyre.

What might have happened if it had been Feyre that day and I’d had to hold her mind in my hand and whisper sweet nothings as I did for Clare while Amarantha tortured her soul from her body and ground it into a fine dust.

But of course, I didn’t have to wonder. I already knew what Feyre dying felt like. It was an effort not to shudder in front of the rest of the table, though I was certain only Feyre was watching me anymore.

“It’s all very disorienting.”

Thank the Mother for Azriel who had a skill set that would not erupt in a thrash of fists and blood nor needed political games to glean the truth. “I can imagine,” he replied. It was all the encouragement Elain needed to turn finally to Cassian and confront his accusations.

“And as for Feyre’s hunting during those years, it was not Nesta’s neglect alone that is to blame.” Feyre looked like one more word might break her face with cracks, veined like the marble adornments throughout the estate. “We were scared, and had received no training, and everything had been taken, and we failed her.” Elain didn’t look - couldn’t look - at Feyre as she swallowed and said to Cassian, “Both of us.”

Nesta stared distantly at her plate, a silent grave of secrets and history. Not entirely closed off, but reluctant as hell to admit even half as much as Elain had.

Tentatively, Feyre reached her hand out and laid it on Nesta’s arm. I found myself wishing she had it even though I wanted this to be peaceable. But if Nesta said so much as one more foul word towards my mate and broke her spirit again, there would be hell to pay for it.

Nesta looked up at Feyre, pride in her mouth like a bit to guide her. “Can we just... start over?” Feyre asked.

It look a second, and perhaps it was Cassian’s shit-eating grin chasing Nesta into reply that brought out the venomous undertone, but she agreed with a curt, “Fine.”

Each of us watched another in turn as eating resumed feeling more like a prison sentence than a shared meal among family and friends. So different from the dinner at the House, even with so much strife on the table that night for Feyre to dissect.

Elain cleared her throat. And said to Az, “Can you truly fly?”

Azriel blinked. If Mor had been here, she would have given him a pointed little smirk hidden quickly behind a sip of wine. “Yes,” Az answered. “Cassian and I hail from a race of faeries called Illyrians. We’re born hearing the song of the wind.”

“That’s very beautiful,” Elain said, looking almost as though she might find a fae concept pleasing to consider for a change. “Is it not - frightening, though? To fly so high?”

Feyre relaxed back into her seat.

“It is sometimes. If you are caught in a storm, if the current drops away. But we are trained so thoroughly that the fear is gone before we’re out of swaddling.”

“You look like High Fae,” Nesta said, regaining control of herself, but not entirely unfriendly. “But you are not?”

It was Cassian who answered for Az, gesturing at myself and Feyre vaguely. “Only the High Fae who look like them are High Fae. Everyone else, any other differences, mark you as what they like to call ‘lesser’ faeries.”

“It’s become a term used for ease, but masks a long, bloody history of injustices,” I said before Nesta could make another judgment call about our kind having such horrifying classifications riddling our social structure - that anyone should be called lesser as her family might once have been. “Many lesser faeries resent the term - and wish for us all to be called one thing.”

“Rightly so,” Cassian agreed, but Nesta again ignored him and turned a thoughtful mind on her sister - on Feyre.

“But you were not High Fae - not to begin,” she said. “So what do they call you?”

Disdain, or merely some of Feyre’s own curious appetite peaking through, it was too close to call.

“Feyre is whoever she chooses to be,” I said, but Nesta’s gaze slid up from Feyre’s gaze and nested at the crown atop her head. I knew she thought it was a lie, that I had decided for her sister who she was to be by giving her a crown.

But another desperate part of myself hope that it was something different - something more - as the lines of Nesta’s face that Feyre’s skin would never earn from age appraised the position her sister had attained. Did she see the potential? Could she feel the power and the strength and the sacrifice her sister had within her.

I’d never given Feyre a crown. She’d earned it. Earned everything.

Whatever Nesta thought, it apparently was enough.

“Write your letter to the queens tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow, Elain and I will go to the village to dispatch it. If the queens agree to come here, I’d suggest bracing yourselves for prejudices far deeper than ours. And contemplating how you plan to get us all out of this mess should things go sour.”

She froze Cassian in place with a single look, but the words - the demand that she and Elain remain protected - I knew, were for me. And damn me to hell if I failed her after bringing Feyre here.

“We’ll take that into account,” I agreed as amicably and earnestly as I could.

Nesta drawled on as though bored. “I assume you’ll want to stay the night.”

Through the windows of the dining room, night had already fallen, the servants having stolen most of the sunshine to light our way home. But if Feyre wanted to leave - then we’d go.

Your choice .

Feyre politely tried, “If it’s not too much trouble, then yes. We’ll leave after breakfast tomorrow.”

The stark contrast between Elain’s bright and cheery face - that she would be happy finally to have her sister home for an evening despite the occasion - next to Nesta’s near disappointed glower set my teeth on edge. “Good,” Elain beamed. “I think there are a few bedrooms ready-”

“We’ll need two,” I cut in as gently as I could. “Next to each other, with two beds each.”

If Nesta wasn’t going to play nice, then nor was I. Not entirely, at least.

Feyre peered up at me a mask of confusion. I wondered if it was the specificity of my request or if she’d registered that we’d be sharing a room that troubled her.

One room...

I pushed back the thought, ignoring the still pungent heat hitting me from Cassian’s direction every time he so much as looked at Nesta.

“Magic is different across the wall,” I told Feyre, and longed for the time hopefully soon when I could speak to her again and feel as though it really were just the two of chatting, even if she’d hate me for dragging her here and putting her family through further hell. “So our shields, our senses, might not work right. I’m taking no chances. Especially in a house with a woman betrothed to a man who gave her an iron engagement ring.”

That beautiful beaming grin Elain had given me not thirty seconds prior vanished. “The - the bedrooms that have two beds aren’t next to each other,” she sputtered.

Feyre sighed, sinking in to her chair. Nesta, I could tell, took it as a signal this meeting was adjourned. “We’ll move things around,” Feyre said. “It’s fine. This one,” and she pointed at me with a tempestuous glare, “is only cranky because he’s old and it’s past his bedtime.”

A joke. She’s making a joke, I registered.

I chuckled, softly, wishing she’d look at me properly and remove the disdain from her regard.

Feyre... darling, smile. Laugh - please.

Nothing. But she eased considerably and where Feyre offered no sound nor pleased expression, the others did.

Nesta alone stood from the table unfeeling and unmoved. “If we’re done eating, then this meal is over,” she announced and promptly left the room. I wasn’t sorry to see her go.

---

Nesta and Elain kept mostly out of our way after dinner, appearing only when necessary and sticking to factual, need-to-know type information, like where to find our rooms and which study to use. It made me question how excited Elain really was to have Feyre share the same roof as her for the night if she was going to excuse herself to bed the moment she was no longer needed by her sister.

When only the four of us remained, we stayed up far too long in the study drafting our letter to the queens. Feyre was tired and sat in the plush chair her father might use when home looking like she might fall asleep at any moment. Whether from physical or mental exhaustion, I imagined it was both.

For her sake, I wrote fast, but every word counted and the minutes easily ticked by into hours by the time we opened the guest room Feyre and I were to share for the evening.

Feyre spun around to face me looking more alert than I’d seen her since dinner as I shut the door - and noticed the lone bed taking up the luxuriously decorated guest room. “I’m not-”

Magic cut her startled exclamation off, a small bed popping into existence right by the door upon which I sat and began removing my boots and socks.

Feyre relaxed and I was - sad, that she was so surprised by my gesture.

“Nesta is a delight, by the way,” I said.

“She’s... her own creature,” Feyre replied, retreating back towards her own bed. And again, she carried that heaviness about her which stifled the air and stole breath from her heart, her lungs.

Thoughts rolled tumultuously about her head in a storm cloud ready to break free. And I was a sea below ready and desperate to feel the rain upon the waves and know what that storm thought.

“It’s been a few centuries since someone got under Cassian’s skin that easily,” I tried. “Too bad they’re both inclined to kill the other.” Quiet. “And Elain should not be marrying that lord’s son, not for about a dozen reasons, the least of which being the fact that you won’t be invited to the wedding.” I threw my boots casually aside hoping... Feyre looked aghast. “Though maybe that’s a good thing.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, sounding almost like her eldest sister. At least now I knew where that contempt for me came from.

“At least you won’t have to send a gift, either,” I shrugged. Feyre’s temper flared. “I doubt her father-in-law would deign to accept it.”

“You have a lot of nerve mocking my sisters when your own friends have equally as much melodrama,” Feyre hissed, standing taller. For a second, I thought her ready to tear the world in two. A low wave of apprehension struck me down over what particular piece of my family’s ‘melodrama’ she might have noticed.

Feyre snorted, her eyes rolling. “Oh,” she said, a near derisive laugh. “So you haven’t noticed the way Azriel looks at Mor?” My stomach tightened. That . “Or how she sometimes watches him , defends him? And how both of them do such a good job letting Cassian be a buffer between them most of the time?”

It was an effort not to groan. I thought of Cassian a couple rooms over, and Azriel with him. Morrigan, who had not come.

Morrigan.

Whom Azriel watched and whom she in turn waited patiently on.

Those two morons need to stop eye-fucking each other so damned much for all the world to see except each other.

It was a history too complex, too personal to fling casually about and I had no idea how much of it Mor had confided in Feyre, though I knew she wouldn’t hesitate if Feyre asked her about it.

Regardless, it was her story to tell. All of their story. Which Feyre needed to know at some point. But I wouldn’t be the one to push her into that. I hadn’t spent five hundred years letting my friends live however they chose and respecting that decision to throw the threads binding them together out the window now.

“I’d suggest keeping those observations to yourself,” I said with a very pointed look.

“You think I’m some busybody gossip?” The words were appalled, though her voice was anything but. “My life is miserable enough as it is - why would I want to spread that misery to those around me as well?”

“Is it miserable?” I asked, our eyes meeting, “Your life, I mean.” Any sense of argument about my family forgotten - an argument I didn’t think had really been brewing to begin with. Not about them, at least. Not really.

My heart waited for her answer before jumping further in my chest between the bones of its prison.

“I don’t know,” Feyre admitted. “Everything is happening so quickly that I don’t know what to feel.”

She slumped, and those hollows that had not faded the entire day stood out in the pale lighting of the room. Hollow - the way her mind felt when she wondered what her soul felt like these days.

The way she’d been when she’d first come to the Night Court.

So I scrambled to pull her beautiful soul back out of it.

“Hmmm,” I mused carefully. “Perhaps once we return home, I should give you the day off.”

“How considerate of you, my lord .”

Another joke.

Or maybe even -

I laughed, thinking she hadn’t shown any of this heat with me since we’d gone to the Weaver.

Good.

I felt Feyre watching me and looked up to see her eyes trained on my fingers as I unbuttoned the fastenings on my jacket. Absentmindedly, her own fingers nudged the fabric of her clothes where they hung at her sides.

I snapped my fingers and her bed things appeared at her side - including a set of lacy unmentionables that Feyre noticed straight away with a scowl. “I couldn’t decide which scrap of lace I wanted you to wear, so I brought you a few to choose from.”

“Pig,” she threw at me and left to change.

I smiled as she exited, admiring her as she went and the way her clothes hugged around her hips, her breasts... the two places those scraps of lacy fabric would go.

I twisted my neck, flexing the muscles. “Cauldron...” And removed my jacket.

But as I shrugged the shirt underneath off, and the chill of the winter air that had crept inside the room met my bare chest, my mind wandered into the realm of questions...

What Feyre would look like shrugging her own top off. Would her nipples peak in the crisp, night air the way my own skin had shivered at the feel of it? I pulled my pants down and swapped them for something softer to sleep it, pulling them up my thighs and wondering if she was standing somewhere close by just then pulling the delicate underthings up over her own legs to meet her hips. What that might look like. How tightly they might caress her skin...

The cold of the room was the only thing keeping me grounded as I waited for her to come back. And even though it helped abate the heat forcing a slight pressure into the front of my pants, I knew Feyre was freezing.

I crawled into the small bed I’d made for myself, letting the light die out save for the faint glow from the fireplace, and forced my back to Feyre’s own bed. If I saw her when she walked in, I might... say something embarrassingly regrettable that she’d never forgive me for.

Feyre returned silent as the night and slid into bed. I thought, perhaps, that was to be it, but then she spoke. “Thank you for warming the bed,” she said.

“Amarantha never once thanked me for that.” The words were out before I could stop them, but anymore... with Feyre, I didn’t care if she knew the truth. At least she’d understand.

“She didn’t suffer enough.” Anger rode between those words.

I suddenly felt incredibly uncomfortable for having thought so freely minutes ago about Feyre and whatever unmentionables she might now be wearing. Amarantha was - fuck, I didn’t want to go there. Not now. Not here in Feyre’s family home.

Her family.

Sharing a room with her.

“I didn’t think I could get through that dinner,” I admitted.

“What do you mean?”

“Your sisters mean well, or one of them does. But seeing them, sitting at that table...” Older. Mature. With full lives of some sort or another ahead of them with little-to-no concern even now for where Feyre’s might go, as though they’d have been content to forge ahead and forget she had a future too. “I hadn’t realized it would hit me as strongly. How young you were. How they didn’t protect you.”

“I managed just fine.” It was all the explanation she offered me. All she needed , I realized.

Maybe Feyre had discovered how to reconcile who her sisters were with what needed to be done a long, long time ago, and now I was only just beginning. I wanted to know more, I realized.

“We owe them our gratitude for letting us use this house,” I said and briefly hesitated for how she might take my next admission, “but it will be a while yet before I can look at your sisters without wanting to roar at them.”

I heard the blankets shuffle and wondered if I’d said too much, if she’d lock me out from the privilege of knowing her thoughts. I’d have deserved it for bringing this day upon her if she did.

And yet.

“A part of me feels the same way,” Feyre said. “But if I hadn’t gone into those woods, if they hadn’t let me go out there alone... You would still be enslaved. And perhaps Amarantha would now be readying her forces to wipe out these lands.”

Even the mention of Amarantha wasn’t enough to stop the force of this truth from sweeping my mind away.

This room. These halls. She’d spent so little time in them. But she was here. Even the woods around us for miles smelled of her - of Feyre. Still to this day. I noticed it the second we swept lower into the woods and I knew that was where she’d hunted. The faint scent of pine still nestled in her skin.

She’d only been fourteen .

Feyre had sacrificed and now she would sacrifice more under the guise of ‘work.’ A thought snapped into place.

“I am paying you a wage, you know. For all of this.”

A pitiful way to make up for her efforts, I knew.

“You don’t need to,” Feyre said straight away.

“Every member of my court receives one. There’s already a bank account in Velaris for you, where your wages will be deposited. And you have lines of credit at most stores. So if you don’t have enough on you when you’re shopping, you can have the bill sent to the House.”

“I-” her words caught, thick in her throat. “You didn’t have to do that.” A pause. “And how much exactly, am I getting paid each month?”

As much as you want .

Have the world and the skies and the seas for all I care, Feyre.

But my mind kept reeling back to the pine filling my nose and the small bundle of a person curled up behind me. “The same amount the others receive. When is your birthday?”

Feyre made a low, guttural humming. “Do I even need to count them anymore?” She sighed when I didn’t budge and admitted, “It’s the Winter Solstice.”

The Winter -

It was near spring. “That was months ago.”

“Mmmhmm,” she said wholly uncaring, the syllables dragged out with a bit of contempt.

I flicked through my memories of her, what she’d allowed me to see during her time with Tamlin around the turn of the Winter -

On the longest night of the year .

Cauldron, the fates that be were laughing at me, I was sure of it.

“You didn’t... I don’t remember seeing you celebrate it.”

“I didn’t tell anyone.” Feyre’s voice became rather faint. “I didn’t want a party when there was already all that celebrating going on. Birthdays seem meaningless now, anyway.”

Meaningless.

She thought herself meaningless. The very idea that she’d even exist or grow older unimportant to her. Didn’t matter. Pointless, now that she’d died.

But how could it be meaningless, that the Cauldron saw her born on one of the most sacred nights for my court. The hour that sang to my powers and weaved a history of seasons and renewal in the stars among the dark, winter sky?

Was it pure, simple, dumb luck that Feyre’s birthday was a day I cherished and called upon with my very blood to celebrate? Or was it fated that I would find my mate in the heart of Night where darkness joined with the heavens to form us both.

Mates - my mate.

Twins.

Match.

Mate.

“You were truly born on the Winter Solstice?” I asked. I wished I hadn’t turned my back in bed so I couldn’t see her.

“Is that so hard to believe?” she asked, well unaware of the thoughts teasing and testing my hope. “My mother claimed I was so withdrawn and strange because I was born on the longest night of the year. She tried one year to have my birthday on another day, but forgot to do it the next time - there was probably a more advantageous party she had to plan.”

Of course there was.

“Now I know where Nesta gets it. Honestly, it’s a shame we can’t stay longer - if only to see who’ll be left standing: her or Cassian.”

“My money’s on Nesta.” Feyre said it without a trace of doubt or hesitation despite the hulking Illyrian and the strength of his body and mind.

But I knew Cassian. And I still recalled that hideous arousal I’d caught lingering on him all about dinner and for a long while after.

I chuckled and agreed with Feyre, who had let me into her world tonight more than she ever had and had not once shied away or made me feel like I didn’t deserve to hear pieces of her story.

“So’s mine,” I said, hearing Feyre’s low hum sounding miles away as she stumbled into sleep.