I went to Feyre’s room looking for a friend, someone to talk to.

Or at least, that’s what I told myself as I opened the door to the sunlit room that interconnected with mine. Bright seafoam green dripped from the walls and ceiling, a soft compliment to the dress Feyre had chosen for the day.

She looked up at me from the dresser she was about to go through or maybe just had. I shut the door in a bit of a frenzy. “The problem, I’ve realized, will be that I like Tarquin,” I said. “I even like Cresseida. Varian, I could live without,” he wasn’t nearly as lively as sister and she wasn’t nearly as clever as him, “but I bet a few weeks with Cassian and Azriel, and he’d be thick as thieves with them and I’d have to learn to like him. Or he’d be wrapped around Amren’s finger, and I’d have to leave him alone entirely or risk her wrath.”

I felt like I’d been talking way too quickly. I hadn’t bothered with my room while I gave Feyre time to sort herself out in hers. Pacing had been all I could abate myself with after Tarquin had seen himself off to prepare for this evening on his barge. I’d wanted to rip my shirt in two as if I could shed the very skin beneath it.

Tarquin was decent. He was kind. And he was just. Lunch had shown me that enough. He was a good High Lord, who cared about his people. And Cassian was right - we risked a lot against him coming here.

“And?” Feyre said, leaning against the dresser. Her expression was bland - too much like the mask she’d had at lunch. The one she’d been so generous with where Tarquin was concerned.

“And,” I said, looking for my friend in that pretty freckled face, “I want you to find a way to do what you have to do without making enemies of them.”

“So you’re telling me don’t get caught.”

I nodded, and realized I was staring at her exactly the way Tarquin had all through the afternoon. Now that I was alone with her again, the mate bond inside me plucked carefully along the strings tuning my blood. “Do you like that Tarquin can’t stop looking at you?” I said, unable to help myself. Feyre’s head turned sharply, her eyes steady on mine. “I can’t tell if it’s because he wants you, or because he knows you have his power and wants to see how much.”

“Can’t it be both?”

“Of course. But having a High Lord lusting after you is a dangerous game.”

Feyre’s facade finally caved in a little, her tone dropping a bit tired. “First you taunt me with Cassian, now Tarquin? Can’t you find other ways to annoy me?”

I don’t want to annoy you, Feyre. I want to -

I took an automatic step to cut the thought off in my head. On edge - I was so completely on edge here. Having Feyre around my brothers, males I trusted heart and soul, was one thing. But around Tarquin - would she actually be interested?

Would he ?

I braced a hand over either side of Feyre’s head against the dresser. And was pleased when she didn’t lean into the drawers away from me as I held her gaze fast and sure.

I knew exactly what I wanted. And what did Feyre want? My court was on the line for this, depended on what she did.

Maybe it wasn’t the mate bond driving me half as insane as I’d imagined. Maybe it was the feeling that for once, I wasn’t the one determining the future of my lands. Feyre was.

“You have one task here, Feyre,” I said. “One task that no one can know about. So do anything you have to in order to accomplish it. But get that book. And do not get caught.”

Feyre’s chin dipped lower towards her chest, the grey of her eyes twinkling. “ Anything?” she asked me, causing my brow to lift at the suggestion. Her voice became breathy - sensual. As she thought of him . “If I fucked him for it, what would you do?”

When Feyre finished the question, it wasn’t the High Lord of the Night Court, nor even her friend who reacted. It was that same primal beast who prowled beneath my skin, the one I’d felt walking the breezeways as another male looked at my mate.

A rush of blood moved through me, making my muscles tense. Indeed the wood on the dresser groaned beneath my hands as I fought off the urge to let predatory instinct take over and unleash my talons so I could protect what felt like mine, even if it really wasn’t.

And that mouth of hers - the things it said, the things it might do .

And I knew right then looking at it exactly what I would do if Tarquin fucked her. And I wasn’t proud of it.

“You say such atrocious things,” I said, the closest I could manage to confronting the issue that burned up the mere inches separating us without seizing her lips then and there. I held off a moment longer to finish swallowing my pride. “You are always free to do what you want, with whomever you want. So if you want to ride him, go ahead.”

Somehow, the words costed me a great deal more than they had when I’d teased Feyre with Cassian outside the Weaver’s cottage.

And Feyre knew it. “Maybe I will,” she said, keeping hold of my gaze.

Our lips were close, her forehead nearly touching mine. She was smaller and larger than me at the same time with all that power rolling about under her skin, drifting off of her in waves. It drove me mad.

“Fine,” I said.

“Fine.” She didn’t move at all.

Neither of us did. “Do not jeopardize this mission.”

And I swore I could see the sea itself rise up in a wave within those eyes of hers, washing the grey away into that bright crystalline blue that appeared when she felt too much. This was the first time ‘too much’ had felt good rather than worrisome.

There was a candle sitting on her dresser. I motioned toward it, but didn’t take my eyes off her. “Light it,” I challenged.

Feyre lingered on me for an added second, and then looked at the candle. Her body hummed with the power, so strong I felt as though I could reach out and taste it straight off her tongue. She looked at the candle, her mind reaching for that glowing power of the Autumn Court, but a tidal wave rose, crested, and fell with a mighty crash instead.

The dresser was soaked, never mind the candle.

Feyre finally didn’t look quite so incensed at me as she took in the mess. I laughed. “Can’t you ever follow orders?”

A million beads of water rose gracefully into the air around us sparkling like diamonds. I almost stepped back as I took the sight of them in. They were gentle. Peaceful. And looked of everything I felt when the Darkness was all around me.

A gift to Feyre from another High Lord - one Feyre found herself inclined toward.

She had never summoned darkness so easily, nor even at all, after days in the Night Court. Yet here she was not even two hours in the Summer Court with a different sea and salt scent drifting out of her.

“I suggest you not show Tarquin that little trick in the bedroom,” I said, and felt all of those glimmering beadlets pummel me before I could so much as blink.

Playful. But also irritated. And somewhat dismissive.

But it was still Feyre and her radiant energy, as ever, as I stared open mouthed at her and willed a smile.

Perhaps I had been wrong to come here thinking I would not look for more than my friend - my ally from Under the Mountain - to share the weight pressing in on me from every turn, without feeling consumed by the heat and the lust and the bond threading up and down my soul.

“Good work,” I said. “Keep practicing.” I pushed off roughly from the dresser, needing and hating the distance from her all at the same time. Cauldron, there still wasn’t much separating us.

“Will he go to war? Over me?”

Water slid softly down my skin, caressing my cheeks, sticking to my skin underneath my tunic as I stalled.

A lifetime of High Lords chasing her. That was the fate that awaited Feyre however long she stayed with me in the Night Court. Or even here if she were ever to find a home with Summer. Tamlin might one day fade away entirely from her vision, but who would rise up to grapple for her then?

And would I be able to help? Would she even factor me into her equation?

Was it right that I even wanted her to when I knew the risks.

Azriel would send word if Tamlin grew too restless so long as we visited Tarquin. Though the borders of the Spring Court remained sealed, my brother would find a way to know if danger became imminent. The question now was - would Tamlin dare?

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

The heated temper that had been blooming in Feyre simmered down as she understood my answer. “I - I would go back,” she said. “If it came to that, Rhysand. I’d go back, rather than make you fight.”

My lungs tightened. At the certainty in her words despite the way they trembled at first. She meant it and would not retreat, whatever it may cost her.

I knew. I would do the same thing when it came down to it for my crown.

My pocket made a faint squishing sound as I slid a hand inside to steady myself. “Would you want to go back?” I asked. I needed to know, just as much for myself as for her. If it came to this one day - I couldn’t let the beast inside me win out over Feyre’s decision. “Would going to war on your behalf make you love him again? Would that be a grand gesture to win you?”

The sound of Feyre’s breathing grew unsteady in my ears. “I’m tired of death. I wouldn’t want to see anyone else die - least of all for me.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

A brief pause.

“No. I wouldn’t want to go back. But I would. Pain and killing wouldn’t win me.”

She wasn’t scared anymore. She was past that now. Tamlin couldn’t contain what Feyre had already become during her brief departure. And she wasn’t even quite tired the way she had once been. Feyre could do and burn and build now without falling down even if she felt like she couldn’t.

But what Feyre had become was cognizant enough to see the corruption around her and admit it was neither what she wanted nor what she deserved. And that she wouldn’t stand for it just because her heart beckoned her to.

That was why Tamlin had balked at letting her too far in. In a way, he had never lied to her. Losing Feyre to the outside world was a loss he truly wasn’t willing to suffer, even if it killed her in the end anyway.

A part of me wondered what would have happened if Amarantha had met this Feyre Under the Mountain - the one who walked in not in the name of love, but simply in the name of truth. This girl who was bright and full of pleasure and cunning, and so many hidden lights that it made Prythian too awful to deserve hosting Feyre’s human heart.

That world included me.

I walked away from Feyre, both wanting and denying. Pieces of myself littered the floor in the wake of my steps.

“He locked you up because he knew - the bastard knew what a treasure you are,” I said, pausing at the door. Feyre’s brow furrowed. “That you are worth more than land or gold or jewels. He knew, and wanted to keep you all to himself.”

Feyre spoke at once, but her posture slumped against the dresser as though even she didn’t quite believe what she was saying. “He did - does love me, Rhysand.”

Rhysand .

She said my full name in ways that were not intimate, were not familiar. Ways that put an ocean between us inside a single room.

“The issue isn’t whether he loved you, it’s how much. Too much. Love can be a poison.”

I couldn’t bother with door. Instead I winnowed, before that very same poison Tamlin and I both suffered the effects of could sink its fangs into my bones too deeply for me to come crawling back again.

---

I’d told Feyre love could be a poison, for feeling it too much.

Too much.

That’s what I felt in the Summer Court as Tarquin sidled up to Feyre almost as soon as we met on the barge upon that calm, luminous sea of his after sundown. Feyre accepted his hand to the dinner table, looking radiant in golds and pinks that made her skin appear sun-kissed, fresh from a day spent under open skies.

So when I followed their path, and intentionally took a seat next to Cresseida preparing for the evening to come, I cut off whatever I could feel of the bond. Didn’t listen as Feyre engaged Tarquin in conversation I couldn’t stomach. Didn’t watch them once so long as she sat there and Feyre let Tarquin undoubtedly stare at her.

Easy. It was so easy for him. To earn her trust, her respect.

No one would ever think ill of the High Lord of Summer as they would the Demon of the Night.

Cresseida did enough staring for the both of us to be miserable the entire night anyway. I waited a few minutes to see what she might do with me sitting next to her, sipping wine as though it tasted dull and flat. If she initiated any interest in me at all, I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. I didn’t need Amarantha’s voice cackling in my ear to know so.

But she didn’t. She just stared at her cousin, and occasionally looked up to scan the room for Varian or some such acquaintance I couldn’t fathom.

Maybe it was wrong to take advantage of her loneliness. Especially when I felt it so keenly myself. And maybe it was worse to know that I was taking advantage, letting the idea of Feyre spending the night tucked against the body of the male sitting down the table from me spurring me further in to it.

Either way, there were things I needed to know. So I took a sip of wine and settled my tongue.

“No young paramour to accompany you tonight, Princess?” I kept my voice a low easy tease. Cresseida didn’t take her eyes off of Feyre.

“Don’t flatter me when your pet is sitting across the table, Rhysand.” I supposed that’s what I got for calling her nicknames.

“Feyre is law unto herself, as I think you discovered at our lovely little lunch this morning.”

“Is that why you looked so decidedly bored at lunch? Not yet won her heart? And here I was thinking you found us all as dull as you do anyone not of your own court.” She drowned herself in a deep sip of her wine, colored a dark red stain.

“And where might you have heard that little untruth, hmm?”

Cresseida snorted, a scowl written across her face. “Please. Your reputation precedes you.”

She probably expected me to dismiss her then, the same way her own flesh and blood continued to do. To say that she had her own reputation and it was equally disenchanting. Which was precisely why that tactic wouldn’t get me anywhere past the frigid exterior.

I shifted in my seat, leaning gracefully over so that my lips were a breath away from her ear, and purred, “That’s not the only reputation I’m known for, Princess .” I pulled back. Only enough to keep our chairs distinctly separate.

Cresseida arched one single, solitary brow against her dark skin, her eyes - vibrant even in the dim lighting - sliding to find me smirking at her. Her long silver hair fell evenly down to her breasts. “Is that so?” I picked casually at the cuffs of my tunic, toying with a stray thread or some such thing. Cresseida sunk back into her own chair. “I don’t believe I’m well versed in that reputation. You’ll have to fill me in, High Lord .”

A feline smirk. “You may call me Rhys.”

“Charmed, I’m sure.”

“Most women are. You being the exception, I think.”

“You have to ask?”

“I’d like to find out.”

Her eyes flashed, and she quickly reached for her wine glass and took another long sip. “You’re horribly obnoxious, but I trust you know that already.”

Tarquin chuckled across the table. I decided then was an excellent opportunity to run a finger along Cresseida’s hand that rested on the table, tracing the delicate bones beneath with my fingertips. Cresseida stilled.

“Another reputation I’m well known for, I’m afraid. But can you blame me? Especially when I was privileged to hear so little from that delightful mind of yours at lunch.”

Cresseida stared for one very long moment at her cousin before deciding. And for the first time all evening, I followed that gaze down the table to where Feyre was looking at the High Lord of Summer with something like admiration.

“Tell me what that look means,” Tarquin asked her.

“I’m thinking it would be very easy to love you. And easier to call you my friend,” Feyre replied, her eyes swimming like moonlight on a lake.

Easy. For Tarquin alone, Feyre would easily give her heart away. Which meant I would have to crawl through blood and tears and sweat to have a chance at it, as I did through all of history for anything I wanted.

I should never have listened, even for those few brief moments. The damage done was enough.

Too much .

Cresseida’s fingers lifted gently, giving a little thrum along the table, her mind made up. I continued my tracing along her skin.

“There aren’t many men who care to hear what my mind has to say these days,” she said, finally dragging her eyes away from Tarquin and Feyre, whom I sensed were amusing themselves well in a less deceptive, ridiculous way.

“Many men are past idiocy. Women, too, I’d imagine, to dare handle someone with such candor.”

“So it’s true then?” she asked, the purr in her voice beginning to match my own as her fingers danced beneath mine. “You are not afraid of the Lion of Spring set forth to retrieve his bride from the Lord of Night?”

“I’m far more concerned with the Siren of Summer, if you must know, Cresseida.” My fingers gave a little squeeze.

She smiled then - not nearly so feline as my own smirking had been. But soft and pleased. Enjoying the attention she never received elsewhere, even if she still suspected its sincerity. Her fingers curled into mine. I gave her a cocky smile in return, the one only Illyrians used when they caught the scent of something they liked.

Nevermind that the something I liked was sitting across the table dressed in shades of the sunset, while Cresseida made for a dashing distraction in wit and temper.

She would hate me for deceiving her like this, if she ever found out. Tarquin and Varian’s own wrath wouldn’t even compare to what Cresseida would harbor in her heart for betraying her trust, the one thing I think she valued more than all else. Someone to believe in her.

Her feet curled up under her as she leaned in, her fingers toying with me just as much as mine did her. When she returned the favor of speaking so seductively in my ear, I could feel her lips just brush my skin. “What worries you so, Lord of Night, that you would run from a siren in the sea?”

Sadness - looming and great opened up in front of me as Feyre jumped from her seat, disturbing the table. I moved only enough to look at her, register that she had suddenly moved, and felt one last flicker of unhappiness before she was on her feet again leaving the room, the bond going still again.

I wasn’t sure what it meant. And I wasn’t going to care. I was too exhausted to care. Too isolated, too lonely to let that ache inside my chest plague me more than necessary whilst we stayed here, subjected to feeling the mate bond slap me in the face repeatedly.

If Feyre could have a fuck with Tarquin, she could handle a night of dealing with the repercussions of that relationship without it breaking me too.

I had work to attend to for my crown anyway.

“What do I have to fear from a siren of the sea?” I said with a chuckle as Feyre walked away, leaving my heart behind but far from peace. “Oh a great many things I’m sure. Perhaps... you could enlighten me.”

Cresseida watched me ravenously. She’d ask me to bed by the end of the night, I was sure. I tried to focus on the fact that I wasn’t obliged to go through with it to stem the sick feeling twisting in my gut from rising.

“What did you have in mind precisely?”

My lips curled sweetly into a smile as I let starlight dust my eyes and damn my nerve. “Care for a drink, princess?”

---

She wasn’t at breakfast.

I took my time working through the various jams and breads that had been set out, listening to Cresseida continue the stories she had left off on last night. I liked Cresseida well enough, but I was too bored with her voice to care and too distracted by Feyre’s absence to really deign a reply.

She’d taken me out into the city, to one of her favorite drinking spots - a restaurant she’d taken a particular interest in renovating when the city resumed its agency after Amarantha’s fall. It overlooked the bay. We could see Tarquin’s ship docking from the open terrace of the bar that had something like coral climbing over the columns of the open facade.

While Cresseida looked more than disappointed when I politely refused her invitation to bed later that evening, it seemed my willingness to give her a listening ear for an evening would keep me in her good graces - for now.

So I let her prattle on while I waited for Feyre, wondering if Tarquin had stayed with her after the ship had turned in for the night. The Lord of Summer himself looked bright-eyed and full of sunshine when I met him with Amren and Varian for our morning meeting.

But Feyre never appeared all morning even after I’d stayed late to enjoy a long breakfast. Nor did she come at lunch.

So I was forced to wait for her until her scheduled appointment with Tarquin finally arrived.

I didn’t like that he was there - or anyone else for that matter. Cresseida was a little sharper again when we sat down to meet with her cousin and brother, and have our first formal discussion of court politics and the war to come. It was uncomfortable sitting next to them, a sorrowful affair keeping the mask up and knowing where Feyre would take it next when Tarquin took her on her tour.

The discussion was smooth, though not without the same snap and petty commentary we endured at meals with one another. And there was a willingness from Tarquin to cooperate that I found myself returning, and cursing myself for it if everything went horribly wrong.

We met Feyre in the main hall after our little chat. She was already there waiting. Styled in an endearing shade of seafoam green in a dress that twirled around her, Feyre looked bright. Too bright, I noted. As though something were changed inside her. Tarquin stepped before her in a tunic of nearly identical styling and it was then I noticed - saw the sunlight bounce between them, tying them together.

A heavy weight fell into the pit of my stomach, a little lump of teeth and claws and a feeling much too sharp to be simple annoyance.

“You’re looking well today,” Tarquin said with a chipper voice.

The voice Feyre said she could love - easily.

But also the one you could befriend yourself, jackass.

Feyre finally made to turn her head, but her eyes found Amren. Not mine. “I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.

“We were finishing up a rather lively debate about armadas and who might be in charge of a unified front,” Amren said with her usual cool. “Did you know that before they became so big and powerful, Tarquin and Varian led Nostrus’s fleet?”

Yes, Amren. Because Feyre needed yet another reason to be enamored of the High Lord. As if on queue, Feyre looked delighted with this new piece of information.

“You didn’t mention you were a sailor,” she said, her eyes lighting up. Tarquin had the decency to looked embarrassed.

“I had planned to tell you during our tour. Shall we?” He offered his arm and my stomach flipped, turning the beast inside of it upside down with rage. I shouldn’t have felt so incensed. Mate or not, Feyre was free to do as she pleased, but she hadn’t even looked at me, and now she was taking his arm and leaving without sparing me a second thought.

Was this punishment for ignoring her at dinner? Was this what she thought I deserved for playing so many cruel and wicked games with a man she could come to call friend or lover?

I found myself leaning forward, willing her to stay. To at least say hello, that we were still okay. To not walk off so easily with this other male who didn’t have to ask for her hand to receive it.

But all Feyre did was call, “See you later,” throwing her words carelessly over her shoulder as if she knew it would wound me.

It worked.

The beast burst from my stomach and clawed viciously at Feyre’s mind, to beg her to at least be careful, but I was met with a wall of glistening adamant that locked me straight out.

And she knew it. I knew she could feel me at the edges of her mind trying to get in. Feyre turned her head like she might acknowledge me, make some comment -

Calm down you stupid prick...

But she stopped when her eyes reached Tarquin, and then she smiled . Smiled like the sun and it was all the things that had been missing from her life - the fun, the radiance, the simple joy in living with someone close to you.

Feyre smiled - for another male who was not her mate.

The beast inside me didn’t back off so much as die completely as I watched her walk away into the day, and get swept up by the seaside and its hidden treasures.

---

The second I could free myself of our Summer Court hosts, I stalked inside Feyre’s room to wait for her. Amren, with her careless daring, had sensed my discomfort and attempted to convince me I should tell Feyre about the bond then and there. “Get it over with,” she’d said. “You’ll feel better.” As if revealing the deepest, most intimate parts of myself were something to throw about with Feyre, no harder than ripping off a bandage.

“You don’t just get it over with with a mating bond, Amren,” I’d snarled in her face, before marching into Feyre’s room and snapping the door shut. She would probably have slashed my face in half if I hadn’t gone inside.

I didn’t care. I was going mad inside waiting for Feyre, the mate bond gnawing on me every single second she was gone - with him . Risking her heart and the future of my court with whatever charms she laid.

No wonder my father hadn’t waited so much as a day to take my mother back to Velaris be his bride.

They took their time touring the treasuries and each tick of the clock was another chance for me to guess at how Tarquin might enthrall Feyre and bring her under his spell. I didn’t even remember the Book she was supposed to be tracking. All I could think about was the two of them finding themselves wrapped up together in the most intimate positions.

Just as I thought I might become sick with the thought of Tarquin’s hands on Feyre’s skin, I scented her approach. I threw myself on her bed, my arms propped casually behind my head as if I had belonged here all along. The devious creature inside me settled in atop the sheets and argued that indeed I did belong right here - in Feyre’s bed.

I closed my eyes satisfied as Feyre walked in briskly. Let her see how she liked being toyed with.

“What do you want?” Feyre snapped, allowing the door to slam shut behind her. I smiled, selfishly glad of her immediate annoyance.

“Flirting with Tarquin did you no good, I take it?” I asked, voice smooth as honey.

A box landed roughly on the bed next to me. “You tell me.”

“This isn’t the Book,” I said, looking at the necklace housed within its little velvet nest. It was, of course, stunning. And Tarquin had just given it to her?

“No, but it’s a beautiful gift.”

Her casual dismissal set me off. All at once, that primal, restless creature I had thought dead at Feyre’s smile roared to life within me once more, pushing and pulling on my tongue.

“You want me to buy you jewelry, Feyre, then say the word. Though given your wardrobe, I thought you were aware that it was all bought for you.” I didn’t even care that my anger was ripping through the edges of my voice. For her part, Feyre sounded tired through the veil of her annoyance with me.

“Tarquin is a good male - a good High Lord. You should just ask him for the damned Book.”

I snapped the box shut, nearly shattering it from the force of my hands in the process. I was surprised the darkness had not come for how upset I felt hearing her defend him . He’d done nothing. Tarquin had done nothing . “So he plies you with jewels and pours honey in your ear, and now you feel bad?”

“He wants your alliance - desperately. He wants to trust you, rely on you.”

“Well, Cresseida is under the impression that her cousin is rather ambitious, so I’d be careful to read between his words.”

A look flashed in Feyre’s eyes, so fast I almost missed it. But it spelled out her own sort of rage curled within in her chest. I felt a ripple of her power underneath her skin as she snapped, “Oh? Did she tell you that before, during, or after you took her to bed?”

I looked up sharply.

So that was it then? She didn’t like me playing with Cresseida ? But surely she saw it for the act it was? Had our time Under the Mountain and in Velaris shown her nothing if not that much? What I wouldn’t do to protect my court?

Had I not flirted and pushed and poured enough heat between us that she’d know I couldn’t possibly want another woman but her?

Distantly, I was aware of the cackling reply Amren would have given me followed by a curt, “No, boy,” if she’d heard me ask the question. Mor would have backed her up on it.

I rose from the bed slowly, trying miserably to appear collected. “Is that why you wouldn’t look at me? Because you think I fucked her for information?”

“Information or your own pleasure, I don’t care.” There was enough bite to confirm that Feyre really was pissed about my evening. The beast inside me writhed with delight. The very idea that Feyre might be jealous to any extent was a thunderous sound in my ears.

Feyre hated me, or at least... she had before.

But I didn’t think - I never thought she could feel… not about me. Not when I was working so damned hard just for a look or a smile. Just one fucking smile.

The bond drove me to her, putting barely any space left between us. “Jealous, Feyre?” I purred, my eyes gleaming against her as she stared me down.

“If I’m jealous,” she said, “then you’re jealous about Tarquin and his honey pouring.”

I almost erupted on the spot with every ounce of night and darkness available to me.

“Do you think I particularly like having to flirt with a lonely female to get information about her court, her High Lord?” I demanded. “Do you think I feel good about myself, doing that? Do you think I enjoy doing it just so you have the space to ply Tarquin with your smiles and pretty eyes, so we can get the Book and go home?”

“You seemed to enjoy yourself plenty last night.”

“I didn’t take her to bed,” I snarled. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation. Was this how Cassian had felt sparring with Nesta? “She wanted to, but I didn’t so much as kiss her. I took her out for a drink in the city, let her talk about her life, her pressures, and brought her back to her room, and went no farther than the door.”

The words spilled out my mouth, my breathing uneven as I became unhinged, Feyre watching me with widening eyes and dawning comprehension. “I waited for you at breakfast, but you slept in. Or avoided me, apparently. And I tried to catch your eye this afternoon, but you were so good at shutting me out completely.”

I tried , I wanted to say. I tried so damned hard to make this easier for you even while it felt like it was killing me to have her wrapped up in my seat while you were so close by with him. I’m trying every day just to get a glimpse of what you’re giving so freely to everyone else but can’t find space in your heart to give to me because I’ve become that much of a mess.

Feyre grew very still, surveying me, taking in the wildness she wasn’t used to seeing from me. I’d hardly been this unhinged in front of her - in front of anyone except Mor on select occasions. “Is that what got under your skin? That I shut you out, or that it was so easy for Tarquin to get in?” she asked, hesitant.

Yes.

No.

All of it.

Everything.

Mine .

“What got under my skin is that you smiled for him,” I said, choking on the words. The creature inside me went limp.

I wanted her. Cauldron, I wanted her so badly and I couldn’t have her. That was really all there was to it. I had fought tooth and nail for that smile for months and she had given it to Tarquin in less than two days.

“You are jealous,” she said with a small voice. Her lips seemed to quiver, her eyes sympathetic.

Of course I am, Feyre. I’m your mate.

But it’s your choice - always your choice.

I would not be Tamlin.

I slumped and made for the bar table in the corner of Feyre’s room, throwing back a drink as wings threatened to form at my back. My control over my body felt tenuous at best, a feeling that unsettled me, I was so depleted.

Maybe Mor and Amren were right. Cassian too. Maybe being more honest with Feyre to take care of myself wasn’t something to feel so guilty about. I threw back another sip of alcohol and let the burn out of my lungs.

“I heard what you told him,” I said. “That you thought it would be easy to fall in love with him. You meant it, too.”

“So?” Feyre asked and my mind was filled with nothing but that smile she had given the High Lord of the Summer Court. It could burn my mind to pieces for centuries to come as easily as the smile itself had been given.

“I was jealous - of that,” I explained. “That I’m not… that sort of person. For anyone. The Summer Court has always been neutral; they only showed backbone during those years Under the Mountain. I spared Tarquin’s life because I’d heard how he wanted to even out the playing field between High Fae and lesser faeries. I’ve been trying to do that for years. Unsuccessfully, but… I spared him for that alone. And Tarquin, with his neutral court… he will never have to worry about someone walking away because the threat against their life, their children’s lives, will always be there. So, yes, I was jealous of him - because it will always be easy for him. And he will never know what it is to look up at the night sky and wish.”

I didn’t think Feyre had been expecting that.

There was a silence that filled that bright, tranquil room and when Feyre came to stand next to me, my heart in her hands, I could see a redness gathering on the rims of her eyes.

Broken. We were both so broken in so many ways fighting for the only truths we had left to protect. But she understood me - or part of me. And knew that I had let her see something profoundly vulnerable that few others ever bore witness to.

I watched as Feyre simply poured herself a drink and then refilled my own before she met my eyes. Compassion burned into that gaze, deep and permanent, reassuring me I was not the only lonely dreamer there.

“To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys,” she toasted.

It was hard not to feel so much of that solemn gloom still, but I clinked my glass with Feyre’s in spite of it anyhow and toasted back, “To the stars who listen - and the dreams that are answered.”

For once, it felt like someone was out there listening to every word we said.