Continuing Tales

A Court of Starlight and Poppies

A A Court of Thorns and Roses Story
by Turtle_Steed

Part 5 of 35

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ACOMAF: Rhys's POV

Velaris.

There was no city on earth like it.

Beneath me fanned out in an array of color and movement stood my city - my home. It was early enough that not many had started their day yet, but I could smell the spices from the many restaurants as the Fae inhabitants began their day’s cooking, could see children running down the streets while their parents lingered inside pouring a final cup of tea, could hear the breeze rustle through trees and over the water as the city slowly woke up.

Weight sinking into my back as my wings flapped in great heaving strokes, some of the tension drained out of me.

Some - but not all.

I landed on the rooftop of my private townhouse ready to sleep for the next three weeks straight. I wouldn’t have the chance to so quickly, though, as I walked in and stumbled upon two hulking Illyrians in my living room.

Cassian’s large frame, outlined in corded muscle and rugged hair, leaned against my bookshelves with his arms crossed. The general didn’t look so friendly as his usual demeanor would suggest.

And Azriel - Azriel sat back quietly in one of the chairs that was open enough to accommodate his wings, elbows sat squarely on his knees while his chin rested pointedly atop his interlocked hands. Behind his back, I caught a glimpse of Truth-Teller, the silver hilt gleaming in the early morning sunlight coming through the window before a sly shadow slid over it and the sword disappeared from view.

That shadow snaked around his back, up his neck, and curled into one ear.

They were both still dressed in their leathers, beads of water from melted snow dripping over their boots over my carpets. They hadn’t bothered changing. Hell, the pricks had probably left after I had and knew just where to wait for me.

Azriel narrowed his eyes - at me. I bit back the urge to snarl.

“Aren’t you two supposed to be in the camps,” I said maintaining the leash on my voice. Feyre had just left. I was in no mood to be poked and prodded, even from them. I hadn’t told them I’d called the bargain in this week, but I could tell they knew.

“Funny,” Cassian said, always the one content to do the talking between them. “We could have asked the same thing of you. You look great, by the way. The shit-faced look really works for you.”

“I am not shit-faced-”

“Could have fooled me.”

“He isn’t drunk, Cassian,” Azriel said.

“No, but he might as well be.” Cassian pushed off the bookshelves and took two careful steps towards me. “Flying home in the middle of that gods-forsaken storm we had last night? Really, Rhys?”

I gritted my teeth. “How are you even in here?”

Azriel flicked his brow up. Offending him wasn’t easy to do and I’d just done it in the space of six words.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break your wings and splatter yourself all over the mountainside.”

“Cassian.” My cousin’s pert voice cut him off as Morrigan strode out from the kitchen with a glass of something that smelled wonderful burning in her hand. But even her voice sounded clipped.

Cassian ran a hand through his hair. “We’d have waken up to find your body in pieces and then we’d all have been utterly fucked . What the hell is wrong with you?”

Nothing - nothing is wrong with me.”

The words came out in a tense growl as I stepped forward to meet him, our wings flaring out in unison.

“That’s enough ,” Mor said and it was enough that Azriel whipped his head to face her. “Rhys,” she said, handing me the glass and putting a hand on my chest to back me away from Cassian - the brother whom I loved and yet, stood by cursing all because I felt the need to lie about how shattered I’d become.

But I couldn’t let any of them know. Not the truth. Morrigan had already taken too much upon herself and she barely knew the half of what had happened in Amarantha’s court. I couldn’t bear the thought of adding that burden to my brothers too, not when -

Skin grazed his thighs, his stomach - one hand dragging over him up towards his chest, a blanket of thick gleaming hair that shone like dark rubies falling to meet him at his face as her lips parted in a decadent moan while she clenched around his -

I closed my eyes, commanding my mind to will the nightmares away.

Azriel. Cassian.

Me .

It didn’t matter. I saw all of us on a near-nightly basis. Telling them would only make the horrors in the night too real in the daytime.

Slowly, with a steel grip so my hand wouldn’t shake, I brought the glass Mor had given me to my lips and drank feeling the wash of liquid burn down my throat and savoring the hint of pain.

My family was watching me when I opened my eyes. “I appreciate the concern,” I said throwing every ounce of sincerity I had in to my voice so they’d know I meant it, “but I am fine.”

“Oh sure. Fine is good - fine is great,” Cassian said with the most sarcastic, shit-eating grin I’d ever seen on him. I tried to hold his gaze, but my eyes betrayed me when my gaze flicked away to Azriel.

The Shadowsinger stood. “Tell us what to do.”

Not a request for information. Not a plea to force me into the light. Azriel knew darkness the way darkness knew itself, was cut from the same cloth and swallowed whole by it to whatever end.

“Go visit Tarquin.”

“The Summer Court?” Mor looked skeptical at the instruction.

“Yes - the Summer Court.” My gaze went back to Azriel. “Tell me what you see.”

Azriel checked a quick glance at Cassian before nodding at me and walking towards the open door where he held back. Azriel never held back from anything, especially not an order.

Cassian rolled his eyes with a heavy sigh. “Do I get special orders too?” he chided, but the bite was gone from his voice.

“Cassian-” Mor started.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I suppose to some degree I deserve even if you are a filthy bastard, Cass.”

Cassian released a breath. “That’s more like it. Rhys,” and he stepped towards me, clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Why didn’t you just tell us she was here?”

Because I love her. I love her so much, it’s going to kill me and I didn’t want us to lose each other all over again. Not me or her or you or Az or Mor or any of us ever again.

Because I am weak and I do not know how to be strong.

“Because she holds the key,” I said. “And I didn’t want to let that information out until I knew exactly what would be within our reach to do with it.” The use of our instead of my seemed to appease him, though his look remained questioning. “She’ll be back in three weeks. I’ll know more then.”

Cassian sized me up and his regard was painful for me to look at even as I held my own and lied about all the ways I was failing him - failing myself. Finally, he sneered. “Got any more of that drink, Mor?”

“Oh, I’m sure I can find something,” she crooned. “Why?”

“Because I think Rhys needs to feel just as shit-faced as he looks.”

“I’m tired-”

“So am I.” Mor produced the bottle - whiskey - out of thin air and handed it over to Cassian, my brother who would not let me fall, would stand by me when I was at my lowest and allow me to pretend I was okay. “Cheers, brother - to you and the girl.”

We clinked glasses. “Now drink, you filthy bastard .”

Mor scowled and walked towards the guest room she enjoyed occupying as the only person privileged with the right of staying here or winnowing directly in, muttering something about men under her breath as she went.

We took our shots and when the alcohol had finished it’s initial detox, we found ourselves grinning at one another and I could tell that even without saying it, Cassian just somehow knew , maybe even about everything.

When I looked at the doorway, Azriel was gone.


Feyre.

Now that she had returned miraculously to my life, there was no more denying her. She consumed my thoughts, my dreams, and all of my nightmares to the point that I stayed at the townhouse to sleep so the others wouldn’t see how unraveled I’d become in her wake.

And in return, I took up no space whatsoever in her thoughts. Her mind had gone eerily quiet, her mental shields so thick that most days I could have questioned her very existence.

She was as silent as the grave.

And it terrified me beyond reason.

It quickly became a habit, a pattern practiced over and over again as I ticked down the days to that blessed week I could bring her back.

Every morning when I woke up and every night before I went to bed, and as few times in between as I could stomach it, I would reach out and caress what I could of that bond between us just to make sure it was still there - that she was still there. The most worrisome part of it being that without the mate bond between us and the bargain, I didn’t think I would have been able to feel her at all .

I had no idea if she was okay. But I concentrated on the fact that if she was strong enough to hold me out so well after only one week of training, she had to be doing okay. Perhaps my visit had been enough to scare her Tamlin shitless and force him to do something for her, though I sincerely doubted it.

Azriel returned from The Summer Court a week after I’d sent him, not entirely long for one of his usual missions.

We met with Amren, the firedrake who coiled in her lair far from the House of Wind, refusing to live so high up on a rock when she could be nestled in her own private cave. My second was nothing if not fiercely reclusive.

Her narrow eyes that belonged more to a snake than a High Fae examined me more than my brother as Azriel reported. Most of the details were nothing new nor surprising to me, but there was plenty concerning the High Lord of Summer’s regimen and council that were of the utmost value to me.

“He’s mostly taken to repairs to the city thus far,” Azriel said.

“What of his treasure troves?”

Azriel expressed mild interest. “Nothing. What of them?”

“Does Tarquin seem interested in cataloguing them anytime soon?”

“No, he doesn’t. He’s too concerned with his people and keeping morale up now that the war is over. He takes to the streets daily.”

An uncomfortable feeling settled in my stomach. He was well loved then, Tarquin, if he was spending his days more often outside the palace of Adriata than within it. He had dreams, hopes for his people. It was the foremost reason I wanted his alliance - and friendship. And the foremost reason I hated driving a knife in his back.

“What about Cresseida, his other-”

Pain, blinding and inexhaustible, roared through my mind in endless supply. It was not of the physical variety as I felt Feyre’s thoughts crack open like an egg, her thoughts slipping freely down the bond to congeal in my head.

Tamlin was ripped apart from her viciously, shouting her name. Feyre only barely registered the shattering of furniture and the violence of color around her before magic exploded out of her skin.

Fear rattled through me, adrenaline screaming at me to winnow on the spot and interfere, but then I heard Tamlin barely rasp her name - “Feyre” - before her shields snapped back up perfectly in place. She probably wasn’t even aware they’d dropped and that I’d seen anything at all.

My vision shifted and I was left with Amren smirking over a glass of her usual poison while Azriel leaned ever so slightly towards me, his hands in a tight grip on the belt of his flying leathers.

I cleared my throat.

“What about Cresseida?” I asked again.

Azriel waited a few careful seconds before beginning. His face was thick with shadows. I didn’t have to tell him where to send them. “I think Cresseida fashions herself the High Lady of Summer. Tarquin seems equal parts amused and aggravated by it.”

I snorted. That little minx undoubtedly did see herself in charge.

But as Azriel plunged on, the details became increasingly muddled in my mind as all I saw - all I could here or think or feel - was Feyre.


Azriel reported nothing amiss, though it was evident that something had happened. But so long as Feyre was physically in one piece, I couldn’t do a damned thing and I wasn’t going to risk her decision to help me woo Tamlin’s alliance in a war with Hybern over my interference in her affairs with him.

The agitation that ensued the rest of the month scratched and clawed at my skin every day. It became harder and harder to control and I found myself longing for that week with her outside Velaris just so I wouldn’t have to hide it so much anymore.

That fact alone nearly gutted me to pieces - that even Velaris no longer felt like a safe and steady refuge.

The first real breath of air I drew was winnowing into those fields and flowers of Spring. I took to the exact spot under that oak tree where I had deposited Feyre upon her return trip. Tamlin’s wards were nothing to me now as I landed, his magic a complete failure next to how easily I ripped the wards apart.

They might as well have not been there in the first place.

I entered the manor and crept easily through it. I knew these walls well, even after centuries of distance between us. But even if I hadn’t known it, Feyre’s scent was a bait that I stalked after, guided by it right to her rooms like a beast hungering at the altar for a sacrifice.

My mate was in these rooms and when I stepped outside her door and came face to face with Tamlin, and that horrid scent of his sex mixed with hers oozed off of him in waves, a vicious feral grin spread over my lips.

Up until this point, I hadn’t allowed myself to entertain the idea of him with Feyre, not past the flashes of heat I’d sometimes receive in the middle of the night when Feyre was so uncontrolled underneath him, her arousal was enough to crack through my nightmares.

I hated those nights. Shoved them so far out of my thoughts I could pretend they weren’t there. Because every time I woke up with the faint sounds of her moans and his name on her lips ringing in my ears, it was an effort not to run to the toilets myself and vomit.

There were several nights that I did.

But now standing here in front of their nest knowing that Tamlin had her, all of her in all the ways that aggressive, primal male in me craved as her mate, knowing he didn’t damned deserve it... It was such a powerful blow that I wanted to rip his throat out as he had Amarantha’s and be done with it.

I chose my feline approach instead.

“I’ve come to collect,” I said cooly, allowing that wild grin of mine to seep over him. The snap of his face into his usual snarl was reward enough, nevermind the claws that peaked through his knuckles.

“Get out,” he said sharply. I walked closer, right in front of the door. Her door, I noted tracing the scent off of him down to his room where hers did not follow. “I’ll say it one more time-”

“You can say it as often as you like,” I said, cutting him off. “It will not change anything.” I dipped my head and allowed my grin to stretch, taunting him every second. “You know that.”

The door creaked suddenly open. My eyes slid to Feyre and, and-

The mask slipped.

Feyre stood wrapped in nothing but a blanket. Though Tamlin was near naked himself, he looked like a god standing next to her, put together and groomed.

But Feyre - oh, my Feyre.

Not your anything, look at her - smell her. Smell him .

Feyre’s entire body was so weak and thin, one breath from me and even across the room, she would have fallen over from the light force. I could count the ribs down her chest, could see her hip bones jutting out at her waist sharply. And her eyes rang painfully hollow, rimmed with red and such hopeless exhaustion.

My mate.

My mate.

My mate, my mate, mate - he’d fucked my mate and left her for dead .

“Feyre,” I said, her name emanating in a heavily restrained gasp. “Are you running low on food here?”

My eyes snapped to Tamlin who had the audacity to feign ignorance. “What?”

In my mind, I imagined that moment where he’d charged Amarantha and sank his teeth into her flesh. Only I wanted him up against that wall, my wings pinning his useless hide against the stone while my talons ripped into his chest and the fangs of my beast snapped his head in two until he was beyond recognition.

But Feyre loved him.

For her, I would not cave.

For her, I had to be strong.

For her, for her - always for her.

“Let’s go,” I said, extending my hand out to her, but Tamlin with his endless nerve stepped straight into my path barring me from her. “Get out,” he said, pointing towards the stairs I’d just come up. “She’ll come to you when she’s ready.”

Tamlin undoubtedly thought he was brave, protecting his lady love as he dutifully should have. With cold, dead malice in my eyes that could have tossed an ocean, I reached mere inches in front of me and flicked a non-existent piece of dust off his shoulder. Feyre’s mind cracked wide open.

She was... awed.

Had Tamlin’s teeth been inches from my throat, I would have bleated in panic .

My eyes shot to her riding that wave of crimson anger. “No, you wouldn’t have,” I said and her eyes went wide. “As far as your memory serves me, the last time Tamlin’s teeth were near your throat, you slapped him across the face.”

Her shields shot into place at once.

“Shut your mouth and get out.” Somehow, Tamlin found even more space to occupy between Feyre and me.

I took one step back - just one .

My hands went smoothly into my pockets. “You really should have your wards inspected. Cauldron knows what other sort of riffraff might stroll in here as easily as I did.”

Feyre looked positively scandalized. But as I looked her over, again taking in her starved appearance and feeling the depression roll out of her despite her mental shields, I wasn’t going to budge an ounce until we were safely back in the Night Court.

“Put some clothes on,” I said, to which she promptly bared her teeth at me and slammed the door shut on my face after Tamlin followed her into the room.

At least she had fight in her still. That was a good sign I didn’t deserve.

The sound of opening and closing drawers met my ears in between their hurried conversation.

“How did he get in here?”

“I don’t know. He just - it’s just part of whatever game he’s playing.”

“If war is coming, maybe we’d be better served trying to mend things.”

I froze, the comment such an unexpected gift. I hadn’t been sure if I’d really expected her to try talking to him about what I’d said. The fact that she had -

“I’ll start mending things the day he releases you from your bargain.”

“Maybe he’s keeping the bargain so that you’ll attempt to listen to him.”

“Feyre, why do you need to know these things? Is it not enough for you to recover in peace? You earned that for yourself. You earned it. I relaxed the number of sentries here; I’ve been trying... trying to be better about it. So leave the rest of it-”

A pause.

“This isn’t the time for this conversation.”

Of course it wasn’t.

Of course.

Baldly, I coughed in the hallway - very, very audibly so.

The door opened by a moment later and there stood Feyre.

Not your anything .

She glanced at me with little concern, the displeasure written all over her face. But still, she had asked him...

It was something I had only hoped and prayed for and it was... a start.

Casually, I offered her my hand. She took it, only for Tamlin to promptly appear and push my hand down. For the first time, genuine desperation overtook everything about him from the look he gave me right down to the pitiful begging in his voice.

“You end her bargain right here, right now, and I’ll give you anything you want. Anything.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Feyre said. I could both hear and feel how his offer shocked her. Even she knew it was a grim, foolish decision.

Lucky for them both, I was not one for fool’s errands.

“I already have everything I want,” I said. And it was true. There was nothing short of Feyre offering herself wholly to me that could have possibly tempted me to accepting him and we all knew that was never going to happen.

As casually as I’d flicked at him moments ago, I stepped around Tamlin and found Feyre’s hand. We disappeared into a blink of dust.

A Court of Starlight and Poppies

A A Court of Thorns and Roses Story
by Turtle_Steed

Part 5 of 35

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