I didn’t even wait for the darkness to clear before my anger at Tamlin shifted into the offensive to see where Feyre was at.

And Feyre, I felt as I set her down and saw the agony in her eyes, was dying.

“What the hell happened to you?” I said.

“Why don’t you just look inside my head?”

Nothing.

No emotion. No sting. No spite in her voice.

Nothing.

“Where’s the fun in that?” I winked for good measure, but Feyre only slowly turned away from me eyeing the stairs that would lead to her room. I’d never seen her this deflated. “No shoe throwing this time?”

Again, no answer. This time she really did move for the stairs, ignoring the intention behind my words that was plain as day.

My skin crawled. My insides twisted horribly in pain. My heart wrenched.

My mate was dying and she didn’t care . Feyre did not care. Not for me. Not for her. Barely ever for Tamlin any longer.

All that power gifted to me since birth - the killing power, the darkness of Night, the ability to bend space and travel through thought and none of it made one damned difference because I was going to lose her.

My muscles trembled beneath my skin aching to let out some kind of release that would catch her, break her fall, but I was so fucking useless to do anything. And she was so horribly pale...

“Eat breakfast with me,” I sputtered. In the five seconds Feyre had her back turned, my mask was so far removed it had never existed in the first place. I was so absolutely unhinged.

The fabric of her top fell over one of her shoulders as she turned to face me again, revealing how pronounced her collarbones were. And still her voice sounded dead when she spoke.

“Don’t you have other things to deal with?”

“Of course I do,” I said, shrugging as casually as I could to maintain some kind of stasis for her because my words were about to fail me. “I have so many things to deal with that I’m sometimes tempted to unleash my power across the world and wipe the board clean. Just to buy me some damned peace.”

Perhaps, I dared hope, offering her that one piece of myself that let her know I was just as wretched and twisted inside as she was would help her understand me more.

But Feyre didn’t move, so I yielded all to her.

I grinned, nothing short of my usual arrogance even as my chest heaved to cover how badly I wanted to shake, and bowed at the waist deep and low as only she could merit. “But I’ll always make time for you,” I said.

Sweet, merciful relief flooded me so strongly when Feyre motioned for me to lead her to breakfast that I could have released a sob had I not wanted to trouble her.

Just stay I begged inside myself. Just stay. Just live. Feyre, please just live.

Her feet dragged across the floor as we made it to that heavy breakfast table well laid out with food. “I felt a spike of fear this month through our lovely bond. Anything exciting happen at the wondrous Spring Court?”

It was very easily too testy of a question to throw at her given her current emotional state, but I had to know - had to be sure Tamlin wasn’t going to drive the knife into her heart himself.

“It was nothing,” was all she said.

Nothing.

Because the shouting, the crying, the fracturing world around her - meant nothing to her now.

And it was his fault.

Feyre looked at me, then quickly away. I didn’t let the rage stop from pouring out of my gaze, a rage so strong the depths of that vicious court beneath me churned in agony.

Feyre’s voice turned icy, the first real flicker of emotion, as she sank into her seat and I joined her. “If you know, why even ask about it?”

Because I adore you, and I abhor the thought that you would suffer and not tell me, even if it is me.

“Because these days,” I said, my voice somehow impossibly smaller than what I fashioned for my persona, “all I hear through that bond is nothing. Silence. Even with your shields up rather impressively most of the time, I should be able to feel you. And yet I don’t. Sometimes I’ll tug on the bond only to make sure you’re still alive.”

The magic inside my soul twitched as I hit the words, denying the flood of memories of the last time she died. It was complete torment to consider it happening again.

“And then one day, I’m in the middle of an important meeting when terror blasts through the bond. All I get are glimpses of you and him - and then nothing. Back to silence. I’d like to know what caused such a disruption.”

Feyre casually ignored me as she piled food atop her plate and merely said, “It was an argument, and the rest is none of your concern.”

My next words snapped out of me quickly.

“Is it why you look like your grief and guilt and rage are eating you alive, bit by bit?”

“Get out of my head.”

“Make me. Push me out.” The words were so pained off my tongue. I just wanted her to react, to do something, to acknowledge the problem, but it was like pulling teeth. I vaguely wondered how far down she hid the truth even from herself, what it must really be like to be inside her own head. Did my own grief and burdens even compare?

But then I thought of Cassian. And Azriel. My family who had watched me shoot into the sky in the middle of a storm that Cassian was right, could have killed me. I hadn’t cared then. Feyre didn’t care now.

So they pushed me to care. Until I saw it even if I lied daily on the surface about every single emotion I felt. But still, they made me care.

Feyre needed to care.

“You dropped your shield this morning - anyone could have walked right in.”

Her eyes met my challenge... and willingly threw in the towel. “Where’s Mor?” she asked, her voice fading.

Working underneath this fucking rock like I asked her to when I should have found an excuse to drag her back here for the week.

But this was about Feyre.

“Away. She has duties to attend to. Is the wedding on hold, then?”

She stopped chewing for the briefest moment and barely whispered, “Yes.”

“I expected an answer more along the lines of, ‘ Don’t ask stupid questions you already know the answer to,’ or my timeless favorite, ‘ Go to hell .’“

She didn’t say anything. Feyre - fuck, please say something .

She reached for a tartlet on one of the shining silver platters and her eyes flickered over my hands when darkness shot out of me reaching for her, ready to claw my way across the brief distance that separated us between our plates.

“Did you give my offer any thought?”

I watched her while she ate. Ate her way through an entire plate of food like she had never eaten anything in her life before she answered me.

“I’m not going to work with you.”

And just like that, the Night sucked me in.

“And why, Feyre, are you refusing me?”

“I’m not going to be a part of this war you think is coming,” she said, an edge of defensiveness lacing her tone as she avoided my gaze pushing fruit around her plate. “You say I should be a weapon, not a pawn - they seem like the same to me. The only difference is who’s wielding it.”

“I want your help, not to manipulate you,” I snapped. This was about my court , not abusing her in the same selfish way Tamlin and these other cursed High Lords would seek to. Feyre’s eyes shot to me immediately, cutting through my anger the way an Illyrian blade could cut through diamonds.

“You want my help because it’ll piss off Tamlin.”

My shoulders gasped. Shadows swarmed. I could have been my very own Shadowsinger for how entirely encased I was, but nothing could stop the endless heartache wrenching through me as word after word, stare after stare, silence after silence, she cut me down and refused to even exist outside the grief I knew was lingering just below the surface of her thoughts.

“Fine,” I said after several long moments during which I gathered myself into the High Lord who sacrificed all for his court, for history. “I dug that grave myself, with all I did Under the Mountain. But I need your help.”

When Feyre again offered me less than nothing, I gave her everything - the barest, most raw truths of who I was.

“I was a prisoner in her court for nearly fifty years.” Feyre raised her eyes to me tentatively with each word. “I was tortured and beaten and fucked until only telling myself who I was, what I had to protect, kept me from trying to find a way to end it. Please - help me keep that from happening again. To Prythian.”

We stared at each other for a long while. I couldn’t feel my own heart beat once.

And when even begging at her feet was not enough, Feyre resumed eating without so much as a backwards glance.

We spent the rest of breakfast in resounding silence.

---

She didn’t come to dinner.

She didn’t come to breakfast the following morning.

I was half a step from going up to her room just sit by her bed and keep watch lest I go insane waiting for her when I felt the bond stir as she woke up. Patiently I waited and at length, she came to the study where I waited with her day’s lessons.

Feyre did not return my amused expression as she entered the room and I motioned her towards a set of sentences I hoped would bait her. “Copy these sentences,” I said, not bothering with hellos. We seemed to be past that now.

Feyre didn’t bother arguing. Just sat down, picked up the papers, and read, bored to tears.

“Rhysand is a spectacular person. Rhysand is the center of my world. Rhysand is the best lover a female can ever dream of.”

Every single word was pronounced perfectly, read with flawless accuracy and not once did she stutter. Even better was her penmanship when she copied them in exact measure on the clean pages I’d set out.

She shoved the papers at me and my claws sprang out, pouncing at her mind and not bothering to be gentle about it - but that wall of adamant greeted them and they sprang back at once.

I blinked at her.

“You practiced.”

Feyre stood up and didn’t bother looking at me as she walked away, done for the day with her lessons, with me .

“I had nothing better to do.

---

She won’t even see me.

I don’t blame her.

Not helping.

What do you want me to do about it? I’m stuck here for the next two weeks dealing with Keir and weeding out the cretins who defected and who stayed. You did that or did you forget?

I cursed, my head hitting the backboard of my bed as snow fell outside the windows over those glorious mountains.

What do I do? It is not just that she won’t see me. She won’t even see herself.

Give her space. I could use your help here anyway and the peace and quiet without you strutting around with your wings in her face every five seconds might help her relax.

I do not strut.

Mor didn’t reply.

Fine. I’ll be there in the morning.

Good.

I had just sat up from the bed when a second sheet of paper fluttered through the air in front of me, Mor’s curling script blazing upon it with insistence.

Bring those chocolate chili muffins with you.

I rolled my eyes and knew wherever my cousin was, she was poised on a throne with a gleeful triumph on her face.

Since Feyre wasn’t in the habit of speaking with me, I didn’t bother her with goodbyes. I perched outside her door in the early hours of the morning, so early it could have still been considered night, and left a stack of books at her door with a note.

I have business elsewhere. The house is yours. Send word if you need me.

Six days.

Not one word.

Not so much as a flicker.

After the first night when I woke up drenched in sweat, Night consuming the room as Amarantha’s face beamed at me while she twisted Feyre’s neck until I felt every single bone break along her spine, I took to winnowing to the townhouse in Velaris when it was time to sleep.

I didn’t tell Mor.

---

Feyre sat in a stream of golden sunlight reading for most of her final day. Only reading.

Just like before, her skin had a little extra color to it making her features more relaxed. But since she had come here worse off than her first trip, her recuperation only seemed to catch her up so much.

I shoved away the thought of how bad it would be the next time she visited.

Still, she seemed almost peaceful sitting there, her book open contentedly in her lap. I didn’t bother to notice if it was one I’d chosen for her or one she’d found on her own as I approached.

“Since you seem hell-bent on a sedentary lifestyle, I thought I’d go one step further and bring your food to you.”

Feyre looked up at me as I slid between the cushioned chairs and set two plates piled with food on the table in front of us, taking a seat adjacent her. Her eyes widened at the food ravenously.

“Thank you,” she said.

Simply.

Plainly.

Empty, empty, empty .

I laughed, just a small laugh, hoping this could be played off, but... “ Thank you? Not ‘ High lord and servant?’ Or: ‘ Whatever it is you want, you can go shove it up your ass, Rhysand.’ ? How disappointing,” I finished with a click of my tongue.

But even after a week - a week that had earned me civility and a polite greeting of sorts that didn’t result in her walking away from me again - Feyre didn’t say anything. Only reached for the plate.

I drained.

My magic reacted on instinct, took over for me where I could no longer help myself and I was willing to let it.

A light current of air dragged the plate from Feyre’s grasp and when she pushed ahead a little more, it jumped back again.

“Tell me what to do,” I said. If I had to flat out beg her for the answer to helping her, so be it. “Tell me what to do to help you.”

Feyre kept still as my power continued to pour out of me with each word. I couldn’t have helped it if I’d tried. “Months and months, and you’re still a ghost. Does no one there ask what the hell is happening? Does your High Lord simply not care?”

Feyre’s eyes glittered with ice as she spoke with enough control, I only just caught the frost behind her words. “He’s giving me space to sort it out.”

Space.

Space like I’d given her all week and look where that had landed us.

If Tamlin wouldn’t help her -

“Let me help you. We went through enough Under the Mountain-”

Feyre nearly jumped out of her seat at the mere mention of that place and I leaned in closer to her, just desperate to feel her close in some way, close enough to know there was still someone in there who heard me even if she tried so hard not to.

“She wins,” I gasped. “That bitch wins if you let yourself fall apart.”

She wins if any of us do .

There were nights during which that thought alone was all that kept me on the fringes of reality. When my face became my brothers and I woke with the sound of Feyre’s neck snapping in my ears, the only thing pulling me back this frustrating idea that Amarantha would want me to cave to it - all of it.

The nightmares, both in sleep and waking.

Feyre’s uncontrollable vomiting, her fear of who she was.

Even Tamlin and his inability to stop his shortcomings from dominating his every move right down to the claws he lived and died by daily.

We would all let her win if we didn’t fight. If Feyre didn’t -

Conversation over.

Her walls collapsed and rebuilt so quickly, the words flying through the bond between us like an arrow to a dear. She grabbed her book, content to starve if it meant denying the truths I flung at her constantly, and I snarled at her openly.

“Like hell it is.”

Something - just give me something, I beg of you.

Her book snapped shut. That one tiny little act had a tide of glittering, towering rage gushing beneath her skin - a rage that was icy and sharp as glass, piercing as -

Snow.

Feyre hurled the book at me before I could blink and I deflected it, but not before I saw the frost covering the bindings - and her hands. My magic reacted instinctively to hers - whether because she was my mate or purely from the thrill of sensing someone of equal capability within reach, someone to play with and live by, I didn’t know.

Maybe it was both.

And it thrilled me to no end.

“Good,” I said, a bit ragged. “What else do you have, Feyre?”

She glared at me as that ice on her hands melted into molten fire, untempered and hot as the burning sun of Autumn. Beron would fuck himself if he knew...

Feyre looked at me and she knew what I was feeling, could see the sense of relief taking over as the shadows at my back retreated and the darkness surrounding us filled with stars instead of that endless, empty void.

She’s alive. She’s alive...

The flames on her hands disappeared. I didn’t care how she did it, pleased enough in the fact that she had at all.

“Any time you need someone to play with,” I said, pushing the plate towards her and prepared to offer her much more than she might have realized she would one day need, possibly even want if she were to ask, “whether it’s during our marvelous week together or otherwise, you let me know.”

Feyre cleaned her plate faster than I’d ever seen her before.

The next morning, Tamlin’s greeting was more an order I might give in the Illyrian camps than a gentle hello to someone he loved.

“Get inside,” he practically barked at Feyre. She made no move to argue, but I could already feel the sinking weight creeping into her gut as I set her down and took a step back.

But Tamlin didn’t know what I knew, did not understand that Feyre could be a soldier when she wanted to be, one who was deadly and focused and determined.

I turned that same authority on her that Tamlin enacted, but I filled it with purpose for her to cling to, direction for her to consider, a challenge for her to rise to rather than die from when the world tried to suffocate her.

“Fight it,” I said, a cold gleam in my eye.

Feyre stepped back towards this man she shared a bed with, this man and this court whom she loved. I didn’t have to wonder what it would feel like for her if she let herself die for that man and that court that did not love her back in the same way, sometimes did not love her at all or perhaps too greatly. For Feyre, I already felt that death every single day.

Leaving her to whatever she should choose, I disappeared and returned home without her - this woman whom I loved to the very ends of the earth.