Chapter Text
“You’re afraid,” Rhysand said, taking a seat on one of the plush chairs that adorned the balcony. He was dressed in his usual finery, a weapon that the wasn't entirely sure how to go about removing just yet. And clothes were most definitely a weapon, even if only a psychological one.
I let my eyes flicker over him, trying to match him with the male that I knew all those years ago, but it just wasn’t possible. Life under Amarantha’s rule had stripped away what we had once been, turning us animalistic and cruel. And I… I wasn’t sure how to go back from that. I wasn’t sure Rhys was either.
“So are you,” I stated, letting my eyes drift back over to the view of the rising sun. It had been years since I’d actually seen the sun. In the rare instances that Amarantha allowed me out of Under the Mountain, it was almost always at night.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Rhysand shrugging his shoulders in a carefree, lazy sort of way. That was just another one of the High Lord’s masks - a way to hide the true extent of the threat that he was. Even when it was just the two of us, we couldn’t drop the facade.
“We’ve already waited long enough,” he said softly. “They know that things have ended… Too much longer and they’ll come for us.”
I let out a tinkling laugh, one that was feminine and soft and so well rehearsed that I was certain that I could do it in my sleep. Or when I was so drunk that I couldn’t remember my own name - which was the same thing really.
“You,” I corrected, sending him the slightest of smiles. “They’ll come for you.”
“You’re one of us,” Rhysand insisted, voice sharper than what I’ve grown accustomed to. “You spent forty-nine years as a slave to help keep them safe and they’ll respect that, no matter your differences before.”
I just shook my head. “Easy for you to say. You’ve been stuck here with me.” I looked at him, really looked at him. We had seen each other at our ugliest, with blood, sweat, and tears binding us together in a way that I hadn’t known possible. “If it hadn’t just been the two of us all these years… If it had just been me that disappeared for almost fifty years and I just showed back up out of nowhere. Would you see me as someone other than the female you knew back then?”
Rhys ran a hand through his hair, a rare break of character. “Esme… If I could take it all back-“
“That wasn’t the question,” I told him with a soft sigh. It was sweet of him to attempt to spare my feelings, but I already knew the answer. “If we had been separated for that fifty years only to come back into contact… neither of us knowing what the other had gone through… you would look at me and see the bratty, problem-making child that you had to keep close because of the threat I posed.”
He looked down at his clasped hands. We hadn’t been close until after we were both forced into slavery. Before that, I’d just been a fae child too powerful to let fall into the wrong hands. A nuisance to him and his plans, but his morals had kept him from executing me, so I had been more or less shoved off to the side.
Rhys nodded his head slowly. “Fine. You’re right.”
“As per usual,” I cooed.
He snorted as he leaned back further into his chair, before his expression turned more solemn. “Still, I think there’s one male who might be more relieved that the others to see you alive and more or less well.”
Those words would have once been enough to bring me to my knees. Now they didn’t make me so much as flinch. “Doubt it. Like I said, forty-nine years won’t change the way any of them feel about me. Regardless of my feelings.”
He rolled his eyes, but that tense look was fading from his face. “It won’t be like that again. I’ll make sure of it.”
I shook my head. “Don’t go fighting my battles for me, they’ll only resist it all the more. Let them come to their own conclusions. If they want to hate me, let them. And if I want to avoid them, let me.”
Rhysand stared at me, violet eyes gleaming with a fierce protectiveness. “And if they were saying the kinds of things that they’re bound to say about you, about me, would you just sit there quietly?”
A soft laugh slipped past my lips. “No. I don’t suppose I would.”
“You have your answer then.”
He stood to his feet, reaching his full, astonishing height. His wings stretched out on either side of him. “Get packed, Esme. We leave in an hour.”
Rhysand disappeared in the blink of the eye. Winnowing wasn’t a talent that I possessed and I’d always been a tad jealous of those who could. Vanishing one place and appearing in the next was an enviable gift, though it did have it’s limitations. One could only go so far. Rhys, being as powerful as he was, could likely go further than most.
I glanced down at my outfit and sighed. The translucent, shimmering fabric of my gown only served as a reminder of what I had become in my time in Under the Mountain. A whore.
But I could hardly remember how I’d dressed before my enslavement. I’d scarcely been sixteen when I’d been dragged beneath the sacred mountain, and if I was honest, I remembered very little about life before then.
My memories were vague at best. I’d been more of reckless tomboy back then, getting into fights that I couldn’t win and wearing clothes designed for males. My hair had been chopped at the shoulders in an uneven cut that I’d done myself after Morrigan had told me that I looked pretty with long hair and thus pissing me off for reasons my sixteen year old self didn’t even understand.
I took a deep breath and made my way over to my wardrobe. It was filled with every kind of dress imaginable. The key was finding one that I actually liked for myself. Not one that I thought would please and distract for the sake of getting a job done, but one that I truly wanted to wear. That seemed like a good first step in discovering myself - you could tell a lot about a person by the type of clothes that they wore.
Most of my gowns were covered in jewels and lace and all sorts of pretty things, but they didn’t speak to me. I looked at them and thought about how they’d been chosen for a specific clientele.
Eventually I settled on a simple, floor-length, black gown with an open back. It was sexy and sleek with hint of gold weaved into the fabric that looked like stars in the darkness. I’d worn it only once, nearly forty-five years ago before shoving it in the back of my closet.
It was the dress I’d chosen to wear when I finally decided to stop fighting the males who Amarantha tossed me to - the dress that had made me understand that my beauty was a weapon to be harnessed, rather than something to be stifled and hidden away. It was the dress that had turned me from the sheep to the wolf.
Only fitting that I wore it on the day of my true emancipation.
Rhysand appeared in the room only seconds later, likely having been kicked out of Feyre’s room. The newly minted fae female had the potential to be a game changer, but I wasn’t so sure how I felt about Rhysand’s peculiar interest in her. Especially when Tamlin was the High Lord who claimed her.
“I’ve decided that this is the only thing worth taking,” I said without turning around. “Everything else can burn.”
It wasn’t until I turned to face Rhysand that I noticed that the blood had been drained from his face.
I sucked in a breath. “What is it? Has something happened to Feyre?”
He just stared at me and for a long moment, he didn’t say anything.
“I understand,” he finally choked out. “I understand what you meant all those years ago when you said that you let Azriel go because you loved him. I understand.”
I took a wary step towards him. Last we’d discussed it, he thought that I was an idiot for not telling Azriel about the bond between us. “Only took you forty-something years,” I said, watching his expression. “Why the sudden change?”
“Feyre,” he whispered. “Feyre’s my mate.”
Then before I could even process what that meant, his hand was clamped around my upper arm and he was winnowing us away.