A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 70: Amarantha

Chapter 70: Amarantha

The palm of her hand had gone raw from running along the stone. She hadn't dared winnow further into the mountain, landing outside the cave entrance, mud splattering along the skirt of her dress from rain-drenched earth. But there was no telling what awaited her at the other end, so she took as much caution as her muddled mind could, and went in on foot.

It didn't take her nearly as long as the first time to reach the first door, leading into that cold, stone hallway. It was empty, so she slipped through the door. The torches in their mantles along the smoothed walls were already lit. In a moment of uncertainty, a tickle of fear, she glanced over her shoulder.

The door was gone. Agape, she slammed her hands against the spot the door had just been, feeling nothing but the biting cold rock against her palms, like it had never been there at all. "No, no." A ward. Some sort of spell. Definitely new and she'd make a guess that whatever it was, kept her winnowing out too.

With her only choice of going forward, she swallowed the fact that her escape had vanished and turned back around. Though it just felt as dark and glum as last time, something else filled the air.

People. Galadriel could feel the hum of life somewhere further within, like a beehive buzzing through a downpour. She didn't take the route she had last time, which led to the dungeon. Reaching out, she felt for that tether linking her to Rhys. It was there, short and taut, but mute. The buzz dampened everything else, like too much magic clogging the channels. Another spell, perhaps.

It was a shock that she didn't run into anybody, aimlessly wandering through the halls, trying to collect some sort of outline of the mountain, but as she passed through more and more corridors, peeking into grand bedrooms, a war room, something that looked like a library, Galadriel realised what it truly was.

Amarantha had built a palace. A city Under the Mountain.

The buzzing grew denser as she went up a set of grand stairs, the floor at the top black marble, flecked with mother of pearl. As though an attempt to make this place decadent, to veil the truth of it all.

A paced clicking stopped her in her tracks. Galadriel hid herself behind a black column, glamouring herself the best she could as the sound became closer. A dark faerie that she'd never seen before stalked past, its skin a pallid grey, hanging from protruding bone. Its face was thin but long, with teeth like claws and nails from its hands and feet like talons. It quickly became apparent why she'd run into nothing below when another creature passed a minute later, squat and fat and muttering under its breath with a pair of wrinkled, leathery wings not at all like the elegant, iridescent membrane belonging to the Illyrians.

Galadriel scurried along the moment it was gone, headed in the direction of the distance humming.

The humming turned out to be the chatter of well over two hundred faeries, both High and Lesser alike. Galadriel hid in the shadows of a servant's entrance between two obsidian carvings of wyverns, scanning the chamber. It was large—cavernous, the dark roof arching high above. The great torches hanging from the walls and the massive chandelier were reflected by the polished floor, the same black marble as outside.

It was a throne room, and sitting on the throne herself, was Amarantha.

Her hair was the colour of dark blood, set straight over both her shoulders. Her skin was pale, her face sharp and wide. She was beautiful, but in the way that a painting of a battle could be rather than in a traditional sense of the word. A beauty that punches you in the gut, that you want to turn away from but couldn't.

Amarantha looked over her guests, a glass of wine in her hand. Behind the throne, hiding in the shadows as Galadriel was, was the creature she'd seen slither past the prison door all those weeks ago, leather-skinned and winged with dirty claws.