A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 11: Like a Book

Chapter 11: Like a Book

Galadriel did not take the bait of the offer that Rhysand tossed her. 'There's someone here that wants to meet you.' Refusing to even answer him, she sat down by the window and overlooked the garden, blocking out the voices resonating from the lower floor. There were curses to High Fae hearing. It wasn't hard to narrow the guest down to the General Commander of the Night Court. The stories of him she had heard were reckoning; Beron always spoke of him with contempt. But he spoke of everybody that way.

It wasn't a disdain for Cassian's reputation that withheld her from venturing down. Or even the fact that he was a part of Rhysand's Inner circle. She had gotten along plentifully with Mor. But she knew it would be a welcoming. Not a simple greeting as they properly introduced, but a welcome to his home. The same reason she declined Rhysand's offer to see the city just yet. Going down was accepting that she was staying. Accepting the fate that she was no longer a spy.

Azriel never introduced his spies to one another, let alone to his home and his friends. It was for their own protection and his. And a boundary she had come to terms with decades ago. Now she sat in the High Lord's spare room, meeting Azriel's closest companions.

Galadriel itched. She itched for something to do, a task to be in her mind. Let it be sewing a new dress together or decoding another message sent to her. Not sitting around like a child pulled from the training rings where the males all learnt to wield their blades.

~

"You're not unpacked."

Galadriel dropped the book to her thighs. She lounged on the bed, knees pointed towards the ceiling. Indeed, her pack remained where she had left it. It had grown late, but not enough that she would need a candlelight to read. Sunset wouldn't come for another hour.

"Expecting to go somewhere?" Rhysand prodded further as he wandered into her room, toeing her pack at the foot of the bed.

"Yes," she said. "I'm only staying here a few days remember? What do you want?"

"You to come eat with me. I'm having dinner."

Galadriel slowly turned another page in her book, fingertip tracing the outline of a paragraph. "Can't I just eat up here? Or are you afraid I'll get crumbs in the carpet?"

Hands in pockets, he leant his weight against a poster of her bed. "I'd rather have company since no one else is here for the night." There he was, a High Lord, standing in her room and asking her to join him like having no company for a meal was a distress she could solve. It almost made her laugh.

"You sound as though you're expecting my company to be warm and delightful."

"I fully expect to be insulted in at least three different ways," he said with swift confidence across a grin. "But I'm finding it wildly entertaining." He nodded towards her door, sending that single strand of hanging black hair even more crooked. "Come eat." Though he turned by the time Galadriel shut her book, she could see straight through the back of his head to the upwards tilt of his victorious expression.

Dinner was already awaiting them downstairs in the dining room, two plates mounted with food upon the cherrywood table. What she found slightly bemusing was the fact that both were at a single end, yet the plates faced opposite each other. It left the end chair—the High Chair, Beron named it—unattended. Galadriel sat in the one closest to the door, albeit with her back towards it. Fortunately, she did not rely on sight alone to sense if another presence approached.

The low backing of the seat that was no doubt made to accommodate for Illyrian wings made it awkward to lean against, so she compensated with elbows driven into the wood to hold her weight. Eyeing their meals, there was little difference between hers and Rhysand's, except for one small thing.