A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 26: A Tale

"I'm here with you now, aren't I?" She pointedly glanced around the park as he shook off her hand. "Alone with you in the dark, far away enough from everything that nobody would hear me scream."

He flicked something out of his nail. "I have a feeling that we're imaging very different scenarios that involve your screams."

Galadriel lurched toward him, thumping his chest with the side of her hand. "Rhysand, you foul-minded bastard." Still, she laughed. As did he, through his groans and gripes, rubbing his chest. She didn't know what it was that dragged this side out of him—if he was like this with every female he came across or if she had just annoyed him enough that he, like the experienced warrior he was, was trying a new tactic with her when the others hadn't worked.

He purred, "What I'm imagining is a very pleasant thing. Hardly foul." She had no response other than the beating heat on her face and the tight folding of her hands beneath her arms. He sighed. "You still call me Rhysand."

"That is your name."

"One only used by those whom I'm not on friendly terms with."

"I don't see your point."

"Galadriel." He waited until she deigned to turn her head to him, his eyes steady on her face. "I would like if you called me Rhys." Not an order, but a request. "I'd like to think that..." He sighed again. "Sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're taunting me or actually feel that way."

She glanced down at the hands he wrung around in his lap. "I thought you could read me like a book."

His lips twitched up. "Only sometimes. You tear out chapters here and there, leaving me only scraps."

Privately, she considered his request. It was conflicting enough to give her a headache—whether she should let herself be that familiar with him, or whether a name was just a name and she should give him what he asks since he is a High Lord, after all.

Lost in her mind, she hadn't realised she had been twisting the ring around her finger until she caught Rhysand's dark eyes directed at it. Stopping, Galadriel wiped her hand over it, soothing the slight burn on her skin from the friction. She asked, "Did Cassian tell you about it, or Azriel?"

"Cassian." He dragged his gaze back up, as if some chain had held them there that he fought to escape. "You don't need it anymore."

"Cassian said the same thing," she said, unable to stop herself from going back to twisting it. "But I feel safe having it there. In case something happens—I don't want to hurt this court. I already fucked up in the worst way." Azriel hadn't given her release not to wear it anyway, so on her finger it would stay until she got the order.

He went back to staring at the ring. "I don't feel comfortable knowing you're wearing it. I don't ask that of my court members, and frankly I'm going to be having a discussion with Azriel about the use of them with his spies." Though she could tell he was trying to keep himself contained, hotness woven into his tone. Not quite anger but...nearly.

"It is these things," she said, angling more towards him, extending her hand between them until her fingertips grazed the length of his thigh, "that help keep this court safe. You and your family safe. I know what risk my job carried and if hadn't been willing to wear the ring, to use it, then Azriel wouldn't have let me become his spy in the first place."

His shoulders sagged—just ever so slightly. That weight, knowing the lives of others were given for him when he might not even realise it—was heavy. Galadriel knew some semblance of that feeling. It became easier when it was far away, but now with evidence in front of him, he wouldn't be able to forget.