A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 94: The Creature

The crowd roused.

Galadriel looked up, watching as some of the faeries stood, leaning out of their seats to gaze something over closer. Turning, she searched for the same thing.

It was difficult to see at first, but when she did find it, horror leaked from her head to her feet, sickening and thick like oil. A body floated in the middle of the pool. Not the entire body. Just half a chest and an arm, as if the rest... As if the rest had been bitten off.

There was an uproar in the audience of something not quite excitement, but neither the alarm the scene deserved. Galadriel swam back to her edge, muscles tensed and ready to pull herself out. Another faerie who had been floating screamed. He did not stop at the edge, throwing himself onto the ground, fumbling right away from it.

Two others looked at the body when they surfaced, paled, and then went back down.

An invisible wave of current brushed against her legs, like a watery feather. Goosebumps prickled up her arms. The monster was close. On the other side of the pool, a bulb of water pushed into the air before sinking back down, almost soundless.

Gods.

Galadriel looked towards the dais.

One more dive and she might never see him again, so she looked. Rhysand sat taut, right at the lip of his seat, fingers curled around the gilded armrests of his chair. She loved him. She couldn't be sure if she loved him the way she did on the night they came here—it felt different. Love didn't feel like running through a spring meadow filled with new blooms and nectar. It wasn't the same feeling as collapsing into bed, welcomed by fresh linen and silk.

The love she felt was rough and coarse. It hurt, like holding a ragged stone in her palm and knowing it was cutting her skin but squeezing it anyway. And she would hold onto it until the pain was too much.

She dove again.

Her muscles had gone a bit wobbly, the cold tire working like poison together. The need to close her eyes came over her, so she obeyed, swimming on instinct alone. Heavy pain blossomed in the back of her head. It was so quiet below. It could almost be peaceful if she didn't know what lived in that serenity with her.

She went deeper than she ever had before, but still there was nothing, only the sound of someone screaming in the water, then ending abruptly.

Turning back around, Galadriel opened her eyes, kicking upwards. Halfway to the surface, she saw it in the corner of her eye.

It terrified her enough that she stopped.

Like a statue crafted but a skilled artisan, she went as still as marble, only a bubble of air slipping past her lips as she stared into the abyss. Seconds passed, feeling like minutes, her lungs burning.

There.

It was an effort not to inhale. The creature was huge, silvery-grey scaled shelling the tentacle that swished past her. It came and went like that, only catching a few glimmers of torchlight that managed to penetrate from far above. Three times, she counted, that it passed by. It was only when her hair, tangled and drifting, catching on her face that shattered her frozen state.

Kicking with every last reserve of energy she had, Galadriel felt like her insides were about to burst apart by the time she made it back up. She rolled onto dry land, heaving, forehead on the ground, waiting for the blackness in her eyes to pass.

It took all her willpower to lift her head and glance at the water again.

It had turned red in patches, right around the stray limbs and shredded flesh and clothes bobbing with the soft waves. The male that had pulled himself out earlier still stood nowhere near close to the edge. There had been a few Games where survivors were allowed, but they rarely came the same way they went in.