A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 96: Tip Tap

Galadriel didn't have the strength to pull away. "Seven by seven," she breathed, horror curdling low in her stomach at the realisation. "The curse. You haven't broken it." Forty-nine years it had been since she last saw his face. Forty-nine years since Amarantha had poisoned the wine of the High Lords. Now he was here, trapped beneath the Mountain.

Tamlin thinned his lips. "No," he confessed quietly. "Humans are...Difficult." Galadriel didn't recognise the look in his green eyes. "I came because I heard you'd been locked down here. You used to be a sister to me."

"You kill little sisters."

Those slender fingers tightened around her wrist. "I didn't—you weren't there. You don't know what happened." He sighed heavily. "Rhysand wiped the memory of you from me. That night she cursed me, I saw you in the crowd. Rhysand took that from me but it came back eventually. Blurry but there. Lucien told me you held him from coming to me. Says he thinks you were trying to protect him."

"I don't remember," Galadriel answered honestly. The guards shuffled in the corridor, grumbling and impatient. What had Tamlin bribed them or blackmailed them with to get these minutes alone with her? What value was it to him to see her?

He searched her face, her eyes. "You're not completely gone." Letting her wrist go, he twirled a piece of short hair from her face, placing it behind her ear. "They haven't taken you yet."

Above the instinctive part of her, Galadriel didn't even know what he was entirely insinuating, but it was enough that she lashed at him. He fell right back on his rear as she used her fissured nails to claw at him like a wild beast. He didn't have magic down here to stop her, but he still held the strength of a High Lord and warrior, throwing her off as the guards ushered him out of the cell. Galadriel panted back in her corner, watching as he glared at her, yanking his tunic straight before turning and storming out. In complete loneliness again, she belted out a scream chorused by tears.

Three things.

Galadriel.

High Lord.

Night Court.

~

Atticus did not come. Not for days, perhaps weeks, if she counted her meals correctly. She waited in apprehension, whittling at the nerves that she never learned to tame. Everything Rhysand had ever protected rested on her shoulders. It was not a burden she had learned to bear in these past fifty years. Practice hadn't made perfect.

Sleep came in episodes that were never complete. But after all these years, she still had the same dream. Twirling figures, their skirts dancing around the fitted trousers and boots. Music, light and wispy, carried on a warm spring breeze that made the leaves shiver and sing.

Galadriel slept facing her bars as if she were constantly waiting for someone to arrive and didn't want to miss the welcome. But her eyes were set lower, an arm's length from the gate. A bowl filled with some thick, sloshy liquid still had steam curling from it. Stacked next to it was something long and solid wrapped in brown paper.

Dream or not a dream?

It didn't really matter, did it?

Crawling towards it, watching the darkness as she did, Galadriel sniffed at the soup. Her mouth watered, a string of saliva dripping down over her lips that she barely thought to wipe away. She knew the package was bread before she opened it.

She didn't relish it. Not one bite. Tipping the bowl, she guzzled the soup down, leaving a burning trail down her throat that she soaked up with the bread she tore. By the time the bowl was empty and she'd finished contemplating eating the paper, Galadriel was almost breathless and...full. Eyes glazing around, she searched for a note or sign of who left this for her but there was nothing. Sitting there, with a hand on her stomach that had a slight bludge in it, the darkness seemed to sing to her. A low and haunting melody.