A Court of Beasts and Shadows >ACOTAR Fanfic

Chapter Forty-Eight

You can't control the darkness, female. Your soul was already darkened by your alliance with the Dark God. My power is too much for you.

Shut the hell up.

You can hide all you want, female, but the Cauldron is a curse to your soul. Unless you channel your new powers, as vessel to the Cauldron, the darkness will eat away at you, bit by bit, until Rhea is gone, and a monster stands in your place.

I will not give in.

Oh, but you will. You have abandoned your family, and now your own mate has betrayed you, he forced these powers on to you, because all he wants is power, as does the creature of nightmares you call a lover.

Bryaxis has nothing to do with this.

Oh, he does. You know it does. He needed you to care for him, to bind him into a Fae's body, to be free. He only pretended to love you, so you would free him.

SHUT UP!

Tamlin only wanted to be your mate because you are of the Night and Winter Courts. He doesn't care for you, he detests you with every ounce of being in his body. You are the daughter of Rhysand and Feyre. Rhysand took everything from him, and do you think he wanted to mate with you? You repulse him.

You know nothing, get out of my head!

Your own father abandoned you, left you to Amarantha's cruel torture. The most powerful High Lord in history, and yet he couldn't get you out of Amarantha's grasp? He didn't bother to, because you were nothing but a burden to him, reminder that because of you, your mother died.

I screamed, disintegrating everything in a 100-mile radius. The voice in my head...it was too much. Too interfering. I couldn't concentrate with it in my head. The things it told me...

Were they true?

I closed my eyes, shutting out the voice, shoving it into a deep corner in my mind. It got free though, eventually, and it wouldn't stop talking.

I reached out with my mind, searching and searching until...

Found him.

***
"You look like shit."

Bryaxis turned around and he froze when he saw me.

"...Rhea?"

I looked at him fully. His hair was cut even shorter than it had been before. His face was gaunt, like he had been starved of food for a while. His clothes were slightly tattered, and he had a fresh scar on his neck.

"In the flesh."

Suddenly I was enveloped, Bryaxis hugging me, like he was never going to let go. I tentatively hugged back and Bryaxis pulled away, the shadows in his eye sockets focusing on me.

"What's wrong?"

I looked up at him, focusing now on what I needed to know.

"Did you know what Tamlin was planning to do to me?"

Immediately, Bryaxis backed up, growling.

"What did Tamlin do to you?"

Well, he hadn't known.

I sat down on the wooden table, rubbing my neck, closing my eyes.

"Did you ever really love me?"

"How can you ask that?"

My eyes snapped open and I focused on Bryaxis, swallowing down my feelings.

"The...voice in my head...the Cauldron, its telling me you only pretended to love me so I would free you from your prison in Velaris."

Anger flickered across Bryaxis' features. "You believe the voice in your head over the male you love?"

"I loved Tamlin" I said quietly, "and yet he still betrayed me."

Bryaxis stayed silent for a long while, his body still, and I wondered if he ever would talk to me again after that.

"You love a male who called you damaged goods? Who physically hurt you?"

"My feelings for Tamlin changed" I said, my voice barely above a whisper, "When Savitr warped my mind, he created feelings for Tamlin so it would buy into the illusion, and those feelings have stayed with me, but I have always loved you in the same way. I let the mating bond get between you and me, it called to me, telling me to go with Tamlin, and the time I spent with him in that cell, and under Savitr's influence, it changed the way I felt, because I didn't remember anything of what he said or did."

"So, you are leaving with Tamlin." Bryaxis' voice was full of bitterness and resentment and I shook my head.

"I'm not going to be with Tamlin. But I'm not going to be with you either. I'm leaving by myself."

"Why?"

I started to get a headache, a reminder that the voice would return and try to play with my decisions and thoughts. I had to leave soon.

"I am the Cauldron. It's power...its too much, too addictive, too powerful. I don't even know the full extent of my abilities, and that scares me. If I don't know what I can do, then there's the risk of hurting you. I can't take that risk."

Bryaxis was in front of me, cupping my face, staring into my eyes. "I'm willing to take that risk. I want to be with you. I love you more than anything in this world. I would take the wrath of all the Gods, just to be with you for one more minute. You love me too, I can see it in your eyes. I won't let something like you being powerful, to separate us. I'm a creature of nightmares. I spread fear, wherever I go, but you have never been scared of me."

I reached up and kissed him, and Bryaxis kissed me back, his mouth against mine. His hands went underneath my knees and lifted me up, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, as he laid me down gently on the small bed, and he pulled off his shirt and I saw a tattoo, fresh, just below his collarbone. I touched the pattern, tracing it, curious.

"You got a tattoo?"

Bryaxis smiled. "After you disappeared, I made a vow to find you. In your father's court, deals and oaths are branded on to the skin."

The brand that would be on him, no matter which form he took.

I pulled Bryaxis down and kissed him, and he groaned, kissing down my throat and neck, and he raised his head, and stroked my cheek.

"You are not leaving me" he said fiercely, "we will find a way for you to control your powers, but I am not leaving you."

How could I ever think he would betray me?

"I love you" he murmured, and I smiled, with tears in my eyes.

"I love you too."

***

When Bryaxis laid asleep, after we had made love, I stared at the ceiling, fighting back the Cauldron in my mind.

I could barely last a day, what about ten years? A hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?

The powers had been essential to defeat Savitr, but he would return, he wasn't dead, only had to bide his time to regenerate. He was a Dark God.

My thoughts wandered back to Tamlin. I had to end things completely with him.

That meant breaking the mating bond between us.