Chapter 18: Midsummer
Galadriel didn't know what to do. She had ventured into the city several times over the past week, sometimes filling the basket hooked in her arm, other times simply wandering through the streets with no mind for where she was headed. Those times, she listened. Galadriel listened and watched the people around her, gathering titbits of gossip that were entirely useless to her. But she needed something to keep her busy. There could be spies, she reasoned, snaking through Velaris. Highly unlikely but if the thought distracted her for only a moment...
Passing by the town house on her way home one afternoon, Galadriel had peered in through the windows as she always did. And as she always saw, the town house appeared empty. It had taken her a few days to realise the glamour that lay over the building, shielding the occupants from view.
She wondered if Rhysand ever stood naked at the windows, drinking coffee and bathing in the morning sun in all his glory.
She snorted.
Back in her home, the tiles in her bathroom were cold enough to sting her bare feet. She watched the water gush from the bath's faucet, goosebumps snaking up her arms and legs in anticipation. In fear and memory. The plumbing creaked when she turned the taps off, ebbing away until only silence remained.
She sunk to her knees at the tub's edge and stared at the water until the surface flattened completely. Her knuckles turned white from gripping the lipped porcelain edge so tightly it might crack under her fingers. Eventually, Galadriel let her fingers drift down, scooping them through the water.
The frigidness shot through her arm, something in her chest seizing painfully. Hissing, she looked away but forced her entire hand to remain under. She had to learn, she had to get over this fear that has kept her captive for nearly two hundred years. So rising, Galadriel toed the freezing water.
Air trapped in her throat as she stood in the tub, water encircling her knees but still she did not stop and lowered herself down. Behind the darkness of her shut eyes, she found herself on that lake again, the freezing water making her muscles ache so loudly, so blindingly, that she had screamed mutely into the darkness. Galadriel's nailbeds throbbed as she remembered scraping the ice above her as the current tore her away from the hole she had fallen through. She remembered that feeling, knowing she was alone. Knowing that no matter how hard she screamed no one would find her. Knowing—
Galadriel shot out of the tub, knees and elbows smacking against the wet tiles. Gasping for the air she thought was lost forever, she forced her eyes open, to look around and know where she was. Not trapped underneath a frozen lake.
A heavy knocking at her door is what had broken her from the memory. There were only so many people that it could be. Shouting out to them to wait, she scrubbed herself off with a towel and shoved her dress back on, unbothered to even think about the sopping hair hanging down her back.
"Rhysand," she breathed, trying to not let the dwindling panic show itself to him. The High Lord stood on the single stone step before her door, dressed as he always was in that immaculate black tunic and polished boots.
A smile had been set on his lips, which widened as he took in the sight of her unruly appearance. Then it simmered as he read something else on her. Galadriel focused on her breaths, not yielding to the desire to crawl away from him into her bed.
"Bad time?" he asked with not a hint of mocking.
She swallowed. "No, no. I was just having a bath. Fell asleep I think."
He nodded as if he didn't believe her. "It's midsummer's day today," he said evenly. "There a few celebrations happening in the main market squares. I thought you might like to join in with some company."
"Oh." Galadriel glanced behind him, expecting an entourage but only the High Lord had come to her home. "Are you not spending it with the others?"
"They're already there. We can join them if you'd like." He pressed against the step and rose those few inches higher until he well towered over her. "But I am brave enough to take your company alone." Now that smirk arose—thin and wicked.
She hadn't had plans to go into town today, but she hadn't made many plans at all. And what horror could an afternoon spent exploring markets and celebrations bring? Not much, she concluded, even if it was spent in the company of the peacocking High Lord. Though those thoughts were little more than pebbles in a scale of decision, something invisible and more powerful than any thought of her consciousness, pressed down on that scale. "Let me change first," she told him, twisting away, leaving the door open for him to decide whether to enter or wait outside.
Galadriel squeezed her hair with the damp towel and ran her comb through it, but she'd have to settle on the knowledge it would dry unruly. Changing out of the dress that had become soaked down the back from her hair, she chose another of a lighter blue shade with loose frills across the shoulders.
Leaving the bedroom, she found Rhysand perched on the arm of her lounge as comfortable as one might do in their own home. She wondered if he did that everywhere in the Night Court, knowing that nobody could contest him, or if it was just because it was her home, a place that he felt some sort of custodianship over.
"At least you'll fit in today," he remarked with a gaze studying her clothes. "Ready?"
Galadriel sent him an unamused look as she passed him on her way door. "How big are the celebrations?" she asked, waiting on the stone step for him to follow behind her before shutting and locking her door.
Rhysand strode alongside her as they moved into the wide, cobblestone lane. "Not very," he answered. "We consider it a smaller holiday. People still work and things still move but I can't deny my people a reason to sing and hang ribbons."
Galadriel smiled gently up at a blooming blossom tree, a dark arm stretching onto the road, pink sprouting along it. "I assume you celebrate Winter Solstice then. Longest night of the year."
He laughed softly. "Yes, I would probably consider Winter Solstice my court's largest celebration." In hindsight, she knew that his laugh hinted at more to those words than what they outright stated. But she wasn't willing to lower herself to demanding answers and brushed the observation away. "Should we find the others?"
Her lips parted, the word 'yes' elegantly making its way to her mouth, but she couldn't. So she sealed them shut and shook her head. "I'm happy to spend my day alone," she said. "You don't have to escort me."
Rhysand kept looking ahead, moving with a grace she could only imagine came with years of training and practice. Grooming. How much of him was that? What parts of him were the groomed traits of a High Lord and what parts were just... Rhysand?
"Have to, want to," he sang. "There's a difference."
Galadriel, distant in her own thoughts, almost missed the insulation he was making. "You want to escort me?"
He shrugged, and for a moment the gesture made him seem nothing like the High Lord she had been surveying seconds ago. "I invited you, didn't I? I wouldn't do that unless I intended or expected to have my day spent with you."
That wasn't how she read it. To her, it was a polite and informal invitation to enjoy the celebrations in his city like a footman gesturing to the party inside a manor or ballroom. "You don't make much sense, High Lord."
"No?" He seemed amused at the fact.
"No." He smiled and she bit her own down.
Celebrations in Velaris were almost whimsical. True to Rhysand's depiction, ribbons of pink and gold hung from poles and across shopfronts. Children scattered the streets with paper artworks of a glistening sun flapping against the wind in their hands. There were many more markets than she was used to, crowding the streets and the music on top of the chattering throng was almost deafening. Rhysand was right, though: she did fit in.
Galadriel couldn't tell if it was because she had their High Lord at her side or because celebration called for such nature, but every vendor greeted with an intense grin and offerings of whatever goods they displayed. One, a fae with spots of fungi sprouting along his neck and skin the colour of wood, would not stop talking about the harvesting process of his strawberries. Galadriel smiled and nodded, utterly lost for the past five minutes.
A small but firm heat pressed against the low of her back and ever so slowly, it pushed her to the side. The merchant's gaze followed her, not noticing the sudden growth in distance between them until at last, another customer had taken her place by the front of his cart, and he forgot about her entirely in favour of fresh ears.
"I probably should have warned you about him," Rhysand muttered in her ear, guiding her through a thick section of the crowd. "Grimmord won't stop talking even with a shoe in his mouth. Moving away discreetly is a skill I learnt very quickly around him."
Galadriel had to force herself to stop smiling and nodding and bring herself back to the present. "I didn't know one person could have so much to say about strawberries," she chuckled. How many small merchants did he know? Or take the time to know? "I didn't even get to try any!" He laughed and straightened, twisting his shoulders to avoid the parade of acrobats performing through the middle of the wide street. Letting out a sigh to release the bubbling thrill the atmosphere brought over her, she mumbled, "Small celebrations? More like a fucking party."
"Well, nothing in the Night Court is ever small."
"No," she agreed airily. "Especially not the arrogance. Big-headedness."
"Charm," he offered.
"Or patience." The last one came softer, more pointed. A hidden 'thank-you' between her sharp jabs. By the delicately crafted smile he sent her, rather than more innuendos or jeering remarks, he knew it too.
"How are you liking the house?" he asked once they stopped for a break, finding a seat on a long bench a little ways from the merriment.
Galadriel held a thin wooden spear with fruit coated in melted sugar pierced along it. "It's very nice." The house was very nice, that wasn't a lie. He hadn't asked how she was doing in the house. "I like the kitchen. I'm terrified about the garden though. If you had come around in another week or so I might have been hosting you in a necropolis of flowerbeds and weeds. Is there any spell you know to keep them alive?"
"I'm afraid my magic only stretches so far, so unfortunately, I won't be able to help you there. I've never so much as watered anything before either." Rhysand frowned suddenly at his own fruit-sugared spear. "That made me sound more pretentious than I imagined."
She laughed. "Well I haven't either and my life has been spent in servitude so I don't think too much on it. Some people are just not made for it."
He leant forward, elbows resting on knees and kept that smile that had shown since they arrived in the city. "My life is servitude," he said, almost so quietly that she didn't hear him. Galadriel leant forward, mimicking his position and let the silence urge him to continue. "Not the same kind as yours. I'm not washing other people's clothes or bringing them meals but my life is dedicated to this court. To serving and sacrificing myself for the people in it. It's an honour I'm willingly carrying, but I can't deny that there are days when I wish I did not."
Her heart thumped uncomfortably heavily in her chest. "I can't imagine what that must feel like. Knowing Azriel's expectations of me often felt like too much. To have a whole court, challenged by people that despise me..." Galadriel knocked her shoulder into his. "I would have crumbled long ago."
His eyes flickered from her shoulder to her lap, the thoughts shifting behind the dark violets distant. "I had help. Without it, I wouldn't have gone anywhere."
She shook her head. "I think you would have made it by yourself. I don't think you would be the person you are today, but you would have become someone."
"You're making this judgement after only a month of knowing me?"
Leaning back, she took a bite of her spear, the fruit and sugar crunching in her mouth. "I'm judging from what I know about the world. My eyes and ears are trained to pick up things many overlook. Knowing whether a lordling was born into nobility or found wealth and status in his later life by the way he holds a quill, or if a servant knows something others do not by the length of their stride around certain people. I do not need to spend a lifetime with you to know those things, Rhys."
He twisted his fruit spear around, biting into the sugary sweetness as a gaggle of High Fae females wandered past under parasols and long dresses. His eyes trained on them but she had the feeling he wasn't truly looking at them. Looking but not seeing.
After a long time—long enough that she considered saying something just to ensure that he hadn't gone completely away in his head, he said: "You called me Rhys."
Galadriel froze. "I did, didn't I?" It had been an unconscious decision and for some reason, that made it worse. Not worse, she decided, but more... important. It came because it had felt right on her tongue, her lips wanting to perfectly mould into that word. She was flung back to her conversation with Azriel on days ago, where she adamantly stated she would not find friendship in the High Lord. That judgement hadn't changed, yet, she called him Rhys. She didn't know what that meant for her. And that scared her. "You need to stop being kind to me when I am rude and defiant. It is confusing my mind."
Rhysand gave a shallow laugh, but she was in no mood for laughter. "It drives you crazy, doesn't it?"
"Like I belong in another world."