Chapter 26: A Tale
They settled in an empty park by the very edge of the Sidra. It was mostly a rolling field, enclosed by foliage and water. There were enough trees that come a summer's day there would be plenty of shady spots to choose from and the scattered bushels of flowers left a pleasant aroma. It was a part of the city she had never been to—well, it didn't even seem part of the city itself, the amber lights muddling together in the far distance. Rhysand let her down on the grass, quiet, letting her explore. Galadriel headed towards the stone edge where the river softly lapped at, staring down at the black water.
"I like coming here when I need a break from everything," Rhysand said, coming up behind her. Another piece of himself he was offering her. "Not many people know about it."
She wished it were closer to the rest of the city simply so she could enjoy strolling here herself. It would take an hour's walk from her eye's calculation. Though she could always winnow, she supposed. "You better stop showing it to people then," she told him.
"I think I'm alright at the moment." His gaze was turned up towards the sky, skin almost glowing beneath it as if he breathed in the starlight, as if it fed him. "Besides, if I've shown someone this place, I wouldn't mind finding them here."
Galadriel crossed her arms loosely over her stomach, mostly to keep the edges of her coat tucked closed to her body. "How long is that list of people?"
"At the moment?" He hummed pensively. "Just one."
A blush crept across her face that ruined the glare she shot at him for the flirt. He laughed at her then gestured to follow him. He led her to a bench with a deep seat, the wooden back curved like a spine. His wings evaporated into nothing as he sat, and she followed him down a moment later. They were still close enough to see the details of the Sidra's shore, a few boats that sailed near mere silhouettes against the buildings and mountains behind them.
"I hear you've been working in a patisserie," he said.
Galadriel had been comfortable in the silence that had been growing, but she didn't shy from talking either. "I have. Cassian helped me with it actually."
"I heard about that too." Rhysand deeper into the seat, crossing an ankle over a knee. "Are you enjoying it?"
She thought about the few shifts she had taken there already. It was busy work, which she didn't mind, but most of it was spent out front with the customers rather than in the kitchen where she truly wanted to be, learning how they made the tarts and the doughs and the biscuits. "I am," she decided it. "It gives me something to do."
"I was getting worried that you might refuse to leave the villa at all one day." He said so gently—a prod as much as it was a true concern. "You've been... Cooped up."
She frowned at him. "Is that what Azriel has been telling you?" She assumed, as Amren had pointed out, that the spymaster had been keeping an eye on her. Sure, she wasn't leaving the house as much as might have done under other circumstances, but she wasn't a hermit.
Rhysand remained an image of calm. "He's mentioned it. But I've also checked in every now and then." It took her a moment to understand that he meant into her mind. "I thought that maybe you didn't think the city is safe for you."
"No," she whispered, just barely shaking her head. It would wound him to think that she believed such a thing—that something he held so close to his heart was something she kept away from. "I know the city is safe. And I've come out here with you, haven't I? I came to the dinner, I've been out with Cassian, and Mor and I went to lunch the other day."
He leant closer, angling to face her directly. "Ah, so now you're just shoving it in my face that you have been out and about, but just not with me." His face was bright with mocking, and she placed her hand against it to shove it back.
"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.
She watched as he let his thoughts drift, trying to catch onto where they moved to.
"Can I ask you something?" The words had jumped into her mouth before she could properly assess them.
Rhysand straightened. "Anything."
"Azriel." She swallowed. "And Mor." His eyes glinted with knowing. "There's something between them, isn't there?"
He parted his lips, but didn't speak immediately. He knew the answer, she could tell, but he was figuring out the best way to say it. Eventually, he smiled weakly and said, "If that's what you can call it. Azriel... Nothing has ever happened between them as far as I'm aware, but Azriel... Yes, he's drawn to her. Mor has never reciprocated anything."
Galadriel only nodded, letting the affirmation of her suspicions sink in. "Do you think they're mates? I know that with some pairs, the males often feel it first. That its stronger for them."
But Rhysand shook his head before she had even finished speaking. "No. They've known each other for over four hundred years. I've never heard of a bond that didn't snap for so long. And if Azriel suspected there was a bond, he'd act differently. He'd respect her wishes, but you would know. I would know."
She leant back into the seat, enjoying the mild breeze with all her extremities warmly clothed.
"Does it upset you?" he asked, the words chipped as if he couldn't quite get them out properly. "I know that you—"
"Don't even finish that." But as he had, she shook her head without much thought needed. "I enjoy what I feel when I'm around him." She couldn't look him in the eye, instead watching a small ship glide silently past them. "I like being around him, but I never wanted—hoped—for something more. Besides, my baking involves more chemistry than we have."
Rhysand snorted though he tried to choke it down, evolving it into a cough behind his fist. Sliding her eyes towards him, she smirked over a pout and dug her elbow into his ribs. Shaking out his mirth, he dropped his hand from his lips. "I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be. Azriel has just been one of the only males in my life who... Was available. I didn't let myself get distracted at the Autumn Court—I considered everyone a potential threat. My only friends were Amoise, Lucien, and Dariel who was one of the guards. And he had a mate already."
"Had?"
She nodded solemnly. "She died a few years ago. He's been a wreck ever since. I'm not sure how's been doing since I left, but he wasn't good when I did."
"Is that..." Rhysand shifted, moving forward, closer to her. "Is that what you meant that day in the garden? That having a mate isn't always for the better?"
Dragging her eyes from the grass around her feet, she bit the inside of her cheek to hold the sting of tears as memories of Dariel's spiral crashed through her. "How was your father, after your mother was slaughtered?"
He flinched at the brazen, harsh question. A deep line formed between his brows and he seemed to sink even lower into the seat. Part of her wished she hadn't asked it and didn't expect him to answer. "He went off and killed the High Lord of another court. And himself along the way."
She knew the story too well—remembered the spray of blood, hot and red, dripping down the floral walls. "Everybody forgets what losing a mate would mean. The lifetime of pain it would bring."
Gazing out across the park, she searched through the dimness for the nocturnal bird she could hear chittering in a tree.
"You were there, weren't you?"
Wide-eyed, she turned back to him, wondering how deep into her mind he had gone. How much he saw.
"I did the math," he said, gently. "You would have been young but you would have been in the Spring Court when... When Tamlin became High Lord."
Ice coursed through her veins. The blood, the screams, the lash of magic whipping through the air. She had been blown back by someone at one stage. She didn't know who. One of her brothers, the youngest other than her, was already dead when she had hurtled around that corner, hearing the crash and the heavy thump. He laid lifeless on the rug she always thought was hideous. Galadriel didn't know whether it was the male now in front of her, or his father who had dealt the killing blow.
She had run straight upstairs, using the hidden servants' corridors she'd explored through her youth to avoid the sounds of battle that had seemed to encapsulate the entire manor, driving her world into a chaos she still could barely comprehend. Straight to Tamlin, she went, as her eldest brother always told her to if she was in trouble.
He winnowed her away, again and again until they reached the frigid border of a court she had never been to. Told her to run, that they would come after her next if she was at the manor. He had believed the High Lord of the Night Court and his son were vicious enough to slew a child if they knew who she was. Tamlin left her there, on the ice-capped land, winnowing away.
They had killed a girl, practically still a child, after all. She would be the perfect victim of vengeance.
Galadriel hadn't understood—but she knew that her eldest brother trusted Tamlin with his life and did everything with him. Later, she would learn, that would include killing the High Lord of the Night Court's mate and daughter.
"I was," she uttered. Rhysand grew deathly still, as if any movement might startle her to bolt. "I know what happened, Rhys. I know what they did to your family. I don't... They deserved what befell them."
Her three youngest brothers hadn't been a part of the band that went with Tamlin and his brothers and father, but they had challenged the High Lord of Night when he came, even when they knew what her eldest brother had done. They knew what they stood for when they raised their arms against a mourning father and son. Her father, she now knew, had gone straight to protect the High Lord of Spring. She didn't know what happened to her mother though, only that report came that she was among the dead.
Up until that day, her family had been intertwined with the noblest family of the Spring Court. She had grown up alongside them, her father the High Lord's closest confidante.
Rhysand's throat bobbed as he let her words settle in him. She had a feeling he'd been stewing for a while over it, but she hadn't been open enough to him to ask. "I had thought that maybe that was why you were so guarded against me."
"Adeon."
He stared at her, waiting for her to continue.
"That was my brother's name. My eldest. He practically considered Tamlin another of his brothers." Her bottom lip trembled so she bit sharply into it until she could trust herself to speak. "He came home one day with blood on his hands. On his tunic. I thought he'd just been on a hunt with Tamlin and his family. He wouldn't tell me what they had caught, only that the beasts deserved it." A burning sting erupted in her nose and in the backs of her eyes. Beasts. That had been the exact term they used to describe an innocent female and her daughter. "But I've never forgotten the smell—and it didn't belong to a deer or wolf or hare."
Rhysand was as still as an ancient tree, sturdy against the storm that thundered around him. He wasn't looking her in the eye, but she could see the tears glazing his.
"That was why I was in Winter Court, where Azriel found me. Tamlin winnowed me out, told me to hide until he came back to find me. I think Azriel was on his way to make sure you were alright but he stopped for me. I never told Azriel what I had been running from, but I assume he put some things together."
"I..." He broke off, unsure of what he was saying. Between them, his fingers twitched and soon his hand was moving across to her until it grazed hers. Galadriel didn't shy, didn't flinch. He didn't go to hold her hand, but he kept his there, laying it gently over hers. "My father promised me that we would only hurt those who touched my mother and sister, but he was beyond reason. I wouldn't have hurt you. I wouldn't have let him."
She didn't believe that he would have had the power to. If his father had promised harm to only those that had been in those Illyrian forests, then the slaughter left behind told her there was nothing that could have controlled him. But she did believe Rhys would have tried. She believed he hadn't wanted what happened that day—not the way it ended.
It had taken her many years to come to terms with that day. She had loathed the new High Lord of the Night Court for stealing her family from her for many years. She mourned them, lashed out at Azriel when he prodded at her, and at the family that took her into their custody. But she also learnt to bare that sorrow in a way she could handle.
So she took his hand, weaving her fingers through his, tightening her hold until she could feel the blood swelling in her fingertips. Then she said, "I know."
He squeezed back just as hard.
They sat together like that for a while, neither feeling the need to say anything. The only thing he said between them when he dropped her home, was, "Thank you."