Chapter 33: Amoise
The slap had nearly sent her to her knees. Galadriel gaped, a hand to her stinging cheeks. "Ow," she cried.
Amoise seethed at her, ears as red as her hair. "You stupid girl. After all that happened, you've come back here?"
Straightening, Galadriel let her hand drop away from her face, taking a steadying breath. "It's nice to see you too." The Lady of Autumn's chest moved in hard pants, as though she had been the one crawling her way through that pitch-black tunnel. "I had to come and see you."
The dull point in Amoise's throat bobbed. Affection and frustration warred on her face. "This is the most idiotic thing you've ever done," she hissed, though with noticeably less spit than before. "If you weren't already not working for me, I'd have you fired then put on fire until you learnt your lesson."
Calmly, Galadriel smiled. "Your threats don't work on me anymore."
"I suppose it isn't worth wasting my time on, then." That sternness broke, chip by chip until the expression became that of the adoring mother Galadriel knew. With a loosened breath, she whispered, "You're alive."
"I sent you letters."
"It is not the same as seeing you." A sheen of wetness covered her stunning eyes. Though she had come blazing in, Galadriel knew better than to be drawn into an embrace. Amoise was a hardened female, who saved that affection for only her sons. And only some of them. She wouldn't let that side of herself be exposed to anybody else. "I hadn't heard from Helion. My husband wouldn't let me see the body but said he had you slaughtered before you escaped the House. Then he put out the bounty. He had councillors blasting him for information for weeks. Nobody knew what was going through his head or what was really happening."
Galadriel let out a huff through her nostrils. "Your husband has control issues."
She hadn't put much thought into it before, but Beron had snapped like someone had lit a match inside of him the moment he saw that letter in her hands. Telling the court that she had been killed would have been a swift solution to the wave of concerns about a spy on the run, but Beron had double-backed on that, setting the bounty and the consequential hunt. He knew she was still alive and in the time he had to think, realised that he would be letting her get away with whatever information he thought she found. Information that was important enough that he risked putting himself out as a fool who claimed false victory over a court treachery.
Whatever it was, was likely long gone. What would Beron have thought when no doubt returned to his stashed letters and realised none were missing?
"You've been in the Night Court," said Amoise, a distinct aversion to the topic of her husband. Galadriel nodded affirmingly. "Is it as cruel as they say?"
"No more than this court," Galadriel answered as honestly as she could. Rhysand trusted her with Velaris. Even for her closest companion, Galadriel would not give those secrets up. "Helion set it up for me. I have everything thanks to him."
A bittersweet smile wrought her cheeks. "He's always been the saviour type."
To draw out that moment, Galadriel added, "Comes riding in with all his muscled glory. I think he oils his skin before he leaves to comes to save helpless maidens such as ourselves." She wrapped her arms around herself, bracing against the instinct to launch forward and attack the Lady of Autumn with her hug. "I know I shouldn't have come, but I left in such a rush that I didn't get the chance to say goodbye properly. Or even give you the letter that I did all this for." Tears shone in her eyes to match Amoise's.
Amoise looked close to slapping her again for the reminder. A pale hand reached between them, delicately curled. They lifted Galadriel's fallen chin, setting it high and firm. "I owe you. More than I can give you."
"Have you spoken to Lucien?"
Her head tipped forward—because Galadriel already knew the answer. "Not since he left." 'Left' barely felt like the word to describe that day. He'd been chased out by his own brothers after watching his lover slaughtered. Part of Galadriel wished that she had gone with him. She would have, if Azriel hadn't needed her in Autumn.
"I don't want him to think I'm a traitor," she whispered, hugging herself tighter. It was hypocritical, seeing as that was exactly what she was to Autumn. But she had never once let her work for Azriel and her care for the boy cross paths. "I don't regret what I've done for you."
Amoise face was steady. "I do. I should have cut him off years ago. Others have paid for my mistakes more than I ever have."
Shaking her head, Galadriel went to say the truth—that she had fallen into a life that seemed too good to be true. That her choice that day led her to other things that were so wonderful, she had to pinch herself each morning. But that was not the image the Night Court held, so she could not say those things and reassure her friend.
Alarm bells still tolled. Lighter than before, but continuous. Galadriel frowned at the air. "That was me. I called a false breach in the northern quarter. They should have called off the search by now."
"I feared it was." Amoise let out a low breath, dark lips pursed. "They already suspect something amiss. The guard I was speaking with said that the order came from the wrong direction. He told me to lock my chamber doors."
Cursing, Galadriel's eyes darted to the angle of the sun beyond the large windows overlooking the woods. It was low, but not low enough that it would be sunset by the time she reached the meeting spot in the forest. She'd be a sitting duck if the sentries decided to spread their forces outwards.
"You can't stay here." Amoise gripped her damp sleeve. "Don't take the tunnels again. They're smart enough to know that if someone knew their signals, they'd know those damn mazes too."
Panic, now, started to rise. There were no other ways out for her other than the tunnels or walking out the front gates. Galadriel had been a face around these walls for two centuries and many of the servants and sentries knew her by name. Too many.
She'd go out the way she came in. It was her best chance. Even if the sentries knew of the tunnel leading to the waterfall, it was long and they'd only risk sending a few down its entire length, which slimmed her chances of crossing paths. The chaos might work in her favour, if she played it right.
All this way she had come, and now she was leaving after only a scrap of a conversation. But it wasn't anything close to a waste. She'd gotten what she came here for and could leave with that reassurance. Back to the Night Court.
To Rhys.
"I don't know if—" Galadriel cut herself short when her ears picked up the heavy thundering of boots nearby. Her pointed ear twitched, head tilting so one faced the door, listening intently. Amoise grabbed at her wrist, a tight clutch of warning. Guards were headed this way.
Amoise tugged her deeper into the chamber, the usually overbearingly large sitting room with ruby drapes over the windows and a deep mahogany table and seating arrangement, became incredibly claustrophobic. "You need to hide," she urged in Galadriel's ear.
It was a chase again. She barely made it out last time and this time, her luck didn't feel so sure. The risk Galadriel had taken, the impending consequences, bore down on her with the weight of a mountain.
Desperation made a fool out of many, and she was its next victim.
It had her frozen on the spot, deaf to Amoise's instruction to move. The rumbling bodies of armour and steel grew louder. As loud as the waterfall had been. Then they were outside the chamber door.
Three hard knocks were like thunder.
Amoise swooped in front of Galadriel, who remained unmoving, her lips parted in silent pants, staring at the wood. She didn't think Amoise said anything to the guards because their knocking came again, but she couldn't be sure. Everything sort of went muddled at that point. Something should have been going through her head—she'd trained for years for this. To know what to do.
Yet, she stood there with an empty mind, as helpless as she had been the day Azriel first found her, as if all that training never happened.
The door shook again. Harder this time. Someone was forcing their way in. How did they know to come here? Galadriel's grey eyes went to Amoise, but there wouldn't have been a chance for her to, even if Galadriel let herself believe she'd been sold out by her friend. As her focus returned to her, piece by piece, she heard the snapping maws of the Autumn Court's revered hounds.
Fuck.
The silver handle and hinges rattled, about to break loose.
The moment that those soldiers tore through the door, Galadriel turned to Amoise and launched herself forward, wrapping her hands around the Lady of Autumn's pale neck, squeezing tight.
Amoise cried out, but Galadriel's fingers trapped the sound as they both went straight down, hitting the ground. Battling her own instincts, she held tighter. Amoise's face was already turning red by the time a soldier tore Galadriel off, her back hitting the wooden floor, pain spiking through her spine. Clambering to her feet, Amoise held her throat and wailed. She was swiftly engulfed in a protective circle as the remaining soldiers dragged Galadriel to her knees.
Tugging and thrashing, it was all she could to fight back against them. Then there was a flash of silver, and the world went dark.
~
The entire right side of her face throbbed in a dull agony. When she opened her eyes, she couldn't fully see out of the right one, dark spots like inky blotches. Groaning, she shifted her weight onto her elbows, fingers skimming the surface of the ground she lay on.
Cold, damp stone. It was slimy with mildew and left a shiny residue on her fingertips. Every part of her ached in protest as she pulled herself into a sitting position. Including the chains dangling from her hands. Saliva and air caught in the back of her throat at the sight of them, the rusted iron shackles that had been cutting into her skin deep enough to leave bracelets of blood on her wrists. The tiny window at the very top of the stone wall to her cell revealed no sun, only starlight.
It took every ounce of will and courage Galadriel had collected over her lifetime to not cry out right then. The Autumn Court's dungeons were more impenetrable than the Forest House itself. No one, not even Helion or Amoise, could save her down here.