Chapter 35: Reaper
The stone was softer than she expected, giving way to the pressure of her jaw. Tossing her head back, Galadriel let it sink down to her molars where she ground it into a powder. It fizzled, reacting with her saliva, burning her tongue like acid. A sound began to erupt from her—a cough maybe, or a gag. She'd never know because that sap-colour haired guard shot forward and clasped his hands around her throat, trapping it.
Her skull banged against the wall and in her pained daze, they somehow slipped to the ground. She hadn't taken a breath to prepare, her lungs already empty and crying for air. The male's face hovered over her, hair curtaining down either side, teeth bared as his hands wrung tighter around her neck.
But this wasn't an act of rageful revenge; to choke her to death. He was stopping her from killing herself. The poison had completely disintegrated by now, bubbling in the back of her mouth but she couldn't move the muscles enough in her throat to swallow. He'd knock her out long enough to remove the poison before this entire thing just started again, and she'd have no escape.
In a fit of panic, she grabbed at his hands, scraping her nails along his skin, entrenching them in his forearm hard enough to draw drizzling lines of blood. His fingers only cinched tighter. The pressure in her head swelled, building behind her eyes. Her feet kicked wildly, scrambling for some sort of footing to knock him off or switch their positions but his weight sunk onto her stomach, trapping her against the ground. She couldn't even scream.
Blackness pulsed in the sides of her vision, threatening to steal more with each resounding thump of her heartbeat. Galadriel reached up, scratching his face, his eyes. She tried to pry each finger off her neck one by one. To turn just enough to swallow the poison down but her movements had grown too lethargic. She couldn't even make out the male's face staring down at her, inches away.
'driel..."
Her hand flopped away from the guard's, knuckles hitting the floor beside her shoulder. The muscles in her legs had already given out. Blackness overwhelmed colour.
'Galadriel.' She heard the call, knew the voice. But it sounded so far away, like there was an entire mountain between them, his voice echoing off the cavernous space. The wards. He was outside them. Couldn't winnow in.
But that wasn't Rhys's plan.
A shadow, darker and more elegant than the ones claiming her, thickened in the corner of the room where her face had fallen to angle. And out of it, came Azriel.
The shortest guard she'd all but forgotten faltered but leapt forward, a weapon from the rack brandished. It might as well have been a toothpick as Azriel's blade knocked it from hand with a single manoeuvre. Galadriel tried to call out to him, to tell him that she was here, but her lashes fluttered closer together and it became too hard to think, her mouth to dry to move.
Something great knocked into her—no, pulling her. The force rolled her onto the side and the relief was immediate. The hoarse, grating sound of her gasps for air filled the chamber. Her back arched, trying to expand her lungs to take more than they could hold as she choked down every minuscule of breath suddenly available to her. Clarity returned first, her vision turning back to blurred colours then distinct shapes.
Azriel hunched over a fallen, limp form just feet from her. He pulled his knife from it with a wet squelch, blood staining the beautiful silver steel of his dagger. Galadriel tried to clamber to her feet but they were still disconnected from her brain, her fingers just only now beginning to curl at command.
Azriel's hands were under her, lifting her up. Hazel eyes darted over her, and she could have melted at the concern that drowned them. Could have, but didn't. Today there was only a shame that made her want to crawl away, to hide in those shadows that always hovered around him.
"I've got you," he breathed, though his voice had a distance to it, his mind someplace else. "Rhys is—" Galadriel cut him off with an abhorrent, strangled sound. She should have been able to move by now, but her legs felt like sacks of sand sewn to her hips. His handsome face, those harsh and lethal lines, were still blurry.
He picked up her hand, she just barely registered, which hung limply in his. The empty band on clear display, with no white gemstone that usually sat there. "Fuck!"
Suddenly, she was facing the ground, his arm bracing her weight. Two fingers pried her jaw open, slipping past her teeth, her tongue, hitting the back of her throat. On reflex, she gagged around them, her stomach seizing, her throat tightening. Bile, a horrid mix of acid and spit and the still bubbling white froth came from her. Galadriel, struggling for lost air, heaved at the same time, throwing her body into a conflicted fit.
Azriel pulled her back up once her stomach had given everything it had, pinching her jaw in his hand, fervently searching her face, her eyes. The burn on her tongue was as hot as ever, her ribcage feeling as though it was trapping fire instead of her heart.
Over his shoulder, a form rose. Not the male that had been choking her, but the other. Azriel caught the horror on her face, his head whipping around. The male guard extracted a small blade from his hip sheath, bracing it over his head.
Shadows lashed around them.
It felt like being everywhere and nowhere, not truly belonging to one form.
Then, there was red. And brown, green, yellow, velvet blue.
Violet.
With a violent sob, Galadriel launched herself at Rhysand, barely able to claw at him before arms pulled her away. Rhysand, from the crouch he fell to at their appearance, threw a scathing glare at his spymaster but Azriel only demanded, "Water."
A waterskin appeared in the High Lord's hands. Azriel snatched it, forcing her head back against his shoulder and put the opening to her mouth, pouring it down her throat.
"What happened?" Helion stood just behind Rhys. Everything about him was dampened in the darkness, as if the night choked his being as terribly as the hands around her neck had.
Azriel seemed reluctant to speak as Galadriel heaved water down, soothing the ache in her throat, which was no doubt bruising already. "They had her in the dungeons," he muttered, looking nowhere but her face as he tipped the waterskin higher. "She took the poison."
Rhysand's eyes cut down to the hand she'd let slip to the side, unneeded and unthought of. "I told you to order it off her!" There was a venom laced in those words that didn't fit the male she'd come to know. A hint of the beast he kept at bay.
He leant forward—to take her and the waterskin—but Azriel threw the water to the side and turned her around once again. It wasn't so much a surprise this time when those two fingers jutted against the fleshy end of her mouth, but it was just as horrid a sensation as the first. She gagged and heaved, spilling all the water she'd just down back onto the grass next to his thigh. Instead of pulling her back up, Azriel let her slump across him, holding her weight, rubbing her back in encouragement. Only when she showed signs of wanting to rise did he help her, examining her face through the darkness again, finding confidence in whatever he saw.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed. It hurt to talk.
"Why did you do it?" The question hadn't come from him.
Galadriel's eyes shifted across to Rhysand, the pain in her chest intensifying. She didn't know which part, exactly, he was asking about but answered anyway. "They had me," she croaked. "I-I couldn't...They wou—would have made me talk."
There was an unwavering coldness to his expression. "I don't care."
"I would have told them everything. If they hurt me, I would have told them." Velaris. She would have given up Velaris. "I couldn't d-do that to you."
"I don't care." He grasped the sides of her neck, cupping her jaw, nearly shaking her. Her body went rigid. "I don't care what you tell them, Galadriel. I don't care if you tell them that I enjoy braiding hair and threading in flowers or that I wear dresses in my spare time. I don't care if you tell them what you might have seen in my personal letters. I don't care if you tell them about the city."
Galadriel gaped silently, her gaze briefly flickering to Helion at the mention of Velaris. "Rhys..."
"I don't care. You are my mate." He stressed each syllable, his hands smoothing down to her shoulders to grip her steady as she wavered. "You live long enough for me to come find you, whatever it takes. Information is not worth your life. Not to me."
Thud. Thud. Thud. It was the only sound she could hear—the ringing of her own heart in her ear. She didn't look at Helion or Azriel or the forest they were in, still in enemy territory. Just at him, the way he stared back, waiting for her response. A wet sheen covered his eyes and a drop of it had slid down his cheek, silver like starlight.
Mate.
Helion slid a soothing hand over Rhysand's should from behind. "Save the lectures for when you're home," he said, softer than she'd ever heard him, with an undercurrent of surprise. Finally figuring out that maybe Rhysand's offer hadn't been a simple exchange of favours after all. "Your...mate is unwell and we're not exactly in the safest spot." Even now he glanced around the forest, spying the high branches in the trees.
The only sign that Rhysand regarded his words at all was the brief flicker of his eyes to the hand on his shoulder. A spike of heat speared down her neck, through her spine. With a hiss, she lurched forward, nails digging into his arms.
"What did they do to you?" he whispered. But he wasn't looking at her throat which felt closed and swollen and bruised, or the scrapes on her hands and knees. He was looking at her face, as if he could see beneath it, feel what she felt.
"I don't feel great," she said. The burning had expanded, migrating to her bones and head, like it had exploded inside of her. "I feel...Hot."
Rhys placed a hand on her forehead. "She's burning up," he spat at Azriel, but the spymaster was already there. "Her skin's like fire."
Azriel shook his head at the accusation it laid. "It's not the poison. That's not a symptom and she'd be near dead already if it had worked."
"There's magic in her," Helion said, standing over them with a dark yet pensive gleam in his eyes. "She's fighting it—she's burning. I can feel it in her."
Galadriel felt it too, prickling on her skin like she'd been held over an open flame. Did Rhys or Azriel sense it? Rhys did—he looked at her like he could.
"Magic?" Azriel echoed. He knew her capabilities—limited in comparison to a High Lord and even the Illyrian himself. Barely powerful enough to be felt.
She cinched her eyes shut, bowing into Rhysand's chest as the heat speared down her spine, melting and welding her bones together.
"Get her out of here."
Even Rhysand didn't bite back at the commanding tone. He didn't even bother looking in Helion's direction as he clasped a hand on Azriel's shoulder, and they were sucked through the oblivion of in-between. Again and again they winnowed, a brand new world with each second of it that she saw. Rhysand hoisted her off her feet the moment they landed at their final destination, and she bumbled around in his arms. Through the blur, she recognised the pale roof accentuated by the dark rafters. Her home.
The back of her neck—all of her, really—was clammy with sweat. The burning had spread, as fast and as vicious as wildfire. It was coming from inside her.
She reached for the collar of her shirt, pulling it down away from her neck, needing to relieve just the slightest of the heat. When it did nothing, she pulled harder, tearing the fabric. It was hard to focus on anything, panting without reprieve. It hurt where he held her, his arms like scorching rods pulled from a forge fire. Tears evaporated before they fell to her cheeks.
Rhys shouldered through a doorway, lighting the hanging lantern to reveal the tiled wall. Her bathroom. Water ran from the tap abruptly, the plumbing groaning in complaint. Galadriel rolled her head from Rhys's shoulder to his chest with a moan, looking down. Whatever was being said between Azriel and Rhys was happening mentally, or she just couldn't tune her mind in enough to hear it, panting and sweating and crying.
Azriel knelt by the large tub, turning the taps even more but they were already giving everything they could. No, not both. Just the cold water.
Rhys knelt by the bath's side with her, sticking his hand in the water. "It needs to be colder," he ordered, barely getting the words out he said them so fast. Though he didn't have an affinity for water or ice magic, shards of frost began to appear at his touch, solidifying into brittle chunks of ice throughout the bath. Adjusting the temperature rather than creating ice himself.
Galadriel realised what he was doing. "No. No no no no."
Rhys rolled her around until her front was pressed against his, holding tighter. "I'm sorry." Standing, he placed one foot in the tub, then the other. He made no sound but she could hear the icy water sploshing up against his calves. He didn't stop. Galadriel thrashed as the water got closer, visions of the frozen lake engulfing her, replacing her modest bathroom.
She screamed as he pressed her into the water, the phantom current ripping her through a dark abyss. The ice battled the feverish heat, her muscles seizing up. It knocked the air from her for the second time that day. Rhys didn't let her go by one inch, not even when her curled fist caught him in the face or her knee between his legs. He just bit everything behind a sharp hiss and lowered enough that he was sitting with her in his lap, water lapping at their chests.
"Are you sure about this?" Azriel asked, merely a warbled sound to her.
"No."
"Get me out! Get me out, Rhys!"
She'd rather burn to death than this.
His hand raked through hair that clung to the back of her neck from sweat as he pressed a kiss to her temple. "I'm sorry," he said again. Then that hand curled right around her head and covered her nose and mouth right after she had stolen a gasping breath.
Rhysand dipped backwards, bringing them both underwater. His raven hair floated around his tanned face. It was a sensation she'd never thought she'd have to feel—like dunking burning steel into water, that steaming hiss—but it was what she felt. And it was utter agony. His hand kept her from screaming but it didn't stop her from trying, from thrashing about. They resurfaced once, maybe twice, but all she could remember before the darkness returned was that she was under when it did.