Chapter 40: Tomes
The priestesses in the library below the House of Wind were a kind but reserved bunch, sneaking glances at Galadriel as she wandered past them, trying to collect her bearings on the expanse of the entire place. The library was more of a labyrinth, with offshoots that either circled back to some different part of the mountain or were a dead end. Floors crossed over others, and she could peek over the edges of balconies and see the floors below and above. Galadriel hadn't gotten the name of the priestess Cassian brought her to, but the female beneath the hood hadn't spoken at all, her hard eyes merely gazing over Galadriel before nodding in allowance of her presence.
Which was how Galadriel ended up in a musty corner as a crooked desk, surrounded by a dozen or so ancient tomes. The low light, provided by a single oil lantern, was giving her a headache behind her eyes.
"You'll get breathing issues if you stay around here too long."
In the quietness, despite being engrossed by the inky script scrawled across the paper, she had heard his coming and didn't jump when the voice broke the long silence. Her chosen corner was indeed dusty, making her nose itch. But it was away from the other priestesses, whom Galadriel wasn't sure how her presence was being taken by.
"I didn't want to haul all these upstairs," she told Rhys, pulling her sleeve over her nose to wipe it again.
He plopped himself on the edge of the desk, picking up one of the tomes she had already scanned through. "Didn't realise you had a sudden interest in curses." Wrinkling his nose, he flipped through the first few pages. "This is old. Nobody knows about this type of magic anymore. Costly stuff that wasn't worth the results."
"I thought it might have something interesting," she said, closing the book she'd been on. She hadn't finished reading through it, but Rhys's appearance catalysed her already weakened motivation to break down completely.
"You think you were cursed." Not really a question, but it called for her answer anyway.
Galadriel shrugged. "I think it's a possibility. They knocked me out before I was put into the dungeons. They could have done anything to me." The idea played in the back of her mind, a constant itch that she couldn't scratch. She hadn't felt defiled when she woke in that cell—beyond the chains and captivity—but she wasn't sure what signs she should have been looking for.
Fingers pinched her chin, dragging it upwards until she met Rhysand's violet eyes. He was leant forward, frowning slightly, analysing her features. She held his stare. After a moment he clucked his tongue and shook his head. "Not cursed."
"How'd you come to that conclusion?"
"I've seen people cursed before. They always turn into something hideous, but you're still as beautiful as ever."
Galadriel pulled her chin from his grip, resting it on her fist instead. "That was a sorely underwhelming compliment if that was the aim. Congratulations Galadriel, you're not bursting with boils."
"I will become the master of poets, then. You will wake to a new ballad each morning until I have conquered all languages and spoken in every arrangement possible to tell you of your beauty."
She rolled her eyes at his whimsical monologue. "I'd settle for you taking back the lie."
Sighing, Rhysand slid from the table, bracing his hands on the lip instead. He gazed over the books knowingly, as if he had already read them, knew that the answers she wanted did not lay in them. "I don't think it's a curse," he said. "If it were maleficent, I would feel it through the bond. But I only feel you as you've always been."
It struck her oddly that he examined the bond between them in such a way. It was a nagging little thing that she always knew existed but... Some part of her mind had just completely shut her out to it, like an instrument lain forgotten until someone plucked the string. Galadriel hadn't spent the time to test it now that she understood it.
It was like a cord, she imagined, bright as starlight, strong as steel, soft as silk. Was that unique to them? To her? Or did others imagine something else? Breathing deeply, her mind reached to play with it, seeing what she could feel from him.
A small pulse... A heartbeat.
Something dark, titillating... His power. Velvet night wrapped him as thick as a blanket and though she couldn't take it, she could brush against it.
Rhys shifted beside her.
"You felt that?" she asked.
"Yes," he murmured, squinting at her. "I'm not used to someone being so close to my magic. Especially not when I have a near-constant shield up."
Tilting her head, she listened intently. A voice. Hard to make out, like a whisper carried on a barren wind, but it was his voice. She'd recognise it everywhere. His thoughts, perhaps. Glimpses into him. She tried, but she couldn't understand anything that passed through the small portal the bond opened between them. Now she understood what he said when he told her about her mind buzzing. For a daemati, those sounds must have been amplified to him—a connection that was never severed but only strengthened by that power.
A gentle caress. Not against her mind as he usually did when he was giving her warning he was there, but against the bond she had ventured across like a treacherous bridge. Greeting her, welcoming her, embracing her presence.
Even after all that had passed between them, it felt too intimate that Galadriel leapt back completely into herself, letting that natural seal she'd developed numb the connection. "Why'd you come down here?" she asked, emptying her pent energy by sorting the tomes back into organised piles.
Rhys tucked a leg under the opposite knee, bracing his palms against the desk's ravaged lip. "Cassian said I need to give you space and let you come to me. Mor says that I should make a better effort around you. I'm not on the best terms with Azriel right now and despite knowing you the longest, I don't think he's the best provider of advice about mates anyway. Amren told me to kindly fuck off but I'm certain she meant out of her apartment. So I'm here, trying to do a bit of everything."
Slumping back into the chair, she said, "You don't put every spice in a soup just because different cooks tell you different ones are good, Rhys."
He tipped his head down, a small smile on display. "What spices do you prefer, Galadriel?" When she didn't immediately answer, he added, softer, "Do you...Want soup right now?"
She stood, starting to stack as many books as she could in her arms when they all disappeared. Rhys shrugged when she glanced accusingly at him. "I'm not sure what my taste is for them yet" she replied eventually, dusting off her hands.
He followed at her side as she began to navigate her way back to the upper levels of the Mountain. After a few uncertain turns, leadership shifted so that Rhys was leading them. He dipped his head with quiet respect at the priestesses that they passed. None of them approached him. "The town house," she bleated out as they began their ascent on a spiralling passage of stairwells. "Can I stay there?"
Rhys looked pleased with the request. "I already told you that you're always welcome. I don't mind the offer being permanent."
Not sure how she could respond to that, she simply didn't. "I like the House of Wind, but I can't go into the city without Cassian or Azriel flying me down. Their busy most of the day, which is a real inconvenience for me, you know." The town house was also smaller, which felt more like a home than the House of Wind did. It wouldn't be her space, but it would belong to her more than any hall or chamber in the Forest House did in Autumn.
"I prefer it too." He'd been in her thoughts. "It's why I had it built in the first place rather than just living up here."
Rhys told her of how the town house came to be, built in the first decade of his reign as an escape from the political terrain that dominated his other spaces. His only other escape was a mountain cabin, secluded from everything and everyone else that he used to visit as a child. "That's for when I'm sick of the bastards around here," he drawled. "Sometimes they follow me though."
"It sounds beautiful," Galadriel replied earnestly.
"I'll take you there. We go there on Winter Solstice, if you're still up for joining us."
That was a topic they hadn't really finished. She couldn't tell if he was asking in true curiosity of her attendance, or if he was veering her memories towards the abrupt end of that conversation on purpose. Likely both. "I'm not sure how I'll feel," she told him. Winter Solstice was still weeks away, but right now she barely felt like eating let alone celebrating.
Knuckles brushed hers. "We'll figure it out. I won't let that happen again. We know what it is, just figuring out the how and why."
"You're not scared of me?"
A hand on her shoulder stopped her. Rhys stepped in front of her. "Power doesn't scare me."
Galadriel bit the inside of her lip. "It scares me."
"I didn't."
"No," she admitted.
"You scare me." He said it so brazenly that she had to replay it over in her mind twice before she was certain that was what he had said. Rhys loosened a sigh, holding her gaze. "I've always had power. I've been learning to control it my entire life and when I became High Lord, there was only one person on this entire continent that could help me and she also scares me." He chuckled. "But the power never did, not even when I knew I could bring down this entire city if I so much as wished it. You though—you scare the living hell out of me." He grinned as he said so, as if he was seeing some unimaginably beautiful thing. "I never let power control me. I control it. But you... I don't think either of us has any idea what you could do to me. I might even let you."
Her chest moved at a rapid pace, but her breaths were silent, as if she couldn't dare let him hear the way those words unravel something inside her. It was there—that urge inside of her to taste him as she had that day on the swing, to press her skin against his. But it was smothered by everything else that had happened, like a crowded mess blocking her, starving the flame. But considering everything she had just gone through occurred because she wanted that flame figured out, she had every intention to work her way through to it again. To brandish that flame. "That's a dangerous thing to admit to me," she whispered.
He smiled. "It is."
She smiled back, as strongly as she could muster.
They walked a little way on until they passed through a corridor that Galadriel hadn't been down before. She didn't know if he'd avoided it before on purpose or not, because lining the walls were large portraits. Beautiful and classical, there was no mistaking the noble blood of each face within them. Most were hardened, cold eyes staring back at her. All of them male. Except one.
Violet eyes the mirror of those now lingering on her stared ahead. The tanned face was beautiful, sharp but elegant. The gold circlet's dropped point settled between her brows like an arrow pointing to a full, slightly curved mouth. "Your sister," Galadriel uttered. Grief and guilt clashed inside her, nearly knocking the air from her lungs.
Rhys gazed over the portrait, a faint smile ghosting his own lips, a shared expression between the siblings. "Arwyn. She would have liked you. Probably would have brought you out of your shell a lot faster than I did. At the same time, she would have taken a lot longer to warm to you than Mor did. Nothing personal against you, but she was...restrictive in who she truly let in."
"I'm sorry. For what my brother did. For his part in it all."
"If we have to start apologising for what our family and ancestors have done, then I fear I might not leave the confessional until my knees welded to the stone."