*Please note that this could be a rough chapter to read if you have triggers with darker themes*
Chapter 83: Shattered
By the time that Galadriel was awake, she was already being dragged along the floor.
She screamed, thrashing as the leathery hands grabbed at her arm and shirt, catching knotted strands of her hand that yanked on her scalp. Her ears filled with the harsh chittering of some dark faerie, the sound of her bare legs scraping against the flat stone ground then—then Rhysand's voice.
"Galadr—Let her go." It was commanding, deep. A voice that called upon the power of his entire line of High Lord ancestors. He had shot from the large bed, moving through the corner post like it was nothing more than a mirage of mist and shadow.
Galadriel screamed again, grasping at the solid frame of his bedroom threshold, hearing the fabric of her shirt rip. "Rhys!" In hindsight, calling him that, a name with such familiarity and comfort, was one of her biggest mistakes.
One of them.
Rhysand took one step over her, his feet on either side of her hips and took the dark faerie that had torn her from his bedsheets by the neck, forcing him to let go of her. The faerie shrieked and squirmed. It did not bother Rhys, who leant in close. "You do not touch what is mine."
Galadriel stammered out a sob, struggling to piece the scene together. Tendrils of loose hair fell into her lap, the front of her shirt dotted with blood from a wound she couldn't source.
"My queen!" the faerie squealed. "My queen's orders!"
Rhys shook him, eyes dark and wide. "What does she order?" he demanded. The faerie didn't seem to be able to get a word out, shrinking and crying under Rhysand's fierce glare. Galadriel panted beneath him, crawling back into his room on her hands and knees. She looked back in time to see Rhysand enter the faerie's mind, the notable dilation of the faerie's pupils.
There was a moment of nothing, silence beyond Galadriel's blabbering, trying to pull herself up by his bedframe. Then the faerie began gasping, the sound empty. Choking. Rhysand's face twisted in a fury she didn't recognise as he drew the faerie forward, then slammed him against the wooden frame of his door. The resounding crack could have been heard by the entire mountain. The wood split almost in half.
The faerie stared forward, but there was no life in his eyes when Rhys dropped him, the back of his head caved in. Galadriel shakily stood on her feet, stepping away from the growing pool of blood. "Rhys," she whispered.
The vein in his neck bulged. He refused to meet her eye. "I'm sorry," he rasped. "I'm sorry—fuck—I'm sorry. There's another one. He's gone. Go back to your room. Run, winnow. Whatever you can." Those jagged words were enough of an indication to the condition of his mind. "I'm sorry," he said again, then disappeared.
Galadriel stared at the empty space he'd been, then glanced around his room. She could still see the imprint of where her body had been laying, the valley of where his arm had been, underneath her neck just where she always found most comfortable. Then his order hit her and she left, half walking, half jogging back to her chamber only a few corridors away, heart hammering against her chest. Where had Rhysand gone? Another one, he had said. Another faerie?
Another faerie had seen them.
Rhys was going to chase after it. Hunt it down before it reached Amarantha.
Galadriel barged through a crowd of servants, ignoring their incensed cries as they toppled and tripped. She twisted around as soon as she reached her room, slamming the door shut and locking it. The sudden emptiness left a long and loud ringing in her ears as she stared at the wood, waiting for something to break it down from the other side.
Nothing came. Not for ten minutes, then twenty. Once half an hour had passed, she wondered if Rhysand was hurt, or if he had killed the second faerie and was on his way to her now. The mating bond was so mute, so numb that she couldn't pry anything from it. She worried her fingers until the skin around her nailbeds bled, the nails themselves cracked and short.
The knock at her door was polite, pleasant. Galadriel thought she imagined it for a time until it came again with a little bit more force. Swallowing tightly, she grabbed the brass knob and turned it. The faerie waiting on the other side was High Fae. A personal guard to Amarantha.
"You have summons," was all he said.
There was no point fighting that, no point asking what for. Galadriel dropped her gaze and let herself be taken. She'd been caught. Right in Rhysand's bed. She felt for the mating bond, and it calmed her just enough to recognise its presence, like a second heart beating inside of her.
The guard led her deep beneath the main palace, to a depth she'd only ever been at twice. Both times were when she'd been near the cells, entering the mountain. It was cold, her breath almost forming in front of her lips despite being somewhere near summer. She couldn't say the exact date for certain.
The room the guard brought her to was empty except for three things. One was a chair, plain and wooden. The second was Amarantha, her black dress simple and long, hair neatly coiled into an elegant bun at the nape of her neck that had pieces draping her face. The look in her eye was cold and daunting. Nothing like the crackling storm of her usual cruel delight.
The third was Rhysand, now dressed in his black suit. He was stiff, hands deep in his pockets, the dark fabric shifting enough to suggest he was fiddling. Most of all, he looked hurt. But no matter how hard she searched, she could not find signs of a physical wound.
The guard shut the door without a word, making Galadriel the final piece of this scene.
Amarantha tilted her head forward like she was a mother speaking to her child. "I thought a lot about you, Galadriel." Her voice was sickeningly smooth, like too-sweet and thick caramel sliding slowly down your throat. "You have your uses, but there are others that bring me more."
Galadriel resisted looking at Rhysand again. "I can do better," she swore.
Amarantha hummed, shutting Galadriel right up. She brought her fingers close to her face, inspecting them as she dug a taloned nail beneath another, picking at the non-existent dirt. Her hips moved like an entrance part of a sensual dance as she stalked forward, circling Galadriel. "I don't often bargain once I've made up my mind, but Rhysand can be very convincing."
Amarantha prowled close to him. Rhysand smiled down at the Mountain Queen, doing nothing as the pale hand slid down the front of his chest, over his pants before trailing off into the air. "I told you long ago that she was a favourite of mine."
Amarantha looked him dead in the eye. "You will have no one but me." Head over her shoulder, she pinched Rhysand's chin and said to Galadriel, "He understands that now. I want to make sure you understand it too."
Galadriel dipped into a curtsey. "Of course, he is yours."
This didn't sound like she was going to be killed. Rhysand's stillness said enough. But after ten years... After ten years, Galadriel wasn't entirely sure what Rhysand would do if her life was on the line. If he would think it was worth fighting for, or if their time Under the Mountain had readjusted what he held most dear. If the pressure of fighting for his court had become so intense that he would give her up for it.
She didn't blame him.
"Yet you seem to have forgotten that when you were found beneath him this morning, letting him bury himself inside you like the common whore you are."
Galadriel couldn't tell where this was going. They certainly weren't seen fucking this morning but that faerie who had run could have said anything. Rhys could have said anything. She glanced at him, trying to read the lines in his face, the light in his eyes, but there was nothing. "I cannot disobey a High Lord if he calls for me, my Queen," she said, her voice frail and choked.
"He is not a High Lord," Amarantha hissed. Galadriel shrunk away, heels hitting the door behind her. The queen rightened herself, nostrils flaring with a quiet sigh. "Rhysand forgot himself. He cannot go around, sticking his cock into whatever hole he finds pleasantly warm around and you—you will never accept his advances. When you walk out of here today, that is something you will remember."
Something, a mess of both dread and relief, dropped in her stomach. So many lucky escapes from death on account of a worth Galadriel didn't know how to calculate. It went beyond the titbits of information she brought the queen. That much was for certain. It had been ten years and Beron didn't even bother sneering at her. There was something else that the Queen Under the Mountain saw in Galadriel and it terrified her what that might be. A card that hadn't been played yet.
Amarantha pointed to the chair. "Sit," she commanded.
Galadriel did so silently. Rhys knew what was happening, rolling his lips inwards, shifting to stand in front of her. He was towering and dark and Galadriel swore she could see some flicker, some crack in his High Fae form that let her glimpse at the beast prowling beneath his pale skin.
Surprising her, Rhysand took her right hand in his, stretching out her fingers. The faintest stroke of his thumb against her palm seemed to be an apology, but she did not know what for until he pulled her pointer finger out straight, one of his own on each side of it and put enough pressure on it that the bone curved to the side.
His expression was cold and empty as he said, "You will not touch me."
Galadriel screamed.
She felt the snap of her bone, a solid break right through the middle of her finger. Rhysand slid his grip down to her wrist, keeping her hand still as she writhed and wormed in the seat, her finger permanently crooked. Staring overhead, he grabbed her middle finger next with his free hand, repeating the motion.
"You cannot have me."
Just a simple flick of his muscles and another snap sounded. Galadriel cried out, throwing herself back against the chair but he would not let go. "Please," she begged. "Please! I'm sorry. I will not touch him."
Rhysand looked at Amarantha.
"Continue," she said.
A third snap. Galadriel managed to steel herself this time, screaming, but keeping the sound trapped behind her lips swollen from being chewed on. Tears already fell down her cheeks in droves, soaking the material of her pants.
"You will not lay your skin on me."
Clenching her eyes, Galadriel couldn't stop herself from trying to twist away from him as he broke her ring finger then her pinkie. When he dropped her hand, only her thumb had been left untouched. She let her hand hang down, bones pointing out in all the wrong directions. Agony tore through her hand and arm, each unconscious twitch spiking pain into her shoulder. The sobs had subsided, her cheeks wet, lashes clinging together.
"Rhysand," Amarantha sang.
Galadriel flinched wildly as he picked up her left hand. "No, no, no," she pleaded, trying to rip her hand from his. Rhysand tucked his lips to his teeth tightly, fighting her resistance until he had her arm locked out. "I can't—no more, please I can't."
He broke her first finger. "You cannot kiss me."
Galadriel didn't bother containing herself, screaming until her lungs burned, feeling the crack of the bone throughout her entire body.
"I am hers and hers alone."
He took her ring finger.
The first night they had spent here, ten whole years ago, she had asked him what he had planned for her birthday. By law they were married, their mateship sealed, but they never had the official ceremony. They never stood before a temple priestess and said their eternal vows to one another. Rhys told her that he was going to take her to one of his favourite jewellers. That she was to make the design for the ring he would wear to signal their mateship. They would have their proper marriage sealed in ceremony and she would wear his mother's ring as he would wear the one she chose for him.
Rhysand held the finger as if he had just slid that ring on, as if they'd already said their vows and were impatiently waiting for the priestess to finish her sacred words.
He snapped that finger too.
"Stop. Stop stop stop." Galadriel couldn't see anything now, her entire world blurred by tears and pain. She threw her head back, moans hissing through her gritted teeth. He broke her smallest finger before she had even realised he'd taken it. She slumped in the chair, heaving, her hands shaking limply past either thigh.
Sighing, as if bored, Amarantha strode forward. "You will not heal your hands with magic. If I find out that you do, I will have them broken once again and add your toes into the mix."
Galadriel wasn't entirely sure what happened after that, but the guard from outside came back in and she was being dragged once more. Every yank on her arm, every jostle in her step had her insides feeling like they were being burned over wildfire.
She was tossed back into her room, slamming onto her knees and elbows, just barely protecting her tremoring hands. They were entirely mangled, and she couldn't feel anything in her fingertips. Galadriel bowed her head to the stone between her knees, the trembling migrating throughout her body.