Chapter 84: A Battle in a War
Galadriel didn't know how long she sat there, but her face had gone numb from crying and the bones in her fingers had already tried to begin healing, calling on magic that was no longer hers to use. She'd crawled some time ago to the side of her bed, too exhausted to climb into it, leaning her head against the side of the mattress. No one came to collect her for work.
All she felt was hunger. Growling, painful hunger. She hadn't eaten since last night's dinner.
Her hands lay limp in her lap, shattered fingers curled and twisted in a way that told her they'd never be perfectly straight ever again. Her eyes itched from the dried salt of her tears, but she had nothing other than her shoulder to rub them against and it caused too much pain to knock even that far up her arm.
She couldn't even react when the door to her bedroom opened. It clicked softly shut behind the intruder, the soft footfalls that followed agonisingly familiar. Galadriel did nothing as Rhysand knelt beside her, intently searching for her eyes with his own. He was breathing hard, as if he'd just run. "You shouldn't be in here," she croaked.
He let out a ragged sound and sunk down fully beside her, breaking her stare at the wardrobe. He looked down at her hands. The shattered remains of his work. "I threw up on her," he said, equally as quiet. "After you left."
Galadriel stared at him. She supposed he said that to make her feel better. To help her remember that he didn't want to do this to her. But she already knew that and it made no difference.
Rhys seemed to pick up on that too, bowing his head. "She would have known if I took away the pain—"
"Stop defending yourself," she uttered, closing her eyes. "Nobody has a choice here."
"You can barely look at me."
"Or you me. Why are you here?" Had they not just spent a morning of torture being disciplined not to be seen with each other? His hand ghosted the side of her head, barely a touch as if he couldn't bear anything more, but with it, tore the pain away. It left her with only the numbness.
"I promised you so much more than this."
Galadriel opened her eyes. She remembered those promises, remembered what it had been like before when he could make them. But she didn't care for them anymore. They were too far away to believe in. "We're surviving, Rhys. I'm surviving, just like you told me to." His brows bunched over his nose as he turned his head, resting his temple against the mattress as hers was. "She did this to hurt you too," she murmured. "We are both hurt." It was as much as she could gather to say that she knew it wasn't his fault.
His hand came reaching for hers, delicately, the night wrapping up around his wrist, she knew, as soft as silk. But she shifted herself away before his touch could graze her. Hurt flashed through his features, but she had to ignore it because her own was too strong. All she could think about was the echo of her bones snapping, how he had been the cause of her pain.
That was exactly what Amarantha wanted.
And she had won.
Only a battle, but the Queen Under the Mountain had come out victorious and Galadriel didn't know when she would be able to fight another. How long she could keep fighting a war?
She turned her face into the mattress. "Please just go." Leave her to lick her wounds in peace.
There was nothing from Rhys for a moment, then, "I love you. More than my crown, more than my court, more than myself." She thought that was meant to be some arrogant jest, intended to draw her out more but when she peaked from her lashes, his face was solemn and she understood. He valued her life over his.
"I love you too," she mouthed and closed her eyes again. She faintly felt the ghost of his lips against her cheek, then he was gone, just as she had asked.
~
It felt like no time had passed when her bedroom door clicked open again. Her first instinct, perhaps her first hope, was Rhys.
But the footfalls had a slightly uneven pattern and were too heavy. She felt this slight pressure that had been against her outer temple ever since Rhys had touched there disappear as a hazel eye framed with chestnut hair appeared in front of her. They were curious at first, then worried, then horrified.
Atticus stared at her hands, his face pale. "She did this." Galadriel nodded. He seemed to want to ask a thousand questions, his lips moving but no words quite making it out until he dared reach for her wrist. She did nothing to stop him, the pain still gone. "How long have you been sitting here?"
Galadriel looked around before remembering that she didn't have a clock. "I don't know."
"These need to be tended to."
"I can't use magic to heal them."
He glared passionately at her. "Good thing there are other methods and that I am well versed in them." She didn't want to know why. She rolled her back against the bedframe as he set about, disappearing for a few moments and returning with a handful of medical supplies. "You won't be able to work for a few weeks," he told her, sitting right in front of her, bent forward as he inspected the severity of her wobbly fingers.
"What am I supposed to do then?" she asked.
He glanced at her. "There are things to do beyond work. Maybe you've forgotten that. I'm sure you could find some poor faerie to torment or maybe a chamber full of skulls yet to be explored."
"Is that what you do in your spare time?" she inquired dryly. It didn't pass on her that he was talking for the sake of distracting her as he wrapped her first few fingers against a splint, not realising that she couldn't feel anything at all. "Don't you have...friends?"
He smiled at her hand before looking at her. "Don't you?"
Caught her there. "I speak more to my dusting feather than I do anybody else here." Friendships were not worth the pain of betraying them. Lying to protect them. Watching them die. "Other than you, I suppose."
He continued working gently, winding a white bandage up to her wrist on her right hand before beginning on her left. "I don't talk with many people. Nothing beyond my line of work." Ten years they'd known each other, but still, she felt like she barely knew him. She could if she wanted to. But she didn't want to. Didn't want to use anything against him.
With his ever-curious mind, Atticus picked out countless details of her life that she never shared verbally. Nothing that could hurt her here, but sometimes she'd catch a flicker of sadness, sometimes abrupt surprise. He never said anything about those looks—what he might have gleaned to cause them.
"Yet you've managed to learn enough that Amarantha keeps you around," he mused, pulling her fingers straight as he tightened the bandage. Still, she felt nothing, watching as the mangled length of flesh and bone shifted unnaturally. With most of her power drained, it would take weeks he said to heal. Mortal healing—how pathetic.
"I'm going to kill her one day." Galadriel hadn't realised she said those cursed words aloud until Atticus slammed his palm over her mouth, his eyes dark in warning.
He breathed heavily, glaring at her. Not because he didn't think the same, but because "—You can't say that shit. Not to me, not even to the shadows." Shadows did in fact speak, but she wondered if they shared the same understanding. He looked strained as he went back to tying the bandage. "If she coerces me..." His lips thinned. "I told you—she has something on me. You hear the talk of servants, I hear the talk of the small lords and ladies. We both serve her." Galadriel stared at him. She'd caught on years ago what his job as a whore entailed, stealing secrets from mouths distracted with pleasure. It made her physically sick but when she hinted towards pitying him, Atticus shut her right up. "What happened?"
Galadriel glanced down at her now fully wrapped hands. Completely covered in white fabric and the pain beginning to return. Rhysand must be distracted or far away. Should she tell Atticus the truth? "I was caught with someone I shouldn't have been."
"Intimately?" he asked bluntly.
"No," she admittedly quietly. "Just...with them. Maybe it was seen as intimate. I don't know."
He sat back on his heels and sighed, licking his lips. There was a sort of recognition in his eyes that told her he knew who she was hinting at. It hadn't been secret that Rhysand preferred her company when they first came to the Mountain but that had been years ago and supposedly she'd been discarded like a soiled rag. "I won't say anything."
"I thought you couldn't promise that," she countered.
He gave her a choppy smile. "I won't gossip," he corrected. It almost got a laugh out of her, but all she managed was a weak smile. "It would have been nice to know you... Outside of all this. Who you were before."
Her spine turned a little rigid. "I'm the same person."
He smiled, sadly. "I hope not."
Those words struck her as hard as an iron fist, right into her gut where it had the most impact. No, she certainly wasn't, but she tried every day to remain the person she once was. Told herself that she was, as if she could pretend the heavy darkness lingering in her mind wasn't growing bigger every damn day.
Atticus wiped his hands on his pants. "I'm going to bring you something to eat." He sniffed at her. "I can practically smell your hunger."
That didn't seem like an entirely horrid idea, so she didn't argue when he stood and left, taking all the medical supplies along with him. But once she was alone again in her room, the pain intensified. Not in her hands, but in her chest.
She winced and squirmed, eyes sealed tightly shut. Rhys had opened the mating bond—just a fraction but enough that it flooded her with agony. Punishment, she realised, for betraying the instincts of the bond, to never physically harm your mate. This is what he felt, and it had probably been worse through the act itself. How hard had he fought to not lash out at Amarantha? She could imagine the fury, burning hotter than molten gold in his blood, his muscles wanting to tear away from his bones. The beast inside of him rearing to break free.
Galadriel gasped, barely able to conjure a thought to wonder why the seal Rhysand held around the bond had suddenly broken as she crawled her way across the room. She didn't know where she was going, but eventually felt the cool tile of the bathroom beneath her palms, her teeth gritted together. Her ribs felt like they were being winched apart, cracking and splintering.
She laid her forehead on the cool tiles, letting it fight against the horrendous burning that had erupted inside of her, panting with the occasional groan. She didn't hear Atticus return but felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her around, his hazel eyes muddy smears in her muddled vision. She sobbed as he pulled her to his chest, probably crying out her mate's name, but she didn't care what he heard. Rhysand was hurting and there was nothing she could do about it.