Chapter Text
The first thing I did after my labor was end Madja's position with my family.
I wanted to do it personally. I wanted to look into her eyes while I told her that she failed to fulfill her duty as a healer. Not because she wasn’t able to save my son and me without Nesta’s help, but because she lied to me. Nursing is only half of a healer’s duty. The other half is informing, and apparently, I was the only one who was not fucking informed about my own death. I needed Madja to understand the gravity of that violation by seeing it on my face as she learned that she would never be welcome in my home again, even if we both lived for ten thousand years.
But once someone – Elain? – put my son in my arms, some awake, battle-ready part of me died. Sleep rushed toward me like wind in the Illyrian mountains. All I could do was gasp “Nesta!” and send her a mental glimpse of what I wanted.
The silver flames in her eyes flared in the dark room. So dark. My vision was dimming, black spots splattering the corners of the world like ink stains.
Nesta only revealed the truth about my pregnancy to me so that she could hurt me, and we would talk about that, among many other things, later. Nevertheless, for the last several, desperate hours, she had been my Valkyrie. Not Cassian’s, not Rhys’s, mine. She and Elain might be the only ones who were.
Nesta’s skirts rustled as she rose and stalked out of the room, a pantheress on the hunt. She had returned the Dread Trove to whatever pocket between worlds she kept them locked away in, but their power's stench still lingered in the room like smoke after a forest fire, thick and caustic in my throat. It clashed with the metallic reek of blood and the sour echo of Rhys’s terror.
My stomach churned. “Elain…”
I wasn’t sure whether the words left my cracked lips until her fingertips brushed my shoulder. “I know,” she murmured. “It’s horrible. Let’s move you, ok?”
The outlines of people and furniture grew fuzzier. Elain said something that came out indiscernible and distorted, as if she was speaking underwater. Even in the aftermath of my labor’s chaos, my heart swelled with peace unlike anything I had ever felt before. Part of it was likely the afterbirth, but the rest of it… I had spent the better part of a decade playing the provider and protector for my sisters, always loving them and yet endlessly disappointed that they hadn’t been the resolute, capable, mentoring big sisters whom all the stories led me to hope for when I was a girl. In this moment, only after cheating death once again, I finally felt the whisper of what might be real sisterhood.
In another life, one where Elain became Graysen’s wife, maybe she and I would have switched places. When my time in the birthing bed came, she would have known exactly what to say and do to ease my pains. Instead, as usual, I was the first of the three of us to explore life’s hardships. This time, though, they helped me. Nesta’s help was one of the few truly selfless things she had ever done for me. Under different circumstances, I might have laughed. The first time I’d died, they never asked me about it. They’d been more shocked by the what of my transformation into fae than the why.
House shoes brushed against the polished floorboards as someone else moved toward me. Of course – Rhys was here. One of his arms wrapped around my shoulders, and the other one hooked under my knees. The world shifted as he picked me up and pulled me against his chest, cradling me as if I were the newborn. Elain leaned in and gathered Nyx from me, her hair tickling my cheek.
I pressed my face into Rhys’s chest and inhaled, trying to banish the room’s reek. Sometime between Calanmai and the cabin, his scent became my home. The citrus and the sea in it summoned my dreams and memories, invoking swollen oranges drooping from the branches shading River House and the ocean crashing against Velaris’s outer walls. He smelled like his favorite lemon bath oil and the sweat I licked off his collarbone days before.
It smashed my heart all over again.
When Nesta told me I was going to die, the shock of the secret stunned me. I felt like a rabbit, ensnared and reeling as a hunter took a rock to my head. When I’d gotten Rhys alone, I screamed and sobbed and raged as if the force of my wrath could unmake the truth. My mortality hadn’t disturbed me so much as the violation he’d committed. “Take it back! Take it all fucking back! Rhys, you didn’t…”
In the end, even though the agony on his face was his own doing, I couldn’t bring myself to withhold affection from him. Not when neither of us were going to live to see our next birthdays. During the war with Hybern, I had a moment when I realized that our time was up – that there would be no last night or last I love you, and it was too late for me to love him for as long and in as many ways as I needed to. The realization burned like an ash arrow between my ribs, and its reality in the moments after his death was a horror that made the Ouroboros Mirror and Bryaxis look like kittens. I didn’t want to replicate that desperation of time slipping through our fingers, not even when my wrath was justified.
So, even though I had wanted to slap Rhy, I let him hold me and sprinkle kisses over my skin like midnight rain, indulging himself in speaking my name like it was the spell that could pull us back together. “Feyre, Feyre, Feyre, darling…”
Our time, I thought as he bore me down the hallway now, Elain striding a step ahead, wasn’t limited after all. If Rhys wanted me to absolve him, he was going to have to work for it.
He’d done it once before – time would tell if that would make it easier or harder for him to succeed a second time.
It might torture us both, but… When Nesta told me what he and the others were hiding, it enraged him because he had done something unacceptable, and he knew it, and he couldn’t handle holding the blame. He was going to learn to hold it.
I didn't want to hurt Nyx in the process, though.
Which reminded me – there was one other thing I needed to settle.
Rhys I whispered to him across the endless, astral plane that minds drift on. I reached for his soul with mine even as it became more and more difficult to force my body to stay alert. Rhys's shields fell immediately, and an offshoot of his thoughts brushed against mine in eager question. Promise me something. His mind wound around mine in answer, not trying to breach my shield, but rather offering himself as part of it.
Annul the life bargain, I pressed. There can't be a world where he loses both of us at once, not for a long time. That was one of the many things that had become clear to me in the last few weeks. It was stupid that we hadn’t done it already.
The inked band around my arm burned away with purifying fire, and I knew he agreed.
When I wake up, I warned, you don’t get to ask questions. I didn’t let myself register his reaction before I plunged into the soothing, welcoming dark.
-
It was night when I woke up.
I came to slowly, keeping my eyes closed and breathing even as I noted the mattress’ familiar give under my body and Rhys’ scent tangled with mine in the silk. I registered that there was no slight, warm body curled against my chest at the same time that a breeze drifted through the bedroom, carrying a new scent with it.
I rolled over and opened my eyes.
A tall bay window was open at the far end of our bedroom, and the curtains danced in a witching-hour wind. Rhys sat in the window seat, his black dressing robe’s sleeves fluttering from the airflow. His eyes stayed fixed on the wool bundle pressed securely against his chest. A chubby arm reached out of the cocoon to seize the thick gold band around Rhys’ neck. Nyx cooed with delight, and my heart ached.
The silver moonlight outlining their bodies reminded me of the sun peering over the rim of an eclipse. It was as if the sky was trying to peak over Rhys’ shoulder to catch a glimpse of Nyx.
Nobody would ever doubt that my son’s birthright was the night. I wanted to order the universe to stop, look at him until the world stopped turning and the sun never rose in the East and all the stars could be his court until the end of time.
And Rhys… Rhys was beautiful even when he wore his ugliest masks, but he was calamitous when he was completely unguarded. His eyes were wide as he gazed down at Nyx, lips parted as if he couldn’t quite believe who he was looking at.
A deep-rooted, instinctual part of me preened. Our child, purred the mating bond’s most primal edge. We have a child with our mate. Not just a child with my lover, not just with my husband, but with the male who was so much a part of me that I felt the lead in his stomach when he looked up and caught me watching.
“Feyre,” He murmured, his eyes devouring me as if he wasn't sure I was really there. “How do you feel?”
“Tired.” I studied the quiet euphoria fading from his face.
Nyx cooed again, and our attention snapped back to him. I didn’t have to ask Rhys to bring him to me. He walked around to my side of the bed rather than join me in it, and all the tension in me released as Nyx giggled in my arms. “He -,” I swallowed, wincing at my sand-dry throat. “He smells like milk.” My breasts ached. I’d have to feed him again soon. He’d bitten me the first time, and my nipples were still sore.
“That’s normal.” Rhys leaned in slowly, as if expecting me to push him away. “It’ll fade.”
“He’s so small.” He was also mostly bald, which made the raven-black tuft of hair he did have even more adorable. Nyx gurgled. The few newborns I’d seen in the human world didn’t do much more than stare, shit, sleep, and scream, but I supposed that the fae were more vivacious.
“It’s terrifying,” Rhys breathed. Even though Nyx wasn’t sleeping, we spoke in hushed tones, as if raising our voices would send him darting out the window like a spooked sparrow. “That he’s so vulnerable, and I’m responsible for protecting him-,”
“We’re responsible for protecting him,” I corrected. That was the problem with Rhys: he could never let anyone else share a burden, even if he would offer anything else they asked for.
Well, anything but the unguarded, complete truth.
“I suppose the others are as well,” I added. Although I didn’t know how comfortable I was giving them that responsibility in this moment. “Since he’s their prince.”
The heir to Prythian’s most powerful court wiped his booger on my sleep shirt. Rhys’s lips twitched upward.
I ran my thumb along the claw at the apex of Nyx’s wing. So, so tiny. I had never seen an Illyrian child, and it was strange – and so adorable that it made my chest tight – to see wings more akin in size to a bat’s than a firedrake’s. “I guess he’s more Illyrian than you,” I mused. “He’s, what, three quarters Illyrian? Since you’re half and I was full-blooded -,” if not as permanently as I was now, after Nesta’s intervention – “when we made him. Will he be able to summon his wings when he wants, or are they always going to be out?”
“I’m not sure.” Rhys leaned a little closer, emboldened, and I basked in the warmth of him against me even as I resisted the urge to melt into him outright. I’d forgotten how much denying him muddled my mind, putting me on edge as the bond begged me to relax against his broad chest. “If he inherits shapeshifting from you, then maybe he can dissipate and manifest them at will. He won’t learn that for a while, though.” He paused, another thought occurring to him. “It’ll take a village to raise him. I’ll teach him to fly, Cassian can teach him to fight, and Amren and you will be the best people to show him how to use his powers, however they manifest.”
“Amren?” I asked.
“Amren may understand what he is better than any of us,” Rhys explained. “Power begets power, so he may be stronger than either of us, or stronger than both of us combined, and because he’s been exposed to the Dread Trove… I don’t know how that could affect him. He’s new – in a different way from you or Amren or your sisters. Amren was the only person who could teach me to use my powers when they manifested. She might be the only one who can handle what he could throw at her.”
I double-checked that my mental shields were up before I spoke. “I don’t want the others near him.” Not right now. Not for a while. “Other than Nesta and Elain.”
He sucked in a breath. I kept going. “You said it’s terrifying, how vulnerable he is. Do you know what else was terrifying?” I gave Nyx my finger to cling to as I spoke. I’d put this conversation off for too long. “When Nesta told me you were lying to me about my own pregnancy, I realized that even though I’m always mind-to-mind with you, there are still things you hide from me. Every time I’ve been inside of your shields – not in the antechamber, but inside of you – I thought there was no way you could let me that close and still keep secrets. I was wrong.”
Rhys once explained to me that the highest form of trust between two daemati was to grant each other unguarded access to their minds. Removing mental shields was more intimate than any physical undressing, especially when both partners were so aware of the risks they took laying themselves vulnerable to one another. The moments when our souls blended were the most perfect times in my life. Mind-to-mind and skin-to-skin, I knew that I was the stars and he was the darkness between them, indominable apart and endless together.
Maybe that was a lie.
“We’ve never talked about age,” I told Rhys, running my thumbpad across Nyx’s plush cheek. “I never thought we needed to. I respect your experience, and you like my curiosity, and you’ve never held youth against me. Now, though, I wonder if it wasn’t naïve of me to assume you couldn’t hide things from me. It seems so obvious now that you’ve learned all kinds of fail-safes to protect information even if someone invades your mind.” My voice was steady. The past few days had cooled and sharpened my early wrath inyo something much more lethal. He’d known for months, and I’d never glimpsed it. How many times had my thoughts nestled against a secret hiding place without me realizing it? “I’m sure I would have noticed in a hundred years, but even though I’m more powerful than you are, my inexperience won out. And you used that against me.”
I raised my eyes to meet his. “Not to mention that you did exactly what you did with the mating bond. I had a right to know then, and I had a right to know about this. Instead of telling me, you and the others debated what was best for me amongst yourselves. I don’t understand why you assumed there was no possible solution. You sent me to the Weaver with minimal training, but you didn’t think it was safe for me to shapeshift while pregnant? What kind of horse shit is that, Rhys?”
His expression stayed carefully neutral, and I laughed. “You don’t even completely regret it, do you? You're just waiting to match my response with whatever answer you think will defuse this the fastest.”
Rhys’s jaw tightened. “It destroyed me, Feyre. You were so happy. Our life was so happy. I couldn’t rip that away from you after you gave so much-,”
“Explaining yourself isn’t the same as saying you’re sorry,” I pointed out. I should have told him that at least a year ago. “When all the courts met to unite against Hybern, you told Helion that you offered me the crown because you loved me, not because you wanted to secure my power. Did you also do it to make a point to Tamlin?” His brow furrowed. “Treating me like your equal would have meant telling me about Nyx. Treating me like a high lady would have meant that the others told me the truth even if you told them not to.”
Rhys frowned. "That's not their fault. I ordered them not to."
"Oh, please." My lip curled. "They say no to you all the time." Cassian had no problem pushing back on Rhys if it was about troop formations or battle tactics, and Azriel put his foot down on a near-daily basis where Rhys’ attitude toward the Illyrians or the Hewn City was concerned. Amren was nothing if not contrarian, and I knew Mor had daily scolded Rhys about his behavior when I first came to the Night Court. "They all have the guts to tell you to go fuck yourself. It just comes down to what they think is in your best interest long-term, and they decided they would sacrifice me for you."
“We didn’t want to give you false hope-,” He started.
“I think Tamlin used that rationale once,” I said.
All of the air went out of the room.
Unbothered, Nyx gurgled. Rhys closed his eyes for a moment, weighing his options. I waited. Saying the wrong thing would damn him, mate or no.
“What do you need from me?” He asked finally.
Good answer. And a complicated question. I looked back down at Nyx, who beamed. “At first, I thought about asking you to make a bargain,” I mused. “But honesty and trust don’t mean much when they’re obligatory. You’re going to have to prove yourself.” My shoulders slumped. “With… many small things. And some big things, in addition to time, space, and a real apology.” He opened his mouth to check the apology off of his to-do list, but I shook my head. “Think about it. I don’t want you to say it now.”
The last time I’d seen such solemnity in his gaze had been on the battlefield. He accepted my orders with a slight incline of his head, and my throat closed up. “Rhysand,” my voice cracked. “I love you.” His throat contracted. “And I am glad to have…” words failed me altogether, and I gestured at the boy between us. “This with you. I’ve heard too many stories about high lords like Beron who treat their children like hunting hounds. I know you won’t be like them. But you've taken my choices away from me, and you of all people should understand what a violation that is.”
Water glittered in the corners of his eyes. This was worse for him than my raw fury when I’d first learned the truth, but every word I spoke was a salve for my shattered soul.
“When we first met,” I continued, half speaking to myself, “I knew you were dangerous because I had met men who smile like you do. I knew those men usually get what they want from the world. I knew you wanted me, and I was so wary of you at first, and so unforgiving to you for so long, because you already had more of me than I meant to give you. I was frightened – not of you, but of what I would do for you. I would give you everything if I let you ask for it.”
I played with a loose thread in the blanket. “Most days, I’m glad that I was right. Since Nesta told me what was going to happen today, though, I wonder if I’ve been too accommodating.” Rhys made a soft noise that sounded like devastation.
“I am a part of you,” I continued, “not an extension of you. I’ve been your confessional, but my forgiveness is only unconditional if you treat me like your mate.” I didn’t hide the edge in my voice. “You told me once not to compare you and Tamlin. I believe that you think you’re nothing like him, but this is exactly the kind of shit he pulled on me before I defected from the Spring Court.”
It shook me to my foundation to admit it, but it was true.
“I’m still learning to think like an immortal,” I continued. “You make your plans so far in advance that it makes you… optimistic, as much as you plan for the worst most of the time. You’ll blindside anyone in the short term if you think they’ll understand in the long term, and you trust – no, you assume - that the people you love will understand and forgive you. Eventually.” I saw ir when he made a deal with Keir and Eris and hadn’t warned Mor because he didn’t want her to object until it was too late. “I’ve accepted your pragmatism, but don’t be cruel to me and then assume that my forgiveness is guaranteed because of some lofty promises you aren't keeping.”
He stayed quiet, watching me. I could have strangled him, and yet the grace he was taking it with was so like him that it only deepened the ache even as it made me want to scream in frustration. Was he accepting the lashing because he regretted it, or because he was sure that this would all blow over?
Even when Rhys hurt me, part of me wanted him so badly that I could cry out from the pressure of the bond dragging us together. Fighting with him felt wrong even before I’d accepted the bond, and we hadn’t had a serious argument since then. I had to destabilize us, but the bond begged me not to so frantically that it terrified me. How much room did I have to maneuver? Would the bond demand that I put up with his bullshit indefinitely, whether I liked it or not? Tamlin once suggested that the mating bond had made his mother reluctant, even unable, to push back on his father. Would I be likewise ensnared?
The cord between Rhys and me writhed like a snake in my gut. His jaw tightened as my fear stoked his own.
“I’m not going to withhold fatherhood from you as a punishment,” I said. I doubted he would let me do that anyways, and I was glad for it. Any male who wouldn’t put up a fight wasn’t worth it. “But if you keep me in the dark again, I’ll leave court with Nyx like your mother did with you.” He sucked in a sharp breath. “If that happens, you can still visit Nyx whenever you want, or you can see him when he comes to court, but you will not visit me, and I will not give our son the opportunity to learn to lie the same way you do.”
And there would be no other children, but now wasn't the time to add that to my warning. If I suggested that I might still consider the possibility of other children with him, it would encourage Rhys that he could still negotiate.
A tear finally raced down my cheek. The ultimatum scorched my throat, and something in me cracked at the thought of holding us both to those words. Rhys looked as if I’d hit him. I was confirming all his fears about himself, but it couldn't be helped. One of Rhys's hands twitched like he wanted to reach for mine, but I curled the fingers Nyx wasn’t playing with into a ball.
“You’re a complicated person,” I pinned him with my gaze, daring him to look away. He didn’t. “Everyone in our family is, and it’s ok. But you need to start being very, very careful about how you treat me. You think I’m your equal? Prove it.”
What had Lucien told me in the Spring Court? That you can’t have the male without having the high lord? The line between the Court of Dreams and the Court of Nightmares wasn't quite solid. After all, a nightmare is another type of dream.
Rhys and I were quiet for a long moment as my words hung in the air between us. At some point, he’d pulled away from me. My skin goosebumped under my shirt, suddenly cold even though he hadn’t touched me even when he was close. Rhys, as always, noticed. Wordlessly, he got up from the bed and walked to the far end of the room to close the window. I couldn’t see his face with his back to me, but his hands shook when he grasped the latch. He shoved them into his pockets as he turned around and leaned against the now-locked glass.
“If you want space, I’ll sleep in one of the guest bedrooms downstairs. If you want someone else to stay in the room with you, I can find Elain. Or Nesta. I… don’t think I can sleep at the townhouse.” His eyes latched onto Nyx with an intensity I’d only seen in his bestial form. “I can’t stay too far away.”
Normally, I would roll my eyes at a statement like that and tease him for his high fae instincts. Right now, though, I understood. The idea of putting a few feet between my son and myself, let alone being in a different house in a different part of the city, made some ancient, animalistic part of me strain against its leash.
Nevertheless, if things didn't change, I wouldn't rule out demanding he stay out of the house.
“The guest room is fine,” I said. For now. Relief and frustration trickled down the bond simultaneously. He wanted to ask me how long I would keep him in exile before deciding he had served his time. He didn’t. I didn’t have an answer for him anyways. "I'll see Elain and Nesta tomorrow."
Rhys walked over to me and leaned down to brush a kiss to my forehead, fleeting as the brush of a snowflake before it melted against my skin. “I love you,” he murmured. “Tell me if you need anything.” We both knew I wouldn’t. He tapped Nyx’s nose. “See you soon, little one.”
I didn’t let myself look up at him as he left, waiting to hear the door shut and his footsteps recede before I exhaled, tipping my head back against the headboard as a tremor of released tension wracked me.
A reckoning would have come eventually, and if it hadn’t been now, the resentment would have eaten me alive until it exploded out of me. So, it had been best to talk now, but I wish we never needed to.
An old argument floated to my memory's surface.
I heard what you told him. That you thought it would be easy to fall in love with him. You meant it, too.”
“So?”
“I was jealous – of that. That I’m not… That sort of person. For anyone. Because it will always be easy for him. And he will never know what it is to look up at the night sky and wish.”
On the other side of the windowpanes, the stars glittered like the gods’ million blinking eyes, passing judgement on all us. Forgive me, I begged.
Even though Rhys had left the room, I could sense him in the house, somewhere on a floor beneath us. The bond churned like a stormy sea, his emotions colliding and blending too quickly to sift through.
In the beginning, Rhys had only been difficult to love because I fought my feelings. Then, it became as easy as breathing. Now it was difficult again, and if we couldn’t fix things, it would stay difficult until the end of time. If someone who was twenty-five could be set in their ways, and if they could be even more stubborn at eighty, how difficult was it for someone to change after five hundred years?
Disturbed, I refocused on the child in my arms and set about nursing Nyx again, wincing as he gnawed on my already-tender skin. Still peaceful and giggling, my son was oblivious to the turmoil he'd been born into or the wider world looming beyond River House.
There were several assassination atempts during my pregnancy, but Azriel caught the perpetrators before any threats against me could become truly frightening. Now that Nyx was born, those attempts would likely multiply in both frequency and brutality. My son would be hunted by enemies who were as curious about his powers as they were determined to never see his abilities manifest. After Rhys stole Tamlin's voice during the courts' pre-war forum, he had mused, half-joking, that Beron likely regreted not killing him in the craddle. Would the Vanserra lord decide not to repeat that mistake? Would Eris warn us if his father made a move? What did Alyssa Vanserra make of her husband's power games? What was it like to watch her sons become one chess piece or another, more or less valuable but ultimately never irreplacable?
As angry as I was at my family, I trusted that the Inner Circle would be merciless to anyone who tried to hurt Nyx. A would-be assassin wouldn't be able to blink before Rhys dropped the leash he kept on his powers and showed them why he was called the Lord of Nightmares. Azriel had murmured stories to me about what Rhys did to the assassins in the Hew City's dungeons, and his accounts made me blanch despite my own rage at anyone who would attack my son. Those stories would only become more gruesome.
But ultimately, if anyone tried to harm Nyx, Rhys and the others weren't really the ones to be afraid of. I would be first in line to tear the perpetrators apart. Very, very, slowly. My son would have a happy childhood, something bright and lovely that couldn't be marred by vicious, politiking adults and a cunning, immortal world. Whatever training befit a high lord's son might complicate his innocence, but I wanted Nyx to have at least some time that he could remember as carefree.
I also, selfishly, wanted Nyx to know his parents before he knew the stories about us. One day, a history tutor might tell him how I pulled Tamlin's throne out from under him or what Rhys watched Amarantha do to Prythian during his time Under the Mountain. Nyx would have questions. I didn't want him to be afraid of us when he asked. That was the main reason I couldn't push Rhys away, not really: My son would not be yet another heir who despised his father and pittied his mother.
Once Nyx finished, I pressed him to my chest and threw one leg over the edge of the bed, biting back a gasp at the pain shooting through my abdomen as I stood for the first time since my labor. The room spun, and I gritted my teeth. Don’t stumble, don’t drop him. I forced myself to shuffle to the cradle, so new it still smelled of sandpaper, and nestled Nyx into the cool bedding.
I leaned on the edge of the cradle and gazed down at him. He beamed, his smile wide and toothless. “Let me sleep, little one,” I warned him. “At least for another hour, please.” He giggled. That might be a no.
I sighed and hobbled back to the bed, sinking down into the plush mattress. I hadn’t slept alone in months, and the largeness of the bed was alien. For the first time, I realized how massive it was. The mattress was big for someone with Illyrian wings, but it was gargantuan for a sleeper without them.
This bed was not designed for me to lie in it.
Nyx didn't let me sleep long, but between waking up to soothe his fussing, I dreamed. In the dreamlands, I galloped Hekete, Mor’s favorite bay mare, down Prythian’s north shore, where the sand was black and glossy like crushed obsidian and the sea spray was cold as ice against my calves when I waded into the waves. Rhys stood in the surf, the shadow of his body barely visible under a white linen shirt that billowed in the early morning breeze. Silent, we both looked up at the morning star blazing in the first light of dawn.