𝔸 ℂ𝕠𝕦𝕣𝕥 𝕠𝕗 𝕃𝕠𝕧𝕖 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕎𝕣𝕒𝕥𝕙 (Book 2)

Forty-Seven

It wasn't endless darkness like I'd first seen, but like the night sky. Glowing beads of light scattered all across my vision like stars. Soft tendrils of murky smoke reached out to touch me, and I let them. The soft glow of stars was calming and I thought I might have been dreaming.

Everything here probably should have sent me into a raging panic; the darkness, the smoke, the endless void. And yet my only thought was how calming and beautiful it was.

    Maybe that was just Rhysand in my own mind.

    The thought made me reinforce my mental barriers and check for small entrances.

    I looked around once more as I walked through his mind, putting out a hand as the shadows ran across my hands.

This was weird.

Really weird.

So, what exactly were you going to show me? I sent through his mind.

It was like I was split in half. Half of me was here and conscious in Rhys's mind, the other was outside, watching Rhys as he realized I'd successfully infiltrated his thoughts.

His eyes widened into saucers as his eyebrows rose high, high into the sky. Satisfaction rolled through me at the fact he didn't think I'd be able to do it, and yet here we were.

I raised a brow in challenge, Are you going to show me, or not? Because I'd really prefer to be sitting in a hot bath rather than this.

    Rhys appeared in the void with that other half of me—this was so confusing, and yet also entertaining. Before I even processed what was happening Rhys took my hand through the void, and my power roared in my veins—

    There was an overwhelming sense of him, even more so than when I'd first entered his mind.

    A bedroom carved from obsidian; a mammoth bed covered in ebony sheets, large enough to accommodate wings.

    On it sprawled in nothing but her own skin, lay Ianthe.

    I reeled back, trying to get out of the memory as I thought I might have just died a little bit more inside.

Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Disgusting, I think my brain just died of disgust. I might have puked had I been more conscious.

Oh, god. That image would never go away. It permanently is burned into my mind forever.

"There is more," Rhys's voice said. More? More. Doomed. I was doomed.

"You kept me waiting," Ianthe pouted.

The absent sensation of polished wood at my back—Rhysand's back, as he leaned against the threshold of a door. "Get out." he said.

Ianthe shifted her legs wider, bearing herself to him. "I see the way you look at me, High Lord." she smiled, a cocky self-absorbed show of teeth that truly made her look like a greedy hobgoblin.

"You see what you want to see," Rhys said—I said— he nudged the door behind him open wider, "Get out."

"I heard you like to play games." Her slender hand trailed across her skin and past her belly button. "I think you'll find me a diverting playmate."

Yep, I was gonna puke. As soon as he let me out of this memory.

I felt Rhys's icy wrath run through him as he debated splattering her on the wall—see that was the difference between us, he thought about it, while I would have actually done it.