A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 31: Her Place

Chapter 31: Her Place

Rhysand was already awake and moving about her home by the time Galadriel gathered enough motivation to peel herself from her bed. When she did, he had settled at her small dining table with a tea. He had to have heard her coming but didn't look in her direction until she slowly curved around the archway leading into the compact, sunlit room. Shrubs had grown untamed outside the windows, strangling the stone frame.

He placed his mug down. "How are you feeling?"

"Fine," she said, and it was true enough. Her headache was gone and the bruising had all but disappeared, a little dark smidge left that she could only see if she leant close to her mirror. "How was the lounge?"

"Compared to a tent at a battle camp, it was wonderful."

Galadriel smiled mildly as she took the seat across from him. "Compared to your bed at the town house?"

"I might have a few complaints."

She couldn't hold her gaze on his face, flickering it between his hands, the width of his shoulders, the windows. The memory of him was burned on her lips. Whatever he had done to her, it was a permanent stain on her memory, like an ink blotch.

"Yesterday," Rhys began, a soft sigh of a word. Tensing in her seat, she willed herself to look at him, to see what was on his face. Just one side of his lips was pulled up in a sensual grin. "I enjoyed it."

The knot in her chest loosened but didn't completely disintegrate. She opened her mouth to say: I did too, but it wouldn't come. Those moments closed off from everything else, made her feel more alive than she ever had before. Something inside her didn't want her to admit that, that he held that power over her.

He cocked his head, leaning forward over the table between them. "I knew I was good, but not enough to steal the words right from your mouth even hours later," he added in her quietness. There was no stopping her smile, wide but coy. Rhys leant back into the seat, his eyes drowning her under their intensity. "I don't think I've ever heard you so quiet. I thought I might wake up to some form of insult to my pride. Spent all morning preparing myself for the wound."

"You're surprisingly perky for being demoted to sleeping on a lounge. I thought that would have done the trick already. If I had a dog that had spent the day digging through mud, even he would have been allowed to share with me."

He grinned, as if to say There she is. But the expression smoothed as he said, "Your mind is still fuzzy. Unusual even for a hit as hard as it was."

Sinking her chin onto her fist, Galadriel shook her head. "I don't think it's my head. I mean—not having my brain nearly knocked from my skull, but...Us." He went solemn at that. Not frowning or defensive, but pensive, lost in thought that she had no power to draw out of him. "You are confusing, Rhys," she told him, adamant in tone. "I don't understand you."

He looked at her—right at her, as though her soul was on open display. "I've tried to be sensitive to your position, but I haven't tried to hide the fact that I desire you. I've been waiting for you to see it."

"Me?" she whispered. A pain grew in her chest, tight like a balled snake, constricting around her airway. "All those..." Her throat was too dry to speak, but he let her take the time to clear it. "All those teases, the flirts." His violet eyes traced every movement on her face, followed the way her hands wrung on the table. "I didn't think you thought anything of them. They were just... a way for us both to pretend everything else didn't exist in those moments."

"Then why did you kiss me yesterday?"

Yes, he had been the one to dissolve the space between them, to bring her into that fit of lust, but she had been the one to ask for it—the one who imagined and yearned for it. So much of her had cried with bliss, the most primal part of her roaring in her head that what she was doing was right.