A Court of Heart and Fealty | Rhysand

Chapter 86: Dreams

Chapter 86: Dreams

They came to her in flashes.

As she stumbled through the corridors, near-blindly trying to find her way back to her bedroom, memories crashed around her mind, striking her like lightning. The sensation of the flame rising inside of her, thrashing around to be released from a gate she didn't hold the key to. The male's anguished screams as he burned—not by mortal fire that could be seen with the eye, but from within.

She had melted him from the inside out.

No. She hadn't. Rhysand had.

Rhysand had taken the burden from her, made himself to executioner.

But she was still his weapon. It was still her body that killed that faerie.

"Galadriel?"

Past and present blurred. Galadriel unwillingly slumped against the wall, her chest tight and withering like burning leather. Her nails cracked as they gouged the smooth stone.

"Galadriel?" A hand pressed against her shoulder. It was not as cold as the stone and she did not want it, but another hand joined the first, manoeuvring her body against his, an arm hooked around his neck. "What do you need?" he asked, dragging her along.

Galadriel let herself close her eyes, drawing her focus into herself rather than the world. "Water," she croaked. "Cold water."

It felt like years before it came, but she felt the tiles under her feet and familiarity led her hands to the lip of the rusted tub. The plumbing creaked as water shot through it. He'd only turned on the cold but he shouldn't have worried. Hot water was a miracle around this part of the mountain.

As soon as it began to cover the base of the tub, Galadriel rolled herself in, sinking as deep as she could, situating herself under the flow. The relief was instant, like dousing a hearth. She swore that steam curled from her skin. Her whimpering eased and once the water covered her fully, she turned the tap off, her fingers a scorching red. It was probably her saving grace that she didn't have access to all her power. She felt the presence of something new, but only a trace. Small magic that all High Fae possessed. It might have been something greater but Amarantha now had possession of that too.

All she did for the next few minutes was breathe and her companion did nothing to break her stillness. When she opened her eyes again, his hazel ones looking down at her, thick with concern, she was hit with a violent bout of grief. But they were a few shades from the right gold and the space around his shoulders was empty.

"You don't have to explain," said Atticus.

"I don't want to."

He nodded. "Do you need anything?"

She shook her head. "Just stay. Please."

"Of course."

~

He had healed her to the best of his ability, but magic never truly worked against the power she had stolen and he wasn't exactly a natural healer. Patches of her skin had already begun to peel and blister—at the body's centres, Atticus said. Where magic pulses. The base of her skull, her chest, her stomach, her hands. He never asked her about the magic that didn't belong to her but he was intelligent enough to conjure a few theories. The only rare part was that today he didn't bother mulling over them aloud.

He forced food down her throat and then something to drink. He then handed her a set of silken nightwear; pants and a singlet. "Some lady left them in my room," he told her. "She never came back for them." Galadriel stared at them for a while, wondering how gross it was to wear another female's clothes that she'd worn intending to have sex, but eventually took them. She hadn't had anything so luxurious in a while.