Night Triumphant

CHAPTER FOUR: THE NAMELESS GIRL AND THE BROKEN HIGH LORD

Rhysand was beautiful. There was no denying it.

But when he smiled, something in The Girl shifted. Not fear, not this time. Something else—a warmth she couldn't name. Like a flicker of light in a room she'd thought was forever dark.

The silence while she'd eaten had been an odd sort of comfort. No demands, no threats, just the quiet rhythm of breathing and the clink of silverware. It wasn't heavy, that silence that was filled with the unspoken horrors they'd both endured. Because there was a thread of understanding there, too—a shared knowledge that words were incapable of expressing the torrent of emotions they both still struggled with.

Now, though, the silence was too much. It pressed down on her from above, seeping through the mattress that was too soft, squeezing the air from her lungs. The sounds of the city—laughter, and was that music? She couldn't be sure. But it all felt like a mockery. A reminder of the world moving on, while she remained frozen.

Rhys had finished her meal as he promised, making sure there were no leftovers. She wasn't sure if his words about Mor being angry were true or if he meant them as a joke, but there was an odd sort of kindness in the gesture. He would not force her to do something she couldn't. And he would be there when she faltered. Then, he had urged her to rest, promising that no one would disturb her.

The impulse to follow him, as she did with Mor, had been overwhelming. She was nothing but a terrified animal drawn to the only gentleness it had found. But she stopped herself. To explain why to him, to expose the raw terror of being alone with the fractured remnants of her mind...she couldn't, even if the words existed.

Because the silence within her was the worst of all. There were too many missing pieces in the fractured puzzle of her memory, and all she could cling to were the more recent images in her mind: Helion's surprisingly gentle hands lifting her, the rush of cold air, finally a relief from the cell's suffocating heat. And then...the shock of seeing those violet eyes for the first time. No disgust, no pity in their depths, only a strange curiosity. And a hint of surprise.

He had stepped forward as the other High Lords argued about her—perhaps out of the foolish notion of protecting her. Perhaps he didn't know that this emptiness, this yawning chasm inside her where memories should be—it felt like a fate worse than death.

And yet...another memory surfaced, unbidden. The touch of his hand on her arm, surprisingly warm, surprisingly steady. The quiet strength in his voice. The gentle caress of his presence as he entered her mind. The way he'd held her up when the sickness came, no flinch of disgust, only a steadiness she craved.

And his vow—it echoed in the stillness, making her sit upright, the luxurious sheets twisting around her legs.

You are safe here. Under my protection, no one will harm you – not ever again.

She believed him. His eyes, when he'd uttered those words...there was a sincerity there, a darkness that spoke of horrors he understood all too well. Yet, a nagging question lingered, a shadow twisting within the warmth of his promise: was she safe from him?

He was different than the others. She could sense his power coiling around him every time they were in the same room together. The pressure of it settled against her skin like a heavy cloak. He tried to hide it, she knew—had knelt before her as if that action would somehow make him smaller. Lesser. But it wasn't that simmering strength that made him dangerous, not in the way the others were.

No, Rhysand was a different kind of dangerous.

The quieter kind. The kind that threatened to open the tightly guarded places within her. The kind that threatened to tear down the walls she'd spent years building. A danger she wasn't sure she could resist, especially not when she was this...adrift. It made her want things she knew were impossible: trust, a sense of belonging.