The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman

Chapter 2

~ Feyre ~

Things since Under the Mountain have been... quiet. Tamlin and I returned to the court, hand in hand, and well... nothing has happened.

That's okay, I tell myself, After the drama Under the Mountain it's best to rest and recover.

But if I was being honest with myself, I craved quite the opposite.

Every time I shut my eyes, their faces flash before me. Those I killed. Sacrifices. Who was I to decide the worth of their life? To hold it below Prythian? Everyone congratulates me and all I can think is I did it for you. All of you.

I've not been able to paint without their faces flashing into my vision. I have vivid night terrors which I wake up from screaming; Tamlin strokes my hair and makes reassuring noises, as one would to a child. It rarely helps. So I resist sleep to the best of my ability and am left with dark unforgiving circles around my eyes. I wear them like a badge of honour, they show the payment I had to make. My mental well being is slowly abandoning me.

So I crave a distraction. Anything from my daily routine. I wake, breakfast with Tam and Lucien, stare at empty canvases, patrol the woods to explore the shadows and then dinner before bed. This happens everyday and the tasks are so numbing that my mind never rests, analysing whether there was something, anything, that could've made things turn out differently.

I was patrolling the woods about five weeks after leaving the Mountain when a peculiar feeling washed over me. I felt a peculiar sensation that started at the fingertips of my tattooed hand and had spread outwards to every point on my body.

During this, my body felt lighter and my head clearer wondering whether I was going to drift off. My heart gave a happy squeeze and my stomach curled in anticipation. My eyes peered through the shadows that had seemed so much lighter in the moments before but were now curling around me, caressing my face. I could've sworn one picked up a loose tendril of my hair and wrapped it around my ear, before caressing my cheekbone. But the wind was blowing softly so the action could be explained away.

The feeling consuming my body curiously pulled back from my limbs and tucked itself into my heart. I prodded it with my mind but it seemed to have... hibernated? I shook off the notion.

What could not be as easily dismissed as the wind was the fae that then stepped out of the gathering dark. My eyes started at his black leather boots and travelled up his muscled body until I reached his face. I was gifted with a confident smirk and a quirked eyebrow.

Rhysand had arrived.