A Court of Tears and Starlight

Appearances

Feyre?

A small smile spread across her lips as she gave an affirming nod.

I could feel the surprise spreading across my face and she giggled, reaching up to flick my nose

FEYRE

He looked up at me with the most wondrous and tender expression. I flushed feeling exposed and insecure. I felt so undeserving of that look. I had been preparing myself for weeks now, ready to accept that he couldn't love me like this. Yet here he was ruining my resolve and breaking my heart all over again. If I couldn't have him I wished he would not look at me so. 

I glanced down at the floor as my cheeks burned red and I couldn't bare to look at his face anymore. 

I closed my eyes and was shocked when I felt the warm passionate brush of Rhys's lips covering my own. I gasped in shock and he used this to his advantage by deepening the kiss and passionately stroking my tongue with his own. I let him. I let go of all of the walls I had been building over the past months. Everyone one of them a prison of fear to protect myself from this. Yet now he was here I knew that I would choose this moment a thousand time over, no matter how much my heart would shatter later. 

As I moaned and lent into his body I felt Rhys become still and pull back from me. I went to move back and pull away but he pulled me onto his lap and wrapped his arms firmly around me.

"By the Cauldron I missed you!" He said as he ruffled my hair playfully. 

"You missed me?"

He nodded. 

"But you have only been awake for less than a day." 

"Well a minute without you feels like eternity so today stretched into an infinite torture."

I snorted with laughter at how dramatic he was being.

"I'm so sorry that you suffered so! What shall be my penance?"

My words set fire to his eyes and my favourite cocky half smile was back. 

"We will discuss that later. For now I would like answers and you won't be able to string a sentence together once I deliver your punishment." 

I giggled as he nipped playfully at my neck, restraining my hands behind my back as I tried to swat him away. I was completely swooning from his close proximity and the feel of his warm breath kissing against the sensitive skin on my neck.

I frowned as he paused and looked up to find his inquisitive eyes looking down at me. Oh! I realised that he was looking down at Elliana. It was so easy to forget that in appearance I was now her.

"How did this happen?" He inquired softly. 

I had been replaying this moment over and over again, every single day since I had woken up in this body. Yet no matter how much I thought about it, I still couldn't find the words to describe it. Except this was Rhysand and if anyone would understand this strange phenomenon it was him. 

He didn't press me or interrupt, he just sat patiently waiting for me to form the words and find the courage to begin. 

"Have you ever noticed how once you've enter someone's mind it becomes easier and easier to hear their thoughts? As though the barriers that contain their thoughts and feelings are weakened and make it easier for you to hear?"

Rhysand nodded in agreement, confirming what I had been suspecting for sometime now. 

"When I met you at Calanmai, I pretended to be Elliana. In order to do so I had to put her into a deep sleep, retrieve all of her memories of you and recreate a false combinations of them to make her believe she had spent the night with you."