And behind me, screaming and pleading—
I turned, finding Elain, naked and weeping, tied to that enormous spit. What I had once been threatened to endure. Gnarled, masked faeries rotated the iron handles, turning her over—
I tried to move. Tried to lunge.
But I was frozen—utterly bound by invisible chains to the floor.
Feminine laughter flitted from the other end of that throne room. From the dais. Now empty.
Empty, because that was Amarantha, strutting into the gloom, down some hall that hadn’t been there before but now stretched away into nothing.
Rhysand followed a step behind her. Going with her. To that bedroom.
He looked over his shoulder at me, only once.
Over his wings. His wings, which were out, which she’d see and destroy, right after she—
I was screaming for him to stop. Thrashing at those bonds. Elain’s pleading rose, higher and higher. Rhys kept walking with Amarantha. Let her take his hand and tug him along.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop it, any of it—
I was hauled out of the dream like a thrashing fish from a net cast deep into the sea.
And when I surfaced … I remained half there. Half in my body, half Under the Mountain, watching as—
“Breathe.”
The word was an order. Laced with that primal command he so rarely wielded.
But my eyes focused. My chest expanded. I slipped a bit further back into my body.
“Again.”
I did so. His face came into view, faelights murmuring to life inside their lamps and bowls in our bedroom. His wings were tucked in tight, framing his disheveled hair, his drawn face.
Rhys.
“Again,” he only said. I obeyed.
My bones had turned brittle, my stomach a roiling mess. I closed my eyes, fighting the nausea. Rippling terror kept its talons buried deep. I could still see it: the way she’d led him down that hall. To—
I surged, rolling to the edge of the mattress and clamping down hard as my body tried to heave up its contents onto the carpet. His hand was instantly on my back, rubbing soothing circles. Utterly willing to let me vomit right over the side of the bed. But I focused on my breathing.
On closing down those memories, one by one. Memories repainted.
I lay half sprawled over the edge for uncounted minutes. He rubbed my back throughout.
When I could finally move, when the nausea had subsided … I twisted back over. And the sight of that face … I slid my arms around his waist, gripping tightly as he pressed a silent kiss to my hair, reminding myself over and over that we were out. We had survived. Never again—never again would I let someone hurt him like that. Hurt my sisters like that.
Never again.
CHAPTER
22
I felt Rhys’s attention on me while we dressed the next morning, and throughout our hearty breakfast. Yet he didn’t push, didn’t demand to know what had dragged me into that screaming hell.
It had been a long while since those nightmares had hauled either of us from sleep. Blurred the lines.
It was only when we stood in the foyer, waiting for Cassian before we winnowed to the Prison, that Rhys asked from where he leaned against the stair banister, “Do you need to talk about it?”
My Illyrian leathers groaned as I turned toward him.
Rhys clarified, “With me—or anyone.”
I answered him truthfully, tugging at the end of my braid. “With everything bearing down on us, everything at stake …” I let my braid drop. “I don’t know. I think it’s torn open some … part of me that was slowly repairing.” Repairing thanks to both of us.
He nodded, no fear or reproach in his eyes.
So I told him. All of it. Stumbling over the parts that still made me ill. He only listened.
And when I was done, that shakiness remained, but … Speaking it, voicing it aloud to him …
The savage grip of those terrors lightened. Cleared away like dew in the sun. I freed a long breath, as if blowing those fears from me, letting my body loosen in its wake.
Rhys silently pushed off the banister and kissed me. Once. Twice.
Cassian stalked through the front door a heartbeat later and groaned that it was too early to stomach the sight of us kissing. My mate only snarled at him before he took us both by the hand and winnowed us to the Prison.
Rhys gripped my fingers tighter than usual as the wind ripped around us, Cassian now wisely keeping silent. And as we emerged from that black, tumbling wind, Rhys leaned over to kiss me a third time, sweet and soft, before the gray light and roaring wind greeted us.
Apparently, the Prison was cold and misty no matter the time of year.
Standing at the base of the mossy, rocky mountain under which the Prison was built, Cassian and I frowned up the slope.
Despite the Illyrian leathers, the chill seeped into my bones. I rubbed at my arms, lifting my brows at Rhys, who had remained in his usual attire, so out of place in this damp, windy speck of green in the middle of a gray sea.
The wind ruffled his black hair as he surveyed us, Cassian already sizing up the mountain like some opponent. Twin Illyrian blades were crossed over the general’s muscled back. “When you’re in there,” Rhys said, the words barely audible over the wind and silver streams running down the mountainside, “you won’t be able to reach me.”
“Why?” I rubbed my already-freezing hands together before puffing a hot breath into the cradle of my palms.
“Wards and spells far older than Prythian,” was all Rhys said. He jerked his chin to Cassian. “Don’t let each other out of your sight.”
It was the dead seriousness with which Rhys spoke that kept me from retorting.
Indeed, my mate’s eyes were hard—unflinching. While we were here, he and Azriel were to discuss what he’d found out about Autumn’s leanings in this war. And then adjust their strategy for the meeting with the High Lords. But I could sense it, the urge to request he join us. Watch over us.
“Shout down the bond when you’re out again,” Rhys said with a mildness that didn’t reach his gaze.
Cassian looked back over a shoulder. “Get back to Velaris, you mother hen. We’ll be fine.”
Rhys leveled another uncharacteristically hard stare at him. “Remember who you put in here, Cassian.”
Cassian just tucked in his wings, as if every muscle shifted toward battle. Steady and solid as the mountain we were about to climb.
With a wink at me, Rhys vanished.
Cassian checked the buckles on his swords and motioned me to start the long trek up the hill. My gut tightened at the climb ahead. The shrieking hollowness of this place.
“Who did you put in here?” The mossy earth cushioned my steps.
Cassian put a scar-flecked finger to his lips. “Best left for another time.”
Right. I fell into step beside him, my thighs burning with the steep hike. Mist chilled my face. Conserving his strength—Cassian wasn’t wasting a drop of energy on shielding us from the elements.
“You really think unleashing the Carver will do the trick against Hybern?”
“You’re the general,” I panted, “you tell me.”
He considered, the wind tossing his dark hair over his tan face. “Even if you promise to find a way to send him back to his own world with the Book, or give him whatever unholy thing he wants,” Cassian mused, “I think you’d better find a way to control him in this world, or else we’ll be fighting enemies on all fronts. And I know which one will hand our asses to us.”
“The Carver’s that bad.”
“You’re asking this right before we’re to meet with him?”
I hissed, “I assumed Rhys would have put his foot down if it was that risky.”
“Rhys has been known to hatch plans that make my heart stop dead,” Cassian grumbled. “So, I wouldn’t count on him to be the voice of reason.”